As millions of Americans visit their health care providers this winter complaining of a cold, surveys suggest that one in four will be expecting their provider to prescribe them an antibiotic, falsely believing that the antibiotic will help them recover more quickly from the virus (Watkins et al. 2015). The demand for antibiotics by patients is not surprising, considering other survey findings. Only about half of Americans know correctly that antibiotics kill bacteria but not viruses, a proportion that has remained relatively stable for more than a decade (Hwang et al. 2015).

In recent decades, similarly false beliefs across countries have contributed to a dangerous rise in antibiotic use. Between 2000 and 2010, worldwide sales of antibiotics by pharmacies and hospitals increased 36 percent. Overall, India, China, and the United States use the most antibiotics, though Americans are by far the highest per capita consumers (Van Boeckel et al. 2014). In fact, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) (2013) estimates that 50 percent of all antibiotics prescribed in the United States are not warranted.

The overuse of antibiotics in the United States and other countries combined with the rapid growth in the use of antibiotics to grow livestock has led to the evolution of lethal “superbugs,” bacteria that are resistant to most antibiotics. When people overuse antibiotics, they are more likely to kill off “good” bacteria in their bodies that protect them from infection. Drug-resistant bacteria are then more likely to take over, festering in places such as the gut. These superbugs can spread to other people at home and at work or in a hospital.

The rise of superbugs and the loss of antibiotic effectiveness not only makes it more difficult to combat common threats, such as urinary tract infections or pneumonia, but those patients undergoing joint replacements, dental surgery, cancer therapy, and other procedures—who often depend on antibiotics to recover—are also put at high risk.

Each year at least 2 million Americans battle serious bacterial infections that are resistant to one or more antibiotics, and at least 23,000 die annually as a direct result of those infections (Centers for Disease Control 2013). In a recent report, the World Bank (2016) warned that by 2050 the growth in drug-resistant infections, if not contained, would cause a level of global economic damage equivalent to, if not worse than, the 2008 financial crisis.

Responding to the threat, in 2015 the Obama administration set a goal of by 2020 cutting inappropriate use of antibiotics in hospitals by 20 percent and in other health care settings by 50 percent. Recognizing that antibiotic resistance is an international problem that cannot be solved by the actions of a single country, a United Kingdom report last year called for a “massive global public awareness campaign” so that patients no longer demand—and health care providers do not prescribe—unnecessary anti­biotics (Review on Antimicrobial Resistance 2016).

Communicating in the Dark

To be sure, more than just public education is needed. The widespread and unnecessary use of antibiotics in agriculture must be ended; sanitation and clean water systems must be built in poorer countries; drug companies must step up to develop new antibiotics; and health agencies need funding for the early detection of emerging superbugs, concludes the recent U.K. report.

But changing the beliefs of the public is also essential. Health care providers are under immense pressure from patients to provide antibiotics for treatment of colds and other viral illnesses. A 2012 survey found that half of U.S. health care providers say that their patients expect an antibiotic when visiting for a viral infection. Research shows that a health care provider’s perceptions of patient expectations are important, since they tend to be a reliable predictor of over-prescribing. Patients also report other means by which they obtain antibiotics, using prescriptions left over from past visits or using those obtained by a family member or friend (Watkins et al. 2015).

The problem in mounting a public education campaign is that only a handful of quality studies and surveys exist that evaluate public attitudes and beliefs, providing little basis by which to design and target messages or to plan other persuasion strategies. Those few studies available reveal a variety of substantial communication challenges and barriers.

In the United States and Europe, members of the public still do not see antibiotic resistance as a personally relevant problem that poses risks to their health or that is a function of their own choices as a health consumer. Instead, they tend to blame doctors, hospitals, and the government. They also believe that science is likely to find a solution in the form of new antibiotics and, as of yet, do not see the need for major changes in individual behavior, health care practice, or policy (McCullough et al. 2016; Wiklund et al. 2015).

The 2016 U.K. report estimates the budget for a global public education campaign at $100 million, an absurdly low figure. The research costs of adequately mapping and evaluating the views of different segments of the public across countries, identifying the types of messages that are likely to be persuasive, the sources that they trust for information, and the local channels by which to reach people would alone easily exceed that figure. The budget for the actual advertising and campaign efforts would be much greater.

In September 2016, all 193 member countries of the United Nations signed a declaration committing to a process that sets goals and timelines for reducing the use of antibiotics in medicine and agriculture. The model for the process reflects past UN efforts on climate change.

However, for decades on the topic of climate change, world governments and scientific bodies were slow to recognize the need to invest in social science-based research to inform public communication efforts, and they continue to underfund initiatives aimed at engaging the public on actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Hopefully we have learned a lesson. In combating the superbug threat, we cannot afford to delay investing in the communication research and activities needed to decrease the overuse of antibiotics.

References

• Centers for Disease Control. 2013. Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States, 2013. Atlanta, GA: US Department of Health and Human Services. Available online at http://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/pdf/
ar-threats-2013-508.pdf.
• Hwang, T.J., K.A. Gibbs, S.H. Podolsky, et al. 2015. Antimicrobial stewardship and public knowledge of antibiotics. The Lancet Infectious Diseases 15(9): 1000–1001.
• McCullough, A.R., S. Parekh, J. Rathbone, et al. 2016. A systematic review of the public’s knowledge and beliefs about antibiotic resistance. Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy 71(1): 27–33.
• Review on Antimicrobial Resistance. 2016. Tackling Drug-Resistant Infections Globally: Final Report and Recommendations. Available online at https://amr-review.org/sites/
default/files/160525_Final%20paper_with
%20cover.pdf.
• Van Boeckel, T.P., S. Gandra, A. Ashok, et al. 2014. Global antibiotic consumption 2000 to 2010: An analysis of national pharmaceutical sales data. The Lancet Infectious Diseases 14(8): 742–750.
• Watkins, L.K.F., G.V. Sanchez, A.P. Albert, et al. 2015. Knowledge and attitudes regarding antibiotic use among adult consumers, adult Hispanic consumers, and health care providers—United States, 2012–2013. MMWR-Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 64(28): 767–770.
• Wiklund, S., I. Fagerberg, Å Örtqvist., et al. 2015. Knowledge and understanding of antibiotic resistance and the risk of becoming a carrier when travelling abroad: A qualitative study of Swedish travellers. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health 43(3): 302–308.
• World Bank. 2016. Drug-Resistant Infections: A Threat to Our Economic Future (Discussion Draft). Washington, DC: World Bank. Available online at http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/527731474225046104/AMR-Discussion-Draft-Sept18updated.pdf.

“Science, my boy, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.”

—Jules Verne

Investigating mysteries can be both fun and instructive. Sure, it’s an activity that requires a lot of patience, the desire and the time to study and remain up to date, the willingness to not stop at the surface but always get to the bottom of things, the humbleness to seek advice, and a lot of other big and small strategies in order to reach the end of the path that will lead to a final explanation—or at least to an educated guess when it’s impossible to perform definitive testing.

Here I present a few tools that will help you get started, after which you can go deeper as you see fit. In Italy, for example, the skeptics group CICAP organizes an annual course on how to investigate mysteries, which includes several seminars, experts from which to learn, books and documents to study, and practical experiences to perform (such as walking on hot coals, testing a self-proclaimed psychic, or creating a crop circle in the night). Similar courses are organized by skeptical organizations in other parts of the world as well, and there are also very good books on the subject.

Let’s start with these ten practical suggestions that you must keep in mind each time you find yourself watching a TV show or news report or reading an article dealing with an apparently inexplicable mystery. Just add a little curiosity about the subject and the desire to apply yourself and you are ready to go!

1) Make sure that the mystery 
actually exists.

It’s the first rule. More often than you would expect, news devoid of any foundation is published in newspapers or broadcast on television. These are usually curious episodes found on the Internet that never happened in reality, fantasies of people seeking publicity, poor translations of news outlets in a foreign language, stories misunderstood by the reporter, or perhaps urban legends that for the umpteenth time are passed off as authentic facts. In all these cases, those who have the patience to ask fundamental questions will invariably find the explanation to the mystery simply because there is no mystery to explain.

However, when you raise doubts and explain the facts to the newspaper, the website, or the program that broke the news, the reaction is rarely one of gratitude. In the best cases, a retraction is published, though usually in small print; at worst, the correction is ignored or the news is simply taken down from the website without further explanations. Therefore, when contacting the news outlet it is best to avoid sarcastic comments or reproaches. Mistakes can happen to anyone, and it is better to offer your findings as helpful contributions to the subject at hand in the hopes that in the future news will be checked for facts before being announced.

2) Check the credibility of the source.

If the director of NASA were to say that little green men have landed on Earth, the credibility of the news would be much higher than if similar statements were made by a former actress or a writer of science-fiction novels. This does not mean that the authority of a source is enough to make the statement true—the list of blunders made by Nobel laureates and heads of state is unfortunately very long—but, at least, it may represent an initial credibility filter.

3) Conduct extensive research and 
go back to the original sources.

Never trust the accuracy of what is reported by secondary sources. Even unintentionally, news may be distorted because it is poorly understood by the reporter, because a witness has not been able to explain him- or herself, because his or her statements were changed in order to make them more palatable to the audience, or for many other reasons. It is important to, on the one hand, compare multiple versions of the same episode, and, on the other hand, to determine who first made the claim in question whenever possible. Only then can you hope to reduce the “noise” added to a story by those who came afterward.

4) Do not make assumptions before 
you have all the facts.

This is the fundamental rule laid out by Sherlock Holmes: “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly, one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

Trying to guess possible explanations for a mystery with few facts and basing your guesses merely on news reports or hearsay is a sure way to avoid solving the problem. You should instead approach the mystery with an open mind and note as much detail and information as possible. You cannot rely on news reports for a very simple reason: even if a reporter is capable and attentive, the limited space available will lead him or her to leave out details that might at first sight seem insignificant but that, if known and seen in perspective, could lead to the solution of the mystery.

5) Reproduce the original conditions.

Try to recreate the conditions under which a specific phenomenon took place. Sometimes this can be enough to solve a mystery. Once, for example, I had a chance to examine some video clips with James Randi where you could see a Russian psychic move objects without touching them. The only explanation possible, aside from the unlikely explanation that she used psychokinetic powers, seemed to be the use of invisible threads or magnets. However, when we had the opportunity to recreate the same conditions using a Plexiglass plate identical to the one used by the psychic, we found with great surprise that any object of a certain weight and a certain shape was going to move around “by itself” when put on top of the plate due to a reaction of static electricity produced by the Plexiglass after it was rubbed. By reproducing the original conditions under which the psychic operated, we found a solution for the mystery without testing the psychic herself.

6) Whenever you can, check the 
facts for yourself.

Never trust reports given by others, even though they may be from people who are usually reliable. For example, whenever you have the opportunity, personally go to the location where a mystery took place; it’s the best way to really evaluate the situation. You can easily start to see possible alternative explanations and maybe understand what really happened. Watching television or reading web pages about the mystery at hand are not even remotely comparable to going out in the field to conduct an investigation.

7) Ask experts for advice.

Do not pretend you know everything—especially in a hyper-informed age such as ours. Getting in touch with the appropriate experts is the only useful way to solve a technical or practical doubt. CICAP’s consultants, for example, come from many different disciplines: physicists, chemists, biologists, psychologists, neurologists, climatologists, geologists, and so on. There is always some new mystery that requires a specialist opinion outside our covered fields. Searching an appropriate expert for the information you need can be a fun activity in itself and could result in collaborations that lead to new investigations and discoveries.

8) Learn to distinguish between 
facts and fantasies.

The plural of anecdote is not evidence. It does not matter how many stories you collect on a particular mystery, they will never have the probative value of a single documented fact. You may even have 1,000 witnesses who claim they have seen a psychic levitate in mid-air, but you can never declare a genuine levitation unless the medium performs the feat, even once, under conditions that prevent any tricks or deceptions.

9) Take witnesses with a grain of 
salt and be polite.

Listen with respect and patience to those who had unusual experiences or who believe they possess evidence of a paranormal phenomenon. Granted, they may be wrong, but the number of factors that influence eyewitness reports are so many (and beyond personal control) that a person may believe in good faith in what he or she says. Please, always bear in mind that the task of an investigator of mysteries is to reconstruct the facts and to find the truth, not to attack or ridicule people’s beliefs or motivations.

10) Apply Occam’s Razor.

This is perhaps the most important rule of all: always try to find the simplest explanation available. Occam’s Razor is a problem-solving principle devised in the fourteenth century by an English Franciscan friar and philosopher, William of Ockham. It states that when there are competing hypotheses that predict equally well, the one with the fewest assumptions is most likely the correct one. In other words, before formulating revolutionary theories, it is necessary to determine whether or not a certain phenomenon can be interpreted with existing theories.

Facilitated communication (FC), also called “supported typing,” is back. Well actually, it has never left us; it keeps rearing its ugly head. This time around, supporters are calling it “rapid prompting method” (RPM). This practice started in the 1960s in Denmark, and although discredited, it took hold in Australia in the 1970s and moved to the United States and elsewhere in the 1990s. Supporters of FC believe that a person with severe communication and educational problems can communicate by pointing to letters on an alphabet board but not independently. The facilitator sits next to the subject and guides the finger, using tiny signals or supporting the arm and unknowingly guiding the finger on the keyboard. Science and disability advocates agree that the only person doing the communicating is the facilitator. This practice has led to claims of abuse, children being removed from their homes, as well as causing emotional distress to people involved.

Enter the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project (GSoW). We had identified that the existing Wikipedia page for FC was mostly accurate but badly needed updating. We wanted to include the best evidence FC supporters had along with the counter argument from experts. We also wanted to include the harm of FC. So often supporters would claim “what’s the harm in trying?” so we included notable case studies and court cases.

We rewrote the Wikipedia page to be neutral, showing just the facts and allowing the reader easy access to more detailed information if they chose to read further. The statements on the page that are in quotes and are opinions are from notable experts in the subject.

This took us many weeks to rewrite, and once it was published back on Wikipedia, it is fair game. Anyone can edit the page, and they do. Every few days, someone makes an edit to the page; usually the change improves the page with an updated article or improved grammar. Once in a while, an edit is made that shows support of FC; I’m looking at the history now and see that someone wrote, “FC has not been discredited ‘There are now far more studies that support FC than refute it.’”

The citation they used to support this claim was a 2014 article written in a non-noteworthy journal by two non-noteworthy people; all completely against the rules of Wikipedia. This edit done by an anonymous person was reverted within an hour. When it was reverted, the editor stated that to add this article, they first needed to discuss it with other editors on the public talk page. The talk page is where we hear the best arguments for making changes to a Wikipedia page that would seriously change the tone of the article.

We have a lot of information on this Wikipedia page: sections on Double-blind testing, FC and the media, Tests of authorship of FC, Organizations that oppose FC, and more. One really nice section I’m quite proud of is the one called “Sexual abuse allegations and facilitator misconduct.” Under this category, we have many high-profile cases that are covered by reliable sources and a couple of paragraphs explaining the cases, complete with citations people can use to learn more. Currently there are twelve cases listed.

We also have a section called “Proponents of FC,” which lists their reasons for belief. This is important, because we want readers to understand what facilitators and educators are told about the practice. GSoW and Wikipedia editors in general have been criticized in the past that “they” are hiding evidence, that we don’t want the public to know how wonderful the (insert paranormal claim here) helps people. These supporters are wrong. We are completely open to evidence proving their claim. I personally would be first in line to add evidence for life after death, or homeopathy and even FC.

The problem lies in the definition of “evidence.” To the scientific skeptic community, the evidence presented is going to have to reach a high bar before it will be accepted. To the believer, in many cases the word evidence means that they have seen it work. They try to use articles written and published in journals. But by Wikipedia standards not all journals and news outlets are equal, and some are banned as a news source as in the case of the Daily News.

The GSoW made the rewritten Facilitated communication Wikipedia page live March 2015. In the past two years, the page has been viewed 134,328 times. We can’t know if those are unique viewers or how much time was spent on the page. We only know total page views. It’s unlikely that any article we could have published or YouTube video we could have uploaded on FC would have received this much attention and to an audience that is outside the normal skeptic choir. It’s possible that the people viewing the Wikipedia page are doing so because they have been introduced to the practice by a school or teacher or proponent. And those are the people we badly need to educate.

If you would like to become involved in GSoW, please join us. Training is thorough and in-house. Write to us at GSoWteam@gmail.com.

The Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science (TIES) stresses the importance of promoting teacher leadership in the United States. Here at TIES we feel that our fellow teachers are our own best resources. We are looking for high school and college biology educators who are interested in presenting our TIES workshops to middle school science teachers in their state. Our reasoning is that a middle school science teacher will typically cover many areas of science within his/her annual curriculum, including earth science, physical science, and life science. It is virtually impossible to become an expert in all of these areas, at least not initially. The purpose of TIES is to inform interested middle school science teachers about the most up-to-date concepts of natural selection, common ancestry, and diversity in order for them to confidently cover the topics in their classrooms and fulfill their curriculum requirements. In addition to providing science teachers with innovative professional development opportunities, TIES also has ready-to-use online resources for the classroom, including presentation slides, labs, guided reading assignments, and an exam.

1. I wrote up proposals to present our materials at two state science teacher conferences, one in Florida and one in Missouri. Both conferences are next October. I secured a presenter in Illinois who can travel by car to the Missouri conference in the event our proposal is accepted.
2. We had two successful workshops this week, a district-level workshop in North Carolina and another at the Annual NSTA Conference in Los Angeles.
3. Our Kansas presenter and I had a good phone conversation this week to prepare her for her April 22 workshop in Wichita.
4. Kenny is working on getting teachers registered for our two upcoming zoo workshops.

In nearly half a century of investigating strange mysteries, I have frequently encountered claims of the mysterious force or power known as qi or ch’i or simply chi (pronounced “chee”). The term translates as “air” or “breath” and, by extension, “life force” or “energy flow.”

In traditional Asian cultures, especially Chinese, chi is the essential principle in such practices as feng shui (pronounced “fung shway”), the art of creating harmonious environments; acupuncture, a form of traditional Chinese medicine in which needles are inserted at specified points to stimulate the flow of chi (Nickell 2012); and certain martial arts, including tai chi. I will expand on the latter here, exposing tricks used by masters and their followers.

I am quick to say I did not have much special knowledge for this particular investigation other than my background as a magician and wonderworker (Nickell 2005, 219–220, 231–232, 274), but I did have a college course in sport judo and was once trained—by karate black belt and physics teacher Matt Lowry—to break boards by striking them with my hand (Nickell 2011; 2012a).

Figure 1. Author at the grave of Dixie Annie (Jarrett) Haygood, a.k.a Annie Abbott, “The Little Georgia Magnet,” whom strong men could not move. (Author’s photo, taken before a headstone was installed.)

Tai Chi, et al.

Tai chi is a shortened form of taiji quan, “Supreme ultimate boxing.” Conceived centuries ago as a martial art, it is now also practiced—as “Taoist tai chi”—as an exercise technique. In China in 2010 as a visiting scholar in an exchange program (see Nickell 2012), I watched people doing morning tai chi exercises. The graceful, flowing movements reminded me of Chinese brush calligraphy, and I found plausible the claims that the practice could help reduce stress and tone muscles.

In addition to tai chi, all martial arts typically involve the concept of chi—including kung fu, a Chinese form of fighting without weapons, and taekwondo, a type of Korean karate that uses such aggressive moves as jabs, chops, and dramatic leaping kicks. All rely on chi, the supposed internal life energy, as discussed in the Qi Encyclopedia (Lam 2016). Many unsupported claims are made for the magical, invisible chi—whose existence itself is unsupported by science.

Consider the myriad therapeutic claims made to promote tai chi. Martial arts authority Bruce Tegner (1973, 140) calls them “misleading.” As he explains:

Tai chi promoters claim that tai chi exercise will cure as many diseases and restore as many non-functioning organs as the old snake-oil remedies. While it is true that practice of the routine will promote general health and you will feel better if you do tai chi, there is absolutely no acceptable evidence that tai chi is a substitute for medical care. A tai chi teacher is without any preparation for diagnosing disease, or for prescribing for cure or care. If you are ill, see a doctor. If your ailment could be “cured” by doing tai chi, it could be “cured” by any routine of exercise. It is a cruel deception to make promises of “cure”; rather than enhancing the reputation of tai chi, it lowers it to the rank of a quack or crank activity. Tai chi is a good exercise and it deserves to be rescued from the bad reputation of cure-all quackery.

Chi Chicanery

Still other claims made for chi—involving tai chi and related martial arts—are actually due to skill and application of simple physical principles. Here are a few examples.

Candle Feat. In 1984, one of my university students, who had witnessed a sensational karate demonstration, told me how the practitioner supposedly flung off some of his “energy” (chi) to extinguish a candle. He supposedly accomplished this by simply pointing at the flame in a dramatic fashion.

I went to see the demonstration at a Lexington, Kentucky, high school. The martial artist had his mouth taped to prove he was not blowing out the flame. He moved his open hand in a rather short, quick blow toward the flame. It only flickered the first time, but on the fourth try was extinguished. I was later able—with some practice—to duplicate the feat. I also found that the secret to such a stunt had been published months earlier in a kung-fu magazine. The secret lies in “displacing the air. . . . The speed of your technique is what causes the flame to go out” (Blauer 1983, 86).

Cutting Apple on Throat. The same evening I watched the candle stunt, I also witnessed a seemingly risky feat in which a martial artist placed an apple on the throat of a reclining man and cut it in two with a sword. The blade went quickly down but stopped abruptly—rather in the manner of someone “pulling a punch” in stunt fighting. This might be practiced successfully.

The blade does not need to go all the way through the apple to cut it in two. Indeed, I have heard of a trick method in which a short length of rigid wire is inserted in the apple near the bottom to help stop the blade. Nevertheless, sometimes the stunt can go awry as shown in a YouTube video of an assistant having his throat cut—fortunately not fatally (“Karate Master” 2009).

Psychokinetic Effects. A young martial arts instructor and ex-con named James Hydrick fooled countless people in the 1980s by causing a balanced pencil to move by only pointing at it, turning pages of a phone book from several feet away by simply staring, and performing other feats. Touted by an Associated Press story and the TV program That’s Incredible, Hydrick seemed to gain scientific support for his powers when he passed tests given by an assistant professor of electrical engineering. Hydrick wore a karate gi and claimed Eastern philosophy helped him develop his mind power.

However, Hydrick was undone when magician and psychical investigator James Randi challenged Hydrick on What’s My Line?—offering him $10,000 if he could demonstrate genuine paranormal powers as claimed. Randi thought Hydrick was merely blowing to spin the pencil and flip the book pages, so he scattered feather-light Styrofoam pieces on the table around the book and challenged him to repeat the feat. If he were blowing, the Styrofoam pieces would be disturbed and thus reveal the trick. Hydrick spent an hour and half pretending to use his powers before giving up (Baker and Nickell 1992, 80). He later confessed, boasting that he had “tricked the whole world” (Korem 1988, 149).

