Skepticism – Page 2 – Nicolas Demers

How to Identify Pseudoscience, Quackery, and Fraud with Dr. Harriet Hall

Okay, it’s been almost two weeks, and I’ve kept putting off blogging about this event. Partly because I’ve been extremely busy, with a new full-time job and working on my freelance career, and partly because, well, I didn’t learn anything earth-shattering. Dr. Hall’s talk at Langara College about the ins and outs of pseudoscience, what it is, how to identify it, and why people believe in it, covered a lot of ground already well-visited by people like Michael Shermer. Still, there were some good tidbits. In point-form, then:

“Thinking like a human” is not a logical way to think but it is not a stupid way to think either. You could say that our thinking is intelligently illogical. Millions of years of evolution did not result in humans that think like a computer. It is precisely because we think in an intelligently illogical way that our predecessors were able to survive…
—Morgan Levy, MD

And that quote from Dr. Morgan Levy’s book Placebo Medicine (available free online) pretty much sums up why people believe weird things.

One thing I did learn was that Jesus promoted colon cleansing. No, seriously! It’s in the Essene Gospel of Peace. Good to know whenever the old Argument from Authority is pulled out.

“Think not that it is sufficient that the angel of water embrace you outwards only. I tell you truly, the uncleanness within is greater by much than the uncleanness without. And he who cleanses himself without, but within remains unclean, is like to tombs that outwards are painted fair, but are within full of all manner of horrible uncleannesses and abominations. So I tell you truly, suffer the angel of water to baptize you also within, that you may become free from all your past sins, and that within likewise you may become as pure as the river’s foam sporting in the sunlight.

“Seek, therefore, a large trailing gourd, having a stalk the length of a man; take out its inwards and fill it with water from the river which the sun has warmed. Hang it upon the branch of a tree, and kneel upon the ground before the angel of water, and suffer the end of the stalk of the trailing gourd to enter your hinder parts, that the water may flow through all your bowels. Afterwards rest kneeling on the ground before the angel of water and pray to the living God that he will forgive you all your past sins, and pray the angel of water that he will free your body from every uncleanness and disease. Then let the water run out from your body, that it may carry away from within it all the unclean and evil-smelling things of Satan. And you shall see with your eyes and smell with your nose all the abominations, and uncleannesses which defiled the temple of your body; even all the sins which abode in your body, tormenting you with all manner of pains. I tell you truly, baptism with water frees you from all of these. Renew your baptizing with water on every day of your fast, till the day when you see that the water which flows out of you is as pure as the river’s foam. Then betake your body to the coursing river, and there in the arms of the angel of water render thanks to the living God that he has freed you from your sins. And this holy baptizing by the angel of water is: Rebirth unto the new life. For your eyes shall henceforth see, and your ears shall hear. Sin no more, therefore, after your baptism, that the angels of air and of water may eternally abide in you and serve you evermore.

Dr. Hall also quoted from Pope Brock’s Charlatan, a book about old-time huckster Charles Brinkley, who got famous by performing goat-to-human testicle transplants, to restore the energy and virility of his patients. It sounds deliciously weird, and I’ve added it to my reading list.

She concluded with a few tips on how to deal with pseudoscientific claims or theories:

How do I know that’s so?
Where’s the evidence?
What’s the evidence against? Is there another side to the story?

Which leads to the SkepDoc’s rule of thumb:

Before accepting a claim we should try to find out who disagrees with it and why.

Words to live by.

Skeptivism: Van Praagh at the River Rock Casino

Last Saturday a handful of skeptics from CFI Vancouver went down to the River Rock Casino to protest their showcasing James Van Praagh, one of the big-name cold-reading vultures preying on people’s fears and grief, by pretending to hear from dead people.

And by “protest,” I mean that just as with Deepak Chopra in June and John Edwards in August, we politely handed out flyers to Van Praagh fans on their way to the show. Just a friendly smile, a “are you here to see Van Praagh? Here’s something to read while you’re in line!” capped off by a “Enjoy the show!” Some frowned, some gave the pamphlets back, one young woman told us she believed in psychics because she was psychic. We never did find out exactly what she believed about her psychicness, so we just parted on a note of “we all have our opinions and we’ll agree to disagree.” Because what else can you do? We weren’t here to make a scene.

But even so, security eventually asked us to leave. Fair enough, we were on private property, and the casino was completely within its rights to kick us out if we were bothering its customers. Most of us retreated to the Skytrain, while the two women in the gang continued to hand out pamphlets on the sidewalk in front of the casino. The guys debated joining them, but (a) I for one was kinda nervous about casino security keeping an eye on us, and I didn’t want to be arrested, however small the probability, and (b) the women seemed to be doing okay, and were probably less likely to be hassled by security, since they looked less threatening.

It was an interesting experience. Kind of anticlimactic, which I guess is a good thing. Doubly good because unlike the Edwards outing, we didn’t have to face any grieving people clinging to false hope. Yeah, i don’t think I could have handled that. Plus, I’m not too diplomatic even at the best of times, and I can’t think of a nice way to tell vulnerable people they’re being strung along by a con man.

So in the end, what did we accomplish? I don’t know. Some people read the pamphlets, sure, and that’s important. Planting seeds of doubt is never a bad thing, but there’s got to be a more efficient—not to mention legal—way to go about it. I think the saying “You don’t pray in my classroom and I won’t think in your church” applies here. As revolting as I find Van Praagh and his cohorts, the casino’s running a business and we can’t expect them to give us free access to their ~~chumps~~customers.

What’s the solution? Obviously there’s no magic bullet to remove gullibility and ignorance, and some people will hang on to their beliefs in spite of all the evidence in the world. Skeptics just have to keep trying. This kind of skeptivism, Getting into people’s faces, does have a place, though we need to go at it a little more smartly, and there are other things CFI should do. Reach out to schools, get kids while they’re young! We’re talking about all those things and more. Stay tuned

Ghosts of Old Victoria

As I said in my previous post, during my recent trip to Victoria I went on a ghost walking tour. It was fairly entertaining (our guide was quite a good storyteller), and I learned quite a bit about the history of Victoria, though of course it didn’t convince me that ghosts are real.

