Ashlyn Noble: "Five Crazy Pseudosciences You've Never Heard Of!"
Leslie Saunders: "How to Fake a UFO Picture"
After Leslie's presentation, we actually got to make our own UFOs! It was plenty of fun, and we managed to capture a few great examples on camera. Here are some of the best. These pictures are exactly as they appeared to the camera; none have been Photoshopped. I prefer GIMP, anyway.
Spooky. I think that alien spacecraft are the most likely explanation for those photos. Prove me wrong!
No image credit this time, because I 'shopped this myself.
Sorry to be a tease, but I just got back from Cuba. Upon returning to the land of ubiquitous WiFi, however, I noted that Steven Novella had written an excellent post on the subject.
I get a fair bit of email, and while I read it all (and respond to most of it), I don't always have time to give it my full attention. This recent email, however, piqued my interest:
Hi Mr Newman, I'd just like to mention that I much enjoy your blog (which I saw profiled in the Freep). This however obviously isn't my only reason for emailing you. I recently had a brief discussion with two Mennonites, each of whom originated in Mexico and now living near Steinbach. I am uncertain if you are very familiar with the history of the Mexican-Mennonites (Senator Giffords' thesis was on this culture) but let it suffice to say that this group of Mennonites left Manitoba in the 1920s after rejecting provincial pressure to modify their parochial school curriculim and that education has taken a backseat to unflinching [theology] ever since.
So when my buddies adamently stated that the Holy Bible is literally true I wasn't perturbed. But their "clinching" proof is the 1947 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls proved conclusively that the Old Testament prophecies of the coming of the Messiah weren't written after the event and that everything about Jesus Christ, from his predicted arrival to his described departure, fits the bill. Help!!! I am unskilled in this debate... Any clues? In the meantime I'll keep surfing...
Thanks, [REDACTED]
I have previously touched on prophecy briefly, when I summarised our trip to Winnipeg's Creation Museum, but this claim is different enough that I think it warrants special attention.
So here's my reply!
Hi, [REDACTED].
Ah, the argument from prophecy. That's a classic!
First, some background.
The Dead Sea Scrolls is the name given to a group of texts found in a series of caves on the shore of the Dead Sea in the late 1940s. Most date from between 150 BCE and 70 CE. The writings are generally attributed to the Essenes, and they contain passages from the Hebrew Bible, sectarian doctrinal documents, and apocryphal manuscripts, in roughly equal parts. Among the scrolls, several passages of Daniel, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel were indeed found, and these books are widely recognised as being prophetic in intent.
So clearly your friends are correct in stating that these documents contained messianic prophecies, which many Christians believe that Jesus fulfilled. So where do we go from here?
Well, the argument from prophecy is a slippery one. While a fulfilled prophecy may indeed be evidence the existence of an unusual and unexplained property of the universe, this evidence would not constitute "proof" of any theological claims.
And do we even have a fulfilled prophecy? Iron Chariots (my favourite counter-apologetics wiki) lays out several good requirements for a fulfilled prophecy, which I will quote here:
It must actually be a prophecy. Not a documentation of events that is misinterpreted as a prophecy after a similar event occurs later.
It must be written before the events that it predicts.
It must not predict a likely event.
It must not be self-fulfilling.
It must not be overly vague.
The predicted events must actually occur.
The prediction must be both falsifiable and verifiable.
Note that in order to accept the argument from prophecy, all of these criteria must be met, not just some of them. There are actually numerous separate prophecies in these books, which do not really form a coherent narrative, but we'll deal with them en masse for the sake of simplicity and concision. Let's go through our requirements quickly.
Requirement:It must actually be a prophecy. Not a documentation of events that is misinterpreted as a prophecy after a similar event occurs later.
We're looking good, here. Scholars are generally in agreement that many of these texts were intended to be taken prophetically. (Contrast this, for example, with the various interpretations of the Book of Revelation.)
That's not to say that all of the supposed prophecies fulfilled in the life of Jesus were meant prophetically at the time they were written. (For example, Jeremiah 31:15, supposedly prophesying the slaughter of the innocents, was probably not meant prophetically, and doesn't really fit the bill as far as the "actual" events in Matthew are concerned anyway.)
Requirement:It must be written before the events that it predicts.
Again, a hit, as your Mennonite friends maintain. Moving on.
Requirement:It must not predict a likely event.
This one is actually fairly difficult to assess. If you want to pick and choose, it's actually fairly like that we'll see messianic figures popping up here and there. Indeed, Jesus was only one of many itinerant preachers wandering about first-century Judea making messianic claims. Sure, they didn't all fulfil every prophecy, but not even our beloved Jeshua did that!
