La Bestia del Mar, en el ‘Tapiz del Apocalipsis’ de Angers. / Kimon Berlin

Hay en España un programa de televisión que desde hace más de diez años funciona como un gigantesco aspersor de desinformación. Lo emite un canal generalista cuya matriz es la reina de lo que se ha dado en llamar telebasura. El espacio lo dirige y presenta un periodista que ya antes de saltar a la pequeña pantalla había demostrado un rigor equiparable al de Andrew Wakefield y Charles Berlitz, inventores de la falsa relación entre las vacunas y el autismo y del misterio del triángulo de las Bermudas, respectivamente. Sin embargo, además de los charlatanes, chiflados y periodistas dispuestos a cualquier cosa por un puñado de euros, nuestro protagonista ha conseguido que algunos científicos y escépticos acudan de vez en cuando a su llamada, algo con lo que esos defensores de la ciencia y la razón están, desde mi punto de vista, alimentando al monstruo.

Para que vean que no soy un exagerado -o que lo soy-, el director del programa ha defendido que los astronautas encontraron ruinas en la Luna; dice que la ciencia depende de mafias; ha presentado un ejemplar de la revista satírica The Onion como si fuera un periódico real; ha mandado a un colaborador a grabar psicofonías a un campo de exterminio nazi; ha identificado como un viajero del tiempo a un pobre joven atropellado por un tren; ha tomado un montaje fotográfico por una conspiración astronáutica soviética; ha calificado a una mendiga de aparición fantasmal; ha ensalzado a un expoliador arqueológico… Sumen a eso la habitual dosis de fantasmas, conspiraciones, fenómenos paranormales, montajes auspiciados por él mismo, milagrería católica y extraterrestres, y ya pueden hacerse una idea de cómo es el espacio. Hace años, un crítico de televisión calificó su contenido de investigación imbécil.

De vez en cuando, nuestro protagonista invita al programa a un científico o escéptico para que se pronuncie sobre un hallazgo de actualidad o participe en un debate frente al charlatán de turno. La presencia en el plató del crítico le sirve al director del espacio para jactarse de que lo que él hace es divulgación porque expone todos los puntos de vista y a su llamada acuden expertos de primera línea. Desgraciadamente, tiene razón en esto último. La estrategia no es nueva. Ya en el editorial del número inaugural de Fate, la primera revista dedicada a explotar la creencia en lo paranormal, Raymond A. Palmer decía en la primavera de 1948 que se trataba de una publicación “dedicada a la defensa de la razón”, “al método científico” y al “análisis de lo conocido y lo desconocido”. Al igual que el programa objeto de estas líneas, el primer número de Fate incluía un riguroso artículo de un periodista especializado en aeronáutica, embutido entre uno de Kenneth Arnold en el que narraba su visión de los primeros platillos volantes del 24 de junio de 1947 y otro sin firmar -escrito por Palmer- sobre las apariciones de esos extraños objetos registradas desde entonces.

Una vieja estrategia

Entre 1961 y 1971, Louis Pauwels y Jacques Bergier, autores de El retorno de los brujos, hicieron lo propio en la revista Planète, donde firmas como las de Umberto Eco, Isaac Asimov, Fredric Brown y otros autores de ciencia ficción y pensadores compartían espacio con las ficciones pseudocientíficas de los responsables de la publicación y sus colegas. La revista era un popurrí de ciencia ficción, divulgación, filosofía y misterios paranormales. Su versión española, dirigida por el ufólogo Antonio Ribera, hizo tres cuartos de lo mismo entre 1968 y 1971. En un mismo número podía hablarse del peligro de las sectas y la pseudociencia, de Charles Fort como un adelantado y de lo que se sabía en aquel momento sobre la célula. En los años 70, siguieron en España ese esquema publicaciones como Mundo Desconocido y Karma.7, tan demenciales como Fate, pero en las que en muchas ocasiones se daba la información sobre la exploración espacial que apenas merecía unas líneas en los periódicos. Posteriormente, en los 90, varios espacios radiofónicos dedicados a lo paranormal cogieron en España la costumbre de entrevistar a científicos entre segmentos dedicados a la promoción de videntes, visitas alienígenas, posesiones demoniacas e inexistentes misterios del pasado.

Si no es algo nuevo, ¿por qué resulta preocupante lo que pasa en el programa de televisión del que hablo? Entre otras cosas, porque ahora los científicos, divulgadores y escépticos que colaboran en un proyecto así son conscientes de lo que hacen, como ya les ocurría a los de la radio española de los años 90. Supongo que en los tiempos de Planète y Horizonte -su versión española-, la revista adquiría los textos a través de agencias que lo mismo le vendían un cuento de Arthur C. Clarke que una reflexión de Edgar Morin para llenar huecos entre los artículos de ufólogos, criptozoólogos y cazafantasmas sin que sus autores supieran nada. Ir a un programa de radio y televisión hoy es otra cosa y más cuando es de sobra conocido que se trata de un espacio dedicado al misterio.

Hace más de una década, tras hacerle una entrevista para el periódico en que trabajo, pregunté informalmente a un entonces popular físico español si no era consciente de que, al participar en programas de radio esotéricos, estaba ayudando a que los charlatanes legitimaran sus delirantes mensajes de cara al público general. El talante amistoso que había habido durante la entrevista se esfumó, me miró con hostilidad y rehuyó contestar. Volví a interpelarle y ahí acabó nuestro encuentro.

Cada uno es muy libre de acudir a la llamada de los programas de radio y televisión que quiera, pero exponer el punto de vista crítico en un entorno rendido a la pseudociencia y la superstición es tan efectivo como difundir el ateísmo en una iglesia o mezquita. Además, concede a los autodenominados periodistas del misterio la posibilidad de erigirse, como ya han hecho en algunos casos,en árbitros de un debate en el que son parte interesada. Porque ellos tienen su bando muy claro. Las principales estrellas de lo paranormal siempre se han negado en España a intervenir en debates con escépticos en entornos neutrales, en programas de radio y televisión cuyos resortes no controlan y no pueden trucar a su antojo. O se juega en su terreno o no se juega.

Cada vez que un científico o divulgador participa en un programa dedicado a la difusión de falsos misterios, su mensaje se pudre como una manzana en contacto con otras podridas y envía un mensaje inequívoco al público: la opinión basada en las pruebas tiene el mismo valor que la del iluminado que sostiene que pronto de van a abrirse una puertas estelares en nuestro planeta o que las vacunas provocan autismo, por ejemplo, porque ambos, el escéptico y el chiflado comparten micrófono y, a veces, hasta tertulia. A ojos y oídos del público medio merecerá el mismo crédito un ufólogo que un astrobiólogo, un homeópata que un médico de verdad, un historiador que un piramidiota… Se alimenta así la idea de que todas las opiniones son igualmente respetables, de que allí donde aparece un científico diciendo algo tiene que aparecer, para equilibrar, un heterodoxo y que el público decida lo que es verdad. ¿Es eso lo que queremos?

Photo by Thomas Hawk

Maria Konnikova has the kind of quietly commanding presence and eloquent speech that makes you want to record her every word and play it back in case you missed something. Which makes it all the more annoying that she’s also funny, kind, and quick-witted. Fortunately for me, I got to speak with her in preparation for her upcoming talk at CSICon 2016, so I could, in fact, record her every word.

Konnikova is a contributing writer for The New Yorker and the New York Times bestselling author of Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes and, most recently, The Confidence Game, a look at con artists. She studied psychology, creative writing, and government at Harvard and earned her PhD in psychology from Columbia. Her writing largely focuses on psychological issues, including deception.

I spoke to Konnikova over the phone, to the occasional tune of New York ambulances on her busy street.

Carrie Poppy: Is this your first time at this conference?

Maria Konnikova: It is, yes.

Poppy: OK, cool. Do you know yet what you’re speaking about?

Konnikova: Con artists.

Poppy: OK, so, generally about the same topic as your book.

Konnikova: As my book, yeah. About the nature of belief and why con artists are so effective. What it is about us that makes us believe them; what it is about them that makes them do what they do.

Poppy: And do you feel that you’re more interested in con artists in particular or in their victims? Which part of the psychology, there, are you more interested in?

Konnikova: You know, I’m interested in both. It was a very purposeful decision on my part to focus on the victims. It was one of the reasons I wrote the book. I felt like they often get the short end of the deal. That people are so just blown away by these stories of these cons and escapades and tend to look down on the victims. You know, we really aren’t that nice to them. We say, “How could you be so gullible? How could you be so stupid? This could never happen to me.” You know, we have a million and one excuses. Which I think is absolutely not true. And so, I was really interested in bringing to the forefront that victims can be anyone, and that every single person that’s coming to this meeting can be conned.

Poppy: Mmm, “this meeting” meaning the conference?

Konnikova: Yep, the skeptics’ conference.

Poppy: Yes! Interesting! How do you think they’ll respond to that?

Konnikova: Um, not well. Because I’ve already tried that at some other skeptics-like meetings, and people got very mad at me.

Poppy: [Laughs] Yeah, I kind of believe that.

Konnikova: But it’s not gonna stop me from saying that, because I firmly believe it’s true.

Poppy: Yes. I mean, to maybe give away my own bias, I think you’re right too. I think it’s a little bit of a controversial opinion in that arena. Do you see something that skeptics get wrong? Is there anything you feel like you’re fighting against there?

Konnikova: Well, I think I’m fighting against overconfidence, right? This belief that all you need to do is be cynical and skeptical to avoid being conned. I think people really have a narrow view of what cons are possible, of what it means to be conned, of what can protect you against being conned. I think they don’t realize that every single person has a point of vulnerability, and the great con artist will find that point and exploit it. And people get very defensive. They say, “That’s absolutely not true.” And by the way, not all people. Some people are very receptive, and they say, “Yeah, you know, I totally believe I can be conned.” Or, “Look, in fact, I have been conned.” But I actually have found skeptics not to be very receptive in general because they think that they know it all. And what I say to that, and this is a point that I may or may not make in my actual talk, is that con artists get conned all the time—the best con artists in the world!

Poppy: Oh!

Konnikova: There’s even a special type of con that con artists perpetrate on other con artists.

Poppy: Really?

Konnikova: When they think they’re getting a little too confident, yeah. And so, one of these ironic effects of skepticism is that you think you’re better protected than you actually are.

Poppy: Are skeptics any better protected than the general public, do you think?

Konnikova: Sure, from some cons! So, one of the things I found is that those same things that make you vulnerable to one kind of con are protective against another. So, for instance, high intelligence is protective against lottery scams, but investment fraud [victims] are much more likely to be highly intelligent and well-educated. And so, what I want to stress—and this is a very central point of my book and my argument, and I borrow it from this guy David Sullivan, who before he died, he was a cult infiltrator. So, he spent his life going after the most profound con of all. And he had this thing, he said, “No one ever joins a cult.” People join an organization that they think is going to make the world a better place. And I think you can actually apply the exact same logic to cons. So, no one says, “I’m going to be conned,” or “Oh, I’m going to believe in this con.” People actually think that this is real. And we have a blind spot when it comes to ourselves. We’re very good at being objective when it comes to other people. But when it comes to ourselves, we’re not going to see that vulnerability. And if someone points out that it might be a con [that we’re buying into], we’ll probably get really mad.

Poppy: Right. What con artists are the most concerning to you right now that you see in the culture right now?

Konnikova: They’re all concerning, to be frank, just because they’re not very nice human beings. They really take advantage of people. You know, I spoke with people who tried to commit suicide, people whose lives were absolutely ruined. For the most part, it’s not like they’re after wealthy people. They take you for everything you’ve got. So, in that sense, they’re all concerning. The ones that I’m finding concerning in particular, right now, are sweetheart scams that take place on dating websites. These are people who pretend to be someone they’re not. It’s kind of a sweetheart/catfishing kind of scam. And they end up stringing victims along, thinking they found their soul mate, and then [the victims are] just emotionally devastated. And that’s just so low. These are people who are lonely, who are vulnerable, who just want to find love. And they’re not greedy. This is the example I use when people say, “You can’t fool an honest man,” or “All victims are greedy,” et cetera, et cetera. All of which is wrong, by the way. And I always give this example of sweetheart scams. I say, “Well, what is there to be greedy about? People want human connection.” And, to me, those types of cons that really prey on a person’s trust and desire for love and connection and spiritual or emotional reassurance... those are the worst. Because it really hits below the belt. There’s something about these people who take advantage of love that are particularly cringe-worthy.

Poppy: Are they usually acting on an individual level, where it’s just a bunch of people operating by themselves, just trying to find one person to take advantage of? Or are they in these big networks?

Konnikova: For sweetheart scams, there are both, but there actually are networks.

Poppy: Really?

Konnikova: And the funny this is, right now, a lot of them are in Nigeria. [Laughs] Which I find hilarious, because people always joke about, you know, the Nigerian prince scam. A lot of these scams do operate out of Nigeria.

Poppy: Huh!

Konnikova: And it’s not one person, one victim. It’s usually one person, I don’t know how many victims, but lots. And oftentimes they are connected, because [with] prolonged cons especially you often need a lot of people to establish trust. You know, you meet the parents. You meet the friends. There are lots of actors who support this drama.

Poppy: You mentioned some people saying, “You can’t fool an honest man,” which I guess is a saying I’ve heard in old movies, but I didn’t really think was a position anyone held. I mean, I think of our vulnerabilities to being conned as kindness. They’re sort of versions of our best selves: wanting to trust other people, wanting to believe that what other people are saying is true… that they’re the vulnerable sides of the best things about us, no?

Konnikova: Well, I think that’s a very nice way of looking at it, and I agree with you. But I do think that a lot of people believe that victims of cons are greedy and dishonest; that if you are always above board, you can’t be conned. There is definitely desire to look down on the victims, because in a way it’s protective. It means it can’t happen to you. And it explains it. Because it’s scary to say, “This person was honest. This person just wanted hope, they wanted connection, they wanted something good, they wanted to be a good person, to be trusting, to help.” Then all of a sudden, that could be anyone. I’ve spoken to a lot of people, and you really do hear people wanting to blame the victims of the con artists. I mean, look at how people wrote about the victims of Bernie Madoff. That coverage is appalling, because they say, “Oh, of course they should have known. Too good to be true returns, blah blah blah. This and that.” And, “Oh, they were just greedy. If they weren’t greedy....” That is not true! Sure, maybe some of them were greedy, but a lot of them were not. And I’m picking on Bernie Madoff in particular, because those victims were really raked over the coals. And think about victims of psychics. People just think that they’re the stupidest [people] in the world. And they often lose their family and friends because people are embarrassed to know them. So, I couldn’t agree more with your point of view, and I actually think that our point of view is a minority. That’s my experience.

Poppy: Huh, how interesting. I don’t even really see the internal logic in the other point of view.

Konnikova: Well, ask a skeptic friend of yours. Say, “Oh, this person fell for a psychic.” Don’t even say “What do you think of victims?” Say, “What do you think of this person?”

Poppy: Right. Well, I’ve certainly seen people look down on people who have fallen for psychics, for sure. But I guess I’ve never really seen anyone say, “Well that means they weren’t honest,” or, “That means they were greedy.” I’ve just seen people say, “Well, that means they were stupid.”

Konnikova: Sure, with psychics, yes. With Ponzi schemes, we get “greed.” It depends. It’s always some kind of negative characteristic. It’s never just, “Oh, this person was just really nice.”

Poppy: Right. Or, “This person was taken advantage of.”

Konnikova: Right.

Poppy: OK, moving on a little bit. The skeptical community tends to focus on these few darlings like vaccination, homeopathy, cryptozoology, ghosts, telepathy. Are there any other things that you’d really like to see the skeptical movement touch that they haven’t tackled before?

Konnikova: Um, let me see. Well, out of the health stuff, cause we’re rattling some off, I’d like to see them pick up the GMOs crusade, basically, to debunk the anti-GMO people, because I think a lot of very liberal people who otherwise think they believe in science are anti-GMO, and it’s really galling. And I think the skeptic community is well placed to do it because they shouldn’t be political, though some of them obviously are. I’d love to see both sides of the political spectrum taken to account because, at least in the media, people really tend to focus on the conservatives, and the incorrect beliefs that they have: Creationism, Flat Earth, and all this stuff. But liberals are, especially right now, going insane with these virulently wrong anti-health claims. And I think that’s really just as scary. And they’re being just as anti-science. And you don’t see it covered in the media as much because most media is liberal.

Poppy: That does seem to be coming to a head a little bit with Jill Stein.

Konnikova: Yes, yes, yes. Yes, so I guess there’s one thing Jill Stein is good for. [Both laugh.] Which is making some of these issues come to the forefront. And can I just reiterate how terrible psychics are?

Poppy: Sure!

Konnikova: I mean they are just awful people.

Poppy: Psychics is one of those things where there definitely are some people who think they have this power and are misleading themselves, but once you’ve done that long enough, you know that you’re making it up.

Konnikova: Yeah. It’s really heartbreaking. Victims of psychics are some of the most frowned-upon, looked-down-upon victims.

Poppy: Did you get to talk to any of them for your research?

Konnikova: I did. I talked to a bunch of psychic victims, and it’s really sad. You have really smart people. There was one woman I talked to who was a Harvard MBA. These are not stupid people. This is what I found over and over: if the people [psychics] are really, really, really good, they can get through anyone’s defenses at the right point in time. Because, you know, when you’re emotionally vulnerable, and lots of things are going on in your life, you have no idea how many times I’ve heard this sentence: “I know psychics are total bullshit. I don’t believe in psychics. Psychics don’t exist. Except for this one psychic. They’re the real deal.” I heard that so many times! And you realize that if everyone had the one psychic, well, all of a sudden, you have an explanation for why there are blocks of Manhattan with five psychic parlors.

Poppy: Right! The exceptions can line a street.

Konnikova: Exactly.

Poppy: Extraordinary. That’s all the questions I had, except, do you have anything you’re excited to do in Vegas? I hate Vegas.

Konnikova: Play some poker.

Poppy: What?! After all that? After all that talk of critical thinking! You’re going to play some poker?

Konnikova: No! Poker, not gambling.

Poppy: Oh, I guess you’re right. See, I know nothing about gambling. [Laughs.]

Konnikova: Poker’s a game of skill. It’s actually research for my next book.

Poppy: Oh, OK. All right, I’ll allow it.

Konnikova: [Laughs.] No, I’m not a fan of Vegas at all. In fact, I hate Vegas with a passion.

Poppy: Oh good, see? We agree on all things.

The recent publication of a book about neuroscience’s most famous amnesia patient—known for decades only as H.M.—has stirred up a controversy in the world of science. On August 3, 2016, the New York Times Magazine released an article adapted from Luke Dittrich’s book, Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets. Two days later, on August 5, over two hundred neuroscientists from around the world had signed a letter to the Times in support of Professor Suzanne Corkin, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist who did most of the research with H.M.

Henry Molaison in 1975. (source: Popular Science magazine.)

Henry Molaison (H.M.) suffered profound memory loss as a result of an experimental brain operation conducted in 1953 in an effort to control his epilepsy. The surgery removed most of Molaison’s hippocampus and some nearby structures on both sides of his brain, leaving him incapable of creating new episodic memories. Henry, who was the inspiration for the popular film Memento, could recall many things that happened to him prior to 1953, but after the surgery he couldn’t tell you what he had done five minutes before the present moment. As Dittrich put it in the New York Times Magazine article, “Each of the hundreds of times [he and Professor Corkin] met, it was, for Henry, a first meeting….”

An illustration of the human brain showing the hippocampus (red area), one of the structures removed from Henry Molaison’s brain. (source: Wikimedia)

The Questions Raised

Sadly, Suzanne Corkin died in May of 2016, months before Dittrich’s book and the Times article appeared, and so it was left to her colleagues to defend her against what they believed was Dittrich’s “biased and misleading” description of Corkin’s work with H.M. On August 9, six days after the Times article was released and four days after the letter signed by two hundred scientists appeared, Professor Corkin’s colleagues in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences got specific about their concerns, posting a letter on the MIT website outlining what Department Head James J. DiCarlo, characterized as the “allegations” in Dittrich’s article:

1. Allegation that (H.M.’s) research records were or would be destroyed or shredded.

Given the importance of H.M. to the history of neuroscience, any destruction of primary data would be considered an enormous loss and possibly a violation of research ethics.

2. Allegation that the finding of an additional lesion in (H.M.’s) left orbitofrontal cortex was suppressed.

When Molaison died, his brain was donated to science, and postmortem analysis revealed a previously unknown lesion in his left frontal lobe. The discovery of this injury could affect the interpretation of earlier studies of H.M.’s memory loss. DiCarlo objected to the suggestion that Corkin had ever tried to block the publication of an article revealing this brain injury. The article did eventually appear with Corkin as a coauthor.

3. Allegation that there was something inappropriate in the selection of Tom Mooney as Henry’s guardian.

Perhaps the most troubling questions raised by Dittrich were about the way Corkin obtained Henry’s consent to be studied. Given Molaison’s disability, it was doubtful that he was capable of understanding and evaluating Corkin’s requests to participate in research, and yet informed consent is a basic hallmark of research practice. According to Dittrich, from 1981 to 1992, Henry was the only person signing the informed consent forms for Corkin’s research studies. Eventually, although three of Henry’s first cousins were alive at the time, Corkin arranged for Thomas F. Mooney, a second cousin, to become his conservator. Mooney went on to sign research consent forms and—importantly—an agreement to donate Henry’s brain to MIT upon his death.

The August 5 letter to the New York Times signed by two hundred scientists in defense of Professor Corkin appears on the MIT website with the heading “by International Community of Scientists”—a clear attempt to suggest a consensus opinion in support of Professor Corkin. Without question, Suzanne Corkin was much admired, and her death must have been a great loss to her colleagues. On a human level, the urge to defend her honor is completely understandable, but was it a good idea? Should these scientists have put their names and institutional affiliations on this letter?

When Scientists Appeal to Consensus

Two other recent cases of scientists making appeals to consensus come to mind. In my July 2015 “Behavior & Belief” column, I argued that Lumosity and similar brain training programs were scams. I based my assessment, in part, on a 2014 consensus statement signed by seventy neuroscientists and memory researchers that found the claims of the brain training industry to be unjustified.

Similarly, in arguments about climate change, scientists frequently cite the overwhelming consensus among climate change scientists that global warming is real and caused by human activity. For example, in a recent climate change debate (see video below) physicist Brian Cox made an appeal to scientific consensus, and the Australian climate change denier Malcolm Roberts, a member of the far-right One Nation Party, attacked Cox for citing consensus rather than data. Fortunately, Cox brought a temperature trend graph and other evidence in further support of his viewpoint, whereas Roberts could only defend his position with vague conspiracy theories about NASA and other scientific groups “manipulating” the data.

As Malcolm Roberts was trying to suggest, consensus alone is not evidence. There was a time when, according to the prevailing scientific consensus, the Earth—not the sun—was at the center of our planetary system, and it took a long time for geocentricism to be tossed aside. Appeals to consensus and authority should always be suspect. At the same time, we cannot all be experts. In the contemporary world, citizens must confront many important issues without having the necessary skills to judge the evidence. As a result, we are often forced to rely on authorities. Furthermore, if the experts have reached a level of agreement, knowing that they agree can sometimes be a useful bit of information.