The Empress Hotel
Burial Boxes and Floating Heads
Haunted Kitcken
Waiting for the Flood
The Steamship Valencia
Cradles and Ley Lines
The Hanging Judge
Helmcken Alley

Starting Out

We started out near the harbour. Our guide—an older gentleman with a nice hat and a cane topped by a silver skull–got the ball rolling by asking, “What are ghosts?” He went on for a bit about how ghosts are energy, and the law of conservation of energy says they never go away, so we’re surrounded by ghostly energy all the time. Sometimes we see ghosts, sometimes we hear them, or feel a cold breeze, or something. And anytime you don’t know exactly where some random sensation comes from, you should ditch logic and consider the supernatural. Seriously, this was a textbook Argument from Ignorance.

Sigh. I guess I expected the bullshit pseudoscience and broken logic, but this wasn’t really getting me in the mood. I wanted gory tales of death and dismemberment and ghostly torment, dammit! Everybody else seemed to be eating it up, though, especially once he gave us instructions on sensing ghostly energy with the palm of our hands. The trick is to rub the thumb on the opposite palm quickly (do this with both hands), then sort of feel around, or slowly put both hands together, and if you feel a tingling or prickling it’s totally that you’re sensing your own energy. No other possible explanation!

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The Empress Hotel

Anyway, on to the ghost stories! Our first stop was on the harbour, in front of the Empress Hotel. The Empress, dontcha know, is one seriously haunted hotel.

Apparently almost every room and corridor has a story attached to it, but our guide focused on two. First, the eighth (and topmost) floor of the West tower is haunted. Apparently, in the 60’s when that whole wing was under construction, a workman was up in the unfinished 8th floor and saw weird moving shadows, of a body swinging back and forth, but there was nobody there! The man was scared out of his gourd, and immediately quit. Further investigation revealed that a worker had hanged himself there about a year (I think) previously, but management had hushed up the whole thing so as not to scare away employees or guests.

Our guide claims to have worked at the Empress during the 60’s, but got the story second-hand through another employee; he never spoke to the worker who saw (or claimed to see) the apparition. Maybe there never was such a worker. Maybe the whole story is just urban legend. Who knows? This happened 45 years ago, and the top floor (supposedly) remained vacant or unfinished since then. 10 years ago they converted the floor to luxury suites. I don’t remember if those suites are said to be particularly haunted. But they probably are.

He also told us about a ghostly old woman who haunts the 6th floor of the same wing. You’ll hear a knock at the door, and open to an old lady in pajamas, who seems lost and confused. You try to help her find her room, and she leads you to the elevator. Then about that point, she vanishes. The story goes that she was a winter guest at the hotel many years ago, who simply died of natural causes. Her spirit stayed in the room, but got brutally evicted when that room was torn out to make room for the elevators. Now she wanders around lost, unable to rest because ghosts don’t like change.

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Burial Boxes and Floating Heads

Moving a little bit up the harbour, the guide pointed out the Inn at Laurel Point, clearly visible across the bay at night with its green neon “L” sign. This is the setting of the next story. The Songhees people (the Nation whose traditional territory includes the Victoria area) have a custom of burying important people in boxes either placed high up in trees, or buried in the ground. One such burial site was at Laurel Point, but was torn up by an evil enterpreneur who built his house and shop on the desecrated site. Soon after, the shop went up in flames. The owner’s wife is said to have seen something emerge from the flames, but it’s not clear what. She got sick and died a few weeks later; the coroner’s verdict was that she “died of fright”.

The land was sold to William Pendray (one of the biggest industrialists in Victoria then) and a factory was built on the site. But a string of weird accidents and occurrences kept happening; Pendray’s son died when his horse spooked and threw him off and somehow his head was cut off by a cart wheel. Four years later, Pendray himself died while inspecting his factory when a pipe fell on his head. Pendray’s house is now part of Gatsby Mansion, an upscale little hotel right by Laurel Point. The spirits don’t try to kill people anymore, but it’s supposedly still haunted. If you stay in room #5, you will see two ghostly heads emerge from the walls and sort of circle each other. They may try to talk, but their words are impossible to make out. These heads are Pendray and son, haunting the places of their untimely deaths.

PS: the deaths of the Pendrays are documented fact, though I suspect details in the guide’s story are exaggerated. For example, all the sources on the Net mention only that Pendray Jr. was thrown from his horse.

PPS: there’s a simple way to disprove the haunting story. The guide said that anybody, even skeptics, will see these heads if they stay the night in room #5.

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Haunted Kitchen

Next stop: Nautical Nellie’s. The kitchen is said to be haunted, with various poltergeist-y activities: rattling cookware, occasionally thrown objects, that sort of thing. What’s odd is that there are no records of murders or violent deaths in that spot, which is usually an indicator of restless spirits.

The real (for certain values of “real”) story is this: back in the 1850’s, the spot was part of Fort Victoria, with the palisades, fur storehouses… and cannons. In 1846 those cannons were used to shoot at a chief’s house across the bay, whose subjects were hostile and needed to be intimidated; thankfully, nobody was home and nobody died. In 1853, Governor Douglas was coming into the harbour; as he rounded Laurel Point, the fort fired its cannons to greet him. Some guy (I forget his function, either a junior officer or civilian) was leaning too close to the cannon and didn’t hear the warning, and got his hand shot off. The story goes that Douglas saw this hand fly overhead, and the crew of his ship unsuccessfully tried to retrieve it.

It is apparently this hand that’s haunting Nautical Nellie’s kitchen.

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Waiting for the Flood

Right next door to Nautical Nellie’s is Red Fish Blue Fish, another fine seafood restaurant. It is also the former old Customs House, built in 1875 and still standing to this day. At the time, the customs house was generally hated by Victoria’s population because it was a symbol of broken promises. When BC joined Confederation in 1871 Victoria was promised a railway, but the terminus ended up in Vancouver instead. I’m not really clear how politicians expected the train to cross the water, but hey. Worse, the customs house took a cut from all the commerce coming into Victoria—and there was a lot—and sent it out to faraway Ottawa.

