A Young Scientist Debunks Some Bunk

A Young Scientist Debunks Some Bunk

Therapeutic Touch is a form of therapy where a therapist moves his or her hands along a patient’s “energy field,” directing the flow of positive bodily energy to the injured or diseased area of the body. This practice should really be called Non-Touch Therapy since the therapist never actually touches the patient’s body. The practice of therapeutic touch is said to provide healing by the movement of these “energies.”

According to one account, therapeutic touch is available in over seventy hospitals in the US for patients who request it. But one young scientist had her doubts about therapeutic touch and decided to test whether these therapists can really sense people’s “energy fields,” as they frequently claim they can. This young scientist, Emily Rosa, was a nine-year-old schoolgirl who asked twenty-one touch therapists if they would participate in her experiment for her fourth-grade science fair project. It’s hard to turn down such a request from a charming nine-year-old girl, so the touch therapists agreed to the experiment.

Emily would sit across a table from a touch therapist with the table divided down the middle with a screen that prevented both parties from seeing each other. Two holes were cut in the screen through which a therapist would extend his or her arms, palms facing down. Emily would then place her hand under one of the therapist’s hands without touching it, and the therapist would then state whether Emily’s hand was under the therapist’s right or left hand. Emily flipped a coin to randomly determine whether she would choose the right or left hand of the therapist.

Many of the therapist were convinced that they could make their determination with 100% accuracy. After 280 trials the therapists were accurate 44% of the time, just about what you would from chance (flipping a coin, or guessing). The certainty expressed by the therapists in detecting these “energy fields” quickly vanished once their powers were put to the test.

With a bit of help from her mother and a statistician, the results of Emily Rosa’s experiment were written up and submitted to the highly respected Journal of the American Medical Association. When her piece was published two years later, in 1998, she became the youngest scientist to have a paper published in a prestigious medical journal. Emily’s story appeared on the national news, and she won the “Skeptic of the Year Award” from the Skeptics Society, and a $1000 grant from the James Randi Educational Foundation. And she won a blue ribbon at the science fair.


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Material for this blog gleaned mostly from: Park, Robert L. (2000). Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 208-210.

Aliens, Spirits, or Sleep Paralysis?

Aliens, Spirits, or Sleep Paralysis?

Some people claim they’ve been abducted by aliens while sleeping, where they’re transported through walls and onto alien ships, then probed, prodded, and poked. This has led people to devise various techniques to prevent these night time abductions: You can build your own Stop Alien Abduction Helmut, you could buy a book called How to Defend Yourself Against Alien Abduction, or you could fall back on the old practice of prayer (if it works against demons it’s got to work against aliens).

People who claim to be abducted in their sleep typically report being conscious yet are unable to move their limbs or talk, and they hear odd sounds and see lights, and have a feeling that they’re being watched. The most reasonable explanation for these experiences is Sleep Paralysis. This is where “a person wakes up paralyzed, senses a presence in the room, feels fear or even terror, and may hear buzzing and humming noises or see strange lights. A visible or invisible entity may even sit on their chest, shaking, strangling, or prodding them.”[1]

Sleep paralysis offers a good explanation for strange “encounters” of sleeping people from various cultures throughout the world. These include Hag Riding in Europe and parts of North America, where a witch attacks a sleeping victim; and Kanashibari in Japan, sometimes described as a devil stepping on a sleeping person’s chest; and Kokma in St. Lucia, which is described as the spirit of a dead baby that jumps on a sleeper’s chest and chokes him; and Popobawa in Zanzibar, which is a ghost-like creature with bat wings that sodomizes men in their sleep. Frankly, that last one seems quite frightful to me.

The fear that accompanies sleep paralysis can be very real for those who believe it involves aliens or malevolent spirits. But rest assured, this is a medically documented phenomenon. Here’s a website that offers good advice on how to cope with sleep paralysis. There are also certain medications that can help if you talk to a physician (not a homeopath, please). Sweat dreams.