Consensus is not a given. Often well-intentioned investigators working with shared sets of data fail to agree. Problems remain unsolved, and scientists retreat to their corners in support of conflicting pet theories. This is common and to be expected. Eventually, future advances in technology or theory may make additional progress possible, but until then disagreements and incomplete answers are the normal state of affairs. So, when scientists are able to converge on a shared understanding, consensus can add a little weight to that view.

But how should regular folks know when—and when not—to accept a consensus viewpoint? To help decide, it is useful to ask, “What is the basis of the claim?” In the strongest cases, we have the word of scientists who have worked directly with the relevant evidence. For example, the consensus in climate change comes from researchers who work directly with climate data. Similarly, the brain training consensus statement was written by seventy scientists who routinely conduct and evaluate research on memory and learning. So, in these cases, the presence of a consensus seems noteworthy. It is not a guarantee that the dominant paradigm is correct, but it adds weight to the claim.

Unfortunately, the apparent consensus produced by the two hundred signatures on the MIT website in support of Professor Corkin is something else entirely. It is unlikely the signers had direct experience with the relevant evidence.  

Professor Suzanne Corkin. (Source: NPR.)

The Questions Raised

In the August 9 letter, Professor DiCarlo highlighted and responded to the three “allegations” above. According to DiCarlo, two of Professor Corkin’s department colleagues at MIT had investigated the matter and their report “rebutted each claim” made by Dittrich in the Times Magazine article. Unfortunately, that appears to be far from clear.

In response to the August 9 letter, Dittrich published a piece on Medium addressing each of the objections raised by the MIT evaluation. In defense of his claim that Corkin destroyed some of H.M.’s data, Dittrich posted an audio file of his interview with Corkin in which she can be heard saying that she had already shredded data and planned to shred more. This means that either Corkin did what she said and destroyed data, or she lied (or perhaps misspoke) to Dittrich.

In a subsequent piece posted on the MIT website (that’s number three, if you are counting) on August 20, Professor DiCarlo further defended Corkin, arguing: (1) that an internal investigation had discovered that no files were destroyed, (2) that there was nothing wrong with the assignment of Thomas Mooney as Henry’s conservator, and (3) that any dispute over publication and the newly discovered lesion was overblown.

Weighing the Evidence

This is a spat that will not be resolved. Professor Corkin is no longer with us, and she alone could answer some of these questions. In her defense, it should be acknowledged that the ethical standards for research with human participants has been evolving somewhat gradually since World War II, and Corkin began working with H.M. over four decades ago. Today’s standards for obtaining informed consent and for the preservation of research data are much more rigorous than they were when she first met Henry. In addition, squabbles among authors of scientific publications happen from time to time. As a result, it is unclear—to me, at least—whether she violated professional research standards.

Having said that, the questions raised by Dittrich are ones that, as a journalist, he has a right—perhaps even a duty—to raise. Our ethical standards will not continue to evolve unless we soberly consider the various research dilemmas of the past, present, and future. Perhaps there were good reasons for assigning Thomas Mooney conservator for H.M.—despite his not being Molaison’s closest relative—but what principles should guide cases like this in the future? Like Dittrich, I would prefer that every bit of Henry’s data be preserved, and yet in Dittrich’s audio recording, Corkin can be heard defending the shredding of data. It is clear to me that Dittrich considers Henry Molaison’s legacy to be a public good, something that should be preserved for future generations, and I tend to agree.

But now back to the question of scientific consensus.

When Should a Scientist Sign a Statement, Petition, or Letter of Support?

It is understandable that MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences should want to defend its status in the scientific community and come to the defense of a beloved colleague. But what of the two hundred signers of the letter to the New York Times? The “International Community of Scientists”? Each of these individuals lent their professional identities to a claim of journalistic bias when few—if any—of them could have known the facts. In an interview for this article, Luke Dittrich reported that only one of the signers had an advanced copy of his book. In preparation for the book, Dittrich interviewed four people who later signed the statement. He recalled discussing the general question of informed consent with all four, but “I don’t think I delved into the three specific ‘allegations’ that MIT made.”

So here is what we know:

• All of the signers responded very quickly—in all but one case based on the New York Times Magazine article alone.
• The signatures were obtained before the specific claims of bias were made public by MIT.
• Once MIT identified the “allegations” it became clear that few if any of the signers could have had relevant knowledge of the facts. For example, it took an additional week and a half for MIT to investigate the H.M. files and come to the conclusion that they had been “maintained and not destroyed”—a claim that would be difficult to validate.

Scientists have a unique and important role in the public dialogue. They are trusted—or should be—to have special skills of analysis achieved after long study and practice. There are many important social issues to which scientists can and should contribute. Unfortunately, when it comes to evolution, climate change, and the benefits of vaccination, scientists are too often ignored.

But if scientists are going to maintain their credibility, they should not squander their authority by weighing in on subjects outside their circle of knowledge. Many of us—myself included—have at times made public statements that go beyond the data, but if we want to maintain the influence of science in society, we need to make every effort to stick to the subjects we know best.

Postscript

After spending a week thinking about this case, I cannot help but wonder what might have happened if MIT had just let the issue slide. Dittrich’s book is interesting and provocative, but the “allegations” that MIT saw in the New York Times article are undoubtedly a much bigger deal inside the field of neuroscience than outside. Had Professor Corkin’s supporters kept their powder dry, they might have done a better job of protecting her honor. The Dittrich article and book would have caused whispers within the scientific community, but by returning fire MIT ensured that the case would be picked up by the press and that more copies of Dittrich’s book would be sold. MIT may ultimately have come to understand this point. Neither Dr. DiCarlo, the head of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, nor the department media office returned emails requesting comment for this article.

Not responding to the New York Times would also have saved over two hundred scientists from having to endorse a dubious statement.

Finally, I strongly recommend Dittrich’s book, Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets. It paints a vivid picture of the history of psychosurgery and the treatment of the mentally ill from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries, and it provides an evocative and detailed account of the world’s most famous human research participant. In addition, Dittrich has a number of personal connections to the story. For example, it was Dittrich’s grandfather, William Beecher Scoville, who performed the tragic operation in 1953 that turned Henry Molaison into Patient H.M.

Elizabeth Loftus is the expert on bad memories. Not the sort of bad memories like your first boyfriend dumping you. The sort of bad memories created when a therapist convinces his client that, as a child, she was abused by her parents in some kind of Satanic ritual that never happened. The kind of bad memories that our brains conjure up on their own or cook up according to someone else’s instructions. The kind of memories that are mirages, coded transcripts of events that never occurred.

Loftus has been studying how our brains betray us for most of her distinguished career, looking at how “false memories” harm both those who harbor them and those who star in them. She has served as an expert witness or consultant in hundreds of legal cases, including the infamous McMartin Preschool molestation case. In her laboratory, she and her researchers have even experimentally implanted false memories into their subjects (harmless ones, such as being lost in a mall as a child) to see how easily fiction can become remembered reality.

Loftus’s life story begins and continues in Southern California. She was raised in Los Angeles, where tragedy struck early: her mother drowned in a pool when Elizabeth was just fourteen, and the family home burned down when she was sixteen.

“I actually ran into our burning house to grab the encyclopedia so I could complete my homework, but it was too dangerous to try to retrieve my diaries,” she writes in her soon-to-be-published autobiography. This unflappable devotion to her studies continued into her graduate years. She writes of her young marriage: “We married in my home in Los Angeles, and had a one-day honeymoon so that I could get back to Stanford to study for the comprehensive exams.” Her autobiography reads with the same humor and pluckiness you sense when she picks up the phone. At seventy-one, she hasn’t gotten any less determined.

Professor Loftus earned her PhD in psychology from Stanford and now teaches, speaks, writes, and serves as an expert witness at the intersection of memory, cognitive science, law, and crime. She remembers the first day she was finally allowed to testify on the drawbacks of eyewitness testimony with eerie precision; it was also the day her father died. For years, she says, prosecutors have been trying to use her exacting memory of the date against her (after all, isn’t she arguing that memory is faulty?), only to fall into silence when they learn why she remembers the date.

Today, Loftus is a distinguished professor at the University of California, Irvine, and will soon publish an autobiography. I spoke to Professor Loftus via phone at her home in Southern California about her upcoming CSICon talk, the good and bad of eyewitness testimony, and just how accurate Scientology auditing can be.

Carrie Poppy: What an honor to talk to you! I was hoping that first I could just hear what your talk for CSICon is going to be.

Elizabeth Loftus: Well, I study memory distortion; how it is that people can remember things that didn't happen. So I haven't worked out the details exactly yet, but I'll be talking about both some of my experiments in which we plant false information into the minds of people, make them believe that they saw things or experienced things that they didn't experience, and just a little bit about what I've learned from these experiments. And then real-world examples of people's memory distortion, or memories that have gone awry, and how it can lead to all kinds of problems for people.

Poppy: Right, and for people who don't have that experience… who have never had so-called "repressed memory" or an acute experience like that, do you think that that lesson still resonates for all of us?

Loftus: Well, the problem of "false memories" is a lot bigger than just the sub-problem of people thinking that they have repressed memories or horrific abuse that happened decades earlier. False memories creep up whenever we get misinformation about something we've experienced. So it might be a recent robbery, or it might be a conversation with a friend or family member that gets misremembered. So, this thing plays itself out in much more than just the accusations of repressed memories.

Poppy: Right, that's what I suspected. I'm thinking of not long ago, seconds after an argument with a friend, and one of us was saying, "You were shouting,” and the other was saying, "No, I wasn't shouting!" It was seconds ago, and neither of you is really sure if you're recalling it correctly.

Loftus: Yeah, and I did a TED talk—

Poppy: Yes!

Loftus: And it's a kind of fifteen-minute version where I tried to pack in, in fifteen minutes, what I've been doing for the past many decades, and how it might apply in the real world. And so, this is going to be sort of an expanded version of that essence.

Poppy: I have seen it, actually. It's a great talk. Now, in your work, I know that you often have to plant these sort-of "false memories" to see if you can successfully plant them in the laboratory. Do you have to, then, do some work to sort of dig those memories up?

Loftus: Well, in the experiments, of course, we debrief people. After the experiment is over, they go through a required and extensive debriefing where we apologize, tell them why we had to deceive them, try to make them feel normal, that their behavior was normal, so they don't feel like a sap, and so on. And so far, in four decades of doing this kind of research, contaminating people's memories, in experiments, involving maybe thirty or forty thousand people, we've never had an adverse effect.

Poppy: Oh, that's great. So no one's still walking around thinking they were lost in the mall as a child?

Loftus: Well, we can't be positive of that because we don't see them again. In fact, we're not really allowed to see them again, unless somehow you were to build that into your protocol and get permission to re-contact them. After they go through the whole process, if we go back to them sometime later, can we see any evidence of sort-of lingering bit of this false memory? And, in a way, it's a difficult thing for us to do because there're so many people who would love to shut down this false memory work.

Poppy: And who's that?

Loftus: Oh, the enemies. The people who think that it's just helping pedophiles come up with an excuse, or you know, discounting a victim's—an accuser's claim. Because, you know, it's certainly possible that guilty people will deny that they committed abuse and accuse the accuser of having false memories. So, you know, we have bunches of people who would love to shut down the enterprise, and so it's a little scary to be going forward doing this study to find out, "Are there any lingering effects?" because I can see that if we do find any, any little glimpse of a lost-in-the-mall memory that's still there, even after debriefing, the enemies will try to use it to shut down the whole enterprise.

Poppy: Sure. Because they're looking for any hole in your system.

Loftus: Yeah, exactly. And I think that would be a tragedy, because this kind of work can help us appreciate a lot of the things that the skeptic community cares about. How is it people think that they saw UFOs? How is it that people can think they were abducted by aliens? Or, how is it that people see Jesus in toast?

Poppy: Since you mentioned that, are there things that the skeptic community isn't doing, or isn't covering, that you'd love to see them do?

Loftus: Well, you know, I've been a long-time fan of the Skeptical Inquirer, and they've got a lot of different topics to cover, but they have on occasion covered these memory issues, in various articles. And, in fact, in one of the articles that I wrote [for Skeptical Inquirer], we got sued, for an article called "Who Abused Jane Doe?" It led to about four and a half years of litigation.

Poppy: You mentioned that in your TED talk.

Loftus: Yeah. Well, that lawsuit arose out of an article that was published in Skeptical Inquirer, and [the magazine] became a co-defendant.

Poppy: How did that end up? Can you say?

Loftus: I can say, but it's really complicated. This recovered-memory lady sued because she didn't like the way the article portrayed her story. And, in the end, the only ones who won were the lawyers. [Both laugh.]

Poppy: I also found myself thinking a lot about Scientology while listening to your talk. I don't know how familiar you are with it.

Loftus: Well, you know, I did read Lawrence Wright's book [Going Clear] on Scientology. Amazing. I don't know whether they're planting attitudes or memories; there is a distinction. Social psychologists study attitude formation change. Memories are something sort of more personal. It's like, what I did last week or last month or in my childhood.

Poppy: Right, well the reason I was thinking of it is because I went undercover in the Church of Scientology with my podcast cohost, Ross—

Loftus: Oh my God! How exciting!

Poppy: [Laughs.] Thank you!

Loftus: Wow!

Poppy: So, we were in there for about two months and we did a lot of "auditing." And L. Ron Hubbard said that our cells—the cells of our bodies—remember everything that happened to us, even if our minds forget them. And so, you go through this process of recalling specific "memories" that he says our bodies are remembering for us. So they might be memories in utero, they might be memories of past lives, memories from being two or one or something one usually forgets.

Loftus: Oh, OK, well that's just an invitation for creative fiction.

Poppy: Yeah, that's my impression! And actually we would say the stories over and over. I would be made to tell the same story maybe for two hours, over and over and over. And of course, you become more and more confident about the details. At the beginning, you were saying, "Maybe her shirt was yellow?" At the end you're saying, "She had a yellow shirt! It had a V-neck." You're convincing yourself.

Loftus: Yeah, well, it's more fluent after you've rehearsed it so many times.

Poppy: True. [Laughs]

Loftus: That's true with true memories, too. If you think of the ones that you tend to tell a lot. You know, the stories you tell when you're in a new relationship.

Poppy: The stories you tell to your new prospective partner?

Loftus: Right, exactly. You know, by the Nth time, you're pretty fluent. I mean, they may be true experiences, but that's what happens with rehearsal. But how amazing! And you didn't get sued, and you didn't get rattle snakes put in your mailbox.

Poppy: [Laughs] Not yet. Keep your fingers crossed, though. So, let’s talk about eyewitness testimony. I was listening to your TED talk and I wrote down, "What is eyewitness testimony good for?" [Both laugh.] I was starting to feel so frustrated. I hear about all these cases that turn out to be completely mismanaged...

Loftus: Well, some eyewitness testimony is good.

Poppy: Phew, OK.

Loftus: You know, when I get a call from a lawyer, saying "I've got a case," sometimes they'll give me a fact pattern that I say, "you know, I'm just not sure I can help you." So, [for example] they tell me, "OK, my guy had a conversation with somebody for a half hour, and then that somebody got robbed, and it was in daylight. And the next day, the victim goes into a pizza parlor, and sees [my] guy sitting there, calls up the police and says, 'Hey, the guy's here who robbed me yesterday.'" And I say, "You know, you've got broad daylight, you've got a long exposure time, you've got a short retention interval, you have no bad police procedure. You've got a same-race situation, not a cross-race [situation]. I don't think there's much anybody can do for you." So, some eyewitness testimony is pretty reliable. It doesn't have that accumulation of problematic factors. And so you have to look at each of these cases, and not just because someone says, "I'm positive," and they're very detailed, and they cry when they tell you the story. That doesn't mean it really happened!

Poppy: Right, nor does it mean they're lying. They might mean it, and be wrong.

Loftus: Exactly.

Kevin Folta is a professor and chairman of the horticultural science department at the University of Florida. He is known for his work with strawberries and how light can be used to influence produce flavor, nutrients, and shelf life. He is a science communicator who hosts the Talking Biotech podcast and speaks about biotechnology with everyone from farmers to physicians, third graders to retirees. He has often drawn a lot of fire because of his visible public engagement in a contentious topic. Folta will be speaking at CSICon on Friday, October 28, in Las Vegas.

Susan Gerbic: So, Kevin, let’s start out on the right foot and get this out in the open. I understand that you do not like the term GMO because of the word modified; you prefer engineered. The reasoning you have used is that people would rather drive across a modified bridge than an engineered bridge. Is this an accurate assessment? And if so, do you think that we can make the public more acceptable to the idea if we change the terminology?

Kevin Folta: We made the mistake of adopting the terminology that is used to smear the technology. Scientists don’t use the term GMO in scholarly publication; we use the precise language of the discipline. You see words like transgene or cisgenic construct. That means something. GMO is rather vague and useless because unless you are a clone, you are a genetic modification of your forbearers. Every change from one generation to the next requires genetic modification. That’s really different (and far less predictable) than the engineered changes we install. Genetic engineering is truly engineering. It is devising new structures or functions to solve a problem, with great precision.

Gerbic: Apparently one of my Guerilla Skepticism on Wikipedia (GSoW) editors has a bit of a nerd crush on you, and my creds went up when she found out that I was going to be talking with you. She gave me some great questions to ask you. She said that you are famous for being an advocate of “letting the real story tell the tale” and not getting in the gutter with your detractors. I’ve heard you say something along this line also and think that maybe skeptics would have a better reputation if we did take the high road. Can you please elaborate?

Folta: Well it would be nice if it was always true. I used to love scrapping with science dissenters, trading barbs, and doing it with a dusting of vitriol. It was borne of frustration. I knew the facts, knew the science, and was livid that people would spend their time misinforming others. I was hardly a saint, and actually a few bad behaviors and regrettable phrases have come back to haunt me, as the folks that want to harm your reputation are awfully good at taking screenshots of your slip-ups.

The realization came when it was clear that I was speaking to the wrong audience. Those steeped in the religious fervor of nonscientific convictions are not going to change, no matter what evidence you give them. There are people that are unteachable. I’m a teacher. When I tried to teach them and they rejected it, I got prickly. Instead I learned to use the mute and block buttons and spend my time with those that just are searching for good answers. People are concerned. They’ve been lied to. They are being manipulated by marketing campaigns and Food Babes. I can be their trusted source of information, but that requires me to be kind, relatable, and ethical. Let those folks come off as brash and hurtful.

There still are many in the science and skepticism community that feel insults, personal attacks, and underhanded tactics are important weapons against pseudoscience. You can’t change pseudoscientific practitioners. However, we can make them irrelevant by swaying the majority of people that just want answers they can trust. We win them with our character, transparency, and integrity. That earns trust, and we need trust before any information will flow effectively.

Gerbic: She also felt that your discussion on Bt brinjals (eggplant) in Bangladesh is starting to make people rethink their distrust of genetic engineered foods. I haven’t heard this story. What is it about these eggplants?

Folta: The brinjal (eggplant or aubergine if you are French) is a world food staple, the second most important non-grain vegetable in Asia next to the potato. But its cultivation is challenged by insects that require up to eighty insecticide sprays a season. The sprays consist of old-school pesticides, typically sprayed from backpack sprayers with no protective equipment. This is what it takes to protect the crop, and when you are a poor farmer that needs that food and profits from the crop, insect protection is a necessity.

The brinjal has been engineered with the Bt protein. This protein only affects target insects, those that feed on the plant. The protein is not toxic to humans, other animals, or even most insects.

India was prepared to accept this technology, but at the last minute the government blocked it, caving to protesters fueled by Western cash. However, the Ag Minister of Bangladesh decided she wanted the technology for her country “to help people and the environment.” What started off as two growers with small fields has spread to many farmers and great acreage, cutting sprays from eighty a season to two. Farmers make more money, invest in better homes, and live with fewer chemical hazards.

This innovation is important because it shatters all of the myths. Pesticide use is cut, farmers can give away or sell the seeds, and the product has no ties to multinational corporation control. This is why the activists are so enraged and why Greenpeace has spent $100 million to fight this innovation. It very well could be the first domino that triggers widespread acceptance, as the poorest farmers in the world now have a safer, profitable crop. What’s not to like?

Gerbic: Another question from my team is about your thoughts concerning the open letter to Greenpeace about getting them to rethink their position on genetic engineered foods.

Folta: Writing a letter to Greenpeace (ironically, if you rearrange the letters it spells “a creep gene”) is like writing a letter to Mt. Rushmore. It ain’t gonna change much. Greenpeace has done a lot of good things over the years, but their stance on GE crops is wrong and purely financially motivated. The letter to Greenpeace was not actually to Greenpeace but rather to the huge number of people that need to understand the good things we can do with technology. People don’t understand that genetic engineering can provide tremendous solutions to contemporary problems and help people and the environment. The average citizen needs to realize that we spend tons of public money to solve problems—that Greenpeace and cronies block. They literally have a body count. We need the average person to erase the Greenpeace halo and understand that blocking beneficial technology from the poor is neither green nor peaceful. It is a breach of social justice to deny the best crops from the people that could use them to live healthier, more productive lives. Those are the people and technologies I want to fight for.

Gerbic: What’s been happening with your other podcast, Science Power Hour? You have an alter-ego Vern Blazek as the host, but apparently it has been a while since releasing a new episode.

Folta: Vern Blazek’s Science Power Hour was meant to be funny—a Colbert Report of science where I played a character in a parody of the Art Bell Show. Whereas the actual overnight AM show was lame topics by a real host, the Science Power Hour was a clearly fake bumbling host dealing with real topics. I have written comedy for actual comedians and performed stand up and sketch back in college, so I like to flex my thespian muscles now and then.

The Science Power Hour (always about thirty minutes) was my first attempt at a podcast, and I didn’t want anyone to know it was me. I have overdue reports, papers to write, and my dog is way past due for her Frontline treatment. The grass in my yard is a meter tall and my house looks abandoned. I figured I’d draw a lot of heat if it was Kevin Folta’s Science Power Hour, so I did it with a funny voice and made it a clear parody. So I thought.

The problem is that when you are a lightning rod people will make a huge deal out of nothing. That’s exactly what happened. The anti-GMOers, aided by a legit science journalist, made something meant to be funny and entertaining into a scandal of epic proportions. I begged her not to do it, but for some reason she felt it was such an important story that it had to be told. She tied it all to Monsanto right in the title of the piece (and as her moral compass maybe kicked in a bit changed the title) when it was me doing a podcast with a funny voice on science topics.

That ordeal almost made me quit a thirty-year science career. The hate was that thick, and portraying something meant to be funny and entertaining as underhanded and deceptive was pure gold to my harshest critics. The way I was destroyed online for making an entertaining and sort of funny podcast was horrible. I still think of cool topics for Vern to approach. Maybe he’ll do it again someday.

Gerbic: Science communicators in the biological sciences are rare. What got you interested in communication?

Folta: Back in high school I wanted to join the speech team. I had a gift for gab and thought it would be good training. Our school’s group was really cliquey, and I never fit in. Instead I took a job selling typewriters and film, training that gives me zero benefit today. In college at Northern Illinois University I was welcomed to a great forensics team (that’s speech and debate, not dead bodies) with amazing leadership and coaches. I learned from experts about persuasion, how to use humor, how to read poetry and interpret prose, and eventually ended up a national finalist. All of those writing and performance skills were so helpful in college and grad school. My grant writing and presentations today have a foundation in the skills I learned there.

