Space mollusks

There's a logical fallacy called the Argument from Personal Incredulity.  The idea here is that you look at something from nature, and find it extraordinary -- beautiful, weird, complex, intricate, or merely bizarre.  Faced with this strange and wonderful thing, you respond, "I can't imagine how this could have come about naturally.  Therefore, it has to be the work of ______."  (Fill in the blank with your favorite deus ex machina, be it gods, aliens, or some other superintelligent power.)

The problem with this, of course, is that saying "I can't imagine how this could happen" only tells you one thing: that you can't imagine how this could happen.  It's not proof of anything else except that whatever-it-is deserves further study.

This approach also gets you into some deep philosophical waters when the extraordinary trait of the example in question is beauty.  You hear people say that gorgeous sunsets or fields of flowers in bloom or whatever are evidence for god's hand in nature, but it conveniently glosses over all the natural things that aren't so nice.  If bunnies and butterflies are god's work, then so are ticks and tapeworms, you know?  Eric Idle pointed this out in his wonderful parody of the hymn "All Things Bright and Beautiful," "All Things Dull and Ugly" -- pointing out that "the Lord God made the lot."

I ran into an example of this -- in a scientific journal, no less -- yesterday, with the paper "Cause of Cambrian Explosion -- Terrestrial or Cosmic?" in the journal Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology.  Written by a team of nineteen scientists, it looks at the remarkable expansion of biodiversity that occurred at the beginning of the Cambrian Era, but also considers an evolutionary conundrum -- how the octopus and other cephalopods ended up so much more intelligent than their mollusk relatives.  I'll cut to the chase and tell you their conclusion:

In our view the totality of the multifactorial data and critical analyses assembled by Fred Hoyle, Chandra Wickramasinghe and their many colleagues since the 1960s leads to a very plausible conclusion – life may have been seeded here on Earth by life-bearing comets as soon as conditions on Earth allowed it to flourish (about or just before 4.1 Billion years ago); and living organisms such as space-resistant and space-hardy bacteria, viruses, more complex eukaryotic cells, fertilised ova and seeds have been continuously delivered ever since to Earth so being one important driver of further terrestrial evolution which has resulted in considerable genetic diversity and which has led to the emergence of mankind.

Hoyle and Wickramasinghe are not an auspicious way to start.  They're both associated with the idea of panspermia, that life on Earth was seeded here from outer space, and they don't seem particularly concerned with the fact that there are other, more plausible explanations.  Wickramasinghe especially is associated with a lot of fringe-y claims, such as that the Archaeopteryx type fossil is a forgery and that the virus that caused the 1918-1919 Spanish flu epidemic was extraterrestrial in origin.  He testified for the defense in the 1981 creationism trial in Arkansas, making statements about the "Intelligent Design" model that his colleagues called "absurd" and "ignorant."  (In fact, in papers that mention Wickramasinghe, the phrase most often associated with his name is "his claims have been completely rejected by the scientific community.")

Of course, for some people, being rejected by the establishment is a sign of being brilliant, a maverick, someone whose ideas are ahead of their time.  Their sticking to their guns turns their claims into something of a crusade.  Fewer people, it seems, conclude that the renegade in question is simply wrong.

Which is how we now have a paper in support of Wickramasinghe and Hoyle -- saying, basically, that we have found the extraterrestrials, and they are us.

The part of the paper that addresses viruses is at least looking at a problem for which the standard model has no particularly good explanation.  Viruses are odd beasts, obligate parasites that hijack a host cell and use their cellular machinery to make more copies of themselves.  Some, the retroviruses (HIV being the best-known example) actually insert a bit of their genetic material into the host's cells, rendering infection more or less permanent.  (We have dozens, possibly hundreds, of retroviral remnants in our own DNA, and they have been implicated in a variety of diseases including multiple sclerosis and schizophrenia.)

But then they start talking about octopuses, and leap right off the logical cliff:

[T]he genetic divergence of Octopus from its ancestral coleoid sub-class is very great, akin to the extreme features seen across many genera and species noted in Eldridge-Gould punctuated equilibria patterns (below).  Its large brain and sophisticated nervous system, camera-like eyes, flexible bodies, instantaneous camouflage via the ability to switch colour and shape are just a few of the striking features that appear suddenly on the evolutionary scene.  The transformative genes leading from the consensus ancestral Nautilus (e.g. Nautilus pompilius) to the common Cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) to Squid (Loligo vulgaris) to the common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris) are not easily to be found in any pre-existing life form – it is plausible then to suggest they seem to be borrowed from a far distant “future” in terms of terrestrial evolution, or more realistically from the cosmos at large.  Such an extraterrestrial origin as an explanation of emergence of course runs counter to the prevailing dominant paradigm.