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[1]. Blackmore, Susan. (May/June 1998) “Abduction by Aliens or Sleep Paralysis?”
Skeptical Inquirer, p.25. Link to article here.

Quackery

Quackery and the Law

In the United States all products marketed as drugs must be tested in order to guarantee their relative safety before being made available to the public. There is one exception to this law. Homeopathic 'remedies' can be marketed as drugs but are except from the same safety standards as other drugs.

This goes back to 1938 when a former homeopath-turned-Senator (Royal Copeland of New York) added a provision to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act that exempted homeopathy from the same oversight by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that other drugs receive. Homeopathic 'remedies' require no proof that they're safe or effective in order to be marketed and sold, unlike other drugs.

Herbal and other supplements are in a different boat. If an herb or supplement is marketed with the claim that it will cure a disease or illness, then it must be reviewed by the FDA before going to market. If there's no claim to a cure, then the FDA doesn't really make an issue of it (unless the product has been shown to cause harm). Of course, one way to get around this is to use customer testimonials. As long as the customers are giving testimonials, and they reflect the customers' honest beliefs about their experiences, then it's fair game, but that's an issue for another blog.

The point is that homeopathic 'remedies' can claim to cure disease and illness (unlike herbs and supplements), and they don't need to be tested to prove that they actually work.

Robert L. Park, in his book Voodoo Science, points out that the smoking-cessation chewing gum Nicorette had to be proven safe and effective through numerous clinical trials before it could be marketed. Whereas on the same shelf in the same store you might find another smoking-cessation gum called CigArrest. This product required no clinical trials to test its safety and effectiveness because the manufacturers claimed that the gum was homeopathic.(1).

Since homeopathic 'remedies' have no active ingredients, there would be nothing to test for in a clinical trial. But homeopaths can still claim that it's a cure. As Park points out, locating the active ingredients in homeopathic 'remedies' "would be like trying to prove that holy water has been blessed."(2).
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1. Park, Robert L. (2000). Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 58.

2. Ibid, p. 58.

Florida Evolution Update

Florida Evolution Update

I've been informed by a reliable authority that the Florida School Board's 4-3 decision to require that evolution be taught in public schools is in fact a victory for evolution, even though the science standards will now refer to evolution as "the scientific theory of evolution."

It would seems that conservative Christians were lobbying the school board to refer to evolution as a theory, in the sense that evolution is only a theory, as in a hunch or a guess.

Well, the school board granted this request, but not how you might imagine. They decided that the phrase "the scientific theory of..." will precede a host of scientific theories such as evolution, plate tectonics, relativity, and so on.

What's great is that these science standards explicitely state that "a scientific theory represents the most powerful explanation scientists have to offer." And the standards also state that evolution is a "fundamental concept underlying all of biology."

I don't think the conservative Christians were pleased with this move by the school board. I'm glad I was wrong in my initial blog (which I've deleted). This is good news indeed.

Here's a link to a report about the Florida decision by the National Center for Science Education.

Synchronicity, Carl Jung, and The I Ching: Nothing but Ordinary Coincidence

[[Some background information on Synchronicity and The I Ching.]]

C. G. Jung was impressed by the ability of the I Ching (The Chinese Book of Changes) to offer clear answers to important questions. Jung had previously coined the term synchronicity, a principle which he used to explain how the I Ching works, stating that “...whatever is born or done in this moment of time has the quality of this moment of time.”[1] Synchronicity deals with meaningful coincidences that are not connected in a cause and effect relationship, but are somehow more than mere chance. In relation to the I Ching, Jung says, “…synchronicity takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning more than mere chance, namely, a peculiar interdependence of objective events…as well as the subjective (psychic) states of the observer or observers.”[2]

Unfortunately, the only real proof that synchronicity is behind the appearance of two coincidental events is simply that one finds the occurrence of those events significant. The problem is that in life we’re exposed to so many events that the probability is quite high that some coincidences will seem dramatic.[3]

