Our previous analyses of awards to medical schools and alternative medicine schools by the former National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM)¹ and its parent National Institutes of Health (NIH) revealed that, from 1999 to 2013, more than $2 billion in taxpayer money was used to convince Americans that non-evidence-based protocols, such as acupuncture and chiropractic spine manipulation, are medical procedures. Our analyses also showed that violations of the laws of basic science, such as the claims that underlie homeopathy and distance healing, are considered acceptable interventions even within a hospital structure and fall under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Our previous analyses covered awards designed by NIH’s NCCAM to install non-evidence-based medicine courses into respected academic schools such as Harvard, Michigan, and Yale, and to beef up schools of alternative medicine such as the College of Oriental Medicine and Bastyr. The fact that the staff at a center at NIH does not distinguish between fantasy and evidence is troubling at best and represents ignorance and misuse of scarce health resources at worst.

In addition to the nearly $3 billion spent on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) research grants (Mielczarek and Engler 2012), and the nearly $76 million spent on CAM training and education (Mielczarek and Engler 2013), and the funding of schools of oriental medicine and naturopathy (Mielczarek and Engler 2014), another pair of federal programs has been active in the alternative medicine sphere. These two are the U.S. government’s Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) grant programs. NIH is one of the five federal agencies that collectively account for nearly all SBIR funding (National Research Council 2009), and NCCAM, along with other NIH centers and institutes, actively participates in the program (see http://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/sbir.htm).

The two business grant programs, SBIR and STTR, were created to encourage “domestic small businesses to engage in Federal Research/Research and Development (R/R&D) that has the potential for commercialization” and to expand “funding opportunities in the federal innovation research and development (R&D) arena,” respectively. Each has similar goals, with the SBIR program focusing on meeting federal research and development (R&D) needs while fostering “innovation and entrepreneurship by socially and economically disadvantaged persons” whereas the STTR program focuses on fostering “technology transfer through cooperative R&D between small businesses and research institutions” and “private sector commercialization of innovations derived from federal R&D.”

Grants are divided into phases, with Phase I “to establish the technical merit, feasibility, and commercial potential” of the effort usually limited both in duration and funding, and Phase II “to continue the R/R&D efforts initiated in Phase I” allowing more time and funds for promising work. For health-related funding, Phase III usually requires a clinical trial (further details on both programs, including the phases defined for each, can be found at http://www.sbir.gov/). In 2003, the SBIR/STTR programs reached a peak with over 7,400 grants totaling in excess of $1.8 billion. In 2013, the last year reported, the number of grants was nearly 5,100, but the total cost approached $2.0 billion (https://www.sbir.gov/sbirsearch/award/all). Applications exceeded grants universally across all federal agencies authorized to make them. Success stories for both programs abound online, and both are popular.

The very nature of these programs means that individual grants tend to rely on cutting-edge technology. This isn’t a bad thing as long as the technology is grounded in some evidence of efficacy. However, scientific substantiation seems to be in short supply in many of the projects we examined.

Using the publicly available NIH RePORTER tool (http://project
reporter.nih.gov/reporter.cfm), we found that over the past fourteen years, NIH has awarded 167 SBIR/STTR grants to seventy-eight organizations totaling over $40 million via NCCAM, largely for questionable (to put it charitably) endeavors. Our research reveals that small companies received awards focused on alternative medicine for a variety of reasons: to invent some rather remarkable devices, to search for medically useful botanicals, and to archive data and develop media presentations. Thus SBIR/STTR programs present an opportunity for the business community to take advantage of 
NCCAM’s tendency to provide legitimacy to non-evidence-based medicine in nourishing a $33.9 billion annual business (Nahin et al. 2009) itself fed by current societal mythologies.

We reviewed all NCCAM-funded small business grants since 2000 and discovered that the majority tend to fall into three broad categories that as shorthand we term Devices, Botanicals, and Data. In this article, we address a few of what we consider to be the least justifiable grants to shine a light on yet another area in which the NIH’s NCCAM is wasting taxpayer dollars.

Figure 1 displays only those organizations that have received $500,000 or more over the period of time for which data were available to the authors. Easily recognizable are fifteen companies that received funds of over $1 million. Focusing on these fifteen recipients of NCCAM’s largest SBIR/STTR awards, we find all three broad categories represented: three recipients (Advanced Medical Electronics, Bahr, and Stromatec) are publicized on their own websites as medical device companies; eleven sell botanical supplements; and one (Sociometrics) is a social research institution. Much of the money shown in Figure 1 is dedicated to developing devices to monitor adherence to Tai Chi, measuring the incidence of hot flashes, quantifying acupuncture needling, and searching botanicals in an attempt to discover natural products that can be marketed as supplements. Because the data-focused grants were unremarkable and not CAM-specific, this paper will concentrate on the devices and botanicals categories.

Figure 1. A graphic representation of individual organizations that received $500,000 or more in NCCAM SBIR/STTR grants between 2000 and 2013.

We used data from NIH RePORTER to track selected NCCAM SBIR/STTR grants to learn whether any had produced inventions or pharmaceutical discoveries.

Devices

Imagine you are a concerned scientist or physician hoping to affect American health. Your expertise and concerns have been noted, and you are asked to serve on a federal committee. The committee’s function? Prioritizing funding of NCCAM’S SBIR/STTR grant proposals for devices. Match your concept of appropriate funding for proposed devices with those of NCCAM’s SBIR awards.

1. Hot flash monitor devices measuring menopause symptoms:


• a) Over $3 million

• b) Between $2 and $3 million

• c) Less than $2 million


• a) Over $3 million

• b) Between $2 and $3 million

• c) Less than $2 million


• a) Over $3 million

• b) Between $3 and $2million

• c) Less than $2 million


See Figure 2 for the answers.



Figure 2. A graphic depiction of $9.1 million in NCCAM SBIR/STTR grants for three types of devices–specifically, those designed for hot flash monitoring, wearable exercise monitoring, and acupuncture needling.

Two “device” firms have received funds exceeding $2 million: Stromatec and Advanced Medical Electronics. Stromatec’s website advertises its Acusensor 2 for teaching and quantifying acupuncture needling (see http://www.stromatec.com/acusensor2/). Presumably this invention was possible through the SBIR awards Stromatec has been given for three clinical trials testing its sensors. The test for its torque sensor was to have involved 169 persons. It’s not clear whether the device tested in this clinical trial is its web-advertised Acusensor 2 or something similar. The trial is listed as completed, but no study results are posted. Some respected academic medical schools list acupuncture as an elective, offering a prospective sales market for Stromatec’s Acusensor 2.

Our search of NIH NCCAM records from 1999–2014 shows an expenditure of $188 million for 561 projects by NCCAM to study the efficacy of acupuncture.² Over this same time period, for all NIH centers, NIH RePORTER lists expenditures for acupuncture totaling $251 million (760 awards). NCCAM’s active projects (as of this writing) related to the efficacy of acupuncture total thirty-one projects at $12 million. NIH’s clinical center employs an acupuncturist (http://www.acupuncturesolution.com/index.html); however, studies that compare the success of trained acupuncturists with untrained ones finds no difference between claims of success by trained over the untrained (http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/nc/).

NIH has indulged in a tenacious pursuit of medical credence for a protocol based on the concept that mammals are threaded by undefined “energy meridians.” Criticisms of NIH’s studies of and endorsements for acupuncture, and of acupuncture itself, have been posted in numerous places online (e.g., http://edzardernst.com/2013/12/
acupuncture-its-a-placebo-isnt-it/; http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-acupuncture-fail/; http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/reference/acupuncture/) as well as in books (Novella et al. 2013; Offit 2013; Singh and Ernst 2009). Even so, NIH incorporates acupuncture as part of its online education, although when accessed July 15, 2014, its webpage was annotated as “. . . an historical document . . . that may be out of date” (https://nccam.nih.gov/training/videolectures/acupuncture.htm).

NIH’s continued examination and even endorsement of acupuncture in the face of all scientific evidence to the contrary is an inexplicable use of taxpayer funds for questionable medical research.

The mystique of a Tai Chi exercise program is reflected by 118 awards from NCCAM that total $38 million. The awards include Research and Training and SBIR grants totaling $400,000 (2012–2014) to develop a three-sensor inner sole attached to a wireless platform that is supposed to record adherence to Tai Chi exercises. The device is currently being tested in a clinical trial at Spaulding Memorial Hospital in Boston (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01687023).

Popular hopes for medically effective “alternative” protocols drive SBIR awards that include examining the misconception that physiologically generated electrical phenomena are a separate field of study unrelated to known physical science. These misconceptions of electromagnetism continue to fuel hopes of CAM practitioners and have generated millions of dollars of grants from NIH’s NCCAM. It is surprising that in view of the National Academy of Sciences report (National Research Council 1997) and the FTC’s Operation CURE.ALL that an SBIR review committee could ignore established science.

Figure 3. A graphic depiction of $8.8 million in NCCAM SBIR/STTR grants for botanicals, broken out by the condition for which the research was intended and its botanical focus, where these were discernable from the NCCAM project descriptions.

Botanicals

To be clear, we do not find fault in general with appropriate research into medical uses of botanicals. The problem we noticed during our SBIR/STTR research has been that many of these grants to small businesses to commercialize plant products for medical or health purposes seem to presuppose efficacy that either has not yet been proven or that has been disproven.

As shown in Figure 3, conditions considered for botanical focus include cancer, mental disorders, and even sickle cell disease, an inherited anemia. Products advertised by the businesses to combat these conditions include feverfew, goldenseal oil, red lettuce, black raspberries, green tea, saw palmetto, various Alaskan plants, and Chinese herbs. 
One example of a botanical that was claimed to have medical potential is goldenseal oil (Hydrastis canadensis). SBIR/STTR awards total $1.4 million, the majority of which was awarded to a single source (http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/6/prweb9652644.htm). Goldenseal, or more correctly some alkaloids in it, most notably berberine, is purported to combat inflammation and infection. Goldenseal also is one of the most popular dietary supplements in the United States. However, 
NCCAM’s own website states: “Few studies have been published on goldenseal’s safety and effectiveness, and there is little scientific evidence to support using it for any health problem” (https://nccih.nih.gov/health/goldenseal). NCCAM has spent more than $1 mill­ion in SBIR/STTR funds principally for “development of research-grade goldenseal” ostensibly “to facilitate clinical studies.” NCCAM-funded research projects received a total of over $700,000 in 2013 and 2014 to “explore an alternative strategy for combating bacterial infections” employing goldenseal as a potential “treatment or preventative for bacterial infections such as methicillin-resistant–Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)” (http://projectreporter.nih.gov/project_info_history.cfm?aid=8443080&icde=0). We have yet to see those studies bear fruit. 
A general search of clinical trials for botanicals, irrespective of funding source, listed sixty-six trials, apparently none of which demonstrated any efficacy (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=botanical). Of the sixty-six, only two report that they “Have Results.” Of these two, one has published negative results (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23553159?dopt=
Abstract) and the other only a trial bulletin to date (http://trialbulletin.com/lib/entry/ct-00556504). Some of the more non-surprising results: Don’t depend on a handful of herbs to eliminate a blood clot or red lettuce to control insulin levels. This is a discouraging indicator for commercial success.

Again, we do not claim that such research cannot be useful, but we do question, as we have in previous articles, why a separate “alternative” therapy-focused center, namely NCCAM, is needed when so many other disease- or infection-specific institutes and centers within NIH already can do the work. For example, the half billion dollars of NIH research related to MRSA very logically has been placed under the direction of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). If goldenseal or extracts from it prove to be of value against MRSA, it will be considered medicine—not “complementary” medicine—so, once more, why does NIH need a separate center for CAM? 
You are invited to test your socially informed perceptions against the results of the clinical trials by visiting the ClinicalTrials.gov home page (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/home) and searching for your favorite brand of woo (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Woo).

Notes

1. Last December, NCCAM changed its name to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, NCCIH (see “NCCAM’s Name Change Fails to Impress,” SI, May/June 2015). Since all our previous analyses and this new one were completed while the center went under its previous name, in this article we will continue to refer to “NCCAM.” If you prefer, you may substitute “NCCIH.”
2. The numbers cited regarding efficacy of acupuncture include all grants, including research and training, not solely SBIR/STTR.

References

• Mielczarek, Eugenie V., and Brian D. Engler. 2012. Measuring mythology: Startling concepts in NCCAM grants. Skeptical Inquirer 36(1)(January/February): 35–43.
• 2013. Nurturing non-science: Startling concepts in physician education. Skeptical Inquirer 37(3)(May/June): 32–39.
• 2014. Selling pseudoscience: A rent in the fabric of American medicine. Skeptical Inquirer 38(3)(May/June): 42–51.
• Nahin, Richard L., Patricia M. Barnes, Barbara J. Stussman, et al. 2009. Costs of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) and Frequency of Visits to CAM Practitioners: United States, 2007: National Health Statistics Reports, Number 18. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. Online at http://nccam.nih.gov/news/camstats/costs.
• National Research Council. 1997. Possible Health Effects of Exposure to Residential Electric and Magnetic Fields. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press.
• 2009. An Assessment of the Small Business Innovation Research Program at the National Institutes of Health. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press.
• Novella, Steven, David Gorski, and Mark Crislip, editors. 2013. Science-Based Medicine: Guide to Acupuncture and “Eastern” Medicine. Kindle Edition. James Randi Educational Foundation.
• Offit, Paul A. 2013. Do You Believe in Magic? The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine. New York: Harper Collins.
• Singh, Simon, and Edzard Ernst. 2009. Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

Figure 1: An iconic drawing of the Daedalus animal, as published in The Illustrated London News. This was produced by a professional artist with advice from Captain M'Quhae.

Figure 2: Two more drawings ("A" above and "B" below) by M'Quhae's artist, as as published in The Illustrated London News. Note the ridges on the head.

The sea serpent was once little more than a monster of Norwegian folklore. During the nineteenth century, various supposed sightings of the creature—mainly in the Atlantic—lent it some public and scientific credibility as a real animal (Heuvelmans 1968). A particularly influential sighting occurred from the British naval vessel Daedalus in 1848. There is no doubt that something remarkable passed by that ship on an August afternoon, and the Daedalus case has remained one of the most famous and puzzling maritime mysteries.
We have the advantage today of greater knowledge of large marine vertebrates than was available at the time, and we have two important contemporary drawings by a Daedalus witness that were not published until 1997. The Daedalus animal can finally be identified.

The Monster Mystery

On August 6, 1848, at about 5 pm, the frigate H.M.S. Daedalus encountered what its captain, P. M’Quhae, later described in a published official report (M’Quhae 1848a) as an enormous serpent, at least sixty feet long. This occurred in the South Atlantic, some 300 miles from the coast of present day Namibia. Three professional drawings of the animal (The Illustrated London News 1848; reproduced in Figures 1 and 2 here), authorized by Captain M’Quhae, were published. An excerpt for the day of the encounter from the diary of Lt. E.A. Drummond (1848) was also published, and a correspondent claiming to be an officer of the Daedalus later gave a basically confirmatory account (‘An Officer . . .’ 1858). Finally—and unexpectedly—in 1997, M. Drummond provided drawings (Figure 3) of the creature from Lt. Drummond’s diary, via a communication to The Log of Mystic Seaport (Dash 2010). These drawings provide important clues about the Daedalus animal.

So, exactly what did the witnesses describe? M’Quhae (1848a) wrote that:

. . . in latitude 24° 44’ S., and longitude 9° 22’ E., the weather dark and cloudy, wind fresh from the N.W., with a long ocean swell from the S.W., the ship on the port tack heading N.E. by N., something very unusual was seen by Mr. Sartoris, midshipman, rapidly approaching the ship from before the beam. . . .

On our attention being called to the object it was discovered to be an enormous serpent, with head and shoulders kept about four feet constantly above the surface of the sea, and as nearly as we could approximate by comparing it with the length of what our maintopsail yard would show in the water, there was at the very least 60 feet of the animal à fleur d’eau, no portion of which was, to our perception, used in propelling it through the water, either by vertical or horizontal undulation. It passed rapidly, but so close under our lee quarter that had it been a man of my acquaintance I should have easily recognized his features with the naked eye; and it did not, either in approaching the ship or after it had passed our wake, deviate in the slightest degree from its course to the S.W., which it held on at the pace of from 12 to 15 miles per hour, apparently on some determined purpose.

The diameter of the serpent was about 15 or 16 inches behind the head, which was, without any doubt, that of a snake; and it was never, during the twenty minutes that it continued in sight of our glasses, once below the surface of the water: its colour a dark brown, with yellowish white about the throat. It had no fins, but something like the mane of a horse, or rather a bunch of seaweed, washed about its back.

M’Quhae (1848b) later added that the animal had a flat head.

It would have been difficult to write a report much more effective in public impact. The phraseology is rather concise, yet not without drama; “On our attention being called to the object it was discovered to be an enormous serpent” engenders the same sort of shivery feeling as does Arthur Conan Doyle’s (1902) famous line “Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!” And consider the convincing power of “had it been a man of my acquaintance I should have easily recognized his features with the naked eye.”

Drummond (1848), for his part, wrote that:

. . . we observed a most remarkable fish on our lee quarter, crossing the stern in a S.W. direction: the appearance of its head, which, with the back fin, was the only portion of the animal visible, was long, pointed, and flattened at the top, perhaps ten feet in length, the upper jaw projecting considerably; the fin was perhaps twenty feet in the rear of the head, and visible occasionally: the captain also asserted that he saw the tail, or another fin, about the same distance behind it: the upper part of the head and shoulders appeared of a dark brown colour, and beneath the under jaw a brownish white. It pursued a steady undeviating course, keeping its head horizontal with the surface of the water and in rather a raised position, disappearing occasionally beneath a wave for a very brief interval, and not apparently for purposes of respiration. It was going at the rate of perhaps from twelve to fourteen miles an hour and when nearest was perhaps one hundred yards distant: in fact it gave one quite the idea of a large snake or eel. No one in the ship has ever seen anything similar, so it is at least extraordinary. It was visible to the naked eye for five minutes, and with a glass for perhaps fifteen more. The weather was dark and squally at the time, with some sea running.

One Drummond drawing (Figure 3B) includes annotations of a length of seven feet for the visible anterior part of the animal, and of thirty feet for the distance between that portion and the top of the dorsal fin. Note that the “tail, or another fin” shown in the drawing is based on hearsay from M’Quhae.

The anonymous ‘Officer’ (1858) wrote that the animal was moving at probably not less than ten miles per hour, that water was surging under its chest, that it was not more than 200 yards away at its closest position, that it was in sight for about ten minutes, and that “the eye, the mouth, the nostril, the colour and form” were all distinctly visible. It should be noted that he was writing nearly a decade after the event, and may have been influenced by the writings and authorized drawings of his captain.

Monster Candidates

Suggestions as to the identity of the Daedalus entity have included an adult of a deep sea teleost fish (referenced to an unnamed source by Cogswell 1848), a land snake swimming at sea (Ibid.), a surviving plesiosaur (‘F.G.S.’ 1848), an undiscovered chondrichthyan fish (Mantell 1848), more specifically an undiscovered elongate shark (Melville 1848), an elephant seal (Owen 1848), a giant seaweed (The Geelong Advertiser 1849), an oarfish (Hawtaigne 1860), an undiscovered giant eel (Gosse 1864), an undiscovered greatly elongated whale (Gosse 1864), more specifically a surviving zeuglodont (Wood 1880), a giant squid (Lee 1883), an undiscovered long-necked seal (Oudemans 1892), an undiscovered giant salamander (Burr 1934), and an abandoned canoe being towed by a harpooned, submerged whale shark (de Camp and Crook de Camp 1968).

None of these authors had access to the revelatory Drummond drawings (Figure 3) that depict a quite long-snouted creature with a dorsal fin. Drummond’s drawings nicely match his description of the animal’s head as “long, pointed, and flattened at the top.” As noted by Dash (2010), the data derived from Drummond’s diary are of particular importance due to contemporaneity. In contrast, M’Quhae’s report was written more than two months later, during which stretch of time memories can change. M’Quhae referred to a sketch made shortly after the sighting, but the iconic drawings in The Illustrated London News were not produced until October, and we do not know to what extent they resemble the original sketch, or how detailed that sketch was.

M’Quhae’s account seems to imply that the animal came very close to the ship, as indeed is shown in one of the drawings he authorized (Figure 1). But another of those drawings (Figure 2B), and the accounts of both Drummond and the “Officer,” are in agreement that the animal was much farther away at closest approach. (Drummond wrote that it was perhaps 100 yards away; the “Officer” wrote that it was not more than 200 yards away.) Moreover, there was poor light during the sighting; the weather was described as “dark and cloudy” by M’Quhae and as “dark and squally” by Drummond. Thus M’Quhae’s comment on naked-eye observable detail was surely an exaggeration. Nonetheless, the witnesses had substantial time to view the animal and had telescopes to magnify the view.

Drummond did not perceive the expanse of body surface shown in M’Quhae’s drawings (Figures 1 and 2B); rather, he saw the “head, which, with the back fin, was the only portion of the animal visible.” M’Quhae wrote that the animal’s head was never beneath the surface; this is contradicted by Drummond’s statement that the head occasionally disappeared “beneath a wave.” But their accounts agree that the animal was swimming along with its head fully out of the water much of the time. This behavior is not typical of large marine vertebrates swimming in the open ocean.

Figure 3: Drawings ("A" above and "B" below) of the Daedalus animal from the diary of Lt. Drummond, as published in The Log of the Mystic Seaport. Note the long, flat head.

Figure 4: A sei whale in lateral view during surface skim feeding, from website Shetland Environment. Note similarity in profile to the Daedalus animal as depicted by Drummond. This photo was taken by George Graham and is his intellectual property.

Figure 5: The same sei whale viewed from behind, from website Shetland Environment. Note the ridges on the head. This photo was taken by George Graham and is his intellectual property.

Figure 6: The same sei whale in lateral view during skim feeding, from website Shetland Environment. Note the long, flat upper head. This photo was taken by George Graham and is his intellectual property.

But suppose that what seemed to be the whole head was actually only partial, with the mouth open and the lower jaw underwater. Some baleen whales swim in this manner while skimming small organisms from the ocean surface; the whale’s body and lower jaw are beneath the surface, while the upper jaw projects at an angle. In true skim feeding, at or below the surface, there is unidirectional water flow between the two baleen racks (located beneath the upper jaw) over much of their length, with filtration by baleen bristles, and with outward water flow between baleen plates. In the Daedalus case, the baleen, or part thereof, may have been mistaken for the lower jaw. Drummond mentioned, and illustrated (Figure 3A), that the apparent upper jaw was overshot, which can also be seen in M’Quhae’s close-up view (Figure 2A). This aspect conforms nicely to the relationship between the tip of a whale upper jaw and the forward limit of the baleen beneath it (Figure 4).

Perhaps, then, the Daedalus creature was a rorqual baleen whale feeding at the surface. It is easy to understand how the flat, triangular rorqual upper head (Figures 4 to 6), with its more reptilian than mammalian general appearance, could have been mistaken for the head of a snake by M’Quhae. And his conviction that the animal was a snake may have influenced aspects of his artist’s drawings (Figures 1 and 2). The snake-like eye depicted may have been based on some blemish or shadow effect seen on the whale’s head; the real eye would have been located at the extreme lateral extension of the head, and often underwater. On the other hand, M’Quhae may have glimpsed the real eye, without accurate clarity as to its placement.

M’Quhae’s close-up of the head (Figure 2A) depicts a ridge that seems to run parallel to the midline anteriorly and then splits posteriorly into two branches, producing a Y shape overall. This ridge (actually located right on the midline) is found in rorquals, the blowholes being located within the two angled posterior branches (Figure 5). No spouting was mentioned by the Daedalus witnesses. However, exhalation during surface skim feeding can produce merely a low cloud of droplets, potentially mistakable for spray from movement or from wave impact.

The rather different Drummond and M’Quhae depictions of the Daedalus animal can be reconciled reasonably under the rorqual hypothesis. In lateral profile in surface skimming stance (Figures 4 and 6), a rorqual upper head looks long, flat, and pointed, greatly resembling Drummond’s contemporary drawings (Figure 3). But when seen from behind (Figure 5), as when the Daedalus animal was moving away from the ship, a rorqual upper head can look relatively short and blunt, and somewhat constricted at the back, a perspective that may have influenced the later M’Quhae depictions (Figures 1 and 2).
Can the type of rorqual seen from the Daedalus be identified? One species should be considered mainly due to the shape of its dorsal fin. M’Quhae mentioned a seaweed-like mane on the Daedalus animal (reminiscent, notably, of the sea serpent’s mane in Norwegian folklore), and his artist depicted (Figures 1 and 2B) two low, narrow ridges of shaggy material, one being located at the posterior end of the visible part of the creature. Drummond referred to an occasionally visible “back fin” presumably corresponding to the more anterior ridge shown by M’Quhae’s artist, and drew this (Figure 3B) as a low dorsal fin with a gently concave rear edge. The fin drawn by Drummond is most similar to the “stepped” dorsal fin of the humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae), a species that could easily have been present in early August at the Daedalus location.

There are, however, difficulties in attempting to identify the Daedalus animal as a humpback. The large sensory nodules adorning the head seem unlikely to have gone unnoticed (though one of them could have been mistaken for an eye). The behavioral difficulty is greater. Humpbacks consuming fish have been observed slowly and briefly moving forward with the upper jaw above the surface and the mouth widely open (Stamation et al. 2007). But a humpback moving steadily for a lengthy period, in a position like that of the Daedalus animal, would seemingly have been engaging in maladaptive behavior. The baleen racks, with their relatively short plates, would have been largely out of the water, ruling out true surface skim feeding on tiny organisms. Perhaps a humpback was engaging in anomalous behavior that day in 1848, but the humpback is not the preferred candidate for the Daedalus creature.

Happily, there is a rorqual species of appropriate size and color that possesses an appropriately contoured head, that sometimes engages in steady surface skim feeding, and that could easily have been present at the sighting location in early August: the sei whale (Balaenoptera borealis). The sei (pronounced “say”) whale has anatomical adaptations for opportunistically feeding in skimming mode (Brodie and Vikingsson 2009). The typical angle the upper head makes with the ocean surface during surface skim feeding (Figures 4 to 6) is that drawn by Drummond (Figure 3) for the Daedalus creature. The sei is a slender whale, usually between forty and fifty-five feet in length when fully grown, and dorsally mainly gray to dark brown in color. Most of the baleen plates are mainly dark (Figure 4), but many can be distally whitish, and all the bristles are whitish or white, which explains the reported color of the underside of the Daedalus creature’s “under jaw.” M’Quhae, at least, seems to have taken the darker proximal parts of the plates to have been part of the upper jaw.

A sei whale usually possesses a sickle-shaped dorsal fin, small but prominent. The dorsal fin (unlike the head) of the Daedalus animal was only occasionally visible, and viewing conditions were far from ideal; perhaps only the tip of the fin was dragging at the surface, making its shape difficult to ascertain. Alternately, the fin may have been in damaged or otherwise unusual condition. An interesting photograph (Engblom 2011) shows a possible sei whale with a low, flat dorsal fin. Many baleen whales bear damage of one sort or another from past orca attacks. If a more stereotypical cetacean dorsal fin had been noted, perhaps the Daedalus whale would never have been reported as a giant serpent.

A classic maritime mystery seems solved: The animal seen from the frigate Daedalus on that fateful winter day in 1848 was almost certainly a rorqual whale feeding at the surface with its mouth open. That would presumably constitute a puzzling sight for many mariners of either the nineteenth or the twenty-first century.

Acknowledgements

This research has involved a confluence of mystery investigation and science. It is therefore particularly appropriate to dedicate this paper to my mother, Ruthie E. Weber Galbreath, who loved mystery stories and their solutions, and to my father, Donald H. Galbreath, a fine engineer with scientific training. I thank the noted natural history writer Sy M. Montgomery for comments on the evolving manuscript. The wonderful sei whale photographs in Figures 4 to 6 were downloaded from Shetland Environment (shetlandenvironment.createaforum.com); they are the intellectual property of the photographer, George Graham.

