***Editor’s note: See part 1 of this column here for an overview of the current body of knowledge on the range of conditions classified as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and to read about DAN! protocol, chlorine dioxide, secretin, chelation therapy, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, lupron, GcMAF, and stem cell therapy, all of which have been purported to treat or even cure autism.

CEASE therapy

Developed by late homeopath Tinus Smits, Complete Elimination of Autism Spectrum Expression, or CEASE, is homeopathy—the fantastical and thoroughly refuted notion that a substance that causes disease diluted infinitesimally can cure it— applied to autism, based solely on unsubstantiated assumptions about the condition’s cause. CEASE proponents believe that “autism is an accumulation of different causes and about 70% is due to vaccines, 25% to toxic medication and other toxic substances, 5% to some diseases. With isotherapy, ... a form of homeopathy using the causative substances themselves in homeopathic preparation, the toxic imprints can be erased.” Certified practitioners around the world administer these treatments, as described on the CEASE website:

The treatment of autistic children and even adults has matured through 300 cases taken by Dr. Tinus Smits and is called CEASE Therapy. Step by step all [assumed] causative factors (vaccines, regular medication, environmental toxic exposures, effects of illness, etc.) are cleared with the homeopathically prepared, that is diluted and potentized substances that were administered prior to the onset of autism. Currently we use the 30C, 200C, 1M and 10M potencies to clear out the energetic field of the patient from the imprint of toxic substances or diseases.

CEASE therapy was banned by the College of Naturopathic Physicians of British Columbia in May of 2018, but several certified practitioners in Canada and worldwide are listed on the CEASE website as of this article’s publication.

The Professional Standards Authority of the UK, accountable to the UK Parliament, told The Guardianin April of 2018 that it advised the UK Society of Homeopaths that “CEASE therapy contravenes medical advice by apparently advising against vaccination of children, avoiding antibiotics in the case of infection and advocates high doses of vitamins not recommended for children. We are also concerned that the full name of CEASE (Complete Elimination of Autistic Spectrum Expression) strongly implies the ability to cure autism through this therapy.”

David Gorski described additional facets of CEASE:

[W]hile Smits (well, these days Smits’ followers because apparently Smits died in 2010) is using vaccine components, medications, and various toxins all diluted to nonexistence to cure autism, he apparently also thinks that “orthomolecular medicine” needs to be used as well. Orthomolecular medicine, for those who don’t remember, is the quackery popularized by Linus Pauling that involves megadoses of vitamin C and other vitamins and nutrients This strikes me as profoundly odd. After all, homeopathy is nothing if not about, well, diluting the alleged remedy away to nonexistence. Orthomolecular quackery is about the exact opposite: Megadoses of vitamins, in particular, megadoses of vitamin C[.]

Of three naturopaths under fire for offering CEASE, two have removed their names from the website, but Victoria's Anke Zimmermann remains defiant, as CBC reported. Zimmerman told CBC that she will no longer advertise CEASE therapy, adding that "[t]t's just a particular combination of homeopathy and nutrition and I can still offer those modalities."

Facilitated communication

A technique formerly used to assist those with severe communication disabilities including autism, facilitated communication (FC), also known as hand over hand and supported typing, involves a keyboard or alphabet board, and a designated facilitator guiding the disabled person’s hand to support typing or pointing. FC was thoroughly discredited in 1994, following over 40 empirical studies between 1991 and 1994 failing to demonstrate efficacy for the technique, and showing that reported successes were due to facilitator influence (thought to be carried out subconsciously). Medical and professional associations quickly passed resolutions advising against its practice. The American Psychological Association position reads in part:

A basic premise of facilitated communication is that people with autism and moderate and profound mental retardation have "undisclosed literacy" consistent with normal intellectual functioning. Peer reviewed, scientifically based studies have found that the typed language output (represented through computers, letter boards, etc.) attributed to the clients was directed or systematically determined by the paraprofessional/professional therapists who provided facilitated assistance. (Bligh & Kupperman, 1993; Cabay, in press; Crews et al., in press; Eberlin, McConnachic, Ibel, & Volpe, 1993; Hudson, Melita, & Arnold, 1993; Klewe, 1993; Moore, Donovan, Hudson, 1993; Moore, Donovan, Hudson, Dykstra & Lawrence, 1993; Regal, Rooney, & Wandas, in press; Shane & Kearns, in press; Siegel, in press; Simon, Toll & Whitehair, in press; Szempruch & Jacobson, 1993; Vasquez, in press; Wheeler, Jacobson, Paglieri & Schwartz, 1993). Furthermore, it has not been scientifically demonstrated that the therapists are aware of their controlling influence.

Consequently, specific activities contribute immediate threats to the individual civil and human rights of the person with autism or severe mental retardation. These include use of facilitated communication as a basis for a) actions related to nonverbal accusations of abuse and mistreatment (by family members or other caregivers); b) actions related to nonverbal communications of personal preferences, self-reports about health, test and classroom performance, and family relations; c) client response in psychological assessment using standardized assessment procedures; and d) client-therapist communication in counseling or psychotherapy, taking therapeutic actions, or making differential treatment decisions.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), and the International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (ISAAC) also oppose FC.

Nevertheless, practitioners continue to use the technique. The Atlanticreported in 2016 that “[t]he practice retains a dedicated community of followers who have sought to prove its scientific validity as a legitimate speech-therapy technique, often using names such as rapid prompting method or “supported typing,” despite warnings by researchers such as James Todd of Eastern Michigan University and Jason Travers of the University of Kansas. And FC’s followers have found allies, such as certain staff members at the University of New Hampshire (which only recently transitioned away from the technique), the University of Northern Iowa, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and the Vermont Department of Disabilities, Aging, and Independent Living.”

The National Council Against Health Fraud reported in May 2018 that the “Facilitated Communication Institute, which in 2010 was renamed the Institute on Communication and Inclusion, continues to promote FC despite objections from the student newspaper and some faculty members.”

Dietary “Cures”

Autism often comes with dietary issues, including atypical eating patterns, and restrictive aversion to certain flavors and texture—beyond typical “pickiness”—that can lead to nutritional deficiencies. Parents of autistic children report gastrointestinal distress at higher rates than children without ASD diagnosis. Though there is scant evidence to support the use of nutritional supplements or dietary therapies for ASD, many parents do report improvement in behaviors and gastrointestinal symptoms with changes in diet. But this is a far cry from the dietary interventions promoted to cure or treat autism, discussed below.

Gluten-free casein-free (GFCF) diet

The most popular evidence-scarce dietary intervention involves the complete removal of gluten, a protein found in grains such as wheat, barley, rye, and casein, a protein found in dairy products, from the diet. While there are strong anecdotal reports from parents that gluten-free casein-free (GFCF) diets greatly improve or even “cure” ASD symptoms, blinded studies show no evidence that GFCF diets lead to behavioral improvements. Though a GFCF diet pales in comparison to other quack autism therapies in terms of harm perpetuated, the strict elimination of these foods can limit an already restricted diet.

Non-GMO

Largely following computer scientist and MIT researcher Stephanie Seneff’s claims that increased use of glyphosate, an herbicide used primarily on crops engineered to tolerate it and as a crop desiccant (with several applications outside of genetically engineered crops), will lead half of all children to be diagnosed with ASD by 2025, claims that non-GMO diets could “cure” autism began to flourish.

With her suggestion that the purported rise in autism is associated with the rise in glyphosate use, Seneff commits a classic correlation vs. causation error:

As David Gorski noted: “[I]f you look at two different variables that have shown an increase with time, you can almost always make it look as though there’s a correlation. Only occasionally does that correlation equal causation.”

This observation led to a now widely-disseminated graph pointing out that a similar correlation can be seen with the boom in organic sales and autism prevalence:

Aside from Seneff herself, the most vocal proponent of this idea is Zen Honeycutt, the founder of Moms Across America (MAA). With the slogan “Empowered moms, healthy kids,” and a mission to raise awareness about GMOs and toxic exposures, the organization peddles supplements to help “detox” customers, conducts poorly controlled experiments with questionable assays to test for glyphosate in participants’ urine and breastmilk, and promotes the idea that glyphosate causes autism. MAA published a widely-circulated, non-peer reviewed biomonitoring report in 2014 claiming that detection of relatively high glyphosate concentrations in breast milk in 3 of 10 sampled women raised a concern for bioaccumulation in breast milk, but the report has been found to be implausible in multiple peer reviewed studies .

Though the herbicide is less acutely toxic than caffeine, table salt, and some pesticides used in organic farming, and less chronically toxic than caffeine, Honeycutt insists that residues affect our gut microbiomes, which Moms Across America has linked to myriad ailments, including autism, allergies, infertility, eczema, fibromyalgia, Crohn’s Disease, childhood tantrums and pneumonia.

A massive body of evidence contradicts all of these claims. Targeting the shikimate metabolic pathway in weeds, glyphosate interferes with protein synthesis in plants, bacteria, fungi and other organisms, but not in animals. There is no evidence that glyphosate residues on food affect the shikimate pathways of bacteria in the human gut. An extensive analysis by science writer Matthew Loftus at the Credible Hulk blog pokes holes in the claim:

The claim that glyphosate harms human health via disruption of the microbiome was never a biologically plausible one, because it only makes sense when the system is not being viewed as a whole. Ironically, glyphosate and GE food opponents like to say that they take a holistic approach, but this is not a holistic argument, because it ignores the environment in which the microbiome exists.

We know that organisms don’t bother synthesizing compounds they can already get from their environment. Knocking out one step of a biochemical pathway and growing microorganisms on different media with various substrates is a tried and true classical method for identifying which substrates are involved in a given pathway and/or the enzymes which catalyze their reactions. We also know that the human gut contains abundant aromatic amino acids alleviating the need for resident microorganisms to synthesize them. Running out of them is not a concern because they are replenished multiple times per day. The exception to this would be cases of starvation or malnutrition, in which case malnutrition would be the problem to address: not glyphosate. Despite this, in vivo research has been done, and reaffirms exactly what theoretical predictions would imply. Gut microorganisms grew and replicated for hundreds of generations, thus contradicting the predictions of the hypothesis under discussion.

Featured as a guest on a 2014 episode of the Dr. Oz show, Honeycutt told an obviously embellished if not fabricated story. Her son had been experiencing “autism symptoms.” After her son’s doctor saw no reason to test for glyphosate levels, Honeycutt used a private lab which detected glyphosate levels “8 times higher than found anywhere in Europe urine testing.” She claimed that within six weeks of going “completely GMO-free and organic, his autism symptoms were gone and the level of glyphosate was no longer detectable.” Dr. Oz did not question Honeycutt’s claims.

There are several notable commentaries on a non-GMO diet to reduce autism prevalence, including an analysis at Snopes:

[D]isregarding the sloppy mathematics, the claim’s very basis (that glyphosate is the cause of a perceived increase in autism) is unsupported. No mention was made of how glyphosate was isolated and shown to be a cause (or even a factor) in some or any cases of autism in the article. No autism spikes near agricultural facilities were described, nor was any definitive causative link at all cited by the article (and presumably, Seneff) to back up the purported link between glyphosate and autism rates anywhere other than the imaginations of those making the claim. The single link of merit made within the article (to a USDA report) made absolutely no mention of autism at all but was misleadingly arranged to suggest a connection.

Novella also took on Seneff at Science Based Medicine:

Dr. Seneff gives every indication of being an anti-GMO ideologue. She is not a biologist, but rather is a computer scientist, and yet she is being presented as an expert. She has also not conducted any original research, but is spreading fears about glyphosate based on pure speculation, bad science and bad logic.

Meanwhile, numerous published systematic reviews show clear evidence that glyphosate has very low toxicity. More careful study when it comes to any agent being used as heavily as glyphosate is always welcome. Science is complicated, and it is always a good idea to consider factors that may have been previously missed. However, failure to show any adverse effect from glyphosate in epidemiological studies is very reassuring. Given its widespread use, any adverse effect must be tiny or non-existent to be missed by the evidence we have so far.

Human molecular geneticist and blogger Layla Katiraee wrote:

I think that there are very few scientists who wouldn’t give their life savings and the naming rights for their first born for the opportunity to identify an environmental cause for autism. Monsanto, Dow Agro, and Syngenta combined aren’t big enough to silence that. The reason it hasn’t been examined is far simpler: there is no likely connection based on the known comparatively benign toxic profile of glyphosate and most researchers do not want to waste their time and effort and preciously limited support dollars on a project that would most likely find no association with ASD.

And biologist and blogger Iida Ruishalme said:

The topic [of autism] is complex enough without somebody manufacturing hypothetical connections and creating more noise for the worried parents and dedicated researchers to wade through, and making strong claims without evidence and spreading them in the media like Seneff does, is very irresponsible behaviour.

Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS) diet:

Another dietary “cure” that draws heavily on the gaps in microbiome science, Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride derived the GAPS (Gut and Psychology Syndrome) protocol from the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) created by Dr. Sidney Valentine Haas to naturally treat chronic inflammatory conditions in the digestive tract as a result of a damaged gut lining. A strict elimination diet that cuts out grains, pasteurized dairy, starchy vegetables and refined carbs, it’s based on Campbell Mc-Bride’s conjecture that autism, among several other conditions, stem from an imbalance in the gut microbiome. Unlike Seneff’s claims, however, GAPS isn’t based even on flawed research—there are no published studies on the diet. Like other quackery in the autism treatment realm, GAPS is based on the flawed assumption that there is “an absolute epidemic” of autism. Campbell-McBride’s website described the GAPS diet in brief, as follows:

The GAPS protocol was designed for patients suffering from learning disabilities, psychiatric and psychological disorders, immune system problems and digestive problems

The purpose of the treatment is to detoxify the person, to lift the toxic fog off the brain to allow it to develop and function properly. In order to achieve that we need to clean up and heal the digestive tract, so it stops being the major source of toxicity in the body and becomes the source of nourishment, as it is supposed to be. As more than 90% of everything toxic floating in our blood (and getting into the brain) comes from the gut, healing it will drop the level of toxicity in the body dramatically.

This target is achieved by means of The Nutritional Programme. This programme has evolved through the personal experience of Dr. Campbell-McBride's family and clinical experience with thousands of GAPS children and adults around the world.

“Angry Chef” and author Anthony Warner isn’t a GAPs fan:

Dr Natasha is distinct from the usual clean eating loons in that she does not link her diet to vague non descript symptoms and hard to diagnose conditions. This diet is not designed to help you with fatigue, occasional headaches and the feeling of having more money than sense. Natasha is far more forthright in her claims. According to her website, the GAPS diet can be used to treat and cure ‘Autistic Spectrum Disorders, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD/ADD), schizophrenia, dyslexia, dyspraxia, depression, obsessive–compulsive disorder, bi-polar disorder and other neuro-psychological and psychiatric problems.’ We are talking about serious conditions that require proper medical help. A line is being crossed here, a line from fad dieting into dangerous lunacy.

Retired physician and blogger Harriet Hall pointed out red flags:

There are plenty of red flags here: the “lone genius,” the “one cause” of most disease, the die-off and “wait a while and try again” explanations to keep patients on the diet when it is making them worse, the unvalidated sensitivity and diagnostic tests, the detoxification language, the bold but unsubstantiated claim of total reversal of autism, the dangerous recommendations for raw eggs, raw milk, and saturated fat and against vaccines and cholesterol testing, and more.

The autism woo world is like a quackery hydra—chop off one head and it grows back in new and ghastly form

Part of the reason that autism misinformation is so hard to counter is that the development of any child, and especially children with autism, is dynamic, as Gorski explained:

[I]t is not nearly as uncommon as parents think for children with a diagnosis of autism to improve spontaneously. Indeed, most parents think this never happens spontaneously, and that’s one (among many) reasons why they assume that whatever quackery they treat their child with must be the cause of their child’s improvement. Yet, autism is a disorder of developmental delay, not developmental stasis; autistic children can and do develop. In fact, a significant minority can even lose the diagnosis of autism or AST by age seven as they develop. As Prometheus points out, promoters of the vaccine-autism myth don’t like to hear that, mainly because it casts doubt upon whether the quackery they choose to treat their children actually does anything. After all, if autism were truly a condition of developmental stasis, then you almost wouldn’t need a control group. If an autistic child improved on a treatment, it would not be unreasonable to conclude that the treatment was beneficial. However, autism is extremely variable. Autistic children can develop, often in spurts punctuated by longer periods of apparent developmental stasis. If one of those spurts happens to occur after a new round of quackery, it’s very easy to conclude that the quackery was responsible.

The internet has not only catalyzed the proliferation and evolution of autism woo— it’s also home to untold forums where perpetrators easily prey on autistic children’s parents. These therapies don’t just cause harm with their side effects, they also impede the movement toward autism acceptance, and distract from evidence based therapies that, with timely intervention, can help autistic children learn important skills.

The FDA explains red flags to look out for with any purported treatment or cure for autism:

• Be suspicious of products that claim to treat a wide range of diseases.
• Personal testimonials are no substitute for scientific evidence.
• Few diseases or conditions can be treated quickly, so be suspicious of any therapy claimed as a “quick fix.”
• So-called “miracle cures,” which claim scientific breakthroughs or contain secret ingredients, may be a hoax.

The bottom line is this—if it’s an unproven or little known treatment, talk to your health care professional before buying or using these products.

As Alison Bernstein and Layla Katiraee note at the SciMoms blog, being armed with a few basic lines of inquiry can go a long way in avoiding autism woo:

Marketing campaigns and articles that use autism to instill fear should be regarded with caution … [T]here have been more diagnoses of autism over the years. This can be correlated with nearly anything whose use or consumption has also increased over the years: GMOs, WiFi, iPhone sales, quinoa and kale consumption, organic food sales, etc. When reading such articles, focus on the data beyond the correlation: is there any evidence to support that one actually causes the other? Who are they interviewing? Is there a reputable medical organization that is supporting the arguments in the article?

If I’ve learned one thing from doing a deep dive into the world of autism woo, it’s that it’s virtually infinite—even as one so-called cure or treatment is exposed as quackery, another pops up like a tragic game of whack-a-mole. As with any form of BS, arming ourselves with a misinformation radar is crucial in the fight to protect autistic children and promote acceptance.

I wasn’t always a skeptical person. In the early 1990s, I believed that ghosts haunted people and places; there was a monster in Loch Ness, and Bigfoot lived in the woods of northern California. I spent my spare time visiting haunted houses with all the latest gadgets that I believed detected ghosts—or rather their “energy.” I had amassed a large collection of various paranormal-themed books; regional “Ghosts of [random city],” “Most haunted houses,” and “How to ghost hunt” volumes filled my shelves. I was neck-deep in metaphysical and belief-based knowledge. If it was a mystery, I was all over it. Looking back, I realize I was also a mystery-monger. I accepted claims at face value, promoting them to others without checking the validity of the information.

It wasn’t until a decade later that I developed an interest in skeptical literature, such as Skeptical Inquirer magazine. I was impressed (and fascinated) by the attention to detail in the articles; approaching each topic point-by-point, addressing each claim like I’ve never seen before. The authors didn’t just say the claims were wrong; they noted mistakes (and explained why they were mistakes), pointed out oversights, and separated fact from fiction/belief with logic and reason. As I began to understand how thorough the authors investigated various mysteries, I quickly learned a valuable lesson that would change my perspective: Always take a closer look.

It seems like an obvious approach—take a closer look at strange claims so you can figure out what caused it. To the “believer” I was, “taking a closer” look meant something different: it meant looking for any information that confirmed my belief while ignoring anything that would refute it. This is a cognitive bias known as confirmation bias, which is common within the paranormal community. Shahram Heshmat, PhD, an associate professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Springfield, tells us that “confirmation bias occurs from the direct influence of desire on beliefs. When people would like a certain idea/concept to be true, they end up believing it to be true. They are motivated by wishful thinking. This error leads the individual to stop gathering information when the evidence gathered so far confirms the views (prejudices) one would like to be true. Once we have formed a view, we embrace information that confirms that view while ignoring, or rejecting, information that casts doubt on it” (Heshmat 2015).

Once I understood this concept, I changed the way I approached paranormal claims. I began looking deeper at the people promoting the claims, the details they were sharing, attributes of places where experiences took place. I also changed my perspective concerning the information that caused doubt; I quit ignoring it and embraced it. Once I did, I finally began solving mysteries.

The first major paranormal case I took a closer look at was a well-known haunted house called Whispers Estate, located in Mitchell, Indiana. For many years ghost hunters claimed they could hear a little girl named Rachael singing “Ring around the Rosie” in the front parlor. Rachael had died of injuries in the house from a fire she accidently started in the front parlor sometime in the early 1900s. What was unusual about this particular claim was one could hear the singing without any recording devices; you just needed your own ears. This is uncommon, since most ghostly voices come from EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) sessions, a method of recording oneself asking questions with short pauses between each, then looking for anomalous noises on the playback.

In July of 2010, I was able to spend a weekend at the house, along with a several ghost hunters who had experienced the singing phenomenon for themselves. I questioned the ghost hunters, asking for specifics of the “who, what, where, how, and why” of the claim. They clarified the singing could only be heard from the front parlor, specifically in the hallway between the parlor and the main staircase. The sound had a metallic echo to it, as if it was being sung through a metal tube. I had also learned the singing had stopped abruptly when the new owner had taken over. Although I had been hopeful to hear the ghostly tunes, I suspected a there was a more natural—and shady—explanation for the experience. It was time to take a closer look.

Figure 1 – Checking under the main staircase. Note the grate in the floor.

I started by simply standing in the hallway between the staircase and parlor, just looking at every detail in view and thinking about what wasn’t in view (a trick learned from Sherlock Holmes). I noticed an air vent grate in the floor and when I pointed a flashlight down into it I saw the crawl space under the house. There was no shaft connected to the grate; it was an open hole. I also noted one of the panels that enclosed the area under the staircase was different from the rest of the décor and was held in place with simple screws (which also didn’t match). I voiced my interest in taking a peek behind the panel but was hesitant in taking it apart. Luckily for me, the other ghost hunters had no such reservations and had removed the panel the next morning.