No-Touch Knockouts. Again, karate master George Dillman allegedly discovered a technique allowing him to direct chi so as to knock down a human target. My Italian friends Massimo Polidoro and Luigi Garlaschelli investigated the claim for an episode of National Geographic TV’s Is It Real? They began by watching a video of Dillman waving his hands before a volunteer who started to oscillate and then collapse on the floor, “exactly as Obi Wan Kenobi would do on an Imperial guard in the Star Wars films” (Polidoro 2008, 20).

The skeptics suspected the feat depended on the power of suggestion. “It looked like the old hypnotic stunts where the hypnotist stands in front of someone, points a finger to his face telling him that he is going to fall backward and, after a while, the person falls as expected” (Polidoro 2008, 20). When they conducted an experiment with Dillman, and Garlaschelli stood with closed eyes as suggested, he learned that another factor was at play: It is easier to lose one’s balance with closed eyes. So he opened his and became immune to the punches of chi directed at him.

The investigators followed up with another test in which one of Dillman’s students stood behind a curtain that blocked his view while the karate master sent his supposed chi punches at intervals directed by the skeptics. This ruled out suggestion, and the student simply stood looking puzzled, awaiting the chi force that never came.

Portrait of Don Ahn graces his business card (author’s collection).

Rooting

Another questionable claim—one a television producer asked me to look into in 2009—involves what is known in the martial arts as rooting. This is the purported special ability—aided by drawing chi up from the earth while imagining roots branching down from the feet—to keep oneself planted firmly despite an incoming force (“Rooting” 2016). I watched a hastily shot video of tai chi Grand Master Don Ahn. What I saw reminded me of the stunts of certain “human magnets”—such as teenage Lulu Hurst of Georgia in the 1880s.

Billed as the “Georgia Magnet,” the fifteen-year-old Hurst would stand before the audience holding a stick parallel to the floor of the stage, while two strong men gripping it would attempt to move her. Instead, she merely pressed against the stick and not only prevented the action but pushed them across the stage to the spectators’ delight. Hurst called her power a “Great Unknown.” However, in time came criticism: the New York Times (July 13, 1884) called her performances “a phenomenon of stupidity” showing “how willingly people will be fooled. . . .”

Miss Hurst also became concerned with how spiritualists were embracing her as a powerful medium. After two years of performing, she married the young man who managed her show and returned to obscurity. She later confessed that the secret behind her power was simply “deflected force,” namely, “unrecognized mechanical principles involving leverage and balance.” She simply caused force applied against her to deflect, or glance off, and so become a useless effort (Nickell 1991, 34–40).

Among several imitators of Hurst, “One of the cleverest of these,” wrote magician Harry Houdini (1920, 228), used the stage name Annie Abbott. Her posters even billed her as “The Little Georgia Magnet.” She was a brief sensation in London, where she took her act in 1891, but—exposed by what Houdini (1920, 229) called “a keen-witted reporter”—she also soon faded from view. Her real name was Dixie Annie (Jarrett) Haygood, and she is buried in the Memory Hill Cemetery in Milledge­ville, Georgia, where I visited many years ago (see Figure 1).

Overpowering a Master

Master Ahn seemed to use principles similar to those of Hurst and Abbott. I flew to New York on June 26, 2009, to shoot a demo for a possible TV series,¹ and I observed him closely. He remained firmly in place while others—singly or together—attempted to push him backward. Having others play by his rules ensured his success as he applied the principles of low center of gravity (his small stature and effective stance) and force deflection.² He employed his forearm much as Lulu Hurst used a stick, having opponents place their hands there so he could use it as a lever, pivoting from the elbow.

I was the only one to displace him. I did so by subverting his method: I quickly crouched low, grabbed him bodily, and moved him—sputtering and protesting—straight back. He strongly objected, saying I was manipulating him. And so I was, refusing to play his game, which had nothing at all to do with chi and everything to do with physical principles.

Of course it was rude to have behaved so, but it was not the same as grabbing something from a magician’s hands. The latter is an honest deceiver, whereas—intentionally or otherwise—the martial artist who attributes such feats to anything other than physical principles is misleading the public.

To smooth things over, I pretended to have misunderstood what was expected and invited him to try again, allowing him to succeed. He not only resisted my push but actually repelled me, as I compliantly played by his rules and let him easily deflect my applied force.

Notes

1. I never learned what happened to our videotape of this event, since I was drawn away to another film project. A producer did say he was very happy with my efforts (Gaines 2009).
2. Dongkuk “Don” Ahn (1937–2013) was also a prominent artist residing in New York City. Born in Seoul, South Korea, he painted in acrylic on canvas using fluid brushstrokes reminiscent of Eastern calligraphy (“Don Ahn” 2014).

References

• Baker, Robert A., and Joe Nickell. 1992. Missing Pieces: How to Investigate Ghosts, UFOs, Psychics, & Other Mysteries. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.
• Blauer, Tony. 1983. Effective self-defense. Inside Kung-Fu August: 85–87.
• Don Ahn (Dongkuk)—Spirit. 2014. Available online at www.ahlfoundation.org/spirit/; accessed August 23, 2016.
• Gaines, Cory. 2009. Personal communication (from Leftfield Pictures) to Joe Nickell, June 27.
• Houdini, Harry. 1920. Miracle Mongers and Their Methods. Reprinted Toronto: Coles, 1980.
• Karate master cuts his assistant’s throat. 2009. Available online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYJvglrEsAk; accessed August 23, 2016.
• Korem, Dan. 1988. Powers: Testing the Psychic & Supernatural. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 85–156.
• Lam, Paul. 2016. Qi in Martial Arts. Available online at qi-encyclopedia.com/?article=Qi%20in%20Martial%20Arts; accessed August 23, 2016.
• Nickell, Joe. 1991. Wonderworkers! How They Perform the Impossible. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.
• ———. 2005. Secrets of the Sideshows. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky.
• ———. 2011. Karate Student. Available online at www.joenickell.com/KarateStudent/KarateStudent1html; accessed August 25, 2016.
• ———. 2012. Traditional Chinese Medicine: Views East and West. Skeptical Inquirer 36(2) (March/April): 18–20.
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• Polidoro, Massimo. 2008. Just like Jedi knights (if only). Skeptical Inquirer 32(3) (May/June): 20–21.
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• Tegner, Bruce. 1973. Kung Fu & Tai Chi: Chinese Karate and Classical Exercises. New York: Bantam Books.

Every year, Chapman University tells us what we fear the most.

While “What’s your biggest fear?” might seem a psychological riddle, these researchers have got it down to a science, using rigorous polling methods to ask Americans about the most common fears and suspicions that plague them. The project, which is in its third year, offers telling insights about fear of government control and terrorism. For readers of Skeptical Inquirer, the survey covers something else equally compelling: Americans’ seemingly unshakable beliefs in the paranormal and in conspiracy theories. And things are looking … well … pretty bonkers.

According to the new research in the 2016 survey, issued in October, 46.6 percent of Americans believe places can be haunted by spirits; 27 percent believe that extraterrestrials have visited Earth in “our ancient past” (we no doubt can thank the History Chan­nel, in part, for this result); 24.7 percent say aliens have come to Earth “in modern times”; 13.5 percent are eating tacos, answering email, and all the while believing that Bigfoot is real; and a whopping 39.6 percent believe that Atlantis, or something like it, once existed.

Conspiracies were a new addition this year, but paranormal beliefs are categorically distinct from conspiracy theories. For one, conspiracies do happen, whereas ghosts (as far as we can tell) do not. It’s simply when we speak of a massive, and massively unlikely, conspiracy requiring many players pulling off incredibly difficult cover-ups that these theories become less likely than the original story they’re meant to blow wide open. Still, an alarming number of Americans believe in outlandish conspiracy theories. Some are more rational than others, and the survey is designed to fairly assess the nuances, from believing that the government might not be disclosing all the details about the 9/11 attacks (which might not be totally outlandish, and which is vague enough that any unreleased detail about 9/11 might be considered “covered up”) to the idea that the moon landing never happened (which has been completely discredited).

In this study, conspiracy theories were examined particularly as they relate to distrust of the government. For each theory, respondents were asked whether they believe the government is “concealing what they know about” the incident or alleged incident.

Respondents were most likely to think that we aren’t getting the whole story about the 9/11 attacks (54.3 percent said the government is hiding something there); the JFK assassination came in at second place (49.6 percent); alien encounters are third (42.6 percent think the government is pulling the extraterrestrial wool over our eyes); 30.2 percent still think there’s something up with Obama’s birth certificate even though that issue has been put to rest so hard you’d think we’d euthanized it; and 30.2 percent think something fishy caused HIV (some believe the CIA created the virus that causes AIDS). Finally, 24.2 percent are still hanging on for dear life to the oft-derided view that the moon landing isn’t real.

However, the most exciting part of the study, by far, is about the North Dakota Crash. As each respondent was asked whether they think the government was covering up information about the famous, mysterious aerial wreck, they were given this question: “To what degree do you agree with the following statement? The government is concealing what they know about the North Dakota Crash.” A sizable 32.5 percent of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed. As readers of Skeptical Inquirer will know, the craft in the North Dakota Crash was quickly discovered to be an experimental passenger plane. Its odd circular design was no match for aerodynamics, and unsurprisingly it fell to Earth within a few minutes of its first test flight. Yet 32.5 percent of respondents still believe that the government wants to cover up something about this highly banal tale of ragtag plane hobbyists.

Okay, I lied. That’s not what the North Dakota Crash was. I made it up. And so did the people who designed the study. The North Dakota Crash never existed; the study’s designers merely created a name for an incident that sounded like something mysterious (the description of the event is all mine). Yet even that name—North Dakota Crash—was enough to make over 30 percent of respondents agree that something is up and the government isn’t telling us what it is. But my little trick is a reminder to us, too. If you, having never read even the name “North Dakota Crash,” presumed there was nothing shady going on with it either, you’ve faced your own presuppositions. And if you read my fictionalized account of the crash and took it on face value without looking it up yourself, it’s a good reminder to always corroborate your sources, because even Skeptical Inquirer gets things wrong sometimes. (One reviewer didn’t like Ben Stein’s Expelled, which, while truly one of the worst movies of all time, is also, for all the same reasons, one of the best movies of all time.)

I asked Christopher Bader, the survey’s lead researcher on conspiracy theories and the paranormal, what he made of all these new North Dakota Crash believers.

“I was absolutely shocked by the high levels of belief in the North Dakota Crash,” he wrote via email, “and by the fact that most Americans believe in at least one of the conspiracies we presented. I see this item as the best indicator (better than asking about any particular conspiracy that ‘exists’ in the public consciousness such as JFK or 9/11) of a conspiratorial mindset.”

So why does someone who has never even heard of the supposed crash say he or she is suspicious of it? Said Bader:

I read it as a respondent thinking “Well I don’t know what the North Dakota Crash is—but whatever it is, the government knows more than it is telling us.” Of course, when you try a [misleading] question like this other factors come into play. Some respondents might lie in their response or may actually think they know what the North Dakota Crash is (have it confused with something else). But the amount of belief we found was shocking, even considering the random error such a technique will introduce. It is a worrying sign of the extremely high levels of distrust in the government when people simply assume the government is nefarious.

And these conspiratorial beliefs can have troubling associations in the believer’s personal life. A person who believes in numerous conspiracy theories is more likely to fear their partner cheating on them and also is more likely to buy a gun out of fear—a potentially deadly combination.

But what of those ghost beliefs? Do they betray other fears and insecurities? Yes, says Bader, who ran an analysis of the data especially for our audience. “There is a significant, positive correlation between fear of ghosts and fear of dying. The more one tends to fear ghosts, the more one tends to fears dying. This is a correlation so I couldn’t claim which comes first—just an association.”

There were other connections, too. I asked Bader if those who believe ET has come to visit also fear undocumented immigrants (a separate portion of the study dealt with American fears of immigrants and xenophobia).

“People who believe aliens have visited the Earth in modern times are more likely to believe that immigrants are more likely to commit crimes than U.S. citizens and that immigrants bring diseases into the United States,” said Bader.

In many ways, the larger report is a warning against painting people with a broad brush: it serves to fight xenophobia and unwarranted fear of Muslim Americans (tragically, 75 percent of respondents said they would or might call the police to report “a large group of people who appear to be of Middle Eastern descent congregating near a fountain”). The issues of paranormal and conspiracy claims, which have long been the focus of our work at Skeptical Inquirer, are finding new, interesting connections with these broader issues of how fear—especially irrational fear—works.

You can read the entire Chapman University Survey of American Fears 2016 on their website at https://blogs.chapman.edu/wilkinson/2016/10/11/americas-top-fears-2016/.

Last year, the news media outlet RT News posted a video updating the story of Eric Garner, who died after being put in a police chokehold in July 2014. The July 12, 2016, video, titled “Witness who filmed Eric Garner’s arrest sentenced to prison,” examined the fate of a man named Ramsey Orta, whose cell phone video sparked outrage across the country and around the world, leading to dozens of protests and helping secure a nearly $6 million settlement between Garner’s family and the city of New York.

In the video, which can be seen in its entirety on YouTube, anchor Anya Parampil interviews retired NYPD Detective Graham Weatherspoon and asks him: “As the world has just watched the police killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, what message does it send that the only person to have gone to jail from the scene of Eric Garner’s death is Ramsey Orta—the man who filmed it?”

The onscreen caption reads “Interesting Coincidence” and the implication is clear: the justice system punished Orta for exposing police misconduct and sent a “message” to others who record police abusing innocent citizens that they might be jailed for doing so.

Except that Orta was sentenced to four years on Riker’s Island on weapons and drug charges, including selling heroin. There is no evidence or even suggestion that Orta was framed by police (or wrongly arrested or convicted) because of his famous video of Garner’s death, or that it was related to his arrest in any way. Thus, it’s not clear what “message” Orta’s jailing might carry. The fact that no police officers involved with Garner’s death were jailed has no logical connection to the fact that the man who videotaped the assault on Garner went to jail on drug charges.

It’s not clear whether anchor Parampil and her news editors didn’t understand the story or merely chose to spin it in an inflammatory and false way, but in any event the “interesting coincidence” mentioned in the screen graphic is intentionally misleading and trades on Alex Jones–style conspiracy theory. There is nothing “interesting” or relevant about Orta being sentenced to jail for serious crimes that are completely unrelated to his earlier filming of Garner’s death. The written caption under the video clarifies why Orta was sentenced, but the rest of the image and content is clearly misleading.

Detective Weatherspoon, to his credit, tries to clarify the situation while subtly undermining the angle presented by the RT News editor and Parampil. Parampil later raises the question of whether Orta was harassed following the publicizing of his videotape, implicitly suggesting that there may be some connection to his imprisonment—yet no evidence is ever offered for that claim.

Why is RT News peddling misinformation and anti-government conspiracy theory in the guise of social justice reporting? The motivations become clearer when we understand who’s behind RT News: the Russian government. The Russians have engaged in a decades-long sustained disinformation campaign, and as The New York Times notes:

The planting of false stories is nothing new; the Soviet Union devoted considerable resources to that during the ideological battles of the Cold War. Now, though, disinformation is regarded as an important aspect of Russian military doctrine, and it is being directed at political debates in target countries with far greater sophistication and volume than in the past. The flow of misleading and inaccurate stories is so strong that both NATO and the European Union have established special offices to identify and refute disinformation, particularly claims emanating from Russia. The Kremlin’s clandestine methods have surfaced in the United States, too, American officials say, identifying Russian intelligence as the likely source of leaked Democratic National Committee emails that embarrassed Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The Kremlin uses both conventional media—Sputnik, a news agency, and RT, a television outlet—and covert channels, as in Sweden, that are almost always untraceable.... The fundamental purpose of dezinformatsiya, or Russian disinformation, experts said, is to undermine the official version of events—even the very idea that there is a true version of events—and foster a kind of policy paralysis.

The idea that Russians are intentionally fomenting social unrest and government distrust in the United States through news media sounds itself like a conspiracy theory, but it is not. There’s clear and overwhelming evidence of this, and the RT story about Ramsay Orta is a good example; the first comment under the video warns that “This is what TYRANNY looks like!” (For what it’s worth, jailing convicted drug dealers is not in fact what tyranny looks like.) Russia is subtly manipulating well-intentioned social activists to share their viral outrage and anti-U.S. propaganda, and their attempts have become even more obvious in the past year during the presidential elections.

Part of Putin’s goal is (and was) to sow distrust of the Obama administration and outrage people into demanding a change in leadership. That Russia attempted, with varying degrees of success, to influence the presidential election in favor of Donald Trump is beyond dispute and widely accepted by the American intelligence community.

Most Americans were justifiably outraged at Eric Garner’s death, and by misleadingly conflating that with Ramsey Orta’s unrelated imprisonment and suggesting a police conspiracy, Russia Today News is intentionally misleading the American public into unjustified outrage and distrust. It is, in a real way, “fake news.” Disinformation stories such as these undermine the credibility of activist movements trying to bring attention to real social justice problems. As Time magazine noted, “The only way to counter mis­information is to doggedly stick to the facts. The aim of RT is to ‘inundate the viewer with theories about Western plots, to keep them dazed and confused,’ says Peter Pomerantsev, a British expert on Russian propaganda.”

Sincere activists should be on the front lines of guarding against this type of manipulation and manufactured outrage, but all too often people “Like” and “Share” information on social media that confirms their pre-existing assumptions and beliefs. The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend, and those who hype and exaggerate genuine social problems have their own hidden agendas. The best way to avoid being misled is by using, as always, skepticism and critical thinking.

The United States has just completed the most contentious presidential election in recent memory. The concept of President Trump is obviously distressing to many members of the skeptical community. It might be particularly tempting at times like this to associate skepticism formally or informally with being a political movement. I think it is important for skepticism to avoid making this mistake.

Skepticism, as it is used in the skeptical movement today, is not necessarily easy to define. Suffice it to say that modern-day skeptics promote the logical and reasonable interpretation of existing evidence. They question claims that lack legitimate supporting evidence and embrace claims that are supported by such evidence. In so doing, skeptics promote good science, criticize bad science, and question no science. Skepticism is needed because people frequently fail to interpret evidence in a sensible manner due to humans’ limited cognitive capacity, memory distortions, and a variety of well-known cognitive errors and biases.

Skepticism can be conceptualized as a nerdy superhero. Until nobody believes the scientifically unreasonable, skepticism is there! Skeptics’ powers are an odd sort. They constitute little in the way of physical force. Skeptics do not overpower villains with superhuman strength or with Amazonian combat skills. Rather, skeptics possess a heightened ability to detect flim-flam, a willingness to educate about corresponding issues, and a propensity to ask a series of annoying questions possibly ending with a lecture about non-falsifiable claims. Skeptics use these tools to promote a particular kind of truth—a truth based on science and reason.

Skepticism has one other inconspicuous but incredibly important superpower. Skeptics should be particularly adept at changing their beliefs to keep them consistent with the existing evidence. Consequently, skeptics, by definition, typically have the evidence on their side. If, for instance, somebody provides reliable evidence for Bigfoot, good skeptics will eventually adapt to the new evidence and move on. Thus, skepticism is an approach to the world, not an obstinate set of beliefs.

Skepticism is enhanced by the number of people who embrace it. There are well-known skeptics who famously and fabulously promote science and reason, but skepticism is also promoted importantly by every member of the skeptical movement. This occurs when members support each other. This occurs when members support groups such as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. This occurs, perhaps most importantly of all, when skeptics have those innumerable unplanned conversations with others about vaccinations, ancient aliens, creationism, faith healing, psychics, and so forth. In sum, the skeptical movement needs members. The more people embracing science and reason, the better.

Politics is potential kryptonite for the skeptical movement. Skepticism, in its focus on the evidence, does not seem to require a particular political affiliation. In the United States, a true skeptic could be conservative or liberal. Many debates between liberals and conservatives carry a considerable degree of conjecture and invoke different ethical perspectives and corresponding solutions. In this respect, aspects of broad political debate are often outside the scope of modern-day skepticism. Science and reason do not clearly debunk many political claims, and they do not debunk the entirety of a political candidate or party, with perhaps some isolated exceptions. Skepticism is applied most sensibly to political claims that are inconsistent with existing science or are illogical in some other way. These political claims could come from any political party or broad political view.

If the skeptical movement allows its focus on science and reason to become transmuted into broad political affiliation, I think the consequences for skepticism would be dire. First, this would undermine the identity of the skeptical movement. Skepticism would be in danger of searching for evidence to support political causes rather than searching for evidence to support truth. Second, an inappropriately partisan skeptical movement would alienate potential members. People who are ready to embrace skepticism more formally might not do so due to political disagreements rather than concerns with skepticism per se.

To illustrate, I return to the 2016 presidential election. It is clearly appropriate for the skeptical community to criticize sternly some of President-elect Trump’s apparent platforms. Mr. Trump appears to be dangerously disdainful of the evidence supporting anthropogenic climate change. He has encouraged unsubstantiated stereotypes by characterizing Muslim and Mexican immigrants in negative ways. One could argue that he has promoted beliefs about gun control that are inconsistent with the existing evidence. These issues, among others, make it alluring for the skeptical movement to fashion itself as Anti-Trump or even Anti-Republican.

It is nonetheless important for all of us who love skepticism to separate the broad political considerations from skepticism. Skeptics cannot support political claims that are simply at odds with reasonable interpretations of the existing evidence. However, they should, when speaking as skeptics, stop short of denigrating an entire political viewpoint. It is understandably enticing for many skeptics to do so by embracing skepticism today as a battle between science-denying Republicans and logical pro-science Democrats, but this would be harmful to skepticism more broadly. It would embrace stereotyping at the political party level; obviously some Republicans are for science and reason and some Democrats are not. Ironically, this broad level of generalization would contradict the thoughtful approach that skeptics generally try to embrace. To this point, it is important to remember that liberally minded people are also capable of generating woo. Proponents of the anti-vaccination movement are more likely to come from the political left than the political right.

More importantly, I think it is imperative to consider the nature of an ideal skeptical movement. Skepticism will be most effective, and possibly most enjoyable, when its members come from all parts of the political spectrum. This might feel counterintuitive at present. However, if skepticism stays true to its principles, a conservative presence would not represent failure. It would represent success. Scientific skepticism will always promote science and reason. A conservative or Republican presence in this movement would not signify a diminishing of those goals. Rather, it would demonstrate that the promotion of science and reason is taking place across the political spectrum. It would indicate that the ensuing political debates are more likely to be grounded in scientific reality. If we could create that world, I would be a happy, happy skeptic. I suspect that most skeptics feel the same way.