References

• ‘An Officer of Her Majesty’s ship Daedalus.’ 1858. The Times (February 16).
• Brodie, P., and G. Vikingsson. 2009. On the feeding mechanisms of the sei whale (Balaenoptera borealis). Journal of Northwest Atlantic Fishery Science 42: 49–54.
• Burr, Malcolm. 1934. Sea-serpents and monsters. Nineteenth Century 115(684): 220–230.
Cogswell, C. 1848. Pages 2316–2323 in “The Great Sea-Serpent” section, edited by E. Newman, The Zoologist 6: 2306–2324.
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• de Camp, L. Sprague, and Catherine Crook de Camp. 1968. The Day of the Dinosaur. Modern Literary Editions Publishing Co., New York.
• Doyle, Arthur C. 1902. The Hound of the Baskervilles. George Newnes, Ltd., London.
• Drummond, Edgar. 1848. Pages 2306–2307 in “The Great Sea-Serpent” section, edited by E. Newman, The Zoologist 6: 2306–2324.
• Engblom, Gunnar. 2011. Online at kolibriexpeditions.com/birdingperu/
blog/whale-watching-in-peru/.
• 'F.G.S.' 1848. Page 2311 in “The Great Sea-Serpent” section, edited by E. Newman, The Zoologist 6: 2306–2324.
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• Oudemans, A.C., Jr. 1892. The Great Sea-Serpent. E.J. Brill, Leiden, Netherlands.
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• The Geelong Advertiser. 1849. The great sea snake. In The Geelong Advertiser 9 (1015). Geelong, Victoria, Australia.
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• Wood, Searles V., Jr. 1880. Order Zeuglodontia. Nature (November 18).

Starting to feel age tugging at your jaw line? Does your doctor tell you that you have a case of the uglies? You need a little Alex Chiu.

Alex Chiu is the creator of what he calls “the most important [sic] invention in human history,” an immortality device.

You might think that if the secret to immortality had been discovered, you would have heard about it by now. But that’s only because most of its users are doing it wrong: Like any medical instrument, Chiu’s invention must be used correctly, and plenty of people don’t quite use them perfectly. Still, even those who don’t achieve immortality will benefit by improving their health and physique, at least elongating their lives.

But that’s not what draws most to Chiu’s website. He’s also the inventor of Gorgeouspil, a supplement that will revolutionize the beauty industry if Chiu has his way. According to his website:

It was named “Gorgeous Pill” because it turns a user prettier every time the pill was taken. The user will gradually look like a super model. And then he will surpass the hottest celebrity super models within months! It is strong enough to change the shape of your facial bones… Simply pop the pills and look prettier each morning!

As pretty, he says, as Alicia Silverstone.

Ever one to take a bet, I bought a month’s supply of Gorgeouspil (which only works with a pair of immortality rings and foot clamps), and for a grand total of $100 I was off to the races.

I started with this yucky face as my starting point.

Then I got to work, turning myself into Cary Grant. The first step was to eat some leafy greens. I chose some green leaf lettuce. No problem, there. Next, I had to wait an hour and remember not to eat during that hour. Again, no problem. Then came the crucial part: eat two tablespoons of Gorgeouspil and swallow with water. Big problem.

As it turns out, Gorgeouspil is not a pill. It is a powder, packed inside a tiny canister. And it reeks of turmeric and spices. In order to take it, one must plop two tablespoons of spice onto their tongue. And we are not talking about a tasty dollop of Mrs. Dash here. We are talking mouthfuls of turmeric. I took a video of my first horrific Gorgeouspil session, wherein I dissolve into petulant pouting.

Once I had recovered from the emotional turmoil of downing straight spices, I donned my foot clamps and rings, which must be worn in a very particular position in order to work. The next step is when the magic happens: I had to lie down, very still, and let the healing take place. The longer a person stays at rest, the more the mixture can work to repair years of aging and degeneration. In fact, for every four days of Gorgeouspil, I would subtract a year from my body. (What happens when you take it for years? Do you become a zygote? Who knows.)

I love any remedy that tells me to lie around and not work, and Chiu’s Gorgeouspil gave me plenty of that. Rest was stressed over and over, both on Chiu’s website and in the materials mailed with my purchase.

Because Chiu began his work many years ago, and is incredibly prolific, his website is full of endless information on all sorts of topics, and a true devotee will find that some writings contradict one another. At one time, he insisted that a person should never fall asleep wearing the rings and foot clamps or “the healing will stop.” At another, he said to wear them while at rest including sleep.

To clear this up, I contacted Chiu and received a reply from his “silent partner,” Christian Kim. Kim was more than happy to answer my many questions, often at length. He explained that:

The body goes through 2 big cycles in a day - active and rest. Rest period is where the body restores/heals itself (or at least it TRIES to)... So, when you can truly rest, you can and SHOULD use the rings and foot braces. Sleeping period is obvious for everyone (well most of us - there are people who are having problem with this too!). What about reading books in bed? How about watching TV? Talking on the phone? Well, that depends on the body. And the BEST (maybe the ONLY?) way to find out is to TEST it out.

Since I tend to be a restless sleeper (and, I admit, the rings and foot clamps made it tough for me to fall sleep to begin with), I decided that I am most serene and at rest while reading. So, every night, after eating my lettuce, taking my Georgouspil, and putting on my clamps and rings, I would read for up to an hour, keeping my hands and feet locked into my immortality devices, and letting the Gorgeouspil sweep through my veins, rejuvenating my every cell.

Many people who went through the same process did not leave satisfied. In 2009, Mr. Chiu was indicted on several counts of felony fraud when he refused to give refunds to people who said his foot clamps, rings, and Gorgeouspil failed to make them gorgeous.¹ Chiu was fined $10,000 and put on three years of probation.

In an interview with disinformation, Chiu explained:

I must admit some of these refunds that I did not honor was [sic] my fault. I was offended when customers sent back the rings or foot braces claiming that I am a fraud, claiming that these rings cannot give them immortality. I was extremely insulted any time customers sent back the rings with an insulting note. So sometimes I just kept their money.

Chiu is also now careful to mark all of his products “No medical claims” and warns that they cannot stop you from getting hit by a bus or being murdered; they merely slow down or reverse the aging process.

It appears that these days, Chiu doesn’t communicate directly with buyers, letting Christian Kim handle correspondence. Kim told me he took over this job, “so Mr. Chiu could devote his time with his continued experimentation and invention!”

And Chiu is clearly very busy. Besides inventing new ways to stop the inevitable march toward death, he devotes sections of his website to Bible code (the idea that prophetic messages are hidden in the Bible), philosophy about the nature of God, a review of the I-Ching, his own end-times prophecies (one says that in 2005, the United States, Taiwan, and China would engage in “the bloodiest war of all”), instructions on building a UFO, rudimentary plans for a teleportation machine, and a plan to stop human overpopulation by giving everyone Gorgeouspil so that they are too healthy and beautiful to need anyone else to carry on their blood line.

For all of his unlikely claims, Chiu puts his money where his mouth is when it comes to proving that his products work. He faithfully documents his own progress, taking YouTube videos of himself at various ages and showing the world how “gorgeous” he remains. I tend to think he looks healthy, and his own age, but you can judge for yourself.

As for me, I don’t think I’m much more gorgeous than when I began. Maybe slightly so. After all, I am certainly well-rested.

Notes

¹ USA v. Chiu, Case # 3:2009-cr-01150.

Pseudoscience has been rapidly gaining ground in the past few decades. Dietary supplements and homeopathic preparations, advertised by the disgraced Dr. Oz and his ilk, now constitute a multi-billion-dollar industry. Major universities house centers of integrative health, which offer courses in acupuncture, Reiki, Therapeutic Touch, qigong, and Vedic medicine, and are funded generously by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (Mielczarek and Engler 2013). Elsevier, a reputable scientific publisher, is publishing journals devoted to pseudoscience (Beauregard et al. 2014). Pop culture icons such as Vani Hari (“the Food Babe”) have gathered armies of uninformed citizens, ready to sign petitions in hundreds of thousands to force their anti-scientific demands on the food industry (Godoy 2014; Alsip 2015).

The destructive strength of such misinformation stems from professionals in whom the public places its trust: medical doctors and scientists, some with impressive credentials. It is therefore imperative to lay bare the message of these professionals and show that, despite their credentials, their message contradicts the very science they once practiced.

Mavericks or Quacks?

David Pruett, a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, has posted a laudatory tribute to the “Manifesto for a Post-Materialist Science” (Pruett 2014), a document purporting a new paradigm of science in which the study of spirituality, parapsychology, and near-death experiences are elevated to the rank of quantum mechanics (QM). The document is signed by four psychologists, one social anthropologist, one medical doctor, one neuroscientist, and one biologist, none belonging to the mainstream of their disciplines (Beauregard et al. 2014). They include names that will be familiar to longtime SI readers for their advocacy of fringe-science, including psychologist Gary Schwartz, Marilyn Schlitz of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, mind-body medicine proponent Dr. Larry Dossey, and Rupert Sheldrake.

Schwartz is one of the three preparers of the manifesto. He is a psychologist at the University of Arizona (UA), who in 2002 received a $1.8 million award from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine of the NIH to create the Center for Frontier Medicine in Biofield Science (CFMBS) at UA. As the findings at the center were “too controversial for mainstream journals,” Schwartz compiled them in a trade book in 2007, the same year that CFMBS was closed down (Schwartz 2015)! Now Schwartz is the director of the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health (LACH, online at http://lach.web.arizona.edu/center_frontier_medicine_biofield_science_cfmbs), an alleged research lab in which mind-body and alternative medicines are investigated. LACH boasts its publications on its website. Clicking on the publications tab brings a page showing Schwartz’s trade books such as The G.O.D. Experiments. Curiously, under Published Articles (as of the writing of this article), there is only a promise: “List added soon …”! The websites of the other two preparers and the five remaining signers of the manifesto show similar out-of-the-mainstream accomplishments.

After extolling their credentials, Pruett writes: “The authors of the manifesto are all scientific mavericks whose viewpoints are not mainstream. . . . It’s worth noting, however, that neither were Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, or Einstein mainstream.” This is a typical degradation of “mainstream” deployed by pseudoscientists to promote woo. Those who follow mainstream science, they say, cannot produce any revolutionary ideas. Pseudoscientists argue that the real geniuses, the ones who change the course of our understanding of nature, are outside the mainstream. In fact nothing can be further from the truth.

There are three categories of scientists (MDs included):

1. Those who do mainstream science.
2. Those mainstreamers who bend the mainstream.

3. Those who leave the mainstream and turn into crackpots.


The overwhelming majority of scientists belong to the first category. Scientists including Galileo, Newton, Dalton, Crick and Watson, Planck, and Einstein belong to the second category. People in the third category may once have been accomplished scientists in the first category; however, for various reasons, they left the mainstream science, and with it, science itself. People like Deepak Chopra, Andrew Weil, Dr. Oz, Rupert Sheldrake, Fritjof Capra, and the authors of the “manifesto,” by their own admission, are no longer mainstream scientists. And certainly they don’t belong to the second category!

Since Pruett’s main argument for the extolment of the post-materialist “science” is his characterization of the authors of the manifesto as “mavericks” on par with Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Einstein, it is crucial to debunk this characterization and to demonstrate that these four scientists, as well as all other giants of science, were in fact mainstreamers.

There is a huge difference between introducing revolutionary ideas within the confines of the mainstream science and irresponsibly throwing in nonsense and calling it “revolutionary” simply because the mainstream scientists don’t accept it. The mainstreamers’ opposition to both types of ideas is a healthy reaction to the subversion of cherished and experimentally tested prevailing theories. The same mainstreamers who oppose a new idea eventually become its supporters once evidence verifies its validity. That is how the mainstream bends! On the contrary, a pseudoscientist’s ad hoc gibberish gets thrown out of the mainstream—along with its proposer, if the latter insists on the unproven, untested, and unsubstantiated idea.

Mavericks of 
the Mainstream

Heliocentrism was discovered by the Greek astronomer and mathematician Aristarchus of Samos, who calculated the sizes of the Moon and Sun and their distances from Earth using data from the observation of the eclipses and phases of the Moon. By carefully examining the arc of the Earth’s shadow on the Moon in a lunar eclipse, Aristarchus determined that the Moon’s diameter is about one-third of the Earth’s; from the observed angular size of a full moon, he found that the Earth-Moon distance was about thirty times Earth’s diameter.

Aristarchus’s (grossly underestimated) solar measurements showed that the Earth-Sun distance was about twenty times the Earth-Moon distance. And since both have approximately the same angular size in the sky, the Sun, being twenty times farther, must be twenty times bigger than the moon, or about seven times bigger than the Earth. Aristarchus concluded that the Earth, being smaller, must be going around the Sun! This conclusion was based entirely on the observations done by mainstream astronomers (Hassani 2010, 8).

Whether Copernicus knew of Aristarchus’s calculations is a matter of controversy (Evans 2014). What is not controversial is that the data on the lunar eclipse and Earth-Moon distance were available to Copernicus in the mainstream astronomical books of his time, most notably Ptolemy’s Almagest. And he used those data to invent his heliocentric model.

Like all other scientific activities, Western observational astronomy lay dormant after the Greeks until Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe made observations with unprecedented accuracy. He continued in the tradition of the Greek astronomers Hipparchus and Ptolemy and was essentially the mainstream, as he was one of the very few who observed the stars.

Brahe’s precise observations of the planets showed disagreement with the two prevailing theoretical models: neither Ptolemy’s geocentric model nor Copernicus’s heliocentric model agreed with his data. As in all good science—and contrary to pseudoscience, which is based dogmatically on beliefs—if a theory does not agree with accurate observations, it needs to be modified. Brahe, not well-versed in mathematics, was not in a position to make the modification. So he invited Johannes Kepler, a well-known mainstream mathematician and physicist at the time, to his observatory in Prague to analyze the data he had collected.

The decision of which theory to choose for modification was clear to Kepler. Ptolemy’s geocentric model had already gone through myriad fine tunings over many centuries. Copernicus’s heliocentric model, on the other hand, was much simpler: the Sun is at the center and all planets move around it in circular orbits. It took Kepler almost twenty years to revise the heliocentric model to make it agree with Brahe’s data. Kepler replaced the circular orbits with elliptical ones. His work was an improvement on an existing theoretical framework to accommodate Brahe’s mainstream observations (Hassani 2010, 40).

Galileo’s greatest contribution to science was his emphasis on—and results obtained from—experiments. But he was by no means outside the mainstream as Pruett claims. There was no mainstream science in Galileo’s time, because there was no stream! The stream of Greek science began to dry up when a Roman soldier murdered one of the greatest scientists of all time, Archimedes.

Archimedes was well known not only as a great mathematician but also as an equally great inventor. While all of his finished works were of a theoretical nature, his investigations in mechanics and liquids deeply influenced his mathematical thinking (Heath 2002). Archimedes’s use of “mechanical” methods to arrive at some of his key theoretical discoveries comes very close to the modern scientific process of designing theories based on observational measurements.

Sixteenth-century Europe saw the revival of science after a 1,800-year hiatus. There emerged two schools of thought. One school followed Plato and Aristotle and advocated the primacy of the mind. The other emphasized the importance of observation, and in this respect followed Archimedes, whose works had been translated into Latin and made available to the scientists of post-Renaissance Europe, including Francis Bacon, who promoted empiricism; Galileo Galilei, who applied the method to motion; and William Gilbert, who applied it to electricity and magnetism. Bacon, Galileo, Gilbert, and others restarted Archimedes’s mainstream.

There is arguably no idea more revolutionary in science than the notion of quantum. The last decade of the nineteenth century saw an upheaval in mainstream physics as physicists tried to understand how a heated object produced electromagnetic (EM) radiation. Such an object was idealized to a black-body radiator (BBR). A brief history of Max Planck’s discovery of quanta from a careful analysis of a black-body radiator helps to see the mainstream character of the discovery.

The study of BBR started with Gustav Kirchhoff—the same Kirchhoff whose laws of electric circuitry are taught in introductory (mainstream) physics courses; it was continued by Joseph Stefan and Ludwig Boltzmann, who discovered an equation for the brightness of a BBR; and it was further advanced by Wilhelm Wien, who came up with a formula describing detailed behavior of a BBR. Planck discovered a new derivation of Wien’s formula and published his result in the mainstream journal Annalen der Physik in November 1899. In the same month, two experimentalists reported discrepancies between the formula and their observations to the meeting of the German Physical Society (GPS) in Berlin. When Wien scrutinized his formula, he concluded that it was valid only for short wavelengths.

In the meantime, one of Planck’s experimental colleagues reported to him a recent observational finding concerning the long-wavelength behavior of BBR and its agreement with a formula derived by the British physicist Lord Rayleigh. Upon receiving this news, Planck, whose re-derivation of Wien’s formula gave him advantage over other theorists, succeeded in finding a new equation that agreed with both ends of the BBR spectrum, and presented his result under the modest title An Improvement of Wien’s Spectral Law to the GPS in October 1900 (ter Haar 1967, 79). For Planck, the urgent question now was why the new equation worked.

Planck had used purely thermodynamic reasoning to reach the new formula. However, there was another mechanistic and materialistic school of thought, which used statistical techniques in thermodynamics. Planck did not belong to this group, and, in fact, was opposed to such a line of thinking. However, after the success of his new formula, he started to lean more and more toward statistical mechanics. In his Nobel lecture, Planck recalled this proselytism and how it led to the principle of the quantization of electromagnetic radiation (Planck 1920).

Einstein came to prominence in 1905 for publishing three articles in the same journal that Planck had published his, Annalen der Physik (Einstein 1905a, 1905b, 1905c).

• The first article on the photoelectric effect was based on Planck’s idea of the quantization of EM waves. This is the article for which Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921.
• The second article on the Brownian motion involved the atomic theory of matter and statistical mechanics, which by now had become a mainstream subject.
• The third article was on electrodynamics, which was one of the mainstream areas of study after Maxwell’s prediction of the electromagnetic waves in 1865 and their subsequent discovery and production in 1887.

One area of research, in which many experimental and theoretical physicists were engaged, focused on the behavior of electromagnetic waves in moving media. In order to explain this phenomenon, Einstein invented the special theory of relativity.
Pruett is therefore utterly wrong in saying that Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Einstein were not mainstream scientists!

Without going into as much detail, I list the mainstream contributions of the five principal founders of quantum mechanics because of their importance in the “manifesto”:

• Bohr Model of the Hydrogen Atom: Neils Bohr published his quantum theory of the hydrogen atom in three papers in the mainstream journal Philosophical Magazine, which had earlier published groundbreaking articles by J.J. Thomson and Ernest Rutherfor (Bohr 1913a, 1913b, 1913c).
• Wave-Particle Duality: In 1923, Louis de Broglie presented three communications to the mainstream scientific organization Paris Academy, where he outlined the basics of a wave theory of matter. These communications became his PhD thesis in 1924 and an article in a mainstream journal in 1925 (de Broglie 1925).
• Uncertainty Principle: Werner Hei­sen­berg, working on the mechanics of the hydrogen atom, came up with this principle and published it in the mainstream journal Zeitschrift für Physik (Heisenberg 1925). Heisenberg was noted for inviting other physicists to join his research. Among the physicists who collaborated with Heisenberg were Felix Bloch, Rudolf Peierls, I.I. Rabi, Edward Teller, and Victor Weisskopf, all prominent mainstream physicists.
• Schrödinger Equation: Schrödinger published his equation in 1926 in Annalen der Physik, the same journal in which Einstein and Plank published their papers (Schrödinger 1926). His equation described the mechanics of the hydrogen atom and the quantization of its energy levels.
• Relativistic Quantum Mechanics: In 1928, P.A.M. Dirac published his paper that unified the special theory of relativity and quantum mechanics and predicted antimatter in yet another mainstream journal (Dirac 1928).

It is important to keep in mind the role of the hydrogen atom in the development of QM.

Quantum Mechanics: 
A Materialistic Theory

Quantum mechanics is a favorite subject of all varieties of pseudoscience. It is portrayed with a halo of mysticism that bears the signatures of Qi, Taoism, Ayurveda, Karma, and many of the other Eastern mystical concepts that the promoters of woo can concoct.

Pruett, echoing the manifesto, says, “Quantum mechanics, however, supersedes Newtonian mechanics and undermines the classical assumption of materialism.” This is a complete distortion of truth! The fact that quantum theory was developed around the behavior of the hydrogen atom is a testimony to its materialistic nature and a falsification of the claim of post-materialist scientists that “QM has questioned the material foundations of the world by showing that atoms and subatomic particles are not really solid objects” [my emphasis] (Beauregard et al. 2014). What does this statement even mean? That only solid objects are material? That as soon as ice melts its materiality evaporates? Solidity, liquidity, and gaseousness—the three temperature-dependent states of matter—are all bulk properties of a large aggregate of atoms or molecules, themselves having none of the properties of the bulk material. The statement is similar to saying that human cells are not human because they cannot laugh and cry.

The deeper question of “what exactly is a (material) particle” was answered in Eugene Wigner’s Nobel Prize–winning paper of 1939, published in yet another mainstream journal (Wigner 1939). Wigner proved mathematically that anything with energy and momentum, whether a subatomic particle or a truck, can be described by two numbers: its mass and its spin, either of which could be zero. Therefore, with mathematical precision, we can conclude that all particles—including atoms, subatomic particles, and (massless) photons—are material, and any science that studies them is, by its very nature, materialistic.

The quantum mechanics that “undermines the classical assumption of materialism” is fabricated by fringe and paranormal “scientists” who have been thrown out of the mainstream and find satisfaction in writing a “manifesto” to attract “comrades!”

References

• Alsip, M.A. 2015. The ‘Food Babe’: A taste of her own medicine. Skeptical Inquirer 39(3)(May/June): 39–41. 
Beauregard, M., G.E. Schwartz, L. Miller, et al. 2014. Manifesto for a post-materialist science. Explore 10(5): 272–274.
• Bohr, N. 1913a. On the Constitution of Atoms and Molecules (Part I). Philosophical Magazine 26(151): 1-24.

• 1913b. On the Constitution of Atoms and Molecules (Part II). Philosophical Magazine 26(153): 476-502.

• 1913c. On the Constitution of Atoms and Molecules (Part III). Philosophical Magazine 26(155): 857-875.
• 
de Broglie, L. 1925. Research on the theory of quanta. Annales de Physique 10(3): 22–128.
Dirac, P.A.M. 1928. The quantum theory of the electron. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A 117 (778): 610–24.
• Einstein, A. 1905a. On a heuristic viewpoint concerning the production and transformation of light. Annalen der Physik 322(6): 132–148.
• 1905b. On the motion of small particles suspended in a stationary liquid, as required by the molecular kinetic theory of heat. Annalen der Physik 322(8): 549–560.
• 1905c. On the electrodynamics of moving bodies. Annalen der Physik 322(10): 891–921.
• 
Evans, J. 2014. Aristarchus of Samos. December 10. Online at http://www.britannica.com/biography/Aristarchus-of-Samos.
• 
Godoy, M. 2014. Is the Food Babe a fearmonger? Scientists are speaking out. December 4. Online at http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/12/04/364745790/food-babe-or-fear-babe-as-activist-s-profile-grows-so-do-her-critics.
• Hassani, S. 2010. From Atoms to Galaxies. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
• Heath, T. 2002. The Works of Archimedes. New York: Dover.
• Heisenberg, W. 1925. Quantum-theoretical re-interpretation of kinematic and mechanical relations. Zeitschrift für Physik 33: 879–893.
• Mielczarek, E.V., and B.D. Engler. 2013. Nurturing non-science. Skeptical Inquirer 37(3)(May/June): 32–39. See also http://www.imconsortium.org/members/members.cfm.
• Planck, M. 1920. Nobel lecture. June 2. Online at http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1918/planck-lecture.html.
• Pruett, D. 2014. Toward a post-materialist science (blog entry). Huffington Post Religion Blog (December 1). Online at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-pruett/toward-a-postmaterialistic-science_b_5842730.html.
• Schrödinger, E. 1926. Quantization as an eigenvalue problem. Annalen der Physik 384(4): 273–376.
• Schwartz, G. 2015. Biography. Online at http://www.drgaryschwartz.com/Biography.html.
ter Haar, D., ed. 1967. The Old Quantum Theory. London: Pergamon Press.
• Wigner, E. 1939. On unitary representations of the inhomogeneous Lorentz group. Annals of Mathematics 40(1): 149–204.

The Cancer Control Society (CCS) describes itself on its website as “a non-profit organization, dependent upon donations for its mission: to prevent and control cancer and other diseases through Nutrition [sic] and Non-Toxic [sic] Therapies [sic].” This mission may sound noble, but a close look at CCS reveals that it enthusiastically promotes approaches to health care that are based on simplistic and/or discredited theories and treatments that either (1) haven’t been shown to be safe and effective for an intended purpose, or (2) have failed under proper testing.

Entrance to the Cancer Control Society's 2015 convention, which served as space for a few of the exhibits.

Nevertheless, what CCS promotes as the “life-saving information” it provides often seduces consumers, journalists, and health professionals. CCS’s misinformation outlets include its annual convention, annual symposium for doctors, annual tours of clinics in Tijuana, recommended films, “PREVENTION DIET” sheet, exhibits at various health expos, “NON-TOXIC CANCER THERAPIES, DOCTORS, & TESTS DIRECTORY,” and “DIRECTORY OF NUTRITION-MINDED DOCTORS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.” People who don’t realize why it is problematic to draw conclusions about treatments from testimonials can be misled by making contacts from CCS’s list of “PATIENTS TREATED WITH NON-TOXIC CANCER THERAPIES & NUTRITION.”

CCS presented its “43^rd Annual Cancer Convention” during the three days of Labor Day weekend 2015 at the Sheraton Universal Hotel in Universal City, California. An advertisement in the Los Angeles Times described the convention as “Prevention and control of cancer and other diseases through Nutrition, Tests & Alternative Therapies” and “* Over 40 Speakers * 5 Movies * 80 Exhibits * CEU’s for Nurses & Dentists *” with the public invited to attend the convention for $40 per day. I attended the 2015 convention on Saturday and Sunday and all three days of the annual conventions in 2009 and 2013.

Many of the empty seats for this presentation could have been filled by conventioneers visiting exhibits.

Continuing Education?

The convention program indicated that CCS is an approved provider (#5688) of continuing education units (CEUs) for nurses and that, for a fee of $135, nurses could earn twenty-seven contact hours of CEUs for attending the convention. I checked the website of the California Department of Consumer Affairs and found that CCS is indeed licensed as a continuing education provider for nurses (through April 30, 2016).

Here’s how the California Board of Registered Nursing describes acceptable course content for continuing education for license renewal:

The content of all courses of continuing education must be relevant to the practice of nursing. Learning experiences are expected to enhance the knowledge of the registered nurse at a level above that required for licensure. Courses must be related to the scientific knowledge and/or technical skills required for the practice of nursing, or be related to direct and/or indirect patient/client care.

Courses related to the scientific knowledge for the practice of nursing include basic and advanced courses in the physical, social, and behavioral sciences, as well as advanced nursing in general or specialty areas. Content which includes the application of scientific knowledge to patient care in addition to advanced nursing courses may include courses in related areas, e.g. human sexuality; death, dying, and grief; foreign languages (conversational); therapeutic interpersonal relationship skills; pharmacology; and those related to specialty areas of nursing practice.

Courses in nursing administration, management, education, research or other functional areas of nursing relating to indirect patient/client care would be acceptable.

I don’t see how any of the CCS convention presentations fit the description of acceptable course content. The only speaker identified as a registered nurse on the convention program is Jenny Hrbacek, author of Cancer Free! Are you Sure?, a book in which she promotes non-validated testing such as the “Greek test” for detecting cancer supposedly years before standard methods of screening and for supposedly improved monitoring for cancer recurrence.

The Board of Registered Nursing identifies eight types of unacceptable continuing education courses, including “courses designed for lay people.” Since the convention was advertised to attract a general audience and most attendees (and some speakers) each year are lay people, shouldn’t that disqualify convention attendance as a continuing education activity for nursing? A reasonable person might think so, but this is the board that previously approved a sham continuing education course on “Feng Shui for Home Care Providers” consisting of furniture moving, feng shui, snake oil, smoke and mirrors, seeing of illusory patterns, divination through human entrails, and “Cannupiary Flexibility” (a meaningless term made up to reveal the lax CEU standards of the board).

