The law of small numbers

A few days ago, I had a perfectly dreadful day.

The events varied from the truly tragic (receiving news that a former student had died) to the bad but mundane (losing a ghostwriting job I'd been asked to do because the person I was working for turned out to be a lunatic, and had decided I was part of a conspiracy against him -- the irony of which has not escaped me) to the "I'll-probably-laugh-about-this-later-but-right-now-I'm-not" (my dog, Guinness, recovering from his recent illness, and feeling chipper enough to swipe and destroy my wife's favorite hat) to the completely banal (my computer demanding an operating system update when I was in the middle of working, tying it up for two and a half hours).

All of this brought to mind the idea of streaks of bad (or good) luck -- something that you find people so completely convinced of that it's nearly impossible to get them to break their conviction that it sometimes happens.  We've all had days when everything seems to go wrong -- when we have what my dad used to call "the reverse Midas touch -- everything you touch turns to shit."  There are also, regrettably fewer, days when we seem to have inordinate good fortune.  My question of the day is: is there something to this?

Of course, regular readers of this blog are already anticipating that I'll answer "no."  There are actually three reasons to discount this phenomenon.  Two have already been the subjects of previous blog posts, so I'll only mention them in brief.

One is the fact that the human brain is wired to detect patterns.  We tend to take whatever we perceive and try to fit it into an understandable whole.  So when several things go wrong in a row -- even when, as with my experiences last week, they are entirely unrelated occurrences -- we try to make them into a pattern.

The second is confirmation bias -- the tendency of humans to use insignificant pieces of evidence to support what we already believe to be true, and to ignore much bigger pieces of evidence to the contrary.  I had four bad things, of varying degrees of unpleasantness, occur one day last week.  By mid-day I had already decided, "this is going to be a bad day."  So any further events -- the computer update, for example -- only reinforced my assessment that "this day is going to suck."  Good things -- like the fact that even though our dog is back to getting into trouble, he is recovering; like the the fact that we've been enjoying the International Ceramics Congress workshops this weekend; like the fact that lovely wife brought me a glass of red wine after dinner -- get submerged under the unshakable conviction that the day was a lost cause.

It's the third one I want to consider more carefully.

I call it the Law of Small Numbers.  Simply put: in any sufficiently small data sample, you will find anomalous, and completely meaningless, patterns.

To take a simple model: let's consider flipping a fair coin.  You would expect that if you flip said coin 1000 times, you will find somewhere near 500 heads and 500 tails. On the other hand, what if you look at any particular run of, say, six flips?

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons ICMA Photos, Coin Toss (3635981474), CC BY-SA 2.0]

In any six-flip run, the statisticians tell us, all possible combinations are equally likely; a pattern of HTTHTH has exactly the same likelihood of showing up as does HHHHHH -- namely, 1/64.  The problem is that the second looks like a pattern, and the first doesn't.  And so if the second sequence is the one that actually emerges, we become progressively more amazed as head after head turns up -- because somehow, it doesn't fit our concept of the way statistics should work.  In reality, if the second pattern amazes us, the first should as well -- when the fifth coin comes up tails, we should be shouting, "omigod, this is so weird" -- but of course, the human mind doesn't work that way, so it's only the second run that seems odd.

Another thing is that in the second case, the six-flip run of all heads, when it come to the seventh flip, what will it be?  It's hard for people to shake the conviction that after six heads, the seventh is bound to be tails, or at least that tails is more likely.  In fact, the seventh flip has exactly the same likelihood of turning up heads as all the others -- 1/2.

All of this brings up how surprisingly hard it is for statisticians to model true randomness.  If a sequence of numbers (for example) is actually random, all possible combinations of two numbers, three numbers, four numbers, and so on should be equally likely.  So, if you have a truly random list of (say) ten million one-digit numbers, there is a possibility that somewhere on that list there are ten zeroes in a row.  It would look like a meaningful pattern -- but it isn't.

This is part of what makes it hard to create truly randomized multiple-choice tests.  As a former science teacher, I frequently gave my classes multiple-choice quizzes, and I tried to make sure that the correct answers were placed fairly randomly.  But apparently, there's a tendency for test writers to stick the correct answer in the middle of the list -- thus the high school student's rule of thumb, which is, "if you don't know the answer, guess 'c'."

Randomness, it would seem, is harder to detect (and create) than most people think.  And given our tendency to see patterns where there are none, we should be hesitant to decide that the stars are against us on certain days.  In fact, we should expect days where there are strings of bad (or unusually good) occurrences.  It's bound to happen.  It's just that we notice it when several bad things happen on the same day, and don't tend to notice when they're spread out, because that, somehow, "seems more random" -- when, in reality, both distributions are random.

I keep telling myself that.  But it is hard to quell what my mind keeps responding -- "thank heaven it's a new week - it's bound to be better than last week was."

