Roving Bands of Eunuchs Seek to Steal Your Johnson: We Thought We Had it Bad With “Gay Panic”

I didn’t understand half the cultural concepts mentioned when I first read this article: why there are roving bands of eunuchs in India at all, what a “male issue” is (an elaborate term for baby boy?), and why, exactly a group of eunuchs would forcibly chop off some poor kids’ private parts. To be honest, it sounded much like yet another element of the so-called “penis panics” that have from time to time erupted in some Asian cultures.

But from this news of the weird tidbit I stumbled onto yet another intriguing wrinkle in culture and sexuality I’d been completely ignorant of.

Think You Can See the Dead? Skeptics Can’t Wait to Test Your Brain and Find Out

One of my favorite articles of blogging past was the piece I did on “Spiritualism Camps” in which I mused over just how it was that a camp counselor medium like Judy Ulch could litterally see “stubble on their faces” of ghosts.  Just today I received the first and only comment on the piece… and was given a terrible review.  “Jean” even said that I looked stupid: trying to apply scientific hypothesizing to spirits, pshaw!  I’m crushed.

Of course, Jean was apparently so outraged by the mere idea of examining spiritual phenomenon that she didn’t bother to read far enough to see all her complaints addressed.  And her post did spark an bright idea of bloggy  back-issue synergism.

You see, just last week I came across a story about some scientists at Berkeley who are working on an MRI technique that could potentially allow scientists to reconstruct the images that a brain is seeing. Now, for mediums like Judy Ulch to be registering anything ghostly as a visual image at all, let alone something detailed enough to have distinct facial features, it almost certainly has to show up in her brain.  And if we can reconstruct that image… well you probably see where I’m going with this.  If we can see what they see, then we can see if they really see what they say they see.  See?

Of course, most mediums will probably balk at the very idea of testing their powers of paranormal perception in such a definitive fashion, and are as unlikely to let scientists strap them into an MRI machine set up in the middle of an Indian burial ground as they were to take James Randi’s million dollar challenge.

Which is a sad thing really.  If spirits really did exist, and mediums really could perceive them, then even a failure in this case could teach us all something.  That is, if a ghostly visage fails to appear on the processed MRI scan at the moment the medium claims to see one, then at the very least we’ve been able to rule out yet another false model of how spirit images work.  We could rule out all sorts of things in fact:

• The possibility that mediums have special rods and cones in their eyes that allow them to detect spiritual radiation.
• That any kind of optical image (light waves hit the ghost, bounce off, are captured by human eyes, etc.) is involved at all.
• That mediums are really “seeing” the ghosts in any meaningful sense, as opposed to the ghostly gaze being somehow superimposed onto the mental results of regular vision.

And of course, there’s always the possibility that spirits would show up on the MRI technique, in which case mediums would be vindicated and heralded as ingenious and overlooked pioneers in a entirely new realm of scientific exploration.

I’m game.  I bet most skeptics would be.  All we have to lose is the money for the use of the machine.  What we have to gain, however, is knowledge, one way or the other.  Sounds good to me.

So how about it, mediums?  Ready to do your part for human knowledge?

Book Meme Corner: Women With Over-developed Nervous Systems and How to Irradiate Your Face

Ah, blogging memes. I’m not a huge fan in general, but Secundum Artem has tagged me with one, and I’ll dutifully follow along. The memeceedure here is:

1. Go to page 123 of the nearest book.
2. Find the 5th sentence.
3. Write down the next 3 sentences.

The actual nearest book to me was Medicine in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, 1810-1976, but unfortunately page 123 lacks enough full sentences and is merely an extremely dry recitation of institutions in any case. Lest you think the book is a total waste though, it does include a long and amusingly sage and serious discussion of homeopathy, as well as recounting the 1881 gynecological lectures of one Dr. Henry Justus Herrick, in which he apparently attributed women’s uterine problems to, among other things, the “overwork of the brain and excessive development of the nervous system.” You’ve come a long way, medicine!

MRI Mind Reading: Reconstucting Visual Images, Even Dreams, Straight from a Brain Scan

This is fascinating stuff: researchers at the University of California at Berkeley are already testing out a form of MRI scan that can reliably discern what sorts of images people are looking at when the scan is performed. They are claiming that with refinement, this technology may be able to reconstruct entire visual images just from brain scans alone, perhaps even including the non-sensory images in people’s vivid memories or dreams (We still aren’t positive that these latter images map to the visual cortex in quite the same way as direct sensory images, but there’s plenty of tantalizing circumstantial evidence that they do).

