In Which Adam Savage is Terrifying and Still Hilarious

And now for something completely different.



Hat tip to Phil Plait.

Russell Glasser Joins the Fray

Russell Glasser, co-host of The Atheist Experience television show and all-around cool guy, has waded into the rapidly expanding mire that is swirling 'round Phil Plait's "Don't be a Dick" speech. From the AE blog:

We do attack ideas, but we attack them in a way that sometimes offends people. The point, though, is that the people who are taking offense are often doing so due to unreasonable beliefs. Like PZ Myers and his "frackin' cracker." It's less about the offensive language and more about the fact that certain people believe the cracker is the body of Jesus -- which it clearly isn't -- and they are willing to terrorize and intimidate people who don't treat it with the respect due to a magical cracker -- which it isn't. It's about the fact that people should be allowed to draw cartoons with Mohammed as a character -- clearly an activity that harms no one except by annoying them -- without receiving death threats.

Agreed. If you have unreasonable expectations in terms of "politeness" (i.e., expectations that are not based upon reason), then you're liable to be offended. Enjoy! You're welcome to follow whatever tenets and strictures that your religion imposes upon you—but the moment that you try to force someone else to abide by your religious doctrines, you're being an ass, and you're wrong. You can't prevent a person from drawing your prophet. You can't prevent a person from sticking a nail through a wafer of wheat. You can't prevent two people who love each other from marrying. You just can't do that.

But Phil Plait would also like to strengthen his case by sneakily conflating two things. On one hand, we have posts that say "All Christians are Retards," a statement which is both dickish and false. On the other hand, we have PZ Myers throwing his cracker in the trash. By conflating the two, we can be left with the impression that PZ Myers calls all Christians retards, when in reality the two acts are not equivalent.

It just seems to me that way too often, saying "Don't be a dick" is actually code for "Shut up and accept it when other people are dicks to you."

Now, I like PZ Myers a lot. He can be a little dickish at times—I think that this is true. But, as I said in my response to Phil's talk, there is a difference between being blunt and being a dick:

I've seen people being fairly blunt, but I think that that definitely has its place. I don't think that the phrase "God is imaginary" should be considered especially offensive, for example (and if it offends you, I quite frankly don't care), but it certainly is blunt.

The problem is, as far as I can see, Phil didn't actually "strengthen his case by sneakily conflating" PZ Myers' desecration of a communion wafer with posts that call Christians offensive names. This was the only post by Phil Plait that turned up when I did a cursory Google search for "myers wafer" against the Bad Astronomy domain:

The Vatican has released a previously secret list of sins. The list itself is not terribly surprising, of course. What shocked me was the way it listed relative importance of these sins: desecrating a Eucharist (the cracker Catholics believe is the transubstantiated body of Christ) is considered a worse sin than murder or even genocide.

I had to read that part twice to make sure I had understood it, but the meaning is pretty clear. What PZ Myers did was worse, according to this doctrine, than what Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot did.

I understand that if you are a devout Catholic, you truly and fervently believe the cracker has become the actual body of Christ. But honestly, is spitting it out — an example specifically stated in the article — or even driving a rusty nail through it a worse sin than actually murdering millions of living people? I’ve read the Bible, and from the Sermon on the Mount it doesn’t sound to me that Jesus was someone who would think that way.

Maybe I'm reading that wrong, but Phil doesn't seem to be coming down hard against PZ. It's quite possible that Russell has some information that currently escapes me, but I can't find any reference to Phil calling PZ's desecration "dickery", and I frankly don't understand why Russell thinks Phil is being sneaky.

As I've said previously, I agree with a lot of what Phil said, but I don't think that we're overrun with dicks:

I don't really doubt Phil's premise, but I would have liked to hear a few substantive, representative examples of such discourtesy. I understand that he intentionally didn't single anyone out, but such examples would prove beneficial to ensure that everyone is on the same page. The problem, I think, is that "being a dick" is fairly subjective.

In terms of "vitriol and venom", I honestly haven't seen a lot of it firsthand.

Perhaps dickery is a problem among rank-and-file Internet skeptics, but I don't think that it's a major issue with the well-known voices in the skeptic movement.