The last bit, at least, is undeniable.  They go on to add:

One plausible explanation, in our view, is that the new genes [i.e., differences between the octopus genome and that of their nearest relatives] are likely new extraterrestrial imports to Earth - most plausibly as an already coherent group of functioning genes within (say) cryopreserved and matrix protected fertilized Octopus eggs. 

Thus the possibility that cryopreserved Squid and/or Octopus eggs, arrived in icy bolides several hundred million years ago should not be discounted as that would be a parsimonious cosmic explanation for the Octopus' sudden emergence on Earth ca. 270 million years ago.

The problem here is that their entire argument rests on two things: (1) the lack of a good fossil record of the octopus; and (2) their amazing intelligence.  So we're adding the Argument from Ignorance ("I don't know the explanation, so it must be ____") to the Argument from Personal Incredulity ("It's pretty cool, so it must be ____") to the paucity of the fossil record (not only for octopuses, but for most life forms) and concluding that the octopus came to Earth via frozen eggs from outer space.

[Image is in the Public Domain]

There's also a serious scientific stumbling block about all this, and it's one the authors don't address.  It's the same problem faced by claims of human/alien hybridization; if life did evolve on other worlds, there is no reason in the world that it would necessarily encode its genetic information the same way we do.  Something like DNA or RNA is probably fairly likely; the nucleotides (building blocks) of these molecules are relatively easy to synthesize, and RNA has the unusual characteristic of being autocatalytic (it can catalyze its own chemical reactions).  But the DNA code chart -- the master recipe book by which our genetic material is decoded, and directs all of our cellular processes -- appears to be entirely arbitrary.

And yet... it is shared by all life forms on Earth.  Including the octopus.  Good evidence that we all came from a common ancestor -- and a tough thing to overcome if you think that some terrestrial life forms came from elsewhere in the galaxy.

So if we have scant evidence for something, we don't engage in wild speculation -- we look for more evidence.  You can't base a valid conclusion either on ignorance or awe.  And to cherry-pick a few odd examples of creatures the Darwinian model hasn't fully explained, and use them to support your claim that life's evolutionary drivers came from outer space, is nothing more than fancily-worded confirmation bias.

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This week's recommended book is an obscure little tome that I first ran into in college.  It's about a scientific hoax -- some chemists who claimed to have discovered what they called "polywater," a polymerized form of water that was highly viscous and stayed liquid from -70 F to 500 F or above.  The book is a fascinating, and often funny, account of an incident that combines confirmation bias with wishful thinking with willful misrepresentation of the evidence.  Anyone who's interested in the history of science or simply in how easy it is to fool the overeager -- you should put Polywater by Felix Franks on your reading list.

Fast forward

In today's contribution from the Unintentional Irony Department, we have: a study out of the University of Buffalo that examined the pervasiveness of false information on Twitter, which a Twitter user summarized incorrectly, then posted the inaccurate summary...  on Twitter.

The study, which appeared in the May 11 issue of the journal Natural Hazards, looked at the responses of people who interacted with tweeted false information following Hurricane Sandy and the Boston Marathon shootings.  What they found was interesting, if a little disheartening.  Of the people who chose to respond to the false tweets:

• 86 to 91 percent of the users fostered the spread of the false news, either by retweeting or "liking" the original tweet;
• 5 to 9 percent looked for confirmation, most often by retweeting and requesting anyone who had accurate information to respond.
• 1 to 9 percent were dubious right from the get-go, and said they had information indicating the original tweet was incorrect.

So it's kind of discouraging that given tweets the researchers knew were false, only around ten percent of the people who chose to respond even asked the question of whether the content of the tweet was factually correct.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Ibrahim.ID, Socialmedia-pm, CC BY-SA 4.0]

Jun Zhuang, lead author of the study, was up front about how alarming this is.  "These findings are important because they show how easily people are deceived during times when they are most vulnerable and the role social media platforms play in these deceptions," Zhuang said.  However, he also pointed out what was the first thing that occurred to me when I read the study.  "[However], it's possible that many people saw these tweets, decided they were inaccurate and chose not to engage."