I came into the professor job with a formal communications toolbox and was excited to use it. I’m thrilled to perform at the public interface, sharing science with third-grade classrooms, League of Women Voters, local dietitian groups, all the way up to Congressional committees. It makes me so happy to share the beautiful science of our time with those that want to know more. We have such a gap between the amazing stories of science and the public’s knowledge of them. We need more scientists stepping into that space, working with journalists and other communicators to reach an audience that wants to learn and is looking for trusted answers.

Gerbic: I live in Salinas, California, the Salad Bowl of the World—Steinbeck Country. It is all about lettuce and strawberries here. I know you focus on all kinds of foods, but you are from Chicago and now live in Florida. What got you interested in strawberries?

Folta: It was the first logical step after my failed efforts in the Deep Dish Pizza Tree. Actually, it is a funny story. I interviewed with a little suite of skills in the model plant, a critter called Arabidopsis. I didn’t know crops at all. When I first was hired at University of Florida and found out that I should work on strawberries, I was excited and asked my boss where I could get some strawberry trees. Yep, it was that bad.

Our industry here is awesome, and I went to the farmers with an open mind and willingness to help. University eggheads like to go to the farm and tell folks what they are doing wrong. I went there and said that I’m a guy with a big toolbox; I have answers, but I don’t know the questions. Those were my words precisely. I listened a lot, learned about the industry and needs, and then started to take questions back to the lab to develop technologies to help. Six years later, I was the senior author on the paper in Nature Genetics that published the strawberry genome.

The lesson is that a good scientist should get rabid and turned on about any topic. The world is nothing but jillions of Rubik’s cubes looking to be cranked on. Right now my lab is working on everything from strawberries to sprouts to S. aureus (the bacterium that causes MRSA). I’ve never had more fun.

Gerbic: Now the really fun questions. I’ve added the good stuff to your Wikipedia page. We GSoW editors are hoping to not only support our spokespeople by writing strong pages, but we want readers to be able to relate to you, to see that scientists aren’t just academic, but some of you are fun. So tell us about Insane War Tomatoes please?

Folta: In the late 1970s everyone loved disco. Except me. Naturally, I gravitated to the polar opposite: the anti-disco beats of edgy new wave and punk rock. Before long I was playing music with friends and was surrounded by really talented kids that could play the hell out of their instruments and loved writing funny lyrics. We played under many banners—Red Lobster Cult, Flock of Smegma, and Dangling Units, just to name a few. Insane War Tomatoes sprouted from those efforts.

We had an elaborate stage show with home-made pyrotechnics—not just puffs of smoke, but propane-fueled fire columns that blew ten feet in the air. We had a stage show that would take one day, twelve guys, and a keg of beer to set up. We’d wear elaborate costumes, had wild stage antics, and even started a show a few times by entering the stage out of a giant butt on a stolen playground slide. We’d blast the place with solid music and mayhem, leave it covered in confetti, water, and gallons of fake vomit. The sixteen people that showed up loved it—every time.

The problem was that this elaborate production emerged at a dud spot in music history. Metal guys hated us because we were too punk; punk fans hated us because we were too metal. We pioneered a sound that would be welcomed a decade later, only played by other people. We don’t have the original master tapes because back then we could not afford the $75 to buy them, and they ended up in a dumpster after the engineer that gave us middle-of-the-night discount recording sessions died way to young. All we have left are mountains of VHS tapes of shows, a pile of red vinyl records, and great memories of something nestled perfectly between clever and stupid, a bit before its time.

Gerbic: I know you are going to be speaking at CSICon about how best to communicate about science. Can you give us a bit more?

Folta: I’m so psyched about this opportunity. I’ve always been in the skeptics’ movement and feel so grateful to be contributing on such a level. We do stand on the shoulders of giants like Carl Sagan and James Randi, and I’m grateful to have a little time on the platform they created.

Relevant to communications, I started thinking, “In what situation can you not afford to get contentious communications wrong, and what can we learn from that?” Hostage negotiation. Science is being held hostage, and we can learn from what law enforcement teaches us about first connecting to the hostage takers before trying to convince them to take action. It is super cool psychology and relates well. We’ll talk about that.

I also want to talk about “SEO-icide” and “e-sassination.” These terms relate to the perils of science communication, as those that want to stop your message use the Internet and search-engine optimization to harm the careers of science communicators. If you analyze the results of Google searches you can learn a lot. Bad people and activist groups use search-engine optimization to get defamatory information placed into top queue for scientists and communicators they need to silence. It takes out effective people and scares others away from entering the discussion. I’ll show some great examples.

All is not lost. There are things we can all do to fix it, and I’ll talk about that too. Most of all, I want everyone to walk out with a basic handle on how to effectively communicate a few central topics of genetic engineering. We’ll cover a few central themes that work. I’m staying for the whole conference and really look forward to helping folks one-on-one. I want to answer their questions, work on some skills, and maybe even add them to my Rolodex of experts. We need people trained and ready to talk to the media and to interested groups. I’d be glad to culture those opportunities for others.

Gerbic: I’ve heard you talk about the Ugly Food Movement—getting people to purchase the not-perfect food in the produce section in order to not waste food. So I’m wondering if at the Halloween costume party on Saturday night at CSICon you might be dressing as an ugly eggplant or something?

Folta: When you see people in great poverty or extreme nutrition deficit it changes you. I can’t stand seeing food wasted. Fifty percent of what is harvested goes into a landfill or spoils. That’s horrible when people need food. When I shop, I buy the produce that nobody wants, sort of like pre-dumpster diving. I go home from the store smiling with my bag of rescues. I don’t know about coming to the party in an ugly eggplant outfit, but the fire-breathing tomato suit from Insane War Tomatoes days that isn’t getting much use. Maybe I’ll have to resurrect that.

As the evidence piles up supporting climate change, the battle over the science in public arenas portrays a false sense of scientific controversy. Scientific misunderstanding is not climate change specific; almost all fields of science now find themselves at loggerheads with the public perception of their research. Neurological research has dualist opposition; vaccine use now faces well funded pseudoscience research; reproductive health information is often tainted by religious communities; evolution has been pushed out of schools; and environmental sciences are smeared by resource companies.

The need for public scientific understanding is vital to human well-being, advancement, and survival, but the complexity of the science leaves many members of the public unable to keep up. Scientists and science enthusiasts are not waiting around for the public to catch up; some are letting average people check them out through Periscope.

Periscope is a social media app that allows the user (“Scoper”) to live-stream a video (a “Scope”). Unlike television, the audience is not passive. Viewers can chat with the Scoper in real time. Everything from cookie spices to racial inequalities in policing are topics of Scopes. Scientists and their champions are leveraging Periscope as a tool for making the ravine between scientific ignorance and scientific knowledge narrower in an effort to improve public understanding.

“The reason I Scope is mainly because I think a lot of people have misconceptions about physics, and science in general, mostly because they’ve never had the chance to ask a scientist their questions,” explains Scoper and theoretical physicist and cosmologist Deanna C. Hooper.

Scoper and neuroscientist Ian McLaughlin wants to overcome the financial and social hurdles between science and the public: “Since people outside of science are separated from most research by paywalls or by specialized language required to understand peer-reviewed publications, I’m hoping to help people without formal training develop a comfort and familiarity with, and appreciation for, science.”

The distance between scientists and the public also creates a distorted view of the process of science and of the people in science. By closing the divide, average people can see the process of science more clearly and not feel alienated from scientists.

“It seems that a lot of people have the ‘us and them’ mentality: ‘us normal people’ and ‘those crazy, unapproachable scientists,’ and by Scoping I hope to show people that scientists are normal people, and definitely not unapproachable,” said Hooper. Periscope is full of brilliant scientific intermediaries: people who are excited to share science but do not make their living from it.

One of the most popular science emissaries is Bob the Cat. Bob is a cat who takes viewers on tours of microbial life in a microscope, interviews scientists, and shows the stars through telescopes. When necessary, his minion—software developer Bob Nebrig—moves slides or speaks for him. “Periscope is great for learning what you want to know, what you didn’t know you wanted to know, and sometimes learning things you wish you had not (like what is crawling on a McDonald’s hamburger left to rot for 7 months),” explained Nebrig.

Advanced scientific conversations have a place on Periscope, too. Numerous scientific and public health organizations use Periscope to share their developments. Instead of only hearing it on the news through conventional media outlets, the information is directly available to the public.

Viewers participating in the question and answer Scopes ask surprisingly difficult questions. Hooper was once asked, “If you took all the mass of the observable universe and shrank it to the size of a black hole, what size would it be?” “That led to a long debate with some colleagues, and multiple discussions on the topic,” said Hooper. “We ended up asking a black hole expert, to confirm our answer was correct (it would actually be the same size as the observable universe; it wouldn’t change size!).”

Making science more accessible also benefits the scientific community. The most obvious advantage is that the more people understand and value science, the more they will fund it. “I’m trying to bring people closer to the research they fund through federal grant-making agencies like the NIH [National Institutes of Health] and NSF [National Science Foundation], as well as to the scientists their funds support,” explained McLaughlin.

Scopers also experience the personal sanctification that comes with transmitting memes of knowledge. “These scopes give me the opportunity to ‘talk’ with some very interesting people,” shared Scoper and astronomy professor Dennis Hands. “I love astronomy. I love talking about astronomy. I love sharing the passion for such a beautiful discipline.”

Ready to reach out and look through the Periscope at science? Peek in on these Scopers.

Deanna C. Hooper—Theoretical Physicist
Scope: @DCHooper91
Watch one here: https://www.periscope.tv/DCHooper91/1yNGaeNkprQGj

Hooper’s Scopes are simple—ask her a question about physics or the universe, and she gives you an answer. She has a tempered, clear, and understandable style. She packs complex ideas into little digestible bits for viewers.

Ian McLaughlin—Neuroscientist
Scope: @_Anthropoid
Watch one here: https://www.periscope.tv/_Anthropoid/1djGXXWVzzRGZ

McLaughlin, a University of Pennsylvania’s neuroscience PhD candidate, answers questions about the brain and neuroscience research with spirited enthusiasm and passion. Viewers are treated to glimpses through the microscope at brain bits, computer graphics of the brain, the beautiful Philadelphia skyline, and on occasion nearby pubs.

Bob the Cat—Science Emissary
Scope:@bobber4143
Watch one here: https://www.periscope.tv/bobber4143/1lDGLNdMZmaxm

Bob the Cat pounces on all sizes of science. He turns his viewers into tardigrade (water bear), hydra, and sea monkey voyeurs through his microscope. He robs stars, clouds, and other celestial bodies of their privacy when he points his phone and telescope upward to share big things in the sky. He even made paint drying interesting. No seriously—check it out—it’s unexpectedly entertaining.

Dennis Hands—Astronomy Professor
Scope: @DennisRHands
Watch one here: https://www.periscope.tv/DennisRHands/1BdxYNaaLQBKX

High Point University professor Dennis Hands Scopes about astronomy. He speaks with the clarity of an educator with decades of experience explaining astronomy. His Scopes are usually question and answer, but most include interesting upcoming events or new discoveries. The Cline Observatory is the occasional setting of his Scopes. He is also the owner of an unusual number of awesome shirts.

Monterey Bay Aquarium—Marine Biology and Conservation
Scope: @MontereyAq
Watch one here: https://www.periscope.tv/MontereyAq/1ZkKzWlZAawGv

The Monterey Bay Aquarium Scopes range from downright illegally cute penguin parades to open water orca chases. Even though there is no shortage of cute octopuses and baby otters, it is also crammed with science. Facts are shared in both lay and scientific language. They travel outside the aquarium to local parks and onto the ocean to capture wildlife in its natural habitat. People of all marine biology levels will ride the wave of entertainment in a sea of knowledge.

Joey Jefferson—NASA Engineer
Scope: @JoeyJefferson30
Watch one here: https://www.periscope.tv/w/1lPJqqrbwVlJb/card#

Jefferson’s upbeat, enthusiastic Scopes often show what’s behind the scenes at NASA. He walks around the campus and shows us scientists at work. Jefferson does question and answer sessions so the public can ask questions about NASA or engineering or physics. He is the personification of the inner space geek in everyone.

Julia Majors—Physicist
Scope: @Feynwoman
Watch one here: https://www.periscope.tv/w/1gqxvAyPZlgJB

Dr. Julia Majors is a physicist who specializes in lasers and materials. She does question and answer sessions as well as interviewing other scientists about their work. She does not keep her Scopes up for long, so watch them while they’re hot.

Periscope can be downloaded in iTunes for Apple users and Google Play store for Android users.

La mayoría de la gente da por sentado que el chupacabras, como sus hermanos Piegrande y Nessie, apareció hace décadas o siglos. Sin embargo, como lo trato en mi libro Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore y en las páginas de The Skeptical Inquirer, el origen de este misterioso vampiro bestial se remonta a un testigo portorriqueño que vio la película Species en 1995, en la que aparecía un monstruo casi idéntico. Aunque tanto las leyendas sobre vampiros como la “misteriosa” predación de animales se remontan a varios siglos, parece que no hay evidencia alguna de ningún “chupacabras” que succione la sangre antes de los años 90.

La bestia cumplió 20 años el año pasado, y su corta edad constituye un problema peliagudo para aquellos que desean afirmar que existe, porque no hay rastro de la procedencia evolutiva de estos extraños monstruos. Los animales reales no aparecen de la nada; todos están sujetos a las mismas presiones evolutivas y deben descender de un animal anterior. En el árbol de la vida no hay ninguna rama para el chupacabras y lo mismo sucede con Piegrande, Nessie, los dragones y el Demonio de Jersey¹.

Cuando se los fuerza a dar cuenta de esta falta de registros históricos, los que afirma la existencia del chupacabras a menudo mencionan mitos y leyendas folclóricas sobre espíritus sobrenaturales, sacándolas de contexto y describiéndolas erróneamente como relatos reales de testigos que tuvieron encuentros con criaturas corpóreas desconocidas. (Para mas información sobre este proceso, véase Abominable Science! Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids, de Daniel Loxton y Donald Prothero, y Lake Monster Traditions: A Cross-Cultural Analysis, de Michel Meurger. También el libro que escribí junto con Joe Nickell Lake Monster Mysteries: Investigating the World’s Most Elusive Creatures).

This article was originally featured in Skeptical Inquirer in English.
Click here to read it.

El chupacabras tiene dos relatos que se invocan para explicar, o tratar de explicar su súbita aparición: el primero es que la criatura es un extraterrestre que trajeron visitantes alienígenas; el segundo es que el chupacabras es una entidad creada en un laboratorio secreto del gobierno de los Estados Unidos que se escapó. Parece que los experimentos genéticos salieron mal —esencialmente una clásica teoría conspirativa que nos recuerda a la de Frankenstein. No por casualidad, ambas historias sobre el origen de la bestia en cuestión son idénticas a las de Sil, un monstruo similar al chupacabras que aparece en la película Species (ver Figura 1, y Radford, 2014).

La explicación “Frankenstein” y la alienígena a la que recurrieron muchos portorriqueños y otros poco después de la aparición del chupacabras en 1995 era insatisfactoria (y quizá un tanto extravagante) para algunos que, entonces, propusieron sus propios relatos sobre la bestia-vampiro. Semejantes historias crean un vacío de información que se llena fácilmente con especulaciones misteriosas. (Para un análisis de la historia de las afirmaciones sobre el chupacabras desde los años 50, véanse mis columnas en el Skeptical Inquirer “The Mystery of the Texas Chupacabra” en el ejemplar de Marzo/Abril de 2014 y “Texas Monsters and the Chupacabra” en el de Mayo/Junio de 2015).

Figura 1a.

Figura 1b. El “chupacabras” primeramente descripto en 1995 en Puerto Rico por la testigo Madelyne Tolentino, al cual había visto hacía poco. Ilustración del autor.

Sabíduría popular del chupacabras atribuida al antiguo Nuevo México

Debido a que el chupacabras apareció por primera vez en Puerto Rico y durante muchos años fue citado en varios países de habla hispana, no es sorprendente que Latinoamérica pudiera servir como lugar plausible para el origen de la historia. En su libro Enchanted Legends and Lore of New Mexico, Ray John De Aragón incluye un fantasioso cuento titulado “The Sheepherder y the Chupacabra”, en el cual un pastor llamado Francisco cuenta una historia:

Doña Serafina, la vieja curandera... dijo que hace muchos, muchos años atrás, la gente encontraba ganado muerto, pollos, bisontes, ovejas, cabras, muertos, e incluso una persona que parecía haber sido desangrada. Sea lo que fuere, atacaba principalmente a las cabras, dijo —un chupacabras— y la gente lo llamaba así. Doña Serafina les dijo que los antiguos indios tenían esta extraña clase de animal. Dijo que ella misma había visto uno con sus propios ojos mientras seguìa a un médico brujo indio que lo tenía como mascota. “El chupacabras se detuvo y me miró”, dijo. “Era una mirada diabólica que me dió escalofríos. Pero yo no le iba a demostrar que tenía miedo. Solo saqué mi detente, un cuadro bordado que decía (en inglés) El Sagrado Corazón de Jesús está conmigo. Los detentes sirven para alejar el demonio y protegerte. Cuando el chupacabras vio el detente, me miró como si hubiera enloquecido, bajando la larga y delgada cola, mirándome de vez en cuando. Yo mantuve mi detente con mis manos mostrándoselo. No voy a ningún lado sin mi detente. Nunca sabes cuándo vas a ver a un chupacabras”.

Un poco después de escuchar esta historia emotiva, mientras cuidaba sus ovejas en la llanura, Francisco encontró...

Una extraña criatura... olfateando y echándole una fiera mirada... Era un chupacabras, que merodeaba, hambriento buscando a las ovejas asustadas. Francisco sacó su detente del bolsillo de la camisa, y mientras lo sostenía con la mano recitó el Padre Nuestro varias veces seguidas. El chupacabras lo miró con los ojos rojos y gruñó ferozmente, se dio vuelta y se fue. El detente le salvó la vida (De Aragón 2012, 91-92).

Cualquiera que esté familiarizado con el folclore o con la verdadera historia del chupacabras —modestamente me considero así en las dos categorías— va a darse cuenta de que no tiene base alguna. Si verdaderamente se trata de una “leyenda” de Nuevo México, es algo nuevo hecho en 2012 por De Aragón sin fuente confiable.

Es un relato que presenta a una criatura que apareció por primera vez en 1995, hablando retroactivamente sobre una bestia ficticia —que para muchos lectores es plausible— la cual se remonta a épocas ancestrales. La idea de que el chupacabras fue adoptado como mascota hace siglos por un brujo indígena norteamericano es una distorsión novelesca, y el tema de una bestia diabólica que se asusta cuando los fieles invocan a Jesús está fuera de los cánones católicos comunes (Para mayor información sobre el uso del chupacabras como símbolo satánico por parte de las autoridades religiosas —sobre todo los Pentecostales— ver páginas 53 a 55 en Tracking the Chupacabra).

Este relato de ficción, si bien es un cuento entretenido, corre el riesgo de que los lectores lo tomen como una leyenda histórica genuina. Aunque De Aragón claramente inventó la historia, dice que está basada en una leyenda que le contaron como verdadera. Los estudiosos del folclore son cuidadosos al dar referencias o citas en las historias que relatan, para demostrar que poseen erudición y son idóneos, pero lamentablemente estas citas no figuran en el libro de De Aragón.

Figura 2. Una leyenda confusa —y posiblemente inexistente— sugiere que el conquistador Francisco Vázquez de Coronado halló una empuñadura de cuchillo perteneciente a enanos caníbales mientras exploraba lo que hoy es Nuevo México en el siglo XVI. Ilustración de Celestia Ward.

Incluso si De Aragón hubiera escuchado algo sobre una historia del demonio-vampiro que pudiera embellecer su cuento sobre el chupacabras, los detalles y los hechos que presenta distan tanto de las fuentes originales que cualquier relato histórico de un encuentro con un verdadero chupacabras se torna confuso e irremediablemente perdido. Sin una pizca de evidencia que pueda corroborarla (por ejemplo una mención histórica escrita sobre la criatura o incluso el relato de algún “testigo” independiente sobre un encuentro), hay que asumir con certeza que esta “leyenda” es totalmente ficticia.

Coronado, Zuni y el chupacabras

Otra afirmación “legendaria” sobre la historia del chupacabras proviene de Bob Curran en su libro Vampires: A Field Guide to the Creatures That Stalk the Night. Describe al encuentro que tuvo el explorador Francisco Vázquez de Coronado con un chotacabras (ver Figura 2). En un capítulo titulado “El Chupacabra”, Curran escribe:

Una leyenda dice que mientras acampaba durante la noche, el ganado Coronado fue atacado. Se dice que algunos de sus hombres ahuyentaron a los atacantes —descriptos como hombres pequeños, oscuros y con piel rugosa— con antorchas y lanzas. A la mañana, gran parte del ganado, que formaba la mayor parte de la manada (1.500 animales), había muerto desangrada. A pesar del contratiempo, Coronado pudo comprarle ganado a los indígenas locales, reemplazando a la mayor parte que había perdido y siguió con la búsqueda. En el pueblo indígena Zuni, en Hawikuh, Nuevo México occidental, escuchó cuentos de extraños hombres grises con “cuchillos en la espalda” que habían peleado esporádicamente con los Zunis hacía mucho tiempo. Podían saltar, según le dijeron los Zunis, y hacer que sus soldados cayeran desde arriba, matándolos con palos puntiagudos. Se dijo que bebían sangre. Estos cuentos no le resultaron interesantes a Coronado, y su destino fue la legendaria Cibola, y todo lo que se dijo acerca de enanos feroces fue solo una distracción (Curran 2005, 46).

Hay muchas claves que indican que esta historia —confusa como es— no es cierta. Para fundamentar su posición, Curran pone varias advertencias sobre su veracidad (“una leyenda dice...” “se dice que...”, etc) y al igual que sucede con la leyenda de De Aragón es importante prestar atención la procedencia de esta historia, que fue de boca en boca varias veces: Curran está describiendo lo que la leyenda dice que Coronado afirma sobre lo que escuchó de los indios Zuni cuando le hablaron sobre lo que sus antepasados le dijeron que hicieron hacía medio siglo.

No tengo idea de lo que significa —si algo significa— esta supuesta leyenda, y Curran tampoco. Por supuesto que el conquistador español Coronado estaba atacando y matando Zunis, no intercambiando cuentos amigables con ellos, y es posible que la tribu le contara historias de los enanos salvajes a Coronado como amenaza indirecta de los peligros que este hombre enfrentaba en la zona a menos que huyera. Incluso si la leyenda es cierta —y no hay razón para pensar que lo es— también está el problema de que los españoles y los indios no hablaban el mismo idioma; de hecho, los dos grupos se comunicaban haciendo señas con las manos e interpretaciones toscas.

En el libro Cities of Gold: A Journey Across the American Southwest in Pursuit of Coronado, Douglas Preston (1992) describe varias instancias en las cuales el significado de las palabras y mensajes estaba deformado o mal traducido entre Coronado y los Zunis (los pollos eran confundidos con pavos, y el ganado con búfalos). Cuando se comunicaban y recibían mensajes importantes de Coronado “no está claro cuánto entendían los Zunis”, indica Preston, que no está sorprendido ya que los mensajes entre ambos grupos eran “explicados mediante señas” (285). Preston manifiesta que Coronado “le pidió a los indios que pintaran una tela mostrándole todos los animales que había en la zona, lo cual hicieron” (304). Pintaron búfalos, alces, coyotes y otros animales conocidos —sin embargo el chupacabras no figuraba.  