CCS’s convention program also indicated that CCS is an approved provider (#4323) of CEUs for dentists who, for a $125 fee, could earn twenty-four contact hours for attending the convention. I checked CCS’s registered provider status on the website of the Dental Board of California and found that it had expired on August 31, 2015. The CCS registered provider license status was labeled “Incomplete,” meaning: “Licensee is attempting to renew. Renewal is incomplete due to incomplete continuing education, failure to sign renewal, or other minor omissions.”

From what I can tell, the bar for becoming a registered provider of continuing education for dentists is set low in California. The application includes a series of simple questions. The most challenging question is:

Will all courses offered be a means of an orderly learning experience in the area of dental and medical health, preventive dental services, diagnosis and treatment planning, clinical procedures, basic health sciences, dental practice administration, or the Dental Practice Act and other laws specifically related to dental practice which is designed to directly enhance the licensee’s knowledge, skill or competence in the provision of service to patients or the community?

I don’t see how the question could have been honestly answered in the affirmative for the program description of the 2015 CCS convention.

The flyer for CCS’s annual “DOCTOR’S [sic] SYMPOSIUM featuring NON-TOXIC ALTERNATIVE THERAPIES, THERAPEUTIC NUTRITION & TESTS” on Tuesday, September 8 indicates a registration fee of $75 including lunch, includes the words “Public Invited!,” and states that the symposium is approved for six CE credits for both dentists and nurses. None of the sixteen listed speakers on the flyer is a dentist, and the only nurse on the list is Hrbacek.

Tijuana-Style Continuing Education

Another flyer indicated that nurses and dentists could earn fifteen CE units at a fee of $125 by taking one of three bus trips (September 9, September 19, or November 14) for tours in Tijuana, Mexico, of clinics treating cancer, arthritis, and multiple sclerosis. The advertised cost of just a tour is $100 and would include visits to five of seven listed clinics. The flyer is clearly designed to attract potential patients and not just health care professionals to visit the clinics. It reads:

• Before disease strikes… discover your options!
• Alternative Therapies in action!
• Learn why Tijuana has become the Mecca for cancer victims!

The flyer appropriately likens a trip for treatment to any of the Tijuana clinics on the tour to a religious pilgrimage. Both require faith, wishful thinking, and inattention—if not obliviousness—to healthy skepticism. Claims of the importance of God or spirituality to healing are marketing messages used by Tijuana clinics and are common applause lines uttered by speakers at CCS conventions. As I concluded recently, “...healing claims made for several of the most celebrated [CAM, or complementary and alternative medicine, modalities] are religiously based, though misleadingly marketed as if they were science-based.” In the contrarian universe of CAM, with its modalities that need not actually complement validated therapies or serve as viable alternatives to them, healing doesn’t necessarily mean an objective reduction in the severity of an ailment; it often means the perception of reaching “a complementary union of mind, body and spirit.” If you are bold enough to challenge CAM devotees regarding the factual basis they claim to have for their beliefs, don’t be surprised if they become offended the way worshippers of Abrahamic religions often react to arguments that God is a failed hypothesis or a delusion.

The Tijuana tour flyer lists each of the clinics/hospitals along with a name of a therapy offered. None of these therapies have been established as effective treatments of cancers, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, or any other diseases that are supposedly remediated by “holistic” or “integrative” healing. The clinics/hospitals and their featured therapies are:

• Bio-Medical Center features the Hoxsey treatment consisting of various concoctions and a restricted diet. The treatment is promoted in a video shown on the Tijuana bus trips.
• Rubio Cancer Center features Rife (a low-energy electrical device developed in the 1920s that is claimed to kill or disable diseased cells) and “immune vaccine” treatments. Although development of cancer vaccines has been an active area of serious cancer immunotherapy research for decades, the only FDA-approved cancer treatment vaccine is sipuleucel-T, which was found to increase survival of patients with a specific type of advanced prostate cancer by several months. The American Cancer Society notes that the process for creating autologous dendritic cell vaccines—the type of cancer vaccine promoted at Rubio Cancer Center and other Tijuana clinics—is “complex and expensive.”
• Two hospitals in the Tijuana area offer the “Gerson-Plus” Therapy promoted by medical doctor and naturopath Dan Rogers, which includes the Gerson therapy of diet, supplementation, and enemas of coffee and/or chamomile tea in combination with a couple of dozen other nonstandard interventions. Hyperthermia is also mentioned on the flyer. The Gerson-Plus website indicates that the type of hyperthermia used involves raising the temperature of the full body. Whole-body hyperthermia is not a standard method of cancer treatment. According to the American Cancer Society: “Hyperthermia is a promising way to improve cancer treatment, but it is largely an experimental technique at this time.” Experimental does not mean validated or ready for commercialization!
• Stella Maris Clinic and Oasis of Hope Hospital feature laetrile and so-called metabolic therapy. In the Fall of 2003, Joe Nickell, senior research fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, investigated Oasis of Hope and reported his findings in the July/August 2004 issue of Skeptical Inquirer. Among the promotional materials he discussed was a video in which Dr. Francisco Contreras (the current facility director, president, and chairman) claimed: “In this hospital the medical director is Jesus Christ, and that makes a difference.”
• International BioCare features “multi-phasic.” That simply means offering a wide range of offbeat treatments, many of which are available at the other Tijuana clinics. Among International BioCare’s treatments are ultraviolet blood irradiation therapy and supposedly “advanced oxidative therapies” including ozone and hyperbaric oxygen.
• Hope 4 Cancer features, in addition to metabolic therapy, Poly-MVA, the most frequently touted product I encountered at the 2013 and 2015 conventions. According to a brochure distributed by AMARC Enterprises, which markets the product and was a CCS convention exhibitor, “Poly-MVA is created through an innovative, patented, and proprietary process whereby palladium (a rare mineral) is chemically bound to alpha lipoic acid, a powerful antioxidant involved in cellular protection.” AMARC describes Poly-MVA as creating “a synergy, action and function not found in any other dietary supplement. This formulation is designed to provide energy for the body’s systems by changing the electrical potential of cells and increasing the charge density of DNA within the cell.” Hope 4 Cancer’s website says: “Palladium Lipoic Acid (LAPd) complex serves as a powerful treatment to any kind of cancer. Lot [sic] of research has been done on the subject and results prove that LAPd complex when taken as a nutritional supplement like Poly-MVA acts as a cancer deterrent.”

Al Sanchez, Jr. AMARC Enterprises CEO, at the Cancer Control Society's 2015 convention.

Such claims for Poly-MVA are illegal in the United States. On December 11, 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sent a warning letter to AMARC objecting to disease-related claims on its website for Poly-MVA and Poly-MVA for Pets. When disease-related claims are made for products marketed as dietary supplements, the FDA regards the products as drugs, which require FDA approval for marketing. It appears that the disease-related claims mentioned in the warning letter have been removed from AMARC’s website, but there are still audio recordings available on the site discussing the use of Poly-MVA in treatment of prostate cancer and other diseases. Even if those recordings were removed from the site, I don’t see how a product that supposedly works as an antioxidant and is said to require a proprietary process for chemical bonding and is apparently not a naturally occurring nutrient or herbal chemical can be legally marketed as a dietary supplement in the United States.

AMARC advertises an eight-ounce bottle of Poly-MVA for $185.00 and recommends as many as twelve teaspoons of it per day “until patients get the desired effects they are seeking.” Considering the lack of evidence of effectiveness of palladium-alpha-lipoic acid complex in treating cancer, asthma, chronic fatigue syndrome, HIV/AIDS, psoriasis, and systemic lupus erythematosus, Poly-MVA customers should be prepared for long waits—if they’re lucky—for desired effects. One of the most famous promoters of Poly-MVA was Shari Lieberman, whose lecture at the Cancer Control Society’s 2007 convention was about “Poly-MVA Successful Case Histories.” Lieberman was fifty-one in 2009 when she died of metastatic breast cancer. Two audio recordings of her touting Poly-MVA were available on AMARC’s site in September 2015.

How can a state board for any health profession permit continuing education units to be awarded for visits to clinics offering services claimed to alter the course of disease based on wishful thinking, faith, and half-baked biological rationales rather than meeting rigorous clinical testing standards?

Fear and Loathing of ‘Toxins’

One of the main seductive, but misleading, messages promoted by advocates of CAM such as the Tijuana clinics and most of the CCS convention speakers and exhibitors is that our health depends on use of various products and services to (1) supposedly remove so-called toxins from our bodies and (2) come as close as possible to eliminating our exposure to various chemical, physical, and biological agents that fringe scientists claim are serious health threats.

Charlotte Gerson at the Cancer Control Society's 2009 convention.

In the contrarian world of CAM, so-called toxins of special concern are usually unspecified synthetic chemicals of modern living, including usually unspecified pollutants. However, the notion that “synthetic” means worrisome and “natural” means safer is misguided. And while it’s proper to use the term toxicants to refer to poisonous doses of synthetic chemicals, toxins are all-natural poisonous substances produced by biological processes of plants, animals, and microorganisms.

In one of the video excerpts of previous CCS talks by Gerson Therapy promoter Charlotte Gerson shown at the 2015 convention, Gerson said: “We must avoid all toxins and poisons.” In another excerpt, she said, “Animal proteins are the number one carcinogen in the world.” The notion that animal proteins are carcinogens has been popularized by physiologist T. Colin Campbell, but it’s farfetched and based on overinterpretation of population studies.

Lorraine Day, MD, at the Cancer Control Society's 2009 convention.

At CCS’s 2015 convention, both Lorraine Day, MD, and Charles Majors, a chiropractor and author of the book The Cancer Killers—The Cause Is the Cure!, expressed a common CAM teaching that I previously described as the cancer-is-the-symptom ploy. In the topsy-turvy perspective of Day, Majors, and, apparently, many CCS conventioneers, it isn’t cancer that makes you sick; you’re sick already and that’s why you get cancer.

According to Day, a sick body causes the tumor, and when you get the sick body well the tumor will go away. The promotional literature for her DVD Diseases Don’t Just Happen! is subtitled We Give Them to Ourselves One Day at a Time By the Way We Eat and Live. Of course, the reality is not so simple.

Charles Majors, DC, at the Cancer Control Society's 2015 convention.

“You’ve been sick for years and then you get cancer,” Majors said. He takes an extreme view of the popular notion of the wisdom of the body claiming: “The body will always do the right thing at the right time.” Thus, developing cancer is supposedly what a body sometimes needs to do in response to a toxic onslaught. He also claimed: “Every cancer at every stage is curable.” One of his cancer killing strategies is to take deep breaths throughout the day to provide a happy home for good cells and an unsuitable home for cancer cells (the same thinking behind discredited oxygenation treatments). Another strategy he recommends is taking Poly-MVA. Majors insisted that inflammation is the key to all disease and is caused by bad fats, toxicity, common allergies, gluten, and food sensitivities. On his “Be a Cancer Killer” website, he advises: “Ditch the plastic in your life.” His book The Cancer Killers—The Cause Is the Cure! supposedly offers the nutrition, fitness, and detoxification advice needed for curing cancers, but I won’t be adding it to my personal shopping list.

Day and Majors weren’t the only CCS speakers demonizing various consumer products and modern technologies. Talks at CCS baselessly promoted or hyped as health threatening: pesticides in food, acidic foods, genetically modified organisms as food sources, Roundup, plastics, coffee (when not used in enemas), foods from animals, vaccines to prevent infectious diseases, pasteurized milk, close proximity to microwave ovens or foods cooked in them, fluoridated water or toothpaste, MSG, gluten, grains, aluminum cans or foil, aspartame, saccharin, sugar, and even polyester clothing.

Anti-GMO Exhibit at the Cancer Control Society's 2009 convention.

Oram Miller at the Cancer Control Society's 2015 convention.

Oram Miller, who presents himself as one of 120 Certified Building Biology® Environmental Consultants, referred the audience to his online slide presentation that promotes extreme precautionary measures to avoid exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMFs) from common sources such as compact fluorescent lamps, electric blankets, induction cooktops, Wi-Fi, and cell phones. Miller claims, but provides no evidence, that:

• EMFs interfere with healing and treatment from health care practitioners
• Most people improve with reduction in EMF exposure

Tulio Simoncini at the Cancer Control Society's 2015 convention.

Nature wasn’t completely excluded from the anti-toxin propaganda at CCS. Renegade physician Tulio Simoncini and Doug Kaufmann, host of the Know the Cause television program both promoted the false notion that cancer is a fungus.

Some CCS speakers even presented negative emotions as toxic. Carolyn Gross, who works as a patient advocate at the Rubio Cancer Center, showed a slide with the title “All Health Begins in the Mind.” She claimed that women “have eight times more blood flow to the right emotional side of our brain,” and, based on psychoneuroimmunology, positive thinking stimulates peptides, which boost t-cell production and help the immune system to improve health. Gross’s biography indicates that she has BA degree in home economics and nutrition and “became a licensed massage therapist from the Institute of Psycho-Structural Balancing in San Diego, California.”

Part of Rubio's Cancer Center's 2015 exhibit featuring Carolyn Gross.

It’s unlikely that Gross’s training prepared her to appreciate that claims for psychological interventions intended to improve immune system function and improve survival in cancer have been repeatedly debunked. Promoting unwarranted concern about negative emotions may serve to add to the distress of those already distressed patients who have difficulty seeing the bright side of life.

Perhaps the most bizarre of the many toxin alarms I heard from CCS speakers came from Donald Jolly-Gabriel. “Sugar is the most evil demon from the deepest darkest pit of hell,” he declared. I guess that’s not a surprising statement coming from someone described in the booklet of CCS speaker biographies as having “received his Degree [sic] from California Christian University, Los Angeles,” and as holding “Degrees [sic] in Psychology, Sacred Theology, Behavioral Sciences, Business Administration and is certified in Hyperbaric Oxygen Medicine from Southern California School of International Studies.” California Christian University is not listed in the U.S. Department of Education’s Database of Accredited Postsecondary Institutions and Programs. The only degrees it offers are in theology. My online search for evidence that the Southern California School of International Studies actually exists was unsuccessful.

Donald Jolly-Gabriel was visited by audience members after his talk at Cancer Control Society's 2015 convention.

Nevertheless, “Donald Jolly-Gabriel, PHD [sic]” is presented as a member of the practitioner team with expertise in hyperbaric oxygen on the website of the Center for New Medicine (formerly the South Coast Center for New Medicine) in Irvine, California, which offers services I have come to expect from Tijuana clinics. The clinic’s director is Leigh Erin Connealy, MD, whose activities I discussed last year. She along with the South Coast Center were named in a lawsuit in 2008 on the grounds of negligent hiring and retention of an incompetent employee, a dentist employed by the Center. Dr. Connealy and her clinic settled for a modest undisclosed sum before the case was tried. In 2010, another patient sued the same parties and others. After visiting the center in 2007 for bio-identical hormones, the patient was referred to a dentist who convinced her that she needed removal of sixteen amalgam fillings and two teeth, which resulted in infections requiring additional surgery, pain, and difficulty chewing. Also in 2010, Dr. Connealy was named as a defendant in a suit filed by Pamela McGreevy, a California woman who, among other things, had been tested with a ZYTO, a computerized device promoted for determining what dietary supplements, herbs, or homeopathic products might be useful. The suit stated that Dr. Connealy had engaged in negligent misrepresentation by telling McGreevy that ZYTO’s limbic stress assessment (LSA) test would identify “stressors, such as bacteria, injury, allergies, lack of sleep, toxins, emotional strain and traumatic events” that affected her body in order to induce her to “undergo an unnecessary and expensive medical treatment, as well as to induce the sale of supplements profitable to Defendants.”

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD, at the Cancer Control Society's 2009 convention.

In 2009, Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy came onstage to receive an award at the Cancer Control Society’s annual convention.

Detoxification Delusions

Once you buy in to toxin-haunted thinking, you can be persuaded to submit to a variety of rituals to cast off toxins that require far more time, effort, and money than evangelists invest in casting out demons in the name of Jesus.

During his CCS 2015 presentation, Garry Gordon claimed that “every man, woman, child, and animal needs daily detoxification as we are all toxic.” Gordon claims to be the “Father of Chelation Therapy,” which is routinely prescribed by some physicians, but has been validated only for treatment of patients with dangerously high blood levels of heavy metals such as lead and mercury. Gordon was trained as an osteopath, had his degree converted to an MD in California (which osteopaths could do in the 1960s), and was licensed to practice medicine in California through 1975. His current license comes from the Arizona Board of Homeopathic and Integrative Medicine, which has been described as “the second chance for doctors who may not deserve one.”

Methods of detoxification recommended at CCS conventions in addition to chelation methods included zeolite products and other concoctions promoted by Gordon, coffee enemas five times per day, colonics, alkalinization of the small intestine, and pulsed electromagnetic field therapy.

Detoxification is only the beginning of the various supposedly holistic, multimodal treatment programs promoted by CCS. A common false teaching in the world of CAM is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to get adequate nutrition from our food supply or the American diet. Beyond recommending organic, GMO-free foods (and sometimes vegan diets), CCS speakers recommended various dietary supplement regimens (most notably PolyMVA), and high-dose intravenous vitamin C. In addition to various aforementioned Tijuana clinic treatments, speakers promoted “leaky gut” treatments, hydrogen-rich water, and various dubious methods of immune support.

What Happened to Standards for Health Professionals?

It’s disgraceful that the pernicious nonsense promoted by the Cancer Control Society, especially from its most dubiously qualified speakers, could be allowed to count for continuing education units for any type of health professional. A phrase from Peter A. Lipson comes to mind: it’s “a travesty of a mockery of a sham.”

How could the California Board of Registered Nursing ever recognize the Cancer Control Society as a worthy source of the kind of “scientific knowledge and/or technical skills required for the practice of nursing” that is expected of continuing education experiences in nursing?

I’m glad that the Cancer Control Society’s continuing education license from the Dental Board of California expired and still shows incomplete status for renewal. But how could that board ever recognize CCS as being inclined to provide continuing education to licensed dentists that would “enhance the licensee’s knowledge, skill or competence in the provision of service to patients or the community”?

Continuing education is needed in healthy skepticism, not credulity. Even without the incentive of continuing education units, many health professionals (and pseudo-professional practitioners) embrace CCS’s messages and attend CCS meetings. Backgrounds in science subjects and solid health professional training are insufficient to immunize people against believing bullshit. Unsuspecting, cynical, overconfident, misinformed, fearful, counter-culturally sympathetic, ideologically-driven, transcendentally tempted, and wishful thinking people may be especially supportive of CCS’s egregious propaganda and resistant to reasonable, scientifically tenable, evidence-based contrary perspectives.

Many health professionals are frustrated with the health care delivery system and the day-to-day difficulties of caring for patients. They wish they had better ways to help, and they try to be open-minded about what are presented as alternative perspectives on healing. Unfortunately, they may not try as hard to be open-minded about strong evidence in support of contrary perspectives. Open-mindedness fails without a well-designed filtration system to effectively separate fact from fiction. In other words, it fails without healthy skepticism.

As Opus from Berke Breathed’s Bloom County comic strip once observed, “The trouble with having an open mind is that people keep coming along and sticking things in it.” When the misguided, toxin-haunted worldview of CCS gets stuck into an open mind that doesn’t filter properly, don’t be surprised when the consequences are paranoia and faulty treatment-related decisions.

Paul Heyne explained the open-mindedness problem in his 1998 microeconomics textbook:

The search for knowledge of any kind necessarily begins with some commitments on the part of the inquirer. We cannot approach the world with a completely open mind, because we weren't born yesterday. And completely open minds would in any event be completely empty minds, which can learn nothing at all.

People on licensing boards should have commitments to consensus conclusions from within the scientific community. Crank hypotheses are no match for well-established scientific facts, which Stephen Jay Gould described as “confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.” Consensus conclusions about biological plausibility should be taken seriously and not overturned without extraordinarily good evidence. It takes empty-mindedness, if not neglect or apathy, to permit the biologically implausible teachings promoted by CCS to count for continuing education units.

I hope that members of licensing boards are open to learning how to improve their standards for licensing continuing education providers and effectively promote professional accountability. I hope they can cultivate the open-minded, science-based, evidence-focused, critical thinking of healthy skepticism.

Photo credits: William M. London

Reason for Change saw a sell-out crowd of 500 attendees.

The Center for Inquiry returned to its founding and headquarters site, suburban Amherst, New York, outside of Buffalo, for its 2015 conference, June 11–15, and by any measure the event was a fine success. The conference sold out with close to 500 registrants packing the various ballroom sessions and participating in lively intellectual and social interchanges.

“Reason for Change” was its multiple-meaning theme, which seemed to serve the conference well. It was the second consecutive annual conference combining the work of both the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (copublisher of the Skeptical Inquirer) and the Council for Secular Humanism (copublisher of Free Inquiry) as well as CFI’s overall mission. But it was the first since those two entities became programs of CFI rather than separate nonprofit organizations.

Scientific skepticism and secularism/humanism blended fairly seamlessly, with numerous plenary sessions where these interests overlapped (about two-thirds of the conference) and some parallel separate-track sessions where the interests seemed distinct (often posing difficult choices for some attendees who wanted to attend both).

Taslima Nasrin and SI contributor Brian Engler at opening reception.

There were optional pre-conference tours to the Center for Inquiry headquarters building (only about a mile away) and its extraordinary library of 72,000 books on freethought and scientific skepticism. The library includes a first edition of Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason and the notebooks and files of famed skeptics such as Martin Gardner and Steve Allen and early UFO critic Thornton Page (plus papers Keay Davidson used in his biography of Carl Sagan). And there were post-conference bus tours to nearby Niagara Falls and to the home of “The Great Agnostic” Robert Ingersoll, a three-hour drive away.

The Board of Directors of CFI also met for the better part of three days before the conference, with a few impromptu sessions during the conference itself. The Executive Council of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (after being featured at a conference Skeptic Track public session Sunday morning) met in a business meeting for five hours on the Sunday afternoon immediately following the conference’s end. I am on both, so it made for a long if stimulating week; it also required my missing a few conference sessions I wanted to see.

Ron Lindsay with Morgan Romano of Atheizm Dernegi (Association of Atheism).

Ronald A. Lindsay, CFI’s president and CEO, welcomed participants at an informal Thursday evening reception. He would later point out that the two strains that unite all aspects of the now-combined organization are a respect for critical, evidence-based thinking and a disdain for dogma.

The next morning things got underway in earnest, with Jim Underdown of CFI–Los Angeles beginning his conference emcee duties. I opened things with a twelve-minute illustrated overview of some historical highlights of CSICOP (now CSI) and SI. The organization got its start thirty-nine years ago, almost exactly across the street from the conference hotel at the then-new Amherst campus of the State University of New York at Buffalo in May 1976, when philosophy professor Paul Kurtz called a conference on “The New Irrationalisms” and announced the founding of CSICOP.

Ken Frazier opens the conference with a quick history of CSI and SI.

I told the story mainly through the way others (especially outside media) reported on us in our early years. Articles in the New York Times, Time, Science News, Smithsonian, Reader’s Digest (then translated into dozens of foreign language editions), Psychology Today, and the Wall Street Journal heralded the creation and early work of CSICOP. One such example was Carl Sagan’s famous “The Fine Art of Baloney Detection” article in Parade, the national Sunday newspaper supplement. The article included a box about CSICOP and the Skeptical Inquirer, calling SI “cheerful, irreverent, instructive, and often very funny.” This was early input to Sagan’s later book about pseudoscience and irrationality, The Demon-Haunted World, published the year he died.

An even more important article was cognitive scientist (and later CSICOP fellow) Douglas Hofstadter’s March 1982 Scientific American article thoughtfully contrasting the two modes of inquiry of the Skeptical Inquirer and the National Enquirer, the era’s best-known sensationalist tabloid. Hofstadter had clearly read the Skeptical Inquirer deeply and carefully. He quoted at length from key articles. He strongly recommended CSICOP and SI. He called us “a steady buoy to which one can cling in the sea of [irrationality] that all of us are drowning in.” This wonderful article prompted so much interest that over the next few months SI’s circulation nearly doubled. (The article also had a ripple effect in other countries, such as Germany when published two months later in the German-language edition of Scientific American.)

The opening session of the conference with Barry Karr, Ken Frazier, and Tom Flynn.

Hoftstadter later reprinted the article in his book Metamagical Themas, with a lengthy epilogue commenting upon reaction to it and providing further thoughtful consideration of the issues SI struggles with. I told the audience that I considered Hofstadter’s article “the most substantive, detailed, and positive article ever written about us. It may still be.”

I then jumped ahead to recent times and the present. “Overall,” I concluded, “I think SI and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry have been a major influence helping to contain the influence of [pseudoscientific and antiscientific] impulses and to keep alive among the public the idea that the wonders of science and nature far exceed the false mysteries of pseudoscience and bogus science.”

Tom Flynn, editor of Free Inquiry and director of the Council for Secular Humanism, followed with a similar illustrated overview of their history and recent influence.

Here are just a few highlights from the conference that struck me as of particular interest for our readers. (Again, I couldn’t get to all sessions.)

Michael Specter chides opponents of GMOs.

GMOs: Potential and Promise

New Yorker writer Michael Specter spoke on one of the hottest and most surprisingly controversial topics of recent times: GMOs (genetically modified organisms). Specter’s book Denialism won CSI’s 2009 Balles Prize for Critical Thinking, and he applied the same critical thought to the GMO topic. He said he’d tried not to write about GMOs for twenty years but can no longer avoid the topic, as society’s unfortunate view seems to be that scientists are concocting “some Martian-like different species.” He emphasized that GMOs can help fulfill global shortages of food and said to think they are more a danger than a boon to addressing hunger is a “big disconnect” from reality. “These are important tools,” he said. “Over the next thirty-five to forty years, we must grow more food than through all of history.”

He chided opponents of GMOs living in wealthy enclaves in the United States and Europe who shop at expensive health food stores (“which no one should ever do”), think “natural” is somehow a meaningful and meritorious term, and seem unaware of how serious the problem of feeding and providing necessary nutrients such as vitamin A to less-developed parts of the world is—and will become, unless the potential of GMOs can be realized.


“We have been modifying food for 10,000 years,” Specter noted. Adding or modifying genes to make key crops have bigger yields or be more resistant to pests is along that same continuum of progress.

Eugenie C. Scott speaking on crank anthropology.

"What GMOs really can do, they are not being allowed to" because of fear-mongering opponents, he said. He said he likes Monsanto, one of the main companies making GMOs and a target of GMO opponents. Nevertheless, he said, “There are tons of [GMO] products that have nothing to do with Monsanto. Some include a gene that kills pests, so the farmers don’t need to spray insecticides.” That, he implied, should be considered a good thing. As for the Roundup brand spray that is also a frequent target of GMO opponents, “Roundup replaced two other products that were far more toxic.”

Critical thinking and better appreciation of the science is needed, he said. Perhaps it would help, he said, to point out that (injected) insulin is a GMO. When you say that, he said, people get it and may realize, just perhaps, that GMOs can be useful.

Crank Anthropology

For her lecture, anthropologist Eugenie C. Scott, the longtime fearless defender of teaching evolution in schools, shifted gears (“back to my roots,” she put it) and addressed a topic of classic pseudoscience: crank anthropology. She gave a little primer on the differences between science and pseudoscience. One of her comments CSI Fellow Dave Thomas later put on Facebook as a nicely designed Internet “Thought for the Day”: “Pseudoscience claims the mantle of science, but fails to earn it.” She described a few examples of pseudoscience in her field, including the Aquatic Ape hypothesis, alleged human/ET hybrids (she outlined the barriers evolution provides to hybridization of vastly different creatures), and a number of fake Bigfoot claims. “All passed the test of being pseudoscience,” she said.

The alternative medicine panel: Harriet Hall, Steven Novella, David Gorski, and moderator Leonard Tramiel.

Alternative Medicine Panel

Steven Novella, Harriet Hall, and David Gorski (all physicians and fellows of CSI) took part in a panel exploring the troubling trends in popular and institutional encouragement of non-science-based medicine.

Novella began by lamenting that alternative practitioners are promoting a double standard, “literally carving out an alternative universe.” He ended answering a question from the audience about critical thinking. “Once they are true believers, evidence doesn’t help,” Novella said. “You have to do it earlier.” 
Hall emphasized that there is no such thing as alternative medicine, only medicine supported by science. The term is nevertheless used for what used to be called “quackery,” “folk medicine,” or “fringe medicine” and “includes fanciful things that couldn’t possibly work.” Troubling signs of it are uncontrolled, poorly designed, never replicated experiments, statements from physician proponents beginning “In my experience” (she calls that “a very dangerous phrase), and anecdotes. Another problem is that proponents use the same word evidence that scientists do “but with a totally different meaning.” (This is why Novella and colleagues are promoting the concept of science-based medicine; see Novella’s recent SI column “It’s Time for Science-Based Medicine” May/June 2015.)

