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

En un reciente artículo del New York Times, el pediatra Aaron Carroll nos pide repensar nuestros prejuicios contra los quiroprácticos en lo que se refiere a tratar espaldas en mal estado. Señala que el dolor lumbar es un problema común que usualmente se resuelve con el paso del tiempo, y que las intervenciones que se centran en el alivio de síntomas y permiten que el cuerpo se cure son ideales. Él sostiene que la terapia de manipulación espinal (TME) es tan efectiva como las terapias médicas, y también seguras o más seguras que ellas.

Hay una notable desconexión entre la evidencia anecdótica y los estudios científicos controlados. Los quiroprácticos y los pacientes están convencidos de que la TME funciona porque la han visto actuar. Yo también las he visto actuar. Observé un paciente renguear con dolor al entrar a la sala de exámenes, apenas capaces de caminar y quejándose de dolores insoportables. Unos pocos minutos después, luego de una manipulación espinal realizada por un terapista médico, se podía parar bien, caminar normalmente, diciendo que su dolor había sido completamente aliviado. Sin embargo, cuando se hicieron estudios científicos controlados, encontraron muy poca evidencia de su efectividad. Un estudio halló que la TME no era más efectiva que darle a un paciente un panfleto sobre el cuidado de la espalda. Una revisión sistemática encontró que la TME no era mejor que intervenciones simuladas. La revisión sistemática más favorable encontró un mejoramiento del dolor, pero solo de 10 puntos sobre una escala de 100. ¿Qué es lo que pasa aquí?

Sospecho que la explicación es que a veces la TME puede proveer alivio instantáneo, pero ello no se mantiene en el tiempo. Cuando los estudios apuntan a un resultado final luego de un período de tiempo, no se ve ninguna diferencia. No todos los pacientes responden, y no tenemos forma de predecir quién se beneficiará. El quiroprático escéptico San Homola solía decir a sus pacientes que no sabía si la manipulación los ayudaría, sino que él intentaría hacerlo en 3 visitas; si no había mejoría al tercer tratamiento, él se detendría.

Pensando en ello, creo que la TME es una opción razonable para saber si los pacientes si quieren tratar con una terapia en la que intervengan las manos en lugar de tomar píldoras. Esto podría proporcionar un alivio temporario. Pero honestamente no podría derivar un paciente a un quiropráctico. Déjenme explicar por qué.

En primer lugar, cuando la quiropraxia es efectiva, lo que es efectivo no es “quiropráctico!: es SMT (Terapia de Estimulación Espinal, TEE). La TEE también la ofrecen los terapeutas físicos y otros profesionales. Éstos se basan en la evidencia científica; la quiropraxia es una disciplina basada en un mito, el mito de la “subluxación” quiropráctica, o los huesos desalineados (estas supuestas “subluxaciones” no son visibles utilizando rayos X). Si yo pensara que un paciente podría beneficiarse con una determinada manipulación, lo derivaría a un profesional que se base en el conocimiento científico.

This article was originally available in English.
Click here to read it.

Si los pacientes son derivados a un quiropráctico para que le haga TEE porque tiene un dolor lumbar, existe la posibilidad de que asuma que todos los tratamientos quiroprácticos son efectivos, y volverán a consultar al quiropráctico para manipulaciones en el cuello, las cuales son usualmente ineficaces y conllevan un pequeño riesgo de apoplejía o muerte.

Mientras algunos quiroprácticos racionales como Sam Homola han tratado de limitar su práctica a tratamientos cortos sobre enfermedades musculoesqueléticas, un porcentaje sustancial de quiroprácticos afirman que la TME también funciona en el cólico del lactante, períodos dolorosos, asma, problemas gastrointestinales y más. Estos alegatos no están apoyados por ninguna evidencia científica confiable. Algunos quiroprácticos tratan de disuadir a los pacientes para que no se traten mediante la medicina convencional, incluso afirmando que están calificados para actuar como médicos de cabecera (en la familia). No lo son.

De acuerdo a sus propios estudios, menos de la mitad de los quiroprácticos apoyan la inmunización. Algunos incluso rechazan la teoría de los agentes biológicos patógemos de las enfermedades. Una vez, un quiropráctico me dijo que “los gérmenes no causan enfermedades; si lo hicieran, todos estaríamos muertos”. Él creía que los gérmenes no lo podían afectar mientras su espina dorsal estuviera alineada apropiadamente.

Entre un 37 a un 43 por ciento de los quiroprácticos estadounidenses informan haber usado kinesiología aplicada, procedimiento falso para examinar los músculos. Los quiroprácticos que no tienen buena formación científica son proclives a adoptar cualquier charlatanería que aparezca por ahí. Yo los llamo imanes charlatanescos. Por mencionar unos pocos de los muchísimos exámenes y tratamientos ofrecidos por algunos quiroprácticos, he aquí una lista: análisis de células vivas, tests de “deficiencia nutritiva” computarizados, iridiología, homeopatía, acupuntura, terapia de quelación, irrigación del colon, terapia craneosacral y la técnica de organización neural. Algunos quiroprácticos venden remedios homeopáticos y suplementos dietéticos. Otros ofrecen “ajustes de mantenimiento” inútiles y “ajustes preventivos”. Si usted elige un quiropráctico al azar, por la guía telefónica, hay grandes posibilidades de que dé con alguno que desaliente las inmunizaciones o lo lleve a alguna práctica proveniente de la charlatanería. Quackwatch y Chirobase ofrecen pistas para elegir a un quiropráctico. Básicamente, usted debería elegir aquel que:

• Rechaze la teoría de la subluxación
• No tome radiografías de la columna vertebral
• No use procedimientos o tests no probados científicamente
• No ofrezca ajustes o mantenimiento preventivos
• No promueva suplementos dietéticos no comprobados
• No simule ser un médico familiar
• No trata a niños pequeños
• No sea antagonista de la medicina científica
• No desaliente las inmunizaciones
• Que limite su práctica a tratamientos cortos de problemas musculoesqueléticos
• Sepa cuándo derivarlo

Conclusión: si un quiropráctico ofrece TEE para tratamientos a corto plazo de dolores musculoesqueléticos, podría ser capaz de ayudarlo, pero un terapeuta físico podría ayudarlo más. Si un quiropráctico le ofrece “ajustar sus subluxaciones” o tratar problemas en cualquier parte del cuerpo, es mejor que lo evite.

¡Buena suerte si trata de encontrar alguno con estos criterios! Yo no he podido encontrar ninguno en mis cercanías.

Contrariamente a lo que dice Carroll, la manipulación de la espina dorsal no es completamente inofensiva. Puede que los pacientes no cuenten voluntariamente al quiropráctico que han padecido efectos adversos, pero estudios meticulosos han demostrado que al menos en un tercio de los pacientes hay efectos secundarios que incluyen dolor, cansancio o jaquecas. Estos efectos usualmente son leves y duran poco, pero en un estudio, el 14 por ciento de los pacientes dijeron que su habilidad para trabajar había sido dañada. Se informó sobre serias consecuencias tales como huesos quebrados, daños vasculares y en la espina dorsal y discos con rupturas, aunque es cierto que éstos se dan raramente y son más comunes con la manipulación del cuello que con la de la zona lumbar.

El Dr. Carroll quiere que los médicos consulten a los quiroprácticos porque “el acercamiento ideal es tratar los síntomas y dejar que el cuerpo se cure. Las terapias no invasivas parecen dar resultado”. Estoy de acuerdo, aunque no veo que esa sea una razón para ver o elegir a un quiropráctico en lugar de un terapeuta físico para la TEM. He aquí un pensamiento innovador: ¿Qué pasa si dejamos que el cuerpo se cure sin tratar los síntomas? No necesitamos tratar todos los síntomas. Los síntomas de un resfrío pueden desaparecer en una semana con o sin tratamiento, y cualquier tratamiento que posea efectos para aliviar los síntomas es probable que tenga efectos secundarios. ¿Qué sucedería si el médico le asegurara al paciente que no hay nada grave, que solo se trata de un dolor de cintura que no durará mucho, y que una opción fuera tolerarlo antes que tratarlo? No sabemos qué causa el dolor lumbar pero sabemos que desaparece sin tratamiento alguno, y que la triste verdad es que ninguno de los tratamientos disponibles va a ser mejor. ¿Qué pasaría si los médicos proveyeran un consuelo, simpatía, cuidado y apoyo moral, y dieran a los pacientes la opción y la opción de tolerar el dolor y mantenerse físicamente activos mientras puedan soportarlo esperando que desaparezca? Si los pacientes insistieran en que el médico “haga algo”, éste podría sugerir algunas simples medidas confortables para tratar, mientras deja claro que ello no va a alterar el curso de la enfermedad. El médico podría aconsejarlos sobre cómo tolerar los síntomas más que tratar vanamente de abolirlos. Ello sería un acercamiento seguro y natural sin efectos secundarios y con un costo mínimo.

El Dr. Carroll nos pide que repensemos nuestros sesgos contra los quiroprácticos. Yo no tengo ningún sesgo hacia la TEM, aunque admito que sí lo tengo contra los quiroprácticos; y tengo buenas razones para ello. La quiropraxia y la osteopatía son sistemas médicos precientíficos basados en la terapia manual; las escuelas de osteopatía se adaptaron, y hoy proveen una educación equivalente a las de las escuelas de medicina. Las escuelas de quiropraxia no se adaptaron, y es difícil justificar la persistencia de la quiropraxia en el mundo actual, donde los terapeutas físicos pueden ofrecer la TEM sin el sinsentido que conlleva la pseudociencia de la quiropraxia. Carroll tendría que tener lectores advertidos sobre las posibles consecuencias de caer en las manos de un quiropráctico que acepta toda clase de disparates y va a causar más daños que beneficios.

Considerando los pros y contras de los quiroprácticos, recordemos que algunos de ellos son pros que saben usar las TEM apropiadamente, mientras que otros son contras que han adoptado toda clase de prácticas falsas. Sería irresponsable que Carroll abogara en favor de los tratamientos quiroprácticos sin aclarar esto. De hecho, ninguno de los argumentos que expone para apoyar la quiropraxia es válido; solamente apoyan las TEM. El New York Times le ha hecho un daño a sus lectores al publicar su artículo.

“Todo empezó una soleada mañana del año 1947: exactamente el 24 de junio”, dice Antonio Ribera en su libro Treinta años de ovnis (1982).¹ Con ligeras variaciones es lo que cuenta la mayoría de los ufólogos: que el caso de Kenneth Arnold, del que se cumplen 70 años, fue el causante de la fiebre de visitas extraterrestres que sufrimos en la segunda mitad del siglo XX y no sólo eso. “Al piloto civil norteamericano Kenneth Arnold le cabe la gloria bastante discutible de haber bautizado a las naves de los misteriosos señores del espacio. Fue Arnold, en efecto, quien creó el tan desdichado nombre de platillo volante”, escribe el mismo Ribera en El gran enigma de los platillos volantes (1966).² A raíz de su avistamiento se multiplicaron las apariciones de objetos extraños, primero en los cielos de Estados Unidos y después en los del resto del mundo, y el bautizo del nuevo fenómeno se debió a esa observación, pero los extraterrestres tardarían años en llegar.

Portada del primer número de la revista ‘Fate’, en el que Kenneth Arnold cuenta su avistamiento.

El 24 de junio de 1947, Kenneth Arnold, un vendedor de equipos de extinción de incendios, vio desde su avioneta nueve objetos en formación y a gran velocidad en las inmediaciones del monte Rainer (estado de Washington). Cuando al final de la jornada aterrizó en el aeropuerto de Pendleton (Oregón) y se lo comentó a amigos pilotos, le apuntaron que “podrían ser misiles guiados o algo nuevo”. “De hecho, varios expilotos del Ejército me informaron de que antes de entrar en combate en el extranjero les habían advertido de que podrían ver objetos de forma y diseño similares a los descritos por mí y me aseguraron que no estaba soñando ni volviéndome loco”, escribió meses después en la revista Fate.³ Uno de esos exmilitares, Sonny Robinson, creía que había visto algún tipo de nave experimental de Estados Unidos o de una potencia extranjera.

Arnold contó a la mañana siguiente la historia a dos periodistas del East Oregonian, Nolan Skiff y Bill Bequette. Les explicó, según mantuvo hasta su muerte en 1984, que los objetos «volaban erráticos, como una platillo si lo lanzas sobre el agua». Y el relato acabó en la primera página del East Oregonian del 25 de junio. “¡Imposible! Tal vez, pero ver es creer, dice un piloto”, rezaba el título. Explicaba en el segundo párrafo: “Él [Arnold] dijo haber visto a las 15 horas de ayer nueve aeronaves con forma de platillo que volaban en formación, muy brillantes –como si fueran de níquel– y a inmensa velocidad”.⁴ Uno de los reporteros, Bequette, mandó una versión de la información a la agencia AP, que la distribuyó entre sus afiliados, y los platillos volantes invadieron los periódicos y los cielos estadounidenses. No se sabe a ciencia cierta cuál de los reporteros convirtió en “aeronaves con forma de platillo” el “volaban erráticos, como un platillo si lo lanzas sobre el agua”, aunque siempre se ha achacado la autoría a Bequette; pero a partir de ese momento se empezaron a ver por todo Estados Unidos platillos volantes, aunque los objetos que Arnold había visto tenían más bien forma de bumerán o luna creciente. Fue tal el impacto de la noticia que a finales de junio se registraban en el país una docena de observaciones al día y, entre ese mes y julio, se dieron más de 850, con un pico el 6 y 7 de julio, con más de 150 casos diarios. El 8 de julio, el Ejército anunció que había recuperado un platillo volante estrellado en Roswell (Nuevo México), accidente que poco después desmintió y que ni entonces ni durante décadas fue tomado en serio por los propios ufólogos. Y el 1 de agosto dos oficiales de inteligencia de la Fuerza Aérea morían al estrellarse el bombardero B-25 en el que volvían a California de investigar un caso en el estado de Washington, el luego conocido como fraude de la isla Maury, en el que Arnold debutó como ufólogo por encargo del editor de ciencia ficción Raymond Palmer.

Armas secretas

En plena fiebre platillista, el astrofísico Lyman Spitzer, de la Universidad de Yale, auguraba el 6 de julio de 1947 en The New York Times que pronto “una pequeña luna con un telescopio para observaciones astronómicas podría dar vueltas alrededor de la Tierra” y la propulsión nuclear nos llevará hasta otros planetas.⁵ No descartaba que pudiera haber vida inteligente en Marte. “En ese caso, el conocimiento científico y la comprensión marciana de la naturaleza serían, por supuesto, mayores que los nuestros”. Creía que, de existir, los marcianos podrían habernos visitado, pero advertía de que, como no habrían dejado pruebas, “probablemente nadie creería a los pocos hombres que los hubieran visto”. En la información, no hay ni una mención a los platillos volantes, aunque ese mismo día el periódico publica dos noticias sobre ellos y, en una, el autor presenta la hipótesis extraterrestre como una opción más.

Gallup preguntó a principios de agosto a los estadounidenses si habían oído hablar de los platillos volantes y qué creían que eran. “Los resultados de la publicidad recibida por los discos habrían sido la respuesta a las oraciones de un agente de prensa. Nueve de cada diez estadounidenses han oído del fenómeno, del que se informó por primera vez el 25 de junio”, decía el estadístico George Gallup, quien destacaba que, frente a eso, “sólo la mitad de la población había oído hablar del Plan Marshall”, cuyas primeras ayudas habían llegado a Europa ocho meses antes.⁶ Uno de cada tres estadounidenses (33%) no tenía ni idea de lo que eran los platillos volantes; un tercio (29%) los achacaba a ilusiones ópticas, espejismos y la imaginación; un 15% creía que se trataba de algún tipo de arma secreta de su país; uno de cada diez (9%), de fraudes; y sólo el 1% temía que fueran armas secretas soviéticas. Los extraterrestres no aparecían como opción en la encuesta, por lo que no podemos descartar que algunos de los que tenían para los objetos “otras explicaciones” (9%) pensaran en visitantes de otros mundos.

Varios periódicos norteamericanos se hacían eco en noviembre de 1947 de un rumor que circulaba por Europa –y que The Gazette de Montreal llevó a su primera página– según el cual había documentos que demostraban que los platillos volantes eran ingenios desarrollados por científicos nazis en la España de Franco.⁷ La noticia, un invento de su autor o de alguna de sus fuentes, apuntaba a lo que se temía en instancias gubernamentales estadounidenses entonces: que los objetos fueran armas de una potencia extranjera. Es lo que preocupaba al teniente general Nathan Twining, jefe del Comando de Material Aéreo de las Fuerzas Aéreas del Ejército de Estados Unidos, cuando mandó el 23 de septiembre de 1947 a sus superiores un informe en el que sostiene que el fenómeno es real y baraja que sea producto de algún proyecto secreto de su país o que “alguna otra nación disponga de una forma de propulsión posiblemente nuclear”. Dos años después de las bombas de Hiroshima y Nagasaki, los militares estadounidenses investigan el fenómeno ante el temor de que suponga una amenaza para la seguridad nacional, algo que descarta el 21 de enero de 1953 el llamado Panel Robertson, del que forman parte, entre otros, el físico Luis Alvarez, el astrónomo (y décadas después ufólogo) Josef Allen Hynek y el astrofísico Thornton Page. Para entonces, en la calle los platillos volantes –la Fuerza Aérea los bautizará ese mismo año como ovnis– son ya para una parte de la población naves extraterrestres y hay quien asegura hasta haberse encontrado cara a cara con sus tripulantes. ¿Cómo se llega a eso?

Frank R. Paul ya dibujaba naves espaciales con forma de platillo volante en 1929.

A finales del siglo XIX, Percival Lowell ve canales en Marte y en la Tierra existe la convicción de que el planeta rojo es el hogar de una civilización avanzada agonizante por la falta de agua. En 1919, en El libro de los condenados, Charles Fort afirma que algunos objetos y luces que se veían en los cielos desde hacía décadas eran naves de otros mundos. Ese mismo año, Nikola Tesla, que en 1899 creía haber detectado señales de radio de Marte, muestra su entusiasmo por los conocimientos que puedan transmitirnos nuestros vecinos, aunque teme que, para cuando alcancemos el nivel de desarrollo necesario para contactar, sea demasiado tarde para ellos. En 1924 operadores de radio militares estadounidenses participan en una operación de escucha de señales procedentes de Marte, aprovechando un momento de máximo acercamiento entre los dos planetas. En noviembre 1929, Frank R. Paul lleva una nave espacial con forma de platillo a la portada de Science Wonder Stories, la revista de ciencia ficción dirigida entonces por Hugo Gernsback. Y, nueve años después, Orson Welles traslada a la radio La guerra de los mundos (1897) de H.G. Wells, y una parte de la población estadounidense –significativa, pero no tan grande como muchos creyeron después– vive una invasión marciana. El terreno está abonado para el mito, pero, aún así, como ya hemos visto, la identificación de los platillos volantes con naves de otros mundos no es inmediata.

Llegan los marcianos

Los alienígenas entrarán en escena tímidamente de la mano de Raymond A. Palmer, director de la revista Amazing Stories que había empezado a publicar en marzo de 1945 una increíble historia. Un soldador de Pensilvania, Richard Shaver, aseguraba que la Tierra había sido colonizada en el pasado por extraterrestres que luego la tuvieron que abandonar. Decía haber visitado los túneles subterráneos que quedaban como vestigio de aquella visita. Palmer dedicó todo el número de Amazing de junio de 1947 al que hoy se conoce como el misterio Shaver, un fraude que había disparado las ventas, pero a la vez indignaba a los aficionados a la ciencia ficción y a escritores como Isaac Asimov, que publicaba relatos en la revista. Cuando ese mismo mes aparecieron los platillos volantes, Palmer vinculó el fenómeno con las supuestas naves espaciales de los extraterrestres de Shaver. Los dueños de Amazing acabaron echándole y entonces creó Fate, una revista sobre fenómenos paranormales cuyo número inaugural dedicó, en la primavera de 1948, al avistamiento de Kenneth Arnold, que firmaba el artículo de portada, titulado “I did see the flying disks!”. En el primer número de Fate, el especialista en aeronáutica John Ross no creía que alguien como Arnold hubiera confundido una aeronave militar con un disco volante –en la revista se refieren a ellos así y como donuts– y decía que, si el empresario había visto lo que decía haber visto, “¡sería un tren de naves espaciales de otro planeta!”.⁸

El primer platillo volante del cine, de ‘Bruce Gentry: daredevil of the skies’ (1949).

El 10 de febrero de 1949 llega el primer platillo volante al cine, pero no desde otro mundo. Es un arma de un villano en Bruce Gentry, daredevil of the skies (Bruce Gentry, el temerario de los cielos), un serial de quince capítulos que se emite por entregas antes de las películas en las salas de cine. El héroe, Bruce Gentry, es un aviador curtido en las tiras cómicas de los periódicos; el malvado, El Grabador, un tipo llamado así porque transmite sus órdenes mediante cintas grabadas, que quiere conquistar el mundo con sus platillos volantes. Ese origen terrestre de las misteriosas naves encaja con lo que todavía creen los estadounidenses, cuyas miradas se dirigirán a otros mundos a partir de enero de 1950. Es entonces cuando Donald Keyhoe, un militar retirado, publica su libro The flying saucers are real, del que la revista True ofrece un extracto con el mismo título en el primer número del año, que llega a los quioscos el 26 de diciembre de 1949.

Keyhoe, que en 1956 fundará el Comité Nacional de Investigaciones sobre Fenómenos Aéreos (NICAP), una de las principales organizaciones ufológicas, establece en The flying saucers are real los principios básicos del credo ovni: los platillos volantes son de origen extraterrestre y el Gobierno estadounidense oculta información al respecto. “La Tierra ha estado bajo observación sistemática de otro planeta, o de otros planetas, desde hace al menos dos siglos”; esta vigilancia se ha intensificado desde la explosión de las primeras bombas atómicas, y “forma parte de un plan de exploración a largo plazo que continuará indefinidamente”, escribe.⁹ Hollywood exportará la idea al mundo.

Escena de ‘Ultimátum a la Tierra’ (1951), película que inspiró el movimiento ‘contractista’.

El 28 de septiembre de 1951 llega a los cines estadounidenses Ultimátum a la Tierra, una película basada en El amo ha muerto (1940), un cuento de Harry Bates sobre un visitante alienígena cuya nave ovoide aparece de repente en Washington. Para adaptarla a los tiempos, Robert Wise, el director, hace que el extraterrestre llegue a nuestro planeta a bordo de un platillo volante. Klaatu procede de Marte, es bien parecido y, tras aterrizar frente a la Casa Blanca, resulta herido por un disparo de un soldado nervioso. Emisario de la Confederación Galáctica, viene a advertirnos de que, si no abandonamos las armas nucleares, nuestros vecinos cósmicos nos destruirán. Un año después del estreno de Ultimátum a la Tierra, George Adamski, un cocinero de un puesto de hamburguesas, se encuentra en el desierto de California con el tripulante de un platillo volante llegado de Venus. Viste como Klaatu y le dice que nuestros vecinos del Sistema Solar están preocupados por las explosiones nucleares. Es la primera cita cara a cara con un visitante de otro mundo. A partir de ese momento, los platillos volantes serán naves extraterrestres y sus ocupantes, en la mayoría de los casos, muy parecidos a nosotros.