Un problema más serio es que —incluso asumiendo momentáneamente que los detalles de la leyenda sean ciertos y que Coronado haya comprendido e informado correctamente lo que escuchó de los Zunis— no hay una conexión clara con el chupacabras. El chupacabras había aparecido en varias formas y se había informado una disparatada cantidad de rasgos que incluían alas, una cola, ojos rojos, y demás —ninguno de los informes describía “hombres pequeños, oscuros, de piel rugosa” u “hombres grises extraños” o “enanos guerreros feroces” armados con antorchas y lanzas. Incluso si se asume que la descripción tiene alguna base, los “cuchillos” en la espalda mencionados podrían simplemente describir dónde enfundaban los cuchillos estos misteriosos “enanos”. La presunción de vampirismo, aunque también estaba superficialmente ligada con el chupacabras, es de hecho ordinaria y común, algo utilizado para demonizar a los enemigos.

Curran da otra versión —incluso más confusa e improbable— de esta historia en su libro American Vampires: Their True Bloody History from New York to California. Tiene que ver con la expedición de Coronado, cuyo ganado fue atacado una noche:

Los atacantes eran “pequeños hombres grises” con piel dura y con púas, que servían para chupar la sangre de los animales y consumir algunos de sus órganos internos. Solo se los podía alejar con fuego —los hombres portaban antorchas para hacerlos retroceder. Los nativos del lugar le dijeron a los españoles que éstos eran chupacabras y que vivían en las colinas cercanas. Eran caníbales que bebían sangre y, si se los enfrentaba atacarían a los humanos como a los animales. Se decía que solo aparecían de noche… Los lugareños les dijeron que los seres… habían vivido allí durante mucho tiempo, atacando a sus cabras y ganado y algunas veces a ellos mismos, y que había algunos de ellos que podían cambiar de aspecto, transformándose en pájaros o coyotes (Curran 2013b, 190)²⁾.

Por supuesto, los caníbales comen individuos de su propia especie y por lo tanto los chupacabras que describe Curran no serían extraterrestres ni cánidos ni demonios sino humanos —identificación reforzada por las descripciones de ellos como “pequeños hombres” que usaban lanzas. Pero por supuesto, esta “leyenda” no es consistente, ya que estos chupacabras también son criaturas que cambian mágicamente.

Así vemos que los detalles dramáticos, específicos y misteriosos presentados en la leyenda en extremo improbables. Incluso si los Zunis de hecho trataron de describir algunos animales desconocidos a los invasores españoles, quién sabe cuán confusa puede haber sido esta descripción (teniendo en cuenta las señas manuales y los dibujos traducidos al castellano y luego al inglés) que al fin y al cabo terminan siendo “extraños hombres grises con cuchillos en la espalda”.

De nuevo, a pesar de la leyenda que una y otra vez invocaba al término chupacabra para describir a los míticos caníbales, vampiros, enanos grises de los cuales supuestamente Coronado oyó hablar, la conexión con el chupacabras es virtualmente inexistente. Para esclarecer la cuestión de las fuentes —y por lo tanto la veracidad histórica— de este relato, me puse en contacto con Curran, quien me dijo “Usé la historia de Coronado en un par de libros pero no tengo idea de si es verdadera o no”³.

Alienígenas antiguos y chupacabras de la Era Pre-atómica

Otras pseudohistorias del chupacabras se pueden encontrar en una edición especial y sensacional de la revista de habla hispana Contacto OVNI, la cual contiene un artículo titulado “El chupacabras hace 70 años” y brinda alocadas conjeturas sobre el origen de la criatura, incluyendo una sección titulada “Chupacabras de la Era Pre-atómica”, que trata de relacionar —sin éxito— a la bestia con una historia de 1925 sobre una depredación de animales en África (Romero, 1996).

En los archivos de la Universidad Interamericana, en Bayamon, Puerto Rico, descubrí otro folleto en castellano, llamado La Verdadera Historia del Chupacabras, que se propone revelar la verdadera historia de la bestia. Comenzando con algunos relatos desacreditados hace tiempo acerca del chupacabras por el ufólogo Jorge Martín, el libro de noventa y seis páginas —escrito bajo el nombre de Redacción Noticiosa (1996)— sugiere que los indígenas Taino (un grupo relacionado con los Ararawak de varias islas del Caribe cuando Colón llegó a América) conocían al chupacabras. Allí se destaca que “figuras de bestias son prominentes en la mitología y utensilios encontrados en la cultura Taina” (traducción del autor); y “Aquí en la Redacción Noticiosa creemos que la presencia del chupacabras se remonta a una época anterior a la conquista cuando los Tainos gobernaban la isla”.

El folleto continúa teorizando que la reverencia que los Tainos mantenían sobre le bosque El Yunque y las deidades en las que creían existían allí (que algunos afirmaban que era el hogar del chupacabras original) permitieron que el animal crezca en ese lugar. No obstante, los Tainos aparentemente cazaban —y a veces se comían— al chupacabras, como se muestra en una fantástica escena dibujada en la que aparece una escena estereotipada de un Taino armado que observa a una mujer preparando una comida cerca de un chupacabras que es asado al fuego (ver Figura 3).

Tal vez la historia ficticia más extravagante sobre el origen del chupacabras proviene del escritor Scott Corrales, quien en un capítulo sobre teorías conspirativas se refiere al chupacabras. Allí cita a un investigador chileno llamado Ferrer a quien un anciano le dijo que “los abuelos de su abuelo sabían que estos predadores (chupacabras) existieron y que eran, de hecho, dioses que venían a traer mensajes. En el pasado, estos mensajes se expresaron en oraciones completas, aunque ahora se muestran en lenguaje numérico… 666 —la marca de la bestia (Corrales, 2004, 127). Corrales da rienda suelta a esta especulación y conjetura, preguntando ominosamente: “Quién o qué son estas extrañas deidades temidas y adoradas por los antiguos Atacamas… Qué hubiera ocurrido si los antiguos Atacamas se negaran a practicar el ritual (sacrificio sangriento)? Sus deidades enviaron monstruos subalternos (por ejemplo el chupacabras) para recoger la sangre que necesitaban?” (Corrales, 2004)

Figura 3. Una pareja de Tainos asa un chupacabras en una fogata. De La Verdadera Historia del Chupacabras, San Juan, Puerto Rico: Redacción Noticiosa.

Conclusión

Descubrí varios ejemplos de pseudohistorias inventadas acerca del chupacabras, desde la mascota de los brujos Zunis hasta las criaturas vampíricas enviadas por deidades Mesoamericanas y enanos caníbales que usaban lanzas. No le envidio a los autores su ficción histórica especulativa —Curran y De Aragón son buenos narradores que brindan historias vívidas y atrapantes basadas en mitos y leyendas— pero una explicación falsa es tan buena como cualquiera otra sin referencias o documentación.

La verdadera historia del chupacabras es un relato fascinante e improbable, repleto de teorías conspirativas, cuentos sobre vampiros, y con mucho despliegue publicitario. Presentar historias inventadas como “leyendas” solo sirve para empañar la línea entre los hechos y la ficción —líneas en las cuales investigadores como yo hemos trabajado mucho para aclarar las cosas (durante años he ofrecido, y lo sigo haciendo, una recompensa de 1.000 dólares para cualquiera que presente un referencia verificable y publicada antes de los años 90 respecto al vampiro chupacabras en cualquier parte del mundo). La expansión gradual de lo que popularmente se llama “chupacabras” es común; en mi libro describo cómo la palabra original se refería a una criatura alienígena muy específica a mediados de los 90 aunque se ha expandido incluyendo cánidos pelados en el 2000 y para 2010 virtualmente cualquier animal que no pueda ser inmediatamente identificado se lo llama (incluso informalmente o a través de los medios) como un chupacabras. Este mismo fenómeno ha ocurrido también en la literatura, con historias bajo el nombre de “chupacabras” aplicado retroactivamente a leyendas y rumores que hablan sobre supuestos extraños encuentros. Dado que las referencias aquí presentadas son anteriores a la publicación de mi investigación, todavía no se puede saber qué efecto tendrá respecto a la corrección de los registros. Es probable que se produzca una migración de los temas aquí expuestos sobre pseudohistorias y el chupacabras. Los rumores, las leyendas urbanas y el folclore no son algo inmutable: cambian día a día. Siendo el investigador que por primera vez identificó el origen del chupacabras, lamento que existan cuentos confusos sobre esta bestia-vampiro hispana. Sin embargo, las fuerzas del folclore no se detienen y tratar de corregir los registros es una tarea ciclópea. El folclore tiene vida propia y lo mejor que puedo hacer es explicar el verdadero origen del chupacabras y ayudar a documentar la difusión del monstruo en la cultura popular. La información está a disposición para aquellos que quieran verla, pero sé que la verdad nunca es candidata a ser una buena historia.

Notas

1. Por supuesto, hubo varios intentos de colocar a las criaturas míticas dentro de un marco evolutivo. Para una fascinante mirada a los intentos taxonómicos tratando de hallar lugar para las hadas, espíritus y ángeles desde una perspectiva darwiniana, véase por ejemplo el libro The Hidden Side of Things, de Charles W. Leadbeater, 1913.
2. No está claro, en esta leyenda, por qué los animales parecidos a los coyotes, y que actúan como ellos —los cuales son conocidos por atacar al ganado, incluyendo cabras— no fueron identificados como coyotes por los nativos sino como chupacabras que se transformaban en coyotes antes de atacar al ganado. Esto sería como asumir que un perro que defecó en el piso debe haber sido realmente un animal desconocido que cambia de forma, en lugar de un perro, porque una mascota amada no haría semejante cosa.
3. Curran me dijo: “De acuerdo a mis notas proviene de un libro que me mostraron en la Biblioteca Nacional de Barcelona hace muchos años. El libro es Las aventuras del Gran General Francesco de Coronado, Explorados y Gobernador de Nueva Galicia y Otras en América, y la fecha que tengo es de 1895. Por alguna razón no tengo al autor pero se publicó en Madrid. Está en catalán y conseguí un amigo para que me tradujera algunos fragmentos” (Curran, 2013ª)

Referencias

• Corrales, Scott. 2004. Chupacabras: A study in darkness. In The New Conspiracy Reader: From Planet X to the War on Terrorism—What You Really Don’t Know, edited by Al Hidell and Joan D’Arc. New York: Citadel Press.
• Curran, Bob. 2005. Vampires: A Field Guide to the Creatures that Stalk the Night. Pompton Plains, New Jersey: Career Press.
• ———. 2013a. Interview by the author, January 27.
• ———. 2013b. American Vampires: Their True Bloody History from New York to California. Pompton Plains, New Jersey: Career Press.
• De Aragón, Ray John. 2012. Enchanted Legends and Lore of New Mexico: Witches, Ghosts, and Spirits. Charleston, South Carolina: The History Press.Preston, Douglas. 1992. Cities of Gold: A Journey Across the American Southwest in Pursuit of Coronado. New York: Simon & Schuster.
• Radford, Benjamin. 2014. Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore. Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press.
• Redaccion Noticiosa. 1996. La Verdadera Historia del Chupacabras. San Juan, Puerto Rico: Redaccion Noticiosa.
• Romero, Armando Nicolau. 1996. El Chupacabras hace 70 anos. En Contacto OVNI—Edicion Especial. Corporativo Mina, México.

August 2016 is upon us. Yes, I know that you are all thinking: What could be so important about that month other than the birthday of the Amazing Randi? Happy eighty-eighth, Randi! Well in case you missed it, August 10 was the first episode of season two of The Hollywood Medium with Tyler Henry. I know—how could you have missed it? E! Network was promoting him like he was … well, someone pretty special. Not that he had actually solved any cold cases or anything. But he had managed to make a lot of B-list celebs cry and say “Wow, there is no way he could have known that.”

For the few of you who do not know of this new amazing link to the dead, Tyler Henry Koelewyn was working as a clairvoyant for the Hanford, California, Cosmic Corral, a new-age shop, back in 2012. Sometime after that Koelewyn was picked up by the E! Network, which had been looking for a young psychic to design a reality show around. They selected Koelewyn, and he became Tyler Henry, Hollywood Medium. His first season aired in January 2016, and E! quickly started the media hype. Henry was shown speaking to all the E! celebrities and in Hollywood “Who’s Hot—Who’s Hip—Who’s It!” type of articles. Henry got celebrity endorsements from Dr. Phil, who seems to have never met a psychic he didn’t like, and the Kardasians, whom we all know as the elite of the “why are you famous” world.

I’ve written about Tyler Henry several times, first in January 2016 explaining how I had first learned of Henry at about the same time the rest of America in “Grief Vampires Don’t Come Out Only at Night.” After that article ran, eight more critical articles quickly were published by Jerry Coyne, Sharon Hill, Steven Novella, and five other notable skeptics. In April, Mark Edward and I took a look at episode number three in season one and analyzed the “hits.” What we discovered was that Henry did not appear to have beforehand knowledge of who he was going to be reading for. Everything that they showed (remember they are only showing the best of the best) could easily be cold reading, and the sitters could either be in on it (remember they are getting a lot of publicity from this) or the sitters could have been reading more into what Henry told them. Comparing what was actually said by Henry to what the sitter actually heard were always two different things.

So now Hollywood Medium season two is out. Radar Online is reporting that season one “averaged 1.6 million viewers through its first five episodes” and that Henry “signed a multi-million-dollar contract to return for Season 2.” And don’t forget that Henry has penned his autobiography, Between TWO Worlds: Lessons from the Other Side, available in Kindle, Hard-cover, and Audio.

Recently people have been bringing articles written by Jezebel’s Bobby Finger to my attention. Finger appears to be of the opinion that Henry is a fraud. The two articles I’ve seen so far are tagged “Bullshit.” One article from January 25, 2016, is titled “In E!’s Hollywood Medium, a 20-Year-Old Bullshits His Way into the Homes of Celebrities.” The latest article, published August 25, 2016, is titled “Hollywood Medium Cemented Its Status as the Worst Show on Television Last Night.” The article features a very annoying gif of Henry laughing with the caption “laughing all the way to the bank,” which shares the screen with a ghostly image of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy.

Finger reports on a reading Henry gave to Carole Radziwill, who is related to Kennedy and was a close friend. Apparently Finger isn’t buying Henry’s innocent act or the claim that Henry does not know who he is going to be reading for in advance. Finger points out that when Henry sits down with Radziwill he tells her, “I don’t know what you do for a living. I don’t watch much TV.” Finger rightly points out Henry just gave away that he knows Radziwill is on TV; she is a cast member of Real Housewives of New York, which is on the Bravo Channel and is owned by the same parent company as E! Finger seems to think that Henry is hot reading. In other words, he thinks Henry is getting info ahead of time (maybe from Google on his phone in the car on the way there?) and is dishing it out in little bits to the sitters, allowing them to fill in the details. If this is true, it isn’t the way he operated in season one. I supposed it might be a good idea to see the same reading that Finger is reporting on. Thankfully with Amazon and $2.99, I had the show in minutes.

Remember three very important things when you choose to do the same as I’m about to do. One, we onlookers have the benefit of not being emotionally involved in this conversation; it is highly emotional being a believer in this situation feeling that in minutes you are about to be in touch with a dear loved one. Two, we also have the ability to pause, rewind, and review over and over again, which is something that can undo the best of these psychic performers. And three, remember that millions of dollars are riding on Henry’s performance. All those E! employees’ jobs are seriously invested in this series continuing. They are not looking to prove whether Henry is genuine or not. They just want to make him look as good as possible. So what you are seeing in these shows are only the best—high emotions and all. These readings last for quite some time, and a lot is not usable; otherwise it would be on air.

Radziwill’s reading begins at thirty-one minutes into the forty-three-minute show. It starts with Henry walking up to a very swanky front door in New York City, excited to see who the client is. Radziwill’s voiceover explains that she has become more skeptical over the years as her story has become more public, but that she is still very open to psychics. She saw Henry’s notebook and said, “Is that the file on me? It should be bigger.” Henry in his voiceover says, “I have read for many skeptics and turned them into believers.” Henry does say that he does not know what she does for a living; he does not watch much TV or anything. “It could be Broadway for all I know.” This is the point that Finger was talking about. I’m not so sure; it looks like a natural statement to make because he does read for a lot of TV personalities, and this woman is obviously wealthy, confident, and looks like she would be in front of a camera.

She gives him what looks to be a woman’s gold band, saying it was a gift. He immediately states that the ring is a reference to someone who died tragically at an early age. She quickly is brought to tears and states, “Oh my God.” Henry goes on about the strong personality of this woman, how she had presence, and then restated that this was a young woman. He asked if Radziwill knew anyone that could fit that, and she said “yeah [pause] a girlfriend [pause] her name is Carolyn.” These pauses are important to note. This is where Henry is just letting the sitter talk and dropping all the information he is going to need in the rest of the reading. And Radziwill does exactly that. She drops everything about who gave it to her, when, and that she died in a plane crash. Henry just listens, nods as if he already knew all this, and smiles. He then goes into his normal feel-good shtick that she is happy on the other side, and she is present around Radziwill “like a sister.” But if you rewind just a minute earlier, Radziwill is explaining how the ring was the last Christmas gift from Carolyn. So obviously a gold ring (that he is examining closely in his hand) from one woman to another woman would probably mean they were very close. She says “I love how you made a connection to my best girlfriend; it’s amazing.” Henry nods and says “definitely.”

She next hands him a watch saying that it has a lot of meaning to her. Henry looks at the watch for a bit and finally says “off of this object, I’m not sure I’m picking up anything” and asks, “Who does this object belong to?” She reveals that it belonged to her late husband. Then she goes on to explain that he died of cancer three weeks after her girlfriend Carolyn. He explains that it’s okay that Radziwill’s husband didn’t come through and that they are probably friends on the other side and Carolyn had the stronger voice today probably because she had a stronger message to give to Radziwill that day.

And I guess it is pretty important, because Carolyn starts referring to a dog that has also passed away—a dog that was like a child to Carolyn. Again, Henry remains quiet and in the silence Radziwill fills in the details about how the dog died of a broken heart a year later. No mention to the dog’s name or breed or well … anything. If he had gotten a name or some kind of hit, then be sure that the editors would have left it in, and it would be part of the show’s trailer. But alas the show jumps to Henry talking about Radziwill’s career.

Carolyn gives Henry a lot of sweet loving platitudes to tell Radziwill and adds that she wants to talk about a “TV Show and reality.” Radziwill calls that a hit by saying “I am on a reality show.” I thought his statement could have fit just about anything—that they used to watch a TV show together, that she will be getting a TV show, or any number of things. The word reality could have been used to mean a TV show type or in other ways. Radziwill fills in more details about her career history. Henry agrees with everything as if it all fit.

And that is the end of the reading. The show does a bit where Radziwill talks to the camera after Henry has left wherein she states that it is wonderful to know that “when you are alone, you really aren’t alone.” The music at this point is happier and more upbeat, cueing the viewers that this is another feel-good moment.

Going back to Bobby Finger believing that Henry knows very well who he is going to read for in advance, I can’t see any evidence of that. As in season one, it’s just cold reading. He says that the ring had something to do with a “reference to someone who died tragically at an early age,” which is pretty general, keeping in mind that he is holding and looking at the ring. He then talks about the dead woman being close to a dog that also died. Who hasn’t known a dog that has died? Henry didn’t pick up on anything to do with Radziwill’s husband, blowing that off as though he had nothing to tell her. Only Carolyn, whose important message was mentioning her dog, came through. And nothing else except how Carolyn is proud of Radziwill’s career choices.

I’m going on the record here and stating that Henry has not changed. He appears to be cold reading. He does not need to Google people beforehand, because he just needs to throw out general statements and then remain silent while the sitter fills in the details. His skill lies in his ability to nod in agreement to every statement as if he already knew that. His repertoire of facial expressions is wonderfully entertaining. And what a wonderful skill he has in silence—something that most of these grief vampires have lost in their rush to throw up as much information as possible for the sitter to grasp onto.

Finger and I both agree that this is not innocent fun. He writes, “to spread a message that is almost without fail, “I’m fine,” doesn’t just con their desperate, mournful targets out of a few hard-earned dollars, it does a disservice to the memories of those they lost.” The sooner Hollywood understands that this isn’t entertainment the better. But I’m not feeling hopeful at the moment; Koelewyn has over 167,000 likes on his Facebook page. When you read the desperate pleadings from his fans hoping to connect with their deceased loved ones, you will probably feel sick. If not Henry, then they will find someone else to believe in. I know that Finger and my actions probably have little effect, yet we keep trying anyway. Thank you, Hollywood, for giving us the best and the worst in “entertainment.”

Ray Hall and Katie Dyer are professors at California State University, Fresno, Ray in physics and Katie in child and family science. For years, Ray has worked behind the scenes for the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) The Amazing Meeting (TAM) by organizing and selecting the Sunday Paper presenters. This year he will be continuing that tradition at CSICon. Ray and Katie will also be presenting a workshop on Thursday, October 27, 1:30–3:30 pm called “Teaching Critical Thinking.”

Susan Gerbic: Katie, Ray, it’s so great to be able to catch up with you both. Can you please give the readers some background?

Ray Hall: I started my career in high-energy particle physics. I spent fifteen years working on a large particle detector at Fermi National Laboratory near Chicago. A highlight was in 1996 when I was part of the team that discovered a fundamental particle of nature called the “Top Quark.” Since that time, I’ve moved back to California and invested more and more in teaching. I just completed my sixteenth year at Fresno State. As I worked on my PhD, I became more curious about not only the science of physics but how science itself works. My first subscription to Skeptical Inquirer was in 1984. I discovered SI in part because I was trying to distill the difference between astronomy and astrology when I was an astronomy teaching assistant as an undergraduate. So these three threads, skepticism, philosophy of science, and physics, all came together in my teaching. My favorite class to teach is a critical thinking class called “Science and Nonsense.”

Katie Dyer: Ray is the insider here; I’m only riding in on his coattails. I’m a social scientist; I study parent education and infant sleep. My work deals with critical thinking, of course, as I teach research methods at the college level. I’ve been teaching students and parents how to interpret the research on things like corporal punishment, bed-sharing, and breastfeeding for two decades. I’ve also been combating nonsense such as the anti-vax movement and the Mozart effect, because those issues are salient to my discipline. But I didn’t know that there was a skeptic movement until I met Ray. Since then, he has introduced me to the work of James Randi and other proponents of scientific skepticism. We have collaborated as researchers studying the pseudoscientific beliefs of college students, and we’ve gotten married. A lot has happened!

Gerbic: I first became aware of you, Ray, when I applied for a Sunday Paper slot in 2011. That was at TAM9: From Outer Space. I was selected to present, and you were so kind yet firm in helping me get the presentation down to the time limit. That was almost my first time publically talking about the Guerilla Skepticism on Wikipedia (GSoW) project. Looking back on that video now, I realize how much our project has changed for the better; I was still finding my feet back then. The Sunday Papers even before 2011 were always one of my favorite parts of TAM. I was very happy to see that you would be continuing that tradition at CSICon this year. Please tell us how you took that role on.