That’s not the ghost story, that was just a bit of history to put us in the mood. And honestly, as a tourist I do appreciate all these little tidbits of Victoria history. But here’s the ghost story:

Emily Carr (yes, that Emily Carr) was born in 1871, the same year BC became part of Canada, not far from where the customs house would be built. As a young child (it’s said) she hung out on the docks in this very spot by the customs house, listening to tall tales from an… uncle? family friend? I don’t remember and my notes aren’t clear. Anyway, there was one particular story she loved, of a great wave coming in from the sea and washing over the buildings. She’d spend hours at the window (of the customs house, apparently) watching out for this fantasy tidal wave. It’s said she’s there to this day. The guide pointed out one window on the ground floor of the customs house, where a ghostly image of the child Emily may sometimes be seen.

Carr died on March 2^nd 1945, at the James Bay Inn, which at the time was operated as a hospital. It is said she still haunts room 115, where she died. I don’t remember what the guide said about apparitions in that rooms, but they’re probably not frightening. Incidentally, this means that Carr is haunting two places at the same time. This makes sense if you think of ghosts as echoes, projections, as opposed to disembodied consciousnesses, but the guide never brought that up—maybe hoping the group wouldn’t pick up on the apparent contradiction. I guess ghosts can be whatever you want them to be, and the more stories the better.

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The Steamship Valencia

We walked over to the north end of the wharf, and the guide related the sorry tale of the SS Valencia.

On January 22^nd, 1906, the Valencia was coming in from San Francisco when she got lost in the fog, hit a reef near Pachena Point and ran aground. Though they were in sight of land, the waves and cold meant that few of the crew made it to shore to signal for help. Rescue ships could not approach the wreck but managed to pick up some survivors in lifeboats. On January 24^th a large wave washed the wreck off the rocks, killing all remaining passengers on board. In all, out of the approximately 150 passengers and crew, only 37 men survived (and no women or children).

Since then, there have been a number of rumours and ghosts sightings of the Valencia or her dead crew. Sometimes the ship itself is seen reenacting its destruction; one time, a lifeboat is claimed to be found with skeletons on board but always disappears before an investigation can be mounted. According to the guide the Valencia “wants to be remembered”.

PS: interesting factoid, it seems the Valencia is the only ghost ship in the area.

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Cradles and Ley Lines

The supernatural isn’t all about suicides and tragic deaths. Some of it is positive. Songhees Point (opposite Laurel Point, and together with it forming the entrance to Victoria’s inner harbour) was known to the local people as “Place of the Cradle” or “Cradle-board.” This name came from the tradition of leaving infants’ cradles in that place as soon as they were old enough to walk, to give them luck and long life.

Then the guide went off on a tangent about Stonehenge; why is it there, out in the middle of nowhere? Turns out it aligns perfectly with other special landmarks, all the better to carry energy or something. Oh crap, I thought, he’s talking about ley lines.

Yes indeed. Did you know there’s a ley line in Victoria? It’s several city blocks wide (really) and about 5km long, stretching from Place-of-the-Cradle through Bastion Square, St. Andrew’s Cathedral, and ending at the 7th fairway of the Victoria Golf Course. No, really. Naturally, that fairway is haunted—by a woman who was murdered there, though my notes don’t have any juicy details.

I know what you’re thinking: do these places actually line up? Well, sure… as long as you accept that the ley line is “several blocks wide”. Songhees Point is almost exactly due west of Bastion Square. That might or might not be a problem, since the Square isn’t exactly aligned east-west, pointing more towards the Delta Victoria Inn. Likewise, St. Andrew’s is pretty much due east of Bastion Square, so those line up okay. But the golf course, and especially the 7th fairway (which I believe is at the southern end of the course, hugging the coastline), is way off. You’d really need to stretch to align that with the other 3 landmarks. The Oak Bay Marina is a much better fit, but I guess there aren’t any murder stories associated with it.

And really, in a city with such a rich history that kind of mystical math isn’t hard to do. Take a halfway regular street grid, a good mix of Native and colonial landmarks, give yourself enough leeway, and you’re good to go.

At this point we got away from the harbour and crossed into Bastion Square. The guide pointed out the Commerce Canoe, a recently-commissioned piece of art. It definitely looked like a reference to the old Songhees custom of burying their dead in canoes up in trees, but the guide hinted that there was more than that. The canoe, he said, pointed towards Laurel Point.

Part of another ley line? Did he get it confused with Songhees Point? Because the Commerce Canoe most definitely does not point towards Laurel Point, that’s too far south. As I remember it, and as my photo suggests, it’s pretty well aligned with the street, which means it points a bit north of due west.

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The Hanging Judge

The website advertised “narrow streets and back alleys of Old Town”, but up to that point, there hadn’t been any back alleys. Now that was about to change! Our guide first pointed out the BC Maritime Museum, which is—you guessed it—haunted. Many people have reported feeling pressure (not just slight, but a strong shove), seeing a strange “burly man”… sorry, my notes aren’t too clear on this. Bottom line: haunted. He took us on a side alley, turning only a couple times but that was enough to completely lose me. We ended up in a little courtyard behind the museum (I think), and there we went inside.

It was a little side room, with a dozen or so chairs, and some weird decor I’ll get to in a moment. We sat down and he regaled us with some old tales of the museum from when it was a courthouse and gallows. There was a particularly nasty judge, lots of hangings, and since we’re talking criminals here, a lot of them didn’t have anyone to claim their body, so they were buried on the premises.

The room we were in was either designed to play up the “ghost” theme, or else it was co-rented by a coven of cheap gothy Wiccans. The only illumination came from a couple windows and a couple lamps with very dark lampshades. In one corner was a sort of Hallowe’en graveyard display, with cardboard tombstones and a sad plastic skeleton with a missing leg.