Which, despite my frequently combative attitude here at Skeptophilia, is how I usually approach that sort of thing online.  I've found that posting rebuttals to total strangers seldom accomplishes anything, more often than not resulting in your being called a know-it-all or a deluded mouthpiece for the [fill in with your favorite political party] or simply a hopeless dunderhead.  So my guess is -- and it is just a surmise -- that the people who actually chose to interact with the tweets in question were (1) a minority, and (2) heavily skewed toward ones who already had a tendency to believe the claim in question.

In other words, yet another example of confirmation bias.

Which is what makes where I found out about this study even more wryly amusing.  Because I got the link to the Zhuang et al. study on Twitter -- from a tweet that said, "STUDY SHOWS THAT 90% OF WHAT YOU READ ON TWITTER IS FALSE!"

Well, as I hope I don't need to point out to loyal readers of Skeptophilia, that is actually not what the study said.  Not even remotely.  So a tweet saying that 90% of what's on Twitter is false was false itself.

And, for the record, I didn't respond to it, unless you consider this post a response, which I suppose it is.

What compounds this whole thing is the tendency of people to retweet (or repost) links after only having read the headline -- witness the Science Post article with the headline, "Study: 70% of Facebook Users Only Read the Headline of Science Stories Before Commenting," which was shared all over the place, despite the fact that the article contained no links to any studies, just repeated the claim in the headline, and followed up with several iterations of "Lorem Ipsum:"

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.  Nullam consectetur ipsum sit amet sem vestibulum eleifend.  Donec sed metus nisi.  Quisque ultricies nulla a risus facilisis vestibulum.  Ut luctus feugiat nisi, eget molestie magna faucibus vitae.  Morbi luctus orci eget semper fringilla.  Proin vestibulum neque a ultrices aliquet.  Fusce imperdiet purus in euismod accumsan.  Suspendisse potenti.  Nullam efficitur feugiat nibh, at pellentesque mauris.  Suspendisse potenti.  Maecenas efficitur urna velit, ut gravida enim vestibulum eu.  Nullam suscipit finibus tellus convallis lacinia.  Aenean ex nunc, posuere sit amet mauris ac, venenatis efficitur nulla.  Nam auctor eros eu libero rutrum, ac tristique nunc tincidunt.  Mauris eu turpis rutrum mi scelerisque volutpat.

I wonder how many people shared that article after only reading the headline.

Speaking of irony.

So anyway, I'll just beseech you once again to read the whole article before you evaluate it, and evaluate the whole article before you share it.  Ask questions.  Look for supporting information.  Consult such fact-checking sites as Snopes and PolitiFact.  Consider source bias -- and the natural tendency to confirmation bias we all have.

Because the last thing we need is more people blindly fast-forwarding fake news.

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This week's recommended book is an obscure little tome that I first ran into in college.  It's about a scientific hoax -- some chemists who claimed to have discovered what they called "polywater," a polymerized form of water that was highly viscous and stayed liquid from -70 F to 500 F or above.  The book is a fascinating, and often funny, account of an incident that combines confirmation bias with wishful thinking with willful misrepresentation of the evidence.  Anyone who's interested in the history of science or simply in how easy it is to fool the overeager -- you should put Polywater by Felix Franks on your reading list.

Firing the watchmen

One of the most maddening things about this administration -- and there are many options to choose from -- is the insidious way they're hamstringing scientific research.

It's not just science denial.  That's bad enough.  Claiming that climate change, evolution, and the documented harmful effects of pollution are false has led to dreadful policy choices and (in the case of ecological malfeasance) put innocent lives at risk.

But they've found a sneakier way to deflect people's focus on reality; simply pull the plug on the projects that keep track of it.

This was done, to little fanfare and nearly zero coverage by the press, last week, to NASA's Carbon Monitoring System.  The project, which cost an estimated ten million dollars a year, not only kept track of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, but studied sources and sinks for carbon worldwide (including methane, which is an increasing concern from thawing permafrost, and which has a higher greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide does).

So the powers that be have moved past arguing that the models are wrong, or the data flawed; they've simply stopped us from gathering the data in the first place.

