Skeptico

Psychics didn’t foresee their arrests

Stupid psychic tricks are always good for a laugh. Three so-called psychics in Queens, NY were charged with accepting money for fortune telling.

According to the Queens district attorney's office, one of the psychics promised to rid one of the officers of evil spirits for the price of a mere $1,000.

"The defendants are charged with preying upon vulnerable individuals seeking advice for their problems to swindle money for their own benefit," District Attorney Richard Brown said.

According to state law, it is illegal to bill yourself as a fortune teller capable of using occult powers to answer questions, give advice or get rid of those pesky evil spirits. That is, unless it's stated that your services are for entertainment or amusement only.

Interesting that in New York State the authorities apparently don’t believe psychics are real. Wonders will never cease. Even more encouraging is that the cops in that state seem to know what is really going on at these “psychic” readings:

The defendant had the officer tie three knots on a string, which were allegedly gone when the psychic rolled the string up into a ball. If the knots disappeared, it meant that God's will wasn't present. But, the complaint said, the undercover saw the psychic switch the string.

That guy should be on Larry King. As guest host.

Anyway, it is obvious they weren’t real psychics – if these were real psychics they would have known their clients were undercover police officers.

More on whether prayer works

In the World Cup, Ghanaians pray for victory:

I am listening to a gospel track on a local radio station. The lyrics are as follows: "This year is ours and in faith we will claim whatever belongs to us Ghanaians."

…

There is a lot of praying. Last night there were all night prayer services and radio phone-ins are asking people from all religious backgrounds to offer prayers for our team's success.

Result: Brazil 3, Ghana 0.

Equivocation

The logical fallacy of equivocation is committed when someone uses the same word in different meanings in an argument, implying that the word means the same each time. For example, someone asserts that I have “faith” in science, and then implies this is the same as religious faith. This argument (that I have to refute with the same friend, periodically), seems to be saying that since I have not personally performed every single scientific experiment ever performed, by every scientist, in the history of the world – since I haven’t personally performed them all - I can’t know for sure that they have been performed at all. Therefore if I believe what I read about science, I must have “faith” in science. This is the same as religious faith, and therefore science is my religion.

Of course, the correct word to describe my view of science is “trust”, not “faith”. I have trust in science because (1) I have evidence that science works (look at all the products of science around you), and (2) there is evidence that science is self-correcting, and that if some scientist just made something up to con the rest of the world, another scientist would eventually expose the fraud. Of course, I can’t prove that all scientific experiments actually took place as described, and perhaps that’s where my friend’s confusion lies. But I do have evidence; therefore accepting science is not faith. The fallacy is to say that trust, based on evidence, is the same as blind faith based on no evidence at all. The ploy is to use the word “faith” for both of these definitions, but then to imply they both mean religious blind faith.

Recently it struck me that New Agers (and other woos) employ a slightly more subtle version of equivocation. You can see an example in this comment by author Daniel Pinchbeck. He is replying to my criticism that his book appears to center around the Mayan prophecy that 2012 will bring about the end of the world as we know it. He wrote:

"The world as we know it" ending in 2012 is flap copy - but it is probably true in any case, Mayan Calendar or not, when you combine the effects of climate change, resource depletion, and the increasing toxification of the environment, plus proliferation of WMDs etc. Species extinction is also passing a critical threshold, so that if we don't make an ecological u-turn in the next few years, it may be irreversible.

Note the double speak – how he’s trying to have it both ways? He backs away from the Mayan prophesy because he knows it’s nonsense, and instead introduces things he thinks are more believable – climate change, extinctions, etc. The idea is I’ll be drawn in (because I can’t deny global warming, etc), and I have to agree with him. Just like I “have” to agree with my friend that I can’t personally prove the big bang happened and therefore I have faith in science. So I agree the world is in crisis and then Bazam! - I’ve just agreed to the premise of his book, namely that the Mayan prophesy is real.  (And despite the weasel words about “flap copy”, that is one of its premises.) Sneaky. Clever though.

