It’s time for another survey of stuff worth reading on the internet, so let’s pretend that I’m hosting some sort of esoteric Blog Carnival. Topic? ME! (And for those readers who are getting sick of Expelled musings, good news: I’ve exiled them to the end of this post)
Anyway, let’s get this thing started with a review of the home-birth-homage film “The Business of Being Born” from someone who might know a little about the subject: family practice doc Harriet Hall. Personally, I think she’s nuts to worry about all the hospital-hate in the film. Doctors are dangerous! That’s why I’m planning on going for an “all-natural” coronary artery bypass when my time comes.
Next, Ed Darrell over at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtubpoints us towards both Cracked list of 11 Movies Saved by Historical Inaccuracy (in which we learn that Mel Gibson’s Patriot hero was, in real life, a notorious slave rapist) and Yahoo’s own similar listing of Greatest Historical Goofups (in which we learn that Mel Gibson’s Braveheart hero would have had to have sex with a three year old to make any sense). Both lists need to apologize for the ridiculousness of calling 2001: A Space Odyssey “historically” inaccurate. It’s called Science-FICTION, guys.
Over at Exploring Our Matrix, religious religion prof James F. McGrath asks “Can (the story of) Noah’s Ark Be Saved?” I’m not sure if his answer is yes or no, exactly but I’m pretty sure that whatever it is, it’s the right answer. The stories of Noah and Job cannot be reconciled any better to modern morals than they can to modern science. That doesn’t mean that we cannot learn things from them (whether believers learning about God, or even non-believers learning about believers).
It’s also worth noting that, for some unknown reason, this teensy blog is actually the or at least amongst the top results when you search for information on the film, which is pretty odd, because Ialmostneverpost aboutthedarnthing. While I’m flattered, Internet, I can’t help but think that othersciencesites should be up there instead.
Finally, as I noted over at Skepchick, what is probably one of the most crucial Google search terms in this little PR war, “expelled movie,” didn’t have a single critical, pro-science site on the all-important first page of results. But then, lo and behold, the very day after I complain about it, Phil Plait and I break into the big time! Somehow, I have gained the power to move digital mountains.
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?
When I first heard about this, I was sad and a little disappointed. But on second thought, it’s really a pretty smart move. In theory, the challenge was a brilliant way to tell psychics and other woo-meisters to put up or shut up. But the reality has played out differently:
Our expectations at first were that we’d attract major personalities by this means, but they’ve avoided having to take the test by simply not applying; those who have actually applied are generally honestly self-deluded persons who have difficulty stating what they can do, which can be understood if they really don’t know what they’re experiencing; we at JREF have gone through involved procedures to help them recognize their problems. Usually, they have indicated that they don’t know what real scientific rules are, when it comes down to their actually being properly tested.
Early this year, Randi and the other folks at the JREF decided to face facts: things weren’t working as planned, and something had to be done. Mystics, astrologers, psychics, John Edward, Sylvia Browne, dowsers, and all the rest were basically just getting away with dismissive technicalities and giving implausible excuses and then dropping the subject. Originally, the plan was to change the rules to screen out mentally ill applicants and target celebrity woo-meisters more directly, something that was done last March.
This is really just a more dramatic move in that direction: think of it not as the challenge giving up, but rather as giving paranormalists a hard deadline. Randi will now be able to go on Larry King and put it pretty pointedly: the test is ending and you’d better get in gear and step up to the challenge instead of endlessly putting it off with excuses. It’s now or never: will you step up to the challenge? Or will you continue to run away and make excuses?
Once the prize expires, it will also put a nice solid period on the whole affair. For ten years, a million dollars was held out to paranormalists of all stripes. A million dollars that they could have just won and then given to charity if they had pleased. Or spend on promoting this amazing new insight into reality that had so far eluded all scientists and other natural observers. All they had to do was show their abilities under controlled conditions, where cheating and other non-supernatural forces were controlled for. And no one could do it: no one could even come close.
Or can they? Two years is a long time to prepare. If you can move things with your mind, if you can predict the future, if you can even see an aura: now is the time to prove it. All you need to do is get a local media outlet or other qualifying skeptics group to check out and report on/preliminarily witness a demonstration of your power in action. The rules are simple, sensible, and open to public scrutiny. We’re waiting… but now we won’t be waiting forever…
Now, the cynics among you will probably say I ignored the predictions I got wrong and just concentrated on the hits. Well, I never claimed to be 100% accurate. And as Sylvia Browne said, only God is 100% accurate. Others may say that some of the predictions weren’t really that surprising. Well, at least I didn’t predict that Tiger Woods would win a golf tournament.
Of course, making obvious predictions, and then counting the hits and not the misses, is all that professional psychics do anyway. And I still think I did better than them. Remember that when, this year, we get the same bunch of lame playing the odds guesses, reprinted uncritically by a gullible media. And although these “psychic predictions” might look like just a bit of fun, remember that uncritically reporting this nonsense as if it were real gives cover for vultures like Browne to prey on the recently bereaved. They also waste police time by forcing them to follow up their made-up psychic “impressions”. I did better than any of them by just guessing.
