Why did the chicken cross the road?

Skeptico is one year old today! Hard to believe, but my first post, Drivel from Chopra, was on February 3^rd 2005.  (Some things never change, it seems.)

Anyway, I’m not going to bore you with details of how many posts I’ve made, how many visitors, etc etc. You don’t care. Instead, I started thinking about all the people we’ve met over the past year, and wondered how they might answer the age old question of this post’s title. So, in celebration of Skeptico’s first birthday, and for (what I hope will be) your Friday amusement, I present the various answers to the question…

Why did the chicken cross the road?

James Randi

I have a million dollar prize for the chicken if it can cross a road as it claims. It is now 225 weeks since the chicken agreed to be tested, and so I ask the chicken, when will you fulfill your promise?

(Sound of crickets…)

Loyd Auerbach

If the chicken crossed the road, the skeptics wouldn’t believe it; they would just believe that Randi was simply scammed out of his million.   It wouldn't change the prevailing attitudes towards poultrypsychology.

Gary Schwartz PhD

I have proven that chickens cross roads in the afterlife. I don’t need to publish my data: I have a PhD from Harvard.

Victor Zammit

I have a million dollar prize for anyone who can prove to a team of judges I appoint that invisible chickens that cross invisible roads don’t exist.

I’m a lawyer.

Sylvia Browne

Randi ran away from the duck crossing the beach test in Bali, so why should the chicken bother?  Quack quack.

James Van Praagh

Just because I can’t prove the chicken crossed the road doesn’t mean it didn’t.

Char Margolis

Do you have somebody who is a “C”?

John Edward

They’re showing me feathers. Wings.  A beak. Do you know an eagle?

A hawk?

A turkey?

A sparrow?

A duck?

A bird of some kind?

Caller: I know a chicken

Edward: You know a chicken that crossed? I thought so because they’re showing me a plate of scrambled eggs.

Larry King: Wow! That’s amazing! How does he do it?

Allison Dubois

There are a lot of chickens that just pretend to cross roads. Beware of these fake chickens – mine really can cross roads.

Jackie Stallone

Send me a close-up photo of the chicken’s ass and a check for $125, and I’ll tell you.

Nostradamus

At the sign of the APAC
Great beasts howl through the night
Two blazing eyes a long time will make war
The Chicken & the Eagle, France the three brothers.

Gregg Braden

“Chicken” in Hebrew is “Tarnegolet”. Using Gematria - the ancient Hebrew system of numerology – “Tarnegolet” converts to 372 = 3+7+2=12 = 1+2=3. Eggs are sold by the dozen. A dozen is 12 = 1+2=3. Could it be that chickens and eggs were created at the same time (which answers the age-old question)? God’s signature is in our DNA which is also 3. So God put it in the DNA of chickens to cross roads.

A baker’s dozen is 13. The next Fibonacci number after 8, the target frequency of the Schumann Resonance, is 13. Can it be just coincidence that these two numbers are the same? Surely not.

I’m a scientist.

Bill O’Reilly

There is a war on chickens crossing the road - part of the secular progressive agenda to get chickens and crossing roads out of the public square. Because if you can question why chickens need to cross roads then you can pass secular programs, like legalization of narcotics, euthanasia, abortion at will and compulsory gay marriage for everyone.

Pat Robertson

I’d like to say to the good chickens by the side of the road: if you are crossing the road and a car is about to run you over: don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him.  And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when the car hits you: you just voted God out of your lives. But don’t forget, Jesus loves you.

Doreen Virtue

Chickens are really angels with very real messages for us about when to cross roads.

Prince Charles

We farm using the principles of biodynamics, a form of farming in which chickens are treated with homeopathic remedies rather than antibiotics, and the signs of the zodiac determine when to cross roads.

David Icke

It wasn’t a chicken; it was a shape shifting lizard.

Deepak Chopra

The interesting thing about the tsunami was, no chicken died.  They were so tuned in to the forces of nature that they crossed the road to the high level mountainous area on the other side where the tidal waves could not reach (quantum mechanics quantum mechanics).

