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. We got Alabama!
   • August 2, 2017: Alabama Career Technical Education Summer Conference, Birmingham, AL
2. There is a new TIES Teacher Corps Member in Virginia Beach, VA, Therese Whitehurst.
3. I wrote a proposal for a workshop in Virginia, one of our TIES Teacher Award winners, Christopher Moran, has agreed to present for us in the event the proposal is accepted.
4. I spent a good part of the weekend “blitzkrieg-ing” about half of the US states with e-mails about TIES. Responses came from South Carolina, West Virginia, Nevada, and Idaho. These states are sending TIES information to teachers across the state. I am fielding a couple inquiries from Nevada today.
5. A successful TIES Partnership will take place in Lancaster, PA on June 2. A biologist at Franklin & Marshall University will be visiting a high school class in Lancaster.

In 2016 many in the mainstream media portentously declared we had entered the age of “post-truth politics” (Drezner 2016) and now live in a “post-factual democracy” (Barret 2016). With monetized “fake news” sites proliferating, tweets inconsistent with reality dominating political debate, and most citizens busily constructing echo chambers of their personal beliefs through their social media accounts, the hysteria may seem warranted. But as Alexios Mantzarlis of the Poynter Institute reminds us (Mantzarlis 2016), politicians, media commentators, and your next-door neighbor have been playing fast and loose with the “truth” for a long time.

Indeed, the classical scholar Edward M. Harris noted in his paper dissecting “Demosthenes Speech Against Medias” (Harris 1989) that 2,400 years ago in Athens, “although a witness who perjured himself could be prosecuted…an orator who spoke in court could indulge in as much fabrication as he wished without fear of punishment.” Harris went on to state: “In short, nothing aside from the knowledge of the audience and the limits of plausibility restrained the orator from inventing falsehoods and distorting the truth.”

Public prevarication, then, is nothing new. What is novel is the technology-saturated environment in which it is now embedded. It is the “knowledge of the audience” and the “limits of plausibility”—not the falsehoods and distortions—that have changed.

How has the “knowledge of the audience” evolved over the tenure of Homo sapiens on this Earth? For more than 95 percent of our history, knowledge was limited but was tested daily against reality. The hunter-gatherer who picked a basket of poisonous berries was soon eliminated from the gene pool, as was the youth who led his kin toward the hungry lions instead of the grazing gazelles. Those few who parsed the patterns of the stars and so could predict the wildebeests’ migration were accorded special veneration (we used to call them “experts”). There was also, no doubt, much misinformation abroad in those halcyon days—lightning evinced the anger of the gods, and neighboring kin groups were largely shunned as the hostile “other,” whether they were hostile or not. But with simple survival as the foremost concern, the “knowledge of the audience” in general comported well with reality.

The average citizen today lives in a very different world. As Arthur C. Clarke’s celebrated third law has it, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” and such magic permeates and defines the world of the typical American adult. From self-parking cars and GPS to iPads, airplanes, and LASIK surgery, most people have no clue how the technology that envelops them works or what physical principles underlie its operation—it is, truly, “indistinguishable from magic.” And, living in this magical world, the “limits of plausibility” are easily expanded. If the talking box on your dashboard knows exactly where you are and can tell you how to get where you are going, why should talking to dead relatives not be plausible? If shining a light in your eye can eliminate your need for glasses, why shouldn’t wearing magnets cure your arthritis?

If a scientific “expert” tells you that magnet therapy is nonsense, he’s just exemplifying Clarke’s first law: “When a distinguished elderly scientist . . . states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.” And since the magnets worked wonders for your sister-in-law’s best friend, they will probably work for you. If most of one’s world is indistinguishable from magic, it is both reasonable and practical to adopt magic as an operating principle. And since only wizards understand magic, consulting them (the homeopaths, the astrologers, the mediums, and the mystics) makes perfect sense.

Thus, the “limits of plausibility” have vanished, and the “knowledge of the audience” is constructed from Facebook feeds, personal experience, and anecdote. The average American is largely insulated from the physical reality his ancestors were forced to confront daily and, as such, resides in a world of self-reinforcing magical thinking.

What we have entered, then, is not the “post-factual” or “post-truth” era but the Misinformation Age. Facts still exist. Good approximations of the truth can still be found. And information has never been more plentiful: IBM calculated a few years ago that we generate 2.5 quintillion bytes of information per day, enough to fill a bookcase half a kilometer tall and stretching around the Earth at the equator—every day. How much of that information is nonsense is anyone’s guess. The problem is that everyone feels equally well-qualified to make such a guess and then post it on their blog where it becomes their personal version of the truth that can be easily shared and propagated. And that’s how misinformation begins.

There was a time when most people writing on a particular topic did so because they had acquired some degree of specialized knowledge. They had read what was already known about the subject, had conducted some observations or even experiments of their own, and had concluded they might have something to contribute to the advancement of our understanding of the topic at hand. They might even be said to be an “expert” on the subject. The Internet has exploded this model. While the democratization of both access to knowledge and the ability to contribute to it provided by the Internet has obvious benefits, it also has a very serious downside.

Tom Nichols, writing in the Federalist (Nichols 2014), describes this downside as “The Death of Expertise,” which he characterizes as “a Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any division between professionals and laymen, students and teachers, knowers and wonderers—in other words, between those with any achievement in an area and those with none at all.”

This, he says, creates a culture in which “everyone’s opinion about anything is as good as anyone else’s.” Thus, Jenny McCarthy can state that her “mommy instinct” is far superior to scientific medical evidence on vaccination safety, and millions of Google-fed zombies nod in agreement and back up their foundationless opinions from a treasure trove of misinformation and related nonsense on the Internet.

This cornucopia of misinformation feeds another great American pastime: conspiracy theories. A recent survey (Poppy 2017) of 1,511 American adults found that 54 percent believe the 9/11 attacks involved a U.S. government conspiracy, while 42 percent believe global warming is a conspiracy or a hoax—the same percentage who believe in alien encounters. Thirty percent believe President Obama was born in Kenya. I was a little surprised to see that only 24 percent believe the Moon landings were a hoax, but perhaps the Apollo program has faded so far from the collective memory that no one cares anymore. Most interesting was the result that 32 percent believe the North Dakota crash was a government cover up—despite the fact that the researchers completely fabricated an incident they called the “North Dakota crash” and inserted it into the survey to see how many respondents view everything as a conspiracy.

For those of us still convinced that facts about the physical world can be discovered and that a rational analysis of those facts can be useful in creating predictive models of that world, a counterinsurgency seems in order. Where should we begin?

Science is the most powerful intellectual tool humankind has yet invented. Unlike the comforting certainty other worldviews provide, science recognizes its facts as contingent and its models as limited in their application. It is important to realize, however, that science is, at once, both a system for fact discovery and a set of values—skepticism, a reliance on evidence, interpretation using deductive and inductive reasoning, etc. Scientists hold that both the fact-discovery system and these values are crucially important. But, since values are a touchy subject with most people and are at best indirectly testable against reality, it is likely wisest to defer to Jonathan Swift’s dictum that “Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired” (Swift 1721), and leave the values part aside for now. My recommendation for an opening gambit in a counterattack on the Misinformation Age is to stick to the facts.

For these purposes, my definition of a simple fact is a measurement of some physical quantity, performed with the best available instruments according to a precisely defined procedure, quoted with an associated uncertainty, and passed through a skeptical review, preferably one that repeats and verifies the measurement. A compound fact can be deduced from a number of simple facts.

A good example of a compound fact is the statement that the dominant component of the CO₂ currently being added to the atmosphere arises from the burning of fossil fuel. I have given many classes and public talks on the subject of climate change, and while my audiences have not all agreed with my conclusions about the gravity of the situation or my proposals for mitigation, I have yet to encounter objection to this fact once I take the time to carefully lay out the evidence. I proceed as follows:

Step 1

I describe how we can count atoms and molecules, one by one, and show a table that lists the numbers of each kind in a sample of a million particles of air. This counting process is, of course, quite remarkable (bordering on magic?), but since most audiences have no concept of the size of an atom (and thus how remarkable it is that we can count them one by one), they can accept the atmospheric concentrations as facts, since counting is a straightforward process everyone understands.

Step 2

I show the first two years of the Keeling curve of CO₂ concentration from 1958 and 1959. This plot shows the number of CO₂ molecules rising steadily from October to May, and then falling symmetrically from May through September. A discussion of how plants breathe in CO₂ and breathe out oxygen during the growing season, and then how bacteria break down the plant tissue and release CO₂ in winter, is also a plausible story that is readily accepted. When a keenly thoughtful person objects because the southern hemisphere has opposite seasons, I reward the thoughtfulness and then show a map of the world pointing out how much more plant-covered land area there is in the temperate zone of the northern hemisphere versus that same zone in the southern hemisphere.

Step 3

I show the entire fifty-eight years of the Keeling curve in which the monotonic trend upward dwarfs the seasonal fluctuations. I then pose the question: How can we know where this additional CO₂ is coming from?

Step 4

I show the O₂ concentration in the atmosphere as a function of time. The decline in O₂ is a surprise to almost everyone but is unmistakable in the data, as are the seasonal fluctuations that are perfectly out of phase with the CO₂ annual pattern. Here I reiterate the plants’ CO₂ to O₂ respiration so everyone is comfortable with it— it is always good to tell people something they know, even if they just learned it five minutes ago, as it keeps them engaged with the line of argument. The interesting point to make here is that the amount of O₂ that has disappeared is just equal to the amount needed to explain the CO₂ increase if the CO₂ comes from the combustion (combining with oxygen) of carbon-containing material: C plus O₂ equals CO₂. It is important to note that this is just a correlation and cannot be interpreted as causation—emphasizing the care with which we are accumulating facts and not jumping to conclusions.

Step 5

A digression into isotopes is now required— in particular, that carbon has three common isotopes (C-12, C-13, and C-14). I emphasize how these isotopes are chemically identical but that the heavier ones move more slowly and are thus discriminated against in chemical reactions. This explains why plants have less C-13 and C-14 than does the air they breathe. I also provide a brief introduction to radioactive decay to explain how C-14 gradually converts to plain old nitrogen, the dominant constituent of the atmosphere, on a timescale of 5,730 years.

Step 6

The penultimate data points are the ratios of C-13 and C-14 to C-12, both from direct measurements of the atmosphere over the past forty years and from tree rings going back many centuries. These data show a gradual decline in the C-13/C-12 ratio beginning round 1800 at the start of the industrial revolution that accelerates rapidly over the past few decades, just as the total CO₂ skyrockets. The C-14/C-12 ratio has also been declining rapidly over the past thirty years. By providing pictures of the various sources of carbon (CO₂ from volcanoes and ocean-air exchange, as well as C from living plants, nuclear bomb tests in the atmosphere, and that long-dead plants equal fossil fuels), I am ready for the inescapable conclusion.

Step 7

The declining ratios rule out volcanoes and ocean-atmosphere exchange, since both have higher C-13/C-12 ratios. The falling C-13 values means plants must be involved. The plunging C-14 values mean we must be adding CO₂ to the air that is highly deficient in C-14 and that can’t come from modern plants whose C-14 was enriched by the bomb tests in the 1950s. It must come from long-dead plants in which the C-14 has all decayed away. Thus, the dominant fraction of the new CO₂ in the atmosphere must come f rom burning fossil fuels. QED.

In my experience, this approach has two virtues. First, for all but the most committed science deniers, it establishes the unequivocal role of humans in changing the composition of the atmosphere. Second, it illustrates the process of uncovering facts about the world. I do not tout dire predictions about the future of the planet, nor do I suggest policy prescriptions to solve this problem. The former are far too uncertain to constitute “facts,” and the latter involves values about which reasonable people may differ. But starting with a fact on which we can agree establishes both a point of connection and a reality-based platform for further discussion.

The Misinformation Age provides poor support for individual decision making and poses a potential disaster for the formation of rational public policy. A counterinsurgency is definitely called for. But our actions will be ineffective if they are politicized (Foster 2017) and unpersuasive unless we scrupulously abide by the principles of a scientific mind. The reproducibility problems in biomedical research (Begley and Ellis 2012) and, more recently, in psychology (Nousek et al. 2015) undermine our credibility. Participation in—even cultivation of—media hype over scientific findings is likewise extremely unhelpful. Assertions of authority will (and perhaps should) be ignored. The power of science lies in its skeptical, rational, evidence-based approach to understanding the world. This power begins with facts, and, in my experience, these facts are the best tools with which to start the revolution.

References

• Barret, Nicholas. 2016. Brexit has locked us millennials out of the union we voted for. Financial Times (June 26). Available online at https://www.ft.com/content/82a1a548-3b9311e6-8716-a4a71e8140b0.
• Begley, G.C., and L.M. Ellis. 2012. Drug development: Raise standards for preclinical cancer research. Nature 483: 531– 533. doi:10.1038/483531a.
• Drezner, Daniel W. 2016. Why the post-truth political era might be around for a while. Washington Post (June 16). Available online at https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/06/16/why-the-post-truth-political-era-might-be-around-for-a-while/?utm_term=.a0da80e33c16.
• Foster, Craig A. 2017. Skepticism, at heart, is not partisan. Skeptical Inquirer 41(1) (January/February): 14–15.
• Harris, Edward M. 1989. Demosthenes speech against medias. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 92: 117–136.
• Mantzarlis, Alexios. 2016. No, we’re not in a “post-fact” era. Available online at http://www.poynter.org/2016/no-were-not-in-a-post-fact-era/421582/.
• Nichols, Thomas. 2014. The death of expertise. Available online at http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise.
• Nousek, Brian, and the Open Science Collaboration. 2015. Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science 349 doi: 10.1126/science.aac471.
• Poppy, Carrie. 2017. Survey shows Americans fear ghosts, the government, and each other. Skeptical Inquirer 41(1) (January/February): 6–18, quoting The Chapman University Survey of American Fears 2016 found online at https://blogs.chapman.edu/wilkinson/2016/10/11/americas-top-fears-2016/.
• Swift, Jonathan. 1721. A letter to a young gentleman lately entered into holy orders. In The Works of Jonathan Swift. London: H.G. Bohn, 1856.

After the huge destruction in private and governmental media and educational institutes in Arabic speaking countries, we are currently witnessing new phenomenon: religious superstition satellite channels.

Satellite channels which promote deceitfulness, fraud, magic and pseudoscience are not a new phenomenon; they started to spread after 2005. Iraqis for example didn’t know Abu Ali Alshaibani¹ until he appeared on Diyar satellite channel, hosted by Sami Qaftan – a famous and respected Iraqi actor – in a TV show which specializes in deceitfulness. He claims having adventures with CIA and MOSSAD , and possessing abilities that allow him to manipulate the international events. In his live shows, he claims to know the secrets of the caller who seems to be honored to speak to him.

Dubai satellite channel which is more important and famous than the Iraqi channel, Diyar, has also showed what is meant to be a debate in 2013 between “spiritual healer”, Izzat Ibrahim, and another cleric who is against exorcism. However, the show “Nashwa show” was enough for Izzat to show his abilities of exorcism, especially that the debate was centred around religious texts, not scientific skepticism which is never hosted by Arabic media.

Not only Dubai channel hosted this “healer”, other channels like “Shabab”, “ONTV” have also gave him the chance to teach us about the worlds of demons and their secret effects on our world, which requires special skills from someone like him to be revealed.

The term “spiritual healer” has publicity today, thanks to Arabic TVs. TV influence on people has been proved before by studies about persons’ opinions toward science and superstition by viewing two different types of TV messages.²

An interesting study in West Lafayette, Indiana in 1994 was done to test the effect of UFO beliefs by two types of media messages: one-sided messages which show only the supporting opinions and two sided messages which show the skeptical opinion as well. Taking in consideration the number of documentaries that are promoting paranormal powers and pseudoscience like “X-Files”, “unsolved mysteries” or “behind reality”, as well as the contributions of Hollywood like “Ghost” movie (1990) and other similar movies. The study involved showing subjects a movie about UFOs by using the same two types of messages: one sided and two sided messages. The results were very interesting; the subjects got significant increase in believing UFO conspiracies after watching the one sided messages and the average change in their opinions has changed to totally agree with the pseudo-scientific content after watching one sided messages while they had significant decrease in believing UFO conspiracies and the average change was under disagree levels when they watched two sided messages.

Another study that shows the effects of media on children’s opinions of scientists was held in the United States in 1994 by two researchers from University of Oklahoma. Children who watched cartoons more often had less respectful opinions about scientists, while those who watched less cartoon had a more respectful opinions about the scientists.³

By considering the previous studies we may think of how far the effects of watching these Arabic TV shows could go despite proofing its false success in exorcism; when the actors fall to the floor while making strange sounds, it makes the naïve watchers think that it’s empirical enough to be accepted. How far would exorcism, reading amulets, spiritual healing, talisman, traditional herbal medicine, dream interpretations and others go?

We saw how the children’s opinions about scientists differ because of watching cartoons, then how will all these TV programs and channels affect its audience’ outlook to the world?

Iraqi channels which specializes in this nonsense are: Diyar channel (قناة الديار) which has other types of programs despite its deceitful show that is the most popular one in the channel; Ahalna channel (قناة أهلنه) presents religious superstition like exorcism and Ruqya along with other religious materials and it can be considered as a religious channel; Dama’a channel which is owned by the famous swindler Shiekh Ahmad Al-Waili, who started with Diyar but decided to run his own channel as his income was growing rapidly.

When you watch Najah (means success) channel showing a female presenter without headscarf (which gives an impression about a secular, not religious channel) discussing spiritual healer called Sayed Atya, you may think that hosting those healers have started to be some type of income source in countries like Egypt. Egypt has an illiteracy percentage reaching 29.7% according to government officials in 2016⁴ while illiteracy in Iraq reaches 18% according to the ministry of planning in 2015.⁵

Anwar (means illuminations) satellite channel is an Iraqi Shiite religious channel; occasionally it presents discussions hosting spiritual healers like Abu Ridha Al-Ramahi. Hayat (means life) satellite channel from Egypt is not a religious channel; however, it promoted someone called “Al-Sheikh Al-Yamani” , meaning “The sheikh from Yemen”, while he displays his skills of exorcism.

For those who wonder how these exorcism rituals happen, owners of channels or those who financially bribe satellite channels can hire actors easily to show some strange moves and sounds, pretending that some demon has entered into their body. Those actors are not ashamed of appearing in this way before their families because it’s socially accepted and those spiritual healers have even started to intervene in medical issues as well.

Tony Khalifa – Christian secular presenter – has also hosted a guest who claims to stop magic effects, exorcism and evil eye. Tony was giving the healer a sarcastic smile but at the end of the day he also supported him indirectly by giving him the time to speak in a satellite channel and receive many supportive phone calls.

The other related phenomenon in Arabic satellite channels is when swindlers speak to debunk other swindlers. Sayed Atia from Egypt gives us a lecture about wizards and quackery whilst a famous cold war erupted when Abu Ali Al-Shaibani threatened and criticized Ahmed Al-Waili in Iraq, which many Iraqis had witnessed on Facebook.

Ruqya

Ruqya is a chanting of religious texts like Quran, Hadith or some prayers and for some Shiite and Sunnis, there are even talismans and special charms to protect people. The main use of Ruqya is to heal and protect against the evil eye, diseases or demons’ effects. Ruqya is done by the cleric (Sheikh) when he puts his hand on your head and starts chanting for a while and then you should feel better due to the placebo effect.

Ruqya has its channels and famous celebrities who usually do other magical actions but with Ruqya they add a special holiness because Ruqya has clear description in Islamic texts.

There is a satellite channel called Ruqya that displays chanting for 24 hours and it also shows advertisements and SMS services for people who are willing to ask about Ruqya or to contact others who do Ruqya. Another satellite channel that does the same thing is Azhari. Furthermore, a famous Kuwaiti cleric, named Mashari, has his own satellite channel that shows his Quran chanting, Ruqya and prayers for 24 hours.

Shanqit channel from Mauritania (illiteracy percentage is 40%)⁶ offers Ruqya chantings in addition to services like protection and cure of magic, exorcism and evil eye along with dreams interpretations. All these services are provided to a nation that needs to learn reading and writing more than anything else.

Similar superstition channels include: Maw’itha channel (means preaching); beauty and health channel ( don’t be deceived by the name, the channel shows advertisements about alternative herbal medicine, unapproved medications and dreams interpretations, by SMS and by special show for that, for 24 hours); Jamila channel (self-development, Ruqya and preaching); Sultan channel (for Ruqya and false sexual performance- enhancing drugs); Ayat; Wisal, Alnas, Sraidi and Iqra ( general religious channels that also have programs for dream interpretations and Ruqya).

A dark image for the future

In many programs we see some “open-minded” cleric hosted to have a debate with the spiritual healer, the cleric usually tries to prove his views according to Islamic texts; however, the end result is always the same: the spiritual healer wins. For Islamic clerics, it’s not about refusing ideas of demons, evil eye, magic or dream interpretations, but about the effects of these things and how deeply they can affect us. Nonetheless, no TV show presenter dares to discuss these subjects from skeptical point of view.

About a year ago, one FM program agreed with real sciences website to host one of the members on weekly basis to discuss common superstition subjects. He did it for the first time and it was about dreams interpretations; however, the presenter was uncomfortable and never called for hosting us anymore. Another bad experiment with TV show, we told them that we will talk about astrology, but the surprise was that the presenter does believe in astrology and she didn’t predict that we may talk against astrology.

With more than 20 satellite channels in Arabic language for spreading ignorance in that way, it cannot become any worse than that.