Well, maybe.  I do agree with another thing my dad used to tell me: "I'd rather be an optimist who is wrong than a pessimist who is right."  I'm just hoping that the statisticians don't show up and burst my bubble.

***********************************

It's astonishing to see what the universe looks like on scales different from those we're used to.  The images of galaxies and quasars and (more recently) black holes are nothing short of awe-inspiring.  However, the microscopic realm is equally breathtaking -- which you'll find out as soon as you open the new book Micro Life: Miracles of the Microscopic World.

Assembled by a team at DK Publishers and the Smithsonian Institution, Micro Life is a compendium of photographs and artwork depicting the world of the very small, from single-celled organisms to individual fungus spores to nerve cells to the facets of a butterfly's eye.  Leafing through it generates a sense of wonder at the complexity of the microscopic, and its incredible beauty.  If you are a biology enthusiast -- or are looking for a gift for a friend who is -- this lovely book is a sure-fire winner.  You'll never look the same way at dust, pollen, algae, and a myriad of other things from the natural world that you thought you knew.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Vikings, auroras, and tree rings

The idea that people from Europe came to North America (long) before Columbus has not only generated interest amongst legitimate archaeological and historical researchers, it has generated a lot of nonsense.

One nonsensical bit is that the Mandan tribe not only descends from Welsh explorers (including quasi-mythical personages such as Prince Madog), but that they have blue eyes and their language is a dialect of Welsh.  None of this is even remotely true, but the story (which had dropped into well-deserved obscurity) regained currency with Madeleine L'Engle's novel A Swiftly Tilting Planet.  While I have to admit it's a decent story in other respects, the whole thing about Native Americans having blue eyes -- and worse, that blue eyes = good and brown eyes = bad -- is seriously cringe-inducing.  In any case, the Mandans themselves live in what is now North and South Dakota, which last I looked is nowhere near the Atlantic Ocean, so the claim is pretty ridiculous anyhow.

Other accounts describe encounters with Welsh-speaking Monacans of Virginia and Tuscarora of New York.  There is no evidence, linguistic or otherwise, supporting those claims.  The brilliant historian of Welsh history Gwyn Williams summed up such stories as "a complete farrago [that] may have been intended as a hoax."

Then there's the Irish story of St. Brendan the Navigator, who supposedly crossed the Atlantic in a coracle with a group of monks, and which is shakier ground still.  The Brendan legend is so wound up in mythology and religious miracle stories that it's impossible to tell what, if anything, about it is true.  Even the Brendan enthusiasts don't agree on much.  "Brendan's Fair Isle," where the monks supposedly landed after defeating various sea monsters and demons, has been identified as coastal North America -- and also the Faeroes, the Azores, Madeira, and the Canary Islands.

There's no hard evidence of any of it.

More reliable -- and corroborated by actual science -- is the claim that the Vikings landed in northeastern North America in the late tenth and early eleventh century, founding colonies in what they called Vinland -- meaning either "land of grape vines" or "meadow-land," depending on which linguist you believe.  The Skraelings ("wearers of animal skins"), as they called the Natives they encountered, were described as unequivocally hostile.  (Funny how surprised the colonizers always seem to be when indigenous people resent someone walking in and saying, "Get out of the way, this is my home now.")  In any case, the whole enterprise is outlined in Eirík the Red's Saga, in which the eponymous Eirík, his son Leif Eiríksson, and their friend Thorfinn Karlsefni lead repeated expeditions between the Icelandic settlements in Greenland and the new ones in Vinland, and which is usually considered to be at least substantially true.

The whole topic was brought to my attention once again because of my sharp-eyed friend Gil Miller, who knowing my fascination with all things Scandinavian sent me a link to an article in SciTech Daily describing new research into the archaeological evidence at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland.  L'Anse aux Meadows is the one and only certain settlement site by Europeans in North America prior to Columbus, and the current research -- using a clever twist on tree-ring analysis -- determined that the site was occupied in the year 1021, exactly a thousand years ago.

A recreation of the Scandinavian settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows [image licensed under the Creative Commons Dylan Kereluk from White Rock, Canada, Authentic Viking recreation, CC BY 2.0]

Between the sagas and the artifacts uncovered at L'Anse aux Meadows, the site seems to have flourished between the years 970 and 1030 C.E.  The problem is, trying to pin down the exact years of occupation of an abandoned settlement is not an easy task.  The key to the new study is an event that occurred in late 992 and early 993 (as verified by dendrochronological evidence from elsewhere, as well as historical records).  Apparently there was a huge solar storm that lasted at least a couple of months.  Historians from the era report vivid auroras that were visible way farther south than usual, and the tree rings show a sudden increase in the uptake of carbon-14, a form of carbon created by cosmic rays striking the upper atmosphere.  The researchers took samples of wood that were cut by the Scandinavian colonists at L'Anse aux Meadows, and after identifying the high C-14 rings in the wood -- corresponding to 993 C. E. -- they were able to determine that the wood had been cut from the living tree in the year 1021.