So, where do we stand?

It seems to me that Phil make several good points with regard to tone and I find his endorsement of Wheaton's Law fine and laudable—these are things that are important to keep in mind during discussions with believers of all stripes. That said, I agree with Russell that we may have a bit of a tempest in a teapot on our hands, for while Phil gives good advice the implication seems to be that we have a dangerous proliferation of dicks on our hands. (Did I mention that this post would have mild NSFW content combined with bizarre imagery? Well, I should have.) And that doesn't seem quite right, either.

For the record, not only do I support PZ Myers' right to desecrate that communion wafer, I think that given the context it was actually the right thing to do.

2012

Granted, I'm beating a dead horse.

I'm not going to get deep into the 2012 mythos, but I did want to make one point that I don't believe I've heard anyone mention, yet.

This is the general structure of the 2012 argument that I tend to encounter:

1. The Mayans were excellent astronomers and mathematicians.
2. The Mayans predicted that the world would end on 21 December 2012.
3. ∴ The world will end on 21 December 2012.

One of the many problems with this argument is that its conclusion is a non sequitur: it does not follow.

I'll grant that, for their time, the Mayans were excellent astronomers and mathematicians, and for the sake of the argument I'll be generous and I'll even grant that they predicted the end of the world (which they quite clearly didn't). But even assuming both premises are true does nothing to demonstrate that the conclusion of the argument is true! That's because this argument is not only unsound, it's logically invalid.

The Mayans are excellent mathematicians and astronomers. The Mayans (for the sake of the argument) predicted the apocalypse. Does that mean that the apocalypse will occur in 2012? Do people really believe the Mayans, being quite good at math, without the benefit of modern scientific instrumentation, were somehow magically able to see into the future? Because that's honestly what this argument seems to boil down to.

Proponents of the 2012 myth try to swaddle their arguments in science, but when push comes to shove it's really an argument from prophecy.

And I don't believe in magic.

TAM, Day One: Phil Plait

This is the eleventh in a series of posts discussing The Amaz!ng Meeting 8, which took place at South Point Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, 8–11 July 2010. You can find the previous post here.

Phil's talk was controversial, to say the least. It's fairly easy to get the Internet riled up, and many skeptics have a tendency to be contrary at the best of times—but, all the same, I think that his point has been unfairly represented, in many cases by people who didn't attend (and thus were not privy to) the talk. So consider yourself warned: this post will contain more commentary than usual.

I'm going to jump right into my summary of the presentation before I get to the commentary and a brief discussion of the backlash that followed. Bear in mind that what I write is (as always) probably more of a reflection of what I got out of the talk than it is a real summary of the presentation, so if you'd rather listen to the talk in full (and you would), you're in luck! The JREF has just posted it, in its entirety, online:



Phil Plait starts us off with an apology (always a good sign): while he usually speaks off the cuff, this time he wrote the whole thing down ahead of time, because he's tired of having what he says misinterpreted. (Spoiler alert: it didn't help.) Typically, he talks about astronomy, but not today. Today, he is concerned by what he calls "some alarming developments" within the skeptical movement.

Skepticism is hard. ... How do you convince someone they're not thinking clearly when they're not thinking clearly?

Phil states that studies have shown that debunking claims will often later reinforce those same ideas. I'm sure that we've all seen this happen up close and personal, and several psychological papers have been published that bear this out.

No magic. No afterlife. No authoritative moral father figure in the sky. No happily ever after. This is a tough sell.

And it's made tougher by the fact that our society stresses faith. "Belief is the highest ideal," Phil tells us. "Clap if you want Tinkerbell to live." There is a smattering of applause, after which Dr. Plait gives the audience a wry look. "Congratulations. Because of you the Cottingley Fairies are still alive." Laughter.

"On a brighter note, homeopathy may be diluting itself out of existence." But at the same time, pertussis is on the rise and polio is coming back.

"Let me ask you this: What is the goal of the skeptical, critical thinking movement?" In some cases we need to debunk specific examples: specific bunk is worth debunking—but that's not what this is about.