So, even at a time like this, we should proceed carefully and openly. Based on my experiences in the skeptical community, I believe that most of its U.S. members are left of center politically. This is understandable. The skeptical community does not need to match the U.S. liberal-conservative political spectrum, and it seems intuitive that contemporary politics makes it easier to be a liberal skeptic than a conservative one. Nevertheless, I believe that the skeptical community should keep open chairs at the dinner table for conservatives who also embrace science and reason. To illustrate, perhaps the most pressing skepticism issue of our time is climate change. On this issue, the skeptical movement does not need more liberals. It needs more conservatives. Liberals are already far more likely to support initiatives aimed at mitigating anthropogenic climate change. Helping conservatives understand the skeptical perspective is more likely to create sensible evidence-based solutions.

How do we do this successfully? To begin, skepticism must stay true to its principles. Skeptics must continue to voice their disapproval for claims that appear to be implausible or impossible based on a logical interpretation of the evidence. Skepticism should continue to engage in this manner regardless of whether claims are associated with liberal or conservative viewpoints. However, skeptics should also take care to criticize the claim not the player. Skeptics, when communicating as skeptics, should be careful to constrain their concerns to inconsistencies between claims and evidence and avoid generalizing skepticism to concerns with broader political affiliations. Skeptics should also take care to constrain the disdain. It is easy to understand why skeptics become so frustrated, but suggestions that opponents are stupid or ignorant will not win them to our side. The goals of the skeptical movement are most likely to be achieved when skeptics communicate in a respectful, transparent, and constructive manner.

Mahatma Gandhi used the Sanskrit word Satyagraha to describe the soul of his political opposition. The word is difficult to translate, but in being so, it might describe Gandhi’s morally enlightening perspective better than any English term. Satyagraha means something like politely and insistently holding on to the truth. Satyagraha is the best course of action for the skeptical community. The skeptical community is founded on the pursuit of truth, a truth that changes as the evidence dictates. In this emotionally charged political zeitgeist, the skeptical community needs to remember its goal of promoting science and reason across all parts of the political spectrum. The skeptical community will achieve that goal most effectively not with brazen, negative characterizations of those who disagree but rather with polite insistence.

Many ideas in child psychology have been largely discredited (Koocher et al. 2014). Unfortunately, parents and college students often have a hard time distinguishing between research-supported ideas and discredited myths. For example, in recent research, college students believed that Facilitated Communication (a pseudoscientific intervention) was more effective than Applied Behavior Analysis (a well-established intervention) as a treatment for autism (Hupp et al. 2012; Hupp et al. 2013).

While there is emerging literature on beliefs about child-focused myths, the existing research base continues to have limitations. First, many popular myths of childhood have never been examined with opinion surveys. Second, published opinion surveys are largely limited to focusing on ineffective interventions even though there are many other myths in child psychology such as those related to etiology (cause), typical development, assessment, and basic parenting approaches. Finally, previous opinion surveys primarily included college students. Although it is valuable to know the beliefs of students, it may be even more informative to gather information regarding parents’ beliefs. The purpose of this study was to assess the beliefs of both students and parents on a wide range of myths related to child psychology, and this is the first study to collect data regarding beliefs for the majority of these myths.

Method

This study includes two different samples of participants. First, 163 consenting undergraduate students were given a paper survey at the beginning of a child psychology course at a midsized midwestern university. All students in the course received a small amount of credit for this activity regardless of whether or not they consented to being in the study. The mean age of the students was 19.9 years old (SD = 2.0). Students were mostly female (83.4 percent), with 13.5 percent indicating they were male, and 3.1 percent leaving this item blank. The sample was primarily Caucasian (66.9 percent), followed by African American (17.8 percent), Hispanic/Latino (3.1 percent), and Asian (1.2 percent); 6.7 percent of participants were biracial, and 4.3 percent did not classify themselves. The sample included freshmen (32.5 percent), sophomores (25.2 percent), juniors (28.2 percent), and seniors (11.0 percent), with 3.1 percent of participants leaving this item blank.

The second group of participants consisted of parents. Specifically, 205 parents took part in an online study using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Although Mechanical Turk is a relatively new tool for data collection, research shows that high-quality data from a diverse population can be collected in this manner, and it helps compensate for limitations inherent in studying college students alone (Buhrmester et al. 2011). Only parents living in America could take the survey, and they completed the survey anonymously. Participants received 25 cents worth of credit to be used at Amazon.com. The mean age of the parents was 33.2 years old (SD = 8.4), and the mean age of their oldest child was 8.6 years old (SD = 6.8). Regarding gender, 52.7 percent of parents were female, 45.9 percent were male, and 1.5 percent left the item blank. The sample was primarily Caucasian (69.8 percent) followed by African American (10.2 percent), Asian (9.8 percent), Hispanic/Latino (4.9 percent), and American Indian or Alaska Native (0.5 percent); 2.9 percent of participants were biracial, and 2.0 percent did not classify themselves into any category.

Both students and parents completed a survey that was designed for this study. The Opinions About Kids Scale (OAKS) includes twenty-six statements that are myths related to child psychology, development, and parenting. Research debunking each of these myths is thoroughly described in the book Great Myths of Child Development (Hupp and Jewell 2015). The myth statements are interspersed with another twenty-six statements that are supported by research.

Participants responded on a four-point Likert scale for each statement (3 = “agree,” 2 = “somewhat agree,” 1 = “somewhat disagree,” 0 = “disagree.”). For the purposes of this study, responses of “agree” and “somewhat agree” were combined to indicate that the participant believed the statement. Results are reported in terms of the percentage of college students and the percentage of parents that believed each statement.

Table 1. Percent of College Students and Parents that Believe Child-Focused Myths

Myths of Child Psychology	Rank	College	Parents
The Attachment Parenting approach strengthens the mother-infant bond	1	88.4	83.0
Most toddlers go through a “terrible two’s” stage	2	84.7	83.4
A child’s drawings provide insight into the subconscious cause of their problems	3	87.0	79.1
Within about one hour after birth, babies need to bond with their mothers so that attachment is stronger over time	4	82.7	82.0
The sex chromosomes of all girls are XX and all boys are XY	5	82.4	79.1
Baby walkers help young children learn to walk	6*	77.8	75.6
Showing cognitively stimulating videos to infants boosts their intelligence	7*	84.7	68.7
Too much sugar causes most children to be hyperactive	8	81.6	70.3
Most antidepressants used for kids are approved by the Food & Drug Administration	9	68.1	67.8
Most “only children” (without siblings) are more likely to be selfish & spoiled	10	79.0	54.2
Some identical twins can feel each other’s physical pain	11	56.4	76.1
Programs like Scared Straight help prevent youth from breaking the law	12	64.2	62.4
Having a baby sleep in the mother’s bed promotes the baby’s secure attachment	13	63.2	62.4
When Mozart’s music is played to infants the music boosts their intelligence	14	59.9	58.0
Using “baby talk” with an infant delays their ability to speak normally	15	50.0	51.7
Breastfeeding a baby for more than two years helps strengthen the attachment between the mother and child	16	38.7	52.2
Divorce tends to ruin the lives of most children that have to go through it	17*	39.5	46.8
Children who frequently wet the bed usually have underlying emotional issues	18*	42.9	43.4
When kids are never spanked for their misbehavior they are likely to be spoiled	19	45.0	38.5
Being in daycare interferes with the attachment between children and their parents	20	35.1	39.1
If a child has an imaginary friend, the child is usually less sociable with real kids	21	41.7	32.2
Brief “time-outs” are too weak to help decrease real behavior problems in toddlers	22	41.1	32.2
Letting one-year-olds “cry it out” at bedtime hurts their emotional development	23	25.5	42.5
Couples that are struggling with fertility have an increased chance of getting pregnant after they adopt a child	24	29.6	35.6
The shape of the mother’s belly is one factor that can help doctors predict the sex of a fetus	25	31.3	20.4
Vaccines have been a common cause of autism	26	22.8	24.4

Note. Participants are reported to believe the statement if they marked “agree” or “somewhat agree.” Rank was determined by calculating the overall average between the college students and parents for each statement; in two cases there was a tie in rank (marked by asterisks), and greater weight was given to the parent rating because there were more parent participants.

Results and Discussion

Results for the myths are presented in Table 1, and results of research-supported statements are in Table 2. Overall, college students (with a paper survey) and parents (with an online survey) responded similarly across most items. That is, college students and parents differed by less than 10 percentage points for a large majority of the items (i.e., forty-one of fifty-two statements), and they differed by less than 5 percentage points for half of the items (i.e., twenty-six of fifty-two statements). Thus, this data indicates that college students and parents hold similar beliefs as measured by these different data collection methods.

The highest-ranked myth overall involved Attachment Parenting: 88.4 percent of students and 83.0 percent of parents believed that “The Attachment Parenting approach strengthens the mother-infant bond.” This commonly held belief could be concerning to psychologists using evidence-based approaches, as a large part of Attachment Parenting is to warn parents of the cry-it-out method used for sleep problems with children even though the cry-it-out approach is supported by research when used as part of a larger sleep hygiene intervention (Kuhn and Elliott 2003). Fortunately, fewer of the participants (i.e., 25.5 percent of students and 42.5 percent of parents) reported believing the myth that “Letting one-year-olds ‘cry it out’ at bedtime hurts their emotional development.” Other items from the survey queried about other components of Attachment Parenting. For example, 82.7 percent of students and 82.0 percent of parents believed that “Within about one hour after birth, babies need to bond with their mothers so that attachment is stronger over time,” and 63.2 percent of students and 62.4 percent of parents believed that “Having a baby sleep in the mother’s bed promotes the baby’s secure attachment.” Overall, these Attachment Parenting beliefs may cause parents to avoid research-supported treatments, engage in bedtime behaviors discouraged by the American Academy of Pediatrics (i.e., bed-sharing), and feel guilty if they did not have the opportunity to bond with their newborn immediately after birth.

The second-highest-ranked myth involved disruptive child behaviors. Specifically, 84.7 percent of students and 83.4 percent of parents believed that “Most toddlers go through a ‘terrible two’s’ stage.” Although it’s common for all two-year-olds to engage in some disruptive behaviors, it’s also common to find some disruptive behaviors in just about every age group, and research shows that two-year-olds are not more terrible than children of other ages (Janson and Mathiesen 2008). While it is true that some new disruptive behavior might crop up at two-years-old, the same can also be said for other ages, and many new prosocial behaviors emerge at age two as well. The “terrible two’s” myth has the potential to normalize clinical behavior problems and prevent parents from seeking evidence-based interventions such as behavioral parent training (Eyberg et al. 2008). Similarly, time-outs are a common component to behavioral parent training, and 41.1 percent of students and 32.2 percent of parents believed that time-outs are too weak to be effective even though research shows that they can often be helpful when used along with other strategies.

The third-highest-ranked myth involved projective drawings that are rooted in psychoanalysis. Eighty-seven percent of students and 79.1 percent of parents believed that “A child’s drawings provide insight into the subconscious cause of their problems.” In other research, over half of the professionals doing child custody evaluations (Ackerman and Pritzl 2011) and nearly half of school psychologists (Hojnoski et al. 2006) were using projective drawing methods, such as the House-Tree-Person. With high use among professionals, it’s not surprising that students and parents believe this myth even though projective drawings have been debunked in terms of their ability to provide useful clinical information during an assessment (Lilienfeld et al. 2000). Although non-projective drawings may be one useful tool for therapists to build rapport with children, projective drawings are problematic when used in place of useful assessment techniques such as functional behavior assessment.

Other commonly believed myths may also interfere with evidence-based approaches. For example, 81.6 percent of students and 70.3 percent of parents believed that sugar causes children to be hyperactive. This belief may lead to ineffective treatments such as sugar-elimination diets instead of well-established treatments such as behavioral classroom management (Evans et al. 2013). In another example, 64.2 percent of students and 62.4 percent of parents believed that the Scared Straight program is an effective intervention for delinquency, which could lead to parents seeking this ineffective treatment in place of an evidence-based treatment such as Multisystemic Therapy (Eyberg et al. 2008). In addition, 42.9 percent of students and 43.4 percent of parents believe that emotional issues are at the root of bedwetting, which could lead to therapy based in treating an unidentified subconscious problem, when a urine alarm is actually a quite effective treatment instead (Gimpel et al. 1998).

The lowest-ranked myth involved autism and vaccines. Specifically, 22.8 percent of students and 24.4 percent of parents believed that “Vaccines have been a common cause of autism,” even though research consistently fails to find this connection (Hobson et al. 2012). Although this is the lowest ranked myth, it is potentially one of the most dangerous, as this belief causes some parents to avoid important vaccinations for measles, mumps, rubella, and other diseases. In addition, belief in this myth causes parents to choose ineffective autism treatments, such as chelation (i.e., to remove mercury from the body) instead of well-established treatments such as Applied Behavior Analysis (Rogers and Vismara 2008).

Table 2. Percent of College Students and Parents that Believe Research-Supported Statements

Research Supported Statements	Rank	College	Parents
Daily physical activity is important for children’s health	1	100	97.6
It is common for siblings to have disagreements with each other	2	99.4	96.1
Breastfeeding is a healthy way for babies to get nutrition	3	97.5	97.6
Physical abuse can be harmful to children’s emotional development	4	98.8	95.6
It is important for mothers to eat a balanced diet while pregnant	5	99.4	94.6
Teachers should report a parent if they see the parent abuse a child	6	98.7	95.1
It is common for children to make grammatical mistakes when learning to talk	7	98.7	94.6
It is a good idea for parents to read every day with toddlers	8	98.1	94.6
Drug use during pregnancy can be harmful to the developing fetus	9	98.8	92.7
Most children need more sleep than adults	10	96.4	94.2
Fathers often have a big influence on their children’s emotional developments	11	92.6	96.1
Most young babies can perceive different speech sounds	12*	92.6	94.7
Verbal teasing can be more harmful than physical bullying	13*	95.1	92.2
Cognitive-behavioral therapy can be helpful for children with clinical depression	14	92.0	92.2
It can be helpful for children who experience a lot of anger to see a therapist	15	93.8	88.3
Children sometimes need to learn how to “face their fears”	16	93.9	87.3
Often a physical trait is influenced by more than one gene	17	91.4	89.7
Applied Behavior Analysis can be helpful for children with autism	18	87.7	88.8
Kids usually develop friendships with others that are similar to them in some way	19	91.9	84.4
Most people don’t remember much before the age of about three years-old	20	91.4	83.9
It is common for children who have been adopted to live happy and successful lives	21	82.2	91.2
When babies are born they already have many reflexes	22	81.5	86.8
Children can be diagnosed with clinical depression	23	77.3	88.3
The average boy tends to be more aggressive than the average girl	24	87.0	75.2
Intelligence is influenced by genes	25	57.1	79.1
The vision of most babies is worse than the vision of most adults	26	51.6	66.3

Note. Participants are reported to believe the statement if they marked “agree” or “somewhat agree.” Rank was determined by calculating the overall average between the college students and parents for each statements; in one case there was a tie in rank (marked by asterisks), and greater weight was given to the parent rating because there were more parent participants.

Regarding the research-supported statements on the OAKS, college students and parents tended to report high levels of belief. For example, about 92 percent of participants believed that Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy was effective for childhood depression, and about 88 percent of participants believed that Applied Behavior Analysis was an effective treatment for autism. Regarding childhood anger, 93.8 percent of college students and 88.3 percent of parents believed that “It can be helpful for children who experience a lot of anger to see a therapist.” Regarding anxiety, 93.9 percent of students and 87.3 percent of parents believed that “Children sometimes need to learn how to ‘face their fears.’”

Overall, students and parents tended to believe in the effectiveness of evidence-based approaches; however, they also tended to believe several myths that could interfere with effective treatments and may otherwise put children’s safety at risk. This study provides data regarding the prevalence of beliefs about several myths and can help instructors prioritize which myths need to be addressed in the classroom. For these myths, this study serves as a marker in time for future studies to evaluate how beliefs change over time.

References

• Ackerman, M.J., and T.B. Pritzl. 2011. Child custody evaluation practices: A 20-year follow-up. Family Court Review 49: 618–628.
• Buhrmester, M., T. Kwang., and S.D. Gosling. 2011. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk a new source of inexpensive, yet high-quality, data? Perspectives on Psychological Science 6(1): 3–5.
• Evans, S.W., J.S. Owens, and N. Bunford. 2013. Evidence-based psychosocial treatments for children and adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology: 1–25.
• Eyberg, S.M., M.M. Nelson, and S.R. Boggs. 2008. Evidence-based psychosocial treatments for children and adolescents with disruptive behavior. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology 37: 215–237.
• Gimpel, G.A., W.J. Warzak, B.R. Kuhn, et al. 1998. Clinical perspectives in primary nocturnal enuresis. Clinical Pediatrics 37: 23–29.
• Hobson, K.A., P.F. Mateu, C.L. Coryn, et al. 2012. Measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines and diagnoses of autism spectrum disorders among children: A meta‐analysis. World Medical & Health Policy 4(2): 1–14.
• Hojnoski, R.L., R. Morrison, M. Brown, et al. 2006. Projective test use among school psychologists: A survey and critique. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment 24: 145–159.
• Hupp, S., and J. Jewell. 2015. Great Myths of Child Development. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Hupp, S.D.A., E. McKenney, M. Schmittel, et al. 2013. Disseminate, debunk, differentiate: Teaching about evidence-based treatments in a child psychology course. The Behavior Therapist 36: 14–16.
• Hupp, S.D.A., A.K. Stary, K.N. Bradshaw, et al. 2012. Debunk, debunk, debunk: Some evidence for why dissemination is only half the battle. The Behavior Therapist 35: 76–78.
• Janson, H., and K.S. Mathiesen. 2008. Tempera­ment profiles from infancy to middle childhood: Development and associations with behavior problems. Developmental Psychology 44: 1314–1328.
• Koocher, G.P., M.R. McMann, A.O. Stout, et al. 2014. Discredited assessment and treatment methods used with children and adolescents: A Delphi poll. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology: 1–8.
• Kuhn, B.R., and A.J. Elliott. 2003. Treatment efficacy in behavioral pediatric sleep medicine. Journal of Psychosomatic Research 54: 587–597.
• Lilienfeld, S.O., J.M. Wood, and H.N. Garb. 2000. The scientific status of projective techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest 1(2): 27–66.
• Rogers, S.J., and L.A. Vismara. 2008. Evidence-based comprehensive treatments for early autism. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology 37: 8–38.

When scientists discover a distant planet that is made of diamonds (Bailes et al. 2011), public admiration is virtually assured. When the same scientific method yields findings that impinge on corporate interests or people’s lifestyles, the public response can be anything but favorable. The controversy surrounding climate change is one example of a polarized public debate that is completely detached from the uncontested scientific fact that Earth is warming from greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., Cook et al. 2013). How can scientists navigate those contested waters, and how can the public’s legitimate demand for involvement be accommodated without compromising the integrity of science?

Denial of Science

Public debate and skepticism are essential to a functioning democracy. There is evidence that skeptics can differentiate more accurately between true and false assertions (Lewandowsky et al. 2009). However, when tobacco researchers are accused of being a “cartel” that “manufactures alleged evidence” (Abt 1983, 127), or when a U.S. senator labels climate change a “hoax” that is ostensibly perpetrated by corrupt scientists (Inhofe 2012), such assertions are more indicative of the denial of inconvenient scientific facts than expressions of skepticism (Diethelm and McKee 2009). The dividing line between denial and skepticism may not always be apparent to the public, but existing research permits its identification because denial expresses itself in similar ways regardless of which scientific fact is being targeted (Diethelm and McKee 2009). For example, denial commonly invokes notions of conspiracies (Lewandowsky et al. 2015; 2013; Mann 2012). Conspiratorial content is widespread in anti-vaccination material on the Internet (Briones et al. 2012) as well as on blogs that deny the reality of climate change (Lewandowsky et al. 2015).

A second common feature of denial, which differentiates it further from legitimate debate, involves personal and professional attacks on scientists both in public and behind the scenes. To illustrate, the first two authors (Lewandowsky and Mann) have been variously accused of “mass murder and treason” or have received email from people who wanted to see them “six feet under.” Such correspondence is not entirely random: Abusive mail tends to peak after the posting of scientists’ email addresses on websites run by political operatives.

Those public attacks are paralleled by prolific complaints to scientists’ host institutions with allegations of research misconduct. The format of such complaints ranges from brief enraged emails to the submission of detailed multipage dossiers, typically suffused with web links and richly adorned with formatting. In the tobacco arena, there is evidence that such complaints are highly organized (Landman and Glantz 2009). The triage between vexatious complaints and legitimate grievances causes considerable expenditure of public funds when university staff are tied up in phone calls, email exchanges, and responding to persistent approaches while also trying to examine the merit of complaints.

A further target for contrarian activity involves preliminary results or unpublished data. This modus operandi was also pioneered by the tobacco industry, which campaigned hard to gain unhindered access to epidemiological data (Baba et al. 2005). At first glance, it might appear paradoxical that an industry would sponsor laws ostensibly designed to ensure transparency of research. However, access to raw data is necessary for the re-“analyses” of data by entities sympathetic to corporate interests. In the case of tobacco, those analyses have repeatedly downplayed the link between smoking and lung cancer (see Proctor 2011).

A curious feature of all these lines of attack is that they tend to be accompanied by calls for “debate.” Often the same individuals who launch complaints with institutions to silence a scientist also proclaim that they want to enter into a “debate” about the science that they so strenuously oppose.

Public Skepticism and the 
Scientific Process

Given that scientific issues can have far-reaching political, technological, or environmental consequences, greater involvement of the public in policy decisions can only be welcome and may lead to better outcomes. To illustrate, the town of Pickering in Yorkshire, England, recently revised its flood management plan as a result of a year-long collaboration between the local public and scientists (Whatmore and Landström 2011). The plan that was ultimately accepted differed considerably from the initial draft produced by scientists without local public input. Notably, Pickering escaped the flooding that gripped other parts of Yorkshire during the winter of 2015–2016 (Lean 2016).

Notwithstanding the public’s entitlement to be involved, scientific debates must still be conducted according to the rules of science. Arguments must be evidence-based, and they are subject to peer review before they become provisionally accepted. Arguments or ideas that turn out to be false are eventually discarded—a process that sometimes seems to take too long but that arguably has served science and society well (Alberts et al. 2015).

Although these strictures are rigorous and may appear daunting to the layperson, they do not exclude the public from scientific debate. It is important to show that the public can participate in scientific debate, because otherwise denialist activities might acquire a sheen of legitimacy as the only avenues open to the public to question scientific findings.

