Today, I'm going to present you with the same UFO story, told two different ways. Sort of Rashomon for the flying saucer crowd.
Recently, the FBI declassified certain documents, which are now available online. Amongst these documents were some memos from New Mexico in the 1940s and 1950s, pertaining to the Roswell Incident, which remains one of the most perplexing alien coverup stories in history. The London Daily Mail did a feature article on the newly released documents yesterday (which you can read in its entirety here).
Everyone has seen the photos and videos, of tiny alien bodies laid out on the autopsy tables; and most of you are probably familiar with the eyewitness testimony of hovering spacecraft and nighttime retrieval of metallic debris from the hill country near Roswell. But these new memos add a depth of credibility to the story. Here are a few excerpts:
From Guy Hottel, special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office, dated March 22, 1950:
"An investigator for the Air Force has stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico. They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only 3 feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of very fine texture... According to Mr. (blacked out), informant, the saucers were found in New Mexico due to the fact that the government has a very high-powered radar set-up in that area and it is believed that the radar interferes with the controling mechanism of the saucers."
This information is remarkably similar to, and therefore corroborates, the more famous Roswell Incident of 1947, in which a twenty-foot wide disc "hexagonal in shape" was recovered, along with the bodies of several aliens.
Okay, let's do this all again, okay?
There once were two con men named Silas Newton and Leo Gebauer. Newton and Gebauer had been involved in hoaxes involving aliens before; they claimed that they had a machine, made using "alien metals and technology," which could find oil and gas deposits. They had a sizeable number of monetary contributions for further Research and Development before a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, J. P. Cahn, tested some of the alien metal and found out it was aluminum. (Although to be fair, being that aluminum is one of the commonest metallic elements, it's to be supposed that there'd be aluminum on alien worlds, too.) The pair were tried, and fined, for fraud over the whole affair.
So it's not like Newton and Gebauer are the most credible of sources. But they are apparently the source of the whole 1950 New Mexico alien thing, hard though that may be to fathom. Here's the sequence, which reads a little like the "begats" part of the bible:
Guy Hottel, of the memo quoted above, was informed by a retired Air Force man, who had picked up the story from the Wyandotte Echo. The editor of the Echo had gotten the story via a line of transmission through newspaper reporters from five different states; the Echo had picked it up from a fellow named Rudy Fick, who had obtained it from a pair named Jack Murphy and I. J. van Horn. Murphy and van Horn, in turn, got it from a guy named Morley Davies, who got it from George Koehler, who got it from... you guessed it... Silas Newton. (I am indebted to The Skeptic's Dictionary for piecing this whole thing together; if you'd like to read the complete history of the so-called "Aztec Incident," go here.)
So, it's no wonder that the memo from Hottel sounds so offhand. Me, if I was sending a memo to the director of the FBI that proved that there were aliens on Earth, I'd sound a little more excited. In fact, Hottel ends the memo with a yawn: "No futher evaluation was attempted by (blacked out) concerning the above." Sounds a little like he was just tired of the whole thing, doesn't he? It certainly doesn't come across as a guy warning his boss that the Earth is about to be turned into a big sound stage right out of Independence Day.
And, interestingly, the "hexagonal disc" in the 1947 incident was said, in the FBI memo, to be "suspended from a ballon [sic] by a cable." Not the way that you'd usually think of aliens traveling through interstellar space, is it, given that balloons don't work that well in a vacuum? But remarkably consistent with the FBI's official story, that the "flying saucers" and "metallic debris" were the results of the crash of a weather balloon array in the New Mexico desert.
So, anyway, that's today's breaking news about something that probably didn't happen sixty years ago. Not that I think anything I can say will put the whole thing to rest; as I've observed before, nothing much can stand in the way of a Conspiracy Theory.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Sunday, April 10, 2011
The case of the telepathic trees
In my AP Biology class, we were discussing a peculiar phenomenon in certain plants; when under attack by herbivores, some species seem to be able to signal nearby members of the same species, who then respond by secreting noxious chemicals that repel the attackers. This response has been observed in sagebrush, clover, a species of African acacia, and several others.
One of my students asked how that communication was accomplished. I replied that it was all done by volatile chemical signals -- the attacked plant produces something like an animal pheromone, which then moves via the air to the surrounding plants. The binding of that signal chemical onto receptors in the nearby individuals initiates synthesis of nasty-tasting compounds that discourage the herbivores from chowing down.
"If that chemical could be synthesized," one student asked, "could this be an easy and low-impact way of controlling plant pests?"
"That's a great idea," I said. "It would depend on whether the specific signal chemical has been isolated." And not knowing whether it had been, I started to do a little research.
A quick Google search turned up a number of sites describing reputable, peer-reviewed science (and it turns out that in some cases, they know what the signal is, and in others they appear not to). So far, so good. But then I noticed that about half of the hits I generated suggested a different explanation -- the plants were engaging in mental telepathy.
In fact, one unintentionally hilarious site, Psychobotany, goes into great detail about the possibility of humans telepathically communicating with plants (or vice versa). As evidence that this might be possible, it dredges up the tired old pseudo-experiment by Clive Backster, who in the 1960s attached a polygraph machine to a plant, and threatened to hurt the plant, and the polygraph machine went crazy. (The site conveniently doesn't mention that because of the amazing claims and the simplicity of the experimental design, Backster's experiment has been redone about 10,000 times since he first published, and nobody has ever been able to replicate his results.)