Even Jung himself is not clear about how synchronicity works. At one point he maintains that the outer event and the mental state are simultaneous.[4] Later he maintains that a mental state coincides with a “(more or less simultaneous) external event,” or with a “future event that is distant in time.”[5] The writer Arthur Koestler, a popularizer of much of Jung’s work, found Jung confusing on the matter of synchronicity, writing “One wonders why Jung created these unnecessary complications by coining a term which implies simultaneity, and then explaining that it does not mean what it means.”[6] As is often the hallmark of many pseudoscientific claims, Jung’s synchronicity principle is a “nonrefutable or irrefutable hypothesis.”[7]

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Notes:
1. Wilhelm, Richard. (1931, 1969). The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life, p. 142.
2. Jung. C. G. (1950, 1979). “Forward to the I Ching.” The I Ching or Book of Changes. Trans. from the Chinese by Richard Wilhelm. Trans. from the German by Cary F. Baynes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. xxiv.
3. Dean, Geoffrey; Loptson, Peter; Kelly, Ivan; et al. (2005). “Theories of Astrology: A Comprehensive Survey.” Correlation 1996, 15(1): 17-52, p.7.
4. Jung, C. G. The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, p. 441 (paragraph 850).
5. Jung, C. G. The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, p. 526 (paragraph 984).
6. Koestler, Arthur (1972, 1974). The Roots of Coincidence. London: Pan Books Ltd., p. 95.
7. McGowan, Don (1994). What Is Wrong with Jung. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, p. 137.

Aliens over Texas

Aliens over Texas

Apparently over two dozen people saw some strange lights in the night sky above the small town of Stephenville, Texas a few days ago, but no one took a photo or a video. In this day and age when almost every cell phone has a camera, why were there no photos, especially when the lights were visible for nearly five minutes?

It's enough to make you suspicious. Without photos or video there's nothing that can be examined by impartial scientists.

Perhaps Stephenville needs an economic boost. This will certainly bring in the tourists. A new Roswell perhaps?

As Carl Sagan once said about UFO sightings, they could be: "unconventional aircraft, conventional aircraft with unusual lighting patterns, high-altitude balloons, luminescent insects, planets seen under unusual atmospheric conditions, optical mirages and loomings, lenticular clouds, ball lightning, sundogs, meteors including green fireballs, and satellites, nosecones, and rocket boosters spectacularly reentering the atmosphere."

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Quotation from: Sagan, Carl. (1995). The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. New York: Random House, pp.70-71.

Flying Saucers: Discovered or Invented?

Flying Saucers: Discovered or Invented?

On June 24, 1947, businessman Kenneth Arnold was flying his private plane over the Cascade Mountains in Washington State when he saw nine shiny objects quickly moving across the sky like "geese in formation." After a few minutes they were gone. Arnold described the objects themselves as "crescent shaped," and that they "moved like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water." The Associated Press misquoted Arnold, describing what he saw as "flying saucers." Later, Arnold complained about being misquoted, saying, "They said that I'd said they were saucer-like. I said they flew in saucer-like fashion" (Clancy 2005, pp. 91-92).

Arnold's misquoted statement about flying saucers was published in 150 newspapers, and soon afterwards hundreds of reports of flying saucers began to surface. What's strange is that hardly anyone seems to have reported seeing crescent-shaped or boomerang-shaped objects as Arnold had reported. It's not hard to see the suggestive power of the media in all these reports of flying saucers. And just a few years later Hollywood made its first contribution to the flying saucer craze with the science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still, firmly embedding the iconic image of the flying saucer in the American psyche. Some UFO sightings have included variations on the saucer theme, with some objects described as cylindrical or spherical, but by and large the most common shape is the saucer. This should certainly give us pause, serious pause.
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Quote from: Clancy, Susan A. (2005). Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Abducted by Aliens. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 91-92.