One girl sitting by herself at the very back seemed… kind of spaced out. She looked either still cold or really nervous about the whole ghost thing, and I kept waiting for her to scream that she saw a ghost. Honestly, I couldn’t help wondering if she was a plant, there to ramp up the spooked-out atmosphere and thus make everybody else more likely to “see” something.

Nobody did, unfortunately, even those that went into the very dark corner that was lousy with ghost energy—or so the guide said. You’d be likely to feel physical pressure or strong tingling on the palms of your hands that you just rubbed with your thumbs. Unfortunately, that was kind of a bust too.

We went back out into the (comparatively better-lit) night for the last leg of our trip.

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Helmcken Alley

The big attraction here was the haunted well. It seems that in the spring of 1858, during the Gold Rush, a group of miners were camping out in what’s now Helmcken Alley, just outside the site of Fort Victoria. One of them lost a ladle (according to my notes) down the well, and bribed a boy to retrieve it, but the boy fell and died. The well remained, but was eventually covered by subsequent buildings until 1975, when it was rediscovered, then nicely bricked up and made the focal point of the lobby. This apparently ticked off the boy’s spirit and now he causes… actually, I’m not sure what, my notes don’t say. But it’s not good. Apparently if you look at night, or take pictures without a flash, you see… something. Which I thought was very silly, because what you’re seeing is reflections on the glass outside the lobby.

The alley just outside the building is also said to be haunted. Long ago, chain gangs used to march back and forth down this alley. One of them was murdered by the guards. Some say you can hear the clang of chains. Sometimes.

In Conclusion

Okay, so that was pretty entertaining, a nice way to spend an hour and a half in a city you’re not too familiar with. And aside from the supernatural stuff it was quite educational—gotta say, Victoria packed a lot of history in a mere century and a half. But for me, all the pseudo-scientific babble actually worked against suspending my disbelief, because I could spot the faulty logic. If it had been a straightforward “here’s what people are saying, here’s what they believe” tour, or a bunch of way over-the-top tales of tragic deaths and vengeful spirits, it would have been easier to swallow. Oh, well. So when I get another chance, I doubt I’ll go on another tour to try different routes.

Skeptics in Victoria

It was totally a last-minute thing. Some of the the Skeptics in the Pub crowd had been talking about a weekend trip to Victoria, but that had been scheduled for mid-July, then rescheduled to… later. Then, at New Bright Lights on Friday I heard that it had indeed been rescheduled, for that weekend. Well, fortunately my plans for the weekend had fallen through, so it was an easy decision. Rides, a place to stay, a clean pair of underwear in my bag, and I was good to go.

I figured I had to be back in Vancouver by noon because I was taking care of grass dropin volleyball and I couldn’t find someone else on such short notice. Then again, it would probably be raining, which let me off the hook. Then again again, what if it didn’t? Then again again again, you only live once.

So I was up early on a grey Saturday morning, off to take the ferry to Victoria. A few other skeptics were on board, so we hung out and—well, honestly, half the time we were all playing with our respective iPhones / iPads. But in a hanging-out sort of way.

Plans for the day were left deliberately vague. We had talked about going up to the Observatory, but that wasn’t happening in this weather. So, first order of business: lunch. Then, the Royal BC Museum. I’d only been there twice, and not for a long time. When was the Leonardo da Vinci exhibit? I think I was even still in school back then. So yes, a long time.

I went through all the exhibits: Natural History, First Nations, Century Hall, and took hundreds of pictures of the fossils, the skeletons, the bugs on pins, the sculptures, everything. I drank everything in, recording (or attempting to record) every single detail of my visit. Of course, most of my pictures didn’t turn out so great, and some just weren’t that interesting the day after. Why on earth did I take pictures of rows of dragonfly specimens—pretty though they were—and the signs identifying their species and sex? I mean, points for completeness, but I think I crossed a line somewhere.

Though if I did, I think the museum crossed it too. Now that I think about it, that exhibit is called “Behind the Scenes”, and all those shelves full of specimens and fossils and snakes in jars are supposed to give us a glimpse of science as it is actually practiced. Good job!

After a couple hours of this, a few of us went to see the IMAX movie on the Hubble space telescope. Frankly I was a bit scared of motion sickness—I’d had bad experiences in IMAX theatre—but everything was fine. And the movie itself? Awesome beyond words. I don’t know what impresses me more: the guts of the people who strap themselves to a giant controlled fireball to lift themselves out into the blackness of space, the ingenuity of the people who designed said fireball, the Hubble, and all the instruments to maintain it, or the breathtaking beauty of the universe as revealed through the telescope.

Some of the Hubble images, like the Pillars of Creation, are pretty common nowadays. Others, like Saturn’s Aurora Australis, a little less common. But what this movie showed us was beyond anything I’d ever seen, beyond the wildest sci-fi because it’s not just beautiful and awesome, it’s also true. That faraway stellar nursery (whose name I forget, could have been the Orion Nebula) whose newborn stars have carved out a deep canyon in the surrounding gas with their fierce solar winds; the faraway galaxies, pretty spirals or weird distorted shapes; a fantastic assortment of light and colour, all in 3D.

And then the gift shop had to spoil it for us by selling healing crystals to realign your chakras and increase your spiritual energy or whatever else. I notice they don’t have any stone to cure your gullibility.

After that we went out to hang with Daniel Loxton (author of the excellent children’s book Evolution and editor of Junior Skeptic magazine) in his cluttered and awesome studio, where Transformers posters competed with dinosaur models and old UFOlogy books. After dinner I and a friend decided to go on a ghost walking tour of downtown Victoria—hey, I’d never been on one, and they promised “narrow streets and back alleys” and a bunch of ghosts. Sounds like fun even if you don’t believe in ghosts.

UPDATE: And here it is

New Bright Lights: Magic and the Lying Brain

The New Bright Lights lecture series started off this morning with the topic of memory, perception and self-delusion. Three fascinating presentations, though one really rubbed me the wrong way.