Notes

1. Famous Iraqi fortune teller, cleric and deceitful celebrity who is known for allegedly having magical capabilities to know the future, the unseen events and information, cure diseases and solve romantic and relations problems and of course deactivate magic effects.
2. Sparks, Glenn G., Marianne Pellechia, and Chris Irvine. "Does television news about UFOs affect viewers’ UFO beliefs? An experimental investigation." Communication Quarterly 46.3 (1998): 284-294.
3. Potts, Richard, and Isaac Martinez. "Television viewing and children's beliefs about scientists." Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 15.2 (1994): 287-300.
4. Seventh day newspaper, “Statistics department: illiteracy percentage in Egypt is 29.7% and 27.1% in whole Arab countries”, 7th September 2016.
5. Sumaria channel, “Ministry of planning: Iraq illiteracy percentage is 18% most of them are females”, 8th September 2015.
6. Hurra channel, “Mauritania’s illiteracy percentage is 40%”, 8th September 2016.

In 2016 many in the mainstream media portentously declared we had entered the age of “post-truth politics” (Drezner 2016) and now live in a “post-factual democracy” (Barret 2016). With monetized “fake news” sites proliferating, tweets inconsistent with reality dominating political debate, and most citizens busily constructing echo chambers of their personal beliefs through their social media accounts, the hysteria may seem warranted. But as Alexios Mantzarlis of the Poynter Institute reminds us (Mantzarlis 2016), politicians, media commentators, and your next-door neighbor have been playing fast and loose with the “truth” for a long time.

Indeed, the classical scholar Edward M. Harris noted in his paper dissecting “Demosthenes Speech Against Medias” (Harris 1989) that 2,400 years ago in Athens, “although a witness who perjured himself could be prosecuted…an orator who spoke in court could indulge in as much fabrication as he wished without fear of punishment.” Harris went on to state: “In short, nothing aside from the knowledge of the audience and the limits of plausibility restrained the orator from inventing falsehoods and distorting the truth.”

Public prevarication, then, is nothing new. What is novel is the technology-saturated environment in which it is now embedded. It is the “knowledge of the audience” and the “limits of plausibility”—not the falsehoods and distortions—that have changed.

How has the “knowledge of the audience” evolved over the tenure of Homo sapiens on this Earth? For more than 95 percent of our history, knowledge was limited but was tested daily against reality. The hunter-gatherer who picked a basket of poisonous berries was soon eliminated from the gene pool, as was the youth who led his kin toward the hungry lions instead of the grazing gazelles. Those few who parsed the patterns of the stars and so could predict the wildebeests’ migration were accorded special veneration (we used to call them “experts”). There was also, no doubt, much misinformation abroad in those halcyon days—lightning evinced the anger of the gods, and neighboring kin groups were largely shunned as the hostile “other,” whether they were hostile or not. But with simple survival as the foremost concern, the “knowledge of the audience” in general comported well with reality.

The average citizen today lives in a very different world. As Arthur C. Clarke’s celebrated third law has it, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” and such magic permeates and defines the world of the typical American adult. From self-parking cars and GPS to iPads, airplanes, and LASIK surgery, most people have no clue how the technology that envelops them works or what physical principles underlie its operation—it is, truly, “indistinguishable from magic.” And, living in this magical world, the “limits of plausibility” are easily expanded. If the talking box on your dashboard knows exactly where you are and can tell you how to get where you are going, why should talking to dead relatives not be plausible? If shining a light in your eye can eliminate your need for glasses, why shouldn’t wearing magnets cure your arthritis?

If a scientific “expert” tells you that magnet therapy is nonsense, he’s just exemplifying Clarke’s first law: “When a distinguished elderly scientist . . . states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.” And since the magnets worked wonders for your sister-in-law’s best friend, they will probably work for you. If most of one’s world is indistinguishable from magic, it is both reasonable and practical to adopt magic as an operating principle. And since only wizards understand magic, consulting them (the homeopaths, the astrologers, the mediums, and the mystics) makes perfect sense.

Thus, the “limits of plausibility” have vanished, and the “knowledge of the audience” is constructed from Facebook feeds, personal experience, and anecdote. The average American is largely insulated from the physical reality his ancestors were forced to confront daily and, as such, resides in a world of self-reinforcing magical thinking.

What we have entered, then, is not the “post-factual” or “post-truth” era but the Misinformation Age. Facts still exist. Good approximations of the truth can still be found. And information has never been more plentiful: IBM calculated a few years ago that we generate 2.5 quintillion bytes of information per day, enough to fill a bookcase half a kilometer tall and stretching around the Earth at the equator—every day. How much of that information is nonsense is anyone’s guess. The problem is that everyone feels equally well-qualified to make such a guess and then post it on their blog where it becomes their personal version of the truth that can be easily shared and propagated. And that’s how misinformation begins.

There was a time when most people writing on a particular topic did so because they had acquired some degree of specialized knowledge. They had read what was already known about the subject, had conducted some observations or even experiments of their own, and had concluded they might have something to contribute to the advancement of our understanding of the topic at hand. They might even be said to be an “expert” on the subject. The Internet has exploded this model. While the democratization of both access to knowledge and the ability to contribute to it provided by the Internet has obvious benefits, it also has a very serious downside.

Tom Nichols, writing in the Federalist (Nichols 2014), describes this downside as “The Death of Expertise,” which he characterizes as “a Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any division between professionals and laymen, students and teachers, knowers and wonderers—in other words, between those with any achievement in an area and those with none at all.”

This, he says, creates a culture in which “everyone’s opinion about anything is as good as anyone else’s.” Thus, Jenny McCarthy can state that her “mommy instinct” is far superior to scientific medical evidence on vaccination safety, and millions of Google-fed zombies nod in agreement and back up their foundationless opinions from a treasure trove of misinformation and related nonsense on the Internet.

This cornucopia of misinformation feeds another great American pastime: conspiracy theories. A recent survey (Poppy 2017) of 1,511 American adults found that 54 percent believe the 9/11 attacks involved a U.S. government conspiracy, while 42 percent believe global warming is a conspiracy or a hoax—the same percentage who believe in alien encounters. Thirty percent believe President Obama was born in Kenya. I was a little surprised to see that only 24 percent believe the Moon landings were a hoax, but perhaps the Apollo program has faded so far from the collective memory that no one cares anymore. Most interesting was the result that 32 percent believe the North Dakota crash was a government cover up—despite the fact that the researchers completely fabricated an incident they called the “North Dakota crash” and inserted it into the survey to see how many respondents view everything as a conspiracy.

For those of us still convinced that facts about the physical world can be discovered and that a rational analysis of those facts can be useful in creating predictive models of that world, a counterinsurgency seems in order. Where should we begin?

Science is the most powerful intellectual tool humankind has yet invented. Unlike the comforting certainty other worldviews provide, science recognizes its facts as contingent and its models as limited in their application. It is important to realize, however, that science is, at once, both a system for fact discovery and a set of values—skepticism, a reliance on evidence, interpretation using deductive and inductive reasoning, etc. Scientists hold that both the fact-discovery system and these values are crucially important. But, since values are a touchy subject with most people and are at best indirectly testable against reality, it is likely wisest to defer to Jonathan Swift’s dictum that “Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired” (Swift 1721), and leave the values part aside for now. My recommendation for an opening gambit in a counterattack on the Misinformation Age is to stick to the facts.

For these purposes, my definition of a simple fact is a measurement of some physical quantity, performed with the best available instruments according to a precisely defined procedure, quoted with an associated uncertainty, and passed through a skeptical review, preferably one that repeats and verifies the measurement. A compound fact can be deduced from a number of simple facts.

A good example of a compound fact is the statement that the dominant component of the CO₂ currently being added to the atmosphere arises from the burning of fossil fuel. I have given many classes and public talks on the subject of climate change, and while my audiences have not all agreed with my conclusions about the gravity of the situation or my proposals for mitigation, I have yet to encounter objection to this fact once I take the time to carefully lay out the evidence. I proceed as follows:

Step 1

I describe how we can count atoms and molecules, one by one, and show a table that lists the numbers of each kind in a sample of a million particles of air. This counting process is, of course, quite remarkable (bordering on magic?), but since most audiences have no concept of the size of an atom (and thus how remarkable it is that we can count them one by one), they can accept the atmospheric concentrations as facts, since counting is a straightforward process everyone understands.

Step 2

I show the first two years of the Keeling curve of CO₂ concentration from 1958 and 1959. This plot shows the number of CO₂ molecules rising steadily from October to May, and then falling symmetrically from May through September. A discussion of how plants breathe in CO₂ and breathe out oxygen during the growing season, and then how bacteria break down the plant tissue and release CO₂ in winter, is also a plausible story that is readily accepted. When a keenly thoughtful person objects because the southern hemisphere has opposite seasons, I reward the thoughtfulness and then show a map of the world pointing out how much more plant-covered land area there is in the temperate zone of the northern hemisphere versus that same zone in the southern hemisphere.

Step 3

I show the entire fifty-eight years of the Keeling curve in which the monotonic trend upward dwarfs the seasonal fluctuations. I then pose the question: How can we know where this additional CO₂ is coming from?

Step 4

I show the O₂ concentration in the atmosphere as a function of time. The decline in O₂ is a surprise to almost everyone but is unmistakable in the data, as are the seasonal fluctuations that are perfectly out of phase with the CO₂ annual pattern. Here I reiterate the plants’ CO₂ to O₂ respiration so everyone is comfortable with it— it is always good to tell people something they know, even if they just learned it five minutes ago, as it keeps them engaged with the line of argument. The interesting point to make here is that the amount of O₂ that has disappeared is just equal to the amount needed to explain the CO₂ increase if the CO₂ comes from the combustion (combining with oxygen) of carbon-containing material: C plus O₂ equals CO₂. It is important to note that this is just a correlation and cannot be interpreted as causation—emphasizing the care with which we are accumulating facts and not jumping to conclusions.

Step 5

A digression into isotopes is now required— in particular, that carbon has three common isotopes (C-12, C-13, and C-14). I emphasize how these isotopes are chemically identical but that the heavier ones move more slowly and are thus discriminated against in chemical reactions. This explains why plants have less C-13 and C-14 than does the air they breathe. I also provide a brief introduction to radioactive decay to explain how C-14 gradually converts to plain old nitrogen, the dominant constituent of the atmosphere, on a timescale of 5,730 years.

Step 6

The penultimate data points are the ratios of C-13 and C-14 to C-12, both from direct measurements of the atmosphere over the past forty years and from tree rings going back many centuries. These data show a gradual decline in the C-13/C-12 ratio beginning round 1800 at the start of the industrial revolution that accelerates rapidly over the past few decades, just as the total CO₂ skyrockets. The C-14/C-12 ratio has also been declining rapidly over the past thirty years. By providing pictures of the various sources of carbon (CO₂ from volcanoes and ocean-air exchange, as well as C from living plants, nuclear bomb tests in the atmosphere, and that long-dead plants equal fossil fuels), I am ready for the inescapable conclusion.

Step 7

The declining ratios rule out volcanoes and ocean-atmosphere exchange, since both have higher C-13/C-12 ratios. The falling C-13 values means plants must be involved. The plunging C-14 values mean we must be adding CO₂ to the air that is highly deficient in C-14 and that can’t come from modern plants whose C-14 was enriched by the bomb tests in the 1950s. It must come from long-dead plants in which the C-14 has all decayed away. Thus, the dominant fraction of the new CO₂ in the atmosphere must come f rom burning fossil fuels. QED.

In my experience, this approach has two virtues. First, for all but the most committed science deniers, it establishes the unequivocal role of humans in changing the composition of the atmosphere. Second, it illustrates the process of uncovering facts about the world. I do not tout dire predictions about the future of the planet, nor do I suggest policy prescriptions to solve this problem. The former are far too uncertain to constitute “facts,” and the latter involves values about which reasonable people may differ. But starting with a fact on which we can agree establishes both a point of connection and a reality-based platform for further discussion.

The Misinformation Age provides poor support for individual decision making and poses a potential disaster for the formation of rational public policy. A counterinsurgency is definitely called for. But our actions will be ineffective if they are politicized (Foster 2017) and unpersuasive unless we scrupulously abide by the principles of a scientific mind. The reproducibility problems in biomedical research (Begley and Ellis 2012) and, more recently, in psychology (Nousek et al. 2015) undermine our credibility. Participation in—even cultivation of—media hype over scientific findings is likewise extremely unhelpful. Assertions of authority will (and perhaps should) be ignored. The power of science lies in its skeptical, rational, evidence-based approach to understanding the world. This power begins with facts, and, in my experience, these facts are the best tools with which to start the revolution.

References

• Barret, Nicholas. 2016. Brexit has locked us millennials out of the union we voted for. Financial Times (June 26). Available online at https://www.ft.com/content/82a1a548-3b93-11e6-8716-a4a71e8140b0.
• Begley, G.C., and L.M. Ellis. 2012. Drug development: Raise standards for preclinical cancer research. Nature 483: 531– 533. doi:10.1038/483531a.
• Drezner, Daniel W. 2016. Why the post-truth political era might be around for a while. Washington Post (June 16). Available online at https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/06/16/why-the-post-truth-political-era-might-be-around-for-a-while/?utm_term=.a0da80e33c16.
• Foster, Craig A. 2017. Skepticism, at heart, is not partisan. Skeptical Inquirer 41(1) (January/February): 14–15.
• Harris, Edward M. 1989. Demosthenes speech against medias. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 92: 117–136.
• Mantzarlis, Alexios. 2016. No, we’re not in a “post-fact” era. Available online at http:/www.poynter.org/2016/no-were-not-in-a-post-fact-era/421582/.
• Nichols, Thomas. 2014. The death of expertise. Available online at http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise.
• Nousek, Brian, and the Open Science Collaboration. 2015. Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science 349 doi: 10.1126/science.aac471.
• Poppy, Carrie. 2017. Survey shows Americans fear ghosts, the government, and each other. Skeptical Inquirer 41(1) (January/February): 6–18, quoting The Chapman University Survey of American Fears 2016 found online at https://blogs.chapman.edu/wilkinson/2016/10/11/americas-top-fears-2016/.
• Swift, Jonathan. 1721. A letter to a young gentleman lately entered into holy orders. In The Works of Jonathan Swift. London: H.G. Bohn, 1856.

Una mano fantasmal, sobre el padre De Heredia (sentado) y un acompañante.

“Todos los que creen en el fenómeno espiritista, así como los que son abiertamente escépticos, no pueden dejar de interesarse por las imágenes espirituales hechas por el padre jesuita De Heredia”, comenzaba en 1923 un reportaje de la revista Popular Mechanics sobre la habilidad de un sacerdote mexicano a la hora de fotografiar espíritus.ⁱ El clérigo en cuestión era Carlos María de Heredia, profesor de la Universidad de la Santa Cruz (Worcester, EE UU), ilusionista aficionado y amigo de Harry Houdini y John Mulholland, dos magos que también luchaban entonces contra la charlatanería mediúmnica.

Carlos María de Heredia nació en 1872 en Ciudad de México en el seno de una familia acomodada. “Su padre era un mexicano muy rico que construyó un teatro privado para él y sus hermanos. Cuando una celebridad visitaba México, negociaba con ella para que actuara en una sesión privada en el teatro de sus hijos. Una vez (Alexander) Herrmann, el famoso mago, visitó México y actuó ante los niños. La pericia del mago impresionó tanto al padre (de Carlos María de Heredia) que se las arregló para que enseñara su arte a sus hijos”, recuerda el editor en el prólogo de Spiritism and common sense (Espiritismo y sentido común, 1922), una de las obras fundamentales del jesuita.ⁱⁱ Así surgió en el pequeño De Heredia el interés por la magia. Años después, ya sacerdote, recurrió a ella para desvelar los engaños de los médiums, incluidas las fotografías de espíritus.

Arthur Conan Doyle publicó en 1922 dos libros sobre fenómenos paranormales: The coming of the fairies (El misterio de las hadas) y The case for the spirit photography (El caso de la fotografía espiritual). En el primero, presentaba cinco fotos de hadas sacadas por dos niñas en Cottingley (Reino Unido) como prueba de la existencia de las criaturas del bosque. Las hadas, en realidad, las habían creado las pequeñas a partir de dibujos de un libro de infantil de 1915, el Princess Mary’s gift book. En el segundo, el padre de Sherlock Holmes hacía lo mismo con fotos de espíritus. Un año más tarde, The New York Tribune contaba cómo, “aunque fuera un fraude”, un imagen tomada por la médium Ada Emma Deane que Doyle había enseñado durante una charla en el Carnegie Hall “estaba tan bien hecha que emocionó a quienes la vieron” hasta el extremo de que “varias mujeres empezaron a llorar y una gritó histéricamente”.ⁱⁱⁱ La psíquica había hecho la foto el 11 de noviembre de 1923, en el quinto aniversario del armisticio que puso fin a la Primera Guerra Mundial. Como en años anteriores, una multitud se congregó aquel día en los alrededores de El Cenotafio de Londres en honor a los soldados británicos caídos. En la imagen se veían cabezas fantasmales flotando sobre la gente. “Creo que es la mejor foto espiritual jamás hecha, con los espíritus de esos hombres que regresaron aquel día mientras la multitud les homenajeaba por su sacrificio”, decía el novelista.

“Diversiones infantiles”

A Carlos María de Heredia ese tipo de fotos no le perturbaba lo más mínimo. En 1920 el sacerdote había hablado en el Club Católico de Nueva York sobre “el peligro de perder la fe en Dios” debido al espiritismo y había hecho una demostración pública de su habilidades, advirtiendo de que todo eran trucos. “No obstante, la mayoría el público coincidió, tras verle levitar sobre una mesa, escuchar golpes del mundo astral y ver cómo producía una fotografía espiritual y escritos del Más Allá, que, si no fuera por su atuendo, el padre De Heredia podría dirigir su propio vodevil”, informaba The New York Times.^iv El clérigo sostenía que el 90% de los fenómenos espiritistas respondían a trucos, otro 5% tenía explicación científica y el restante 5% estaba pendiente de ella.

Para él, todo médium era un fraude. “Hacen negocio con ello, y el negocio es el negocio. En los negocios, encuentras lo que quieren tus clientes y se lo suministras. Puede haber algunos que crean que realmente hacen algo sobrenatural. Si existen, son tan pocos que pueden contarse con los dedos de una mano. Y, si creen sinceramente en lo que dicen, están muy confundidos. Porque inconscientemente están haciendo cosas perfectamente naturales, aunque puedan ser un poco inusuales”, decía.^v De las fotos del Más Allá pensaba que en su mayoría eran fraudulentas y que las que no eran un engaño intencionado tenían una explicación “perfectamente natural”.

El cura empuja un taburete con la ayuda de un brazo astral.

Las imágenes de las hadas de Cottingley y las fotografías psíquicas como las de Deane eran para él meras “diversiones infantiles”. “En casi todas las fotos espirituales, un estudiante de ciencias puede descubrir las más obvias formas de engaño, desde las dobles exposiciones, los dibujos superpuestos y otros efectos de la manipulación de placas hasta las formas más simples de engaño del médium al fotógrafo. En este último caso, es a menudo difícil de creer que el investigador no colabore con el médium en el engaño”, advierte en Spiritism and common sense.^vi Dos días después de la charla de Doyle en el Carnegie Hall, el sacerdote recrea fotos fantasmales en la sede del diario neoyorquino The Evening World ante un artista, un reportero y un fotógrafo del periódico que estaba seguro “de que no se le escaparía el procedimiento del padre, por oculto que fuera”.^vii

El fotógrafo llevó una de sus placas montada ya en el chasis. Los cuatro se metieron en el cuarto oscuro y, para evitar cambiazos, sacaron la placa, la firmaron y la volvieron a poner en la cámara. Una vez fuera de la habitación, el fotógrafo retrató a los otros tres y, cuando reveló la placa, apareció entre ellos el rostro del almirante inglés David Beatty. Repitieron tres veces el experimento y surgieron de la nada otras tantas figuras fantasmales: la de un soldado, la de un borracho y la del propio Arthur Conan Doyle. El fotógrafo intentó dar con una explicación para el fenómeno, pero no lo consiguió, ante lo cual el jesuita le contó en privado cómo lo había hecho. Entonces, el fotógrafo repitió el experimento ante la mirada del sacerdote y consiguió que un espíritu apareciera en un retrato del artista y el reportero. Cuando vio las fotos fantasmales del cura en The Evening World, Doyle rechazó que se parecieran a las auténticas. “La afirmación del padre De Heredia de que puede fabricar fantasmas falsos está fuera de toda consideración”, sentenció.^viii Lo cierto es que no hay diferencia entre las fotos del jesuita y las auténticas más allá de que en las primeras los espíritus correspondan a personajes vivos cuando se sacaron las imágenes.

Un rostro fantasmal se materializa sobre el acompañante del jesuita mexicano.

De Heredia hizo en los meses siguientes demostraciones similares en otras redacciones, incluidas las de las revistas Scientific American y Popular Mechanics. Tenía varios métodos para fotografíar espíritus, pero nunca reveló en sus libros el que tanto asombraba a los periodistas al hacerlo con placas que no eran del cura ni las había visto antes. Decía que “podría hacer muchísimo daño, ya que no pocos médiums, al saberlo, lo pondrían en práctica engañando irremisiblemente a sus infelices clientes”.^ix Otros lo contaron por él.