The research, which appeared in Nature last month, was led by Margot Kuitems of the University of Groningen.  The authors write:

Our result of AD 1021 for the cutting year constitutes the only secure calendar date for the presence of Europeans across the Atlantic before the voyages of Columbus.  Moreover, the fact that our results, on three different trees, converge on the same year is notable and unexpected.  This coincidence strongly suggests Norse activity at L’Anse aux Meadows in AD 1021...  This date offers a secure juncture for late Viking chronology.  More importantly, it acts as a new point-of-reference for European cognisance of the Americas, and the earliest known year by which human migration had encircled the planet.  In addition, our research demonstrates the potential of the AD 993 anomaly in atmospheric 14C concentrations for pinpointing the ages of past migrations and cultural interactions.  Together with other cosmic-ray events, this distinctive feature will allow for the exact dating of many other archaeological and environmental contexts.

It's always amazing to me when we can bring the tools of science to bear on historical or quasi-mythological claims.  The most famous one, of course, is Heinrich Schliemann's discovery of the city of Troy, supporting that The Iliad (minus the interference by various gods and goddesses, and possibly the involvement of a giant wooden horse) had its basis in a real war that led to the sack and burning of the city.  But here, we have far more conclusive evidence of a more recent event -- the arrival of Vikings in North America -- and are now able to state with confidence when it happened. 

Which is way more exciting that any spurious claims of blue-eyed, Welsh-speaking Natives.

***********************************

It's astonishing to see what the universe looks like on scales different from those we're used to.  The images of galaxies and quasars and (more recently) black holes are nothing short of awe-inspiring.  However, the microscopic realm is equally breathtaking -- which you'll find out as soon as you open the new book Micro Life: Miracles of the Microscopic World.

Assembled by a team at DK Publishers and the Smithsonian Institution, Micro Life is a compendium of photographs and artwork depicting the world of the very small, from single-celled organisms to individual fungus spores to nerve cells to the facets of a butterfly's eye.  Leafing through it generates a sense of wonder at the complexity of the microscopic, and its incredible beauty.  If you are a biology enthusiast -- or are looking for a gift for a friend who is -- this lovely book is a sure-fire winner.  You'll never look the same way at dust, pollen, algae, and a myriad of other things from the natural world that you thought you knew.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Gone in a flash

Sometimes being a skeptic means answering the question, "So what happened?" with the rather unsatisfying response, "We don't know and may never know."

That was my immediate reaction upon reading a report out of Argentina from a little over a week ago, over at the website Inexplicata.  (Here are the links to part 1 and part 2 of the report.)  The gist of the story is as follows.

On Tuesday, November 15, a woman from the town of Jacinto Araúz went missing.  A search was launched in the area where she was last seen, but there were no traces -- no signs of a struggle, no note, no vehicle missing that she might have taken if she'd run away from home.  The search, in fact, turned up nothing.  Trained search dogs were brought in, and they easily picked up the woman's scent trail near her house, and then abruptly lost it after only 150 meters.  Neighbors said that there was no way she'd simply walked away -- her physical condition was poor, and a leisurely one-kilometer walk was enough to tire her out.

The mystery deepened when several relatives received messages from the woman's cellphone number, but the messages contained nothing but a mechanical buzzing noise and static.

Then, twenty-four hours later, she turned up again -- in Quinto Meridiano, sixty-five kilometers away.  She had a cut on her forehead, but otherwise was physically unharmed.

She seemed to be in a profound state of shock, however, and wasn't able to (or at least didn't) speak a word to authorities.  She was taken to a local hospital, where she wrote down what she claimed had happened to her.  She said that on Tuesday, she'd been in her house when she'd heard a noise.  She went outside, and there was a sudden, blinding flash of light.  When her vision cleared, she was in Quinto Meridiano -- with no apparent lapse of time.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Grelibre.net, Spectre Brocken, CC BY-SA 3.0]

The report, of course, made all the UFO aficionados start jumping up and down making excited little squeaking noises.  The area around Jacinto Araúz is a "hotspot," they said.  I saw a reference to the "Dorado Incident" in the report, but I wasn't able to find a good account of it; apparently it was some sort of UFO sighting nineteen years ago.  The report mentioned other sightings in the vicinity that have included spacecraft that landed, leaving scorch marks on the ground, and a "red-eyed creature" that has been seen more than once nearby.

But that's about all there is to the woman's story.  She's missing for a day, then turns up with a superficial injury, apparent emotional shock, and a strange tale of vanishing in a flash of light.

So what really happened?