[Image courtesy of NASA]

Daniel Jacob, an atmospheric chemist at Harvard University, called this an "ironic" time to shut down the system.  There are two new, and more sensitive, carbon monitoring devices scheduled for launch -- one this year (to be mounted on the International Space Station), and one next (the Geostationary Carbon Cycle Observatory), and these will now be tabled.  So Jacob finds it ironic because the funding is cut just before we added some tools to our kit that would allow far more refined measurements of the carbon levels in the atmosphere.  Me, I don't think it's ironic at all, I think it's pure cunning.  Stop the scientists from bolstering the data and their atmospheric models.  Prevent them from producing integrated theories that might make predictions leading to potential strategies for dealing with climate change.  It's like firing all the watchmen, and then acting surprised when your store gets robbed.

Or, as Paul Voosen put it, writing for Science:  "You can't manage what you don't measure."

There's no doubt about where this is all coming from; the pro-corporate, pro-fossil-fuel leanings of the current administration have never been in doubt.  Along the way, they've made sure that the voices of industry (Scott Pruitt, Ryan Zinke, Rick Perry, Doug Domenech) are appointed to influential positions, and the voices of science are ignored, defunded, shut down, silenced, and harassed.  If you doubt the last-mentioned, look into the track record of Texas Representative Lamar Smith -- who, fortunately, is retiring this year, but who has spent damn near his entire career fostering doubt about climate change and other environmental issues, and making the lives miserable of any scientist who dares to claim the opposite.  Oh, he gives lip service to caring; earlier this year, Smith said he'd be fine addressing carbon dioxide levels and climate change -- but only if we do it by replacing fossil fuels with fusion technology.

Which doesn't exist yet, and which may not even be possible on a sufficient scale to provide the nation's energy needs.  And we'd only find out if it was feasible through scientific research, which Smith and his cronies have systematically shut down.

So the fossil fuel CEOs make money hand over fist, and then they buy the votes of politicians like Smith who are more concerned with their bank accounts than with the long-term habitability of the Earth.  And the scientists -- who, of all of us, have the most reason for sounding the alarm, and evidence to back them up -- are being sidelined.

All of this leaves me feeling helpless.  I know that optimists keep talking about a "Blue Wave" that's going to come in November and sweep away all of the elected officials who have become nothing more than Trump's professional ass-kissers.  Me, I'm not quite so sanguine.  Not only do we have a powerful, deeply entrenched corporate/industrial superstructure that is tickled pink by the environmental deregulation, pro-business tax legislation, and defunding of research, there's the dictatorship-style State-Sponsored Media that Fox News has become, presenting only the cheerful party line coming from the White House and ignoring anything that could be considered a criticism of the Dear Leader's agenda.  So you've got the rich and powerful pulling the strings, and a deluded and ignorant slice of Americans never hearing what the actual effects are -- and voting the same lobby-bought politicians back into power over and over and over.

I keep hoping that people will wake up, but I'm reminded of what one of my Environmental Science students wrote, many years ago, and which seems a fitting, if depressing, way to conclude: "It'd be nice if humans based their decisions on science, but that's not what most people do.  In this case, it's going to take something really horrible to bring people to their senses -- not just one drought, one storm, one killer heat wave.  People are so sunk in short-term expediency and long-term self-delusion that it's going to take a global-scale catastrophe for them to frown, and say, 'Wait.  Maybe this was a bad idea.'  And not only does that mean that it'll come at the cost of millions of lives, it may not happen until it's too late to do anything to stop it."

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This week's featured book on Skeptophilia is Flim-Flam!, by the grand old man of skepticism and critical thinking, James Randi.  Randi was a stage magician before he devoted his career to unmasking charlatans, so he of all people knows how easy it is to fool the unwary.  His book is a highly entertaining exercise in learning not to believe what you see -- especially when someone is trying to sell you something.

Centennial of a curious fellow

A hundred years ago today, groundbreaking physicist Richard Feynman was born in Manhattan, New York.  I first bumped into Feynman when I was in high school, and I found out about "Feynman diagrams" -- a way of looking at particle interactions that was simple and elegant, but raised profound questions about the nature of time.  (Specifically, why there's an "arrow of time" -- that time always proceeds in the same direction -- when Feynman diagrams imply that either direction is equally likely.)

Then in the mid-80s, I read his autobiography, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!  I picked it up because I'm fascinated with physics, but when I read his book, I was blown away with how playful he was about it.  He was the opposite of the stereotypical science nerd -- he has whole chapters devoted to strategies for picking up women, his (successful) attempt to convince an Italian man he was speaking Italian (just a different dialect), performing on the bongos, and various practical jokes he'd played.