We found a large hole in the floor under the stairs, which was fitted with an aluminum shaft and open to the crawl space under the house. I made my way to the cellar, which was a single, small room with access to the crawl spaces. I climbed up the wall and crawled over to the hole, popping my head up through the opening. As I spoke with the other ghost hunters, I noticed a metallic echo from my own voice. With this detail and knowing there were two openings directly to the area where the singing was heard, I was becoming more convinced this spirit singing phenomenon was staged. I just needed one more piece of evidence: a mechanism that produced a ghostly voice.

And then I found it. Actually, I kicked it. As I crawled around, looking for more clues, I kicked something that was propped up against the support column next to where I was kneeling. It was covered in dust and dirt, which made it blend in with the brick column. Once I picked it up, I knew I solved the case: it was a Pioneer Bookshelf 25 watt speaker (Item Number 66698, Biddle 2010). The speaker was positioned between the big hole under the stairs and the smaller vent in the hallway. I found the speaker wires were laid against the columns and led straight back to the cellar room, where a bin of audio equipment was left behind by the previous owner (including the speaker’s mate). This wasn’t a discarded piece of trash thrown into a junk pile; it was deliberately placed there with the intention of being used.

Figure 2 – The speaker I found in the basement under the staircase and vent.

This case showed me the importance of taking a closer look at the details. For many years, ghost hunters had visited the house and heard the singing, convinced they were hearing the disembodied voice of a genuine ghost. They believed it was true, partly because they already believed ghosts existed and could talk to us and partly because they just didn’t take a closer look. The claim was accepted at face value, and thus no further investigation was warranted: You don’t need to prove what you (think) you already know. Mysteries don’t get solved this way; instead they get perpetuated ad nauseam. Incidentally, the specific claim about the singing was removed from the Whispers Estate website soon after I posted my report (Whispers 2012).

Taking a closer look is at the core of what I do; it’s at the core of what skeptical and science writers do all over the world. It’s a basic idea that helps us learn, helps us understand—and in my experience, solves mysteries. When I was asked to write a column for the Center for Inquiry (CFI) website, I was beyond excited. It had been a goal of mine to write for CFI since picking up my first issue of Skeptical Inquirer. I was also perplexed for a bit; columns usually have a name. What would I call this? I wanted the title to reflect what I do but not be standoffish to those who hold paranormal beliefs close to their hearts. So, naturally I did what I always do; I took a closer look at the question.

Boom! “A Closer Look” sums up what I do, what all of the writers who contribute to the CFI website do; from seasoned investigators such as Joe Nickell and Ben Radford, to new contributors such as Mick West and Rob Palmer (both of whom you should follow). In future columns, I’ll be taking a closer look at a variety of strange claims; photos and videos of weird anomalies, gadgets that proclaim to detect or communicate with ghosts or aliens, and even cursed and haunted objects. I’ll take you along with me as I join ghost investigations, Bigfoot hunts, attend conferences and lectures about all things strange. You’ll be by my side as I conduct simple experiments that test those testable claims that come my way. We’ll take a closer look at the people, places, and experiences behind extraordinary claims and maybe we’ll solve some mysteries along the way.

Never Stop Learning!

References

• Biddle, Kenny. 2010. Whispers Estate Investigation. Available online at https://www.facebook.com/notes/kenny-biddle/whipsers-estate-investigation/419134122777/.
• Heshmat, Shahram, PhD. 2015. What Is Confirmation Bias? Wishful thinking. Available online at https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/science-choice/201504/what-is-confirmation-bias.
• Whispers Estate. 2012. About the House. Available online at http://whispersestate.com/about/.

Critical thinking is important; most people agree with that statement. Research in cognitive science conceptualizes and measures (that is, operationalizes) critical thinking. There are myriad studies examining components of critical thinking (Stanovich, West, and Toplak 2016).

Educators often pay lip service to the idea of teaching “critical thinking.” But, when asked to define critical thinking, answers are often weak and ambiguous. Common responses to the defining critical thinking include: “teaching them how to think,” “teaching them formal logic,” “teaching them to be thinkers,” “teaching them how to think for themselves,” or “teaching them how to solve problems.” They already know how to think; logic is only a portion of what is needed to increase critical thinking, independent thinking doesn’t necessarily imply critical thinking and teaching them how to solve problems are hard to measure assertions.

Stanovich argues “that the super-ordinate goal we are actually trying to foster is that of rationality” (Stanovich 2010, 198). Educators are concerned with critical thinking as it reflects rational thought, in both the epistemic sense and the practical, instrumental sense.Certain thinking dispositions and cognitive abilities are valued because they help us base our beliefs on available evidence and assist us in achieving our goals. Educators, science writers, and evidence based practitioners express to students, administrators, readers, clients, and patients the importance of critical thinking. Yet many of those expressing the importance of critical thinking don't have a firm grip on rationality or critical thinking, or what it includes. Promoting critical thinking is important; promoting critical thinking through the lenses of cognitive science presents a clearer picture of exactly what critical thinking advocates are trying to promote. A key characteristic of science is precision, and critical thinking includes scientific thinking. A scientific concept is one derived from converging evidence; critical thinking demonstrates that type of convergence (evidence from various theoretical underpinnings and research). Critical thinking is a concept-complex (it involves various concepts, connections, and interactions). To reiterate, critical thinking is synonymous with rationality in the context of cognitive science.

Rationality

Rational thinking is not synonymous with rationalizing thought. These phrases are often mistakenly used interchangeably. Rationalizing thought has an Aristotelian flavor, in that it involves putting forth reason for essentially any behavior or thought. Rationality is a weak concept, when conceptualized in this sense. Most people are rational, if rational means an ability to provide some form of a reason for their behavior or actions. Cognitive science provides a different conceptualization of rationality—one that is consistent and subject to testing.

Rationality is concerned with what is true and what to do (Manktelow 2004). In order for beliefs to be rational they must be in agreement with evidence. In order for actions to be rational they must maximize potential in attaining goals. I suspect everyone agrees that both of these requirements are important. Cognitive scientists generally identify two types of rationality: instrumental and epistemic (Stanovich 2009). Instrumental rationality can be defined as adopting appropriate goals, and behaving in a manner that optimizes one’s ability to achieve goals. Epistemic rationality is defined as holding beliefs that are commensurate with available evidence. This type of rationality is concerned with how well our beliefs map onto the structure of the world. Epistemic rationality is sometimes called evidential rationality or theoretical rationality. Instrumental and epistemic rationality are related; there is overlap.In order to optimize rationality one needs adequate knowledge in the domains of logic, scientific thinking, and probabilistic thinking. It is also essential that reflective processing (overriding fast thinking that leads to incorrect responses) occur at appropriate times. A wide variety of cognitive skills (cognitive style / thinking dispositions and cognitive ability) fall within these domains of knowledge. 

Components of critical thinking have been operationalized in a wide range of studies. In a 2012 study (Hale 2012), I presented students with questions derived from critical thinking tests. The critical thinking tasks were cover tasks; the primary concern of the study was expectation and food liking. In regards to the critical thinking tasks (three questions) the performances were not good. No one correctly answered all three of the problems, and many participants missed all three. Total percentage of correct answers was 19 percent. The tasks used were similar to the ones often used by Stanovich, Kahneman, and Frederick (Stanovich 2009; Kahneman 2011; Frederick 2005). The questions used on the test are presented here: Confused About Critical Thinking, https://jamiehalesblog.blogspot.com/2015/12/confused-about-critical-thinking.html.

In 2016, a prototype for a comprehensive assessment of rationality was made public: CART (Comprehensive Assessment of Rational Thinking). The assessment was constructed by the Stanovich, West, and Toplak Research Lab. CART assesses epistemic and instrumental rationality. The assessment involves twenty subtests. Stanovich discussing the importance of a comprehensive assessment of rationality (Interview with Stanovich, Hale 2016):

“Why does society need a comprehensive assessment of rational thinking?

To be globally rational in our modern society you must have the behavioral tendencies and knowledge bases that are assessed on the CART to a sufficient degree.Our society is sometimes benign, and maximal rationality is not always necessary, but sometimes—in important situations—our society is hostile. In such hostile situations, to achieve adequate degrees of instrumental rationality in our present society the skills assessed by the CART are essential.In Chapter 15 of The Rationality Quotient we include a table showing that rational thinking tendencies are linked to real-life decision making.In that table, for each of the paradigms and subtests of the CART, an association with a real-life outcome is indicated.The associations are of two types.Some studies represent investigations where a laboratory measure of a bias was used as a predictor of a real-world outcome. Others are reports of real-world analogues of biases that were originally discovered in the lab. Clearly more work remains to be done on tracing the exact nature of the connections—that is, whether they are causal. The sheer number of real-world connections, however, serves to highlight the importance of the rational thinking skills in our framework. Now that we have the CART, we could in theory begin to assess rationality as systematically as we do IQ.If not for professional inertia and psychologists’ investment in the IQ concept, we could choose tomorrow to more formally assess rational thinking skills, focus more on teaching them, and redesign our environment so that irrational thinking is not so costly. 

Whereas just thirty years ago we knew vastly more about intelligence than we knew about rational thinking, this imbalance has been redressed in the last few decades because of some remarkable work in behavioral decision theory, cognitive science, and related areas of psychology. In the past two decades cognitive scientists have developed laboratory tasks and real-life performance indicators to measure rational thinking tendencies such as sensible goal prioritization, reflectivity, and the proper calibration of evidence. People have been found to differ from each other on these indicators. These indicators are structured differently from the items used on intelligence tests. We have brought this work together by producing here the first comprehensive assessment measure for rational thinking, the CART.”

In order for educators to successfully teach critical thinking / rational thinking it is imperative that they understand what critical thinking actually is and why it matters. Questions that should be asked: What are the goals of critical thinking? How can critical thinking be tested? Does my curriculum contain information regarding scientific reasoning, logic, heuristic processing, and probabilistic thinking? 

Critical thinking is about what is true (epistemic rationality) and what to do (instrumental rationality).I recommend reading the works of Keith Stanovich, Daniel Kahneman, Richard West, Shane Frederick, and Jonathan Baron to name a few, in an effort to enhance critical thinking.

Rationality vs. Intelligence

Note that developing measures of rationality are a result of a plethora of research showing that intelligence and rationality are different concepts and are often weakly associated. Good thinking requires more than intelligence. Intelligence is important, but so is rationality (Stanovich 2009). Intelligence reflects reasoning abilities across a wide variety of domains (particularly novel ones) and processing speed. In addition, intelligence reflects general declarative knowledge acquired through acculturated learning. The type of cognitive skills required for rationality are not measured by intelligence tests and their proxies (GRE, SAT, standard IQ tests, etc.).

Society is complex, and requires complex thinking. Critical thinking is learnable; being a better critical thinker will assist humans in navigating the world much better, that is much better in the sense of making better judgments and better decisions, being more rational.

• Frederick, S. 2005. Cognitive reflection and decision making. Journal of Economic Perspectives 19, 25–42.
• Hale, J. 2012. “Expectations Do Not Always Influence Food Liking.” Online Theses and Dissertations. 129. Available online at https://encompass.eku.edu/etd/129.
• ———. 2016. Rationality Quotient: Comprehensive Assessment of Rational Thinking. Knowledge Summit. Retrieved on July, 12 2018 from http://jamiehalesblog.blogspot.com/2016/11/rationality-quotient-comprehensive.html.
• Kahneman, D. 2011. Thinking Fast and Slow. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
• Manktelow, K. I. 2004. Reasoning and rationality: The pure and the practical. In K. I. Manktelow and M. C. Chung (Eds.), Psychology of reasoning: Theoretical and historical perspectives (pp. 157–177). Hove, England: Psychology Press.
• Stanovich, K. 2009.What Intelligence Tests Miss: the psychology of rational thought.London: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
• Stanovich, K. E., and P. J. Stanovich. 2010. A framework for critical thinking, rational thinking, and intelligence. In D. Preiss & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), Innovations in educational psychology: Perspectives on learning, teaching and human development (pp. 195–237). New York, NY: Springer.
• Stanovich, K., R. West, and M. Toplak. 2016. The Rationality Quotient: Toward A Test of Rational Thinking. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

On June 10, yours truly—someone who had never done a presentation anywhere as a skeptic with a capital “S”—was the very first speaker at the very first New York City Skeptics’ SpeedyCamp. So, of course I have absolutely no choice but to report on this event right here and now in my new column.

So, what is a SpeedyCamp? Well, many of you may already be aware of SpeedyCamp’s older, bigger brother SkeptiCamp, which has been a thing since 2007. SkeptiCamps are a much less elaborate version of the huge skeptical conferences such as CSICon, NECSS, and QED. Unlike those big conferences, SkeptiCamps need less planning and are much shorter. Most importantly, while the big conferences attract well-known speakers, SkeptiCamps allow less well-known speakers, and even totally unknown people, to have a go at it. [1][2]

Russ Dobler, a member of the board of directors of the NYC Skeptics, and one of the six SpeedyCamp speakers, told me that he credits the president of the NYC Skeptics, Spiro Condos, with the idea for SpeedyCamp. Russ sees SpeedyCamps as a mid-year, shorter version of their annual day-long SkeptiCamp, which his organization has held each December for some time, with fifty to eighty people typically attending.

The NYC Skeptics went pretty far to downsize the SkeptiCamp model: this first SpeedyCamp was held in just two hours. At NYC SkeptiCamps, speakers have been allocated thirty minutes on stage (including Q&A time), but SpeedyCamp only allocated half that time. Another difference is that to present at NYC SkeptiCamps, perspective speakers are vetted by supplying their proposed topics and presentations for review by the organizers, in accordance with detailed instructions. [3]For this SpeedyCamp, as far as I have discovered, there was no vetting of material. I know that no one reviewed my slides, and Russ confirmed that this applied to his presentation as well.

I believe the rationale may have been that if someone gave an inappropriate—or just uninteresting—presentation, it was only fifteen minutes lost. No big deal. Or perhaps it was just that the event was arranged with insufficient time for vetting (more on the repercussions of this in a little while!). I also noticed that, for some reason, the six allocated speaking spots were being filled right up to the eleventh hour. Again, perhaps this was because the announcement went out with insufficient notice. I found out about SpeedyCamp and contacted the organizers just nine days before the event, and I was only the fourth to be added to the published speaking schedule. [4]Also, one of the six presenters, Russ, told me he was a last-minute fill-in.

The final list of speakers and topics was posted as follows. (Note that three of the topics provided no description beyond the title.) [5]

Perhaps short notice for the event kept the attendance down; I counted just twenty in the room including myself, those running the meeting, and all six speakers. Initially, the low turn-out disappointed me. I had spent many hours preparing for this and then travelled nearly three hours (in awful NYC traffic) to give my presentation about the Guerrilla Skeptics team in the slim hope of gaining new members. My article on the subject published online by Skeptical Inquirer [6] and upon which my SpeedyCamp presentation was based, had garnered several recruits. But I had decided to try my hand at an in-person recruitment talk. After all, the more folks I can get to know about and join GSoW, the better the skeptical movement will do in its perpetual battle against woo. With so few people in the audience, I knew the odds were not good that this trip would bear fruit.

On the other hand, having a smaller audience would calm the butterflies in my stomach that seemed to be multiplying as the time drew near to take the microphone. In my professional career as an aerospace engineer, I have frequently presented to large audiences on technical matters, and I had grown comfortable doing so. But I have not done a presentation in over a decade and felt extremely rusty. Also, this would be my first presentation to a group of skeptics, and I imagined that saying absolutely anything in the least bit suspect would get me bombarded by rotten tomatoes. This SpeedyCamp was being held in a café after all (The Brooklyn Commons Café) with conveniently palm-sized food readily available for throwing.

But when I took the stage as the first speaker and was unexpectedly, ceremoniously presented with the official PC remote control on a decorative throw pillow (don’t ask—I didn’t get it either), the small size of the crowd actually helped my nerves. I delivered my presentation smoothly (I think) and finished with time to spare on the nerve-wracking countdown clock. My presentation was broken into these parts: why Wikipedia matters to the skeptical movement, the scope of GSoW’s work (including key examples), how GSoW articles are found by the public, the impact of GSoW (with stats), example of journalists quoting GSoW’s work, my reasons for joining GSoW, and the difficulties of going it alone on Wikipedia vs. joining GSoW. Those in attendance seemed engaged, no one was hostile, and there were several really good questions asked by the audience during the five-minute Q&A session that followed. I was relieved to have gotten through it unscathed. The next speaker was not so lucky.

Bill Chapman’s topic was advertised as “Introducing the Intellectual Dark Web,” but no other description had been listed on the schedule. I had not heard the phrase and was intrigued, thinking it was going to be a technology topic. However, I could not have been more wrong; the presentation was all about left vs. right American political discourse. Bill used most of his time to instruct the audience about the characteristics and dogma of what has been described since about 2012 as the “regressive left”. [7] He then reported that those with political views not conforming to this philosophy are being suppressed by that group and by the mainstream media as well, and they have resorted to interacting and publishing their opinions using a collection of fallback communication outlets, which include podcasts, closed FaceBook groups, YouTube, and Twitter. In just the past few months this phenomenon has been dubbed the Intellectual Dark Web.

Although Bill may have made some good points, the presentation was extremely political and was peppered with hyperbole, so I found it very off-putting. An example was a claim Bill made regarding the regressive left’s core philosophy: that “In any conflict between two people, what happened between them is unimportant and what matters is only that whoever is in the more privileged group is wrong.” In any conflict? No matter what happens? Really? Could it be that black and white? (No pun intended.) That seems like a big exaggeration … a strawman representation of a certain point of view. Another problem was Bill’s (erroneous) claim that in order to change the demographics at the Bronx High School of Science to suit the agenda of the regressive left, NYC Mayor de Blasio had signed a law to eliminate the school system’s entrance exams.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Q&A session resulted in confrontations and criticism. The de Blasio claim was rebutted by at least two audience members who spoke up and gave the actual facts—that no law as described had been enacted—and Bill backtracked. Another audience member exclaimed that this was a “prejudicial presentation” and the MC intervened to mitigate the backlash. He ended Bill’s segment by playfully asking the audience “Any other questions, or objections? Anyone have any rotten fruit they’d like to throw?”

Besides finding some of Bill’s claims and details problematic, I believe his entire topic was over the line (way over the line) of acceptable themes as was specified in the instructions provided to SpeedyCamp presenters: The “Guidelines for Topics on the Borders of Science” section of the Session Leader's Guide clearly states: “Please avoid political advocacy or blatantly partisan political talks. You can talk about areas where science applies more directly to policy, or you can be skeptical of specific science claims made by politicians…” [3]So, I believe that if topic vetting had been done this presentation would not have been approved in the first place. But it certainly was an interesting deviation from what I had expected; and it was just fifteen minutes long. After the IDW talk, the remaining four topics were more in line with what I expected at a skeptics meeting.

I found the third topic, the Analytic Hierarchy Process, “fascinating.” Yes, that’s a Spock reference. Chris Everett presented a method to help make complex decisions in a structured, mathematical fashion, and the example he used (which included a photo of the Vulcan Science Officer) was determining “the best sci-fi franchise.” (In case you are wondering, using this method Star Trek overwhelmingly beat-out both Star Wars and Doctor Who. Live Long and Prosper!) Chris reported that AHP is “far and away the most popular decision-making framework in use today.” I like the technique, but fear that if I were to use it to retroactively verify the choices I made for all the important decisions in my life up to this point, it would only serve to prove that I have royally screwed-up more times than not. Who wants that? But maybe I’ll consider using it going forward.

The fourth speaker was the previously mentioned Russ Dobler, and his topic was listed only as “Astrology,” a belief system unfortunately making a resurgence. However, thepresentation was not so much about the details of astrology but about the cognitive biases, logical fallacies, and other human fallibilities that make people believe so many untrue things—including but unfortunately not limited to astrology. Skeptics tend to understand the general concept of self-deception, but perhaps not everyone knew all the details that Russ brought up, so I thought this was a very worthwhile topic to cover. Russ mentioned that he also delivered a longer version of this presentation to a general audience at the Brooklyn Public Library just weeks before. By the way, Russ does much needed skeptical outreach by writing about Science and Skepticism for AiPT! Comics, and he detailed this in April 2018 for the Skeptical Inquirer. [8]

The fifth topic was presented by one of the SpeedyCamp organizers who was also the Master of Ceremonies for the event, Mitchell Lampert. (To begin with, Mitchell the MC handed Mitchell the presenter the remote control balanced on the fancy pillow—just as he had done for me and everyone else. I figured he didn’t want to slight himself.) It turned out that Mitchell’s presentation was not so much about “How People Learn,” but more about the mistakes skeptics make when we try to get people to change their minds—or, in other words: understanding how people don’t learn. At one point, Mitchell took exception with James Randi’s claim that “Those who believe without reason cannot be convinced by reason.” It was clear that Mitchell has been actively researching the methods science is exploring regarding the most effective ways to teach people what they are reluctant to accept, and he encouraged the audience to “go on this journey” with him. He ended by recommending several books on this important subject.

The final speaker was Yelena Bernadskaya who, like Russ, is a board member of the NYC Skeptics. Rather than a typical presentation, after explaining the topic, Yelena had the audience participate in an “overconfidence quiz.” Basically, it is supposed to determine how well you understand the degree to which you know what you know. I did rather poorly, as did at least some others in the audience who I heard admit this out-loud. I guess that was the point. We tend to be overconfident in what we think we know. And realizing that fact is a very good thing indeed.

I have summarized the material provided in each presentation, but intentionally have furnished no opinion regarding the presentation skills of the speakers, including their oral communication aptitude, the quality of their textual material, or their skill at handling questions. As is to be expected in any inexperienced group, these skills varied widely. I will go no deeper. After all, the intention of SpeedyCamp, as well as big-brother SkeptiCamp, is to give folks with negligible presentation history a chance to gain experience and confidence, and also to bring a selection of interesting subjects to the attention of fellow skeptics. It seemed that those goals were certainly accomplished, and I hope that the SpeedyCamp concept flourishes and spreads to other skeptical groups. The presentations were all recorded by the event organizers, and I was told they would eventually be posted to the NYC Skeptics’ YouTube channel. My fifteen-minute session, however, has been uploaded to the GSoW Team’s YouTube channel. [9]

By the way, it turned out that all the time I spent constructing a presentation, plus my long round-trip to Brooklyn—all done for just fifteen minutes on stage at SpeedyCamp—was not done in vain. Several days afterwards, someone from that very small audience contacted me and joined the GSoW team! I can’t speak for the expectations and level of satisfaction of the other presenters, but to have gained a new team member from an audience of just nineteen made my NYC SpeedyCamp experience totally worthwhile.