Así, en Popular Mechanics explicaron que el sacerdote había descubierto el método años antes “por accidente” cuando, mientras experimentaba con “algún tipo de pintura luminosa”, dejó un momento sobre una hoja de papel “un objeto cubierto con esa sustancia” y, al levantarlo, descubrió una “débil impresión fotográfica del objeto”. “Esto le llevó a intentar transferir una imagen directamente a una placa fotográfica untándola primero en pintura y luego dejándola sobre la superficie sensible”.^x Los resultados no sólo eran sorprendentes, sino que además no afectaban a la placa lo suficiente como para que alguien se diera cuenta de que había sido manipulada. Según Harry Houdini,^xi cuando llegaba el momento de firmar la placa para garantizar que no habría cambiazo, el sacerdote llevaba oculta en la palma de la mano izquierda una foto empapada en fósforo. La imagen se impresionaba cuando el cura apoyaba esa mano en la placa mientras estampaba su firma de control con la derecha. Sencillo, ¿verdad?

1. Peabody, J.L. [1923]: “Spirit pictures and a speaking skull”. Popular Mechanics (Nueva York). Vol. 39, Nº 6 (julio). 817-820.
2. Heredia, Carlos M. de [1922]: Spiritism and common sense. P.J. Kenedy & Sons. Nueva York. viii.
3. Redacción [1923]: “Doyle’s ‘spirit’ photos of war heroes thrill”. Chicago Daily Tribune (Chicago). 7 de abril.
4. Redacción [1920]: “Priest exposes spiritism”. The New York Times (Nueva York). 18 de octubre.
5. Redacción [1925]: “Father De Heredia to produce spooks while you wait at Loyola Summer School”. The Maroon (Nueva orleans). 25 de mayo.
6. Heredia [1922], op. cit., 72.
7. Heredia, Carlos M. de [1930]: Fraudes espiritistas y fenómenos metapsíquicos. Prologado por Andrés Aberasturi. Editorial Acervo. Barcelona 1993. 215-217.
8. Associated Press [1923]: “Sherlock Holmes spirit aid”. Nueva York. 9 de abril.
9. Heredia [1930], op. cit., 222
10. Peabody, J.L. [1923], op. cit., 817-818.
11. Houdini, Harry [1924]: A magician among the spirits. Cambridge University Press (Col. “Cambridge Library Collection”). Nueva York 2011. 114

I first saw the Northern Lights from between the cars of a speeding Canadian VIA Rail train at about the fifty-eighth parallel north. I was on the last leg of a three-day journey five hours shy of Churchill, Manitoba, known as the polar bear capital of the world. It was about four in the morning, and nearly everyone else in the car was asleep, rocked and rattled into some semblance of slumber. I too needed sleep but was drawn to the mesmerizing celestial dancing greenish streaks outside. Being in such a remote location, so far away from Winnipeg’s light pollution where the journey began, the stars and lights contrasted spectacularly against the inky night sky. The rushing wind blasted frigid sub-Arctic air in my face, making the experience uncomfortable and even painful, but I couldn’t resist. Even a “clean” window on the train—a greater rarity than the lights—was too much of a barrier. I needed firsthand experience with the lights, at least for a minute before my wind-whipped eyes teared up.

That was a decade ago, but the experience resonates with me to this day. So when I heard that there was a new book out about the aurora, I was intrigued. Not only because the author studied the science behind the phenomenon, but also because she researched its history and folklore. I interviewed physicist Melanie Windridge, author of Aurora: In Search of the Northern Lights.

I asked Windridge what first piqued her interest in the subject. “As a plasma physicist, I decided I should see the most impressive natural plasma phenomenon in the world, which was the aurora,” she replied. No armchair-ridden ivory tower egghead, Windridge is a veteran of days-long treks and wilderness expeditions. Her website features photos of her summits, and her book contains many compelling first-person adventures in Iceland, Scotland, Sweden, and Norway. “I love the mountains. I love the outdoors. I love snow.... I was very drawn to the Arctic and these wild, remote, open places. It seemed like the perfect combination, really.”

“When I was doing my undergraduate work, I had no idea what I’d be doing now.... I was doing fusion, so it was very lab-based, so it was very different for me to say I want to get out of the lab; I want to study physics in a very different domain. It’s really wonderful to see this phenomenon that really touches you on a personal, inner level.... But also to look at the science of it, and understand that the science doesn’t take away that feeling you get. It’s still magical. In fact, knowing the science makes it even more incredible.”

Indeed, I noted that in Richard Dawkins’s book Unweaving the Rainbow he discussed that very notion, that knowing the science behind how a rainbow is created doesn’t detract from its awe or beauty: “Mysteries do not lose their poetry when solved,” he writes. “Quite the contrary; the solution often turns out more beautiful than the puzzle and, in any case, when you have solved one mystery you uncover others, perhaps to inspire greater poetry” (p.41). After offering a rich and elegant explanation of the optics and physics of rainbows, Dawkins asks, “Could anyone seriously suggest that it spoils it to be told what is going on inside all those thousands of falling, sparkling, reflecting, and refracting populations of raindrops?” (p. 49).

As for the layperson’s understanding of what creates the aurora, it’s certainly true that charged particles come down from the sun along magnetic field lines, but Windridge says that’s only part of the explanation. “The thing that gets missed out is the process of acceleration.... You mentioned charged particles and magnetic fields, and yes both those things come into it. But there’s a bit more to it.” It doesn’t explain, for example, why we see the aurora at night: How are the charged particles getting around the back of the planet since they’re coming from the sun?

The answer is that “you need this process of acceleration as well.... It happens when solar winds hit the Earth’s magnetic field; it sets up a cycle which ultimately creates a catapult behind the Earth, and that fires particles down the field lines into the atmosphere. That catapult is accelerating electrons, a process called magnetic reconnection.... Without that acceleration process, we wouldn’t have the bright aurora that we see; it just wouldn’t happen.” You can find a more detailed explanation on her website; the aurora effect is still not fully understood, and as with all science the research continues.

Lore of the Lights

Beyond the science, legends and stories about the aurora date back millennia: “Some of the earliest writings may go back to the Bible,” Windridge notes, where celestial descriptions suggest an aurora display that was perhaps interpreted as a divine vision. In the lore of indigenous people, “there is often the threat of spirits.... They’d say that the aurora was spirits; sometimes it was spirits of their unborn children, or their dead relatives, or maybe their enemies.” The spirits were said to be doing different things, and the motion of the lights was often likened to stirring cooking pots, causing big spirals in the soupy sky.

As is often the case with legends, the lights sometimes served as a boogeyman, a form of social control. For example, Windridge notes that inhabitants of northern Norway would warn that “you mustn’t tease the aurora because otherwise it would come down and burn your hair, or come and get you.” One Sami reindeer herder told her that “the aurora were natural babysitters—that’s what he called them—because he said parents would tell their children that they mustn’t be home late because otherwise the Northern Lights would come and get them!”

Windridge notes that for many in Arctic regions the lights are normal and unremarkable; several people she interviewed were bemused by the attention she and others bestowed upon the phenomenon. After all, to them it’s just like part of the weather. Because of that she found that stories about the aurora specifically were curiously sparse; instead, “the stories aren’t about the Northern Lights [specifically]...often they just weren’t there. Instead they were embedded in other stories and legends.”

“I didn’t want to just write a science book,” Windridge says. “I wanted to celebrate the beauty and magic of the aurora and how captivating it is, and also explore the history of Arctic exploration and the cultures there.... It’s this wonderful crossover between art, history, science, culture, and landscape. I wanted to tell the whole story, not just take one little branch of it and say that’s it.” Indeed, her book Aurora goes far beyond the science of the lights and explores the people and cultures that live under them, as well as fascinating tidbits of historical trivia—and the occasional helpful footnote on Icelandic pronunciation.

As for how she got into the field: “I always loved physics. I liked science in school—it was just playing, really—‘Oh, hydraulics, what do these things do?,’ and that was just fun. In high school, physics was a separate subject and I liked it; it was just so interesting. I liked finding out how the world works. I just knew that I liked physics. I also knew it was unusual.... I was at a girl’s school and most of my friends hated physics. But I just knew that I liked it, so even [as a teenager] I knew I wanted to study it at university. I later got interested in fusion energy because I was interested in the environment and worried about climate change and the energy security problem” of finite fossil fuels.

Aurora: In Search of the Northern Lights combines Melanie Windridge’s passions: “I’m really interested in pushing the boundaries, doing impossible things, and exploration. I love mixing science with adventure. I love the stories of the polar explorers. I’m a mountain climber and so I love that history. I love the history of exploration, of doing things that have never been done before. That’s what scientists do; that’s what explorers do.”

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. We have two more workshops confirmed thanks to Kenny Coogan. Please note that they are full-day events:
   • July 19, 2017, 9 AM-3 PM: Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium, Omaha, NE, presented by Emily Brown, Education Program Manager
   • September 16, 2017, 9 AM-4 PM: Greensboro Science Center, Greensboro, NC, presented by Alison F. Manka, and Melanie J. Lee-Brown, Ph.D. Professor of Biology Guilford College
   The next step is to make sure these presenters have enough materials for such a long session. This is the first time other presenters TTCs will present a full-day session.
2. Five workshop proposals were sent out in the last two weeks. I wrote up proposals for workshops in South Carolina and Virginia. Three TIES Teacher Corps Members also wrote proposals for workshops in the last two weeks, in Maryland, Nebraska, and West Virginia. In the event these proposals are accepted, all five workshops would be presented by local TTCs. It’s getting harder and harder keeping these straight!
   
   In total, that’s 12 proposals currently pending:
   
   Florida
   Illinois
   Maryland
   Mississippi
   Missouri
   Nebraska
   North Carolina
   New Jersey
   South Carolina
   Texas
   Virginia
   West Virginia
   
3. We have 3 new TIES Teacher Corp Members in West Virginia and another in Virginia. Information about TIES was sent out to teachers across the state in Idaho as well, but I have not received anything. Cheryl Hollinger is reaching out to teachers in Wyoming.
4. I tried to ramp up the local promotion of Richard's May 27^th Miami appearance at the Olympia Theater. We were at 845 tickets left when I asked Books & Books to include it in their newsletter and for our local NPR station to send out an e-mail blast to its membership. As of this morning, we have 680 tickets left. The local NPR station is doing a second e-mail blast/ticket giveaway today. The first one received 250 responses.

At 1:52pm on November 11, 2014, a Chilean Navy helicopter was flying along the coast about eighty miles southwest of Santiago airport. They were testing their new infrared camera, a Wescam MX-15 FLIR. It was a nice late-spring day with clear blue skies and low clouds over the nearby mountains.

The crew of the chopper spotted something white flying far off to the north. They could not identify it, so they looked at it with their new camera and started to try to follow it while recording video. The object looked like two linked black orbs in the infrared footage but like an indistinct white shape in the regular footage. At one point the object appeared to emit some strange substance that seemingly showed up as hot like the object. They continued to follow it, but it was moving too fast and they eventually lost sight of it and had to return to base.

Since this flying object was unidentified, the video footage ended up at the Committee for Study of Anomalous Aerial Phenomena (CEFAA), the official UFO investigating body of the Chilean DGAC (the DGAC is the equivalent of the FAA in the United States, or the CAA in the United Kingdom). It’s an impressive sounding body chaired until last December by a retired Air Force general, Ricardo Bermúdez, with two permanent investigators. They also list as associates the following categories of scientists and experts: “astronomers, geographers, nuclear chemist, physicists, psychologists, aerospace medicine, air traffic controllers, meteorologist, aeronautics researchers, pilot inspectors, aerospace engineers, and imagery analysts.”

It’s indeed an impressive list, and if the object had a prosaic explanation, then you would certainly expect such a group of experts to be able to identify it—or at least provide a plausible explanation.

Thermal camera image of the mysterious object leaving a trail.

But on and off for about two years, CEFAA looked into this case without finding such an explanation. They studied the crew accounts, the video, and other data they thought relevant. They enlisted the help of French UFO analysts who concluded that it was probably a plane coming into land at Santiago airport dumping waste water before landing. The Chileans rejected this explanation because no planes were landing at that time.

They asked meteorologists if it was a weather balloon and were told no. An astrophysicist checked to see if it could be space junk and told them it could not be. A Navy admiral told them there were no Navy exercises or secret aircraft flying in the area. The DGAC officials confirmed it was not a drone. Air Force photo analysis determined that the object was not a bird. Numerous other experts ruled out numerous other explanations.

So CEFAA could not figure out what it was, and after two years they made an announcement declaring it a genuine unexplained phenomena. They released the video via writer Leslie Kean of the Huffington Post, who then wrote an article about the case, published on January 5, 2017.

The article and video went viral, quickly racking up over a million views. It caused great excitement—at last there was a “real” UFO video, certified unknown by the military, countless experts, and years of study.

Five days later, the case was solved. On January 6, Scott Brando from the UFO of Interest blog tweeted me a link and asked “Could this be a plane and its contrail?” I looked at the video and it instantly reminded me of a type of contrails I often see from my home. I live about 100 miles east of San Francisco, and the departing traffic often climbs through 25,000 feet as it heads over the Sierra Mountains. At that altitude, you often see short segments of aerodynamic contrails (which occur at lower altitudes than the normal exhaust contrails). So I wrote my first post on the Metabunk Skydentify forum on the topic: “My initial interpretation of this is that it is a plane, flying away from the camera, considerably higher than the helicopter (somewhere around 15,000 to 25,000 feet), that briefly creates an aerodynamic contrail. The two dots are flared from the heat of the engine.”

Skydentify is a sub-forum on Metabunk.com where people who enjoy identifying unknown aerial objects collaborate to do just that. We specialize in aircraft and contrails but cover all kind of unidentified phenomena, so this was just the type of thing the Skydentify crowd likes. The next day, January 7, @Trailblazer posted that he had found the ADS-B coverage for that area on that day.

ADS-B is a relatively new system where aircraft use GPS to locate themselves and then broadcast their position, altitude, heading, etc., over radio to local ADS-B receivers. These receivers then share the information over the Internet, where it is collated and made freely available to the public by sites such as planefinder.net and flightradar24.com. The data is archived, and you can look at what planes were where at any time for several years back.

It quickly became apparent that there were only two possible planes. Due to the age of the data, we initially only had an overhead view of the air traffic, and I thought it was a twin engine LAN airlines plane (LA330). However, on January 8, I converted the data to a 3D format viewable in Google Earth, and it seemed that a four engine Iberian jet (IB6830) was a better fit for most of the movement of the object, although LA330 seemed a bit better for the second contrail in the video.

The discussion continued for a few days, with various people weighing in. An airline pilot who flew out of Santiago commented that the planes would not have responded to “hailing” as they would still be on the ATC frequency and not the general traffic frequency. An expert on the camera used to capture the images explained the different fields of view and how the heading indicator was not calibrated. Other people joined in and asked questions, and we worked to answer them. We figured out that cold contrails appear warm because of contrast with the empty sky (which appears supercooled). I did some experiments to verify this.

Object size matches time-stamped positions.

Experiment demonstrating how ice appears “hot” against the sky.

By January 11, after some detailed frame-by frame analysis of the movement of the object, we were able to conclude with a very high degree of confidence that the object was flight IB6830, departing from Santiago airport and leaving two segments of aerodynamic contrails as it climbed. So the event was solved in five days.

It was challenging to communicate this to the UFO community; they had been told that countless experts in every field had verified that they could not figure out what this was after two years of study. So how could a few people on the Internet possibly figure it out in five days?

The answer, I feel, lies with a fundamental problem with panels of experts, namely that you can’t be an expert in the unknown. The list of scientists and experts from the CEFAA website is indeed impressive. There are all kinds of different disciplines there, and they would certainly be able to identify the majority of things we can see in the sky. But in this one case, the needed expertise was simply too specialized to be included in a general panel.

What was needed was someone who understood how persistent aerodynamic contrails formed, where they normally formed relative to the airport, what they looked like when viewed from eighty miles away, and how to view historical time-stamped ADS-B data overlaid on geolocated photographs in Google Earth.

In other words, they needed me on the panel—not that I’m a real expert in aviation. I just happen to have some very specific knowledge and experience in solving this specific type of case. The issue is not really that they should have had an expert like me on the panel. The point I’m making is that it’s impossible to have all the experts you can potentially need on a panel. Any panel is going to be limited in the amount of domain-specific knowledge it has, so eventually a UFO will slip through the gaps.

CEFAA nearly caught this one when they asked the French team IPACO to investigate. The IPACO report is technically quite good. However, they seemed unaware of the existence of ADS-B data and so were unable to find the GPS tracks that would have proven which plane it was. This was compounded by other errors, such as the number of engines, which they thought must have been two but was actually four. They also thought the plane was descending when it was in fact climbing. While the majority of IPACO’s reasoning about it being a plane was sound, their errors led to CEFAA throwing out the entire report.

How do you close the gaps in a panel of experts? Clearly you can’t just add more and more people to the panel. No, the way to close the gaps is to do what IPACO eventually did (without intending to). You ask the Internet.

Asking the Internet (also known as “soliciting public comment,” “asking the public for help,” or “consulting the hive mind”) is a way of casting as wide a net as possible. While you might have a few dozen experts on your panel, they only cover a few dozen broad fields of study and a few narrow ones. By asking the Internet you instantly add several million narrow experts. Of course they are not all going to drop what they are doing and look at your video. You also have the concern you may be inundated with hundreds of suggestions that are unlikely to be helpful (“It’s a Chinook helicopter,” “It’s fake,” “It’s a trans-dimensional being,” and so on).

But the beauty of the Internet is that it helps in both directions. Given enough momentum, it funnels the question toward those who can answer it best. I didn’t look into this until someone else read about it. They thought it might be a contrail and realized I would be a good person to look into that. So the question found its way to me.

Similarly, if a good answer arises from the hive mind of the Internet, then a sufficient number of people will recognize it as the right answer and it will eventually get funneled back to those asking the question. Asking the Internet—crowdsourcing a question—does not mean you have to read every single discussion on the topic. You can just put the question out there, and if the question is interesting enough, and a good answer arises, then it will organically find its way back to you.

The process does not have to be entirely unstructured. With the Skydentify forum on Metabunk, we have something of a hybrid. It’s a public forum so anyone can comment, but there’s a core group involved in most of the discussion, then there’s me keeping everything organized. There was also some crossover with some Facebook groups I’m a member of. I think of this investigation as curated crowdsourcing. I certainly would not have arrived at the conclusive and detailed answer alone, but I think having someone to curate the additional input was a vital part of the process.

Perhaps the key point here is that CEFAA never asked the Internet at any time in the two years of their investigation. They had this lovely piece of evidence in the form of a video with time and GPS coordinates, and they could have simply posted it on the Internet when they got it and someone would have figured it out for them in a matter of days. Instead, they wasted months asking individual experts pointless and misguided questions. But beside the simple lack of diversity of expertise, why did CEFAA get it wrong? Why did they so conclusively eliminate a plane as a possibility?

I think the answer is a fundamental problem with the reasoning they used in the investigation. They set out to consider various possible explanations (bird, plane, weather balloon, meteor, etc.) and then worked to either verify or eliminate each of those explanations. Once everything they could think of was eliminated, they then certified it as a “verified unknown.”

The problem here is the binary nature of eliminating possible explanations. The explanation starts out as possible when first suggested, then is moved over to a hard impossible after some fact is found that contradicts the explanation. For example, the plane explanation was rejected for the following reasons: There were no planes landing at Santiago; there were no planes on the radar; planes can’t dump hot liquid; and the object did not respond to radio contact.

Now from a deduction reasoning perspective, these objections sound reasonable, with unassailable propositional logic:

1. If it was a plane, it would show up on radar.
2. It did not show up on radar.
3. Therefore, it is not a plane.

It seems all very reasonable. The problem is that this reasoning has two rather vague premises. In this case “it did not show on the radar” actually meant “it did not show on the helicopter’s short-range radar or on the ATC area radar where we thought it was.” Secondly, “If it was a plane, it would show on the radar” should really be “If it was a plane where we thought it was, it would show on the radar.”

So the flaw here is an oversimplification of the assumptions, and then treating them as being axiomatic, which then allows you to simply eliminate an explanation. A general term for this is an argument from false premises, a type of logical fallacy where incorrect assumptions can lead to incorrect conclusions. Once you replace the overly simple premises with the more complex accurate premises, you can see that the conclusion does not follow.

Arguably, we also have the fallacy of argument from ignorance, the fallacy where we reach a conclusion because we can’t figure out any alternative to that conclusion. Here the conclusion was that it was a “verified unknown” because they could not figure out what it was. This is then compounded with the argument from authority fallacy, where we are asked to believe the conclusion because the pilots were experienced and the investigators were retired military. But expertise does not prevent you from reaching the wrong conclusion from false premises.

The way I find to avoid arguing from incorrect assumptions is to never eliminate any explanation; instead you should keep a list of all the explanations you’ve come up with and rank them based on the plausibility of what it would take for that explanation to be true. For example, for the plane explanation to be true, it requires the helicopter pilots to have underestimated the distance to the object.

Such a list is a dynamic tool in a curated crowdsourced investigation, allowing for progressive refinement of all the possible explanations without them being prematurely eliminated. Often this will prompt new avenues of investigation. For example, if the requirement was that there be planes in the area, and there were no planes landing, then we might investigate if there were any planes taking off, and see how that would work out.

In many cases, especially those based on more limited photos or video, you are not going to be able to reach a conclusive conclusion. However, a ranked list of possible explanations is still vastly preferable to a false conclusion that the phenomenon is “unexplained.” There is a vast difference between “no definitive explanation” and “no explanation.”

This type of rapid crowdsourced explanation of an “unsolvable” case is not unusual. There are two very different cases that have striking similarities to this one.

First is the case of the Roswell Slides. In 2014, UFO enthusiast Thomas Carey announced he had some Kodachrome slides showing the body of an alien. He claimed to be investigating this with groups of experts, and only poor-quality versions of the images were released. When the main image was released a year later, it took only a matter of hours for others to apply a filter to the image to reveal some text that explained the “alien” as a museum exhibit of a mummified two-year-old human child.

