Skeptic's Circle #115

Yep, it's that time again. Head on over to Tech Skeptic to check out the newest entries into the coolest blog carnival this side of the Cat's Eye Nebulae.

200,000

This blog has been around since 2005 and just recently passed 200,000 hits. This officially makes me an "F" level blogger at best, but I wanted to say a big "thanks" to anyone who has stopped by and read, had a laugh, got pissed off, left a nice comment, left a nasty comment, or wanted to either punch or kiss me.

An extra-special thanks to the seven and a half regular readers who always make my day. I may not be daily or, the odd month, even weekly, but I'll always be around, dammit. Watching...and waiting...

Alternative Medicine & Logical Fallacies

I frequent a massage therapy forum on Facebook that posts articles, most with a skeptical, science-based bent to them. Recently, there was a link to a book review on Amazon for the title, Snake Oil Science: The Truth about Complementary and Alternative Medicine, by R. Barker Bausell.

One member of the forum had the following all-too-common-to-skeptics comment:

Since we know only a fraction of a percent of how physics, chemistry and physiology work it seems pretty arrogant for someone to criticize effective therapies because the model the practitioner was taught is faulty. Every scientific model ever from Newton to Einstein has been proven wrong or adapted, that's how the process works. The implication that some branch of science or medicine is somehow 100% correct or informed is absurd.

Explain the placebo effect to me and we'll talk skeptic. Your life may be full of "facts" but it lacks the color and mystery mine has.

Cheers, good luck.

Firstly, I have to address what is known as an "argument from ignorance". This is a logical fallacy where someone says that because something is unknown or difficult to know, that it is impossible to know. In the above, the commenter's fallacy says, in essence, "we know only a fraction of a percent of how physics, chemistry and physiology work", therefore alt.med. is true. We (the royal "we", not including myself) know much more than "a fraction of a percent" of physics, chemistry and physiology and because of this, we can say with very near certainty that homeopathy, acupuncture, and other alt.med. modalities are ineffective.

The commenter also assumes efficacy with respect to alt.med. "therapies". All we say, as skeptics, is to show evidence under proper controlled circumstances. This is usually never met with compliance. A major difference (and many times an unspoken sticking point) between skeptics and believers, is their level of acceptance for "evidence". What a believer will take as rock-solid proof that their pet "therapy" is efficacious will make a skeptic shake his or her head in disbelief and annoyance.

The commenter then makes this (summarized) argument: science has been wrong in the past (lists prominent names like Newton/Einstein), so no one knows for sure what's going on, therefore trust alt.med. This is known as the "two-wrongs make a right" fallacy and what it is saying is that because alt.med. does not know how the world works, neither does science, therefore everything is equal and why not trust an alt.med. practitioner? Science will change in the future and the alt.med. will be validated - jump on the bandwagon early! Nevermind that "no evidence" thing....

Then we have a strawman; a caricature of the adversarial position that is easy to dismantle and/or ridicule. No scientist or branch of science claims to be, "100% correct or informed", so to claim this is silly and, honestly, it is a mirror of the alt.med. position. Where science-based medicine is forced to be honest in difficult situations and admit that there is nothing that can be safely done to help, alt.med. is always lurking with a made-up answer. It is alt.med. that claims to be 100% informed.

The commenter then asks: "Explain the placebo effect to me and we'll talk skeptic" - If the commenter read the link, perhaps this bit would have stood out as it deals with that particular question:

Indeed, as Bausell reveals, it is the placebo effect that accounts for most of the positive results. He explores this remarkable phenomenon--the biological and chemical evidence for the placebo effect, how it works in the body, and why research on any therapy that does not factor in the placebo effect will inevitably produce false results.

Finally, the commenter drops the, "science unweaves the rainbow" argument. Skeptics are dull, boring, lack "mystery and color". We do not get New Age therapies and are jealous of the chakra-feeling, aura-seeing, light-ball-making healers that are everywhere, everywhere, man!

