Number Four, Bethink Avenue

The end has come!

2007-12-17T08:04:00.001-08:00

` Bethink Ave got canned, so there will be no more posts.

Update for October 23, 2008: I have most of them - except for a few links - transferred onto my new blog, corrigendopedia.blogspot.com with other things. When I get that all sorted out, I'm deleting this blog and the user profile.

Don't worry, I'm putting them back online elsewhere!

Darwin vs. 'Darwin' - if you can't beat 'em, caricaturize 'em!

2007-11-25T00:40:00.000-08:00

` ATTN: In the process of adding rest of illustrations.

[Image of Darwin, Image of Caricature of Darwin]

` At long last, after more than three weeks I have completed (writing) this post - and fought the temptation of writing any others during bouts of writer's block! Though it is a fine essay for anyone to read, it also addresses my fellow biology students.

` Science, as I've written before, isn't an overly natural process to human beings: When we have an idea, it's our first instinct to come up with evidence to support it. In science, not only do you learn as much as you can, you try to find evidence that disproves your ideas. (That way you know if you got something wrong.)
` Darwin's Theory of Evolution Through Natural Selection has passed, with flying colors, a century or more worth of tests that were designed to disprove it. (Some people don't agree, and I'm getting to that.)

` Charles Darwin was a creationist who began to explore the natural world - it wasn't until after his travels that he became convinced that natural processes and long stretches of time could account for all the variations seen throughout life on earth.
` Today, so much is known about biological processes that evolution has long been considered a fact. Even Darwin, in the mid-1800s, could not explain anything that he knew - about comparative anatomy, populations, biogeography, embryology, paleontology, etc. - without referring to the idea that all species living today had a common ancestor.

` The question he asked was how did it happen?

` Darwin's version of 'how' is called the Theory of Evolution Through Natural Selection, whereby certain organisms are 'edited out' by their own environment. It is true that one organism can produce many more than one replacement for itself. As a result, this creates many 'chances' for its lineage to continue - and there surely needs to be.
` The million-dollar question is; which offspring will survive?
` Despite what opponents of evolution will say, Darwin's theory is far from being completely random: Mutations and new variations abound - especially with species that reproduce sexually - so not all offspring are equal. Many even have extra copies of genes, missing genes, mutated genes, or simply unusual combinations of genes, all of which can affect their ability to survive. Over the generations, 'disadvantaged' individuals will be completely 'bred out' of a population while better-adapted are likely to be preserved, or 'selected' by nature.
` Thus, species are forced to change into others. And, as the environment also changes, what was useful for one individual may make survival difficult for its great-grandchildren. So, species continue to be forced into changing. But, if enough individuals of a species cannot do this, their kind faces the ultimate cut - extinction.

` The Theory of Evolution is not to be confused with the general concept of evolution, which simply refers to the fact that species are constantly changing. This is important because it may be helpful to know that anti-evolutionists confuse them all the time.
` About Darwin: He wasn't the first to come up with a theory of how evolution happened, but his is the only one for which all of biology - as well as chemistry, geology, cosmology, et cetera, have done nothing but back it up.
` This is why it's called the Grand Synthesis - pretty much everything we know about the universe relates to and supports Darwin's theory in some way.

` The Theory of Evolution Through Natural Selection is truly a gargantuan concept - so huge that it is based on a lot of different laws of nature as well as statistical probabilities. Since a law can only contain one very simple and utterly absolute concept - such as the speed of light, or the law of gravity - Darwin's theory encompasses far too much to ever become a law.
` Similarly, a lot of the patterns and activity of your cells is also based on both laws and statistics - and are thus not always consistent or predictable - and yet, their tendencies still manage to form a living, changing body that doesn't suddenly lose coherence. There is no 'Law of a Human Body', and there never could be.