References

1. Wikipedia article about SkeptiCamp.
2. “Raising our game,” Skeptic Magazine article about the SkeptiCamp concept.
3. Session Leader Guide for NYC SkeptiCamp.
4. Incomplete SpeedyCamp schedule as it appeared just after I was added.
5. Final posted SpeedyCamp schedule including all six topics.
6. “Guerrilla Skeptics: A Pathway to Skeptical Activism,” a Skeptical Inquirer article by Rob Palmer.
7. Wikipedia article about the Regressive Left.
8. “Beyond the Echo Chamber: Skeptical Outreach through Pop Culture,” an SI article by Russ Dobler.
9. Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia, NYC SpeedyCamp 2018 presentation by Rob Palmer.

Timothy Caulfield is a Canadian professor of law at the University of Alberta. He is an author of several books and writes about legal and ethical issues for various publications. In 2017, he was the host of the Canadian documentary series “A User’s Guide to Cheating Death.” He will be speaking at CSICon on Saturday October 20 at 9:30 am.

Susan Gerbic: Hello Timothy, nice to meet you. I know you are very busy, so thank you for a few minutes of your time. My GSoW editor Robin Cantin spent a lot of time writing your Wikipedia page in English and French. I was watching over his shoulder and proofreading so I feel like I know you. For those people who have not yet read your Wikipedia page, can you please tell readers about yourself?

Timothy Caulfield: It is always tough to describe yourself, isn’t it? Especially if you aren’t sure how to describe what you do, which is my situation! I am a Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy at the University of Alberta. I work with an amazing interdisciplinary team to explore a range of science and health policy issues. We try to do both empirical work and conceptual analysis trying to tease out what the evidence says about the best policy approach. I love working with big science teams. I feel very fortunate that my career took me down this path.

Gerbic: From what I understand you almost stumbled into the world of pseudoscience; you were leading an academic life as a professor of ethics and law, writing about genetics and health law, and gradually you started writing about health claims, then pseudoscience health claims, and then a book on Celebrity Culture and GOOP. The next thing you know you spent a year following an expensive regimen of skin care products specifically recommended by a dermatologist. What an interesting turn of events.

Caulfield: It was an interesting turn of events! I’d love to get in a time machine to tell the early career me that I will be spending a significant amount of my time writing about Gwyneth, Brady, and the Kardashians. But as I did more and more research around how science is represented in popular culture, it became clear that celebrity culture matters. It has a tremendous impact on health behaviors and attitudes, much more than people realize. 

I think trying stuff out is important.We shouldn’t battle anecdote with anecdote, but getting a sense of perspective helps. What is attractive about these therapies? I’ve been to a naturopath, several acupuncturists, a TCM expert, a holistic nutritionist, a crystal therapy clinic, a mindfulness advocate, etc. Almost all of these experiences were entirely pleasant. Sure, they may be also largely science-free, but you get a sense why people go.

Gerbic: Have you heard from Gwyneth? (note: here is a link to Caulfield’s book - Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong about Everything?)

Caulfield: No word from Gwyneth! Of course, she ranted about how science-informed commentators are all closed-minded downers. I’d love to sit down and talk critical thinking with Gwyneth, perhaps over some herbal tea. Does she really believe this stuff?Of course, most of it is just about building her brand and, alas, it is working. Goop is now valued at $250 million.

Gerbic: I’m very interested in this documentary series “A User’s Guide to Cheating Death.” Some topics are about detox, extreme dieting, and the fountain of youth. This all sounds like the kind of programming we need more of. This was released in September and October of 2017 and was only six shows. What are the chances more are in the works, and maybe to a larger audience?

Caulfield: I’m absolutely thrilled with how the show turned out. As you know, making TV involves a lot of moving parts. I was a bit worried the science would get sucked out. But the production team was keen to keep it science-informed. There are currently so many health “documentaries” that spread misinformation. And they are so darn popular! It is frustrating. We hope there is an audience for this evidence-based stuff. We do keep it fun and very international. And yes, we have another six episodes finished! We tackled some great topics, including sleep, sex, body hacking, and vitamins. I’m happy to announce that Netflix is now involved. They will air season 1 this summer and season 2 in the fall!

Gerbic: Oh, that is wonderful!! Congratulations! And we just got your Wikipedia pages done this year, so perfect timing. Now when people see you on Netflix they will Google you and find your Wikipedia page. Yeah Team!

You have coined the term “scienceploitation” and I see your talk at CSICon is called “Scienceploitation: Pop Culture’s Assault on Science (and why it matters!).” Please tell us more about your talk.

Caulfield: This is a very troubling phenomenon as I think it makes it more difficult for the public to get a sense of what is real science and what is BS. Basically, scienceploitation is the leveraging of the language as real science to push bunk. Of course, it has always been around. When an area of science starts to get attention, it is coopted as a marketing tool. The discovery of magnetism led to a host of magnetic health products. But now you see stem cell, genetic, and increasingly, microbiome research being exploited to sell a host of ridiculous products. My favorite example, however, has to be the use of “quantum physics.” Many alternative medicine practitioners seem to think that if they slap the word “quantum” on a product it sounds more science-y and more legitimate. We have done research on this phenomenon, especially in the area of stem cells. Unfortunately, studies have shown that scienceploitation works. It creates a veneer of legitimacy that makes the product seem more credible.

Gerbic: One bit of trivia about you I know is that if not for motion sickness issues, the science community would never have known of you, as we would have lost you to the punk rock scene. Have I got that story right?

Caulfield: There is absolutely some truth in that story! Being in a band requires a lot of touring in crappy vans. Long, late night drives. Ugh. Just thinking about it makes my stomach queasy! All the aspiring musicians out there can confirm that being in a band is really 80 percent loading gear and driving, 10 percent dreaming of success, 5 percent sitting around arguing with each other, and 5 percent gigging and rehearsing. I’m pretty sure there is a meta-analysis and systematic review that confirms this breakdown. By the way, I still have terrible motion sickness. Know any good alternative therapies?

Gerbic: Absolutely not! We don’t want to lose you now! Looking forward to meeting you in person. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me today.

On July 4, 2018, a video titled “Ghost Crashes” was shared to a Facebook page called Video Feed, an entertainment website. The video shows a compilation of various car crashes involving a single car appearing to crash into another apparently “invisible” car. In just under a week, the video has gained over 29 million views and over 537,000 shares. I had been sent the video several times, with friends asking if I had any information on it. I decided to take a closer look into it.

The car crashes are typical of what can be viewed in hundreds (if not thousands) of videos on YouTube, collected from traffic cameras and dash cams from all over the world. There are entire channels dedicated to these videos. I spent a few moments reading a few of the thousands of comments attached to the Ghost Crash video; about half declared “fake!” while the other half seemed to be completely mystified by what they saw, swearing these events were genuine cases of the supernatural.

I watched the video several times, and the first issue I immediately noticed was a lot of extra blurring and distortions in the areas where the “invisible” cars should be. In several crashes, smoke (from impacts) vanished much too quickly or swirled around in unnatural patterns due to the elements that were erased or covered up. At times there was a camera shake effect added to the video to make it appear as if the camera was moving (it was not). The visual effects are not horrible, but they’re not particularly good either.

Aside from the poor quality effects, there were a few mistakes made while editing the video. The most obvious is a car that suddenly appears in the background of one of the scenes. At the forty-second mark, a silver car is hit by a “ghost car” and is flipped over onto its roof. Instead of watching the accident car, pay attention to the line of cars on the opposite side of the street (opposing traffic). Just as the accident car begins to flip, the line of cars jumps forward. They don’t roll forward; there’s a definite skip in the video just in that area. Additionally, another vehicle suddenly appears at the end of the line. This is a sure indication of video manipulation.

One frame shows a line of cars on the opposite side of the street.

In the next frame, an extra vehicle appears out of thin air. This was caused by an oversight when editing out the ‘ghost’ car.

Each segment of the video is from a stationary traffic camera or dash cam (in a stationary vehicle). This allows for much easier editing techniques. Specific areas of the video can be masked by a screenshot or additional sections of each video, since the camera doesn’t change its view. I’ve used this technique for editing myself into videos as a transparent ghost or making random objects disappear. It requires some practice and a little time, but the skills can be acquired by almost anyone. These techniques (and much more) are covered on the YouTube channel of Captain Disillusion, an incredibly skilled and entertaining visual effects expert.

There was something else that struck me as odd about many of the videos; I could hear all the crashes. Some dash cams do record audio; I own one that has this capability. However, the traffic cams featured also had accompanying audio with them. This didn’t make sense, since they’re usually mounted way up high and are not equipped to record audio (though there are models that do). Even if they were, the sounds of the crashes didn’t always sync with the events we were seeing on the video. They were most likely sound effects added later.

The most obvious indication that this video was a creation and not an incredible compilation of actual “ghost” cars crashing into real cars is how the video ends. One doesn’t have to look into whether visual effects were used or not, they need only to view the video until the end. In the last few seconds, some text appears on screen that reads “by Donato Sansone.” I followed the next logical step and did a Google search for Sansone.

It turns out that Donato Sansone is an Italian Graphic Designer, and “Ghost Crash” was not his first creation. He has uploaded several visual effects-filled videos onto his Vimeo website, a video sharing platform similar to YouTube. While browsing his selections, I found one called “boy-crash” which is a similar type of video, showing a boy getting hit by an invisible car (he was unhurt). “Ghost Crash” was originally uploaded in May 2018 and has since been seen almost 76,000 times on the Vimeo website. Since then, it was shared on various social media pages such as Aperotoon, FeedyTV, and Video Feed where I came across it (and was up to 29 million views as of this writing).

Reading the comments on his personal Facebook page, it became obvious Sansone had fun editing some sequences of real accidents (Sansone 2018). One friend, Juan Scassa, commented “Did you dupe the web, or did the web dupe itself?” There were dozens of comments offering “congratulations” for doing such a good job and fooling so many people. Some of the comments even mentioned a “video manipulating community” that Sansone was a part of.

Even though the evidence so far is more then enough to demonstrate the video is a fabrication, there was still something I wanted to do—find some of the original videos. YouTube is filled with thousands of “Car crash compilation” videos. I knew that looking for matching videos would be time consuming, so I decided to try a shortcut; I went over to Snopes.com. Sure enough, they had also looked into it and, much to my delight had already located several of the original car crash videos. The links below include three of the crash videos in their original form. Incidentally, these three videos, from traffic cams, do not have accompanying audio track.

Car Crash 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpwMOvNCUig

Car Crash 2

https://ok.ru/video/409592728177

Car Crash 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=74&v=OPLMRMstxi4

There is no doubt that what we are seeing, or rather not seeing, are not phantom cars. They are the result of graphic designer flexing and expanding his skills at manipulating video. This is not a case of someone perpetrating a hoax; he made no claims that the video displayed anything paranormal. Sansone simply called his creation “Ghost Crash”; he also put his name on it and made no attempt to hide the fact that he created it. In fact, he proudly posted articles and videos that showcased his creation. I honestly doubt Sansone had any idea his video would be such a sensation.

In the end, Sansone’s work provided him with some notoriety and the satisfaction of millions of people seeing what he created. That would put a smile on my face.

• Disillusion, Captain. 2018. YouTube Channel. Available online at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEOXxzW2vU0P-0THehuIIeg.
• DtpPtz.ru. 2015. ВАЗ (Car Crash 1). Available online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpwMOvNCUig.
• Korensky, Sergey 2017. A selection of road accidents and state of emergency # 59 from the community (Car Crash 2). Available online at https://ok.ru/video/409592728177.
• Ge, Ly. 2016. Car Crash Compilation # 745 (Car Crash 3). Available online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=74&v=OPLMRMstxi4.
• Sansone, Donato. 2018. Facebook page. Available online at https://www.facebook.com/donnyPomponny.
• Snopes.com. 2018. Does This Video Show 8 Supernatural Car Crashes? Available online at https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/video-8-supernatural-car-crashes/.
• Video Feed. 2018. Invisible car collision can not be explained. Available online at https://www.facebook.com/LikenowVideoFeed/posts/356566588212607.

Abby Hafer is a scientist, educator, public speaker, and author of The Not-So-Intelligent Designer: Why Evolution Explains the Human Body and Intelligent Design Does Not. Her scientific career includes a doctorate in zoology from Oxford University and teaching human anatomy and physiology at Curry College. She has recently broadened her scope to include crushing the gender binary using biology and giving the same treatment to morality based on the supernatural. She will be presenting at CSICon on Saturday, October 29, at noon.

Susan Gerbic: Hello, Abby. We met at the Los Angeles LogicCalLA event in February. I really enjoyed your talk. It does not look like they have released that video yet, but here is one from the American Humanists in 2016. Can you please tell our readers more about yourself?

Abby Hafer: Although my graduate degree is in zoology, specifically animal behavior, most of my professional work both in research and teaching has been in physiology. I tend to look at biology through both these lenses. In the 1990s, I got a job teaching adult education courses in human anatomy and physiology to smart, motivated adults who had little to no knowledge of the sciences. So I had to develop courses that started at zero, yet got the students to where they needed to be by the end of the term. They, and I, worked very hard. It required me to start with very basic concepts and give information in small, straightforward bites. I was respectful of my students but demanding. It worked well. This, plus a dark sense of humor, has served me well when I have written my talks and my book. These days I really enjoy using these skills to explain science to people and debunk things that need debunking. 

Gerbic: I see you have expanded your focus from zoology and human anatomy to gender binary. Can you tell us more about that?

Hafer:The inspirations are similar. First, I think that when science gets turned into a political issue, it helps to use arguments of a type that will work in the political arena. This means using arguments that are short, easy to remember, easy to repeat, and preferably entertaining. Call me old-fashioned, but I want my arguments to be true as well. I also find that humor is a great way to puncture bad ideas.

When I set out to debunk intelligent design, I had a moment of inspiration right during an anatomy and physiology lecture, when I was lecturing about reproductive systems. I realized that men’s testicles were my best kickoff argument against the intelligent design of the human body, because once I started talking about men’s testicles, people would pay attention. I was right. It works every time. I then realized that using examples from the human body generally was likely to be compelling, because nearly everyone is interested in their own bodies, even if they are not interested in anything else in biology.

When I started using this approach, I realized that I already knew more than enough to debunk intelligent design, and that most other biologists do as well. I think that this is a strength—using material that has been well-established, so much so that many people learn it as undergraduates. It’s a matter of pointing out the obvious, just as Jon Stewart used to do, but from the standpoint of biology.

Then, in the summer of 2016, I had a similar moment of realization regarding the gender binary—that is, that I already knew enough to debunk it and had since my undergraduate days.What I needed to do was organize my knowledge in an accessible way. The issue was very much on my mind because of the Pulse nightclub shooting and all the anti-LGBTQ “bathroom bills” that were being enacted that summer. So I took what I already knew, read up on more recent research, and my gender binary–debunking talk came into being. 

People have encouraged me to work on climate change in a similar way, but I have not yet come up with something that works as a talk. That said, I keep turning over in my mind the idea of doing a TV show with the theme of “This Week in Climate Change.” Thismight work, since I could look at things that are cool and relatable, like changes in the times when flowers bloom, what crops can be grown where, and so on. We have a lot of good data on bloom times in the 1800s due to the careful work of naturalists like Thoreau.

Gerbic: CSICon has an excellent lineup again this year. I believe that this will be your first CSICon? Who are you excited about seeing talk? 

Hafer:First, I hope I get to see James Randi! Even back when I was a graduate student in the early 1980s, James Randi was known and admired by scientists who were interested in debunking unscientific nonsense.

A number of the people who will be presenting are people I already know to some degree, so I will concentrate here on folks who are not already friendly acquaintances. 

I want to see Stephen Fry and Adam Conover. Stephen Fry because I have admired his humor and acting since the 1980s, when he and Hugh Laurie were the comedy team “Fry and Laurie.” His service to humanism has been a delight, particularly that interview when he said that if he were standing at the Pearly Gates of Heaven, and it turned out that God exists, then he’d want to know why God gives bone cancer to children. As for Adam Conover, I really enjoy “Adam Ruins Everything.” 

I would also enjoy seeing Carl Zimmer for the simple reason that he is an amazing science writer whose work I admire.

Gerbic: Keep in mind that CSICon is unique by throwing a Halloween party. The theme this year is pajamas. We are encouraging attendees to follow CSICon on its Facebook group in order to keep abreast of all that is going on in between the lectures.

Hafer:I’m really more of a sweatpants and T-shirt kind of a gal when it comes to bed clothes, so look for me in something like that, probably with a dinosaur theme. 

I recently came across Round the Red Lamp, a delightful volume of medical-themed short stories and other medical writings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a medical doctor and the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Among its many treasures are two of his letters that were printed in newspapers in 1887 on the subject of compulsory vaccination. A Compulsory Vaccination Act was in effect. At the time, the only vaccine available was for smallpox, but the anti-vaxxers were already out in full force. It is fascinating to see how little has changed after 131 years. Today’s anti-vaccine arguments echo the same words that were used in 1887.

In the letters, he is responding to a Colonel Wintle, who objects to vaccination “upon two points: its immorality and its inefficiency or positive harmfulness.” Conan Doyle says “an enormous responsibility rests with the men whose notion of progress is to revert to the condition of things which existed in the dark ages before the dawn of medical science.”

The Moral Question

Wintle’s line of argument is that smallpox has been sent by Providence and that it becomes immoral to take any steps to neutralize its mischief, and he objects to any government interference.Conan Doyle asks:

Is it immoral for a Government to adopt a method of procedure which experience has proved and science has testified to conduce to the health and increased longevity of the population? Is it immoral to inflict a passing inconvenience upon a child in order to preserve it from a deadly disease? Does the end never justify the means? Would it be immoral to give Colonel Wintle a push in order to save him from being run over by a locomotive? If all these are really immoral, I trust and pray that we may never attain morality.

The Question of Effectiveness

Conan Doyle points out that smallpox vaccination had been around for a century and had been thrashed out by learned societies, argued over in medical journals, examined by statisticians, and tested in every conceivable manner; and “there is a unanimity upon the point which is more complete than upon any other medical subject.”

He points out that the ravages of smallpox had been forgotten since vaccination made the disease a rarity. In earlier generations, advertisements for missing relatives regularly described them as pock marked. Mary, the wife of William the Third, died of smallpox. Whole tracts of country were decimated. But by 1887 many doctors never saw a single case in a lifetime of practice. Similarly, today the public has forgotten the devastation once caused by vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles, mumps, whooping cough, diphtheria, tetanus, and others. The threat doesn’t seem real to them.

Just as today’s anti-vaxxers claim that it was hygiene, sewers, and safe water, not vaccines, that made the diseases disappear, the Anti-Vaccinationists of his day tried to account for the decreased incidence of smallpox with other explanations. They speculated that the disease might have changed, but there is no reason to think so. In the twenty-first century, I have heard people claim that smallpox is still around but is being misdiagnosed as chickenpox; that’s absurd, because we can clearly tell the two apart by clinical appearance and lab studies. Conan Doyle points out that nurses and doctors had worked in smallpox hospitals for over fifty years without a single case of them catching the disease, because they were vaccinated.

The Question of Adverse Effects

He says, “As to the serious effects of vaccination which Colonel Wintle describes as indescribable, they are to a very large extent imaginary … Some parents have an amusing habit of ascribing anything which happens to their children, from the whooping-cough to a broken leg, to the effects of their vaccination.” We are still seeing this today, with alarmist false claims of all sorts of harm from the HPV and other vaccines, and from the ongoing concern that vaccines cause autism despite all evidence to the contrary.

Colonel Wintle Tries Again

Conan Doyle says, “Colonel Wintle’s second letter appears to me to contain a jumble of statistics and quotations, some of which do not affect the question at all, while others tell dead against the cause which he is championing.” That also describes much of the supporting evidence today’s anti-vaxxers bring to the table.

Wintle says vaccination is a failure because occasional outbreaks of smallpox still occur. Conan Doyle points out that those very outbreaks strengthen the argument for vaccination, because (1) there are far fewer deaths in those who have been vaccinated compared to the unvaccinated, and (2) the disease is much more severe in the unvaccinated. He presents a tabulation of twenty years data from the Smallpox Hospital:

• Of those with four vaccination marks: 0.5 percent died
• Of those with three marks: 1.9 percent died
• With two marks: 4.7 percent died 
• With one mark: 7.7 percent died
• With no marks but claiming to have been vaccinated: 23.3 percent died
• Non-vaccinated patients: 37 percent died

Wintle argues that vaccines are poisons. Conan Doyle points out that the most useful drugs, such as opium and digitalis, are poisons. We accept a small risk to get a great benefit.

Wintle reports fatal cases following vaccination. Conan Doyle acknowledges that there are occasional bad reactions and he stresses the need to use the purest vaccines to avoid problems, but he insists that any harm done by vaccines “bears an infinitesimal proportion to the total amount of good done.” He comments: “At present if a child dies of any cause within a certain time of its vaccination the anti-vaccinators are ready to put it down as cause and effect.”

Today any event can be reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and the anti-vaxxers are ready to falsely claim all of them as proven vaccine damage.

Conan Doyle ends by chastising Colonel Wintle for trying to impose his personal opinions on society in opposition to the experts and thereby endangering public health. He encourages readers to consult the National Health Society’s publication on “The Facts about Vaccination.”

Plus ça Change …

The more things change, the more they’re the same. Vaccines have always encountered opposition, and the arguments continue to be the same. It’s sad when one of the greatest accomplishments of science is rejected because of misinformation and faulty arguments.

Conan Doyle’s thinking about vaccination was sound, and he was fighting the same battle we’re fighting today. Unfortunately, his thinking on other subjects was not always so sound. He believed in spiritualism, parapsychology, telepathy, psychic abilities, and séances … . But that’s another story for another day.