One of these -- the chapter entitled "Who Stole the Door?" -- is required reading in my Critical Thinking classes, when we're discussing ethics.  The central question is, has a person lied when he tells the truth so unconvincingly that no one believes him?  (For the details, you'll just need to read the book.)

Of course, Feynman had a serious side, and his contributions to subatomic particle physics and quantum electrodynamics won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 (along with Shin'ichiro Tomonaga and Julian Schwinger).  His Feynman Lectures on Physics, now a classic of science literature, started as his attempt to improve undergraduate pedagogy at CalTech, and is still considered groundbreaking -- a 2013 review in Nature said of them that they embody "simplicity, beauty, unity ... presented with enthusiasm and insight."  His enthusiasm for the topic never waned.  "Physics is like sex," he said.  "Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it."

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Copyright Tamiko Thiel 1984, RichardFeynman-PaineMansionWoods1984 copyrightTamikoThiel bw, CC BY-SA 3.0]

He was also quick to criticize his colleagues, and the scientific endeavor in general.  It was all very well to specialize, he said, but the disdain some scientists show for broad-based general knowledge was completely wrong-headed.  "In this age of specialization men who thoroughly know one field are often incompetent to discuss another," he said, at a luncheon at CalTech where he was the keynote speaker.  "The great problems of the relations between one and another aspect of human activity have for this reason been discussed less and less in public.  When we look at the past great debates on these subjects we feel jealous of those times, for we should have liked the excitement of such argument.  The old problems, such as the relation of science and religion, are still with us, and I believe present as difficult dilemmas as ever, but they are not often publicly discussed because of the limitations of specialization."

However, Feynman was unequivocal about well-done science being the ultimate arbiter of truth.  In a lecture he did at the University of Auckland in 1979, he said:

There's a kind of saying that if you don't understand its meaning, "I don't believe it. It's too crazy. I'm not going to accept it."…  You'll have to accept it.  It's the way nature works.  If you want to know how nature works, we looked at it, carefully.  Looking at it, that's the way it looks.  You don't like it?  Go somewhere else, to another universe where the rules are simpler, philosophically more pleasing, more psychologically easy.  I can't help it, okay?  If I'm going to tell you honestly what the world looks like to the human beings who have struggled as hard as they can to understand it, I can only tell you what it looks like.

His skepticism comes shining through in many of his writings and speeches.  He was unimpressed by claims of the paranormal, and showed up what he thought of synchronicity at the beginning of one of his talks:

You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight.  I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came in through the parking lot.  And you won't believe what happened.  I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357.  Can you imagine?  Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight?  Amazing!

He was up front about being an atheist.  "Agnostic, for me," he said, "would be trying to weasel out and sound a little nicer than I am about this."

He exited the world with his characteristic humor.  His last words before his death in 1988 from complications of liposarcoma are said to have been, "I'd hate to die twice.  It's so boring."

When people come up with scientists and other intellectual figures who represent the heights of brilliance, Einstein usually comes up as the apex, the pinnacle of what the human brain can accomplish.  Myself, I always think of Richard Feynman, who not only was smart enough to comprehend the innermost workings of the universe, but tempered it with self-deprecating humor.  And what stands out to me most is his driving, insatiable curiosity.  As he put it in The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist:

It is a great adventure to contemplate the universe, beyond man, to contemplate what it would be like without man, as it was in a great part of its long history and as it is in a great majority of places.  When this objective view is finally attained, and the mystery and majesty of matter are fully appreciated, to then turn the objective eye back on man viewed as matter, to view life as part of this universal mystery of greatest depth, is to sense an experience which is very rare, and very exciting.  It usually ends in laughter and a delight in the futility of trying to understand what this atom in the universe is, this thing — atoms with curiosity — that looks at itself and wonders why it wonders.  Well, these scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems inadequate.

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This week's featured book on Skeptophilia is Flim-Flam!, by the grand old man of skepticism and critical thinking, James Randi.  Randi was a stage magician before he devoted his career to unmasking charlatans, so he of all people knows how easy it is to fool the unwary.  His book is a highly entertaining exercise in learning not to believe what you see -- especially when someone is trying to sell you something.

World War Woo

If you're wondering why the world seems to have lost its collective marbles lately, we now have an answer:

The Reptilians who control all of the governments in the world have realized that we're on to them, and they're trying to start World War III.