Recently, two of us (Friedman and Brown) were coauthors of an article (Brown et al. 2013) that received much coverage for its criticism of a long-standing, much-cited finding in the field of positive psychology. Positive psychology studies the strengths that enable individuals to thrive and aims to aid in the achievement of a satisfactory and fulfilling life. At the time when the project that led to our article began, Brown (the first author of that paper) was essentially a stranger to academia, having only attended three weeks of a weekend master’s program in psychology at the age of fifty-one while working full time as a civil servant.

When he doubted the validity of some of positive psychology’s findings that were presented as fact in his classroom, he pursued the issue by contacting a researcher (Friedman) by email based only on the hope that Friedman might be sympathetic to his puzzlement. Once a dialog with the expert had been established—and once Brown had convinced his interlocutor of his sincerity—a fruitful scientific collaboration ensued that has thus far led to the publication of six articles. Notably, this collaboration differs from conventional student-professor interactions in that the parties initially were not known to each other and had no professional relationship prior to an unsolicited approach by email.

To be sure, the process of getting the first rebuttal article published was not easy, given the stature (e.g., more than 350 citations) of the article reporting the original, erroneous finding (Fredrickson and Losada 2005). Brown and Friedman encountered a certain amount of resistance—which would mostly qualify as bureaucratic rather than sinister, despite some apparent conflicts of interest—to the acceptance of both their initial rebuttal article (on the basis of some rather bureaucratic interpretations of customary publishing practices), and to their attempts to write a subsequent comment on the original author’s reply (on the basis that the standard sequence of replies to a target article was now finished).

Ultimately, the system worked as it should: everyone remained calm and polite, and the various publishing and appeals processes were tested and observed to work. In the end, all articles appeared in print in the same journal, the scientific record was corrected, the field of positive psychology took stock, and nobody felt the need to publish home addresses or other personal details on the Internet (a harassing process known as “doxxing” that is popular not only with political operatives who oppose climate science but also with anti-vaccination activists and others). The contrast between the approach followed by Brown and the refusal to engage in the scientific process that is characteristic of denial as we described earlier in this article is striking.

The Need for Vigorous Debate

We underscore that there is plenty of room for honest and vigorous debate in science, even among collaborators: One of us (Brown) is an enthusiastic proponent of the widespread adoption of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) as a way to alleviate global food shortages, whereas two of us (Mann and Lewadowsky), while provisionally accepting the safety of GMOs, are concerned about their indirect consequences, such as the emergence of herbicide-resistant weeds that has been associated with GMO-related overuse of herbicides (Gilbert 2013). One of us (Friedman) is concerned about both their indirect consequences and their potential safety to individuals.

Two of us (Friedman and Brown) are not convinced beyond doubt that highly complex climate models are as yet sufficiently validated to be used as the basis of major public policy decisions that might have effects for many decades; the other two authors (Lewandowsky and Mann) acknowledge the uncertainty inherent in climate projections but note that, contrary to popular intuition, any uncertainty provides even greater impetus for climate mitigation (Lewandowsky et al. 2014). Notwithstanding those disagreements, the present authors found common ground for this article.

Although we believe that scientific evidence should inform political debate, we acknowledge that it is no substitute for it. To illustrate, the scientific evidence shows that the fallout from the Fukushima nuclear accident poses no discernible risk to people in North America (e.g., Fisher et al. 2013), but that finding should only guide, and not preclude, political debate about the safety of nuclear power. Whatever the science may say about the safety of nuclear power—for example, that it causes 100 times fewer fatalities than renewable biomass (Markandya and Wilkinson 2007)—those data might be legitimately overridden by the “dread” that nuclear power evokes in people. However, even dread does not justify harassment or threats of violence against scientists who measure nuclear fallout (Hume 2015).

Enhancing the Resilience of the 
Scientific Enterprise

Opinion surveys regularly and consistently show that public trust in scientists is very high (Pew Research Center 2015). However, the position of the scientist as a neutral, disinterested proponent of “the truth” should not be taken for granted. For example, when Brown and Friedman’s first article on positive psychology (Brown et al. 2013) was published, it was cited on several forums and blogs dedicated to creationist ideas or to climate change denial. The argument typically ran thus: If psychologists can be as badly wrong as Brown et al. showed, and if psychologists are scientists, then how much confidence can we have in the pronouncements of other scientists? While such flawed logic is easily refuted in reasoned debate, it might be preferable if scientists refrained from giving provocateurs the opportunity to raise this kind of question in the first place. We suggest that the scientific community should respond to both legitimate skepticism and politically motivated denial with a three-pronged approach.

First, legitimate public concern about a lack of transparency and questionable research practices must be met by ensuring that research lives up to rigorous standards. We endorse most current efforts in this regard, and one of us (Lewandowsky) is a member of a relevant initiative involving the use of peer review to facilitate openness.

Second, we believe that daylight is the best protection against politically motivated maneuverings to undermine science. The first part of this article is one effort toward such transparency.

Finally, skeptical members of the public must be given the opportunity to engage in scientific debate. We have shown how two of the present authors—an academic and a member of the public who had been to three evening classes before his skepticism was aroused—teamed up to critique a widely cited finding and showed it to be unsupportable. None of their activities fell within the strategies and techniques of denial that we reviewed at the outset, clarifying that denial is not an “avenue of last resort” for members of the public who are desperate to contribute to science or even correct it but rather a politically motivated effort to undermine science.

Note

An extended version of this article, which contains recommendations for the way in which scientists and members of the public might engage with each other on contested issues, can be found at Lewandowsky, S., M.E. Mann, N.J.L. Brown, et al. 2016. Science and the public: Debate, denial, and skepticism. Journal of Social and Political Psychology 4: 537–553. DOI:10.5964/jspp.v4i2.604.

References

• Abt, C.C. 1983. The Anti-Smoking Industry (Philip Morris internal report). September. Available online at http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/vob81f00. Accessed May 6, 2012.
• Alberts, B., R.J. Cicerone, S.E. Fienberg, et al. 2015. Self-correction in science at work. Science 348: 1420–1422. doi: 10.1126/science.aab3847.
• Baba, A., D.M. Cook, T.O. McGarity, et al. 2005. Legislating “sound science”: The role of the tobacco industry. American Journal of Public Health 95: S20–S27. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2004.050963.
• Bailes, M., S. Bates, V. Bhalerao, et al. 2011. Transformation of a star into a planet in a millisecond pulsar binary. Science 333: 1717–1720.
• Briones, R., X. Nan, K. Madden, et al. 2012. When vaccines go viral: An analysis of HPV vaccine coverage on YouTube. Health Communication 27: 478–485. doi: 10.1080/10410236.2011.610258.
• Brown, N.J.L., A.D. Sokal, and H.L. Friedman. 2013. The complex dynamics of wishful thinking: The critical positivity ratio. American Psychologist 68: 801–813. doi: 10.1037/a0032850.
• Cook, J., D. Nuccitelli, S.A. Green, et al. 2013. Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature. Environmental Research Letters 8: 024024. doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024.
• Diethelm, P., and M. McKee. 2009. Denialism: What is it and how should scientists respond? European Journal of Public Health : 2–4. doi: 10.1093/eurpub/ckn139.
• Fisher, N.S., K. Beaugelin-Seiller, T.G. Hinton, et al. 2013. Evaluation of radiation doses and associated risk from the Fukushima nuclear accident to marine biota and human consumers of seafood. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110: 10670–10675. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1221834110.
• Fredrickson, B.L., and M.F. Losada. 2005. Posi­tive affect and the complex dynamics of human flourishing. American Psychologist 60: 678–686. doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.60.7.678.
• Gilbert, N. 2013. Case studies: A hard look at GM crops. Nature 497: 24–26. doi: 10.1038/497024a.
• Hume, M. 2015. Canadian researcher targeted by hate campaign over Fukushima findings. The Globe and Mail. Available online at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/canadian-researcher-targeted-by-hate-campaign-over-fukushima-findings/article27060613/.
• Inhofe, J. 2012. The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future. Washington, DC: WND Books.
• Landman, A., and S.A. Glantz. 2009. Tobacco industry efforts to undermine policy-relevant research. American Journal of Public Health 99: 45–58. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2004.050963.
• Lean, G. 2016. UK flooding: How a Yorkshire town worked with nature to stay dry. The Independent. Available online at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-flooding-how-a-yorkshire-flood-blackspot-worked-with-nature-to-stay-dry-a6794286.html.
• Lewandowsky, S., J. Cook, K. Oberauer, et al. 2015. Recurrent fury: Conspiratorial discourse in the blogosphere triggered by research on the role of conspiracist ideation in climate denial. Journal of Social and Political Psychology 3: 142–178. doi: 10.5964/jspp.v3i1.443.
• Lewandowsky, S., G.E. Gignac, and K. Oberauer. 2013. The role of conspiracist ideation and worldviews in predicting rejection of science. PLoS ONE 8: e75637. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0075637.
• Lewandowsky, S., J.S. Risbey, M. Smithson, et al. 2014. Scientific uncertainty and climate change: Part I. Uncertainty and unabated emissions. Climatic Change 124: 21–37. doi: 10.1007/s10584-014-1082-7.
• Lewandowsky, S., W.G.K. Stritzke, K. Oberauer, et al. 2009. Misinformation and the war on terror: When memory turns fiction into fact. In W.G.K. Stritzke, S. Lewandowsky, D. Denemark, et al. (Eds.), Terrorism and Torture: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (pp. 179–203). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
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An integral part of the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project (GSoW) is not only to create well written, strongly cited Wikipedia pages for the people associated with the skeptic community, but to enhance the story with photographs, video, and audio. As a professional portrait photographer, I don’t feel that a Wikipedia page is completely finished until we have added at least one quality photograph. What few people understand is that Wikipedia has very strong licensing rules. Only media released to WikiMedia Commons by the owner of the content is allowed to be added to a Wikipedia page. We can’t grab something we find on the Internet.

You would be surprised how few of our people have great quality and current photographs of themselves, and have ownership and the understanding of how to upload the image to WikiMedia Commons. We have learned over the years that the easiest way to find these photos, and get them uploaded in a timely manner, is to just do the photography ourselves.

The photographers that work with the GSoW project volunteer hours of conference time photographing not only the speakers, but what happens in the hallways. Yes, I know everyone these days carries around a camera in their pocket or purse. But we aren’t looking for photos of the speaker standing next to their fan; no need for selfies either. We are looking for something specific and I need them uploaded quickly.

GSoW has had assistance from many people over the years, all over the world. But in this interview I’m going to be talking to two very helpful men who worked all weekend at CSICon 2016. Let me introduce you to Brian Engler and Karl Withakay.

Brian Engler and Susan Gerbic

Brian and I go back many years; I can’t quite remember a time I didn’t see him, camera in hand, photographing the conferences. Karl is a more recent friend; I think we shared a bus ride from the airport at a past TAM, since then he has been a great help gathering photographs for our use.

Susan Gerbic: So, Brian, Karl please tell the readers a bit about yourselves. What was your first skeptic conference?

Brian Engler: In late 2007, I had decided to retire within a year from my paid career—at the time, I was Executive VP of a national nonprofit. That—as well as previous careers as a defense consultant and a flight officer in the Navy—had kept me so busy that I hadn’t found time to attend conferences or conventions outside the scope of my work. For years I’d been an avid reader of Skeptical Inquirer, Free Inquiry, and similar periodicals; listened to Skepticality, Point of Inquiry, and the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcasts; and was a member of the JREF Forum, so I decided I’d look around for some skeptical and atheist conferences that seemed interesting. The first I attended was not a conference per se, but was the first live appearance that SGU made. It was held in Brooklyn in August 2007. I went, first met the Novella brothers, Evan Bernstein, Rebecca Watson, and many other fine folks, and had an absolutely wonderful time—walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, touring Bodies-The Exhibition with Steve as a guide, and of course partying into the early hours. Lots of photo ops too—so that prompted me to look around for more events. The first formal convention I found was located in northern Virginia in September 2007 and was called Crystal Clear Atheism sponsored by AAI—at the time a single organization both inside and outside the United States. Again, I took my camera (an early Minolta digital SLR that I’d used in my day job at our own meetings and conferences). As I walked in the door, who strolls in behind me but Richard Dawkins straight from the airport and casually dressed. Since I’d read and enjoyed several of his early works and most recently The God Delusion, I introduced myself and he graciously spent some time talking and had his assistant take a picture of us. I was impressed and had the opportunity to meet and talk for the first time with many other authors that the conference organizer and AAI President Margaret Downey had gathered for what turned out to be an historic meeting: Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Eugenie Scott, Matthew Chapman, and many others. I got some good photos and decided that I needed to go to more events with freethinkers and skeptics—and to always take my camera. I decided that I’d try an out-of-town conference and attended TAM 6 in Las Vegas in June 2008. I reconnected with Margaret, with whom I’ve become good friends through the years, and first met some more great skeptics: The Amaz!ng Randi (of course—a nicer guy I don’t think I’ve ever had the pleasure of hanging out with), Neil deGrasse Tyson, Penn & Teller (the latter of whom is a fine conversationalist, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise), Adam Savage, Phil Plait, Richard Wiseman, and the list goes on—all genuinely accessible and interested in dialogue with attendees. I subsequently was fortunate to attend TAMs 7, 8, 9, 10 (called 2012), and 13 (the last—in 2015). I met you, Susan, at one of the early TAMs—perhaps 6—and I remember you calling a few of us together for a meeting in the South Point hallway at a later TAM to talk about forming what has become GSoW. We’ve come a long way since then thanks to your leadership! That original SGU Live event in Brooklyn led in part to the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism (NECSS) series, and I’ve been able to attend NECSS 2011, 2014, and 2015 in New York City so far. As an active member and volunteer in the CFI–DC community, I attend and photograph many local events but I also have made it a point to attend Center for Inquiry conferences (the names and themes of which vary) starting with the CFI World Congress in Bethesda, MD, in 2009 and continuing with CSICon 2011 in New Orleans, CSICon 2012 in Nashville, the CFI Summit in Tacoma in 2013, CFI Reason for Change in Buffalo in 2015, and CSICon 2016 in Las Vegas. To round out major events, I’ve also attended and photographed all four Women in Secularism conferences (2012, 2013, 2014, and 2016) as well as both Reason Rallies (2012 and 2016). During the latter, I was honored to be a part of the official Reason Rally Photo Team where I learned a lot from the real pros.

Karl Withakay: I’m an IT systems engineer by profession, a skeptic by philosophy, and an amateur photographer by hobby. Whatever you do in life, you can use skepticism and critical thinking, and that especially applies if anything you do involves problem solving, as IT often does. Start at the beginning, assume nothing, don’t accept claims without evidence, reason it out logically, etc.

TAM7 in 2009 was my first skeptic conference. A friend of mine and I were talking not long after TAM6 about how we really need to get to a TAM to see people like James Randi in person. So, we went to TAM7. The following year, Richard Dawkins was appearing at TAM8, and that was a strong enough draw to get me to go to TAM8 despite that fact that it meant flying back from a vacation in Barcelona and spending only one day at home in St. Louis before boarding a plane for Las Vegas to attend. I just kept going back every year until there were no more TAMs and CSICon has filled the void.

Gerbic: I have a fun story to tell about Karl before you get started. A few years ago, someone wanted to use a photo of me in an article. They asked me for a photo, and I supplied one Karl had taken. I told them that the photographer was Karl Withakay. I got a query back saying “Susan are you sure you spelled his last name correctly?” I went to Facebook and made sure I had it spelled correctly and wrote back. They again questioned me and I said, “What’s the big deal?” It took me a while to notice it. What’s the deal Karl? who are you really?

Withakay: I’m Batman. OK, seriously, I’ve spent my whole life living with the fact that most people outside of Germany or German backgrounds assume my first name is spelled with a C. Because of that, I got into the habit of saying “with a K” when giving people my name for any semiofficial purpose, as in “Karl, with a K.” I started joking that I should just change my middle name to Withakay to make it easier, and that’s the name I eventually adopted online, Karl Withakay. I’m not the only person to think it up: five seconds of Googling will turn up others; the bald guy with the guitar is not me.

Gerbic: The readers that are photographers are going to want to know about the equipment you use. So, go ahead and get technical and geek out.

Engler: First of all, I’m an amateur, so my equipment probably is simpler than someone with a pro kit. I currently use a Sony Alpha 77 body, and at conferences and events tend to swap between a Sony 16-50mm/f2.8 zoom and a Tamron 70-200mm/f2.8 zoom as I move around the room. Occasionally I find use for my Tokina 11-16mm/f2.8 zoom when I want extra wide angle shots and my Sony 50mm/f1.4 for very low light and when I want to minimize the camera size and weight, for example at a welcome mixer or party. In all cases, I use fast enough glass that I seldom need flash. When I do, I have a Sony HVL F43M flash and a number of Magmod modifiers. I like Sony and think I get some good shots with it, but I came to that brand sort of by default. Many years ago while in the Navy I had purchased Minolta film gear. When the digital age came along, I naturally moved to the Minolta digital body that I mentioned earlier in order to use my old lenses. Then Sony bought Minolta so I went along as I upgraded and eventually bought new lenses to fit the newer Sony bodies—and so it goes. As a side note, if you look at the Sony Alpha 77 article on Wikipedia, the photograph at the bottom of the page (showing the camera back with a photo of lenticular clouds on it) is my camera and my photo. I have since procured a far superior strap.

Withakay: OK, you asked for it. Well, I’ve been using the Micro Four thirds platform since I got back into semiserious photography seven years ago on the eve of a western Mediterranean cruise out of Barcelona (right before the aforementioned TAM8). I wanted to get a good interchangeable lens system camera for the trip instead of the point and shoot I had been borrowing from my parents when I previously went on vacations, but I didn’t want to lug around a big camera and large, heavy lenses like I had back in the 35mm film days. I mentioned this to a friend of mine, and he told me about a relatively new platform he had just read about that seemed to be exactly what I was looking for: Micro Four Thirds which uses an intermediate sized sensor, larger than most point and shoots, but smaller than most DSLRs. The intermediate sized sensor allows a balance between the advantages of large sensors like depth of field control, low light performance, etc., and those of small sensors like smaller, lighter lenses and bodies, longer effective focal lengths, etc. For me, it’s all about the weight. Photography isn’t fun for me if I have to carry 20–30 lbs of equipment in a backpack or alternately, I have to leave behind some of my favorite lenses to keep weight down.

My current camera is a Panasonic Lumix GX8 body, with my previous body, a Lumix GX7 used for stills when I’m shooting video with the GX8.

Before I discuss lenses, I should mention that the Micro Four Thirds platform has a 2X crop factor relative to a full frame 35mm system. To figure the full frame equivalent to a particular M4/3 lens and body combination, multiply the focal length of the M4/3 lens by 2, meaning that, a 12–35mm lens on an M4/3 camera covers the same field of view as a 24–70mm lens on a full frame camera. Also, to assist readers in comparing Brian’s gear to mine, Brian shoots APS-C, which has a 1.5X crop factor relative to full frame; his 16–50 mm has the field of view of 24–75mm in full frame.

My go to lenses are a Panasonic 12–35mm (24–70mm eq) f2.8 and a Panasonic 35–100mm (70–-200mm eq) f2.8 that both work well in most lighting conditions. For longer shots, I have a Panasonic 100–300mm (200–600mm eq) f4-5.6 that gives me ridiculous reach, but isn’t great in low light. For really low light, I use a Leica 25mm (50mm eq) f1.4. For ultra-wide shots, I have an Olympus 7–14mm (14–28mm eq) f2.8, which is the lens I shot most of the George Hrab Sing-Along footage with at CSICon 2016 to get as much of the crowd as possible in frame. I also have an 8mm (16mm eq) f3.5 fisheye I use for fun, artsy shots. I own a small flash that I never use because other than the 100–300mm super telephoto, all my lenses are pretty fast and at least decent in low light. Due to the light weight of Micro Four Thirds gear, I can carry all this equipment at the same time in my Think Tank Urban Disguise shoulder bag, but I usually leave the second camera body behind unless I’m shooting video. I also have a Manfrotto carbon fiber tripod with which I have a love-hate relationship. I despise carrying it around, but it’s invaluable when I actually use it. At the conferences, I use it when shooting video of George Hrab performing.

Gerbic: You both have been to so many conferences. What is it that brings you back to these events? And I don’t want to hear you say “an airplane.”

Engler: Principally, I come for the people who will be there. Over the years I’ve gotten to know quite a few skeptics fairly well—leaders, staff, speakers, and attendees—and while we stay in touch electronically, I like to get reacquainted in person each year if possible, or at least every few years. Also, as new authors and speakers come to my attention, I want to hear what they have to say and get to know new folks. Finally, I’m an inveterate collector of books—I really like to get them signed and talk to the author, and I hate to give up books that I like after reading them. My shelves are sagging, but I come back for more and these conferences are perfect places for that.

Withakay: The people, all of them. I’ve made so many friends at the conferences, including you and Brian. I’m a naturally shy and introverted person, and I instinctively don’t want to talk to or interact with people I don’t already know. I probably come pretty close to a diagnosis on the spectrum for this and many other reasons. I think my first two TAMs, I didn’t socialize much at all, and I only really talked to Dave Gorski who sort of already knew me from the comments section of Science Based Medicine. I work very hard at forcing myself to engage in conversations and make new friends each year at the cons. It’s so rewarding. It’s one on the reasons I try to find interesting T-shirts to wear. They can be great conversation starters. Every year, I look forward not just to the conference itself, but to seeing my skeptical friends and making new ones.

And then there are the speakers. How many other cons can you name where the big name talents like Richard Dawkins hang out with the regular attendees, where you can have real conversations with them, not just shake their hand and get an autograph? I mean seriously, Richard Freaking Dawkins at the Halloween costume party IN COSTUME! And he’s totally open for conversation like any random person you might meet. How cool is that? You can’t get anything close to an equivalent experience from watching videos on YouTube. There’s just no substitute for the social experience of a TAM or CSICon. One of my most prized memories was when Kimball Atwood of Science Based Medicine blog, after realizing who I was, said emphatically, “Oh, you’re one of our favorite commenters!”

Gerbic: Whenever I attend an event, I usually have a photo in mind that I want to make sure I get. At TAM 6 back in 2008, I wanted a photo of me shaking the hand of one of my heroes, Robert S. Lancaster from Stop Sylvia Browne fame. My friend Paulina Mejia took it for me, and that has been one of my favorite photos, even now. Do you two have a story you can tell about a photograph from a past skeptic conference that has meaning for you?