Seems to me there are five possibilities:

• Her story is substantially true, and she was teleported (for want of a better word) from Jacinto Araúz to Quinto Meridiano more or less instantaneously by some unidentified, possibly extraterrestrial, agent.
• She's lying -- she made the whole thing up for her "fifteen minutes of fame."  She went to Quinto Meridiano by one of the usual means of transport, and invented the flash-of-light stuff.  The dogs lost her scent because that's the point at which she got in a car and drove (or was driven by an accomplice) away.  The phone calls with the buzzing noise were manufactured.
• She's mentally unbalanced, and got to Quinto Meridiano somehow but doesn't remember how.  Sixty-five kilometers would be a significant walk in twenty-four hours even for someone in good shape, but there's no reason she couldn't have hitchhiked.
• She was kidnapped -- knocked on the head (thus the injury on her forehead, and possibly explaining her perception of a flash of light), and then driven to Quinto Meridiano, where she was dumped by the kidnappers.
• The people who reported the story made it up, and the mysterious and unnamed woman doesn't even exist.

All of these explanations, however, leave some serious unresolved problems.  In order:

• Instantaneous transport, or even something very close to it, seems to break just about every law of physics we know. 
• This all seems like quite an ordeal to put oneself through just to give UFO enthusiasts multiple orgasms.  Not only do we have an apparently weak, unwell woman taking off for the next town for a day, but giving herself a deep cut on the forehead, for no other reason than to fool a bunch of people and worry the absolute shit out of her friends and family.
• If she is simply mentally ill, and hitched a ride from Jacinto Araúz to Quinto Meridiano, why hasn't anyone turned up saying that they'd seen her or given her a lift?  According to the sources, her disappearance was widely publicized -- it seems like someone would have reported seeing her.
• Why was she kidnapped?  There's no mention of her being robbed or raped.  It seems like there's a complete lack of any plausible motive for kidnapping.
• It's possible the story is made up from stem to stern, but there's been enough mention of it in other news sources (such as here and here), with enough details about which police departments were involved in the search, that if it was an out-and-out hoax, it would have been debunked by now.

As I asked before: so, what really happened?

The answer is: we don't know.  Perhaps more evidence will surface that will allow us to eliminate one or more of the explanations in the list, but given all we know at the moment, there's no way to narrow it down further.  We have to fall back on the ECREE principle -- extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence -- which would suggest that the supernatural/paranormal explanation (#1) is less likely than the natural ones (#2-#5), but "less likely" doesn't mean "impossible."

As I used to tell my Critical Thinking classes, you don't have to have an opinion about everything; being a skeptic means that in the absence of conclusive evidence, we have to accept the rather unsatisfying outcome that we need to hold off making a conclusion, perhaps forever.

So that's our exercise in frustration for the morning.  A peculiar story out of Argentina with no clear explanation.  It'd be nice if everything was neat and tidy and explicable, but we have to accept the fact that there are things we don't know -- and may never know.

**********************************

I've always loved a good parody, and one of the best I've ever seen was given to me decades ago as a Christmas present from a friend.  The book, Science Made Stupid, is a send-up of middle-school science texts, and is one of the most fall-out-of-your-chair hilarious things I've ever read.  I'll never forget opening the present on Christmas morning and sitting there on the floor in front of the tree, laughing until my stomach hurt.

If you want a good laugh -- and let's face it, lately most of us could use one -- get this book.  In it, you'll learn the proper spelling of Archaeopteryx, the physics of the disinclined plane, little-known constellations like O'Brien and Camelopackus, and the difference between she trues, shoe trees, and tree shrews. (And as I mentioned, it would make the perfect holiday gift for any science-nerd types in your family and friends.)

Science education may never be the same again.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Cloudy, with a chance of disaster

I remember my younger son, ever the practical, literal type, struggling over his homework in eleventh grade English Lit.

"You know what the problem is?" he finally burst out.  "I have a hard time identifying narrative techniques because they never occur in real life!"

I asked him to elaborate.

"Like foreshadowing."  He made an annoyed gesture.  "Nothing foreshadows anything.  If I look outside and there are black clouds on the horizon, it doesn't mean some disaster is going to happen, it just means it's going to rain."

I told him I couldn't argue with that.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Gerlos (original picture), modification: Mielon, Thunderstorm 003, CC BY-SA 2.0]

"So why do writers do that?" he asked.

I told him to revisit the definition of the word fiction.

He gave me an annoyed snort, and rolled his eyes in the way only a teenager can.  "Well, it's ridiculous.  I think the only reason they put that stuff in there is so that high school English teachers can make their students try to find it."

When I was remembering this exchange, the thought occurred to me that this might make an amusing topic for this week's Fiction Friday.  Why work tropes into writing that obviously never happen in the real world?

I have to admit to having used some of this "ridiculous stuff" myself, although being that what I write is speculative fiction/magical realism, we're already assuming that in some way or other we've left behind the real life Nathan finds so narrative-technique-free.  I explicitly used "Chekhov's gun" in Descent into Ulthoa -- the principle coined by playwright Anton Chekhov, that if something unusual appears in a scene, it'll eventually be crucial to the plot.  The way he put it was, "If a gun appears, at some point it will go off."  In this case Chekhov's gun is a trail cam -- but in my own defense, I had one of the characters point out that maybe just putting out the trail cam was assuring that it'd turn something up, and outright identifies it as the famous writer's eponymous firearm.