Hall: Blame Hal Bidlack. If memory serves, I gave the very first Sunday Paper at the very first TAM in Florida in 2001. I applied again to give a paper at TAM2 (at the Tuscany in Las Vegas) and was accepted. It was at TAM2 when Hal Bidlack, the TAM emcee, sensing that I would apply again next year, approached me and asked if I would accept responsibility for vetting the Sunday Papers. I’ve been doing it ever since. One aspect of the Sunday Papers at TAM that drives me is how James Randi exemplifies where non-academic credentials are valuable to the skeptic movement. James Randi uses his skills as a magician to offer something very important to the cause, and he taught academics a thing or two to say the least. The Sunday Papers are an opportunity for anyone with a specific expertise to lend their skills to the movement. Every person can participate. In essence the Sunday Papers represent these crucial contributions of James Randi.

Gerbic: It’s too late this year, but perhaps you can give some pointers for anyone interested in applying for the honor of presenting in the future? You have a set number of slots open; it must be terrible to have to decide who is in and who is not.

Hall: Yes. One of the hardest parts of this responsibility is to inform those whose proposals did not make the cut. I feel it is important to be supportive of all those who submit, and I try when possible to offer tips for potential future resubmissions. In terms of the selection process, the first cut is to ensure the topic aligns with the mission of skepticism and the dissemination of critical thinking skills. If the talk is a good fit, the selection criteria, like skepticism itself, are about evidence and logic. Papers that are data driven get high priority. Sometimes I get proposals that are mostly a description of a project in the planning stages, or sometimes a wish to use the stage to crowd source a project. These are given much lower priority than studies that have already collected and analyzed data or, say, a media campaign that has a measurable outcome to report. Proposals that make it to the stage have some or all of these characteristics: they are well researched (with citations), introduce new data and analysis, discuss successes in media outreach, and the speaker’s credentials are well matched to the content of the proposal.

Gerbic: Katie, at TAM 2015 you presented a paper also. I heard many good things from people wondering where you have been all these years. Can you please tell us about that presentation?

Dyer: Ha ha! Thanks, Susan. Well, Ray has a vision that the Sunday Papers are an opportunity for anyone in the skeptic community to share their serious scholarship, even those of us who are not professional skeptics. So it seemed the right venue to share some preliminary results of research that I was doing at my own university that I thought would be of interest to the group. As a teacher, I wonder pretty much constantly why some students seem to “get it” and others don’t. I wonder what I can do to help move everyone into the group who embraces learning eagerly. This interest seems shared by skeptics who wonder how to educate others, whether formally or informally. I started off wondering how to “spark” curiosity, assuming that curiosity is what differentiates the eager learner from the apathetic one. So I’ve been surveying my students about their curiosity, along with other things such as their religiosity, their academic aptitude, their interests, and even their belief in pseudoscience. Ray and I have started evaluating the effects of educational interventions on pseudoscience belief. But last year, I shared the prevalence of epistemically unwarranted beliefs in a large sample of college students. This year, I’ll share the results of some intervention studies, but you’ll have to wait until CSICon to hear what works and what doesn’t!

Gerbic: One of my personal goals for organized skepticism besides rewriting Wikipedia is to help grow our community by finding the “doers” and encouraging and supporting them. Ray, can you tell us about some of the Sunday Paper presenters that like myself have used it as a stepping stone to do more? The first one that pops in my head is Robert Lancaster who presented on his Stop Kaz website and then went on to become a giant thorn in the side of Sylvia Browne. Who else?

Hall: Yes. Stop Sylvia was an amazing moment. Robert Lancaster’s has to be one of the most remembered Sunday Papers. But Tim Farley also comes to mind. He gave a Sunday Paper in 2008 called “Building Internet Tools for Skeptics.” He has gone on to do work with the website What’s the Harm?, among many contributions. Steve Novella and Harriet Hall presented from the Sunday stage, although it’s clear they were both active and rising stars promoting, and perhaps defining, evidence based medicine.

Dyer: What I most enjoy are the Sunday Papers that apply critical thinking in unconventional areas.

Hall: Yes. I love being introduced to fields and endeavors where skepticism is needed but where I hadn’t heard or thought of it yet. Some examples from recent Sunday Papers: Skepticism in veterinary medicine, in the patent office, in English and history textbooks, concerning the way law is practiced, and even skepticism at the gym. In thirteen years of Sunday Papers there have been a lot of surprises! Many wonderful surprises—and thankfully only a handful of cringe-worthy moments!

Gerbic: Katie, you have been to many TAM events as an observer and insider. Are you, like me, excited that CSI is taking the best parts of TAM and adding their own special pizzazz to make this the skeptic conference event of the year? I mean we have the Sunday Papers AND James Randi. Richard Dawkins AND the organizing strengths and history of CSI. Even a Victorian Houdini Séance by Mark Edward held at Midnight. How much better can it get?

Dyer: Don’t forget that we’ll be having a costume party, as it’s the weekend before Halloween!

Gerbic: Ray, after your years of working with the JREF, can you share some of your best memories? Maybe some behind-the-scenes gossip only the organizers would know?

Hall: The inner workings of all but the last TAM remain a mystery to me. I always did only the one task asked of me (Sunday Papers) until TAM 13 last year. My favorite memories involve my children. I have three, and over the thirteen TAMs I was able to bring each at least once. At TAM 5 I had my oldest son with me and at a dinner he got to sit across from James Randi and watch as Randi made a salt shaker disappear in front of Richard Dawkins. At TAM 6 my middle son pointed out to me that Matt Parker and Trey Stone were on the elevator with us and later had a nice conversation with Adam Savage. And I have a fantastic photo of my daughter at TAM 9, an eighth grader at the time, standing next to Randi after the entire audience participated in a “bending of the spoons” with Richard Wiseman.

Dyer: I am delighted that we have a chance to fill in the gap where TAM used to be.

by Celestia Ward

Over the past week schools throughout Alabama have been threatened by several people claiming to be clowns. Responses to the threats—many of them originating (or shared) on social media—have resulted in increased police patrols and in some cases full lockdowns.

Last Thursday morning police in Flomaton Ala. investigated what were deemed credible threats to students at Flomaton High School that were shared via social media. A total of about 700 students at Flomaton High School and nearby Flomaton Elementary School were told to shelter in place while the schools, following protocol, were placed on lockdown for much of the day while dozens of police and other law enforcement officers searched the grounds for threats. The threats had originated from two Facebook accounts, “FLOMO KLOWN” and “Shoota Cllown”; the digital trail led FBI investigators to one adult and two teens. Twenty-two year old Makayla Smith of Flomaton was arrested for making a terroristic threat while posting as an evil clown and is being held on a $200,000 bond.

This string of incidents may leave parents and teachers wondering if the “clown lockdown” is the new normal, and indeed a similar incident happened again yesterday in Irondale, another Alabama town. As the news website AL.com reported, “Irondale police Officer James Lewis, a school resource officer, said a student reported to police that a Facebook post hinted at the possibility of clowns showing up on campus at Shades Valley High School. Irondale police Det. Sgt. Michael Mangina said they have two school resource officers assigned to Shades Valley. In addition to those two officers, extra officers were patrolling the campus today. Mangina said they are monitoring the situation, but said they are not overly concerned. ‘Part of the problem is the fact this stuff gets on social media and it explodes and it alarms people and it just spreads,’ he said. ‘In today's climate, we’re better safe than sorry.’”

In a third Alabama school threat this week, two people dressed as clowns appeared in a Facebook video brandished a knife and ranted for several minutes about “coming for you in Troy, Alabama.” Police identified the two in the video, which had been seen more than 50,000 times, as juveniles who attend Charles Henderson High School in Troy. Police did not charge the two boys because the video did not contain a specific threat to a person, building, or institution, but warned in a public statement that other potential copycats that such pranks would not be tolerated: “The Troy Police Department strongly discourages anyone from dressing as a clown or wearing a clown mask for any reason due to the sensitive and threatening environment that this type of costume is currently under.”

Amid the rumors and scares one eleven-year-old girl in Georgia took a knife to her middle school to fight off clowns. The girl was arrested September 16 at Burney-Harris-Lyons Middle School in Athens; a police report quoted the unnamed minor as saying she needed the knife to protect her and her family from the clowns she’d heard were coming out of the woods and attacking children.

Not only have creepy clowns recently been reported in Greenville, S.C., allegedly luring children into the woods. No evidence of those clowns has emerged and they are widely considered merely rumors, but there have been a handful of people dressing as clowns and scaring people. Last month a pair of Canadian teenagers dressed as clowns were having fun in a park scaring younger kids, and in Wisconsin a clown seen at night was revealed to be part of a viral marketing campaign for a scary film. In some cases both adults and schoolchildren have admitted to making up stories of seeing threatening clowns.

Any other time reports of threatening clowns would likely have been ignored or dismissed, but these copycat clown incidents come at a time when very real terroristic threats and school shootings are in the news. Parents can take comfort that no clowns are actually trying to abduct or harm kids—not a single credible report has surfaced of any child being hurt or even touched by a threatening clown in recent weeks. Still, teachers and police understandably err on the side of caution, deciding it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Social media plays a large role in inspiring these copycat incidents and police, who waste time and resources responding to these false reports, hope that the novelty of reporting fake clown threats wears off soon.

Jay Diamond is known on the West coast for his unending enthusiasm for scientific skepticism as well as his San Francisco speaker series and activist group, Reason 4 Reason. Jay also presented a Sunday Paper at TAM 2015 on evidence-based fitness and skeptical bodybuilding.

Susan Gerbic: Jay, you are quite a popular personality in the community, but the real reason I wanted to talk to you today was because of your involvement with the Sunday Paper presentation at TAM 2015. I know the deadline to petition to speak has already passed, but I don’t think the average attendee understands how much work goes into these fifteen-minute presentations. Can you please tell us about the experience of qualifying to speak?

Jay Diamond: You definitely need to do your work. I applied in 2014 and made the short-list but wasn’t selected. I refined my work, did more research, and made the cut in 2015. The first piece is writing a synopsis that quickly identifies that you’re appropriate for the audience. You should demonstrate an understanding of scientific skepticism and critical thinking, research, experimentation, and a novel subject or twist on a well-understood subject. It should also be of mass appeal and potentially entertaining, so detailed math proofs are probably sub-optimal subject matter.

If you are selected, you must submit a formal paper, and the hard work begins. You must organize and articulate your work, as you would with any formal report, and clearly separate how you are bringing scientific skepticism to your subject. Most importantly, you must back up all assertions with evidence.

No changes were made to my paper, but I needed to clarify that specific citations backed up my claims. It’s the kind of clarification that would and should be requested of any good skeptic. I’d been writing a blog on the subject for several months, so much of the work had previously been done in parts.

Finally, you should remember that your paper is being selected as part of an ensemble and that Dr. Hall is attempting to create something both educational and entertaining. You may not be selected only because another subject fits better with the ensemble, and there’s nothing you can do about that but apply again in subsequent years.

Gerbic: Tell us about your talk.

Photograph by Brian Engler

Diamond: I went on a journey from the worst shape of my life to vastly exceeding my fitness goals and had to wade through mounds of questionable claims to understand which claims were valid. In the process, my research unveiled some surprising facts and busted some myths. I discussed the science behind actively improving your health, the rationale behind taking protein supplements for bodybuilders, and the ultimate secret for building muscle. It was a combination of historical research, calculation, and critical thinking.

I’d always wanted to do a talk at TAM, and this was a chance to give back to the community by talking about a subject that combined a life-changing event with scientific skepticism. I had no idea that I’d be opening the last day of the last TAM. Since the talk, I’ve had a number of people credit me with losing weight, improving their fitness, or changing their perceived fitness goals. It’s been incredibly gratifying and undoubtedly the highlight of my skeptical experience.

Gerbic: One of my first experiences speaking about the Guerilla Skepticism on Wikipedia (GSoW) project was a Sunday Paper Presentation at TAM9. I know exactly what you are talking about. Ray was kind but also strict with making sure I was prepared. It was nerve racking but looking back well worth it.

Diamond: It’s much easier to do an hour-long talk than fifteen minutes. For the short talk, you need to be very well rehearsed. I’ve presented to Nobel Laureates, billionaires, and industry leaders, but I’ve never been more prepared and more nervous than presenting to a room with 1,000 skeptics.

Gerbic: CSI will continue the tradition of Sunday Papers this October. You and I have talked about this before; it is both of our favorite part of the convention. Why do you think that’s so?

Diamond: The Sunday Papers are “best of” the skeptical community. Grassroots skeptics get fifteen minutes to discuss their passion, so they are concise and clear. The presentations are almost always on subjects not otherwise discussed. Dr. Hall curates the talks to ensure a broad diversity, so if a subject doesn’t interest you, wait fifteen minutes. Speakers span armchair skeptics to skeptical activists to experts in a field. I’m usually riveted by one or two of the talks, fascinated by another two, and the others are wild cards—the right balance to ensure diversity and broad appeal.

Getting up on the last morning of a long conference is hard, but I do it every year because it’s completely worth it. DO NOT MISS IT!

Gerbic: I hope to talk to a few other Paper presenters, as many have stuck with me over the years. How about you? Which ones were your favorites?

Diamond: I remember Dr. Martha Keller discussing alternative veterinary medicine in 2012, combining her work with her passion for scientific skepticism. I was surprised at the breadth of treatment, which includes acupuncture, chiropractic, and homeopathy. The talk was fascinating, funny, and left me with something actionable—to warn my friends with pets.

In 2013, Andrew Hansford discussed “The Marblehead UFO,” which was basic grassroots skepticism. Andrew did what every skeptic wants to do but rarely does. He did basic research on a UFO sighting to find the source of the sightings by assembling press reports, searching through flight logs and weather reports, triangulating maps, and performing basic calculations to unquestionably identify a specific airline flight that was responsible for the sighting. He changed a UFO to an IFO, and everyone left that talk thinking “I could do this.”

The same year, Australian Shane Greenup discussed his inventive internet platform for global debate, Rbutr. His goal of spreading critical thinking and civil discourse was so motivating to me that I asked Shane to travel to San Francisco and give the talk for my local speaker series.

Gerbic: So there will be a Halloween contest this year at CSICon. I was hoping you were going to dress up as Phelps with the red cupping marks, power balance bracelet, and nasal tape strips. Any chance that is going to happen?

Diamond: I was planning on going as the Wikipediatrician, but I’m not sure I can get the rights…. Know anyone that can help?

Gerbic: HaHa, Jay. Let’s get serious for a minute, Jay.

Diamond: This will be by far the largest gathering of skeptics in costume. It’s in Vegas, and I’m going all-in. I have a costume planned, but nobody will see it until that evening. Everyone going to the conference should plan on going to the party and attending in costume. We have so many creative people in our community; I think it will be the highlight of the weekend—outside of your workshop, of course—and skeptics won’t be able to stop talking about the brilliant costumes.

The New York Times Magazine has published a remarkable article by Kathryn Jezer-Morton: a letter of recommendation for ear candling. It is part of a regular series of “Letters of Recommendation” that the magazine publishes as “celebrations of objects and experiences that have been overlooked or underappreciated.” Jezer-Morton’s article is remarkable for providing insight into why people ignore science and do weird things.

Ear candles are hollow fabric cylinders impregnated with beeswax. Users insert the small end into their ear canal and set fire to the outer end; the candle is burned for ten or fifteen minutes. Candling supposedly creates a vacuum that sucks earwax out of the ear canal. Users “know” this is true because when they open the used candle they can see the wax inside. It’s crumbly and earwax-colored, but it isn’t earwax; it’s residue from the candle itself. If users did a simple test, they would see that the same debris appears if they prop the candle in a drinking glass instead of inserting it in an ear. Scientific studies have shown that no vacuum is produced, and no earwax is removed. Moreover, it is dangerous. There are reports in the medical literature of burns, blockage of the ear canal, temporary hearing loss, infections of the external ear, and perforations of the eardrum that can be permanent. In one case, general anesthetic was required to remove a large mass of solidified yellow candle wax from deep in a woman’s ear canal. In at least two cases, users have set their houses on fire, with one case resulting in death.

Ear candling is performed in spas, by beauticians, and by alternative therapists, but most often by patients and their friends at home. Most users think ear candling just removes earwax, but some think it can relieve sinus pain, cure ear infections, treat tinnitus and vertigo, and even strengthen the brain!

Ear candles are uniformly denounced by real doctors as ineffective and dangerous. It is illegal to sell them in Canada and is only legal to sell them in the United States if no medical claims are made.

I have long thought ear candling was one of the stupidest and most laughable oddities in alternative medicine. I did a double take when I saw that someone was recommending it in The New York Times Magazine. Didn’t she know the facts? It turns out she did; she says, “I believe the doctors. I really do. I swear.” And yet she chooses to keep doing it. She explains why.

She says clean ear canals feel good: “I’m pretty sure there’s a nerve connection between the inside of my ear canals and the part of my brain that causes me to involuntarily sigh with pleasure.” She reminds us about the warnings not to use Q-tips to remove earwax and asks, “if all ear-cleaning is technically bad for you, why not have some fun with it?” (Yes, Kathryn, but you are having fun with something that doesn’t clean ears.)

And it really is fun for her.

Late in every summer, a few of my old friends get together at my cabin in Vermont, and after the kids are in bed, we pour some wine and we ear-candle … making sure no errant bits of burning gauze ignite your hair or furniture.... Friends in proximity to a burning ear candle tend to slow down. Conversations become reflective. Smartphone screens remain dark. Having your ears candled engenders a state of relaxed focus, both on the flame burning mere inches away from your ear and on your friend’s presence beside you. When one of you is done having your ears candled, you can switch places. Like hair braiding or nail painting, ear candling is a ritual that forces a stillness, a momentary presence of mind that can elude friendships for weeks, if not months, at a time … a calm takes hold of the group.

She describes the soothing hiss of the candle burning, punctuated by occasional satisfying little pops, and how the smoke gently warms the ear. Then comes “the reveal,” where the gauze is unraveled and she and her friends share a collective gasp of exaggerated disgust at the residue. She considers it a pleasant experience with effects that are probably illusory but no less enjoyable as a result.

The Roman playwright Terence said “humani nihil a me alienum puto” which means “I am human, and nothing that is human is alien to me.” I try diligently to understand why other humans do weird things; I try to put myself in their shoes and try to get into their minds. I do understand the pleasure of stillness and relaxation, and I understand the strong appeal of a comforting familiar ritual shared with friends, but ear candles still seem pretty alien to me. Part of me understands why Kathryn does this, but another part of me wants to scream at her: “Why can’t you enjoy relaxing and spending time with your friends without having to stick a frigging candle in your ear?”

I actually own a package of ear candles that I received as a gag gift from a skeptical friend. I keep them as a reminder of the inexhaustible ability of the human mind to make things up and believe in them. No way am I ever going to put one in my ear.

Call me prejudiced … in favor of science and reality.

HBO, via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MepXBJjsNxs

Scientists and the modern scientific process have taken quite a beating over the past few weeks. First, the New York Times reported (based on a Journal of the American Medical Association article and commentary) that in the 1960s, the sugar industry funded and reviewed studies that downplayed sucrose’s role in coronary heart disease.^1,2 “They were able to derail the discussion about sugar for decades,” one study author said. Then a study by Stanford researcher John Ioannidis found that most medical meta-studies are either unnecessary, misleading, or wrong.³ He also found that when an employee of a drug company served as an author, the paper was twenty-two times less likely to make negative statements about the drug.

Reading such reports can put the defenders of modern science in a difficult spot. We’re used to batting away accusations of money-driven conspiracies, such as climate scientists’ supposed profit motive. But it’s hard to deny that sometimes money and other powerful influences have a deleterious effect on the practice of science and, in turn, on public well-being. Tobacco industry influence over smoking studies is a prime example; others include inaccurate findings about the drugs Vioxx, Paxil, and Avandia and the bone protein Infuse. Conflict of interest, it seems, can be a signal of something deeply wrong, an irrelevant smear, or even the gateway to unscientific thinking.

How, then, should members of the public think about conflict of interest, especially when it comes to medical research—something that touches them on a day-to-day level? And how can science communicators help?

Or Is This Even a Problem?

The first stumbling block to public understanding is that the science community disagrees wildly about how much of a problem conflict of interest is and how we should think about it.

For example, Andrew Brown of the University of Alabama at Birmingham argues that to downgrade evidence because of its source amounts to an ad hominem attack, and devaluing a study because of its funding is an example of the genetic fallacy. Instead, the fair and logical approach is to judge the evidence itself, especially the study’s methodology.

There’s also the problem of establishing cause and effect. The sugar industry’s involvement in that 1960s research certainly wasn’t very palatable—but, as Brown points out, there’s actually no direct evidence that the industry influenced the study’s outcome.

Many scientists also emphasize that industry funding for medical research is simply unavoidable, given the low levels of government support. After peaking at $35.6 billion in 2004, National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding then declined by almost 2 percent a year in real terms. Industry’s share of U.S. medical research funding grew from 46 percent in 1994 to about 48 percent in 2004 to 58 percent in 2012.⁴ So for-profit companies have long contributed a good chunk of funding, but medical researchers rely on them now more than ever.

With industry funding being so widespread, a lot of good research risks getting discredited. “It's kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't," Brown told Vox Media site Eater. He says that critics have focused on his own funding and dismissed his work, failing to even look at his methods and results.

Moses III, H., D.H.M. Matheson, S. Cairns-Smith, et al. 2015. The anatomy of medical research: US and international comparisons. Journal of the American Medical Association 313(2): 174–189. doi:10.1001/jama.2014.15939.

Evidence Cuts Both Ways

But advocates for tighter scrutiny say there’s good data to support their claim that on the whole, conflicted science is worse science.

A Cochrane meta-review of forty-eight papers—which themselves made comparisons between corporate-sponsored and non–corporate-sponsored research—found that industry funding led to more favorable results and conclusions.⁵ Another study of seventeen systematic reviews revealed that of those studies that disclosed a financial conflict of interest, 83 percent found no association between sugary drink consumption and weight gain or obesity. But of the studies without such disclosures, the opposite was true: 83 percent found that sugary drinks were a risk factor.⁶

The ubiquity of industry funding is significant, transparency advocates argue—but if anything, this reality demands more transparency rather than less.

“I think that there is so little recognition on the part of many members of the general public about the extent of conflicted research,” says Gary Schwitzer, publisher of medical journalism watchdog HealthNewsReview. His website reviews health news stories using a list of ten criteria, including, “Does the story use independent sources and identify conflicts of interest?”

Schwitzer notes that a financial relationship doesn’t necessarily imply diminished research quality. But, he says, “We need to shine the brightest of lights on disclosures that are made, and to be vigilant about those disclosures that should be made but are not. Then, if this is not too idealist, we can start to have a more informed public dialogue about where are we with the funding of research, what are we comfortable with and what are we not comfortable with.”

I’m inclined to agree. To argue that conflicts of interest are an unavoidable evil shows a paucity of imagination and ethical ambition. Most of the world’s social reforms have come about after determined people sought to challenge the “unchangeable” status quo. Science funding isn’t slavery or women’s suffrage, but I think the same broad principle applies: throwing our hands in the air helps no one.

Principles for Science Communicators

With that background in mind, I would suggest that science communicators need a set of principles to govern how they report conflict of interest. This is only a starting point, but such principles could include the following:

Honesty
Sometimes, science communicators seem to pursue two separate and somewhat opposing conversations. One conversation is about all the problems undermining science—not only conflict of interest but reproducibility, cognitive bias, p-hacking, and so on. But the articles that are actually designed to guide the public or to bolster their belief in the scientific method often fail to acknowledge these problems.