At least that's the contention of YouTube user "2CirclesArchive," who posted a video a couple of days ago that should win some kind of award for complete batshit lunacy.  In case you don't want to jeopardize valuable cells in your prefrontal cortex watching the thing, here are a few salient quotes:

The Reptilian parasites know that humanity is waking up to their existence and presence. That’s why the need the Third World War as a distraction.  That’s the sole reason for this irrational conflict.

Which of the many irrational conflicts are we talking about, here?  Because in the last few months, we seem to be having global-scale irrational conflicts on nearly a daily basis.  And I'm not entirely sure how starting a world war helps out the Reptilian parasites' goal of remaining undercover.  You'd think that'd kind of seal the deal, actually.

It’s Reptilians versus humans – not humans versus humans.  Not the West versus Russia...  Putin had been part of a group advised by reptiles.  Nordics made the counter offer to Putin.  The technology the Nordics are giving to Putin is on par with America.  The Nordics have told Putin he no longer has to toe the American line, hence his resistance.

The "Nordics" doesn't refer to Scandinavian people, here.  They're a race of sexy blond aliens, kind of like Liam Hemsworth only with superpowers.  So apparently the Nordics and the Reptilians are playing some kind of chess game with Putin as one of the pawns.  And since "2CirclesArchive" claims that the focal point of the unrest is going to be in the Ukraine, I suppose it makes some kind of bizarre sense that Putin would be involved.

Then we're told that at least one other human besides "2CirclesArchive" has figured it out.  This person is Simon Parkes, former councilor in Whitby, North Yorkshire, England.  Parkes has appeared in Skeptophilia before because of his claims that (1) his mother was a nine-foot-tall green alien with eight fingers on each hand, and (2) he's been abducted by an alien he calls "the Cat Queen," who screwed him silly and proceeded to give birth to a half-alien, half-human child named "Zarka."

So I think we can safely conclude that Parkes is a few fries short of a Happy Meal.  Nevertheless, "2CirclesArchive" thinks he is a credible witness, and finds it completely plausible that he has interacted with "aliens, shadow people, elementals and UFOs... Mantid (Mantis) beings, Draconis Reptilian, Feline, small and tall Grey creatures, Crystalline beings and other creatures that can’t be identified."

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons CGP Grey, Roswell - Alien 4889611102, CC BY 2.0]

Okay, what do we do about all this?  "2CirclesArchive" has some advice:

Pass it on and tell everyone.  The internet is controlled.  Call people in Ukraine randomly.  Google for a phonebook of Ukraine and call people and businesses and tell them all politicians are Reptilians.  They want the Third World War.  Search on the internet.  I love you.  Hurry, time is running out.

So because the internet is controlled, we're supposed to... search on the internet?  And then... just call random people in Ukraine?

There's also the problem of the fact that even if I was inclined to do this, which I'm not, I don't speak Ukrainian.  I mean, anyone can look up how to say "All politicians are Reptilians" using Google Translate ("Vsi polityky ye reptiliyi"), but I should warn you that Google Translate isn't all that accurate.  Every year I have to advise my Latin and Greek students not to attempt cheating on their assignments by loading them into Google Translate, because what comes out is an often-hilarious hash.  As an example, take the simple and rather well-known quote from Petrarch, "Nihil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio" ("There is nothing as hateful to wisdom as too much cleverness").  Here's what Google Translate did with it:

There is nothing more offensive to that wisdom of the sharpness of the excessive.

Right!  What?

So I'm not sure you should be all that confident of my translation into Ukrainian.  You might be better off hiring an actual Ukrainian person, although you'd have to choose carefully, or they'd just tell you, "ty absolyutno bozhevilʹna" ("you are absolutely insane," at least if you believe Google Translate).

Other than that, I'm not sure what to do.  I mean, I've done my part in passing the message along, but I'm not sure I'm going to push it much further.  I'm only willing to stretch the patience of my readers so far.  Beyond that, I think we'll have to take our chances with the Reptilians, shadow people, Mantids, and Liam Hemsworth.

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This week's featured book on Skeptophilia is Flim-Flam!, by the grand old man of skepticism and critical thinking, James Randi.  Randi was a stage magician before he devoted his career to unmasking charlatans, so he of all people knows how easy it is to fool the unwary.  His book is a highly entertaining exercise in learning not to believe what you see -- especially when someone is trying to sell you something.

Labels, morality, and hookups

There have been some interesting, and all too predictable, responses to a study that appeared in the Archives of Sexual Behavior this week.