After my article “Twenty-One Reasons Noah’s Worldwide Flood Never Happened” was published in the March/April 2018 Skeptical Inquirer, the creationist organization Answers in Genesis produced a YouTube video in which Andrew Snelling criticized some of the reasons I presented in the article for why such a worldwide flood could not have happened (see https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2018/04/02/christian-equips-atheists-debate-christians/). Snelling, a geologist, is director of research for Answers in Genesis. As a lead-in to this video, Ken Ham pointed out that there were many people working for Answers in Genesis with PhDs who are well trained in science and who support the interpretations presented by Snelling, and he implied that my science was not as good as theirs.

In the course of the video, Snelling argues that I have preconceived uniformitarianism views that differ from the biblical ones that the young-Earth creationists have. However, in either case, because the creationists call themselves “creation scientists,” our differences in opinion must be based on scientific evidence and not necessarily on our positions with respect to interpreting the Bible. The young-Earth creationists interpret it with a literal translation, whereas I and most other mainline Christians who are scientists do not believe that the Bible was written to be a science textbook. I believe that the Hebrew authors of the Old Testament of the Bible were inspired and wrote their books based on their understanding of what they thought they knew during the time in which they lived. I believe that the Bible portrays who God (the Creator) is, why he created the universe, the Earth, and life (including humans), and how to obtain salvation. It does not answer the questions of when, where, and how creation was done. Science answers these questions.

In Ken Ham’s introduction and in the video, there was no attack on me for being a Christian, but he, Snelling, and others from Answers in Genesis were irked that I had published the article in Skeptical Inquirer and gave ammunition to atheists to attack the young-Earth creationists. Snelling essentially threw down the gauntlet, so to speak, and challenged me to give real scientific evidence. Not replying to his challenge is really not a choice for me, as he claimed that I had not “done my homework.” Therefore, in this follow-up response I have chosen five of the twenty-one reasons to demonstrate that Snelling has not done his scientific homework. There is not enough space in this short response to give scientific justifications for all twenty-one reasons I provided. Here are the five reasons that I address.

The origin of salt and gypsum deposits

Instead of my explanation that deposits of salt had to form by evaporation of marine water in areas where an arm of the ocean had been cut off for some reason and where a desert climate caused the isolated water to evaporate, Snelling claims (at about the 8:30 mark of the video) that the salt was carried in a solution of hot water. (I make an interpretation here because he did not elaborate on where this hot water came from, but it is generally believed by young-Earth creationists that it was ejected from oceanic volcanic spreading centers from which the “fountains of the deep” emerged.) Supposedly, sufficient salt was concentrated in these solutions that the salt became precipitated when the water cooled. But there are no salt deposits anywhere in the world close to oceanic spreading centers. All are in the interiors of continents and occur multiple times throughout the geologic ages in widely different places in every continent.

I heard a young-Earth creationist in a talk say that the hot water that carried the ions of sodium and chlorine of which salt is composed was ejected at high speeds as steam from the oceanic spreading centers. If so, somehow the salt-bearing steam had to cool as a mass of liquid instead of expanding explosively as an extremely hot gas and thereby becoming scattered and dispersed in the atmosphere. Then, this condensed mass of hot water (whether once steam or not) had to land somewhere in large volumes of Noah’s flood waters. The problem for Snelling is that the sodium and chlorine ions in this water mass are so soluble in water that they would become dispersed in the huge volumes of the flood waters and never concentrate to the point of precipitation to form solid masses of layered salt (see http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/collins.pdf). What Snelling proposes is impossible and shows that he has not done his homework. The natural laws for chemical behavior must be obeyed.

Sand dunes with giant cross-bedding in the Mesozoic rocks in Zion National Park

Snelling claims (about nine minutes into the video) that the cross-bedding in sandstone dunes was created under water (like the sand dunes that are created under the Golden Gate Bridge by rushing tidal water). He claims that the angles of maximum dip of cross-bedding are less than 30 degrees, and therefore, this cross-bedding of sandstones in the Grand Canyon area was deposited under water. Figure 1 is a photo of cross-bedding of dunes a few miles north of the Grand Canyon National Park boundary that clearly shows angles greater than 30 degrees—which is clear evidence that these dunes were formed under dry desert conditions instead of under Noah’s flood waters. Adjacent to it (right image) is another example from the Vermillion Cliffs in the same area. A similar image is on page 54 of the Grand Canyon book (cited below), also with dip angles greater than 30 degrees. All of these images show that Snelling has not done his homework.

Moreover, sand dunes like those formed underwater under the Golden Gate Bridge would not be expected to be formed by Noah’s worldwide flood and be stacked like what is seen in these two images. Even the Permian Coconino sandstone that crops out in the Grand Canyon has desert dune cross-bedding with dips of 30 degrees and delicate footprint trails of spiders, scorpions, and millipedes and raindrop prints (Figure 2) that could not have been preserved on the surfaces of dunes formed by the raging torrents of Noah’s flood waters. See illustrations on pages 58 and 156 in the book The Grand Canyon, Monument to an Ancient Earth, 2016, edited by geologist Carol Hill and others.

Raindrop prints occur in many places around the world

Snelling claims (about twelve minutes into the video) that he has seen raindrop prints in the Grand Canyon when he has led tours down the canyon on rafts. He says that raindrop prints in the canyon do not look like anything that he has observed in the adjacent rocks. He suggests that such may be just concentrations of precipitated minerals. Figure 2 shows fossilized raindrop prints as casts on the underside of the prints.

You can see the clear demonstration of the bowl-shape impact basins where the globular water drops have collided with mud and the raised splash-rims that result from the impact. In this underside view, the rims project into the rock instead of being raised around the bowls, and the bowls extend upward instead of downward. It is clear that these really are fossilized raindrop prints. Next to this image are fossil raindrop prints in the Coconino sandstone, which clearly shows that rain fell on the sand in a desert dune in open air. Paleontologist Phil Senter records raindrop prints in several geologic ages (Triassic, Permian, Devonian, and Cambrian) around the world in sedimentary rocks that were also supposedly deposited during Noah’s Flood; see Figure 1 in http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/Flood%20geology.pdf. Therefore, Snelling has not done his homework, because there are published data that show that raindrop prints do in fact occur in the supposed Noah’s flood deposits.

Coccoliths in the White Cliffs of Dover

I suggest that the coccoliths, which are a kind of algae with calcareous platelets in spherical shells, cannot be deposited beneath water thicknesses of over 350 feet during Noah’s flood because they require sunlight for photosynthesis and must exist near the ocean surface to obtain the energy from the sun and that having that many coccoliths (trillions and trillions of them) in the oceanic waters at the same time as the one-year flood would cut out the sunlight for coccoliths a few feet below the ocean surface. Snelling argues (at the 13:12 mark of the video) that I cannot use the chalk (composed of coccoliths) in the White Cliffs of Dover as an example because they are on the continent and not like coccoliths that occur in modern oceans.

This is a ridiculous argument because coccoliths in the past did not grow on continents; they grew in ocean waters. He then proceeds to use an example of coccoliths deposited in Kansas, which is far in the interior of our continent. He points out that these deposits contain fossilized remains of a fish (twelve feet long) with another smaller fish in its stomach as well as fossils of large turtles, birds, and a plesiosaur. He claims that because these kinds of creatures are mixed together, they had to be deposited suddenly during a rapid change in the chemistry of Noah’s flood waters that caused all the coccoliths to suddenly plunge down and be buried. He says that they could not have been buried over millions of years by falling dead coccoliths that settle at a few inches at a time over thousands of years.

As I have pointed out, a 350-foot thickness of coccoliths cannot be living at the same time in ocean waters; furthermore, the skeletal bones of the various fish, reptiles, and birds are composed of calcium carbonate, which is the same composition as the calcareous platelets of the coccoliths. The oceanic water was saturated with calcium ions, and therefore there is no chemical reason the bones of these creatures should dissolve and disappear. They could remain on the ocean floor for millions of years without disappearing.

Moreover, Snelling’s statement that birds were buried by the coccoliths is misleading because it implies that birds were living at that time (the Cretaceous Age) during Noah’s flood. They were not birds in the modern sense but were gliding reptiles (pterodactyls) with teeth. One does not know how these various creatures could have been killed, but a toxic algal bloom could have been the cause. Such blooms commonly and suddenly kill thousands of fish and other marine creatures today.

An experiment done on a live olive tree by Charles Munroe III

I suggested that an experiment with the submergence of a live olive tree under water for three months showing that the olive tree was killed by this submergence was evidence that a worldwide flood never happened. Snelling discusses the olive tree experiment (about twenty-two minutes into the video) and asks where the published article is in which this experiment was described. He said that Answers in Genesis would not consider any assertion unless they can see a published article. Figure 4 below at left contains the images in question.

And, thereby, here is the published article. Snelling said that olive trees that lived during Noah’s flood could have been hardier than those living today. He also asserts that olive trees would have been like orange trees in that they could reproduce asexually by budding from roots or from fragmented branches. But neither Snelling nor his colleagues have demonstrated by any experimental studies of their own that a live olive tree or any fragmented branches that have been submerged for three months (or even six months during Noah’s flood) can come alive again. He is merely speculating without scientific support.

Conclusion

These five examples show that Snelling has not done his homework. I agree that I look at many situations from a uniformitarianism point of view, but geologists recognize that not all processes that occur during geologic history are necessarily slow events occurring over millions of years. Catastrophic events, such as the explosion of Mt. St. Helens, are examples. But young-Earth creationists cannot decide that uniformitarianism does not work during the Genesis week and up until Noah’s flood and then decide that they will accept such processes at other times. I note that Snelling never responds to my Reason 21, in which I point out that the Redwall limestone has karst topography (cave formation) in it as well as deep erosion channels of the Surprise Canyon Formation on top of it, neither of which could happen in less than one year during Noah’s flood. He chooses data that he thinks fit his model and ignores data that do not fit. Science is not done that way. As I said in my original Skeptical Inquirer article, it only takes one ugly fact to ruin a beautiful hypothesis. Moreover, a local huge flood that occurred in Mesopotamia during biblical times is certainly possible. For more information, see http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/Collins2.pdf and http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/Carol%201.pdf.

As a further point, my March/April Skeptical Inquirer article gave physical reasons Noah’s worldwide flood never happened, but there are equally strong reasons from biological evidence such a flood never happened. See article to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Skeptical Inquirer. This article also gives evidence that the Earth cannot be 6,000 years old, but many billions of years old.

1. Snelling essentially threw down the gauntlet, so to speak, and challenged me to give real scientific evidence.
2. What Snelling proposes is impossible and shows that he has not done his homework. The natural laws for chemical behavior must be obeyed.

In the field of autism treatment, the forces for science and evidence have won a few battles, and lost a few. Unfortunately, some of the most recent victories have been on the side of pseudoscientific and fad therapies, but a new army of researchers, practitioners, and advocates is fighting back.

Twenty years ago, it looked like facilitated communication (FC), a popular pseudoscientific treatment for autism, was dead. Proponents had suggested that many people with autism were trapped inside broken bodies. Autism was not a cognitive problem but a physical one. Inside these non-speaking people were intelligent, expressive minds, and if someone—a facilitator—just steadied their hands over a keyboard, FC could unlock the thoughts and feelings of the person within. Suddenly, with the help of their facilitators, people who were previously unable to speak were writing novels and poems and going off to college. The promise of FC was so miraculous that it spread like wildfire.

Full hand-over-hand facilitated communication, sometimes called supported typing. (Source: YouTube)

But, in the early 1990s, the first empirical tests of the technique began to appear, and the results were devastating. In virtually every case, controlled studies revealed that the facilitator—the autistic person’s helper—was doing the typing, not the person with autism. It was a Ouija board-like phenomenon. The facilitators appeared to be entirely unaware that they were the authors of the words on the computer screen.

This research was a substantial blow to the proponents of FC, and a 1993 PBS Frontline episode, “Prisoners of Silence,” was particularly effective in discrediting the technique. Major professional organizations, including the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association issued policy statements against the use of FC, and teachers and therapists went back to using more validated methods of educating people with autism. So, by the mid-1990s, it looked like the FC controversy was over, and science had won. Unfortunately, the story did not end there. 

As readers of this column know, FC has surged back, and the autism wars have resumed on a number of new fronts. First, the pro-FC crowd criticized and denied the research. Syracuse University professor of education Douglas Biklen (2005), who is the primary promoter of FC in the United States, claimed the research methods used to evaluate FC were not suited to the particular needs of people with autism and had caused test anxiety. Many parents continued to believe their children were articulate writers whose mouths, hands, and arms did not work properly. Pro-FC researchers using less rigorous methods appeared to show some evidence of independent typing in a few individual students, promoting belief in the technique (Mostert 2010).

Second, new variations of FC were introduced that looked different but shared the same problems. The most popular of these new techniques is Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) developed by Soma Mukhopadhyay (2013). In this case, instead of hand-over-hand guidance on a keyboard, the person with autism points to a letter board, and a teacher or assistant reports the words tapped out. RPM is different from FC, but it has the same potential for unconscious prompting because the letter board is always held in the air by the assistant. As long as the method of communication involves the active participation of another person, the potential for unconscious guidance remains. Perhaps having learned a lesson from the FC episode of the 1990s, the proponents of RPM have avoided participating in research studies that might test its validity, and its popularity has grown. Furthermore, the original, thoroughly discredited version of FC continued to be promoted by a number of universities and professionals.

A boy and his teacher using rapid prompting method. (Source: YouTube.)

For those who lost track of the FC story back in the 1990s, the resurgence of pseudoscience was a surprise. Twenty years earlier, science had spoken, and that should have been that. But the promise of uncovering an intelligent, articulate child was just too appealing, and as a result, for some parents and professionals, FC became a system of belief.

Science Strikes Back

Although many of the recent battles have been won by the proponents of FC, RPM, and other related pseudoscientific therapies, in the years since the 1990s, the scientific viewpoint has scored some victories, particularly in the courtroom. Some of the earliest challenges to FC came when parents or others were falsely accused of sexual abuse through FC. Typically, a child with autism would type out a message describing acts of sexual abuse allegedly committed by a parent or someone else. When these cases went to trial, an essential question was, who was writing the abuse claims, the child with autism or the facilitator? In several cases, a simple double-blind test was able to show that the facilitator was the author of the abuse claims, not the person with autism. After these tests were conducted, defendants were usually acquitted or the charges were dropped.

Unfortunately, these victories came at a heavy cost, because the courts move slowly and people’s lives can be damaged in the process. As recently as spring of 2018, a Hialeah, Florida, man was arrested and held in jail for thirty-five days while his case progressed. His was eventually released without any charges filed, but in addition to his incarceration, he had to endure the humiliation of having his picture, complete with prisoner’s orange uniform, published in the Miami Herald—despite having done nothing wrong. No picture of the teacher who authored the false claims appeared in the paper. If this is a victory for science, it is an unsatisfying one.

Another development on the side of science has been the emergence of some very good writing on the topic. Much of this has come from national-level science journalists, including Slate’s David Auerbach (“Facilitated Communication is a Cult That Will Not Die”), Forbes’ Steven Salzberg (“Facilitated Communication Has Been Called An Abuse Of Human Rights. Why Is It Still Around?”), and Kavin Senapathy, who writes both for Forbes and here at Skeptical Inquirer (“On Unsubstantiated Yet Prevalent Therapeutic Interventions for Autism [Part II]”). In addition, Daniel Engber has been the leading reporter on the case of Anna Stubblefield, the Rutgers University philosophy professor who used FC to gain consent for a sexual relationship with a nonverbal man with cerebral palsy. Her first conviction and sentence of twelve years in prison for sexual abuse was thrown out on appeal (due to the judge’s exclusion of some evidence in the first trial), but after serving less than two years of her sentence, Stubblefield avoided a second trial by pleading guilty to third-degree sexual assault, for which she was sentenced to time-served and fifteen years’ probation (Napoliello 2018). Engberg has covered this case at great length for both Slate and the New York Times. Finally, Thomas E. Heizen, Scott O. Lilienfeld, and Susan A. Nolan (2015) have published a wonderful little book called The Horse That Won’t Go Away: Clever Hans, Facilitated Communication, and the Need for Clear Thinking.

True Voices

Despite these few glimmers of light on the side of science and reason, the current state of the conflict appears to favor the forces of pseudoscience. RPM continues to spread, and it has been aided by a relatively new autism advocacy group, the Autism Self-Advocacy Network (ASAN), that frames people with autism as a minority whose rights to communication have not been respected. In the view of ASAN, access to RPM is part of the right to communication, and the organization advocates for its use. For example, having published a policy statement about FC back in 1995, the American Hearing-Speech-Language Association (ASHA) recently posted a draft policy on RPM that includes a detailed comparison of RPM and FC. The main nugget of the policy is this statement:

It is the position of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) that use of the Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) is not recommended. Furthermore, information obtained through the use of RPM should not be considered as the voice of the person with a disability.

The ASAN advocacy group has issued a statement opposing this policy (“ASAN Letter to ASHA On The Right To Communicate”) claiming that the ASHA’s “blanket statement that specific forms of communication are per se inauthentic robs us of the right to communicate.”

This is not ASAN’s first statement promoting RPM. In March, 2016, ASAN filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice in support of students in the Arlington (Virginia) Public Schools who were denied the use of RPM. RPM was not mentioned by name, but the complaint states that the students in question communicate best by “spelling words by pointing to letters on a letter-board held by a trained supporter.”

Recognizing that the war was not yet won, a group of science-minded advocates, researchers, and professionals have launched a new effort. They call themselves “True Voices,” and they are going on the offensive. Their first target was the University of Northern Iowa (UNI), which, in June of this year, sponsored the “Midwest Summer Institute: Inclusion and Communication,” cosponsored by the Syracuse University Institute for Communication and Inclusion, which was formerly known as Facilitated Communication Institute. The conference schedule (which can be found here) included a session called “Intro to Facilitated Communication Training,” and offered college credit from the University of Northern Iowa to attendees. First, in the weeks before the UNI institute, five members of the True Voices group wrote an article in The Conversation that dramatically highlighted the kind of damage that can—and has—been done by FC. Next the group drafted a “Letter of Concern” about the UNI institute, signed by over thirty professionals and academics, and sent it to several officials at the university.

Here is the letter a group of more than 30 professors, speech pathologists and other professionals sent to the dean of the University of Northern Iowa’s College of Education, urging UNI to cancel the conference:

<a href="https://t.co/cCSHETCdPb">pic.twitter.com/cCSHETCdPb</a></p>&mdash; Jordan Muller (@jordanmuller18) <a href="https://twitter.com/jordanmuller18/status/1008546611365138437?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 18, 2018</a></blockquote>

<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Attacking public institutions is an excellent strategy. Universities are supposed to be places of enlightenment and reason, and where public funds are involved, the promotion of discredited ideas is particularly controversial. Furthermore, attacking universities that lend credence to FC has proved to be an effective approach in the past. In May of 2015, I wrote article on FC in which I mentioned that the University of New Hampshire Institute on Disability (IOD) regularly sponsored an “FC skill builders” group. Seven months later, I was contacted by the director of the institute who told me he had read my article and wanted me to know that, after a lengthy review process, the IOD had decided to cease all activities related to FC. I added an update about this development to the archived web version of the article.

It would be a mistake to think my article caused the change at IOD. I am sure they received criticism from a number of fronts. But the fact that the director contacted me suggests that he was interested in correcting the public record.

The True Voices effort at UNI has also begun to produce results. First, the episode provoked a flurry of bad publicity for the university. The previously mentioned Forbes article by Steven Salzberg was released the same week as the Midwest Summer Institute and mentioned it directly, asking why a university would offer college credit for instruction in a thoroughly discredited therapy. Other outlets publishing articles included Inside Higher Ed (“Critics Question Conference on Facilitated Communication”) and the Syracuse University student newspaper, the Daily Orange (“Academics criticize conference co-hosted by SU”). Syracuse University is the mecca of FC because Douglas Biklen, is an emeritus professor of education and the Institute for Communication and Inclusion is housed there. Nonetheless, the Daily Orange has been a consistent critic, publishing a number of well-researched articles on FC.

Closer to home, two highly critical articles, quoting members of the True Voices, group appeared in the local Cedar Falls newspaper. The first article, “Facilitated communication conference draws fire at University of Northern Iowa” was published just prior to the conference. The second article was released the same week as the conference, and after the university had received the letter of concern. It reported that the university would form a committee to look into the institute:

We regularly evaluate UNI’s sponsorship of conferences and events to ensure that we are supporting high-quality programming consistent with the mission of the university. As part of this regular review, we will be convening a group of faculty experts from across campus to discuss the practices presented at this conference. (UNI spokesman Scott Ketelsen)

So, if nothing else, the True Voices offensive forced the University of Northern Iowa to endure some public criticism and prompted the administration to reevaluate their involvement with FC. If the experience at University of New Hampshire is any indication, UNI may choose to cut their ties to this discredited and dangerous technique. We can only hope.

Next on the True Voices radar is a two-day conference on FC at the University of Syracuse in October. I will report back on what happens there.

Note: To learn more about the True Voices group and its goals, listen to the episode of the Skeptic Zone podcast below. The host, Richard Saunders interviews Susan Gerbic, fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and leader of Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia. Gerbic, who is also an active member of True Voices, describes the genesis and goals of group.

Disclosure: I am also a member of the True Voices group.

References

• Biklen, Douglas. 2005. Autism and the myth of the person alone. NY: New York University Press.
• Heinzen, T., S. O. Lilienfeld, and S. Nolan. 2015. The horse that won’t go away: Clever Hans, facilitated communication, and the need for clear thinking. New York: Worth.
• Mostert, Mark P. 2010. “Facilitated communication and its legitimacy—Twenty-first century developments.” Exceptionality 18, no. 1: 31–41.
• Mukhopadhyay, Soma. 2013. Developing communication for autism using rapid prompting method: Guide for effective language. Denver, CO: Outskirts Press.
• Napoliello, Alex. 2018. “No More Prison for Ex-Rutgers Professor Who Sexually Assaulted Disabled Student.” NJ.com. May 11. Accessed July 22, 2018. https://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/2018/05/anna_stubblefield_sentenced_for_second_time.html.

Susan Gerbic: Today I’m speaking to one of the old guard of attendees of skeptic conferences, Mitchell Lampert. He’s not “old” but someone that I’ve seen at most of the conferences I’ve attended, and an active member of the social world of our community.

Thanks, Mitch, for speaking with me today. I wanted to talk to you about the CSICon Halloween parties but decided that we should chat about what has been happening in the past few years. You are on the East Coast and I’m on the West Coast, and we probably see and hear different things. Please tell readers a bit about yourself.