Second is the 2010 case of the Los Angeles Mystery Missile. This occurred over a much shorter timeframe but had much more impressive experts. A mysterious trail was spotted by a news helicopter; they could not figure out what it was (although they thought it was about thirty miles out over the water), so they asked some “experts,” specifically Tom McInerney (a highly decorated retired Air Force Lieutenant General) and Robert Ellsworth (former Deputy Secretary of Defense). They both said it was definitely not a plane and it looked like a missile. So the media went with that explanation. For a few days it was a huge news story—that some foreign power had fired a missile just a few miles from Los Angeles.

Then after a couple of days, several people (including me) identified it as the contrail of a plane that was over 100 miles away (as with the Chilean UFO case, we just used free online flight tracking). Again, there was some difficulty in getting people to believe this due to the high ranking “experts” having identified it as a missile. But after some extensive explanation with illustrations of the radar data matching the images, they eventually accepted it.

The lessons learned here are that groups of experts are no guarantee of success when investigating obscure phenomena, and the smaller the group, the less likely they are to have the exact obscure mix of knowledge that is needed. Experts should not be put on unassailable pedestals, especially with UFOs, since by definition it’s impossible to be an expert on something if you don’t know what it is.

Crowdsourcing has been shown time and again to be the quickest method for identifying an unknown (see, for example, the /r/Whatisthis subreddit). In the cases where the answer does not immediately spring from the Internet hive mind, curating a live list of possible explanations will provide valuable structure and direction to an investigation. Sometimes this ranked list might be what you end up with, but often, with a big enough crowd, the actual explanation can be found.

Further Reading

• Cousyn, Antoine, et al. 2016. Video from the Chilean Navy, IPACO, November 11. Available online at http://www.ipaco.fr/ReportChileanNavyCEFAA.pdf.
• Kean, Leslie. 2017. Groundbreaking UFO video just released by Chilean Navy. Huffington Post (January 5). Available online at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/groundbreaking-ufo-video-just-released-from-chilean_us_586d37bce4b014e7c72ee56b.
• Lagos, Jose Patricio Lay. 2017. Caso Armada, CEFAA, January 6. Available online at http://www.cefaa.gob.cl/home/en-la-prensa/noticias/casoarmada.
• The Roswell Slides research group, Mystery Solved. Available online at http://www.roswellslides.com/the-roswell-slides/.
• West, Mick, et al. 2017. Explained: Chilean Navy “UFO” video—Aerodynamic Contrails, Flight IB6830, January 6. Available online at https://www.metabunk.org/.t8306/.
• ———. Los Angeles Missile Contrail Explained in Pictures. Available online at http://contrailscience.com/los-angeles-missile-contrail-explained-in-pictures/
• Watisthis Reddit forum for identifying objects. Available online at https://www.reddit.com/r/Whatisthis/.

Artículo traducido por Alejandro Borgo, Director del CFI/Argentina.

Pregunta:

Recientemente leí su libro Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries (Investigación científica de lo paranormal: Cómo resolver misterios inexplicados) sobre los errores que cometen los cazadores de fantasmas usando detectores de campos electromagnéticos (CEM) en sus investigaciones y por qué no dan resultados productivos. Sin embargo, tenía entendido que los lectores y medidores de CEM se usaban para medir niveles de CEM debido a que altos niveles de CEM podían causar alucinaciones que pueden parecer experiencias paranormales. ¿Me podría decir algo sobre esto?

—M. Chapman

Respuesta:

Muchos cazadores de fantasmas, incluyendo al equipo T.A.P.S. en el programa de televisión Ghost Hunters, usan detectores de CEM para buscar campos electromagnéticos porque creen que los campos magnéticos intensos pueden crear alucinaciones, las cuales a su vez podrían crear la impresión de que son fantasmas. La base de esta teoría proviene principalmente de la investigación realizada por un neurocientífico cognitivo canadiense, Michael Persinger. Encontró que algunas alucinaciones (como las de las experiencias fuera del cuerpo) podrían dispararse estimulando áreas específicas del cerebro con patrones de longitud de onda fija de campos electromagnéticos de alto nivel.

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

Persinger sugirió que los CEM podrían ser responsables de todo, desde los avistajes de OVNIs hasta apariciones religiosas y fantasmas. Como dice el investigador Chris French:

La propuesta es que las fluctuaciones en el campo magnético de la Tierra pueden interactuar con el lóbulo temporal, especialmente en individuos cuyos lóbulos temporales tiene una particular sensibilidad para producir la sensación de una presencia o alucinaciones visuales… Esta explicación plantea la interesante posibilidad de que una estimulación magnética transcerebral podría ser la causa de informes sobre fantasmas y apariciones (French & Stone 2014, 99).

Es una teoría interesante. Desafortunadamente para los cazadores de fantasmas, es solo una teoría —no un efecto probado. De hecho, hay muy poca o ninguna evidencia para apoyar la idea de que los CEM crean fantasmas. No se ven fantasmas en el laboratorio experimental de Persinger, en Ontario; se ven en hospitales abandonados y en sótanos suburbanos. Simplemente, no hay evidencia de que los artefactos domésticos puedan generar CEMs de la frecuencia y potencia suficientes para inducir alucinaciones en un marco clínico.

El autor usa un detector de CEM para demostrar a los integrantes de un equipo de televisión cómo los enchufes de electricidad pueden crear falsas lecturas de “fantasmas” en el histórico Teatro KiMo, en Albuquerque, Nuevo México. Foto: Larry Baker.

Ciertamente, el neurocientífico de Yale, Steven Novella dice que la teoría de los CEMs como origen de los fantasmas es “especulativa hasta ahora”. La estimulación electromagnética usada por Persinger

tiene que estar concentrada, y a una cierta frecuencia, para obtener este efecto. Parece improbable que los campos electromagnéticos ambientales puedan estar finamente sintonizados como para causar este efecto… Es una idea interesante; no creo que sea muy plausible. Al presente, si bien es cierto que podemos repetirlo en un laboratorio, no tengo noticias de ninguna evidencia que sugiera que lo que afirma la teoría suceda en alguna parte del mundo (Novella 2010).

Richard Wiseman, en su libro Paranormality: Why We See What Isn’t There (Paranormalidad: ¿Por qué vemos lo que no está ahí?), destaca que varios investigadores trataron de repetir los resultados de Persinger. A un equipo de psicólogos suecos liderado por Pehr Granqvist

le preocupó que algunos de los participantes en los experimentos de Persinger pudieran haber sabido lo que se esperaba de ellos y por lo tanto sus experiencias podrían deberse a la sugestión más que a campos magnéticos sutiles. Para descartar esta posibilidad, Granqvist hizo que todos los participantes usaran un casco que le había prestado Persinger, pero se aseguró de que las bobinas magnéticas solo estuvieran activas en los cascos de la mitad de los participantes. Ni los participantes ni los experimentadores sabían cuando estaban presentes o ausentes los campos magnéticos. Los resultados fueron notables. Granqvist descubrió que los campos magnéticos no tenían absolutamente ningún efecto… Pero todavía no había llegado lo peor para Persinger. En 2009, Chris French y sus colegas del Goldsmiths College de Londres llevaron a cabo su propia investigación sobre las ideas de Persinger ocultando bobinas detrás de las paredes de una habitación totalmente blanca, y luego le pidieron a la gente que se desplazara por el cuarto e informara sobre alguna sensación extraña. Setenta y nueve personas, de a una por vez, visitaron esta casa, la más científica de las casas encantadas, durante 50 minutos. Siguiendo los pasos de Granqvist, French y su equipo se aseguraron de que las bobinas estuvieran activadas solo para la mitad de los visitantes y que ni los participantes ni los investigadores supieran si las bobinas estaban activas o no. Los campos magnéticos no tuvieron ningún efecto sobre lo que la gente dijo que había experimentado, es decir, las experiencias extrañas no tenían relación con los campos magnéticos (Wiseman 2011, 219-220).

En su apuro para aceptar esta explicación “científica” sobre los avistamientos de fantasmas, los investigadores extrapolaron muchísimo la evidencia. Hasta que pueda demostrarse que los CEMs generalizados, no clínicos, puedan crear la percepción psicológica del fenómeno de los fantasmas, no hay valor investigativo alguno para detectar tales campos. Si los investigadores de fantasmas están seguros de que los CEMs de los artefactos del hogar pueden causar alucinaciones fantasmales, hay muchas maneras sencillas de poner a prueba esta teoría. Si Persinger está en lo cierto y los CEMs están de hecho relacionados con la experiencia fantasmal, es porque los CEMs están causando la ilusión de fantasmas. Si los fantasmas existen, pueden o no estar relacionados con los CEMs (no hay evidencia de que lo estén), pero los cazafantasmas que cita la investigación de Persinger en apoyo de sus métodos están minando inconscientemente sus propios argumentos: si usted está seguro de que los fantasmas son reales (y no el producto de alucinaciones inducidas por CMEs), no hay lógica ni razón alguna para usar un dispositivo para detectar dichos CMEs.

Referencias

• French, Christopher, y Anna Stone. 2014. Anomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal Belief and Experience. London: Palgrave MacMillan.
• Novella, Steven. 2010. Getting into the spirit of things. MonsterTalk podcast (March 2).
• Wiseman, Richard. 2011. Paranormality: Why We See What Isn’t There. London: Pan Macmillan.

On a visit to beautiful New Zealand in October 2015, I encountered this question: Did the moa, the large flightless, even wingless, bird of New Zealand—a cousin to the ostrich and the emu—really become extinct over 500 years ago? According to the historical and scientific evidence, the Maoris, who came in epic canoe voyages from Polynesia to settle the land in the thirteenth century (“Maori” 2016), drove them to extinction. Where once there were perhaps 58,000, by ca. 1440 there were none—due mostly to hunting (Figure 1) but also to forest clearing (“Moa” 2016). Some Maoris have even pointed to the legendary site—a Totara tree (an evergreen species) on the shore of Lake Rotorua—where their ancestors speared the last of what were once nine species of moa (Heuvelmans 1972, 134).

‘Obstinate Rumors’

Still, although Captain Cook made no mention of the colossal birds following his visit in 1769 (when he circumnavigated and charted New Zealand’s two main islands), in time moa sightings would be reported, and they continue to the present. As fossilized bones and tracks piqued the interest of scientists beginning in 1839, there soon became “obstinate rumors that the moa survived.” Indeed, when a German naturalist planned to climb Mount Taranaki (or Mount Egmont), a Maori chief dissuaded him, saying the mountain was guarded by a moa (Heuvelmans 1972, 137–138).

The reputed survival of the moa puts it in the category of “cryptid”—that is, a supposed animal that is “of interest to cryptozoology,” the study of “hidden” animals. Cryptids are of two types: either (1) unknown species, such as Bigfoot or at one time the Mountain Gorilla; or (2) known species that supposedly become extinct but may have survived and could be rediscovered—the moa for instance (Coleman and Clark 1999, 75–77).

There were no fewer than 150 moa sightings beginning in 1500 (!) and increasing throughout much of the nineteenth century—in 1810, 1845, 1863, several circa 1825–1875, and one in 1878 by Sir George Grey. These are presented in the three-volume work Moa Sightings compiled by Bruce Spittle (2010), who is himself of part Maori descent. My old friend, the late skeptic Denis Dutton, professor of philosophy at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, commented in the foreword: “This invaluable book ... provides a broad and systematic historical backdrop for individual claims to have sighted a living moa. However misguided or illusory moa-sighting claims may be, Bruce Spittle has done an authentic service to scholarship.”

A Case in Point

The modern sightings begin (and Spittle’s collection of reports ends) with an encounter by three hikers about fifty miles west of Christchurch on Wednesday, January 29, 1993. One witness was a local hotelier named Paddy Freaney; he saw and photographed the alleged bird, which he said stood about six feet tall (about half the height of the largest species of moa [“Moa” 2016]). Two others with him—Sam Waby, a school art department head, and Rochelle Rafferty, a gardener at Freaney’s hotel—also insisted they saw the bird (“Long lost” 1993).

The possibility of hoaxing was soon raised. Dennis Dunbar, owner of the Moana Railway Station, told a reporter that he and Freaney had become friendly rivals in seeing who could attract the most publicity, and that months earlier Freaney had said his next exploit would be the best ever. However, Dunbar later retracted his statement (Coleman and Clark 1999, 164–167; Shuker 2003, 147–148).

Denis Dutton and the Canterbury skeptics invited the trio of witnesses to a meeting, held at the University Staff Club, to take their measure. They were treated in a friendly way—Denis would have made sure of that—and he felt that given “their coherence, consistency and sense of sincerity, the three were remarkable.” He concluded that “few skeptics left the meeting thinking the moa sighting was an intentional hoax” as had been suggested (Dutton 1993).

Figure 1. Artist’s conception of a moa hunt, ca. 1400 CE. (Drawing by Joe Nickell.)

An earlier plan by the Department of Conservation to search the immediate area for tracks, feathers, droppings, or any other sign of the moa (“Long lost” 1993) was nevertheless canceled when a then-postgraduate zoology student (later paleontologist), Richard Holdaway, identified the creature in the blurry photo as a red deer, observing that the neck was too thick for a bird (“Paddy” 2012).

Moa Tracks

Regarding tracks, Australian monster hunter Rex Gilroy—whose exploits I first encountered in 2000 (Nickell 2011, 91–94)—has repeatedly “discovered” moa tracks and other alleged traces in New Zealand.

Unfortunately, Gilroy is what skeptics disparagingly call a “repeater”—one who repeatedly claims to have had a most unusual sighting or to have made a remarkable discovery—thus straining credibility (Nickell 2011, 68, 215–216). For example, Gilroy alleges that in Australia’s Blue Mountains (where I have also ventured), he encountered a Yowie, a Down Under version of Bigfoot (Nickell 2016). He also claims to have found Yowie tracks; sighted another presumed-extinct creature, the thylacine (or “Tasmanian Tiger”); and discovered evidence of such other cryptids as the Blue Mountain lion, the Australian panther, and the megalania (an extinct giant monitor lizard) (“Rex and Moa” 2008).

Figure 2. Author poses with moa, reconstructed from skeleton, in Auckland museum. (Author’s photo by Craig Shearer.)

In 1980, Gilroy claimed to have discovered a moa’s lower leg bone in northern New Zealand. In 2001, he claimed he discovered no fewer than thirty-five separate moa ground prints from which he infers the existence of a colony of as many as fifteen birds. In November 2007, Gilroy reputedly found evidence of a moa nest (in a rotten, hollow tree trunk) and a trail of tracks through a forest. He stated that a cast of those prints could be matched with a species known as the little scrub moa that he had viewed in the Auckland Museum (“Rex and Moa” 2008). Gilroy has also exhibited what he maintained was a fossilized footprint of the extinct giant ape Gigantopithecus, which would make it the only such print known (Healy and Cropper 2006, 50).

Gilroy withholds information regarding some of his evidence, and that raises further questions. For instance, he refused to reveal the site of his alleged 2007 discoveries or to allow anyone, even a television cameraman, to visit the secret location. He says that his intent is to protect the birds, but secrecy can invite suspicion. New Zealand paleontologist Joan Wiffern—the first to discover dinosaur bones in the country—suggested Gilroy was perhaps only enjoying “a bit of a dream” (“Rex and Moa” 2008).

Explanations

Given the lack of any real evidence for the supposed moa survival, a moa expert at Canterbury Museum, Beverly McCulloch, stated: “The weight of scientific evidence is against it. The history of moa studies is littered with possible sightings, none of which has ever been proven, some of which were hoaxes and most of which were wishful thinking” (“Long lost” 1993). Wishful thinking could cause people to misperceive (as with reports of Bigfoot that may often be misidentifications of bears walking upright [Nickell 2013]). In the 1993 case, for example, some thought the “moa” might have been an emu, since the birds are bred on nearby farms, but local farmers insisted theirs were accounted for (“Long lost” 1993; Shuker 2003, 143–150). Nevertheless, emus do escape, and they can be mistaken for moas when they do (“Baby moa” 2013).

In addition to hoaxes and misidentifications, belief in the continued existence of the moa may also have been assisted by the dynamics of folklore. Oral tradition tends to “telescope” time so that important events are brought into more direct association (Layton 1999, 25). Thus, it appears that the last moa hunt (previously mentioned) “was constantly updated to ‘grandfather’s time’ to keep it in touch with the present” (“Review” 2010). In this way stories of ancient moa encounters might seem historically much more recent and could help inspire belief that sparks more claims.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to John and Mary Frantz, whose generous financial support makes many of my investigations possible. I also sincerely thank Robert and Zalina Bartholomew, who were wonderful hosts during my 2015 visit to New Zealand. Thanks also to Craig Shearer, Secretary of NZ Skeptics Society, for his logistical assistance, and the staff of the Auckland War Memorial Museum.

References

• Baby moa. 2013. Available online at http://www.stuff.co.nz/oddstuff/8983326/Baby-moa-spotted-in-womans-garden/; accessed March 2, 2016.
• Coleman, Loren, and Jerome Clark. 1999. Cryptozoology A to Z: The Encyclopedia of Loch Monsters, Sasquatch, Chupacabras, and Other Authentic Mysteries of Nature. New York: Fireside/Simon & Schuster.
• Dutton, Denis. 1993. Skeptics meet moa spotters. New Zealand Skeptic. 30 (December): 1.
• Gazin-Schwartz, Amy, and Cornelius J. Holtorf. 1999. Archaeology and Folklore. New York: Routledge.
• Healy, Tony, and Paul Cropper. 2006. The Yowie: In Search of Australia’s Bigfoot. New York: Anomalist Books.
• Heuvelmans, Bernard. 1972. On the Track of Unknown Animals. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 131–146.
• Layton, Robert. 1999. In Gazin-Schwartz and Holtorf, 1999.
• Long lost bird ‘seen by hikers.’ 1993. Christchurch Press. Undated clipping (January 21–26). Available online at http://forteanworld.tumblr.com/post/74367840405/articles-moa; accessed February 23, 2016.
• Maori. 2016. Available online at http://www.maori.com/; accessed February 23, 2016.
• Moa. 2016. Available online at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moa; accessed February 22, 2016.
• Nickell, Joe. 2011. Tracking the Man-Beasts. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
• ———. 2013. Bigfoot lookalikes: Tracking hairy man-beasts. Skeptical Inquirer 37(5) (September/October): 12–15.
• ———. 2016. Searching for the Yowie, the Down Under Bigfoot. Skeptical Inquirer 40(2) (March/April): 16–18.
• Paddy Freaney, Moa man, is dead. 2012. Available online at http://kiwiscots.blogspot.com/2012/03/paddy-freaney-moa-man-is-dead.html; accessed February 24, 2016.
• Review: Moa sightings. 2010. Available online at http://www.strangehistory.net/2010/12/22/review-moa-sightings; accessed February 23, 2016.
• Rex and moa articles. 2008. Available online at http://www.network54.com/Forum/93258thread/1201218041/last-1201218183/Rex+and+Moa+articles; accessed March 1, 2016.
• Shuker, Karl P.N. 2003. The Beasts That Hide from Man. New York: Paraview Press.
• Spittle, Bruce. 2010. Moa Sightings. Dunnedin, NZ: Paua Press Ltd. Cited in Review 2010.

It was just before two in the morning; the place smelled old and I wasn’t much fresher. I stood quiet and still, alone at the top of the carpeted stairs in one of the most famous Old West–related haunted houses in America: the St. James Hotel in the small town of Cimmarron. It’s in northern New Mexico not far from the Colorado state line.

The historic hotel, built in 1872 as the Lambert Inn, was a prominent stopover for various gold-fevered prospectors and assorted ne’er-do-wells headed west. A parade of rooming outlaws and lawmen added to the hotel’s legend, including Wyatt Earp, Jesse James, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Annie Oakley. Jesse James was said to favor room 14, for example, and today most of the rooms are named for the gunslinging celebrity who allegedly quartered there.

The two-story St. James has kept maintenance in that historic part of the hotel to a bare minimum; the wallpaper is peeling, the doors are scratched, the blood-red carpet and wooden floors are worn. There are modern rooms on the property, but if you want a taste of the Old West and to imagine what it was like to stay there in the 1800s, it’s about as close as you’re going to get. Most of the furniture is antique—or at least quasi-antique—if not from that exact era, with allowances made for modern fire code regulations and minor amenities. A large mirror sits near the top of the stairs. Despite its pocked and blistered silvering, it is in good shape for its age and has surely held the reflections of countless farriers and farmers, harlots and handymen, gunslingers and ghost hunters who roomed there.

Bar area of the historic—and reputedly haunted—St. James Hotel. Photo by the author.

I’d spent much of the past eighteen hours investigating the grounds, interviewing people, doing historical research at the local library, photographing the area, cataloging claims, reviewing evidence, and taking notes. I’d spent much of the past eighteen years doing more or less the same thing in dozens of other supposedly spooky locations in North America and around the world. Though approaching each new mystery with an open mind and a boyish investigative eagerness to find ghosts and solve mysteries, I had to admit, in this hotel and at this late hour, to a certain numbness, a discouraged cumulative emotional and intellectual exhaustion with evidence that never seemed to improve, no matter the location, reputation, or particulars. It’s a sea of teasing second- and third-hand stories seemingly accepted as self-evident documentary evidence, a litany of twice-told tales “confirmed” by psychic visions, “feelings,” and sciencey Radio Shack beepy things.

I’d seen mirrors in many supposedly haunted locations associated with some ghostly lore—though I hadn’t come across any tales at the St. James related to that particular mirror—and I’d seen cases where mirrors played a role in explaining some ghost sightings. I was curious to see if there were any odd reflections one might mistake for a ghostly image that could be created by a camera flash. I took a handful of test photos, including a few of myself in the mirror. As the sharp click of the shutter faded and the flash burst slowly left my eyes, I met my mirrored gaze and grew, pardon the word, reflective.