Despite my son's objections, I have to admit that a lot of narrative techniques do have the effect of making me keep turning the page.  Here are a few, and some examples I think were particularly effective:

• In media res -- the name comes from the Latin phrase for "in the midst of things."  It's the technique of starting a story in the middle of the action, and (if necessary) revealing the lead-up to it in flashbacks.  For example, I think it's pure brilliance that Andy Weir began The Martian with the sentence, "Well, I'm pretty much fucked."
• Plot twist -- the stock-in-trade of murder mystery writers, but certainly used widely in other genres.  The one that immediately comes to mind is in Stephen King's The Stand, in which four men -- Glen, Stu, Ralph, and Larry -- are walking from Boulder, Colorado to Las Vegas to confront the evil Randall Flagg.  There's an accident in which Stu shatters his leg, and the other three recognize they have to leave him behind, that their task is more important than one man's life.  (Stu agrees with them, for what it's worth.)  When they leave him, the chapter ends with the sentence, "None of them ever saw Stu Redman again."  The reader, of course, thinks it's because the badly-injured Stu is going to die -- but in the end, it's the other three who die, and Stu survives.  (This is also a good example of "author intrusion" -- the author giving the reader information that none of the characters have -- which is usually frowned upon in modern novels.  Here, though, I think it was a stroke of genius, showing that there's no such thing as "the law of the land" in writing fiction.)
• An unreliable narrator -- the best example of this I can think of is the wonderful (if heart-wrenching) character Snitter from Richard Adams's The Plague Dogs.  Snitter is a dog who was used as a test subject in an animal research lab, and had his brain surgically altered.  The result is that he can't tell reality from his imaginings.  There are a number of sections in the book told from Snitter's point-of-view, and every time you have to adjust your understanding of what you're reading, because what Snitter is experiencing -- and telling the reader -- may or may not be real.  It's profoundly disorienting, but chillingly effective.
• Allegory -- the most commonly-cited example is the Christian allegory in C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but that one is so ham-handed that I wouldn't cite it as a skillful use of the technique.  Much better, I think, is George Orwell's Animal Farm, which can be read as a rather disquieting fable about sentient animals on a farm, or -- more devastatingly -- as an allegory to the Russian Revolution and historical figures like Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin.
• Hyperbole -- exaggerating for humorous effect.  I may have been guilty of that once or twice here at Skeptophilia, but no one does it better than writer Dave Barry.  As an example, one of his statements in a column on politics: "The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery."
• Parody -- poking fun at something by amplifying the style to the point of being ridiculous.  Take, for instance, National Lampoon's Bored of the Rings, which features characters named Frito, Dildo, Poppie, Murky Brandyflask, Legolamb, and the wizard Goodgulf Greyteeth.
• Irony -- where there's a discrepancy between what the characters know or expect to happen, and what the reader does.  Despite other aspects of the book being problematic at best, this always makes me think of C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength, where it's used like a sucker punch.  The bad guys, led by the evil Fairy Hardcastle, are hot on the heels of the good guys, and are desperate to trace them back to their headquarters.  There are three people they're trailing whom they suspect might lead them to the good guys' home base, but at the last minute Hardcastle realizes she doesn't have enough people to follow all three.  She instructs them to forget about tracking Professor Cecil Dimble.  Dimble, she says, is a mild-mannered academic who surely doesn't have the guts to put his life on the line for the cause.  "In any case," she tells her subordinates, "Dimble can be got any time.  He comes into college pretty regularly every day; and he's really a nonentity."  Dimble, of course, is the guy they were after -- and the good guys miss being found out by a hair's breadth.

Like anything, these sorts of literary devices can be used unskillfully, or overused.  But with a subtle touch they can really ramp up the emotional punch of a story.

Even if sometimes, dark clouds on the horizon just mean it's going to rain.

**********************************

I've always loved a good parody, and one of the best I've ever seen was given to me decades ago as a Christmas present from a friend.  The book, Science Made Stupid, is a send-up of middle-school science texts, and is one of the most fall-out-of-your-chair hilarious things I've ever read.  I'll never forget opening the present on Christmas morning and sitting there on the floor in front of the tree, laughing until my stomach hurt.

If you want a good laugh -- and let's face it, lately most of us could use one -- get this book.  In it, you'll learn the proper spelling of Archaeopteryx, the physics of the disinclined plane, little-known constellations like O'Brien and Camelopackus, and the difference between she trues, shoe trees, and tree shrews. (And as I mentioned, it would make the perfect holiday gift for any science-nerd types in your family and friends.)

Science education may never be the same again.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

The legend of the lost sister

The difficult thing about any sort of historical research is that sometimes, the evidence you're looking for doesn't even exist.