¿Qué vio Arnold el 24 de junio de 1947? Sólo podemos especular. En su día se habló de espejismos, nieve azotada por el viento y hasta meteoros. Lo más probable, según quienes han estudiado el caso con detalle, es que se tratara de una bandada de pelícanos. ¿Pero realmente importa?

Notas

1. Ribera, Antonio [1982]: Treinta años de ovnis. Editorial Plaza & Janés (Col. “Horizonte”, Nº 2). Barcelona. 38.
2. Ribera, Antonio [1966]: El gran enigma de los platillos volantes. Editorial Pomaire. Barcelona. 57.
3. Arnold, Kenneth [1948]: “I did see the flying disks!”. Fate (Chicago). Vol, 1, Nº 1 (primavera). 10-11.
4. Redacción [1947]: “Impossible! Maybe, but seeing’ is believin’, says flyer”. East Oregonian (Pendleton). 25 de junio.
5. Kaempffert, Waldemar [1947]: “Artificial moon may circle Earth”. The New York Times (Nueva York). 6 de julio.
6. Gallup, George [1947]: “9 out of 10 heard of flying saucers”. St. Petersburg Times (St. Petersburg). 15 de agosto.
7. Shapiro, Lionel [1947]: “‘Flying saucers’ traced to Franco; secret weapons made by Germans”. The Gazette (Montreal). 4 de noviembre.
8. Ross, John C. [1948]: “What were the ‘doughnuts’”. Amazing Stories (Chicago). Vol. 1, Nº 1. 17.
9. Keyhoe, Donald E. [1950]: The flying saucers are real. Fawcett Publications (Col. “Gold medal books”, Nº 107). Nueva York. 174.

Former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly is doing her best to establish herself as a hard-nosed journalist in recent interviews with Russian president Vladimir Putin and conspiracy peddler Alex Jones. Both shows were breathlessly hyped, and while Putin has spent decades conducting disinformation campaigns (and continues to do so; see my CSI Special Report “How Russian Conspiracies Taint Social Activist ‘News’”), Sunday night’s interview with Jones was the more controversial. This was due in part to Jones’s promotion of the conspiracy that the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, was a hoax.

The question of whether or not Kelly should have given Jones more of a platform for his blinkered views (or any legitimacy) is a fair one—and one she anticipated. In the program Kelly defended her decision at least partly on the grounds that Jones has some influence over the President of the United States. As I’ve noted in Skeptical Inquirer magazine and elsewhere (and in a PBS NewsHour segment), no modern politician has so successfully and routinely employed conspiracy theories as Donald Trump. Trump enjoys flirting with fringe and extremist elements including conspiracy theorists, and has appeared on Jones’s program. This is a legitimate concern, and Alex Jones, as the source of many of those conspiracies, is by extension useful to understand.

That being said, the Kelly interview generated more heat than light (or ratings, as I’ll touch on). I watched the first ten minutes of the interview—it was about as much as I could stomach—and it was exactly what I expected. Jones blustered and bluffed his way through the interview, blithely brushing aside self-evident contradictions and routinely resorting to the familiar tactic of “I’m not saying any of this is true... I’m just asking questions!” What, if anything, Jones really believes remains an uninteresting mystery and it’s unlikely the program changed any minds.

As it happens, Kelly’s interview with Jones more or less bombed. As Variety reported, “Megyn Kelly’s controversial interview with Alex Jones failed to rise above previous installments of Kelly’s new NBC News show in the Sunday overnight ratings. According to Nielsen data, the new installment of Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly averaged a 0.5 rating in adults 18–49 and 3.5 million viewers, airing at 7 p.m. The previous two episodes of the freshman news show have averaged a 0.7 and 4.9 million viewers. Kelly lost in the timeslot in both measures against both the U.S. Golf Open Championship (1.4, 6.1 million) on Fox and a rerun of America’s Funniest Home Videos (0.7, 3.7 million) on ABC. She tied with a rerun of 60 Minutes in the demo, but the CBS news magazine topped her in total viewers with 5.3 million.”

Yes, that’s right: More people watched a rerun of America’s Funniest Home Videos than Kelly’s much-hyped interview. So whether the interview helped or hurt Jones, it seems that few fewer people were interested in what Jones had to say than many people (and certainly NBC) thought. Which, overall, is a good thing—though it did raise the Sandy Hook issue all over again.

For skeptics it’s often a no-win situation: If we ignore whatever bogus claim (UFO, Bigfoot, ghosts, conspiracies) then what happens is that believers say to themselves: “There must be something to it... I don’t see anyone refuting their claims or answering their questions!” People will often assume that if they are not hearing a solid rebuttal that it’s not because scientists and skeptics think it’s too silly or evidence-free to bother with, but instead that they can’t or won’t address the claims—or because scientists “fear the paranormal” as a threat to the materialist worldview. Ideally, the best way to treat these people would be to ignore them, but in practice that’s often counter-productive.

The concern about indirectly promoting the very information skeptics are trying to combat is a valid one, and several methods have been devised to address the problem. A widely used online tool among skeptics is DoNotLink. Skeptic Tim Farley wrote about this on his Skeptical Software Tools blog: “The problem this tool solves is sort of an online skeptic variation of the Streisand Effect. When you critique a bad idea that has been posted on the web, you often start by linking to it. The link allows your readers to understand what you are debunking. In addition to allowing your readers to see the source, the link itself will become input to various algorithms such as Google PageRank, Facebook’s news feed algorithm and Twitter trends. But these algorithms share a crucial limitation – they all treat any reference to content as positive....To these algorithms, there’s nowhere to go but up. And so skeptical links literally send mixed signals out on the web. While you are telling all the humans, ‘This content is bad!’ your hyperlink is telling all the robots ‘This content is good!’”

As one of the most prominent skeptics to have written an article debunking part of the Newtown conspiracy, I have routinely been contacted by people about the topic since the event happened. Some are seemingly sincere, such as the man who asked me about claims regarding shooter Adam Lanza’s death certificate (see my column in the May/June 2013 issue of Skeptical Inquirer); several were hate mail and death threats; still others were conspiracy theorists who demanded the opportunity to “debate” me on the issue.

In fact soon after the Kelly interviewed aired, I got an email from someone who wrote, “I am hoping that you can help me in my search for the truth about Sandy Hook. I as a school administrator are [sic] going a different direction that I believe you would follow. Please help me because it is all about helping children and parents not questioning whether they died or not.” The email ended with “Lots of videos on you tube [sic] about this issue,” which was a giant red flag for me that the source of this person’s information likely contained fact-free smatterings of all caps and no shortage of exclamation points.

With all the diplomacy I could muster after only one cup of coffee, I politely declined his request to call him and debate the issue, after which I got a response refreshing in its clarity and brevity: “Coward and a Chickenshit.” As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. Skeptics can do our best to offer critical analysis of extraordinary claims and evidence-based alternative explanations, but conspiracy thinking is powerful indeed.

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 added three more workshops in the last two weeks.

• October 12, 2017: Birmingham Zoo, Birmingham, AL, presented by Kathy Fournier
• October 28, 2017: Illinois Science Teachers Association’s Annual Conference, Northern Illinois University, Dekalb IL, presented by Kathy von Hoeck
• October 30, 2017: Mississippi Science Teachers Association Annual Conference, Biloxi, MS, presented by Blake Touchet

Yes, it’s grief vampire Tyler Henry time again. Cosmopolitan Magazine released a 2:45 minute video of a reading given to one of their staff editors. And guess what? “The results were pretty crazy.” Well, according to Cosmopolitan that is. “Crazy” can mean different things to different people; I’m sure we are not going to agree, but let’s look at this short reading and see what we learn.

First, I should introduce you to Tyler Henry. He is a young psychic medium who was given a reality TV show on the E! Network called Hollywood Medium. He made his debut in January 2016 and has just been renewed for his third season. I have been writing about Henry since the beginning under the title “Operation Tater Tot.” Henry claims that he is unaware of who he will be reading and knows little of the celebrity world because he was raised in a small town outside of Fresno, California. Most skeptics believe that Henry is hot-reading his way through these readings. A hot-read means that he has the knowledge beforehand.

I have written extensively that from everything I have seen he is using cold-reading tactics. This means he is reacting to the person’s appearance and body language. Also, he is throwing out generalities that will apply to most people. All this is followed by video editors who will keep all the best parts of the reading and throw out the misses. The magic really happens in the editing room.

So, here we go: we are given a 2:45 minute video that begins with Tyler meeting a senior video producer for Cosmopolitan named Jason Ikeler. Ikeler is in his late twenties. He is a white male with glasses and a short trendy haircut wearing a light jacket over a plain white t-shirt. Ikeler has a nose piercing, no wedding ring, but he does have a black band on his right hand and tattoos on some of his fingers. He smiles often, showing off a dimple on his right cheek, and he nods attentively and seems careful to follow instructions. A very agreeable sort of fellow, trendy, and open to a psychic reading. All of these observations are important to a cold-reader. They guide the psychic.

First up, Ikeler hands Henry a black sweater as an object Henry will use to focus on. This tells us that Ikeler probably knew he would be participating in this reading. I doubt he carries this sweater (which we later learn is his dead grandfather’s) around with him, so he had to think about this, maybe even ask his mother for the sweater. How much of this could have been discussed at the workplace beforehand is not known, but it’s possible it was. It’s something that Henry’s handlers might have been able to ascertain ahead of time.

The first thing I want to point out is that this is a very short reading, or so it appears to be. Henry takes the sweater from Ikeler and then it looks like right away he “gets” the grandfather. What we don’t see is that there could be a cut between getting the sweater and Henry saying, “Immediately, I have to go to your Mom’s side of the family, not your Dad’s side of the family.” We don’t know if they have been talking for a while and Henry has already learned many things about Ikeler. The word immediately could have been used out of the context of what it seems to mean in this video.

A man comes through and something about generations and “Mom, Mom, Mom… has your maternal grandfather passed?” Ikeler confirms that he has. Henry talks about how this grandfather liked to smile and laugh and Ikeler says that he liked to laugh and was very jolly. But how many of our dead relatives did not laugh and smile? Or at least we have good memories of them doing so at one point. If Ikeler’s grandfather was someone who never smiled or laughed, then Henry could say that now he is on the “other side” he has found a sense of humor or Henry could say, “before he became a grandfather he was a very funny man.” There is always an out for a cold-reader.

Now here is the big hit. Henry asks, “Who is Ed?” Ikeler is stunned and says, “That’s his name.” Henry is also stunned, “You’re kidding!” he answers. I would be stunned too if a psychic did this to me and I felt like there was no way they could have known my maternal grandfather’s name. But wait, Henry didn’t say that Ikeler’s maternal grandfather was named Ed. He said, “Who is Ed?” Very different, isn’t it? Still it does appear odd, that is until you think how common the name Ed is and consider that Henry is not saying whether Ed is alive or dead. It is just a short name that could have applied to Edward, Edna, Eddie, or possibly a last name. Henry might have had knowledge of this name beforehand, or he might have been throwing out a common name in the hopes it would stick to someone, and he got lucky. Or maybe Ikeler’s grandfather is trying to contact his grandson. If so, then I’m sure he has some important wisdom to give to him…

Well, not so much. Ed wants to talk about the last six months of his life: how he was having problems with mobility, not walking well. Again, not much of a major hit as lots of people have mobility problems months before they die. We do learn from Ikeler that Ed is missing a leg.

Now another hit: “Do you know a Ryan that would be in the family?” Ikeler answers, “That would be my brother.” Again, Henry did not say “Ed is talking about your brother, Ryan.” Henry said “Do you know a Ryan… ?” Ryan is a very common name for men born in the eighties and nineties, and it was also a very common middle name, often teamed up with Christopher. Henry could be playing the odds and got lucky again, or possibly Ed is really chatting with Henry or there was knowledge beforehand.

Ikeler had already told Henry that his grandfather had lost a leg, and now Henry is talking about a story about a pirate and Captain Hook. Ikeler seems to remember his brother teasing their grandfather about being a pirate. That fits; I can easily see a fun grandfather joking with his grandsons about being a pirate. And remember, Ikeler only thinks he remembers his brother telling this story. Then Ed goes on to tell his grandson that he wasn’t conscious when he passed and that everything is okay. Henry asked who the sweater belonged to, and Ikeler said, “my grandfather.” It’s not clear if he is referring to Ed and not to his other grandfather.

Then that was all.

So, we are left with several questions. Could this have been a much longer sitting with lots of misses and lots of chances for Henry to grill Ikeler for information? Possibly. Could Henry have learned who Ikeler wanted to hear from and who the sweater belonged to? We don’t really know. I’m sure the Hollywood Medium people would say that there was no connection between the two of them. Possibly not, but there are a lot of people wandering around working for both sides: makeup, hair, setting, lighting and so much more. All it would have taken would be for one assistant to have asked another assistant, “So who is this guy who is getting the reading today, and who does he want to hear from?” Both Cosmopolitan and Hollywood Medium are on the same page about wanting a really great reading with strong hits. There is a lot of pressure to make a good show. This is entertainment after all, not a show to catch a psychic faking a reading. If it had been a flop and Henry had not connected to anyone, then it would not have aired. We only see the successes. No testing is going on here. No controls are set up. Off-camera they could be sitting together discussing Ikeler’s family history; we just don’t know.

Or maybe it’s possible that Tyler Henry really is in touch with dead people. Why they would want to pass on messages like these I’m really not sure. Why not something more important such as advice for his grandsons and other family members? What’s it like on the other side? And why isn’t Henry clearing up cold-case files for the police? Don’t those grieving family members deserve a little comfort in finding lost loved ones? The only messages Henry can give is a mention of a pirate from a one-legged jolly grandfather?

I know I’m going to appear cynical. It’s obvious of these three possibilities that I’m leaning heavily toward this being a hot-read. For whatever reason, maybe as a joke on Ikeler or in order to get a great reading or because someone in the psychic camp overheard something in the Cosmopolitan camp, I’m betting that there is no communication with the dead. After this reading, I Googled Jason Ikeler and found that he is quite prolific with his writing and social media. Twitter, Instagram, IMDb, Tumblr, and more. His personal website shows his birthdate and where he was born, and while Henry didn’t mention these things on a reading, it does show that Ikeler isn’t private with his personal information. Possibly he or someone around him could have talked about his grandfather. One thing I noticed is that Ikeler is a “reality television producer currently living in Los Angeles.” That sounds familiar. Isn’t Hollywood Medium a reality television show in LA? I wonder if someone who knows Ikeler arranged this reading. Looking through Ikeler’s Instagram page, it is clear that he is really into celebrities; he both interviews and reports on them. I wonder: Have any appeared on Hollywood Medium?

And brother Ryan Ikeler, who is on Facebook, is also a very public person. With a bit of scrolling I find a post in 2016 with photos of a smiling, one-legged grandfather and a mention of how much Ryan misses him. These same photos we later see on the video.

So where do we go with this? There were some really powerful hits, with the names of Ed and Ryan, that sound like there might be some communication going on. But we need to use common sense; what is more likely? That this sitting was arranged between reality TV people and leakage happened, either intended or accidental? Could it be good guessing, with Ed and Ryan thrown out as common names and they got hits as family members and the rest of the sitting was carefully edited out? Or Is the Hollywood Medium really communicating with the dead? Personally, I think that the first option is most likely. Both Cosmopolitan and the E! Network have vested interests in producing this video with a strong message of “WOW! Watch this AMAZING video!” yet they need to make it look really natural. Cynical as it might sound, follow the money and you won’t be far off with your conclusion.

Ghost hunters absolutely love their gadgets. Simple observations show that technology attracts ghost hunters like moths to the blue glow of a bug zapper. It’s the “sciencey” aspect of it; gadgets make it look like one is being all scientific, with blinking lights and noises that reach excited peaks. Sadly, the majority of gadgets that are being used by ghost hunting teams are about as useful as a car muffler in the shower. In other words, they are completely useless. But that doesn’t stop groups from adapting any and every piece of cool tech to the cause of “proving” ghosts float among us.

In the past couple of years, I’ve noticed a new addition to the ghost hunting arsenal—the Xbox Kinect. Paranormal teams were plugging them into laptop computers and claiming the devices were able to track spirit entities that happened to appear in a room that was being monitored. As of this writing, portable versions of the device—basically a Kinect, a power source, and a tablet on a handle—have become extremely popular with paranormalists due to the freedom they provide and their various appearances on popular TV shows.

What is the reason behind this? Why do paranormalists get excited about this device? Well, it seems to have followed in the “footsteps” of the Ouija Board by gaining a reputation based on a movie. In October of 2012, the film Paranormal Activity 4 was released and gave the ghost hunting community the idea that the Kinect could “see” ghosts, spirits, demons, etc. Just as with other paranormal gadgets, the idea was based on an unsupported belief (and fiction); the Kinect uses infrared light (paranormalists believe ghosts can be seen with this), and it produces dots much like the laser grid (also known as a “Shadow Detector”). To paranormalists, it was a natural addition to their pile of Pelican Cases.

The infrared speckle pattern that is spread out onto the playing area.

However, the paranormalists using the Kinect were not getting the creepy alien-like figures portrayed in Paranormal Activity; instead they were getting random “skeletons.” More like stick figures, these “skeletons” are how the Kinect identifies what it thinks is a player (human) entering the playing area. When paranormalists began seeing these skeletons appear in empty rooms—in what they believed were haunted houses—they immediately came to the conclusion that they were capturing ghosts. This is an irrational conclusion that I have observed dozens of times and have been told about (by paranormalists) dozens more. Why don’t these paranormal groups ever test their equipment in “non-haunted” locations? False positives can happen anywhere with these pieces of equipment, and honestly, false positives are what drive the para-gadget industry.

So, are they really “capturing” ghosts with this device? To answer that, we must first understand how the Kinect works. This is something that is most often overlooked by paranormalists in their over-eager race to use the “latest technology” and land the next annoying paranormal TV show. We’re not going to rush; we’re going to learn a few things—knowledge is key.

The Xbox Kinect (for Xbox 360) was launched on November 4, 2010, (in North America) to the delight of video game geeks everywhere. It allowed players to put down the controller, get their butts off the couch, and reach a level of emersion within their games like never before. The Kinect packed a lot of technology into a small, cheap package.

The Kinect comes in a sleek black bar, measuring 2.8” x 11” x 2.8”, weighing in at 1.3 pounds. Housed within the bar is an RGB (Red, Green, Blue) camera used for video chatting, which has a standard resolution of 640x480 at 30 frames per second¹ (Wilson 2010), a monochrome infrared depth sensor, an infrared light emitter, and four microphones. It has a power/USB cable that allows connection to the Xbox game console or any computer with a USB port.

The Kinect plugged into my laptop. It has assigned two distorted stick figures to my entertainment center and archway yet has ignored me standing there.

The process behind the motion sensing ability of the Kinect is a complicated one, but I’ll do my best to break it down. There are two main components that make this happen—software (casually referred to as “the brain”) and hardware. Working together, they produce some pretty cool results.

The Kinect has an infrared (IR) emitter that projects a speckle (as in dots) pattern of IR light into the playing area (room), which can be seen by IR cameras. This speckle pattern is not random; the software knows where each dot is within the pattern. An infrared depth sensor containing a CMOS sensor takes a look at the speckles reflected off of the various objects in the room and measures something called “time of flight”—the time it takes for the IR light to travel from the emitter, reflect off an object, and return to the depth sensor. This gives the Kinect the ability to know where an object is in space (Cong and Winters 2017).

In addition, there is more information encoded within the infrared light of the speckle pattern. When the light returns to the depth sensor, some of it is deformed by the various angles of the objects within a room, including the players. When the angles change due to a player moving forward, backward, right, left, up, or down, the speckle angle of reflection is changed as well. The technology and software of the Kinect can use these subtle or drastic deformations of light to calculate an object’s depth to within 1 cm and their height to within 3 mm (Carmody 2010). This is how the Kinect builds its 3D view of the room and tracks a player’s movements within it.

Both processes—reading the time of flight and reading the angle deformation—are done thirty times a second while tracking forty-eight different points of the human body, such as the head, torso, arms, elbows, hips, knees, and feet (Cong and Winters 2017).

So how does it see people and distinguish them from other objects? Well, that took a ton of work and started with millions of images of everyday people. Developers went into homes all over the world (seriously, they did) and gathered images that represented people of different heights, weights, genders, body types, clothing styles, hair styles, ages, and more. And they had to get images of each of these types in various poses in order to for the Kinect to recognize “real-life” scenarios, i.e., how people really move rather than how programmers think they move. Programmers then had to go into each frame and label every body part (Duffy 2010; Crawford 2010).

In addition, professional motion-capture video was also collected and incorporated into the required data (Duffy 2010). All of this information—literally millions of images and seconds of motion-capture video—was fed into a machine-learning algorithm developed by Jamie Shotton, a researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge in England. The data are mapped to the various types of the human form and “teach” the system how to recognize joints and skeletal movements.

A full stick figure is assigned to my lower half, while another stick figure has been assigned to my entertainment center.

As you, the player, stand in front of the Kinect, the speckle pattern reflecting off of you allows the Kinect to calculate the distances to different parts of your body. This creates what is called a “point cloud,” which looks much like those pin frame toys that we push our hand or face into to create a 3D image from the metal pins. Based on the millions of reference images and video it has, the “brain” (the software) guesses which parts of your body are the arms, legs, head, etc. That’s right, I said “guesses.” Since it is comparing your figure and pose with references, accuracy depends on how close the two match.

The software then applies a wire “skeleton” to you (the player), based on reference images and video, probabilities assigned to various areas of the body, formal kinematics (mechanics concerned with the motion of objects without reference to the forces that cause the motion), and guessing. Yes, the software can make assumptions on where it thinks a hidden body part (say, an arm that is swung behind the player) is or the path of travel an appendage might take (Crawford 2010).  

The result of this is a wire frame that, in the game system, eventually gets layered with skin, clothes, armor, weapons, etc., and displayed in your favorite game in glorious HD. Thirty times every second the Kinect performs this process, frame-by-frame, sending the most likely skeletal structure to the gaming system. This all takes just a few milliseconds to accomplish. It truly is some amazing technology.

Ok, so that’s the break down of how the Xbox Kinect works. How does this apply to the mysterious and often freaky-looking stick figures that ghost hunters are capturing?

The first mistake is the most common one that I see ghost hunters make: they simply don’t test the equipment they put so much faith in. They see an anomaly that they cannot explain, and rather than investigating what might be the cause, they settle on the conclusion that it must be paranormal. This is, has been, and always will be bullshit.

The most common claim I see is that ghost hunters are seeing stick figures suddenly appear on the screen. These figures seem to interact with a living person that moves toward them, perhaps extending a hand to “touch” the figure, which seems to react—either by moving away or seeming to be reaching out. The final conclusion is usually that these figures are ghosts.