David Gorski sharing on “quackademic” medicine.

Gorski gave an overview of “quackademic” medicine, noting (as have a number of recent SI investigative articles) that the U.S. government is spending close to half a billion dollars a year on “complementary and alternative medicine.” “Medicine should be based on science,” he emphasized. He noted one prominent proponent of alternative remedies at Yale has called for “a more fluid concept of evidence” than typically demanded by science, meaning one where controlled experiments aren’t required. “Integrative medicine” is now the new faddish term for the same thing as before. Gorski calls it “integrative quackery.” He ended with a pungent equation: “Integrative Medicine = Medicine + Myth.”

Rebecca Goldstein gives a spirited luncheon keynote speech on “mattering” and questioning.

Two Philosophers, on Science... and the God Argument

Philosopher, novelist, and MacArthur Fellow Rebecca Goldstein gave a spirited luncheon keynote talk about what she calls “mattering.” That night she received CFI’s Morris D. Forkosch Award for Best book for her Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away (2014). Mattering starts with questions. The question “What is?” is our trying to get our bearings. And that captures something very distinctive about our species. It has resulted in science, philosophy, and religion. Religion’s answer to that question is “God is.” If that were true, if “God is,” Goldstein said, “that would change the entire decor of the universe.”

“What matters?”—including whether we ourselves matter—is a second universal question. Both religion and secular reason have distinctive approaches to these two questions. Religion says, “God matters, and we matter to God,” since we are made in his image. In this view, Goldstein says, “He appears to take us almost as seriously as we take ourselves—which is gratifying.”

The problem is some people matter more. “And that leads to terrible atrocities.”

Rebecca Goldstein signs copies of her book.

A seeming corollary to this view is that “If God isn’t”—if there is no God—then human life doesn’t matter. And if life doesn’t matter, it’s a “moral free-for-all.” This is an invalid inference, she notes; it’s the fallacy of denying the antecedent.

With the ancient Greeks, mattering didn’t depend on gods. “They kicked the gods out of mattering.” They were intent on “keeping the terrible gods out of it.” And that created the preconditions for philosophy and then science.

The tools of science are powerful, but “there’s nothing simple about the scientific methodology. Even calling it a methodology—as if there are simple step-by-step rules—is misleading.” Science makes use of observation, theory, induction, deduction, abduction, intuitions, prediction, experiment, modeling, and computer simulations. “Science is not a simple follow-the-rules procedure. But the most essential fact about science is that it always leaves open the possibility that we’re getting ‘What is?’ wrong, even at the most fundamental level.” Science “directs its ingenuity to trying to get nature to correct us when we are wrong.”

Says Goldstein, “We need fellow knowledge-seekers to show us the blind spots in our thinking.”

The two arms of reason—what used to be called natural philosophy and is now called science and moral philosophy—have made progress over the course of the centuries, expanding our points of view both scientifically and morally.

Goldstein praised the conference theme, “Reason for Change,” with its “deliberate ambiguity, the kind of semantic gestalt switch it forces the mind to make.” And she concluded: “Why shouldn’t we get to be inspired, reasonably inspired, by reason itself?”

Stephen Law offers the Evil-God Challenge.

In a Sunday morning lecture, Stephen Law, senior lecturer in philosophy at Heythrop College, University of London, and provost of the Centre for Inquiry–UK, described what he calls The Evil-God Challenge. He wrote about this previously in the Skeptical Inquirer in an article titled “The God of Eth” (SI, September/October 2005, available on our website at csicop.org).

It was an interesting complement to Goldstein’s talk. He called it “a simple argument.” It began with most believers’ sense of God as omnipotent and all good. He asked, Is belief in this God reasonable? He found that the typical arguments “provide no grounds to suppose that this being is all good or all powerful.” He then brought up the question of gratuitous evil. “If gratuitous evil exists, God does not. But gratuitous evil exists. Therefore, God does not exist.”

“It is a great argument,” Law said, “but Christians are ready for it.” They simply say, “God works in mysterious ways.” They say God gave us free will, and it follows that suffering results. Bad experiences can make us suffer, “but no pain, no gain.” Anyway, free will leads to more good than suffering. He restated this view as, “It’s arrogant of us to suppose we can understand the mind of God—an infinitely wise being. . . . So belief in God is not so unreasonable.”

He then proposed an alternative hypothesis: “There is a God. He is all powerful and all evil.” “This is just as well-supported as the other arguments,” Law said, “Yet Christians would reject it out of hand as ludicrous.” Why, they ask, would an evil god give us sunsets and mountains, healthy bodies, children, and good deeds and bestow on many of us good fortune and wealth?

“We can reasonably rule out an evil God,” Law argued. But, using a similar argument, “Then why can’t we rule out a good God?” The argument is the same. “The real mystery is, why do so many fail to see this?”

The first question from the audience following Law’s talk came from Richard Dawkins. Dawkins said if he believed that way he’d just say, “The God I believe in is unconcerned, indifferent.”

Law’s quick answer to that was, “Then why should I worship—and be eternally grateful to—this being?” And the lively discussions went on from there.

Climate Change Panel

A big gap continues between the abundant scientific evidence for climate change and global warming and the public’s perception that even if true (which many in the United States doubt), humans aren’t responsible for it. The Skeptical Inquirer has been reporting on the scientific evidence and these issues of troubling anti-science since 2007.

Jim Underdown introducing the Climate Change panel: Ken Frazier, Mark Boslough, Scott Mandia, Jan Dash, and Joshua Rosenau.

As moderator of an afternoon panel on climate change, I offered one new data point: The alleged hiatus in global warming that opponents have made so much of doesn’t exist. Using newly developed and more accurate data sets of land and ocean surface temperatures, and two additional years of data, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that the hiatus vanishes. The rate of warming from 1998–2014 is almost identical to the rate of warming from 1950–1999. (See theconversation.com/improved-data-set-shows-no-global-warming-hiatus-42807.) This announcement came just a few days before our panel and is now published online in Science (http://scim.ag/TKarl). Yet, I cautioned, don’t expect this to sway contrarians, because factors other than the scientific evidence, such as whom one trusts and identifies with, tend to carry more weight.

Scott Mandia on what influences public opinion on climate change.

Scott Mandia, professor of earth and space sciences at Suffolk County Community College and cofounder of the Climate Science Rapid Response Team, expanded on that point in his presentation “Sometimes It’s Not about the Science.” Mandia outlined a number of factors other than the science that influence opinion about climate change. Public confusion is being driven by “merchants of doubt” who have very deep pockets and a desire to maintain the status quo. Numerous conservative “think tanks” with “experts” (a significant proportion of whom have no scientific training) result in a loud megaphone, with 108 climate change denial books written just through 2010 linked to them. Ninety percent undergo no peer review, allowing authors to recycle scientifically unfounded claims. Political ideology plays a big role.

“Republicans are motivated to deny climate change and other environmental problems because of their aversion to the perceived solutions which may infringe on their ideological values,” Mandia said. He described Dan Kahan’s research indicating that “individuals subconsciously resisted factual information that threatened their defining values.” Other research by Kahan shows that the message (in this case about climate change) is trusted when the messenger is from the same peer group. Climate scientists are not in most conservatives’ peer group.

So what to do? Use examples that relate to that audience’s worldview. Point out that the evidence for climate change is accepted not just by scientists and science academies but also by the U.S. military, health officials, and insurance companies. All consider it a serious problem. None are considered liberal tree-huggers. Putting it all together, Mandia counsels to lead with the facts, keep arguments simple, warn the listener before stating the myth, align the message with the person’s cultural worldview, and provide a more credible alternative.

Jan Dash on the risks of climate change.

Jan Dash, Climate Initiative Chair and managing editor of the Climate Portal website for the Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office, is an expert on risk management. He spoke on managing the risks of climate change and of contrarian obstruction. The risks are higher in the future (the next fifty to 100 years) than they are now, and that is one problem; we’re not good at assessing future risks. Economic risks include breakdown of supply lines and markets via increased political instabilities and other serious impacts. Energy risks include a collapse of the fossil fuel sector. Financial risks include over-leveraging by our descendants for future borrowing to cope with climate impacts. But there are also risks to the oil industry, a loss of reputation and possible legal risks. Underappreciated are the positive opportunities to business in mitigating climate change. Dash offered no silver bullet: he said we need innovative strategies by individuals, business, and all levels of government.

Joshua Rosenau, programs and policy manager for the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), said climate change is a critical part of science education and warned that deniers, just like antievolutionists, are targeting the schools. More science and better education matter, and there’s a lot scientists and skeptics can do on that front. But he suggested we can’t just win with better education or by throwing more science at people; we need to forge effective cultural and social connections to diffuse this fight. He said NCSE can help folks find the best ways to make those connections and get involved.

Albuquerque computational physicist and CSI Fellow Mark Boslough, another panelist, was the primary mover behind the December statement “Deniers Are Not Skeptics” signed by fifty-two Committee for Skeptical Inquiry fellows (SI, March/April 2015) and more than 28,000 others so far (see http://act.forecastthefacts.org/sign/skeptics/). At the panel he spoke on his proposal to create climate futures markets, a way to “bet” on future climate trends. This would allow businesses at risk from global warming, such as agriculture, to hedge against climate-related losses and would provide a market-based consensus on the rate of change that could be used as an index for a carbon dumping fee that would increase automatically with future temperature. His interest in climate futures markets led him to propose a challenge to deniers based on that concept. Immediately following the planned presentations by the climate change panelists, CFI President Ronald A. Lindsay came up to the lectern and announced the Committee’s challenge to the Heartland Institute. It is described in the sidebar on page 17.

The Executive Council of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry held a public skeptic track session at the conference Sunday morning, prior to its business meeting that afternoon. From left: Leonard Tramiel, Dave Thomas, Ray Hyman, Eugenie C. Scott, Ken Frazier, Harriet Hall, Scott Lilienfeld, Amardeo Sarma, Steve Novella, and Barry Karr.

Conclusion

Lindsay concluded the conference Sunday morning on a moving note, describing the recent history, role, and future of the Center for Inquiry as he sees it. His brief remarks are published as a special essay on page 35. It was a fitting end to a stimulating conference that took us back to the founding roots of the modern skeptical movement, examined where we are now, and looked ahead to the challenges to come.

Let’s start this article with a disclaimer: I am, by most definitions, a “cat person.” I have always loved cats, and I’ve pretty much always lived with cats. I currently have two cats: Brendon and Fry, two bonded brothers I adopted when they were about a year old. These cats, like most of my previous cats, defy the common stereotypes people seem to have about cats. They greet me at the door when I come home, follow me around the house, sleep in bed all night, like to have their bellies rubbed, and have never bitten or scratched anyone.

I don’t think they’re necessarily weird outliers. I think that any cats could be that great if they have humans who treat them well and bond with them.

It’s important to note that Brendon enjoys wearing clothes. I know you don’t believe me. That’s okay. You’re a skeptic. That’s a good thing. But it’s true. He runs over to me when I pull out his shark costume, and he purrs and rolls around for awhile after getting it on. I take his picture and put it online, and my friends tell me that secretly, Brendon wants to murder me.

Some of my friends, including the very editor of this article, felt vindicated recently when mainstream news outlets reported Study: Your cat might actually want to kill you It brings me no joy to report that they are wrong. Okay: a little joy.

The study is available in full online, and I’m happy to report that nowhere in it does it come even close to commenting on whether or not your cat has homicidal plans for you.

The purpose of the study was to compare personality traits across various species of cat in the hopes that doing so might provide insight into how to better treat big cats in captivity. Accordingly, the researchers asked zookeepers to fill out personality surveys for clouded leopards, snow leopards, and African lions. They compared that information with survey results from shelter volunteers rating domestic cats, plus previous studies on Scottish wildcats.

Already, you should note that this study didn’t look at domestic cats in your home—it looked at cats in the highly stressful shelter environment. The personality ratings may relate to how your cat behaves in a loving home, but it’s not by any means exact. You should also note that a personality survey that a human fills out for an animal is bound to be somewhat subjective. If people expect an animal (or another person) to be aggressive or conscientious or agreeable, they’ll be more likely to notice the behaviors that reinforce their opinion. This is simple confirmation bias.

I’d like to note that while typing that previous sentence, Fry climbed on top of me and started licking my face while purring (see photo). I have no idea why.

This leads nicely into the personality traits the researchers identified most strongly in domestic cats: dominance, impulsiveness, and neuroticism. Spontaneously licking someone’s face could be the result of any one of those. I suppose that “murder” could also be a result, but the research doesn’t get into that at all. Come to think of it, perhaps Fry now has a taste for human face and it’s only a matter of time before I’m nibbled alive.

All that this research shows is that as domestic cats evolved, they seem to have retained some of the same personality traits as their big ancestors. This isn’t news; watch videos of big cats chasing laser pointers or “hugging” caretakers. There are a lot of fascinating similarities to our tiny companions, and it may very well be true that cats have never been truly domesticated.

But (many) domestic cats do share a mutually beneficial relationship with humans, and there’s absolutely nothing in this research to suggest that they would suddenly forget that fact if they were to magically grow a hundred times their size.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to open a can of chicken glop for Fry and Brendon, lest they read over my shoulder and get any big (cat) ideas.

Mike Bohler has been studying and debunking conspiracy theories since the old days of computer bulletin board systems. He ran a system called Radio Free Illinois under the pseudonym of Dr. Oldsmobile, where he routinely posted the results of his efforts to discover the truth behind the hype of conspiracy theories. He has an avid interest in historical conspiracies, particularly those involving Pearl Harbor, but he’s also interested in other aspects of American history including the American Civil War and the Progressive Era in the United States.

Now, in the age of the Internet, Bohler has decided to put his research on these fascinating topics online in the form of a blog and a podcast titled A Skeptic’s Guide to Conspiracy. Since 2011, he’s been putting all his exhaustive and thorough research to good use by providing a valuable resource for anybody looking for skeptical information about conspiracy theories.

Bohler agreed to answer a few questions from the Skeptical Briefs’s Gurmukh Mongia.

Gurmukh Mongia: What is it about conspiracies that you think really fires the public’s imagination and gets people interested in hearing more about them?

Mike Bohler: I believe there are a couple of reasons that people will be attracted enough by conspiracy theories to advocate for them. First of all is the aspect that deals with the personal fears that many people face. This is on the basic necessity level, things like having food on the table and a roof over your head. Many conspiracies prey on people’s fears of losing these basic needs. A one-world government, for example, is often envisioned as a totalitarian state which will take away all rights to personal property.

The second reason relates more to politics, which builds upon personal fears but adds a level of in-group versus out-group dynamics into the mix. This, again, plays into people’s fears—paranoia even—of overreaching intrusions into not only personal affairs but into group level persecutions. Simply put, many conspiracies feed our natural level of paranoia. They often provide a simple enemy and objective for directing our fear and anger. The fear generated by conspiracy theories can be a powerful motivation towards action.

Mongia: What was your inspiration for starting the podcast? What makes your show different?

Bohler: Several factors converged which led me to start podcasting. My basic interest in the topic of conspiracy theories in general, and the topic of the Pearl Harbor conspiracies in particular, led me to want to do something that would help me get my views out to an audience. I thought about writing a book on my opinions of the Pearl Harbor conspiracies, but I was unsure about how to go about that, and I thought a podcast would be a wonderful way to get my views directly through to the public.

I have personally known people who lost their life savings believing in the Y2K conspiracy. It’s very sad that honest and hard working people lose their life savings because of conspiracy theories that prey on their fears. Sometimes, belief in these conspiracies can even result in death. I believe that greater public awareness of these issues can only be a good thing.

I had started listening to podcasts, especially skeptical podcasts, and I was very impressed with the power of this medium to allow individuals to fairly easily get their voice and their message out to a wider audience. With so many skeptical podcasts out there, though, I needed an angle to try to make my voice heard. I noticed that most skeptical podcasts focused on scientific based conspiracies such as vaccine denial or homeopathy. I felt like there was a niche here that I could fill with my aforementioned interest in historical based conspiracies such as Pearl Harbor, the Illuminati, and holocaust denial.

Mongia: Do you have one or two favorite or most memorable shows? What are they and why?

Bohler: I was very pleased to see how popular my episode on celebrity conspiracies was with my audience. I got a lot of very encouraging feedback from that episode, as well as requests for more material on these kinds of topics. I am, however, particularly fond of my Pearl Harbor shows. I have done so much reading and research on the events leading up to the attack that I feel like it would be difficult to find much in the way of information that I have not already gathered on the topic. In spite of this, I find different angles on the topic endlessly fascinating, and the range and depth of the accompanying conspiracy theories are very rewarding.

Mongia: You do extensive research for your episodes. Have you ever come across facts or arguments in your research that have led you to conclusions that have surprised you?

Bohler: This happens to me all the time. I feel like it’s a skeptic’s job to look at an issue from a variety of possible angles and consider information that doesn’t completely mesh with your preconceived notions. There have been many cases where I chase down one line of thought and discover either a piece of information that would fit well as part of a different conspiracy, or more usually a line of inquiry that I never thought of. Most of the time it doesn’t change my basic opinion on a conspiracy, but it can add a lot of nuance to the exercise of understanding the facts of the situation and the mindset of the people who advocate these theories.


A Skeptic’s Guide to Conspiracy may be found on the web at mikebohler.com. The podcast may also be found on Facebook at facebook.com/ASGTC and on iTunes. Mike Bohler may be followed on Twitter through the handle @JDRipper1962, and he may be reached over email for feedback at feedback@mikebohler.com. If you have any interesting research or data that you feel may be useful to Bohler, you may send it to research@mike
bohler.com.

Broccoli causes cancer! Global temperatures are falling! Chocolate helps you lose weight!

Why is science news so bad?

More specifically: Why do journalists insist on trumpeting the findings of the latest, anomalous study—ignoring the weight of all the evidence that came before?

It’s certainly one of the most frustrating tendencies in science journalism—as Marguerite Holloway surely knows. Her group of journalism, computer science, and design researchers at Stanford and Columbia is developing Science Surveyor, a tool to help journalists quickly get an idea of the scientific context for new studies, according to Nieman Lab.

The project is at an early stage of development, but the idea is that the tool would search academic databases for relevant papers and try to determine if the new study is an outlier or part of a consensus. It would also show changes in the field over time. The researchers hope the tool can communicate all this through simple, easily understood graphics.

If it lives up to this promise, the tool could mitigate one of the most frustrating problems in science journalism.

Where’s the context?

Communications scholars have for some years now recognized the dangers of science news items that fail to put studies in their proper context. For example, Corbett and Durfee found that when climate change stories lacked information about the scientific consensus, readers were less likely to perceive scientific certainty about the issue.¹

Communications researchers also have some idea of why such problematic reporting occurs - though some of the reasons are fairly obvious. One is journalism’s obsession with speed, which has only accelerated in the past few decades. University public relations departments have honed their game to meet this challenge, providing news outlets with press releases that can easily form the basis of stories, with a minimum of additional reportage or verification.

Another factor is “balance,” which arose as a journalistic norm to ensure that both sides of a story get heard. For many topics, this can be an appropriate way of presenting information to the public. As University of Wisconsin professor Sharon Dunwoody argues, “Although journalism exists in principle to help individuals make reasoned decisions about the world around them, journalists are rarely in a position to determine what’s true. Objectivity and balance have evolved over time to serve as surrogates for truth claims.”²

In science reporting, this approach has become both a shield and a stumbling block, allowing journalists to claim they’ve done their duty, while actually misinforming the public. One shouldn’t resort to a truth “surrogate” where the truth can actually be found.

Attribution: Efraimstochter via Pixabay

Are journalists just lazy?

With all the dangers that context-free science reporting poses, it’s easy to see the journalists who write such stories as lazy or incompetent. And we can’t forget either, that publishers have a financial interest in emphasizing novelty, controversy, and the “man bites dog” imperative. They know lots of people will read about how chocolate helps weight loss, while the old news about chocolate packing on the pounds is far less intriguing.

At the same time, if we hope to change journalistic practice, it’s important to look more deeply at the conditions that shape journalistic practice. One of those constraints is limited expertise.

The expertise problem exists at many scales. Yes, as frustrated scientists and science enthusiasts have pointed out, there are journalists who cover science without the most basic skills necessary: without rudimentary understanding of probabilities and statistics, without understanding why a control group is needed or why a study of mice hardly tells us anything about humans.

But the problem may be more systemic and unavoidable than that. Even the most talented science writers—including individuals with advanced degrees in scientific disciplines—typically cover a variety of topics. It’s hard to make a living as “that guy who writes about microbiology” or “that woman who writes about neutron stars.”

As Dunwoody writes, “Science writers… are defined as specialists among journalists, yet most cover a wide variety of topics, from nanotechnology to stem cells. There’s solid evidence that years in the saddle is a good predictor of one’s knowledge base as a journalist—science writers who have been covering the beat for a couple of decades know a great deal about many things—but even experienced journalists cannot grasp the factual intricacies of all they cover.”³

How do we determine “consensus”?

There’s also an inherent difficulty in getting the true sense of “scientific consensus.” Take global warming. The scientific consensus may seem obvious now, after several studies have established that a vast majority of climate scientists believe that climate change is real and man-made^{4, 5, 6}—most recently, a 2013 paper by Cook, Nuccitelli, et. al., establishing the oft-cited 97 percent figure.⁷

But for a long time, the weight of evidence wasn’t clear to journalists covering climate. In a survey of members of the Society of Environmental Journalists, published in 2000, only one-third of the reporters knew that global warming was accepted by most atmospheric scientists.⁸

Should they have known better? How would they have known better? Establishing the weight of scientific evidence is far from a quick process. As Cook’s work shows, it takes careful analysis and in fact, a non-trivial amount of statistical know-how—it’s a process that likely took these researchers months.

On the other hand, the journalist’s toolbox contains a number of shortcuts that are supposed to get around this difficulty. Calling up a few experts on a topic can certainly help—but how can the journalist be assured that the scientists she chooses will be on the side of the consensus, if there is one? After all, even Nobel Prize winners have been known to develop wacky ideas far outside the mainstream.

Then there’s scientific associations and governmental bodies, like the AAAS and Centers for Disease Control. These can be an invaluable resource. But even many well-respected, well-funded bodies have demonstrated that they haven’t yet mastered the fine art of risk communication, and their poorly chosen words can lead journalists astray. Just look at the World Health Organization’s mangled attempts to explain the cancer risk posed by bacon.

New approaches, new tools

So what’s the solution? Dunwoody argues that journalists must take a “weight-of-evidence” approach, that is, “to find out where the bulk of evidence and expert thought lies on the truth continuum and then communicate that to audiences.”⁹

Building on this, Clarke, Dixon, Holton, and McKeever argue for “evidentiary balance,” which would combine the weight-of-evidence approach with appropriate hedging of scientific findings.¹⁰ That means telling readers about study limitations—crucial information that often goes unreported.¹¹

These are good frameworks to start with, but much more needs to be done. First, every link in the science communication chain—from university PR departments, to government and non-governmental agencies, to publishers, editors, and reporters—must start taking seriously the findings of communication researchers.

This means tossing out the old-fashioned and irresponsible model of journalism whereby reporters simply throw down words on a page, according to an institutional formula, and expect their audience to make sense of the story. It means gaining a basic grasp of how readers construct meaning, out of the words on the page and the ideas and attitudes already in their heads, and understanding that different people and groups will construct meanings differently.

And yes, it means finding better and faster ways of understanding just what the scientific consensus is. Thankfully, while the online age has brought us many ways of obscuring the truth, it offers opportunities too. Toward this end, Science Surveyor marks a promising start.

References

1. Corbett, Julia B., and Jessica L. Durfee. 2004. Testing public (un)certainty of science: Media representations of global warming. Science Communication 26(2): 129–51.
2. Dunwoody, Sharon. Winter 2005. Weight-of-evidence reporting: What is it? Why use it? Nieman Reports 59(4): 89-91.
3. Ibid.
4. Oreskes, Naomi. 2004. The scientific consensus on climate change. Science 306(5702): 1686.
5. Anderegg, William R. L., James W. Prall, Jacob Harold, and Stephen H. Schneider. 2010. Expert credibility in climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107(27): 12107–9.
6. Doran, Peter T., and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman. 2009. Examining the scientific consensus on climate change. Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union 90(3): 22.
7. Cook, John, Dana Nuccitelli, Sarah A. Green, Mark Richardson, Bärbel Winkler, Rob Painting, Robert Way, Peter Jacobs, and Andrew Skuce. 2013. Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature. Environmental Research Letters 8(2).
8. Wilson, Kris M. 2000. Drought, debate, and uncertainty: Measuring reporters’ knowledge and ignorance about climate change. Public Understanding of Science 9(1): 1–13.
9. Dunwoody, Sharon. Winter 2005. Weight-of-evidence reporting: What is it? Why use it? Nieman Reports 59(4): 89-91.
10. Clarke, Christopher E., Graham N. Dixon, Avery Holton, and Brooke Weberling McKeever. 2015. Including ‘evidentiary balance’ in news media coverage of vaccine risk. Health Communication 30(5): 461–72.
11. Jensen, Jakob D., Nick Carcioppolo, Andy J King, Jennifer K. Bernat, LaShara Davis, Robert Yale, and Jessica Smith. 2011. Including limitations in news coverage of cancer research: Effects of news hedging on fatalism, medical skepticism, patient trust, and backlash. Journal of Health Communication 16(5): 486–503.

I’ve become a little obsessed with Dr. Phil.

The no-nonsense sixty-five-year-old southern psychologist has been on the airwaves regularly since the late-90s, when Oprah Winfrey hired him as a psychology consultant after she was sued. His style apparently won Winfrey over. She soon had him on her show as a regular feature, and by late 2002, he had his own show, Dr. Phil.

The show is marked by Dr. Phil’s blunt style and contrary disposition. Whatever his guest thinks, you can bet Dr. Phil will think the opposite. His audience seems to eat it up, applauding his every move. He tells it like it is!

Dr. Phil airs in Los Angeles every weekday, making it easy to get trapped in its grip while making your morning coffee. I love to hate Dr. Phil. He shoots from the hip, sometimes with seemingly disastrous results, but he always makes a good show of it. And his reputation bears some scars.

In 2003, he started selling a weight loss supplement line called “Shape Up,” which he claimed "contain[ed] scientifically researched levels of ingredients that can help you change your behavior to take control of your weight." Disappointed customers entered a class action lawsuit against him, claiming that the plan required them to spend $120 a month on pills, yet they saw no results. Facing a Federal Trade Commission investigation into false-advertising concerns, CSA Nutraceuticals (the manufacturer of the Shape Up line) agreed to stop making the product. In the midst of all this attention, Dr. Phil settled for $10.5 million and the product was withdrawn from shelves.

The same year, an unauthorized biography of Dr. Phil hit the stands, claiming that he had covered up a previous marriage (now verified); that he’d been accused by former friends and colleagues of setting up fake press interviews to catch disloyal employees; that he flew into “rages”; and that his team attempted to halt the book’s publication.

In 2007, he blamed the Virginia Tech shooting on video games.

“The problem is we are programming these people as a society…. Common sense tells you that if these kids are playing video games, where they’re on a mass killing spree in a video game, it’s glamorized on the big screen, it’s become part of the fiber of our society.”

(A recent American Psychological Association analysis did state that “first person shooter” games are associated with aggression, but found no clear correlation between their use and criminal violence.)

In 2008, Dr. Phil’s staff bailed a young woman out of jail after she assaulted another teenager on tape and then released it on YouTube.

Also in 2008, Dr. Phil visited Brittany Spears in the hospital in an attempt to stage a mental health “intervention.” The family’s representative said he was invited privately and that he exploited the event for the media without consent.

In 2013, he drew the ire of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, when he described “insane” people as those who “suck on rocks and bark at the moon.”

He has had “psychic medium” John Edward on to promote Edward’s alleged abilities to communicate with the dead.