It’s as if by only talking about the general superiority of the scientific process over other ways of knowing, we can avoid talking about some of the reasons that people might be distrustful of science in the first place. To those who know about science’s greatest scandals, such as the Tuskegee experiment, this can seem like willful obfuscation. Distrust of the medical establishment is a legacy years in the making with particular ramifications for minorities, so we needed to start talking openly decades ago. We’ve got some catching up to do.

Context
That said, there are responsible and irresponsible ways to talk about conflict of interest. In most cases it would be inappropriate to lead a news story with a screaming headline like “Industry-Funded Study Finds No Link between X and Y!” Such an article, taken by readers in isolation, suggests that the industry funding was unusual or that it was necessarily responsible for the finding.

At the same time, potential conflicts of interest should be reported. This might be most effective if combined with an overview of funding figures in the given area of research—so readers can see that while industry funded this study, it also funds such-and-such percent of similar studies. Whether the reader concludes from this that the funding source is therefore not a big deal or that it is a problem to be solved will depend on the reader’s own point of view.

Consider Types of Industry Involvement
Scientists taking dictation from industry before diving into their Scrooge McDuck–like pool of gold coins is an unlikely scenario. Industry involvement can take a variety of forms, ranging from unrestricted university research support to partnerships with individual researchers to establishment of research centers to fee-for-service consultation arrangements.

As Julia Belluz argues for Vox: “Often the researchers working with industry are good researchers who honestly believe their views. They may even have good reasons to work with food companies. The problem is that industry funding can elevate minority views and give them more prominence than they otherwise would have.”

In other words, industry influence is both less willful and more pernicious than strident critics might have you believe. Even if a particular study uses good methods and yields valid results, it could be part of a wider pattern of distorted emphasis on particular maladies or interventions.

Consider Wider Types of Influence
This column has focused mostly on problems of funding, but that’s far from the only form conflict of interest takes.

“Financial conflicts of interest are really important… [But] there are so many other conflicts of interest that nobody talks about or that you can’t put a finger on,” says Ivan Oransky, founder of Retraction Watch, global editorial director of MedPage Today, and himself an MD.

He outlines a likely scenario: “I’m so-and-so professor and I’ve built a whole career on the idea that x is related to y. And someone comes along and says, ‘Actually x is not related to y, q is related to y.’ Although what I should be doing if I’m thinking about knowledge and science and the greater good is saying, ‘Wow, that’s great, we know more now than we thought we did,’ instead I’m going to fight like hell to discredit that work.

“The conflicts of interest that worry me are the unspoken ones,” Oransky says.

Look at the Pattern
Are you looking at an isolated example—or has this industry funded dozens of studies over decades? Or something in between? What percentage of industry-funded findings in this field are positive compared to studies with nonprofit funding? These questions can be difficult to answer in a definitive way, but searching the relevant journals can help. There’s also an opportunity here for investigative journalists to build comprehensive databases to inform the public and guide their fellow reporters. (The medical community has discussed such databases too but without much to show for it yet.)

Look at Methods
Conflict of interest or no, one of the most powerful tools we have for evaluating scientific research is simply judging the methods used. Was the study randomized and controlled? Was the sample size large enough? Was the study period long enough to demonstrate lasting change? Were the statistical methods valid? And don’t forget the invaluable ten-point list over at HealthNewsReview.

Guidelines for the Public

Likewise, it would be useful to start developing some guidance for readers on how they might want to consider conflict of interest claims. They might want to ask themselves the following questions:

What’s the methodology?
Although people don’t often have time to dig into the methods of individual studies—and think how impossible that becomes when we talk about entire fields—we should at least encourage them to put methodology top of mind. Ask for Evidence is a great layperson’s guide.

Is this a pattern?
It’s easy to get upset about the conflict of interest in a particular study. But if there’s no evidence of a wider problem, that apparent conflict is pretty irrelevant.

What does the preponderance of evidence say?
Do you even need to read about new studies? Sometimes we get worked up about apparently flip-flopping advice—especially about nutrition—and forget that ongoing research is mostly working at the margins. The fundamentals remain the same. As Michael Pollan puts it: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”

What alternative funding arrangement would satisfy you?
Some people complain about the influence of Big Pharma or Big Agra. Others say government funding influences the direction of research. If you can’t think of a single reasonable source of research funding that would satisfy you, realize that you’re advocating for no research at all.

What’s the alternative to this research? Are you trading off a conflict of interest problem for a deeper methods problem?
One of the most worrying outcomes of distrust in science is that people often turn to unproven alternative medicine. Essentially, they’re trading somewhat flawed research for either much more flimsy research or no research at all.

As Oransky neatly summarizes it: “I don’t think that just because you mistrust some aspect of modern medicine, even if it’s legitimately because there’s been fraud, that should throw you into the hands of people who don’t have any scientific credibility.”

That might be a difficult point to get across to the true believers, but it’s one where we can have a real and positive influence over the broader public. We start by being honest.

Notes

1. Kearns, C.E., L.A. Schmidt, and S.A. Glantz. 2016. Sugar industry and coronary heart disease research: A historical analysis of internal industry documents. Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine. Published online September 12. Available online at http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx&articleid=2548255.
2. Nestle, M. 2016. Food industry funding of nutrition research: The relevance of history for current debates. Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine. Published online September 12. Available online at http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx&articleid=2548251.
3. Ioannidis, J. 2016. The mass production of redundant, misleading, and conflicted systematic reviews and meta-analyses. The Milbank Quarterly 94(3): 485–514. Available online at http://www.milbank.org/uploads/documents/The_Mass_Production_of_Redundant_Misleading_and_Conflicted_Systematic_Reviews_and_Meta-Analyses.pdf.
4. Moses III, H., D.H.M. Matheson, S. Cairns-Smith, et al. 2015. The anatomy of medical research: US and international comparisons. Journal of the American Medical Association 313(2): 174–189. doi:10.1001/jama.2014.15939.
5. Lundh, A., S. Sismondo, J. Lexchin, et al. 2012. Industry sponsorship and research outcome. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (12). Available online at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.MR000033.pub2/full.
6. Bes-Rastrollo, M., M.B. Schulze, M. Ruiz-Canela, et al. 2013. Financial conflicts of interest and reporting bias regarding the association between sugar-sweetened beverages and weight gain: A systematic review of systematic reviews. PLoS Med 10(12): e1001578. Available online at http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article&id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001578#.

By Sgerbic - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Robert Carroll, philosopher, CSI Fellow, and prominent skeptic widely known for his online Skeptics Dictionary, died from pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer August 25, 2016. He was 71. His legacy lives on through his work, his writings, his inspiration, and in the thousands of students who sat in his classroom where he taught critical thinking skills. Our heart goes out to his family, especially his wife of 48 years Leslie, daughters Jennifer and Allison, sons-in-law Rodney and Daniel, and his grandchildren Olivia and Flynn.

Before there was Wikipedia, there was The Skeptic’s Dictionary. It was conceived and managed by this one amazing person, Robert Todd Carroll. He started it in 1994 after taking a community education class with his wife Leslie, learning about the Internet, email, and HTML.

Carroll earned his PhD in philosophy in 1974 from the University of California at San Diego. A professor of philosophy from 1977 to 2007 at Sacramento City College, Carroll initially began the Dictionary with rewritten lectures from his classes. Over time the website http://skepdic.com morphed into the workhorse it is today with more than 85,000 hyperlinks and 5,500 files. It receives more than 400,000 visits a month. In 2003 it was published in book form by John Wiley and Sons.

In 2010 CSI made him a well-deserved Fellow. Starting in March 2012 Bob appeared on the Skepticality Podcast with a regular segment called “Unnatural Virtue.”

When Bob discovered his cancer in 2014 we talked briefly about it as we were both members of the club no one wants to join. He told me that he had traveled to Switzerland for treatment and that after 5 weeks he was exhausted. He didn’t feel depressed, just tired. He asked me, “Did you ever get to the point where you were tired of being tired?” Yet he continued maintaining the website and writing his popular newsletters. Only in May 2016 did he announce that he was stopping due to health reasons.

Mostafa Mahmoud, an editor for our Guerilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project, published a long overdue rewrite of Carroll’s Wikipedia page in May 2016. Readers will enjoy learning about the Bob Carroll few knew. He was raised Catholic and, for a time in college, even entered the seminary. His doctoral thesis was on the religious philosophy of Edward Stillingfleet, which Carroll later published: The Common-sense Philosophy of Religion of Bishop Edward Stillingfleet 1635-1699.

I asked Mostafa why he felt so strongly about wanting to rewrite Bob’s Wikipedia page, and I think his response explains completely why Bob Carroll is so important to us.

“When I was 15 and grappling with Islam, the internet was my only chance at some rational and impartial reading material in Egypt. That’s when I first came across skepdic.com. Carroll’s article about Satan particularly fascinated me. The article was written in an amusing satirical tone, mocking fears that had been instilled in me since infancy. Yet, it still managed to feel analytical and thought-provoking, it spoke to me deeply at the time. This article all the more special for me because of how hard it was to find people with a sympathetic point of view before the explosion of social media. Since that day I’m still yet to emerge from the rabbit hole that’s skepdic.com.

“I was fortunate to be able to tell Carroll just how big of an impact he had on my life a few months before his passing. Surely thousands of others have similar stories, thousands who were affected by a stimulating piece of writing from the man’s prolific career. His writing brought skepticism to the internet. However, its value doesn’t just lie in its entrepreneurial status. More than twenty years after its inception, skepdic.com still houses some of the most intriguing and provocative skeptical arguments around. Nowadays, because of the efforts of Carroll and people like him, truth seekers all around the world can traverse any geological or intellectual barriers set by their environments, that’s the sort of legacy he leaves behind.”

Bob Carroll inspired all who knew him. He created a skeptical Encyclopedia, years before Wikipedia. It became a major go-to source for the world. He had an iPhone app that I heard advertised on every Skeptic Zone podcast weekly. I think I have the ad memorized. Bob was approached by so many people thinking that they were going to change the world with their blog and he received requests all the time from people asking Bob to read their work. Bob’s answers were polite and friendly, advising them to join the GSoW project if they really wanted to make lasting educational changes to topics concerning scientific skepticism. He sent me one such letter where he refers the correspondent to one of his newsletters about GSoW and how the Skeptic’s Dictionary received over 8,000 visitor referrals coming from Wikipedia:

Good luck with your project. Sorry, but I don't have time to read the hundreds of skeptical blogs that now exist. Good luck getting heard above the din. You might ask yourself if starting a blog right now is the best use of your talents. If you are interested in having an impact while remaining relatively anonymous read the following from one of my newsletters:

‘“So, if you are a skeptic in search of a project, consider becoming an editor of Wikipedia articles. Don't know where to start? In her interview with Ben Radford, Susan says "I would love to mentor anyone interested in learning how to edit." I hope those words come back to haunt her.”’

I learned about Bob’s death from an email from his wife Leslie. I’m reprinting it here with her permission.

Dear Susan,

I am very sorry to bring sad news about Bob. He left us Thursday morning, August 25, on a journey to the stars and beyond from whence he came. He was admitted to the local hospital August 22 and was due to come home to hospice care. It was not to be. Our boy took his own path home and died quietly and peacefully, surrounded by family and Bob Dylan songs.

Two years ago, he was diagnosed with Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Cancer, the same rare disease that Steve Jobs had. We both hoped he would be with us longer since this disease is often slow-growing. It was not to be.

Shortly before Bob died, he looked at me and said, "Death is nothing." When I looked puzzled, he explained that Epicurus had said that while dying was hard, death is nothing. In fact, death was quite something to those of us who loved this complex, bitingly funny, loving man who is no longer.

I apologize for the time it's taken to let the skeptic's community know but it's taken me a while to re-center. As a friend and colleague of Bob’s, I thought you would want to know about his passing.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sacbee/obituary.aspx?n=robert-todd-carroll&pid=181699431

http://www.smith-funerals.com/obituaries/Robert-Todd-Carroll?obId=1130514#/celebrationWall

With sadness..

Leslie Carroll

The number of comments I received after the announcement of his death on my Facebook wall tell the story of Bob’s impact on the lives of our community. Here is a sampling:

“His legacy lives on, as it should, and must.”
– Claus Larsen

“A great loss for our community, and the world at large.”
– Brian Hart

“I used to look stuff up on SkepDic all the time, trying to sort out the real from the woo. This is a loss.”
– Michael Lazarus

“I loved and still love his dictionary. Have spent hours on that site.”
– Dan Green

“His stuff was among the earliest material I referenced when schooling myself on skepticism.”
– Bob Morse

“My copy of the skeptics dictionary is sitting on the shelf. I loved Bobs email[s] also. Going to miss him.”
– Greg LeMunyan

“He put skepticism on the web. A deep thinker. He will be missed.”
– Ray Hall

“The WWW was quite small in 1994 and his efforts carved out a significant part of the skeptic online identity. I remember reading his dictionary when I should have been working at a publishing job.”
– Chris Guest

“So sad to hear this. My signed copy of the Skeptics Dictionary sits on my shelf - I bought it out of the trunk of his car the night before it went on sale. He was at the Skeptics Toolbox that year. What a huge contribution he has made.”
– Jeanine Streeter DeNoma

I’ve asked several people from the skeptic community for their thoughts on Bob’s legacy…

Ben Radford: “I only met Bob Carroll twice, but he was a prominent figure in skepticism for me. He was thoughtful, intelligent, and a great explainer. His Skeptics Dictionary was one of the first skeptical books I bought, and I consider it essential reference reading along with Randi’s encyclopedia, Martin’s Fads and Fallacies, and a few others. When I found that he had created a website based on the book, I was delighted and often linked to it in articles I’d written. The entries were not comprehensive or too academic, but then they were not meant to be; Bob’s goal was more public outreach and less preaching to the choir. I was honored on occasion when I found myself referenced in his work, and we exchanged a few correspondences over the years. Between his teaching and his books and website, he educated many thousands of people over the years, and his legacy lives on. I’ll miss him.”

Harriet Hall:
“If skepticism had a Bible, it would be the Skeptic's Dictionary. I refer to it constantly. Robert was thorough and meticulous about checking his facts and providing references. His critical thinking skills were without equal. The Dictionary is an invaluable resource on pretty much every topic of interest to skeptics.”

Richard Saunders:
“I have lost count of the number of times I have used Bob's work as references. It was so good to direct people to his website for concise reliable information. It was and still is one of the better sites on the Internet for skeptics and believers too.”

Brian Dunning:
“It's a pretty rare occasion that I'm researching some paranormal or pseudoscience topic that I don't find Bob Carroll had already found everything I'd found, and more. Sometimes I'll find something incredibly obscure that I'm sure nobody else had ever turned up; and nine times out of ten, Bob had. And that tenth time, Martin Gardner had. Between the two of them, I don't think there's a single unturned stone left in the world.”

Sharon Hill:
“I can't count how many times I consulted The Skeptic's Dictionary for a reference or overview of a topic. It was my primary source to link to regarding a skeptical view of a topic, the closest thing to a Wikipedia of skepticism that we had. I only met Bob once so didn't know him personally, but I will miss his passion for this work. I'm so grateful to have this legacy that remains.”

Tim Farley:
“When I first got into skeptical topics, The Skeptic’s Dictionary was an absolutely crucial resource in my education. As I put together my own website What’s The Harm? I linked to Bob’s site whenever possible to provide background and supporting material. He was always a friendly and gracious person when I encountered him at skeptic conferences, or asked him a favor over email. Just a few months ago I found a minor factual error that had crept into one of his articles, and he quickly fixed it and thanked me for the input. The entire skeptical community will miss him.&rdqou;

Derek Colanduno:
"I got to meet Bob only a couple times, we had a lot of fun the times we did get to actually sit down and discuss his work, and his future plans for what he was doing. Bob had a great, popular, segment on my show, Skepticality. When he told me he was diagnosed with cancer it was terrible. Even though I hadn't been able to see Bob for more than a couple years, it still kills me a little inside when I think I cannot reach out to him anymore to know what he is thinking about, or what his next, cool, idea would be to promote critical thinking and the skeptical mindset to the public."

Barry Karr:
“One of the best responsibilities I have as CSI Executive Director is to write the letters to the people who have just been elected as either a Fellow or Consultant to the Committee. I remember being simply delighted to be able to send such a letter to Robert. He had spoken at CSI conferences and had taken part in our Skeptic's Toolbox, but it was his tireless work on the Skeptic's Dictionary that really shined for us. It is such a wonderful resource for all things skeptic's need to know, kind of a one-stop oasis of knowledge. I so looked forward to his regular "The Skeptic's Dictionary Newsletter" not only for the updates on existing entries, but for his take on new topics and claims. When it showed up in my in-box it was always "What does Bob say about it!?" Truth be told there was also a bit of a thrill when Bob would mention an article in the Skeptical Inquirer, or one of our events. You know how the saying goes that you don't know how much you miss something until it's gone. I am not sure that is totally true, he is missed dearly already.”

I know Bob Carroll was exceptional to his family and friends, and I want everyone to know that he was very special to the skeptic community as well.

Thank you Bob; you showed us the way. We will continue from here.

In January 2016, Campbell Soup generated headlines by announcing that it would voluntarily label its products containing genetically modified (GM) corn, soy, beets, and other crops. Like most food industry leaders, about three quarters of Campbell Soup products contain such ingredients.


The company’s announcement came in advance of a summer deadline set by Vermont requiring the labeling of GM foods sold in the state. Legislatures in more than twenty states have considered similar requirements. Food industry groups have lobbied for congressional legislation preempting any state requirements, encouraging voluntary disclosure. But Campbell Soup is notable for breaking with this strategy, calling instead for mandatory labeling (Strom 2016).


Contrary to the claims of “Frankenfood” opponents, research shows that Americans have not turned against the promising technology. Most remain unaware of the debate. If asked directly, Americans voice support for labeling, but these opinions are neither deeply held nor top of mind.


In this context, Campbell Soup’s strategy is a shrewd gamble that could lead to several counterintuitive yet welcome outcomes. If Americans were to encounter GM labels on almost all processed foods, the ubiquity and apparent safety of such foods may actually bolster public trust and confidence, quelling controversy and opening the door to a next generation of GM food products that offer enormous benefits.

Science vs. Movement Politics


According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other expert organizations, GM foods in comparison to other food products do not pose substantial risks to human health. Thus, federal regulators, experts, and industry members argue that there is no scientific or legal justification for special labeling.


Yet a few discredited studies provide just enough rhetorical fodder for activists to falsely claim that the technology poses a health threat. In the face of such uncertainty, they argue that precaution should be the rule. Therefore, consumers have a “right to know” if they are consuming GM ingredients.


For these activists, the debate over the scientific justification for labeling is a smokescreen that clouds deeper-rooted grievances. In this sense, no amount of scientific evidence will soften their opposition. The origin of these grievances can be traced to the rise of America’s local food movement.


During the early 2000s, looking across survey findings, researchers concluded that most Americans were unaware of GM food products, lacked basic knowledge of the science or policy specifics involved, and had yet to form strong opinions about the issue (Shanahan et al. 2001).


But among a smaller segment of consumers, the issue was emerging as a chief concern, correlated with a cluster of other food-related attitudes. Those few Americans who said they actively looked to buy GM-free food also said that they preferred their food to be organic, vegetarian, natural, locally produced, not processed, and without artificial colors or flavors (Bellows et al. 2010).


These consumers were early adopters of many of the beliefs and preferences that constitute today’s local food movement. The origins of the movement date back to the 1980s and a series of food safety controversies. Since then influential activists, food writers, and documentary filmmakers have argued the connections between industrial food production, agricultural policy, and problems such as obesity, income inequality, food-borne illness, and the decline of community life (Pollan 2010). In doing so, they have contributed to a new food politics, helping a diversity of groups unify behind a movement pushing for food system reforms.


From Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, many regions have rebuilt their economies and identities around locally owned, mostly organic farms, restaurants, and artisanal foods. These local efforts are complemented by the popularity of well-known national organic brands such as Stonyfield Farms and Horizon. In 2014, U.S. consumption of organic fruits, vegetables, dairy, breads, meat, and other foods generated an estimated $35 billion in sales, more than triple the amount from a decade ago (USDA n.d.).


The growth in the organics industry and local food economies has created a formidable alliance of farmers, entrepreneurs, and activists who bring considerable money, influence, and voice to the debate over labeling. For this alliance, corporate controlled, “unnaturally” produced GM food is perceived as a direct threat to their livelihood and preferred way of life.

Labeling: Not a Big Deal?


Simmering at the grassroots level for years, in 2012 the labeling of GM food exploded into prominence as a hotly debated political issue. In successive years, California, Washington, Oregon, and Colorado residents considered and eventually voted down proposals to label GM food products. In these battles, the food industry is estimated to have spent more than $100 million to block labeling efforts, while activists and organic industry members spent tens of millions promoting the measures.


These battles across Western states generated considerable national media coverage. Yet despite the attention, carefully designed survey research suggests that broader public awareness remains remarkably low. For at least a decade, the great majority of processed foods sold in grocery stores have contained ingredients from GM crops. But when asked in a 2013 Rutgers University survey about the matter, only 44 percent of Americans said they were aware of such foods, and only 26 percent believed that they had ever eaten any food with GM ingredients (Hallman et al. 2013).


A majority of Americans in 2013 said they know very little or nothing at all about GM foods, and 25 percent said they had never heard of them. Even among those who answered they were aware of the issue, a majority mistakenly believed that GM tomatoes, wheat, and chicken products were being sold in supermarkets (Hallman et al. 2013). Specific to labeling, if asked directly, 80 percent of the public said that it was either “very important” or “somewhat important” to know whether a product contains GM food. Yet these labeling preferences are weakly held. In the 2013 Rutgers survey, when respondents were asked in an unprompted way “What information would you like to see on food labels that is not already on there?” only 7 percent said GM food labeling. Moreover, only one in four Americans knew that federal regulations do not currently require such labels (Hallman et al. 2013).


Given the public’s ambivalence about labeling, economists have long questioned claims that labeling would deter the great majority of consumers from purchasing GM food products. For most Americans, cost and brand preference rather than labeling drives their food choices. To the extent that most organic foods today cost 50 to 100 percent more than their GM counterparts, this price difference is likely to override any impact of labels.


To test these assumptions, economists Marco Costanigro and Jayson Lusk designed a series of experiments that asked a sample of American adults to choose among apples and Cheerios that were either labeled as genetically modified or were unlabeled. To simulate the price differences for these products, those marked as genetically modified were priced at half the cost of their unlabeled counterparts. Across conditions, the economists did not observe any significant impact of labeling on risk perceptions or concern. Subjects rated GM apples and Cheerios just as safe as their non-modified counterparts. The economists, however, did find that a GM label made consumers somewhat more willing to pay a premium for unlabeled apples and Cheerios. In other words, though GM labels are unlikely to raise undue alarm among consumers, such labels may indirectly help boost sales of organic food products (Costanigro and Lusk 2014).