The paper, written by Arielle Kuperberg and Alicia M. Walker, is entitled "Heterosexual College Students Who Hookup With Same-Sex Partners," and investigates the skew that can exist between a person's behavior and their self-identification.  Specifically, Kuperberg and Walker sifted through data from 24,000 American college students, asking questions about hookups, long-term relationships, and which demographics they fell into.

The results were unsurprising, at least to me.  Only looking at the individuals' most recent hookup, they found that 12% of the male-male experiences, and 25% of the female-female experiences, were reported by self-labeled heterosexuals.

In an interview with PsyPost, study co-author Kuperberg explained that the (also self-reported) reasons for these hookups by students who consider themselves straight varied all over the map.  Some said they were curious, or experimenting; others, that found themselves in the situation in the heat of the moment (as it were) but had no inclination to repeat the experience.  Most fascinating -- and saddest -- were the 8% of the students who said they were heterosexual but had participated in a same-sex experience, and who described themselves as highly religious and such behavior immoral and sinful.

What is a little disheartening are the responses I saw on social media to this study, a link to which I've now seen on Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter.  Some of the comments were positive, but a great many were like the following:

• Another skewed study by liberals trying to ram their immorality down everyone's throats.
• If you're male and like to have sex with women, you're straight.  If you like to have sex with guys, you're gay.  Why is that so hard to understand?
• More license to treat deviancy as normal.
• So trans and pansexual and bisexual and so on isn't enough?  Now we have to have a separate category for guys who want a girlfriend and a boyfriend at the same time?
• Astroturfing to destroy our culture.

(Astroturfing, by the way, is "the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization (e.g., political, advertising, religious or public relations) to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by a grassroots participant(s)."  I'd never heard the term, and had to look it up, so I thought I'd save you the trouble if you also hadn't run across it.)

What baffles me about all of this, and in fact what has baffled me for years, is why anyone cares who's having sex with whom.  As long as there's consent, and no breaking of trust with a significant other, how is any of it immoral?  (And, in the case of opposite-sex hookups, measures are taken to prevent conception.)  Jonathan Haidt, who has extensively studied morality, includes "purity/sanctity" as one of his five moral pillars.  But it seems to me that this one is different from the other four (care, fairness/justice, in-group loyalty, and respect for authority) in that even when it's broken, no one gets hurt.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Ludovic Bertron from New York City, Usa, Rainbow flag and blue skies, CC BY 2.0]

Again, let me emphasize that I'm not talking about situations of cheating.  That's not just about the sex, it's also about disloyalty, dishonesty, and lack of respect for a commitment.  But setting that aside, how can two guys trying it out be "immoral," or "deviant," or a move toward "destroying our culture?"

After all, they're not insisting that you have a same-sex hookup.  They're just saying they wanted to.

And as far as the person who objected to all the categories, let me say something I've said before.  Gender and sexual orientation are not binary.  They never have been.  Gender is not just about the physical anatomy -- it also has to do with the chromosomal makeup (XX versus XY) and the fundamental wiring of the brain.  As far as orientation goes, it was known all the way back to the Kinsey studies that there are plenty of people who are not exclusively heterosexual or homosexual in their desires -- irrespective of whether they ever act on them, or how they choose to label themselves.

So the idea of same-sex hookups between people who consider themselves mostly hetero might make you feel squinky, but the fact that you don't like reality deserves only a shrug and a comment of "tough shit."  As I've also said before, the universe is under no particular compulsion to behave in a way that makes you comfortable or conforms to your biases.

I'll end with a quote from study co-author Arielle Kuperberg:

Our research shows that sexual identity and sexual behavior do not always match up.  Same-sex behavior may not necessarily have implications for sexual orientation; not everybody who has hooked up with a same-sex partner but identifies as heterosexual is "secretly gay" or "on the down low." 

Some may be engaging in experimentation because that’s now an expected part of college, and they are curious about same-sex sexuality.  Others may be experiencing conflicts between their sexual orientation and their religious beliefs, which can cause psychological distress.  Although the behavior is the same, motivations for it are diverse, which is important to take into account in future research and in clinical settings.

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This week's featured book on Skeptophilia is Flim-Flam!, by the grand old man of skepticism and critical thinking, James Randi.  Randi was a stage magician before he devoted his career to unmasking charlatans, so he of all people knows how easy it is to fool the unwary.  His book is a highly entertaining exercise in learning not to believe what you see -- especially when someone is trying to sell you something.