I experienced this fallacy at a dinner party recently. Some people were talking about the absurd What The Bleep Do We Know!? film: specifically the “Indians didn’t see the ships” myth. For those who haven’t heard about this, a premise of the film is that we can create our own reality with the powers of our minds only. It’s standard Newage drivel drawing on distorted interpretations of quantum mechanics among other things. Anyway, one example given in the film, to support the premise, is how when Columbus first arrived in the West Indies, the natives were literally unable to see his ships.  Why?  Because they had never seen ships before, so ships did not exist in their reality.

When I pushed these people on the absurdity of this claim, they started to retreat to lesser versions of the myth. For example, they suggested perhaps the Indians just didn’t realize they were large ships containing people. Or, perhaps they didn’t realize the significance of the ships – that they contained colonizers who would steal their lands and kill most of them off. See how the story has now been downgraded to something believable? But this was the same shtick as with the Mayan prophesy. Surely I must agree the Indians might not have realized the significance of the ships? How could I not see this might have been true? And the moment I agree to this possibility - Bazam! - I’ve just agreed to the absurd premise of the film, and all my other criticisms of it have been refuted. They have got me to agree to a lesser, more believable version of the story, but are using acceptance of that lesser version to show the premise supported by the woo version is true.

Debating people like this can be frustrating - a bit like trying to nail jelly to the wall. Just when you think you have nailed the absurdity of something they say, their story slips almost imperceptibly to something less woo, and you find you have to agree with them. You have to be focused to prevent them from claiming victory as they slide back to the woo point that started the argument. Specifically, you have to be clear about the different versions of the story that are now being discussed, and you have to push them to say which ones they believe. If they believe the woo version, then ask them for the evidence. If they are equivocating about a lesser version, point out that this lesser version does not support the premise that they want to prove. Keep a clear head as they slide between the different versions of the story. Point out they are equivocating – using different versions of the story but implying that both support the woo premise.

An interesting question is do they realize they are doing this? My view is that most of them don’t: their thought processes are so muddled that they really don’t see they are equivocating. After all, if they could think clearly, they wouldn’t believe the stuff they do believe, would they?

Edited to add:

Check out this comment that in an incredibly timely manner, demonstrates again equivocation around the “Indians didn’t see the ships” myth. As I said – muddled thinking.

The Skeptics’ Circle reappears

Strange! The 37^th Skeptics’ Circle was lost in the Bermuda triangle but magically reappeared again today. Ooh! Anyway, click over to Autism Diva’s place quickly and read it before it disappears again.

There’s a lot of good stuff there this week, but I should draw your attention especially to a couple of exposes of those mercury-autism quacks Mark and David Geier. First, Kathleen Seidel exposes some phony credentials the Geier’s are claiming, and she follows this with a revelation of the Geiers’ huge conflict of interest – they set up their own Institutional Review Board to review their own studies! Orac then provides some additional perspective on the significance of this. (It’s a real no no in the research world apparently. See especially the comment from Mark Chu-Carroll.) Fascinating stuff. Remember this the next time some mercury-autism nut quotes the Geiers as the source for “studies” showing thimerosal in vaccines causes autism, or when they cite “conflict of interest” as the sole reason to dismiss studies that don’t support their mercury-causes-autism beliefs.

The circle is not just about autism – there’s plenty of other good stuff there too.

Why I won’t read your book

People are always telling me I have to check out this or that book or this or that film that will change my worldview, prove skeptics wrong or whatever. It’s usually backed by some claim that “scientists” support or have produced the information they want me to look at. It started years ago with Gregg Braden. A friend told me it contained all this amazing stuff, all confirmed by scientists etc etc and I shouldn’t criticize it unless I read it. Well OK, so I read it and it was the worst book of its kind I have ever read. Worst in that not only was it nonsense, but the manipulative style of the author made it clear he knew he was writing pseudo-scientific drivel to impress the scientifically naïve. It was so dishonestly bad it compelled me to write a review of Gregg Braden’s book – a review that I think has stood the test of time.