In my own field of historical linguistics, for example, we're trying to determine what languages are related to each other (creating, as it were, a family tree for languages), figuring out word roots, identifying words borrowed from other languages, and reconstructing the ancestral language -- based only on the languages we now have access to.  There are times when there simply isn't enough information available to solve the particular puzzle you're working on.

The further back in time you go, the shakier the ground gets.  You'll see in etymological dictionaries claims like "the Proto-Indo-European word for 'settlement' or 'town' was *-weyk," but that's an inference; there aren't many Proto-Indo-Europeans around these days to verify if this is correct.  It's not just a guess, though,  It was reconstructed from the suffixes -wich and -wick you see in a lot of English place names (Norwich, Warwick), the Latin word vicus (meaning "a village in a rural area"), the Welsh gwig and Cornish guic (which mean approximately the same as the Latin does), the Greek word οἶκος (house), the Sanskrit viś and Old Church Slavonic vĭsĭ (both meaning "settlement"), and so on.  Using patterns of sound change, we can take current languages (or at least ones we have written records for) and backpedal to make an inference about what the speakers of PIE four thousand years ago might have said.

Still, it is only an inference, and the inherent unverifiability of it sometimes leaves practitioners of "hard science" scoffing and quoting Wolfgang Pauli, that such claims "aren't even wrong."  I think that's unduly harsh (but of course, given that this is basically what my master's thesis was about, it's no surprise I get a little defensive).  Even so, I think we have to be careful how hard to push a claim based on slim evidence.

That was my immediate thought when I read an article by Jay Norris, of Western Sydney University, in The Conversation.  It was about the mythology associated with my favorite naked-eye astronomical feature -- the Pleiades.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Rawastrodata, The Pleiades (M45), CC BY-SA 3.0]

Norris and another astronomer, Barnaby Norris (not sure if they're related, or if it's a coincidence), have authored a paper that will appear in a book next year called Advancing Cultural Astronomy which looks at a strange thing: in cultures all over the world, the Pleaides are associated with a collection of seven individuals.  They're the Seven Sisters in Greece, and also in many indigenous Australian cultures, for example.  And Norris and Norris realized two things that were very odd; first, that even on a clear night, you can only see six stars with the naked eye, not seven; and in both the Greek and Australian myth, the story involves a "lost sister" -- one of the seven who, for some reason or another, disappeared or is hidden.

So they started looking in other traditions, and found that all over the world, in cultures as unrelated as Indonesian, many Native American groups, many African cultures, the Scandinavians, and the Celts, there was the same tradition of associating the Pleiades with the number seven, and with one of the group who was lost.  

They then went to the astronomical data.  They found that the stars in the Pleiades are moving relative to each other, and that a hundred thousand years ago there would have been seven stars visible to the naked eye in the cluster, but in the interim two of them moved so close together (from our perspective, at least) that they appear to be a single star unless you have a telescope.  That, they say, is the "lost sister," and is why cultures all over the world have a tradition that the group used to have seven members, but now only has six.

And this, they said, was evidence that the myth of the Pleiades is one of the oldest stories humans have told.  At least fifty thousand years old -- when the indigenous Australians migrated across a grassy valley that (when the sea level rose) became the Bay of Carpentaria -- and perhaps as much as a hundred thousand years old, when the common ancestors of all humans were still living in Africa and (presumably) shared a single cultural tradition.

It's a fascinating claim.  I have to admit that the commonalities of the myths surrounding the Pleiades in cultures all over the world are a little hard to explain otherwise.  Still, I can't say I'm a hundred percent sold.  I know from my work in reconstructive linguistics that chance similarities are weirdly common, and can lead to some seriously specious conclusions.  (Long-time readers of Skeptophilia might recall my rather brutal takedown two years ago of a guy named L. M. Leteane, who used cherry-picked chance similarities between words to support his loony claim that the Pascuanese -- or Easter Islanders -- were originally from Egypt, as were the Olmecs of Central America, and both languages were descended from Bantu.)

So as far as the claim that the story of the Seven Sisters is over fifty thousand years old, count me as unconvinced.  I think it's possible; it's certainly intriguing.  But to me, it's too hard to eliminate the simpler possibility, that the "loss" of one of the stars in the Pleaides was noted by many ancient cultures -- separately, and much more recently -- and became incorporated into their legends, rather than all the legends of the Pleiades and the lost sister coming from a single, very ancient ancestral story.

But it'll give you something to think about, when you see the Pleiades on the next clear night.  Whatever the origins of the myths surrounding it, it's awe-inspiring to think about our distant ancestors looking up at the same beautiful cluster of stars on a chilly, clear winter's night, and wondering what it really was -- same as we're doing today using the tools of science.

**********************************

I've always loved a good parody, and one of the best I've ever seen was given to me decades ago as a Christmas present from a friend.  The book, Science Made Stupid, is a send-up of middle-school science texts, and is one of the most fall-out-of-your-chair hilarious things I've ever read.  I'll never forget opening the present on Christmas morning and sitting there on the floor in front of the tree, laughing until my stomach hurt.