Dr. Jay Gordon

The American Academy of Poultry has a very cozy relationship with the chicken industry. Most speakers in the crossing roads controversy are paid consultants to the chicken industry; this means their conclusions are wrong.

PsiTech

Since the commencement of this project, PSI TECH has worked diligently on the first objective: to find the chicken. It was determined within the first few hours that it was deceased – it had been run over by a milk truck while crossing the road. The driver of the milk truck was a white male with short cropped hair – here is a picture of the driver.

…

DID WE SAY DECEASED? Nooooooooooo, we meant it crossed the road safely. It isn’t that remote viewing doesn’t work; we just misinterpreted the data (er, we didn’t see the chicken safe on the other side, but we see it now).

Robert F. Kennedy Junior

In June 2000, a group of top government veterinarians and poultry officials gathered secretly for a secret meeting at an isolated broiler farm in Norcross, Ga.  Convened by the Centers for Chicken Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC), the meeting was held at this remote retreat to ensure complete secrecy. All of the scientific data under discussion, CCDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly “secret”.

Did I say “secret”? Does it sound like a conspiracy yet? According to the following out of context quotes from the transcripts (obtained under the Freedom of Information Act – aren’t I great?), the officials spent the whole of the two days just conspiring how to cover up the damaging revelations about how salmonella would affect the poultry industry's bottom line. This proves thimerosal causes salmonella.

I’m a lawyer.

Michael Behe

A chicken crossing a road has:

• eyes
• legs
• a road
• the other side

If any one of those irreducibly complex parts is missing the chicken will be unable to cross the road, so if it looks, walks (across roads) and clucks like a chicken, then, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, it's an intelligently designed chicken. Its legs are molecular machines, literally outboard motors. Look at Mount Rushmore… (Continued)

William Dembski

While evolution is able to explain small scale changes within species, it has completely failed to explain the sudden explosion of life forms during the Cambrian Explosion, where the chicken appeared suddenly in the fossil record with no trace of evolutionary ancestors (eggs).  Since Darwin’s theory can’t explain precisely how this particular chicken crossed this precise road at this precise spot at this precise time, any life of any kind, anywhere, is evidence of design.

The Dover School Board

The theory of crossing roads is a theory not a fact. Gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence.  If you wish to investigate the alternative theory of “intelligent crossing”, you should consult a book called “Of Chickens and People” in the school library.

Kansas Board of Education

An unknown supernatural entity made the chicken cross the road at an unknown time in an unknown way for an unknown reason. Intelligent crossing is a scientific term.

Hugh Ross

According the 322 parameters and the probabilities for each that I have made up, there is a less than 1 chance in 10²⁸² that a chicken could cross a road without a divine miracle.

Terrell Owens

It was part of God’s plan to give the chicken an even bigger platform during Super Road Crossing Sunday than it otherwise would have had, thus proving God's greatness.

Bill Maher

The vaccine won’t protect you against chicken flu. Louis Pasteur renounced that theory on his deathbed and said that Beauchamp was right: it’s not the mosquito, it’s the terrain; it's not the chicken, it’s the inhumane battery conditions they’re kept in where they don’t get to run around happily in the sunlight, pecking freely at the ground and crossing roads at will.

I’m a board member of PETA.

Greenpeace

The genetically modified chicken crossed the road to contaminate the non-GM chickens on the other side of the road with genetically modified DNA. This has created a “superchicken” that can cross roads at will without ever being hit by a truck.

Alien abductee

The chicken awoke to find it was paralyzed and surrounded by aliens that teleported it out of its bedroom, over the road to the mother ship where they performed experiments on its eggs.

Susan Clancy

What you have is a chicken that is predisposed to believe it can cross roads. Here's a chicken who reads maps and travel guides. It watches “Martha Stewart” and other cookery programs.  Then one night it has a sleep-paralysis experience. It doesn’t mean it really happened.

Ramtha channeled by JZ Knight

The chicken can create its own crossing roads reality just by thinking about it (quantum mechanics quantum mechanics).

Scientologist

The chicken crossed the road to receive auditing. The auditing will reveal a need yet to cross additional roads for more auditing. The additional auditing will reveal a need to cross even more roads for even more auditing. This will reveal… (continued).