I’d paced the decaying halls for an hour searching for any unusual or (seemingly) supernatural phenomenon. As my mind wandered, I wondered what I should look for. I’d read and heard about specific scary events at the St. James (of varying degrees of credibility), but none had manifested themselves to my skeptical eye or equipment. Many of those ghost stories were anonymous anecdotes from a time before the area had electricity—century-and-a-half-old reports of ghostly goings-on, vengeful spirits, and murderous mayhem, all clearly rooted in folklore.

I wondered what would genuinely frighten me. As a longtime movie buff (and the director of two short films), I have developed an eye for how directors and cinematographers frame their shots. TV and film scenes are a series of carefully composed images. A scene’s lighting, camera angle, color, actor blocking (positioning), focus, and many other elements are carefully considered and chosen to achieve a specific effect and reaction from an audience: suspense, surprise, humor, and so on.

This artifice has transformed our cultural expectations of what should frighten us. For example, in her book Monsters of Our Own Making: The Peculiar Pleasures of Fear, Marina Warner notes:

The jack-o’-lantern, which [in early folklore] lures wayfarers to their death, may be timelessly traditional in one sense, but has acquired its familiar pumpkin face through the media of modernity—print, graphic reproduction, and now, of course, television. The media have deepened the reach of these images. The same can be said of vampires, ghosts, loreleis, sirens and other fatal attractions of folklore. (42)

It was likely much easier to be scared in the years before the light of science chased the shadows from the dark corners of the world. Our (Western) forefathers lived not so long ago in a world populated by unseen malevolent spirits such as fairies, vampires, and witches. Fear has its roots in the unknown, and as more and more is known about the world around us (ranging from mapping remote lands to understanding germ theory), it stands to reason that the world becomes less and less frightening. Fearsome monsters once rumored to roam South America and Africa or lurk in the murky depths of the oceans are now known not to exist. There is of course a cryptozoology-influenced middle ground, but most modern monsters are all too human and largely created by the news media: school shooters, candy-bearing pedophiles, foreign terrorists, and so on. We have become passive consumers of other people’s interpretations and depictions of what we fear—or are expected to fear—and much of that is visual.

Haunted hallway in the St. James Hotel. Photo by the author.

This careful staging for visual clarity and maximum effect is most obvious in scenes where actors are sitting around a dinner table and are carefully positioned so that none have their back fully to the camera or are blocking other actors. Once you begin to notice it, it’s hard to miss the family or group unnaturally sitting around a table in a C-shaped semicircle so that the camera can see what they’re doing. By recognizing (and trying to strip away) the artificial cinematic conventions of ghosts, demons, and the supernatural from our expectations about the real world, we can try to imagine what a genuinely supernatural experience might be like. There is no reason to expect that genuinely supernatural creatures or entities would hew closely to our mass-media-mediated expectations of them.

As I stood at the top of the stairs, I tried to picture what I might see in the mirror in one of the region’s most famous haunted houses that might startle or frighten me—something that would nudge the needle of my internal Skeptometer into the Believer zone, no matter how slightly or briefly. Like many people, I endorse the famous X-Files phrase “I Want to Believe.” I do want to believe—but more so I want to know; belief by itself is cheap, as cheap and transient as doubt. What’s important is understanding the reasons and evidence that make a claim plausible or dubious. I wanted something real, something profound and soul-shaking and unmistakable, to occur. Not some later-noticed and tortuously enhanced small flash reflection orb in the corner of some photo, one mild “anomaly” among hundreds. Not some ambiguous dark blur or “shadow figure” whose origin as a long exposure is obvious to photographers and skeptics (but apparently few others).

No, I wanted something real, something both intellectually and emotionally compelling, something I hadn’t seen dozens of times before. Something that would make me question reality, make me doubt my experience-informed, science-based, heretofore generally negative conclusions about the quality of the evidence for ghosts.

I didn’t want to let my imagination run wild—after all, it was dark and so late it was early, and I was tired. I’d had a long drive and not enough coffee. I was all too familiar with the dynamics of psychological priming and suggestion at spooky locations, certainly enough to know that I’m not immune to it. As Richard Feynman sagely noted, a cardinal rule of science is that “you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”

Still, as my heavy-lidded gaze slowly shifted from spot to spot around the mirror, changing focus in the sickly yellowish glow cast by hallway light bulbs, a few visions came into my head. Bloody Mary was the most obvious, the most famous mirror-based ghost story. I pictured her suddenly appearing in the silvered gleam and reaching out toward my face with the classic, dramatic cliché of a pallid outstretched hand and filthy, cracked nails preparing to exact revenge upon the living—me, in this case, I assume—for daring to summon her.

Or maybe, I mused, like the Hispanic ghost La Llorona—and as in Kubrick’s The Shining—she’d appear as a beautiful woman before suddenly turning terrifying. Or would the ghost be closer to Sadako (Ringu), the long-maned Japanese girl who might climb out of the mirror and slowly, inexorably crawl toward me over the worn wooden floor in muted blue cathode-ray light of unknown origin?

I sought a pure, genuinely foreign experience, something unmistakably supernatural that could not be the product of a tired mind, a mild hallucination, or a half-forgotten memory of a scary film scene. It makes sense that our primal fears draw from our familiar bodies and lives, of course; Stephen King understands this and has mined deep fears from the ordinary for decades. If cats feared ghosts, those feline phantoms would surely have tails and walk on all fours; a cat skull—not a human one—would haunt their fervid nightmares.

No matter how deeply I mined my memories or imagination, all the scary, ghostly images I could conjure came from movies: the swarming luminous semi-transparent skeletal wraiths in Raiders of the Lost Ark; the creepy demonic face pushing though a flexible opaque fabric on the poster of Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners; the glimpse of a homeless subway rider’s rat-like tail in Jacob’s Ladder; and so on. Over and over when I tried to picture a real ghost, a genuine spirit of the undead, I drew not from my own personal subjective fears or experiences but from those of other people—and even those were not genuine but completely artificial computer-generated images carefully rendered and constructed by talented visual effects artist strangers. They didn’t know me; they didn’t know my personal fears. They were creating and dispensing memetic fear widgets that I had absorbed and internalized.

These were not organic fears summoned from the depths of my dark unconscious.

These were images created commercially by humans specifically for the purpose of scaring other humans—often using tired tropes such as skeletons (which honestly have never scared me; bones don’t frighten me because they prevent me from collapsing in a soft fleshy lump).

Those were the obvious Hollywood camera-friendly ghosts. But in my years of investigating, I’d never seen anything even close to resembling those. The best “ghost” videos were either fakes (occasionally clever but more often fairly obvious) or so ambiguous as to be close to worthless (reflections in windows, unnoticed long exposures, and so on). There’s no bell curve distribution to quality ghost evidence; instead it’s more of a pyramid shape, with the vast majority of ghost photos being of very poor quality, and the most compelling mysteries very rare.

I watched and waited, studying my reflection. I was tired. I felt as old and faded as the wallpaper.

I felt each minute standing silently in front of the old mirror.

I felt each hour at the hotel.

I felt each year doing the same investigations at dozens of places just like it, looking behind closed doors for spooks that weren’t there.

The search for some ghostly sign, the interviews with believers, the countless fruitless photos and videos and Rorschach EVPs—all that seemed to amount to nothing more than sound and fury: a handful of shadow, a fistful of rain.

As those thoughts lazily wandered through my mind, I returned to the moment and focused on my reflection again.

I sighed and finally gave up. There was nothing for me here or anywhere else I searched. I decided to end it. I was done. I took one last long look in the silver-pocked mirror on the second floor of the haunted St. James hotel and went to bed. Despite a lumpy bed in an old hotel, I slept better than I had in years.

Over the past few months scary warnings have been circulating on social media asking parents, teachers, and police to beware of a hidden threat to children: a sinister online “game” that can lead to death! Some on social media have limned their reporting on the topic with appropriate skepticism, but many panicky social media posts plead for parents to take action.

Here is a typical warning: “The Blue Whale ‘suicide game’ is believed to be a hidden online social media group which its main aim is to encourage our children to kill themselves. Within the group daily task are assigned to members have to do different tasks for fifty days. They include self-harming, watching horror movies and waking up at unusual hours, but these gradually get more extreme. But on the fiftieth day, the controlling manipulators behind the game reportedly instruct the youngsters to commit suicide. Please share and warn all other parents of the dangers of this game. We do not want any deaths related to the game within the UK.”

Though a few qualifiers are dutifully included (“is believed to be” and “reportedly,” for example) the overall tone is alarmist and sensational. It’s not clear where the appellation “Blue Whale” game comes from, though some have suggested it’s linked to suicidal whale beachings. Debunking website Snopes traced the story back to a May 2016 article on a Russian news site, which “reported dozens of suicides of children in Russia during a six-month span, asserting that some of the people who had taken their lives were part of the same online game community.”

While it appears to be true that some of the teens used the same social media gaming sites, it does not logically imply that there’s any link between the deaths, nor that the site caused them. Correlation does not imply causation, and it’s more likely that depressed teens may be drawn to certain websites than it is that those websites caused their users to become depressed and/or suicidal. And, of course, on any wildly popular social media site (including Instagram, Facebook, or Pogo), a small subset of users will share common characteristics, including mental illness, simply by random chance.

Real or Rumor?

There is little evidence that the game has actually caused suicides, or that it even exists.

The question is not, “Is this scary event possible?” because of course it is—anything is possible. Rumors and legends often involve things and events that people can believe might be real, might be a genuine threat to the health or safety of themselves or their loved ones. All urban legends have an element of superficial credibility about them; that’s why they are widely shared and warned about.

There is a sort of self-limiting credulity mechanism built into urban legends and what’s often called scarelore: If you hear some warning that is so outlandish and bizarre that no one would believe it, then you don’t spread it around because others will recognize the story as patently absurd and question your judgment for sharing such a silly story in the first place.

The question is instead, “Is there any evidence that this scary story is true?” and that is a very different matter. Rumors and legends are widely shared because they appeal to apparently legitimate statistics and sources—in this case seemingly specific numbers such as 130 victims—or to statements from legitimate police organizations. There is little or no evidence that the story is true, and it’s important for journalists to make sure the public knows this and not write alarmist stories that sensationalize the claims.

Moral panics such as the Blue Whale Game are part of a very old tradition. These scary media stories are very popular because they are fueled by parents’ fears and wanting to know what their kids are up to. Are seemingly innocent role-playing games and entertainment leading to unspeakable evil, in the form of Satan or even death? We saw the same fears decades ago about Dungeons and Dragons, heavy metal music, and violent video games. Now it’s online games and social media.

Indeed, the Blue Whale Game has all the hallmarks of a classic moral panic. Familiar elements and themes include:

1. Modern technology and seemingly benign personal devices as posing hidden dangers to children and teens;
2. In classic “Stranger Danger” fashion, the threat is some influential evil stranger who manipulates the innocent; and
3. There is an element of conspiracy theory to these stories: it’s always a “hidden world” of anonymous evil people who apparently have nothing better to do than ask teens to do things for fifty days before (somehow) compelling them to commit suicide.

Responding to the Scare

The mere fact that news organizations and school officials comment on the rumors often lends credibility to the stories, and authorities should be careful about legitimizing these sorts of moral panics. Police, teachers, and others issue statements to address rumors but often end up legitimizing the stories and making them more credible. Parents and others who might otherwise recognize the rumors as bogus may say, “Well, I thought it was a hoax, but even the police are commenting on it, so there must be some truth to it!”

In fact, authorities will often be pressured by parents and others to address rumors and stories even if there is no evidence for them. People take a “better safe than sorry” approach to sharing these stories, and it ends up doing more harm than good if there is no underlying threat, as is the case here. It’s also common for journalists and others—even when a threat is recognized as bogus—to spin the panic into a “teachable moment” in which to remind kids about the dangers of peer influence, the perils of online predators, bullying, and so on. (A similar thing happened with last year’s scary clown panic, during which several schools were placed on lockdown due to rumors of violent clowns.)

The best way for parents to cope with these rumors is to not share them and calm their children’s fears if they hear them. Parents do not need to have a somber, serious sit-down discussion with their kids; instead it can be as simple as acknowledging the rumors and saying in passing, “You know it’s just a joke, a rumor. There’s no truth to it.” Parents should trust that their children are media savvy and smart enough not to do whatever a stranger tells them. (Parents have a hard enough time getting their teenagers to follow their rules one day at a time, so getting them to diligently follow a stranger’s increasingly bizarre instructions daily for nearly two months would be a remarkable feat indeed.)

CFI Fellow Richard Saunders, a veteran skeptic and host of the Skeptic Zone podcast, added that “One of the problems faced by the modern media is the precious little time and resources they have to do basic investigation into the validity of a story. It is more expedient for a publisher or an editor to put out the story half-baked, especially one concerning the imminent demise of beloved children, than to do thorough research.” Saunders noted that in today’s twenty-four–hour news cycle, “There are just too many other stories competing for the public attention, and their attention span is brief, especially when they get much of their news from Facebook. Competition is fierce and in order to keep up and sell newspapers, or have people read your story in any form, it is necessary to cut corners. Next week there will be another story and any controversy over the current story will be soon forgotten as yesterday’s (or last week’s) news.”

There is of course a possibility that some people (kids or adults) will take the stories seriously and try to participate in, or even create, such a game, even if it doesn’t really exist. Journalists and others in the news media can help deter such copycats by treating the topic skeptically. Journalists and police should also be careful not to confuse or attribute some genuine, unrelated suicides to the Blue Whale Game, as the Russian news source mentioned earlier apparently did. In the wake of suicides, which are sadly not uncommon among young people for a wide variety of reasons, many people will look for answers or scapegoats, including rock music, violent video games, and so on. Journalists can also help by seeking out skeptics, psychologists, and experts in folklore to help put the claims into context.

This is only the latest in a long series of similar moral panics and outrages shared on social media and aided by sensationalist news media. Often the best antidote to the Blue Whale Game and other moral panics is a healthy dose of skepticism.

Thousands of scientists and science enthusiasts gathered all over the world carrying witty signs, chanting science slogans, and making new friends. Others watched over social media, cheering on the crowds. Wonderful, we sent a message. We care about science, education, critical thinking, and the Earth. Okay, now what? We are all jazzed up and raring to go, but jazzed up to do what? And go where? Here is a unique answer to these questions. You join my project, stay home, and educate millions. and it won’t cost you a penny. All training is done at your own pace; you will make new friends all over the world and will be supporting science in the place where millions go to learn: Wikipedia.

You use this website all the time; have you considered the impact it has? Has it occurred to you that you yourself can edit this powerhouse of knowledge? For the moment, I would like you to forget all the negative things you have heard about Wikipedia. I’ve heard all those arguments also, and I can counter them with real answers. But for the moment, I would like you to hear me out.

The Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia project (GSoW) has been an editing team since 2011. In that time, we have touched thousands of pages and written or rewritten hundreds of pages all associated with scientific skepticism and science. Anyone can learn to edit Wikipedia on their own; you might already be an editor. What sets us apart from everyone else is that we handle all the training with unique tasks that teach a wide range of editing skills. We are a social group; we have our own Secret Cabal on Facebook where we know each other and discuss edits and motivate each other, learning new skills as we interact. We are doing this in all languages as well. And we are making major differences in improving scientific content in the place where the world is reading it.

Why is this important? Because we need to have the backs of the people who are on the front lines doing the science, being attacked by climate change deniers and alternative medicine practitioners. If we want people to know science history, to know about the people, projects, and organizations that have been doing the work, then someone needs to write the Wikipedia pages for people to find. When a well-written Wikipedia page exists, then it brings respectability to the person, and the media is more likely to contact this person when they need an expert opinion. How can we ask the world to respect the people and projects that represent us, when we don’t respect them enough to care? When it comes to Wikipedia, there is no “they,” it is only “us.” We need to have this and GSoW will teach you how.

Here is an example. The Wikipedia page for Archie Cochrane had eleven citations and the lede was one sentence long and said, “Archibald Leman Cochrane (1909–1988) was a Scottish doctor and pioneer of evidence based medicine.” It is “okay” but hardly anything respectable. After a GSoW editor rewrote the Wikipedia page, readers now learn that Cochrane was a prisoner of war during World War II, that his experiences there led him to develop randomized controlled trials, and that he is known as one of the fathers of modern clinical epidemiology. We have the term “Evidence-Based Medicine” because of this man. Now the page sports twenty-one citations and is more informative. In February 2014, a GSoW editor translated the English page into Dutch. and it has received 1,127 pageviews. The English Wikipedia page has received over 30,000 pageviews since it was rewritten.

One more example: in March 2013, GSoW created a brand-new page for oncologist and outspoken critic of alternative medicine, David Gorski. We have had to protect the page for years against vandalism by his critics especially from the anti-vax community. When actor William Shatner tweeted about an autism group that has anti-vax leanings, Gorski tried to enter polite conversations with Shatner explaining why Shatner's support of the organization Autism Speaks was controversial. Gorski’s Wikipedia page views spiked. Shatner’s followers wanted to know who this expert was, and when they looked, they found a well-written Wikipedia page with fifty-six citations. Since GSoW wrote this page in 2013, it has received 62,706 page views.

GSoW has written or rewritten hundreds of pages on many topics such as vaccinations, astronomy, cryptids, skeptical-oriented books, the discredited teaching technique called facilitated communication, and its younger cousin Rapid prompting method. The pages for the two have received 142,114 page views. Our rewrite of spontaneous human combustion has received 1,244,705 page views since 2013. We work on the paranormal as well as the scientific; it is up to the interest of each GSoW editor what they want to work on.

Training can take weeks, but it is done online at your own pace. You are assigned a trainer that can assist you all the way through the training process. You are placed in the Secret Cabal on Facebook (yes, you need to have a Facebook account) and will mingle with your peers from all over the world. Currently over eighty-five editors socialize and learn in that space. If you are interested in learning more, please visit our public page on Facebook or our YouTube channel. There you will find hundreds of examples of our work, as well as interviews with our editors, lectures on GSoW, and some training videos.

Requirements to become a GSoW editor are the obvious ones of needing to have access to the Internet and Facebook and basic computer skills. All else is taught. You need to be a self-starter, interact well with people online, and be able to take constructive criticism about your work. Strong English skills are not necessary as everything is peer reviewed before it is made live. We have many editors whose first language is not English and go on to work on pages in their native language. And even more importantly, you need to be able to search for information without it being handed to you; you will note that I have not given you our contact information.

The work that GSoW does is extremely important. Not only to preserve our history, but to educate people who are looking for information about subjects that they are curious about. The work we do is accessed by millions of people. We are changing minds and you can as well. Reach out to us; we need you. The world needs you. March with us.

In a recent article in The New York Times, pediatrician Aaron Carroll asks us to rethink our biases against chiropractors when it comes to treating bad backs. He points out that lower back pain is a common problem that usually resolves over time, and that interventions that focus on relief of symptoms and allow the body to heal are ideal. He claims that spinal manipulation therapy (SMT) is as effective as medical therapies and as safe, if not safer.

There is a remarkable disconnect between compelling anecdotal evidence and controlled scientific studies. Chiropractors and patients are convinced that SMT works because they have seen it work. I have seen it work too. I watched a patient hobble painfully into the exam room, barely able to walk and complaining of excruciating pain. A few minutes later, after spinal manipulation by a physical therapist, he was standing tall, walking normally, and reporting complete relief of his pain. Yet when controlled scientific studies are done, they find little evidence of effectiveness. One study found that SMT was no more effective than giving the patient a pamphlet on back care. A Cochrane review found that SMT was no better than sham interventions. The most favorable systematic review found an improvement in pain, but only of about 10 points on a 100-point scale. So what’s going on here?

I suspect the explanation for the disconnect is that sometimes SMT can provide instant relief, but it doesn’t last. When the studies look at final outcomes after a period of time, they don’t find any difference. Not every patient will respond, and we have no way of predicting who will benefit. Skeptical chiropractor Sam Homola used to tell his patients he didn’t know if manipulation would help them, but he would try it for 3 visits; if there was no improvement by the third treatment, he would stop.

With that in mind, I think SMT is a reasonable option for patients to try if they like the hands-on approach, don’t mind multiple visits to the provider, and prefer not to take pills. It might provide temporary relief earlier in the course of the episode for some patients. But I could not in good conscience refer a patient to a chiropractor. Let me explain why.

In the first place, when chiropractic is effective, what is effective is not “chiropractic”: it is SMT. SMT is also offered by physical therapists, DOs, and others. These are science-based providers; chiropractic is a discipline based on a myth, the myth of the chiropractic “subluxation,” or bones out of alignment (these alleged chiropractic “subluxations” are not visible on X-ray). If I thought a patient might benefit from manipulation, I would rather refer him or her to a science-based provider.

If patients are referred to a chiropractor for SMT for low back pain, there is a chance they will assume that all chiropractic treatments are effective, and they may return to the chiropractor for neck manipulations, which are usually ineffective and carry a small risk of stroke or death.

While some rational chiropractors such as Sam Homola have tried to limit their practice to short-term treatment of musculoskeletal conditions, a substantial percentage of chiropractors claim that SMT also works for conditions such as infantile colic, painful periods, asthma, gastrointestinal problems, and more. Those claims are not supported by any credible scientific evidence. Some chiropractors try to dissuade patients from conventional medical care, even pretending they are qualified to act as the patient’s family doctor. They aren’t.