Requirement:It must not be self-fulfilling.
We're getting into dangerous territory, here. Worldwide, people have made messianic claims for as long as there have been prophetic texts. If there's a prophecy, someone will be trying to fulfil it, for fun and profit!
Requirement:It must not be overly vague.
Let's take a look at one prophecy in particular:
And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD. (Zechariah 11:13)
This passage (according to Matthew 27:9) apparently prophecies that Judas will betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. (Although Matthew says it's in Jeremiah, which is amusingly incorrect.)
Let's contrast that prophecy with one a little less vague:
For example, suppose the New Testament somewhere contained the following passage: "Before two millennia shall pass since the birth of our Lord, a man will stand on another world within the firmament and he will smite a tiny orb with his staff such that it will fly from sight." Obviously no mere mortal in Jesus' day could have anticipated that in two thousand years men would walk on the moon. Nor would he be expected to know anything about golf.
—Vic Stenger,
in God: The Failed Hypothesis
See the difference? Even if the prophecies predated Jesus, the prophecies were quite vague, making it easy to retrofit the facts to the earlier texts.
Requirement:The predicted events must actually occur.
Uh-oh. The New Testament claims that these events occurred—but what good is that?
Requirement:The prediction must be both falsifiable and verifiable.
Oh, and we were so close!
The fact of the matter is this: the contemporary, extrabibilical evidence for the very existence of Jesus is weak, verging on nonexistent. That's not to say that Jesus did not exist—I personally think that he did probably did (although I have no reason to believe that he had magic powers)—but the evidence is not good.
We have no reason to believe that Jesus actually fulfilled any messianic prophecy.
The Bottom Line
The most important thing to take away from this (aside from the fact that arguments from prophecy are generally worthless) is that your friends actually get the argument backward: generally speaking, critics of Biblical prophecy don't argue that messianic Old Testament writings were written (or modified) after the New Testament was complete; they argue that New Testament accounts of Jesus were almost certainly written specifically to show that Jesus fits the Old Testament mould.
The nativity story is notoriously inconsistent between gospels, and contradicts known history. Not only that, it is a transparent attempt to place the birth of Jesus (apparently a Nazarene) in Bethlehem (in accordance with Micah 5).
Jesus' lineage is described in both Luke and Matthew, both attempting to cast him as a descendent of King David (in accordance with prophecies in Isaiah and Daniel). Problematically, these genealogies contradict each other, and there is some contention as to whether the lines pass through Joseph (troublesome for those who assert that Joseph was not the father of Jesus) or Mary (again a problem, as following the Babylonian exile, the Davidic line was traced through the father).
These are simply two among many examples to be found in New Testament texts. Iron Chariots also sums up some of the problems with the prophecies related to Jesus' birth quite well. It's also pertinent to note that while these messianic prophecies are Jewish in origin, the Jews do not consider Jesus to have fulfilled them. For a Jewish perspective on the matter (and for several more examples of failed prophecy), I recommend reading Rabbi Simmons' account of the matter on About.com.
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in this argument is simply a red herring: it's irrelevant, and meant to distract you from the fact that they're making one giant straw man argument. They're not addressing the actual, substantive criticisms made of arguments from prophecy.
When it comes to homeopathy, it seems that the more dilute the evidence, the stronger the belief in the remedy. Case in point, a recent conversation that Leslie Saunders and I had with a proponent of the nostrums on Facebook.
To avoid highlighting spelling mistakes (and for the sake of concision) I'll paraphrase some of the arguments made. But let me be clear: all of these arguments were made by one or more proponents of homeopathy. Please remember that: I'm not making any of this up.
Claim:Homeopathy doesn't work if you close your mind.
Leslie's Response: It also doesn't work in double-blind, placebo-controlled trials.
It's worth noting that it's very easy to perform a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial with an open mind.
This reminds me of the argument that the remedies require tailoring to the individual, which is impossible to do in a controlled environment. That's complete bollocks: all you have to do is have the consultation for every person in the trial, have the homeopaths prepare the nostrums, and then randomise participants to test or control groups. Swap out the remedies prepared for the control groups with placebo, and you're good to go! In fact, I'd be interested in having a third group that had their "specialised" remedies reassigned at random; I would wager that the results would be indistinguishable.
And if the remedies require tailoring to the individual, why does Boiron sell cookie-cutter remedies to the general public? I don't see you speaking out against the profitmongering of "Big Homeo".
And say what you will about "Big Pharma", aspirin will still get rid of your headache even if you don't keep an open mind. And speaking of aspirin...