Citing this research and other evidence that labels are not likely to scare the public, some experts have argued that if the food industry were to follow the lead of Campbell Soup and support a mandatory labeling law, the strategy would help to restore public trust in the food industry while defusing controversy. “People are getting increasingly scared of [GM food] precisely because the industry is fighting a rearguard battle not to tell people which foodstuffs contain them,” argues author and writer Mark Lynas (2013). “This has to be the worst PR strategy ever: can you think of a single analogy where an industry uses every media tool, every electoral and legal avenue possible to stop people knowing where their own products are used?” As David Ropeik (2013), a risk communication consultant, argued in an open letter to the food industry:


Even if you win the vote, you will lose the war ... because the war isn’t about labeling. It’s about the public’s lack of trust in you, and therefore their opposition to the technology that is so important to your success. Your company’s opposition to labeling is hurting you far more than it’s helping. It is time for a new approach.

Defusing Controversy


Certainly if the food industry were to support mandatory GM labeling, the precise impact on consumers remains unkown. But to continue to battle against labeling rules is also risky business, lending credibility to claims by activists that the industry has an undue, corrupting influence on the political process. In contrast, the labeling of GM food may have only a limited impact on consumer buying habits, while doing little to alarm the public about the safety of the technology. Putting an end to the labeling controversy is also likely to benefit public debate over the next generation of genetically engineered foods, ensuring that scientists, universities, and companies have the freedom to pursue breakthrough technologies.


These innovations are aimed directly at helping the world meet a 70 percent increase in food demand by 2050. Some crops have been engineered to counter deficiencies in vitamin A and iron among populations in developing countries. Other GM crops are able to survive under conditions of drought, extreme heat, or unfavorable soil conditions (Wohlers 2013). After many years of evaluation, in 2015 a genetically engineered salmon became the first modified animal approved for human consumption by the U.S. government. The small company that pioneered the high-tech salmon says that they can be grown in half the time and using 25 percent less small wild fish as feed. The system recycles 95 percent of the water used and reduces harmful waste. The all-female sterile fish are raised in landlocked tanks, making escape into the wild unlikely. Currently produced in Panama, the plan is for the fish to be grown close to large U.S. urban areas, reducing the energy costs associated with transportation (Saletan 2015).


Activists have moved quickly to oppose such “Frankenfish,” pressuring major grocery store chains and restaurants to refuse to sell the sustainability-friendly product. Apart from unsupported claims about environmental and health risks, their chief complaint is that the fish would not be labeled. As the case of engineered salmon suggests, as important high-tech crops and farming practices are brought to market in coming years, the chief strategy of GM food opponents to appeal to the public’s “right to know” can be removed from the table by pushing for a smart, mandatory labeling policy.

References

• 
Bellows, A.C., G. Alcaraz, and W.K. Hallman. 2010. Gender and food, a study of attitudes in the USA towards organic, local, US grown, and GM-free foods. Appetite 55(3): 540–550.
• 
Costanigro, M., and J.L. Lusk. 2014. The signaling effect of mandatory labels on genetically engineered food. Food Policy 49: 259–267.
• 
Hallman, W.K., C.L. Cuite, and X.K. Morin. 2013. Public perceptions of labeling genetically modified foods. Working Paper 2013-01. Rutgers Uni-
versity. Available online at http://sebsnjaesnews.rutgers.edu/wp-content/
uploads/2014/06/RU-GM-labelingper
ception-white-paper-2013.pdf.
• Lynas, M. 2013. It’s time to label GMOs: Why we need to move biotech out of the shadows. The Breakthrough.org (October 23). Available online at http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/conservation-and-development/its-time-to-label-gmos.
• 
Pollan, M. 2010. The food movement, rising. New York Review of Books (June). Available online at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2010/06/10/food-movement-rising/.
• 
Ropeik, D. 2013. GMO labeling: An open letter to BigAgTech CEOs. The Huffington Post (November 6). Available online at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-ropeik/gmo-labeling_b_4224023.html.
• 
Saletan, W. 2015. Don’t fear the Frankenfish. Slate.com (November 20). Available online at http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/11/genetically_engineered_aquabounty_salmon_safe_fda_decides.html.
• 
Shanahan, J., D. Scheufele, and E. Lee. 2001. Trends: Attitudes about agricultural biotechnology and genetically modified organisms. The Public Opinion Quarterly 65(2): 267–281.
Strom, S. 2016. Campbell labels will disclose G.M.O. ingredients. The New York Times (January 7). Available online at http://nyti.ms/1ORR7EN.
• 
USDA n.d. Organic market overview. United States Department of Agriculture. Available online at http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/natural-resources-environment/organic-agriculture/organic-market-overview.aspx.
• 
Wohlers, A.E. 2013. Labeling of genetically modified food: Closer to reality in the United States? Politics & Life Sciences 32(1): 73–84.

From The Skeptic’s Dictionary, Volume 15, No.5, May 2016:

“It would probably be more fashionable to go out with a bang rather than with a whimper, but at this time, this is as good as it is going to get. Thanks to those who stuck with me over the past fourteen years. I wish you the very best in your search for facts, truth, scientific knowledge, and a life based on reason and self-examination.”

Robert Todd Carroll was an American writer, academic, and fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Carroll is best known for his contributions in the field of skepticism and philosophy, particularly as a teacher and author of books such as Becoming a Critical Thinker: A Guide for the New Millennium, The Skeptic's Dictionary, and The Critical Thinker's Dictionary—texts that also had popular online versions.

This is an edited version of an interview I conducted for my podcast, Token Skeptic, in 2011; I spoke to Robert about the origins of the Dictionary and how it evolved over time.

Robert Todd Carroll: The Skeptic’s Dictionary began back in the early ’90s. I live in the town of Davis, California, and I was teaching logic and critical thinking at a community college, and my city got a grant from CalSTRS, which is a state organization, to teach anyone in town how to use the Internet, how to use email, how to write webpages, et cetera.

My wife and I took the classes because we were going to get one year’s free Internet connection for doing it, so we did—and my project was The Skeptic’s Dictionary. I had been doing a lot of handouts for my students on science and pseudoscience and logical fallacies, so the first twenty or thirty entries were all about logical fallacies, the nature of science, scientific reasoning, control group experiments, pseudoscience, and so on.

Once I got on the Internet, it was impossible to stop! It was like this giant locomotive going down a hill. I’d get emails from all over the world, which was of course kind of exciting at first. Well, it’s still exciting, but it got overwhelming after a while! Things like, “Would you look into this,” or, “What do you think about this?” Well, that’s interesting… somebody cares what I think! Next thing you know, I’ve got 700 entries and it’s fifteen years later!

It just got more and more interesting to me to start exploring the paranormal. In fact, I ended up about probably twenty-five years into my teaching career before I created a course called Critical Thinking About the Paranormal. When I started out, all of us in philosophy, I would say, considered the paranormal like, who’d waste your time with that? It was just like—that’s so silly that no one would waste their time with that, but by the time I finished teaching, I found that it was a great way to introduce critical thinking concepts using the writings of people like Gary Schwartz and Dean Radin, contrasted with The Skeptic’s Dictionary, to explore, with content, some of the ideas that we tried to teach in the critical thinking class.

I’d always been interested in philosophy of religion. That was the area I did most of my doctoral work in, and then that just led off into all kinds of topics in the supernatural. I’ve never really had a great interest in cryptids or cryptozoology, but things like Bigfoot and the chupacabra and a few other things all caught my eye, so I did a few on those.

Alternative medicine then would seem to creep in. No matter where I was going, I’d run into these really weird ideas about health that just seemed to me like people were just making stuff up. Where do they get these ideas? Now, I don’t know. I probably have as many entries on various so-called alternative medicine—they’re not really alternatives to anything, if you ask me, but they’re all listed as, I call it all now “placebo medicine,” now that I have a pretty good understanding of what’s going on in these areas. Why something like, say, homeopathy could still be popular in the twenty-first century is not too hard to understand if you realize how easy it is to trick ourselves into thinking that one thing causes another. It really goes back to a basic lesson we would teach all our critical thinking students about causal reasoning: it’s just bad causal reasoning.

Anyway, that’s how it started, and then it expanded out. I started writing essays, and I started doing book reviews and a blog. I had a couple of blogs early on, before they were called blogs, and then I consolidated those into one. Now there are so many bloggers, I hardly ever blog, to tell you the truth! It’s like “Why bother? Everything’s covered!” It’s so great to see hundreds of skeptical bloggers out there. Just feels good. It really feels good.

I think it’s in our nature to be superstitious and to not really be—I put it this way, that critical thinking is an unnatural act. It really isn’t something that comes instinctively to us. Our natural behavior is to do what makes us feel good, what leads to our being liked by other people, what leads to our getting girlfriends and boyfriends and prospering. Whether or not what we believe is true is really kind of secondary to all that, and so I think we’re driven in such a natural way that there will always be a job for people like me who are trying to overcome some of the natural tendencies that we all have: to think incorrectly, to make causal connections where there aren’t any, to see patterns where there aren’t patterns, to be superstitious.

In some ways, things are a lot better because we have the Internet. I know there’s a negative side to the Internet, but if you look at the positive side of it, you have all this good information available, and good bloggers passing on not just their content but their passion. You’ve been at The Amazing Meeting and seen how that’s grown to over 1,500 people. I was at the first one. There was only like 200 or 250, and now it’s just huge. I expect the meetings with CSICOP are going to be another blockbuster.

Who would’ve thought that Ireland would be having … of course, having all those pedophile priests has helped a little bit, but who would’ve ever thought that Ireland would be actually going against the Catholic Church? You have the TASC, the president of Ireland publicly lambasting the Vatican. That’s like the Berlin Wall coming down to see Catholic countries willing to criticize religion!

They had a big atheism conference in Dublin. If anybody ever told me they’d had an atheism conference. I’ve been to Ireland many times, and I’ll tell you, it is a very religious country. I started going there around 1985. Now, I understand, the majority of church attendees are not native Irish, they’re immigrants.

Then the popularity of all the atheistic writers in the last decade, so there has been a lot of churn—but a lot of things stay the same. We’re going to have a presidential election here in a couple years. It’s already started, the campaigning, and our Republican Party might as well just call itself a religious party because half of their appeal is to fundamentalist religious groups, usually Christian religious groups. That has not changed at all. There’s still a very strong fundamentalist, anti-scientific movement in America. Things are getting better. I think so.

Kylie Sturgess: Which topic on The Skeptic’s Dictionary gets the most hits?

Carroll: I was telling my wife this morning, “You know, this is weird. I check every week to see what’s coming up, and anthropometry has been number one for the last three weeks.” She says, “What’s that?”

I said, “Well, that’s where you measure head size.” It used to be popular when racist philosophies were rampant, and they’d measure skulls to show how intelligent white people were and how stupid all these other races were. Now it’s used mainly by hatters and people who want to know what size hats to make. They measure heads or something along those lines, but I have no clue why that entry has suddenly become popular.

Amway was number one for many years! When I first put a little entry on, I got all kinds of nasty emails. The reason there’re things like the chupacabra, Loch Ness monster, Nessie, those have been pretty popular, but it varies. There does seem to be a long-time interest in Nessie, for some reason. You’d think that one had been put to rest by now, but people want their monsters, I guess. I don’t know!

Sturgess: How do you narrow it down to figure out which ones are suitable for children? You now have a children’s version of The Skeptic’s Dictionary out.

Carroll: I do, and that was hard, because there are 720 entries in the Dictionary now, and I wanted to have no more than fifty for the children’s version. At least the beginning of the children’s version. I went through them, and I have two grandchildren. They’re now thirteen and ten, and I started making up stories about two dogs, two beagles that I claimed I had when I was a kid, and we had all these adventures going around the world and doing all these things. They were probably two and four when I started telling them these stories, so I’ve been doing it for about ten years. In the beginning, these were just a couple of card-playing, cigar-smoking, beer-drinking dogs who’d go to Cubs games and things like that.

Finally, my wife said, “You know, you really should put some morals into those stories. Those are really bad!” I started to expand them out until the last one dealt with Area 51, and how we investigated it and blah blah blah blah. I guess I used my grandkids as kind of a sounding board for what sounded interesting to them, and also just knowing them, what kinds of things interest them. They live in San Francisco. I live in Davis. We’re only about an hour-and-a-half away from each other, so we’ve seen each other a lot over the last ten years, and I have pretty good sense of what they’re interested in. Now, whether other kids are interested in them or not, I don’t know, but it was difficult to narrow it down. Some were pretty easy, like monsters seem like a natural for kids.

I then started thinking, one thing that really irritates me—not really irritates, angers me—are all the fear-mongers that are out there in the media who are scaring the hell out of our kids about the end of the world and all kinds of terrible things. To me, the world’s scary enough. There is enough really bad stuff out there to not have to make stuff up that is going to terrify a lot of children.

I mentioned this in a newsletter that I recently sent out—that I conducted a session at SkeptiCal that is a little skeptical conference once a year up here in Northern California. A teacher came up to me afterwards and was telling me a story about a child who was just in hysterics in school, probably third grade or something like that, that the world was going to end, that the Mayans had predicted it. She’d seen the movie, or had heard about the Mayan prophecy and so on.

She’d gone to the secretary, and the teacher came in, and the secretary’s in hysterics too, but she’s in hysterics because the Mayan are wrong. The world’s going to end this weekend because of the prophecy of Harold Camping, this former engineer who thinks he can read the Bible to predict the end of the world, and actually has people following him. I’m thinking, oh. I did consciously select entries like ghosts, Mayan prophecy, where I could maybe alleviate a little bit of the fear because these are bogus. There’s no need really to be afraid of ghosts, because there aren’t any, and there’s no reason to be afraid of the end of the world because the Mayans predicted it. They didn’t predict anything.

That was one concern, and of course critical thinking and logic has always been an interest of mine, and there’s no reason why children shouldn’t be encouraged to think critically. I saw an opportunity to give a lesson about how the brain tricks us, and how we often are led to believe things that aren’t true because of misunderstanding and misinterpreting perception. I did put a couple of alternative medicine entries in there like homeopathy and acupuncture, because it gave me an opportunity to talk about the placebo effect and how just because one thing happens after another, it doesn’t mean the thing that came first caused the latter, and so on. It all kind of fell together, and I eventually had to throw a couple things out because I didn’t think they were going to work well.

It’s only been up for a short while, and I’ve only gotten maybe a dozen emails on it. I also have a Skeptic’s Dictionary Facebook page, and posted it there, and the only negative comment I’ve gotten so far—I don’t know if you call this negative—was that somebody wrote, “There’s nothing about religion in here and there should be.”

That was a conscious choice to leave out the particular religions—you’re not going to find anything under the Book of Mormon, or Bible, or Bible stories, or the Quran. There won’t be any of those kinds of entries. There probably will be one on demons and devils and hobgoblins, something along those lines that I didn’t put in the first time, but none of the specific myths of the various religions. I don’t plan to do that. That’s the only negative thing I’ve gotten so far.

Oh, wait, there was one more. Most of them have come from adults, by the way, who are reading it, but one of them said, “I read the zombies entry, and I don’t think you made it clear that these are not real creatures.” I have this little box at the beginning of each entry that’s called “In a Nutshell,” and it just has a sentence or two about the entry. In Zombies, it says, “a mythical…” I thought that would cover it, calling it a mythical creature or mythical character, but I guess this person didn’t think that was enough. I thought, okay, so I added a little bit more there to make it clear that you’re not really going to bump into a zombie on the highway. They’re a movie character!

On the entry in The Skeptic’s Dictionary, I do talk about some of the stuff that goes on in Voodoo and in Haiti and so on, but I don’t think I needed to do that for the kids.

Sturgess: It’s interesting how you mentioned you have a PhD in philosophy/religion, and yet you have obviously selected certain religious topics, such as the Book of Mormon, to be exempt. Do you think that skepticism should be changing to perhaps include more religious topics, or do you kind of stay away from these sorts of debates?

Carroll: No, just in The Skeptic’s Dictionary for Kids, I’ve stayed away from them. In The Skeptic’s Dictionary, I have a few. I think on the Mormons, there are plenty of websites that cover that weird history. The religion I know the best is Christianity, and I have one on the resurrection. I have one on miracles, and most of them deal with so-called miracles within Christianity, and there are a few others. The resurrection—that’s got to be the central idea in Christianity, I would think. That one’s in The Skeptic’s Dictionary, so I haven’t shied away from them. I have an article on gods, and one on theism and atheism, spirits, and angels, so there are quite a few on religion in the dictionary.

Just to go back a bit, I make it clear throughout The Skeptic’s Dictionary for Kids that my purpose is to promote science, among other things, so it’s very clear that I’m promoting evolution, the big bang theory, that the universe is billions of years old not thousands of years old, and so on. When you do that in this country, you cut off half the population who’d believe in a fundamentalist version as taught by this weird group in the nineteenth century that decided, “Okay, look, the way science is going, it keeps contradicting what’s happening in the Bible. We got to take a stand.” So they took a stand, and the stand was, if it goes against our belief in the Bible, it’s wrong. That nineteenth-century view is still held by many, many people in America. The last survey I saw was like 45 to 50 percent don’t accept evolution but accept that the Earth’s only a few thousand years old and that God created all species in a day or two days, whatever, a week, six days. By contradicting that throughout The Skeptic’s Dictionary for Kids, I’m alienating 50 percent of the United States population. At least parents, anyway. The kids may not agree with their parents. I don’t know, but anyway, I don’t really need to talk about religion to alienate half the population over here. All I have to do is talk about science.

I remember Stephen Jay Gould one time, when he was asked the question about, “Well, are we really making any progress, because look at how bad things are?” And he says, “Yeah, but just think how they’d be if we didn’t do anything.”

I’ve always felt that there’s got to be a way to enchant people, but at the same time, let them make their own discoveries and let them make their own decisions. I think there’s enough in The Skeptic’s Dictionary for Kids to do just what you’re talking about: get them interested enough to go explore, and once they start exploring, it’s got to inevitably lead to some questions about some other things that they might now be taking for granted, because that’s what their parents have taught them or that’s what they’ve learned at their schools.

Theresa Caputo, a self-proclaimed psychic whose Italian origins are quite evident (she was born Theresa Brigandi), has been a celebrity for quite some time now thanks to her reality TV show Long Island Medium. However, all of her apparently paranormal demonstrations are perfectly explainable and, interestingly, most of them would not have been possible only a few years ago.


Caputo, in fact, seems to be the next evolutionary step of contemporary mediums after the likes of Rosemary Altea, John Edward, Sylvia Browne, and James Van Praagh: performers who, from the stage, point to members of the audience and claim to receive communications from the dead on their behalf. In the cases of Altea, Edward, Browne, or Van Praagh, the use of old cold reading techniques is quite clear. These are techniques that undoubtedly require a quick mind, ready to grasp any information coming from the sitter and convincingly sell it back to believers as if it came from the spirits.


Caputo, however, has taken a step forward. Instead of taking risks with straight cold reading—guessing and inevitably making mistakes—she prefers to come well prepared to her shows.


To begin with, Caputo places in the front rows those who she already knows, for whom she already has performed in the past and about whom she has already learned everything there is to know. But her great idea (or perhaps that of her staff) was to take full advantage of what modernity has to offer. In particular, it is thanks to the information found on Facebook and other social media that she can astound her public.


Thanks to an exposé by magician and skeptical investigator Mark Edward (2012), who worked on a “sting operation” on Caputo for Inside Edition, her methods are now quite clear. “In combination with selling seats through Ticketmaster and the use of credit cards, Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter and all the rest of the latest places people post private information, our own egocentric fascination with ourselves makes it easy for the techie-smart agent or producer to make seeming miracles happen,” explains Edward. “Like the old days when the gypsy only needed to tell her sitters what they wanted to hear about themselves, we are now in an era when anyone can tell you more about yourself than you might ever want to know.”


Edward relates several such episodes, revealing how absurd this can get: “At one point Theresa asked a woman, ‘... Why am I picking up baby clothes?’ To which the woman replied, ‘Oh, that’s weird. I just put up a bunch of pictures of baby clothes on my Facebook page!’ Not weird at all, really.”


It is enough for her to have a few similar bits of information placed beforehand on a seating chart of the show. Her staff can then cue her to the right spots, since all seats are numbered and far apart. She really can’t miss. Even the casual encounters that she seems to have on the street during her “reality” program are carefully choreographed. “In classic mentalist style,” continues Edward, “everyone must sign a pre-show waiver or agreement to have their image used on television. It’s only a standard form to those folks. Why would they suspect anything? They should. All the staff needs is a laptop, a name, an address and a willing victim.”

Converting the ‘Skeptics’


Karen Stollznow, a linguist, author, and skeptical investigator, wrote about Caputo’s exaggerated displays of emotion:


There is rarely a scene where she isn’t in tears or claiming empathetic abilities, such as, “I could feel your tears running down my cheek.” In one episode she announces that the spirit of a deceased six-year-old boy has become “attached” to her. Convinced that the only way to free the spirit is to meet with his mother, she tracks down the woman whose details she happens to have in an appointment book. Caputo appears to be greatly distraught by the little boy’s constant presence, but she is strangely unavailable for a session until the following week. She spent this week in apparent spiritual agony, yet still had time to have lunch with friends, all the while complaining about her invisible friend. (Stollznow 2012)


Another of her specialties is confronting and converting “skeptics.” As Stollznow notes:


During a live interview for Long Island radio station KJOY a line of eight “skeptics” are pitted against her. Visibly stressed at first she asks the group, “Who lost a sister?” A woman acknowledges this question, and the medium quickly finds her stride, achieving perceived “hits” with her staple “validations” about clothing and personal letters. Caputo had emotionally disarmed the woman who was taken in by what a real skeptic would readily recognize as a classic cold reading. Skillful editing seems to have ironed out any misses and genuine skeptics.


It is no surprise, then, that in 2012 Theresa Caputo received a Pigasus Award for Performance from the James Randi Educational Foundation.


Today mediums really have an easy life. One wonders what Margery Crandon, D.D. Home, Eusapia Palladino, and all of the famous mediums of the past would have given for a chance to amaze their clients in such an easy way, instead of risking every night to be proven wrong by tipping tables with their legs or exuding ectoplasm gauze. It all seems very silly, in the end, but it is quite distressing to look at the effect that banalities of this kind can have on the grieving. People get emotional; they start to cry and seem to be willing to give Caputo everything they have in order to speak again with their loved ones. Instead of helping the grieving accept their loss and go on with life, such “performers” keep them stuck in their sad situation, preventing their healing. The only consolation is that she won’t last long, as this is the fate that awaits all self-styled psychics. “Caputo,” admonishes James Randi, “is just one more of the myriad faux seers who have stepped into the TV spotlight for their turn, and though her exuberant shtick rather outdoes the others, she’ll do her number along with Van Praagh, John Edward and ‘Psychic Sally’ until someone with a newer novelty elbows her offstage” (Randi 2012).

References

• 
Edward, Mark. 2012. Is Caputo kaputo yet? Skepticblog (November 9).
• 
Randi, James. 2012. The “medium” is not the messenger. Wired (September 4).
Stollznow, Karen. 2012. Long Island medium: A tall story. JREF Swift Blog (June 27).

Figure 1. Brisbane’s historic Tower Mill is reportedly haunted. (Sketch by Joe Nickell)

According to The Ghost Guide to Australia (Davis 1998, 224), one or  perhaps both of the ghosts of two Aborigines—convicted of murder and hanged at Tower Mill in Brisbane in 1841—may still be seen there. Residents in the neighborhood in the mid-twentieth century reported that “sometimes when they looked up at the small window facing the street they could see a faint glow and a figure inside the tower, swinging gently from side to side.” No sources are given, but various online sites repeat the claims (e.g., “Tower Mill Ghost” 2016), and Tower Mill is a stop—sometimes even a point of origin—for ghost tours.