According to their own studies, less than half of chiropractors support immunization. Some even reject the germ theory of disease. A chiropractor once told me “Germs don’t cause disease; if they did, we’d all be dead.” He believed germs couldn’t affect him as long as his spine was in proper alignment.

Between 37 to 43 percent of American chiropractors report using applied kinesiology, a bogus muscle testing procedure. Chiropractors who are not well-grounded in science are susceptible to adopting every new quackery that comes down the pike. I think of them as quack magnets. To list just a few of the many, many bogus tests and treatments offered by some chiropractors: live cell analysis, computerized “nutrient deficiency” testing, iridology, homeopathy, acupuncture, chelation therapy, colonic irrigation, craniosacral therapy, and neural organization technique. Some chiropractors sell homeopathic remedies and dietary supplements out of their offices. Some offer useless lifelong “maintenance adjustments” and “preventive adjustments.”

If you choose a chiropractor at random out of the phone book, there’s a good chance you will get one who discourages immunizations and subscribes to every kind of woo-woo. Quackwatch and Chirobase offer tips on how to choose a chiropractor. Basically, you should look for one who:

• Rejects subluxation theory
• Doesn’t take full spine X-rays
• Doesn’t use quack procedures or tests
• Doesn’t offer preventive or maintenance adjustments
• Doesn’t promote unproven dietary supplements
• Doesn’t pretend to be a family doctor
• Doesn’t treat young children
• Is not antagonistic to scientific medicine
• Doesn’t discourage immunizations
• Limits his practice to short-term treatment of musculoskeletal problems
• Knows when to refer

Bottom line: If a chiropractor offers SMT for short-term treatment of musculoskeletal pain, he might be able to help you, but a physical therapist could help just as much. If a chiropractor offers to “adjust your subluxations” or to treat problems elsewhere in the body, it’s best to avoid him.

Good luck finding one who meets these criteria! I haven’t been able to find one in my local area.

Contrary to what Carroll says, spinal manipulation is not entirely harmless. Patients may not voluntarily report adverse effects to the chiropractor, but meticulous studies have shown that in at least a third of patients side effects occur, including pain, tiredness, or headache. These effects are usually mild and short-lasting, but in one study, 14 percent of patients reported that their ability to work was impaired. Serious consequences such as broken bones, vascular and spinal cord injuries, and ruptured discs have been reported, but admittedly these are rare and are more common with neck manipulation than with lower back manipulation.

Dr. Carroll wants doctors to consult chiropractors because “the ideal approach is to treat the symptoms and let the body heal. Noninvasive therapies seem to do that well enough.” I agree, but I don’t see that as a reason to see a chiropractor or to choose a chiropractor over a physical therapist for SMT. Here’s a novel thought: What if we let the body heal without even trying to treat the symptoms? We don’t necessarily have to treat every symptom. The symptoms of a cold will go away in a week with or without treatment, and any treatment that has symptom-relieving effects is also likely to have side effects. What if the doctor reassured the patient that nothing serious was going on, that it was only garden variety low back pain that wouldn’t last long, and that one option was to tolerate it rather than to treat it. We don’t know what causes low back pain but we do know it usually goes away on its own without any treatment, and the unfortunate truth is that none of the treatments in the medical armamentarium is likely to make much difference. What if doctors didn’t automatically reach for a prescription pad or a referral slip? What if they provided a reality check, reassurance, sympathy, caring, and moral support, and gave patients the option to tough it out and keep as physically active as they can tolerate while waiting for the pain to subside? If patients insisted on the doctor “doing something,” he could suggest some simple comfort measures to try, while making it clear that they would not alter the course of the illness. He could give the patient advice about how to tolerate the symptoms rather than vainly trying to abolish them. That would be a safe, natural approach with no side effects and minimal cost.

Dr. Carroll asks us to rethink our biases against chiropractors. I am not biased against SMT, but I admit to a strong bias against chiropractic; and I have good reasons to be biased. Chiropractic and osteopathy were both prescientific medical systems based on manual therapy; schools of osteopathy adapted, and today they provide a science-based education equivalent to that of medical schools. Schools of chiropractic did not adapt, and it is hard to justify the persistence of chiropractic in today’s world, where science-based physical therapists and DOs can offer SMT without the accompanying baggage of chiropractic pseudoscientific nonsense. Carroll should have warned readers about the possible consequences of falling into the hands of a chiropractor who subscribes to all kinds of woo-woo and will do more harm than good.

In considering the pros and cons of chiropractors, remember that some chiropractors are pros who are skilled at SMT and use it appropriately, while others are cons who have adopted all kinds of bogus practices. It was irresponsible of Carroll to advocate treatment by chiropractors without making that clear. In fact, none of the arguments he makes for chiropractic support chiropractic at all; they only support SMT. The New York Times has done its readers a disservice by publishing his article.

CSICon 2017 is right around the corner. I just received my speaker’s packet, and I am starting to share the good news all over my social media. Conference season world-wide is starting, and I will be attending as many as I can. For myself and other GSoW conference attendees, this means one thing: find content we can use on the speakers’ Wikipedia pages. And finding often means creating. I’m going to tell you how to help make that happen.

Wikipedia as you know contains lots of text, but the better pages also contain photos, audio, and video. Everyone carries around all the tools we need to make this happen but rarely uses that tool. Pull out your cellphone and capture photos, video, and audio for Wikipedia please! The next step is that you must upload the content to WikiMedia Commons. This site can be a bit scary to use, which is why I have a video for anyone confused. Wikipedia does not allow just any media to be added to a page; the owner of the content MUST release the photo to WikiMedia Commons first. THEN the file can be placed on a Wikipedia page.

One project GSoW started several years ago was the Skeptic Audio Project. Our goal was to corner speakers at conferences we attend and record their voices for later use on a Wikipedia page. At the time of this writing, we have uploaded ninety-seven files to the repository. As GSoW is international, you will find voices in many languages other than English; it is quite cosmopolitan to listen to.

Quality of course is important, but most modern cell phones do a good enough job. For audio, do your best to find a quiet area; some background noise can be removed with software, and the GSoW team can do that for you if needed. Video obviously should have good sound quality as well as be visually attractive. But even small snippets of lectures are valuable. Think of it this way: imagine a hundred years from now someone wants to know what we looked and sounded like, and all people are going to be able to find is content from the Kardashians. You don’t know who will be important in the future so best to archive the content now. Even a person saying their own name is worthwhile. If they speak more than one language, ask them to record in that language also.

As you browse through the content we have already collected, you will see that the file types WikiMedia Commons allows are oga, wav, and ogg for audio. Video you need to upload as webm. Again, GSoW can help you if need. Don’t worry about recording it in the correct format, just record it, and we will figure it out later.

Some of these recordings are hilarious. When I ask for a recording for their Wikipedia page, they rarely think about what they are going to say, so they launch right into their elevator pitch. But others tell jokes and even one gave me an ancient Greek proverb (John Allen Paulos). I think the funniest is Emery Emery’s. I don’t know if there is a limit of how long these should be—we have 15 seconds to many minutes—so record as long as you need. It should be concise and not dated. You do not want them to mention that they have “written two books” as they might just write a third and the audio will be outdated. Also, it is great for them to add information that the Wikipedia page is missing a citation for where they were born, early influences, where they grew up, the name of their elementary school, all those kinds of things can be used as a citation on the text of the Wikipedia page.

When I wrote the Wikipedia page for SGU podcaster Perry DeAngelis, I begged fellow SGU member Evan Bernstein to upload snipits of the best of Perry, which he did. It is so wonderful to be able to revisit this audio whenever I want. The Wikipedia page has been viewed 16,625 times since I released it in February 2015. I’ve heard from many people on social media on how much they appreciate the content.

As I mentioned at the beginning, CSICon 2017 will be here soon. At CSICon 2016, my GSoW team managed to collect some memorable content: Richard Dawkins, Ray Hyman, Paul Offit, Mark Boslough, Dave Thomas, Tom Flynn, Ron Lindsay, and Kevin Folta. My favorite recording was with James Randi who wanted to get it right so he stopped and started several times. I uploaded a short version as well as the entire recording with all the goofs. It is so indicative of his personality and professionalism that I wanted to be able to share it with everyone.

If someone has some free time and would like to take on a small project for GSoW, I really would like the audio we have already collected to be transcribed. We can add the text to the audio once it is transcribed. Click on the recording for Harriet Hall on her Wikipedia page and you should see the text appear.

Conference attendance is an important part of activism; I hope you attend at least one conference this season or if not sponsor someone else. CSICon is the weekend before Halloween in Las Vegas, but there are conferences all over the world. Don’t wait to record audio and take photographs at a conference, record at lectures and other events. I know some of you reading this live near or personally know people who have Wikipedia pages. Podcasters, you are in the best position possible to record audio for us, just explain to the person you are interviewing and make a quick recording, upload it and add it to the Category: Audio of skeptics. You might want to give us a heads up so we can make sure it gets added to the Wikipedia page.

This is a relatively easy way to help out GSoW and improve Wikipedia content; don’t over think this, don’t wait for the perfect moment. If the opportunity arises, please ask and then make it happen. Take the phone out of your pocket and hit record. Then contact us at GSoWteam@gmail.com; it really is that simple.

Al igual que el capitán Renault de ‘Casablanca’ descubre que en local de Rick se juega, algunos periodistas han descubierto ahora que en el mundo se miente.

“La culpa es de las redes sociales”. No me dirán que la sentencia no les suena familiar. De un tiempo a esta parte, el periodismo anda inquieto por la facilidad con que se expanden los bulos y las mentiras a través de las redes sociales. Muchas veces son los mismos que nos han alertado de la existencia de un juego –el de la ballena azul– que lleva a los adolescentes a suicidarse, del peligro de las borracheras femeninas por meterse en la vagina tampones empapados en vodka –el llamado tampodka–, del riesgo de que los teléfonos móviles provoquen cáncer y de las bondades de la homeopatía, por citar cuatro falsedades con gran predicamento mediático.

La llegada de Donald Trump a la Casa Blanca y el Brexit, dos victorias de la mentira y el populismo, han provocado un terremoto en torno a lo que se ha dado en llamar posverdad. Acuñado en 1992, el término, según el Diccionario Oxford, “denota circunstancias en que los hechos objetivos influyen menos en la formación de la opinión pública que los llamamientos a la emoción y a la creencia personal”. Es un neologismo para rebautizar el impacto de uno de los usos de la mentira de toda la vida: la propaganda. Sin embargo, como si el uso propagandístico de falsedades fuera algo nuevo, algunos grandes medios dedican tribunas y reportajes a la posverdad, los bulos y las mentiras, incidiendo en que el peligro está en las redes sociales y el efecto eco, consecuencia de la creación de comunidades ideológicas aisladas del exterior, de burbujas impermeables a mensajes discrepantes.

El problema no son las redes. El problema es la mentira, el bulo, la noticia falsa. Algo tan viejo como el ser humano y a lo que en demasiadas ocasiones se ha hecho la vista gorda desde los grandes medios, cuando no se ha alimentado, sobre todo desde la generalización de Internet y la necesidad de financiar las webs a golpe de clic, de impacto publicitario. Nada nuevo, por otra parte. La mentira ha sido siempre un gran negocio. No es una novedad que se publiquen libros llenos de mentiras, que haya revistas y programas de radio y televisión cuyo negocio sea explotar las credulidad del personal. Es lo que ha hecho siempre el mercado de lo paranormal, en el que un autor es más famoso cuanto más inmune es a la verdad o cuanto más chiflado está. Elijan ustedes.

En España, por ejemplo, ya en los años 70 había una colección de libros, Otros mundos, cuyo denominador común era la posverdad mucho antes de que se inventara el término (con la excepción de La conexión cósmica, de Carl Sagan, que sorprendentemente apareció en el mismo sello). En Otros mundos publicaron sus primeros libros Erich von Däniken, Peter Kolosimo y Juan José Benítez, entre otros autores que siempre han vivido en una realidad alternativa ajena a los hechos. Revistas como Karma.7 y Mundo Desconocido eran entonces las suministradoras periódicas de patrañas pseudocientíficas. Y programas como Más Allá, con Fernando Jiménez del Oso en TVE, y Medianoche, con Antonio José Alés en la Cadena SER, representaban la vanguardia anticientífica en televisión y radio. Lo mismo ocurría en otros países sin que casi nadie se quejara, sin que casi ningún periodista dijera que aquello eran mentiras, en parte, porque los medios serios veían esos temas como algo marginal, indigno de atención.

Las redes sociales, contra la mentira

Digo casi nadie porque precisamente para combatir las patrañas pseudocientíficas nació en 1976 en Estados Unidos el Comité para la Investigación Científica de las Afirmaciones de lo Paranormal (CSICOP), actual Comité para la Investigación Escéptica (CSI), por iniciativa de Isaac Asimov, Martin Gardner, Ray Hyman, Philip J. Klass, Paul Kurtz, James Randi, Carl Sagan, B.F. Skinner y Marcello Truzzi. Fue el germen de un movimiento, hoy presente en todo el mundo, cuya motivación ha sido siempre combatir la mentira, muchas veces vendida como verdad desde los grandes medios de comunicación que hoy llamamos convencionales.

Guía rápida para detectar noticias falsas y bulos, según la Federación Internacional de Asociaciones de Bibliotecarios y Bibliotecas (IFLA)

“¡Qué escándalo! He descubierto que aquí se miente”, dice ahora parte de la profesión periodística ante fenómenos como Trump y los bulos que circulan por las redes sociales. En mi despacho, montañas de recortes de prensa prueban el cinismo de esa indignación. Según esos recortes, se han demostrado los poderes de Uri Geller, es posible determinar el carácter de una persona por su caligrafía, las antenas de telefonía provocan graves enfermedades, los extraterrestres secuestran humanos, las pirámides de Egipto son obra de alienígenas, la Atlántida existió, la resurrección de Jesucristo fue demostrada por la NASA, las medicinas alternativas funcionan, hay que gente a la que posee el Diablo, es posible hablar con los muertos… Estas afirmaciones extraordinarias e infundadas, y muchas otras por el estilo, no están tomadas de revistas esotéricas, sino de medios generalistas, los mismos que ahora se escandalizan por el desprecio a los hechos de la Administración de Trump y la rápida expansión de los bulos, los mismos que hace unos días informaban de la santificación por el Papa de dos niños que dijeron ver a la Virgen en Fátima (Portugal) en 1917 como si los milagros fueran más que ficciones religiosas.

Tenemos un serio problema con la mentira, pero no es nuevo ni consecuencia de la existencia de las redes sociales. Éstas expanden falsedades, como antes lo empezó a hacer la imprenta y más recientemente la radio y la televisión. Confiar en que las grandes corporaciones de la era digital evitarán mediante algoritmos la difusión de bulos es como hacerlo en los sistemas de autocontrol de la publicidad y de la profesión periodística. Inútil. No existe una solución a un problema que –y no quiero ponerme dramático– puede llegar a poner en peligro la propia democracia y cuyos efectos sólo pueden paliarse con una ciudadanía mejor informada y más crítica, justo por lo que llevamos décadas abogando los escépticos. ¿Cómo se consigue eso? Tampoco lo sé.

La lucha contra la desinformación debería empezar en la escuela, sembrando la duda entre los más jóvenes y enseñándoles que lo que muchas veces se presenta como realidad no lo es y que, cuando alguien hace una afirmación, hay que pedirle las pruebas. Siempre. Sería fundamental, además, que los medios de comunicación serios llamaran a la mentira por su nombre también cuando sale de la boca de alguien que no es Donald Trump, y que los profesionales del periodismo fuéramos más críticos y pudiéramos hacer nuestro trabajo como es debido. Esto último no siempre es posible. Aunque los periodistas a los que la verdad importa un bledo son una minoría, a las prisas propias de la profesión se han sumado en los últimos años factores que han minado la credibilidad de los medios: el ansia por el clic –hay que llamar la atención del público hacia nuestro producto en un mercado donde la oferta de noticias resulta apabullante– y el adelgazamiento forzado de las plantillas a consecuencia de la crisis del modelo de negocio. Si cada vez hay en las redacciones menos periodistas y más trabajo, ¿quién comprueba los datos? Si otros medios supuestamente serios publican una historia falsa como si fuera real, ¿cómo convenzo a mis jefes de que no lo es? Si la gente pincha en la noticia y ganamos dinero con cada clic, ¡qué importa que sea mentira!

Reflexionen sobre ello y, entre tanto, cuando descubran una falsedad en algún medio, cuéntenlo en las redes sociales. Así se ha conseguido que la homeopatía ya no tenga en España la buena prensa de otros tiempos, gracias a la redes y a la movilización en ellas de la comunidad escéptica. Porque a ningún medio le gusta que le acusen de fomentar un fraude, una mentira, y las reglas del juego han cambiado para todos: lo mismo que cualquiera puede difundir un bulo, cualquiera puede denunciar públicamente ese engaño… gracias a los blogs y las redes sociales.

It was a quiet, uneventful week in Washington. I mean, aside from the ongoing tire fire at a fireworks factory that is the Trump presidency. When news broke that Trump had given highly sensitive intelligence to the Russians and that he had asked recently redundant FBI Chief and famed memo writer James Comey to call off the investigation into suspected foreign agent and National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, a dependent clause that one would never thought would ever have to be written, I expected wall to wall coverage about the scandal. And there has been, with the notable exception so far of conservative media, including Fox News. Instead, a number of outlets have been focusing on the early morning murder of a DNC staffer named Seth Rich last July. It seems like a random killing, and most of the reports I’ve seen suggest that it was the result of a robbery gone wrong in a part of town where there had recently been several muggings. Rich’s name was again popping up in my conspiracy theory feeds, and it was clear he was back on the radar. Nonetheless, I was shocked when I tuned into a PBS audio feed of an off-camera press gaggle May 16, where I heard what for all the world sounded like the Press Secretary of the White House talking about a DNC staffer during the week that things were exploding in the administration’s face.

I had missed the beginning of the exchange with the reporter, so I looked up the transcript of the gaggle later. Spicer called on a reporter named Ronica, and it turns out this is Ronica Cleary from a local Fox outlet, WTTG Fox 5. I usually don’t conflate Fox News and their affiliates. The scope and content of the local and national news usually are quite separate, but it had never occurred to me that things might be different in DC.

Because Rich lived in the DC area and was killed there, it makes sense that the death was covered by the local Fox affiliate, and Fox 5 has covered it extensively, but it’s also routinely covered some questionable claims relating to the murder. Nothing seems weird about the case itself, though it remains unsolved. The weirdness is in the commentary circulating around the murder. Julian Assange and possible Russian connections are mentioned in the list of previous stories. We’ll get back to that. The resurrection of the Rich story occurred on May 15 and it came from a private investigator named Rod Wheeler. Wheeler, who is also a regular Fox News guest/analyst, is described in a story on the Fox 5 web page as the Rich “Family’s Private Investigator.”

Rich was shot a few weeks before the DNC email leak at Wikileaks. Guest of London’s Ecuadorian Embassy, Julian Assange, who has proven to be a partisan in this matter (and, let’s face it, a completely heartless monster if he’s using the Rich family’s pain for cheap political points), hinted to Megyn Kelly in August of last year that Rich may have been a source of the DNC emails. Of course he never said it outright, and I think that Wikileaks’ announcement last August about a $20K reward for information about the murder was a cheap publicity stunt. No evidence has emerged that the murder was in any way related to Rich’s job or that he was a source of information sent from Wikileaks.

When the explanation of an event precedes the event, you are often looking at a conspiracy theory. In this case, the story about the shooting is another chapter in the longstanding Clinton Body Count, which is a decades-old narrative sustained by the far right that contends that if anyone connected to the Clintons ever died, it was because of the Clintons. Snopes’s excellent overview currently lists nearly fifty victims. Seth Rich worked on Hillary Clinton’s behalf during the election last year, so of course she is implicated in his murder, goes the thinking. In this variation on a well-established Clinton murder/cover-up theme, Wheeler says: “I have a source inside the police department that has looked at me straight in the eye and said, ‘Rod, we were told to stand down on this case and I can’t share any information with you.’ Now, that is highly unusual for a murder investigation, especially from a police department. Again, I don’t think it comes from the chief’s office, but I do believe there is a correlation between the mayor's office and the DNC and that is the information that will come out [Tuesday]” (brackets in original). Well, if a hypothetical person looks you in the eye, it has to be true.

Wheeler claims that Rich’s laptop, and with it the email evidence linking Rich to Wikileaks, is curiously missing and that both the FBI and DC police claims the other agency has it. NBC looked into the case of Rich’s laptop: “A former law enforcement official with first-hand knowledge of Rich's laptop said the claim was incorrect. ‘It never contained any e-mails related to WikiLeaks, and the FBI never had it,’ the person said.” Oops.

I contacted the DC Metropolitan Police and they replied very quickly with what is clearly a form letter (it was identical to the email sent to Snopes):

The assertions put forward by Mr. Wheeler are unfounded. The Metropolitan Police Department’s (MPD) Homicide Branch is actively investigating Mr. Rich’s murder and we continue to work with the family to bring closure to this case as we do with all homicide investigations.

The investigation by Wheeler, who once claimed on the O’Reilly Factor that gangs of lesbians were raping young girls and wreaking havoc with their pink Glocks across the country (really), is being paid for not by the family but by a third party, a financial adviser in Dallas named Ed Butowsky. Butwosky is a Fox News regular, according to NBC, and he has also written for Breitbart, the right wing propaganda outfit whose former Chief Executive sits at the right hand of President Trump. Butwosky telegraphed the release of this story last week in a tweet, but that message has since been deleted. Butwosky denied that he was even involved in the independent investigation, at least until Rich’s family went on the record about it.