So if you’re wondering what 2008 will bring, the lesson here is to do yourself a favor and just think about it. Or, better yet, go out and make it happen (like whomever got Christina Aguilera pregnant did). And if you positively, absolutely must give someone money to make up amazing “paranormal” predictions off the top of their heads, get a skeptic. We’re much better at it!
Surf through the scienceblog world, and you might find a number of reflections on a man who is a hero to many: Carl Sagan. Today is the 10th anniversary of his passing, and among other things, a blog-a-thon is being held in his memory.
I touched on Sagan a little bit in my post “Scientists May Have Already Saved the World, Just by Observing It!“… and if you somehow managed to get through life this far without hearing his short “Pale Blue Dot” speech, you owe it to yourself to check that video out (it’s the last video on that page, and you can find many versions of it on youtube.
I’m too young to really remember Sagan as a cultural force, and in some sense it seems like the decade I’ve been most active and aware of science and culture in is a lot poorer after his passing. My take on the man, looking back rather than remembering, is sadness that there has not really been anyone in the popular culture to take his place. There are tons of fantastic science journalists and bloggers and writers and even popularizers like Bill Nye out there today, many of whom owe their careers to the wonder that Sagan sparked in them. But there’s been so far no one to replace him as a singular public figure and advocate.
An Arizona couple has built a device that allows people to “bathe” in moonshine. By which I mean, mirror-concentrated light from the moon. While this is the sort of thing that skeptics often have a good laugh at, I think we should probably cut these folks a little slack.
What they did really is just plain cool, conceptually and from a pure geek standpoint.
Of course, things are definitely inching into woo territory with the visitors claiming that the moonbeams have curative powers. It seems that the concentrated light is warming, which of course feels nice. But unless someone can provide evidence that this warm light is any better for you than standing in front of a heat vent, lets just hope this doesn’t develop into another unproven “natural” treatment for every self-limiting condition under the sun. Er, or under the moon.
I also noted with dismay that the story’s one named skeptical voice on these purported healing powers strayed a bit from the proper tut-tut attitude we generally hope for:
“But whether or not it’s the placebo effect or the light, I don’t think that matters as long as people feel like they are having a positive effect, then it’s worth it to them to do it,” she added. (emphasis added)
No. Bad scientist! Naughty! Don’t endorse the placebo effect!
I guess I should just be happy that the article didn’t mention the mythical Full Moon effect. I mean, the “instant and profound sense of euphoria” that one visitor experienced might actually be a sign of something sinister. After all, if full moons are supposed to increase homicide rates, shouldn’t we be afraid that concentrated moonlight might turn aging hippie hypnotherapists like Eric Carr into serial killers?
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.
Here’s someone that actually did their homework in examining the phenomenon of a supposed “blue ghost” seen on a gas station surveillance camera. They observe the situation, form hypotheses, examine the evidence, and even run some tests on the plausibility of their possible explanations for what was seen.
With a little production value, why couldn’t something like this be what gets on TV instead of some poor reporter out trolling for a fluff piece… and then predictably delivering fluff?
When it comes to news reporting on the allegedly supernatural, cable news tends to be hit or miss insofar as offering a skeptical, investigative view. CNN racks up a pretty solid miss in this report on a supposed ghost caught on a gas station surveillance camera. It offers classy theories like “old Indian Reservation” and “angels” that the reporter claims are turning “non-believers” into “believers.” The closest to any down-to-earth skepticism is some kids’ shouting that it looks like a blue plastic bag.
I know “investigative reporter” is just a anachronism when applied to cable news personalities, but wouldn’t this story have been more interesting if the reporter had, you know, actually tried to figure out what was going on by testing different theories or maybe at least tried to learn something more substantial about optics? I mean, it’s not like this is front page news, but if you are going to spend an hour or two driving out to Parma and wandering around a gas station with a camera, why not make the most of it?
Because whatever it is, it seems pretty obvious from the shadowing and blurriness that the blue blob is something very small and very close to the lens of the camera: not, as the breathless reporter claims, resting on car windshields and flying around the pumps, but instead moving around directly in front of the camera lens. It would be pretty darn easy to test this out with some blue fuzz, or even a shiny dead insect (which might reflect blue because of the lighting). But I guess it would also take more effort than walking down the snack aisle yammering into a microphone.
Since I’ve been complaining regularly about how supernatural or theological explanations claim to offer so much and yet embarrassingly fail to deliver, I figured some more explanation is in order.
To illustrate, I want to offer an example of what a real explanation of a real mystery looks like: a satisfying answer to a hard question that actually illuminates instead of obfuscates. The example also serves as a plug for a great “high-information content” book: Parasite Rex, a book written by science journalist Carl Zimmer (who blogs over at The Loom). Read the rest of this entry »
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