Phil tells us that he's not here to talk about using the toolbox: he wants to talk about shop safety. He opines that rather than relying on the arguments, skeptics are becoming increasingly prone to vitriol and venom.

"Hubris is running rampant. Egos are out of check." The audience is told that demeanor is important. There are more believers than skeptics, and to be quite honest our brains aren't wired for this whole "critical thinking" thing. Even the best idea in the history of humanity is useless unless we can communicate it, and how we go about that communication will have a huge impact on whether it will take. Audience members are asked to think about times in the past when they have changed their minds. "It wasn't overnight," Phil reminds us, "and it wasn't because someone got in your face and called you an idiot."

Insults can start to fly for a many reasons, one of which is frustration. As Mary Roach said, "Anger seeks a victim." It may make us feel better to take out our frustration on a believer, but in chess, how often do you sacrifice a piece for the good of the game?

Phil Plait suggests that you ask yourself this: What is your goal? What are you trying to do? "Is your goal to score a cheap point, or is your goal to win the damn game?"

He ends the talk with two simple pieces of advice:

1. Always ask yourself what your goal is. Is this going to help? Is this just to make myself feel better? Is this going to hurt my cause?
2. Don't be a dick.

Winning hearts and minds is our goal.

Although some were clearly upset by what Phil Plait had to say, he did receive quite the ovation at the end of his talk. Hal Bidlack was clearly pleased, as he is very fond of the big tent approach. "You can be a conservative," he says, "and still not want people to have their memories raped and their money stolen by Sylvia Browne."

I talked with Phil Plait about his presentation, afterward. I can tell you that he was not proposing that everyone was doing it wrong. He said to me that he recognised that a diversity of voices is just fine, even important.

What we're talking about is strategy, and you need to figure out what you're trying to achieve. The point is that for any given goal there will be an approach that works best, and it will work best regardless of whether it gives you an adrenaline high. If you're trying to convince a person, telling him or her flatly that he or she is wrong is unlikely to work—it is much more likely to result in defensiveness and hostility to the ideas being presented. That's just the way our brains seem to function.

Full disclosure: Phil is another one of my intellectual crushes (I cannot begin to describe how excited I am about his new MythBusters-meets-Cosmos series, Phil Plait's Bad Universe), so if you think that you detect some bias in my reporting... well, that'll happen.

So.

Don't be a dick. Wil Wheaton may not have said it first, and he may not have said it loudest, but for some reason I think that he deserves credit for it anyway. In any event, that was more or less what Phil Plait's talk boiled down to. Phil has actually been thinking about this topic for quite some time. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if you are (a) a skeptic and (b) a person with any friends, you have probably put at least cursory thought into the subject, as well. Here's what Phil said about it in 2009:

I sometimes have trouble in social situations because someone will say something that is perhaps not supported by reality, and I have wind up jumping right in. I don’t say they’re stupid or anything like that, but people identify with their ideas, so saying that an idea is wrong is basically saying they are wrong, and maybe even implying they’re stupid (or, more likely, they wind up inferring it).

Even when you try to be nice, some people are liable to take offence. That's okay—to some degree, it's inevitable. Steven Novella recently commented on this issue on Neurologica:

Where I find the conflict within the skeptical movement to be most persistent and unresolvable is in the personal choices that people make with respect to balances between the dictates of free speech and intellectual integrity (a consistent application of skepticism with no sacred cows) and the desire for courtesy, creating a friendly and collegiate environment, and presenting skepticism in a positive light.

Phil Plait is not unaware of the cloud of controversy that he's stirred up. Parts one and two of three planned posts discussing the aftermath of the talk are now available on Bad Astronomy. In part one he remarks:

Some were claiming they have a right to be dicks – I’m bemused by this, as of course you have that right. But that doesn’t mean it’s most effective, or that you should be one.

Yes. Many dissenters are framing this as a free speech issue, which it most definitely is not. Telling someone that their particular approach is counter-productive does not constitute censorship. Phil Plait is not suggesting that we should not be allowed to express our ideas in whatever manner that we choose—he is suggesting that we ought to consider the likely outcomes of what we're doing and weigh them against the outcomes that we actually desire.