My first objective was to see this for myself and not just on YouTube videos. I wanted to go out to a location with a group that was using one of these things and see what was going on. Luckily, as I was working on this project, a friend (and ghost hunter) contacted me about this topic. Matt Hass invited me out with his group in order to observe the Kinect in use under the conditions that most ghost hunters were using. So, in the basement of an old mansion, we set up the Kinect and pointed it toward a room that had some shelves, an old sink, and some packed trash bags. One of the bags had a stick figure on it. We sat and watched it for a little over ten minutes doing nothing more than wiggling its “arms” and “legs” until we moved the trash bag. Poof—it disappeared. We got it to come back by moving the trash bag around until the stick figure popped back on screen. We also turned the Kinect to face the stucco wall two feet in front of it. Guess what? We got a stick figure there too.

Over the course of several weeks I watched (so you wouldn’t have to) over 200 videos that claimed to have caught a ghost using the Kinect.² I found several common factors throughout all of them.

1. The stick figures usually resemble something out of a horror/monster/alien movie with appendages coming from weird angles. Many seem to have extra joints and severely deformed limbs that are either too short or elongated (think of the “open arms” alien from Close Encounter of the Third Kind).
2. The stick figures remain locked in one place. They move the “limbs” about like a dancing queen, but the body does not move about the scene; it is locked in one spot. In a few cases, the “torso” stick would shift slightly to one side, but then return locked to a specific item (see next point). I have yet to see one of these stick figure ghosts casually walk across the scene as the living people do.
3. There is an object that the stick figure is locked to. The object most often the cause is a couch/sofa. Other objects include (but are not limited to) chairs, jackets hung over chairs, potted plants, water heaters, camera bags, vacuum cleaners, tripods, pillows, pedestal fans, curtains, and even part of an actual person (when the entire body of the person cannot be seen). I’ve posted several of my own videos showing stick figures on a vacuum cleaner, a jacket, and a camera bag.
4. There were a few times when a stick figure would disappear and another would appear in a different location in the scene. The reaction of the ghost hunters was that it was the same entity and it simply moved, blinking out and in style. This most often occurred when another player (investigator) walked into the scene. Other times (not as often) it was due to the Kinect locking onto another object and assigning a stick figure to it.

All of these can be traced back to a common source—user error. It is not a glitch in the system (as originally designed) because it is working as it was designed to do. These false positives are due to ghost hunters ignoring how the device was intended to be used and ignoring the recommendations set forth by the manufacturer that would seriously lower the likelihood of a stick figure being assigned to an inanimate object. Let’s look at a more in-depth explanation of this.

The Kinect was designed to be placed above or below a television “between 2 feet (0.6 m) and 6 feet (1.8 m) from the floor” for the Xbox 360, according to Microsoft. The Xbox One gives the same measurements but includes the note “the higher the better.” It was also designed to be placed on a stable, stationary surface, not hand-held as we see in portable versions used on paranormal shows such as Ghost Adventures. But wait, isn’t the Kinect used for applications other than games? Yes, from robots using it for navigation (Tanz 2011) to a scientist using it to make a 3D scan of a cave floor (Mann 2011) but in these cases, the software has been adapted for specific uses by scientists, engineers, and programmers who are detecting/mapping things that are known to exist—rock, metals, land masses, etc.—all things that have known qualities. In the hobby of ghost hunting, paranormalists are using the same software the gamers are using, which is designed to detect players that come into the play area.

Tape measure showing a distance of ten feet from the Kinect. This is the distance it was still picking me up as a player, as well as the entertainment center and vacuum cleaner.

The play area, as per Microsoft, should be at least six feet wide, but no wider or longer than twelve feet. A solo player should be about six feet from the sensor to be picked up, and two players need to be at least eight feet from the Kinect. Keep in mind that this play area is supposed to be for the players to move around (dance, jump, step to the side, forward and backward, etc.), which means no furniture should be in the way. This is not the case when we see video after video from ghost hunters using the Kinect and getting an extra stick figure on the monitor.

The Kinect has a large reference library to compare with human shapes, but it doesn’t have any filters against other objects that resemble that shape. Keep in mind that the Kinect is relying on the depth sensor for recognition of a player. It is reading the distance of the infrared speckle pattern to determine depths. Also keep in mind that the software will make guesses on where missing limbs might be based on probabilities. This is why you’ll see “hands” or “feet” wiggle around when you’re in front of the Kinect, holding your hands in front of you or your feet are just off screen. When the difference in the depth of various objects matches images in the Kinect’s reference library, it will get confused and assign a stick figure to it.

When the Kinect is used at allegedly haunted locations, paranormalists are simply not setting up the device as it is supposed to be. They are positioning the Kinect in rooms filled with furniture and objects of various shapes and sizes. The surface of these various objects in the “play area” is being read by the depth sensor. The data is similar, but not an exact match, to references the Kinect has of player figures and poses. The Kinect, seeing only partial matches, extrapolates what the rest of the body is most likely doing. Because it is guessing thirty times a second for minutes at a time, it creates a waving/dancing/freaky stick figure.

There’s also an issue with people sitting down. In an article by Stephen Totilo (2010) titled “Xbox Kinect Does Not Play Well with Couch Potatoes,” the question of whether the Kinect would work only if someone was standing was brought up to Microsoft and several game developers by the author. The question was avoided or statements such as games were “optimized for standing” were given. However, the author finally got somewhat of an answer: “Sitting is something we’re still calibrating for.” This was followed with a little more: “One of the Microsoft people with whom I was discussing the ‘sitting question’ said the chair stuff is just more complicated. You could be sitting far away, at an angle” (Totilo 2010).

The Kinect can get confused when it doesn’t see the entire player. This is obvious by watching any number of videos that show the skeletal view and have people/players moving about. The stick figure limbs will not always track correctly when limbs are hidden or out of the frame. When players sit down, the Kinect gets confused; it simply doesn’t know how to interpret the depth data correctly. We blend into the couch and either disappear in the eye of the Kinect or it makes a guess based on what it does know (from its reference material). Since it has data from all types of players, it can mistake a sitting adult for the figure of a child.

But what about when the “ghost” stick figure interacts with a living person who enters the scene? There’s a few things to consider when answering this. First off, tracking is still dependant on the depth sensor. So, if the end of a couch is causing a stick figure and you’re standing next to the couch and reach out your arm, the depth senor is going to read you as either part of the couch (thus extending the stick figure created by the couch) or the Kinect will see you as a second player and attempt to keep the stick figures of the two players (as the Kinect sees things) separated by bunching up the couch stick figure. A third option is that the Kinect will realize its guess about the couch was wrong and correct itself and the stick figure will disappear. Oh, and another thing is you’re applying human traits to a computer error caused by you. Stop it.

Here’s another thing to consider: the Kinect is using infrared light to create the speckle pattern and calculate depth. This is what it uses to find a player and assign a stick figure. If a ghost was indeed the cause of these extra stick figures showing up, a few things would be quite clear. First, you’d see the darn thing with the infrared camera. You wouldn’t just see a stick figure; you would see the object causing the stick figure (the ghost). Why? Because if the infrared speckles (which are what would supposedly be reflecting off the ghost) can be seen by your night-vision camera, then the object reflecting them would also be seen by the same camera. And there’s always a solid figure of some form behind a stick figure. Second, since the only way to cause a stick figure to appear is to change the angle and location of the speckle dots, you would easily see not only a disturbance in the speckle pattern but the speckles change distances (like the pin art toy). The IR speckles could be observed changing distances while viewing through a night-vision camera.

In addition, I was able to borrow a few IR lights from a friend for a simple experiment. With paranormalists using IR lights as standard attachments to their video cameras and other toys, I wanted to see if the presence of these lights would interfere with the Kinect. I set up the system and (quite easily) got the Kinect to lock onto my vacuum cleaner and assign it a stick figure (skeleton).

A stick figure assigned to my vacuum cleaner, as well as another very distorted stick figure assigned to a set of shelves.

When I take everything I’ve learned over the few weeks I’ve been researching this topic, I am left with the conclusion that the cause for the “stick figure ghosts” is multi-layered. The first layer is a limitation in the software, caused by a machine being forced to make guesses. Another layer involves people not paying attention to the simple rule that the “play area” must be clear of obstacles except for the players. And the last layer falls heavily on the shoulders of ghost hunters, who too easily accept strange things they can’t understand as paranormal without good reason or a decent effort at researching the topic.

Acknowledgments

Special Thanks to the following for their involvement with this article.

Mitch Silverstein—review and discussion

Matt Haas— for questions on this topic and supplying various video clips

Notes

1. The RGB camera can achieve 1280x1024 but at a slower frame rate.
2. This does not include video that appeared to be obvious hoaxes.

References

• Carmody, Tim. 2010. How motion detection works in Xbox Kinect. Wired (November). Available online at https://www.wired.com/2010/11/tonights-release-xbox-kinect-how-does-it-work/.
• Cong, Robert, and Ryan Winters. 2017. How does the XboX Kinect work? Available online at http://www.jameco.com/jameco/workshop/howitworks/xboxkinect.html.
• Crawford, Stephanie. 2010. How Microsoft Kinect works. HowStuffWorks.com (July 13). Available online at http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/microsoft-kinect.htm.
• DeSena, Joey (ClanOfTheGrayWolf). 2010. The way games work—Kinect for Xbox 360. YouTube.com (September 12). Available online at https://youtu.be/RT7hGBY5FZU.
• Duffy, Jill. 2010. Exclusive: Inside Project Natal’s brain: The artificial intelligence behind Microsoft’s Xbox 360 motion-sensing game controller. Popular Science website (January 7). Available online at http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2010-01/exclusive-inside-microsofts-project-natal.
• Mann, Adam. 2011. Scientists hack Kinect to study glaciers and asteroids. Wired (December 14). Available online at https://www.wired.com/2011/12/hacked-kinect-science/.
• Tanz, Jason. 2011. Kinect hackers are changing the future of robotics. Wired (June 28).
  Available online at https://www.wired.com/2011/06/mf_kinect/.
• Totilo, Stephen. 2010. Xbox Kinect does not play well with couch potatoes. Kotaku (June 17). Available online at http://kotaku.com/5565777/xbox-kinect-does-not-play-well-with-couch-potatoes.
• Wilson, Jeffrey L. 2010. Microsoft Kinect for Xbox 360. PCmag.com (November 4). Available online at http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372069,00.asp

On Saturday, June 24, the conference “70 years of Flying Saucers, Science, Myth and Fiction” was held; it was organized by Eventos Anómalos (Anomalous Events) and the Patrimony and Beliefs Department of the Institute of Historical Research of Roca Museum, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Eventos Anómalos (Anomalous Events) is a private enterprise that organizes events where people can find a proper place to express their ideas, knowledge, creations, or scientific, artistic, or intellectual presentations and show these to the public. Its director is Teresita Escario and Eventos Anómalos was created by journalist Alejandro Agostinelli.

It was a very intense day, from 9:00 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. The event was supported—among others—by CFI Argentina and was entirely dedicated to flying saucers and on several subjects related to them.

Alejandro Borgo (CFI Argentina) and Alejandro Agostinelli from Anomalous events.

Alejandro Agostinelli inaugurated the conference explaining the reason and meaning of the event: seventy years after the historical sighting of the commercial pilot Kenneth Arnold, it is still interesting to organize a meeting with specialists of several subjects giving their points of view on the UFO phenomena according to their own investigations carried on through years. “None of the speakers was chosen in an improvised way,” Agostinelli emphasized.

Flying Saucers in History

The first roundtable was called “Flying Saucers in History.” Psychologist Juan M. Corbetta talked about “Spiritualism, Mediums and Extraterrestrials.” He stressed that Allan Kardec, in his book The Book of Spirits, refers to the possibility of contacting with extraterrestrials; though, in spiritualism, the term extraterrestrial has a more spiritual connotation than that of an alien who inhabits another planet. It was very interesting the description of the medium experience of Helene Smith, who claimed to be a reincarnation of a Hindu princess and also of Marie Antoinette. As a result of the sessions investigated by psychologist Theodore Flournoy, the French researcher published the book From India to Planet Mars, where he explained that the alleged Martian language of the medium in trance was a mere transliteration of the French language.

The next presentation was “UFOs and Interplanetary Voyages during the First Peronist Government.” Researcher Hernán Comastri analyzed several personal letters sent to President Juan Domingo Perón by individuals who wanted to collaborate with the development of the political project using drafts and drawings of technological inventions introducing flying saucers that supposedly other world powers were constructing.

Journalist Agostinelli referred to a case of the contactee Eustaquio Zagorski who claimed to have traveled on a flying saucer and learned extraterrestrial language, which he named “Varkulets.” He caught the interest of an ufologist Jesuit priest, to whom he made a translation of the “Martín Fierro” (1) book (traditional in Argentina) to this supposed extraterrestrial language. However, the Argentinian ufologist Oscar Galíndez was successful in proving that this was a transliteration of Spanish language writing an historical article called “Cryptoanalysis of Varkulets.”

The Martians of Oesterheld

Strip cartoonist and draftsman Felipe Ávila referred in detail regarding the roll of extraterrestrials on the comics written by Germán Oesterheld, making an exhaustive analysis of his great work El Eternauta: the so called “manos” (hands), subdued by its superiors, the “them,” by means of the “terror gland” in order to have no fear because if this happened, the gland activated itself and inoculated a lethal poison to its carriers.

Is Time Travel Possible?

One of the best lectures was given by astrophysicist Gustavo Esteban Romero about the possibility of time travel. He explained the counterintuitive theories of special and general relativity. He made an analysis of those theories regarding the possibility of time travel, concluding that those theories, specifically the general relativity theory, supposedly allowed time travel. But he emphasized that the current technology is not enough to make time travel possible. Difficult to understand by someone who is not a physicist or a mathematician (worm-holes, black holes, space-time dimension), Romero tried his best explaining the subject as good as possible.

Gustavo E. Romero, Astrophysicist in a brilliant lecture about time-travelling

Abductions and Shamanism: A Controversial Lecture

The controversial moment of the day was the roundtable about “Abductions and Shamanism.” Agostinelli tried to organize a roundtable about abductions with the presence of an expert on the subject, who could give a scientific or skeptical approach, but this was not possible. So, the only opinion was that of the transpersonal anthropologists who gave their presentations starting with the case of Juan Pérez.

Documentary Director Alan Stivelman projected a fragment of his documentary that he made taking this case and pointed out the interest it generated on ufologist Jacques Vallée.

Anthropologist Diego Viegas presented “The Pérez Case: extraterrestrials or Guaraní (2) initiation?” and definitely took sides on the following issue: the abduction case, of which he never doubted, wasn’t a contact of the fourth kind caused by extraterrestrial beings but a shamanic initiation truncated by some reason that remained unclear. He showed an illustration representing the boy Juan Pérez, 12 years old at that moment, inside of what seems to be a spaceship with two entities: one of them almost identical to R2D2—from the Star Wars movies—and the other one which was three meters tall.

Viegas notes that “maliciously, skeptics make a relation of the robotic figure with R2D2,” but he discovered that in fact the film was released after the incident.

In order to assess that what he said was correct, we did some simple research through the Internet, and it showed the contrary: the event that has taken place in 1978 occurred after the film was released, on December 1977. That is to say, the chance that it was an imaginary projection of the character of the movie has been reinforced significantly.

Psychiatrist Néstor Berlanda, supported Viegas’s presentation, as they are part of the same group, adding that the supposed extraterrestrials who took part in the case could be revealed entities of the Guaraní or Mapuche mithology. Afterward, he established a frenetic comparison of the eyes of the “gray” with entities from different parts of the world (pictorial illustrations of the Anasazi indians, the Moais of the Easter Island, and so on). Viegas and Berlanda manifested their worry about the Pérez situation (we don’t know if physical or mental, or both) but they said the contactee showed no alteration or psychical disorder, though we could not find the diagnostic proofs of that claim. Both insisted on the need to complete the recovery shamanic process so that the “initiation” experience—occurred during an altered state of consciousness, as they claimed—would not remain truncated.

Going deeply on the idea of “transpersonalization,” Berlanda pointed out that the phenomena repeats from generation to generation (he considered suggesting the name and surname of the abducted, that is equivalent to a John Smith) and mentioned Juan’s mother, but he didn’t go further. He added that some of the psychobiologic features that make a person to be abducted are related to a family similar history.

Humanoids’ Literature at the Beginning of Argentinian Science Fiction

Writer Carlos Abraham made a very detailed exploration of UFOs and extraterrestrial beings in the Argentinian science-fiction book of the nineteenth century until the middle twentieth century, concluding that “each period of history builds the extraterrestrials that its society needs.”

ERKS. How to Enter and Get Out of a “Dimensional Gate”

From our point of view, the most interesting roundtable, that generated the greatest debate, was by history professor Fernando Soto, anthropologist Alejandro Otamendi, and journalist Fernando Diz, titled “ERKS. How to Enter and Get Out of a “Dimensional Gate.” Let’s say: the Era of the flying saucers sanctuaries.

First, a video was projected where the producer of the film 30 years of silence, the secret of Guillermo Terrera, Diego Arajondo, referred to the story of the “baton” that supposedly was given to the main protagonist of the ET beings.

From the beginning, Fernando Soto introduced himself as a skeptic of Terrera’s story and also to the intra-terrestrial city called “ERKS,” though he was very interested in knowing how that legend was constructed in the city of Capilla del Monte (Córdoba province of Argentina), to the point that it became a tourist attraction.

Social anthropologist Alejandro Otamendi, who gave a very professional presentation, narrated the history of the origin of the myth from the apparition of a burned out surface of 100 meters in diameter, and the impact that it had on the media, attributing the event to a spaceship.

Thus appeared the idea that at the zone of Uritorco hill existed a subterranean or inter-dimensional city called “ERKS,” whose spokesperson was Terrera who kept the “cane of command.” Since then, a unique sociocultural phenomenon emerged all over the country.

Journalist Fernando Diz moved to Capilla del Monte (Córdoba Province) in 1990 and dedicated his life to politics. Since then, he carried out a series of investigations about the sociocultural phenomenon finding—many years later—the testimony of local people relating how the phenomenon was directly produced by the local authorities and media hired to promote tourism. The whole thing was originated from a spark leaving a big track. Local people took advantage of this event to increase the prices of properties in that zone. Of course, this was an extraordinary and complex sociocultural phenomenon that had its own and unique features.

Round Table: Nazi UFOs and Anime Aliens

Historian Boris Matías Grinchpun revealed the origin of Hitler in Antartica. Starting with the story by Ladislao Szabó, a Hungarian-Argentinian journalist who managed to publish his conspiracy theory to Time magazine, he reconstructed the conditions of production that made this myth plausible. It is the story of an Adolf Hitler alive after the Second World War, who feigned his own death, and ran away to the South Pole in a submarine while he built up flying saucers. The story is ridiculous, but it reached the History Channel. We have seen occidental movies and series that have been made about aliens, but … How does the cultural Japanese treat an alien story like that? Historian Jonathan Muñoz took the audience to carry on a journey through the Japanese history and its relation with the Occidental world. The Japanese culture has considered strangers as demons many times, and the speaker proposed a parallelism between the historical view of the stranger, in the history of that country, with the idea of extraterrestrials captured by the Mangas, its relationship with the right-wing nationalism, the militarization, and a critical view of the government. It was a very interesting lecture about a strange culture for us like that of Saturn planet.

Ufology as Scientific Expert Examination

The last lecture of the day “Ufology as Scientific Expert Examination” by Rubén Lianza, military pilot, graduate on Aerospace Defense Systems, and principal member of the Commission for the Study of Aerospace Phenomena (CEFAe) of the Argentinian Air Force.

His presentation was one of the highlights of the conference. Lianza explained the methodology of investigation used by CEFAe to deal with sighting UFO cases. Using the scientific method he could solve the major part of cases he studied. The lecture was also an introduction to critical thinking. He presented some clues against wishful thinking which, so many times, convince people that what’s not true seems to be true. Thus, the researcher concludes modifying the evidence so that they fit into his theory. Lianza pointed out that proof, not wishes, must lead us to an explicative theory. Using a digital program for image processing, the CEFAe analyzes photos of supposed UFOs sent by the public. Conclusion: 98 percent of the cases ended in water drops on the lenses, tennis balls, swallows, or airplanes. During Lianza’s presentation, one furious ufologist exited.

Rubén Lianza, an excellent presentation about scientific method.

If you wanted to listen to the experts, and learn, this meeting achieved its goal, no doubt. “70 years of Flying Saucers: Science, Myth and Fiction” was a great event for all those who dare to deal with UFOs world.

According to Agostinelli, it’s a serious mistake to tease an “enlightened.” “It’s more important to understand the social construction of the phenomena; and that is achieved knowing the roll played by every node of the network of actors that allows the history to grow on the media and the public consideration.”

Notes

1. Martín Fierro is a traditional book of gaucho poetry by José Hernández.
2. A member of an Indian people now living principally in Paraguay. Also a language belonging to the Tupi-Guarani family of languages and spoken by the Guarani Indians: the chief vernacular of Paraguay.

“Why can’t we do this every weekend?” asked Leighann Lord, comedian and sometimes co-host of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk Radio podcast, as she opened the first day of lectures at the ninth annual Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism (NECSS). It was Lord’s first emcee gig for NECSS, and the meeting’s first time at midtown Manhattan’s Hotel Pennsylvania, thanks to a fire that scorched the usual rooms at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) just days before the conference was set to begin. But not even an “act of God” could keep a full day of Science-Based Medicine talks from kicking things off on Friday, June 30.

Good morning! #necss pic.twitter.com/FaxnyfAW3z

— NECSS (@NECSS) June 30, 2017

Making connections with people became the theme of the weekend, as opening speaker David Gorski (aka Orac) told the sad story of Somali immigrants in Minnesota who were convinced by discredited anti-vaccine doctor Andrew Wakefield to forgo their MMR shots and were then blamed by anti-immigrant voices when they got sick.

“They’ve been victimized twice,” Gorski said.

See more photos of the event by Bruce Press.

Lord’s instant connection with the crowd of over 300 people shown through not just in person, but on social media during the entirety of the conference, as she took notes and knew just when to interject with a poignant quote or a laugh, when needed.

“I was an anti-vaxxer at one point,” Lord said after Gorski’s presentation. “In my defense, I was three years old.”

See more photos of the event by Bruce Press.

Other Science-Based Medicine talks included Harriet Hall on statin denialists, Clay Jones on folklore in pediatric medicine, and Steven Novella on overly hyped neuroscience, but the most compelling lecture for many came from former naturopathic “doctor” Brit Marie Hermes. She herself questioned that nomenclature, after realizing she treated sick people in Africa and elsewhere with ineffective remedies. She feels guilty now, but that only makes her more driven to expose the practice.

“Now that I know better, I want to do better,” Hermes said.

“If you all can accept me, a former quack, than this community can do anything." - @NaturoDiaries #NECSS #skepticism pic.twitter.com/VZofphX0Gc

— NECSS (@NECSS) June 30, 2017

The focus on making connections actually began the previous day, which featured interactive workshops between presenters and conference attendees. Longtime skeptical activist and former Air Force pilot Steve Lundquist used his own UFO sighting as a way to relate to believers and to show that anyone can be fooled. Physicist Brian Wecht and Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe cohost Jay Novella led an entire workshop on the art of conversation as a way to engage with those with whom we disagree.