Lon Mandrake

Lon Mandrake learned magic at his father’s knee, and has cultivated a sense of wonder about the natural world since childhood. As a teacher, he uses magic tricks to both instill the same sense of wonder in his students, and to get them to think scientifically. Magic tricks are followed up with encouragement to come up with hypotheses and experiments, to try to get at the truth. As he stressed during the Q&A session (in response to a question about fake psychic vultures like Sylvia Browne), he prizes openmindedness. He was a little less emphatic in condemning that evil harpy than I’d like, but sure, I’ll go along with it.

He performed a couple of amusing tricks (one of which went wrong, but the subject was a good sport), but it would have been awesome if he’d focused more on science-related demos and less on mentalism.

Rob Hadley

Rob Hadley is a hypnotist, performing on stage, working on patients in a therapy setting, as well as consulting for video game companies to make the gaming experience more immersive. He talked for a bit about the theory of hypnosis, how it was just an altered state of consciousness, with no real trick or magic to it, and then brought a few people from the audience up on stage to be hypnotised. That was kind of fun, and I for one let myself go with the “you are feeling very relaxed, your eyelids are very heavy” bit; out of the four audience members only one really went under, which looks pretty much par for the course.

The really worrying part came when he told us about a patient of his who he’d helped get rid of her budding alcoholism with a little hypnosis… and a homeopathic pill. Immediately the row behind me (all CFI skeptics) started grumbling. The grumbling got worse when Hadley defended homeopathic medecine, arguing that the pill he gave was meant to relax but he’d never told his patient that, therefore it couldn’t be the placebo effect, and concluding with “It just works.” During the Q&A one audience member really laid into him, calling out his, quote, “ignorance of medicine” and lack of ethics. Hadley got defensive (which… is understandable), but couldn’t defend his use of homeopathy except by vaguely quoting some UK studies which shows an efficacy far above the placebo effect.

While we’re talking about ethics, another audience member questioned why he consulted to make some games more immersive, thus making it more likely for players to get addicted, while also curing addictive behaviour. Hadley replied that he worked to make games more enjoyable, and while he agreed that some people would abuse them, he couldn’t be responsible for players with addictive personalities. Which I guess is fair, though still troubling.

Rob Teszka

Rob is a cognitive psychologist working in UBC’s BARLab, and his talk is all about how our perception, memory, attention, and cognition in general is way less reliable than we’d like to think. His talk was just an entertainingly presented string of studies, from the Adelson illusion to that famous video of the gorilla (a new one, actually, with more unexpected details, because too many people had seen the old one), to that guy with the severed corpus callosum (which I’d seen before, but was still damn cool). The brain’s a weird thing, and I’m glad there are people studying it like this!

PZ Myers in Vancouver

Biology professor and godless liberal PZ Myers was in town last Friday to give two lectures: one at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, in the afternoon, one at UBC in the evening. The advertised title for both was “Atheism in the Scientific Battleground”, but the focus in each was a little different.

Speaking in Abbotsford Prof. Myers focused on how religion, as an attempt to understand and gain knowledge about the world, has been a complete failure. It has never given us useful insights about the world, has never competed with science. He went on to give a few examples, starting with developmental biology (his specialty, after all): the Church-favoured preformation theory (ie: that beings already existed fully-formed in either sperm cells or ova and only needed to grow bigger) was only laid to rest in the 19th century when new scientific findings led to the conclusion that embryos emerge from an unformed mass of cells through a complex process.

“As you know, I’m a fairly aggressive atheist. Because somebody has to be.”

Yet these findings—at least in humans—is still not really accepted by pro-life folks. To them, since life and identity begin at conception, even a fertilised egg cell is already a full-fledged human being. PZ showed us pro-life billboards spouting inane platitudes such as embryos having ears and a nose at 3 weeks, therefore abortion is wrong. Mind you, these posters never show actual embryos, only cute smiling toddlers. And they don’t mention that though embryos at 3 weeks do have little bumps and ridges that will develop into actual ears and facial features, they also have proto-gills and tails.

Myers argues that it’s social science which must decide who’s protected. But religion has failed to provide good answers, and “life begins at conception and barely-humanoid embryos are already cute little babies” is not a good answer.

And then there’s evolution. I don’t think I need to go into too much detail about creationism, or the Creation Science Museum in Kentucky where PZ rode a triceratops, but let’s just say that PZ’s thesis holds up there too. The Biblical creation story is, quote, “Zoology written by a guy who doesn’t care about zoology”.

Lest people believe he’s always singling out Christianity, PZ had a few words about Islam—Quranic astronomy and Quranic embryology, both of which are quite worthless. There was one Muslim in the audience, who argued that Mulsims believe in God and evolution, and that Muhammed wrote about the Big Bang, but these are exactly the same arguments used by fundies desperate to see science in the Old Testament: interpreting vague bits of a creation story in light of current scientific theories. Nothing new here.

(Incidentally, this was my first time at UFV. It’s a pretty little campus and, even though I got there late, I’m glad I made the 90+ min trek from downtown. Snapped a few photos for your pleasure, including a killer view of Mount Baker.)

There are good reasons to be dogmatic about evolution.

The UBC lecture focused more on atheism. In fact, the title in his slides was “Science and Atheism: Natural Allies.” PZ started off talking about evolution, and how at this point nothing could prove it wrong. It’s never going to happen. Why? The theory certainly isn’t complete, there are still many unanswered questions and new data being discovered all the time. But it is not a tentative hypothesis. It’s a solid, well-established theory that’s withstood 150 years of criticism. If somehow some fantastic new findings came along that revolutionised the field, it would not lead to the death of evolution. It would lead to a more complete theory that would include the present one as a special case, just as the theory of relativity includes Newtonian mechanics as a special case.

So yes, there are good reasons to be dogmatic about evolution.

Next, he asked: what would convince us that God exists? Weeping statues, Jesus or the Virgin Mary appearing on burnt toasts, a vision of a 900 ft. tall Jesus? But all these things have non-divine explanations, including (in the last case) “I’m going out of my mind.” So it looks like there’s no way to prove God exists (or, to be fair, does not exist). So given that, what does it mean to be an atheist? The dictionary definition’s no help, since it only talks about belief, or lack of, or belief in lack of. But there must be a reason for disbelief, just as there is for belief.