I find it maddening how quickly people want to leap to a supernatural explanation when someone reports something odd. Richard Dawkins calls this the "Argument From Incredulity;" the world is weird, wonderful, amazing, and I don't have a ready explanation for what I'm seeing, therefore it must be __________. Fill in the blank with your favorite paranormal explanation -- ESP, aliens, ghosts, spirits, god, the devil, etc. etc. etc. Scientists are frequently accused of arrogance -- "You think you're so smart, you think you have all the answers." In reality, the opposite is true. If you're not comfortable with being in a state of ignorance, you won't last long in science, because the first thing you discover when you go into science is how little we actually are certain of. This, to me, is one of science's strengths as a model; presented with anomalous data, a good scientist is perfectly willing to suspend judgment, indefinitely if need be. Only a theory that explains all of the available data is good enough, and even then, there's a tentativeness about good science -- a sense of, "well, this is what we think now, but things could change if we get new information." As Albert Einstein once said, "A thousand experiments could never prove me right, but one could prove me wrong."
The supernatural explanations, on the other hand, strike me as cheap cop-outs. If you call plant communication "botanical telepathy" you don't have to go any further; you can sit there and enjoy your little mystical shiver up the spine, and you're all done. There's no need to provide a mechanism, to look for details of how such a thing might be accomplished. You've made your pronouncement about how the world works, and there it ends.
And in contrast with science, which shifts its stance if contrary data is found, supernatural explanations are notorious for clinging on like grim death even in the face of mountains of evidence. The Psychobotany people even cite the study done with pheromonal communication in sagebrush, but oddly, they neglect to mention that the effect went away when the researchers placed plastic bags over the sagebrush plants. This result brilliantly supports the chemical signal hypothesis, but is a little hard to explain if you buy telepathy. Does plastic block Psychic Energy Rays, or something?
Myself, I have no problem with Not Knowing Stuff. This sometimes bothers my students. When I'm asked about things for which science has yet to find evidence, but which can't be ruled out on a theoretical basis -- things like alien visitations, Bigfoot, and life after death -- my answer is, "the jury's still out on that one."
"Well, do you believe in it?" they often ask.
My response is that I neither believe nor disbelieve in anything without sufficient evidence, or at least a strong logical argument one way or the other. In the absence of either -- for instance, in the case of Bigfoot, where there's no particular biological reason that it's impossible, but there's also never been any hard evidence -- I am completely comfortable with adding that to the big old pile of stuff I don't know about.
On the other hand, in the case of the telepathic trees -- I'm pretty confident about that one. "Psychobotany," my ass. I think this time it's Science 1, Woo-woos 0.
One of my students asked how that communication was accomplished. I replied that it was all done by volatile chemical signals -- the attacked plant produces something like an animal pheromone, which then moves via the air to the surrounding plants. The binding of that signal chemical onto receptors in the nearby individuals initiates synthesis of nasty-tasting compounds that discourage the herbivores from chowing down.
"If that chemical could be synthesized," one student asked, "could this be an easy and low-impact way of controlling plant pests?"
"That's a great idea," I said. "It would depend on whether the specific signal chemical has been isolated." And not knowing whether it had been, I started to do a little research.
A quick Google search turned up a number of sites describing reputable, peer-reviewed science (and it turns out that in some cases, they know what the signal is, and in others they appear not to). So far, so good. But then I noticed that about half of the hits I generated suggested a different explanation -- the plants were engaging in mental telepathy.
In fact, one unintentionally hilarious site, Psychobotany, goes into great detail about the possibility of humans telepathically communicating with plants (or vice versa). As evidence that this might be possible, it dredges up the tired old pseudo-experiment by Clive Backster, who in the 1960s attached a polygraph machine to a plant, and threatened to hurt the plant, and the polygraph machine went crazy. (The site conveniently doesn't mention that because of the amazing claims and the simplicity of the experimental design, Backster's experiment has been redone about 10,000 times since he first published, and nobody has ever been able to replicate his results.)
I find it maddening how quickly people want to leap to a supernatural explanation when someone reports something odd. Richard Dawkins calls this the "Argument From Incredulity;" the world is weird, wonderful, amazing, and I don't have a ready explanation for what I'm seeing, therefore it must be __________. Fill in the blank with your favorite paranormal explanation -- ESP, aliens, ghosts, spirits, god, the devil, etc. etc. etc. Scientists are frequently accused of arrogance -- "You think you're so smart, you think you have all the answers." In reality, the opposite is true. If you're not comfortable with being in a state of ignorance, you won't last long in science, because the first thing you discover when you go into science is how little we actually are certain of. This, to me, is one of science's strengths as a model; presented with anomalous data, a good scientist is perfectly willing to suspend judgment, indefinitely if need be. Only a theory that explains all of the available data is good enough, and even then, there's a tentativeness about good science -- a sense of, "well, this is what we think now, but things could change if we get new information." As Albert Einstein once said, "A thousand experiments could never prove me right, but one could prove me wrong."
The supernatural explanations, on the other hand, strike me as cheap cop-outs. If you call plant communication "botanical telepathy" you don't have to go any further; you can sit there and enjoy your little mystical shiver up the spine, and you're all done. There's no need to provide a mechanism, to look for details of how such a thing might be accomplished. You've made your pronouncement about how the world works, and there it ends.
And in contrast with science, which shifts its stance if contrary data is found, supernatural explanations are notorious for clinging on like grim death even in the face of mountains of evidence. The Psychobotany people even cite the study done with pheromonal communication in sagebrush, but oddly, they neglect to mention that the effect went away when the researchers placed plastic bags over the sagebrush plants. This result brilliantly supports the chemical signal hypothesis, but is a little hard to explain if you buy telepathy. Does plastic block Psychic Energy Rays, or something?
Myself, I have no problem with Not Knowing Stuff. This sometimes bothers my students. When I'm asked about things for which science has yet to find evidence, but which can't be ruled out on a theoretical basis -- things like alien visitations, Bigfoot, and life after death -- my answer is, "the jury's still out on that one."
"Well, do you believe in it?" they often ask.