Scientists love mystery. They love it more than the alt.med folks do and I can prove it: Show me any alt.med practice that has been left behind because new evidence arose that showed it to be ineffective. Science (any branch) looks to new areas, places where mystery and confusion lie, and tries to learn whatever it can glean. Alt.med just makes up answers based on dogma and never changes. Exploring new areas of interest is sexy and it attracts the best and brightest of every era - Columbus, the astronauts and cosmonauts of the space race and beyond, the thinkers who make predictions that are discovered true years after the death of the maker. Alt.med and its practitioners just look pale in comparison.

Saying that science takes away mystery and "color" is just plain wrong. It always reminds me of this beautiful passage from Richard Feynman:

I have a friend who’s an artist and he’s some times taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say, "look how beautiful it is," and I’ll agree, I think. And he says, "you see, I as an artist can see how beautiful this is, but you as a scientist, oh, take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing." And I think he’s kind of nutty.

First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me, too, I believe, although I might not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is. But I can appreciate the beauty of a flower.

At the same time, I see much more about the flower that he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside which also have a beauty. I mean, it’s not just beauty at this dimension of one centimeter: there is also beauty at a smaller dimension, the inner structure...also the processes.

The fact that the colors in the flower are evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting – it means that insects can see the color.

It adds a question – does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms that are...why is it aesthetic, all kinds of interesting questions which a science knowledge only adds to the excitement and mystery and the awe of a flower.

It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.

Exactly.

Skeptic's Circle #114

I have been remiss in mentioning the recent Skeptic's Circles that have been happening. The most recent is the 114th(!) and is over at Homologous Legs. It's well worth checking out. It's witty and the entries look interesting, so do yourself a favor and do some reading!

What's The Harm?

I'm often asked, like many skeptics who get into discussions about "alternative" medicine, odd beliefs, or the paranormal, about what the harm is when people hold beliefs that can't be backed up by reason or evidence. With "alt. med" it is often easy to explain the drawbacks of the uncritical view - most people know someone who has had to deal with a very serious disease like cancer. Once you explain something inane like homeopathy and its history, most folks will agree that it is potentially dangerous.

A slightly more touchy area is the paranormal. When you talk to people about ghosts, for example, most who believe are not at all willing to give that up because it is so closely tied to a personal belief in the afterlife and religion. It's much deeper. While ghosts are still hip here, the stigma in the "first" world with regard to witches has dropped off to the point where you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who truly believes that people can cast spells and the like.

That is not the case in a place like Kenya. I would recommend reading this article and listening to the linked BBC radio show at the bottom called African Perspectives. It is disturbing to say the least to hear first-hand accounts of village elders being accused of witchcraft, beaten, and burned alive.

The The DEO (District Education Officer) of Malindi, Kenya (a small costal town about halfway between the borders of Somalia and Tanzania) was asked by the interviewer if she believes in witchcraft, to which she replied:

Witchcraft is there, even the Bible says in the time of Moses there were issues of witchcraft...I don't believe I can be bewitched because I believe in God and he is the one who is in control of the universe...

This is a huge problem. When the people who are supposedly educating the population believe in nonsense, you end up with a whole lot of people buying into (obviously extremely dangerous) bullshit from a very young age. She apparently read the Bible closely because the only two times "witch" appears is in Exd 22:18 (the famous, randomly out-of-place, "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" line, and also in Deut 18:10-12 which says:

There shall not be found among you [any one] that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, [or] that useth divination, [or] an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things [are] an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee. (My bolding, here's the source)

So being a witch, according to the damn Bible, should be handled by God himself, not by his followers. So sayeth the Book. Maybe she didn't read it all that closely after all.

The DEO said that there is a "witchcraft act" in Kenya that can fine or imprison people who accuse others of witchcraft. It, obviously, is not enforced with any sort of rigor, however, as there are videos of lynchings and burnings with no authorities in sight. Quite frankly, if the "authorities" are anything like the woman quoted above, you probably wouldn't want her there anyway.

This is the danger of ignorance. This is where it leads. It turns The Crucible into a documentary, only with more fire and agony and ending up with no village elders to consult in times of need. There is a telling part of the audio where a man tries to explain why villagers think the old people are witches; he says that at about 60 years of age, some physical changes occur in the population, one of which is that their eyes often turn a reddish colour - a side-effect of smoke from a particular wood used. That, plus wrinkled skin equals accusation and violent death. There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the visible changes and yet no one is launching an education campaign, no one seems to be taking charge, and the elderly are being savagely abused and killed.