The atheism PZ is endorsing is based on scientific thinking. This is a positive thing, unlike popular perceptions of atheism, based on rebellion or nihilism or what have you. Science, when you get right down to it, is an error-correction mechanism for our flawed and easily-fooled brains, which evolved to find food to eat, avoid being eaten, and try to get laid. They were not evolved to write sonnets, build space shuttles or ponder quantum mechanics. Key to scientific thinking is the requirement for empirical evidence, plus rigorous and open reasoning.

Not to take away from PZ’s eloquence, but Terry Pratchett, Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart said it best in The Science of Discworld II:

This, then, is science. Questioning authority. Complicity between theory and experiment. And being within a community of like-minded people to question your work. Preferably accompanied by a conscious awareness of all of the above, and gratitude to your friends and colleagues for their criticisms. And what’s the aim? To find timeless truths? No, that’s asking too much. To stop frail humans from falling for plausible falsehoods? Yes—including those of people who at least look and sound just like you. And to protect people from their willingness to believe a good story, just because it sounds right and doesn’t upset them.

Oh, and after the lecture a bunch of us went for a bit and a drink at Moose’s Down Under downtown. At one point, the conversation somehow wandered into the topic of tentacle sex. (Why? FOR SCIENCE!) Did you know that Pharyngula comes up on the second page when you google “tentacle sex”? It’s true!

Vancouver Skepticamp

That was a really awesome day. I’d never gone to a Skepticamp before, had only heard about it a few weeks before, and didn’t really know what to expect. I was sort of imagining a big convention, sort of thing, with panels so I could pick and choose which brilliant presenter to study at the knee of. But no, it all took place in one auditorium at UBC, from 10AM to 6:30 (with a lunch break), an audience of about 80 people, and 16 presenters (more if you count the Radio Free Thinker people separately) expounding on a wide range of topics, from the scientific to the social to the philosophical.

That was a really awesome day. I’d never gone to a Skepticamp before, had only heard about it a few weeks before, and didn’t really know what to expect. I was sort of imagining a big convention sort of thing, with panels so I could pick and choose which brilliant presenter to study at the knee of. But no, it all took place in one auditorium at UBC, from 10AM to 6:30 (with a lunch break), an audience of about 80 people, and 16 presenters (more if you count the Radio Free Thinker people separately) expounding on a wide range of topics, from the scientific to the social to the philosophical.

It’s always a thrill to be in an explicitly skeptical space, where everybody’s speaking the same language, and you don’t have to worry about offending or confusing people by talking about “woo” or “the FSM” or “argument from ignorance” or whatnot. But even aside from that, and especially seeing as it was billed as a community participation event where anyone could register as a speaker, the level of polish was generally quite high and with just a couple of exceptions I really enjoyed the presentations. They were informative, funny, inspiring or infuriating, sometimes all four at once.

The best part of the event for me, though, wasn’t so much the talks, but the Twitter conversation happening in parallel; a half a dozen of us shooting comments back and forth, looking up and posting links, and it was so exhilarating! I’d never been part of such an online conversation, with so many interesting people who had been strangers a minute before. I felt like I was contributing to something greater than me, something important, unlike short back-and-forths in Facebook statuses.

Or maybe I’m overdramatizing this. I don’t care; it was a rush, and I can’t wait for my next opportunity. At least now I’ve figured out how to use hash tags. And another thing I’ve learned: next time I’ll be sure to bring a portable charger or something. Oh, my poor battery! That might explain why the twittering slowed way down in the afternoon; I guess everybody’s laptops and phones were running dry.

I’ll just post some thoughts on a few of the presentations, because otherwise we’d be here all week.

Fred Bremmer: a demonstration of Charpentier’s Illusion
Dr. Steve Wiseman: The Troubled Relationship between Psychiatry and the Church of Scientology
James Bernath: Private programs for going into space
Greg Bole: Defending Darwin
Shannon Rupp: Rational Journalism
Dr. Jaymie Matthews: Who Needs Paranormal?
Gerry Armstrong: Scientology

Fred Bremmer: a demonstration of Charpentier’s Illusion

Basically, this involves underestimating the mass of a large but light object (in this case, an empty styrofoam cooler) against a smaller object (medicine bottles partly filled with copper shot). There are various theories about why we do this, but it’s very predictable, and in the end only three people in the entire audience got the mass right. Actual masses of the medicine bottles: here. What the audience perceived: here

The moral of the story? Skeptics, being human, aren’t free of biases and flawed perceptions. But we are more aware of them, and more willing to subject them to rigorous reality checks.

Dr. Steve Wiseman: The Troubled Relationship between Psychiatry and the Church of Scientology

Wow, that was some impressive airing out of LRon Hubbard’s dirty laudry, some of which I knew—that Hubbard was kind of a dismal failure at everything until he lucked into the Dianetics scam—some of which I didn’t: where did he first publish an essay on Dianetics? A cheesy sci-fi magazine. Awesome. Or should I say, “Astounding”? Plus, some interesting history about early psychiatric pharmacology, and how some of those successes seem to be directly linked to the rise of Scientology and LRon’s paranoia.

James Bernath: Private programs for going into space

Mr. Bernath is very skeptical of the viability of privately-funded space flight, because so far they haven’t gotten anywhere near what government programs have achieved. Which… I don’t think is a fair conclusion. I agree that there are tremendous technical problems, especially if you want to transport humans into deep space (or, hell, even as far as Mars). Not that humans can’t get there, of course, but casual tourists are right out. We won’t have a Mars Hilton on the Valles Marineris anytime soon. Two parts of his presentation grabbed me, though:

Bernath also dismissed the idea of space elevators, since he saw too many problems just with getting the damn things up, not to mention docking spacecraft at the top. But my view is that since Arthur C. Clarke could imagine them, I believe they’ll be a reality some day, so nyah! Which is perfectly objective and rational, totally not magical thinking in any way. Really. Shut up.
He brought a few interesting space artefacts to pass around. The best was a fuel tank from a downed Soviet satellite, which crashed in a Saskatchewan farm in 1981. Doesn’t look like much, a dark metallic sphere, with a weird nipple-like bit where reentry caused it to melt slightly. But it used to be up in space! I held in my hand something that floated in orbit high above the Earth! That’s… really fucking cool.