My response is that I neither believe nor disbelieve in anything without sufficient evidence, or at least a strong logical argument one way or the other. In the absence of either -- for instance, in the case of Bigfoot, where there's no particular biological reason that it's impossible, but there's also never been any hard evidence -- I am completely comfortable with adding that to the big old pile of stuff I don't know about.
On the other hand, in the case of the telepathic trees -- I'm pretty confident about that one. "Psychobotany," my ass. I think this time it's Science 1, Woo-woos 0.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Another New Direction For Education
In breaking news from the "Correlation Implies Causation" department, New York State Commissioner of Education David Steiner and New York City Schools Chancellor Cathleen Black have announced their resignation, immediately following my post yesterday calling Steiner and his staff "micromanaging b-b stackers."
Besides making me feel like perhaps I should be a little more careful who I insult, Steiner's unexpected departure has me worried. It's not, as you might imagine, because I'm fond of Steiner or his policies; it's more because I'm afraid we're in for another U-turn.
"A Vision" is an unfortunate part of the personality of many administrators. Please note that there is a difference between "vision" and "A Vision." The former implies an awareness of the both the big picture and the details, and a deep understanding of how to run a school. Certainly, there are many administrators with vision; I'm pleased to say that my high school's current principal appears to be one. The latter, on the other hand, tends to take the form of a single-minded commitment to a particular set of goals, wisdom-be-damned, and often followed with a zeal that would do an Old Testament prophet proud.
A vivid example of the distinction occurred during the tenure of our previous commissioner, Richard Mills. Shortly after Mills was appointed, he came up with A Plan To Improve Education. This involved rewriting all of the curriculum used in New York State, and was ushered in with countless meetings. In one of the first ones I attended, a curriculum specialist was called in, and we endured a day-long meeting with her in which we were supposed to design our ideal curriculum in the field we teach. "Anything," she told us, "is fair game."
I responded that I kind of liked the one I had. Biology, I told her, is biology; you can use different strategies to teach it, but the science is what the science is.
A frown appeared on her face. "There must be something you'd change if you could," she said.
"I'd like more money from the state to buy equipment," I said.
"Not money!" she said. "That's not what this is about. This is about designing your ideal curriculum in your field."
"Okay," I said. "I choose not to change anything."
And this sort of went on all day -- her trying to maneuver us into buying in to the idea of change for change's sake, and me (and several others) digging our heels in, asking her why on earth we were supposed to change something that already worked just fine.
We later found out that she informed our superintendent that we were "the rudest science department she had ever worked with."
And, of course, it was all an exercise in futility anyway. The opinions of a bunch of silly teachers would never change the direction of The Vision Of An Educational Leader. At enormous expense, the entire curriculum was rewritten. The results? I can find two: (1) They changed the name of the course from "Biology" to "Living Environment." (2) They made the statewide final exam much easier.
So, now that Steiner's out, after under two years in the position, we'll have someone else take his place. And in all likelihood, it'll be someone with A Vision, because you don't get that far in the field of education unless you have one. Meaning that we'll take everything we've always done, pretend we're jettisoning it and taking off in A New Direction For Education, the policy wonks will spend millions of dollars generating Draft Protocols and Mission Statements and Program Timelines, teachers and administrators will waste countless hours in meetings, and in the end we'll get back what we started with, maybe under a different name. (You'll probably be amused to know that after the change from "Biology" to "Living Environment" ten years ago, I flatly refused to use the new name, and all of my course handouts and lab manuals and so on are still labeled "Biology." I wonder what the new name will be? I'm guessing it'll be something like "Our Amazing World Of Nature.")
I realize this sounds cynical. That's because I am cynical. Not about the act of educating children; the day I'm cynical about that should be my last day on the job. What I'm cynical about is the motives of our leaders, who often seem more concerned about putting their personal stamp on the educational system they're running than they do about sensible, practical policy that benefits the kids we're serving. And my attitude toward NYSED and the Federal Department of Education reminds me of the quote from Lily Tomlin: "No matter how cynical I get, it's just never enough to keep up."
Besides making me feel like perhaps I should be a little more careful who I insult, Steiner's unexpected departure has me worried. It's not, as you might imagine, because I'm fond of Steiner or his policies; it's more because I'm afraid we're in for another U-turn.
"A Vision" is an unfortunate part of the personality of many administrators. Please note that there is a difference between "vision" and "A Vision." The former implies an awareness of the both the big picture and the details, and a deep understanding of how to run a school. Certainly, there are many administrators with vision; I'm pleased to say that my high school's current principal appears to be one. The latter, on the other hand, tends to take the form of a single-minded commitment to a particular set of goals, wisdom-be-damned, and often followed with a zeal that would do an Old Testament prophet proud.
A vivid example of the distinction occurred during the tenure of our previous commissioner, Richard Mills. Shortly after Mills was appointed, he came up with A Plan To Improve Education. This involved rewriting all of the curriculum used in New York State, and was ushered in with countless meetings. In one of the first ones I attended, a curriculum specialist was called in, and we endured a day-long meeting with her in which we were supposed to design our ideal curriculum in the field we teach. "Anything," she told us, "is fair game."
I responded that I kind of liked the one I had. Biology, I told her, is biology; you can use different strategies to teach it, but the science is what the science is.
A frown appeared on her face. "There must be something you'd change if you could," she said.
"I'd like more money from the state to buy equipment," I said.
"Not money!" she said. "That's not what this is about. This is about designing your ideal curriculum in your field."
"Okay," I said. "I choose not to change anything."
And this sort of went on all day -- her trying to maneuver us into buying in to the idea of change for change's sake, and me (and several others) digging our heels in, asking her why on earth we were supposed to change something that already worked just fine.
We later found out that she informed our superintendent that we were "the rudest science department she had ever worked with."