Penny Thornton (astrologer)

We can only make assumptions as to why chickens cross roads. But given that these ancient civilizations saw omens in the flights of birds and sheep’s entrails, why not chickens?

Robert Hand (astrologer)

Although I study chickens for a living, if you wish to get the answer you are going to have to do the research yourself.

Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum (astrologer)

As post modernity impacts on all epistemological levels to link eidos with telos in a hermeneutic perspective, science acknowledges that it is no longer the sole custodian of why chickens cross roads.

Now for some commenters on this blog…

Boney

What’s wrong with asking if the chicken is channeling Ramtha when it crosses the road? Did gravity exist before Newton discovered it?

Grace (and others)

Chickens have been crossing roads for 5,000 years. What makes you think that the tools of science, only a few hundred years old, will be adequate to prove or disprove this?

Karl

If you question why chickens cross roads you must be a grinding a political axe. I bet you disagree with Michael Moore too. If you don’t immediately tell me your political affiliation that proves chickens can cross roads.

Diathermic

Why does Skeptico need to appease his ego by asking for evidence that chickens cross roads? Allopathy kills 225,000 people per year and Stephen Barrett has lost his license and needs a toupee, so chickens can cross roads.

TSK

Skeptico called Auerbach an “idiot”. Skeptico’s use, once, of this single word refutes all of Skeptico’s argumentations and means chickens can cross roads.

I’m an engineer.

Edit (Added on request):

Bronze Dog

Logical Fallacy/Propaganda Tactic: Changing the subject / Red herring: the reason the chicken crossed the road is irrelevant to the issue. The only purpose for questioning the chicken’s reason for crossing the road, at least in this case, is to distract people from the issue.

And now, some of my fellow skeptical bloggers…

Autism Diva

Autism Diva awards the chicken four tiaras, her highest award, for outstanding effort at crossing roads on behalf of autistics everywhere.

Autism Diva
Cluck Cluck

Pharyngula

Here is an explanation of how invertebrates evolved the ability to cross roads…

Butterflies and wheels

Yes why indeed?  It was suggested that the crossing was caused by a supernatural being. Well, yes, it might, it might. But is it likely? I mean, is it? Seriously. Think about it. Is it likely? At all?  Does it seem even remotely plausible? That “some all powerful conscious being” (but who? oh, who? who might it be? Colonel Sanders?), powerful enough to “produce” perhaps the entire universe and some conscious beings with free will - would cause a chicken to cross the road?

Bob Park

NASA terminated the chicken’s road crossing expedition so it can concentrate on the useless Space Station and its new priority of sending chickens to the Moon.

The Bad Astronomer

The chicken crossed the road to see these really cool pictures of the egg nebula taken by the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) on the Hubble Space Telescope. Science is really cool. I love this stuff.

Rockstar Ryan

I'll go out on a limb and say it was probably to get to the other freaking side you moron.

Respectful Insolence

This will be the last article I write about the chicken and the crossing the road case for a while. This post is definitely the last one. If something new comes up, certainly I'll think about addressing it, but there are only so many times and ways one can debunk the chicken "rebuttal" to the crossing roads report without starting to bore people (although the sheer number of howlers that the chicken included in his report did provide a lot of blogging material to handle them properly). So I’m not going to write about this much more.

But, before I move on, I just wanted to write this one more post about the chicken’s rebuttal. That’s what this post is going to be about. Once I get to it it will be, anyway. Honestly. So here I am, writing my last post on the chicken and the crossing the road case.  My last post for a while anyway. OK. It’s going to be good. Here goes.

When the chicken… (Continued.)

And finally…

Skeptico

The question is not, why did the chicken cross the road? Before I answer that question you will first need to demonstrate if the chicken crossed the road. So if you have any evidence that the chicken did actually cross the road, please present it.

^{Sorry to those I missed}

Comments

[BronzeDog]

Ooo! Do me! Do me!

Had a little fun writing a post tonight. Also, I recently learned how to put links into my posts so that I don't do the weird text drift thing.

One of my own:

Fore Sam:

To dodge my questions about its stock portfolio and ramble on about inanities like "evidence."