And last year, he was sued by the family of a former guest, who say he sent the young woman to a rehabilitation academy where she was isolated, mentally and physically abused, and suffered a broken arm and “permanently and irreparably” severed nerves when staff forcibly pulled her off of her bed. According to court documents, the guest had originally gone on the show after having been raped and witnessing a violent murder.

The good doctor may have some skeletons in his closet, to say the least, but most central to any review of Dr. Phil’s $70 million business is the real question: Is he a good doctor?

Well first of all he’s not a medical doctor nor a licensed therapist. He does have a PhD, and while some would argue that it’s misleading to call oneself “Doctor” without practicing medicine, technically, anyone with a doctorate can claim the honorific.

But Dr. Phil’s show is a show about real people, not abstract academic concepts. When he sits down with someone suffering from a seriously incapacitating illness such as obsessive compulsive disorder or bipolar disorder, do they realize that this “doctor” merely completed a PhD program and wrote a dissertation on rheumatoid arthritis in 1979?

In fact, Dr. Phil only practiced counseling for ten years before quitting because, “he hated it,” as one reporter summed up his statements. Dr. Phil explained,

"A couple would come in and they'd start bitchin' and whinin' and after 10 minutes, I'm like, `My God, no wonder you people don't like each other, I can't stand either one of you!'"

One has to wonder how his former clients feel, reading those words. Betrayed? Enraged? Or do they shake their heads like his TV audience and say, “That’s just Dr. Tell-It-Like-It-Is”?

In the same interview, Dr. Phil said he found counseling “too gray,” and that he liked black-and-white victories such as those in courtroom forensics, so he founded his deposition company, Courtroom Sciences. Surely, court battles afford clear wins and losses, but to hear a self-proclaimed “doctor” who advises people with mental issues regularly (and in front of millions, no less) say he doesn’t like “gray” issues is more than a little disconcerting.

I went to visit Dr. Phil myself last week. The show is taped just a mile from my home in Los Angeles. Obtaining tickets was one website visit and a phone call away. In no time, I had two tickets to be in the audience the very next week, so my partner and I read over the rules (no cell phones, no cameras, no weird clothes), and showed up at 8 am for the taping.

A group of mostly women entered and milled around an alleyway with free coffee. The mean age appeared to be somewhere around fifty-five, and they were about 90 percent female. We were asked to fill out basic waivers before going inside, essentially stating that the producers could edit us any way they wanted. This is standard in the industry and has low stakes for an audience member, but it would certainly make me nervous if I were going to be up on that stage, spilling my guts to Dr. No-Bullshit.

After the usual herding around and insistence that everyone “go to the bathroom now! You won’t be able to go for five hours!” we were escorted into the studio and placed in seats. A warm-up host joked with audience members, endearing himself especially to the older women in the crowd. He gave away coffee mugs, books, and toiletries. A woman in our row won a copy of Dr. Phil’s The 20/20 Diet, then commented to us that it was the fifth she had won in the last few weeks. She was an audience regular.

Rather unceremoniously, the warm-up act was ushered from the stage, and a voice announced an approaching Dr. Phil, who ambled onto the stage from behind a 90s-style geometric set. Without acknowledging the live audience at all, he looked right at the camera and began reading off the teleprompter.

“Ashleigh says she accidentally pushed her husband out a window, but others say it was murder…”

The first episode centered around two potential miscarriages of justice: A woman who, in Dr. Phil’s estimation, was imprisoned for a crime she didn’t commit, and two foster children whose torturers were not sufficiently punished for their crimes. Dr. Phil attacked each story expertly, bringing to light interesting angles and compelling questions. It was not hard to imagine a jury eating out of his hand. When he promised to go to Oklahoma to visit one prisoner and potentially help her get a retrial, the audience burst into applause, and the prisoner’s family smiled in dizzying excitement.

This is what Dr. Phil was born to do.

The next episode of the two-episode taping was what the show had become famous for: Close encounters with people who needed “tough love” therapy. The first, a twenty-two-year-old beauty queen who was brought on by her mother who feared she was overworking herself into an early grave, smiled brightly for the camera but quickly descended into a desperate spiral of moral guilt. She had taken on the duties of the world: feeding the sick, helping the poor, and getting involved in local politics to make others’ lives better.

“I don’t think I’m better than anyone else,” she said, “just more willing.”

She appeared completely sincere to me, though her sentiments may seem unfamiliar. As she quietly divulged that she was religious, I was reminded immediately of scrupulosity, a less-common but still widespread variant of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), in which the sufferer obsesses (literally) over whether they are doing the morally right thing, and doing enough to help the world, or to please God. I have no training as a therapist or doctor, but on the other hand, Dr. Phil’s current license to diagnose someone is exactly the same as mine.

Rather than note that there are genuine disorders that could make a person harbor these feelings and thoughts, Dr. Phil immediately accused his guest of lying, of making up her motivations, and selflessness, and of having a narcissistic need for approval from others. The young woman looked not so much embarrassed as crestfallen; she had hoped for help and instead was being told that her problem was something that didn’t resonate at all. She nodded politely, trying valiantly to assimilate his thoughts into her mental framework. But when he went to commercial, all I saw was disappointment in her eyes.

Strangely, as Dr. Phil led us into the next segment, he said there would be a common theme between this guest and the next, and hinted that the next guest was someone with OCD.

“Ah ha!” I thought. “Maybe he will mention scrupulosity!”

But he didn’t. The next woman spoke of her germ phobia, a heartbreaking story of washing her hands until they bled and being unable to stand on the floor of her own house without shuffling on paper towels beneath her feet. She had been diagnosed with OCD when she was eight, and today is in her late twenties. Her OCD has become so difficult that her fiancé has considered leaving her and their son out of frustration. But Dr. Phil doesn’t buy any of it.

“Eight is very early to be diagnosed,” he said, “Usually you don’t even see these symptoms ’til ten or twelve.”

Dr. Phil is half-right. Of minors being treated for OCD, the mean onset is 9.6 years old for boys and eleven for girls. His guest is outside the average, but not by much. The most recent data on this, however, is from 1989. Virtually all diagnoses (other than those conditions which have been removed from the literature) have become more prevalent, and thus people can be diagnosed earlier. Dr. Phil’s own website has a questionnaire to gauge “signs that your child might have OCD” but mentions nothing about age.

Dr. Phil suggested that her diagnosis might be, instead, an iotragenic label: a concept introduced by a person’s therapist or physician that then becomes reality to the patient. The guest didn’t have OCD! She just thought she had OCD and so was acting like someone with OCD. McGraw went on to say she did have a germ phobia but that she just needed to stop telling herself she has a crippling disorder.

This might sound temptingly insightful, but health professionals know that denying that OCD exists (or denying that you have it) only leads to more suffering. Bruce M. Hyman, an expert in OCD, explains in his book, Coping with OCD, that denial is particularly powerful among OCD sufferers, who think that their compulsions are actually helping others:

“Another kind of denial occurs when you tell yourself that you’re engaging in a compulsion for the greater good, to keep the people around you safe from harm…. It numbs you to the very real pain that the people around you feel as a result of your OCD. At the same time, it gives you a false sense of pride and accomplishment, making you into something of a martyr… But the truth is that they’re suffering—and you’re suffering—all needlessly. And the longer you deny that fact, the more pain you and your loved ones will have to endure.”¹

There is nothing inherently wrong, of course, with seeking second opinions. In fact, the American Medical Association encourages it. But second opinions should come from licensed doctors, not TV personalities without medical credentials.

To Dr. Phil’s credit, he briefly turned to an expert in the audience—a licensed doctor on his advisory board—to give brief advice to his guest. The doctor seemed to hint at cognitive behavioral treatment, saying that our thoughts and actions can be reprogrammed through the right kinds of therapy. But there was no mention of whether Dr. Phil and his staff would actually get the young woman the help she needed.

As I watched all of this, I became increasingly uncomfortable. It seemed entirely possible that guests came on Dr. Phil’s show better off than they left. And as for the trust factor, when Dr. Phil took a five-minute segment to recommend a beauty cream, it became obvious that we were dealing with little more than a TV huckster. He sells gotchas and zingers with occasional breaks for Boots No. 7, available at Walgreens for under $30.

It’s time for us to acknowledge the problem with Dr. Phil. It’s easy to demonize people such as Dr. Oz, who promote obvious, quantifiable pseudoscience. But there’s another doctor in town arguably doing the same kind of harm. Psychology is also a science, and therapists are licensed for the very reason that only certain people have the knowledge and talent to do it, and even those that do need training to do it effectively. Everyone is entitled to give insight and advice, but positioning yourself on national TV with the misleading title of “doctor” is something altogether different. Something possibly sinister.

I left the studio with two free bottles of Boots No. 7 (which actually works great) and the nagging feeling that I should have tried to talk to the women he’d berated on stage.

But what would I have said? I’m no doctor.

1. Hyman, Bruce M. Coping with OCD, p. 131.

Having long observed that many Bigfoot sightings seem consistent with bears, I have for some time been expounding on the subject—showing that, when bears stand upright on their hind legs, they become North America’s foremost Bigfoot lookalikes (other than for people in Bigfoot suits). Bigfoot also 
usually behaves like a bear and is typically found in bear territory (Nickell 2013a).

The resemblance is sometimes made especially clear when we look at regional subtypes of Bigfoot—the Skunk Ape of Florida, for example, or a unique “bluish” creature seen in the Yukon. As it happens, the former, together with its bad odor, is consistent with the black bear (Nickell 2013b), and the latter is illuminated by the fact that black bears of a bluish color may be found in the southwest Yukon (Nickell 2014; Gloia 2011).

Here we look at several more of these regional variants of Bigfoot—such well-known creatures as Old Yellow Top, the Traverspine “Gorilla,” the Fouke Monster, Big Muddy, and others—to compare their appearance and behavior with those of bears.


Old Yellow Top

In 1906 at a mine near Cobalt, Ontario, a group of men saw a creature that would become known as Old Yellow Top because it was described as having a light-colored mane.

Seventeen years later, in July 1923, two miners working on their claims in the Cobalt area saw “what looked like a bear picking in a blueberry patch” (Green 1978, 248–249). One stated: “It kind of stood up and growled at us. Then it ran away. It sure was like no bear that I have ever seen. Its head was kind of yellow and the rest of it was black like a bear, all covered with hair” (qtd. in Green 1978, 249).

Actually, Black Bears (Ursus americanus) love blueberries, are indeed completely covered in hair—which may be all or partially blond—and often stand on their hind legs to better sense something that has attracted their attention (“Black Bears” 2013; Herrero 2002, 87). (A photograph of such a blond-maned bear—although a brown bear in this instance—is shown in Herrero 2002, 133.) This ability of bears to stand upright “no doubt influenced some people’s perception of them as being humanlike . . .,” according to Herrero (2002, 139).

A similar creature (not the same one of course) was seen again in the same area—in April 1946, by a woman with her son, and another in August 1970, by a bus driver. “At first I thought it was a big bear. But then it turned to face the headlights and I could see some light hair, almost down to its shoulders. It couldn’t have been a bear,” he concluded.

A passenger on the bus stated that it “looked like a bear to me at first, but it didn’t walk like one. It was kind of stooped over. Maybe it was a wounded bear, I don’t know” (qtd. in Green 1978, 249). Both men’s first thoughts were no doubt correct, as they themselves would probably have recognized had they been more familiar with bears’ stances and color phases.

Traverspine ‘Gorilla’

A famous 1913 sighting of the Traverspine “Gorilla,” named after a community in Labrador, occurred when a little girl saw a huge, dark-haired creature come out of the woods. “It was about seven feet tall when it stood erect, but sometimes it dropped to all fours.” It left tracks in the mud, and later in the snow, “twelve inches long, narrow at the heel, and forking at the front into two broad, round-ended toes” (Merrick 1933).

Again, this is consistent with a black bear. Yes, such bears have five rather than two toes (as do most “Bigfoot,” based on their alleged tracks); however, we learn that “in mud a black bear’s toe separation may not show” (Herrero 2002, 178). Given the clue that the “two” Bigfoot toes were “broad,” the likely explanation is that separation only appeared between the second and third toes. That would give the appearance that there were just two notably broad toes. That the heel was described as “narrow,” characteristic of a bear’s hind foot (Napier 1973, 61), also helps to further identify the tracks as probably a bear’s. (The estimated twelve-inch length of, presumably, the hind foot is uncommonly large, but the tracks may have been overlaps of front and hind feet or the size could have been overestimated.) Besides, size can vary, that of the same foot impression being “different in the mud, in snow, or dry ground” (Herrero 2002, 175). The estimated standing height of the “gorilla” seems about right too, since a black bear can easily be seven feet tall—with or without a little girl’s misperception or exaggeration.

One account tells of two creatures, one supposedly smaller than the other, yet contradictorily stating, “They sometimes stood erect on their hind legs at which time they looked like great hairy men seven feet tall” (Wright 1962). Another indication that the creatures were indeed bears came from reports that the first creature “ripped the bark off trees and rooted up huge rotten logs as though it were looking for grubs” (Merrick 1933). Indeed, the Black Bear, in spring “peels off tree bark to get at the inner, or cambium, layer” and “will tear apart rotting logs for grubs, beetles, crickets, and ants” (Whitaker 1996, 705).

The Fouke Monster

Probably the first sighting of what would become known as the “Fouke Monster” after Fouke, Arkansas, near where it was sighted, was in 1953. It was not seen again until 1955 when a squirrel-hunting fourteen-year-old boy fired at it with birdshot.

He described the monster as covered in reddish-brown hair or fur, standing upright at a height of some seven feet, and having very long arms. It also had a flat nose that was dark brown. The creature “stretched, sniffing the air,” then started toward the boy, who shot at it. That seemed to have no effect, and the youth ran away. In 1971 hundreds of three-toed, thirteen-and-a-half-inch tracks were found in a bean field and attributed to the monster (Green 1978, 189–191). The Fouke Monster was the inspiration for the Legend of Boggy Creek movies (Coleman and Huyghe 1999, 56–57; Fuller 1972, 24–28). (As an example of careless research in some quarters, one source [Matthews 2008, 110] places Fouke in “Kentucky.”)

Be the tracks as they may, the boy’s description is a pretty good fit for an Ursus americanus (black bear) of cinnamon color. States one bear expert (Herrero 2002, 131–132): “An individual [black] bear’s coat color may range from blond, cinnamon, or light brown to dark chocolate brown or jet black.” (See also Van Wormer 1966, 21.) Significantly, the Fouke Monster stood and sniffed the air; that is common behavior for a bear “trying to sense something” (Herrero 2002, 139), as the creature obviously was attempting in this instance.

Momo

In 1972, “Momo,” short for “Missouri Mon­ster,” appeared near Louisiana, Missouri. A huge creature covered in black fur, it stood upright on two legs. Reports of such monsters date back to the 1940s, and a year prior to “the Momo scare” two women had encountered a hairy ape-man on River Road near the town (Green 1978, 194–195; Coleman and Huyghe 1999, 50–51).

Then, on July 11, 1972, an incident occurred that received national attention, with many eastern U.S. newspapers sending reporters to cover the story. About 3:30 pm on that sunny Tuesday, a fifteen-year-old girl heard her younger brother scream. Looking out a window, she saw a blood-flecked monster holding a dead dog under one arm; then it “waddled” off (Coleman and Huyghe, 1999, 50; Green 1978, 195). According to John Green (1978, 195), “after the fuss started several other people claimed to have seen something similar, generating even more excitement, and a lot of people spent time monster hunting, but nothing came of it.”

I have compiled this composite description of the creature: It stood about six or seven feet tall, was neckless, and was completely covered in long black hair—even its face, according to one source. It appeared to be bipedal yet “waddled” or walked awkwardly. It had a foul smell and was, at least in part, carnivorous, capable of killing and carrying away a dog (Green 1978, 195; Coleman and Huyghe 1999, 50–51).

I submit that this is a convincing description of a black bear standing upright with its waddling gait a corroborative detail. Of course we should read “arm” as “front leg.” (See Nickell 2013a.) As to the hair-covered face, a feature not reported by all witnesses, it may be that the creature was actually seen from the back. In this light, an artist’s conception of Momo, reproduced in Coleman and Huyghe’s The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Yeti, and Other Mystery Primates Worldwide (1999, 51), strongly resembles a black bear viewed from behind.

Big Muddy

In the vicinity of the Big Muddy River near Murphysboro, Illinois, came reports of a seven-foot Bigfoot described as “dirty white” or white “with muddy body hair,” or even as a “big white ghost”—from three sightings in two nights, June 25 and 26, 1973 (Bord and Bord 2006, 270). Two of the witnesses, teenagers, thought it had been covered in mud or slime from the river. Later that summer it was seen “three or four” additional times (Green 1978, 204).

"The Big Muddy Monster"—as it was now known—was seen again the following year, July 9, 1974, and again in July 1975, both times in the vicinity of Murphysboro (Green 1978, 204; Bord and Bord 2006, 270, 277, 281). On its way to legendary status, “Big Muddy” has also been styled the “Murphysboro Mud Monster” in that learned tome, Monster Spotter’s Guide to North America (Francis 2007, 107), which tells us that it is “Seven to eight feet tall, weighing over two hundred pounds,” that it is “omnivorous,” and “may be dangerous if cornered or startled.”

I do not doubt it. Big Muddy sounds for all the world like a tall black bear—one not black in color however. Black bears can be off-white and even white—as shown in Whitaker (1996, 703, color plate 337)—and albino ones are also known (Herrero 2002, 132).

Sister Lakes Monster

This Michigan creature eventually attracted others—including some faux monsters. In May 1964, something that seemed to lurk in the swamps nearby caused frightened fruit pickers to abandon their fields near Sister Lakes, a rural community in the state. For two years there had been reports of a mystery creature, but now they had escalated until they dominated the headlines in local newspapers. The entity was described as very tall, covered in black fur, and having eyes that “glowed with reflected light” (Bord and Bord 2006, 77). That is, the creature merely exhibited animal eyeshine, reflecting light from such sources as car headlights.

Indeed, two fruit pickers, brothers from Georgia, saw the creature in their headlights on June 9, standing upright at an estimated nine feet tall. It appeared to be a cross, they said, between a gorilla and—a bear. What this characterization probably meant was that it looked like a bear if (as they perhaps did not know bears did) one stood on its hind legs. Over the next couple of days, what is now called the Sister Lakes Monster had presumably returned to its lair (Bord and Bord 2006, 77–78; Brandon 1978, 115; Coleman and Huyghe 1999, 50).

Nevertheless, would-be monster hunters and sightseers flocked to the area, where cafes served Monster Burgers, a theater played horror fare, and the radio station interrupted its Monster Music with monster updates. One enterprising storekeeper marketed a monster-hunting kit, complete with a light, net, baseball bat, and—just in case—a wooden stake and mallet. All in good fun, but when the teenagers began to don old fur coats and imitate the monster, the sheriff stated, “I had to order hunters away because it’s getting mighty dangerous—three thousand strangers prowling about at night with guns . . .” (Bord and Bord 2006, 78).

It would hardly have been safe for people or bears. Allowing for a little understandable exaggeration (monsters tend to loom larger, rather than smaller, in frightened witnesses’ eyes), I think the Sister Lakes Monster was likely to have been, once again, a black bear.

Dwayyo

In Maryland, near wooded Gambrill State Park in 1965, one John Becker claimed that he went outside his house to investigate a strange noise, and on his way back, he said, he saw something approaching. “It was as big as a bear, had long black hair, a bushy tail, and growled like a wolf or a dog in anger.” Moving toward him, it stood upright and began to attack, but Becker fought it until—with his wife and children looking on in horror—the creature ran away. He subsequently claimed to have filed a report with the Maryland State Police (“Dwayyo” 2013).

Now, this account of a four-footed creature “as big as a bear” sounds just like a bear (save perhaps for the “bushy tail”—a black bear’s being only about six inches long), but in what is described almost like hand-to-paw combat, surely one would recognize a bear. Actually, this story was almost certainly a hoax. A state police spokesman denied they received any such report, and “Becker” proved to be a pseudonym.

An opportunistic reporter for the Frederick News Post, George May, who cranked out several articles on the creature, is implicated: Someone had used the Becker name to apply for a “Dwayyo License” from the county treasurer’s office and the return address was in care of George May at the Frederick News Post ! (“Dwayyo” 2013; Chorvinsky and Opsasnick 1988; “Big hairy monsters” 1973) Whatever the truth, some earlier and subsequent sightings of a creature in the area could well be those of bears.

Summary and Conclusions

As these several examples show, not only does Bigfoot most resemble an upright-standing bear generally, but certain well-known regional subtypes—both past and present—seem to tally with black bears: Florida’s Skunk Apes (smelly black bears); a “bluish” Bigfoot in southwestern Yukon (a blue-gray or “glacier” variety black bear); the blueberry-picking Old Yellow Top of Cobalt, Ontario (a blond-maned black bear); Labrador’s bipedal/quadrapedal traverspine “Gorilla” (a typical large black bear); Arkansas’s reddish-furred Fouke Monster (a familiar cinnamon-colored black bear); Momo, the Missouri Monster, with “waddling” walk (an upright-walking black bear); Illinois’s “dirty white” creature known as Big Muddy (a white, possibly rare albino black bear); the nine-foot Sister Lakes, Michigan, monster with “glowing” eyes (the exaggeration of a black bear with normal eyeshine); and the Dwayyo of Maryland lore (a hoax with occasional bear sightings).

Many other examples could be given, but these should be sufficient to show that indeed, not only do bears often double as Bigfoot but some specific subtypes are mimicked by particular bear behavior, varieties of coloration, or other traits.

Acknowledgments

Librarian Lisa Nolan, of the CFI Libraries staff, provided considerable assistance with the research for this article.

References

• “Big hairy monsters.” Maryland. 1973. INFO Journal III.3 (Summer): 27–28.
• “Black Bears.” 2013. Online at http://www.catskillmountaineer.com/animals-bears.html; accessed March 25, 2013.
• Bord, Janet, and Colon Bord. 2006. Bigfoot Case Book Updated. N.p.: Pine Winds Press.
• Brandon, Jim. 1978. Weird America. New York: E.P. Dutton.
• Chorvinsky, Mark, and Mark Opsasnick. 1988. Notes on the Dwayyo. Strange Magazine 2: 28–29.
• Coleman, Loren, and Patrick Huyghe. 1999. The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Yeti, and Other Mystery Primates Worldwide. New York: Avon Books.
• “Dwayyo.” 2013. Online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwayyo; accessed December 18, 2013.
• Francis, Scott. 2007. Monster Spotter’s Guide to North America. Cincinnati, Ohio: HOW Books.
• Fuller, Curtis. 1972. I see by the papers. Fate March: 7–35.
• Gloia, Carol. 2011. Facts about the American Black Bear. Online at http://www.critters360.com/index.php/facts-about-the-american-black-bear-4012/; accessed December 18, 2013.
• Green, John. 1978. Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us. Saanichton, B.C.: Hancock House.
• Herrero, Stephen. 2002. Bear Attacks, rev. ed. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press.
• Matthews, Rupert. 2008. Sasquatch: True-Life Encounters with Legendary Ape Men. Edison, NJ: Chartwell Books.
• Merrick, Elliot. 1933. True North. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Cited in Green 1978, 252–254.
• Napier, John. 1973. Bigfoot: The Yeti and Sasquatch in Myth and Reality. New York: E.P. Dutton.
• Nickell, Joe. 2013a. Bigfoot lookalikes: Tracking hairy man-beasts. Skeptical Inquirer 37(4) (September/October): 12–15.
• 2013b. Tracking Florida’s Skunk Ape. Skeptical Briefs 23(3) (Fall): 8–10.
• 2014. The Yukon’s Bigfoot Bears. Skeptical Briefs 24(2) (Summer): 8–9.
• Van Wormer, Joe. 1966. The World of the Black Bear. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott.
• Whitaker, John O. Jr. 1996. National Audubon Field Guide to North American Mammals, rev. ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
• Wright, Bruce. 1962. Wildlife Sketches Near and Far. Fredericton, NB: University of New Brunswick Press.

In a television interview, a practitioner of biomagnetic therapy claimed she had cured her own breast lump and the metastatic cancer of another person. I wonder how many viewers believed her. On the “official website” of biomagnetism therapy, http://biomagnetism.net/, they claim it is “the answer to ALL your health problems… an all-natural, non-invasive therapy proven to prevent, diagnose and treat countless diseases, chronic illnesses and degenerative health problems.”

Sound too good to be true? Of course it does! You are already skeptical. If you read further, you will become even more skeptical.

They tell us that medical biomagnetism, also called biomagnetic pair, uses magnets of medium intensity to equalize the organism’s pH level. It tells us illness can’t develop with a balanced pH level. It “uses pairs of magnets with opposite charges to depolarize areas in the body that are unbalanced due to pathogens or other factors that resonate energetically and vibrationally… it has the ability to diagnose the etiology and combat the real cause of the disease, especially viruses.” It can prevent diseases as well as heal them.

A Mexican doctor, Isaac Goiz Durán, discovered the principles behind this treatment twenty years ago when he cured an AIDS patient by putting magnets on his thymus gland and in his rectum. (I kid you not!) He explained that HIV virus in the rectum resonates with E. coli in the thymus to cause the collapse of the immune system. (Really? The whole immune system? Part of it? Which part? How does he know?) He says HIV thrives in an acid environment. (No, it doesn’t; it does not survive well if the pH is below 7 or 8.) He also says the bacteria thrives in an alkaline environment. (Also not true: E.coli thrives in a neutral or acidic environment.) He says the magnets neutralize the pH, which immediately eliminates the pathogens.

Proponents of medical biomagnetism make ridiculous claims about the specific effects of magnetic poles. The magnet’s north pole, for instance, provides a negative energetic charge that increases the alkaline level by reducing the concentration of hydrogen ions. Hmm, what do you suppose happens when the earth’s magnetic fields flip, as they do every few hundred thousand years, and the north pole becomes the south pole? They claim that with biomagnetic therapy, pathogenic viruses lose their genetic information and bacteria lose their alkaline environment needed by their metabolism to reproduce themselves.

They also claim that 20,000 doctors have used biomagnetic therapy to treat millions of patients worldwide; they provide a comprehensive list of diseases that have been treated with great success: everything from rheumatoid arthritis to cancer, from epilepsy to Alzheimer’s, from acne to diabetes, from colds to halitosis, from mumps to smallpox … you name it! They describe cases. They don’t describe a case where smallpox was treated; they couldn’t possibly do that, since the therapy was developed in the 1980s and the last case of smallpox anywhere in the world occurred in 1977 in Somalia.

Dr. Goiz did a half-assed “trial” of the method in Spain. The description is hilarious. He used a bogus test called “live cell analysis,” to verify the diagnosis; he held a patient’s heels and recited a mantra of possible pairs out loud, asking the body to respond; he could tell when the body responded because one leg became shorter than the other. Then he applied magnets and followed up with another bogus live cell analysis to confirm the cure. You, too, can cure people. You can buy the magnets, a pair-search computer program, and a training course with online videos.

All of this is just too silly! It’s an arrant pseudoscientific fantasy. Only a complete scientific illiterate would fall for this nonsense. It really isn’t worth the effort to point out what is wrong; it’s essentially all wrong. Diseases are not caused by pH imbalance; magnets don’t affect pH; the “negative and positive” magnetic poles do not attract negative and positive ions in the body. The strength of the magnets they use is far less than that of the typical refrigerator magnet and does not penetrate much beyond the skin. Of course the methods have never been properly tested, and there isn’t a shred of credible evidence that patients have actually benefited.

Magnets do have some legitimate uses in medicine. They are used for diagnostic imaging in MRI machines. Transcranial magnetic stimulation is being investigated for the treatment of depression and other conditions. Pulsed electromagnetic fields have been proven to promote bone healing in non-union fractures and failed fusions. But static (non-pulsed) magnetic fields are not effective.

Magnetic quackery abounds. Proponents claim that magnets attract the iron in hemoglobin and improve circulation. But the iron in hemoglobin is not in a ferromagnetic state, and tests have shown that if anything magnets very slightly repel red blood cells, and they do not increase blood flow. Think about it: if blood cells were attracted to the magnet, they would cluster close to the magnet instead of circulating. Magnets are big business: they put them in everything from bracelets to insoles, from back braces to mattress pads, and they sell them with false advertising and high prices. The article about magnet therapy on Quackwatch concludes: “There is no scientific basis to conclude that small, static magnets can relieve pain or influence the course of any disease. In fact, many of today's products produce no significant magnetic field at or beneath the skin's surface.”