` There is a lot of ignorance on the subject of evolution in this country (and thus plenty of misconceptions) so it's relatively easy to get many people to swallow a false picture of Darwin's theory - one that makes evolution look nonsensical - whether or not they agree on its validity.
` This is what Intelligent Design proponents do (as did the 'Creation Science' proponents before them). Intelligent Design Theory - which (as you'll see) is merely an attack on Darwin rather than an actual theory - was employed by creationists as a 'Wedge', explicitly to gain converts.
` Main ID proponent and lawyer, Phillip Johnson, describes how he came up with the idea ('Berkeley's Radical', Touchstone Magazine, 2002):

So the question is: "How to win?" That’s when I began to develop what you now see full-fledged in the "wedge" strategy: "Stick with the most important thing" —the mechanism and the building up of information. Get the Bible and the Book of Genesis out of the debate because you do not want to raise the so-called Bible-science dichotomy.
Phrase the argument in such a way that you can get it heard in the secular academy and in a way that tends to unify the religious dissenters. That means concentrating on, "Do you need a Creator to do the creating, or can nature do it on its own?" and refusing to get sidetracked onto other issues, which people are always trying to do.

` This explains why the book Of Pandas and People, which goes on about design and a designer, was originally called Creation and Biology and talked about God and the book of Genesis.
` Another main ID proponent, William Dembski, explains the motivation behind it (National Religious Broadcasters convention, 2000):

Intelligent Design opens the whole possibility of us being created in the image of a benevolent God … The job of apologetics is to clear the ground, to clear obstacles that prevent people from coming to the knowledge of Christ … And if there’s anything that I think has blocked the growth of Christ as the free reign of the Spirit and people accepting the Scripture and Jesus Christ, it is the Darwinian naturalistic view.

` Phillip Johnson also highlights his reasoning (Missionary Man, Church and State Magazine 1999):

The objective is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism vs. evolution to the existence of God vs. the non-existence of God. From there people are introduced to ‘the truth’ of the Bible and then ‘the question of sin’ and finally ‘introduced to Jesus.’

` There you have it - in their own words, not mine: Intelligent Design theory is missionary work disguised as some sort of 'scientific' debate. Some have told me, "it doesn't matter where the science comes from; science is science and it's wrong to censor it."
` And I say, "What science?" The ID camp is taking their firm belief in a creator and distorting the methods, logic and fruits of science to make evolution look bad, rather than using them to support what they're saying (which they claim is what they are doing).

` As even they have openly admitted, while they have a few ideas that supposedly attack evolution, there really isn't an actual theory to 'ID Theory' since just saying "that ain't so" does not explain "how, then?" There's no rhyme, rule or mechanism proposed - according to them, life could have been (nondescriptly) designed at one point, or gradually created over millions of years, depending on the particular aspect or scale of evolution that is being skewed at the time.
` As I will demonstrate (in time), they are basically making up a bizarre version of evolution that doesn't make sense - this is then presented as the real thing. A general poor understanding of evolution is what actually 'makes their case' - most scientists (of any type) are not fooled by this ploy.

` Theory or not, ID proponents are not deterred because in their attacking of 'pseudo-evolution' they apparently believe they can just say; "since evolution makes no sense, that means we're right anyway!" Gee, that's bad news for anyone who comes up with an alternative explanation to Darwin's theory - ID is apparently already right!
` A combination of this, the 'false dichotomy', along with the 'argument from ignorance' is another important long-time creationist/ID tactic. What they do is argue that "there's no evidence for X, which means X doesn't exist; therefore evolution just doesn't make sense, so we must be right."
` Intelligent Design proponents argue this way in the name of science and sound logical reasoning - though it is precisely the opposite; Any scientist (or logician) can tell you, a lack of information just means that nobody knows - therefore, there is no information telling them that there's evidence against evolution.
` It just so happens that the thousands of 'Xs' that have later been found - including DNA and everything about it - that do support evolution. Even so, anti-evolutionists have maintained that some such discoveries actually weaken the existing evidence for evolutionary theory.

` My favorite is what they do with transitional species. Here's one example: Since Darwin's time, biologists have theorized that the ancestors of whales once lived on land.