[Galvatrond]

An what has the chicken itself got to say about this?

Chicken

Yo, Skep-dude! Just crossed the road to wish you a happy birthday. Respect for keeping one of the best skepticism blogs on the net. Word!

[Clint]

Brilliant, I especially liked the ones at the end.

[Tara Mobley]

Great stuff. Altie types are always fun to poke at. It was even fun seeing you poke fun at your fellow skeptical bloggers, and even yourself.

[BronzeDog]

We really need to be able to laugh at ourselves.

My brother has a hypothesis that all humor (except maybe slapstick) has a basis in logical fallacies. No wonder alties have no sense of humor and are unable to construct jokes.

[arationalbeing]

Quantum Physicist answer:

The chicken is on both sides of the road and when you observe it, the wave function for the chicken on the other side of the road collapses to zero, and equals one on this side of the road.

[BronzeDog]

Oldie for you math-oriented people:

Why did the chicken cross the mobius strip?

To get to the same side.

[Mr. Bill]

Why did the Chicken cross the road

I thought it was to prove to the possum it could be done...

[AJ Milne]

Durn funny.

[jre]

Absolutely brilliant!

My own humble contribution:

Dr. Joseph Mercola
I am trying to obtain a copy of a Russian study in which it was shown that road-crossing disturbed the life-force of chickens, causing their flesh and eggs to become violently toxic. Eating chickens after they have crossed roads is the real cause of AIDS, but this fact has been covered up by the FDA and the Department of Transportation, who never did a study of HIV in omelettes. If you send me $72.00, I will ship you a pint of Tropical Living Chicken Fat (TM), which will cure both cancer AND bad breath -- and you won't even have to cross the road!
(I'm an osteopath.)

JB Handley

All the available evidence points to chicken road-crossing, along with thimerosal, being a cause of autism.

[bcpmoon]

Congratulations, this is a real gem!

[bcpmoon]

Congratulations, this is a real gem!

[Paul]

Happy birthday! A very funny birthday entry today. I laughed, I cried, I laughed some more, then I felt guilty over lying about the crying.

Also, my favourite joke I made up when I was eight:

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?

A: He was being chased by Colonel Sanders.

And, finally, a Matrixism: "There is no road."

Ciao!

[IAMB]

Then there's me:

"The issue here really has little to do with crossings of any kind. The real question is whether or not a chicken makes a good poo target... ah, what the hell: I'll throw anyway, just for personal amusement."

Great post, by the way!

[Eric]

Penn and Teller:

Because it listened to the fuckin' idiots telling it not to cross the road. JESUS fucking CHRIST, how fuckin' stupid can you be?

Look, we understand there are some chickens who don't want to cross the road for their own personal reasons, and we're okay with that. But when these fearmongering ASSHOLES start scaring perfectly normal chickens into living their lives on just one side of the road, we say BULLSHIT.

[Clay]

To prove to the racoon that it could be done.
(You never see chicken carcasses on the road.)

[Autism Diva]

The chicken crossed the road to avoid being chelated, didn't it?

Smart chicken.

Thank you, Autism Diva laughed so hard she had to keep wiping the tears from her eyes. You totally nailed Bobby Kennedy Jr.

Prometheus

The major division in the Chicken Family is between deliberate and inattentive Chickens. Deliberate Chickens are aware that they are crossing the road and don’t care – inattentive Chickens think that they aren't actually crossing a road at all and so don't care. As a result, this division is largely a cosmetic one, since the effects and actions of the two groups are largely the same. It can therefore be nearly impossible to differentiate between the two groups in the field, since the distinguishing characteristic is intent, rather than action.

:-)

[Skeptyk]

Yesterday lost in a migraine haze, it was delightful to wake up to this, Skeptico. Thanks for making me laugh. Happy blogbirthday.

[Skeptico]

Bronze Dog - your wish is granted.

Careful what you wish for. ;-)

[HCN]

To parody myself, I put "chicken cross road" into PubMed search box and got 30 cites. All papers about stuff that have nothing to do with roads.