Do I agree with him? Hell yes I do. In fact, I threw together a graph to illustrate the point:

What you should be doing is trying to accomplish your goal.

But it seems to me that sometimes "dickery" is warranted. There's room for both approaches, and picking your targets is important. When one is dealing with an individual true believer or with someone who is misguided or has been misled (a consumer of pseudoscience), I would agree with Phil that the gentler approach is more likely to yield the desired result. You probably won't get instant gratification, but more often than not it's about planting the seed of skepticism—it's unrealistic to expect the average person to turn on a dime.

But when one is dealing with a Deepak Chopra or a Sylvia Browne or a Kevin Trudeau (a purveyor of pseudoscience), it seems to me that the more aggressive approach is warranted. One is unlikely to convince these people (indeed, like as not many of them don't believe half of what they say), and turning them into rhetorical punching bags may serve a purpose.

So that's the line that I try to draw: I try to be gentle to the consumer of pseudoscience, but I get a little prickly toward the crackpots and confidence tricksters. Being a dick toward some poor sap who's been blinded by pseudoscience is probably not going to help anything.

But is anyone actually doing that?

Oh, probably. I mean, we're all dicks, sometimes. I don't really doubt Phil's premise, but I would have liked to hear a few substantive, representative examples of such discourtesy. I understand that he intentionally didn't single anyone out, but such examples would prove beneficial to ensure that everyone is on the same page. The problem, I think, is that "being a dick" is fairly subjective.

In terms of "vitriol and venom", I honestly haven't seen a lot of it firsthand. (Granted, I no longer read the comments on Pharyngula...) I've seen people being fairly blunt, but I think that that definitely has its place. I don't think that the phrase "God is imaginary" should be considered especially offensive, for example (and if it offends you, I quite frankly don't care), but it certainly is blunt. Then again, I'm skeptical enough to know that my personal experience doesn't generalise to the population at large.

One place that I definitely do see a lot of vitriol and venom is on the Internet, but it occurs to me that at least some of the perceived acerbity might be an error in interpretation. As my wife will attest, I often mount completely unsound ad hominem attacks on promoters of woo, but I think that the expression on my face and my tone of voice make it clear that these aren't meant to be serious arguments. But in a text-dominated format, such subtleties are difficult to express. When P.Z. Myers calls someone a "raving loon" (as he is prone to do), the tone that he intends when typing it may be anything from playfully chiding to incredulous to a barely coherent scream of rage. (Having spoken to the man, I think that the truth lies somewhere between the first two.)

At the same time, I do recognise that the impersonal nature of the Internet has led to some degeneration in the level of discourse, and that's even giving YouTube comments a free pass; people are willing to say things on the Internet that they certainly wouldn't even consider saying to another human being in person. Skaff Elias said it nicely on the Games with Garfield podcast (it was either episode 14 or 15):

The fact that someone's not going to leap across the table and punch you in the face—it's surprising how much that's actually a real constraint for people.

I have also occasionally been guilty of intentionally juxtaposing inflammatory content with straightforward, friendly delivery to draw people into an interesting discussion—this could easily be interpreted as being intentionally inflammatory. I'm thinking of the time that I cheerfully informed a coworker that I didn't believe that he had free will (not contra-causal free will, at any rate), or the time that, during a discussion about vat-grown meat, I asked my friends if they would try human meat if it were made readily available, hastily adding that I'd be delighted to do so (as long as some hickory-smoke barbecue sauce were ready to hand).

In some senses, I suppose that this would count as being a dick, but I think that it's mostly about startling people into thinking about things that they've never considered, before.

I'll give Phil the last word:

Again, to be clear, I did not say we should back down when confronted. I did not say we should be weak against ignorance. I did not say we shouldn’t be angry. I did not say we should be passionless.

In fact, I argued the exact opposite. We need our anger, or strength, and our passion.

For further reading on the subject:
P.Z. Myers at Pharyngula
Matt Dillahunty at The Atheist Experience
Ethan Clow at Skeptic North

And I'd especially recommend Team Skeptic's discussion on the most recent episode of Skepticality.