I'm not saying that this is going to happen in Canada anytime soon, but the fact that it is happening ANYWHERE in the world in 2009 indicates that something is horribly wrong with us. Beliefs can and do kill. Brutally.

Martial Arts Retardedness

You must watch this video. It's from 2006, something called the "Pathgate Summer Retreat". We'll talk after.

Ok? Now, firstly, did you get through the whole thing? I know, it's hard because it's so goddamn stupid, but it shows a really nice parallel between martial arts believers and faith healer believers. When you get people who believe in you, they'll do whatever it takes to keep the myth alive. "Oh, you're a lama? Cool. You can throw people around and make them bounce like monkeys with your special lama energy? Cool. Oh, like those people...I see. Well, sure, I guess I'll try...I mean, there's been so many bouncing around already, it can't hurt." And off you go. Stupid belief, a couple true believers, mutual reinforcement, closed off from mainstream society. That's a recipe for...wait for it....

Benny Hinn! Aren't the similarities interesting? I know, this one was harder to get through, even with the annoying, chanty, brain-washing "hallelujah" muted. There are a couple of things to notice about Hinn, however, as he's working with a very large audience and has to find the believers that will most persuasively make his case for everyone else. He's a professional, after all.

Check out how he finds a live one at about the one minute mark and gets his ushers to grab him so Benny can fuck with him in front of the crowd. That gets everyone else primed to know what to do when Hinn waves his arms in front of them. Then he takes the three true believers up on stage so everyone can see. It's nice that he's got his ushers trained to fall and convulse when his arm waves happen to pass by them. It's sweet, really. By the 3:45 mark, he's not even putting effort into it anymore; the overweight couple just get nonchalantly dropped twice.

Ok, skip ahead (if you didn't watch it all yet) to about 5:45 and watch him drop what looks like the choir. Well, all except for the one guy in front row who, apparently, wasn't on script. He won't be back next show (although I'm assuming that because there was a translator telling them what to do - i.e. hold hands - he's probably a local there for his wife or something). Near the end of the clip (around 9:18 or so), he tries to drop a group on stage and a man and a woman don't fall. Hinn does his usual grab-the-motherfucker-by-the-face routine he pulls out when folks don't fall, but he's a believer so he falls easily. The woman next to him just sort of sways backwards and doesn't go all the way down. I guess the "FIRE" didn't fully flow over her....

These two embarrassing videos are a testament to the gullibility of our species and our desire to believe what feels good, to our eventual detriment. Benny Hinn steals money from these people for what amounts to a couple hours of "entertainment". The crappy part is that the people in these clips lose so much more than their money - they lose what is overlooked when the shruggies¹ say, "What's the harm?". They lose their ability to detect baloney, and that can cause untold amounts of harm, like to that woman who went the "lama" for her back pain and was up "throwing" students around afterwards. I'd be interested in seeing her the next week....

1. Shruggie (noun): a person who doesn’t care about the science versus pseudoscience debate. When presented with descriptions of exaggerated or fraudulent health claims or practices, their response is to shrug. Shruggies are fairly inert, they will not argue the merits (or lack thereof) of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) or pseudoscience in general. They simply aren’t all that interested in the discussion, and are somewhat puzzled by those who are. From Science-Based Medicine

Michael

He turned into a weirdo...or maybe he was one from the get-go. Now we've got to put up with all the assholes giving their little stories and theories that don't matter worth shit. There's no forgiving child molestation, if he did it, but I'm not here to judge. I just remember the best Michael moment from my personal recollection:

Plus, you get to see Sammy, and he was the greatest ever. Period.

Deepak's Tweets - #1

From Deepak on Twitter:

E. Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in less than 6 words. He wrote “Baby Shoes, Never Worn.” Can you write a story in 4 words?

Yep, I certainly can. "Deepak's research sucks ass." Jesus christ, he can't even get a fucking six-word story right. Hemingway was challenged to write a story in six words or less and what he came up with was: "For sale: Baby shoes, never worn." That should tell you the level of research to which Deepak has committed; he literally forgot a third of the story. When the whole story is condensed into six words, you really have to think that there's a lot of meaning tucked into those first two words.

Man, it just never gets old.