Engler: There have been so many good memories, some preserved in a photograph but many only in my mind, that it’s difficult to pick one. I will say, though, that at TAM 6—my first big skeptical conference—when Phil Plait (then JREF President) presented Randi with a trophy cup that contained slips of paper written by all the attendees stating what he, the JREF, and TAM meant to them as individuals—to a standing ovation—I got a photo of a nearly speechless and very moved man that is certainly near the top of my list.

Withakay: As a photographer, I almost never go looking for any particular shots, and I’ve never gone into a conference with any specific shot in mind. It’s more about finding… stumbling across that special moment. At a con, it can be hard to get the perfect shot of such a special moment because they often occur in the middle of crowds, and it’s nearly impossible to get the exact composition you want; there’s going to be an extra person, or an arm, leg, or head of someone else intruding into the shot. Even the photos I take of the speakers on stage, I’m trying to get that special shot where the speaker has just the right expression on their face, the right pose, the right gesture with their hands…that special moment that makes the shot. Getting a great hand gesture without also getting motion blur is really tough.

So that being said, it leads me a photo of Dave Gorski at TAM2014. I don’t really have a story for it, but it’s one of those shots where it all came together at the right fleeting moment, and I just got the shot. The facial expression, the pose, the hand gesture, no motion blur: boom, there it is. I keep meaning to create a “One does not simply…” meme image with it, but I haven’t gotten around to it. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, do an image search on “Sean Bean One Does Not Simply.”)

Gerbic: What was your favorite photograph from CSICon 2016?

Engler: One that I took during Lawrence Krauss’s address on “Applied Metaphysics: Journey to the Beginning of Time” is my favorite first because I was able to frame him in front of his slide of outer space and work the light, focus, and depth of field in a way that pleases me, and second because when I tweeted it, Dr. Krauss both responded to me that he liked the photo and then retweeted it himself. I think it nicely captured his topic and his passion.

Withakay: I do have a lot of shots that lean more toward the reportage or documentation side of the photographic spectrum, but it’s the more artistic shots that I like the most; the ones that most appeal to me artistically. As a photographer, I generally loathe taking posed photographs. I like shooting people being themselves, being natural and unaware they are being photographed. I hate it when people notice me photographing them and they stop what they were doing and pose, face the camera, and smile right at me. Usually, if I’m pointing my camera at you from across the room, I either already see a shot I want, or I’m waiting for one to develop naturally. I’m trying to capture you being you, and I lose interest if you stop being natural and pose. Of course, there’s the chance that people read this and reverse compensate, and I won’t get any good shots of people in costume at the Halloween party next year, so be careful what you wish for I guess. Anyway, my favorite shot from CSICon 2016 is of Isil Arican, who I had just met at the beginning of the con, sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall during the George Hrab Sing-Along Sunday night after the con officially ended. She’s just sitting there, relaxed, natural, and totally unaware she’s being photographed. The expression on her face, her posture, the direction of her eyes… it’s just an amazing, beautiful shot capturing an amazing, beautiful moment, and I absolutely love it. I mean, some photographers will work hard, sometimes for hours, trying to set up a shot like that with a model, and I just found it sitting there for a brief moment, waiting for me. You can make up a lot of stories about that photo, what’s she’s thinking about, who she’s gazing at…One of my photographic mentors, Freeman Patterson (look him up in Wikipedia), talks about those photos you look at and just go “Umm!” That’s this shot for me.

Gerbic: I’m going to jump in and show the photo I took that most captured the moment of CSICon in my mind. And it was this one, Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins examining my son, Stirling Gerbic-Forsyth’s proboscis. What a proud moment for a mother. I especially like the “busted” look on Dawkins’s face. Not sure what Dawkins would think of this photo, but it is my favorite. And there were a lot of favorites to choose from.

Gerbic: So, in between all the photography you take, I hope you get to enjoy the lectures. What were some of your favorite parts of CSICon 2016?

Engler: There was a lot to like, but I very fondly remember the impromptu sing-along that George Hrab, joined by Karen Hart and Paula Serrano (who had come all the way from Buenos Aires to attend CSICon), held with a bunch of us after the con. Lots of fun to sit back, relax, and enjoy great music after a busy and educational week!

Withakay: Well, I love everything from the Thursday workshops to the Sunday papers, and hey, anyone who goes to CSICon needs to move heaven and earth to stay until Monday to get the full experience. DO NOT MISS OR SKIP THE SUNDAY PAPERS! And then, there’s the perfect way to wrap it all up and wind down: the Official Unofficial George Hrab Sing-Along on Sunday night. I’d go just for that, seriously.

Gerbic: One great thing that sets CSICon apart from other conferences is the Halloween party. I know I had a blast last year photographing the costumes.

Engler: Well, every conference I’ve attended—or coordinated back in my working days—has some event where attendees can just network—or not if that’s their choice—and let down their hair. CSICons, since 2011 at least, have been held on or near Halloween, so a costume party has been a natural choice. In New Orleans, it was held in conjunction with a Mardi Gras–like parade through the streets!

Withakay: Yeah, even TAM didn’t have anything quite like that. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed that party and the thought many people put into their costumes. We do still need to figure out a Del Mar Lounge equivalent for CSICon, to provide a good, nightly venue for even more socialization though.

Gerbic: Completely agree with you Karl; the South Point Casino had an area that you could find skeptics hanging out in almost at any time, which was called the Del Mar. CSICon 2016 was held for the first time at the Excalibur, and we struggled to find a location we could call “home base.” This year we will again return to the Excalibur, October 26–28, so I will make a few suggestions. We found the Hotel Lobby Bar a great choice as we could watch people arrive as they checked in. If you are interested in being social at this year’s CSICon and you don’t know anyone, please post on the Facebook event page and start to get to know people. We are as interested in meeting you asyou are in meeting us. When you are near me, you are always welcome to have a place at my table, there is always more room (okay maybe not always, but you understand). Looking for where we are hanging out? Need a room-mate? Want to learn more about the conference? Post on the event page.

Gerbic: I understand that Barry Karr has a new plan for this year. A zombie disco theme (Lord help us!).

Engler: I think he’s just gathering ideas at this point, but who really knows—it’s Barry after all. I’m sure it’ll be fun in any case.

Withakay: Yeah, I’m not sure about that one. I like the seeing the inventiveness and variety of different costumes that a theme-less party delivers.

Gerbic: I want you both to know how much I appreciate all the work you do for our community. I don’t think people really thought about it before, but when the event is over and you start uploading the images, people all over start changing their avatars to photos you have taken. I know I love seeing the notifications. What people don’t really remember is that after spending a lot of time roaming the corridors and haunting the speakers during the conference, you spend hours going over the photos, cropping and enhancing them, and uploading them. That takes hours.

Withakay: Yep, I love it when I see a like or notification that someone used one of my photos for their Facebook profile. I take it as a real compliment. Way back, I used to only upload the best photos I considered most worthy, but I noticed people were frequently liking and using for their profile photos ones I considered borderline and almost didn’t upload, so I starting just doing photo dumps and uploading everything. A “bad” photo I took might be the only photo someone has of them with one of their skeptical heroes. Any time. It’s very validating as an amateur photographer to have someone want to use one of your photos, especially if it’s for something important, like a GSOW project. It’s my small contribution to the movement.

Gerbic: You both have been so generous with your time helping with this, and might I add patient with me. I start on you right after I get home asking when I’m going to be able to see the images. Then all through the year I send you messages asking for specific photos, and we always seem to need it uploaded right away.

For readers who think they might have photos we can use, please email me at SusanGerbic@yahoo.com and include a link to where you have your photos uploaded. I’ll be happy to take a look. High res is not as important as just good quality. And if you think you would like to help out at future conferences and events, please let me know. We can always use more help; all are welcome.

Withakay: Yeah, most people only look at the image that fits in the Wikipedia article, so massive megapixels don’t mean too much and don’t worry about not using a pro camera; good composition trumps premium equipment most of the time. It’s possible to take really good pictures even with an iPhone.

Here is a link to the Lanyrd page for CSICon 2016. This is a catch-all place for all things concerning conferences.

I’m sure people will want to see some of the work you have uploaded to WikiMedia Commons.

Engler: The photographs I’ve uploaded to Wikimedia Commons are here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ListFiles/BDEngler&ilshowall=1

Withakay: Here’s my Wikimedia Commons page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ListFiles/Karl_Withakay&ilshowall=1

And here’s my blog page with all my personal skeptical media links, including links to all my skeptical related FB albums, YouTube videos, Wikipedia articles featuring my photos, etc., to which I will be adding a link to this article when it goes live.

Gerbic: And here is my list of contributions to WikiMedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ListFiles/Sgerbic&ilshowall=1

Quick quiz: What caused the Great Recession of 2008?

OK, I admit it. That’s an unfair question. It was complicated. If you’ve done some homework, you might be able to mumble something about a housing bubble, subprime lending, mortgage-backed securities, credit-default swaps, big banks, irresponsible borrowers, George W. Bush, Barack Obama….

But there is one thing I can be fairly certain you will not mention: the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA). You may not have heard of BAPCPA or, if you have, it may only be a foggy memory. So, here is a little history:

In the 1990s, personal bankruptcies were rising sharply, and the banking industry began a lobbying campaign to stiffen the bankruptcy requirements—a move that was expected to increase the profits of credit card companies. Attempts to pass a bill failed until President George W. Bush was reelected in 2004. Finally, after big banks spent $40 million in campaign contributions and millions more in lobbying efforts, the bill went into effect in late 2005 (Labaton 2005). It had a number of provisions, but most importantly it increased the up-front costs of filing for bankruptcy and made the process more onerous.

Of course, people should pay their bills. We all should live up to our responsibilities. But, as President Obama was fond of saying, America is a nation of second chances (Obama 2016). Bankruptcy is designed to give people a “fresh start,” a chance to right their financial ships. Furthermore, it often works as intended. While writing a book about the psychology of spending and debt, I met a number of people who went through bankruptcy and were able to get their lives back on course. But the money written off in bankruptcy cuts into the profits of credit card companies and other lenders and keeps interest rates high, so the banks lobbied to make the bankruptcy requirements more difficult. Little did they know what would happen next.

Figure 1. Non-business (personal) bankruptcies and percentage of homes in foreclosure (right-hand axis) for the years 1990–2016. The vertical line marks the implementation of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. Sources: U.S. Courts and Mortgage Bankers Association.

Although it took a few years to figure it out, several economic studies now conclude that the BAPCPA was a precipitating factor in the ensuing debacle of 2008 (Albanesi and Nosal 2016; Li et al. 2011; Morgan et al. 2012). According to these investigations, once the new bankruptcy requirements went into effect, many people who were struggling with debt found bankruptcy was no longer an option. Ironically, they could no longer afford to declare bankruptcy. But what remained an option was not paying the bills, and beginning in 2007, a little over a year after BAPCPA went into effect, an increasing number of homeowners chose to stop paying the biggest bill of all—the mortgage. The switch from bankruptcies to foreclosures can be seen in Figure 1.

The rest is history. Many of those mortgages had been bundled together and sold to investors, and when the value of those mortgage-backed securities started to tank, so did the stock market, the employment rate, and the economy in general. Obviously there are many other factors that went into the Great Recession. BAPCPA was not the only cause. But the crash of 2008 started when the real estate bubble finally burst in 2007, and the bursting of the bubble gained steam when thousands of homeowners stopped paying their mortgages. Had bankruptcy still been an option, some of those people might have been in a position to keep paying the mortgage.

The beauty of bankruptcy as a form of financial failure is that most of the effects are restricted to the individual filers and the banks. Foreclosure is a different matter entirely. When your neighbor forecloses, your house loses value, and the real estate market and the economy in general are affected. As President George W. Bush explained when he spoke to the nation in September of 2008:

Borrowers with adjustable-rate mortgages, who had been planning to sell or refinance their homes at a higher price, were stuck with homes worth less than expected, along with mortgage payments they could not afford.

As a result, many mortgage-holders began to default. These widespread defaults had effects far beyond the housing market. (Bush 2008)

So, in what would be a colossal case of unintended consequences, bankers hoping to save money may have fueled the biggest banking crisis since the Great Depression. It has been estimated that U.S. banks lost $550 billion in the 2008 recession (Boswell 2013), and homeowners, consumers, and workers lost much more.

Unintended Consequences

The history of economic and government intervention has produced many examples of unwanted consequences. Most of us can think of a military campaign that was heralded at the beginning but was later described as a quagmire. One of my favorite cases from behavioral economics is a study of daycare centers in Israel that introduced a fine for parents who were late picking up their children (Gneezy and Rustichini 2000). Once the policy was introduced, late pickups nearly doubled. Apparently parents thought of the fee not as a fine but as the cost of purchasing lateness. As a result, they felt more justified in being late than when the only consequence was the ire of the daycare staff.

Good, Bad, and Perverse Outcomes

The Israel daycare study produced what is sometimes called a perverse effect: making the problem it was designed to fix even worse. We also should acknowledge that sometimes unintended consequences are positive. For example, the drug that was eventually marketed as Viagra was originally developed to treat angina. Its more lucrative application was an unanticipated “side effect” discovered during clinical trials (Jay 2010). Many “off-label” uses of drugs begin with the discovery of unanticipated side benefits.

An unexpected benefit is a happy surprise, but for a couple of reasons we are more concerned about negative consequences. First, as the work of psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky demonstrates, losses hurt more than gains feel good (Kahneman 2011). Unexpectedly losing $100 gives us more displeasure than the joy of unexpectedly gaining $100. This factor tends to make us naturally risk averse and more concerned about unanticipated bad things than unanticipated good things.

In addition, we are usually talking about unexpected consequences of an action—rather than inaction—and acts of commission are more prone to regret (Gilovich and Medvec 1995). In a famous experiment, Kahneman and Tversky asked participants about the following scenario:

Mr. Paul owns shares in company A. During the past year he considered switching to stock in company B, but he decided against it. He now finds out that he would have been better off by $1,200 if he had switched to the stock of company B. Mr. George owned shares in company B. During the past year he switched to stock in company A. He now finds that he would have been better off by $1,200 if he had kept his stock in company B. Who feels greater regret? (Kahneman and Tversky 1982)

Although the amount of money lost was the same for both men, an overwhelming 92 percent of respondents said Mr. George, the investor who got burned when he made an act of commission, would feel more regret.¹ Taking an action is less common and more salient than not taking an action, and—at least in the short run—a potential source of kicking ourselves after the fact. It is easy to imagine the counterfactual of doing nothing, and often, when our actions don’t work out, we wish we had done just that. Nothing.

Why Are We So Blind?

Over the years, many people have written about unintended consequences. American sociologist Robert Merton wrote a classic paper on the topic called “The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action,” in which he identified five conditions that lead to unintended consequences. Two of these stand out as major culprits in the most common cases:

1. Lack of knowledge. Ignorance of science or of human behavior makes it impossible to predict outcomes. The Israeli daycare investigators clearly lacked sufficient knowledge of parental behavior to predict the outcome of their experiment. Thankfully, the perverse effect they produced did not cause a major social or political problem.

Donald Rumsfeld has further articulated the problem of ignorance with his famous statement of the unknown unknowns problem:

As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones. (Department of Defense News Briefing, February 12, 2002)

Sometimes we understand that certain pieces of information are missing, and we take a chance (or not) on the likely influence of these known unknown factors. But worse yet is the completely-out-of-the-blue unknown factor. I suspect the lobbyists for bankruptcy reform did not think far enough ahead to predict what overextended homeowners would do once bankruptcy was no longer an option. They also may not have known about the precarious nature of the mortgage-backed securities being promoted by the investment divisions of their banks.

2. Imperious immediacy of interest,” in which “the actor’s paramount concern with the foreseen immediate consequences excludes consideration of further or other consequences of the same act” (Merton 1936, 901).

This category of mistake would include actions based on emotional impulse rather than deliberative decision-making. For example, the all-too-familiar case of military invasions that fail to anticipate what will happen after the initial attack.

In addition to Merton’s factors, groupthink, as described by Irving Janis, is another phenomenon that has been frequently blamed for bad decisions, the classic example being John F. Kennedy’s undertaking of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. According to Janis, groupthink emerges from a highly cohesive group and involves the “non-deliberate suppression of critical thoughts as a result of internalization of the group’s norms” (Janis 1971, 44). Several aspects of the decision-making process used by Kennedy and his team seem to have produced a groupthink phenomenon, and after the invasion had been scrapped, Kennedy was reported to have said, “How could we have been so stupid?” (Janis 1971).

What Can Save Us from Unintended Consequences?

By now there has been over fifty years of rather vigorous research in decision-making—both about where it goes wrong and about how to improve it. Much of the effort to improve decisions is aimed at moving people from quick, intuitive decisions (what has come to be called System 1) to slower, more deliberative thinking (System 2). For example, a 2009 article in Perspectives in Psychological Science suggested that more effective decisions could be achieved by (a) trying to adopt an outsider’s perspective on the question or (b) deliberately considering the opposite of the decision you are about to make (Milkaman et al. 2009).

But perhaps some of the best advice comes from a familiar source: the basic principles of critical thinking and Carl Sagan’s “Baloney Detection Kit.” Among Sagan’s many good ideas, these seem particularly important:

• Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
• Spin more than one hypothesis.
• Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours.
• If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise)—not just most of them.

This last suggestion is particularly important when the policy or intervention under consideration sets off—or could reasonably be expected to set off—a chain of events. As Merton’s “imperious immediacy of interest” suggests, often we are so focused on the initial, more easily predicted effects of a plan that we are blinded to the possible longer-term consequences.

But perhaps the biggest problem of all is one that is not adequately addressed by decision-making research and the principles of critical thinking alone: decision-makers have to want to make better decisions. Often decision-makers are driven by competing incentives. There is a strong push to do something immediately to address a pressing problem, or there are multiple motives bundled up in the decision-maker’s thinking. For example, abstinence-only sex education programs are often promoted by groups with religious objections to contraception and abortion, and yet abstinence-only sex education has little effect on sexually transmitted disease infection rates and is associated with higher teen pregnancy and birth rates. Nonetheless, these programs continue because they are driven by philosophy rather than evidence.

Better policy outcomes will be achieved only when decision-makers are motivated to use the best modes of thinking and deciding. It may slow things down to consider all the alternatives and think through the likely chain of events, but if we take the time, perhaps we can avoid the next Bay of Pigs or the next Great Recession.

1. There is no mention of the happiness or regret felt by Mr. John or Mr. Ringo.

References

• Albanesi, Stefania, and Jaromir B. Nosal. 2016. Insolvency after the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform. No. 1147. Society for Economic Dynamics. Available online at https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/120789/1/822062429.pdf.
• Boswell, Jim. 2013. Here’s how much money US banks really lost during the crisis. Business Insider (February 17). Available online at http://www.businessinsider.com/identifying-us-banking-losses-for-the-crisis-they-helped-create-2013-2.
• Bush, George W. 2008. President Bush’s Speech to the Nation on the Economic Crisis (September 28). Transcript available online at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/business/economy/24text-bush.html
• Department of Defense “News Briefing” 2002 (February 12). Available online at http://archive.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=2636.
• Gilovich, Thomas, and Victoria Medvec. 1995. The experience of regret: What, when, and why. Psychological Review 102(2): 379.
• Gneezy, Uri, and Aldo Rustichini. 2000. A fine is a price. The Journal of Legal Studies 29(1): 1–17.
• Janis, Irving L. 1971. Groupthink. Psychology Today (5): 43–46.
• Jay, Emma. 2010. Viagra and other drugs discovered by accident. BBC News (January 20). Available online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8466118.stm.
• Kahneman, Daniel. 2011. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
• Kahneman, Daniel, and Amos Tversky. 1982. The simulation heuristic. In D. Kahneman, P. Slovic, & A. Tversky (eds.). Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (3–20). New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Labaton, Stephen. 2005. Bankruptcy bill set for passage; victory for Bush. New York Times (March 9). Available online at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/09/business/bankruptcy-bill-set-for-passage-victory-for-bush.html.
• Li, Wenli, Michelle J. White, and Ning Zhua. 2011. Did bankruptcy reform cause mortgage defaults to rise? American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 3(4): 123–147. Available online at https://philadelphiafed.org/-/media/research-and-data/publications/working-papers/2010/wp10-16.pdf.
• Merton, Robert K. 1936. The unanticipated consequences of purposive social action. American Sociological Review 1(6): 894–904.
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• Obama, Barack. 2016. A Nation of Second Chances. Whitehouse.gov. (May 5). Available online at https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2016/05/05/nation-second-chances.

Eggs are an excellent source of protein and other nutrients in a convenient, inexpensive package. One egg contains 6 grams of protein and 5 grams of healthy fats, plus:

• Vitamin A: 6 percent of Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA)
• Folate: 5 percent of RDA
• Vitamin B5: 7 percent of RDA
• Vitamin B12: 15 percent of RDA
• Phosphorus: 9 percent of the RDA
• Selenium: 22 percent of the RDA
• Vitamins D, E, K, B2, B6
• Calcium, zinc, biotin, choline, iodine, iron, lutein, zeaxanthin, and omega-3 fatty acids
• And only 80 calories

So far, that’s all good. But they also contain around 160–200 mg of cholesterol. Because of that one component, they got a bad rap. Egg consumption was discouraged, especially the yolks. Cholesterol-free egg products were marketed. Restaurants offered egg white omelets. I admit I fell for it. I tried to limit my egg consumption. I bought Egg Beaters; I threw out yolks and used only the whites. Now it turns out the bad rap was undeserved. Eggs have been rehabilitated.

For decades, scientists have been working their way towards a better understanding of what causes heart attacks and strokes. They got some things wrong but gradually corrected their errors. At first, they noted that patients with heart attacks usually had atherosclerosis, with plaques in the arteries that interfered with blood flow. The plaques contained cholesterol. They reasoned that reducing cholesterol would reduce plaque formation and thereby reduce the risk of heart attacks, so they recommended limiting dietary cholesterol. They relied on a 1913 Russian study that produced atherosclerosis in rabbits by feeding them a high cholesterol diet (but people are not rabbits). And they relied on an epidemiologic study by Ancel Keyes (later found to have faulty methodology) showing that countries where people ate more fat had more heart disease. So they came up with an arbitrary limit of 300 mg of cholesterol a day.

Cholesterol is only found in animals, not in plants; plant-derived products that never had cholesterol and couldn’t possibly have cholesterol were labeled “cholesterol-free” to persuade consumers to buy them. Consumers chose margarine with partially hydrogenated vegetable oils over butter, sometimes inadvertently increasing their intake of harmful trans-fats. But only about 15 percent of blood cholesterol comes from what you eat; 85 percent is produced by your liver. When you get less in your diet, your liver compensates by manufacturing more.

As more and more studies were done, scientists refined their thinking. It seems the risk wasn’t so much from the cholesterol as from the total fat in the diet. And some fats were better than others. Saturated fats were worse than unsaturated fats, and trans-fats were particularly bad.