Finally, Phil provided a fairly exhaustive list of blog entries pro and contra his position in part two of his discussion on Bad Astronomy. And, wonder of wonders, I'm actually on the list! I'm the "Winnipeg skeptic" to whom he refers.

Years from now I'll be saying, "...and I knew Phil Plait before he was a TV star."

---

Edit: The discussion continues here.

TAM, Day One: Pamela Gay

This is the tenth in a series of posts discussing The Amaz!ng Meeting 8, which took place at South Point Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, 8–11 July 2010. You can find the previous post here. You can find the next post here.

Pamela Gay

When Pamela is asked what she does at a party, people are invariable taken aback. No one expects to meet a scientist. In 2007 in the United States, for every 10,000 people there were 2.6 scientists, 3.0 clergyfolk, and 41.3 lawyers.

Pamela Gay believes that involving citizens in science—an effort called, appropriately enough, "citizen science"—is not only important, but is also a realistic goal. Crowdsourcing works. The most prominent example of citizen science in her field is Galaxy Zoo, where countless members of the public have helped sort through millions of astronomical objects to classify them.

Galaxy Zoo led directly to the discovery of Hanny's Voorwerp, an unknown astronomical object, in 2007. The pun "Give peas a chance!" was responsible for the discovery of small green galaxies 100 times smaller than our own, but each with greater stellar mass than the Milky Way. Pamela encourages anyone interested to participate in the science of astronomy by helping to classify stellar objects, survey craters on the moon, or watch for solar storms. Here are some links!

Moon Zoo
Galaxy Zoo
Solar Stormwatch

I now do Galaxy Zoo classifications during my lunch break at work. I find that it's a good, fun way to relax, and although it seems to me that artificial neural networks ought to be able to do a fair job of classifying such things, they probably wouldn't enjoy it as much as I would.

Pamela goes on to talk about making a difference at small state schools, telling the audience, "There is a desperate need for scientific missionaries." In 2009 she was teaching a science class, cramming all of the science an elementary school teacher needs to know into 16 weeks. She was asked why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe, and she began, "After the Big Bang—" but got no further before the Ph.D. chemist teaching the class next to her interrupted. "The Big Bang?" he cried. "Aren't you a Christian?"

"The battle isn't just to keep creationism out of the classroom—it's to keep science in."

I like Pamela Gay quite a lot. She is legitimately concerned about the state of science education. Although I disagree with her assertion that skepticism has nothing to say about religious faith (I think that Matt Dillahunty does a fair job of representing her position, as well as those of other theistic skeptics, here), she not feel the need to overlay her religious beliefs onto the science that she teaches. Not only that, she actively opposes such intrusions. And that, I think, makes her a praiseworthy ally.

National Go Topless Protest

Let's just get this out of the way first: I'm in favour of equal rights and freedom of expression. It is trivially demonstrable, however, that one can be on the right side of an issue for the wrong reasons. GoTopless.org (caution: NSFW) provides just such an example Next Sunday, 22 August 2010, marks the date of a national go-topless protest:

We welcome everyone! GoTopless was founded by the Raelian Movement, which recognizes that life on Earth was created by advanced extraterrestrial scientists. These scientists, both male and female, used their mastery of genetic engineering to create humans in their own image (breasts included!).

Sexy.

(Tip of the, er, well... nipple to BoingBoing.)

TAM, Day One: Adam Savage

This is the ninth in a series of posts discussing The Amaz!ng Meeting 8, which took place at South Point Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, 8–11 July 2010. You can find the previous post here. You can find the next post here.

Adam Savage

I love Adam Savage—he's just one of those really cool people that I've been wanting to meet for years. I've never been the sort to attend conventions and the like, so I don't have many chances to hobnob with celebrities, but I've always felt that given the opportunity I would be perfectly capable of carrying on a normal conversation. Upon coming face to face with the fellow, however, I found myself unaccountably unable to put together a cogent sentence, much to my wife's amusement.

A brief aside: it was my wife who, when we were first dating, actually introduced me to MythBusters (I'd never had cable) and thus to Adam Savage. (If I remember correctly, the first episode that we watched together was the one in which Jamie and Adam attempted to determine whether running one would end up wetter if one were to run through the rain rather than walking.) I now had the opportunity to reciprocate, and (after untying my tongue) I had the pleasure of introducing Adam Savage to her.