Claim:Scientists don't even know how aspirin works, therefore knowing how something works isn't important in a therapeutic context!
Leslie's Response: Actually, scientists do know how aspirin works. Damaged and pain-causing cells produce cyclooxygenase-2, which in turn produces a prostaglandin. This chemical sends a message to the brain, signalling that a specific body part is in pain. Prostaglandin also causes the injured area to become inflamed. Aspirin adheres to the cyclooxygenase-2 and prevents it from producing prostaglandin, which in turn prevents some of the pain signals from reaching the brain. The lack of prostaglandin production also minimises inflammation.
I would add that even if we didn't have complete knowledge of the pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics of aspirin, we may easily posit plausible methods of action for the drug. Homeopathy fails the plausibility test.
Claim:More people have been killed by modern drugs over the last 3,000 years than have been killed by homeopathy.
Gem's Response:You're doing it wrong. That's like comparing the number of people killed in car accidents by seatbelts to the number of people killed in car accidents by not being in the car. Of course no one has died by taking homeopathic medicine—no one has been killed by rubbing their thumb and forefinger together attempting to cure their cancer, either—because it doesn't do anything!
Nitpick Alert: Homeopathy has not been around for 3,000 years (nor have "modern drugs"). Homeopathy was invented around 1796.
Claim:Science supports microdosing: it's called hormesis.
There are two obvious problems with this one. First, homeopathy doesn't involve micro-dosing: these aren't small doses of a toxic substance, they are literally nonexistent doses. Second, the principle of hormesis certainly does not apply to all substances, and so is not analogous to Hahnemann's ipse dixit "Law of Infinitesimals". Indeed, the hormesis dose-response model is still debated in the scientific literature.
Claim:Homeopathic remedies work in the spiritual plane, not in the physical plane.
No kidding.
Please demonstrate the existence of a "spiritual plane". Also, if the remedies do not work in the "physical plane", how are they useful for curing diseases in the "physical plane". Also, could you possibly get any more hand-wavy?
Claim:Homeopathy is energy medicine, which heals the "vital force" of the patient. This energy is called Chi by Chinese and Prana by Indian Ayurveda.
Oh goody, vitalism! Is homeopathy useful in balancing the four humours? Will it help realign my chakras?
Gem's Response: I would caution you that referencing medical beliefs and practices from times and places where the average life expectancy was roughly 30 years could be counter-productive.
Claim:Quantum physics says...
Go away.
Claim:No, seriously: quantum physics proves that water has memory!
Gem's Response: Water memory was proposed by French immunologist Jacques Benveniste, who also claimed that homeopathic remedies could be emailed to patients. Nature, the journal who published his findings on water memory, suspected him of fraud, and when they sent John Maddox, James Randi, and Walter Stewart to investigate, Benveniste's own team was unable to replicate his results. Experiments have shown that "water memory" lasts less than a picosecond. As for the appeal to quantum physics, that's a wild guess that is unsupported by any data.
Claim:Plenty of studies show evidence for efficacy.
Gem's Response: In such positive studies, as the controls are tightened, the effect size approaches zero. Anyone can cherry pick studies that support their own biases; this is why systematic reviews of the literature are important. Here are some such reviews:
The evidence from rigorous clinical trials of any type of therapeutic or preventive intervention testing homeopathy for childhood and adolescence ailments is not convincing enough for recommendations in any condition.
The results of these re-analyses demonstrate that the more rigorous trials are associated with smaller effect sizes which, in turn, render the overall effect insignificant... Collectively these data do not provide sound evidence that homeopathic remedies are clinically different from placebos.
This finding is compatible with the notion that the clinical effects of homoeopathy are placebo effects.
The Response
The remainder of this account will be verbatim.
Homeopathic Proponent: if you have to be told what to think, thats your own fault,its worked for me and others so i dont need someone else to tell me yay or nay*
Gem: Yeah, because you're not subject to regression to the mean, confirmation bias, confusion between correlation and causation, mistaking the natural history of a disease for effects of a remedy, or any other cognitive bias that affects the rest of us.
In effect, what you're saying is that your personal experience trumps the data, that double- or triple-blind randomized controlled trials are irrelevant, and we need nothing more than anecdote to know that a particular intervention is effective.
That's not how science works: that's how magic works.
Homeopathic Proponent: lol that was a complete waste of time
Gem: For you, perhaps. You've demonstrated that evidence doesn't matter to you. Even if you're going to cling dogmatically to your position, it's possible that there are a few onlookers with open minds who might actually consider the evidence and change their positions.
Let's be fair: a skeptical takedown of homeopathy is like shooting fish in a barrel—or, to make the simile a little more apropos, like shooting the memory of fish in a barrel.