If you want a good laugh -- and let's face it, lately most of us could use one -- get this book.  In it, you'll learn the proper spelling of Archaeopteryx, the physics of the disinclined plane, little-known constellations like O'Brien and Camelopackus, and the difference between she trues, shoe trees, and tree shrews. (And as I mentioned, it would make the perfect holiday gift for any science-nerd types in your family and friends.)

Science education may never be the same again.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Requiem for a gentle soul

Seven years ago we were looking for a dog to adopt.  Not too long before we'd lost our brilliant, eccentric border collie mix Doolin, and while we knew there was no replacing that big a personality, we felt like our house needed another canine presence.  Our other dog, Grendel, had gone into a positive decline when his friend died, and although he was beginning to come out of it, he was clearly still lonely.

We started pawing through (pun intended) local rescue and adoption sites, and for a while didn't see anyone who seemed right.  Grendel was great with other dogs, so compatibility wasn't likely to be a problem, and one April day we drove with him to a couple of shelters to see who might need a home.

After a couple of "well, maybes," we ended up at the lovely Animal Care Sanctuary in East Smithfield, Pennsylvania.  If you're ever up that way looking for a dog -- not very likely, I guess, because it's in the middle of rural north-central Pennsylvania -- this is the place to go.  Carol had found a listing for a dog who seemed interesting, a seven-year-old hound mix, so we drove down to meet her.

The first thing we found out about her was that she'd already been adopted three times -- and brought back.  The people at ACS weren't sure why, although they thought one time had been because of problems getting along with another dog who was (their words) "kind of hyperactive."  But we figured we could tell a lot by how she interacted with Grendel when they met, and it'd be obvious quick if the problems had been partly on her side.

We left Gren in the car while we went to meet her.  We were escorted into a meeting room with toys and a dog bed, and waited for the assistant to bring her in.  When the door opened and she came in on a leash, Carol and I said simultaneously, "Oh, my goodness, she is gorgeous."  I'd never seen a dog with those markings.  Apparently she was part bluetick and part redbone hound, and the markings were a blend of both -- patches of black and chestnut-brown, and lots of white with freckles of both colors.

The second thing that became apparent quickly was that whatever the problem had been with the other dog, it hadn't been her fault.  She trotted right up to us, tail wagging madly, as if we'd known her for years.  When we brought Gren in to meet her, there was more tail wagging, as well as the obligatory mutual all-over sniff.  It took us about five minutes to decide she was coming home with us.

We named her Lena.

Me with Lena and Grendel shortly after her adoption

Our dogs seem to accrue nicknames, and in short order Lena got the moniker "Splat:"

Her penchant for digging led to her being called "Pothole:"

Snow, ice, whatever.  Didn't matter.

Other times she was JellyBean (what Carol usually called her), Moaning Myrtle (because of her moans and groans when she was getting an ear rub or a belly skritch), Speed Bump (she had a knack for lying right across door thresholds or across the top of the stairs), Derpy (when she did something unusually silly), and Your Royal Majesty (from her habit of standing at the back door barking when she wanted to be let in right now).

The most striking thing about her, though, was her extraordinary gentleness.  She is far and away the sweetest, most laid-back dog I've ever met.

When Grendel died four years ago and we decided to find her a new friend -- and settled on a big, goofy knucklehead of a pittie mix who's named Guinness but who earned the nicknames "Galoot" and "Crash" really early on -- she tolerated his antics and love for rough play without a hint of a growl.

Like they all do, she got creaky with age.  When she hit ten, she started to get a little arthritic, but most days handled all the staircases in our house without any hesitation.  And even when her health began to get more precarious, early this year, she never lost her exuberant cheerfulness and sweet disposition.

The tail never stopped wagging.

That, in fact, is how we knew something was seriously wrong last week.  She stopped eating, and began to experience other unpleasant symptoms I won't go into.  But the biggest red flag was that she was clearly unhappy.  The tail was down, the eyes downcast, and a gentle probe of her stomach elicited a yelp -- and the presence of a mass that shouldn't have been there.

Three days later, it became obvious she was suffering badly.  As a frail fourteen-year-old, there was no way we were going to put her through surgery, which was unlikely to be successful and certainly would have compromised her quality of life even if it extended the quantity.  And Monday evening, we sat with her as our wonderful vet, Dr. Bonnie, helped to end Lena's pain with us sitting right next to her stroking her head and telling her what an amazing dog she was.

Even though it was the right thing to do, I feel heartbroken.  It's going to be a long time before I stop looking for her to walk into my office in the morning to say hello and get the obligatory ear rub.  Other pet owners will understand how much they become part of the fabric of your family, and how much both pet and owner get from the mutual unconditional love.  Lena was an extraordinary dog, and her loss leaves a hole in our lives.  But despite the pain I'm feeling now, I'm thankful we had the chance to give her seven great years in a warm and loving home.  Although I'm crying now I'll always remember with a smile a calm, sweet, gentle soul with a huge heart, who needed very little to be happy -- and always gave us far more than she ever took.