Then I was in a debate with someone about reincarnation. This guy said I should read the works of Ian Stevenson – a doctor who had documented cases that were very strong evidence for reincarnation, and I shouldn’t criticize it until I had read some of his work. So, I bought one of Stevenson’s books and I found it to be very unconvincing. His work is merely a collection of anecdotes: all the “past life behavior” had been witnessed before the author met any of the “reincarnated” children and so the veracity of the stories was hard to determine. In addition, in the later chapters Stevenson made several statements and drew conclusions that cast doubt on his ability to evaluate these kinds of claims critically. I thought this book was so bad that I wrote a review of Stevenson’s "Children Who Remember Previous Lives” and a general overview of Stevenson’s credulous outlook.  I have since read skeptical reviews of Stevenson’s other work in Skeptic magazine and elsewhere, that mirrored my thoughts.

I then had a discussion with a Reiki practitioner who said I should read Candace Pert’s Molecules of Emotion that somehow proved Reiki worked (except it did no such thing). The same person said I should read another book called “Spiritual Healing” (ditto and ditto). Later still, various people told me I must see What The (Bleep) Do We Know!? What a waste of nearly two hours that was.

There have been many other examples.

Now, don’t get me wrong. It was interesting reading all those books and films, and it certainly gave me something to write about. And I learned a lot. For example, I think I can say with some degree of confidence that Ian Stevenson’s work is not good evidence for reincarnation. And since his work is considered to be some of the best evidence there is for reincarnation, I can say with some confidence there is probably no good evidence for reincarnation. I wouldn’t be able to say that if I hadn’t read his book. Likewise, while deconstructing What The Bleep for my review I became pretty clear about the flaws in each part of that absurd film. It’s comical now listening to true What The Bleep believers twittering to each other over dinner about the amazing things they found in this film. I can say this sure in the knowledge that I have seen it and examined it carefully with an open but critical mind and found it seriously wanting.

But enough is enough. I’ve seen enough now to get an idea if something is worth bothering with before I even start. I don’t have to read every book someone tells me about any more, if I don’t think the book’s premise makes sense. I was prompted to write this post after reading this comment apparently from Daniel Pinchbeck, after I wrote about Pinchbeck’s book here. (I wrote something on what his book appeared to be about, and how it looked like a load of 2012 / Mayan Calendar woo.) He made the point in his comment that he’s not going to defend his book if I’m not prepared to read it. And he’s quite right – why should he? But likewise, I see no need to invest time in a book that appears on the surface not to be worth the effort.

Don’t get me wrong. There may well be woo-ish books or films that I decide to look at, and maybe write reviews of in the future. It depends if the material looks interesting enough and if enough people are talking about it to make it worth the effort. But don’t expect me to read every book you found fascinating that you’re sure proves skeptics wrong, unless there is a very good reason for me to potentially waste days of my time. Sorry. No offense but been there done that.

As for Pinchbeck’s book – I haven’t read it so I can’t say for sure if it’s any good, but a book that (according to amazon.com) centers “around the Mayan prophecy that 2012 will bring about the end of the world as we know it”, comes under the heading of “this book’s premise makes no sense”. But don’t take my word for it – read it yourself if you want. Just don’t blame me if you think it’s woo.

My 2012 woo beats your 2012 woo

There is a problem with believing in stuff that can't be validated by independent evidence (ie, the stuff skeptics refer to as “woo”), namely that you don’t know where to stop. I was reminded of that reading this description of a recent book signing by Daniel Pinchbeck. Pinchbeck has a new book out about what is supposed to happen in the year 2012, which is (not) the end of the Mayan calendar. According to Amazon’s editorial review:

Pinchbeck… has set out to create an "extravagant thought experiment" centering around the Mayan prophecy that 2012 will bring about the end of the world as we know it, "the conclusion of a vast evolutionary cycle, and the potential gateway to a higher level of manifestation." More specifically, Pinchbeck's claim is that we are in the final stages of a fundamental global shift from a society based on materiality to one based on spirituality.