* Leslie pointed out that this was the rhetorical equivalent of saying (as Jay Novella might), "Oh yeah?"
The 10:23 Campaign took place this weekend, with events in seven Canadian cities and on every continent worldwide—and I mean every continent: I'm told that there was even participation at one of the Antarctic research stations! [Edit:Here's the link!]
In Winnipeg, we had a modest turnout of ten skeptics; we had a few cancellations due to illness, despite event co-organiser Leslie Saunders' assurances that there would be copious quantities of Oscillococcinum available. Go figure.
When we arrived at Memorial Park, directly north of the Manitoba Legislative Building, we discovered that the snow was knee- (and in some cases, waist-) deep. Luckily Douglas had a shovel in his trunk, and Robert and I took it in turns to clear a path to our chosen area.
Richelle and Leslie with homeopathic moonshine, diluted to a very potent 60C.
Leslie supplied us all with "homeopathic moonshine", and Robert and Richelle were kind enough to furnish everyone with some hot coffee (thankfully, not diluted to homeopathic quantities). It was a balmy –2°C, but while the weather was mild the added warmth of the hot beverages was much appreciated. That, and I'm a coffee addict.
Douglas and Nathan with two varieties of homeopathic sleeping pills.
When 10:23 came around, the overdose began. Douglas and Nathan both downed bottles of homeopathic sleeping pills. Half an hour later, they were not even drowsy, although Nathan took his with a Monster Energy Drink: it was obviously this dangerous combination of uppers and downers that kept him going for the rest of the event.
I chose to take a 30C preparation of ignatia amara, a remedy that is meant to treat "intense grief, bereavement, and emotional shock"—and, if I'm reading this reference site correctly, also "shrivelled" genitals and "the plague".
I down my bottle of ignatia amara, which is supposed to contain a deadly cocktail of strychnine and brucine.
Although we hadn't received responses to any of our media solicitations, we did have a fellow from CTV who showed up after the main event. Several of us were still chatting, and we were more than happy to do another overdose for the camera. Apparently we got some CTV News screen-time, which I missed. (But who watches the news?) You can find a very brief write-up of the story here.
Gem Newman, founder of the local group Winnipeg Skeptics, said that the protest was to put pressure on pharmacists and healthcare providers to ensure that products sold as medical treatments are effective.
That's actually a very fair summary of our position. I'm impressed! This isn't about telling people that they can't take homeopathic nostrums if they so desire—it's about raising awareness and educating the public so that they can make an informed choice.
Of course, the obligatory false balance was also present:
Kumar Belgaumkar, a homeopathic medicine practitioner with the Winnipeg Homeopathic Clinic, said that while consuming excessive pills during the staged overdose wasn't dangerous, it also isn't a scientific test of homeopathic medicine.
Homeopathic medicine has been practiced for over 200 years and has been proven in a clinical setting, he said.
Of course. It was never meant to be a "scientific test of homeopathic medicine". Those have been done, and, contrary to Mr. Belgaumkar's assertion, they show that homeopathy has no effect beyond placebo.* And I presume that you noted his worthless appeal to antiquity?
Let's move on.
After the event, I was contacted by Rob Drinkwater, a reporter for the Canadian Press, and he conducted a telephone interview with me. I also put him in touch with Michael Kruse and Jonathan Abrams, who organised the Toronto and Ottawa demonstrations.
When the Canadian Press story eventually hit the news sites, I was disappointed by the factual inaccuracies it contained. Even after I walked Mr. Drinkwater through the homeopathic process and explained that the preparations (despite their labels) contained nothing but sugar and lactose, the story implied that the "remedies" were herbal in nature.
Skeptics of homeopathic medicine have downed entire bottles of the remedies at demonstrations in several Canadian cities in an effort to prove the concoctions don't work.
Gem Newman, who consumed a whole bottle of St. John's Wort at an event in Winnipeg, says the capsules were mostly comprised of sugar and water and didn't affect him.
Again, we weren't trying to "prove the concoctions don't work": we're trying to raise public awareness of this fact. The scientific legwork has already been done, but public perception of these nostrums is lagging behind.
Nitpick Warning: I did not consume a bottle of St. John's Wort! I did not even consume something labelled St. John's Wort. I was planning to take hypericum perforatum myself, but its claims to cure puncture wounds, crushed fingers, and lockjaw made it popular enough that I gave it away to another enthusiastic skeptic.
But that's irrelevant, because no one actually got any hypericum. Taking a whole bottle of actual hypericum could be extremely dangerous, potentially resulting in liver failure. The capsules weren't "mostly comprised of sugar and water"—they were entirely comprised of sugar and lactose!