Greg Bole: Defending Darwin

Greg Bole is a Darwin impersonator. Didn’t think there was such a thing as a Darwin impersonator? Yeah, neither did I. I guess they get most of their business at events such as the Cambridge Darwin Festival. (Too bad Bole didn’t give his talk in costume, though.) The focus of his speech was on Ray Comfort (he of the banana as proof for God—no, it’s no better than the Babel Fish) and his plan last year to distribute copies of The Origin of Species, with a special new introduction. Of course, Bole points out, Comfort’s spiel is really nothing new. It’s just the same tired old canards creationists have been trotting out for decades. An audience member asked him if creationists have advanced any new arguments, in light of recent advances in genomics or paleontology. No, he said, it’s always the same old crap, maybe dressed it up a little (ie: Intelligent Design) but essentially unchanged.

Shannon Rupp: Rational Journalism

Rupp, a journalist herself, says, “Only journalists are in the business of journalism. Newspapers are in the business of eyeballs.” Editors and publishers don’t care about accuracy, or even truth, as long as it gets people buying their papers—and thus making advertisers happy, which is where their business really lies. Checking facts costs money, and it’s the easiest thing to cut because not many people notice, and fewer care. Besides, writing puff pieces is much safer since advertisers don’t get alienated, readers don’t get alienated, and you won’t get sued. in short, the whole system is set up to penalise good journalism and reward sloppy, shallow writing.

But, Rupp warns, don’t just blame the evil media and evil advertisers. Schools and universities, which should be in the business of educating, are also peddling woo and confusing students with pseudoscience. Just as a for instance: Royal Roads University offering a course on astrology. The university gets more money, but also gets inextricably linked with the astrologers and entrail readers and whatnot. The latter get recognition and prestige, while the university’s reputation gets tarnished.

Dr. Jaymie Matthews: Who Needs Paranormal?

Ah yes, Jaymie Matthews. I remembered him from a CFI talk he gave a year ago, about the MOST deep-space telescope. It’s so obvious that he loves his work, because it’s cool science and because it reveals so much of the beauty of the universe. How many exometeorologists—ie: people figuring out weather patterns on extrasolar planets—do you know? One line he said really stuck with me: “Paranormal is the new normal; normal is the new paranormal.” Paranormalists’ myths and imaginations are really very small and petty when you come right down to it. Especially when it’s Nazi-flavoured occult crap being peddled to suckers. Reality, as revealed through science, is the thing that’s mindbogglingly weird and crazy and enchanting.

Gerry Armstrong: Scientology

This is the personal account of an ex-Scientologist who has been persecuted by the Church of Scientology for decades now. His talk—the attempts on his life, the harassment, the insane lawsuits—just drove home how disgustingly evil the Clams are. Read more on gerryamstrong.org

In conclusion

I had such an amazing time, and I’ve already marked down the next Skepticamp’s date (October 23^rd)! Meantime, here are more pictures!

I got my picture taken with James Randi!

The Amazing Randi was invited to UBC to give the keynote address for Science Week 2009. I decided to attend even though it was a weeknight, and really out of my way. And the map I printed out from Google Maps still didn’t keep me from getting lost. Health Sciences Mall is a street, my ass.

Check it, kids!

But it was totally worth it. Randi is well in his seventies now, I think, but still going strong, and as a great showman as always. He demonstrated a few tricks (both sleight-of-hand and mentalist) to educate and entertain, and of course went over the old standbys: Peter Popoff and Uri Geller and Sylvia Browne. I’d read about all that, of course, both on his site and others, but it was a different experience to hear about it from The Man himself, in an auditorium full of other skeptics.

Nice job as always, Mr. Randi. Here’s to many more years or debunking frauds.

Take Us To Your Leader

A little while ago, during our usual post-Taijiquan-class lunch, the conversation somehow briefly turned to UFOs. I don’t remember exactly what was said, but our teacher brought up some UFO video clips on YouTube that he found intriguing; he said he had a hard time seeing how they could be faked, and wanted my thoughts. I was surprised he’d bring this up as worthy of consideration, since he’s a huge skeptic.

A little while ago, during our usual post-Taijiquan-class lunch (and let me make a totally free and unsolicited plug for Craig’s Cafe, whose yummy food, excellent service and eclectic music have won our loyalty for years), the conversation somehow briefly turned to UFOs. I don’t remember exactly what was said, but our teacher brought up some UFO video clips on YouTube that he found intriguing; he said he had a hard time seeing how they could be faked, and wanted my thoughts. I was surprised he’d bring this up as worthy of consideration, since he’s a huge skeptic. Then again, he is the one who recommended What The Bleep Do We Know to me, so maybe he has a bit of a blind spot for some kinds of pseudoscience. I watched the videos as promised and gave him a critique of each, which I’m reproducing here in slightly edited form.

I knew about the alien autopsy from a few years back, but this painfully boring alien interview was news to me. Sadly not news were the mounds of sloppy logic, lies and half-truths, shallow New Age mysticism, shoddy special effects and spooooooky music. I don’t know who among the interviewees was in on the scam, but it doesn’t matter. This is all crap I’ve heard before, mostly in connection to the excellent computer game Deus Ex, whose plotlines involved conspiracy theories about MJ-12, Area 51 and the Bavarian Illuminati.

Prophet Yahweh looks like a grade-A nutbar (and, from what I can tell, has now dropped the UFO summoning schtick and fallen back on religious cultish end-times preaching). That thing he “summoned” could be almost anything; note, though, that it seems to be floating lazily in the wide shots, zipping about only when the camera zooms in on it. But this “zipping” is totally consistent with a shaky camera, especially since there are no clouds against which to measure the motion. Verdict: it’s a balloon.