Adam just has this effect on me, you know? He's one of those people up to whom I seriously look. (I hope that you'll excuse my absurd attempt to avoid ending that sentence with a preposition.) I try not to idolise people, but there are a few who are just such forces for good in the world that they make it truly difficult. This is why meeting Adam Savage, however briefly, was a major highlight of the conference for me. I'll never get to meet Richard Feynman or Carl Sagan, and that makes me sad, but Adam is in my mind a character of the same calibre: his excitement and enthusiasm for discovery is at once contagious and inspiring. The Winnipeg Skeptics will be hosting SkeptiCamp Winnipeg, Manitoba's first SkeptiCamp event, in October, and I will be presenting a talk tentatively titled "The Pleasure of Figuring Things Out". I have a feeling that Adam Savage will come up more than once.

But enough gushing.

Before beginning the Q&A session, Adam presented a speech that he'd delivered to the Harvard Humanist Society in April. You can read the full text at BoingBoing, but I'll quote some highlights:

I think one of the defining moments of adulthood is the realization that nobody's going to take care of you. That you have to do the heavy lifting while you're here. And when you don't, well, you suffer the consequences. At least I have. (And in the empirical study I'm performing about interacting with the universe, I am unfortunately the only test subject I have complete access to, so my data is, as they say, self-selected.) While nobody's going to take care of us, it's incumbent upon us to take care of those around us. That's community.

The fiction of continuity and stability that your parents have painted for you is totally necessary for a growing child. When you realize that it's not the way the world works, it's a chilling moment. It's supremely lonely.

So I understand the desire for someone to be in charge. (As a side note, I believe that the need for conspiracy theories is similar to the need for God.) We'd all like our good and evil to be like it is in the movies: specific and horrible, easy to defeat. But it's not. It's banal.

Adam briefly mentions that he was recently featured on the Nerdist podcast, where he performed stand-up comedy for the first time in his life. (And for those interested, the Nerdist podcast just did an episode featuring the entire current cast of MythBusters.)

Then the Q&A session began.

Things started off with a bang, when an Australian (I think) moon hoax proponent called the episode on the Moon Landing "a series of botched experiments". I seem to recall Phil Plait later commenting that the moon hoaxer was bothering him all weekend. (Phil's dissection of the Moon Hoax is required reading for skeptics: you can find it archived on the old Bad Astronomy site here.)

Adam dealt with the fellow with remarkable aplomb, and I say this not only because I obviously have quite the crush on him. "You sound quite hostile, so I'd say, 'Relax, what we do isn't science.' I'm biased by the fact that I know we were right in that episode, so you'll just have to take that." There was much laughter and applause.

The Q&A spun off in several different discussions from there, mostly centring around nitpicks of various MythBusters episodes. Adam mentioned w00tstock (which also featured Wil Wheaton, another really cool guy). For more information, head over to w00tstock's Wikipedia entry.

And then...

Announcements! Brace yourselves: we get a contractually-guaranteed five more years of MythBusters! Not only that, but Adam and Jamie are also going to be producing more shows for Discovery. (Adam assures us that, unfortunately, he can't do anything about the Ghost Hunters).

To wrap things up, the JREF auctions off a piece of the original duct tape bridge built for MythBusters. It's about six inches by six, and is signed by Adam and Jamie. After much running through the crowd showing it off, the piece sells for $650.

If you're just dying for more Adam Savage (and honestly, why wouldn't you be?), you can listen to him interviewed here for Geek a Week.

SMBC Presents: Debate Strategy

From the archives of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

Yoga is the name of super-consciousness!

Check out these Illustrations on Raja Yoga on Flickr—they're excellent.

Wink of the third eye to BoingBoing.

TAM, Day One: Joe Nickell

This is the eighth in a series of posts discussing The Amaz!ng Meeting 8, which took place at South Point Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, 8–11 July 2010. You can find the previous post here. You can find the next post here.