I had a friend who used magnets for pain. I showed her evidence from scientific studies showing that they don’t work. She insisted that those studies were done on inferior products that don’t work but that the brand she used, Nikken, did work. I showed her a study that had been done on Nikken magnets showing they don’t work either. That didn’t change her mind. She is a highly intelligent, well-educated woman who is able to think critically about most things, but when it comes to alternative medicine, she consistently favors anecdote over evidence.

I once attended a free dinner with a presentation on magnetic mattress pads. The salesman repeated the myth about magnets attracting red blood cells, and I told him if that were true, when you had an MRI with far more powerful magnets, the blood would explode out through your skin. He said he wasn’t a scientist; he could only tell us what the scientists in his company said (in other words, “I can just ignore you”). He went on to tell the audience that the negative magnetism was stronger at night because the moon is out! I tried to point out his errors, but it did no good; most of the attendees eagerly signed up to buy his atrociously overpriced mattress pads.

It pains me to see misinformation such as this fed to gullible patients. Using biomagnetic therapy isn’t likely to harm patients physically, but it’s likely to harm their comprehension of science. It’s likely to waste their money, and it could delay getting treatments that do work. Perhaps the worst thing is that people who practice this therapy are deceiving themselves. They don’t understand science, and they mistake testimonials for evidence of efficacy. They don’t understand the need for controlled studies. They don’t understand placebo effects, suggestion, expectation, regression to the mean, the natural course of illness, and all the other things that can lead people to believe a bogus treatment works. It is particularly tragic that anyone trained as an MD could have such poor critical thinking skills and be misled by such egregious pseudoscience.

Poor psychology. Times have been tough lately for both psychological science and for the profession of clinical psychology.

First, there was the reproducibility controversy: a recent effort to independently duplicate the results of 100 recent psychology experiments found that only 39 percent of the findings could be replicated. This news, combined with recent reports of outright fraud, wounded the image of behavioral research and chastened psychologists to raise their standards for research methodology and peer review.

Then came the torture controversy. This past summer, an independent study found that the American Psychological Association (APA) had secretly collaborated with the George W. Bush administration in support of interrogation programs involving torture. Once this information was made public, many APA members were outraged at actions that stood in such obvious conflict with the association’s ethical code forbidding harm.¹ Several resignations from APA’s administration followed, and the repercussions of the incident are still being felt.

Meanwhile other controversies are simmering. A recent debate that has not received much attention involves professional psychology’s relationship to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). For over half a century, professional psychology has been committed to a scientist-practitioner model. In the best programs, graduate training in clinical psychology involves both professional training in the application of psychology to human problems and training in behavioral science. Typically, the PhD in clinical psychology is granted only to candidates who have learned scientific methodology and conducted an original research project as part of their doctoral dissertations. The idea is that, even if psychologists go into private practice and never do research again, they should be able to read and evaluate the scientific literature for the purpose of providing the most effective treatments available.²

Despite this expressed grounding in science, professional psychology has struggled to be genuinely scientific. One clear example of psychology’s rocky footing is the use of CAM in clinical practice. Earlier this year, Australian psychologist Peta Stapleton and colleagues published a survey of 193 practicing psychologists in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. They found that almost all of the psychologists surveyed, 99.6 percent, had used at least one CAM technique in the past. In addition, 64.2 percent of psychologists had received “some level of more formalized training in at least one complementary or alternative therapy” (Stapleton et al., 2015, p. 193). Table 1 lists the CAM therapies surveyed by Stapleton and colleagues.³

Table 1

• Complementary and Alternative Medicine Therapies in Stapleton et al. (2015)
• Acupuncture
• Ayurveda
• Biofeedback
• Chelation therapy
• Chiropractic care
• Deep breathing exercises
• Diet-based therapies
• Energy psychology (e.g., emotional freedom techniques)
• Vegetarian diet
• Macrobiotic diet
• Energy healing therapy
• Folk medicine
• Guided imagery
• Homeopathic treatment
• Hypnosis
• Massage
• Meditation
• Megavitamin therapy
• Natural products (nonvitamin and nonmineral; e.g., herbs and other products from plants, enzymes)
• Naturopathy
• Neurolinguistic programming
• Timeline therapy
• Prayer for health reasons
• Prayed for own health
• Others ever prayed for your health
• Participate in prayer group
• Healing ritual for self
• Progressive relaxation
• Qi gong
• Reiki
• Tai chi
• Yoga
• Other (please specify)

The sample in the Stapleton study was relatively small, but the investigators found that psychologists in New Zealand were significantly less likely to use CAM than those in the other three countries, and women psychologists were significantly more likely to use them than men.

The use of CAM is not entirely surprising given that, in recent years, some respected psychologists have published articles and books encouraging the integration of CAM into clinical practice. In 2012, Loyola University of Maryland psychologists Jeffery E. Barnett and Allison J. Shale published an article titled “The Integration of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) Into the Practice of Psychology: A Vision for the Future” in the journal Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, which is published by the APA.⁴ In that article Barnett and Shale review what research there is in support of CAM and conclude:

Accordingly, to fulfill this ethical obligation, each psychologist will want to include discussion of reasonably available treatment options. For many presenting problems, this discussion should include various CAM modalities whose use for particular difficulties is supported by the relevant scientific literature. (p. 582)

Furthermore, in 2014, Barnett and Shale, with additional coauthors, released a book titled Complementary and Alternative Medicine for Psychologists: An Essential Resource, which was published by the American Psychological Association Press. These and other efforts within mainstream psychology are clearly giving legitimacy to the use of CAM. But is it justified?

Thankfully this is not the end of the story. Last month, Lawton K. Swan of the University of Florida and several coauthors published an article titled, “Why Psychologists Should Reject Complementary and Alternative Medicine: A Science-Based Perspective,” also in Professional Psychology: Research and Practice.⁵ This article was in direct reply to Barnett and Shale (2012) and, as the title makes clear, came to a very different conclusion.

Swan and colleagues make a strong case for a science-based approach to practice, not merely an evidence-based one. In a science-based approach, randomized control trials are highly valued, whereas case studies and investigations that do not include well constructed control groups are given less value. Swan and coauthors constructed the following hierarchy for the quality of research evidence, which they based on a 2006 model proposed by the APA Presidential Task Force on Evidence Based Practice.⁶ At the top of the hierarchy are randomized control trials (RCTs) and systematic summaries of groups of RCTs, most often done in the form of meta-analyses.

Figure 1. A hierarchy of research evidence based on the 2006 APA Presidential Taskforce on Evidence Based Practice (from Swan et al. 2015).

In a rather Herculean effort, Swan and colleagues went on to perform a systematic re-review of the evidence cited by Barnett and Shale, with a particular attention to the quality of the control groups employed in each study. First, they evaluated the individual RCTs cited by Barnett and Shale and found that only three out of ten studies had adequate control groups. Of these three, only one showed positive effects for the CAM in question, Reiki. Next, they went on to evaluate all the individual studies summarized in the meta-analyses cited by Barnett and Shale. Of the 230 studies included in these meta-analyses, only thirty had adequate control groups. Of the remaining studies, most (57 percent) failed to show a significant effect of the technique under study. Some of the more common problems within the 200 excluded studies were that investigators had failed to blind participants to the independent variable of the research—setting up the possibility of placebo effects—and that the study had never been described as an RCT in the first place.

At the conclusion of their re-review of Barnett and Shale, Swan and colleagues made the following summary statement:

From a science-based perspective, the highest quality empirical studies (RCTs) cited by Barnett and Shale as evidence for CAM’s efficacy in fact support the opposite conclusion—that CAMs either have not been properly evaluated or simply do not work better than credible placebos. (p. 329)

It is encouraging that a rigorous review of CAM therapies with such a strong conclusion should be published in an APA journal, but if the Australian survey of professional psychologists is any indication, there are many practitioners using unsupported methods with their clients. Part of the problem may be that the evidence-based movement is still quite young and that many clinicians were trained long ago. “I suspect we will only really know the impact of the evidence-based practice movement when the generation trained within that framework become the majority of practitioners,” said Sondre Skarsten, one of Swan’s coauthors and a graduate student at the University of Chicago Center for Decision Research.

Recently it has been proposed that a distinctive accreditation be established for psychology training programs committed to a more rigorous science-based practice approach⁷. This would go a long way toward making it clear which practitioners were using the most scientifically grounded techniques and which were not. Unfortunately, Swan points out that little progress has been made in that direction yet, and “in the meantime, the public endures far, far too much bunkum from a profession that fancies itself a member of the evidence-based elite.”⁸

References

1. See http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/index.aspx . Principle A under General Principles.
2. Baker, D.B., and L.T. Benjamin Jr. 2000. The affirmation of the scientist-practitioner: A look back at Boulder. American Psychologist 55(2): 241–247.
3. Stapleton, P., H. Chatwin, E. Boucher, et al. 2015. Use of complementary therapies by registered psychologists: An international study. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 46(3): 190–196.
4. Barnett, J.E., and A.J. Shale. 2012. The integration of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) into the practice of psychology: A vision for the future. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 43(6): 576–585.
5. Swan, L.K., S. Skarsten, M. Heesacker, et al. 2015. Why psychologists should reject complementary and alternative medicine: A science-based perspective. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 46(5): 325–339.
6. Anderson, N.B. 2006. Evidence-based practice in psychology. American Psychologist 61(4): 271–285.
7. Baker, T.B., R.M. McFall, and V. Shoham. 2008. Current status and future prospects of clinical psychology toward a scientifically principled approach to mental and behavioral health care. Psychological Science in the Public Interest 9(2): 67–103.
8. Citing limitations of space and time, Jeffrey Barnett declined to comment for this article.

In 2014, Skeptical Briefs Editor Benjamin Radford attended a caricature conference in Reno, Nevada. Inside a hotel ballroom full of ridiculously talented artists from around the world, he happened to meet Celestia Ward, a caricaturist who’s also a skeptic. Naturally, he had questions for her.

Benjamin Radford: For those who are not artists or are unfamiliar with caricature, can you explain what it is?


Celestia Ward: Many people think caricature is just a bad cartoon drawing that gives you a big nose, but this is a vicious rumor started by bitter people who have big noses. One old boss of mine used to say it’s a “juxtaposition of facial relationships.” Illustrator John Kascht says it’s “a portrait with the volume turned up.” Basically it’s a drawing (or painting, or sculpture, or collage, or 3D computer rendering) that looks like a particular person but pushes the visual cues of that person’s face to amplify the perceived likeness to viewers. A good caricature should look more like you than you do.

Radford: What’s your background? How did you get involved in skepticism and in art?

Ward: I started drawing young, and I started skepticism young—I was glued to the TV for shows like Ripley’s Believe It or Not and That’s Incredible!, and I started reading Isaac Asimov and Douglas Adams in middle school. I think my first celebrity crush was Penn Jillette, and reading Penn & Teller’s early magic books led me to James Randi. As for drawing, I was a chronic doodler but looked at my art as a relaxing bad habit, not any sort of career path. At Johns Hopkins as an undergrad, I happened to take a cartooning class and it ended up leading to a summer job doing caricatures with the professor. Sure enough, like a bad habit, caricatures proved really hard to quit. After earning a BA in writing (not a BS in biology or physics like I’d originally planned), I was hired on at an academic press and eventually worked my way up to senior manuscript editor, but I was still slinging caricatures to tourists on nights and weekends. Eventually, I realized I wanted to have just one job, and so about a dozen years ago I traded academia for the life of a freelance cartoonist.

Radford: At first glance there may not seem to be an obvious overlap between skeptics and caricature artists, but it seems to me that there may be some interesting parallels. For example, on a philosophical basis, caricaturists, like skeptics, seek to uncover the truth or essence. It’s their job to look at a person’s features and represent the person in all their imperfect glory; the parts they emphasize are selected and exaggerated, of course, but it seems there’s some common ground. Can you talk about the process of revealing truth through caricature?

Ward: Well, as the January 2015 attacks on the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo showed, caricaturists working in the political arena can face dangers similar to those that plague skeptics and debunkers in hostile territory. Some caricature artists are purposefully inflammatory, to make their point, just like some outspoken public skeptics employ inflammatory language or mockery to drive their message home. But each believes their message is worth the risk.

I cannot speak for all caricature artists, and certainly I’m not one of the brave inflammatory political cartoonists, but I do have experience with subjects face-to-face as a retail and party artist. Unlike medicine or physics, caricatured “truth” is subjective. When dealing with the actual subject of the drawing, it becomes highly subjective and you get a front-row seat to all the ways people fool themselves. “I’m not that fat/old/bald/funny-looking!” and on and on.

I had one older lady exclaim: “You gave me freckles! I do not have freckles!” to which her daughter said “Yes, Mom, you totally have freckles,” and she insisted “These aren’t freckles; they’re just brown spots on my face!” There are also subjective degrees of “truth” even when you aren’t having the artwork judged by the subjects themselves. A highly exaggerated caricature might resonate with some but not all viewers. Seasoned caricature artists will all disagree, to some extent, about how best to stretch a likeness. And, when working on a stretch you think you’ve nailed, you can suddenly notice something that just looks wrong, and it unravels the whole likeness. So “truth” is a funny word to apply.

We do seek a visual type of truth, beyond vanity and photoshopped blandness, sure, but it’s still a “truth” we know is founded on deep-seated perception biases—the ways our brains shorthand a likeness and tell one human being from another. Those biases have been formed by evolution, culture, or accidents of our brain development, but it’s those quirks of perception that we exploit.

When working in the public eye as an artist, you also get repeated exposure to the woo that permeates our general population. Every live caricaturist hears daily how talented they are, how it’s a magical sort of “gift” that we were surely born with or received from some supernatural source. We also see how easy it is to fool people’s senses (“Oh my gosh, it didn’t look like him at all, but then you drew the top of the hair and that’s totally him now!”) or how easily people form wrong-headed notions and proudly repeat them (“My eyes are usually green but whenever I’m sad they turn a strange sort of turquoise; it’s so peculiar but I swear it’s true!”). Honestly, I wish I had a nickel for every person with dark brown eyes who insisted they were “hazel green.” While there are no doubt artists who themselves subscribe to the magical-thinking version of things, most working caricaturists I know are well aware that their abilities came from study and practice, not a supernatural force. And most nod and smile politely while people talk about the mystical properties of their eyes, but they know how light and color works and they know emotions don’t change iris pigmentation.

Radford: Can a caricature more accurately represent or reveal the physical presence of a person than a photograph? In the same way that eyes are said to be windows to the soul (or personal essence in a more secular context), do you think a person’s facial features can tell their life story, in a sort of poetic way? Or does that get into the pseudoscience of physiognomy or phrenology?

Ward: There is something to this. Of course phrenology and physiognomy are bunk: facial bumps and the bony structure of the skull tell one nothing about personality. But expressions—how the muscles move over those bony bumps—are loaded with content. Paul Ekman’s work is pretty well known, and that annoyingly non-scientific (but still fun) TV show Lie to Me, based on Ekman’s work, certainly exploited the notion of mining expressions for data. While I’m not qualified to judge the psychological accuracy of Ekman’s conclusions, I can certainly add my anecdotal experience to the mix. People react strongly when a certain characteristic expression is “nailed” just right in a live drawing.

My husband (and partner at Two Heads Studios) once fielded this very question from a group of curious wedding guests. Someone asked if being a caricature artist imbued us with any special abilities to “read people” and see into their personalities. He gave the table a “non-psychic” psychic reading, guessing something about each of the people sitting with us. Sure enough, the one he guessed was a serious, studious type was in fact a surgeon in training. The one he labeled a “social butterfly, maybe a bit overly curious, nosy even?” blushed as her friends giggled and said that was “absolutely her.” And so on, around the table. He then explained what visual clues he was exploiting: the surgical intern had a continual serious expression and deep furrows in his forehead, more than a young man his age would have—which perhaps bespoke years of concentration. And the social butterfly was constantly smiling, with eyes that darted around the room constantly. So, while no cranial ridges were measured, simple observation of their expressions and demeanor helped create a profile.

Radford: I picked up a few copies of the caricature magazine Exaggerated Features and found an article by you about pareidolia. It’s something I’d researched and written about as a skeptic, but of course it fits perfectly in a magazine about caricatures. Was that a form of grassroots skeptical outreach?

Ward: Yes! And I was happy to explore the topic for an audience that would not be familiar with the term. A big part of caricature is how our brains perceive the human face, and the success of any caricature depends on how viewers perceive it. Just like magicians exploit deficiencies in human perception and, without realizing it, learn about aspects of skepticism, so do caricature artists learn by trial and error how to navigate pareidolia and other intricacies of perception. As social animals, our brains are highly attuned to recognizing individual members of our species. I owe my living to this evolutionary trait, and to pareidolia—as no cartoon would be recognizable as a face, let alone a particular face, without our brain’s characteristic ability to read meaning into patterns.

I have also blogged on a few skeptical topics that cross over into the realm of caricature and being a working artist. While my musings on the industry only reach a small subset of the population, it’s a neat way to introduce some critical thinking and skeptical notions to an audience that might not seek them out on their own. Likewise, when I gave a seminar this past November at the international caricature convention, I drew upon the information I’ve learned from skeptical sources. While talking about the psychology of client-handling as an artist, it was easy to introduce things like logical fallacies, heuristics, and a few other ways our brains fool us on a regular basis. My goal was not to “sneak in” skeptical thought under the radar—rather, since I’m often steeped in skepticism, it just seemed the natural way for me to explain a few things about client-artist relations and marketing.

Radford: Artwork, and caricature specifically, can evoke strong feelings. Let’s talk about caricature as a form of insult comedy. Obviously sitting for an artist is not the same as being skewered by Lisa Lampanelli or Don Rickles in the front row at a comedy show, but there are some interesting parallels. In both cases, people choose to put themselves in a situation where they may be made fun of. But it seems that edgy caricature, like edgy comedy, can sometimes go wrong. How do you as a caricaturist deal with the racial aspects of your subjects? If an African American subject has prominent lips or an Asian sitter has the classic epicanthic fold, how do you draw the line (so to speak) between caricature and racist depiction? You want to accurately, creatively, and humorously exaggerate the features, but that very process can blur into seeming accusations of racism. How do caricaturists handle that?

Ward: This was actually the topic of one of my most-read blog posts. Racial features are indeed a hot button. In my own live caricature, I rely heavily on forming a rapport with the subject before I figure out how far to take any stretch. That said, I once drew an Asian guy with particularly small eyes and chose to just leave his eyes out completely. His friends (who were also Asian) howled with laughter, doubling over, and he loved it too. Far from insulted, they tipped me generously and were thrilled. Unlike a stand-up comedian, I get to chat with my target for a few minutes as I begin the drawing. By the time I get to any “danger zones,” I typically have a good idea as to what I can get away with. Heck, plenty of caricaturists begin their process with the question “So, do you have a sense of humor? Can I go crazy with this?” Many people are totally fine with a lampooning of their features; some really want an edgy drawing. Some don’t.

Every artist should recognize that caricature has a history of being wielded as a weapon—on Jewish people, Asians, African Americans, you name it. Added to this history are also the individual racial sensitivities each person brings to the table, which can be anywhere from slight self-consciousness to absolute, raging delusion. Working with the public, you do see plenty of Asians who ask for bigger eyes (or blue eyes!), people of color who ask for lighter skin or thinner lips, and people with grand Semitic noses who feel that any drawing capturing that feature would be a grave insult. This is a shame, and I hope it will change eventually. I feel that minimizing racial features is itself the worst kind of visual racism. It’s erasing a trait because that trait is associated with a particular race—how can that not be a grave insult? It says “your phenotype is so repulsive that I’m going to leave out those awful features and make you look more European. There . . . now you’re presentable.” Screw that. If someone really does seem filled with shame over a facial feature that identifies them as a particular racial type, I sometimes just try the straightforward, rational approach. Ask them “why?” when they tell you they want that feature changed. I mention what I like about it, what I like about drawing it. How strong, or graceful, or statuesque it is. I talk about how bland the world would be if I only drew generic faces, and I throw in a few technical terms like “epicanthic fold” or “philtrum.” Granted, I have five to ten minutes with these folks, not a whole hour of therapy on a couch. But with the right word choices and approach, sometimes I see a change in how they look at themselves. And I at least get them to buy the drawing!

Radford: I notice that your model caricatures include a piece of James Randi. Can you tell me a bit about why you chose to do a 3-D caricature of him and what was involved in the process? Is it true that you cast him from a life-size mold?

Ward: That was a last-minute challenge. I had not done a piece for the studio competition part of this year’s caricature convention, and on a lark I decided to sculpt something quickly, in one night. Doing 3-D work has been one of my specialties, so my process is pretty streamlined by now. Still, I knew I’d better choose someone with distinct features, fun to sculpt, and it would help if it was a celebrity I was familiar with and liked—the better to be inspired by. Randi popped up as a logical choice, and I hammered that out and painted it the night before the convention. And, having been lucky enough to meet the “Amazing One” in person several times now, I can assure readers that he is at least twice the size of my sculpture.

Radford: Do you find that caricaturists, as a profession, tend to be more or less accepting of other people in terms of their physical flaws? After all, part of your job is to seek out and enhance a person’s features and flaws, and in many ways the more unusual a person looks, the more material there is for an artist to work from and the more interesting a subject is. Squints, double chins, birthmarks, thinning hair, and the like seem to be fair game. Are there any facial features or subjects that are sometimes considered taboo, that many caricaturists will ignore out of kindness (maybe a lazy eye, war wounds, or something), or is everything fair game under the assumption that people know what they’re getting into if they sit for a caricature?

Ward: It really depends, from artist to artist, what is “taboo” or not. Some young, new, frightened artists shy away from drawing anything that might offend. Some seasoned artists try to go for the jugular every time. I suppose I’m somewhere in the middle. Scars, wounds, lazy eyes—those are things I sometimes ask about. And I try not to make it seem like it’s some hideous defect; I say “Awesome features! It’s all right for me to represent that, yeah? It would be hard making it look like you otherwise.” And generally I get no hassle about it. I myself love drawing lazy eyes. If someone has one eye that looks right at you and one that leans toward the wall or their nose, I get really excited because it makes for such a dynamic drawing. See, if someone has something like that on their face, they are typically aware of it. And, as they sit for you, they know you can see it too. So it generally doesn’t come as a huge surprise when they see the picture.

What strikes me is how many people seem unaware that the vast majority of human beings walking the earth have “flaws” just like they do. I have explained hundreds of times to people shy about their “crooked smile” that asymmetry in smiles is perfectly natural and occurs for most people to some degree. Elvis had a famously asymmetrical smile! And squinting while one smiles is absolutely how our anatomy is wired to work. To drive the point home, sometimes I smile at the model while holding my eyes open unnaturally. The result looks like I’m doing an impersonation of a scary ventriloquist dummy—not the look anyone wants in a picture, caricature or otherwise! So squint when you smile, squint proudly, and smile your wonderful crooked smile and get over it!

Radford: In your experience do caricaturists seem to be any less judgmental of other people’s minor physical flaws than others since they are able to easily see them in everyone around them?

Ward: Yes and no. I often joke that I find myself staring at weird looking guys in public, and then have to rebuff their subsequent interest by saying “No, no. I’m not undressing you with my eyes; I’m just drawing you in my head.” I’m joking, of course, but it’s rooted in truth. Whether we are judgmental of flaws is a loaded question. Just replace “judgmental” with “fascinated by.” And, to pick apart your question even further, I hate the word flaws! So many people use the word flaws to describe themselves, their faces, their racial physiognomy, even their children’s adorable faces! Unless something about your face prevents you from chewing, breathing, or seeing, it’s not a flaw, it’s a feature (as engineers and artists alike would say). That said, working with people’s features so closely, and so often, does sometimes hyper-sensitize us to deviations. Mad magazine artist Tom Richmond talks in his book about having an entire play ruined because the lead actor had an unusually large forehead, which became a mesmerizing distraction for the entire two hours. While we all appreciate “standard beauty” on some level, it’s just more fun for us to look at faces that are not so plain.

Radford: What are the best and worst parts of being a caricature artist?

Ward: The best part for me is that I get to indulge in a bad habit I’ve had for decades and I’m getting paid for it. As a side-bonus, I also get to have five to ten minutes of face-time with some of the most interesting people in the world. I have drawn at parties and conventions that put me in the center of very different demographics each week—from computer experts to public health legislators to adult film stars. I get to chat with them, ask them questions, and joke around—all while I make fun of their faces. It’s pretty sweet. Many caricature artists complain about the lack of respect our field is given. We are sometimes seen as the underbelly of the art world, the gutter-level artists eking out a living at carnivals or tourist traps. I choose to look at it as grass-roots art. For many average people, a caricature is the only “real” original artwork they have in their home that’s not a reproduction or print. So I’m going to revise that: for me, the worst part of the job is falling into a rut, that dangerous pattern of drawing faces that start to look alike. At some point one’s “style” can become a crutch, an excuse to do bad work, to stop learning. It’s a big fear, and it’s one I work against constantly—but not always successfully.

Radford: For many people their first exposure to caricature may have been in pop culture media such as Gerald Scarfe’s work on Pink Floyd’s The Wall album and film, or Philip Burke’s Rolling Stone portraits of rock stars (I saw an excellent exhibition of his work at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007). Aside from your cartooning class at Johns Hopkins, what were some of your early exposures to caricature?

Ward: There was a British TV show in the 1980s and 1990s called Spitting Image, which found its way to American TV and incorporated some of our celebrities and political figures. It was a satire show done completely with caricature puppets. And these puppets were out of sight—the detail, the sculpting, the exaggeration, the costumes. I could not keep my eyes off them. While I was aware of Pink Floyd’s The Wall and Burke’s rock star caricatures (gigantic paintings, actually), my tastes gravitated more toward Mad magazine and Cracked. Like the puppets, these caricatures told a story and interacted with one another. Mort Drucker captured likenesses from any angle, any expression, any lighting—detailed or gestural, he nailed them in every panel. And I always loved Norman Rockwell. People don’t think of him as a caricaturist, but his work was very much in line with what caricature artists aim for in illustration.

Radford: Who are some lesser-known contemporary caricature artists with really exciting or unusual styles that might be seen in magazines in coming years?

Ward: Mongolian artist Choimbol Gan­baatar really impressed us all at the most recent convention, taking home many awards for his first time attending. His style is rough and passionate; it reminded me a bit of Scarfe but with more painterly elements. Ali Thome has a crazy, funny style that I imagine will blossom even further with her web-comic work. Marlo Meekins can draw caricatures that make you a little ill just looking at them—she is kind of her own brand now, doing comedy and possibly launching a show, but I hope to see her illustration flourish too. Paul Moyse and Court Jones are both accomplished painters and caricaturists whose work already is showing up in publications. Jason Seiler, though still quite a young man (and yes, a former live caricature artist), has already been commissioned to paint Pope Francis for Time’s person of the year and was asked again this year to paint one of the runners-up—so I cannot list him as an “up and comer” but expect his body of work to grow to monumental proportions over the next few decades. Seo Kim’s delicate, cuddly work has quite a following already, and her work on Adventure Time will only increase her audience. It’s hard to say, though. There are many caricaturists I run across who have immense ability but not the temperament to work seriously in publications (meeting deadlines, working with agents, etc.).

Radford: Let’s switch gears for a minute and talk about the rock stars of caricature. Who have been some of your favorite guest speakers at the International Society of Caricature Artists (ISCA) convention over the years? Who are some of your biggest influences as a caricature artist?

Ward: John Kascht, Drew Friedman, Jan Op De Beeck (from Belgium), and Sebastian Kruger (from Germany) have all been impressive speakers. I enjoyed David O’Keefe, especially, because he’s a strong sculptor and his work rivals that of Fluck and Law, who did Spitting Image. All of these artists have influenced me, but working in the chair live means you get highly influenced by those coworkers around you. For better or worse! So I owe a lot to the skilled artists I have sat next to over the past twenty-three years.

Radford: I understand that there were some grumblings among some caricature artists that the 2014 guest, Sebastian Kruger, had changed his style and moved away from exaggerated caricatures to more straightforward (though brilliantly rendered) portraits. What does this say about the line between a caricature and a portrait? Does any exaggeration transform a portrait into a caricature?