It seems clear that the right wing media would rather talk about anything other than the unfolding extinction event at the White House. Butwosky and Wheeler picking on a dead kid, however, is beneath contempt.

Postscript: Fox 5 has updated their coverage of the worthless “revelations”:

On Wednesday, just before our newscast, Wheeler responded to our requests via a telephone conversation, where he now backtracks his position and Wheeler characterizes his on-the-record and on-camera statements as "miscommunication."

When asked if Wheeler is still working for Seth Rich's family, Wheeler told FOX 5 DC the contract still stands—ties have not been severed.

We reached out once again to the Rich family, and through a spokesperson the Rich family tells FOX 5 DC, "The family has relayed their deep disappointment with Rod Wheeler's conduct over the last 48 hours, and is exploring legal avenues to the family."

Post-postscript: Can you imagine having the opportunity to ask a question to the Press Secretary during such a historic week and wasting it on this?

We Didn’t Know Any Better, p < .05

Cornell University psychologist Daryl Bem and I have something in common. Yes, we are both research psychologists, but that’s not what I mean.

For me, it started when I was just a young graduate student. Statistics courses are a standard part of graduate training in psychology, because statistical methods are still the coin of the realm in psychological research. Most graduate students are required to conduct empirical research as part of their doctoral dissertations, and if they go on to academic positions, they often continue to do quantitative studies throughout their careers. Training in statistics is important because statistical number crunching techniques are the way we determine whether our results mean anything or not. Most of my graduate school cohorts hated anything that looked like math, but—to my surprise—I discovered that I liked statistics courses. I took more of them than were required, and my relatively strong background in stats was an important factor in landing an academic position. (Let that be a lesson to any psychology students who might be reading this.) In graduate school, I coached my math-phobic friends on how to enter data into the computer and analyze it, and in my academic life, I did the same with students and colleagues.

With all this background, I got to be pretty good at statistical consulting, and as a result, needy researchers often came knocking. Publishing trends are gradually changing, but even now, most studies need to report statistically significant results to have any chance of getting published. Journal editors are much less interested in studies in which nothing happened, so everyone is on a quest to achieve the vaunted p (for probability) < .05 that indicates the findings are unlikely to have happened by chance. When a friend’s research or my own appeared to have come up short, I was pretty good at salvaging something from the rubble. I might suggest altering the design of the study by combining data from previously separated groups of participants, or massaging the numbers in some way. These were techniques I’d learned at my mentors’ knees, and although we had some inkling that we were fudging the results a bit, we consoled ourselves by openly reporting the steps we’d gone through and supplying some plausible-sounding justification for each manipulation. We didn’t think we were doing anything wrong.

But now we know better. Today, the process I just described is called “p-hacking,” a pejorative term that suggests an unethical manipulation of data in search of statistical significance. We also know that admitting you manipulated your data is not like going to confession. It doesn’t wash away the sins of p-hacking, and in the modern world of research it is no longer acceptable. Most reputable journals will not accept an article based on such questionable techniques. Recent research aimed at trying to replicate previously published psychology studies has demonstrated—shockingly—that a large number of classic phenomena cannot be reproduced, and the popularity of p-hacking is thought to be one of the culprits.

Textbooks will have to be re-written in light of this “reproducibility crisis,” but there has also been a very positive outcome. In just a very few years, the standards for psychology research have been ratcheted up substantially with the introduction of the “open science” movement, which urges researchers to publicly state their plans for a study before they start data collection. Methods and results are also publicly posted so that it is harder to fudge your data and other researchers can reanalyze your results if they wish. Journals and professional organizations have quickly endorsed the principles of open science, which is spreading far beyond the field of psychology. I wrote about the open science movement in my December 2016 column, “The Parable of the Power Pose and How to Reverse It.”

Daryl Bem, p-Hacking, and the Paranormal

Daryl Bem is unquestionably one of the world’s most fascinating psychologists. His career spans five decades during which he’s made substantial contributions to the field. He got a BA in physics from Reed College, but when the civil rights movement got underway in the 1960s, he changed fields and earned a PhD in social psychology at the University of Michigan. He went on to teach at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, and ultimately Cornell University (Bem, D. n.d.). His early contributions include self-perception theory, which offered an alternative interpretation of the phenomenon we know as cognitive dissonance, and the exotic becomes erotic theory of sexual orientation, which suggested that biological differences in sexual orientation are mediated by early childhood experiences (Bem, D. 1996).

Even Bem’s personal life, about which he has been exceedingly open, is remarkable. When he first met his future wife, Sandra, in the mid-1960s, he reportedly told her two things: that he was from Colorado and that his sexual preference was primarily homoerotic. She replied that she had never met anyone from Colorado before (Nussbaum 1998).

From the beginning, they committed to a completely egalitarian and gender non-conforming partnership, long before this kind of marriage was fashionable, and they held to these principles while raising their two children. In 1972, the couple was profiled in an article called “A Marriage of Equals” for the first issue of Ms. magazine. Sandra became an eminent feminist scholar, author of the Bem Sex Role Inventory, and director of the women’s studies program at Cornell. In the mid-1990s the couple separated amicably but remained married, and both went on to have same-sex relationships (Nussbaum 1998). Through it all, they remained close, as Sandra recounted in her memoir “An Unconventional Family” (Bem, S. 1998). In 2009, when Sandra began to show the signs of Alzheimer’s disease, she resolved to take her own life before she became too ill to be capable of the act. Her death, which was documented in a New York Times Magazine story, happened on May 20, 2014, with Daryl at her side (Henig 2015).

Is Psi Real?

The foregoing already describes a remarkable life and career, but it is unlikely Daryl Bem will be best remembered for these things. His most widely publicized work has been in extrasensory perception, where he represents the rare combination of an accomplished mainstream psychologist who is also a believer.

Like much of his life and career, Bem’s path to ESP was somewhat unique. Beginning when he was just a young boy, Daryl was fascinated with magic shows, and as a teenager he amused his friends with magic tricks. He continued to dabble in magic and used it for demonstrations in his classes, but unlike The Amazing Randi, Banachek, or Penn & Teller, Bem’s interest in magic eventually led him to belief rather than to skepticism.

Bem was invited to perform some mentalism tricks at a meeting of the Parapsychological Association, where he met Charles Honorton (Tsakiris 2012). Honorton had set up a lab where he was doing mental telepathy experiments using the Ganzfeld technique, which employed sensory deprivation to sift out noise in the hope of allowing weak telepathic signals to be received. Bem was impressed with Honorton’s work, and in 1994, he and Honorton coauthored a meta-analysis of Honorton’s Ganzfeld data titled “Does Psi Exist: Replicable Evidence for an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer.” The article, which appeared in the prestigious journal Psychological Bulletin, purported to show an overall correct reception rate of 32 percent, which was statistically greater than the chance expectation of 25 percent on a four-choice test (Bem and Honorton 1994).

As you might expect, Bem and Honorton’s Ganzfeld study caused quite a stir in the scientific community. Most of the earlier ESP research had been published in parapsychology journals that were viewed with skepticism by mainstream psychology. Here was a highly respected scientist publishing evidence of psi in one of psychology’s most respected journals, and for the first time ESP was getting a serious look.

Daryl Bem speaking at a CSICOP meeting in Buffalo, New York in 1983. (Source: wikipedia)

CSI Fellow Ray Hyman, who earlier published a joint paper with Honorton suggesting additional experimental controls for future Ganzfeld studies (Hyman and Honorton 1986), wrote a critique of Bem’s statistical methods in the same issue of Psychological Bulletin (Hyman 1994), and many other critiques followed. In 1999, CSI Fellow Richard Wiseman and coauthor Julie Milton published a meta-analysis of eleven new Ganzfeld studies, comprising more participants than in the Bem and Honorton article, and they found no significant psi effect (Milton and Wiseman 1999). These studies were followed by much back and forth (see, e.g., Storm and Ertel 2001), but the current state of the Ganzfeld debate does not support the reality of psi (Bierman et al 2016).

A “receiver” in a Ganzfeld experiment sitting in a comfortable chair. Halves of ping pong balls cover the participant’s eyes, white noise is played through their ears, and the entire area is bathed in red light.

Feeling the Future

For his next big foray into psi research, Bem conducted his own research at Cornell over a period of ten years. The resulting 2011 paper, “Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect,” which included nine different experiments, was published in another very prestigious journal and purported to show evidence that future events could influence the present (Bem 2011). According to Bem, participants who were asked to predict whether an object would be behind one of two curtains showed choices that were influenced by events that happened after they made their selections.

This time the media reacted in a big way. Many newspaper articles were written about the study, and even before it appeared in print, Bem was invited on the The Colbert Report. Stephen Colbert’s predictably comical interview with Bem is shown in the clip below.

As in the past, skeptics responded to Bem’s 2011 paper. CSI Fellow James Alcock wrote a highly critical review in Skeptical Inquirer, and Ray Hyman called the publication “crazy” in an article in the New York Times (Carey 2011). Finally, last summer, Bem and two coauthors reported the results of a pre-registered replication that was conducted using the more rigorous methods of open science (Engber 2017). Unfortunately, the results were negative: no evidence of feeling the future effect.

Traditionally, Bem has been a staunch defender of his work, responding to every criticism, but lately he seems to be softening. In May 2017, Daniel Engber wrote an extensive article on Bem’s parapsychological research for Slate, in which Bem came remarkably close to an outright admission of p-hacking:

“I’m all for rigor,” he continued, “but I prefer other people do it. I see its importance—it’s fun for some people—but I don’t have the patience for it.” It’s been hard for him, he said, to move into a field where the data count for so much. “If you looked at all my past experiments, they were always rhetorical devices. I gathered data to show how my point would be made. I used data as a point of persuasion, and I never really worried about, ‘Will this replicate or will this not?’” (Engber 2017).

I hear a bit of weariness in this statement—perhaps the sentiments of a battered researcher near the end of his career—and to some extent, it is a feeling I can understand. The standards for research are changing rapidly, and after a career of doing things a certain way, it is a daunting task to retool in the new procedures of open science. Like Bem, my empirical research days are mostly behind me now, and part of me is relieved to get out before having to confront the new research realities. Open science is a welcome and hugely important development. It may end up being the salvation of psychological science. But, like Bem, part of me is happy to leave it to younger researchers.

If there is an upside for Bem, it might be that, in retrospect, he has been given substantial credit for stimulating the movement to tighten the standards for research. In the 2011 paper he chose methods that he knew would be easy for other researchers to use, and he has been quite vocal in encouraging replication. Some observers, including Jade Wu, who was a research assistant on the 2011 study, have voiced the opinion that this was all a deliberate plan to expose the failings of the field and spark a movement for reform: “I still think it’s possible that Daryl Bem did all of this as a way to make plain the problems of statistical methods in psychology,” Wu is quoted as saying in the Engber article (Engber 2017).

Bem brushes off these suggestions, minimizing his role: “I get more credit for having started the revolution in questioning mainstream psychological methods than I deserve,” Bem told Engber. “I was in the right place at the right time. The groundwork was already pre-prepared, and I just made it all startlingly clear” (Engber 2017).

Whatever Bem’s personal role might be in the new wave of rigor in psychology, two things are abundantly clear: p-hackers like Bem and me are out of business, and science is better for it.

References

• Bem, Daryl. N.d. Daryl Bem: Brief Biography. Accessed June 04, 2017. Available at http://dbem.ws/bem_bio.htm.
• ———. 2011. Feeling the future: experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect. Journal of personality and social psychology 100(3): 407.
• ———. 1996. Exotic becomes erotic: A developmental theory of sexual orientation. Psychological Review 103(2): 320–35. doi:10.1037/0033-295x.103.2.320.
• Bem, Daryl J., and Charles Honorton. 1994. Does psi exist? Replicable evidence for an anomalous process of information transfer. Psychological Bulletin 115(1): 4–18. doi:10.1037//0033-2909.115.1.4.
• Bem, Sandra L. An Unconventional Family.1998. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Bierman, Dick J., James P. Spottiswoode, and Aron Bijl. 2016. Testing for questionable research practices in a meta-analysis: An example from experimental parapsychology. Plos One 11(5). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0153049.
• Carey, Benedict. 2011. Journal’s paper on ESP expected to prompt outrage. The New York Times (January 5). Accessed June 05, 2017. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/science/06esp.html.
• Engber, Daniel. 2017. Daryl Bem proved ESP is real. Which means science is broken. Slate Magazine (May 17). Accessed June 05, 2017. Available at https://redux.slate.com/cover-stories/2017/05/daryl-bem-proved-esp-is-real-showed-science-is-broken.html.
• Henig, Robin Marantz. 2015. The last day of her life. The New York Times (May 14). Accessed June 04, 2017. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/magazine/the-last-day-of-her-life.html.
• Hyman, Ray. 1994. Anomaly or artifact? Comments on Bem and Honorton. Psychological Bulletin 115(1): 19–24.
• Hyman, Ray, and Charles Honorton. 1986. A joint communiqué: The psi ganzfeld controversy. The Journal of Parapsychology 50(4): 351.
• Milton, Julie, and Richard Wiseman. Does psi exist? Lack of replication of an anomalous process of information transfer. Psychological Bulletin 125(4): 387–91. doi:10.1037//0033-2909.125.4.387.
• Nussbaum, Emily. 1998. Emily Nussbaum: Does the exotic become erotic? Emily Nussbaum, writer. Reprinted from Lingua Franca, May/June 1998. Accessed June 04, 2017. Available at http://www.emilynussbaum.com/lingua_franca/1998/05/does_the_exotic_become_erotic.php.
• Storm, Lance, and Suitbert Ertel. 2001. Does psi exist? Comments on Milton and Wiseman's (1999) meta-analysis of Ganzfield research. Psychological Bulletin 127(3):424–33.
• Tsakiris, Alex. 2012. Dr. Daryl Bem responds to parapsychology debunkers. Skeptiko - Science at the Tipping Point (May 4). Accessed June 04, 2017. Available at http://skeptiko.com/daryl-bem-responds-to-parapsychology-debunkers/.

The anti-vaccine movement is full of conspiracy theorists who deny the evidence for the effectiveness of vaccines, call vaccines “poisons,” think doctors and manufacturers (in collusion with the government) only promote vaccines to boost their incomes, and blame vaccines for all manner of adverse events. These vaccine denialists must not be confused with vaccine skeptics, many of whom are intelligent, well-educated people who trust science but who have legitimate questions and concerns about one or more vaccine. Many of these concerns turn out to be myths promulgated by people who appear to be experts and who sound convincing but who are not reliable sources of information. It’s hard for laymen, and even for many doctors, to distinguish the trustworthy sources of information from the untrustworthy. Here are some short answers to some of the most common objections to vaccines.

My Child Is Not Likely to Be Exposed to These Diseases

That’s true. This is actually a very good reason not to vaccinate, but it’s short-sighted. Vaccines have been so successful that these diseases are no longer around. Even if the risk of side effects with a vaccine are small, why expose your child to that small risk when the risk of catching the disease is even lower? And why waste your money and let your child experience the pain of a needle stick? The problem is that these diseases are only a plane-ride away, and your child could be exposed to an imported case; but that risk is still admittedly small. The bigger problem is that herd immunity protects everyone so these diseases are not likely to spread if a case is imported into a community. If enough people followed your reasoning and refused vaccination, herd immunity would decline and sooner or later these diseases would come roaring back. It is selfish and immoral to let others take a risk you are unwilling to take and then take advantage of the herd immunity those others have established. Vaccination is a social responsibility; it protects the community as a whole and protects vulnerable individuals who are too young to be vaccinated or who are at high risk like the elderly, people with chronic illnesses, and the immunocompromised (for instance, patients on chemotherapy).

Vaccines Cause Autism

A few years ago, there was legitimate concern that vaccines might cause autism, based in part on a since-retracted study by Andrew Wakefield. While a few studies may have suggested a correlation, we now have many more large, well-designed studies that have looked hard for a link between vaccines and autism or other neurodevelopmental problems and have failed to find one. The scientific consensus is clear: there is no credible evidence that vaccines cause autism.

There’s Toxic Mercury in Vaccines

This concern is particularly misguided, since there never was any mercury in the MMR vaccines that were falsely accused of causing autism, and there is no longer any mercury (thimerosal) in any vaccine except for multidose vials of flu vaccine, where it is used as a preservative to prevent contamination once the seal has been breached. Most flu vaccines given in the US are the single-dose version, and you can specifically request it, but there’s no reason to. There never was any evidence that thimerosal in vaccines caused any harm to recipients, and the World Health Organization (WHO) still strongly supports using thimerosal to allow lower-cost multidose vials to be used.

There Are Other Toxic Ingredients in Vaccines

Aluminum is used in some vaccines to enhance the immune response; the amount is less than everyday intake from foods, and the aluminum in vaccines has never been shown to cause harm. Formaldehyde is used in the manufacturing process and then removed; small traces may remain, but the amounts are too small to have a toxic effect. Rachael Dunlop has pointed out that you get 600 times more formaldehyde from eating a pear than you get from a vaccine, and your own body naturally produces formaldehyde. The “monkey virus” SV40 contaminated some polio vaccines half a century ago, but it did not cause any harm to recipients, and today’s vaccines are carefully screened to prevent such contamination. The viruses for some vaccines are grown in eggs or on chick embryo cell lines, so egg allergy has been a concern, but the amount of egg protein in most vaccines is so small that they can be given safely to most patients with egg allergies.

More Vaccinated People Get the Disease

Yes, but only because more people are vaccinated. The rate of illness is much higher in the unvaccinated than in the vaccinated. Vaccines are not 100 percent effective, but when vaccinated people catch the disease they are likely to have a milder illness.

Vaccines Can Overwhelm a Child’s Immune System

When parents see their child get several immunizations at a time, they naturally suspect that must not be a good thing. They assume that the current vaccine schedule is “too many, too soon.” But vaccines can’t overwhelm the immune system; they simply exercise it. Children encounter up to 6,000 immune challenges in their environment every day, compared to 150 during the course of the entire vaccine schedule. They can handle it. Delaying or spacing out vaccines only prolongs the period of vulnerability to the diseases.

The Diseases Were Already Going Away; Vaccines Had Nothing to Do with It

Anti-vaxxers love to show a graph demonstrating that the diseases were already going away before the introduction of vaccines, due to improved hygiene, sewers, safe water, etc. But that’s terribly misleading. The graph shows that the death rate was declining, not that the diseases were going away. The death rate was declining because of better medical care: not as many people who caught the disease died. But the number of people who caught the disease had not declined. Other graphs that show the incidence of the diseases are compelling: they show a precipitous drop after the introduction of vaccines. And there have been many inadvertent natural experiments in several countries where the vaccination rate dropped, the disease rate rose, and then the disease rate dropped again when the vaccination rate improved.

Vaccines Didn’t Eradicate Smallpox

They most certainly did! The last case occurred in Somalia in 1977. Some people claim that it is still around and is being misdiagnosed as chickenpox, but that’s absurd. Doctors can easily tell those two diseases apart on clinical grounds as well as by electron microscopy and blood tests. Vaccines wiped smallpox off the face of the Earth and are well on their way to eradicating polio and measles. In fact, every contagious disease that is transmitted only from person to person and has no environmental reservoir has the potential to be permanently eradicated like smallpox.

Vaccines Spread Disease

You’ve all heard people say, “The flu vaccine gave me the flu.” That’s a false assumption. It may have been a flu-like illness from another virus, or it may have been flu from a strain not covered in that year’s vaccine. You can’t get flu from the vaccine because it is prepared from only a small piece of the virus, and that piece is not infectious.

Some vaccines contain live viruses, but these are attenuated, weakened forms of the virus. They can replicate in the host to stimulate an immune response, but they can’t cause the disease. The varicella vaccine can cause a vesicular skin rash, which can transmit the attenuated vaccine virus to other people through direct contact, but this has happened only six times in 56 million doses, and it can be avoided by avoiding direct contact with the skin lesions. The oral polio vaccine is cheaper and easier to administer than the injectable vaccine and is the best choice for getting control of the disease in a population. It is a live virus that, even though it is attenuated, can sometimes spread to others and can rarely (one in 2.7 million) cause paralysis; for that reason, nations switch to the safer injectable vaccines once the disease is no longer prevalent.

Vaccines Aren’t Adequately Tested

All vaccines have to be rigorously tested in thousands of people before they are released; the approval process can take up to ten years, and monitoring continues after approval. The one exception is the flu vaccine. It’s not necessary to test each new annual formulation because it is the same vaccine only with antigens for slightly different strains of flu virus. If we waited to test each year’s formulation, it would not be available in time to protect people from the strains circulating that year.

Childhood Diseases Aren’t Serious

Many of us had those childhood diseases before vaccines were available, and for most of us the diseases were mild and didn’t cause any permanent damage. But these diseases can be serious and even fatal. We may not remember how polio paralyzed children and confined them to iron lungs. We may not have sat helplessly at the bedside of a child with diphtheria struggling to breathe or a child coughing uncontrollably from whooping cough until they choke, turn purple, and vomit. We may never have seen chickenpox develop into chickenpox pneumonia or kill an immunocompromised patient. We may not have seen a grandparent die from pneumonia as a complication of the flu. We may not have met anyone with brain damage from measles. We may not realize that one in ten thousand patients with measles will develop subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), sometimes as long as fifteen years later, with a uniformly fatal outcome within three years of onset. One in 10,000 may seem like a small risk, but why take that risk when you can get insurance against it by getting the vaccine?

Vaccines Are Cultured on Cell Lines from Aborted Fetuses

Certain cell lines originated from human fetal tissue obtained from three elective abortions performed for medical reasons in the 1960s. No further fetal tissue has been obtained since that date. The Catholic church finds no moral or religious objection to the use of existing vaccines.