And, of course, it was all an exercise in futility anyway. The opinions of a bunch of silly teachers would never change the direction of The Vision Of An Educational Leader. At enormous expense, the entire curriculum was rewritten. The results? I can find two: (1) They changed the name of the course from "Biology" to "Living Environment." (2) They made the statewide final exam much easier.
So, now that Steiner's out, after under two years in the position, we'll have someone else take his place. And in all likelihood, it'll be someone with A Vision, because you don't get that far in the field of education unless you have one. Meaning that we'll take everything we've always done, pretend we're jettisoning it and taking off in A New Direction For Education, the policy wonks will spend millions of dollars generating Draft Protocols and Mission Statements and Program Timelines, teachers and administrators will waste countless hours in meetings, and in the end we'll get back what we started with, maybe under a different name. (You'll probably be amused to know that after the change from "Biology" to "Living Environment" ten years ago, I flatly refused to use the new name, and all of my course handouts and lab manuals and so on are still labeled "Biology." I wonder what the new name will be? I'm guessing it'll be something like "Our Amazing World Of Nature.")
I realize this sounds cynical. That's because I am cynical. Not about the act of educating children; the day I'm cynical about that should be my last day on the job. What I'm cynical about is the motives of our leaders, who often seem more concerned about putting their personal stamp on the educational system they're running than they do about sensible, practical policy that benefits the kids we're serving. And my attitude toward NYSED and the Federal Department of Education reminds me of the quote from Lily Tomlin: "No matter how cynical I get, it's just never enough to keep up."
Friday, April 8, 2011
Grading the teachers
Our school district had a district-wide faculty meeting a couple of days ago to discuss the new requirements coming down from the state education department regarding teacher evaluations and the so-called APPR (Annual Professional Performance Review) standards. At the moment, teacher evaluation is handled at the local level, and it's seemed to work well enough; all of the principals I've worked with here in New York State have been fair evaluators, and I haven't seen any particular need to alter the system.
But NYSED, which works on the "If It Ain't Broke, Mess Around With It Until It Becomes A Bureaucratic Nightmare" principle, has decreed that teachers are now not only supposed to be evaluated in written form, we're supposed to be given a numerical grade, similar to those we give our students. "Turnabout's fair play," I can hear people saying (many of them will probably be my students); but wait a moment. The grades my students earn are based upon hundreds of smaller assessments, which provide feedback continuously throughout the school year. The grading system proposed by the state generates a single number, at the end, which will be some sort of mysterious composite of "locally-determined assessment rubrics" and such criteria as student achievement and student growth. The details of how this will be done are unclear even to the policymakers in Albany; at the moment, all we have is vague, hand-waving sorts of talk about "metrics for assessing progress," and that local evaluations, of the kind we've always used, can only account for 60% of a teacher's score.
Of course, this opens up a whole host of sticky questions, none of which anyone seems to have answers to. For example, what exactly do we mean by "student growth?" Well, the state has said it has to be some kind of this-June-to-next-June comparison of student achievement. So, if a student in my biology class scores an 85, and goes on to take chemistry and scores a 75, has he regressed? Is his lack of "growth" in the sciences my fault (for not preparing him adequately) or the chemistry teacher's (for not teaching him so that he could keep his scores up to their previous level)?
Okay, what if you looked at composite scores for a particular teacher? It's not any easier. Do you give me good marks (because in my AP Biology class, I have 100% of my students with averages above 80) or bad marks (because in my elective class, currently 1/4 of the students are failing)? How could you compare student scores from a teacher who teaches all AP and honors classes with one who teaches all remedial or special education classes? I hope no one would fall for the ridiculous notion that the former's higher student scores are because (s)he is a better teacher than the latter is.
And in any case, suppose you did figure out a way to collapse a teacher's entire performance during a year into a single number, what would that number actually mean? Suppose I got an 82 one year and a 79 the next. What does that three-point drop signify? Am I 3% worse this year than last year? Suppose I got an 85 and so did a third-grade special education teacher. What would the fact that we got the same score indicate about our teaching ability? How can you use the same set of criteria to generate a score for two people whose jobs require completely different skill sets, and expect that that number has any actual meaning?
Then there's the added twist that schools will be required to make teachers' scores public. That's right -- it will be out there for all to see: GORDON GOT A 68 AS A TEACHER THIS YEAR. We have a host of privacy laws covering students' grades -- I know a teacher who was reprimanded for publicly congratulating a student for getting 100 on an exam, because the kid was "put on the spot" and complained to his parents about it. But our grades will be a matter of public record. That should generate some entertaining lawsuits, don't you think? The lawyers must be rubbing their hands together and cackling with glee over all this.
The most maddening thing about this is that because of President Obama's Race To The Top Initiative, we are being required to rush into this immediately. We applied for RTTT because it promised money -- and New York State won, and our district got... $40,000. A little more than the salary of a single first-year teacher. And now we're being told to revamp our evaluation standards OR ELSE. David Steiner, the Commissioner of Education, has passed along the message to superintendents that he has formed a 63-member study group to come up with a policy, and if they can't make their minds up by July 1, he's going to make up a policy of his own -- because we have to have the new evaluation procedures in place by next September.
So, once again, we are waiting for the micromanaging b-b stackers down in Albany to tell us the latest and greatest. Honestly, I doubt it's going to have much impact on the day-to-day life of teachers; we'll keep doing what we're doing, trying to educate children as well as we can given the constraints of time, money, and energy we continually work under. I do feel for the principals and superintendents, however, who are caught in the middle of this mess, and now have to figure out how to comply with a policy that no one (including the people in charge) seems to have the vaguest idea about.
The whole thing has me torn between laughing and screaming. Part of me is just sitting back, grinning evilly, waiting to see what kind of chaos will occur when they try to make this work. The other half of me, however, mourns for yet another blow to the educational system. With the current troubles -- declining money, union bashing by politicians, teachers being vilified by the press -- it will be a wonder anyone in this generation of college students will choose education as a career.