I’m a little skeptical of the idea of reconstructing new images without pre-observing them: the way the brain actually maps out different details in an image is probably not anywhere near as simple as a sort of linear pixel map. The “data” might be heavily layered or interpreted in ways that make it difficult to reconstruct, just as optical illusions produce experiences of visual effects that aren’t there on the paper itself. The scientists may currently be observing predictable inputs to the system and getting reliable hits off of that, but that’s no guarantee that the particular sorts of things they are looking at can easily translate right back into normal images again. The best that might be possible would be statistical generalizations (i.e. we can tell that he’s looking at something square, or something blue, but can’t reproduce the exact contours and fine details of what it is).

Still, very cool, and I can’t wait to see if more really is possible.

I’m not sure I really see the potential privacy worries mentioned though: the technique is essentially just a proof of concept that visual perceptions are mapped onto the brain in a mechanical fashion. Considering that a subject would have to be strapped into a huge MRI machine in order to do a scan, and that the scan could only reproduce what the patient was currently looking at, this seems more like the most expensive way imaginable to look at a Polaroid rather than getting into “thought-crime” territory. The machine doesn’t observe thoughts, per se: it merely observes what the brain is observing (or, perhaps, envisioning).

And it would be utterly wondrous if scientists could piece together even brief, cloudy snapshots of the images in people’s dreams: allowing others to finally catch a glimpse of what has always been a subjective and isolated experience.

Disclaimer: take this all with a skeptical grain of salt. It’s science journalism after all.

Corporate Death Sentence for Enzyte, the “Natural Male Enhancement” Scam

You’ll never have to sit through another “Smiling Bob” commercial again: Enzyte maker Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals and it’s President have been busted on everything from mail fraud to money laundering.

Some former employees, including relatives of Warshak, pleaded guilty to other charges and cooperated with prosecutors. They testified that the company created fictitious doctors to endorse the pills, fabricated a customer-satisfaction survey and made up numbers to back claims about Enzyte’s effectiveness.

Just another reason not to trust the claims of those shilling “herbal supplement” and other such products which have no independently proven results. What’s unfortunate here is that BPN only got caught because they flagrantly abused things like their money-back guarantee (not only would they not give people’s money back, but they would apparently keep quietly charging customers’ credit cards for non-existent purchases). Meanwhile, countless other companies who manage not to blatantly steal things from their customers outright will continue with their snake oil scams without any fear of prosecution for their bogus claims.

The Thimerosal (that’s not) in Vaccines Does Not Cause Autism. Can We Stop the Deadly Scaremongering Now?

Yet another damning study came out today: damning to those people who have risked the lives of millions of children with phony, unfounded scares about vaccines.

Jenny McCarthy’s babbling mommy-mentalism aside, the case for thimerosal or any other preservative causing autism was never strong to begin with.  But the tide of definitive evidence has come in over and over again, and it all soundly puts the link, both for causation and even correlation, well beyond the realm of the ridiculous.  Read the study.  Recognize that a chemical that isn’t even in vaccines in the first place cannot “cause” anything in the first place.

So now that that’s all taken care of, can we go back to stopping the spread of deadly diseases now?  Ok?

Silly Sci-Fi Science: NBC’s Heroes does Antibodies

Good fantasy fiction lets us suspend the rules of our reality in favor of the rules of our imaginations. Of course, imaginary worlds usually still need self-consistency to be satisfying: plot holes can make an audience feel cheated even if straight-up magic is involved. And Science fiction can be even more problematic, primarily because sci-fi writers are often tempted to act as if they are “teaching” the audience authentic scientific principles.

Case in point: while NBC’s Heroes has been an enjoyable show with some well-developed character arcs, the scientific concepts it’s presented have been pretty consistently incoherent. The show gets a free pass on most of the superhero special abilities, of course: things like phasing through walls and stopping time are classic comic book ideas that are just too fun to bother justifying or complaining about. Unfortunately, the show also tries to lecture its audience about seemingly realistic biological and medical principles… and then gets them laughably wrong.

Detox and Re-Tox: Bad Medicine and Even Worse Homeopathy at Alt-Med Mecca NewsTarget

It’s time for another foray into the neverending stream of nonsense that is NewsTarget, the alternative medicine super-site run by bemuscled granola guru Mike Adams.

This edition will be a double feature debunking: two awful articles for the price of none. In the first, Adams himself tries to convince readers that picking your nose all day long once every year is a sensible way to stay healthy. In the second, engineer Sarah Ramratan takes a stock principle from the pseudoscience of homeopathy and drives it off the deep-end. Let’s roll!