[Image of Darwin, inset]

` Why? For one thing, whales are mammals, which (as it is now even more clear from the numerous reptile-mammal fossils) evolved from land reptiles. For another thing, embryonic whales have pelvises, hind legs and toes, as do adult whales (albeit usually on the inside): I myself have had the pleasure of seeing a dolphin skeleton and a gray whale skeleton, both with these vestigial appendages intact. (In some individuals, these structures develop into visible flippers.)
` Presumably, the first highly aquatic whales were like today's otters, sea lions, or walruses, which gradually adopted a more marine lifestyle. (Could seals be the next 'whales'?)
` Then one day, paleontologists dug up part of a land mammal's skull whose highly unusual ear canal and teeth resembled that of no other known species except for living and fossil whales. This species, a carnivorous ungulate (hoofed mammal), was dubbed 'Pakicetus' or 'whale from Pakistan'.
` Since then, many more bones have been found, allowing for more accurate reconstructions:

[Pakicetus skeleton, skull and reconstruction]

` Though it doesn't look like a typical cetacean (whale), Pakicetus is classified as one because it shares the most important defining characteristic - the distinct ear canal.
` The anti-evolutionists still scoffed at the land-whale, a common claim being that; "There's no evidence of any transitional species between Pakicetus and whales (one instance of evolution), so we still must be right about God creating everything (all instances of evolution)."
` No transitional species at all? A very presumptuous argument, yes, and one that's been well-demonstrated to the contrary. Indeed, there has since been discovered many species which bridged Pakicetus with ancient whales.
` These specimens were found in the right chronological order, in the time period before modern-looking whales are found - they span from about fifty-seven to thirty-six million years ago:

[Images of fossil species, including Ambulocetus, Dalanistes, Rodhocetus, Takracetus, Gaviocetus, Durodon, Basilisaurus.]

` So, though this is more information for biologists, this also happens to make many antievolutionists cheer, because instead of one 'gap' in the fossil record, we now have many gaps to criticize! ("But what about the transitional species between Takracetus and Gaviocetus?")
` On the other hand, other antievolutionists instead ignore most or all of the transitional species and baselessly criticize any that they do acknowledge.

Darwin vs. "Darwin"

` Pure logical fallacies aside, as I've said, the most prominent 'arguments' comprising Intelligent Design 'theory' is the complete distortion of entire evolutionary concepts and/or facts. ID proponents and their followers are protected by a general ignorance that the arguments are distortions - even they themselves may not know.
` So, let me use an overly obvious example of the type of distortion I mean: Let's say someone is telling you about the characteristics of mammals - i.e. lungs, mammary glands, a high metabolism, a large cerebrum, three middle ear bones - and then points out that whales have them, too. Well, of course they do; they're mammals.
` Then the person points out that whales swim up-and-down like mammals do, and not side-to-side like fish, and that everything we know about whales tells us that whales are mammals, not fish. Well, is that supposed to be surprising? There's nothing wrong with these statements.
` But then - now that he's got you agreeing with him - this person concludes that the very fact that whales are mammals means that the evolution of whales is impossible. (And then goes off on a rant about how 'brainless' scientists are to have missed that.)

` Ask yourself, does that argument make any sense at all (much less warrant any anger)? Whales are mammals - that's a fact. I've just highlighted their evolution from other mammals. Could this argument possibly make any sense?

` Only in the light of a false picture: This person claimed that scientists believe whales evolved directly from fish, without leaving the ocean, so how could we have two separately-evolved groups of animals that by 'random coincidence' are both unmistakably mammals? (Especially since it doesn't make any sense for a fish to get rid of its ability to breathe water!)
` Well, I will admit one thing; this idea is contrary to all available evidence....

` I'd like to point out that this isn't in particular an Intelligent Design argument, though someone really did use that to try to outsmart me and my 'dogmatic faith' in evolution. While my facial expression in response showed I was amazed with at how far removed from reality it was, he took this to mean that he had brought up an excellent point.
` Nevertheless, this is exactly the type of thing found in ID arguments: Describe one thing accurately (such as facts about whales) and then describe another thing inaccurately (such as the premise of those facts) in such a way that it creates contradictions.
` Obviously, changing select facets of something that is logically consistent - so that it becomes otherwise - allows the possibility of convincing people that it is the real article, and therefore that the real article is worthy of ridicule.