Joe Nickell

Joe Nickell is friendly and mildly self-deprecating, calling himself "the warm-up act for Adam Savage." He was an undercover detective for several years, and begins by briefly discussing the ethics of undercover (and thereby inherently deceptive) skeptical operations—they are, in his assessment, necessary, and do more good than harm.

He speaks about his investigation of Camp Chesterfield, and the tell-all book by confessedly fraudulent psychic M. Lamar Keene, entitled The Psychic Mafia. Nickell went in under the name Jim Collins (an homage to Houdini's assistant of the same name), and the results of his investigations were eventually published in Skeptical Inquirer.

Joe tells the audience of a spiritualist church service in which participants were instructed: "Please address your billet to one or more loved ones in spirit, giving first and last names." Nickell asked how he was to fold his paper, and one of the people assigned to pick them up replied, "Just fold it in half once." Nickell points out that when all papers are folded in this way it is impossible to tell which is which.

The papers were gathered together in a basket, and the psychic at the podium would take one and hold it to his forehead. With head bent in prayer, the medium would read the paper with his mind, announcing its contents.

Joe Nickell explains that this is rather easy to do. Simply take a paper and hold it to your forehead, while taking a second paper behind the podium with the other hand, flipping it open, and reading it under cover of prayer. Announce the contents of the second paper to your astonished audience: they won't know the difference.

Joe gives a brief rundown of common forms of hucksterism that he's encountered over his long career, mentioning faith healing (Popoff, Hinn, etc.), psychic detectives, and others of their ilk. He castigates the Oasis of Hope Hospital for selling laetrile after several studies have shown that it has no effect on cancer survival. He discusses the stigmata of Lilian Bernas, and faked holy blood in Belgium. Finally, at the spiritualist camp at Lily Dale, Bartlet drew him a portrait of Yellow Bird, his recently fabricated aboriginal spirit guide.

It seems like Joe Nickell has had a fascinating career. If you'd like to read more about him, visit his website.

Proposition 8 Overturned

From Richard Adams's blog at the Guardian:

Declaring that "same-sex love and intimacy are well-documented in human history," a judge has overturned California's ban on homosexual marriage as unconstitutional – in a sweeping victory for gay and lesbian civil rights.

This is very, very good news.

You can read the full text of the ruling here.

TAM, Day One: Simon Singh

This is the seventh in a series of posts discussing The Amaz!ng Meeting 8, which took place at South Point Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, 8–11 July 2010. You can find the previous post here. You can find the next post here.

About fifteen minutes before Simon Singh's presentation, Roy Zimmerman was welcomed to the stage to perform some old favourites. You can see many of them on YouTube.

After Zimmerman, there were some plugs for the upcoming TAM London, including a hilarious video from Richard Wiseman. It went something like this:



Simon Singh

It's time for a presentation by Simon Singh and his always audacious haircut. Singh has a PhD in particle physics (according to Bidlack, Singh used to study particles "smaller than Uri Geller's sense of ethics") but has more recently become an acclaimed science journalist.

I anticipated that we would be hearing about the suit leveled against him by the British Chiropractic Association (which I have mentioned in passing before). What I did not anticipate is how amusing the presentation would be: Simon Singh is a very funny man!

Simon begins by talking about a BBC 2 documentary called Alternative Medicine: the Evidence. Wow. You can read his take on it by visiting Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog, where Dr. Goldacre reproduces an email (with permission) that Simon had circulated regarding the myriad inaccuracies of the series. Singh goes on to discuss "anesthetic" acupuncture and how it is misleadingly portrayed in the media. For example, the series depicts acupuncture as being employed as an anesthetic for open-heart surgery, when there are in fact several powerful sedatives and local anesthetics swirling around in the patient's body as well.

Simon gives a quick plug for Trick or Treatment, a book that he wrote with Edzard Ernst (it's on my to-read list: it sounds fascinating!), before moving on to chiropractic.

He begins by talking about Palmer's original conception of chiropractic, in which disturbances in the flow of "innate intelligence" caused disease. Palmer claimed to be able to cure deafness (and just about everything else) by performing spinal adjustments which repaired the flow of this vitalistic energy.