[BronzeDog]

Heh, nice. :)

[Clark Bartram]

Kevin Trudeau

The chicken could easily cross the road if not for the unholy alliance between car manufacturers and the Department of Transportation. There are natural ways to cross virtually all roads but they don't want you to know about them because it will cut into their profits. Learn more about ways to naturally cross roads in my book, on my website, by watching my infomercials, or simply take out $30 and burn it to achieve the same effect.

I haven't had the opportunity to interview Kevin Trudeau himself but I have met with the next best thing: http://theclayexperience.blogspot.com/2005/11/unintelligent-design-interview-with.html

[Ettina]

My Dad likes to call PETA People who Eat Tasty Animals. Chickens are tasty. Therefore chicken-road-crossing is a conspiracy to kill chickens so PETA can eat them.
Ettina

[Ettina]

Darn, I forgot to finish typing in my URL.

[FhnuZoag]

SOLLOG KNEW THE CHICKEN WOULD CROSS THE ROAD

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sollog)

[BronzeDog]

Funny. Good pick, Fhnu. (Link made for easy clicking.)

[Don]

"Quantum Physicist answer:

The chicken is on both sides of the road and when you observe it, the wave function for the chicken on the other side of the road collapses to zero, and equals one on this side of the road."

And immediately the egg appears on the opposite side of the road. (Spooky Chicken at a Distance).

[Don]

Larry King:
"Well, if the chicken crossed the road, why are there still chickens back on the other side?"

[Sylvanite]

This looks like fun!

How about Twisty Faster?

I sure could get outside of some of that chicken barbecued with a side of that which is called broccolini. *insert exquisite picture of culinary masterpiece*

Did the chicken actually wish to cross the road? I pity the fool who doesn't know the answer to that. I Blame the Patriarchy.

Wow, I hope Twisty doesn't get irritated by this. Her writing style is way better than this.

By the way, dead on parody of Orac! Ha!

[wheatdogg]

May I offer the following additions:

Any AIDS denier:
There is no definite connection between crossing the road and getting to the other side. It is merely misinformation perpetrated by a bigoted First-World conspiracy against non-white Third World populations.

Wendi Friesen (hypnotist/charlatan):
I can guarantee that within 24 hours that chicken can be cured of its road-crossing habits. Only $49!

[Kitmeout]

A great many paranoid conspiracy theorists (PCTs) and average Joes and Joettes are conscious of the esoteric order named the Illuminati. The Illuminati is commonly believed to have its roots in the European Enlightenment and it’s believed the order was founded in May 1776 by Adam Weishaupt a Jesuit instructed Professor of canon law. Today there’s a growing belief that the Illuminate is not simply a benign group of intellectuals and wealthy adherents seeking camaraderie in kind but is in fact a malignant entity dedicated to the creation of a one world order in which the masses are enslaved and controlled by “the few”.

David Icke is perhaps the most well-known and vociferous campaigner against the Illuminati and he reputedly believes the Illuminati controls humanity via machinations, subterfuge, secrecy, and conspiracy. Indeed, David Icke cites the Holocaust, Oklahoma City bombing, the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, the war in Bosnia, and the September 11, 2001 attacks as examples of events orchestrated by the Illuminati; Icke believes these orchestrated catastrophes are designed to coerce, control and led the masses into submissive subjugation — to a world in which the Illuminati have complete, unequivocal and unanswerable control over the ignorant masses.

Recently it was proposed that Fashion has its own form of the Illuminati. This elite order of “fashion” Illuminati apparently coerce, control and led the masses into submissive style — dictating what is fashionable and thereby excluding free and true style which they consider a threat to their positions of power. Most historic Fashion Houses have been identified as members of this esoteric order and a number of media channels have been accused of being complicit in the conspiracy to control the fashion buying masses. It has been suggested that if we look around us today we will see clear evidence to support this conspiracy theory as the verve of youth and innovation is suppressed in favor of drab, lifeless mediocrity.

On the other hand, perhaps we should not look to blame secret orders for the serious, and not so serious, issues of our time. Perhaps we, you and I, the masses, need to step forward and through our own spirit, determination and desire for change claim a new future built on egalitarianism, inclusive respect and opportunity for all.