This is followed by numerous credulous five stars “awesome” type customer reviews. LOL – I haven’t read the book but it sounds just like Gregg Braden’s nonsense – made-up drivel leading up to a big secret the author is going to clue you in on. Apparently one of Pinchbeck's big deals is “synchronicity”. New agers define this as being where different, seemingly unconnected, events are meaningfully related; skeptics use the word “coincidence” to describe the same thing.

Anyway, this guy is clearly getting tired of all the out-there woo beliefs of his fans. This is how he started off his book signing:

“It would be great if you didn't pontificate" when asking questions, Pinchbeck told the 50 or so listeners, noting a tendency of his audiences to use the Q-and-A sessions as a sounding board for their own cosmological outlook.

(Snip)

A number of audience members, many already clutching their own jade-green copies of "2012" to be signed, recognized the concept of synchronicity and wanted to offer their own versions (one such instance included buying Pinchbeck's new book and then discovering that the author was coming to Portland).

Pinchbeck, however, had heard plenty of these stories of late. "Now I get a little bored -- people come up to me, 'Oh, I had this amazing synchronicity. . . .' Yeah, whatever."

Translation – don’t bother me with your made-up woo when I’m trying to sell my made-up woo. Priceless.

Edited November 27, 2006

See Brian Doherty's review of Pinchbeck's book in Reason Online.

Skeptics’ Circle

The 36^th Skeptics' Circle - the best skeptical blogging from the past two weeks - has just been posted at The Examining Room of Dr. Charles

Darwin not dead, despite rumors

Via Pooflingers Anonymous I learn the Darwin is Dead - Part Two carnival – that Matt calls the Carnival of the Cretinists – is up at Radar’s blog.

I had to search through the post a couple of times to check I was reading it right – there are only three posts and one of them is a spoof from the satirical reDiscovery Institute. Quite a sorry excuse for a carnival – it seems that rumors of Darwin’s demise may have been exaggerated.

The thing that struck me most though, was Radar’s opening words:

I admit it, this cold/virus thing is kicking my butt! I take anti-biotics, I begin feeling better, they run out, I get sick again

Well, of course I would never expect a creationist to understand biology or any of that pointed headed elitist “sciencey” stuff or anything, but surely everyone knows you don’t treat a virus with an antibiotic? Don’t they? (OK, silly question.)

Defender of Faith Healing

Reader James reminded me about Prince Charles’ desire (recently criticized) to be "Defender of Faith" rather than "Defender of the Faith" (ie the Christian and specifically non-Roman Catholic faith), as previous monarchs have been obliged to swear.

Of course, “faith” means “belief although there is no evidence to support that belief”, and often (as I think Richard Dawkins put it), belief even in the teeth of contradictory evidence. It basically means you believe in superstitions, or are credulous. I guess “defender of credulity” wouldn’t sound so good, even if technically accurate. But we have known for a while that Brian believes in many things not supported by evidence: homeopathy (in fact all sorts of quackery), and astrology spring to mind. Now he wants to make it official. Good for him! Although, based on his support for therapies that don’t work, I suggest “Defender of Faith Healing” would be a better title. Perhaps I’ll email the Archbishop of Canterbury and see what he thinks.

Incidentally, if I recall my history correctly, “Defender of the Faith” originally meant “Defender of the Roman Catholic Faith”, until Henry VIII took the title to mean “Defender of the non-Roman Catholic Faith”. Henry had problems with wives surplus to requirements, and he had a novel way of getting a divorce from the first one – he started his own religion. Perhaps Charles wants to emulate Henry: see Prince Charles- "My Twin Passions, Homeopathy and Infidelity." Now it begins to make sense (sort of).

Homeopathy works! No, really.

Pretty soon…

Compare and contrast the following.

The Society for Psychical Research – “the first of its kind to examine allegedly paranormal phenomena in a scientific and unbiased way” - was established in 1882. (Remember that date.) Success was claimed in its first test of “psi” when the psychic powers of the Creery sisters and their servant girl were supposedly proven. Of course, we now know the girls cheated (they were secretly signaling to each other). However, you’ll be pleased to know that 124 years later the society is not defeated in its aims:

Today the Society continues with its aim of understanding events and abilities commonly described as 'psychic' or 'paranormal' by promoting and supporting important research in this area.