So, the lesson here is that dealing with the media is a recipe for frustration.
On a lighter note, did anyone else notice that "Drinkwater" has to be the greatest possible name for a reporter doing a story on homeopathy ever?
In the interest of avoiding facepalms, I suggest steering clear of the comments section on the Winnipeg Free Press site. It's full of the standard "Big Pharma" conspiracy-mongering, naturalistic fallacies, appeals to consumer freedom, anti-vaccine kookery, and simple misunderstandings of what homeopathy actually is. The comments probably shouldn't be taken as representative, however: the alt. med. crowd is really good at mobilizing the troops.
IMO, the people who pulled this little media stunt are big pharma insiders out to discredit natural medicine. It's all part of the plan to remove natural products from the shelves... they don't even deny it.
Exactly right! Because the only way someone could possibly disagree with you is if they were paid off.
Even so, there were some glimmers of hope. My wife went through the comments and picked out some winners.
Good and innocent people (though not many smart people) quite often die from taking homeopathic remedies instead of medicine. THIS is the issue. You need not bow down to big pharma, but don't bow down to homeopathy either. It's so much dumber.
Many, perhaps most "remedies" contain not a single molecule of the active "ingredient" (it's not an ingredient if there isn't any of it present, DUH!) because they are diluted by a factor of 10 to the power of 60 (that's a 1 with SIXTY zeroes after it!). Further claims are even more ridiculous than that one - that the remaining dilutant (usually water or alcohol) retains an "impression" of the diluted substance (which is no long even present). This is, unfortunately, in opposition to all known science.
Big pharma will stop at nothing. [Homeopaths] will stop at even less. Do your own research, and remember that keeping an open mind includes being open to the idea that homeopathy may not be good for you. Weigh the evidence, especially if you or a loved one are ill, even more especially if it is a serious illness that is known to be curable or treatable by other methods than homeopathy.
And how about this one, responding to some anti-vax claims?
People used to die of pneumonia, whooping cough and the COMMON COLD in outrageous numbers but improvements in our understanding of modern medicine (including sanitation) have improved survivabilty of disease. The best that homeopathy can give you is improved hydration.
I believe that this one was posted by Richelle, and it nicely sums up our position:
We don't want to take away people's rights to free choice. What we do want to see is people be aware of what they're throwing their money away on. It is a scam. Imagine if a "Big Pharma" company swapped out their drugs for something that didn't work, had been proven not to work, and sold it for a jacked up price to an innocent public!
This whole campaign is about choice: it's about informed choice. As things stand, it's incredibly difficult for people to make informed choices, because misinformation abounds. This is easily illustrated by the fact that neither the reporter nor the commenters seem to understand that homeopathy ≠ herbal remedies.
And finally...
[Homeopathy] is every bit as valid as horoscopes and healing crystals! I can't understand how these people can protest such important treatments.
I just want to finish up with a brief note about placebos. Someone suggested on Facebook today that even if homeopathy is nothing but placebo, placebos have been proven to work.
This is not true.
Placebo is "effective" in roughly 30% of cases, and only for symptoms with a high psychological overlay (e.g., pain or nausea), and it isn't clear whether people are perceiving less pain or if they are simply reporting less pain. Objective outcomes are not affected by placebo.
When placebos seem to affect objective outcomes, this effect occurs in the form of regression to the mean (when symptoms are at their worst, they tend to improve a little). When a patient seems to get better, it can also be due to the natural history of the disease (many diseases—colds, flus, etc.—get better on their own). Throw in a little confirmation bias for good measure, and the "placebo effect" isn't much of an effect at all.
Many folks think that it's "mind over matter". It isn't. Placebos aren't used because they work, they're used because they're necessary to maintain blinding procedures in clinical trials, which prevents bias in patient, practitioner, and analyst. (But don't take my word for it! For more information from an actual medical doctor and infectious disease specialist, see episode 5 of QuackCast.)
And don't forget: with real medicines you get a placebo effect on top of a real medical intervention. Bonus!
I probably should have prefaced this with "TL; DR". Ah, well.
* From the conclusion of a recent systematic review of 110 placebo-controlled trials: "when analyses were restricted to large trials of higher quality there was no convincing evidence that homeopathy was superior to placebo."
Source: A. Shang, K. Huwiler-Muntener, L. Nartey, P. Juni, S. Dorig, J.A. Sterne, et al. "Are the clinical effects of homoeopathy placebo effects? Comparative study of placebo-controlled trials of homoeopathy and allopathy". Lancet, volume 366 (2005).