Hoodia Hoodoo can’t Scam Skeptics

I knew I couldn’t glance over at alt-med megasite NewsTarget and resist ridicule, but there’s simply too much to dash off before work. In the meantime, check out Secundum Artem a where skeptical pharmacy student N.B. does some quick calculations and figures out that there’s something tremendously fishy about popular weight loss supplement “Hoodia”.

Deepak Attack! Choking on Chopra’s Medical Malarkey

Deepak Chopra believes in positive thinking, which is why he’ll never ever realize that he’s a fool.

In response to Chopra’s latest medical advice antics, Orac over at Respectful Insolence slices Chopra’s arguments to nice digestible pieces, and then Mark Hoofnagle of the denialism blog goes and chokes on those pieces anyway.

Both bloggers are well worth a read, delivering useful insight beyond merely exposing inanity. Hoofnagle in particular makes an extremely important point regarding how alternative medicine stacks up against the conventional variety:

The last half is again just an example of the selection pressure for ineffective treatments for altie medicine. You probably can trust most quack remedies to do nothing, and therefore be pretty safe. And lots of people each year do die in hospitals, therefore hospitals must be dangerous killers of the innocent! Or, maybe, lots of people die in hospitals because that’s where the sick people are, and you know what? No one lives forever. Eventually, something gets you.

Chopra makes it sound like a 20-year-old who goes into the ER to get stitches is going to die of MRSA. What this ignores is that hospitals are responsible for taking care of people who are actually really sick, often very old, and frequently near death. In other words, hospitals take care of patients that no altie practitioners in their right mind would touch with a ten-foot pole, you know, those with real sickness. If you actually look carefully at the reports that the quacks cite to show how dangerous hospitals are, it’s really a reflection of just how incredibly sick and likely to die the patients were in the first place.

In any case, go read. I may have gotten all worked up about Chopra’s inane musings on Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness, but those sorts of bad ideas are ultimately pretty harmless. Chopra’s rambling diatribes about health and medicine, on the other hand, have the potential to truly hurt and even kill the people who might buy into his alternate reality. The more people are out there armed with the knowledge to counter him, the better.

Bush, Solomon, & Stem Cells: Yuval Levin at National Review

Yuval Levin has some more to add on the stem cell debate as well. Like many of his fellows, Levin also rather overplays the science here: painting the currently discovery as any sort of scientific endpoint is simply silly. The technique in question answers some questions and opens new avenues of possibility, but it does not by any stretch negate what there is still to learn. Nor does it, as many have suggested, take embryonic stem cells out of the picture. Despite surely having heard about it by now, he apparently still can’t quite bring himself to tell his readers that this somatic research owes much, and will continue to owe much, to knowledge gained from studying embryonic cells, even those outside Bush’s stand. Researchers in Japan, of course, work outside of American restrictions, and have created and delved into embryonic lines and their mysteries. As such, his picture of how the breakthrough was attained by proudly holding firm against immorality is still a distortion.

But look: if you believe the things Levin and Bush believe, their core position is reasonable and perhaps their Solomonic moderation was indeed laudable. I can empathize with that, and appreciate the back-patting that’s going on as legitimate for how they view things.

Fair enough.

But can they do the same? What if those ethics are mistaken? Then their decision is not laudable, and is, simply put, immoral. It would indeed be wrong to overlook some moral importance to developing embryos, but it would also be wrong to falsely ascribe moral importance to something that doesn’t have it. There’s harm either way.

The best conservatives seem to be able to do in empathizing with our position is in arguing that by avoiding embryonic research, we are “playing it safe.” Maybe they can’t convince us for sure that embryos are morally important, but shouldn’t we acknowledge the possibility and be more careful? They even seem to imply that we should now universally agree that handicapping the research was and is a good idea.

No. There is no playing it safe when it comes to moral decisions. Putting undue value on something leads to harm just as surely as overlooking its value. Reading the Bible such that you believe that blood transfusions are immoral, for instance, can lead to death. There is no “playing it safe” by avoiding blood “just in case” it turns out that it’s wrong to take it.

I can put myself in people’s shoes and see why they feel embryos are worth saving. But instead of doing the same and appreciating the values that suggest to us that they are not, polemicists on the right generally prefer to ignore our values and paint us as nihilists: rapacious scientists who are driven to devalue human life so that we can use it as raw material for our obsessive devotion to experiment. Surely they know that this is precisely the opposite of our position: that in fact it is a deep respect for human life and human dignity that drives us as well. But, they prefer to argue otherwise.

Unfair enough?

Freddoso Responds: More on the National Review & Stem Cells Debate

Freddoso responds, and again, I think there’s plenty I agree with him on (as long as I grant, for the sake of argument, his belief that its morally wrong to destroy embryos at all).

I’ll just cover what I think he gets wrong.