` There you have it, that's the main 'scientific' debate technique involved in ID theory - if both the real bits and the distorted bits are accepted as an equally valid whole, then it certainly would appear that evolution is falling apart at the seams.
` But how many people know enough or care enough not to swallow at least many of the false concepts as facts? If public opinion polls mean anything, probably not a large proportion.

A Few Differences Between Darwin and "Darwin"

` To reiterate, Intelligent Design is all about creating the illusion of attacking evolutionary theory (as well as science in general). Proponents are merely pretending that a dysfunctional caricature is evolutionary theory and work to persuade people to laugh at it - as if scientists would be short-sighted enough to support such a thing!

` I guess you could say, the scientists might laugh as well, but for a different reason.

` I tried explaining this once to a friend who supported ID at the time, and she assured me; "Oh no, I haven't heard any arguments like that! This is all solid science." Sure enough, everything about evolution she proceeded to criticize was nothing but laughter directed at whimsical caricatures of evolutionary theory.
` What's more, she had no clue she was doing this.
` Every time I started to explain how each argument was not attacking real evolutionary theory or findings, she just changed the subject and came back to it later as if I hadn't attempted to scrutinize it in the first place. This quickly became exhausting.
` It was like a hopeless game of Whack-A-Mole; she had a handful of arguments, and she kept cycling through them as fast as I could lunge at them. She never gave me the chance to actually point something out. (On top of that, she used the argument of 'you're really in for it because you don't believe in God'.)
` It was somewhat dismaying to me that she really thought she got me good every time I was shocked by an argument akin to 'whales aren't fish': Many a time I had to suppress the urge to rebuke her for believing in the caricature drawn by Intelligent Design proponents.
` If they drew the tooth fairy, I had thought to myself, she would believe in that, too.

` So, I might as well get around to some of these arguments, right? Why not pick one on a topic that concerns something that's extremely important to know about Darwin's theory? Here goes:
` Some ID arguments come from the distortion (pushed as real evolutionary theory) that species evolved in a linear fashion in an order somewhat like a scala naturae, with minerals at the bottom and complex beings - humans - at the top. We've come a long way since then, as you can see....

[Scala naturae]

` Darwin's theory has never included the idea of a scala naturae because all the evidence supports a spreading family tree, with one species branching into two. In this way, though chimpanzees have smaller brains than we do, they are not more 'primitive': We share a common ancestor which lived at least six million years ago.
` Whatever this species was (Sahelanthropus? Orrorin?), it must have split into two or more subspecies (something that we see happening today) where one population gave rise to an upright ape lineage while the other became a tree-climbing ape lineage.
` Interestingly, DNA evidence shows that the common ancestors of gorillas and orangutans existed farther back in time than our common ancestor with chimps. In other words, chimpanzees are more closely related to us than they are to gorillas or orangutans.

[Human & Ape family Tree]

` I've heard a few people scoff, "I'm sorry, evolution just doesn't make any sense: No one can explain to me why, if humans evolved from monkeys, can there still be monkeys."
` If the 'ladder' of species made sense, that might be a tough one to get out of, but as you can see, there's nothing contradictory about the idea that humans evolved from "monkeys", or rather, apes that lived millions of years ago. Modern humans, monkeys and apes can all live at the same time - though the ancestors that once linked us necessarily had to live in the past.

` There is one website I know of that is dedicated to compiling an accurate family tree with data from various different scientists. It's called the Tree of Life Project, if you're interested.