Mitchell Lampert: I am a professional software developer, at least by day. I have been active in the skeptic community for about fifteen years. I am the lead organizer of SkeptiCamp NYC, an open conference on science and skepticism. And, I just enjoy exploring all of the various geeky facets of the world!

Gerbic: I always think of you as the name I first knew you as, Wowbagger. What’s the story behind that username?

Lampert: For internet discussion forums, such as ISF (formerly JREF Forums) my name is Wowbagger. He is a character from the novel Life, the Universe, and Everything. I am a huge Douglas Adams fan, and did not want to pick any of the obvious names, such as "Zaphod" or "Ford Prefect." This more obscure character tends to insult people a lot, which is the opposite of my own personality. I felt the irony might eventually be appreciated. And, he is also immortal, which somehow appeals to me as well.

Gerbic: What is your history in this community? I think you have been attending conferences as long as I have been. I think you first got involved from the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) forum?

Lampert: Almost. My first skeptical conference was TAM3, and I was not even part of the JREF forums yet. I learned about it from Randi's site while researching some claims I was doubtful about. I became a member of the forums right after TAM4 though.

My urge to become an active skeptic stemmed from two things: The re-election of George W. Bush and the thrill of debunking junk in the movie What the Bleep Do We Know!?, which I assumed would be an awesome movie when I got the tickets. Then I actually watched it and felt ripped off.

Gerbic: Oh, Interesting. I think I joined the forum after TAM4 but felt like everyone knew each other already. So I didn't get into it big time.

How soon until you joined New York City Skeptics (NYCS)? And what are they up to these days? I know you had my GSoW editor Rob Palmer to speak recently and from that lecture Craig Sachs joined us and is now going through training.

Lampert: I joined NYCS as soon as it was founded, actually. They have lectures every month, which included Rob Palmer. And, they host various other social events throughout the year. Plus, of course, they co-organize NECSS.

Gerbic: I want to encourage more people to attend skeptic conferences; so many think that it's just lectures.

Lampert: Anyone can watch lectures on the internet. Being at a conference is about being with people. And, skeptical conferences, such as CSICon, have some of the brightest people concentrated all in one place. Have dinner with a bunch of them. We are all open to making new friends, and you learn all sorts of great things from those among the crowds! Not just merely from the speakers (who are also good, but that's beside the point). The best parts of CSICon are around the lectures.

Gerbic: I completely agree. There has been some criticism that speakers are talking down to the audience, trying to show that they are smarter than everyone else. I don't get that at all. That has rarely been my experience. I have known a few speakers to be pretty ego driven, but that is the same everywhere. I could probably count them on one hand. Why do you think people should spend the money to attend a skeptic conference? (If you agree with me that people should do so.)

Lampert: The quality of speakers can vary. A few of the bad ones might sound like they are talking down to people. Most, however, have been respectfully informative. I also think the quality of speakers is generally improving every year! I remember a time when I used to index who was "The One Terrible Speaker" at every TAM and NECSS. Now-a-days it is difficult to find one. I think this year's NECSS really didn't have any bad speakers at all.

Gerbic: So many people attend and make plans for the "off hours" going to shows and dinner and things, but not with the other attendees. They don't understand that the best part is what happens in the hallways and before and after the events. I've been in line or sitting at the buffet table and see someone alone in line or looking for a table and they have on a nametag. I've invited them to join us and they usually are the most interesting people. I love that we can do this and at a casino setting where we are all in one place we can do that.

Lampert: One of the things that made TAM a little better than CSICon was its forum community, which was responsible for creating TAM in the first place. It allowed everyone to "know" each other relatively well before ever meeting each other in person. It allowed all of the extra-curricular activities to be organized among the other attendees.

I tried to bring a flavor of that back, with my activities board you might have seen in the back of the hall, at CSICon. But it was barely successful. The forums still exist as the International Skeptics Forum. But it does not have quite the same number of active users. We are trying a few efforts to change that, I think.

Gerbic: Oh? You are still there? Why does it still exist when there is Facebook? I agree about the forum arranging the activities and allowing people to "meet" each other beforehand. But Facebook event pages do the same thing.

Lampert: I think the format of the internet discussion forum is better suited for long discussions and debates; especially if you want them all archived and easily searchable. It is not, yet, so easy to search Facebook for past comments you have made on stuff. Many of our conversations on the forums become also like reference volumes when discussing topics elsewhere. We can link to the related forum discussion thread to look things up.

Gerbic: Great! I never thought of that. GSoW tried to use a forum to keep organized and it badly failed. Yes, we were more organized, but people didn't care for it and they stopped checking messages. We switched to a secret group. Facebook still has work to do to keep organized, but it is improving things over time. And far more people are on Facebook.

Lampert: One of the problems, I think, with Facebook events for conference activities is the draw. How do you get lots of people at the conference to notice your specific event, unless you promote it outside Facebook a lot? Having everyone at the conference know that there is a central forum out there, with a whole easily browsable section devoted to such activities, really helps bring people into it. One of the many reasons TAM had a Forum Table was to introduce non-forum folks to that very concept.

Gerbic: What are some of your favorite memories from past conferences?

Lampert: I have a lot of such favorite memories, now, since I have been attending these things for so long! I suppose one of the earliest was the very first dinner I had with attendees at the very first TAM I went to (TAM3). Before that event I really liked the filmmaker Michael Moore. That dinner discussion was all about unraveling the deceitfulness of his tactics, and I could no longer stand him after that. Did I feel ashamed of that? No! I felt like my brain just suddenly got so enlightened, emerging from a realm of self-induced delusion. And I thought: "These are my people!"

Most of my favorite memories are from around the group activities which don't always have to do with skepticism: skydiving, ziplining, seeing shows, etc. But, it is who you do these things with that matter! Nerds make any mundane activity so darn nerdy!

Gerbic: And which lectures do you remember as your favorites?

Lampert: The problem I have with recounting specific lectures is that they have all sort of congealed and melded in my brain a bit, into a few different "wads" of lecture parts. I can remember the names of my favorite speakers but usually not which year they said what thing. Among my favorites are Richard Wiseman, who is always a jolly good psychological magician; Carol Tavris, who has amazing clarity and speaking skills, in general; Adam Savage; Phil Plait; and I am probably leaving out a lot of great people from that list. And James Randi himself, who always seems to have a new story to tell. And, of course, the magic performances.

Gerbic: One big difference between CSICon and TAM besides the timing of the year. (October in Vegas is 100 percent better than July) is the Halloween party. You really get into it. Tell me about your past involvement. You won best skeptic costume in 2016 with the Strawman Vulcan.

Lampert: My recent history of cosplay goes back to Dragon*Con in 2007 (which lost the asterisk in its name a few years ago). That convention had such an intense cosplay scene; I felt I needed to be part of it! And, I thought Spaceman Spiff was a nice, easy costume to do. I was correct on that point, by the way.

I never spend the exorbitant amounts of time on my costumes necessary to win any major awards at Dragon Con: The competition includes real pros who make costumes for a living! But I don't throw together anything that is too shabby to at least try to stand out, in some way, at the Con, either. I think that small level of motivation gives me an advantage at CSICon: It is small enough of a crowd that my "barely stands out by Dragon Con standards" effort can really stand out at CSICon! And, it is tight-knit enough that I can take advantage of the local memes. I think that is one of the reasons my Straw Vulcan costume (which I only wear to skeptical conferences) was so well praised.

Last year I got lazy and reused my T1000 costume from Dragon Con, which was one of my stronger costuming efforts in general. But this year, I am going for a localized meme, again! You will see what it is when we get there.

Gerbic: To you and I who have been involved for years, we have seen a lot of drama within our community. I think for new people they step their foot in and see people up in arms and upset with each other and they quickly scamper off. But there has always been drama; social media only enhances it, and it happens so much quicker. If the founders of America had social media, we might never have gotten that Constitution written! When you look at it over years and years, you see that we have weathered the storm, and there will be more. Any thoughts on that?

Mitch as the Terminator

Lampert: Fissures among large groups are normal things that emerge from the complex interactions within them, and I think skeptics would be arrogant to assume they are somehow immune to such things by virtue of the fact that they think they know better. As painful and embarrassing as they are, the good news is that the spirit of these groups never goes out, and they can reform into more solid entities when the right leadership arises. As that happens, there will be less scampering off of curious newcomers. Those who can weather the storms can also rebuild the forest.

Gerbic: There has been some conversation that we have too many skeptic conferences, that people can't afford to attend more than one a year. I've seen suggestions that some conferences should just "stand down" and support others. Thoughts?

Lampert: No one needs to attend more than one skeptics conference every year. You could probably make enough new friends going to just one, I think. And these conferences often end up hosting a lot of the same speakers, or at least similarly leveled experts on much of the same topics, just in different locations. I only go to a bunch of them because I am insane that way. I think diminishing returns would set in quite quickly for most other people.If the skeptical movement grows, we will need more conferences to fit all of them into, anyway!

I sometimes almost feel there are too many sci-fi/fantasy conventions, but then I remember that most of them are pretty much all the same, anyway. Only a couple of them, such as Dragon Con, are genuine stand-outs that I think almost everyone should go to if they can!

Gerbic: I’m speaking at Dragon Con this year. Derek Colanduno runs the Skeptic Track there. This happens in Atlanta, Georgia, Labor Day weekend. It is insane.

So, what are the differences between CSICon and NECSS?

Lampert: CSICon takes place in a resort hotel, so it is easier for everyone to hang out and socialize all evening long. NECSS, which usually rents a university's stage, puts some effort into that with their official socials, but it is not quite the same. And, I also believe CSICon attracts more international attendees than NECSS does. I believe NECSS puts a bit more effort into production values for the whole conference, making it feel more like a fancier show than a lecture series.

The reputation of NECSS took a hit two years ago, with the Dawkins thing and the John Horgan thing. But, the management is capable of learning lessons, so I do not foresee anything like that happening again. This year's NECSS had not even one drop of controversy come out of it! Even the #MeToo panel was handled really well.

The CSICons I had attended seemed to skew toward an older audience, than other skeptical conventions I have been to. But, I think they are trying to change that, in part by bringing in some young, hip names such as Adam Conover. But, I think the best way to expand that reach is probably through embracing an internet forum. Perhaps they can better usurp and utilize the existing ISF one?

Gerbic: What are you looking forward to at CSICon 2018?

Lampert: Aside from the usual "hanging out with a skeptical crowd" (which, again, is the best part) and seeing some old friends in particular: There are actually a few speakers I am looking forward to this year at CSICon: Stephen Fry (who was almost at TAM London 2010, which I attended), Stephen Pinker (one of my favorite authors, though I have seen him before), Adam Conover (he "ruins" everything!!), and Susan Blackmore (I like books about consciousness). And, of course, the Halloween Party.

As for spending money on the Halloween party: Not only is the party a lot of fun, but you are supporting a major skeptical organization by doing so! Sure, you could just donate that money anyway. But this way you get to see a rather classy lot of costumed critical thinkers in person.

Gerbic: Thank you, Mitch. Great to catch up with you. Looking forward to your costume at the Halloween party this year. The theme is pajamas, and Barry keeps reminding me to tell everyone to keep the PJs family friendly. CSICon attendees should also remember to “like” the CSICon Facebook Event page to follow the discussions, the easiest place to keep abreast of what is going on CSICon wise.

Supported by records citing eyewitness testimony, St. Joseph of Copertino was a seventeenth-century religious marvel who laid claim to the power of levitation. Reportedly, as stated by the title of a new book by Michael Grosso (2016), he was The Man Who Could Fly. Although I had addressed both the topic of levitation and Joseph himself briefly in a book (Nickell 1993, 211–216) as well as in a BBC television documentary (“Secrets” 1999), I determined to look more deeply into the strange life of “the flying friar.”

Future Saint

Born Joseph Desa in the Italian village of Copertino (or in English Cupertino), he lived his sixty years (1603–1663) during a superstitious period that included the European witch obsession. Joseph—whose father had fled to avoid debtor’s prison and whose mother gave birth to him in a shed—was thought stupid. As a boy he loitered at churches and—though always apologizing for fits of reverie—was taken in at a Capuchin monastery. There he prayed on his knees so often and so long (a habit that would later prove useful in his “levitations”) that his knees became infected. When his trying to operate on them himself led to a lengthy convalescence, he was thought worthless and was dismissed.

Nevertheless, with some help from his mother, he joined the Order of Conventuals in 1625 and, three years later, became an unlikely priest. (He was aided by a stroke of luck: the bishop who was to administer the final exam was called away and so waived the test!) Already given to long meditations, Joseph often yielded to fits of ecstasy—emotional outbursts that began to prompt talk about him and even to herald certain mystical phenomena reported around him (Grosso 2016, 15–23).

The superstitious believed Joseph was able to divine the thoughts of others, to effect cures, to engage in combat with the devil (at least in a story he himself told), to have the supposed power of bilocation—that is, to be in two distinctly different places simultaneously—even to miraculously multiply food, like Jesus (Dingwall 1962, 23). But it was the “levitations”—which only began with his ordination as a priest in 1628 and therefore seem contrived—that secured his evolving notoriety and ultimate legacy.

Subsequently, Joseph’s wonderworking increased, becoming “more frequent and more dramatic.” He attracted crowds and was taken on tour by a ruling prelate, where he impressed the credulous as a prophet, a healer and exorcist, and an ecstatic. He had also begun his “levitations” and had become in effect “the reluctant star of a traveling spiritual circus,” whereupon he came to the attention of the Holy Inquisition. He was accused of being ostentatious and of having “affected sanctity,” but after two years he was found innocent. Rome later sent him into a sort of exile, away from public exhibitions (Grosso 2016, 23, 24, 26–28). He was at Grotella for sixteen years and lived the last six at Osimo.

In time, the prelate who had taken the friar on tour would tell Roman authorities, “I can say nothing except that he was a saint who went into ecstasy and was adored by everybody” (Chiappinelli 2008)—hardly a ringing endorsement of one who purportedly flew like a bird. Another, a traveling companion to Joseph for years, suddenly requested to be sent away from him (Grosso 2016, 29)—a mystery that seems to bespeak some dark secret, possibly knowledge of deception.

Performance Art

What Grosso calls Joseph’s “strange performances” do indeed seem to reveal him as a “performance artist” (Grosso 2016, 72, 165). They were especially common during his dramatic, lengthy Mass (that could last up to four hours). In what I suspect was feigned entrancement, his ecstatic state would render him immobile as a statue, his body perhaps taking on the form of a cross. Then he would seem to “rise and float.” I would wager that he mimed this by stretching himself upward until he artfully stood on tiptoe, then danced lightly in place so as to create the illusion of “hovering” just above the ground.

He might then begin to “fly”—or leap—about, as he himself described it, “like a small bird in a cage when it can get out and fly away.” On occasion, he would soar (bound through the air) to some elevated perch. (These flights were his greatest feats, as we shall see in the following section.)

Around Good Friday, certain odd movements of his body might occur, as if caused by an invisible power: he would be flung down, lifted up, shoved forward, or jerked back. Sometimes when he came to break the host (the consecrated wafer), it would become (or so he would act out) incredibly heavy or impossibly resistant, whereupon he would fall down heavily and then, weeping on his knees (seemingly a prerequisite for what followed), supposedly “levitate backward.”

For instance, during a Duke’s visit Joseph began to wail, then gave a great scream and flew into the air backward in a kneeling position (original emphasis, Bernini 1722, 85). But did he simply spring backward? Details are too unclear: Did kneeling become crouching and afterward a crouch return to kneeling—the truth concealed by the friar’s tunic? In other instances, details are also important. Bernini (1722, 30) in one instance describes Joseph “now going to the altar, jumping onto the last step of the pulpit” (emphasis added). (For all of this, see Grosso 2016, 71–76, and his own sources.)

Once, some talented young singers were brought to Joseph’s room to perform for him. Their singing sent him into such ecstasy that he fell on his knees, then rose and floated just above the ground. In confirmation, the three boys “put their hands between Joseph’s tunic and the ground” (Parisciani 1963, 443). Readers might want to pause here to consider what I will explain as a probable trick in the next paragraph (assuming the account is not merely hearsay and embellishment).

Because of Joseph’s station, the boys would have been compliant, not aggressively skeptical. Note that the friar’s feet are never mentioned, indicating that he rose while still apparently kneeling. But recall my earlier suggestion, regarding the “backward levitations,” that Joseph could subtly move from kneeling to a pre-crouch position by placing the bottoms of his toes flat on the floor. As he then moves slowly into a crouch using his well-developed muscles (you see where this is going), the still-apparently kneeling friar is witnessed rising upward—or rather his knees are seen to rise, giving that illusion. The rest is child’s play, literally. The boys are invited to place their hands between the tunic and the floor. It would probably not occur to them to reach far back and search for the actual placement of Father Joseph’s feet.

The Levitations

Now let us examine some of the more extreme defiances of gravity that Joseph supposedly accomplished. That he could stand on tiptoe and even seem to slightly rise and hover may only indicate wonderful strength, balance, and acting; I suspect such acts were fundamentally stunts that may have led credulous seventeenth-century peasants to believe it was accomplished by levitation. (After all, there were numerous “levitating” saints before Joseph, a partial list naming fifteen [Smith 1965, 37, 38; see also Rogo 1982].) Thus, the witnesses would, in all good faith, unintentionally exaggerate what had actually happened.

Let us start with an incident in which Joseph “flew” to the feet of a statue that stood more than a man’s height above the ground; there he adored it while “floating midair” (Grosso 2016, 81–82). In fact, all the time he “embraced” (i.e., held onto the feet of) the statue! Perhaps with muscular ability he extended his body horizontally to add to the effect.

A more significant example is a story told in the first biography of the friar (Bernini 1722, 150). A priest walking with “Padre Giuseppe” (Father Joseph) had mentioned the beautiful sky when, suddenly:

These words seemed like an invitation for Padre Giuseppe to fly up into the sky, and so he did, letting out a loud cry and bounding from the ground to fly up to the top of an olive tree when he landed on his knees on a branch that kept shaking … as though a bird were perched on the branch. Padre Giuseppe stayed up there about a half hour … .

Note the use of the word bounding¹ plus the fact that olive trees are typically of low height (described as “short” and “squat” [“Olive” 2017]). Remember too that Joseph was practiced in kneeling for long hours. Besides, bounding upward was one thing, but after coming out of his supposed rapture he had to have help getting down! So the other priest fetched a ladder for the catlike friar.

Another example is also instructive. The account (Bernini 1722, 26) quotes a deposition by some shepherds (who were probably illiterate), apparently given years later. Father Joseph was dancing excitedly in the name of the church, when he:

… suddenly sighed and loudly screamed and flew up in the air like a bird, halfway to the ceiling, where he continued dancing above the main altar, and went to embrace the tabernacle that was a considerable distance above the main altar. This was all the more marvelous because the altar was filled with flaming candles and he rested between the candles without knocking over even one. He stayed that way with his knees above the altar, embracing the tabernacle with both arms, for about fifteen minutes … .

It is apparent from his movements that he bounded, in increments, onto the altar where he “rested between the candles”—that is, on the support that held them. And there, for the several minutes duration, he was “embracing”—in other words, holding onto—the tabernacle (which contained the Eucharist). He was never simply floating in air, as sources may seem to imply.

Conclusions

Not only do the accounts indicate Joseph’s most dramatic aerial traverses were launched by a leap—not by a simple slow rising while merely standing or kneeling (Smith 1965, 49)—but, moreover, I find that they appear to have continued as just the sudden arcing trajectories that would be expected from bounding. They were never circuitous or spiraling flights like a bird’s. Invariably, Joseph’s propulsions began with a shout or scream, suggesting that he was not caused to leap by some force but chose to. Analogous to martial artists who yell when executing some technique (like breaking a board with their hand), his cry may have been to help him focus and commit to the act and so dispel fear. It might also have served to turn all eyes on him. He might have found that if he yelled not when he first started moving but only the instant before he left the ground people would be more likely to think they saw him simply rise up.

Grosso (2016, 80) gushes that the duration of Joseph’s levitations—from only seconds to fifteen or thirty minutes or more of “sustained floating”—“seem to point to the reality of an unrecognized force of nature.” Certainly, he insists, they were “enough to render implausible the claim that they were tricks of perception.” Yet our analysis revealed that Joseph did not hover in the air but, after rapidly ascending, he then rested on some support such as a tree limb or held onto some fixed object such as a statue. In other accounts, such details may have been left out because the narrator was simply relying on his impressions.

Eyewitnesses are fallible, as we know all too well. People insisted they actually saw what they thought they saw—or they remembered much later what they believed they had seen, minus, for example, in some instances, the friar’s initial rushing forward before actual lift-off. Moreover, the canonization (saint-making) process itself, requiring evidence of miracles, could well have fostered some pious exaggeration on the part of a late beloved friar’s brethren and flock. There is also the “gross exaggeration” of biographies that were published more than half a century after Joseph’s death.² Also, as a practical matter, the original records that led to his canonization are no longer available for study (Smith 1965, 48–49).

Today, I think few would be deceived by witnessing such feats—though we might well be impressed by the acrobatics. Certainly most of us, understanding gravity, will not expect to see actual levitations or flying—although there are the tricks of magicians and fakirs (Nickell 1993, 183, 211–216; 1995, 29).³ Even now, however, we can marvel at the flights of basketball players like “Doctah” Julius Erving, who “added razzle-dazzle acrobatics to the game, and was the first to spend seemingly endless moments in the air, levitating toward the basket.” Although Michael Jordan would become the master of this feat, being dubbed “Air Jordan,” in fact “the Doctah supplied the original formula” (Musiker 2008, 24–25). If we can be so impressed in the twenty-first century, imagine such effects in the superstition-ridden seventeenth, and I think we can begin to understand the “levitations” of “The Flying Saint.”

1. Hence, the noted Anglican haigiographer Baring-Gould (1914, 297) used the phrase “extraordinary bounds,” and Smith (1965, 48) extrapolates “that St. Joseph appears to have been a gymnast.” (For an opposing view, see Rogo 1982.)
2. Grosso’s most-used source for the levitations is Bernini, whose 1722 text appeared nearly six decades after Joseph’s death.
3. Although I do not suggest Joseph used one, springboards were available since the Middle Ages to propel acrobats (“History” 2018).