But NYSED, which works on the "If It Ain't Broke, Mess Around With It Until It Becomes A Bureaucratic Nightmare" principle, has decreed that teachers are now not only supposed to be evaluated in written form, we're supposed to be given a numerical grade, similar to those we give our students. "Turnabout's fair play," I can hear people saying (many of them will probably be my students); but wait a moment. The grades my students earn are based upon hundreds of smaller assessments, which provide feedback continuously throughout the school year. The grading system proposed by the state generates a single number, at the end, which will be some sort of mysterious composite of "locally-determined assessment rubrics" and such criteria as student achievement and student growth. The details of how this will be done are unclear even to the policymakers in Albany; at the moment, all we have is vague, hand-waving sorts of talk about "metrics for assessing progress," and that local evaluations, of the kind we've always used, can only account for 60% of a teacher's score.
Of course, this opens up a whole host of sticky questions, none of which anyone seems to have answers to. For example, what exactly do we mean by "student growth?" Well, the state has said it has to be some kind of this-June-to-next-June comparison of student achievement. So, if a student in my biology class scores an 85, and goes on to take chemistry and scores a 75, has he regressed? Is his lack of "growth" in the sciences my fault (for not preparing him adequately) or the chemistry teacher's (for not teaching him so that he could keep his scores up to their previous level)?
Okay, what if you looked at composite scores for a particular teacher? It's not any easier. Do you give me good marks (because in my AP Biology class, I have 100% of my students with averages above 80) or bad marks (because in my elective class, currently 1/4 of the students are failing)? How could you compare student scores from a teacher who teaches all AP and honors classes with one who teaches all remedial or special education classes? I hope no one would fall for the ridiculous notion that the former's higher student scores are because (s)he is a better teacher than the latter is.
And in any case, suppose you did figure out a way to collapse a teacher's entire performance during a year into a single number, what would that number actually mean? Suppose I got an 82 one year and a 79 the next. What does that three-point drop signify? Am I 3% worse this year than last year? Suppose I got an 85 and so did a third-grade special education teacher. What would the fact that we got the same score indicate about our teaching ability? How can you use the same set of criteria to generate a score for two people whose jobs require completely different skill sets, and expect that that number has any actual meaning?
Then there's the added twist that schools will be required to make teachers' scores public. That's right -- it will be out there for all to see: GORDON GOT A 68 AS A TEACHER THIS YEAR. We have a host of privacy laws covering students' grades -- I know a teacher who was reprimanded for publicly congratulating a student for getting 100 on an exam, because the kid was "put on the spot" and complained to his parents about it. But our grades will be a matter of public record. That should generate some entertaining lawsuits, don't you think? The lawyers must be rubbing their hands together and cackling with glee over all this.
The most maddening thing about this is that because of President Obama's Race To The Top Initiative, we are being required to rush into this immediately. We applied for RTTT because it promised money -- and New York State won, and our district got... $40,000. A little more than the salary of a single first-year teacher. And now we're being told to revamp our evaluation standards OR ELSE. David Steiner, the Commissioner of Education, has passed along the message to superintendents that he has formed a 63-member study group to come up with a policy, and if they can't make their minds up by July 1, he's going to make up a policy of his own -- because we have to have the new evaluation procedures in place by next September.
So, once again, we are waiting for the micromanaging b-b stackers down in Albany to tell us the latest and greatest. Honestly, I doubt it's going to have much impact on the day-to-day life of teachers; we'll keep doing what we're doing, trying to educate children as well as we can given the constraints of time, money, and energy we continually work under. I do feel for the principals and superintendents, however, who are caught in the middle of this mess, and now have to figure out how to comply with a policy that no one (including the people in charge) seems to have the vaguest idea about.
The whole thing has me torn between laughing and screaming. Part of me is just sitting back, grinning evilly, waiting to see what kind of chaos will occur when they try to make this work. The other half of me, however, mourns for yet another blow to the educational system. With the current troubles -- declining money, union bashing by politicians, teachers being vilified by the press -- it will be a wonder anyone in this generation of college students will choose education as a career.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
ESP (Extra-Sexy Perception)
Daryl Bem, an experimental psychologist of some standing, has an obsession; proving that ESP exists. He's been at this for decades. He was one of the researchers who designed the Ganzfeld Experiment back in the 1980s, in which people were placed in sensory deprivation and allegedly could communicate telepathically. (Other scientists, naturally wishing to see if they could replicate these results, couldn't.)
He's still at it, almost thirty years later, and published a paper last month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in which he basically says, "Now I've done it! See?"
Unfortunately for Bem, this piece of research is (1) once again generating results that most other scientists don't consider significant, and (2) may be one of the most unintentionally funny experimental designs I've ever heard.
What he did was to take a bunch of college students, and place them in front of two computer screens. The students were equipped with sensors that detected which way their eyes were moving. Then they were shown pairs of photographs on the two screens. The pairs of photographs were made up of (1) an innocent photograph like a landscape or a puppy, and (2) a photograph of people having sex. Bem's claim was that based on the eye movements of the students, they anticipated the screen with the erotic photograph "significantly more than fifty percent of the time."
The experiment was repeated with other types of photographic pairings, and no effect was found.
So, if you accept Bem's results -- ESP works, but only if sex is involved.
Bem writes, with an apparent straight face, "The presentiment studies provide evidence that our physiology can anticipate erotic stimuli before they can occur. Such anticipation would be evolutionarily advantageous for reproduction and survival if the organism could act instrumentally to approach erotic stimuli and avoid negative stimuli."