But there was plenty of fact amid the emotion, when NECSS returned to a non-charred section of FIT for its Saturday and Sunday lectures. Science communicator Summer Ash gave a “universe appreciation” talk on the things in space we can’t see with our eyes; NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt spoke on scarier, earthly matters; and former astronaut and Big Bang Theory guest star Mike Massimino split the difference and delivered some sound advice from his time in the sky.

See more photos of the event by Bruce Press.

“No matter how bad a situation is,” Massimino said, “remember you can make it worse.”

It’s a mantra that even applies to skeptics, as a panel discussed the merits of the recent “conceptual penis” hoax perpetrated by Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay, in which the pair successfully published a fake paper in a peer-reviewed gender studies journal. Skeptic Zone podcaster Richard Saunders and philosophers Massimo Pigliucci and Skye Cleary wondered what the motivation of the exercise was, as it’s already known that referees (in any field) can’t check all of a paper’s references and that most studies end up being irrelevant and never referenced. Moderator Wecht likened the hoax to “punching down,” but Cleary put a finer point on it.

“It was mean-spirited, taking aim at a relatively new field,” Cleary said.

Other highlights of NECSS 2017 included a panel called “Journalism in the Age of Alternative Facts and Fake News,” with contributors Helaine Olen (recently) of Slate, Nina Burleigh of Newsweek, Snopes managing editor Brooke Binkowski, and moderator John Rennie, which received the conference’s only standing ovation—on a Sunday afternoon, no less!

The biggest attraction for veteran skeptics may have been the special, standalone “Evening with James Randi” event, which was open to the public and drew a crowd upward of 600 people. The legendary figure showed he’s still got it by performing an escape trick and “overdosing” on a homeopathic remedy, but he made educating the younger generation the focus of his presentation. Randi continued this thought on a Sunday panel led by entertainer George Hrab that asked what a “skeptic coming of age ceremony” would look like, when he recounted the wonder he felt as a child upon learning that to look at a celestial body, due to the finite speed of light, was akin to peering into the past.

“More kids need to be stunned,” Randi said.

NECSS is produced by the educational, not-for-profit organizations New York City Skeptics and the New England Skeptical Society. The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe and The Society for Science-Based Medicine are also major sponsors.

The 1937 disappearance of pioneer pilot Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan in the Pacific Ocean has been the subject of continuing research, debate, and speculation—most recently in a show titled Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence. Here is the History Channel’s explanation of the show’s premise:

Buried in the National Archives for nearly 80 years, a newly rediscovered photo may hold the key to solving one of history’s all-time greatest mysteries. On July 2, 1937, near the end of her pioneering flight around the world, Amelia Earhart vanished somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. Most experts, including the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum, believe Earhart likely ran out of fuel and crashed into the Pacific Ocean. But no trace of the aviator, navigator Fred Noonan or her twin-engine Lockheed Electra airplane were ever found, confounding historians and fueling conspiracy theories ever since. Now, new evidence has surfaced in U.S. government archives suggesting Earhart might not have crashed into the Pacific at all, but crash-landed in the Marshall Islands, was captured by the Japanese military and died while being held prisoner on the island of Saipan.

According to HISTORY’s investigative special Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence, airing Sunday, July 9, retired federal agent Les Kinney scoured the National Archives for records that may have been overlooked in the search for the lost aviator. Among thousands of documents he uncovered was a photograph stamped with official Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) markings reading “Marshall Islands, Jaluit Atoll, Jaluit Island, Jaluit Harbor.” In the photo, a ship can be seen towing a barge with an airplane on the back; on a nearby dock are several people. Kinney argues the photo must have been taken before 1943, as U.S. air forces conducted more than 30 bombing runs on Jaluit in 1943-44. He believes the plane on the barge is the Electra, and that two of the people on the dock are Earhart and Noonan. As part of the program’s investigation, Doug Carner, a digital forensic analyst, examined the photo and determined it was authentic and had not been manipulated, while Kent Gibson, another forensic analyst who specializes in facial recognition, said it was “very likely” the individuals in it are Earhart and Noonan.

Big... If True

If the photo is what it’s claimed to be, it means that the “lost” pair were alive and well on a dock in the Marshall Islands in 1937. That still doesn’t fully explain where they went after the photo was taken, and as noted the show suggests they were captured by the Japanese and died in prison on Saipan—a fact that the U.S. government knew about and covered up.

To be clear, this idea is not new and is only one of many theories put forth over the years—and widely rejected for lack of evidence. While Earhart’s precise fate remains unknown, the most widely accepted explanation is also the most mundane: they ran out of fuel and their plane crashed into the vast Pacific Ocean. In an effort to breathe life (and ratings) into a theory heavy on speculation but light on evidence, the History Channel offered what they claimed was something akin to a smoking gun: a blurry photograph of what might or might not be Earhart and Noonan.

Doubts were raised about that explanation before the show aired and quickly escalated afterward. As National Geographic explained, “New evidence indicates that the photograph was published in a 1935 Japanese-language travelogue about the islands of the South Pacific. As Japanese military history blogger Kota Yamano noted in a July 9 post, he found the book after searching the National Diet Library, Japan’s national library, using the term ‘Jaluit Atoll,’ the location featured in the photograph.”

Instead of being hidden in a secret archive deep in the guarded National Security vaults, the image popped up on the first page of search results: “His search query turned up the travelogue, The Ocean's ‘Lifeline’: The Condition of Our South Seas, which features the ‘Earhart’ photograph on page 44. One translation of the caption describes a lively port that regularly hosted schooner races—with no mention of Earhart or Noonan to be found. Page 113 of the book indicates that the travelogue was published in October 1935.”

This of course poses a problem because the photo was published two years before Earhart’s final flight. It’s almost certainly not Earhart but even if it was, it has nothing to do with her disappearance. Displaying keen investigative acumen, Yamano said in an interview “I find it strange that the documentary makers didn’t confirm the date of the photograph or the publication in which it originally appeared. That’s the first thing they should have done.”

To be fair, the entire show does not stand or fall on the photograph’s authenticity. The show’s producers likely knew that the photo itself might not be entirely convincing and suggested that there was hard forensic evidence to support the theory: bones found on the island where Earhart supposedly died were to be subjected to genetic testing and compared to Earhart’s known relatives to prove she was on the island. As Eve Siebert noted on the July 12 episode of The Virtual Skeptics podcast, “I’m assuming that this did not actually happen because if they were able to identify bones buried on Saipan identified as Earhart’s, they really buried the lede by focusing on that blurry photograph.”

The History Channel promised viewers in a July 9 tweet that “After tonight, the story of Amelia Earhart will no longer have a question mark.” This prediction turned out to be prophetic; indeed, the single question mark has since been replaced by dozens of question marks—ranging from the integrity of the History Channel to the competence of its on-air researchers. (If it’s any consolation, the recent show almost certainly supplants a 2012 show that Skeptoid’s Brian Dunning called “one of the worst examples of television promoting pseudohistory.”)

While skeptics, historians, and sensible people can revel in a touch of schadenfreude, a closer look at the show is warranted. There are surely some executives at the History Channel who—like the general public—are wondering how their program could have gone so spectacularly off the rails. As a mystery investigator, media critic, and an expert who has participated in front of the camera on many television shows (including some on the History Channel), I can offer some insight into what went wrong and why.

1. Extrapolating beyond the evidence

Perhaps the most glaring error is over-interpreting ambiguous evidence and reading too much into what is ultimately a very limited and inconclusive data set. The photograph at the heart (and referenced in the title) of Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence is simply not good evidence of anything relating to Earhart; links to her are based purely on speculation and conjecture. There’s nothing wrong with guesses and theories—as long as they are presented as such rather than all-but-verified facts. Absent strong corroborating evidence, one theory is as good as the next.

The show takes great pains to demonstrate that the photograph had not been altered or retouched, which is a good first step in authentication but sheds no light whatsoever on the key issue of whether the image depicts Earhart and Noonan. There was never any reason to doubt the image’s authenticity in the first place, and surely a photographic faker trying to deceive could have crafted a much better likeness of both aviators.

Going beyond the evidence is routinely seen on reality television, in which ghost hunters believe (or at least act as if they believe while on camera) any creak or thud in a darkened room is a ghost. Though I suspect the History Channel would bristle at comparing their fact-based research on a real-life historical mystery with SyFy’s Ghost Hunters, there are other parallels as well. The science in both shows is oversold; audiences are assured that the highest level of technological sophistication is being brought to bear on the investigation, whether it’s EMF detectors, infrared devices, or cutting-edge facial recognition software. The devices and technology can only do as good a job as the data they have to analyze; otherwise it’s GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). Much of the analysis lies in interpretation, often by people who have a vested personal and financial interest in the outcome. Which leads me to a second issue…

2. Failure to recognize confirmation bias

According to an ABC News story offering context to the find,

Retired U.S. Treasury Agent Les Kinney said that he was looking for clues surrounding Earhart’s disappearance in the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, when he found the photograph in 2012 in a box filled mostly with text documents from the Office of Naval Intelligence but “didn’t really look at it carefully” because he was looking over thousands of documents and images. In 2015, he took another pass at the photo. “I looked at it and I went, ‘I can’t believe this!’” He asked his wife to come over and pointed to the seated person, asking if it seemed to her to be a man or a woman. “She said, It’s a woman!”

This passage is revealing from a psychological point of view because Kinney explicitly states that he was examining all the materials with the hope or expectation that it would be connected to Earhart in some way—whether it was or not. We often see what we want or expect to see, and it’s not surprising that upon discovering a piece of ambiguous information he imposed his pre-existing assumptions, hopes, and interpretations on it. When Kinney’s wife (according to him) independently confirmed his belief that the seated figure was female, that to him was strong corroborating evidence it was Earhart—motivated, surely, by his wanting to be the first person to solve an international mystery. This is a common psychological phenomenon, and Kinney is hardly alone: Once we have an idea or a mental framework by which we understand a topic, it can be very difficult or impossible to not see additional information on the subject through that prism; it’s a form of what psychologists call anchoring bias.

The ABC News piece continues, “Kinney, who started his career as a naval intelligence agent, said the photograph he found was in a batch of documents collected by U.S. sources in anticipation of the 1944 invasion of the Marshall Islands. ‘This was a mistake. This was never meant to be there,’ he said. The National Archives verified Thursday that the image is from its holdings and was in a file ‘unrelated to Earhart.’”

Thus, Kinney understood explicitly that the material collected there was unrelated to Earhart as far as anyone knew. This leads some to introduce a conspiracy theory, and indeed Kinney states that “This was a mistake. This was never meant to be there,” perhaps suggesting that damning information had been misfiled by some clerk unaware that it proved Earhart made it alive to the islands. Except that Kinney doesn’t know who placed it there or why, so he cannot know whether it was “meant” to be there or not—that’s his expectations and assumptions once again coloring his interpretations.

This does not suggest that Kinney was wrong to consider the photo as potential evidence, or that it might not have been of Earhart. It does, however, suggest a reason to be extra careful about establishing the provenance and authenticity of the photograph—and helps explain why Kinney and the producers ran with it.

3. Choosing TV drama over substantive research

The process of solving mysteries is often tedious and academic, and thus not terribly telegenic. For that reason, TV producers are under pressure to add drama anywhere they can, to break up the talking head interviews (no matter how well informed they may be) with action. In the context of ghost hunting shows, this demand usually means turning all the lights off and having people walk around in the dark with beeping gadgets, trailed by a camera crew. In the case of Destination Truth, it often involves host Josh Gates running up stairs, jumping down holes, into surf, that sort of thing. In the case of Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence there’s a fair amount of hacking through leaves and tropical overgrowth for no apparent reason.

Much has been written about the value of crowdsourcing information, and if the goal was to solve the mystery, the History Channel could have saved themselves a lot of embarrassment by soliciting help from the public to prove or disprove their theory. They did not do that for several reasons, including that it undermines the credibility of their highly touted experts. After all, if anyone with a knowledge of Japanese, a spare half hour, and an Internet connection can locate the photo, why do they need retired federal agents and digital forensic analysts? Secondly, of course, it ruins the drama; the History Channel can’t hype and tease the reveal for weeks before the anniversary of Earhart’s disappearance, because the online collaborators and keyboard detectives would already know about the discovery as soon as the answer was found. The demands of television outweighed the search for the truth.

There is also a lesson to be learned by the experts on how to avoid getting egg on your face: Don’t go beyond your expertise, and qualify your statements. To the best of my knowledge none of the experts have publically claimed that the show misrepresented their views, and I’m not suggesting the show did. But it’s important to keep in mind that producers want their experts and eyewitnesses to issue dramatic and bold statements that pack in as many superlatives as possible. In my years of television work, I can think of a dozen times when a producer or assistant producer has tried to steer me into saying what they want to hear on camera. Sometimes the producers will feed you lines, points they want you to hit or say in order to fit their script. There is nothing inherently wrong with that; typically, there are one or more pre-production interviews in which they have established your views and what you’re going to say, at least in general outline. Working from that, writers craft a script and plug your contributions in as necessary to flesh out the narrative. At the end of the day, it’s your credibility on the line, preserved (or tainted) forever in reruns.

It is true that clever video editing can completely distort and mischaracterize what you say on camera. While colleagues of mine have complained about being the victim of dishonest editing on television shows, it’s rarely happened to me, partly because I have learned how to carefully phrase my answers to make a deceptive editing job more difficult. Give them clean and concise sound bites saying what you want to say, and most of the time the editors will use them—even if the producers wish you had been more declarative and hyperbolic.

Top. Men.

So where does the debunking information leave the show? National Geographic, perhaps with a hint of rivalry-inspired delight, noted that “In the wake of Yamano’s evidence, the History Channel and the documentary’s on-screen personalities have expressed various forms of concern and disbelief. ‘I don't know what to say,’ says Kent Gibson, the facial-recognition expert that the History Channel hired to analyze the photograph for Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence. ‘I don’t have an explanation for why [the photograph] would show up two years early.’” Requests for additional clarification were not returned. In a statement, the History Channel said that it has a team of investigators “exploring the latest developments about Amelia Earhart” and promised transparency in their findings, concluding that “Ultimately historical accuracy is most important to us and our viewers.”

Reading this I’m reminded of the exchange at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, in which Indiana Jones questions the competence and authority of those investigating the titular remarkable find:

“We have top men working on it right now.”

“Who?” asks Jones.

“Top. Men.”

Given that the photograph’s provenance was established—and thus the key premise of the show discredited—in about half an hour of Google searching, it will be interesting to see what world-class expertise and “top men” the History Channel will bring to their re-investigation of Earhart’s disappearance.

Photo by Susan Gerbic.

Mark Edward is a mentalist who specializes in magic of the mind. He started his professional magic career at Hollywood’s Magic Castle in 1975, and in 1993 he began performing séances as one of the mediums in their Houdini Séance Room, which he would continue for fourteen years. He has been involved in the skeptical movement throughout his years as a “professional psychic,” where he infiltrated the darkest corners of the psychic business. Mark has been very public in exposing celebrity psychics and the techniques they use. His book Psychic Blues: Confessions of a Conflicted Medium, which was published by Feral House in 2012, exposed the inner workings of psychics, mediums and so-called “spiritual advisors.” He continues to teach magic and write books on creating mentalism and mind reading experiences.

Gerbic: There’s so much to talk about. Your work exposing the methods of psychics is well-documented. You are one of a very small group of “insiders” who are outspoken on the tricks and cons of the grief vampire. I have often heard that readers who are interested in the subject are encouraged to read Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham from 1946 and Lamar Keene’s 1976 book The Psychic Mafia as well as your book Psychic Blues. Anything else you would suggest?

Edward: I started my journey into the realm of psychic skepticism by reading a Prometheus [Books] book called The Psychology of the Psychic by Kamman and Marks. I highly recommend it as a jumping off point and a general intro on the whole scene as it was back in the early 70s. A few books on magic and mentalism might be added, but these would be mostly as reference for specific tricks and effects that have been co-opted by many psychics over the years: 13 Steps to Mentalism by Corinda and certainly any of the many works by Theodore “Ted” Annemann fall into this category. A good start would be his Practical Mental Effects.

Gerbic: You say that the history of mediumship has shifted over the years, from the dark séance to TV psychics doing group readings using the law of large numbers to look like they are getting hits. They are evolving in style as well; the woman wrapped in shawls is now replaced with the “fuzzy sweater” boy or girl next door. The more things change the more they stay the same. I understand that social media is making it so much easier for psychics these days?

Edward: Absolutely. All you need is a name and you can data mine all you need to appear as The Real Deal. Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram and all the places we gladly put up all of our most intimate information is now fair game for anybody to play the part of the person who knows all and sees all. It’s all right at their fingertips to know and see, so why not? In fact, any devious crook who doesn’t take advantage of these resources is either a lazy fool or has probably already made it into the higher levels of the psychic racket and no longer needs the “hits” that can be garnered though even the most cursory glance at these sources. It’s my opinion based on the people I have worked with and researched that after ascending (or descending depending on your viewpoint) to a certain level of celebrity, the psychic tends to get more lazy and offers only the flimsiest of limp cold readings to justify their paychecks. With television and savvy editing, all bets are off. It’s easy if you can lie sincerely.

Gerbic: You have done investigations into many different psychics, with me and also with media like Good Morning America, Bullshit!, 20/20, Inside Edition, and many more. Sylvia Browne was one of the first I remember. She was always my pet grief vampire going back to Robert Lancaster’s StopSylviaBrowne.com website. At CSICon 2016 I dressed up as Sylvia for the Halloween contest and even carried several of her books. People kept asking me who she is. I was pretty surprised, as she was such a big topic at everything skeptic for years. What are your thoughts on this? Is it a good thing that these people are forgotten?

Mark Edward and Ray Hyman, photo by Susan Gerbic.

Edward: Well yes, of course. Unfortunately, as soon as one is slightly forgotten, ten more psychics pop up in their wake. I think what really died off with Sylvia was the mean-spirited psychic demeanor. Many people accepted her crude behavior by thinking if she could be so mean, she must be “real” and therefore telling the truth. I never understood that twisted appeal, but it worked for her. She managed to re-invent the guru New Age style of tie-dyed woo into a sort of street-wise, know-it-all old crone witch image. That croaking voice of hers made it all the more “un-hippy-dippy.” She was a horrible human being. Psychics have learned from her rather extreme persona and re-adjusted to more of a calculated character style reflecting the homey reality television trope of “just somebody who has strange powers next door” instead of anyone particularly spiritually motivated. The days of incense and ashram gurus is essentially over except for Yoga and other self-improvement leftovers from the 60s. We can see the crass street talk softened slightly with the emergence of the Theresa Caputo phenomena.

Gerbic: On Bullshit! – Speaking to the Dead, you exposed Rosemary Altea. She was one of the fuzzy sweater psychics but with a British accent, and now almost no one has ever heard of her. I give you full credit for that. If she had been left unexposed, she had the chops to rise to the top of the heap.

Edward: Well. I’m sure she’s still eking out a good living in some small English village pub somewhere. We like to think we made a difference, but it was more about exposing the methods she used than taking her down personally. We tend to forgive and buy into little grannies with buns and shawls, don’t we?

Gerbic: At TAM 2012, Sylvia Browne did one of her “performances” at a nearby casino. You organized us and a group of us went to protest. That was an absolute blast. Video can be seen here. I’ve heard skeptics say that protesting outside these venues does nothing, as believers will not change their minds. But I’ve heard your response: “We aren’t there to change believer’s minds, we are there to let the psychic know we are there.” In essence you are saying that these psychics are performers, and when you stir them up, worry them that we might be in the audience, that we might make a disturbance, then it knocks them off their game and the whole tone of the show shifts. They might be more desperate to make something happen and make mistakes that can be exposed. Have I got this right?

Edward: Pretty much. Of course, the “knocking them off their game” theory makes us as a group feel better about ourselves and all our hard work, but actually the most surprising situation (and one of the things we found out through talking to so many people on the street as they passed by and commented) is for the most part there are an awful lot of people who already knew about her or psychics in general and the fact that she was a terrible fake. It’s important to bear in mind that as a skeptical group, we tend to focus on what we perceive as a big deal because it makes us angry. When in reality we often find that as a whole, people are not that stupid. It sometimes seems like we are lost in a world of woo—but there is hope. That was my take away from that experience. On the other hand, as a performer, I know that if there’s a commotion, no matter how small, it can put a dent in my timing and how I might react to a person in the audience or shade my delivery. It doesn’t take much. We know from when we did the John Edward protest in Pasadena, he mentioned us to the audience in unflattering terms and even later in another interview. So we know we are getting to him. That’s important. Letting his audience know we were out there on the street with something to say could be the first seeds of thought many of these people will ever get to start them thinking. It’s like “Oh, so there is another way to look at this guy?” How else does it start? People generally don’t know any better until it’s in their faces. They can like us or not and it doesn’t matter so much before or during the show. It’s afterwards that counts and when the fix sets in. On the drive home or in the coffee shop eating pie or thinking it over before falling asleep. Also, I think you’ll agree that when we as critical thinkers band together and stand up as a coordinated group against what we see as deceptive practices—not only as performed by the performer but also supported by the management of the venue—it helps us create bonding and lasting partnerships that are both effective and fun. When John Edward’s management lost their cool and called in the police that night, it only made it worse for them. The crowd grew, people were drawn in, and as long as we stood on our rights to protest peacefully, the message was clear to everyone involved: the onlookers, the event staff at the venue, the police, and the few audience members who might have had their cages gently rattled. Doing something is so much better than sitting around talking about how bad it is. It’s empowering—to use a woo expression.

Gerbic: This year at CSICon you will be doing a workshop on Thursday, October 26, at 3:30 pm. The workshops require a special ticket to attend, but I highly encourage people to arrive in Vegas on Wednesday night and hang out with everyone and then attend the workshops that start at 11:00 am the next morning. This is your chance to have one-on-one time with speakers who really know their stuff. You will be talking about cold-reading, and I understand you will also be talking about hot-reading? And people are going to get to practice with others in the audience, right?

Edward: Yes. Everyone will have the opportunity to learn how to cold read up close and personal and there may be some amazing other more experimental things that will happen. I’m not at liberty to report exactly what, but let’s just say at this point mind control, telepathy, and cyber-meddling may be involved. If you have heard the phrase “There’s no way in the world the psychic could know that!” and wanted to have a clue how easy it has become, you will get a lot from my presentation.

Gerbic: At CSICon 2016 you preformed a séance in the Excalibur’s chapel. Is that going to happen this year? If so, are you going to try and bring back Houdini?

Edward: I haven’t heard back on that yet. Right now the exact venue hasn’t been determined. Part of the problem with performing a successful séance entertainment in the old-school fashion is having the ability to completely black out the room used for the last part. Last year we had some issues with the hotel staff on that, so I can’t comment at this point. I can say I’m totally open to the chance to do something weird anytime, anywhere. We shall see if the spirits are willing.

Race, Pornography, Fake News, Eclipse, Brain Myths, Popular Assumptions, and the Magic of Science: those terms sum up the content of the eighth annual SkeptiCal conference held in at the Shattuck Hotel, in Berkeley, California, on Sunday June 11, 2017. SkeptiCal is a one-day skeptic conference brought to us by the Bay Area Skeptics and the Sacramento Area Skeptics.