• Baring-Gould, Sabine. 1914. The Lives of the Saints, vol. 10. Edinburgh: John Grant; cited in Grosso 2016, 87–88.
• Bernini, Dominico. 1722. Vita Fr. Giuseppe da Copertino, abridged translation into English, cited in Grosso 2016, 219–221.
• Chiappinelli, W. 2008. San Giuseppe da Copertino. Anacona, Italy: Shalom, 90; cited in Grosso 2016, 226.
• Dingwall, Eric John. 1962. Some Human Oddities. New York: University Books, 9–17.
• Grosso, Michael. 2016. The Man Who Could Fly: St. Joseph of Copertino and the Mystery of Levitation. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. (Except as otherwise noted, information on Joseph is taken from this source.)
• The History of Trampolines. 2018. Available online at https://www.trampolinegurus.com/trampoline-history/; accessed April 5, 2018.
• Musiker, Liz Hartman. 2008. The Smart Girl’s Guide to Sports. New York: Plum.
• Nickell, Joe. 1993. Looking for a Miracle. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.
• ———. 1995. Entities: Angels, Spirits, Demons, and Other Alien Beings: Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
• Olive. 2017. Available online at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive; accessed November 13, 2017.
• Parisciani, Gustavo. 1963. San Giuseppe da Copertino. Osimo Anacona: Pax et Bonum; cited in Grosso 2016, 72.
• Rogo, D. Scott. 1982. Miracles: A Parascientific Inquiry into Wondrous Phenomena. New York: The Dial Press, 13–50.
• Secrets of levitation. 1999. Season 1, episode 11, Supernatural Science, a BBC documentary series (1999–2001).
• Smith, Robert D. 1965. Comparative Miracles. St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 46–50.

The issue of cell phones and cancer is in the news again since the National Toxicology Program (NTP) study has released its results. Keeping track of the NTP results can be difficult. In 2016, they released the partial findings of their study (Report of Partial Findings 2016), which showed an association between cell phones and two types of cancer (cardiac schwannomas and brain gliomas). The full data was released in February 2018 (Wyde et al. 2018), and while the cardiac schwannoma association remained statistically significant, the brain glioma association was seen as more equivocal. Then in March, the NTP study results went through peer review where an eleven-member panel reviewed and voted on whether to accept or modify the study’s recommendations. The peer review panel (Actions from Peer Review 2018) voted to label the cell phone cardiac schwannoma association as demonstrating “clear evidence” of carcinogenicity and the glioma association as showing “some evidence.” (These reports are all online at the NTP website at ntp.niehs.nih.gov.)

Keeping track of this evolving evidence base can be confusing, and the NTP will issue a final report sometime this fall. But it’s worth examining why different people can come to such different conclusions about the study’s findings.

The NTP study was designed to expose rats and mice to different levels of radio frequency radiation (RFR). One group was a control group and three other groups were exposed to 1.5W/kg, 3W/kg, and 6W/kg of RFR. Researchers also tested two forms of signal modulation, reflecting two major access technologies employed by cellular telephones: Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) and Global System for Mobiles (GSM). Both technologies transmit data in the form of modulated signals, but GSM is much less uniform in its power output than CDMA. Even though the average exposure level over time may be the same, hypothetically there could be a difference in biological effects, though there is no credible reason to expect any such differences.

The rats and mice being studied had their entire bodies exposed to RFR for nine hours every day for two years. The exposure also started in utero, not at birth. The whole-body exposure levels were far above the whole-body exposure limits for humans but were comparable to exposure limits set for very small regions of the body near a cell phone antenna. Consequently, the animals were being exposed to RFR in a way that is very inconsistent with the actual exposure to a human user of a cell phone, both in the particulars of exposure and duration of exposure. Notwithstanding these limitations, it is worth looking at what the data actually demonstrated.

The association between malignant gliomas and cell phones has been of primary interest, and it’s the one conclusion that has been subject to the most revisions. The idea that cell phones may cause brain cancer is not a new concern. The INTERPHONE series of studies (interphone.iarc.fr) is often cited as supportive evidence for this association even though the actual conclusions of the study were that “no increase in risk of glioma or meningioma was observed with use of mobile phones.” There was one statistically significant association though. Those who used their cellphones most (defined here as the top 10 percent of users) seemed to have an increased risk of glioma. But the authors noted that there were “implausible values of reported use in this group” and that bias and error in the measurement prevented a causal interpretation. Accurately measuring RFR exposure over years is extremely difficult. The combination of weak (and generally negative) results, coupled with the difficulty of accurately measuring exposure, has led health agencies to consider this evidence unpersuasive one way or the other.

Therefore, the results of the NTP were particularly eagerly anticipated. The NTP study did show an association between RFR and gliomas. However, the association was seen only in rats and not in mice. Also it was seen only in male rats and not female rats. Finally, it was seen with CDMA signal modulation but not the GSM signal modulation.

There are some important limitations to this analysis. Notwithstanding the obvious issue that animal studies do not necessarily translate to humans, it is hard to understand why the association would only be true in male rats and why it would only be true with one type of signal modulation. It is also worth noting there were very few cases of malignant gliomas in these animals. For the animals exposed to CDMA RFR, only the male rats showed an increase in gliomas—not the female rats or mice of either sex. The male rats exposed to CDMA RFR at 6W/kg had three malignant gliomas, compared to none for those exposed to 3W/kg, 1.5W/kg, or unexposed controls. For GSM RFR the 1.5W/kg, 3W/kg, and 6W/kg groups developed three, three, and two gliomas, respectively. Given the very small numbers, it becomes important to consider the possibility of random chance. A scientist would consider these results to be very fragile—if one animal in the control group had developed glioma (which is consistent with historical data for that species), the association would disappear statistically.

When it comes to cardiac schwannomas, the results are more consistent in that the association was seen for both forms of signal modulation, CDMA and GSM. But again, the results were seen only with male rats and not female rats, male mice, or female mice. Schwannomas are tumors arising from Schwann cells that produce the myelin sheath around peripheral nerves. Schwannomas are interesting because they are histologically similar to acoustic neuromas. Some studies have suggested a link between acoustic neuromas and cell phones (Hardell et al. 2013); other studies do not (Pettersson et al. 2014). Again, the results are fragile, and the evidence base is somewhat inconsistent.

Thus, any evidence linking RFR to cardiac schwannomas would seem to be possibly supportive of this link given the similarity of the tumor types. However, it is worth remembering that the rats had their whole bodies irradiated with RFR, and it is not immediately obvious why schwannomas would preferentially appear in the heart. In fact, they could have (and did) appear in any organ. Consequently, when you look at all schwannomas, not just the cardiac schwannomas, there does not appear to be a significant relationship to RFR. Therefore, for the schwannoma analysis to be positive you have to ignore the whole-body results and focus only on the cardiac findings.

Reconciling the disparate data has been made harder by the just-released study from the Ramazzini Institute in Bologna (Falcioni et al. 2018), which was rushed to publication after the NTP results were made public. This paper presented the results of a long-term rat study that suggests an increase in heart schwannomas in rats exposed to RFR. These data are hard to reconcile with the NTP. First, they used exposures about 1,000 times lower than in the NTP study, which would argue against a dose-response effect where more RFR is worse. While dose-response effects are not mandatory in science, it is difficult to understand how low and higher doses of RFR could be equally dangerous. The Ramazzini also diverges from the NTP in another way: the cardiac schwannoma association was only seen in male rats and not female ones, which makes these results far less consistent than has been reported in the media. Finally, the Ramazzini found no evidence that RFR was linked to neoplastic lesions of the brain. They claim that there was a nonsignificant trend, but this occurred in female rats as opposed to the male rats that were seen in NTP. All we can say for sure is that the NTP and Ramazzini studies are not entirely supportive of each other nor have they “settled” matters.

Given that the results are not consistent across or even within species, one must ask whether the results of the NTP could be due to chance alone. Given the small number of tumors that occurred in each group, random chance could have a significant role in these findings. We often fail to appreciate just how important random chance can be in statistical analyses. The ISIS-2 study offers up a perfect example (ISIS 1988).

The ISIS-2 study demonstrated that giving aspirin to patients after a heart attack improved outcomes. However, even though the study was overall positive, one subgroup of patients showed no benefit. That subgroup was patients born under the zodiac signs of Gemini and Libra. In fact, the authors of the ISIS-2 study purposely highlighted this rather ludicrous and totally spurious statistical finding to demonstrate that “all these subgroup analyses should be taken less as evidence about who benefits than as evidence that such analyses are potentially misleading.”

In the NTP study we have a similar problem. Remember that there were four groups of animals, which were tested against two types of signal modulation and evaluated for many different types of cancer including heart, brain, pituitary, adrenal, liver, prostate, kidney, pancreas, mammary gland, and thymus cancer among others. Thus, you have dozens of statistical analyses being run across all these many subgroups. The NTP study was an exhaustive analysis, but that thoroughness and the multiplicity of tests that were run means that you must expect some false positive results due simply to chance.

Most statistical tests are based on the assumption that you have a 5 percent false positive rate, represented by 1 - 0.95 = 0.05, or 5 percent. However, if you do two analyses the chance of at least one false positive is 1 - 0.95 = 0.0975, or 9.75 percent. Do five analyses and the chance of at least one false positive is 1 - 0.95 = 0.23, or 23 percent. Do thirty analyses and the chance of at least one false positive is 1 - 0.95 = 0.79, or 79 percent.

Therefore, the more tests you run in your study, the more likely that you will generate a false positive. And the NTP study ran a lot of tests. Consequently, they are very likely to have had false positives. Studies such as this are essentially fishing expeditions or data mining with no single hypothesis that is being tested, and it would not be surprising if the increase in heart schwannomas were just a random event.

There are statistical ways to deal with this type of multiple hypothesis testing. The Bonferroni correction is one technique that is sometimes used, and it basically amounts to using smaller p-value cut-offs the more tests you run. You basically divide 0.05 by the number of tests you intend to run. So if you perform two tests, then you should use a threshold of 0.05/2 or 0.025. If you run ten tests, then your threshold should be 0.005, and so on. The NTP study did not adjust for multiple testing.

The inherent weakness of the NTP results is their lack of consistency. We see a signal for harm in rats but not mice. We see a signal for harm in male rats but not female rats. We see a signal for schwannomas in the heart but not the rest of the body. Finally, the rats exposed to RFR actually lived longer on average than the controls. So do cell phones cause cancer while simultaneously extending survival? It is not impossible that there is some yet to be fully understood mechanism at play, but at this point random chance seems far more likely.

The NTP study is a good case history of the problems of data dredging. For more on this, see Kenneth R. Foster and Joseph Skufca, “The Problem of False Discovery,” IEEE Pulse, March/April 2016, available online at https://www.dropbox.com/s/4echhc6ez6pyn60/Foster_Skufca_2016.pdf?dl=0. and Stuart Vyse, “Moving Science’s Statistical Goalposts,” Skeptical Inquirer, November/December 2017, available online at https://www.csicop.org/si/show/moving_sciences_statistical_goal_posts.

• Actions from Peer Review of the Draft NTP Technical Reports on Cell Phone Radiofrequency Radiation. 2018. Available online at https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/about_ntp/trpanel/2018/march/actions20180328_508.pdf.
• Falcioni, L. et al. 2018. Report of final results regarding brain and heart tumors in Sprague-Dawley rats… . Environmental Research (March 7). Available online at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/29530389/.
• Hardell, L. et al. 2013. Pooled analysis of case-control studies on acoustic neuroma diagnosed 1997–2003 and 2007–2009 and use of mobile and cordless phones. International Journal of Oncology 43(4): 1036–44. Available online at https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/about_ntp/trpanel/2018/march/actions20180328_508.pdf.
• ISIS. 1988. Randomised trial of intravenous streptokinase, oral aspirin or both…. Lancet 332: 3490360 (August 13). Available online at http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(88)92833-4/abstract.
• Petterson, D. et al. 2014. Long-term mobile phone use and acoustic neuroma risk. Epidemiology 25(2): 233–41 (March). Available online at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24434752.
• Report of Partial Findings from the National Toxicology Program Carcinogenesis Studies of Cell Phone Radiofrequency Radiation… . 2016. Available online at https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf.
• Wyde, Michael E., et al. 2018. Effect of cell phone radiofrequency radiation on body temperature in rodents. Available online at https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/about_ntp/trpanel/2018/march/wyde.pdf.

Christopher Labos is a cardiologist with a degree in epidemiology. He writes regularly for the Montreal Gazette and cohosts a podcast called the Body of Evidence.

Kenneth R. Foster received his PhD in 1971. Since then he has been engaged in studies on the interaction of nonionizing radiation and biological systems, with more than 160 papers in peer-reviewed journals on topics including biophysical mechanisms of interaction, exposure assessment of RF fields in the environment, and medical applications of RF fields. In addition, he has written widely about the public controversy surrounding these issues and about broader issues related to technology and society. He is coauthor or coeditor of two books on risk assessment and the law.

Credit: dictionary.com

The Qanon conspiracy theory is both an old and new conspiracy theory; the narrative elements of the conspiracy long predate this most recent assemblage. In the week since Qanon signs and supporters appeared at the President’s Tampa rally waving signs and wearing Q t-shirts, the press has focused on the bizarre beliefs promulgated by the online community developing and pushing this conspiracy theory. Numerous explainers have appeared over the past few months, but Will Sommer has been on top of the story since the beginning, so I recommend his version. In short, it’s a conspiracy theory that posits that things are really sort of going Donald Trump’s way. The Mueller investigation? Mueller is working for Trump, and together they are going to root out the pedophile murder-squads of the Deep State. It is, in the words of Ben Collins, “Pizzagate on bath salts.”

The evidence for this conspiracy theory supposedly comes from anonymous posts on 4chan and 8chan by someone close to the administration who is supposed to have top-level “Q clearance” and leaves what are known as “breadcrumbs,” or cryptic clues. These “QDrops” are so vague as to invite numerous interpretations, and as a result the beliefs spawned by intense scrutiny are varied and totalizing.

None of this is remotely new in America, however.

The Pizzagate-style focus on violent crimes against children is an extension of an old, old scare story that has been used for decades to demonize outgroups, a lie as old as the blood libel, in which Jews were accused of killing Christian children for their blood to either perform Satanic rituals or make matzo. It also resembles the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, only this time nobody has found a single child who has been victimized by the cabal in question. In fact, the hardest evidence emerged from Tucson last month when a conspiracy theorist “patrolling the desert” came across a homeless camp that he immediately identified as a child rape camp, whatever that is. There is literally no evidence of this, and the activist has since been arrested for trespassing.

What stuck out to me as I watched the breathless wall-to-wall coverage of Qanon on major networks that don’t usually pay attention to that sort of thing was that anchors and reporters looking into it were flabbergasted that people could believe this stuff. But the older conservatives who are latching onto this conspiracy theory have been trained to believe something almost exactly like this, the story of the Second Coming of Christ as laid out in Revelation and interpreted by premillenarian Christians.

When I say premillenarian Christians, I’m talking about the religious perspective that led to the Left Behind series, the novels that are based on an interpretation of the book of Revelation where humanity has to go through a Tribulation, along with the associated wars and suffering at the hands of the Antichrist, before Christ’s triumphant return. When he returns, he will separate the sheep from the goats in one great act that resolves history, leading to his thousand-year reign. This form of Protestant eschatology is the predominant form among American evangelicals. Because the Bible is supposed to be the inerrant word of God, the faithful scrutinize Revelation and try to match characters and events to the world, essentially reading Revelation as if it were a newspaper. This flawed type of reading, which takes Revelation outside of the context of its writing and assumes that the modern world is its actual context, has been practiced for centuries. For instance, between the World Wars, some evangelicals claimed that Hitler or Mussolini was the actual Antichrist. It’s never been a particularly prescient type of reading, but it has kept Christians on the edge of their seats, biting their nails and all that, as they allow their imaginations to swap in and out new actors for the characters in the Bible. The end is, from this perspective, perpetually nigh because the faithful are distorting the world to fit their expectations.

In a country where a sizeable percentage of the population thinks that mighty, unseen forces are shuffling the chess pieces around the board for an inevitable victorious outcome, why should we be the least bit surprised when a secular version of the story pops up? In this version, we have the evil cabal working in secret, made up of Hillary Clinton and the rest of the Deep State sex deviants (and people in Hollywood) who have controlled the White House for generations in the role of Antichrist. We have the media being portrayed as a false prophet, and we have Q the Evangelist making the will of those closest to the Throne known to the people in a highly elliptical way open to lots of bad interpretations (according to one believer Q’s anonymous tidbits are the “most important intel drop in the history of information”). Above all, is a sixteen-dimensional chess-playing savior who is going to separate the “white hats” from the “black hats,” and all the bad actors (Democrats and, for some reason, John McCain) are going to be banished to Guantanamo Bay. And it’s all just about to happen! We are seeing, I think, a secular millenarianism, where the faithful read the postings of internet trolls as if they were gospel. America is the promised land and it will be made great again and be returned to a prelapsarian state.

The media should not be surprised by the emergence of this strange cluster of beliefs at this time of national division and uncertainty, which is always fertile ground for conspiracy theorizing. Further, Qanon is neither the strangest version of this story out there nor the most widely believed. According to a 2010 Pew survey, about 40 percent of Americans have convinced themselves, using similar interpretive textual practices, that all of what Qanon espouses is basically true, only in their version the faithful will be raptured into heaven first.

The practice of administering plant-derived essential oils on the skin, via inhalation of vapors, or internally via ingestion for supposed healing power is commonly called aromatherapy. The oils for aromatherapy are described as "essential" to refer to the volatile, aromatic components that some people describe as the “essence” of the plant source, which represents the plant’s “life force,” “spirit,” or soul. Aromatherapy is thus rooted in vitalism, which is described in The Skeptic’s Dictionary as:

… the metaphysical doctrine that living organisms possess a non-physical inner force or energy that gives them the property of life.

Vitalists believe that the laws of physics and chemistry alone cannot explain life functions and processes.”

Perhaps the most famous notion of vitalism is “The Force” in Star Wars, but different names for the hypothesized vital force, such as chi, prana, and innate intelligence, are used as part of the medical folklore in various real-world cultures. Vitalism is a significant component of religious belief systems.

Some people have strong religious beliefs in the healing power of essential oils, as suggested in the Amazon description for David Stewart’s book Chemistry of Essential Oils Made Simple: God's Love Manifest in Molecules (2005):

This solidly scientific book is anchored in scripture and easy to understand, [sic] It will give you an appreciation of both the scientific and spiritual bases of healing by prayer and anointing with oils.

Anchoring in scripture is not what I expect of a solidly scientific book, but perhaps Stewart’s book can be cited as evidence against the notion of non-overlapping magisteria.

Regulation of Essential Oils in the United States

The marketing of essential oil products in the United States is subject to regulation by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

CPSC regulates a wide range of consumer products to ensure that consumers are not exposed to unreasonable risks of injury or death. Essential oils are somewhat similar to products like air fresheners and scented candles, which are regulated by the CPSC.

Essential oils are also somewhat similar to cosmetics and/or drugs, which are two categories of products regulated by the FDA. Intended use is key to FDA product regulation. When products (other than soap) have as their intended use cleansing the body or making a person more attractive, they are regulated as cosmetics. When products are labeled for therapeutic purposes involving changing the structure or function of the body, they are then subject to FDA’s authority to regulate drugs. In the United States, drugs require FDA approval prior to marketing. Investigational New Drugs (INDs) must be shown to perform well in three phases of increasingly rigorous study to receive FDA approval. It is illegal to market unapproved drugs.

The FTC regulates advertising of consumer products. The FTC can take regulatory action when essential oils are advertised with false or misleading claims.

The Aromatherapy Market

According to a market research report published in 2018:

• The largest regional market for aromatherapy is North America.
• Aromatherapy companies include: doTERRA International, Edens Garden, Frontier Natural Products Co-op., G Baldwin & Co., Mountain Rose Herbs, Ouwave Aroma Tech(shenzhen)Co., Ltd., Plant Therapy Inc., Ryohin Keikaku Co., Ltd. (Muji), Thann-Oryza Co., Ltd., Young Living Essential Oils and Zija International.
• “… the global aromatherapy market was valued at US$ 1,413.4 Mn in 2016, and is expected to reach US$ 3,226.2 … .”
• Application to the skin is the most common mode of delivery of essential oils, but aerial diffusion methods are growing in popularity.
• Applications are used for skin and hair care, relaxation, pain management, scar management, sleep management, and overall health and well-being.
• Essential oils are touted as natural healers and are used by aromatherapists and spas for healing pain, injuries, sleep enhancement, skin care, and allergies.
• Historic uses for aromatherapy include treating skin rashes, eczema, burn treatment, and acne.

The National Association for Holistic Aromatherapy (NAHA) a “non-profit association devoted to the holistic integration and education of aromatherapy into a wide range of complementary healthcare practices including self-care and home pharmacy.” It states that internal use of essential oils is common throughout the world, but it acknowledges that it is often done without sufficient knowledge of safety concerns.

NAHA warns: “If essential oils are used internally, we recommend doing so under the guidance of a knowledgeable health professional.” I’m not sure how consumers can make consistent, valid determinations of which health professionals who promote internal use of essential oils is sufficiently knowledgeable.

According to NAHA:

… aromatherapy is an unlicensed profession in the United States. Many aromatherapy practitioners hold a license in another occupation, e.g. nursing, massage therapy, esthetics, naturopathy, acupuncture, etc.

Aroma-Acupressure

Aromatherapy has also been administered in conjunction with acupressure. Acupressure is a variant of acupuncture that uses manual pressure instead of needle insertion at specific points of the body to supposedly enable various types of healing throughout the body. Although some acupuncture enthusiasts claim that acupuncture has real therapeutic effects and suggest various biological mechanisms of action, acupuncture, like aromatherapy, is rooted in vitalism.