Sure. That makes total sense. If a guy sees a woman making sexual advances toward him, it's gonna help him out if he's ready to rock and roll 0.1 seconds before she is. Because we all know how slow guys are to get aroused. Excuse me while I take a momentary break to guffaw. All of which tells me that whatever he knows about psychology, the guy (1) doesn't understand evolutionary theory, and (2) apparently has never gotten laid.
Bem's paper also describes a variety of other experiments he conducted. My favorite was one in which he found that studying after a test makes your score better. Yes, you read that right. In Bem's words: "The results show that practicing a set of words after the recall test does, in fact, reach back in time to facilitate the recall of those words." I hope my students don't find out about this. I have a hard enough time getting them to study as it is.
And of course, no woo-woo article would be complete without a mention of quantum physics. Bem writes, "Those who follow contemporary developments in modern physics, however, will be aware that several features of quantum phenomena are themselves incompatible with our everyday conception of physical reality."
As far as I can tell, this means, "Quantum physics is kinda weird. ESP is also weird. Quantum physics is real. Therefore ESP is real. Q.E.D."
There's also the problem that other psychologists did a statistical analysis of Bem's results, and found that "the evidence for psi is weak to nonexistent." Given that this criticism was published in the same issue of JPSP, you have to wonder how Bem's paper got past the peer review process in the first place.
Anyway, Bem claims that his research shows that if ESP exists, (1) it will help you to locate pornography, and (2) allow you to study after you take tests. All of which explains vividly why his findings would appeal to college students. If he could add another experiment that showed (3) a method for dowsing for beer, I think he'd be the most popular researcher on US college campuses.
He's still at it, almost thirty years later, and published a paper last month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in which he basically says, "Now I've done it! See?"
Unfortunately for Bem, this piece of research is (1) once again generating results that most other scientists don't consider significant, and (2) may be one of the most unintentionally funny experimental designs I've ever heard.
What he did was to take a bunch of college students, and place them in front of two computer screens. The students were equipped with sensors that detected which way their eyes were moving. Then they were shown pairs of photographs on the two screens. The pairs of photographs were made up of (1) an innocent photograph like a landscape or a puppy, and (2) a photograph of people having sex. Bem's claim was that based on the eye movements of the students, they anticipated the screen with the erotic photograph "significantly more than fifty percent of the time."
The experiment was repeated with other types of photographic pairings, and no effect was found.
So, if you accept Bem's results -- ESP works, but only if sex is involved.
Bem writes, with an apparent straight face, "The presentiment studies provide evidence that our physiology can anticipate erotic stimuli before they can occur. Such anticipation would be evolutionarily advantageous for reproduction and survival if the organism could act instrumentally to approach erotic stimuli and avoid negative stimuli."
Sure. That makes total sense. If a guy sees a woman making sexual advances toward him, it's gonna help him out if he's ready to rock and roll 0.1 seconds before she is. Because we all know how slow guys are to get aroused. Excuse me while I take a momentary break to guffaw. All of which tells me that whatever he knows about psychology, the guy (1) doesn't understand evolutionary theory, and (2) apparently has never gotten laid.
Bem's paper also describes a variety of other experiments he conducted. My favorite was one in which he found that studying after a test makes your score better. Yes, you read that right. In Bem's words: "The results show that practicing a set of words after the recall test does, in fact, reach back in time to facilitate the recall of those words." I hope my students don't find out about this. I have a hard enough time getting them to study as it is.
And of course, no woo-woo article would be complete without a mention of quantum physics. Bem writes, "Those who follow contemporary developments in modern physics, however, will be aware that several features of quantum phenomena are themselves incompatible with our everyday conception of physical reality."
As far as I can tell, this means, "Quantum physics is kinda weird. ESP is also weird. Quantum physics is real. Therefore ESP is real. Q.E.D."
There's also the problem that other psychologists did a statistical analysis of Bem's results, and found that "the evidence for psi is weak to nonexistent." Given that this criticism was published in the same issue of JPSP, you have to wonder how Bem's paper got past the peer review process in the first place.
Anyway, Bem claims that his research shows that if ESP exists, (1) it will help you to locate pornography, and (2) allow you to study after you take tests. All of which explains vividly why his findings would appeal to college students. If he could add another experiment that showed (3) a method for dowsing for beer, I think he'd be the most popular researcher on US college campuses.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Ear candles and carrot dances
Just when I thought "alternative medicine" couldn't get any weirder, I came across a practice I'd never heard of before: "ear candling."
It's also called "thermo-auricular therapy," which is a little like an elevator operator wanting to be called a "vertical transportation technician." Basically, the concept is that many people suffer from impactions of ear wax, and so what you need to do is to lie on your side and stick a lit candle in your ear. The lit candle will create a suction that will pull the ear wax out.
Practitioners always cut open the candle stubs at the end, showing all the orange goop inside the candle -- but in a controlled experiment performed on himself by skeptic and brave soul Bobby Nelson, it was demonstrated that the orange goop was residue from the candle itself, and was there even if you let the candle burn while sitting on a cereal box. (We are assuming that the cereal box did not have an impaction of ear wax at the time.) You can read the account of his experiment here, and see photos of Nelson lying there with a lit candle in his ear and a very grim expression.
As I was reading about this, I kept thinking this was some kind of prank medical procedure, as April Fools' Day was last week, but tragically, it's not. People really do this, and some people swear by it. Never mind that if the candle actually was capable of creating a powerful enough suction to suck up ear wax, it would rupture your ear drum. Never mind that claims of the practice originating with the Hopi turned out to be lies -- the Hopis, when questioned, responding, "Of course we don't stick lit candles in our ears. Do we look like morons?" Never mind that dozens of people have ended up in the emergency room because hot candle wax ended up dripping down into their ear canals. Never mind that there have been two recorded cases of people performing ear candling on themselves, falling asleep while doing so, and burning down their houses.