While elevated blood cholesterol levels are definitely associated with an increased risk of heart attacks, it soon became apparent that reducing cholesterol in the diet was not very effective in reducing blood cholesterol levels. The official government 2010 Dietary Guidelines still recommended limiting cholesterol in the diet to 300 mg a day; but that recommendation was omitted from the 2015 Dietary Guidelines because they felt there was insufficient evidence to establish a quantitative limit. Their scientific advisory panel said “cholesterol is not considered a nutrient of concern for overconsumption.” Wow! A complete turn-around.

Current dietary cholesterol intake in the United States averages 270 mg daily. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) still recommends eating as little dietary cholesterol as possible. Dietary guidelines in Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Korea, and India do not have an upper limit for cholesterol intake. Epidemiologic data have clearly demonstrated that dietary cholesterol is not correlated with increased risk for cardiovascular disease. Some individuals, perhaps a quarter of the population, are more sensitive to dietary cholesterol; but as their total blood cholesterol rises, their good HDL cholesterol rises too, so there is little overall impact on cardiovascular risk.

Dietitians and cardiologists still recommend limiting egg consumption, especially for their patients with heart disease or diabetes; but their caution is not supported by the evidence. Some studies showed a higher risk of heart disease with dietary cholesterol, but most of them failed to account for potential confounding by other features of the diet like saturated fat intake (bacon is frequently eaten with eggs, and and bacon is not so good for you). Two large prospective cohort studies of healthy adults found no increased risk of cardiovascular events (heart attacks and strokes) with egg consumption in either men or women. They did find an apparent increased risk for the subgroup of diabetics, but a recent study reviewed the published literature on the relationship between egg consumption and cardiovascular disease in individuals with type 2 diabetes. They found that consumption of 6–12 eggs a week had no impact on total blood cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol, triglycerides, insulin or C-reactive protein. In fact, two thirds of studies found that it improved the “good cholesterol” HDL. In one study, men who consumed more eggs had lower serum cholesterol than men who consumed fewer eggs. Replacing carbohydrate-rich foods with eggs benefits the heart by raising “good” HDL cholesterol levels and decreasing blood sugar and insulin responses.

Eggs are back on the table. They are a healthy food, and there is no reason to limit them other than perhaps the age-old principle of “moderation in all things:” an eggs-only diet would not be a good idea. But eating eggs regularly as part of a healthy diet is an eggs-cellent plan. Enjoy!

Ghostly Encounters: The Hauntings of Everyday Life. By Dennis and Michele Waskul. Temple University Press, 2016. 184 pp. Paperback, $25.95.

Ghostly Encounters is the product of two years of fieldwork and interviews with more than seventy Midwestern Americans by Dennis Waskul (a professor of sociology at Minnesota State University Mankato and author or coauthor of several books) and Michele Waskul (an independent scholar with a focus on special education). The authors examine how people experience ghosts and hauntings in everyday life through an ethnographic lens, including how uncanny happenings become ghosts and why people struggle with belief or disbelief.

They found that “many participants in this study were not sure that they had encountered a ghost and remained uncertain that such phenomena were even possible, simply because they did not see something that approximated the conventional image of a ‘ghost.’ Instead, many of our respondents were simply convinced that they had experienced something uncanny—something inexplicable, extraordinary, mysterious, or eerie” (p. 20). Thus we see why defining and explaining ghostly phenomenon is slippery and problematic. Many people who will go on record as having a ghostly experience didn’t necessarily see anything that most people would recognize as a classic “ghost,” and in fact they may have had completely different experiences whose only common factor is that they could not be readily explained. As I describe in my book Scientific Para­normal Investigation, context is critically important to understanding the claims: something “unknown” or “unexplained” in the context of a reputedly haunted house will be interpreted as a ghost, while something “unknown” or “unexplained” in the context of a wilderness hike may be interpreted as a Bigfoot; in the context of something odd in the skies, it may be explained as a UFO.

The Waskuls note that “given all their otherworldly powers to defy the known laws of nature, the majority of everyday ghosts are dramaturgically impaired. Ghosts are most often indifferent to the living. When ghosts bother to pay us any attention at all, that attention is more frequently friendly and even helpful than malevolent” (p. 10). Indeed, apparently odd, peculiar, or strange things happen in our everyday lives—and usually pass unnoticed. “When something odd occurs, we either ignore or investigate. If we choose to investigate, most times we find an answer, and sometimes we do not, but either way we minded it. Oftentimes, if an answer is not found and the oddity is mundane enough, it is easy to just scratch your head and move on with your business” (p. 3).

When afraid, alarmed, or psychologically primed to the idea that something unusual and unknown is going on, our sensitivity to anything odd or out of the ordinary goes up, and things that we would otherwise ignore (or perhaps not even notice) can take on added significance. Common occurrences such as flickering lights, dead batteries, unexplained but fleeting unease, computer crashes, blurry sections in photographs, video glitches, and so on can be, and have been, claimed as possible evidence for ghosts. Not only does this unconscious psychological bias lead us to pay attention to such mundane mysteries, but it also imbues them with added significance, making them much easier to remember. A flashlight that happens to go out during a power failure will be soon forgotten, but a flashlight that happens to go out in a dramatic moment when a ghost hunter is asking for a sign from an invisible spirit will be remembered for a lifetime.

The book’s approach is less investigative or skeptical than perhaps many readers of this publication would like. Ghostly Encounters contains many first-person anecdotes about ghostly experiences (some of them quite lengthy), and little or no effort is made to establish the truth or validity of such claims. In this sense the Waskuls’ ethnographic research is aligned with a folkloric approach. Ghost stories, whether presented as fictional campfire tales or “true” stories are a dime a dozen—as anyone who’s visited a library or bookstore knows. Ghostly Encounters helps explain what ghosts mean, not only to ghost experiencers but also more broadly in society. The book is a bit self-indulgent, with several extensive digressions about the authors’ personal opinions and beliefs about the spirit world, though as Dennis Waskul wryly notes, “I have to admit that I’ve come to envy the people who reported having poltergeists in their home; they have a ready explanation for anything amiss in their household” (p. 134).

The book is divided into five chapters, with such titles as “Ghostly Reason,” “Ghostly Topology,” and “Ghostly Legends,” and presents an assortment of scholarly curiosities (in case you’ve wondered why most ghosts are assumed to be men, the Waskuls speculate about this on pages 87 and 88). In their chapter on “Ghostly Reason,” the Waskuls claim that “in the process of doubting what is real, people routinely rely on an approximated scientific method to make empirical observations, formulate inferences, identify correlations, arrive at working hypotheses, and sometimes test these hypotheses” (p. 45). As someone who has interviewed hundreds of alleged ghost experiencers (as well as worked with many amateur ghost hunters), I think the Waskuls greatly overestimate the average person’s understanding of scientific methodologies. I agree that most ghost experiencers exhibit a modicum of skepticism, don’t automatically assume that everything odd is a ghost, and may make some effort to “test” their interpretations, but suggesting that they “approximate scientific methods” is only true if one uses approximate very broadly. In describing how one woman, Amy, tried to “test” her idea that a ghost was present, the Waskuls admit that “Amy’s test would not pass ‘a double-blind test in laboratory conditions,’ but they work for her” (emphasis in original). But of course that’s not how science operates. Science does not “work” for some people but not others. Subjectively validated science is no science at all, and it would be more accurate to say that people attempt to “test” their perceptions than that they do so in a way resembling a scientific process.

There are many excellent books on ghosts from a variety of scholarly perspectives, including historical (for example, R.C. Finucane’s Ghosts: Appearances of the Dead and Cultural Transformation); folkloric (Alas, Poor Ghost! Tradition of Belief in Story and Discourse, by Gillian Bennett); and sociological (The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts, by Owen Davies). Ghostly Encounters is an interesting contribution to the literature on what ghosts mean to the individuals who experience and report them.

Q:

What do you know about the mysterious “Paulding Light” reported in Michigan? Any idea what it is?
–A. Onion

A:

Mystery buffs in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula often seek out a lonely road at a remote spot in the woods near the Wisconsin border hoping to see a mystery known as the 
“Paulding Light.” Some come prepared with bug spray and beer, while others arrive empty-handed. All, however, harbor hopes of seeing the mystery for themselves. Lights such as those seen in the Upper Peninsula are often referred to as ghost lights or spook lights.

Some traditions link floating lights with death—accounts from centuries ago suggest that if a person saw three distinct unknown lights in the sky, it was an omen that three deaths should be expected soon. Though such superstitions are rarer today, the association between mysterious lights and ghosts or the supernatural lives on in folklore.

These lights are not merely encountered as factual, visible anomalies but instead often appear in the context of ghost stories. Local folklore provides a legendary “explanation” for the lights—part of a long tradition of creating narratives to explain natural celestial processes.

Fans explore and post videos of their experience, speculating endlessly about the light’s origin. In the case of the Paulding Light, John Carlisle of The Detroit Free Press explains:

Legend says the light comes from the swaying lantern held by the ghost of a railroad brakeman who died when he was crushed as he tried to stop an oncoming train from hitting railcars stalled on the tracks. This was logging country more than a century ago, and local residents say there were a number of railroads that ran through the forest and are now buried in the underbrush. Some believe it’s the light of the train, which itself is now a ghost. Some claim it’s the distraught spirit of a grandparent looking for a lost grandchild with a lantern that needs constant relighting, the reason the light seems to come and go. (Carlisle 2016)

Other places with similar reports include the Brown Mountain Lights of North Carolina (see Joe Nickell’s column on the topic [Nickell 2016]), Missouri’s Ozark Spooklight, and the Marfa lights near Marfa, Texas. There are many natural explanations for curious lights seen in the skies, and a single blanket explanation cannot account for them all. Instead, it depends on the specific circumstances of each location: some areas may contain groups of bioluminescent animals, including fireflies (which are in fact beetles); other locations may have types of fungus that emit light. Other explanations include aircraft lights, reflections from stars or planets distorted through layers of different temperatures, and will-o-the-wisp—glowing swamp gas seen over marshes and wetland caused by the oxidation of decomposing organic matter. The lights are seen only under certain conditions and circumstances; many visitors wait in vain for hours and see nothing. Eyewitnesses to the same phenomena sometimes offer different descriptions of what they saw: some are said to briefly flicker in place; others are said to dance or shoot across the sky like a UFO.

The distant lights’ fickle nature makes them difficult to fully investigate. Members of the SyFy television show Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files—for whom mundane curiosities and obvious camera artifacts are often characterized as eternally insoluble mysteries—tackled the Paulding Light case but, predictably, failed to solve the mystery and proclaimed it unexplainable.

However, Carlisle notes that in 2010 a team from Michigan Tech led by electrical engineering student Jeremy Bos

brought a spectrograph and a telescope to the dead-end road, sent each other driving down the new highway while blinking their lights in a prearranged pattern, and recorded the results. Every time the light appeared, one look through the telescope showed what sure looked like the headlights of oncoming cars, which could be seen clearly through the lens, sometimes with the distinct outline of the car coming down the road, which is about 8 miles away. The group even shot a video through the telescope so others could see, and posted it online. The flickering, they said, was caused when cars went over a hill.

Some believers dismiss such explanations as far-fetched, acknowledging that while known light sources do exist in the direction of the lights and may account for a few reports, others would be too faint to be mistaken for the spook lights. Ordinarily that may be true, but under certain circumstances low clouds cannot only reflect but amplify ambient light from roadways and nearby towns. Indeed, Bos analyzed local atmospheric patterns and found that “Heat rising off the pavement may sometimes contribute to the light’s distortion . . . [and] an inversion layer in the line of sight between the road and the Paulding Light viewing spot may also create very stable air, which could account for the light’s visibility about four and a half miles from US-45” (Goodrich 2011).

It’s very difficult to conclusively rule out all the possible known sources of light that could be mistaken for spook lights—automobile headlights, campfires, aircraft, cloud reflections of distant city or vehicle lights, insects, and so on—and inevitably some reports will remain unexplained. At the end of the day, of course, it’s more fun to imagine the distant glimmer is a ghostly railroad brakeman’s phantom lantern than the headlights of a 2005 Honda Civic.

References

• Carlisle, John. 2016. Mysterious light draws thrill seekers to a U.P. forest. Detroit Free Press (September 5). Available online at http://www.freep.com/story/news/columnists/john-carlisle/2016/09/04/mysterious-paulding-light-upper-peninsula-michigan/89275134/.
• Goodrich, Marcia. 2011. Just in time for Halloween: Michigan Tech students solve the mystery of the Paulding Light. Michigan Tech News (January 24). Available onlline at http://www.mtu.edu/news/stories/2010/october/just-time-for-halloween-michigan-tech-students-solve-mystery-paulding-light.html.
• Nickell, Joe. 2016. The Brown Mountain Lights: Solved (again!). Skeptical Inquirer 40(1) (January/February).

Hello again! I begin my joyful return to the pages of the “Magazine for Science and Reason” at the age of eighty-eight. Yes, I’ve slowed down in some ways but have embraced medical science enthusiastically, as it permits me to continue well past the average life span attained by the average male. Our esteemed editor Ken Frazier has set limits on how much I write in this new column for the Skeptical Inquirer, but not upon what subjects I may choose to pontificate. Joy! Here goes. . . .

What follows here is about one very important subject of my next book—my eleventh—A Magician in the Laboratory, already written and seeking publication. If there is one major concern that has taken my attention as a skeptic and served to inspire this book, it is the persistent and currently very popular delusion that tries to connect the process of childhood vaccination with the dreaded condition known as autism. I’ve personally known two families plagued with autism.

Andrew Wakefield

The most erroneous and damaging misunderstanding about this condition started in 1998, when a British researcher, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, published in the prominent medical journal The Lancet a paper claiming that there was a connection between the use of MMR—a multi-purpose immunization vaccine used against measles, mumps, and rubella (German measles)—and the onset of autism in children. This is simply not true. MMR has been found to be a very effective prophylactic measure, and since the 1970s, well over 500 million doses have been successfully administered worldwide in some sixty countries.

Wakefield received $780,000 for his consulting services on that project. . . .

Then, in 2010, that Lancet paper by Wakefield was officially retracted upon the discovery of serious overlooked basic flaws in his protocol and the unethically close connection between the author of the paper and the industrial agencies that had financed his work. That, however, did little to assuage the fears of some parents who were by then very convinced that the MMR vaccine had caused their children to become crippled by autism. Part of that parental reluctance to accept the findings may well have been that several investigators postulated that autism might really be the result of hereditary factors, a possibility that those parents understandably preferred not to face.

The symptoms of this still-mysterious condition are highly variable and appear in different degrees in different individuals. My own personal and extended experience with autistic children occurred when, following a direct request from the University of Syracuse, I looked into the farce known as “Facilitated Communication” (FC). The resulting experience was most unpleasant, with little cooperation being offered me by those administering this blatant quackery.

FC consists of the “facilitator”—most often a young woman—holding the hand of an autistic child with the child’s index finger extended, hovering over a computer keyboard, and guiding that finger while pressing it against selected keys so as to spell out messages that are said to originate from the child. Wrong. That child seldom even looks toward the keyboard, is often wriggling, kicking, and looking away, or even dozing off, though the facilitator’s attention is seen to be very concentrated, often looking ahead to the next letter of the word being spelled out! Consult the subject under Facilitated Communication on the Internet, and you will see this farce as I’ve just described it. The staff at Syracuse had actually come to believe that these children might be using telepathy, and had called me in to find out if that might be the correct solution!

Please understand: most autistic kids have problems establishing eye-to-eye contact and will display bizarre facial expressions and strange body postures. They seem unable or unwilling to share enjoyment or interests with others, and they do not relate to the discomfort of others. About half of them do not speak well, using wails or repetitive loud noises or words to express themselves. They have very poor skills at maintaining communication, and often exhibit echolalia (seizing upon a verbal phrase or expression that captures their attention and repeating it endlessly). Some will choose a shiny object or a bright light and fixate on it. Others will constantly rock their bodies and/or flap their hands. As for the degrees of these behavior patterns they exhibit, I found that it varied from extreme—wild shouting and damaging bouts of flailing with arms and legs—to gentle, distant, and almost acceptable demeanors and attitudes.

The Lancet found that Dr. Wakefield had changed and misreported results in his research. Medical documents and subsequent interviews with witnesses have since established that he manipulated patients’ data, thereby triggering fears that use of the MMR triple vaccine was linked to the condition. They found that the families of eight out of twelve children attending a routine clinic at the hospital had blamed MMR for their autism and said that problems came on within a few days of the injection. However, as confirmed by evidence presented to the U.K. General Medical Council (GMC), most of the twelve children’s ailments as described in The Lancet differed substantially from their hospital and medical records. Though the research paper had claimed that autistic symptoms were detected within days of the injection, thus implying a temporal connection, in only one case did records suggest that this was true, and in many of the other cases, pertinent medical concerns about MMR had been raised before the children had even been vaccinated! After the publication, rates of inoculation fell dangerously low, from 92 percent to below 80 percent.

Populations acquire what’s known as “herd immunity” from diseases such as measles—as well as from mumps and rubella—when more than 95 percent of the local population has been vaccinated because the percentage of carriers of such infectious diseases is thereby kept below a sustainable spread ratio. Early in 2010, official figures showed that 1,348 confirmed cases of measles in England and Wales were reported that year compared with only fifty-six back in 1998. Two children died of the disease.

Even before The Lancet’s withdrawal of the paper, ten of Wakefield’s coauthors had their names removed from authorship.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of course shares (along with parents and many others) great concern about the number of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and is still trying to understand what causes autism, how it can be prevented, and how it can be recognized and treated as early as possible. Estimates are that one in 120 of eight-year-olds had ASD, then in 2012 that figure had jumped to about one in eighty-eight, an estimate which is higher than estimates from the early 1990s. This is a seriously frightening figure.A preservative, thimerosal, used in vaccines has induced much terror from the uninformed. It’s a compound that contains the element mercury—you know, the liquid metal that you played with in chemistry class, those little silver beads. Yes, mercury can be poisonous, but only when consumed or combined into a compound. Consider: common table salt is sodium chloride—chemical formula NaCl—which we all consume every day, but sodium all by itself is a soft silvery metal that converts into a very highly caustic and poisonous compound when it comes into contact with water, yet it’s 100 percent safe—as salt. Chemically, thimerosal is C₉H₉HgNaO₂S, a far more complicated compound.

There are two very different types of mercury in compounds that you should know about. These are methyl­mercury (CH₃Hg) and ethylmercury (C₂H₅Hg), and they are quite distinct from one another. Mercury itself is found everywhere in the Earth’s crust, air, soil, and water. Certain types of bacteria in the environment can change natural mercury into the methylmercury variety, which can be very toxic to humans, but thimerosal contains the very different form of mercury—ethyl­mercury—which is broken down and excreted from the body rapidly after being administered, so the type of mercury found in the influenza vaccine is far less likely to accumulate in the body and cause harm. A very, very tiny amount of thimerosal serves to preserve vaccines to avoid the possible growth of bacteria and fungi in case they get into the vaccine—which could occur when a syringe needle enters a vial just as the vaccine is being prepared for administration. Contamination by certain germs in a vaccine could cause severe local reactions, serious illness, or even death.

Be assured, the vaccine preservative thimerosal has a proven track record of being very safe. The most common side effects can be very minor reactions such as redness and swelling at the injection site. Research does not show any link between (a) thimerosal in vaccines and (b) autism. In any case, use of thimerosal was discontinued in childhood vaccines in 2001, yet recent reports of autism have gone up dramatically, which is quite the opposite of what would be expected if thimerosal caused autism. Also, the MMR vaccine—specifically blamed for autism by the uninformed, remember—does not, and never did, contain thimerosal, nor did vaccines for varicella (chickenpox), inactivated polio (IPV), and pneumococcal conjugate (a meningitis source), ever contain thimerosal.

Anti-vaxxers—those who embrace the misguided notion that vaccines administered to children are a major public health threat and/or that this practice causes autism—are misguided people who are generally well-intentioned but still badly mistaken. They may mean well, and in fact many have autistic children themselves, a fact that may have prompted them to become involved in the controversy. But if they are successful in preaching their fears, many, many children will die of totally preventable diseases. As I mentioned earlier, we’re already seeing a comeback of measles due to drops in vaccination rates. This is no far-flung future; these terrible consequences of antiscientific nonsense are happening to us right now. For most in the medical community, this issue is now closed.

But why do so many people continue to believe that there is a link, despite the overwhelming evidence? The answer is something that has more credibility than the best scientific study: personal experience. Here we encounter a basic error in logic that folks often make. Many parents came to believe that vaccines caused their children’s autism because the symptoms of autism appeared shortly after the child received a vaccination. On a psychological level, that assumption and connection seems to make sense, but on a logical level, it is a clear and common fallacy: post hoc ergo propter hoc—“[It happened] after this, therefore because of this.”

I trust that my reader can understand my concern over this MMR farce, and I offer encouragement to concerned parents. Louis Pasteur’s vaccines have saved countless lives all over the world and hopefully will continue to do so.

Dr. Paul Offit is the director of the Vaccine Education Center, a professor of pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine. He wrote several books about the importance of vaccines and clarifying their risks, which are often misunderstood. For example, the anti-vaccination movement insists that the MMR vaccine causes autism. However, that relationship has already been analyzed scientifically, and we know it’s wrong. In his book Do You Believe in Magic?, Offit makes a critical analysis of alternative medicine and the use of large doses of vitamin supplements. It’s important to raise the awareness about vitamin supplements. An unregulated industry claims that vitamin supplements prevent disease. However, several studies^1,2,3 say most supplements do not prevent disease and some, such as vitamin E and beta-carotene,⁴ can increase the risk of cancer and mortality. Paul Offit’s website is at www.paul-offit.com.

Felipe Nogueira: Can you pinpoint when the anti-vaccination movement started?

Paul Offit: I think it started with the first vaccine. The smallpox vaccine was developed by Edward Jennen in the 1700s. There was violent opposition to the vaccine in the early 1800s because that vaccine was mandated. I think the professional anti-vaccine people, such as National Vaccine Information Center, Moms Against Mercury, Safeminds, and Generation Rescue, will say they would stop their anti-vaccine efforts if you simply make vaccines optional.

Nogueira: What exactly is the risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome⁵ (GBS) after influenza vaccine?

Offit: We can say with confidence that the 1976 swine flu vaccine had a risk of GBS in one per 100,000 who were given the vaccine. It’s not clear that since then any vaccine causes GBS. The CDC and other groups that tried to categorize this always say that we cannot say it is more common than one per million. The people are left with this vague notion that the vaccine might cause GBS, but since the 1976 swine flu vaccine there is no clear evidence that it has.