This is the first time being held at the Shattuck, but the event has floated between Berkeley and Oakland, California, over the last eight years,. This time because of the location, the organizers decided to only meet in one room with no breakout sessions running concurrently as it had in the past. I have attended all eight conferences as it is only a two-hour drive from my home in Salinas. Each one has its own flavor, this one seemed tighter and the lectures felt like they were given more time, though I think fifty minutes has always been the norm. The space was completely full, with attendance at about 275 and ten exhibitor tables all in the room. It was a cozy feeling; thankfully everyone is friendly.

Photo by Susan Gerbic.

While each SkeptiCal has its own feel, each skeptic conference in our community also has its own style. Traditionally, SkeptiCal is a no-nonsense, on-time professional kind of event, and this year it was just the same. The format just works; the emcees introduce each lecture with a nice bio; and there is no song and dance (or limericks). On time and usually they can sneak in a Q&A question or two. Audio was handled by Greg Dorais and, other than a brief problem in the first lecture, nothing else occurred to interrupt the flow. As they say, you shouldn’t notice how much work goes on behind the scenes; if you do then something probably went wrong.

I’ve long hoped SkeptiCal would become a two-day conference in order to attract more out-of-town attendees hoping to make this a destination conference. I did meet several people who came from a long way away: two women attending their first skeptic conference came from Oregon, and another woman who has attended a few meetups in the LA area said this was her first real conference. According to the survey results, 40 percent of the attendees were women, and 40 percent were first time SkeptiCal attendees.

Tradition has it that the night before SkeptiCal we hold a SitP event and did so again this year. This small group of about thirty people is when you get to have great one-on-one conversations with acquaintances and make new friends. Social interaction is the key to conferences; people say they come to the conference because of the speakers but return for the people. Otherwise you might as well stay home and watch the videos on YouTube. There is something really heartening about laughing and talking with fellow skeptics, some long-time conference groupies (like myself), and others who just recently learned that there is a skeptic community.

Another aspect of SkeptiCal is how it pulls speakers from local expertise; all lecturers (with the exception of Brian Dunning who came from Southern California) are within the Bay Area. Several of them were unknown to the average skeptic conference attendee, which gives this event a more local feel.

President of the Bay Area Skeptics, Eugenie Scott really needs no introduction to the skeptic community, but I will briefly remind you. She is the former executive director of the National Center for Science Education and a physical anthropologist. Genie was involved in the Kitzmiller vs Dover court case regarding the teaching of intelligent design in public schools in 2005. When other lecturers are on stage and the question of anthropology or Bigfoot comes up, no matter how big the audience, the speaker always good-naturedly says, “If Genie Scott is in the audience, I better be careful with how I say this; I don’t want to get it wrong in front of her.”

For SkeptiCal, Scott’s lecture was called “The Science and Pseudoscience of Race,” which was a very big topic that she had to cut down to fifty minutes.

Sociologist, policy analyst, and certified sex therapist, Marty Klein’s lecture was titled “Pornography 2017: Porn Panic, Public Health, & Porn Literacy.” He talked about the time the world was flooded with free porn, in 2000 broadband Internet was released, and “the world collapsed into another moronic panic about sex… America was not a sexually healthy place.” Klein calls this PornPanic. As a therapist, he states that people would rather pay him “a lot of money to blame pornography than talk about problems with their sex lives." As America is not educating our youth with good sex education, they think that porn is a documentary: “Most sex does not feel like porn looks.” He concludes that communication is the problem not pornography.

Edward Wasserman is a professor of journalism and dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. His lecture “All The News That’s Fit To Fake” was as you can imagine quite timely. He stated that we “pay for information with information, you are being furtively induced to provide or all others to gather (information) about yourself. Content is the lure, content is the bait, you pay for that information.” He talked about the standards of significance; the media is deciding what is news, “Why is it that certain news organizations make such a fuss about it?” He said that stories are framed to have the slant that they want, with news organizations telling reporters to go find an opinion that fits into the story they want to tell. People are led to believe that there is more crime than is happening: “They aren’t going to cover all the people who went to work and didn’t get mugged.” Visuals dominate: “Stories that lend themselves to visuals will tend to get disappropriate coverage.” One of the very dangerous problems with media is the news cycle. The media needs to get a story out very quickly, before social media is flooded with other sources. The example Wasserman offers as an explanation is ofthe Boston Marathon bombing. The media named and released photos of suspects early on, which nearly led to lynch mobs going after innocent people. He ended his lecture with suggestions the media can do to fix the problems, but he felt the changes are unlikely to happen. He ended by saying, “The Internet does not absolve you to check information, in fact it just makes it more acute.”

Andrew Fraknoi is an astronomy professor at Foothill College, and his lecture was titled “Eclipse Myths and How to Prepare for August’s ‘All-American’ Eclipse.” A wealth of knowledge was in this talk on how to safely look at the eclipse, where to be to look at it, and how to handle the logistics of going to where it will best be seen. He talked about how the media was going to steadily increase reporting on the eclipse as we grow closer to the August 21 date, and when doing so, people who live within 100 miles of the path will decide at the last minute to drive to the best viewing sites. The problem with this is that the path of the eclipse across America is mostly rural; infrastructure does not exist for the increased traffic, food, and bathrooms. Good planning as well as safe viewing are the watchwords.

Judith Horstman, photo by Susan Gerbic.

Judith Horstman is a science journalist and author of seven books. Her lecture was titled “Myths of the Brain.” She covered the “we only use 10% of the brain” and “left-brain/right-brain” common myths, but what was new to me was the “you need 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep.” Apparently studies show that we only need four hours of uninterrupted sleep. She said, “When I first started researching… I was surprised at how much misinformation there was about the brain… I should not have been surprised because your brain knows very little about itself.” She gives five best practices for good brain health: exercise, challenge your brain, socialization, nutrition, and rich emotional experiences. Diabetes, high blood pressure, chronic stress, and obesity, she tells us, are very bad for the brain. Horstman suggests that we should all donate our brains to research when we die; they are badly needed for experiments and training.

Brian Dunning, photo by Susan Gerbic.

Brian Dunning is an author and popular science communicator. He is best known for his podcast Skeptoid: Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena. Dunning has also recently released a free movie aimed at classrooms with free teaching guides, Principals of Curiosity. His lecture at SkeptiCal was called “Waterspouts & Swamp Gas: Challenging Popular Assumptions.” I really enjoyed how he started off his lecture about Timothy McVeigh watching the 1993 Waco siege and how that convinced him of many government conspiracies, eventually masterminding the bombing of the FBI building in Oklahoma City. Dunning really brought it to home that there is real harm in believing in pseudoscience. Dunning talked about people making bad decisions about their health, Jim Henson, Steve Jobs, and Steve McQueen. He also talked about fake bomb detectors being used across the Middle East. Bad decisions and wasted resources all based on false assumptions: lie-detector tests, Myers-Briggs Personality Type, McMartin Preschool and repressed memories, vitamin C, and more.

Luigi Anzivino is an educator at the San Francisco Exploratorium’s Tinkering Studio. He is also a magician who uses his understanding in the brain (he has a PhD in Neuroscience) to educate. His lecture was called “The Science of Magic” and included close-up magic as well as explanations of how to use slight-of-hand to teach critical thinking skills.

Kernan Coleman and Ranch 7 Creative handled the graphics for the conference. Musician Joey Fabian preformed during the lunch break. The Sacramento Area Skeptics are led by Frank Mosher; organizing committee members are Sam Baker, Lauren Camp, Kernan Coleman, Raymond Lee, and Angelo Niosi. The Bay Area Skeptics are led by Eugenie Scott; organizing committee members are David Almandsmith, Işil Arican, Yau-Man Chan, Marilin Colon, Jay Diamond, Greg Dorais, Sheldon Helms, Tucker Hiatt, Herb Masters, and Yuli Talyansky.

All the lectures will be released on the YouTube channel for the Bay Area Skeptics; check out their past videos and subscribe.

I came home with six autographed books from the speakers and lots of photos, videos, and some great memories. I was able to reacquaint myself with friends and met new people as well. I know it’s a lot easier to stay home and wait for the lectures on YouTube, but I assure you, the whole experience is so much more rewarding in person.

I had the privilege of attending a movie premiere for the new Skeptoid Media production, Principles of Curiosity, in Los Angeles on June 14, 2017. Disclaimer:  I’ve been following the creation of this crowd-sourced movie for some time; although I am not a donor, I’ve been a fan and friend of Brian Dunning for years. I find him creative, inspiring, and a powerful resource for science education. So, yes, I am biased.

It might be an odd thing to say that I feel discussions of UFOs, feral children, photographic memories, ghosts, and the Mad Gasser of Mattoon, are topics worthy of a science classroom, but they are a backdoor to understanding critical thinking and the weird world around us. And they are popular topics. You think that people are only discussing climate change and vaccines? I assure you that the paranormal is hot news.  Reality TV, YouTube, and social media fuel stories of the Dyatlov Pass incident, Berserkers, and the Minnesota Iceman. I’ll come back to this in a minute.

Photo Credit: Susan Gerbic, 2017

For many years, Dunning has been working on a classroom length, free for everyone, critical thinking video. In 2008, he gave us Here Be Dragons: An Introduction to Critical Thinking.  He states that the purpose was “to reach a much broader audience, and provide this general introduction to critical analysis of pop phenomena.”

One of several YouTube sites hosting the video has over 400K views and 978 comments. Here Be Dragons was designed to give viewers a general overview of critical thinking.  It is aimed at people who are not aware of the skeptic world of conferences, publications, and podcasts. Here be Dragons is captioned and translated into fifteen languages, including Hebrew, Norwegian, Lithuanian, Finnish, and Croatian. The production quality was good by 2008 standards coming from a podcaster with very little money to dedicate to creating a free product.

The YouTube comments are pretty typical, with the majority supporting the film. One reviewer, Jack Calvert, says, “Great video. The fundamental principles of critical thinking should be required curriculum in every primary and secondary school. We need to be teaching children not what to think, but how to think.” And then you have comments from people like cabadejo, who wrote, “Disinfo merchant. I did not reach 4 minutes of this paid disinfomercial. Big Pharma is about making money. 9/11 was a government operation. These are screamingly obvious. Fraudster nothing less.” Another commenter used the term “labcoats” as a derogatory term for scientists.  We skeptics obviously have a lot of work to do.  

In 2016, Dunning started gathering funds and people to work on a bigger project, which became Principles of Curiosity. Written by Brian Dunning and directed by Ryan C. Johnson, this forty-minute video has a different feel from Here be Dragons, not only in the production values but also in the attitude and approach. Here be Dragons had a provocative feel to it, with silly music playing in the background when people were talking about how crystals work to subtly tell viewers that the person on screen was speaking nonsense. Principles is less provocative, more intelligent, and less likely to insult viewers who believe in the paranormal. It is perfect for the random person who comes across it on YouTube or who is exposed to it in a classroom. Dunning states it was important to teach people how to “tell what is real from what is not, by understanding the science… and have fun doing it, with cool stories.”

The cinematography is beautiful. The drone video of Death Valley’s dry lake bed and the footage at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, is incredible.  One brief clip features a toddler standing next to a window inside the airport, and you can see airplanes on the tarmac behind him. Something about that shot makes me say “adorable” each time I see it; you will just have to watch it to see what I mean.

Dunning explains how to evaluate a claim using the scientific method.  Instead of going through the normal steps, he explains it using what he calls the “3 C’s”: Challenge – Consider – Conclude.  He picks one claim to illustrate this method of thinking: Racetrack Playa.

Let’s look at these three C’s and how they apply to the Racetrack Playa mystery. The mystery concerns huge boulders, dubbed “sailing stones,” which seem to move across the sand on their own without an apparent natural cause, leaving clear tracks on the ground.

Consulting Wikipedia, we learn that the playa is a dry lake bed in Death Valley, California. The surface area is just over 2.7 square miles and is “exceptionally flat.” It is dry almost all year and has no vegetation. The area receives about three to four inches of rain a year. The sailing stones are “slabs of dolomite and syenite ranging from a few hundred grams to hundreds of kilograms [that] inscribe visible tracks as they slide across the playa surface.” These tracks are what give the area the name “racetrack.” Until recently, scientists did not know what caused the rocks to move and leave trails in the lake bed. This was the focus of the movie.

Dunning tells us that the we first need to Challenge the concept we are curious about using Hyman’s Maxim: “Do not try to explain something until you are sure there is something to explain.”  With the playa, it has been well documented that the rocks have, in fact, moved in the way described. This satisfied the first of the 3 C’s, “Challenge.”

Next, we need to Consider alternate explanations. “What work have other people done to solve this problem?” Near to my heart, Dunning states that Wikipedia may be a good starting point for an overview and says to read the citations to find “boring and exciting explanations.” He stresses that we should “go with the experts—people who have studied this subject for years…. When you are taking a flight, you want a trained pilot.” Then, “Collect ideas to consider,” keeping in mind the argument against “appealing to authority.” Note that many false authorities, celebrities and people wearing lab coats, may influence someone considering the claim when they have no expertise to make those claims. As far as the playa, people have claimed energy vortexes, UFOs, or the wind are causing the stones to move.

In 2002, Dunning and friends visited and filmed the playa right after sunrise on a very cold morning and found that there was a layer of ice on the lake. They concluded that the strong winds in the area push the ice into the boulders. Because the ground has become wet, the friction between the rocks and ground is reduced, allowing the seemingly immovable rocks to be pushed across the muddy ground. When the ice melts away, the motion stops, the lakebed dries out, and the tracks remain to document the motion of the rocks in the now dry lakebed.

Once you have considered the explanations, Conclude what explanation fits best.  Dunning explains Occam’s Razor, using some quite humorous graphics that will entertain viewers. With Occam’s Razor explained, the viewers are given the various explanations again and asked which seems most likely given what is known.

At the Q&A following the movie premiere, Dunning explained that he wanted a topic that had a scientifically testable explanation that had been recently solved but would not offend or challenge many people’s worldview.  Racetrack Playa was perfect to use in the film as it was a mystery that Dunning was instrumental in solving himself when he and friends visited and filmed the mysterious moving stones in 2002.  Ten years later, scientists proved Dunning’s hypothesis was accurate.

In 2012, researchers set up GPS markers on stones and observed and photographed the results. Over time they were able to prove Dunning’s theory that the stones were moving because of the combination of the ice and wind.

Interviewer Kyle Hill asked Dunning why he was giving the movie away for free. Dunning’s response was that he was most proud to have been able to create the movie completely “crowd-funded, with no business model behind it.” Apparently for years, educators around the world have been writing Dunning, telling him that they use the podcast episodes in their classrooms. Dunning knows that teachers often have to supplement teaching supplies out of their own pockets, and he didn’t want there to be barriers for them to have access to this movie. This movie was funded “by people who are on board with the [Skeptoid Media] mission.” There are twenty-five pages of curriculum that go along with the movie that are available for educators and are aimed at high school and college level students.

Director Ryan C. Johnson was asked what difficulties he ran into filming a movie like this on a tight budget. He said that they had to figure out how to explain difficult concepts like Occam’s Razor and make it appealing to look at. Johnson compliments Dunning, saying that he has a “tremendous ability to take an esoteric concept and distill it down,” breaking the idea into “manageable bite-sized concepts.”

Other questions Dunning answered at the Q&A were about how to get someone to change their mind about the paranormal. He said, “You have to start with common ground. You can get anyone to come around to almost any point of view if you do it starting from common ground.” Using a mystery like the sailing stones, which most people would agree with the solution, they will apply the steps they learned to their “sacred cow” beliefs.

On where Dunning gets his information from, he said it is a difficult question to answer, but he feels that when doing research, you should “seek out the information you disagree with as much as the information you do agree with,” and see what they say about the topic. “It’s a great way to learn the nuances on any topic.”

Before ending this review, I want to quickly support my claim that the paranormal is still quite popular. One of the best places to check to see if a topic is in the public sphere is to check Wikipedia page view stats. I chose the topics mentioned above from some of the Skeptoid podcast titles, not knowing what the results would be. These numbers are from the last ninety days. UFO (111,569 views), Feral Children (123,688 views), ghosts (219,487 views), Minnesota Iceman (5,380 views), Berserker (133,251 views), Dyatlov Pass incident (327,394 views), Mad Gasser of Mattoon (11,799 views), photographic memory (239,155 views), and finally the Racetrack Playa (9,331 views).

So please lend a hand and support the work Brian Dunning and Skeptoid Media are doing to better teach critical thinking and support educators. Share the movie, available at principlesofcuriosity.com. Encourage educators to use it, and subscribe to Skeptoid Media updates in order to learn about new upcoming opportunities you can become involved in. 

Let me close with a quote from the movie: “Making the right decisions is how humanity improves… The scientific method is a way to steer our curiosity.”

Britt Marie Hermes is a writer, scientist, and former naturopathic doctor who will be speaking at CSICon on Friday, October 27 at 11:30 a.m. Her lecture is titled “The Bloody Work of ‘Naturopathic Doctors.’”

Susan Gerbic: Hello Britt Marie. You seem to be everywhere these days, at least all the podcasts I listen to. I’ve heard your story several times and am looking forward to meeting you in person in Las Vegas at CSICon. Your story is so compelling; there is something about someone so involved in pseudoscience and then educating themselves out of that belief, and in your case becoming so outspoken about your past life. Can you please tell everyone your story?

Britt Marie Hermes: That form of pseudoscience was “naturopathic medicine.” Some people may not have heard of it because it’s been relatively obscure until the last decade or so. Now naturopaths are all over the place with detoxes, homeopathy, and a whole suite of “treatments” ranging from herbal enemas to intravenous injections of herbs and vitamins. They are also claiming that they are “medically trained.”

So, I was one of these “naturopathic doctors.” I went to a school near Seattle named Bastyr University, which told prospective students that its curriculum was “just like” medical school. It was a lot of work at times, but we spent it learning pseudoscience and magical theories that was mixed with just enough real medicine to make it believable. When I graduated in 2007, I fully believed I was a doctor. In Washington state, where I was first licensed, I was even legally allowed to call myself a physician.

In Arizona, where I practiced until 2014, I used the title “naturopathic medical doctor.” I had a Federal DEA number that allowed me to prescribe some controlled substances. In my practice, I commonly prescribed drugs and ordered tests like X-rays, MRIs, and blood work. These signifiers of medical legitimacy reinforced the fantasy that I was a doctor, but none of us have the right training to have any medical responsibility. There is also a political aspect. Naturopaths lobby state and federal lawmakers to have this medical responsibility and to self-regulate, which means self-protection to allow the quackery to go on.

Gerbic: I believe you were beginning to have doubts about your profession as a naturopath, but it was an unethical and, possibly, illegal incident that finally pushed you to leave. Is that correct?

Hermes: It was easy for me to brush off doubts while I was in practice. I had been doing it since my time at Bastyr. I remember finding critical information about naturopathy on websites such as Quackwatch or Science-Based Medicine. My response was to think those critics just didn’t understand. They didn’t know me or my philosophy.

I believed naturopathic therapies were inherently safe since they were “natural.” I thought that all alternative therapies, such as herbs, homeopathic substances, ozone gas, water, and other bizarre treatments you may cringe at, were effective because we were taught them in school. Why would the schools teach us treatments that didn’t work or that were dangerous? I was incredibly naive and, obviously, not a good critical thinker. I suffered from an appeal to nature, confirmation bias, and Texas sharpshooting.

My perspective abruptly changed after I discovered my former boss was importing and administering a non-FDA approved drug to cancer patients. This is a federal crime. Under my boss’s orders, I administered this drug to patients, and I still feel sick about it. I immediately confronted my boss and resigned. I reported my boss to the naturopathic regulatory board in Arizona. Then, I spoke with an investigator at the Attorney General. Afterward, I spoke with a naturopath and mentor who encouraged me to keep working with my former boss. He said this incident wasn’t a big deal; I was a naturo-path after all.

After this incident, I decided to critically comb through my naturopathic education documents. I examined the practices of my colleagues around the country. I quickly realized that my training at Bastyr was riddled with pseudoscience. I determined that naturopaths across the country were overwhelmingly using debunked, dangerous, or simply nonsensical treatments in their practices. This was the norm. My former boss was not the exception. The entire profession was rife with quackery. I could no longer be a part of it.

Gerbic: You first turned to naturopathy because you had a bad experience with a medical doctor. I understand that one main criticism of doctors is that they are brisk and arrogant and they over-prescribe. That hasn’t been my personal experience; just what I’ve heard from the alternative medicine community, that and the accusations that they are involved in Big Pharma. Naturopaths, I’m told, spend more time with their patients, get to know entire families, and use less “toxic” medications, often prescribing herbs and homeopathy. Is this your experience?

Hermes: As a naturopath, I was proud of the fact that I spent about an hour or more with each patient. I took detailed family histories and often counseled patients about emotional matters in their lives. I asked about every personal detail. I knew my patients very well. But, this extra time spent with them does not translate into better medical care. It is important not to confuse good bedside manner and an easy repertoire with medical competency. The issue is that naturopaths do not know what they do not know. They certainly do not know the sharp limits of their training, and with this confidence and quality time seeing patients, its easy to develop relationships that translate into recurring customers.

Gerbic: And a follow-up, if true, as someone who has seen both sides of this really important issue, what advice would you give to medical schools to improve training?

Hermes: All primary care providers, including physicians, nurse practitioners, and PAs, are trained to save lives and keep us healthy. I think they do a great job. Even though the healthcare system needs serious improvements, I think most of these practitioners are not contributing to the problem of hurting patient satisfaction. Naturopaths have an “in” because we are trained to connect with patients and make them feel like their concerns are fully heard. We take them seriously and with compassion. Medical schools and other training programs based in science should look at the science! We know there are better outcomes when doctors are nice, empathetic, and engage their patients. Maybe medical schools and others are already teaching this. Maybe it's the system that’s the problem?

Gerbic: I think that skeptics are usually very compassionate people and understand that people who turn to alternative medicine do not deserve that treatment. We tend to act as consumer watch-dogs and demand that people get good value for their money. In other words, we want evidence that something actually works.  How have your thoughts evolved over time?

Hermes: I used to be afraid of skeptics. The support of this community helped me make a public change from quackery to science. I am grateful for this community. I could not have done it without them. Whereas before I was drinking the Kool-Aid, now I am deeply concerned with patients getting harmed. Naturopaths do not give proper informed consent. How is this possible for a treatment that has no basis in reality like homeopathy. If you don’t tell the patient: “This is a bottle of sugar pills that’s had magic water dripped over it that contains a dilution of 10^-400 duck liver and heart. There is no reliable evidence that this works for anything, and the industry is not regulated,” then you’ve crossed an ethical line and should not be in practice. It goes for all bad treatments, and naturopathy is full of them.

Gerbic: You have a blog Naturopathic Diaries. Are you getting a lot of push back from the alternative-medicine community for that?

Hermes: The naturopathic profession seems to be threatened by my blogging. I frequently get emails from naturopaths asking me to stop speaking out. There are some zingers for sure, but for the most part, naturopaths and other natural medicine zealots say I am being too hard. They often claim not all naturopaths practice how I experienced. So, it’s now the “no true naturopath” fallacy.

Gerbic: Are you still in touch with the peers from Bastyr University or your instructors? Those must be some interesting conversations if so.