I am always amazed at how far the placebo effect and confirmation bias can drive people. Now, don't misunderstand me; there are some types of "alternative medicine" that actually might work, and which are currently being studied by reputable medical researchers. Acupuncture and a few of the herbal medicines come to mind. But to quote Tim Minchin: "There's a name for alternative medicine that works. It's called... medicine." I'm much more willing to believe the dozens of controlled studies that have shown that ginkgo biloba doesn't improve your memory than the anecdotal evidence of people who say "it worked for me." But when not only is there no evidence for something, and controlled studies show that it doesn't work, and there's a good argument that it can't work as advertised, and people still believe in it... that I really don't get.
On the other hand, the obnoxious side of my personality (never very deeply buried) wonders if I might not be able to have a little fun with this. Perhaps I should come up with an alternative medicine therapy of my own, and create a website to promote it, and see how many people I can get to give it a try. How about this one:
Are you tired? Do you sleep poorly? Do you feel like you're not grounded, of late? Invoke the Earth Spirits and realign your Root Chakra by performing the CLEANSING DANCE OF THE SACRED CARROTS. Take two carrots, and bless them, saying, "Oh great Carrot Spirits, bring to me your sacred wisdom." Then stick the carrots up your nose. Then put on some nice New Age music (we suggest Yanni) and dance around in your living room until the carrots are Saturated With The Heaviness Of Your Soul and fall out. Wear gloves to dispose of the carrots so that the Tired Energy doesn't seep back and infect your chakras again. You'll feel better immediately. Trust me.
It's also called "thermo-auricular therapy," which is a little like an elevator operator wanting to be called a "vertical transportation technician." Basically, the concept is that many people suffer from impactions of ear wax, and so what you need to do is to lie on your side and stick a lit candle in your ear. The lit candle will create a suction that will pull the ear wax out.
Practitioners always cut open the candle stubs at the end, showing all the orange goop inside the candle -- but in a controlled experiment performed on himself by skeptic and brave soul Bobby Nelson, it was demonstrated that the orange goop was residue from the candle itself, and was there even if you let the candle burn while sitting on a cereal box. (We are assuming that the cereal box did not have an impaction of ear wax at the time.) You can read the account of his experiment here, and see photos of Nelson lying there with a lit candle in his ear and a very grim expression.
As I was reading about this, I kept thinking this was some kind of prank medical procedure, as April Fools' Day was last week, but tragically, it's not. People really do this, and some people swear by it. Never mind that if the candle actually was capable of creating a powerful enough suction to suck up ear wax, it would rupture your ear drum. Never mind that claims of the practice originating with the Hopi turned out to be lies -- the Hopis, when questioned, responding, "Of course we don't stick lit candles in our ears. Do we look like morons?" Never mind that dozens of people have ended up in the emergency room because hot candle wax ended up dripping down into their ear canals. Never mind that there have been two recorded cases of people performing ear candling on themselves, falling asleep while doing so, and burning down their houses.
I am always amazed at how far the placebo effect and confirmation bias can drive people. Now, don't misunderstand me; there are some types of "alternative medicine" that actually might work, and which are currently being studied by reputable medical researchers. Acupuncture and a few of the herbal medicines come to mind. But to quote Tim Minchin: "There's a name for alternative medicine that works. It's called... medicine." I'm much more willing to believe the dozens of controlled studies that have shown that ginkgo biloba doesn't improve your memory than the anecdotal evidence of people who say "it worked for me." But when not only is there no evidence for something, and controlled studies show that it doesn't work, and there's a good argument that it can't work as advertised, and people still believe in it... that I really don't get.
On the other hand, the obnoxious side of my personality (never very deeply buried) wonders if I might not be able to have a little fun with this. Perhaps I should come up with an alternative medicine therapy of my own, and create a website to promote it, and see how many people I can get to give it a try. How about this one:
Are you tired? Do you sleep poorly? Do you feel like you're not grounded, of late? Invoke the Earth Spirits and realign your Root Chakra by performing the CLEANSING DANCE OF THE SACRED CARROTS. Take two carrots, and bless them, saying, "Oh great Carrot Spirits, bring to me your sacred wisdom." Then stick the carrots up your nose. Then put on some nice New Age music (we suggest Yanni) and dance around in your living room until the carrots are Saturated With The Heaviness Of Your Soul and fall out. Wear gloves to dispose of the carrots so that the Tired Energy doesn't seep back and infect your chakras again. You'll feel better immediately. Trust me.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Cheerleaders for Miskatonic University
New from the "Let's Review The Definition Of Fiction, Shall We?" department, apparently there are people who think that whole pantheon of gods dreamed up by H. P. Lovecraft is real.
Never mind that Lovecraft himself was a staunch materialist. Never mind that he used to respond to nutcases in his own day who'd write to him, claiming to have visited the ruins of Dunwich and Innsmouth, with, "Those places don't exist. I know that for certain. You see, I made them up." Never mind that if you go to your local high school's counseling office, and peruse the bookshelf for a college catalog for Miskatonic University, you will find it goes from "University of Minnesota" directly to "Mississippi State."
You'd think all of that would lead people to the conclusion that Elder Gods were figments of Lovecraft's fevered imagination. You'd think that people would focus on the "myth" part of "Cthulhu mythos."
You'd be wrong.
There are apparently whole cults devoted to the worship of the Elder Gods, amongst whom Cthulhu seems to be the favorite. Yog-Sothoth, who is inevitably described as "congeries of iridescent globes," is also popular, which raises a question: what the hell is a "congery?" I looked it up, and supposedly it means "collection, group, or assemblage." I think you all need to make a point of using this word in a sentence today, such as, "look at that cute congery of puppies," or "that's a mighty nice congery of Star Wars action figures you got there, Bob."