Nogueira: If a vaccine causes a symptom, usually the disease the vaccine tries to prevent causes the same symptom. Can you clarify?

Offit: The best example is thrombocytopenia, which is low platelets level. There are a couple of studies, and they all have been consistent and reproducible: the measles vaccine causes thrombocytopenia in one per 25,000–40,000 recipients. A measles virus also causes thrombocytopenia, but it is far more common. Another example: from eight to twelve days after receiving chicken-pox vaccine, one can get a mild chicken-pox rash with as few as five blisters, but sometimes as many as thirty blisters. But chicken-pox natural infection can cause 300 to 500 blisters.

Nogueira: Knowing that the MMR vaccine does not cause autism, how dangerous is it to widely spread information not corroborated by science?

Offit: I think once you scare people, it’s hard to un-scare them; once you open the Pandora’s Box, it’s hard to close it. The question was raised by Andrew Wakefield in 1998 with his publication in The Lancet, which wasn’t a study. It was a simple case series: eight children who had received the vaccine developed symptoms of autism within one month. There are now seventeen studies, looking to a large number of people who did and didn’t get the vaccine to answer the question: “Are you at a greater risk of having autism if you receive MMR vaccine?” The answer has been very reproducible: no. I think people are far more compelled by anecdote than they are by statistics. If Jenny McCarthy gets on Oprah and says, “I watch my son get this vaccine, I watch his soul leave his eyes” and she cries, that’s very compelling. A scientist on the show would say, “Fair question: Could the vaccine cause autism? Is this a causal effect relationship, or is it just a temporal effect?” This is a scientific question, and it has been answered in a scientific venue. But how do you trump the anecdote with science? The media became critical, and they’re not great at it.

Nogueira: Moving into vitamin supplements, when did this idea begin?

Offit: We need vitamins, no doubt about it. If we don’t get enough of them from diet, we suffer diseases such as pellagra, scurvy, and rickets.⁶ But we’ve crossed the line from a certain amount is good to therefore more would be better. That’s not true. Once you’re above the protective levels, you don’t need more than that. And I think the “big push” for supplements came in the 1970s with Linus Pauling, who won Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Peace. He was a strong voice and used that platform to push vitamin supplements. Some of the earlier supplements were called Linus Pauling vitamins.

Nogueira: What about the risks of taking vitamin E?

Offit: What amazes me about the vitamin E story is that there is a preparation of vitamin E that said “natural E 1000.” If you look on the back label, it said that it had 3,333 percent of the recommended daily allowance. You would have to eat about 1,650 almonds, which are a good source of vitamin E, to get the same amount from one gel capsule. That’s not a natural thing to do. And if you take large doses of vitamin A, E, or beta-carotene for a prolonged period of time, you increase your risk of cancer and heart disease and potentially shorten your life. Those data are clear; there are twenty studies now that show that.

Nogueira: There is an article discussing that laboratory cut-off values for vitamin D might not be evidence-based. What can you say about it?

Offit: You’re right. Suddenly in the United States, everybody has become vitamin D deficient. Certainly, it’s not because there’s been an outbreak of rickets; that hasn’t happened. It’s because of serum tests. I think what are considered normal values are not validated. Because of incorrect levels, all my friends tell me their doctors prescribed vitamin D for them. I like to think this is a fad and will pass in a few years, because we’re doing no good and potentially some harm.

Nogueira: Do you think there is enough evidence for vitamin D supplementation to prevent falls or fractures?

Offit: The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) had at one point supported the use of vitamin D specially to prevent osteoporosis. The bone gets thinner in older people, so when they fall, they’re more likely to have fractures. Postmenopausal women are more likely to have these fractures. Then, vitamin D was recommended, since it helps to increase the uptake of calcium in the intestinal tract. However, with more data available, USPSTF does not recommend it anymore, since there is no clear evidence that postmenopausal woman or older people benefit from the intake of vitamin D or calcium.

Nogueira: Where do you think this notion that vitamin supplements are natural came from?

Offit: I give credit to the industry, which has been able to sell itself as natural. The nutraceutical and dietary supplements indus­try sell its supplements as “all natural, it can’t hurt you and it’s being made by old hippies.” This is not true. Pfizer and Hoffman-LaRoche are major players in the dietary supplement game. It’s an unregulated industry with no obligation to support its claims. And, in the United States, they have enough political influence to keep the FDA away from regulating them. Also, it’s very hard to be vitamin deficient; everything is supplemented. For example, it’s hard to suffer from folic acid deficiency in the United States, because grains, cereals, and pastas are supplemented with folic acid.

Nogueira: Your latest book is Bad Faith. What’s it all about?

Offit: It’s about how, in the United States, people have been able to use their faith to medically neglect their children. I think people should not be able to use the law to medically neglect their children. For example, forty-seven states have religious exemptions for vaccines. So, the book’s message is “We should not allow people in this country to use religion to put children in harm’s way.”

Nogueira: Have you planned a next book?

Offit: I have a new book coming out in April 2017. The title is Pandora’s Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong. It’s about scientific discoveries that changed the world for the worst.

Nogueira: Thanks for this thoughtful interview.

Notes

1. Fortman, S., et al. 2013. “Vitamin and Mineral Supplements in the Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease and Cancer: An Updated Systematic Review for the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.” Annals of Internal Medicine 159(12): 824–834.
2. Guallar, E., et al. 2013. “Enough Is Enough. Stop Wasting Money on Vitamin and Mineral Supplements.” Annals of Internal Medicine 159(12): 850–851.
3. Autier, P., et al. 2014. “Vitamin D Status and Ill Health: A Systematic Review.” The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology 2(1): 76–89.
4. Bjelakovic, G., et al. 2012. “Antioxidant Supple­ments for Prevention of Mortality in Healthy and Patients with Various Diseases.” The Cochorane Library (March).
5. Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is an autoimmune disease that attacks nerve cells causing muscle weakness and often paralysis. According to the CDC, approximately 3,000 to 6,000 people develop GBS each year in the United States. Infection by Campylobacter jenuni, influenza, and other infections are risk factors for GBS. More recently, countries with the zika virus outbreak reported increased numbers of GBS cases. For more information, visit the following CDC page: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/vaccine/guillainbarre.htm.
6. Pellagra, scurvy, and rickets are caused by deficiency of niacin (vitamin B3), vitamin C, and vitamin D, respectively.

In January 2015, I acquired for my collection a rare Currier and Ives print—an original hand-colored lithograph (Figure 1)—depicting a supposedly miraculous occurrence at Knock, Ireland, in 1879. I had written about this event previously (Nickell 1993, 175–176), but I now decided to see if the apparitional experience could be explained in more detail.

The Event

The caption of the Currier and Ives print (dating from 1879–1886¹) reads as follows:

OUR LADY OF KNOCK.

On the evening of August 21st 1879 on the outer gable wall of the Sacristy of the Catholic Church in the Village of Knock, County Mayo, Ireland, was seen an extraordinary light in the midst of which appeared the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph and St. John the Evangelist. Behind them an Altar on which stood a Lamb and above it the Crucifix with the figure of our Lord upon it. The people soon gathered at the spot gazing rapturously on the Heavenly Vision. And crowds now visit the scene of the wonderful apparition bringing many lame and blind who by touching the structure have been miraculously cured and restored to sight.

Unlike the usual apparitions reported by lone “visionaries” (typically persons with fantasy-prone personalities [Nickell 2013, 281–282]), in which the inner vision is described to others who did not see it, the occurrence at Knock was quite different, having multiple viewers. It did, however, begin with a single witness, a young woman named Margaret Beirne who was making her daily visit to lock the doors of the village church. About 7 pm, she noticed a strange brightness that illuminated the top of the church. She gave it little thought, but half an hour later another woman, Mary McLaughlin, had a profound experience. Passing by, she saw within the glow—seeming to emanate from the church’s southern gable—the “tableau” of holy figures already described; however, the figures were standing on the left, not as depicted in the lithograph.

Figure 1. “Our Lady of Knock,” a hand-colored lithograph by Courier and Ives depicting a scene that “miraculously” appeared on a church wall at Knock, Ireland, in 1879. (Author’s collection)

There are serious discrepancies in what the fifteen or so witnesses did actually see. Some mentioned a cross or crucifix while others specifically insisted they had not seen this. Likewise, at least one witness did not see a lamb, and two boys alone saw flying angels. One figure—although described by some as a bishop wearing a miter—was seen, or later interpreted, as St. John the Evangelist. Nevertheless, there was general agreement as to the scene, but it was essentially the same as depicted in various holy pictures and a stained glass window in the nearby village of Ballyhaunis. Such images may well have influenced the perceptions of witnesses as well as their later memories.

Reportedly, while an inquiry was being conducted into the first occurrence, “another apparition took place on January 6, 1880, followed by two more on February 10th and 12th of the same year.” Again, there were multiple witnesses and “The visions remained identical” each time (Aradi 1954, 101). A different view comes from another source (“Knock” 2015): “Apparitions of lights on the gable and even of the Virgin herself were seen after the vision but the church dismissed those stories.” There is no official record of the later phenomena (“Knock Shrine” 2015).

In any event, in the original mysterious tableau according to Margaret Beirne’s sister Mary, the Virgin was “life-size, the others apparently not so big or not so tall” (qtd. in Mullen 1998, 99). For some two hours the faithful watched the “apparition” in the falling rain, while the figures in the tableau remained unmoving and unspeaking (except, apparently for the one early sudden movement reported by two of the earliest witnesses [Rogo 1982, 218]). Indeed, Mary McLaughlin first thought the three figures were actual churchyard statues (perhaps, she thought mistakenly, replacements for those destroyed recently in a storm) (Mullen 1998, 99). One skeptic huffed that the experiencers “saw an apparition of statues!” (“Knock” 2015).

Apparition vs. Illusion

The ability to see pictures in random forms—as in clouds, tea leaves, and inkblots—is known as pareidolia; the images themselves are called simulacra. Some publicized examples I have made pilgrimages to to examine include the face of Jesus in the skillet burns of a tortilla; the figure of Mary in the iridescent stain on a window (caused by water deposits from a sprinkler); the Madonna cradling the infant Jesus, in another window stain; and Jesus emerging from his tomb in a church’s patterned marble. (See my “Rorschach Icons,” Nickell 2007, 18–26.)

At Knock, the various elements—the multiple viewers, the unusual light, the immobility of the scene, the mismatched size of the figures, and the duration of the phenomenon—all suggest some type of optical illusion, probably involving pareidolia. Such illusions are known. In August 1986, for example, a Catholic woman reported seeing an illuminated image of Jesus, with his hand on the shoulder of a young boy, on a Fostoria, Ohio, soybean oil tank. Other believers saw the image, while nonbelievers tended to see nothing. As spokesman for the tank’s owner, the Archer Daniel Midland Company, explained the image as “a combination of lighting, rust spots, fog, and people’s imaginations” (qtd. in Nickell 1993, 36).

Another illusion occurred at Santa Fe Springs, California, in 1981. A couple saw on their garage door in the evenings the head of Christ crowned with thorns surmounting a cross. As it turned out, the effect was caused by the combined shadows of a real estate sign and a nearby bush, which were cast by a pair of street lamps (Nickell 1993, 28).

‘Explanations’

Many have tried to explain the phenomenon at Knock—first, of course, as supernatural. But like other such claims, it is based on a logical fallacy called an argument from ignorance: “No one can explain it, therefore, it must have been a miracle,” they say. In fact, one cannot draw a conclusion from a lack of knowledge. Substitute “X-force” for “miracle,” and we see what a non-explanation it is.

Skeptics have not done so well either. One proposal is that it was pure suggestion: Mary Beirne, who saw a strange light, was the first to “identify” the figure of the Virgin Mary and quickly adopted a leadership position; she then influenced the others. In part, this no doubt happened, but it is unlikely as a complete explanation. Others have suggested a hoax, that, for instance, luminous-painted canvas cutouts were secretly hung on the wall; however, this can hardly be taken seriously. Another suggestion has been the use of a magic lantern, say hidden in a nearby school; or perhaps an altar-shaped box was temporarily attached to the wall itself, which “concealed the magic lantern and mirrors required to make the image” (“Knock” 2015). But could there be a simpler, natural explanation?

We have already considered some clues as to what might have happened. There are more. The gable wall was enveloped in the “eerie light” during the entire event, while rain continued to fall. Moreover, “The whole tableau seemed to stand out from the gable wall and to float about a foot and a half above the ground.” Yet the apparitions, continues Rogo, “were obviously ephemeral” (1982, 219). One old woman said she went up “to kiss, as I thought the feet of the Blessed Virgin; but I felt nothing in the embrace but the wall, and I wondered why I could not feel with my hands the figures I had so plainly and so distinctly seen” (quoted in “Knock Shrine” 2015).

The Mysterious Light

The light was first noticed illuminating the top of the church, and then seen to emanate from the south gable (Rogo 1982, 218). It was not uniform, since even a monochromatic (one-color) picture must have tonal values (lights and darks) to form shapes. (Think of an ordinary black-and-white or sepia-tone photograph.) Mary Beirne first said the Virgin’s cloak was “of white color” and the crown rather yellow (Mullen 1989, 99; “Knock” 2015). Whether the light “flickered” (Aradi 1954, 101) or portions “glimmered” (Rogo 1982, 218) or they did not (“Knock Shrine” 2015) is contradictorily stated. Whether there might have been shadow effects is also unknown. Mary Beirne saw stars that were “gold” (i.e., a deeper yellow) around the Lamb. “She admitted that the stars seemed to be caused by reflection” (“Knock” 2015; emphasis added).

But what was the source of the light? I consulted my colleague James McGaha, director of the Grasslands Observatory in Arizona. He made a computer recreation of the sky at the place, date, and time2 of the “miracle,” and discovered that the evening sun, coming from due west (270˚) was above the horizon for the duration of the miracle. Moreover, not far from the church had been a school (shown in an 1879 survey of the area [“Knock” 2015]); it stood to the southeast, its eastern wall angled toward the church’s south gable.

What is suggested is a natural version of a magic-lantern effect. Indeed, with the sun as a light source, an illusion was created with “smoke and mirrors”—or rather, rainy mist and reflective windows.3 Such effects are documented. For example, diffuse reflections from windows, projected onto the wall of a nearby building, have been photographed. (See Min­naert 1993, 17.) These odd shapes could produce the requisite pareidolia (pictures-in-randomness) effects in susceptible individuals, especially those who were motivated to see something “miraculous” and were familiar with similar holy pictures.

McGaha stresses that while other scenarios are conceivable, the conditions that were apparently operative at Knock were ideal for producing such an optical illusion. His calculations show that “The angular relationship between the school wall and the chapel wall perfectly matches an angle of incidence to an angle of reflection, in relation to the azimuth of the sun.”

Although rain clouds overhead would have darkened the sky, the setting sun could—and rather obviously did—serve as the light source. And everyone has seen strange lighting effects caused by the sun—sometimes shining while rain is falling. Rainy mist in front of the church wall probably played a significant role in the tableau illusion. The reflected images could have been projected in part onto such diaphanous mist, helping create the illusion that—as reported—the “figures” stood away from the wall, seeming “always just beyond reach” (Mullen 1998, 100), yet proving entirely without substance when one tried to grasp them.

The mystery light lasted—like the sun’s light—from before the time the first witnesses noticed it until after everyone had left. They went to see about an old woman who, having been left alone, got out of her sickbed to try to see the vision and collapsed. After a few returned to the site some ten or fifteen minutes later, the lighted vision had vanished (“Knock” 2015). So, of course, had the sun.

The Healings

An enterprising archdeacon worked the following morning to bottle rainwater that had flowed down the gable and use it to create holy water with supposedly curative powers (“Knock” 2015). People came to be healed, and “Knock soon became celebrated as one of the great Marian shrines” (Aradi 1954, 102). Unfortunately, the zealous were so intent on breaking pieces of cement from the church wall—for their supposedly curative power—that the wall became in danger of collapsing (“Knock” 2015).

As to the “miracle” cures at Knock, these are typically based, again, on the illogic of arguing from ignorance. Moreover, healings may be attributed—like such claims elsewhere—to mis­diagnosis, psychosomatic conditions, spontaneous remission, prior medical treatment, the body’s own healing power, and other effects, including exaggeration and even outright hoaxing.

With tragic irony, some people have been harmed rather than healed at Knock. Certain of the faithful were apparently persuaded by the predictions of self-proclaimed mystic Joe Coleman from Dublin that there would be a Miracle of the Sun like that reported in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917. In 2009, many people reported observing such phenomena at Knock, but unfortunately there was a correlation with a spike in cases of retinal damage. As an ophthalmologist explained, the “dancing” sun and other effects were merely visual disturbances due to staring at the sun, which can cause reduced sight and a condition called “metamorphopsia,” or distorted vision (“Knock Shrine” 2015; Taber’s 2001, 1286; Nickell 1993, 176–181). It may be wondered, then, whether any miracle has ever occurred at Knock.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to James McGaha for his expert analysis of the conditions at Knock. Thanks also to Melissa Braun and CFI Libraries Director Tim Binga.

Notes

1. From 1876–1886, Currier and Ives were located at the address—115 Nassau St.—given on the print (Kovel and Kovel 1973, 242).
2. The times given in the account were local time, here assumed to be one hour after that of Greenwich mean solar time.
3. We infer the likely presence of windows in the long sides of the school building. If they were not present, we would still postulate the sun obliquely hitting the church wall directly, with other scenarios for the random, diffuse forms.

References

• Aradi, Zsolt. 1954. Shrines to Our Lady Around the World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Young.
• Knock. 2015. Available online at www.miracleskeptic.com/Knock.html; accessed January 15.
• Knock Shrine. 2015. Available online at www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knock_Shrine; accessed January 15.
• Kovel, Ralph, and Terry Kovel. 1993. Know Your Antiques. New York: Crown Publishers.
• Minnaert, Marcell. 1974. Light and Color in the Outdoors. Reprinted New York: Springer-Verlay, 1993.
• Mullen, Peter. 1998. Shrines of Our Lady. New York: St. Martin’s Press.Nickell, Joe. 1993. Looking for a Miracle: Weeping Icons, Relics, Stigmata, Visions & Healing Cures. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.
• ———. 2007. Adventures in Paranormal Investigation. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
• ———. 2013. The Science of Miracles. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
• Rogo, D. Scott. 1982. Miracles: A Parascientific Inquiry into Wondrous Phenomena. New York: The Dial Press.
• Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary. 2001. Philadelphia: F.A. Davis Co.

Since its appearance in 1741, a mysterious creature has remained controversial—a so-called “sea monkey” that puzzled naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller. He encountered the mystery creature during his service as physician and scientist on Commander Vitus Bering’s Second Kamchatka Expedition to America, 1741–1742.

Some cryptozoologists (active in a field that postdates Steller) refer to the creature as a marine “cryptid” (an animal whose existence—or current existence—is scientifically unverified and thus of interest to cryptozoologists). They use the name Steller’s Sea Ape (“Georg Wilhelm Steller” 2013; Coleman and Huyghe 1999, 64–65; Mackal 1983, 1–32). I determined to approach the case as a skeptical cryptozoologist—more specifically as what I term a paranatural naturalist (one who first considers allegedly paranatural entities as hypothetically natural creatures and seeks to identify them [Nickell 2015]). I determined to conduct a new investigation.

Steller’s Description

Steller (1709–1746) wrote an account of his sighting in his journal at the time. After his early death this passed to the archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences (a body I was once honored to speak before). There it was discovered nearly a century later and published (Steller 1793). I quote from the second (and best) of two English translations of the German text (Steller in Golder 1925, 64–66).

Steller notes that they were at about 52.5° N latitude, 155° W longitude—off the Shumagin Islands of the Aleutians (that constitute southwest Alaska). As he wrote:

On August 10 we saw a very unusual and unknown sea animal, of which I am going to give a brief account since I observed it for two whole hours.—It was about two Russian ells in length [i.e., about five feet long]; the head was like a dog’s, with pointed, erect ears. From the upper and lower lips on both sides whiskers hung down. The eyes were large; the body was long, rather thick and round, tapering gradually towards the tail. The skin seemed thickly covered with hair, of a gray color on the back, but reddish white on the belly; in the water, however, the whole animal appeared red, like a cow. The tail was divided into two fins, of which the upper, as in the case of roosters, was twice as large as the lower. Nothing struck me as more surprising than the fact that neither forefeet nor, in their stead, fins were to be seen.

He likened the creature to one that another naturalist, Konrad von Gesner, had reported, and so called it “Gesner’s sea monkey.” He continued:

For over two hours it swam around our ship, looking, as with admiration, first at the one and then at the other of us. At times it came so near to the ship that it could have been touched with a pole, but as soon as anybody stirred it moved away a little farther. It could raise itself one-third of its length out of the water exactly like a man, and sometimes it remained in this position for several minutes. After it had observed us for about half an hour, it shot like an arrow under our vessel and came up again on the other side; shortly after, it dived again and reappeared in the old place; and in this way it dived perhaps thirty times. There drifted by a seaweed, club-shaped and hollow at one end like a bottle and gradually tapering at the other, towards which, as soon as it was sighted, the animal darted, seized it in its mouth, and swam with it to the ship, making such motions and monkey tricks that nothing more laughable can be imagined. After many funny jumps and motions it finally darted off to sea and did not appear again. It was seen later, however, several times at different places of the sea.

The first thing to emphasize is that “there is no known animal, in the sea or, for that matter, on land, that corresponds to Steller’s description,” according to the late cryptozoologist Roy Mackal (1983, 5). Some have thought Steller had seen some known sea creature such as a sea otter or fur seal (Mackal 1983, 6). Yet as a naturalist of note who identified several species of North American plants and animals, Steller was a skilled observer who had an excellent opportunity to see the animal for two hours, although its several close-up appearances were seemingly each brief.

It seems unlikely to have been a hoax, although that has been suggested, or a satire: Since Steller’s text uses the term Simia marina danica, “Danish Sea Ape,” the thought is that Steller was poking fun at Captain Bering, “the only Dane on the ship” (Thaler 2011). However, the description contains no hint of satire and would seem more likely to have been an honorific naming.

Toward a Solution

We are looking, therefore, for a real creature—one that, as Mackal notes (1983, 19, 26), was “most certainly” a mammal, given its anatomy and movements, and “most probably” a seal, which it most resembled. So far, so good, but would Steller not know a seal when he saw one?

There are two families of seals (which, with the Walruses, constitute the order Pinnipedia). The eared seals (family Ota­riidae)—consisting of the smooth-coated sea lions (the “trained seals” of circus acts) and the fur seals—have small though noticeable external ears and longer necks than seals of the other family. Earless seals (family Phocidae), also called hair seals or true seals, have only a small orifice in place of an external ear (Whitaker 1996, 712–744).