Hermes: I am occasionally in touch with a few naturopaths who support my work. These individuals would like to see significant changes made to the naturopathic curriculum and to the profession as a whole. There are actually a few internal divisions within the naturopathic community that fall along various ideological lines. But for the most part, they are almost exclusively rallied against me. Many naturopaths who do support my work are no longer practicing. A major fallout of my advocacy is that I am no longer in contact with my closest friends and mentors. They feel betrayed.

Gerbic: You will be speaking at CSICon this October. What do you have in store for us?

Hermes: Since CSICon is so close to Halloween, I wanted to do something spooky. My talk is titled “The Bloody Work of Naturopaths.” I will describe some of the most egregious examples of naturopathic malpractice that involve doing some procedures that no one should be doing.

Gerbic: Remember that CSICon will be having a Halloween party on Saturday night. The theme is 1970s Disco Party. I heard mention that it should be Zombie themed. Have you started learning the moves from Saturday Night Fever yet?

Hermes: To the max!

Gerbic: Really looking forward to meeting you in person, and I’m sure others will as well. New attendees to CSICon you will learn that all the speakers are very approachable and would love to talk about their area of expertise, and most will be attending the entire conference. Join the CSICon Facebook group to learn more about the after-hours socializing that makes these conferences extra special. And don’t forget your zombie costume. https://www.facebook.com/CSIConference/

I’ve been getting emails advertising a lost Navajo remedy that can cure deafness. Nearly 33,500 people have allegedly reversed their hearing loss in just two weeks with this 100 percent natural treatment. The emails invited me to watch a free video presentation by Ben Carter. I did. What I found was a textbook example of a dubious health claim that employed practically every known red flag for quackery. It is so bad it can serve as a teaching example.

Even before I watched the video, I noticed red flags in the emails. How likely is it that hearing loss could be cured in only two weeks? If the treatment were that effective, that would be big news; why would we be learning about it from an advertising email and an Internet video rather than from mainstream news media? And then there were the logical fallacies: the appeal to ancient Navajo wisdom and the idea that “natural” is somehow better. I had a lot of questions. I wanted to know what was in the remedy, what the before-and-after audiograms showed, whether controlled studies had established its effectiveness, whether it had been tested for safety, etc. I was hoping that the video would answer my questions. It didn’t. It only raised more questions, and soon I was enmeshed in a veritable forest of red flags.

Discovered By a Single Individual

Most scientific discoveries today are made by teams of researchers, not by a “lone genius.”

Discoverer is Not a Doctor or Scientist

Ben Carter is a semi-retired aerospace engineer. He claims that his career gave him skills in research and experimentation. But we know that expertise in one area doesn’t translate to other areas. Linus Pauling won a Nobel Prize in a basic science, chemistry, but he didn’t understand the pitfalls of clinical research in an applied science, medicine. He became a laughingstock for his promotion of vitamin C.

Improbable Story of Discovery

When Ben Carter visited his elderly mother, who was hard of hearing, she mentioned a family story he had forgotten. His grandfather was deaf following an accident; his grandmother wrote her mother, who was Navajo, asking her to visit the tribe’s medicine man and seek his advice. In response, she got a package of herbs and other ingredients and a recipe for cooking up the Navajo hearing remedy. Grandfather’s hearing was restored. Once Carter remembered the story, he searched through his mother’s stored belongings and found the recipe tucked in with others in an old Betty Crocker cookbook. It was in Navajo, but someone had already translated it into English. He found all the ingredients in local food stores, prepared the remedy as instructed, talked his wife into acting as his guinea pig, and by the third week his wife’s hearing was completely restored. Then he cured his mother. They passed the information on to family members and got incredibly positive feedback. For instance, Aunt Edna no longer had to wear her hearing aid to watch Jeopardy.

Claims of Altruism Don’t Match Actions

He says he wants to share the information with the world and claims he is not interested in making money. But his actions are not altruistic: instead of divulging the ingredients, he sells a book for $37. He claims he has to make money from the book to build a legal fund to protect himself from the legal leeches hired by hearing device manufacturers, who have already come after him and are seeking a court injunction to suppress the information.

Scientific Explanation is Sketchy

He claims hearing loss occurs when the hair cells in the cochlea are damaged. He doesn’t seem to know that hearing loss can be either sensorineural or conductive. Conductive hearing loss is caused by problems in the external and middle ear, and it has nothing to do with the hair cells of the inner ear that are damaged in sensorineural hearing loss. He says lost hair cells can regenerate in birds and non-human mammals; they have never been shown to regenerate in humans, but he believes that damaged hair cells are still present but are simply “weak and limp” and can be restored to health. He offers no rationale to explain how that might happen and no evidence that it actually does happen.

Bogus Explanations of Why This Isn’t Common Knowledge

He claims to have spoken to numerous scientists and researchers who have studied this treatment and know it works; however, they have told him privately, in confidence, the shocking reason that they could not share their knowledge. Their research was funded by the medical device companies, who own the legal rights to their findings and have managed to bury them, using “top-notch blood thirsty vampire lawyers.” Frankly, if multiple researchers really had found convincing evidence for a treatment that could cure deafness in two weeks, I don’t think even the most bloodthirsty “vampire lawyers” could succeed in keeping that information secret.

Claims of Research But No Citations

He supposedly found published research about the ingredients as well as double-blind studies and an experiment done by the Israeli army; all of these demonstrated remarkable hearing improvement. Since he doesn’t divulge the ingredients and doesn’t provide a citation for the Israeli study or any of the other studies, we have no way of verifying these claims.

Testimonials But No Studies

Any snake oil salesman or charlatan can provide testimonials. We have no way of knowing if they are from actual patients or were simply invented. Testimonials are anecdotal evidence, and the plural of anecdote is not data. Testimonials are notoriously unreliable; they serve only as a suggestion for what to research. Without a control group, we can’t know whether just as many people might have improved over time or with placebo treatment.

He is Selling Something

Stephen Barrett of Quackwatch has a rule of thumb: when looking for reliable medical information, first weed out the websites that are selling something. In this case, Carter is just selling a book, but still... Non-commercial websites like the NIH, the American Cancer Society, and the American Academy of Pediatrics are generally more trustworthy than commercial websites selling a product.

Broken Promises

He says in this video he will tell viewers exactly how to use the Navajo hearing remedy, but he doesn’t. He only tells them how to buy his book. He says he will present the medical research that shows how it works. He doesn’t.

Appeals to Emotion

He uses inflammatory language (“bloodthirsty vampire lawyers”). He vividly describes the difficulties of living with hearing loss and how it often leads to isolation and depression. Doctors don’t need to resort to those kinds of emotional appeals to persuade patients to take effective medications.

Unverified Claims to Have Already Helped Many People

He says 33,477 people around the world have used the remedy and now all of them have crystal-clear hearing. Why should we believe that bald statement without any evidence to back it up? I’m guessing it only means he has sold 33,477 books.

Cheaper Than Conventional Treatments

Cochlear implants or a lifetime of hearing aids can cost thousands of dollars. You can buy the book for only $37. The ingredients in the remedy are mostly natural products available at the supermarket or health foods store. But lower price is no advantage if it doesn’t work.

Questionable Reviews

Some of the rave reviews at the top of the search list contain links to buy the book. They appear to be fake reviews that the seller managed to get placed and to get high search rankings.

Related Scam Has Been Identified

Amazon.com offers an app for free download that sounds like the same book, with the title The Navajo Medicine Man Remedy by the same author, Ben Carter. The subtitle promises to reverse hearing loss. The product description says:

“This program will instruct people how to clean out and unblock built up toxins [detoxification is a worrisome alternative medicine buzzword] from their ears and ear canals quickly and easily. The Navajo Hearing System program also covers a lot of recipes and remedies for ringing in the ears (tinnitus), ear blockage, ear infections, earaches and other ear problems. People will have the “Nature’s Cures – Complete Handbook” manual that covers natural and safe remedies for improving their skin health, and recipes to rejuvenate their skin on their face.”

It also addresses natural cures for gout.

Customer reviews reveal this is nothing but an advertisement trying to get you to buy the $37 book. A whopping 88 percent of the customer reviews were 1-star, and one customer said it was an annoying ad not even worth a star. Many customers said they were unable to download it and called it a hoax.

Appeal to Ancient Wisdom

He claims that Navajo medicine men have used this remedy for centuries to help their people maintain sharp hearing. There is no evidence that this is true; in fact, one commenter said he was Navajo and had never heard of it. This reminds me of the advertisements for “Hopi ear candling,” something the Hopi protested that they had never used!

The Ingredients are Kept Secret

They are not divulged online. You are required to buy the book. I was going to sacrifice the $37 so I could check out the ingredients, but because of what I learned online from purchasers, I decided not to bother. Guess what? People who bought the book say the ingredients are not divulged there either! It reportedly contains only general health advice like eating well, doing yoga, exercising, etc.

It’s Natural!

This is the “natural fallacy,” the idea that natural remedies are somehow better. What matters is not whether a treatment is natural or artificial. What matters is whether it works.

Money-Back Guarantee?

Legitimate medical treatments don’t offer money-back guarantees. In this case, they are offering a book by electronic download, so it costs them practically nothing. And customers who tried to get their money refunded have reported that they were unable to do so.

Conspiracy Theories

“The medical device companies are coming after me. They are in the process of getting a court injunction to remove this website and stop offering the Navajo remedy.” I find this hard to believe. Even if the hearing aid companies were afraid of the competition (which I doubt), there are no grounds for an injunction. Freedom of speech is protected by the Constitution. They are not “offering the remedy,” only information. And there is a disclaimer on their website.

Act Now!

“If you wait, this website may be gone.” Aggressive salesmen always push you to make a quick decision; they don’t want to give you time to think about it and investigate their claims or to check with the Better Business Bureau or look for customer complaints.

How to Spot a Scam

If this Navajo hearing remedy is not a scam, it certainly walks and talks like one. You can evaluate any new questionable claim you encounter by using the red-highlighted items above as a checklist. As a general rule, the more red flags you identify, the lower the probability that the treatment is legitimate. But red flags don’t prove that a remedy doesn’t work. It still might work, but there is no way to know without proper scientific testing with a control group. The only reasonable approach is to assume a red-flag–laden advertisement is a scam until proven otherwise by the presentation of credible scientific evidence. There is no reason to believe this Navajo hearing remedy works. Only desperate people with poor critical thinking skills are likely to fall for it. This particular scam is relatively benign. Bogus cancer cures can kill people by persuading them to reject or delay effective and lifesaving mainstream treatments. The worst this one can do is persuade people to put off getting a hearing aid. Customers will only be out $37, which I suppose isn’t a bad price to pay for a valuable lesson about false advertising.

The need for critical thinking in Africa cannot be overemphasized because some of the dark and destructive effects of dogma, superstition, and blind faith are most manifest is in this region. The inability to question claims and beliefs is at the root of witch killing, ritual murders, and other superstition-based abuses that plague the region. Unfortunately, the spread of education, science, and human rights has not significantly weakened the hold of irrational beliefs on the minds of many. Pastors, medicine men, godmen, and godwomen continue to propagate bogus claims and prey on popular fears, ignorance, and credulity. In Kenya, Prophet Owuor claimed to have resurrected a woman from the dead. A traditional priest in Ghana sustained serious injuries while testing a magic bulletproof vest. In South Africa, pastors asked church members to eat grass and drink Dettol. They used insecticide faith heal the people. Another pastor, Bushiri, claimed to have walked on the air.

In Nigeria, there have been reports of witches crash landing in a church or at a bus stop and then turning into a cat or bird. These issues are worrisome and have made critical thinking urgent and compelling in Africa and among Africans. This piece explains a very important device for critical thinking. This tool contains programs that one can utilize in nourishing the mind and in sifting through the welter of information that one receives every day. I call this device “iDoubt.” The “i” stands for different applications: individual doubt, inspire doubt, inculcate doubt, inform doubt, and Internet doubt. I argue that these applications can enhance one’s curiosity and critical abilities and help us guard against deception, exploitation, and foolery.

Individual Doubt

The program, individual doubt, underscores the capacity of all persons—young and old, black or white, educated or non-educated, religious or nonreligious—to query and dispute notions and beliefs. Humans are doubting beings. We are questing, questioning, inquisitive, and curious animals. Questioning a claim is part of the human chemistry. In fact, critical thinking is in the human DNA. Too often the human mind boils and bubbles with questions. Unfortunately, these impulses get suppressed. The thoughts are brushed aside. Things we see on the streets or on the television or on the Internet; things we hear from family members or friends; what we read in the papers or presentations such as this, trigger questions. They provoke thoughts and ideas because they seem not to be as true or as real as imagined, expected, or stated. People are constantly grappling with the notion of appearance versus reality, truth versus falsehood. They try to reconcile what people say with what they mean. Accounts of what happened in the past or in the present—even what people say would happen in the future—elicit objections and reservations.

Very often we have questions regarding the actors behind certain events and experiences, the persons involved in a robbery, kidnapping, accidents, or murder; the roles they played, the time and place of events. The mind is curious to understand these characters or is unsatisfied with what is presented. Hence doubting attests to the mind’s thirst for knowledge and understanding. It is the driver of human curiosity and ingenuity. The mind poses and composes questions in order to ascertain, clarify, verify, or to obtain more information. For instance, some people have questions regarding the holy books. They ask: who wrote the Bible? Did Allah really dictate the Quran? Can a spirit talk? The mind boils with questions regarding ritual beliefs and traditions: Can a human head turn into money? Can a human being turn into a snake? Can human beings “fly” at night as witches? Why at night? Why can’t they fly during the day?

This application draws attention to the fact that although human beings believe and have faith, they also exercise doubt. It is important to note that human beings do not doubt exactly the same way. Human beings relate differently to issues. Things affect us in ways that we question with varying degrees of passion, nuance, and emphasis. So, doubts have personal connections, content, and intent. Our questions reflect personal experiences, frustrations, and expectations. Our doubts are unique just as we are. But these sentiments may be dormant and not overtly expressed. So we need another facility to awaken and put these critical ideas into active use, another application that inspires doubt.

Inspire Doubt

This application stresses the importance of motivating people to question. Although doubting is natural to us, we may not doubt at the end of the day. The art of questioning can be stimulated; it could be directly or indirectly provoked. Information that one reads could make the person curious and begin to ask questions. Questions also provoke questions.

For instance, in 1994 I applied to teach in a school in Ibadan that is in South West Nigeria. After going through my application, which contained my date of birth, the headmaster of the school asked me: Is that your real age? Actually, he meant to ask: Is that your real date of birth? I was confused and taken completely aback by the question. I stared at him for a while and then replied: Which one is real age? The man suspected that the question did not go down well with me and then said with a smile: “Well, I am just asking.”

This experience haunted me for a while because, until I encountered this man, I never knew that a person could declare an unreal age or date of birth. I did not know what, in Nigeria, they call “official age.” It seemed impossible and unthinkable because I have younger brothers. If I had quoted an age less than my actual age that would mean I am the same age as my younger brother! Meanwhile, my mother never had twins!

As you can see, questions provoke questions. Doubts trigger doubt. This encounter made me doubtful of people’s ages. Since then, whenever a person tells me his or her age or their date of birth, this question comes to my mind: Is that the real age? Is that the real date of birth? From there, other questions follow: Is that the real certificate? Is that the real name? Is that the real grade? Is that the real nationality? Is that the real father or mother? Is that the real child? Nowadays, in dealing with people I devote a lot of time doing a reality check.

People may have doubts about a thing or a project; about a person’s age, qualification, or credential. One may have questions regarding changing one’s job, accepting a friendship or marriage proposal, relocating to another country, starting a new business, joining a group, contributing to a cause, etc. However, the person may be reluctant to express his/her doubts. Sometimes it is necessary to nudge people to ask questions and to disclose their suspicions. This program stresses the need to incentivize critical thinking and inquiry. It invites us to motivate persons: children, siblings, parents or peers, friends, coworkers, family, or community members to openly and expressly voice out their objections and dissent.

This application urges us to reward and not penalize critical reasoning. Those who doubt and question beliefs should be commended and celebrated. Skeptics should be honored. There should be prizes for those who ask the highest number of questions in an event like this. Some reward should be set aside for persons who pose tough questions after presentations. However, as Bertrand Russell said, some people would rather die than think. Some people would rather die than express their doubts. That is why the next application is a very important part of this device.

Inculcate Doubt

This application is closely related to inspiring doubt. The only difference is that it reminds us that questioning aptitude can be taught. Although it is part of human nature to question, doubting is something that can be instilled into others. Critical thinking is a learned process. The skills can be transmitted. Questioning claims and behaviors is not an attribute that just readily manifests on its own. Sometimes, the habit has to be nurtured and cultivated because human beings could decide not to examine or interrogate certain issues and claims.

So this application invites us to teach people to doubt and to instruct others to think critically. We can instruct people to challenge claims, examine traditional, cultural, and religious beliefs. Critical aptitude should be introduced as a subject in primary and secondary schools. People should be able to learn from a young age how to question and to doubt.

We need to teach pupils to ask questions such as: How do you know? What is the evidence? Are you sure? Why should I believe you? Can you prove it? Just as people are taught to greet, drive, run, cook, play football and tennis, they should also be taught to questions ideas and critically examine claims and beliefs. Even when people are taught to doubt they may still refuse to express their thoughts. That is why we need the next application in the kit.

Inform Doubt

This application emphasizes the need to inform others about our doubts. It urges us to publicize our critical thoughts and disseminate our misgivings. Simply put, tell others you have doubts. Tell a friend: “I doubt it.” Doubts lurk and rage in our minds longing for expression. They could dissipate and fizzle out from there. Without telling someone about them—without communicating these objections and reservations—no one would know about them. A key benefit of a doubt is lost. The power and value of critical thinking lies in its public expression and application. No one will reckon with those critical thoughts or ideas unless they are made known. Without communicating such thoughts, the ideas will not be taken into account. First of all, the benefit is lost to the entertainer of a doubt because non-expression of doubts has choking and suffocating effects. Expression of doubt is cathartic and leads to mental relief and ventilation.

In addition, informing others about our doubts nourish other persons’ doubting capacity. Critical ideas shared are critical ideas gained. Human beings are producers as well as consumers of doubts. Expressed critical thinking is an exercise in mutual intellectual nourishment.

Sometimes, the tendency is to think that one is doubting alone. Too often I have heard skeptics heave a sigh of relief that they are not the only ones who doubt certain notions and beliefs. First timers at skeptics/humanist meetings often say: “Oh I thought I was the only one thinking this way.” They make this remark after hearing others share their doubts and disbelief, and say openly and publicly what they have been thinking and expressing privately. This application enjoins us to announce it to the world that we doubt and wear the labels of critical thinking, skepticism, and rationalism with pride. This is because doubting is one of the human’s most valuable assets. It is a mark that human beings do not just accept whatever is said. Human beings consume with some taste.

So please, tell your doubts to anybody who cares to know that you have them. Even if people do not care to know, express your doubts to them; they may start caring from that moment. You may be surprised to hear their response such as: “I doubt it too” or “I don’t believe it too” or “I have been suspecting that guy” or “I also think that prophet is a fraud. This whole notion of an afterlife? It has never made sense to me,” etc. Some of my Christian friends have told me during conversations that they do not believe in the existence of Hell or in the Devil. One said to me that he did not believe that the Bible is the word of God.

Very often one may never get to hear such doubt-filled declarations if one refuses to communicate one’s critical ideas. In fact, one may not get to meet other doubters like some of you out there unless one shares openly and publicly one’s skeptical thoughts. So, don’t keep those doubts to yourself. Announce them, publicize them, tell a friend, and say to a neighbor: “I doubt it.”

Internet Doubt

In the business of communication today, one important facility is the Internet. This application urges us to use the online accessories to express and communicate our doubts. These accessories include websites, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snap Chat, podcasts, and blogs. Before the advent of the Internet, the space to express one’s critical thoughts was limited. Many people who doubted hardly ever put their thoughts into writing.

Even when these thoughts are written, they would often not be published. The few critical thinkers who published their ideas did so in obscure journals, magazines, or bulletins that few knew about or read. With the advent of the Internet, this situation has changed. Information technology has liberated doubts and doubters. It has provided an additional space to express skeptical ideas.

To let you know how the Internet could really be vital in expressing our doubts, let us take a look at the reaction to an article that I published online, on Ghanaweb, some time ago. After a stampede in Mecca that led to the death of some of the pilgrims, I queried why those pilgrims should suffer death if Allah really existed. I have no doubt that you agree with me that this query is in order. The article titled, “Hajj Stampede: Where was Allah?” did not go down well with many readers and generated 177 comments. In one of the comments, captioned “Think Deep,” the writer said:

Writer no name is sad. I don’t know how and where to start or what to say. But my question to the writer is if you say Muslims believe Allah is omnipotent, omnipresent etc what about the God you believe in? And if your God also has any of those qualities where was he when tragedies like this happen? Just think. Think deep and you will know how seriously and wastefully you wasted your time in writing this piece.

As you can see, my piece that was itself a question has generated more questions. But this article would not have generated these questions to my knowledge if I had not posted it online. So, the Internet has been useful for skeptics and believers alike in disseminating their doubts and disbelief.

Furthermore, try and visit any of the online forums and see how Nigerians, Ghanaians, and Kenyans are waxing with doubts and critical ideas. Someone who was worried about the rise of atheism in Nigeria posted this comment on Naira land:

I was just reading a post on Naira land some minutes ago where the topic was on what constitutes a God-fearing individual. Someone commented adding that he/she is (sic) an atheist and that got me wondering. I have been seeing so many atheists on social media in Nigeria and it bothers me why there are so many of them nowadays. Are people now saying that there is no God? Do people mean that they don’t believe in the creator of the universe? How did they come into existence if they don’t believe in God? God created us all and this is what the Bible says. What is it with all these atheists? I want to understand why anyone would come to the conclusion that there is no God. It baffles me seriously. I need answers.

So, the Internet is providing a platform for believers and nonbelievers to pose questions and express their doubts, shocks, and surprises. It has become a tool for all those who are baffled by atheism or theism to look for answers. So, I say: Use it; make use of the internet. Digitalize your doubts!

Conclusion

I have explained the iDoubt device and the various applications that we can use to nourish our minds. Doubting is a mark of an intelligent and active mind. Bertrand Russell has aptly noted that the trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are filled with doubts. Questioning illumines, awakens, and enlightens. Critical thinking has the potential of saving life, money, and time. It could help diminish the harm, suffering, and exploitation that many people experience across the region. Critical reasoning is human beings’ greatest weapon against authoritarianism, tyranny, and fraud. It is necessary for active humanism and a worthwhile life because critical examination of claims is revealing and unveiling. By questioning beliefs, we free the mind from the chain of dogma. We unveil what is hidden from the other: what parents hide from the children, children from adults, leaders from the led, teachers from students, clergy from lay people, men from women, and women from men.

At the same time, doubting disrupts knowledge and truth claims. Questioning unsettles and unnerves, especially those who lay claim to absolute truth or to an unshiftable paradigm of knowledge. Doubting faults what is believed to be true or right; things as we see them and as we perceive them or things as we want them to be seen or perceived. Doubts are the harbingers of the new, of new knowledge, clues, insights, and discoveries. Critical inquiry is a marker of creative, inventive, and innovative minds. Doubting is an invaluable asset that is needed in sifting through the maze of information, the confusing and contradictory claims and beliefs that we encounter daily.