Yes, I guess they think that pretty soon they’ll have good evidence that psychic powers exist and will be able to make some use of it – surely it’s only a matter of time, right? Right. That’s what some people believe, anyway.

Around the same time – in the 1890s - Morse code began to be extensively used for radio communications. Shortly after, on Christmas Eve 1906, the world's first radio voice broadcast was made. The early ship bound Morse operators didn’t believe it when they first heard a human voice on their equipment, but it really was there and radio would soon be extensively used whether they believed in it or not.

In the early 20th century, J. B. Rhine coined the term "extrasensory perception" (ESP) to describe the apparent ability of some people to acquire information without the use of the known senses. Using Zener cards, he claimed he had proven the existence of ESP, although it was later discovered that Rhine was leaving out negative results from his results on the basis that persons who disliked him guessed wrong to spite him. To my knowledge, no practical use has ever been made of Rhine’s work, although I’m sure some people think that will change pretty soon.

As a young boy I learned the Russians had put a satellite into space. It was called Sputnik and I remember my friend and I watching it with our naked eyes as it passed over our town at night. You could listen to it on your radio too. Soon after, Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space, and my friend and I played at being astronauts. Not all that long afterwards (in the grand scheme of “long”), we all saw pictures of the first Moon landings. It didn’t matter if you believed it or not, space travel was real, and we could see it beamed back to us in real time.

In the 1950s S.G. Soal experimented on 160 psychically gifted people to see if they could determine through psychic means which one of five Zener cards had been turned over by a “sender” in another room. After some data mining, Soal claimed he had proven the existence of psi, although it was later shown he had cheated. Funnily enough, Soal’s work didn’t add any new knowledge or provide any more utility compared with what Rhine had already found (or more accurately, “not found”), and for some reason, forced choice Zener cards are not used in psi experiments any more. Instead, more subjective tests requiring judging (and therefore allowing more wiggle room) are used. Pretty soon, using this less rigorous method, we’ll have the proof that psi is real and is of use. Or so some believe.

Meanwhile scientists had invented color TV. I remember it well – our next door neighbor, who was wealthier than us, got one of the first color TVs and we went to his house to watch a football match. For the first time you could easily tell which team a player was with because each team’s shirts were in different colors. You had no choice about believing it or not – color TV worked and was a vast improvement over black and white.

As a teenager, I read that someone called Nostradamus had managed to predict the future 500 years ago. Surely this was proof of psychic powers? But then I got hold of a book containing the entire Nostradamus Centuries and I realized Nostradamus’ predictions were useless unless the thing being predicted had already taken place. To me, that didn’t seem to be much use. Believers in Nostradamus said I was closed minded, but I had examined the evidence and I just didn’t believe in Nostradamus or see any use in reading his predictions any more.

My (older) brother-in-law who worked “in computers” took me to his workplace. He showed me the big stacks of punch cards that he had to feed into the massive computer (it took up a huge room) to make it work. Apparently he ran the overnight batch jobs.  A few years later, someone developed a small computer that can sit on your desk, and even later a way of connecting all these computers in the world in what became known as the Internet. I’m writing this piece on a one of these small computers now, and you’re reading this on one too, over the Internet. It works whether you believe in it or not.

Someone called Rupert Sheldrake claimed he had proven that people can tell when somebody is staring at them. When this was investigated by skeptics it was found that the sequences used in Sheldrake's research were not properly randomized: when random sequences were used people can detect staring at no better than chance. Believers still dispute this, and Sheldrake is on the verge of coming up with a use for this phenomenon pretty soon. If you believe Sheldrake, anyway.

I remember when the first mobile phones appeared. The first person I saw talking on one in the street looked ridiculous with the huge headset and battery back slung over his shoulder. But now my cell phone is so small I don’t even notice it is in my pocket. And I have a tiny headset that fits in my ear and connects wirelessly to the cell phone in my pocket – I don’t even have to hold the phone to my ear with my hand any more. And I can dial just by saying the name of the person I’m calling. And it works whether I believe it or not. (Most of the time, anyway.)

