Skeptico

Tangled Bank

The 42^nd Tangled Bank – the semi-weekly compendium of the best science blogging - is now up at Dogged Blog. There are over 40 science blog posts featured today, including one from yours truly.

Hold the salad

Via Red State Rabble I learn of an article in the Harvard Crimson that, as RSR states, contains an interesting insight into the mind of the intelligent designer, with respect to rabbits’ digestive systems:

The animals can absorb the nutrients from plant matter only in the small intestine, but food is digested in a part of the gut that’s farther downstream.” So how do plant nutrients finally get into the rabbit’s bloodstream having already passed through the small intestine undigested?

“They secrete these things through their anus, eat them,” and pass them back through the small intestine, Hanken explains.

And then he adds, “Now you tell me, where’s the intelligence in that design?”

Works in mysterious ways indeed!

Thanks Doc, but I’ll stick to my carrot

Putting the fun in fundamentalism

Check out the hilarious Fundies Say the Darndest Things! Website. It’s a round-up of the nuttiest of the nutty posts on fundamentalist discussion boards such as Christian Forums, Christian Message Board and of course Rapture Ready. It also includes posts by fundamentalists on atheist forums such as Internet Infidels. You would think from reading them that these are made-up quotes, but they are all actual posts made by real people during online debates. They are funny for the reason that they were all obviously written with such serious intent.

They are fascinating. My favorite has to be this November’s post of the month:

One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn't possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it.

(Emphasis added.)

A powerful argument. Still, I’m confident that sooner or later scientists, working diligently, will locate and identify this external source of energy that provides light and heat to planet Earth. Quite a day that will be.

The site owner suggests memorizing a few favorite quotes to tell to your friends, to instantly become the life of the party. (If you don’t know where to start, just use the search page and the keywords "babies" or "gravity": more than enough comedic gold to last all night.) This practice comes with a warning though: once you start this it’s hard to stop. Before you know it you have spent a whole evening reading this stuff. You have been warned.

As an aside, if you’ve ever wondered why these people are called fundamentalists, here’s the reason: it’s because they speak out of their fundament. You heard it first here.

The appeal to “science was wrong before”

Here is another fallacious argument:

Science was wrong before

… or equivalent wording.

The argument is that since science is sometimes wrong, the believer’s claim is as likely to be true as one supported by scientific evidence.

The flaw in the argument

Science is a series of provisional truths, backed by evidence, that are amended when better evidence is available. The key word here is “evidence”. In other words, we have a reason to suppose scientifically supported ideas are true. Contrast this with unscientific ideas, where there is rarely any rational reason to suppose they are true. Additionally, the scientific idea that was shown to be “wrong” was often not completely wrong: it often still had utility.

In reality, science has proved the most reliable method we know for evaluating claims and figuring out how the universe works. The appeal to “science was wrong before” is just a smoke screen to disguise the fact that the believer has no evidence for his claim. It does not follow that science should not be applied to evaluate claims, or that unscientific claims are likely to be true.

What they’re missing

As well as being a flawed argument, it also shows ignorance of how science works. Yes, science has been wrong, but the scientific method is self-correcting. And it is always scientists who have unearthed new evidence who do the correcting, never people who ignore the scientific method.

Ironically it also shows up the strength of science and the weakness of believer methods. For example, compare the way scientific errors are discovered and corrected, with what happens in, for example, astrology or alternative medicine. In those fields no errors are ever corrected for the simple reason that no one ever critically tests those beliefs to see if they even contain errors. Errors are a permanent feature of those beliefs. Error recognition and correction is a strength of science.

Examples

There are several versions of this fallacy. For example, believers often cite Newton being proven wrong by Einstein. Of course, Newton’s calculations are close enough for anything other than close-to light speed calculations – that’s why Newton’s formulae are used by NASA.

Alternative medicine proponents will often note that evidence-based doctors are sometimes wrong in their diagnoses, as if this means altie therapies work. Doctors are fallible and our knowledge is incomplete, but the evidence-based approach has led to huge advances and improvements in healthcare, unlike alternative treatments that have achieved virtually nothing.

This fallacy is related to, but is slightly different from, the appeal to other ways of knowing.

More San Francisco stupidity

It seems the local government in San Francisco is determined to drive as much business away from the city as possible. Legislation was introduced Tuesday by Supervisor Tom Ammiano to require all San Francisco businesses with 20 or more workers to pay for health care insurance:

The ordinance, submitted by Supervisor Tom Ammiano, would force businesses not offering medical coverage to their workers to set up health savings accounts and pay $345 a month per employee into them. Businesses would use the savings to buy health insurance for their workforce.

The $345 is what it costs the city government per month to cover each of its workers.

Under the legislation, a task force would be created to examine whether companies that say they can't afford the $345 a month should be allowed to pay a lower, unspecified fee directly to the city -- and the city would provide coverage or direct medical care.

Great. Just what businesses in the city need: another set of government forms to complete and another government audit to comply with, to determine if they can afford this new tax for doing business in SF.