At a time when we are witnessing rampant and irresponsible claims of people resurrecting from the dead and turning into birds, goats, and snakes and in an era when pastors are walking on the air and many Africans still believe that human beings fly at night as witches and that one can make money through ritual and human sacrifice, this device—iDoubt—is a resource.

iDoubt and its different applications can be put to effective use in tackling the demon and witch hunters and in furthering the cause of proactive skepticism in Africa in this Internet age. So the next time you encounter those peddling dubious superstitious, religious and paranormal beliefs, whether online or offline, let them know in no uncertain terms:

I doubt it; you doubt it; we doubt it!

Taner Edis is a professor of physics at Truman State University in Missouri. He is a Scientific and Technical Consultant for CSI and has written several books on religion and science. He will be speaking at CSICon 2017 at 9 am on Saturday, October 28.

Susan Gerbic: Taner, it’s so good to talk to you. Can you give us a preview of what you plan to talk about at CSICon?

Taner Edis: We skeptics know a lot about controversies over UFOs and psychics and so forth and media misinformation about them. I want to bring an international perspective, specifically looking at Muslim and Turkish examples. There is much that might seem new and exotic to us in, for example, Islamic creationism. But a lot of it is also very familiar. Both the intellectual and political contexts in which debates over pseudoscience take place have some universal features. I'll argue that the commonalities suggest that we skeptics have to pay closer attention to some political concerns about media and education.

Gerbic: Creationism is a topic you write quite a bit about, and being from Istanbul I suppose you are all over the recent news that Turkey is going to stop teaching evolution in science classes. This is distressing to our community and to science educators, but it must be extremely frustrating for you personally. Is there any good news?

Edis: Don't expect any good news about evolution from Turkey. The Turkish example is fascinating as an illustration of creationist success. Both in public education and in public opinion, the creationists have been fairly successful, far beyond what our American creationists can hope for.

Gerbic: You supported the March for Science this past April. I loved your signs “Save the Passenger Pigeon, wait, too late … Save the Endangered Species Act” and “E = mc(3) (Alternative Fact)”. You wrote on Facebook “I enjoyed the event, including how we got to pat ourselves on the back for being more rational than the alternative-facts crowd. And, yet, little that we did made sense without the very questionable myths about science that framed everything.” If I understand you correctly, are you saying that the march would not have been possible if science didn’t have a nemesis? It’s been months since the march; are you seeing any signs that it accomplished anything lasting?

Edis: By "myths about science," I meant how when we argue for the public utility of science, we almost entirely draw attention to applied rather than basic science. And we present applied science very selectively: we talk about medicine and the awful diseases that can be cured, but not, for example, about weapons research and the number of people we can exterminate. That's unavoidable, I suppose. But the March for Science was still useful like all such political demonstrations are. It makes a constituency more visible and tells like-minded people that they're not alone. It might help further organizing, or it might fade away without any follow-up. It's hard to say.

Gerbic: You are the author of many books about science, Islam, and creationism. In 2016, you published Islam Evolving: Radicalism, Reformation, and the Uneasy Relationship with the Secular West. Can you tell us what you are working on next?

Edis: I've been writing a few papers. One that might be of interest to skeptics is about the question of when it might be rational to believe in certain falsehoods. The argument turns on the costs of acquiring and possessing beliefs; sometimes truth is just too costly. (I teach physics, but for many years now my main area of research has been philosophy of science, mostly on science and pseudoscience issues.)

Gerbic: One of the topics that I was surprised to learn you are very interested in is crop circles. You said in your book Science and Nonbelief, “So we do not need to find the perpetrator of every crop circle to figure out that probably they all are human made.”

Edis: For some reason, I've acquired an online reputation as a critic of paranormal claims about crop circles. Not so much, really. In Science and Nonbelief I used crop circles as a nice illustration to illustrate a more general point: that skeptics don't need to solve every damn mystery. Then somehow a few crop circle proponents got wind of this and thought my brief remarks needed a response. But I've never written more about crop circles, and my association with crop circle–skepticism is still rather amusing to me.

Gerbic: CSICon is quickly approaching, and the Halloween theme will be a zombie disco. I know you physics professors are a wild and crazy bunch.  Any chance we will be seeing you in bellbottoms and a sequined top?

Edis: Close to Halloween, I often show up in class wearing a wizard hat, and if I remember, I might do something similar at the CSICon conference. But you do not want to see me on any dance floor. I'm one of those people who can show you the meaning of the "two left feet" metaphor. My wife had given up on me years ago.

Gerbic: Thank you, Taner. I know you are super busy and have just returned from a trip to Turkey and Wales. I look forward to hearing your talk at CSICon. Readers, remember to get your tickets soon for CSICon. Try to arrive on Wednesday in time for the workshops and remain until late Sunday or even have breakfast with me and the rest of the “survivors” on Monday morning. Follow the Facebook page for the convention activities to see where people are hanging out.

Photography Credit: Karl Withakay ©

Homeopathy is a sham. Homeopathic “remedies” have been shown repeatedly by scientific research to be at best placebos. The entire theoretical basis of homeopathy—the concepts that “like treats like” and that increasingly diluting an alleged active ingredient to untraceably small concentrations while periodically shaking the solution actually increases its potency—is laughable, and no credible research has shown it to have any validity.

Yet millions upon millions of dollars are spent each year by the American public on this snake oil. Frustrating as that may be, we at the Center for Inquiry (CFI) believe that is an adult’s right. If they want to waste their money on such nonsense, they may do so, just as they may buy “healing” crystals or visit a reiki practitioner. However, there are important caveats. We have extreme misgivings about parents eschewing science-based medicine and “treating” their children homeopathically. The denial of real medicine to those who have no say in their treatment leads to short term pain and suffering and often long term negative consequences up to and including preventable death. We also believe that if adults are purchasing such products, they should be provided with true information about what they are spending money on. Homeopathic products should not be marketed in a deceptive manner.

The regulation of over the counter (OTC) drugs in the United States is shared by two main government agencies: the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FDA oversees what products may be offered for sale in this manner, and the FTC regulates how these products may be marketed. Both agencies have, in recent years, undertaken a review of their regulation of OTC homeopathic products, and CFI has contributed testimony to both.

The FDA, in response to an inquiry from CFI, noted that it will announce its regulatory regime later this year. The FTC, however, in November 2016, issued an Enforcement Policy Statement (EPS) detailing a change in its approach to the regulation of OTC homeopathic products. Noting that the Federal Trade Act “does not exempt homeopathic products from the general requirement that objective product claims be truthful and substantiated,” it continued to state that “the promotion of an OTC homeopathic product for an indication that is not substantiated by competent and reliable scientific evidence may not be deceptive if that promotion effectively communicates to customers that: (1) There is no scientific evidence that the product works and (2) the product’s claims are based only on theories of homeopathy from the 1700s that are not accepted by most medical experts.” The EPS also acknowledged that “for the vast majority of OTC homeopathic drugs … there are no valid studies using current scientific methods showing the product’s efficacy.”

The EPS then is clear. To avoid deceptive promotion, homeopathic products being promoted as beneficial for particular ailments must display this disclaimer. However, this doesn’t appear to be happening. Homeopathic manufacturers don’t seem to have changed their packaging, and if you walk into a neighborhood drug store, you still see, for example, Boiron’s Oscillococcinum (a “remedy” containing an infinitesimally small dilution¹ of the liver of a Muscovy duck) sitting alongside Tylenol on a shelf labeled “Cold and Flu.” Both the producer and the retailer are promoting this product as a treatment for the symptoms of a particular illness, there is no scientific evidence that it works for that illness, and there is no display of the required disclaimer.

So, we at CFI decided the best initial approach was to contact a retailer. We have been in communications with CVS stores through their attorneys. Our requests were, we think, reasonable. We did not ask that CVS stops selling homeopathic products, but merely that they market them, both online and in their brick and mortar stores, in a nondeceptive manner. We requested that CVS sells homeopathic products in a different section, and that this section displays clearly the required FTC disclaimer. For online sales, we requested that the disclaimer be displayed when someone added a homeopathic product to their shopping cart. CVS, after initial discussions, has failed to respond further.

CFI’s next step, then, was to write to the FTC requesting enforcement proceedings be undertaken against CVS. The letter can be read here. The ball is now in the FTC’s court. The agency has established rules for the promotion of OTC homeopathic products. They must now enforce them. If they don’t, CFI is pledged to explore ways to bring private legal action to ensure that retailers no longer participate in this fraud on the public.

¹ Oscillococcinum is a 200C dilution—approximately 1 part duck offal in 10⁴⁰⁰ parts “remedy.”

Rob Brotherton is an author and professor at Barnard College in New York City. He has a PhD from Goldsmiths University of London; his thesis was on the psychology of conspiracy theories. He will be speaking at CSICon on Saturday, October 28 at 2:30 p.m. For more information about Rob, find it here https://conspiracypsychology.com/.

Susan Gerbic: Rob, so nice to meet you. I see you are interviewed all over the media from MSNBC to Breitbart. Conspiracy theories seem to be a hot topic these days. Your 2015 book Suspicious Minds – Why we Believe Conspiracy Theories https://conspiracypsychology.com/2015/11/02/suspicious-minds-why-we-believe-conspiracy-theories/ is pretty timely. When you wrote this, you had no idea that the president of the United States would be someone who would spout this rhetoric. What a wild and crazy world we find ourselves in right now.

Rob Brotherton: Right. The Breitbart thing still tickles me. I’d written about the history of the Illuminati, how it became connected with hip hop for the Daily Beast, and Breitbart put up an article about it wildly misconstruing what I wrote—basically implying that I’d revealed Kanye West to be part of the Illuminati. Breitbart publishes misleading, clickbait stories—who knew?

Gerbic: You mean Kanye West isn’t a part of the illuminati? Can you tell readers a bit more about yourself? Why is the topic conspiracy theories your area?

Brotherton: I got into conspiracy theories very early in my psychology career, while I was still an undergrad. Around that time I was getting into the skeptical movement, reading books such as Flim Flam and The Demon Haunted World, and it got me interested in the weird side of psychology—false memories, magical beliefs, and the like. Then a faculty member suggested doing a project on conspiracy theories. At that point, the topic had been almost entirely ignored by psychologists, presumably because a lot of people assumed it was a trivial curiosity not worth spending much time on. But I was immediately hooked. For me, understanding conspiracy theories is important on the one hand because it helps us understand the psychology of belief in general and on the other hand because conspiracy theories can be impactful in and of themselves. In the last few years that has become more obvious, and more and more psychologists are researching conspiracy theories now.

Gerbic: It’s possible that people think that a belief in conspiracy theories is harmless; I’m thinking of the moon landing and lizard people in the government. Obviously, these aren’t exactly harmless as they fuel a mistrust of society around them. But they appear to be harmless compared to the false flag Sandy Hook theory (one of the fathers, Lenny Pozner, was a believer in conspiracy theories right up until the moment his son became a victim; he even was listening to Alex Jones the morning he dropped his son off at Sandy Hook) and Timothy McVeigh who believed the government instigated the Waco siege; his mistrust in the government eventually led him to bomb the FBI building in Oklahoma City.

Brotherton: Yes, there are those two reasons for concern. There are the rare but startling instances in which individuals are driven to extreme acts seemingly in large part thanks to their belief in a conspiracy. There was McVeigh, as you mentioned, or more recently Edgar Welch, the guy who went to investigate the Pizzagate conspiracy theory with an automatic rifle, though thankfully he didn’t hurt anyone. And then there are the broader but less tangible consequences, like choosing not to vaccinate your kids, take action against climate change, participate in the political process, or being generally distrustful. As far as the psychological research goes, studies do find that exposure to conspiracy theories can breed alienation. But it’s also likely that it goes in the other direction, too—that conspiracy theories resonate most with people who are alienated to begin with. So it’s likely a vicious cycle where alienation promotes conspiracism, which reinforces alienation, which promotes conspiracism, and so on.

Gerbic: Conspiracy theories have been with us for years, I remember reading that people didn’t believe that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated Lincoln. I naively believed that when people had access to better information in a timely manner they would be less likely to believe in conspiracy theories. Is there any hope for our society? Is this just something we are going to have to learn to deal with?

Brotherton: Actually, I think you’re right, the accessibility of information thanks to the Internet has been great for debunking conspiracy theories. But it’s been good for spreading conspiracy theories as well. Overall it seems to be a wash, at least so far. The best longitudinal data we have come from a study by Joe Uscinski and Joseph Parent, who looked for references to conspiracy theories in letters to the editor published in a couple of national newspapers over more than a century. And they found that conspiracy theories form a pretty stable background hum. The proportion of people who are drawn to conspiracy theories, and the proportion who dismiss them, doesn’t change much over time, and both sides use whatever technology is available to consume and spread what they want to believe.

Gerbic: You will be speaking at CSICon in Vegas this year. Can you give us a glimpse into what you will be talking about?

Brotherton: The talk will be a whistle-stop tour of the highlights of the last decade or so of research into the psychology of conspiracy theories. I’ll focus on how some of the biases and shortcuts our brains use to make sense of the world that can make conspiracy theories seem appealing.

Gerbic: You spoke in 2011 at a conference in London called “Conspiracy Theory Day” and again in London in 2013 at the “Nine Worlds GeekFest.” CSICon sounds like it will fit right in; what would you say if someone said you are just speaking to the choir?

Brotherton: My take on conspiracy theories is quite different than the typical skeptical response of challenging the theorists on the facts. My secret agenda—don’t tell anyone—is to make skeptics question their views on conspiracy theories just as much as the conspiracy theorists. The stereotype of the tin-foil-hat-wearing crackpot is just wrong, and dismissing conspiracy theorists as people who just have the facts wrong misses an important psychological reality. We’re all potential conspiracy theorists, because that’s how our minds work. And, of course, sometimes people do conspire. The real trick is to calibrate your skepticism appropriately, which requires an awareness not just of when the people you disagree with are being biased but when you might be being biased yourself!

Gerbic: Okay, so now I need to know, what’s your favorite conspiracy theory?

Brotherton: I love the idea that the Illuminati is manipulating us via pop culture—I do an entire talk on references to the Illuminati in hip hop, if anyone is interested! But my favorite has to be David Icke, the British conspiracy theorist who weaves absolutely everything into a grand conspiracy narrative. I mean everything. I’ve been to a couple of his talks, and they last all day, eleven or twelve hours. He explains how the rings of Saturn are a radio transmitter and the moon is a hollow amplifier, beaming mind control rays down to Earth so that the evil Archons—his famous interdimensional shapeshifting lizards—can keep us trapped in their holographic reality. It’s great sci-fi. The only difference is that David Icke says it’s true, but I’m not convinced.

Gerbic: What’s next for Rob Brotherton? It seems that there is so much to work to do to educate about conspiracy theories that its almost overwhelming.

Brotherton: No kidding. I’m still researching conspiracy theories from different angles. My book was really the start of a conversation, not the end. I thought it was time to collect the early findings together in one place and get the message out that this is an interesting and important thing to study. But the research that’s been done so far is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s still a lot of work to be done.

Gerbic: Folks, please join us at CSICon this year held at the Excalibur Hotel & Casino October 26–30, 2017. Join the Facebook page to get updates on where people are hanging out and what outside activities are happening. This isn’t only about attending interesting lectures but about meeting and interacting with like-minded people. Go for the speakers; return for the people. Trust me on this.

Follow the Links Below to Stay Updated:

CSI Conference on Facebook
CSI Conference Website

Joaquín María Argamasilla de la Cerda y Elio alardeaba, antes que Superman, de tener visión de rayos X. Su padre, Joaquín Argamasilla de la Cerda y Bayona, décimo marqués de Santa Cara y pilar del carlismo navarro, presidía hace cien años la Sociedad Española de Estudios Metapsíquicos.¹ En noviembre de 1922, había descubierto que su hijo podía leer trozos de papel impresos y manuscritos metidos en una caja metálica y había bautizado esa nueva facultad humana como metasomoscopia. Así lo contaba en El Imparcial, el 16 de febrero de 1923, el ingeniero y amigo de la familia Joaquín Menéndez Ormaza:

Un buen amigo mío, rico, titulado, cultísimo y escritor notable, me habló hace un par de meses de cómo había observado en un hijo suyo, mozo de 17 años, con motivo de sus partidas familiares de tresillo,² la extraordinaria e incomprensible facilidad para conocer algunas veces (no siempre) las cartas del juego por transparencia, según afirmaba. No hice caso de tales fantasías ni cuando me refirió otras habilidades realizadas posteriormente por su hijo. Últimamente, con ponderaciones que yo atribuí al amor paternal, me aseguró mi amigo que su hijo leía con pasmosa facilidad escritos para él totalmente desconocidos y encerrados en una caja metálica. Del escepticismo sistemático a la candidez hay un término medio, una posición tan incómoda como inquietante: la de dudar y sonreír con cierto aire de superioridad…³

El cronista había visitado a Argamasilla en su casa madrileña, “acompañado por una personalidad de máxime relieve en las letras patrias”. Creían ambos que iban a presenciar “juegos de prestidigitación o combinaciones pseudocientíficas”. Tras una demostración a cargo del joven, Menéndez Ormaza y su amigo se fueron de la casa convencidos de los poderes del muchacho. “Al salir a la calle, mi acompañante y yo no sabíamos qué decirnos”.⁴ El 8 de marzo de 1923, el notario y político madrileño Cándido Casanueva y Gorjón levanta acta de los prodigios que hace el joven ante su padre, el diplomático y escritor Francisco A. de Icaza, el ingeniero Manuel Maluquer y Menéndez Ormaza, para quien el documento del fedatario deja “bien sentada la realidad del fenómeno de la visión al través de los cuerpos opacos con todas las garantías posibles de la humana certeza”.⁵ ¡Como si un notario, por serlo, supiera de ilusionismo y estuviera, además, capacitado para validar un experimento científico! Posteriormente, Maluquer elabora una peculiar teoría según la cual los causantes del fenómeno son unos misteriosos rayos que llama NH.

Houdini con Argamasilla en 1924.

Las habilidades del adolescente, quien con el tiempo se convirtió en undécimo marqués de Santa Cara, se limitan a acertar con los ojos vendados la hora que marcan las manecillas de un reloj de bolsillo con tapa y lo escrito en un papel arrancado al azar de un libro o revista y metido en una caja de metal. Dice que su visión de rayos X funciona siempre que el metal no esté pintado. Sale de la habitación, los experimentadores meten un papel en la caja o mueven las agujas del reloj, regresa, se venda los ojos, toma la caja o el reloj cerrado entre las manos y adivina lo escrito o la hora. La visión del joven la bloquean únicamente “la porcelana, el cristal, el carbón y, en general, las [materias] malas conductoras de la electricidad. El papel también lo es hasta el punto de que, si se interpone uno de seda, la visión se interrumpe”.⁶

Científicos Deslumbrados

Joaquín María Argamasilla de la Cerda y Elio es un fenómeno en la España de la época. “Fue sometido en diferentes ocasiones a pruebas en el Museo de Ingenieros Militares, en diversos centros, en el Palacio Real ante sus majestades los reyes y en su casa misma ante hombres de ciencia, que se rodearon de todas las precauciones que pudieran garantizar la veracidad del fenómeno”.⁷ En esas exhibiciones, controladas siempre por su padre, deslumbra a científicos de primera línea que certifican sus poderes, como el físico Blas Cabrera, el ingeniero e inventor Leonardo Torres Quevedo y el médico Amalio Gimeno y Cabañas, conde de Gimeno, exministro y presidente de honor de la Sociedad Española de Estudios Metapsíquicos. “Yo no puedo hacerle más que dos afirmaciones absolutas. La primera, que el fenómeno existe y que creo en su veracidad. La segunda, que es absolutamente imposible explicarlo con las hipótesis físicas modernas. Todo esto que habrá usted oído de los rayos X es pura fantasía. No tiene usted más que fijarse en que estas teorías no explican en absoluto cómo es necesaria la existencia del metal para la visión, ni otras particularidades experimentales del fenómeno”, explica Cabrera –amigo de Albert Einstein y anfitrión del genio cuando en 1923 visitó España– al químico Miguel Masriera.⁸

Así manipulaba Argamasilla la caja para ver su interior, según Houdini.

Por encargo de la reina María Cristina, Ramón y Cajal preside en abril de 1924 una comisión científica para estudiar los hechos. La forman Cabrera, el histólogo Jorge Francisco Tello y el neurólogo y psiquiatra Gonzalo Rodríguez Lafora –ambos discípulos del Nobel aragonés–, el médico Juan Negrín –que sería presidente del Gobierno de la República entre 1937 y 1939–, el cardiólogo Luis Calandre y el oftalmólogo Manuel Márquez. Los experimentos se suspenden el día antes de su inicio “al sentir el vidente la desaparición de esta facultad”.⁹ Un don que recupera poco después para viajar a Francia para ser examinado por Charles Robert Richet (1850-1935), Nobel de medicina y apasionado de la metapsíquica.

El conde de Gimeno había aprovechado un viaje a París para informar del fenómeno a Richet. El fisiólogo francés, que había acuñado el término metapsíquica, consideró la posibilidad de viajar a España para estudiar al joven dotado. Al final, los Argamasilla –padre e hijo– van a París invitados por el Instituto de Metapsíquica Internacional, dirigido por el médico Gustave Geley. Según la prensa española, Richet escribe dos cartas a Gimeno en las que le dice: “Gracias a usted, hemos podido comprobar la sorprendente lucidez de Joaquín Santacara [sic]. Ello es verdaderamente maravilloso. Estamos en días de descubrir nuevos rayos. Nos encontramos en presencia de uno de los mayores descubrimientos de nuestros días. Comprobadas estas asombrosas facultades, nos es preciso continuar los estudios”. Los renombrados científicos y aficionados a la metapsíquica que ponen a prueba a Argamasilla pasan por alto un detalle revelador para cualquier aficionado al ilusionismo. “La condición para el eventual éxito [de Argamasilla] era que el lugar estuviera muy bien iluminado puesto que, según sus propias manifestaciones, las experiencias que había realizado en condiciones contrarias fracasaron”, indicaba en 1991 el mago argentino Enrique Márquez.¹⁰

El joven viaja poco después a Estados Unidos para ser examinado por la Sociedad de Boston para la Investigación Psíquica. “Ha venido a este país a convencer a los científicos de que puede ver a través del oro, la plata, el cobre y otros metales, e hizo su primera demostración antes de una reunión ayer en el hotel Pennsylvania”, dice The New York Times el 7 de mayo de 1924.¹¹ Argamasilla lleva cartas de presentación de Richet, Geley y varios científicos españoles que aseguran que “había superado todas las pruebas y había demostrado concluyentemente a su satisfacción que podía leer a través de metal”. Sin embargo, Houdini no cree que el español, de 19 años cuando llega a Nueva York, tenga “visión supranormal”. Sabe que uno puede vendarse los ojos de tal modo que siga viendo –es un arte que dominan los prestidigitadores– y pilla a Argamasilla levantando ligeramente el pañuelo que tapa sus ojos, abriendo subrepticiamente la tapa de un reloj y echando una mirada dentro sin que nadie más se entere. Comprueba, además, que el truco de la caja metálica sólo le sale si lo hace con dos de su propiedad que le permiten echar un vistazo al interior por la holgura del cierre.