Astrohomeopathy

Because there's no idiotic idea that can't be made even more ridiculous by blending it with another idiotic idea, today we consider "astro-homeopathy."

If you're thinking, "Wait... that can't mean what it seems to...", unfortunately, yes, it does.  There actually are people who are prescribing homeopathic "remedies" based on your astrological sign.

As we're told over at the the site Ashwini Homeopathy Holistic Healing:

Each planet and its sign have certain characteristics, which may be weak or strong, depending on their placement in the horoscope.  By matching these characteristics of the planets and their signs with the symptoms of Homoeopathic [sic] remedies, it is possible to connect them in order to select the right medicine.

It's explained even more fully over at the site Mystic Scripts:

Astro homeopathy is based on a very unique idea of relating homeopathy with astrology.  Many people follow the astrohomeopathy principles and lead a healthy life.  You can also try astro homeopathy healing methods so that you can lead a life free from health hazards and fitness problems.

Astrology and homeopathy are bridged in astro homeopathy.  An astrohomeopathy reading for you finds out your sun sign and the body parts related to your sign of the zodiac, and tells you the health problems you have the possibility to suffer from (if, of course, there is [sic] any).  In addition, you also come to know the homeopathic remedies for the health problems.

On this site there is a link where you can get your own free astrohomeopathy reading, so of course, I had to do it.  So I entered my birthdate, and this is what I got:

You are intense and ong [sic] willed people who have a very determined nature.  You are powerful and full of energy.  You may seem very calm on the surface but inside, you have a lot of latent aggression. You are very thoughtful and good company, but you are more than that meets the eye.  You seem to be detached from events but actually keep a careful track of what is happening.  You are very sensitive, which leads you to being short tempered.  You have great will power and will achieve your goals if focused.  You are highly motivated individuals who are very resourceful and passionate in your dealings.  You have ong [sic] powers of reasoning and if put to the right use, you will reach the top in no time.

Man, if being short-tempered and having latent aggression are my "positive traits," I can barely wait to see what my negative ones are.  At least I'm a very "ong" person.  That's good, right?

L'homme zodiacal from Les très riches heures du Duc de Berry (ca. 1410) [Image is in the Public Domain]

Now, for the bad news -- my "negative traits:"

Your bluntness may hurt a lot of people.  You may get too involved and probe into issues, which doesn't concern them.  You may be temperamental, making them very difficult to get along with.  You believe you can achieve a lot in life, but just talk and don't do anything as you may have become over confident.  You may be arrogant and jealous of others' achievements.  You do no [sic] trust people and are always suspicious.  Your secretive nature may create problems.  Also you may turn violent at the blink of an eye.

If wanting to flip a table when I'm reading paragraph after paragraph of horseshit constitutes being "temperamental and violent," then guilty as charged.

Then there's the homeopathy part.  Apparently, given my birth sign, what I need is a "remedy" made from plaster of Paris.  I shit you not.  And wait till you read why:

CALCAREA SULPHUREA (Sulphate of Lime, Plaster of Paris) -- Scorpio exerts influence over the sexual organs and as such the pure Scorpions are prone to suffer form infections and problems in their sex organs.  They are susceptible to skin eruptions on the genitals, cystitis and diseases of the urinary tract along with venereal infections.

I don't know about you, but that's enough to make me walk around in a protective crouch for the rest of the day.  The remedy, by the way, "has no side effects," which is a relief, although a more accurate way to put it is "has no effects whatsoever."

Oh, and my lucky numbers are 2 and 4, my lucky colors are burgundy and black, and my lucky day is Tuesday (which is today!  Yay!).

I'm also told that famous persons I'm supposedly similar to include John Keats, Julia Roberts, Bill Gates, and Pablo Picasso.  And I'm sure you can see immediately how alike those four are.

Anyhow, I'm off to take my plaster of Paris pills so my sexual organs don't erupt, and so my arrogant and overconfident nature doesn't cloud my powers of reasoning and bring to the surface my latent aggression.  I hate it when that happens.

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This week's featured book on Skeptophilia is Flim-Flam!, by the grand old man of skepticism and critical thinking, James Randi.  Randi was a stage magician before he devoted his career to unmasking charlatans, so he of all people knows how easy it is to fool the unwary.  His book is a highly entertaining exercise in learning not to believe what you see -- especially when someone is trying to sell you something.