From 1975 through 1995 the US government funded investigations into remote viewing to the tune of $20 million, in what was known as the Stargate Project. Despite all the time and money, nothing useful ever came from Stargate and the US government dropped it. A private remote viewing organization calling itself PsiTech claims it purchased this (useless) “technology” from the government, and claims to this day to be able to perform remote viewing. Their recent successes include divining the location of Elizabeth Smart’s dead body. Unfortunately for PsiTech but fortunately for Elizabeth’s family, Elizabeth appeared some months later, quite alive. This didn’t faze the President of PsiTech who emailed me bleating “This is still a young technology”. Hey, tell that to the Society for Psychical Research, founded in 1882.

Last year, scientists managed to decode a two-watt signal from a spacecraft on one of Saturn’s Moons, a billion miles away. Although the signal was never meant to be transmitted to Earth, it was received anyway and 100% of the scientific data was extracted successfully. That happened whether you believe it or not.

Meanwhile, I turn on the TV and I see a clown called John Edward asking a caller on Larry King if they know a J or a G-sounding name. (Note – Edward asks the caller – wouldn’t a real psychic tell the caller this information?) The same Larry King also features on primetime worldwide TV a moron called James Van Praagh who actually says “skeptics … use this thing about taking a test and proving it, the emphasis should be on them to prove it to us this is not real”. According to him this stuff, which is of no use at all anyway, is real unless we can prove it isn’t. The next day Sylvia Browne tells listeners on the "Coast to Coast" radio show that the miners trapped in a West Virginia mine would be found alive. That was just after the news broke they had been found alive but just before the revised news they were actually dead.  And people still believe this old phony.

Oh sure, Gary Schwartz claims to have validated John Edward and Allison DuBois, but Schwartz hasn’t published his data and no one has been able to replicate it. (The fact that he validated John Edward should be enough to tell you his research stinks.) And even if it were true, no use has come from these bozos other than “acknowledging” and “validating” passed loved ones, whatever that means. In 124 years, psi research has progressed to no more than a carnival guessing game act on TV.  But it’s not just that the evidence for psi has not gotten any better over the last 124 years compared with advances in science, although that is notable. The real lesson is that even if psi were real, in 124 years we still haven’t found an actual use for it – no psi communications devices, no accurate predictions of the future, no military use, nothing.

Compare that with the real world of science. We started this post with Morse code, but now I can now access computers anywhere in the world from the color screen of my small cell phone. And it all works whether you believe in it or not. Where are the equivalent unambiguously real and useful psi applications? Oh I get it: they’ll be here pretty soon. My question is – how much longer do we have to wait for some use to be made of psi before we can all agree it doesn’t exist?

Dead letter box

I wonder what Allison DuBois thinks of this story:

'Ghost' helps acquit murder suspect

Two letters said to be dictated by a ghost helped acquit a woman of murder in Brazil.

The letters, written by a medium who claimed they were from the victim, were used as evidence in a murder trial in Viamao.

The medium claimed the spirit had revealed that the woman accused of his murder was innocent.

A jury declared Iara Marques Barcelos, 63 not guilty of the killing Ercy da Silva Cardoso.

Mr Cardoso was shot dead in his home in 2003. Mrs Barcelos was accused because she was the victim's lover and was angry he wanted to leave her.

The defence lawyer told Folha de Sao Paulo: "The letters were a low blow and they were decisive to the verdict."

A court spokesman said the letters were accepted as evidence because the prosecution lawyers made no objection.

Letters dictated by a ghost? Surely Allison is the secretary to the dead? And I’ll bet John Edward is jealous – the only letters he gets from dead people are R, J and M.

But at least we now have evidence that psychics and mediums can get people off charges for committing crimes. Of course, we’re still waiting for any evidence that any psychic (including the one in this story) can determine who did commit a crime, or find the dead bodies, or in fact tell us anything useful. But it’s a start, I suppose.

No, I said R or J or M. J!  Write it down.