**********************************

I've always loved a good parody, and one of the best I've ever seen was given to me decades ago as a Christmas present from a friend.  The book, Science Made Stupid, is a send-up of middle-school science texts, and is one of the most fall-out-of-your-chair hilarious things I've ever read.  I'll never forget opening the present on Christmas morning and sitting there on the floor in front of the tree, laughing until my stomach hurt.

If you want a good laugh -- and let's face it, lately most of us could use one -- get this book.  In it, you'll learn the proper spelling of Archaeopteryx, the physics of the disinclined plane, little-known constellations like O'Brien and Camelopackus, and the difference between she trues, shoe trees, and tree shrews. (And as I mentioned, it would make the perfect holiday gift for any science-nerd types in your family and friends.)

Science education may never be the same again.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

The book in the bog

It's a sad truth that written records are ephemeral.

The Library of Alexandria burns, taking with it an unguessed number of priceless manuscripts.  Ink fades; some kinds of ink actually degrade the paper and make its demise even faster.  Mildew and mold take their toll if there's even the slightest amount of moisture.  Insects like the taste of the glue used to hold older books together.  And -- in the words of Brother William of Baskerville, the brilliant main character in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose -- "rats like books almost as much as scholars do."

The result is that books and scrolls are better than no written records at all, but are very far from permanent.  This is why the survival of a book of prayers in a peat bog in County Tipperary, Ireland, for twelve hundred years is something akin to a miracle.

I found out about what is now known as the Faddan More Psalter from a friend and loyal reader of Skeptophilia, and was as fascinated by how manuscript conservationists restored the book (as much as was possible) as I was by its mere survival.  When it was discovered by someone cutting peat, it was so sodden with bog water that no one dared to try opening it.  When they were finally able to pull the pages away from each other, the first words the researchers saw were in ualle lacrimarum ("in the valley of tears"), and they quickly realized that it was a medieval rendering of the Book of Psalms.

That was only the beginning of the restoration effort.  Not only was there the danger of the paper disintegrating when the pages were peeled apart, there was the problem that the iron gall ink used to write the manuscript had in some places eaten right through it, so what the conservationists had was a bunch of loose letters.

[Image by Valerie Dowling and the National Museum of Ireland]

The first three years after the discovery of the book, the priority was drying it out and stabilizing what was left of it.  Dewatering the paper was done first by freeze-drying it, then putting it in a near-vacuum so the water would evaporate without further damaging the pages.

"It was absolutely terrifying," said John Gillis, chief manuscript conservationist at Trinity College Dublin, home of other treasures like The Book of Kells.  "I heard from someone in the British Museum that there was a picture of the mass on the walls in a staff area there with the words ‘if you think you have a bad day ahead …’  You had this nerve-racking scenario of disturbing this material, which meant losing evidence, when the whole point was trying to gain as much information as possible."

Ultimately, Gillis and his team were able to dry out and tease apart the pages of the Faddan More Psalter. "The rewards when you slowly lifted up a fragment, and suddenly beneath this little bit of decoration would appear, particularly the yellow pigment they used. It would kind of shine back at you," Gillis said.  "And you’d go: ‘Wow, I am the first person to see this in 1,200 years.’  So that kind of privilege made all the sleepless nights and racking of the brain worthwhile.  It was the purest conservation I’ve ever carried out.  There is no repair, I’ve attached nothing new.  All I’ve done is captured and stabilized."

What strikes me most about all this is the tremendous patience the conservationists had with letting the book give up its secrets on its own timetable.  Rushing the process would have undoubtedly caused further damage.  The whole restoration process took years, but now we have a glimpse at a book that, amazingly, escaped decaying into nothing while submerged in a bog for over a millennium.

Showing that books, although undoubtedly ephemeral, are more resilient than you might think.  All of which makes me wonder what else is out there waiting to be discovered.

**********************************

I've always loved a good parody, and one of the best I've ever seen was given to me decades ago as a Christmas present from a friend.  The book, Science Made Stupid, is a send-up of middle-school science texts, and is one of the most fall-out-of-your-chair hilarious things I've ever read.  I'll never forget opening the present on Christmas morning and sitting there on the floor in front of the tree, laughing until my stomach hurt.

If you want a good laugh -- and let's face it, lately most of us could use one -- get this book.  In it, you'll learn the proper spelling of Archaeopteryx, the physics of the disinclined plane, little-known constellations like O'Brien and Camelopackus, and the difference between she trues, shoe trees, and tree shrews. (And as I mentioned, it would make the perfect holiday gift for any science-nerd types in your family and friends.)

Science education may never be the same again.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]