Some people who actually know about running businesses think this may be a bad idea:

"Supervisor Ammiano calls his coverage 'universal,' but the only thing universal about the Worker Health Care Security Act is the universal damage it will do to San Francisco's economy," said Mike Flynn, director of legislative affairs for the Employment Policies Institute in Washington, D.C.

"Expanding insurance coverage is a laudable goal," Flynn added, "but you can't wave a wand and do it by legislative command. His proposal would slap San Francisco's businesses with staggering costs and lead to tremendous job loss among the city's least-skilled workers."

Nathan Nayman, the director of San Francisco's Committee on Jobs, a lobbying group for downtown business interests, echoed the point. "This is going to have a negative consequence on business in the city. There's just no doubt about it," Nayman said.

…

Jot Condie of the California Restaurant Association... said restaurants and other small businesses typically operate at small profit margins. If Ammiano's legislation passes, it would likely drive them out of town, he said. "The fact that it's a city proposal, the notion of flight from San Francisco and its tax base really is a relevant point."

Ammiano doesn't agree:

Businesses that offer health care for their workers have higher productivity, he said, and do better in the marketplace.

And there speaks someone who has never run a business in his life.

Hey Tom, if offering healthcare means higher productivity and doing better in the marketplace, why do we need legislation to force companies to implement it?

I’m from the government: let me tell you how to run your business

 

Boy probably not reincarnated Buddha

There have been reports that a 15 year old Nepalese boy is the reincarnation of Buddha.

Ram Bahadur Banjan, 15, sits cross-legged and motionless with eyes closed among the roots of a tree in the jungle of Bara, about 100 miles south of the capital, Katmandu.

…

Many visitors believe Banjan is a reincarnation of Gautama Siddhartha, who was born not far away in southwestern Nepal around 500 B.C. and later became revered as the Buddha, which means Enlightened One.

It’s quite a show, with 10,000 people reported to be visiting the site to view the boy each day. One of the things that has people excited is the claim he has gone six months without food or drink – miraculous if true. The Royal Nepal Academy of Science and Technology has even been asked to send scientists to look into it.

Actually I don’t think they need to go to all that trouble. I think the answer to how he apparently manages without food or drink can be found in this snippet:

Mahat said visitors can catch a glimpse of Banjan from a roped-off area about 80 feet away from him between dawn and dusk.

Followers then place a screen in front of him, blocking the view and making it impossible to know what he is doing at night, Mahat said.

"We could not say what happens after dark," Mahat said.

Ah-So - he goes without food during the day. Unusual perhaps, but not especially enlightened.

What me, miss meals?

Skeptics’ Circle

The 22^nd Skeptics' Circle is now up at Mile Zero, otherwise known as the National Weekly World Inquirer News.

And check whose post is first.  I'm just sayin...

Absurd homeopathy study

From Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science blog I learn of a study (.pdf) into homeopathy that was just commented on by the BBC:

A six-year study at Bristol Homeopathic Hospital shows over 70% of patients with chronic diseases reported positive health changes after treatment.

…

Of the group, 75% felt 'better' or 'much better', as did 68% of eczema patients under 16.

But “felt better” compared with what?

From the BBC’s report it is clear that there was no:

• Control group – ie no group being given a placebo. (Of course, homeopathy is nothing more than placebo, but you know what I mean).
• Randomization of patients selected for the trial
• Baseline measure of how the patients were before treatment, to compare with how they were after.

A test this bad should never have been performed, let alone published. Let there be no doubt this shows the lack of scientific rigor needed to get a study published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.

Of course, the dopey homeopaths have been quick to trumpet the success of this crappy study:

Dr David Spence, Clinical Director and Consultant Physician at Bristol Homeopathic Hospital and Chairman of the British Homeopathic Association, a co-author of the new study, said: "These results clearly demonstrate the value of homeopathy in the NHS."

No they don't.  All they show is that when asked by the homeopath treating them if they felt “better”, 75% of patients said “yes”. Let’s be clear – a recent review of 110 homeopathy trials published in the Lancet shows homeopathy is nothing more than placebo.

Call for Skeptics’ Circle submissions

The next Skeptics' Circle will be held this Wednesday, November 23 at Mile Zero. Please send your best skeptical blogging to Tom by Noon Tuesday.  (A day earlier than usual due to the US Thanksgiving holiday.)

Gentle Wind Project

There is a lot of crazy stuff out there. For example, I have recently been looking at the Gentle Wind Project website. As far as I can tell, these people offer little plastic cards that you hold in your hands to achieve “physical and emotional balance” in the face of traumatic events such as the tsunami. They were supposedly designed by benevolent “non-physical entities living outside the Earth's physical and astral systems” who communicate telepathically with the project’s leader, John Miller.  No kidding.

Here’s one of the cards. Apparently they’re in laminated plastic. The detailed instructions for use are on the card.  (Er, you hold it between your hands.)

And this piece of plastic, sorry “instrument”, can not be “bought” for money, oh no. They are offered in return for suggested “donation requests” that range from $650 for the card to $10,000 for a thorough overhaul from the “New World System V 2.2”. What a deal.