When Simon published an article critical of chiropractic in The Guardian, the problems began (full text of the article, with annotations, here). The British Chiropractic association threatened to sue him for libel. The Guardian offered the BCA a right of reply, as well as an apology, but the BCA refused and took Simon to court.

A brief timeline of the incident:

18 April 2008: Article published.
May 2008: BCA threatens Singh personally with a libel suit.
May 2009: Preliminary hearing rules on the wording of the article. (This is bad.)
April 2010: Preliminary ruling overturned. (This is good.)
15 April 2010: BCA drops the suit.

Simon Singh is not the only proponent of science-based medicine who has been sued by a quack. It is incredibly common. (See, for example, Matthias Rath's suit of Ben Goldacre.)

The problems with English libel laws are legion: suits are unbelievably costly, libel tourism is common, and the accused are presumed guilty until proven innocent. Although it was a personal nightmare for Simon, his case really began the British Libel Reform Campaign. Singh played a very encouraging clip from the British House of Lords, demonstrating that the government is serious about libel reform.

Free speech is not for sale.

For more coverage of Simon Singh's victory, see Steven Novella's post on NeuroLogica.

TAM, Day One: James Randi

This is the sixth in a series of posts discussing The Amaz!ng Meeting 8, which took place at South Point Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, 8–11 July 2010. You can find the previous post here. You can find the next post here.

These posts are compiled from notes taken on my iPhone during the presentations. I am now turning the screen brightness on the device way down in the hopes that its battery will make it though the day.

James Randi
Interviewed by Jamy Ian Swiss

It looks like they'll be talking about Johnny Carson and how influential he was in the United States and abroad. Randi was on the show a total of twenty-two times. During the presentation, many old clips of Randi and Carson are aired.

Randi tells us that Johnny had a habit of sitting outside the studio in his white Corvette after the show, and as Randi exited Johnny would call him over. The two of them would sit in Johnny's car while the TV host smoked cigarette after cigarette, and they would talk.

Carson had a policy of never meeting with guests before they appeared together on-screen—but he constantly broke this rule for Randi. Johnny always had another question for him.

Randi got a call from Carson's show one day, asking him to appear on the show that night. Uri Geller would be a guest on The Tonight Show, and they wanted Randi to replicate or explain some of his parlour tricks. Randi, not wanting to tip off Geller, instead asked to speak to the prop master, who told him what was up.

Geller had requested several silver spoons and plastic film cannisters. Randi told the prop master to scotch tape the spoons to their tray and to put rubber cement on the bottom of the film cannisters.

Although Geller's dubious ability to bend spoons and keys using the power of his mind (in addition to the power of his hands) has been discussed in detail, the film cannisters were a fairly new trick: apparently several were to be presented to Geller, sealed, on a tray, one of them containing a small object. Geller would then lift the tray, and by surreptitiously observing the ways in which the cannisters slid slightly as he lifted it, he could determine which were empty and which contained hidden items. However, applying rubber cement to the bottom of the cannisters would greatly increase their coefficients of friction, preventing them from sliding and revealing the location of the hidden object.

The prop master did as Randi recommended, and Geller spent some eighteen minutes floundering before eventually giving up.

Randi went to see Peter Popoff at one of his many faith healing performances, and together with Banachek they discovered his trick: his wife was backstage transmitting via radio all of the relevant details about each audience member. They taped everything. Johnny Carson's producer bumped a few actresses, and allowed Randi to surprise the host with the stunning reveal.



Amazing.

"It turns out that God's frequency is 39.17 MHz..."

Popoff was ruined—but it didn't last. According to Randi, in 2009 Peter Popoff brought in $1,000,000 more than he did the year they shut him down.

During the discussion, Randi reveals that Johnny Carson was a heavy contributor to the JREF—he would frequently mail Randi letters containing short notes and cheques for $100,000. Randi relates that Penn Jilette once donated $50,000 on a humongous ten-foot cheque, saying that he wanted to be half the man that Johnny Carson was; much hilarity ensued when Randi went to the bank attempting to cash it.

The presentation ends with a clip of Randi performing psychic surgery on The Tonight Show.



"No, that doesn't come out!"