In discussing Steller’s Sea Ape, Mackal correctly singles out the element of the apparently missing forelimbs or fins as crucial. Such a unique instance of congenital deformity in a seal would have been extremely statistically unlikely. More plausible was that when the animal swam it held its fore flippers pressed closely against its body—as in fact the Leopard Seal does. Unfortunately the Leopard Seal lives in the southern hemisphere, and it has no external ears. Nevertheless, Mackal (1983, 30) suggested the possibility of an unknown seal species having evolved with characteristics of Steller’s creature: having both ears and a tendency to swim in the fashion described (probably with flippers folded rather than missing). Mackal thought a new expedition might well discover just such an aquatic mammal.

But Mackal, I believe, should have considered that his hypothesis seems even more statistically unlikely than that of a seal with missing fore flippers. Moreover, his approach assumes that, if we cannot identify the creature, it must be a hitherto unknown one.

Identification

I took a different tack, considering it more likely that Steller’s observation was imperfect. He admitted as much when he explained his reasons for firing on the creature: it was “in order to get possession of it for a more accurate description.”

Of course, what I think is the main error in Steller’s description involves portions of the creature’s anatomy that would have been under water or, when not, would have been viewed at a distance. First were the “missing” fore flippers. Actually, he did not insist that they were absent but instead that they were not “to be seen”—not precisely the same thing. The other feature was what Steller mistakenly thought was a tail fin. More on both of these features presently.

Allowing for these misperceptions by Steller, the animal he remotely studied was most like a Northern Fur Seal (a.k.a. “Alaska Fur Seal”). Its scientific name is Callorhinus ursinus, which means “the bearlike animal with the beautiful hide” (Bonner 1999, 50). In addition to having noticeable ears, it does have a doglike head, “large eyes,” and “long whiskers” (Whitaker 1996, 713), hanging down, just as Steller described. It has the requisite body shape and is covered with thick hair—again like Steller’s mystery creature. The long-necked fur seal could also raise a third of its length or so out of the water. As to its antics, I believe that, as described, these were within the range of seals generally and the fur seal in particular (Whitaker 1996, 713–715; Stejneger 1936, 280, 281). As it happens, the pinnipeds are characterized by their “playful disposition” and the fact, “In the wild state, they show little fear of man” (Larousse 1975, 546)—descriptions that tally with Steller’s mystery sea animal.

Now, I made this tentative identification after reading Coleman and Huyghe (1999, 64–65), using mostly the National Audubon Society Field Guide to Mammals: North America (Whitaker 1996). Subsequently, Mackal’s book (1983) helped convince me I was on the right track, but when I finally accessed a copy of Leonard Stejneger’s 1936 biography of Steller, I realized that Stejneger had effectively solved the mystery himself. I had done little more than independently confirm his prior identification. However, since cryptozoologists had ignored or dismissed Stejneger—whose evidence was not as fully developed as it could be—I determined to press on.

More Precisely . . .

Why would Steller not have recognized a fur seal? As his biographer insists (Stejneger 1936, 281), Steller, “at the time he made his observation, had never seen a fur-seal, dead or alive” (original emphasis). When he did later make the animal’s acquaintance at Bering Island, the die was already cast.

I question Stejneger on one significant point. He believes Steller saw “a full-grown bachelor fur seal.” However, in two respects—size and coloring—adult males tend to be unlike Steller’s mystery creature. Steller’s biographer Dean Littlepage (2006) has therefore tweaked the identification to suggest a young member of the species.

However, the females, as we shall see, are an exceptionally good match. They had previously been wintering in California (along with pups and young males). Still today, they head north in spring to the Aleutians where the bulls collect large harems on rocky islands. The three months of family life (including giving birth to pups conceived the summer before, then mating again) end in early August when the females begin making “feeding forays” (Whitaker 1996, 714–715; Jordan 1952, 149).

Moreover, the female has different coloring than the male, who is blackish on its upper side, grayish on its massive shoulders, and reddish beneath. In contrast, the female has coloring like Steller’s creature, which had “a gray color on the back, but reddish white on the belly.” The female Northern Fur Seal similarly has “gray above, reddish below” (Whitaker 1996, 715).

Size is also important, since the Northern Fur Seal exhibits “pronounced sexual dimorphism in size,” beginning at birth (Reeves et al. 1992, 50). The male is typically much larger than Steller’s creature, measuring in length 6’3” to 7’3”(1.9–2.2m). On the other hand, the female is in the range of 3’7” to 4’7” (1.1–1.4m), much more in keeping with Steller’s estimate of about five feet. Of course size and coloring of individuals vary, but, taken together, I think the evidence is stronger for a female.

In any event, either female or male would have shared the other features of Steller’s creature: the doglike head, the drooping whiskers, large eyes, etc. If it be quibbled that the fur seal’s ears are, while pointed, not really “erect” (they are actually directed backward), Steller did in fact describe those of the actual fur seal using the very same descriptors: In his De Bestiis Marinis (“Of Sea Beasts”) he says the fur seal’s ears are “acutae . . . et erectal” (Steller 1751, 2: 334).

And to return to the issue of the “missing” fore limbs, Steller’s own failure to observe them on his creature actually argues in favor of its having been a Northern Fur Seal. That is because the position of the fore limbs on that animal is farther back, emphasizes Stejneger (1936, 280), “than in any related animal with which he was then familiar.” Surely, that is why the creature, able to raise a third of itself upright out of the water for a few minutes (obviously treading water), failed to show fore limbs. “Moreover,” adds Stejneger, “when moving at high speed through the water the fur-seal keeps the fore flippers pressed very close to the body so that they are practically invisible.”

The identification of the creature as the Northern Fur Seal also helps explain Steller’s other serious error, the description of the creature’s tail as “divided into two fins.” In reality, this was simply a misperception of the seal’s two closely set rear legs with their flippers (Stejneger 1936, 280).

Conclusions

In rounding up the usual suspects, we had to be careful that our net not miss what we can now see is the closest match to Steller’s Sea Ape: the female Northern Fur Seal. In contrast to the male, she better fits the profile of Steller’s mystery creature. She is, I believe, not only the nearest match of any existing creature but represents the preferred hypothesis in the case, according to the principle of Occam’s razor (that the hypothesis with the fewer, smaller assumptions is to be preferred).

I have accepted Steller’s description on a dozen points, only questioning his observation regarding a few details. I think the timing of his sighting is corroborative, occurring when the female—having the size and coloration he described—would have come from the breeding grounds.

I am glad Steller’s two shots fired at the delightful animal missed. Had they not, we would have lacked the intriguing mystery she gave us. I think I’ll name her Agatha.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for assistance from the staff of CFI Libraries (Director Tim Binga and librarian Lisa Nolan) and of the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library.

References

• Bonner, Nigel. 1999. Seals and Sea Lions of the World. London: Blandford.
• Coleman, Loren, and Patrick Huyghe. 1999. The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Yeti, and Other Mystery Primates Worldwide. New York: Avon Books.
• Georg Wilhelm Steller. 2013. Available online at http://en.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Steller; accessed December 23, 2013.
• Golder, F.A., ed. 1925. Bering’s Voyages: Account of the Efforts of the Russians to Determine the Relation of Asia and America. Reprinted New York: Octagon Books, 1968.
• Jordan, E.L. 1952. Hammond’s Nature Atlas of America. New York: C.S. Hammond and Co.
• Larousse Encyclopedia of the Animal World. 1975. New York: Larousse & Co.
• Littlepage, Dean. 2006. Steller’s Island: Adventures of a Pioneer Naturalist in Alaska. Seattle: Mountaineers Books. Cited in “Steller’s” 2016.
• Mackal, Roy P. 1983. Searching for Hidden Animals. London: Cadogan Books.
• Nickell, Joe. 2015. Monster lookalikes: Reflections of a paranatural naturalist. Skeptical Inquirer 39(3) (May/June): 12–15.
• Reeves, Randall R., Brent S. Stewart, and Stephen Leatherwood. 1992. The Sierra Club Handbook of Seals and Sirenians. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Book Club.
• Stejneger, Leonard. 1936. Georg Wilhelm Steller: The Pioneer of Alaskan Natural History. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
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Artículo traducido por Alejandro Borgo, Director del CFI/Argentina.

En casi medio siglo de investigación de extraños misterios, frecuentemente me encontré con alegatos sobre una misteriosa fuerza o poder conocido como qi o ch’i, o simplemente chi. El término se traduce como “aire” o “soplo” y, por extensión, “fuerza de vida” o “flujo de energía”.

En las culturas asiáticas tradicionales, especialmente la cultura china, chi es el principio esencial en prácticas como el feng shui, el arte de crear ambientes armónicos; la acupuntura, un tipo de medicina china en la cual se insertan agujas en puntos específicos para estimular el flujo de chi (Nickell 2012); y ciertas artes marciales, incluyendo el tai chi. Me voy a explayar sobre éste último, revelando los trucos usados por los maestros y sus seguidores.

Debo decir que no tenía mucho conocimiento especial para hacer esta investigación en particular más que mi experiencia como ilusionista (Nickell 2005, 219–220, 231–232, 274), pero hice un curso de judo en una facultad de deportes y por primera vez me entrené —con un cinturón negro de karate y por el profesor de física Matt Lowry— para romper tablas golpeándolas con la mano (Nickell 2011; 2012a).

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

Tai Chi, et al.

Tai chi es una abreviatura de taiji quan, “boxeo máximo supremo”. Concebido hace siglos como un arte marcial, ahora también se practica —“Tai chi taoísta”— como técnica de ejercicios. Cuando fui a China en 2010 como investigador visitante en un programa de intercambio (ver Nickell 2012), observé a la gente haciendo ejercicios matutinos de tai chi. Los movimientos elegantes y fluidos me recordaron la caligrafía china y los alegatos acerca de que esta práctica podían ayudar a reducir el estrés y tonificar los músculos me resultaron plausibles.

Figura 1. El autor en la tumba de Dixie Annie (Jarrett) Haygood, también conocida como Annie Abbott, “El pequeño imán de Georgia”, a quien hombres forzudos no podían mover. (Foto del autor, tomada antes de que se instalara una lápida mortuoria).

Aparte del tai chi, todas las artes marciales contienen el concepto de chi —incluyendo al kung fu, un tipo de lucha china sin armas, y el taekwondo, una forma de karate coreana en la que se utilizan movimientos agresivos como golpes, manotazos y patadas espectaculares. Todo se basa en el chi, la supuesta fuerza interna de energía vital, tal como se analiza en la Enciclopedia Qi (Larn 2016). Hay muchos alegatos sin base acerca del mágico e invisible chi —cuya existencia no está corroborada por la ciencia.

Consideremos la miríada de alegatos terapéuticos que se hicieron para promover el tai chi. Bruce Tegner (1973, 140), autoridad en artes marciales los llama “engañosos”. Lo explica así:

Los promotores del tai chi afirman que la ejercitación en tai chi va a curar tantas enfermedades y restaurar muchos órganos que no funcionan, como lo prometían los bálsamos que se vendían en el pasado. Si bien es verdad que la práctica de una rutina (de ejercicios) puede promover la salud general y te vas a sentir mejor si haces tai chi, no hay ninguna evidencia aceptable de que el tai chi sea un sustituto de la medicina. Un maestro de tai chi no tiene ninguna preparación para diagnosticar enfermedades, o para prescribir una cura o tratamiento. Si estás enfermo, ve a un médico. Si tu enfermedad puede “curarse” haciendo tai chi, podría ser “curada” por cualquier rutina de ejercicios. Es un engaño cruel hacer promesas de “curación”; más que aumentar la reputación del tai chi, lo rebaja al rango de una actividad propia del charlatanismo.

Las artimañas del chi

Se han hecho más afirmaciones sobre el chi —incluyendo también a otras artes marciales— que realmente se deben a la aplicación de principios físicos simples. He aquí unos pocos ejemplos.

Proezas con velas. En 1984, uno de mis estudiantes, que había presenciado una demostración sensacional de karate, me dijo cómo el practicante supuestamente lanzaba “energía” (chi) para apagar una vela. Supuestamente lo lograba apuntando simplemente a la llama en una pose histriónica.

Fui a ver la demostración en una escuela secundaria de Lexington, Kentucky. El artista marcial se tapaba la boca para probar que no estaba soplando la llama. Movía su mano abierta en un corto soplo hacia la llama. La primera vez la llama solo titiló, pero al cuarto intento fue extinguida. Después yo mismo fui capaz —practicando— de recrear la proeza. También hallé que el secreto para realizarla había sido publicado meses antes en una revista de kung fu. El secreto yace en “desplazar el aire… La velocidad de tu técnica es lo que causa que la llama se apague” (Blauer 1983, 86).

Cortar una manzana sobre el cuello. La misma tarde en que presencié la prueba de la vela, también vi una proeza que parecía riesgosa, en la cual un artista marcial colocaba una manzana en el cuello de un hombre acostado y la cortaba en dos con una espada. Ésta llegó rápidamente pero se detuvo en forma súbita —algo parecido a parar un golpe en una pelea ficticia. Esto se puede practicar exitosamente.

La espada no precisa llegar al fondo para partir la manzana en dos. De hecho, he escuchado algo acerca de un truco en el cual se inserta un alambre rígido en la manzana cerca del fondo para ayudar a parar el golpe de la espada. Sin embargo, a veces la prueba puede fallar, como se muestra en un video en YouTube en el cual un asistente termina con el cuello cortado —afortunadamente no fue fatal (“Karate Master” 2009).

Efectos de psicoquinesis. Un joven instructor de artes marciales y ex presidiario llamado James Hydrick engañó a mucha gente en los años 80 haciendo que un lápiz en equilibrio se moviera con solo señalarlo, pasar varias páginas de una guía de teléfonos a varios pies de distancia simplemente mirándola fijamente, y llevando a cabo otras proezas. Siendo promovido por un relato de Associated Press y el programa de TV That’s Incredible (Eso es increíble), Hydrick pareció ganar algo de apoyo científico acerca de sus poderes cuando pasó varios estudios propuestos por un profesor asistente de ingeniería mecánica. Hydrick usó un atuendo de karate y afirmó que la filosofía oriental lo ayudó a desarrollar su poder mental.

Sin embargo, Hydrick fue destrozado cuando el ilusionista e investigador de fenómenos parapsicológicos James Randi lo desafió en What’s My Line? —ofreciéndole 10.000 dólares si podía demostrar poderes paranormales genuinos, tal como lo afirmaba. Randi pensaba que Hydrick simplemente estaba soplando para mover el lápiz y pasar las hojas de la guía telefónica, así que esparció sobre la mesa pedazos de poliuretano extruido del peso de una pluma rodeando a la guía y lo desafió a repetir la proeza. Si estaba soplando, los pedazos de poliuretano serían afectados y así se revelaría el truco. Hydrick estuvo una hora y media fingiendo usar sus poderes antes de rendirse (Baker and Nickell 1992, 80). Más tarde confesó, fanfarroneando, que había “engañado al mundo entero” (Korem 1988, 149).

Nocauts sin contacto. El maestro de karate George Dillman supuestamente descubrió una técnica que le permitía dirigir el chi para noquear a una persona. Mis amigos italianos Massimo Polidoro y Luigi Garlaschelli investigaron el alegato para un episodio del programa Is It Real?, de la National Geographic. Empezaron mirando un video de Dillman moviendo las manos delante de un voluntario que comenzó a oscilar y luego cayó al piso, “exactamente como Obi Wan Kenobi lo hubiera hecho en una guardia imperial en las películas de Star Wars” (Polidoro 2008, 20).

Los escépticos sospechaban que la proeza dependía del poder de la sugestión. “Parecía una de las viejas pruebas hipnóticas donde el hipnotizador se para frente a alguien, señala con un dedo su cara diciéndole que está por caerse hacia atrás y, luego de un momento, la persona cae tal cual se espera” (Polidoro 2008, 20). Cuando llevaron a cabo un experimento con Dillman, y Garlaschelli se paró con los ojos cerrados como se le sugirió, se dio cuenta de que había otro factor en juego: es más fácil perder el equilibrio con los ojos cerrados. Así que abrió los ojos y los golpes de chi no lo afectaron en absoluto.

Los investigadores continuaron con otro test en el cual un estudiante de Dillman se paró detrás de una cortina que bloqueaba su visión mientras que el maestro de karate mandaba sus golpes chi a intervalos indicados por los escépticos. Esto impedía que actuara la sugestión, y el estudiante se quedó de pie, algo confundido, esperando una fuerza chi que nunca llegó.

Retrato de Don Ahn en su tarjeta comercial (colección del autor)

El plantado firme

Otra afirmación cuestionable —que un productor de televisión me mostró en 2009— implica lo que se conoce en las artes marciales como “rooting”. Esta es una habilidad especial —conseguida haciendo que el chi salga del suelo mientras uno imagina raíces saliendo de los pies— para mantenerse plantado firmemente a pesar de una fuerza entrante (“Rooting” 2016). Observé un video filmado apresuradamente del Gran Maestro de tai chi Don Ahn. Lo que vi me hizo recordar una de las pruebas de los “imanes humanos”— como el de la adolescente Lulu Hurst de Georgia aproximadamente en 1880.

Llamada “El imán de Georgia”, Hurst, de 15 años, podía pararse frente a la audiencia sosteniendo un palo paralelo al piso del escenario, mientras dos hombres forzudos que lo agarraban intentarían moverla. En cambio, ella apenas presionaba contra el palo y no solo impedía la acción sino que empujaba a los hombres que estaban en el escenario para delicia de los espectadores. Hurst llamaba a este poder un “Gran Desconocido”. Sin embargo, al tiempo llegaron las críticas: el New York Times (13 de julio de 1884) dijo que sus actuaciones eran “un fenómeno de estupidez que demostraba cómo la gente podía ser engañada...”

La señorita Hurst también se interesó por la forma en que los espiritistas la acogieron como una médium poderosa. Luego de dos años de actuaciones, se casó con un joven que manejó su show y volvió a la oscuridad. Más tarde confesó que el secreto de su poder sera simplemente una “fuerza de bloqueo”, a saber, “principios mecánicos no reconocidos de palancas y balance”. Simplemente Hurst hacía que la fuerza aplicada sobre ella fuera bloqueada, o rebotara, transformándola en un esfuerzo inútil (Nickell 1991, 34–40).

Entre varios imitadores de Hurst, “Una de las más ingeniosas es éstos”, escribió el ilusionista Harry Houdini (1920, 228) usó el nombre artístico de Annie Abbott. Sus afiches la llamaban “El pequeñó imán de Georgia”. Fue una breve sensación en Londres, donde llevó a cabo su acto en 1891, pero —expuesta por lo que Houdini (1920, 229) llamó “una ingeniosa periodista”— pronto desapareció. Su nombre real era Dixie Annie (Jarrett) Haygood, y está sepultada en el cementerio Memory Hill, en Milledgeville, Georgia, donde yo estuve varios años atrás (ver Figura 1).

Vencer a un Maestro

El maestro Ahn parecía usar métodos similares a los de Hurst y Abbott. Volé a Nueva York el 26 de junio de 2009, para filmar un demo para una posible serie televisiva. Lo observé de cerca. 1)Permanecía firme mientras otros intentaban empujarlo hacia atrás. Aplicaba los principios de un bajo centro de gravedad (su pequeña estatura y su efectiva postura) y del bloqueo de fuerza. 2) Empleaba su antebrazo como Lulu Hurst usaba su palo, haciendo que sus oponentes colocaran sus manos allí de manera que pudiera usarlos como palanca, pivoteando desde el codo.

Fui el único que lo pudo desplazar, y lo hice trastocando su método: me agaché rápidamente, lo agarré y lo moví hacia atrás. Él se opuso objetando que yo lo estaba manipulando. Y así lo hice, rechazando jugar su juego, lo cual no tenía nada que ver con el chi y mucho que ver con los principios físicos. Por supuesto, fue grosero comportarme de esa manera, pero no era lo mismo que quitarle algo de las manos a un ilusionista. Éste último es un impostor honesto, mientras que el artista marcial que se atribuye tales proezas a otra cosa que no sean principios de la física está engañando al público.

Para limar asperezas, yo fingí que había malinterpretado lo que se esperaba y lo invité a tratar de nuevo, permitiéndole tener éxito. No solo resistió mi empujón sino que me repelió, mientras yo jugué con sus reglas y lo dejé que bloqueara fácilmente mi fuerza.

Notas

1. Nunca supe lo que pasó con nuestro video de este evento, ya que me dediqué a otro proyecto fílmico. Un productor dijo que estaba muy contento por mi esfuerzo (Gaines 2009).
2. Dongkuk “Don” Ahn (1937-2013) también fue un prominente artista que vivía en Nueva York. Nacido en Seúl, Corea del Sur, pintó en acrílico en un lienzo utilizando fluidas pinceladas que remedaban la caligrafía oriental (“Don Ahn” 2014).

Referencias

• Baker, Robert A., y Joe Nickell. 1992. Missing Pieces: How to Investigate Ghosts, UFOs, Psychics, & Other Mysteries. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.
• Blauer, Tony. 1983. Effective self-defense. Inside Kung-Fu August: 85–87.
• Don Ahn (Dongkuk)—Spirit. 2014. Disponible online en www.ahlfoundation.org/spirit/; último acceso en Agosto 23, 2016.
• Gaines, Cory. 2009. Personal communication (from Leftfield Pictures) to Joe Nickell, June 27.
• Houdini, Harry. 1920. Miracle Mongers and Their Methods. Reprinted Toronto: Coles, 1980.
• Karate master cuts his assistant’s throat. 2009. Disponible online en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYJvglrEsAk; último acceso en Agosto 23, 2016.
• Korem, Dan. 1988. Powers: Testing the Psychic & Supernatural. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 85–156.
• Lam, Paul. 2016. Qi in Martial Arts. Disponible online en qi-encyclopedia.com/?article=Qi%20in%20Martial%20Arts; último acceso, Agosto 23, 2016.
• Nickell, Joe. 1991. Wonderworkers! How They Perform the Impossible. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.
• ———. 2005. Secrets of the Sideshows. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky.
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• ———. 2012a. Jujitsu White Belt. Disponible online en www.joenickell.com/JujitsuWhiteBelt/JujitsuWhiteBelt1.html; último acceso en August 25, 2016.
• Polidoro, Massimo. 2008. Just like Jedi knights (if only). Skeptical Inquirer 32(3) (May/June): 20–21.
• Rooting, stabilizing . . . in Qigong. . . . 2016. Disponible online en www.egreenway.com/qigong/rooting.htm; último acceso, Agosto 23, 2016.
• Tegner, Bruce. 1973. Kung Fu & Tai Chi: Chinese Karate and Classical Exercises. New York: Bantam Books.