And if you don’t believe they work, check out these pictures of satisfied customers who are tsunami survivors (I refuse to copy the pictures of these people to my site). Look at their happy faces. I’m sure those little pieces of plastic were a great comfort to them.

An “instrument” more advanced than the card is this healing hockey puck. Carnegie Mellon Professor Dave Touretzky has acquired pictures of these devices (suggested donation $300 to $450, although he says new models go for $5,850) taken apart. This is what the puck consists of: a round plastic container housing a printed computer art design and a small amount of sand.  That's it!

This is what its deconstructed components look like:

Impressive huh? But don’t forget, it was designed by aliens so it will provide “physical and emotional balance”, even if humanity isn’t ready for an explanation for how this pile of sand and plastic works. (No refunds.)

How do they work? Well, it’s a secret:

The way they work is extremely complex and cannot be understood by anyone in humanity at this time.

Told you. It gets better:

Remember - most people have no idea where their electricity comes from, how their radios, televisions, how their auto engines run, computers work, or satellite GPS systems work, let alone the complexity of high frequency temporal shifting matrixed with millions of predefined etheric modifications operating in a vertically and horizontally oriented polarization. If this sounds complicated and confusing - it is. This ultra complex process is set in motion by our Healing Instruments which are essentially a "Key." A temporal and spatial gate is created when a Healing Instrument is held. This "gateway" or window enables an individual's entire etheric system to interface with a very large, complicated, partially automated, predefined healing process. The more complex the Instrument the wider the "opening" and the deeper the penetration into the human system. As you can see, the Healing Instruments are only a small part of the entire process. Our healing technology incorporates an elaborate sentinel system which prevents anyone from "breaking into" or corrupting the system in any way.

Because some people don’t know where electricity comes from, this card works. I’m convinced. And um, well yeah, if it has high frequency temporal shifting matrixed with millions of predefined etheric modifications operating in a vertically and horizontally oriented polarization, it must be good.

Unfortunately for the very curious, this is the best explanation, shallow as it is, that we can provide right now. Some day in the future when humanity is ready, we will explain in more detail how the Instruments and the total system works.

Ha so grasshopper – one day you will understand. Just not yet. (In 2012, perhaps?)

It’s total pseudoscientific nonsense, of course.

A Cult?

Of course it’s nonsense, but (as someone once said) there’s nothing so dumb you can’t get someone to believe in it. A more serious criticism of the Gentle Wind Project from former members Judy Garvey and her husband Jim Bergin is that they are a mind-control cult. The Wind of Changes website details their 17 year involvement with the group, including claims of sexual manipulation, as well as financial ruin. (The description fits the bait-and-switch profile of other cults.) Bergin describes how little by little the organization gained more control over his family’s life and life savings:

It happened so slowly and subtly that I was not cognizant of the process at the conscious level. Had someone asked me early on whether I would submit to handing over a large part of my income and life’s savings, give up a nurturing and valued relationship with my wife, take a back seat to seeing and parenting my children, sell the business I loved, and live in greatly reduced circumstances, I would have laughed at the idea. But, as I will describe here, the process was deceptively subtle, pervasive, and persistent.

The Gentle Wind Project denies these claims and has filed a defamation lawsuit and a RICO (racketeering!) Federal lawsuit, claiming punitive damages.  Bergin and Garvey have filed a Motion for Summary Dismissal (.pdf file). The lawsuit is continuing, with a trial (if there is one) not slated until at least February 2006.

Rick Ross, who runs a database of cults, destructive cults, controversial groups and movements, has several articles on the Gentle Wind Project. Rick states "in my opinion the group appears to parallel the criteria for a destructive cult”.

It’s all tax free!

It gets better. The Gentle Wind Project is registered as a not-for-profit organization. Translation: it’s tax free.  The most recent 2001 tax returns (.pdf file) linked on their website show revenue of almost $1.57 million against expenses of $1.53 million. These “expenses” include $67K for “boat”, $89K for “electronics” and $66K for “shop”. They state “the majority of our funds have been spent on education and research” – research into boating, shopping and enjoyment of electronics, apparently.

Rick Ross has their 2003 tax returns (.pdf file) showing “donations” adding up to quite a tax-free (Gentle) Windfall:

As a private, nonprofit corporation known as "Gentle Wind Retreat" the project is exempt from federal income taxes, much like a church, a hospital or a private college.

…

The latest Form 990 filing shows GWP net assets of $2,077,324 as of August 31, 2003, up from $1,918,205 the year before. Revenue for the 2002-03 fiscal year totaled $1,969,923, with expenses totaling $1,810,804.

(My bold.)

You can buy an awful lot of sand and plastic (and electronics), for $1.8 million. The aliens must be living it up on their yacht.

References:

Gentle Wind Project

Wind Of Changes

Rick Ross Institute for the study of destructive cults, controversial groups and movements

Dave Touretzky

Now Magazine

Rip Off Report  and another Rip Off Report

Healthwatcher.net