Yeah, this’ll stop illegal drugs

I noticed that PZ Myers has already commented on this story in Wired about how the Feds are cracking down on people with home chemistry sets and the like. Apparently there is a danger that kids might hurt themselves with chemicals; also terrorists might get hold of them. But another reason to ban people from owning chemistry glassware is that they might make crystal meth with it.

PZ has already gone into how this discourages kids from getting involved with science – read his post and the wired article for more details. I just had to comment on how the useless paranoid war on drugs has once again interfered with the lives of otherwise law abiding people. First, do they really think this will stop people making meth? I’m sure determined cooks will find a way round this somehow. Secondly, the crackdown on availability of the precursors has already pushed most meth production to Mexico anyway:

This deadly drug is now a growth industry for Mexico's deadly drug cartels. They're replacing small U.S. kitchen labs with Mexican super labs. The cartels are smuggling ephedrine from China, India and Europe and cooking up huge quantities of cheap meth — including an especially potent variety, Mexican Ice. Then the cartels smuggle it north to U.S. users.

"They're making quite a lot of money off of meth," Gonzalez said. "They are pretty much using the same routes that they've used in the past with cocaine and with marijuana."

By some estimates, as much at 80 percent of the meth on U.S. streets comes from Mexico.

The war on drugs has been successful only in promoting the outsourcing of drug production. The resultant cost reductions have promoted increased drug use. Behold, the market in action.

The myopic pirate sails off into the distance

Just when I was wondering what to write about (actually I was wondering if I could be bothered to write anything at all), something happens. The fake Skeptico I wrote about here, and who “guest blogged” here, has now wised up to the fact that we’re making fun of him and has posted to his blog again – a post entitled “Pseudo-Skeptico Strikes Again!” - ranting at length about how his “Skeptico” name was an accident and how he was now trying to change his web name, etc etc.

I am a little skeptical that he chose the Skeptico name without knowing about this blog. He’s no skeptic (skepticism isn’t about doubting everything, it’s about applying critical thinking to evaluate claims), so why “Skeptico”? Also, his blog title was completely different. But it could be true I suppose – people make mistakes. Either way his last post and in fact the entire http://skeptico.blogspot.com/ blog has disappeared. For now his Blogger Profile is still there, but I suspect he will restart his blogging career with another handle. Just before the blog disappeared I noticed he had changed his handle to “The One Eyed Pirate”, so perhaps that will be his new name (although I hope this guy has no objections - he sounds scary!).

Anyway, I just had to comment on that last post (even though it’s gone). It’s totally inane, and at least three people commented on it on his blog, before it disappeared. At the end of the post was this piece that he obviously thought was a killer problem for evolution:

But I close this post with a simple conundrum for you all, just for fun. (After all, this is supposed to be fun, isn't it?) And you don't have to be a microbiologist to understand the conundrum.

In the animal kingdom, there are all sorts of creatures that fly, from the gnat to the bat, from the humble housefly to the eagle in the sky. But let's focus on some ordinary bird, like a sparrow. Consider his wing. Ever consider the structures and mechanisms of a bird's wing? Well, to work, it has to have the form and strength of a wing, that is, an airfoil, as well as strong and properly controlled muscles to make it beat. But it needs something else to make it work. It needs feathers. Ever take a look at the structure of a feather? Pretty remarkable. Not much like hair or fur or scales.

Question is, which evolved first, the wing or the feathers? (And don't try to tell me we first had birds flying around without feathers, because, besides being preposterous, there is just no scientific evidence for that. And don't bring up any flying reptiles; they weren't birds. And don't tell me they evolved in parallel. The mathematical probabilities against linear evolution occurring are anstronomical (sic) as it is.)

Wow – the stupidity of that statement is quite amazing on so many levels. Considering that he actually mentions two creatures (the gnat and the bat), that have wings but no feathers, but can fly, I would suggest that the answer to his question “which evolved first, the wing or the feathers?” would probably be, “it doesn’t matter”. The important thing for evolution is that feathers are clearly not necessary for flight. And birds evolved from dinosaurs, which makes “don't bring up any flying reptiles” pretty dumb too.