Ward: Ha. Yeah, Kruger said something to the effect of “I feel like I have betrayed you all” when caricaturists questioned him on the newer direction his work is taking. His agent and website describe the work he’s been doing lately as “New Pop Realism.” If you look at Kruger’s body of work prior to that, it really pushes caricature to the limits of recognizability. His paintings inspired a whole generation of caricaturists to stretch further, get bolder, and feel the likeness “down to the bones” as Kruger described it. For him, when questioned about it, he simply said this was the next thing for him. I look forward to seeing what he does in the next twenty years. Geniuses do surprising things when they get bored with one artistic avenue! While exaggeration does push any portrait further along into the realm of caricature, if you look at any portrait close enough you will find some deviation, some exaggeration. Portraiture cannot be wholly cleansed of caricature elements. And vice versa.

Celestia Ward’s website is at www.2Heads
Studios.com, and her caricature blog can be found at www.celestiaward.blogspot.com.

The Australian federal government’s no-jab-no-pay laws will remove childcare benefits, rebates, and the end-of-year Family Tax Benefit A supplement from parents who don’t immunize their children.

After legislation was passed by the Senate, the changes will start on from the 1st January next year, with exemptions for medical reasons.

After she wrote a detailed blog post in response to the news, I asked an Immunisation expert from the University of Sydney, Associate Professor Julie Leask, on what is new and what remains the same with these laws.

Julie Leask: Well, they are and they aren’t. We already have this requirement. Children have to be up to date with their vaccinations in order to receive these family assistance payments, and that’s been the case since 1999. What’s changing now is that while previously if the parents refused vaccination and lodged an exemption form called the so-called conscientious objection, they could still get the payments, and this revision of the policy removes their capacity to get those payments.

Kylie Sturgess: There’s an estimated 7 percent of parents who don’t vaccinate their children but they’re not registered conscientious objectors. Will these changes make much of a difference in your opinion?

Leask: They will to a certain extent; the main part of the policy is the one I describe, the removal of conscientious objection capacity, and that I’d say is the main course. Then there are these side dishes that come along with the bill, and they’re what I think will probably make a difference, because they actually touch that 7 percent. The conscientious objectors, by now they’re 2 percent, they’re 1.5 percent.

Then there’s this 7 percent who don’t lodge their objection. They’re still not up to date, so they’re not actually getting their payments at the moment. The new policy isn’t in theory going to touch that group, because they need something else, because the removal of capacity to object, they’re not objecting anyway.

What’s coming along with the new policy is a yearly requirement. Instead of just being reminded, “Hey, your kid’s not up to date,” when they turn twelve months, two years, and five years, which is what happens now, it’ll be every single financial year. “Hey, your kid’s not up to date. You, this year, will lose these payments unless you get them up to date.” I think that extra nudge every single year will make a difference.

They’re extending the requirements; they used to finish at age five, and now they go right up to age nineteen. If you have, for example, a twelve year old and you’re eligible for one of these payments and they weren’t up to date for their baby vaccines and we still haven’t got them up to date, then you will be warned that you’ll lose those payments and you need to get them up to date.

Sturgess: We’re talking about very small numbers here. Even if we add up those little percentages, it’s less than 10 percent overall of people who aren’t vaccinating their kids. So, what are some of the barriers for these people, and what makes it such a big concern?

Leask: First of all, that’s a national average, and averages mask differences in regions and particular population groups, like aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, children born overseas, and then the regions where you have more alternative practices and more people who are actively refusing vaccines. There you can see lower vaccination rates and higher rates of vaccine objection.

I must qualify that among the families that have children born overseas and the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, they’re not objecting. They’re not getting around to it. They want to vaccinate their kids, they’re motivated; it’s just an issue with accessing the services and getting to those appointments and having culturally appropriate, safe services that are available to them so that they can use those services.

They’re very different groups. I think also we’ve got to remember that we’ve got 92 percent of children fully vaccinated now. We’ve been able to come from a 53 percent vaccination rate in the ‘90s to that 92 percent all with these requirements, with these incentives, with these “you must be vaccinated or lodge an exemption or you’ll lose your payments,” with other reforms like paying health professionals to get children up to date. They’ve all made a difference. I think regulation is really important with changing behavior, as it is in many areas of public health, but then you reach this point where you’ve got in Australia today this last 8 percent who need something different, because the regulation hasn’t worked. The “no jab, no pay” works on those objectors by saying, “Well, you can’t get your objection signed anymore and get the payments. You just won’t get the payments at all now.” As I said, they’re now 1.5 percent, and there’s that other 7 percent who need other things.

In fact, for the objectors I think there are better ways to address that group, but we’ve got the legislation now. We have to make the best of it and advocate for some other reforms that will strengthen our immunization programs.

Sturgess: You’re not fully on board? You’re saying “making the best of it,” as it were.

Leask: Yes, I’ve always been very concerned about the strategy of tipping over from an incentive scheme to a sanction scheme, which is essentially what this is, because these are quite large payments. For a very low income family with a child in full-time child care, they can be up to $15,000 if you include the child care benefit and the rebate and the family tax benefit payment. That could represent hardship for families. It’s the first time we’ve ever linked family assistance payments to a particular health behavior.

I guess the question then is, if parents smoke in their car with their kids, should we be also stopping them getting their payments? Where should it stop? Asking, “Well, what makes us focus on vaccination?” I think when you ask that question you see that people are rightly concerned about spread of diseases, rightly concerned about high vaccination rates, but also there’s a fair amount of community outrage about people who refuse vaccination.

I guess the job that I’ve seen I’ve needed to do is to raise awareness of these other groups who aren’t fully vaccinated among children and adults and say this is a bigger problem, and to address it effectively we need these multifactorial, supportive strategies that address the actual problems that we know are there rather than this fairly punitive strategy, which is brilliant politics, but I don’t think necessarily great policy. Many other people in vaccination programs share my views.

Sturgess: These changes are meant to improve immunization rates for children. What about adults?

Leask: That’s one of the areas where we’ve tried to shed a light on a very serious problem, which is that vaccines, we get the primary course in childhood, and then our immunity can wane with some of these and we can need boosters. Very many adults are not getting boosters for various reasons. Often it’s unwitting, but we need to really focus on adult vaccination and make sure that those vaccination rates are high as well. We’ve got 92 percent of children in Australia fully vaccinated. For adults, you can see rates as low as 30 percent for some of the recommended vaccines.

An example would be that for a number of years pregnant women have been recommended an influenza vaccine. That vaccine will help protect her from serious influenza, which will help protect her from getting very sick from influenza during pregnancy and if it happens can affect her and the baby. We want better than 30 percent vaccination rates in those moms. I’d love to see a bit more attention on those problems as well as the vaccine refusers and the people who lack access and opportunity to get fully vaccinated with their children.

There are some adults who are recommended flu vaccine every year, and they’re not getting it. Some other adult groups, those with a chronic disease for example, children with a chronic disease, they’re recommended a free flu vaccine, and we see some quite low vaccination rates among those children. There are children getting influenza, going to hospital, and getting very sick and even dying from a disease that they could’ve been protected against. I’d love to see some more focus on these areas where there are very low rates, and a lot more needs to be done.

Sturgess: You also spoke at the Commonwealth Senate Inquiry into the “no jab, no pay” amendment to social services legislation when it first got underway. What was the experience like? There were a lot of people speaking up…

Leask: It was really interesting! This was my first time in presenting, submitting a paper to the federal senate, and then being called as a witness to an inquiry.

It’s been a real learning curve for me as a researcher. We had a week’s notice. I was called a week beforehand and asked if I would present as a witness to the hearing. That was based on I think a seven-page submission that I had written with a colleague, Dr. Kerrie Wiley, about the amendment bill.

The weekend before I spent a lot of time agonizing over my four-minute preliminary speech of what to say, and eventually wrote something out. Then the morning before at the airport I was able to talk to a former senator who I got some advice from about how to broach this issue with this committee. She made me, basically caused me, to have to toss my speech in the bin and completely rewrite it!

In the end, we knew that this bill would be passed. All the writing was on the wall. What we had to focus on was what other things we can draw attention to if the bill is passed, and they included the need for Australia to bring in a no-fault vaccine injury compensation scheme, the need to continue monitor vaccine acceptance and opinion in Australia so that we can get a sense of where that’s going, because we’ve lost that capacity now that we’re not making people register their objection, the need for review of this policy and its impacts a year and then two years into its implementation so that we’re keeping abreast of how this is affecting families.

Fortunately, all of those things were put as recommendations along with the recommendation that the bill be passed. We were really pleased with that outcome, given that we accepted that “no jab, no pay” would likely be passed through the senate, just to see those issues put on the national agenda.

Now our focus will be very much on continuing to call attention to the fact that, unlike nineteen other countries, Australia doesn’t have a compensation scheme for people who are injured by a vaccine. This is a very, very small group, and it’s very rare because vaccines are largely very safe and very important and effective. Like any medicine, there can be rare serious side effects, and some people may need to be compensated for those side effects. Australia, now that it’s ramping up the level of the mandate to vaccinate even more, we need to have a scheme that looks after those individuals who might be injured who are doing the right thing by the community. We are going to keep that on the agenda.

Sturgess: Speaking of opinion, debates about vaccinations and immunization are often heated. It seems for example on social media you can get people who are equally completely for vaccination or completely against it, and often they have similar rhetoric and similar tone. It’s quite funny. Even though they’re on different sides, they can sound the same. Do you think that there’s a need for a more middle ground in terms of voices? How do you think that could be encouraged?

Leask: It’s been really interesting, because I started in this area looking at ... I did my PhD on the anti-vaccination lobby in Australia and how they behaved and how they constructed their arguments. I saw a number of different typical biases that they exhibit, and strategies and formed some views about what to do about them. I think what it taught me … my mum said to me all through my childhood, “All things in moderation,” which is a bit of a contradiction in terms, I know, but I’ve really held to that!

My mom grew up with an anti-vaccination mother herself, so my grandmother was against vaccination. Mom turned from that. She got all of us immunized and she kind of rebelled. I’ve really respected my mom’s approach to this issue, which is just to be moderate about things in life. It’s taught me to constantly be aware of my own biases and try to keep being objective about things. When we’re very passionate about something, whether it’s against vaccination or for vaccination, it can sometimes be genuinely difficult to think rationally.

I think all of us need to guard against being irrational in our thinking, and what Dan Kahan calls “motivated reasoning.” We want an outcome, we want to see something in a certain way, and so we reason away stuff to suit that argument. I think watching the very strident views that particularly occur on the anti-vaccine side of things, but you do see them on the very pro-vaccine end of the spectrum where I’m generally located, that it’s just so important for us to try to be balanced and measured and rational. We need that in science, and we need it when we’re thinking about the science of vaccine communication and vaccine-related behavior.

As a researcher, I’m committed to encouraging us to think rationally and calmly about the problem of vaccine refusal and non-vaccination and partial vaccination among children and adults, and how we can address that in ways that are evidence based and ethically sustainable at the same time.

In the days after the mass shooting in San Bernardino, a dear friend and single mother made an impassioned plea on her Facebook page. After seeing many calls for increased gun control, she explained that she had been a victim of assault in the past and would not be giving up her handgun anytime soon. She said maintaining her permit was difficult to do—“as it should be”—but she was clearly upset about the many calls for additional controls.

While I sympathize with my friend’s desire for security, she has fallen for one of the most common and most dangerous misconceptions Americans hold. According to a 2013 Gallup poll, the top reason U.S. gun owners keep a firearm is “personal safety/protection.” Fully 60 percent of gun owners gave this reason, and the next most common reason was “hunting” at 36 percent.

Sadly, buying a gun does not make you safer. To the contrary, the evidence suggests that bringing a gun into your home increases the chances you will be killed. You are to be forgiven if you have not heard more about this. There is an extremely profitable industry based on the myth that guns are an effective means of self-protection, and it would be bad for business if this information were more widely known. Furthermore, the myth that weapons make you safer has benefited from a deliberate campaign against science and the collection of gun violence data.

The Campaign Against Gun Violence Research

In 1993, Arthur Kellerman and colleagues published a landmark study in the New England Journal of Medicine entitled, “Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home.” The Kellerman study examined 388 cases of homicide that occurred in the home or within the property borders of the home and an equal number of matched control households. The data were drawn from the most populous counties in three different states (Ohio, Tennessee, and Washington). Kellerman famously found that “keeping a gun in the home is independently associated with an increase in the risk of homicide in the home.” Indeed, controlling for other factors, households where a gun was present were 2.7 times more likely to experience a homicide and 77 percent of the victims were killed by someone they knew: a spouse, partner, relative, friend, roommate, or acquaintance.

Kellerman and colleagues concluded:

Despite the widely held belief that guns are effective for protection, our results suggest that they actually pose a substantial threat to members of the household. People who keep guns in their homes appear to be at greater risk of homicide in the home than people who do not. Most of this risk is due to a substantially greater risk of homicide at the hands of a family member or intimate acquaintance. We did not find evidence of a protective effect of keeping a gun in the home, even in the small subgroup of cases that involved forced entry. (p. 1090)

The Kellerman study caused quite a stir, and pro-gun advocates were quick to try to criticize it. But the gun lobby was not satisfied with merely trying to debunk the study. The National Rifle Association (NRA) acted to prevent research on gun violence altogether.

The Kellerman study employed telephone and face-to-face interviews, making it very expensive to conduct, and the investigators had received funding from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention (NCIP). The NRA response was to advocate for the complete elimination of the NCIP. They failed at that effort, but they were able to effectively block all federal funding of research on gun violence. In what has come to be called the Dickey Amendment—after its author, former U.S. Representative Jay Dickey (R-AR)—Congress placed language in the 1996 omnibus funding bill that prohibited any funds given to the CDC from being used to “advocate or promote gun control.” In addition, Congress cut the CDC’s budget by $2.6 million, the same amount that had been allocated for firearm injury research in the previous year. The effect of the amendment was chilling and all federal funding for firearm injury research quickly disappeared, a condition that is still in effect today.

Former Representative Dickey has subsequently changed his position and is now in favor of the CDC funding gun violence research. But last summer Congress quietly renewed the ban on firearms research, voting down an amendment that would have lifted the ban. When asked why the CDC amendment was not supported, Speaker of the House John Boehner replied, “Because guns are not a disease.”

As I write this, Congress is again in the process of passing an omnibus spending bill. Despite the efforts of Democrats to eliminate the Dickey amendment, it survives. The NRA-backed ban on gun violence research remains in effect.

Visitors at a gun show in Houston (Wikipedia)

What Does the Available Research Show?

Although federal funding has been cut off for almost two decades, investigators have found other ways to conduct research, and there are some consistent findings.

1. Access to Firearms Increases the Risk of Being a Victim of Homicide.

The primary result of the Kellerman study has held up over time. In 2014, researchers from the University of California at San Francisco published a meta-analysis summarizing all the available controlled studies in the Annals of Internal Medicine. They found the odds of being a victim of homicide were between 1.6 and 3.0 times higher when the victim had access to a firearm. The wide availability of firearms is only one of the factors contributing to the high rate of homicide in the United States, but, contrary to popular belief, you are safer if you don’t have a gun at home than if you do.

2. Women Are Especially at Risk of Homicide When a Firearm is Present.

The same 2014 meta-analysis found that the increased risk of homicide victimization created by access to a firearm was significantly greater for women than for men.

3. Access to Firearms Greatly Increases the Risk of Suicide.

Although it gets far less attention, suicide is a much bigger problem than homicide. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, in 2013 there were 2.5 times as many suicides as homicides in the United States, and many of them were committed using a firearm. Of all firearm deaths, 63 percent were suicides and only 33 percent were homicides. Furthermore, 51 percent of all suicides were committed with a firearm.

Many suicides are impulsive acts that can often be prevented if there is time. Unfortunately, firearms are quick and highly lethal. Ready access to a gun makes it possible to act on impulse with tragically irreversible results. The 2014 meta-analysis also looked at controlled studies of suicide risk and found that access to a firearm increased the odds of suicide by ratio of 3.24-to-1.

4. Firearms Are Not Very Effective at Deterring Crime.

One of the most popular arguments in favor of firearm ownership is that guns are useful for self-defense in criminal encounters. A frequently cited 1995 study by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz estimated that Americans used guns for self-defense approximately 2.5 million times per year. This figure has been widely criticized, and more recent studies using superior methodologies have painted a very different picture.

For example, in April of 2015 a study published in Preventive Medicine by David Hemenway of the Harvard School of Public Health and Sara J. Solnick of the University of Vermont examined data from the National Crime Victimization Surveys for the years 2007 through 2011. Hemenway and Solnick found that out of 14,000 episodes in which the victim came into contact with the offender (robberies, burglaries, assaults, etc.), the victim used a gun to threaten or attack the perpetrator in only 127 cases (0.9 percent). Hemenway and Solnick also found that men and women were equally likely to be the victims of contact crimes, but men were three times more likely to use a gun in self-defense. In over 300 cases of sexual assault there was not a single incident of self-defense gun use.

For those who used a gun in self-defense, the chances of being injured in the incident (10.9 percent) were essentially equal to those who took no action at all (11.0 percent). There was some evidence that the use of a firearm resulted in less loss of property, but guns were no more effective than other methods of self-defense in this regard.

Dr. Hemenway summarized the findings this way:

The National Crime Victimization Surveys, the gold standard for crime estimates, indicates that using a gun in self-defense is quite rare (less than 1% of contact crime) and that it does not appear to be more effective than many other measures of self-defense or protection in reducing the likelihood of being injured. Not having a gun does not render potential victims of crime either helpless or easy marks.

A Dangerous Myth

In 2012, the U.S. gun industry was estimated to be worth $31.8 billion per year. If the recent Gallup poll is an accurate measure of why people purchase guns, a large part of the industry’s profits are based on the false belief that owning a gun makes you safer—that a pistol in the drawer will protect you from all the bad guys out in the dark. This is not the first or only industry to profit by spreading false beliefs, but it is hard to imagine one where the public health costs are as high.

In fact, gun owners would be less likely to be victims of homicide and especially suicide if they got rid of their guns. In addition, taking no action during a criminal encounter would make them no more likely to be injured than if they used a gun.

It is easy to understand the emotional appeal. I am quite certain my gun-owning friend feels safer. Psychological research is replete with examples of how emotion and intuition can lead us astray. When asked what one thing he would eliminate if he had a magic wand, Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman said “overconfidence.” The kind of overconfidence that makes governments think wars will be easily won and makes investors believe that housing prices will always go up.

Many gun owners undoubtedly suffer from overconfidence, too. Thanks to a well-funded advertising campaign, they have a particular image of how a gun would affect any future conflicts in their homes. They have been told, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” But of course, real life is not a melodrama with easily identifiable good guys and bad guys. Most of the perpetrators of violence are not strangers coming in from the darkness.

It is likely that many gun owners also discount the possibility that they or someone in their home will become suicidal in the future and, as a result, don’t consider the implications of having a gun in the drawer when that happens.

It is easy to say, “That would never happen to me.” Many gun owners undoubtedly believe they can beat the odds because they are careful and wise, but the evidence is clear. If you care about your safety and the safety of your loved ones, get rid of your guns.

Alternative medicine, by definition, is medicine that is not supported by good enough evidence to have earned it a place in mainstream medicine. Some people insist that modern medicine is not evidence-based either! Not long ago I got an email from a man who said that and tried to prove it with a series of arguments that were all fallacious. These are zombie arguments that keep staggering back to life after they have been thoroughly eviscerated and buried. Skeptics can only refute them over and over in a Sisyphean effort.

First he cited Mark Crislip’s statement that 50 percent of what a graduating doctor knows will be proven false before he retires. Let’s turn that around: that means that 50 percent of what he knows is true, and by the time he retires the other 50 percent will have been modified or replaced by better knowledge based on evidence. Far less than 50 percent of alternative medicine claims are true; in fact a lot of them have already been proven false, and that evidence is being ignored.

Next he complained that the frequency of antibiotic use and the antibiotics chosen vary hugely by region. That doesn’t mean antibiotic use is not based on evidence. For one thing, the prevalence of different pathogens and antibiotic resistance varies by region, so doctors should prescribe the most appropriate antibiotics to cover the most likely organisms in their locale. For another thing, the evidence is not always black and white, so doctors have to add their own judgment to imperfect evidence, and doctors tend to follow the lead of their peers in their local medical community. Admittedly, antibiotics are over-prescribed; some doctors are not following the best evidence, but that reflects on the individual doctors, not on the evidence base of medicine itself. There are standards of practice and consensus guidelines for evidence-based treatment, but that doesn’t mean that every doctor will do or should do exactly the same thing.

He said “Evidence-based medicine is merely a minority movement within modern medicine.” That is demonstrably false: just read any medical journal. The journal of my specialty, American Family Physician, even uses a rating system to denote the quality of evidence for every treatment it discusses.

He complained that some surgeries turn out to be useless. True, but how do we learn that? We only know that because modern medicine tested them and followed the evidence.

He says medicines are prescribed off-label. Yes, but off-label doesn’t mean not based on evidence. Off-label prescription is usually based on compelling evidence from studies that just don’t happen to have been done by the drug company and submitted to the FDA. Off-label only means that the drug company did not specifically test for and get FDA approval for that use. Doctors are held to an evidence-based standard of practice for off-label prescriptions.

He says things that are just wrong: that statin drugs do more harm than good, and that PSA tests are useless to detect prostate cancer. Published guidelines for prescribing statins are firmly based on evidence, on good evidence showing that when prescribed appropriately they save lives. And while the PSA test is no longer recommended as a universal screening test (based on the evidence) it is very useful when used selectively.

He has the gall to blame modern medicine for the failings of pre-modern medicine, which makes just about as much sense as blaming auto mechanics for errors made by wheelwrights and blacksmiths in the nineteenth century. Doctors were wrong about bloodletting, but the practice was stopped when the evidence showed it did more harm than good. He criticizes doctors who were slow to accept Semmelweis’s findings about childbed fever, but that was a century and a half ago. That’s all ancient history from before the development of randomized placebo-controlled trials and evidence-based medicine. It is irrelevant to the question of whether modern medicine is evidence-based.

The zombie meme that annoyed me the most was his argument that Barry Marshall was “demonized” for proposing that ulcers were caused by bacteria and could be treated with antibiotics. The myth is that Barry Marshall’s research on H. pylori was ignored and rejected by mainstream medicine. Critics of science-based medicine love to recycle that claim, but it isn’t true. It was masterfully refuted by Kimball Atwood in the pages of Skeptical Inquirer.

Doctors had been treating ulcers with antacids and other medications based on the theory that excess stomach acid caused ulcers. It was only natural that they weren’t eager to admit they had been wrong. And surgeons who performed vagotomies and other operations for recurrent or complicated ulcers were reluctant to admit that antibiotic treatment could have prevented the need for most of the surgeries they had been subjecting patients to. Doctors were justified in questioning the early studies that seemed to contradict facts they thought they knew. But they were quickly convinced as the evidence mounted from other studies by other researchers around the world. Despite “areas of resistance” it was only a short ten years from Marshall and Warren’s Lancet paper to the NIH Consensus Conference recommending triple antibacterial treatment. By 1994, antibiotics were the standard evidence-based treatment, although some providers may not yet have been following the new consensus recommendations. Far from being “demonized,” Marshall and Warren were awarded a Nobel Prize, for crying out loud! To my mind, the H. pylori story is a great example of science-based medicine working just as it should, with new evidence-based standards being adopted as quickly as could possibly be expected.

How much of modern medicine is based on evidence? Critics tell us it is only 20 percent or less, but that’s just another silly zombie meme. Robert Imrie and David Ramey tracked down the origin of that myth in an article published in The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine. To just excerpt a few of their findings, they found evidence that 96.7 percent of anesthetic interventions are based on evidence, 82 percent of general medical interventions, 84 percent of internal medicine interventions, and 97 percent of pediatric surgical interventions. Overall, published studies found that an average of 37 percent of interventions are supported by gold-standard randomized controlled trials and 76 percent are supported by some form of compelling evidence.

In an article on his Neurologica blog, Steven Novella reviewed the published evidence and went on to estimate that 100 percent of the clinical decisions he makes are based upon the best available evidence combined with plausible and rational extension of what is known. He never resorts to the kind of untrustworthy anecdotal evidence that so much of alternative medicine relies on.

Modern medicine isn’t perfect, and practice often lags behind evidence, but the medical profession is constantly striving to improve practice and make it as evidence-based as possible. Critics of modern medicine would do well to follow my “SkepDoc’s Rule:” Before you accept a claim, try to understand who disagrees with it and why. Just as we check email and Facebook rumors by going to Snopes.com, anyone who is tempted to repeat one of these zombie memes should do some fact-checking first.

A study out this month has discovered that some Chinese medicines contain toxic heavy metals, undisclosed prescription medications, and the DNA of snow leopards, cats, and dogs.

In addition, the paper, called “Combined DNA, toxicological and heavy metal analyses provides an auditing toolkit to improve pharmacovigilance of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM),” finds nine out of ten Chinese medicines have a substance in it that’s not declared on the label.

Researchers from the University of Adelaide, Curtin University, and Murdoch University combined efforts to do this study—I spoke to Murdoch University biochemist Dr. Garth Maker about what may be hiding in your alt med.

I began by asking what defines Chinese medicine:

Dr. Garth Maker: It’s a very broad term and there’re lots of things which are encompassed within traditional Chinese medicine. I guess from our perspective, we’re interested in the herbal and other preparations that are used in the form of tablets and teas, and such and that are based on some aspect of this very ancient system of medicine that’s been around for about five thousand years. From our perspective, it’s the herbal compounds that are derived from these traditional Chinese practices.

Kylie Sturgess: How did the research get started? What led Curtin, Murdoch, and the University of Adelaide to combine to do this study?

Maker: There has been a small number of reports within the clinical literature of adverse reactions where individuals have presented to emergency rooms with some sort of reaction to a herbal medicine they’ve been taking. It’s not widely reported. We know it’s been considerably under reported in fact, but there was enough there that suggested that maybe there was something worth investigating. Then at the same time, we came together because we each had a different aspect of the expertise that was required to combine these new technologies into this study, so this particular combination of things has not been applied to herbal medicines before.

Sturgess: What was discovered in the range of Chinese medicines that the study looked at? What were some of the findings?

Maker: There are sort of three major areas of concern that we’ve determined so far; the first being we identified a number of medicines which contained endangered species, so they contained DNA that suggested some material from an endangered animal or plant had been included within that preparation. That included things like DNA from snow leopards, which are obviously highly endangered, and other things like snakes and frogs for example. We suspect in these cases that it may be that they’re included for their perceived medicinal benefit which we know that some animals are thought to have, even though there’s often no evidence to support that.

We also found other DNA from organisms like rats, cats, and dogs, which suggests that maybe these products are not being manufactured in the clean environment that we would expect from the manufacturing of products for human consumption. Those are the first area.

The second area was then the presence of undeclared pharmaceutical compounds, so things that could either be derived from plants or that actually are completely synthetic drugs, which have most likely been added to achieve a specific therapeutic outcome. For example, we found herbal medicines that had been sold for hay fever treatment that contained antihistamines, so conventional drugs had been added so they did what it said on the label, if you like.

A lot of them contained ephedrine, which could be derived from plants, but at the same time if you took something with ephedrine in it, it’s going to give you a buzz. It’s going to make you feel stimulated, and therefore it might be added for that particular purpose. People take it and think this is amazing; I’m going to keep taking it because it makes me feel great.

Sturgess: So, they’re paying for something that they could get over-the-counter, at any chemist?

Maker: Exactly, although the fact that it contains ephedrine means that it should be much more tightly regulated than it is in terms of how easy it is to buy these particular herbal medicines.

We also found prescription medicines that automatically made some of these compounds not legal for sale in this country, so things like warfarin (which obviously has to be used under close medical supervision), sildenafil (which is the active ingredient in Viagra for example), and also some corticosteroids (which are very tightly regulated). Obviously there’s great concern there because people might be unwittingly consuming these compounds without realizing it.

Sturgess: Is the sample that you collected, is that representative of most Chinese medicine that’s being sold in Australia do you think?

Maker: This is obviously difficult for us to determine at this stage. Since this study was completed, prior to publication we obtained a grant from the National Health and Research Council to expand the study. We’re looking in this instance around three hundred herbal medicines that we’ve then purchased from around the country so that we can then much more clearly elucidate the scope of the problem. That’s what we’re currently in the middle of at the moment. We’re processing those samples and we’ll certainly be making that data widely available as soon as the study is completed.