Debate en la Prensa Española

Arranque de la crónica sobre el encuentro de Argamasilla con Houdini del corresponsal del periódico Abc en Nueva York.

La historia que se cuenta en España es muy diferente. “La opinión publicada en la prensa refleja el respeto que el país tenía a la familia del marqués. El hecho de que el hijo del marqués estuviera implicado hizo que el caso fuera más convincente: ¿por qué un joven aristócrata iba arriesgar innecesariamente su reputación y tomarse la molestia de simular esa habilidad? ¿Quién iba a atreverse a contradecir a un marqués apoyado por prestigiosos científicos?”, destacan las historiadoras de la psicología Annete Mülberger y Mònica Balltondre.¹² Así, Miguel de Zárraga, corresponsal en Nueva York del diario Abc, envía una crónica en la que sostiene que “los ingenuos neoyorquinos están un poco desconcertados ante los experimentos, realmente asombrosos, que Joaquín María de Argamasilla les brindó con la mayor modestia” y que Houdini había hecho el ridículo al intentar replicar los poderes del joven español. “Todos los grandes periódicos norteamericanos han proclamado el triunfo de Argamasilla, y se burlan donosamente del atrevido Houdini”, sentencia.¹³ Si bien es cierto que Houdini yerra a la hora de adivinar la hora de un reloj de tapa y dice que sus agujas marcan la una y diez minutos cuando apuntan a las doce y diez, el marqués y su hijo vuelven a casa derrotados ante los científicos y la opinión pública estadounidense, para la que el joven queda como un charlatán.

El primer relato fidedigno de lo ocurrido en Estados Unidos que se publica en nuestro país es obra de Rodríguez Lafora, el principal crítico español de Argamasilla. En agosto de 1925, el neurólogo y psiquiatra cuenta en el periódico El Sol cómo “Houdini ha venido a demostrar que los psicólogos, los médicos y los físicos son tan fáciles de engañar como los abogados, los artistas o los sacerdotes. Cualquier prestidigitador les sorprende, exactamente los mismo que a los otros profesionales que no se consideran técnicos”.¹⁴ Se refiere a los desenmascaramientos de la médium estadounidense Mina Crandon, conocida por sus seguidores como Margery, y de Argamasilla. “No se contentaban allí [en Estados Unidos] con las afirmaciones de Richet y de los sabios españoles que lo atestiguaban. Querían comprobar por sí mismos la realidad del fenómeno. Pero los hombres de ciencia americanos son, al parecer, menos pedantes que los de Europa y aceptaron la colaboración de un mago o prestidigitador profesional, Houdini, que es el que les ha revelado los secretos y trucos de estos pretendidos fenómenos”.

Días después, Argamasilla se queja, en una carta a El Sol enviada desde Biarritz, de haber sido presentado “como un embaucador y un farsante que ha logrado engañar, con una pretendida facultad nueva de visión, a centenares de personas sabias y legas, hasta que un comité de doctores de Nueva York, con mayor perspicacia”, proclama su “falta de honradez” y le echa “al montón de los impostores”.¹⁵ El joven asegura que él y Houdini habían mantenido un encuentro privado en el que había demostrado sus poderes al mago, quien, “maravillado del éxito”, vio en su habilidad “un filón a explotar” y le propuso asociarse, algo a lo que el aristócrata se negó. Como represalia, añadía, el ilusionista había empezado entonces a decir que todo lo que hacía el joven eran trucos que podía replicar. “Él no pudo cumplir su palabra, con lo que mi triunfo fue completo, y de ello dieron cuenta los periódicos de América y algunos corresponsales de Madrid”, escribe. Rodríguez Lafora pide entonces al vidente que, como él había hecho en su artículo de denuncia, cite “las revistas y artículos de hombres respetables de Norteamérica que aceptaron su nueva facultad”. No lo hace. No puede. No existen.

¡Desenmascarado!

Houdini explica en un librito las artimañas del psíquico español, a quien considera “un inteligente manipulador”, y acaba con la carrera paranormal de Argamasilla en Estados Unidos.¹⁶ Cuenta cómo el joven mueve tanto la caja metálica con el papel en su interior como el reloj de tapa hasta casi su barbilla, de tal modo que puede, a través de la rendija de la primera y abriendo rápidamente el segundo, llegar a ver lo escrito en el papel y la hora que marcan las manecillas, respectivamente, gracias a un hueco entre la venda, la nariz y la cara. Otra vez, es Rodríguez Lafora quien en España explica los detalles en tres artículos sucesivos publicados en El Sol, ilustrado uno de ellos con imágenes del libro del mago. El neurólogo propone una serie de sencillos experimentos para poner a prueba los poderes del muchacho y llama la atención sobre los fallos cometidos hasta ese momento por los experimentadores, sólo explicables por su ingenuidad. “Entre los numerosos absurdos chocantes de las pruebas del señor Argamasilla, está el de que dice generalmente que no ve a través del cartón o papel, y en cambio lo hace a través de los algodones y pañuelo o venda que se pone ante los ojos, olvidando que la pasta de papel es de composición parecida a aquéllos. ¿Cómo no se le ha ocurrido a ningún investigador suprimir el algodón y el pañuelo de los ojos del vidente y, en cambio, ponerlo envolviendo las cajas metálicas? Si no impedía el paso de los rayos a través de los párpados, tampoco lo impediría al envolver las cajas metálicas. Éstas y otras contrapruebas parece incomprensible que se les hayan escapado a hombres de ciencia e investigación”, escribe.¹⁷¹

Portada del librito en el que Harry Houdini desenmascara al falso dotado español.

Argamasilla se indigna, se niega a responder a las “acusaciones injuriosas” de Rodríguez Lafora y amenaza con “proceder consecuentemente”, al tiempo que envía varias cartas de científicos e intelectuales en su apoyo. En una, Torres Quevedo, Cabrera, el conde de Gimeno y el biólogo Joaquín María de Castellarnau aseguran que ellos tomaron en su momento todas las precauciones posibles para evitar cualquier engaño y afirman “rotundamente que es absolutamente imposible” que Argamasilla use “ninguna rendija de las cajas metálicas para ver los objetos que había dentro de ellas”. Ramón María del Valle-Inclán, apasionado del ocultismo y amigo del marqués, firma una segunda carta en la que dice que Rodríguez Lafora “carece de toda autoridad” para juzgar el caso: “Hablar de lo que no se ha visto y suponernos tontos a los que hemos tenido plena comprobación, acusa más ligereza que sentido científico”.

No todos los que han presenciado los prodigios de Argamasilla comparten la opinión de Torres Quevedo, Cabrera, el conde de Gimeno, Castellarnau y Valle-Inclán. El escritor y político Luis Araquistáin asiste a una exhibición del joven en compañía de su amigo Juan Negrín.¹⁸ Ve a Argamasilla abrir la tapa del reloj subrepticiamente para ver la hora y se da cuenta de que es incapaz de leer la parte del papel metido en la caja metálica que queda fuera de su campo de visión. Eso, unido a que el muchacho no adivina la hora de un reloj con la tapa atada, la necesidad de tener siempre la apertura de la caja hacia él y su negativa a someterse a los controles pedidos por Houdini, lleva a Araquistáin a concluir que Argamasilla “ve bastante bien en los cuerpos opacos, y todavía mal a través de los cuerpos opacos”, y a desmarcarse de los “testimonios de tantos sabios españoles”. “Este asunto –extraordinario como tema de literatura picaresca– no encierra, para mí, el menor interés científico", coincide Negrín.¹⁹

Meses después, en una conferencia en Palencia, Rodríguez Lafora dice que el éxito entre algunos científicos de renombre de sujetos como Argamasilla, que llegó a ser director general de Cinematografía y Teatro durante el franquismo (1952-1955), se debe a que “los hombres de ciencia son generalmente cándidos por estar acostumbrados a investigar la verdad, y van a buscarla directamente, sin estar habituados al trato con los que premeditadamente se valen del engaño”.²⁰ “Las personas que desean creer en los fenómenos supernormales no están capacitadas para investigar estos fenómenos. Un investigador simpatizante no sólo carece de capacidad crítica, sino que incluso ayuda al médium y le facilita los trucos, y aún afirma luego con toda sinceridad que ha visto el fenómeno y que ha controlado bien”, sentencia el neurólogo.²¹ A la hora de poner a prueba a alguien presuntamente dotado de poderes paranormales, el mejor aliado de un científico es un mago, alguien que ha hecho del engaño de los sentidos un arte y un modo de vida. Por eso individuos como Uri Geller nunca se someten voluntariamente al escrutinio de un prestidigitador.

Nota Final

Este texto es un extracto del libro El peligro de creer (Léeme, 2015), de Luis Alfonso Gámez.²²

1. Metapsíquica era el nombre que recibía la parapsicología a principios del siglo XX.
2. Juego de naipes español que nació a finales siglo XVIII.
3. Menéndez Ormaza, Joaquín [1923]: La luz negra o la visión al través de los cuerpos opacos. Librería San Martín. Madrid. 36.
4. Menéndez Ormaza [1923], op. cit., 38-46.
5. Ibid., 77-81.
6. Marqués de Santa Cara [hacia 1924]: Un tanteo en el misterio. Ensayo experimental sobre la lucidez sonambúlica. M. Aguilar. Madrid. 277.
7. Redacción [1924]: “Un tipo de metapsiquia”. La Vanguardia (Barcelona). 10 de enero.
8. Masriera Rubio, Miguel [1924]: “La metasomoscopia (II y último)”. La Vanguardia (Barcelona). 16 de febrero.
9. Rodríguez Lafora, Gonzalo [1924]: “Sobre la visión a través de los cuerpos opacos”. El Sol (Madrid). 10 de enero.
10. Márquez, Enrique [1991]: “Harry Houdini, un capítulo de su lucha contra el fraude”. El Ojo Escéptico (Buenos Aires). Vol. 1, Nº 3 (diciembre). 14-15. Márquez, Enrique
11. Redacción [1924]: “Challenge super-sight”. The New York Times (Nueva York). 7 de mayo.
12. Mülberger, Annette; y Balltondre, Mònica [2012]: “Metapsychics in Spain: acknowledging or questioning the marvelous?”. History of the Human Sciences (Londres). Vol. 25, Nº 2 (abril). 108-130.
13. Zárraga, Miguel de [1924]: “‘Abc’ en Nueva York. El maravilloso Argamasilla”. Abc (Madrid). 24 de mayo.
14. Rodríguez Lafora, Gonzalo [1925]: “Espiritismo, videncia y engaños”. El Sol (Madrid). 1 de agosto.
15. Argamasilla de la Cerda, Joaquín María; y Lafora, Gonzalo R. [1925]: “Una carta y una respuesta, Espiritismo, videncia, engaños”. El Sol (Madrid). 8 de agosto.
16. Houdini, Harry [1924b]: Houdini exposes the tricks used by the Boston medium ‘Margery’ to win the $2500 prize offered by the ‘Scientific American’. Also a complete exposure of Argamasilla, the famous Spaniard who baffled noted scientists of Europe and America, with his claim to X-ray vision. Adam Press Publishers. Nueva York. 38 páginas.
17. Rodríguez Lafora, Gonzalo [1926]: “La visión a través de los cuerpos opacos: el caso Argamasilla”. El Sol (Madrid). 17, 18 y 19 de febrero.
18. Araquistáin, Luis [1926]: “La visión ‘en’ los cuerpos opacos”. El Sol (Madrid). 23 de febrero.
19. Negrín, Juan [1926]: “Opinión del doctor Negrín”. El Sol (Madrid). 2 de marzo.
20. Febus [1926]: “Conferencia del doctor Rodríguez Lafora. Los fenómenos espiritistas supernormales”. El Sol (Madrid). 22 de mayo.
21. Rodríguez Lafora, Gonzalo [1927]: Don Juan, los milagros y otros ensayos. Prologado por Luis Valenciano Gayá. Alianza Editorial (Col. “El libro de bolsillo”, Nº 591). Madrid 1975. 193.
22. Gámez, Luis Alfonso [2015]: El peligro de creer. Prologado por José A. Pérez Ledo. Léeme Libros. Madrid. 226 páginas.

Kenny Biddle lives in Pennsylvania and was a paranormal investigator until he began questioning ghost photographs he and his peers kept shooting. He is a professional photographer, blogger, writer and science enthusiast. He will be speaking at CSICon 2017 Thursday, October 26 - Workshop 2B – Explaining Paranormal Photography and Video 1:30– 3:00 pm.

Susan Gerbic: Kenny, I’m hearing more from you these days: a nice long interview on the 15 Credibility Street podcast and now I see you are giving a workshop at CSICon. I’m really looking forward to learning more about this topic. Can you give us a preview of what you will be talking about?

Kenny Biddle: I hope what you’re hearing is good! I have to give a shout out to my friend, Sharon Hill, for having me on her podcast. It was a great discussion that got deep into critical details.

So you want a sneak peek, huh? Well, I try to make my presentations fun, informative, and interactive. I’m not a “stand at a podium” kind of guy. I don’t like talking at people; I like to get them involved. I like to get them playing with their cameras. I want the audience to create the anomalies themselves! The best way to understand how something is done is to do it yourself.

One of the points I want to get across is what kind of weird things you can do with long exposures. So many ghost hunters, Bigfoot hunters, and UFO hunters are using cameras, yet many only know how to “point and shoot.” We’re going to see what happens when the lights are low and we turn the flash off.  We’re going to see how time and light affect images. We’re also going to duplicate (as best we can) the most famous ghost photo out there. You’ll have to show up to find out which one.

We’re also going go over some basic photography and the common “ghosts.” Audiences usually contain photographers of varying skill levels, from casual camera owners that only know to “push the button” to pros that own thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment. We’ll cover how orbs and ecto mists are created and apparitions from “shadow people” to phone apps. I’m going to jam as much as I can into this workshop, which means I’ll be ramped up on Monster drinks all morning long. I’ll also be around for the whole conference, so if anyone has questions later they can always ask me.

Oh, and if anyone has seen my videos or blog posts, they know I have a slight tendency to curse when a topic really pisses me off. I try to be PG during conferences, but you should be warned just in case.

Gerbic: I see you are a professional photographer with a bit of this and that. Have you ever captured anything that you thought was paranormal? Or have you ever been shown something that made you wonder if they had caught a ghost?

Biddle: I love to dabble in every aspect of a hobby or interest, learning little tricks here and there. I’ve done weddings, family portraits, headshots, product photography, nature photography, and so on. I’ve never taken a class on photography; I learned it “old school”—by reading books/manuals, tagging along with other photographers, and simply pushing all the buttons. I follow the idea of “What will happen if I do this?” It’s a great way to learn.

Twenty years ago, I called myself a “ghost hunter” and believed that orbs, ectoplasmic mists, and “energy” vortexes were genuine evidence of ghosts. Mostly because I was ignorant—or an idiot, I haven’t decided yet. So if you asked me back then if I had caught something paranormal, I would have said “yes.” Over the years I’ve learned so much that I was able to apply that knowledge to past images. I haven’t taken a single image that contained something that could be labeled “paranormal.” The majority of them I’ve been able to extract a plausible explanation, which I can recreate! Showing people that it’s possible (and sometimes quite easy) to recreate a ghostly effect has a much better impact than just a skeptic saying something “ain’t a ghost.”

As for images from other people…. Well, I get sent some crazy shit.  But again, as I learned more and more, I found that I wonder less and less. “Ghost,” as a conclusion, is at the very bottom of my list of possible causes—like below the fine print. My thinking process has evolved so that if I get through hours of intense scrutiny (because my OCD won’t let me “let it go”) and still can’t figure out how an anomaly was created/captured, then I will admit that I don’t know long before I call something a ghost. If I don’t know what it is, I can’t conclude it’s a ghost—that would be fabricating a conclusion!

Gerbic: With everyone carrying a camera with them everywhere you would think by now we would have lots of great images of spooks, UFOs, and cryptozoological creatures. At a certain point, it’s getting silly to continue to think these things exist but for some reason we can’t photograph it.

Biddle: Agreed. Almost everyone in modern society owns some type of camera. Paranormal enthusiasts usually own several! Paranormal hunts are going on every weekend, yet after decades and decades of trying, we still don’t have a valid photo of a ghost, a bigfoot, or an alien spacecraft. I tend to blame the power of belief, confirmation bias, and misinterpretations.

You’re right: it’s getting really silly. All the “great” (classic, popular) ghost and crypto photos came from a time when cameras were not as commonplace. But today, with teams setting up camera systems by the dozen, we don’t get shit. Ghosts are still odd lights and shadows, and Bigfoot is still a blurry fuzz ball despite cameras having advanced image stabilization. The equipment gets better, but the photos and video still look like a two-year-old shot it while learning to walk.

Gerbic: You’re a big fan of Houdini?

Biddle: Houdini was the freakin’ man. Last year I was able to visit the Houdini museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where I met Dorothy Dietrich, a famous stage magician and escapologist, as well as a huge follower on Houdini (she’s been referred to as the “female Houdini”). She’s been charged with carrying on the tradition of the Houdini séance, which was passed on from Bess (Houdini’s wife) to magician Walter B. Gibson, who in turn passed it onto Dorothy. Dorothy was kind enough to extend me an invitation to last year’s séance, but I was in Vegas for CSICon at the time. I also had a chance to visit Houdini’s grave site in New York last year.

I just recently finished reading A Magician Among the Spirits, which is an amazing work detailing Houdini’s investigations into psychics and spiritualists. I love his dedication to finding all the details, working out how mediums performed their tricks, and most especially not pulling any punches when he exposed con artists. He was a critical thinking badass, who never backed down from a challenge. Despite the countless mediums he exposed, he still maintained an open mind. He would still attend events to see if the claims held water. To me, Houdini was the the skeptical paranormal investigator, and I strive to be as good as he was. 

This is how I approach paranormal claims that I investigate. I attend ghost hunts, sit for readings, and look at the evidence presented. I go in giving them a chance to prove their claim. Then I research the crap out of it, looking at all the details and putting the pieces together until the mysterious puzzle presents me with a picture of what’s really going on. I let the data lead me to a conclusion.

My next step will be attempting to acquire some (or at least one) Houdini memorabilia. That would be an awesome item that I treasure forever. I take donations and have a good home. Anyone? Anyone?

Gerbic: What was your gateway into scientific skepticism?

Biddle: For me, the “gateway” had several doors right after each other.  I had a growing curiosity with photography and the alleged ghost photos I believed I was capturing. Every paranormal enthusiast was getting the same kind of pictures…EVERYONE! I wanted to know “How the F@*k is this happening?”  It was around this time that I had begun seeking out more and more skeptical and science writings. I had doubt about the photographs and my beliefs.  I not only wanted to know what skeptical-minded people thought, but why.

Enter Benjamin Radford. The guy has written about a ton of places, and he’s appeared on quite a few TV shows as the “token skeptic.” His approach was always professional, polite, and focused on the claims. This really stuck with me, especially when he was able to explain and duplicate alleged ghost photos just like the ones I had. His work helped me question what I was doing and helped me figure out how ignorant I was to all the possible and perfectly normal explanations out there.

Ben’s work lead me to Joe Nickell (who I had the chance to spend an entire day with!) and his in-depth investigations and books (of which I own all of them). I particularly enjoyed his book Forensic Photography. The man has probably forgotten more than I know.  Joe’s work led me to James Randi, who is a freakin’ legend! The guy boldly challenged psychics and other extraordinary claimants, offering a ton of cash if they won! That took balls. I totally respect that. 

I had found DoubtfulNews.com and spent hours reading the critical reviews of fantastic new stories. Sharon and her partner-in-crime Torkel Ødegård do an amazing job of cutting through the bullshit and presenting a critical look at these stories. Of course, Houdini became a huge influence once I really started learning about him.

I’m not trying to “name-drop.” These people really inspired me to look deeper into the claims, to seek information beyond “just enough,” to look at all angles rather than just my own. They helped focus my curiosity into something useful, and I can’t thank them enough. Like I said, there were many doors that led me to where I am today. These were the first few.

Gerbic: Tell me a story about meeting someone “famous” at a skeptic conference?

Biddle: To be honest, I’ve only been to one skeptic conference, and that was last year’s CSICon. It was an amazing experience for me, because there were so many people attending who I admired and looked up to. There was one person I totally geeked out over: James Randi. I’ve always wanted to meet him, but my budget usually kept me from attending events he was at. When CSI announced the CSICon last year with Randi being a guest, I really, REALLY, R-E-A-L-L-Y wanted to go. My wife and I talked about it, cut back on a few things, and we were able to go. BOOYA!

When we got to the lobby on the first day of the conference, it only took a minute before I saw Randi calmly wandering around chatting with people. To be honest, I was nervous—but the good “OMFG, IT’S JAMES FREAKIN RANDI” kind of nervous. I walked up and asked if I could get a picture with him, and he was all for it. Once my wife took the picture, he looked at me and said “That will be $29.95”…then winked at me. I asked if I could give him a hug, and he said “As long as you don’t break me.” Randi is a very sweet, friendly, and still quick-witted gentleman. He was so nice to me and my wife, Donna, chatting leisurely with us for a few minutes. He sat next to me during a few lectures, and autographed my treasured copy of Flim-Flam—playfully arguing that he was going to address it to my wife instead of me, because she was “cuter” (well, she is…so I had no argument). It was a great experience that will stick with me until I kick the bucket.

Gerbic: CSICon this year will have a zombie disco party. Can you tell me what you have planned?

Biddle: My wife and I do have something planned, but you’ll have to attend to see. NO HINTS!!!

Gerbic: What is next for Kenny Biddle?

Biddle: I always have (too many) projects going on.  I’m currently working on three books; two are the “then and now” type where I revisit my experiences as a former ghost hunter. I apply the knowledge I’ve gained over the years to what I experienced then, and present plausible explanations for the many strange events I wrote about. The third book will be an update to a self-published one that focused on alleged paranormal photography, explaining how common anomalies are “caught on film.”

I have a ton of videos I need to work on for my YouTube channel, and I’ll continue to write pieces for my blog. I have a few para-conferences that I speak at talking about critical thinking and photography. My ultimate goal would be to get a call from Joe Nickell when he’s ready to retire, telling me “Hey Kenny, pack your stuff and move into my office. I named you as my successor. Barry Karr said it was OK.” Ha ha ha. (Call me, Joe).

Gerbic: For those who would like to learn more about Kenny Biddle, he has recently published a Special Report for the Skeptical Inquirer website, “The Xbox Kinect and Paranormal Investigation,” and has written a section for the upcoming (still untitled) investigating paranormal claims book by Ben Radford. Biddle focuses on some of the photographic anomalies of the photos sent to Radford. Subscribe to Kenny Biddle’s YouTube channel here. Kenny is offering a free drink to the first person who attends his workshop and mentions reading this article who sees him at CSICon. So please take him up on it. CSICon attendees keep in mind that workshop attendance requires a separate ticket. Arrive on Wednesday afternoon and hang out with your peers. Join the CSICon Facebook group for up-to-date news.