This guy is typical of the know-all evolution denier. He has not studied the subject and by his own admission hadn’t read anything about it until about a month or so, when he read Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box. Now he has seemingly read on some creationist web site this thing about wings and feathers and he thinks it’s a killer for evolution - something that experts in evolutionary science who have dedicated their lives to this subject have missed – and arrogantly crows about it on his blog. And yes I know I shouldn’t appeal to authority – an argument should be considered on its merits not on whether the person presenting it is a scientist or not. But wouldn’t you think someone new to the subject would spend a few minutes researching this evolution-killer question before posting it for everyone to see his ignorance? (OK, rhetorical question.)

In less than five minutes I found the answers on talkorigins.org. For the benefit of Kennesaw Williams (if he is really interested), I present thoughts on how flight, wings and feathers may have evolved (all with my bold):

As to wings: if you read the chapter on wings in the recent excellent book by Richard Dawkins, Climbing Mount Improbable, you will get a better idea how flight could evolve generally, but as to bird's wings and feathers, there is recent evidence that feathers were initially varieties of scales used for insulation (recently feathers were induced in chicks to form from scales on their legs, and a dinosaur in China showed an imprint of feathers along its spine). Once there, feathers must have been co-opted for a range of reasons. One theory is that they were used to catch prey - insects and small rodents - as a kind of net. Once you have them on forelimbs, it is not a long leap, if you'll forgive the pun, to flight, as we see incipient fliers all around us in the form of tree leapers and gliders. Straight selection would account for it.

I also found more information on how feathers probably evolved:

In past times, feathers were probably first used as insulation, much like hair in mammals, and were probably hair-shaped, as some of those other types of feathers mentioned above still are. At some point, some of the proto-birds developed branching projections from the early feathers. These were better at insulating, and so natural selection favored those animals that possessed them.

The next step was probably selection for barbules which curled at the ends, hooking the barbules into the adjacent ones and thus making a better wind-shedding surface, like a windbreaker. (The underfeathers would make better insulators by staying fluffy and unhooked, so the downy type of feather would be retained.) At this point the barbules were probably still pretty much round in cross-section, with no grooves. Since the limited interlocking mechanism was an improvement over non-interlocked feathers, there would be a competitive advantage to having the hooks.

So, now we have hamuli hooked around barbule "petioles". Now go back to one of Darwin's assumptions that I've been pretty much taking for granted so far- variation. Some of these proto-birds had "petioles" slightly oval, or squarish, or crescent-shaped, as opposed to round. Please stress the "slightly" there! Now, one of these shapes was better than the others at holding the interlocking mechanism together (another idea of Darwin's). So, that proto-bird's offspring would survive better than offspring of the others, and so eventually replace them.

Fast forward a couple of hundred million years of the same variation, mutation, and selection, and you end up with modern bird feathers. Simple, no? Just time-consuming. The groove and hook did not evolve separately, as has been contended, but one in response to the other. The hooks were not useless without the grooves, they just work better with the grooves. You find this same pattern all through the living world.

And I found information on the evolution from dinosaurs to modern birds:

Many new bird fossils have been discovered in the last couple of decades, revealing several intermediates between theropod dinosaurs (such as Allosaurus) and modern birds:

* Sinosauropteryx prima. A dinosaur covered with primitive feathers, but structurally similar to unfeathered dinosaurs Ornitholestes and Compsognathus (Chen et al. 1998; Currie and Chen 2001).

(More at the link.)

Not that hard really. I imagine that Kennesaw Williams, if he bothered to read this, in his next post, would perhaps ask how the eye could possibly have evolved, perhaps asking the killer question “what use is half an eye?”. (Answer – a lot more use than no eye.) Or perhaps he would ask how we could agree that a watch (should we happen to find one lying on a beach, for example), was designed, but would suggest that life is not? The possibilities are endless. Such a pity we won’t know where to find such brilliant musings; but at least we will be spared knowing how comprehensively evolution has been debunked. (Sigh.