The HPV Vaccine Will Make My Children Promiscuous

This has been tested. Children who got the vaccine were not more likely to engage in sexual intercourse.

The HPV Vaccine Has Killed Thirty-Two (or 100) Young Women

This is a myth that has been thoroughly debunked on Snopes. The HPV vaccine has never killed anyone. Some young women have died after getting the HPV vaccine, but there is no evidence that anyone has ever died because of the vaccine. Alarmist death claims are based on reports to the VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System). VAERS is a voluntary reporting system that accepts reports of anything and everything that happened after a vaccination. The reports of deaths have been investigated, and analysis has not shown any causal link. Adverse events were no more common in vaccine recipients than in a comparable group of non-recipients.

Immunization Is Unnatural

Diseases are natural. They kill people. ’Nuff said.

Conclusion

Some intelligent and well-educated people question vaccines. They may have legitimate reasons to mistrust the medical establishment on other issues. They may have a strong emotional bond to a community that mistrusts vaccines, and they may tend to let emotions outweigh facts. They may have been persuaded by the so-called “evidence” and the myths promulgated by anti-vaccine activists and untrustworthy anti-vaccine scientists. Even some doctors and scientists are unable to distinguish between misleading anti-vaccine claims and good science.

Vaccine skeptics want what we all want: to keep our children safe. We mustn’t blame them or insult them for their concerns about vaccines. But we can give them accurate information to counteract the myths. Every objection to vaccines has been answered and thoroughly demolished by reputable doctors and scientists, but some people may not have seen the answers or may not trust them. I’ve only hit some of the highlights here. Many more details can be found in the Australian government publication “Myths and Realities: Responding to Arguments against Vaccination.” It’s an invaluable, exhaustive reference for anyone who has concerns about vaccines or wants to reassure others who have concerns.

I’ve been advocating for many years about the importance of getting out from behind your computer and attending skeptic conferences. Even if it is just a Skeptic’s in the Pub (SitP) event or a lecture … GO. This interview with the European Skeptics Podcast is an example of what can happen when you venture out and meet others who share the same passion and worldview.

András Pintér was involved in the formation of the Hungarian Skeptic Society. He has participated in many European skeptic conferences (his first was TAM London). He lectures and is often interviewed by Hungarian media on topics related to skepticism. He is a member of the GSoW Wikipedia editing team and currently lives in Brighton, England. His Twitter handle is @skepman.

Jelena Levin joined the GSoW project after hearing an interview I gave on the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe podcast. She grew up in Riga, Latvia, and now lives in England. She attended her first skeptic conference, QED, in 2014 and was hooked. Now she is a regular attendee of lectures and conferences nearby. You can find her on Twitter @JelenaLevin.

Pontus Böckman became involved in skepticism in 2010 and is now involved as the president of the local south branch of the national Swedish Skeptics Society (“Vetenskap och Folkbildning” or VoF). He lives in Malmö in the south of Sweden. He’s on Twitter @Bockmanp.

Gerbic: What motivated you all to create another podcast? What unique quality do you bring to the community?

Böckman: There are so many initiatives and wonderful skeptics all over Europe that go unnoticed, mainly due to language barriers and that their country may not be on everyone’s mind. We wanted to bring that to the world’s attention. Another thing is that a lot of CAM [complementary alternative medicine] and scams are truly international, and if we just get in contact across the borders we can combat them together and learn from each other.

Levin: András came up with this idea a long time ago. He had been looking for people to do the podcast with. At the last European Skeptics Congress in London in 2015, I, Pontus, and András were hanging out together, and he offered to do the podcast with us. I thought it was a great idea; I thought, even though there are a lot of podcasts out there not many concentrate specifically on Europe and what is going on here as well as on bringing different European skeptic organizations together. I think we all in different ways bring our own personality and cultural background and knowledge to the table (in the context of the podcast and the skeptic community at large).

Pintér: Well, we were at the 16th European Skeptics Congress in London, when we started chatting about how little we knew of what was going on in other countries in the realm of skepticism and that the only thing we had to bring us together was this bi-annual conference, plus the yearly QED events in Manchester. Then the idea of doing a podcast that focuses on skeptical activism across Europe came about. The next thing we knew, we had our first show out. It’s been nonstop ever since. What I consider a unique quality of our podcast is the truly European focus. Although there are those who do give room for some coverage of what’s going on here (praise be to Richard Saunders and The Skeptic Zone for being a great example), most of what we see is focused on the US, UK, and Australia, as a result of which the community is missing out on some brilliant activism in countries where people don’t speak English as a first language. We try our best to provide a better picture of what people do in Europe. Occasionally, we have guests from outside the continent, like you, Susan, but every interviewee’s work holds some relevance to European activism.

Gerbic: You have been very open about wanting feedback as you progressed in the growth of the show. I’m impressed how responsive you have been. On alternate weeks, you release an interview with a person from Europe or someone who has a project that affects Europe. And the next week you focus on news and topics from the world of skepticism focusing on Europe. Personally, I have learned a lot from your interviews about people and projects I’ve never heard of before. What have been your favorite interviews?

Böckman: We have had many great names from all around Europe on the show, like Simon Singh, Edzard Ernst, and Massimo Polidoro to name a few. And from outside Europe too. I must admit I was quite star struck when we had James Randi on over Skype. I also got to conduct a long interview with Jay Novella in person when he visited Sweden; that was amazing. That is a fantastic quality of the skeptics movement: everybody is so supportive and generous with their time, no matter how prominent they are. But perhaps it’s even more gratifying to interview lesser known people, the ones who work their butts off without much recognition. If we can help them to get noticed and perhaps in that way help them to do what they’re doing, that feels really good.

Levin: First of all, I think all our interviews are very interesting and engaging. I learn so much every time we interview someone. One of the interviews that stands out especially is with the Amazing Randi. I was star struck of course. Also knowing how much he does for the skeptic community and how busy he is, I was humbled by the opportunity to talk to him. It was a very inspirational interview. And the other interview was with Diana Barbosa: I loved her enthusiasm, great spirit, and amazing work she does in Portugal within the skeptics movement. I had an opportunity to get to know her better over the past year as I had the pleasure of meeting her in person and spending time with her at the two different skeptic conferences. I feel very privileged to have this opportunity to talk to all these amazing people and get inspired by them.

Pintér: Yes, we do value feedback a lot as we don’t do this for our own amusement or to make sure we spend some time away from our families and friends, but to try and serve an audience and be useful as a source of information for our listeners and the international community of skeptics. That said, we have learned a lot from our interviews ourselves, but if you want to know which one my favorite was, I would say the one with James Randi for personal reasons (having considered him a hero for all my adult life). I do have concerns, though, that we overused his generosity with regards to his time, but we were like small children, I guess. That one was not about learning new stuff or finding out about some exciting project. The fact that we had the Amazing Randi on our show completely blew our minds. I’m pretty sure that is obvious when you listen to it. But apart from that interview, it would be difficult to point out one or even a few. I just love doing them because I admire these people for all the effort they make to try and educate people and make a difference in the world. Skeptics are my favorite kind of people. So, I do recommend you listen to all those interviews for the sake of getting to know these wonderful men and women and their brilliant projects. And let yourself be inspired by them. Because the more of us actually take on a task and do something, the further we get with our movement.

Gerbic: Pontus, you do a segment called “Really Wrong” about a person or group that excels in getting information wrong. How do you manage to choose only one single topic each week? I would think that there would be an overwhelming number of choices. I also think I remember you giving the “award” a couple times to someone who was “really right.”

Böckman: There is much to choose from, and another challenge is to research a story when it is in languages I do not know or just barely understand. Thankfully now we have built up such a network of local people that I can always find someone to contact for clarification and verification, because I don’t want to falsely ridicule or accuse someone. I want to make sure they deserve it.

But I also enjoy handing out a “Really Right” prize once in a while, not to be too negative. My favorite Really Right story so far is about the two young ladies in Ireland, Courtney Robinson and Lucy Simpson, who in public, and quite legally, circumvented the Irish abortion pill ban by ordering pills from the Republic of Ireland. They had them flown over the border into Northern Ireland by drone and then swallowed them in front of the press and the police. The police could not do anything about it because they exploited loopholes in the legislation; it was just hilarious. That’s a much more uplifting story than some quack swindling desperate cancer victims.

Gerbic: Jelena, one of your contributions is to talk about one person from the science community historically associated with the week you are recording. As a lover in history, this is one of my favorite segments. It feels like I’m getting the Jelena version of a Wikipedia page about someone I’ve probably not heard of before. What have you learned about this part of the project?

Levin: I love this part, as every time I research a person or an event it’s like a little adventure. Whenever I do my research and I find some famous person (like a scientist) who could be good for the segment I always look to see if there is anything in this person’s life that has a relationship to skepticism. And often there is a lot of interesting information to be discovered about people we know well; some facts are less known and can be very surprising. Like with one of my segments when I talked about Isaac Newton who, among other things, believed in God and even predicted the end of times. Who would have thought? Or that Arthur Conan Doyle believed in fairies and mediums. It is amazing how scientifically minded, logical people can compartmentalize different beliefs in their brains and live in a state of constant cognitive dissonance. But I guess we all do this to a certain extent, and it is just more proof that none of us is safe from biases, misconceptions, and false beliefs. We have to stay vigilant and try to change our opinions as evidence changes and follow the truth. Also, as part of preparing for this segment I have discovered a lot of great activists from Europe who I have never heard of but who had enormous influence on the skeptics movement.

Gerbic: András, I believe that this was your idea to form a European podcast? You were heavily influenced by several podcasts I believe. What is the best advice you can give to others thinking they might also want to start a podcast?

Pintér: Yes, I’m afraid I have to take the blame for coming up with this idea. And I have to say I’d had no idea what we were getting into. Now I know… It’s a huge commitment. You need the equipment, you need to dedicate a lot of time to research and record the shows, and then you have to be (more or less) consistent with the release dates of subsequent episodes. And then there’s the website, the Facebook page, the Twitter feed, and you still have to live your life and do your job that pays the bills. Oh, and after all that work is done, you still don’t know if there’s going to be people interested in your show. So, my advice? Well, first of all, know why you do it and don’t expect your podcast to be a hit. Especially if you do it for a relatively small community that already follows a myriad of shows. That modest attitude will help you get through the moments of doubt when you don’t see it as a success. Don’t get overwhelmed; allow yourself some time to produce the show the way you want it. And be ready to make sacrifices. Because there will surely be some. Also, if English is not your first language, do consider running a show for your own people. No matter how good your English is, it’ll still be a challenge to discuss topics and keep the show going smoothly while you’re looking for the right word to express yourself. Moreover, your contribution is probably much more important in your own country, where you might be the only one providing that kind of content. But the reason we (TheESP) had to do it in English is that we try to bring all those skeptics together, speaking different languages, representing lots of countries. And English is the common language we all speak at some level.

Gerbic: It’s been eye-opening to listen to your seventy-five-plus podcasts. I had no idea that there was this much activity happening with European skeptic groups. Here in the United States, I’m starting to come to the conclusion that organized skepticism is dying out, especially anything to do with activism. I’ve learned from your podcast (and the Skeptic Zone from Australia) that in some parts of the world some people are still active. I’m really interested in your thoughts about my statement?

Böckman: I’m not sure about the US, but I feel that skepticism in Europe is thriving and that activism is booming. Look at the Good Thinking Society, for instance, that delivers blow after blow against homeopathy and lately has gotten the UK Charities Commission to oversee the rules for charities that are used to promote quackery. And there are so many skeptical conferences this year in Bulgaria, Italy, Poland, the UK, and more. I wish I could go to them all!

Levin: I think sometimes people do get disengaged from the activism and retreat into their own lives for one reason or the other because sometimes it is an easier and more convenient thing to do than keep fighting and protesting and arguing, but I think that very often we find ourselves in somewhat of a bubble and one must step outside one’s bubble to see what is really going on in the world. I choose to remain positive about humanity and skepticism and the movement (although sometimes it is hard). There are still a lot of people out there doing a lot of good work. One particular person comes to mind, Britt Hermes (she was on our show once), an amazing activist, former naturopath, who is now fighting to debunk pseudoscience left, right, and center. I am sure America is full of these kinds of people. I am not 100% convinced that skeptics can be organized. I am sure you heard this phrase before: it can be like herding cats. But when we come together for an event like QED [a fantastic conference in Manchester “Question Explore Discover”], I can see that now and again likeminded people do come together to get inspired and learn from each other. And there are similar events all over the world. America has got its fair share of these events I am sure. Although you might argue that skeptic events are not quite the same as activism, attending one of these events is the reason why our podcast exists.

Pintér: Well, as American people usually don’t have much of an idea of what’s going on in Europe (apart from the UK), we don’t know much about the grassroots activism going on in the US either. We see what’s on display, which is pretty much the surface only, I guess. So, I wouldn’t want to draw any conclusions based on what I can see. With European skepticism, we are in a special situation. There are lots of relatively small countries and a few large ones all being ethnically different and yet living alongside one another, forming a special kind of alliance. Most of us are members of the EU, where European level legislation is happening and the directives emerging out of that can affect us all, examples of that being GMOs, homeopathy, or vaccination, to mention only a few. And although our focus is different from country to country, there are topics that are of common interest and need to be discussed with science in mind in order for all of us to move in the right direction. So, we need to make our voices heard. That requires coordination. And, weirdly, we have a common language of communication, English, that is only the second language for most of us. There are countries where that’s not a problem for 90% of the population, but there are still those where people would find following stuff in English too much of an effort. And of course, that has an effect on our reach and also makes it more difficult to coordinate our actions as European Skeptics. However, there are some positive signs lately that make me optimistic about future cooperation.

Gerbic: In my opinion, even with a great idea or mission behind a project, without the personality to keep it on track and people motivated the project fails. I seem to see this in the community so much lately. What keeps you three from burning out?

Böckman: Of course it can feel tough sometimes, but it is just so much fun doing the podcast and keeping in touch with other groups! And the three of us, mind you we didn’t know each other very well to begin with, but we have a great time recording the show. We put some of the funny banter in the outtakes to let people get a glimpse of that.

Levin: Andras :). And also the desire to learn and explore and make a difference and be challenged. Sometimes it feels like all this is for nothing, but now and again I see a comment on our latest episode or someone sends in a nice email and you just want to keep going. It is an adventure we are on together. But also, I think a big part of it is the fact that we are friends and I think (although I am only talking for myself) we like each other’s company and we like getting together once a week to chat with each other or to interview an interesting person.

Pintér: There are several things. The diversity of issues and the cultures they emerge in will keep you busy trying to find out as much as possible about them and trying to own the topics. Getting to know the most interesting people there are out there through the interviews is another thing. I just love this. These men and women inspire by example. But there is also the feedback that can be very uplifting, coming from the community that we try to serve. Of course we welcome criticism, but nothing compares to when people get in touch praising the show for being so unique in approach, expressing their amazement over how much activism is going on across the continent. That gives you a certain sense of accomplishment.

Gerbic: You keep up a European calendar with skeptic events all over Europe. That must be a challenge to keep updated. Tell me what you have learned about these groups and their activities.

Böckman: There are very good resources out there to find the events, and people often contact us and ask us to add events we have missed. I’m sure there are even more that goes under the radar, but even so on a typical week we have over a dozen events in the calendar, Skeptics in the Pub and other things. To me one main purpose of the calendar is to show how much is going on. You would not realistically decide to go from your local town in Denmark to Delft in the Netherlands because of a Skeptics in the Pub on a Tuesday evening. But it’s my belief that seeing how much is going on may encourage you to do something locally instead. And then we will put that in the calendar too, and that will inspire even more events. It is also a great resource to find other skeptics in other places just by looking for the organizers.

Pintér: It is indeed a challenge. You can’t comb through every website for those pieces of information every week hoping to find something. There are a couple of sources that we regularly check, but thankfully, there is a growing number of emails we get from listeners advising us of events they organize or know of. About what we’ve learned: first of all, some of them we had never heard of before we started this. Everyone knows Skeptics in the Pub is a big thing in the UK. But now we also know there is a huge event that happens regularly in Sofia, Bulgaria, there are lots of local groups of GWUP, the German skeptics, hosting regular pub talks. And we’ve also learned that in the last six years or so, there have been 600 events, big and small, across Spain hosted by either one of the large national organizations or local groups. How cool is that?

Gerbic: I know your theme song is from George Hrab and someone named Keisha. When I interviewed George he told me that Keisha won the chance to write this song with him at one of the conferences. It is so catchy I find myself humming it for a couple days after listening to your podcast.

Levin: I love the choice of this song for our podcast. I think Pontus found it one day and we were all like: Hell yeah! Could not have been more perfect. “I don’t know how you can believe…”

Böckman: Her name is Keisha J. Gray, and the song is called “Guess Which One,” although James Randi just called it “Song for Skeptics” when it premiered at TAM in 2009. George and Keisha’s performance from is available on YouTube. They later made a studio recording that Geo was kind enough to share with us, and they both were so generous to let us use it in the show. It’s a great song! It’s a pity it’s never been officially released.

Gerbic: Although you are a European podcast I assume that you have listeners from outside Europe. What are the demographics for your listeners? Anything surprise you?

Böckman: Actually, we have a big share of downloads outside Europe, like in the US and in Australia, which could be seen as surprising for a podcast with “European” in the title. I’m glad our content is appreciated outside Europe too. We always hoped it would be, and many of our topics are of course of global interest. It can also be noted that Russia is in sixth place, and it makes me feel good to know that people are also skeptical in the land of Putin!

Levin: A lot of the listeners are from America (like half of all the listeners), and a lot of them from the UK. I don’t find it surprising as we do broadcast in English. Also, I think podcast listening is not yet very widespread in all of the European countries but is very popular in the UK and America. So people are more aware of the concept of listening to podcasts there. We don't have a detailed breakdown of our demographic; we can only go by IP address when people download the podcast, but this is the info we have so far. There was a surge in Russian listeners at some point, but this seems to have died down (Putin propaganda won and they not interested).

Pintér: Actually, about one quarter of our overall downloads are from the US, then approximately half of that from the UK and the rest is spread across a lot of other countries, among which the most downloads occur in Sweden, Australia, Germany, Russia, Norway, the Netherlands, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Portugal, Belgium, Hungary, and Switzerland.

Gerbic: I’m a giant “ra-ra” supporter of skeptic conferences. Pontus had been a Facebook friend of mine for some time and András and Jelena were GSoW editors though you hadn’t met each other yet. I spoke at QED in 2014 and András and Pontus independently walked up to me when I arrived to introduce themselves. I said let’s go sit down and talk, and we ended up at a McDonalds in Manchester. I remember saying “Lets solve all the world’s problems while sitting here at the table. Who wants to start?” A couple hours later we all met Jelena. That was an amazing conference. I say that the first steps toward activism are to attend a skeptic gathering. I have a feeling you all would agree?

Böckman: Nothing beats meeting people in person. Oftentimes seeing the speakers and panels is only half the experience, and it’s only when you find new friends among the other attendees that the rubber hits the road and things start to happen! The ESP got started that way and you never know what can happen when you meet others who share your interests and passions.

Levin: Abso-effin-lutely! As I said it in one of my earlier answers, that conference for me lead to my activism. It is so inspiring to see all these people on stage and off stage talking about their activism and what they do. Also, you get to meet the speakers and just chat with them like you would with a friend and ask them questions. And there is nothing that can replace this experience. I will never forget when I said to you, Susan, I want to meet Nate Phelps (he was one of the speakers at the 2014 QED). And you were like, “Lets go, I’ll introduce you.” It was so exciting. I love Nate. He is one of the most wonderful human beings I have ever met and his talk at the QED conference was absolutely heartbreaking and inspiring and educational all at the same time. And I got to meet him, in person, and now I get to call him my friend. Unbelievable! And this is what a conference like that can do to you. So get out there and see people, hear talks, ask questions, hang out. Be curious, be interested, be inspired! Hmmm… that could be a slogan for QED. Although their name is already a slogan. Better save this one for myself for later. But even if you don’t get to meet the speakers there are so many fascinating people who attend the conference, who you can talk to and explore different options and challenge each other’s views. It’s great fun all around.

Pintér: Totally agree. The first step is always realizing that you’re not alone and there are others around you that you can share your frustrations, experiences, and wisdom with. Socializing with these people will make you comfortable and you’ll have a good network of contacts on your hands to start with when you want to take part. Then, there’s the step of organizing actual activism. That requires cooperation and planning. The rest is up to those being involved. Go and attend one or all of these conferences, people! You won’t regret it. And then, when you feel the urge to go and do something yourself, do not hesitate.

Gerbic: So, what’s next for the ESP?

Böckman: More conferences! All three of us will go to both the European Skeptics Congress in Poland in September and to QED in Manchester in October. We will do interviews all over the place and get to meet new and old friends. And record together in the same room again! That’s always special. If possible we may do a live recording in front of an audience! That would be a first for us.

Levin: More of the episodes. Keep going, keep having conversations, keep covering events and news from Europe, keep trying to bring skeptic organizations together and exchange experiences and learn from each other. We are very new at podcasting and we have so much to learn in terms of how to make it better. So we will keep doing what we do and improving.

Pintér: Oh, we have a lot of things on our minds. Plenty of interviews planned for starters. There are more topics and people we would like to have on the show than we can cope with at the moment. That said, we plan to start a YouTube channel and release the interviews as standalone material (once we can find time to do it). We are entertaining the idea of registering at QED 2017 with a live show on the podcast track of the conference, and doing a live episode online is also among our plans. We also are in contact with the European Council of Skeptical Organisations and we think we could cooperate along a couple of issues and act as a hub. After all, our motto is “building a bridge for skeptics.”