Sturgess: What Chinese medicine actually contains is a big question. Why does the TGA (Therapeutic Goods Administration https://www.tga.gov.au/) allow for Chinese medicines that don’t actually have contents listed on the label, and in fact have arguably dangerous contents in them, to be sold? What’s going on with the TGA in Australia there?

Maker: This is quite a complicated issue. We know for one thing that the TGA doesn’t really have the resources that it needs. Certainly one thing we would be advocating for would be for them to have greater resources. Because of that lack of resources, they’ve actually adopted an effectively and honesty system when it comes to what we refer to as listed medicines.

These are things which we think of like herbal medicines, dietary supplements. They need to be approved for sale, but the system is effectively such that an individual says I want to sell this, they fill out a form that says what’s in it and what it’s purported to do, and that is then taken as read by the TGA. There’s no widespread independent testing that goes on to actually concern that these things are safe, let alone efficacious.

That’s the gap in the system at the moment. That’s certainly what we would like to see addressed as one of the outcomes of our work.

Sturgess: What’s the likelihood of harm, not only to let’s say the poor, old snow leopards who are being put into these medicine, but people if they take these products?

Maker: One of the biggest issues we found is the difficulty in many cases actually understanding the labelling. In some cases the labelling was incorrect. In other instances it was not written in English, so it was very difficult for us, let alone a patient, to actually determine whether or not this thing was safe and also to determine what the appropriate dose was. In some cases, we found medicines that were recommended to take sixty-four tablets a day.

Sturgess: Wow. Why would anyone want to take that many tablets a day?

Maker: Just counting it out would take up half your day! Obviously that then has an issue in terms of how much people are taking, how much they’re potentially being exposed to ... I mean there’s some key risk groups here. We know some people use these medicines because they’ve perceived them to be natural and therefore safe. Obviously if you have groups like children, pregnant women for example being exposed to these things, there could be consequences.

At the same time, those individuals who already have chronic health issues and are taking numerous other medications, then the medications that we found within these things could potentially interact with their other medicines and cause unintended side effects.

One group that we did sort of realize as we started to see the data of course was professional athletes. If we’re finding things like steroids and other restricted compounds, they could unwittingly return a positive drug test, even though as far as they’re concerned they have abided by all the regulations. There are a number of areas where there’s a potential for great risk and harm to individuals.

Sturgess: Let alone cost. I’m trying to imagine a bottle containing sixty-four tablets, and that’s one day’s dose according to what they’re recommending. My goodness.

Maker: Exactly.

Sturgess: There’s news of a Sydney research institute that’s trialling Chinese medicine for vascular dementia. It’s the National Institute of Complementary Medicine based at the University of Western Sydney. They’re doing a trial to see how well this particular Chinese herbal medicine works in treating vascular dementia. What’s your take on that? Should we be skeptical of these kinds of trials as well?

Maker: It’s a difficult question. This system of medicine is over five thousand years old, so there is a phenomenal amount of knowledge there that we would be fools to ignore because it’s got such a history. We should certainly be looking to traditional medicine for inspiration for new conventional medicines. At the same time, from our perspective the issue of efficacy cannot be properly addressed until we are confident that these products are safe.

That’s what our concern is at the moment; are these things actually safe for consumption by the general population? Once we can say yes, we have a well-regulated system whereby we know that what it says on the label is what’s actually in the product, then I think we can move on to addressing these issues of do they actually work and what potential pharmacological applications could they have.

Sturgess: How do we encourage a well-regulated system? You mentioned that further studies are going on, including a grant to look at what’s being popped onto Australian shelves in terms of traditional Chinese medicine. But what can we all do about the findings?

Maker: I think the biggest issue is the issue of reporting. We know that a substantial portion of the population uses alternative medicines; not just herbal medicines, but all sorts of other complementary therapies. We know at the same time that the majority of those people do not disclose that to their general practitioner.

The medical community is not aware of the scope of use of these particular compounds, and then at the same time when things go wrong people often don’t go to their GP or they don’t fully disclose what has potentially caused the adverse reaction, so we also have considerable under reporting of these adverse reactions.

If we’re actually able to gather that sort of evidence, if people were more open about what they use with their health practitioners, then hopefully we can start to say you can see the scope of the issue that exists within, for example, the Australian population, and that will help us to then lobby for greater resources for the TGA, greater resources for further research into these compounds. We think that’s probably the key first step that the general population can be involved in.

On November 19, 2015, in Austin, TX, lawyers gave their opening statements in the Texas Medical Board’s (TMB) case against cancer doctor Stanislaw Burzynski. Two years have passed since patient complaints opened this case, the latest in a long series of only occasionally successful attempts to sanction the Houston internist who has boasted of his unorthodox cancer treatments for decades. As many readers will know, Stanislaw Burzynski discovered, developed, prescribed, manufactured, distributed, and profited mightily from the business he built around what he calls “antineoplastons,” amino acids and peptides that are found in human urine and blood. Burzynski contends that cancer patients have lower levels of these compounds in their blood, and he has administered an antineoplaston replacement therapy since the late 1970s. No professional medical organization recognizes antineoplaston deficiency as a risk factor for cancer, and Burzynski had never produced a reputable study that suggests antineoplastons are an effective chemotherapy. In more recent years, Burzynski had taken to prescribing untested low-dose, off-label chemotherapy cocktails (plus a sodium phenylbutrate chaser, which he also manufactured) on the basis of a commercially available gene test, calling it gene-targeted therapy.

A TMB investigation yielded charges against Burzynski, three doctors, and a physician’s assistant at the Burzynski Clinic. In the intervening time, numerous filings at the State Office of Administrative Hearings (SOAH) website have revealed a wide array of charges about financial, medical, and ethical shortcomings alleged to be plaguing the Burzynski Clinic. In the final months leading up to the current hearings, Lee Bukstein, the Board’s lawyer assigned to the Burzynski cases, began to withdraw from the cases of Greg Burzynski, Anita Shrout, Alejandro Marquis, and Zanhua Yi, cases which are not as far along as the one against Stanislaw Burzynski. It seemed like after all that time the lawyer with over a year and a half of experience on this complicated case would be leaving it to new lawyers at the eleventh hour. In June, however, a letter from Bukstein to the presiding judges, Roy Scudday and Catherine Egan, appeared on the SOAH website, which read in part:

After significant discussion with my supervisors about the logistics of transferring responsibility for this case over to another member of Board staff, we have reached a consensus that the most expeditious and efficient plan would be to have me remain on the case through the end of the trial on the merits. [...] I will point out that I will only be representing the Board in regard to this captivating case, and no other, after August 31, 2015.

In July, not long after the announcement that Mr. Bukstein was going to be devoting all of his time to this one case, a motion appeared on the SOAH site that was entirely unexpected. It began:

For reasons that should be left unexplained, Respondent’s [Burzynski’s] Counsel hereby moves to withdraw from this case.

Rick Jaffe, the lawyer who had been Burzynski’s wing man and advocate for at least fifteen years, was pulling out of the case. No explanation was given, and following a hearing behind closed doors, an independent administrative law judge determined that Jaffe was required to withdraw given the circumstances. What had happened did not become clear until Jaffe withdrew from another case, that of Greg Burzynski, Stan’s son and heir apparent:

Respondent [Greg] is a vice president and an employed physician at the Burzynski cancer clinic in Houston. The clinic is owned by Respondent’s father, Stanislaw R. Burzynski. Undersigned counsel had represented Stanislaw Burzynski in a related SOAH board case.

Undersigned counsel is taking legal action against Respondent’s employer which might have a material adverse effect on Respondent’s interests as an officer and employed physician at the clinic. As a result of such action, undersigned counsel will likely have a conflict of interest with Respondent, at least until the anticipated legal action is resolved.

In the PACER database, we discovered that Jaffe was not only suing Burzynski for nearly $250,000 in unpaid fees, but was also trying to force Burzynski into chapter 7 bankruptcy to collect. In the TMB case, Burzynski’s new legal team, in a doomed bid for a continuance, suggested that Jaffe may have hurt Burzynski’s case deliberately:

Additionally, Mr. Jaffe has now led suit against Respondent in the Bankruptcy Court in an attempt to force an involuntary bankruptcy for the Respondent. It is Respondent’s belief that Mr. Jaffe has taken actions to undermine Respondent’s position in this case, all of which prejudices Respondent and his ability to properly prepare his defense.

Because Jaffe’s performance was suddenly at issue, Jaffe suggested that Burzynski had waived lawyer/client confidentiality so that he could defend himself. Further, when Burzynski’s list of creditors was presented to the court, Jaffe alleged that Burzynski had not complied with the order because money was owed to insurance companies and to patients, none of whom were listed as creditors. Jaffee and Burzynski have since settled, and it seems we shall never know the names of those alleged creditors.

And so, on November 19, Burzynski, flanked by a new legal team, appeared before judges Scudday and Egan to answer charges by the Texas Medical Board. Mr. Bukstein began with the following opening statement:[1]

Dr. Sidney Farber, after World War II, worked in a basement of Boston’s Children’s Hospital trying to come up with a medicine for children who had leukemia, which was a really horrific death sentence for children. He’s acknowledged and it’s widely undisputed that he is one of the world’s pioneers of cancer chemotherapy. His successes made him one of the most respected members of the medical community and took him from the basement to an office with a grand view of Boston Harbor across the Charles River into Cambridge. Today there are buildings named after Dr. Farber on both sides of the river. The list of Nobel Laureates that came out of Dr. Farber’s cancer research program is long. Despite all the accolades, Dr. Farber was more concerned with his frustration with the apparent resistance of cancer cells to each new medication he found.

His protégés, Dr. Emil Frei and Dr. Emil Freireich, proposed the idea of combination chemotherapy. It was a combination of medical punches to floor the cancer long enough for the immune system to finish it off. Dr. Farber’s overriding concern was protection of the patients from the side effects the toxicity of the ingredients in the cocktail of drugs. This cocktail they came up with was called (BAM), almost insidious, but the two young physicians under Dr. Farber’s supervision insisted that they would do everything possible to protect the patients. Still Dr. Farber initially showed Dr. Frei and Dr. Freireich the door. But ultimately they worked out this fundamental tenet of cancer research. Protect the patient from the disease AND the cure.

The principles that were developed in their combination treatment research became the cornerstone, the standard for cancer research all over the world. These principles for physicians involved in clinical investigations evolved into the study designs, the requirement that biostatistically significant data and appropriate objective analysis to backup conclusions. These principles for physicians involved in clinical investigations evolved into the standards for Phase 1, Phase 2, and Phase 3 trials for innovative treatments. We’ll be talking a lot about Phase 1, Phase 2, and Phase 3 in this trial. Phase 1 a small number of patients to determine the parameters of safety. Phase 2, a larger number of patients to determine whether safety and efficacy support a decision to move on to Phase 3. And finally Phase 3, studies of several hundred, at a minimum, several hundred patients in randomized trials with control groups of patients receiving a standard treatment. The bargain that Dr. Frei and Dr. Freireich struck with Dr. Faber was to engage the discipline of science to objectively pursue data for an objective evaluation while protecting the patients as much as possible.

And this was as a time when all 3 doctors knew that most their patient subjects would suffer from the disease and the treatment and then die. The fundamental principle in their bargain was that the patient with their family would have a choice if they entered into the frontier of cancer research. There was no deception that the choice was between life and death. The choice was between a more comfortable demise or being part of the journey forward toward a cure for tomorrow’s patients, tomorrow’s children. The only thing that made this choice acceptable to Dr. Farber, Dr. Frei, and Dr. Freireich and the medical professional community was the discipline of science, the promise that doctors involved in research would honestly follow the guidelines involved and this is where Dr. Burzynski departed from the promise of the medical professional community a long time ago.

Consistently as will be shown through testimony and documents in this case, Dr. Burzynski has supervised, directed and controlled activities that are clinical research, human experimentation, clinical investigation in such a way as to masquerade as the discipline of science. The care of the patients in this case the conduct of Dr. Burzynski and his clinical studies as both doctor and investigator, the manipulation and influence on the institutional review board that is supposed to be policing him, the publications and reports on his treatment of patients and his misleading promotional marketing statements about his treatment of patients with cancer all represents a breaking of the promise made between Dr. Farber, Dr. Frei and Dr. Freireich. I have lost count of the times that Dr. Burzynski has insisted that he should be awarded the Nobel Prize for his treatment of cancer patients. Scientists do not win the Nobel Prize by cheating their way into it, and it is cheating. The frontier of science is where the medical professional community insists that the real discipline of science be applied at patients.

Dr. Burzynski and his witnesses will describe the frontier of science as the Gold Rush, where anything goes, especially unloading entire arsenals of medications on naive and desperate cancer patients and families almost all in uses of these medications unapproved by the FDA and unproved by the accepted process of Phase 3 study and peer review in the general medical professional community. The frontiers of science are not a wilderness or a wasteland. The discipline of science is not the guile of a gunslinger. No matter how many cancer tumors Dr. Burzynski seems to shrink, or even kill with his magic bullets, Dr. Burzynski and his witnesses will explain how they can observe test tubes and petri dishes full of dead cancer cells and cell cultures and know exactly what happens on a genetic and molecular level inside the body of a living human being, a living cancer patient. They might as well just tell you that he uses magic bullets. Dr. Burzynski and his witnesses will describe the frontier of science as a place where the end justifies the means. The frontiers may be the range of true pioneers such as Dr. Farber, Dr. Frei, and Dr. Freireich, but it is not the Wild West. So Board staff will not be focused on Dr. Burzynski’s magic bullets. Board Staff will be focused on the allegations in the second amended complaint. Those are the facts, along with the supporting facts the Board Staff is required to prove by a preponderance of the evidence, and I’m going to summarize what we are going to talk about.

Bukstein then outlined the main charges against Burzynski by the Board following an investigation into treatment of seven cancer patients (almost all of whom are now dead): 1) that Burzynski violated the standard of care; 2) failed to demonstrate an adequate medical rationale for evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment; and 3) violated standards of adequate documentation. The TMB also alleges that Burzynski’s practice of medicine: 1) constituted inadequate discussion of treatment alternatives; 2) constituted improper charges for care, drugs, medical supplies, and other services; 3) constituted inadequate informed consent; 4) aided and abetted the unlicensed practice of medicine; 5) constituted inadequate direction, supervision, and control of medical care personnel; 6) constituted improper delegation of medical tasks; 7) constituted inadequate disclosure of ownership interest in a facility to which a patient is referred; and 8) violated the ethical and professional responsibilities of clinical investigators.[2]

Bukstein concluded:

Today Dr. Fost [a medical ethicist] will explain why Dr. Burzynski’s conduct, practice model, clinical investigation model and public marketing statements are cheating on the discipline of science. Tomorrow Elaine Kloos, the coding and billing expert, will explain how Dr. Burzynski and the employees under his supervision, direction, and control cheated in coding and billing for patients A through G. Monday, Dr. Wetmore will explain the details of how Dr. Burzynski and the employees under his supervision, direction, and control cheated on the standard of care, and how Dr. Burzynski’s conduct, practice model and clinical investigation model, and public marketing statements are cheating. Tuesday Patient F and his wife, and Wednesday Patient A’s wife, will testify how they got cheated by Dr. Burzynski and employees under his supervision, direction, and control.

Remember Dr. Farber who I introduced at the very beginning of the opening. [...] Dr. Farber, in his office high above the Boston Children’s Hospital parking lot, [...] showed Dr. Frei and Dr. Freireich the door when they first faced his skepticism about protecting patients adequately in the rush to advance cancer treatment. If Dr. Farber had reviewed this contested case, I am confident that he would show Dr. Burzynski’s cheating the window.

I was present only for the first half of the first day, long enough to get a really nasty look from Burzynski and for his wife to mutter something nasty about my appearance as I walked past her. The Medical Board’s experts whose depositions had been entered into evidence were cross examined by the defense team. My impression of the examination of the medical ethicist was that the defense was trying to point out all of the things that the medical ethicist was not an expert in or had not done, while avoiding his area of expertise, ethical trial design, and execution. Whenever the defense inadvertently strayed into one of these areas, it was like they trod on a landmine. The next day, the billing expert similarly defended her expertise exceptionally convincingly, I thought, while drawing attention to the hundreds of thousands of dollars of allegedly improper billing codes in the patient files. The Medical Board rested its case before Thanksgiving, and the hearing will continue between January 19 and 29. A list of names read out at the first half of the hearing suggests that Burzynski intends to parade a number of the same former patients in front of the judges who have testified for him before. The hearings will be open to the public, and skeptics are encouraged to attend.

A number of questions remain. In 2013, following the death of a child from apparent hypernatremia, a known side effect of antineoplastons, FDA inspectors reviewing Burzynski’s numerous clinical trials (which his former lawyer, Rick Jaffe described in his memoir as “[...] an artifice, a vehicle we and the FDA created to legally give the patients Burzynski's treatment”) observed a host of grotesque, unthinkable violations, including “[failing] to comply with protocol requirements related to primary outcome, therapeutic response” (i.e., inflating success rates in two-thirds of the cases reviewed), failure to report adverse events, over a hundred overdoses, that “tumor measurements initially recorded on worksheets at baseline and on-study treatment […] studies for all study subjects were destroyed and are not available for FDA inspectional review,” and most chillingly, “There is no documentation to show that you have implemented corrective actions during this time period to ensure the safety and welfare of subjects.” The trials were suspended for a long time, however, now there appears to be no resistance from the FDA, as patients with brain tumors are currently travelling to Houston to be given antineoplastons. Skeptics want to know what happened at the FDA that allowed this to occur, and we are soliciting any information that anyone has that could help us understand how in the world this could possibly happen. The FDA is simply not forthcoming with any useful information about this, and so we are seeking to cultivate relationships with knowledgeable experts to enlighten us. As it stands, the only government agency currently protecting patients from Burzynski’s medical adventurism is the Texas Medical Board.

Notes

1. A pared down video recording of the proceedings was posted by one of Burzynski’s supporters, and is available at: http://www.donotlink.com/hmr1. All quotations from the trial come from an audio recording made at the hearing; any errors may be attributed to faulty transcription.
2. The Board’s allegations may be read in their entirety in the Second Amended Compliant at http://wp.me/a2X2Ga-hs.

Attribution: Gage Skidmore

Misinformation has been big news lately—and emotional misinformation more so. Donald Trump’s claims that thousands in New Jersey cheered the fall of the Twin Towers, that the Mexican government sends “the bad ones over,” and that most white people are killed by African-Americans all seem rooted in fear, alongside a good dose of racial stereotyping. Both President Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee describe Trump as tapping into voter anger. Norman Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute says the public’s desensitization to inflammatory rhetoric has created the perfect environment for Trump’s bombast.

And while much of this is speculation, there is data to show Trump has a unique angle on outrage. The Pew Research Center found that most of the GOP candidates appeal to angry voters, but Trump gets markedly unfavorable support from right-of-center voters who are not angry but who are content or merely frustrated.

Meanwhile, Caitlin Dewey of the Washington Post recently penned the final installment of her reliable and entertaining column, What Was Fake on the Internet This Week, blaming its demise on a shift in the fake-news ecosystem. Dewey argues that faux news sites have moved beyond celebrity death hoaxes and started to cynically prey on people’s political and ideological biases. They also do a brisk trade in schadenfreude, racial prejudice, and hate.

Whether or not you think that we’ve reached some kind of anger apex, the events of 2015 do raise an important question: what role do anger and other strong emotions play in the spread of misinformation?

Emotion and Information Flow

Research suggests that emotions play a number of important roles in how information spreads, if it is believed, and how we act upon it. First, it’s understood that anger and other strong emotions—both positive and negative—are a powerful factor in helping information go viral. In an analysis of 7,000 New York Times articles,¹ Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman of the University of Pennsylvania found that the high-arousal states of awe, anger, and anxiety were all correlated with high virality, while low-arousal states such as sadness were correlated with low virality. In fact, a one standard-deviation rise in anger level led to a 34 percent increase in the likelihood that an article would appear on the Times’ most-emailed list.

Then, there are the effects that emotions play in our information-seeking. Several researchers have found that anger causes people to spend less time looking for information on a political campaign^2,3. Nicholas Valentino (then of the University of Texas, now of the University of Michigan) offers two possible explanations: first, anger may distract people as they try to perform complex cognitive tasks. Second, it may cause more targeted information-seeking, meaning people can reduce search volume while improving search efficiency. Valentino does not explain why anger in particular would cause either outcome.

UNC’s Michael MacKuen likewise found that participants experiencing anger and similar emotions seek less information overall, less information from the opposition, and more information that reinforces their prior beliefs. The author characterizes anger, disgust, contempt, and hatred as components of aversion—an emotional strategy people employ when encountering familiar, negative stimuli. When confronted with such conditions, MacKuen suggests, we fall back on well-worn coping routines. These often involve either ignoring the disturbing information or seeking information to confirm our prior views.

MacKuen's theory of emotions' effects on information-seeking.

Anxiety, on the other hand, results from unfamiliar situations. Anxiety signals that our existing habits are not sufficient to deal with the potential threat we now face. It therefore makes sense for anxious people to seek information, even that which challenges their prior views, and MacKuen’s experimental results bear this out, too.

“A standard expectation is that when people get emotional about politics, their positions become entrenched, resolute, and steadfast,” MacKuen notes. But his data seems to support this expectation only for anger, not for anxiety. When anxious, it appears, we can actually suspend the partisan biases that so often drive our reasoning.

Valentino, meanwhile, found more variable results for anxiety: sometimes this emotion suppressed information-seeking, sometimes it promoted it. But the difference between results for anxiety and anger were still significant. “Outrage, perhaps, is more damaging than fear if we hope to foster an informed citizenry,” Valentino concluded.

Information Processing and the “Lamestream Media”

Once we’ve acquired information, emotions also likely influence how we process that data. Specifically, they may do this by moderating or enhancing the power of our group identities. Researchers have repeatedly found that such affiliations play a great role in how we evaluate misinformation. Through the process of motivated reasoning, we are compelled to dismiss information that threatens our identities, and to accept information that solidifies our identities. Corrections that threaten our identities can actually backfire, strengthening our belief in misinformation.⁴

University of Michigan professor Brian Weeks wanted to investigate how emotions tap into the motivated reasoning process. In his experiment,⁵ participants were asked to write about topics that made them angry or anxious. They were tested to see if the writing produced the desired emotion, and in most cases it did. (There was also a control group that did not receive the emotional manipulation.) Then they were exposed to misinformation on the same topic, which appeared to originate either from their in-group (the ideology with which they affiliated) or out-group (the opposing ideology).

Weeks concluded that anger increases the likelihood that people will process information in a partisan way, while anxiety decreases the likelihood. Angry participants who received misinformation from their own party ended up holding less accurate beliefs, compared to participants in a neutral emotional state. It appears that the anger intensified these participants’ motivated reasoning, making it easier for them to accept misinformation that confirmed their group identities.

On the other hand, anxious participants who received misinformation from the opposing party also held less accurate beliefs. That is, anxiety appears to have diminished their motivated reasoning, to the point that they were actually more likely to believe misinformation from their opponents.

This may seem strange, but makes sense in light of the previous findings that anxiety provokes information-seeking and the consideration of outsider viewpoints. An anxious person seems to assume that his own beliefs and knowledge are not sufficient to deal with the situation at hand, and becomes more open to persuasion and compromise. Such open-mindedness can be a boon to our democracy, but if the outside information is actually erroneous, the person can end up worse informed than before.

There is another important aspect of anger to consider. It’s worth noting that Trump plays not just on anger about politicians and political issues but also on anger at the mainstream media. Not surprisingly, such anger is bound up with identity protection, too. In a study of 293 undergraduates,⁶ Florida State’s Laura Arpan and UC Santa Barbara’s Robin Nabi found that identity-threatening news content was more likely than neutral content to provoke anger responses. Anger made the participants more likely to read identity-affirming content, as well as, strangely, identity-threatening content. In the latter case, participants might be engaging in surveillance, trying to learn the extent of potential harm to their in-group. Anger also made subjects more likely to read irrelevant content, perhaps as a way to distance themselves from their emotions.

So What’s the Deal with Trump?

If we accept the balance of findings above, then we may gain some insight into the Trump phenomenon. Trump supporters are no great fans of the mainstream media, if they’re typical of Republican voters, only 27 percent of whom have a fair or great deal of trust in media. Likely Trump’s camp trusts the media even less than that. When the mainstream media undermines Trump’s claims (as fact-checking organizations such as PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, and the Washington Post Fact-Checker do),⁷ his supporters dig in their heels, as predicted by the theory of motivated reasoning.

Since the fact checks are identity-threatening, they are also likely to provoke an anger response. This further enables acceptance of misinformation. Anger could cause the supporters to seek information that confirms their identity affiliations—or it may shut down information-seeking that poses a threat to their identity. The anger also will likely provoke sharing on social media, helping to galvanize fellow supporters—and the cycle continues. As Weeks argues, “Anger therefore has the potential to create media diets in which people are primarily exposed to like-minded messages, which may further enhance anger directed at political opponents.”

This is by no means a proven process or a complete picture. For example, there is some tension between the dual information-seeking effects proposed above: can people really cleave their information-seeking so neatly between “identity-affirming” and “identity-disturbing”? Yes, there’s a myriad of partisan news sources available to all of us, promising to confirm our preconceived notions. But it’s hard to imagine that we pursue information in such entirely dissimilar states, rather than in the many gradations in between.

And what of fear? If we assume that Trump is tapping into old, familiar anxieties, then MacKuen’s work would support the idea that supporters then reduce their information-seeking. Terrorism, immigration, races other than one’s own—these all seem to be old bogeymen. On the other hand, ISIS in many ways represents a new threat, employing different tactics than other terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda, so it would be interesting to explore how voters’ information-seeking have responded. And it seems that anxiety can both promote and inhibit information seeking, as Valentino found, so overall the picture is a bit murky.

Attribution: littlewonder. Source material: BBC.

Are We So Outraged?

It would also be wise to take a step back and ask ourselves: Is the public anger we observe today really so new or special? Have we reached a zenith of ire? Vox labelled 2015 “the year of fake outrage,” only a year after Slate exhaustively chronicled what angered us in 2014, “the year of outrage.” Jon Ronson recently argued that Twitter has evolved into an arena for electronic shaming, with its stone-throwing citizenry getting froth-at-the-mouth angry 140 characters at a time. But even if his anecdotal assessment of Twitter content is correct, there have always been many corners of the Internet—really, more like atriums, or arenas—for us to air our most base feelings.

Intriguingly, the Pew Research Center recently found that 22 percent of voters say they are angry with the federal government, down from a record 30 percent during the government shutdown two years ago. That’s not a huge decline but it’s certainly not a blossoming of anti-government feeling.

Despite this persistence—in fact, because of it—understanding the role of anger in political communication is undoubtedly an important task. As the Internet brims over with so many versions of the “truth,” anger appears to worsen our ability to recognize and dismiss misinformation. What’s more, while righteous anger can provoke positive social movements, bringing greater equality and helping to lift people out of poverty, anger can also serve as a conduit for racism and xenophobia.

Anger motivates action MacKuen notes: “Commonly, enraged partisans want to go to the streets, send in their financial support, and march to the polls.” And a politician who plays on anger will succeed in motivating those who already support him. On the other hand, MacKuen argues, undecided voters and oppositional voters are more likely to be swayed by an appeal to anxiety. So as we move towards the primaries, perhaps we’ll see Trump tone it down a bit (though I’m not holding my breath).

The solution is not to seek some Platonic ideal of pure rationality, which is neither achievable nor desirable. Anger, managed correctly, can drive ethical action. The key is to focus on the informational content of those anger states and find the most effective ways to fashion and spread correctives.

While the tenacity of motivated reasoning can sometimes drive one to despair, there is some hope in the knowledge that we don’t let motivated reasoning drive our information-processing all the time. Where beliefs are not crucial to identity, corrections are easier to make. And even strongly partisan beliefs are susceptible to a “tipping point”—a certain amount of corrective information that finally breaks through the wall of motivated reasoning.⁸ So I remain hopeful that the cause of political fact-checking is still worth pursuing. It will just take perseverance, creativity and, when we evaluate arguments, trying to keep our cool.