In 2015, BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicinepublished a paper on a study that randomly assigned six institutions that specialize in the care of dementia patients in Taiwan to have their patients receive one of three interventions intended to prevent agitation among patients: (1) aroma-acupressure with 2.5 percent lavender oil at five specified acupuncture points (56 patients), (2) aromatherapy with 2.5 percent lavender oil at five unspecified points (73 patients), or (3) a control intervention of usual care(57 patients). Two institutions were assigned to each intervention. Outcome measurements were taken using an inventory for evaluating agitation and a heart rate variability (HRV) analyzer. The researchers reported that both aromatherapy groups had lower agitation scores than the control group and at some follow-up periods the aroma-acupressure group had the most favorable autonomic nervous system activity related to stress response at some, but not most, follow-up times.

You might be confused about how the aroma-acupressure intervention differed from the aromatherapy intervention. So am I.

Focus on Alternative and Complementary Therapies published my critique of the study. I noted that: (1) the study was a quasi-experiment rather than a true experiment since institutions rather than individuals within each institution were randomly assigned to the intervention conditions; (2) there were notable differences among the groups in terms of age, gender, and diagnostic categories among the groups, and agitation scores at the start of the study; (3) patients were not blinded to what intervention they were receiving (which meant that they could have been responsive simply to extra attention they were getting in the two aromatherapy groups); (4) the researchers didn’t establish that HRV is valid for measuring autonomic nervous system function; and (5) the researchers didn’t establish why it is clinically meaningful to consider HRV when attempting to control agitation of dementia patients.

Improvement should have been expected for the patients since they were selected to be in study because of their high agitation scores. Whenever research participants are selected based on having extreme scores on an imperfectly reliable measure, upon retesting, more of the research participants are likely to have less extreme than more extreme scores. This phenomenon is known as regression toward the mean.

I wrote:

It is not clear that apparent positive findings reflect differential effects of interventions rather than differences in patient populations of different facilities, the overall care given at different facilities at various times, extra attention received in intervention groups compared control groups, measurement bias, excess statistical power, and/or the result of considering a large number of endpoints instead of focusing on testing a few clearly specified hypotheses.

Systematic Reviews of Aromatherapy

Many therapeutic claims have been made for aromatherapy. It’s a huge task to scrutinize them carefully. While I have not systematically reviewed the individual studies or systematic reviews of individual studies assessing the safety and benefits of aromatherapy, I can summarize at least some systematic reviews.

Several systematic reviews have found significant shortcomings of available evidence or have indicated causes for concern: 

• An overview published in 2012 of systematic reviews of aromatherapy concluded: “… the evidence is not sufficiently convincing that aromatherapy is an effective therapy for any condition.” (p. 257)
• A 2012 systematic review of case reports and case series reporting adverse effects (AEs) of aromatherapy identified seventy-one patients that experienced adverse effects and concluded: “… aromatherapy has the potential to cause AEs which can occasionally be serious. Their frequency remains unknown.” (p. 147) Dermatitis was the most commonly reported adverse effect. The oils that were most commonly implicated were lavender, peppermint, tea tree, and ylang-ylang.
• A systematic review published in 2012 of eleven clinical trials of aromatherapy for behavioral problems of dementia reported several positive effects but noted flawed research designs in most of the studies so that “… available evidence in the literature is not sufficient to make a conclusive claim.” (p. 380)
• In 2012, authors of a systematic review of aromatherapy treatment of hypertension concluded: “The existing trial evidence does not show convincingly that aromatherapy is effective for hypertension.” (p. 37)
• A systematic review published in 2011 based on sixteen randomized controlled trials of aromatherapy used for treating symptoms of anxiety found that most of the studies indicated positive effects and no adverse events were reported, but the researchers noted: “The quality of the studies’ design prevented drawing firm valid conclusions as to the clinical efficacy of aromatherapy.” (p. 106)

More recent systematic reviews emphasizing (but, unfortunately, not always limited to) rigorously controlled randomized clinical trials have been inconclusive due to limitations in designs of studies of reviewed. Examples are reviews that addressed studies of effects of aromatherapy on dysmenorrhea, depressive symptoms, symptoms associated with burns, stress, agitation in dementia, and sleep. The least rigorous of these reviews provided optimistic spins on the findings despite limitations noted in the studies they scrutinized.

A 2016 systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trials of aromatherapy on pain had favorable results, but it relied on studies that combined aromatherapy as an add-on in combination with usual treatments while control groups had no special intervention. Studies with such designs are biased in favor of intervention groups for generating favorable subjective outcomes because they send the message to research participants receiving the add-on that they are getting something special while control groups get no such message. A 2017 systematic review of aromatherapy for postoperative pain found insufficient evidence to support its use.

A systematic review paper published in 2018 that scrutinized fifteen randomized controlled trials, two uncontrolled trials, and five quasi-experiments (comparison group studies that aren’t tightly controlled) of inhalation or (in six of the studies in the review) massage aromatherapy treatment of hemodialysis complications reported that aromatherapy had favorable effects of anxiety, fatigue, itching, pain at the hemodialysis puncture site, sleep quality, depression, stress, and headache. The authors did not discuss effect size, so it is unclear from their review how much impact the aromatherapy interventions had on hemodialysis complications. Statistical significance does not mean that false discoveries are unlikely and does not imply that positive effects are strong enough to make a practical difference for patients. Quality scores for the studies reviewed ranged from only 2.2 to 3.5 on a five-point scale.

From what I can tell, none of the studies had a control group that received the attention, care, comfort, and bodily contact of massage, but without the particular aromas of the recommended oils. Massage might be more responsible than any particular oils for symptomatic relief.

Nonetheless, the authors offered this favorable, though tentative, conclusion:

Considering the complications and heavy cost of managing complications in patients undergoing hemodialysis, it appears that aromatherapy can be used as an inexpensive, fast acting and effective treatment to reduce the complication in hemodialysis patients subject to further study to assure the safety and effectiveness of the procedures.

The Bottom Line

In Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts About Alternative Medicine (2008, W. W. Norton & Company), authors Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst offered this conclusion about aromatherapy:

Aromatherapy has short-term ‘de-stressing’ effects which can contribute to enhanced wellbeing after treatment. There is no evidence that aromatherapy can treat specific diseases. (p. 299)

They also wrote that since the relaxing effects of aromatherapy massage are usually short lived, they are “therefore of debatable therapeutic value.”

I think their assessment holds up well ten years later.

I acknowledge that some people enjoy the aromas of essential oils. As long as aromatherapy is offered inexpensively to consumers, I’m not sure that rigorous studies are needed to verify modest, nonmedical claims such as: people experience transient mood improvement when they are exposed to aromas they like. Perhaps there is a role for some approaches to aromatherapy in providing care and comfort to people with specific health challenges. But I see no reason to expect any type of aromatherapy to alter the course of any disease or have vitalistic actions such as “balancing body energies,” as promoted by some enthusiasts.

Aromatherapy isn’t necessarily inexpensive. Essential oils have been promoted through multilevel marketing, which inflates product prices so that distributors at each level can receive a portion of payments. Consumers should be wary when distributors of multilevel marketing companies hype essential oils and other products using testimonials.

I acknowledge that many aromatherapists strive to be responsible and professional, and they succeed, at least in some ways. For example, NAHA notes safety considerations regarding skin, eyes, and during pregnancy when administering essential oils.

Some aromatherapy advocacy groups have taken strong, commendable stands against practitioners who have promoted unsafe uses of essential oils and have made unfounded claims for aromatherapy in enhancing bodily processes or relieving specific health problems. My next column will focus on one notorious essential oil huckster and his record as a diploma millnaturopath in promoting bogus healing methods to people with serious diseases.

Several years ago, I came across the manual for a self-paced speed reading course. Intrigued by promises of reading thousands of words per minute, I worked my way through the book. To my disappointment, my reading speed did not improve very much. I re-read the instructions and was urged to go faster! Skip words! Ignore the unimportant stuff! I did all that and my speed improved, but my understanding and retention of what I read dropped dramatically. I concluded that for some reason I just wasn’t a good candidate for speed reading. Much later I learned that my experience was quite typical.

The term speed reading was coined by a school teacher named Evelyn Wood in the 1950s.

People typically read about 250 to 300 words per minute. Wood claimed to greatly speed up reading by eliminating subvocalization and looking at groups of words instead of individual words. She would also use her finger as a guide to the eye, running it straight down the middle of a page at high speed. She began teaching speed reading seminars, and in 1959 she founded the Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics Institute in Washington, D.C. Students were promised they could increase their reading speed by two to five times, with improved comprehension. Some of her students allegedly could read 6,000 words per minute. Wood herself claimed to read anywhere from 2,700 words per minute to 15,000 words per minute depending on content (Van Gelder 1995). At 15,000 words per minute, you could read Gone with the Wind in twenty-eight minutes. Many people are skeptical that reading at this speed results in any real comprehension of the material. As Woody Allen sarcastically commented, “I took a course in speed reading and read War and Peace in 20 minutes. It’s about Russia” (Oliver 1995).

President Kennedy sent many staff members to Reading Dynamics courses, as did Presidents Nixon and Carter. At its peak, Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics seminars were taught at more than 150 outlets. Evelyn Wood died in 1995, but her methods are still taught through Fred Pryor Seminars.

There are some people who do have a natural ability to read extraordinarily fast with high comprehension. For example, Kim Peak (the model for Dustin Hoffman’s character in the film Rain Man) was reported to have memorized the contents of 12,000 books and could read at more than 4,000 words per minute. However, Peak had an abnormal brain structure, had difficulty with routine physical tasks such as walking and buttoning a shirt, and scored below average on standard IQ tests (Weber 2009). For this article I’ll exclude speed reading claims associated with savants.

Academic studies of speed reading have had difficulty confirming the more extreme claims. Many early studies in the 1960s reported very high reading speeds from 2,000 to 10,000 words per minute but lacked proper measures of reading comprehension or didn’t have control groups. In one case, speed readers scored “68% comprehension,” but people who had never read the passage scored 57 percent (Carver 1971). Speed readers were generally found to have a poor grasp of detailed content but a good grasp of the main theme and could perform well at tasks such as producing an outline of the text. A key feature of speed reading was that the readers made fewer and quicker eye fixations on the page. A typical reader’s eye will fixate for about one-fourth to one-half second on perhaps every other word, with the remainder being filled in by peripheral vision or from context. Speed readers have far fewer fixations and spend less time on each, typically 1/10 to 3/10 of a second. Thomas described a reader with a reading rate of 10,000 words per minute who only made six eye fixations per page, scanning vertically downward on the left hand page and upward on the right. The reader made no fixations at all on the bottom third of the page. It was unclear what comprehension was demonstrated by this reader (Thomas 1962).

Perhaps most interesting was a study in which graduates of a speed reading course were presented with a text in which, unknown to them, every alternate line was taken from one of two unrelated source documents. Speed readers read this text at an average rate of 1,700 words per minute and claimed to have good understanding of it, but none of the speed readers noticed that the material was from two different sources. The speed readers did not attend to details or local coherence between ideas (Ehrlich 1963).

Perhaps the most thorough and conclusive study of speed reading was conducted by Michael Masson (Just et al. 1982). Study participants were recruited, some of whom had completed Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics, and others were a control group of normal readers. As of the early 1980s, Reading Dynamics focused on two aspects of reading: making fewer and faster eye fixations, and using previous knowledge of the subject to organize the information that is read.

Students had been instructed in Evelyn Wood’s method of using their hand as a pacer, moving it across the text at a rapid speed. The instructor and the students were under the impression that these hand motions guided the eye to fixation locations; however, Masson’s research demonstrated that the hand motion acted more like a metronome than a pointer. The hand and eye beat out a similar rhythm, but the eye did not actually follow the hand motion.

The Evelyn Wood class also emphasized the understanding of how different types of texts are organized, such as textbooks, newspaper articles, and stories. For example, students were trained to read textbook passages by skimming the table of contents, titles, headings, and illustrations while using previous knowledge of the topic to fill in the gaps. These techniques are similar to research skills used by many people. For example, Martin Gardner was once asked how he could review so many books, and he answered that he did not actually read most books he reviewed; he just looked at the index and that gave him all the information he needed to write his review (Hyman 2010).

Masson’s research study consisted of three groups of college students: normal readers, trained speed readers, and “skimmers,” i.e., normal readers who were encouraged to skim the text at a rapid pace. A relatively simple passage was taken from Readers Digest and a more demanding one from Scientific American. In both cases, the results were the same: speed readers were about three times faster than normal readers, but their reading comprehension was much lower and decreased as their reading speed increased. The speed readers were only slightly faster and better at comprehension than the skimmers, although the speed readers performed well at tasks such as preparing an outline of the text. One could easily conclude that speed reading is basically a form of skimming, making use of study skills commonly used by college students.

The recent popularity of hand-held wireless devices has led to a renewed interest in speed reading. Apps are now available that will present one word at a time on the screen (Chen 2014). Users can increase the speed to the point where they feel they are just catching all the words, typically about 50 percent faster than their normal rate. Reading speed increases because there is no time lost in moving the eye to a new fixation point. Actually, this technique has been around for decades under the name Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP), but it used to require special equipment. Studies have shown that RSVP does increase speed but it also reduces comprehension because readers cannot look back at previous words. RSVP also prevents the reader from using the structure of the text to skim for key content.

Returning to my original question, is training in speed reading valuable? It really depends on what sort of material you read and what you want to get out of it. For those of us who read highly technical material that requires careful study of each sentence, speed reading may not have much to offer. However, for people who need to skim a large amount of material or need to improve their study skills, a speed reading course just might be worth it.

• Carver, R.P. 1971. Sense and Nonsense in Speed Reading. Silver Spring, MD: Revrac Publications.
• Chen, Angela. 2014. How fast can you read this. The Wall Street Journal (March 27).
• Ehrlich, E. 1963. Opinions differ on speed reading. National Education Association Journal 52: 45–46.
• Hyman, Ray. 2010. Martin Gardner: A polymath to the nth power. Skeptical Inquirer 34(5) (September/October).
• Just, Marcel Adam, Patricia A. Carpenter, and Michael Masson. 1982. What Eye Fixations Tell Us about Speed Reading and Skimming. Pittsburgh: Carnegie-Mellon University.
• Oliver, Myrna. 1995. Evelyn Wood; pioneer in speed reading. The LA Times (August 31).
• Thomas, E.L. 1962. Eye movements in speed reading. In R.G. Staffler (Ed.), Speed reading practices and procedures. Newark: University of Delaware.
• Van Gelder, Lawrence. 1995. Evelyn Wood, who promoted speed reading, is dead at 86. The New York Times (August 30).
• Weber, Bruce. 2009. Kim Peek, inspiration for ‘Rain Man,’ dies at 58. The New York Times (December 26).

Before I begin this review, a quick shout-out to the skeptic folk of New Zealand, who hosted a very fine (although a little shaky post-earthquake) conference in Wellington back in 2013.

I recognized Cuba Street from my time in that city; it’s a paved arcade area that features prominently in the first episode of Wellington Paranormal. Officer O’Leary (played by actor Karen O’Leary) demonstrates some very community-minded policing just after midnight, while addressing the documentary camera following her. She approaches a young woman who appears to be lost, perhaps left behind by her friends.

It’s after that point that everything goes completely and utterly haywire in this new mockumentary by the New Zealand Documentary Board (created by Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi, and Paul Yates, who are also responsible for another related paranormal comedy, What We Do in the Shadows).

With long-Samara-of-The-Ring-style dark hair and glassy eyes, the girl is introduced with a quick rattling sound effect and a sudden spew of Exorcist-inspired green vomit. If you’re even slightly familiar with the tropes of horror movies, then you’re in for a treat. However, the shameless borrowing of the generic conventions is completely lost on Officer O’Leary, who sums up her inquiry about the girl’s regurgitating wellbeing with a bland “…I guess that’s a no…. That’s quite a lot to come out of a small person…”

O’Leary is soon joined by her cheerfully befuddled partner, Officer Minogue (actor Mike Minogue), who is unable to spot his fellow officer standing a few feet away from him, let alone the huge puddle of puked ectoplasm he nearly slips over. “…Is that the Unholy Realm in Hataitai?” he politely note-takes, before “Bazu'aal” hurls him halfway down Cuba Street into a pile of bins.

As the officers transport the now glowing and pulsating demonically possessed girl back to base, we are introduced to what has apparently become a necessary part of the duties of local law enforcement—the highly classified Wellington Paranormal Unit. Headed by Sergeant Maaka (actor Maaka Pohatu)the team have an other-worldly weary response to vampires, demonic possessions, levitating creatures, and drops in real estate prices due to hauntings. The Sergeant even has a hidden Wellington Paranormal office behind some shelves, which would be the envy of the likes of James Randi and Joe Nickell.

While Sergeant Maaka claims to have an “observational absurdist sense of humor that borders on the risqué,” he is as blandly straight-faced as the rest of his team when possessed characters do things such as climb backward up the walls of the interrogation room and leap through windows to terrorize the city further. After an impressive escape scene using the split-camera security system, we are then introduced to the latest levitating incarnation of Bazu'aal’s possession, promptly dismissed as having a “mid-life crisis” while his head spins around.

By accident rather than design, the officers manage to be fairly effective law enforcement against highly acrobatic and even shape-changing demons, even though at some points they resort to using Google to figure out what to do next. The actors’ remarkable ability to keep straight faces while dealing with hilarious scenarios (such as “large circles in some crops… not sure what it’s called…”) is probably more astonishing than the creative special effects on a limited budget.

While the two episodes of a six-part series I’ve seen are only around twenty minutes long, and thus come across as more like a web video comedy than a TV series, the dry approach to extremist situations is brilliantly funny and well-paced. I look forward to seeing if the officers’ firm “Stop that! It’s a bit scary!” will be successful against other terrifying apparitions.

Wellington Paranormal aired via TVNZ OnDemand, is screening on Australia's SBS Viceland, and hopefully will be arriving in other countries soon.

Despite returning to its regular home at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan, change was in the air for NECSS 2018, the tenth annual event coproduced by the New York City Skeptics and the New England Skeptical Society. With James Randi being unable to attend the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism on July 12–15 as originally planned and Bill Nye being a late addition, most of the speakers were likely seen by veteran skeptical convention-goers for the first time.

Among them were the keynote speaker, renowned science writer Jennifer Ouellette, former science editor at Gizmodo and author of books such as The Calculus Diaries, Me, Myself, and Why: Searching for the Science of Self and The Physics of the Buffyverse. Ouellette’s talk, “Plateau: Why Nothing Changes (Until It Does),” addressed the counter-intuitive phenomenon of criticality, likening social change and other shifts to a phase transition. Nothing seems to move until about 25 percent of a population adopts a stance, then vocal members of that group begin influencing others.

Social media mavens such as physicist Katie Mack, who delivered an upbeat talk on the death of the universe, and chemist Raychelle Burks, went out of their way to engage the audience. Burks’s presentation, “It was the Professor, in the Library, with Poison,” touched on her own unique career trajectory and revealed a little more about the 300 or so in attendance than maybe we wanted to know.

“How many people want to learn more about murder?” Burks asked, to a resoundingly positive response.“That’s not disturbing in the slightest,” she said.

Raychelle Burks (photo by Jonathan Nelson)

Burks, who now spends much of her day devising ways to detect drugs and bio-weapons, presented the audience with several different “murder” cases, each time providing a little bit of data, allowing people to talk about it among themselves, then fielding questions to see if they could hone in on the culprit. The first such story ended up not being a murder at all, though it sure looked like it at first. The truth became more apparent as threads became untangled and the injuries and circumstances came into focus. “The context really, really matters,” Burks said.

Mack and Burks were part of a NECSS 2018 speakers group that was more than half female, and the unavoidable topic of sexual misconduct in the skeptics community was addressed in a panel named “SciComm Meets ‘Me Too,’” moderated by Skeptics Guide to the Universe costar Cara Santa Maria and featuring Buzzfeed science editor Virginia Hughes, Guerilla Science head of operations Olivia Koski, and law professor Margo Kaplan.

“This is not new, it’s just that you now know about it,” Santa Maria said. The discussion rarely named names, though, and instead focused on the nature of evidence in sexual misconduct investigations, what these investigations are really like for women, and how we can all make things better moving forward.

“I think the skepticism community has a lot to say in this movement,” Kaplan said, specifically, where there’s an opportunity to dispel myths. “A woman’s statement is evidence,” Koski said, and the call to “believe women” just means to take that report as a piece of evidence and not to dismiss it out of hand. The number of false claims is very small, “so incredibly small,” Santa Maria said, although a source was not provided.

At the same time, Hughes emphasized that reporters are not “stenographers of women,” truly vetting claims and doing most of the journalism work behind the scenes. “This is not going to be fun for you,” Hughes said of any potential misconduct accuser, saying that reporters will go to all of your friends to try to find holes in your story. Kaplan said there’s little benefit to making a misconduct claim, as “it follows you around,” there will always be someone at the next job who didn’t believe you, and you might even lose a mentor in the process.

The panel also spoke about “benevolent sexism,” things that might seem helpful while assuming women to be helpless. Carrying someone’s groceries might sometimes be chivalrous, but maybe she doesn’t want strangers touching her stuff. The help that’s really needed is to not be silent when misconduct occurs, because then it’s normalized. “Call out bad behavior,” Koski said.

Primatologist Natalia Reagan’s talk, “Time Has Always Been Up,” echoed some of those thoughts, as she said, “you cannot blame biology for your bad behavior,” and other NECSS presentations roamed into the political realm, too, with panels on gun violence research, the benefits(?) of medicinal marijuana, and one named “Scientists Take Action,” moderated by Heather Berlin, featuring three scientists who have actually run for political office.

The “Scientists Take Action” panel, from left to right:Moderator Heather Berlin, Valerie Horsley, Shaughnessy Naughton, and Elaine DiMasi. (photo by Bruce Press)

“It’s harder than I thought it was going to be,” said Yale molecular biologist Valerie Horsley and Democratic Party challenger for the Connecticut state senate. It bothers her that truth doesn’t get the same respect in politics that it does in science but adjustments are needed. “You’re a scientist, why would you do anything that doesn’t work?” asked Elaine DiMasi, who lost her New York congressional Democratic primary bid, about reticence to engage in professional marketing pushes. Shaughnessy Naughton, who lost her Pennsylvania congressional Democratic primary bid, said that first time candidates need to articulate why they’re running and what they hope to accomplish and not just rest on their credentials.

“It’s not about how smart you are,” Naughton said. “Nobody cares.”