` So, what this means is that today's fish are not 'stuck in the past', in any concrete way. They are actually very highly-evolved versions of primitive fish that lived millions of years ago. And, so are we - after one of those primitive fish scooted, mudskipper-like, onto land. So, in a way, we are fish - it's just a difficult concept for us to wrap our highly-developed brains around.
` In other words, ever since the common ancestor of all fish lived, all of its descendants have been evolving for the same amount of time as one another.
` Why don't we resemble primitive fish as much as the hundreds of species of fish living today do? Because they haven't had to adapt to living on land - so they continue to have similar body structures.
` We also have the same basic structures, but they have been re-shaped for life on land. For one thing, lungs must have gone from being mere swim-bladders to oxygen-absorbing organs in our common ancestor with lungfish. But, while a lungfish's lungs are adapted to store oxygen when they need it, we are adapted for breathing on land, 24/7.
` They are, therefore, two (of many) different possible modifications of the same organ. In fact, every part of a fish can - effectively - be found in your own body (though it may not be easily recognized). This type of correspondence is called a homology, and I'll point a bunch more out by the time I'm through.

` Now, finally approaching a specific ID argument, let me tell you a bit about genetics: The DNA of, say, a monkey, a whale, and a frog, have the same amount of genetic changes relative to their last common ancestor. However, if you compare a monkey's genes with a whale's and a frog's, the whale is the one that's going to be more similar to the monkey because they have a more recent common ancestor.
` As one evolutionary biologist remarked (Gould, I believe), evolution acts like a 'short-order cook', not a long-term planner. It adapts a species for its immediate situation with what it already has at the time - through history, one part is used over and over again for different purposes.

` This is what creates homologies.

` Characteristics can even evolve and then 'evolve away', which explains the presence of vestigial parts (such as whale's hind legs - or a snake's) that clearly had some past purpose (walking) but no longer do.
` There's no way that Nature could 'know' what would happen if fish evolved into land animals. They just happened to be going somewhere that no vertebrate had gone before, perhaps at first to chase their crunchy prey (like a modern species of African catfish does with its leg-like fins and bendable neck), or to escape from predators (as flying fish do by gliding on their enormous fins).
` Species must survive in the 'here and now' - they cannot 'rest' or 'wait' because they'd go extinct. This, along with the 'life is a huge family tree concept', are fundamental to Darwin's theory.

` So, you're not more 'evolved' than your cousin, you're just on different branches. The whole idea of progress in evolution, like an arrow of complexity from bacteria to humans, is completely against the Theory of Evolution Through Natural Selection.

` Well, guess what Intelligent Design theorists often insist? And since that's wrong, then evolution must be wrong. But that's not part of Darwin's theory! And so, at long last....

An Example of Darwin vs. "Darwin"

` As I've said, genetic studies do support evolution, however, this can be turned on its head if you don't understand what's going on: In the 1980's, Michael Denton said that protein differences between species don't support evolution. (Since proteins are straightforwardly direct expressions of genes, this could be considered an argument from genetics.)
` He studied a protein that has to do with cellular metabolism, called cytochrome C, which is common to all life. Between organisms, however, there are variations. As with teeth, nerve cells and blood, the chemistry of life is homologous across species.
` After measuring the amount of differences (divergence) across many species' versions of cytochrome C, he wrote:

"Between horse and dog (two mammals) the divergence [in cytochrome C] is six percent, between horse and turtle (two vertebrates) the divergence is eleven percent, and between horse and fruit fly (two animals) the divergence is twenty-two percent." (Denton 1985.)

` Well, that's perfectly consistent with evolution. See? (You'll have to click on the picture to see, because my blog is too narrow to display it any larger.)

` And yet, Denton said that in all his studies, since he couldn't find any proteins from a transitional species in anything alive today, it must mean that Darwin is wrong. And Darwin would point out that transitional species of modern animals - and their proteins - lived millions of years ago.
` Here's my own version of the Venn diagram made from Denton's cytochrome C analysis. Notice how everything is in overlapping groups, exactly as they are in the Linnean classification heirarchy.