Anyhow, the cultists faced a problem; being that the whole thing was made up, so were all the trappings -- especially the books and so on, such as "the cursed Necronomicon of the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred." Undaunted, they simply got into the spirit of things, and made that up, too. A guy who is known only as "Simon" wrote (well, he claims he translated it) the version of the Necronomicon that currently is used by most of your better Cthulhu cults. It's available on Amazon (no, I'm not kidding) and apparently sells quite well.
And, of course, if you're going to have cultists, you'll have people who preach against them. Jack Chick, who is the leader of a nominally Christian fringe group and who seems to be a raving wackmobile, claims that (1) Cthulhu and all the other Elder Gods are real because he's seen them, and (2) they're all minions of Satan so you better be careful. In fact, he published a series of graphic novels about how Satanism is undermining American society, and one of them specifically deals with Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath, and the rest of the gang. It's named, "Who Will Get Eaten First?"
You'd think that anyone who made these kind of claims would be guffawed at. And I live in the hope that 99% of people are rational enough to have exactly that response. But sadly, all you have to do is to Google "Cthulhu cults" and you'll have tens of thousands of hits. So I wondered, what is it about these ideas that people are so attracted to? While I like a lot of Lovecraft's stories, notwithstanding his tendency toward purple prose ("loathsome, amorphous, bubbling slime from the nethermost darkness of the eldritch depths of space and time!") and predictability (why does everyone in his stories live in a house with a "gambrel roof?"), I really would prefer it if his view of the universe was fiction. What with earthquakes, leaking nuclear reactors, rebellions and uprisings, we have enough to worry about these days without there also being evil monsters lurking around trying to eat us for dinner. Of course, the stories are also full of characters who are drawn in by the powers that said monsters allegedly grant their followers, and honestly, I can see how that might be a temptation. If I could chant a magic formula in my classroom and make a misbehaving student or two melt, I think I might be willing to join the Esoteric Order of Dagon, too.
The downside, of course, is that being fiction, it isn't real, which is a distinction these people seem to have trouble with. You'd think the first time they tried to summon up Nyarlathotep, and nothing happened, they'd basically sit back and say, "Well, I guess it's all fake. What a bunch of goobers we are," and go back to their jobs and houses and so on. But that never seems to happen with Believers, does it? All you need is conviction, and a grim determination to hold on to your ideas in the face of contrary evidence, and you're set for life.
Never mind that Lovecraft himself was a staunch materialist. Never mind that he used to respond to nutcases in his own day who'd write to him, claiming to have visited the ruins of Dunwich and Innsmouth, with, "Those places don't exist. I know that for certain. You see, I made them up." Never mind that if you go to your local high school's counseling office, and peruse the bookshelf for a college catalog for Miskatonic University, you will find it goes from "University of Minnesota" directly to "Mississippi State."
You'd think all of that would lead people to the conclusion that Elder Gods were figments of Lovecraft's fevered imagination. You'd think that people would focus on the "myth" part of "Cthulhu mythos."
You'd be wrong.
There are apparently whole cults devoted to the worship of the Elder Gods, amongst whom Cthulhu seems to be the favorite. Yog-Sothoth, who is inevitably described as "congeries of iridescent globes," is also popular, which raises a question: what the hell is a "congery?" I looked it up, and supposedly it means "collection, group, or assemblage." I think you all need to make a point of using this word in a sentence today, such as, "look at that cute congery of puppies," or "that's a mighty nice congery of Star Wars action figures you got there, Bob."
Anyhow, the cultists faced a problem; being that the whole thing was made up, so were all the trappings -- especially the books and so on, such as "the cursed Necronomicon of the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred." Undaunted, they simply got into the spirit of things, and made that up, too. A guy who is known only as "Simon" wrote (well, he claims he translated it) the version of the Necronomicon that currently is used by most of your better Cthulhu cults. It's available on Amazon (no, I'm not kidding) and apparently sells quite well.
And, of course, if you're going to have cultists, you'll have people who preach against them. Jack Chick, who is the leader of a nominally Christian fringe group and who seems to be a raving wackmobile, claims that (1) Cthulhu and all the other Elder Gods are real because he's seen them, and (2) they're all minions of Satan so you better be careful. In fact, he published a series of graphic novels about how Satanism is undermining American society, and one of them specifically deals with Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath, and the rest of the gang. It's named, "Who Will Get Eaten First?"
You'd think that anyone who made these kind of claims would be guffawed at. And I live in the hope that 99% of people are rational enough to have exactly that response. But sadly, all you have to do is to Google "Cthulhu cults" and you'll have tens of thousands of hits. So I wondered, what is it about these ideas that people are so attracted to? While I like a lot of Lovecraft's stories, notwithstanding his tendency toward purple prose ("loathsome, amorphous, bubbling slime from the nethermost darkness of the eldritch depths of space and time!") and predictability (why does everyone in his stories live in a house with a "gambrel roof?"), I really would prefer it if his view of the universe was fiction. What with earthquakes, leaking nuclear reactors, rebellions and uprisings, we have enough to worry about these days without there also being evil monsters lurking around trying to eat us for dinner. Of course, the stories are also full of characters who are drawn in by the powers that said monsters allegedly grant their followers, and honestly, I can see how that might be a temptation. If I could chant a magic formula in my classroom and make a misbehaving student or two melt, I think I might be willing to join the Esoteric Order of Dagon, too.
The downside, of course, is that being fiction, it isn't real, which is a distinction these people seem to have trouble with. You'd think the first time they tried to summon up Nyarlathotep, and nothing happened, they'd basically sit back and say, "Well, I guess it's all fake. What a bunch of goobers we are," and go back to their jobs and houses and so on. But that never seems to happen with Believers, does it? All you need is conviction, and a grim determination to hold on to your ideas in the face of contrary evidence, and you're set for life.
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