Incidentally, though the announcer says the TV station chose the time and place for the summoning, there’s no telling what kind of negotiations went on behind the scene. For example, how much notice did they give Yahweh, so he or an associate could set up at the park? What restrictions did the kook give them, and how much veto power did he have? When Yahweh applied for James Randi’s $1M challenge he initially set out a lot of very silly conditions. So if the station was going through a slow news day or, worse, a producer was already a believer in this loony, I could totally see them agreeing to all those things and more, then not telling the viewers just to make it look more miraculous.

This looks like a crashed weather balloon. The resolution’s horrible, but there seems to be something hanging under the “saucer,” and something else trailing behind. Also, it looks like it’s fuller at the beginning, becoming flatter after the bounce without losing its basic shape (i.e.: nothing’s broken off). The trailing stuff might be equipment, but is more likely escaping gas.

This was a commercial for last year’s Sarajevo International Film Festival. Likewise, this was a commercial for scifi.com

This very short clip is quite cool. Amazing what the they can do with remote-control toys nowadays, isn’t it? We’re seeing it right from the side, so we don’t what its horizontal cross-section is. Most likely, it looks like one of these things.

This seems to be part of some woo-ish documentary on Nazi experiments with antigravity, or something. Googling a bit, I found out the British guy is called Nick Cook, and claims to have found evidence for some sort of Nazi super-weapon. There’s also a bit about the Philadelphia Experiment. The engineer, Tim Ventura, seem to have similar far-out ideas about antigravity and such—which is a shame, since the hovering dealie we see in this clip really does work, and looks to be based on real-life science.

This one, I admit, is the most startling of the bunch. But it seems even some UFO nuts think it’s a model or CGI, so the chances are pretty good there’s a down-to-earth explanation.

So there you go. Pretty slim pickings, isn’t it, if you’re looking for evidence of extraterrestrials—the sci-fi equivalent of weeping statues, or seeing the Virgin Mary on a Chicago underpass. Then again, to the true UFO believers (not including my Taiji teacher, incidentally) mere evidence isn’t too important. What matters is that they want little green men (or little grey men) to be real, and this makes them unable to properly distinguish reality from bullshit. They let their imaginations (fed by cheap sci-fi and a bare minimum of genuine science) run wild, seeing “orbs” in dust motes when they take flash photography, and a potential extraterrestrial invader or anal prober in every unexplained light when they drive at night. Simply because, to them, a world with those beings is more exciting than a world without.

I can relate, though. I’ve been a huge sci-fi/fantasy fan since I was a young ’un, devouring hundreds of books and short stories (good, bad and in between) over the years. Also, I was playing Dungeons & Dragons before I turned ten, and kept it up regularly from my early teens well into university. I tried my hand at writing a couple of times—nothing memorable, just the kind of cliché sword-and-sorcery an enthusiastic but inexperienced teen would write, though it was fun. And the best part: for years I actually fantasized about being contacted by aliens. Basically, the story went that I was one of a select group of young humans, taught various mental powers and given access to ultra-sophisticated technology. We were the next stage of human evolution, destined to change the world and eventually lead humankind to a bold future amongst the stars.

Those fantasies—naive and derivative though they were—held all my dreams of a better life, a better world, even ones I couldn’t articulate or admit to consciously. Most obviously, there were purely self-centered wishes of being selected by higher beings, being given great abilities, being special, which is just what a kid with abysmally low self-esteem wants. Then there were Star Trek-inspired visions of a universe where diverse alien species lived in harmony, and humanity could eventually grow up. And though I was still deep in the closet, my fantasy self was bisexual, with a committed girlfriend (in an open relationship) but enjoying occasional casual sex with guys. But for the longest time I just didn’t get the message: the truth about me—the real truth, not fantasy truth—was buried under miles of denial. I won’t speculate why I was bi and not gay in these fantasies: maybe I couldn’t accept not liking girls? Maybe deep down I saw bisexuality as the ideal situation? Who knows?

So yes, I know what it’s like to yearn for an exciting universe full of magic and wonder, so unlike the universe I lived in everyday. But even then I knew that when I opened my eyes, when I turned off the TV, the real world was still there. No amount of mere wishing could change it, and that’s how it should be. It took me a long time to realize that the real world is much better than any fantasies I can dream up. Yes, it’s more frustrating, more complex, less predictable. But it’s also more rewarding. Sure, I can’t travel to other star systems, or move objects with the power of my mind. There’s bigotry and war and general stupidity. But doing something about it, working to improve the world and myself is ultimately more satisfying that dreaming of benevolent aliens. Unless you actually start believing in those aliens, despite the evidence, and—fortunately—I could never manage that level of self-delusion.

Dianetics at the PNE

I went to the PNE last night, for the first time in a couple of years. Amongst the numerous vendors of household implements, cheap wallets and miracle stain removers at the marketplace were a few psychics, promising insight on your future, love life and financial situation for a modest fee. And, a Dianetics booth. The people there—who, it must be said, didn’t seem at all creepy or crazy—kept asking people if they wanted a stress test. I heroically resisted the urge to ask them how their pseudo-therapy was working on Tom Cruise.

One of my friends did get his palms read, purely for entertainment purposes. Which I considered doing myself, but I didn’t want to encourage the psychics by giving them my attention and money. (Mind you, I do occasionally buy the Weekly World News myself, when it has an especially outrageous cover story. The Garden of Eden being found in Colorado is one of my favourites. Apparently they even found two skeletons, one male and one female. Of course, the male skeleton was missing a rib!)

They printed out his chart—actually, two charts, one for the present and near future, one for the more distant future—which included some pretty diagrams of all the lines and regions on the hand, their connections to astrological signs and so on. His computer-generated scores in various areas of life (a) were really not that accurate, and (b) seemed to change more or less randomly between the two charts. But I guess the suckers who believe this stuff will assign special meaning to it anyways, ignore or forget the misses, and think they’ve spent their money wisely.