NECSS 2018 topics were diverse, though, including a presentation on local myths by official Manhattan Borough historian Mike Miscione and one of the conference’s continuing hallmarks, a full day of Science-Based Medicine, presented by the website of the same name, who also cosponsored the conference. Talks included David Gorski on the hype of stem cell treatments, Harriet Hall on the dangers of cancer vaccine “manufactroversies,” Clay Jones and Grant Ritchey on quack Tourette Syndrome remedies, and Michael Marshall discussing his strategies with the Good Thinking Society that helped (almost completely) eliminate public medical funding for homeopathy in the United Kingdom.

“Clean eating is really about marketing,” Steven Novella said, in maybe the most relatable talk of the day. People tell you not to eat anything you can’t pronounce, but everything has a technical name, and you should avoid pesticides, even though 99 percent of the pesticides you ingest are produced by the plants themselves. The “clean-eating” movement wants to conflate physical and moral disgust, shaming those who don’t eat the right things, while making it so the “good” people are “reassured by a comforting label.”

NECSS 2018 also featuring a renewed emphasis on art and alternate outreach methods, as verbalized by Jay Novella in a Thursday workshop titled “Epic Movie Characters,” which also featured his wife Cortney, brother Steven, and physicist and Ninja Sex Party band member Brian Wecht. Other workshops included anthropologist and comedian Kyle Marian on using humor for outreach, the author on using pop culture, and artist Tony Saunders and singer Hai-Ting Chinn holding something like a “support group” for skeptics in the arts. Chinn actually concluded NECSS with an excerpt from her Science Fair opera, which followed a surprise performance by rap artist Baba Brinkman and Olivia Koski showing off a brain mold from a Guerrilla Science project that neurologist Steven Novella dutifully checked for accuracy.

Olivia Koski and Steven Novella (photo by Bruce Press)

“Did Steve cut that brain up like a trained serial killer or what?” asked emcee and comedian Leighann Lord, whose attention to detail and highlighting of the weekend’s best moments made her one of the most dependably entertaining parts of the proceedings for a second consecutive NECSS. With a blending of new paths, old traditions, and new traditions, NECSS has taken its first steps in blazing a different trail in the future of skepticism.

Forty-two years have passed since the birth of CSICOP, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, CSI), and its magazine, Skeptical Inquirer. Soon after its birth, there was a wave of skepticism across the globe. A great visionary was at the center of the explosion: Paul Kurtz, a philosophy professor who saw skepticism as a global worldwide endeavor. The Australian Skeptics took off in 1980 with Mark Plummer as president. A decade later, in the mid-1980s, CSICOP encouraged skeptics all over the world to form their own groups.

Mark Plummer, then executive director of CSICOP, and Wendy Grossman, founder of the magazine The Skeptic in the United Kingdom, toured Europe in this mission, resulting in many new groups.

Paul Kurtz also defined skepticism as he saw fit for the movement in his book The New Skepticism (1992). This variant is what we would now call “scientific skepticism.” It is distinct from the ancient Greek variety of skepticism that denied that we could acquire knowledge and wanted us not to take a stand—to suspend judgment.

Skeptics today do take a stand. They insist on skeptical inquiry, which is at the core of scientific research, as a fundamental and indispensable tool. At the same time, they also acknowledge that the body of science represents reliable knowledge of a real world. More importantly, they stand up and advocate for what we know about science and pseudoscience, even when others (including friends and colleagues) frown on us. Skeptics today are committed to scientific realism.

Initially, the movement focused mainly on fringe science claims ignored by the scientific establishment. A decade ago, Kendrick Frazier, editor of Skeptical Inquirer, extended the scope. In the book Science under Siege: Defending Science, Exposing Pseudoscience (2009), he put the defense of science itself on the map. Publications and events organized by skeptics had been increasingly taking up anthropogenic global warming, GMOs, and the anti-vaccination movement. Conspiracy theories are a recent addition. (See also Frazier’s Commentary “In Troubled Times, This is What We Do,” Skeptical Inquirer, March/April 2018.)

With the twenty-first–century trend of “alternative facts” well underway, the time is ripe for revitalizing a vision for the future.

We need to begin by framing our cause and our identity as skeptics worldwide. Let us start from the very core.

Why Do We Do What We Do?

Why do we bother? What drives us? Do we enjoy showing that others are wrong? Or do we want to show that we are somehow better than others who we believe to be ignorant?

The answer is central to the skeptical movement. It defines the ambition of contemporary skepticism.

Our overall goal and vision must be at the very core of our motivation, at what drives us. Let us take an example from someone who set out to change the world, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He had a dream. What is ours?

We strive for a world in which pseudoscientific claims do not deceive or harm anyone.

Our motivation also defines what we are concerned with: unfounded, unscientific, pseudoscientific, antiscientific, or plainly false claims. With our tools of skeptical inquiry and with the background of reliable, scientific knowledge, we do not want such false claims to fool or deceive us or others and thus harm us or withhold benefits from us. By doing so, we also want to better understand the world around us and the mechanisms by which our wishful thinking leads us astray.

So how do we reach our goals or strive to fulfil our dream? How do we limit deception and harm caused by pseudoscientific claims? Most skeptical organizations focus on science and critical thinking as the best available instruments of reliable knowledge by far. Most would describe their mission and how they achieve their overall goals in some version of the following:

We provide reliable information on claims that contradict science and the tools of skeptical inquiry to evaluate and investigate them.

Our vision and mission together define the driving values of skeptical organizations. They are the reason so many skeptics are passionate about what they do and spend so much of their time and money for skepticism instead of for themselves and their own benefit. We need these values to motivate us and others to action.

What Makes Us Different?

Skeptics are neither the first nor the only people educating the public about science or on what might be disadvantageous for them. We have consumer protection agencies, testing agencies and companies, science communicators, the scientific establishment itself, and information portals, such as ones on climate change.

It does not make sense to duplicate others’ efforts. There is, however, something particular and unique to what we have been doing and will very likely continue doing in the future. I see three elements that define our scope and approach:

1. We take on issues on which others for various reasons are silent. Initially, these were limited to fringe science issues, but this has changed significantly of late.
2. We focus on delusion, self-delusion, and wishful thinking that may lead us astray. It is no coincidence that magicians were part of the movement from the very start.
3. We are truly nonpartisan and independent and know that every political, ideological, and religious inclination can lead to self-delusion in some areas. Even skeptics may fall for claims that they wish to be true if they do not remind themselves that they too have their political, ideological, and religious or nonreligious biases that could cloud their objectivity.

The reason we have taken up such issues is that others are reluctant to deal with them for fear of antagonizing people they need to work with or on whom their career paths may depend.

Our work is much harder than it would be in an ideal world because many of those who should know better are failing. Universities have allowed pseudoscience in their curricula. Too many leading scientists and renowned experts are silent when they should be speaking up. We often need to do the dirty work of others, as in keeping quackery out of medicine. Several NGOs have gone off course and have ignored science and evidence.

Alternative facts and fake news are not new. And even the use of these terms is losing its meaning when those who spread bullshit apply those terms to those who are more factual than they are.

As skeptics, we have a growing job to do, and this means much more work for us all.

Scientific Skepticism Is Central to Our Well-Being

Contemporary skepticism is about everybody, not just us as skeptics. It is about everyone’s well-being, now and in the future. Its approach combines science and critical thinking—twins of a sort.

As skeptics, we place our confidence in science as by far the best means to acquire knowledge that we can rely on, even on matters of life and death. We are also aware that we as humans have a broad capability to fool ourselves. This psychological limitation can severely damage us individually or the planet as a whole, and it can also prevent us from taking useful action.

The potential consequences also point to how we would want to prioritize our efforts. As a disclaimer, any prioritization should not discourage anyone from pursuing their favorite project or topic. Our success depends on enthusiasm, and we do not know whether a “pet” topic of today could become a significant problem years or decades in the future. People are best at doing what they love doing.

Many skeptical organizations are already prioritizing their work based on how much harm some areas cause or how much benefit they prevent. Examples are:

• Pseudomedicine in all its forms, such as homeopathy;
• Denying the usefulness of vaccination or even the fact that viruses cause diseases; and
• The spread of superstition and magical thinking with significant damaging potential. (Rationalists in India and skeptics in Africa face physical threats and endanger their lives with their engagement.)

In line with a view on possible consequences and possible harm or denied improvement, global warming and GMOs have been rightly taken up.

Both prioritized and “pet” topics have led to a wealth of information worldwide that skeptics make available today. We can all draw from these resources and have done so in the past. The German skeptics reacted very quickly when claims related to facilitated communication came up. Their magazine, Skeptiker, reprinted an article by Gina Green and benefited from the experience gained in Australia and the United States.

Working across the Globe

There are now skeptic and rationalist organizations all over the world. But we also need networking between skeptics globally to help us all be more effective and efficient. Science has been doing this all along. This kind of networking must be at the heart of our future work.

However, it remains essential that we do not make the mistake many other NGOs have made. Every country and region has its specific problems and approach. The network of skeptical organizations must learn from each other and at the same time avoid imposing on each other.

These considerations also frame the ability and limitations of organizations, such as ECSO, the European Council of Skeptical Organisations. ECSO was formed to bring together skeptical organizations in Europe. Organizations such as ECSO must focus on facilitating the exchange of information, promoting the creation of new groups, and organizing events to bring people from all over a region or the world together. They can reflect shared values, motivations, and scopes, but they should not tell individual organizations what to do.

At every level, it will always be a challenge to achieve the right mix between useful consolidation and individuality to avoid fragmentation. Should we consolidate the movement based on language, country, or region? How large or small should these regions be? Those concerned need to decide how to solve this on a case-by-case basis, and I do not see a one-size-fits-all formula to solve this problem.

Skeptics Are Human

We have been fortunate to have all sorts of people driving the skeptical movement and ensuring that it moves on. Some are doers who form the backbone. They make sure that the organizations keep running, magazines keep being published, and events keep happening. We also need leaders who organize skepticism and keep individual organizations across the world together. Then there are personalities such as James Randi who inspire us all. A healthy combination of this diversity helps us all.

If we want others to see us as pushing a universal cause, we must also ensure diversity in a different sense of the word. Skeptical groups must have women and individuals from minority communities in visible positions. Increasing diversity requires particular and constant attention.

What we do not need are those who put themselves above the movement. When we do involve stars, we need to make sure that they will benefit our cause and not just use our common cause to boost their reputations.

However, it is unavoidable that, in the long run, we will have problems with well-known and lesser-known skeptics. Problematic people are not unique to skeptical organizations, but they are something that the movement, and particularly its leaders, will have to manage.

Being a skeptic does not mean that we are all good people. A few may not be. Similarly, some of those we argue against may have good intentions. Within skeptical organizations, we will have to be just and take action, defending those who interested parties accuse unjustly, as well as acting firmly on unacceptable behavior. We have to prepare for even unlikely occurrences and ensure that mechanisms are in place to prevent misbehavior such as sexual harassment. It is the job of the leaders of the skeptical movement to deal with such problems and issues. These issues will not go away but will remain a constant challenge.

Professionalization

One prominent limitation is that skeptics are all far too dependent on voluntary activity. We need more skeptics who can do this as a paid job. The problem is very often the lack of funds. Marko Kovic from the Swiss skeptics makes a valid point when he writes: “One of the highest priorities of skeptical organizations should be to generate revenue streams that are as large and as sustainable as possible” (https://www.skeptiker.ch/some-problems-of-the-skeptic-movement/).

There have been three ways to generate revenue. The first is via membership of organizations, which has been the prime source of income for the German skeptics organization GWUP. The second is via donations and bequests, which is the way other organizations work, CSI and the Australian Skeptics being two examples. The third is what almost all organizations do anyway: providing services and products, such as a magazine or events.

It is the first two that can significantly improve the financial basis of cause-based organizations. We have not yet been able to present our cause and why we do what we do well enough. Much more than what we do, we have to clearly communicate why we put in all our time and effort. We are unwilling to accept the dangers caused by alternative facts and pseudoscientific claims.

Skeptical organizations should not show themselves as primarily places for careers. They must build on our cause as the primary motivator, followed by the fun of doing things, with career considerations coming last.

Branding

So who are we? Should we call ourselves “skeptics” despite the negative connotation? Does it match our vision and purpose?

I think we should be pragmatic here. The term skeptic does often convey a negative association, and some use it in a way we don’t like. We oppose climate “skeptics” and refuse to accept the term in this connection.

At the same time, we as a movement have been known as skeptics. With any search on the internet for skeptic (or “Skeptiker” in German), we show up rather than the climate or GMO “skeptics.”

Not only will it be a waste of resources looking for a new word or brand, but this will also detract from our actual purpose and work. We have been able to establish the term scientific skepticism. What we need to do whenever we show up is to say, it is we who are the skeptics. The others are not. Let us identify our cause, our mission, and our community as skeptics when we do what we do.

Reform or Refocus?

We have come a long way since the 1970s. Some skeptical organizations started in the nineteenth century. The Vereniging tegen de Kwakzalverij, the association against quackery in the Netherlands, was founded in 1881. Comité Para in Belgium took off in 1949. There is a lot we have achieved, and we all have an excellent reason to be proud of it. We are here to stay.

But we also have much further to go. We should never be satisfied with what we have achieved; instead we must build for the future. As a movement and with organizations that are independent of specific or vested interests, we are more credible than most.

So here is my take on our future priorities:

1. Get a consistent message out on the skeptical movement. Focus on what drives us and why we are needed. The “why” is at the very core to motivate and grow skeptical groups.
2. Define a skeptic as one who adheres to scientific skepticism.
3. Prioritize on topics having the most significant potential for harm, be it directly or by omission. At the same time, let those with a strong motivation continue working on their favorite subjects. You never know when they may turn out to be critical.
4. Make use of the immense global resources of skeptics. Involve women and people from minority communities. Network across countries and regions.
5. Support those who work under the hardest social and economic conditions, such as in Africa. Don’t be condescending, and provide advice only when asked.
6. Make it clear that we are the people who are not committed to any interest groups and who will stand up for science and critical thinking even if it means alienating some of our “friends.” Our independence from interest and pressure groups is what makes us different. It is, as some would say, our unique selling point.

Let us make it clear that we have a cause of utmost significance with the challenges of the twenty-first century in view and that this requires support, both work and financial resources. Should it not be on everyone’s agenda to not be deceived or harmed? Let us get on with it!

In mid-February 2018, I was commuting home from the office listening to skeptical podcasts as usual, and I heard private eye Bob Nygaard’s interview on Episode 288 of Skepticality. It was absolutely fascinating. Nygaard is a one-of-a-kind detective who specializes in bringing “psychic” con artists to justice. He has been doing this for ten years and has been instrumental in convicting psychics and returning millions of dollars to victimized clients across the United States. So how had I not heard of him?

When I got home, I immediately looked up Nygaard on Wikipedia. To my surprise, there was no article about him. A travesty of justice! What’s a member of the Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia (GSoW) team to do? Well, actually this is what we GSoW folk live for after all … find a worthy subject (a person or thing) related to science or skepticism not covered in Wikipedia and write a new article! So, of course, that’s just what I did.

By the end of February, my Wikipedia article was published, and as I write this in early August it has garnered over 15,000 page views. I imagine at least some of those hits represent psychic scam victims who were searching for help and didn’t know where to turn. Any such person reading the article will learn that they are not alone—and they might even contact Nygaard for help. (Read my article about the GSoW project here.)

One of the perks of being on the Guerrilla Skeptics team is that sometimes we get to interact with the subjects we write about. Writing for Skeptical Inquirer has afforded me the chance to go further and actually interview Nygaard to learn and document details of his unique story that I could not find written about elsewhere. Only things documented in other sources can be used on Wikipedia … so … maybe someone else on the GSoW team looking for something to do will add the new information from this interview to Nygaard’s Wikipedia article.

I do not have the space here to go over everything in Nygaard’s Wikipedia article, which includes summaries of some of his most fascinating psychic fraud cases. So, before reading this interview, you may want to first read that Wikipedia article for a good overview of his psychic-busting history. When I wrote that article, Nygaard had taken down a total of twenty-eight psychics and had recovered $3.2 million for their victims. Nygaard told me that his numbers are now thirty psychics and $3.5 million recovered.

Rob Palmer: Bob, for those who have not yet read your Wikipedia article [despite my suggestion above] please quickly introduce yourself.

Bob Nygaard: Well, I’m a retired police officer from New York and I’m a private investigator-turned actor.

Palmer: Yes. Funny. You’re an actor now! I read that you were going to play yourself on a true-crime TV show. How did that happen?

Nygaard: Some people from CBS called me and asked me if I wanted to be interviewed for a show called Pink Collar Crimes. Basically, it’s a show about women who commit fraud crimes and get prison time for things like embezzlement based on real cases. My episode is about a bogus psychic named Gina Marie Marks, how I tracked her down and caused her to be arrested a couple of times over the course of ten years, and how I recovered almost a million dollars for her victims.

Palmer: How did you get to be the star of the episode?

Nygaard: I sat down and did the interview and then all of a sudden, I got a call from out in L.A. and they said “we like the way you are on camera—we think you could play yourself better than anyone could play you. Would you like to actually act?” So I said “You know what? I’ll give it a try.” The director gave me a lot of freedom because they had certain scripts written, but when I saw it sometimes I would say “that’s not what I would say” and they would say “Okay, go ahead and just do the scene.” So I would do the scene and basically just wing it with what I knew it should be. And they were like “this is great!” They gave me a lot of freedom and it was a lot of fun. It was thrilling. It was great to be working as part of a team of artistic people all pulling together to try to put out a stellar product. That was a pleasant experience compared to the twenty years I spent in the police department where it was a civil-service mentality and a lot of people were trying to do the least amount of work possible. It wasn’t the same type of camaraderie. It’s unfortunate that I feel that way now, but I honestly do.

(Bob’s episode of Pink Collar Crimes, “The Psychic Didn’t See Him Coming,” was scheduled to air on CBS on August 11, 2018. If you are reading this after that date, look for it on your cable system’s On Demand, or at CBS.com.)

Palmer: I’m looking forward to watching your episode, especially because I wrote about Gina Marks in your Wikipedia article! So, can you tell me about any other interesting psychic case that wasn’t covered in your Wikipedia article?

Nygaard: Yes … Peaches Stevens … she was out of the Orlando area and she ripped off my client, Priti Mahalanobis. I got involved in the case and it went to the Orlando state attorney’s office but they wouldn’t even return our phone calls. They even kicked her out of the office. I wanted to help this woman but I had no idea how I was going to cause the Orlando State Attorney’s Office to prosecute the case. I was at my wit’s end. Then my phone rings and it’s a producer from the Anderson Cooper show. They read about me and wanted to know if there were any cases I wanted to publicize. I told my client if we’re going to have any shot it’s going to be you going on the show. So, I said to the producer “I’ll let my client go on the show but only on one condition: if Anderson promises he’ll let her take the microphone and blast the Orlando State Attorney’s Office for not doing their job.” [She did that at the end of the show] and within a few days of that airing, the psychic was under arrest. And it wasn’t long after that that my client had her $136,000 back. [However, after returning the money, Stevens was not prosecuted. It turns out that in many of these cases, the psychic is allowed to walk.] This is what we call a “happy ending” … facetiously. Everyone’s happy including the psychic—who is the happiest of all. They get to walk and do it all over again. [Watch a TV news segment on this case here.]

Palmer: Do you go into every case with the belief that there can’t possibly be anything real regarding the psychic in question, or are you open to finding out someone actually has the paranormal powers they claim to have?

Nygaard: I’m open minded. I’m absolutely 100 percent open minded. I don’t believe in it. I don’t believe anyone has ever been able to prove they have psychic ability since the beginning of recorded time.But I always look at things with an open mind.

Palmer: Have you ever prosecuted or even just investigated a case involving a psychic who you felt was self-deluded, rather than knowingly running a con?

Nygaard: No. I have never. You know what? The ones that I investigate, when I first screen the call and the person tells me about the case … it almost just jumps out at me: where all the lies are. The modus operandi is very evident to me right from the start. And there are patterns, hallmarks if you will: Start the person off at a nominal fee, have a progression of fees, create a sense of dependency, create a siege mentality … It’s a lot of the same things that you would see from a cult leader to gain control over his followers.

Palmer: You previously have said that secrets a client shared with the psychic may be used against that client if they come to their senses and threaten to prosecute the psychic. Have you had any cases in which that’s just what happened … but the victim contacted you and went for a prosecution anyway?

Nygaard: A lot of times it’s really hard for the people when they call me because they have deep secrets and sometimes they move forward with the hope that those secrets won’t come out ... but the psychics are more interested in keeping their mouths shut, letting the lawyer deal with [the case], and moving on to their next mark. They’re not interested in revenge.

Palmer: I understand that you believe the “Sunk Cost Fallacy” is one thing that keeps victims spending money as the scam gets more and more elaborate. Can you explain?

Nygaard: This happens all the time. The client calls me and says they were already $100,000 in, “but if I stop now I would’ve had to admit to myself that the whole thing was a lie and that all the money I put in was wasted and so I felt if I just kept going that maybe it would just all come true.” It’s hoping against hope ... The human mind is fascinating. Psychology is fascinating. And when you’re dealing with psychic fraud cases, these psychics are masters of psychology ... that’s what they are! And they never went to school; they just learned from watching their mother and their grandmother from when they were five years old.

Palmer: You mentioned on Skepticality that in these criminal families, the women do psychic scams and romance scams and the like, and the men do different types of scams. Have you worked on other types of fraud like romance scams for example?

Nygaard: I’m working on one right now. I am working on one with a ninety-year-old man that was ripped off for almost $2 million. He’s in Manhattan and the woman that did it to him is also a self-proclaimed psychic. This is happening more and more because of the graying of America.

I want to thank Bob Nygaard for his time—and his service. And a special thank you goes out to Paula Serrano for copy editing this on short notice. My interview with Nygaard will be continued in part 2 of this article. Meanwhile, check-out a short documentary about Nygaard here.

Also, I should mention that thanks to the efforts of Derek Colanduno from Skepticality, Nygaard is now being pulled into the skeptical movement: he has just been scheduled for an on-stage discussion with Jamy Ian Swiss at DragonCon 2018 (August 30 to September 3) in Atlanta, GA, to discuss his experiences in the world of psychic fraud.