I became acquainted with the old tower (Figure 1) in October 2015 when I stayed for several days at a hotel just down the street from the historic site. (I was there to speak at the annual Australian Skeptics National Convention, October 16–18, 2015, spending some two weeks in Australia and New Zealand and conducting several investigations.) Here is my solution to the mystery of the ghosts in the tower.

Background


Tower Mill is the oldest remaining building in Brisbane. Constructed of sandstone blocks and brick in 1828, it was at that time encircled (about a third of the way up) by an exterior balcony. The tower was built as a windmill for grinding grain, especially corn. That was the main staple of the diet of convicts, who were transported from Britain to Australian penal colonies (beginning with Sydney in 1788).


The mill was outfitted with wind-powered sails, but when these proved unreliable a treadmill, powered by convicts, was installed. When the convict settlement closed in 1842, the treadmill was dismantled.


From its inception as a grist mill, the four-story structure became (at one time or another) a signal station, a fire tower, first home of the Queensland Museum, a radio-experiment site, a pioneer television broadcasting tower, and (presently) a weather observatory (“Old Windmill” 2015; Dawson 2009, 22). Once, of course, it briefly served as a gallows.

Murder


There had been conflicts between the Aborigines and British occupants of the penal colony of Moreton Bay since the 1800s. However, with the seizure of hundreds of square miles of Aboriginal land and the arrival of squatters in 1840, the native people began a coordinated response, largely involving attacks on livestock. To this powder keg, surveyors came waving firebrands. They were intruding on Aboriginal land filled with cultural sites (Dawson 2009, 4–6; Chambers 1999, 131–139).


On Sunday, May 31, 1840, members of a survey party, including a number of convicts, awoke at their bush camp some thirty kilometers south of Mount Lindesay. Surveyor Granville Stapylton—who exhibited a low regard for indigenous people—sent five convicts to clear a passage over a creek while he remained at camp with several Aboriginal men and two other convicts, William Tuck and James Dunlop (Dawson 2009, 12).


Soon three of the Aborigines left camp but returned with another, all now armed with spears. Two went to Sta-
pylton’s tent and two to Tuck’s, while yet another knocked the observing Dunlop senseless with a waddy (a club). When the work party returned from the creek about noon, they found Stapylton and Tuck murdered. Abandoning the injured Dunlop, they fled back toward Brisbane. A group of thirty or so Aboriginal men meanwhile returned to the scene to strip the bodies and loot the camp. One Aboriginal man came to Dunlop’s aid, and he later managed to crawl into the bush. The next evening, exhausted and hungry, he ran into a search party that had been alerted by the fleeing convicts (Dunlop 1840).


A gruesome scene awaited the searchers. Tuck’s body had been stripped and partially burned, while Stapylton’s was found so “torn and mangled” (possibly by the marauders’ dogs) that it could not be legally identified. Three of five identified Aboriginal suspects were captured. One died before trial, but two others, named Mullan and Ningavil, faced the Sydney Supreme Court in May 1841. The prosecution focused on the murder of Tuck whose body had been identifiable, but, since it was impossible to say who struck the death blow, the accused were tried as accessories. They proclaimed their innocence, but—although Dunlop swore they were not the attackers—other convicts claimed to have seen them in the vicinity, and they were wearing clothes stolen from the camp. They were convicted and sentenced to death (Dawson 2009, 12–20, 27).

Figure 2. Experimental photograph recreates a ghostly glow reported in one of the tower’s windows. (Photo by Joe Nickell)

Hanging


The tower served as an improvised gallows for the men’s hanging on Saturday morning, July 3, 1841. While ghost raconteurs more than a century later would claim people had seen through a window a hanged man swinging back and forth, it seemed to me unlikely the hanging was carried out inside the tower. That it stood on a hill suggested the hanging was to be a very public display, not one hidden from view.


I investigated and found that this was indeed the case. The hanging was exterior to the tower, and a large crowd gathered, including a hundred or so Aborigines. The Foreman of Works in the Brisbane settlement, Andrew Petrie, provided a strong round beam that he extended from an upper window. The rope was hung from this beam, its noose dangling to the balcony. Possibly a trapdoor was put in the floor, or, more likely, the prisoners may have been dispatched by pushing them off the balcony (Knight 1892; Dawson 2009, 23). In any case, the drop was a short one, resulting in the condemned being slowly strangled to death. (In later executions a “long drop” was employed as a humane measure, allowing the body to fall far enough to create a force sufficient to break the person’s neck.)


A ten-year-old boy who watched the gruesome event was foremen Petrie’s son, Tom. A convict led him by the hand to one of the dead men’s coffins where he saw the man’s face. As Tom Petrie’s own daughter would later write (Petrie 1904, 245), “The eyes were staring, and the open mouth had the tongue protruding from it. The horror of the ghastly sight so frightened the child that it set him crying, and he could not get over it nor forget it for long afterwards.”

Hanging Specter


The dead man’s features that so traumatized young Tom Petrie are consistent with a strangulation death. Such a victim will often bite his tongue (Geberth 1993, 250) that “frequently protrudes from the mouth” (Spitz 1993, 463). This confirms reports of the “short drop” of the hanging.


It also casts further doubt on the hanging-ghost story. Not only is that often-repeated tale effectively discredited by the historical error of placing the hanging inside the tower, but (and this is a more subtle point) there was no mention of the hanging ghost having grotesque features—as did at least one of the two executed Aborigines. Moreover, the description of the ghost does not give any indication that it was Aboriginal, and only a single ghost is mentioned.


I suspect that the ghost tale—or someone’s apparitional experience that inspired it—was prompted by knowledge of the fact of a hanging at the tower, while, at the same time, that knowledge was factually limited. Thus, like many other apparitional experiences that have the ghost supposedly returning “to reenact its death” (Guiley 2000, 150), the Tower Mill tale is based on a false re-creation and is therefore itself obviously false: apparently the work of some percipient’s faulty imagination or the creation of a writer of fakelore.


Light in the Tower


The other element of the alleged Tower Mill apparition, we recall, is the accompanying glow—seen allegedly by unspecified eyewitnesses who had “looked up at the small window facing the street.” A light-in-the-window motif is common in ghostlore.


The usual explanation for such lights is a simple illusion. While the glow or apparent light source (such as a supposed ghost lantern) does indeed appear to be located inside the structure, the source is typically not an interior one at all. Rather, as explained (with examples) in my The Science of Ghosts, it is a celestial or terrestrial light being reflected by the window glass (Nickell 2012, 113–114). This illusion has fooled many.


I conducted experiments at Tower Mill on two successive nights. Various effects are possible, such as the glow apparently emanating from the window in question shown in Figure 2, but are actually a reflection of a nearby light.


These experiments, along with historical research on the execution of two convicted murderers at the site, indicate that the reported ghostly phenomena at Tower Mill are part of this—and not some supernatural—world.

Acknowledgments


I am exceedingly grateful to John and Mary Frantz for their financial assistance, which helps make many of my investigations possible. I also thank Ross Balch, president of Brisbane Skeptic Society, for inviting me to Australia, and both Cassandra Perryman of Rainbow Beach, Queensland, and Tim Binga, CFI Libraries director, for crucial research assistance.

References

• 
Chambers, John H. 1999. Australia: A Traveller’s History. Gloucestershire, Great Britain: The Windrush Press.
• 
Davis, Richard. 1998. The Ghost Guide to Australia. Sydney, NSW, Australia: Bantam Books.
Dawson, Christopher. 2009. The Hanging at the Brisbane Windmill. Fairfield Gardens, Queensland, Australia: Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society.
• 
Dunlop, James. 1840. Deposition of June 7; cited in Dawson 2009, 13.
• 
Geberth, Vernon J. 1993. Practical Homicide Investigation, 2nd ed. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
• 
Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. 2000. The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits, 2nd ed. New York: Checkmark Books.
• 
Knight, J.J. 1892. In the early days–XI. The Queenslander (Brisbane), February 27, 402–403. Available online at http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article19821754; accessed January 19, 2016.
• 
Nickell, Joe. 2012. The Science of Ghosts: Searching for Spirits of the Dead. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
• 
The Old Windmill, Brisbane. 2015. Available online at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Windmill,_Bristane; accessed October 12, 2015.
• 
Petrie, Constance Campbell. 1904. Tom Petrie’s reminiscences of early Queensland. Brisbane, Australia: Watson and Ferguson. Quoted in Dawson 2009, 28.
• 
Spitz, Werner U. 1993. Spitz and Fisher’s Medicolegal Investigation of Death, 3rd ed. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.
• 
Tower Mill Ghost. 2016. Available online at www.brisbanehistory.com/ghosts_of_Brisbane.html; accessed January 7, 2016.

Have a sore throat? No worries! No need for lozenges, medicines, or home remedies. All you need to do is let someone stick needles in your ear! According to a recent study, ear acupuncture relieves sore throats. Do you believe that? I don’t. That’s one of those extraordinary claims that would require extraordinary evidence, but the researchers didn’t even provide ordinary evidence. The study is a great example of how not to do science.


Acupuncture theory is based on a prescientific vitalistic concept: an unmeasurable, undetectable energy called “qi” supposedly flows through meridians and can be accessed at acupoints, where needle stimulation is supposed to somehow unblock the flow of qi, which is somehow supposed to relieve pain and improve health. Qi, meridians, and acupoints are imaginary, but that doesn’t necessarily mean acupuncture can’t possibly work. It’s not implausible that sticking needles into the skin might have some physiologic effects, so it is reasonable to do scientific studies—and thousands of studies have been done, some better than others. The results have been disappointing. It is not reasonable to conclude from the existing published studies that acupuncture works.


Some people believe acupuncture is an effective way to relieve pain, but the evidence from scientific studies and systematic reviews is mixed. Any positive effects can be attributed to suggestion and the surrounding rituals, and the effects are too small in magnitude to have any clinical importance. The most rigorous studies have shown that sham acupuncture works just as well as “real” acupuncture. It doesn’t matter where you put the needles, and in fact it doesn’t matter whether you use needles at all. In one study, simply touching the skin surface with a toothpick worked just as well as penetrating the skin with a needle (Cherkin et al. 2009). There was even a study where subjects were given a “phantom limb” illusion that a rubber hand was their own hand, and they got similar results from acupuncturing the rubber hand! (Chae et al. 2015). The main thing that seems to matter is whether the patients believe acupuncture will work. If they get a sham procedure but think they got the real thing, they will think it worked. If they get the real thing but think they got a sham procedure, they will think it didn’t work. It has been pretty well established that acupuncture is nothing more than a theatrical placebo (Colquhoun and Novella 2013).


The Center for Inquiry issued a position paper on acupuncture that concludes:


It is becoming increasingly clear that the placebo effect accounts for much of the optimistic research on acupuncture published between the 1970s and 1990s. With the development of sham needles during the past decade—needles which retract like stage knives—researchers have since been able to more accurately assess the therapeutic effects of acupuncture. The result has been a complete unraveling of nearly all acupuncture claims... . The bulk of recent research strongly tends towards the hypothesis that acupuncture’s positive effects are mainly due to a built-in expectation... . (Slack 2010)


When The Medical Letter reviewed acupuncture in 2006, it concluded “Acupuncture alone has not been shown in rigorous, duplicated studies to benefit any defined medical condition.” Our own CSI fellow, Steven Novella, coauthored the paper that concluded acupuncture was nothing more than a theatrical placebo (Colquhoun and Novella 2013). Medical ethicists unanimously agree that doctors should not prescribe placebos. So why are some doctors still recommending acupuncture?


Unfortunately, there are many doctors who lack critical thinking skills and don’t really understand science or the psychology of cognitive errors. They don’t all read Skeptical Inquirer or the Science-Based Medicine blog. They should.


The history of acupuncture research is revealing. There were never any controlled studies to verify the alleged location of meridians and acupoints or their alleged connections to other parts of the anatomy. They transposed human diagrams onto animals without any testing for validity; the acupuncture diagram for horses, for example, shows gallbladder meridians. Horses don’t have gallbladders.


There are many different systems of acupuncture, some involving needles and some involving various kinds of stimulation of acupoints through intact skin (with electricity, light, heat, and other modalities). The number of meridians and acupoints varies among the different systems. In traditional acupuncture, there were originally 365 acupoints to symbolically correspond to the days of the year; now there are over 2,000. In Korean acupuncture, there are 300 acupoints, all on the hand. In other systems, they are found only on the ear, scalp, tongue, or foot. With all those different acupoints in all those different systems, is there any spot on the body that isn’t an acupoint in some system? Yes, there is: no system uses points on the male genitalia. Draw your own conclusions! A variant called “tong ren” doesn’t use acupoints at all; the patient rhythmically taps an acupuncture doll with a metal hammer. The online video of tong ren (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I4r3FrzFBc) has to be seen to be believed: Is there no limit to human gullibility? As far as I know, no one has ever thought to try testing one system of acupuncture against another to find out which one is superior. For that matter, no one has ever thought to test homeopathy, chiropractic, acupuncture, and Reiki against each other. Alternative medicine simply doesn’t think that way. Anything goes.


The sore throat study didn’t use traditional acupuncture. It used ear acupuncture—and not even standard ear acupuncture but a simplified version. Why? Because the researchers were Air Force doctors, and the Air Force has been teaching ear acupuncture as “battlefield acupuncture” to its doctors under the guidance of Col. Richard Niemtzow. They clearly have drunk the Kool-Aid, because they allege that points on the ear correspond to areas on the body and stimulating them “balances the flow of the body’s energy or qi.” Their modified procedure involves five short needles that are left in place to eventually fall out on their own; the method is taught to non-acupuncturists in a four-hour workshop. The authors claim that there is research supporting ear acupuncture, but they admit that there is only “limited data” regarding the modified technique. You’d think that before they forged ahead to use it on wounded soldiers on the battlefield, they’d want convincing evidence that it worked. There isn’t any.


Ear acupuncture isn’t as silly as tong ren, but it’s still pretty silly. It was invented by a Frenchman, Dr. Paul Nogier, in 1957. He invented it all by himself—not through science but through intuition and epiphany. He looked at the external ear, the pinna, and imagined that it looked sort of like a fetus curled up in its mother’s womb. I can tell you he had a much better imagination than I do; I can’t see the resemblance. He arbitrarily assigned a spot on the ear to correspond to the part of the imagined fetus, tried inserting needles in ears, and confirmation bias kicked in to convince him that it worked on the corresponding part of the body. He originally used thirty points; now ear acupuncturists claim to have identified 120. The ear is pretty small to accommodate 120 acupoints, and anyway there are no connections between the ear and those other parts of the body.


The study, “Ear Acupuncture for Acute Sore Throat: A Randomized Controlled Trial,” (Moss and Crawford 2015) was published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine. The fact that the editors did not reject the study is both surprising and disappointing.


Moss and Crawford studied fifty-four patients who presented to an Air Force family medicine clinic with pain from sore throat. They were randomized into two groups: one got standard treatment (ibuprofen, plus antibiotics when indicated); the other got standard treatment plus ear acupuncture. There was no blinding and no sham acupuncture control group. They didn’t even standardize the treatment: they placed “up to 10” needles. Unblinded research associates assessed the results by phone interview. Patients in the acupuncture group reported significantly less pain at fifteen minutes and twenty-four hours after the procedure, although at forty-eight hours there was no difference from the control group. Acupuncture patients reported taking fewer ibuprofen pills. There was no difference between the groups in time missed from work.


What’s wrong with this study? Practically everything. It is a typical example of the “pragmatic trial” favored by alternative medicine. Instead of asking whether acupuncture works better than placebo to relieve pain, they gave everyone standard treatment and added acupuncture to one group. When you add anything to the usual treatment, you are practically guaranteed to get positive results. Patients respond to the extra attention and to suggestion. They expect to feel better, so they do. In this case, the needles were left in the ear as a continuing reminder that they had received special treatment. Pain is subjective, and suggestion is powerful; that’s why we kiss our children’s minor injuries. Of course the acupuncture subjects reported less pain; that’s exactly what we could have predicted.


Pragmatic studies test the real-world practical performance of treatments. They have their place. A treatment that has been proven to work in a research setting with a select group of subjects and carefully controlled methods might not work as well in a real-world setting with patients who might have other illnesses or be on other medications, or where the providers might not be as rigorous in following treatment guidelines. Pragmatic studies can’t establish whether a treatment works better than placebo, and they were never intended to be done on treatments that had not already been proven to work.


That’s why studies must have a convincing control group. These researchers could have used a sham acupuncture control where they used retractable needles or put the needles in the “wrong” spots, in the ear or in other parts of the body. But they rejected the whole idea of a sham acupuncture control. Their amazing rationale: sham acupuncture can stimulate “C” fibers and produce analgesia too, so sham acupuncture wouldn’t be a placebo, it would actually be a treatment! If that were true, it would mean that acupuncture’s whole treatment rigmarole is unnecessary. There would be no reason to specify acupoints: you might as well just stick needles anywhere, and no training would be needed to administer the treatment. The authors didn’t even think of comparing a usual treatment group to an acupuncture group; both groups got the usual treatment. And why on Earth didn’t they blind the research assistants who did the telephone interviews? That would have been so simple to do, and it would have eliminated any suspicion that they might have subtly influenced the results in some way.


They got positive results, but they would have gotten positive results if they had added any other intervention to the usual treatment for sore throat. What if they’d offered massages, or training in meditation or relaxation exercises, or a warm scarf to wrap around the neck, or therapeutic touch to “balance their human energy fields,” or funny movies to take their mind off the pain? Or even a gift certificate for a shopping spree at the local mall to boost their spirits? We can predict that those would have “worked” too, maybe equally well or better. That’s why pragmatic studies such as this are useless.


It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. This study is astonishingly poor science. It should not have been done, and it should not have been published; it didn’t give us any useful information about acupuncture. But it can serve as a bad example to help us learn to distinguish between good and bad science.

References

• 
Chae, Y., I.S. Lee, W.M. Jung, et al. 2015. Psychophysical and neurophysiological responses to acupuncture stimulation to incorporated rubber hand. Neuroscience Letters 691 (March 30): 48–52.
• 
Cherkin, Daniel C., Karen J. Sherman, Andrew L. Avins, et al. 2009. A randomized trial comparing acupuncture, simulated acupuncture, and usual care for chronic low back pain. JAMA Internal Medicine 169(9): 858–66. Available online at http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=414934.
• 
Colquhoun, David, and Steven P. Novella. 2013. Acupuncture is theatrical placebo. Anesthesia & Analgesia 116(6): 1360–63. Available online at http://journals.lww.com/anesthesia-
analgesia/pages/articleviewer.aspx?year=2013
&issue=06000&article=00025&type=Fulltext.
• 
Moss, David A., and Paul Crawford. 2015. Ear acupuncture for acute sore throat: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine 28: 697–705. Available online at http://www.jabfm.org/content/28/6/697.full.
Slack, Robert. 2010. Acupuncture: A science-
based assessment. Center for Inquiry, Inc. (June). Available online at http://www.centerforinquiry.net/uploads/attachments/Acupuncture_Final_Paper.pdf.



There is a worldwide epidemic of thyroid cancer. South Korea has been hit the hardest; in 2011, the rate of thyroid cancer diagnoses was fifteen times what it was in 1993. There have also been dramatic increases in other countries including the United States, France, Italy, the UK, and Japan, and lesser increases in Scandinavia and Australia. What is going on? Could there be some new environmental carcinogen that we haven’t identified? We know radiation is one cause; the rate of thyroid cancer increased significantly following the Chernobyl disaster. It may be associated with obesity, but the relationship is not clear. Why is South Korea more affected? Should we be frightened? Should we avoid traveling to South Korea? Should we all go get tested for thyroid cancer before it’s too late?

Before you get too alarmed, consider this curious fact: while the incidence of thyroid cancer has been rising, the incidence of deaths from thyroid cancer has remained stable or declined. What could that mean? You’re more likely to get it but it’s less likely to kill you?

Thyroid cancer is very common. A lot of us have it without ever knowing it. Autopsy studies have shown that over a third of older adults who die of other causes have thyroid cancer that has never caused them any harm. When a screening test detects cancer, there is no way to know if it is one that is harmless or one that will grow or metastasize, so all detected cancers have to be treated alike. Patients undergo surgery with all its attendant risks, they may be exposed to radiation treatments, and they may have to remain on thyroid hormone replacement for the rest of their lives. Insurance claims show that 11 percent of patients have postsurgical hypoparathyroidism and 2 percent have vocal cord paralysis. Despite guidelines recommending against surgery for tumors smaller than half a centimeter in diameter, a quarter of surgeries are currently being done on tumors smaller than that.

Major medical organizations do not recommend screening for thyroid cancer. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) does not recommend screening the general population for thyroid cancer. They say:

Given the lack of evidence that early detection of thyroid cancer by screening improves outcome, the high prevalence and uncertain clinical significance of occult thyroid carcinoma, the poor sensitivity of neck palpation in the detection of thyroid nodules, the fact that most positive screening tests would be false-positives, and the invasive nature of diagnostic tests (e.g., biopsy) likely to follow a positive screening test, routine screening for thyroid cancer cannot be recommended at this time. For persons irradiated in childhood, the greater likelihood of having both thyroid nodules and malignancy means that the yield from screening is likely to be higher. The clinical benefits of such screening have not been established, however.

South Korea has had national health insurance since the 1980s. Their medical costs are relatively low, but their system is technology intensive. Among OECD countries, Korea ranks second in acute care hospital beds per capita, fifth in CT scanners, and fourth in MRI machines. In 1999, they started a national screening program for cancer and other diseases. They offer screening for breast, cervical, colon, gastric, and hepatic cancers free of charge or for a small copayment for higher-income patients. Recently more and more providers have been adding on thyroid screening with ultrasound for an additional fee of $30–50. Hospitals market programs that include it, and many general practitioners have ultrasound machines in their offices. The government and the media have strongly stressed the value of early diagnosis.

So what it boils down to is that there is no increase in the incidence of thyroid cancer; there is just an increase in diagnosis of small, early cancers, many of which might never have caused problems.

In a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine, http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1604412, experts looked at the numbers for twelve countries and estimated that the proportion of over-diagnoses was 70 percent in South Korea, France, and Italy, and 45 percent in the United States and Australia. They estimated that more than 470,000 women and 90,000 men may have been over-diagnosed with thyroid cancer in the last two decades.

In short, the apparent “epidemic” of thyroid cancer is nothing but an artifact, an illusion created by ill-advised thyroid screening. There is no epidemic. Small cancers are being diagnosed earlier, but early detection has had no overall impact on survival. This is a cautionary tale: sometimes screening does more harm than good. Individual patients suffer, and society wastes money on unnecessary treatments. The USPSTF has been very reliable in putting all the risk/benefit evidence into perspective for us and coming up with recommendations for screening tests that have been shown to do more good than harm.

Early diagnosis may sound like a good thing, but screening tests can kill. They can lead to invasive, dangerous medical procedures that are unnecessary and don’t benefit the patient. It pays to be skeptical and to listen to the experts. Just because you can screen for a disease doesn’t mean you should.