` He said that these data made evolutionary theory "collapse" because the modern animals' proteins did not show any signs that they evolved into proteins in another animal living at the same time. Well, why would evolutionary theory predict that?
` What it does predict is that such protein findings will fit right in with the family tree of animal life - and they do:

` And yet, according to Denton, bacteria ought to be at the bottom. Bottom of what? Eukaryotes and prokaryotes have been separate for something like two billion years - that constitutes four billion years of changes because we count both branches since the common ancestor.
` So, one can see four billion years of changes between bacteria and pigeons, four billion years of changes for bacteria and yeast - you get the idea. There's the same amount of changes between modern prokaryotes and modern eukaryotes.
` As you can see here, Denton has also found this:

` So, the four billion years between bacteria and all these eukaryotes has resulted in about the same number of differences in cytochrome C. Unsurprisingly, that supports evolutionary theory absolutely, but no; Denton said that Darwin's theory dictates that bacteria ought to show more signs of being primitive, that they should be relatively close to wheat, and a little farther from silkworms, and father than that from tuna.
` Here's the part where we say, "Oh no, whales aren't fish, so Darwin was wrong!"

` (Interestingly, Denton has since retracted these arguments - and has admonished others to follow suit - because he's realized that they don't make any sense.)

Reducing Complexity

` Another Intelligent Design argument - and this is a major one - is about where bacterial flagella come from. One of the major Intelligent Design 'theorists', Michael Behe, says that they simply couldn't, and that's it. Therefore, evolution is impossible. (And by default, ID 'theory' is right.)
` I could mention that he also said that transitional fossils between land animals and whales was impossible, too....
` Behe claims that components for various body parts can't just one day appear in the right order, just as a tornado can't assemble a Boeing 747. Well, I don't think they can either, but what does that have to do with evolutionary theory?

` That's the inaccurate premise right there - and unsurprisingly, it doesn't fit with the facts.

` He says the all the parts of the bacterial flagellum must be present for the entire thing to work; there is no way that it could be functional if it's missing a part, and any of the parts cannot work by themselves. As this is firmly not the case in reality, the argument's already been proven wrong.
` But, since he chooses to ignore this fact, he will still tell you that bacterial flagella cannot be reduced and therefore have 'irreducible complexity'; their existence is only possible if a creator put all the parts together 'just so'.
` My own brashness aside, let us look at this argument from another angle: It is like saying that birds' wings simply cannot exist unless a creator 'put them on', fully-formed, because forelimbs (arms) and feathers cannot exist by themselves.
` So, this is our analogy:

[Armless, naked bird compared to modern bird]

` Actually, this is similar to what they have said about birds - except that instead of having no arms, they had tiny arms because coelurosaurs (the family of dinosaurs birds are in) apparently all had tiny arms like Tyrannosaurus.
` Actually, Tyrannosaurus is an unusual coelurosaur because it had small arms - Therizinosaurs, Oviraptors, Troodontids and Dromaeosaurs are more typical. The Dromaeosaurs - the ones most similar to birds - are called 'knuckle draggers' by the people who dig them up because their arms and hands are frequently longer than their legs and feet.
` We find the same feature with primitive birds (and most modern birds). In fact, Dromeosaurs (think Velociraptor) have more characteristics in common with primitive birds than modern birds do.

[Bird skeleton compared to dromaeosaur and crow skeletons]

` Though the fossil record at the very beginning of the bird family tree is sketchy, it is reasonable to assume that dromaeosaurs shared a close common ancestor with them. (This runs counter to the anti-evolutionist claim that Velociraptors couldn't have evolved into primitive birds because they lived after the first birds did.)
` But I digress. My point is that birds got their present characteristics from their ancestors. So, where did their wings come from, ultimately? Glad you asked: Fish have the same bones in their fins as we have in our arms and legs - they are homologous, just variations on a theme.
` Tiktaalik was a fish that had functional wrists in its fins, as well as a bendable neck - adaptations also seen in the African catfish that runs out of the water. After this species lived similar fish that had fin-like legs, so it seems to have something to do with them.
` Since then, though land vertebrates have lost several of these arm bones, the remaining ones are still homologous in all species. Therefore, legs evolved from fish fins.

[My illustration of this is pending....]

` Where did birds get their feathers? Well, if you change the genes of chickens, a type of scale they have - called a scute - turns into a feather. Dinosaurs had scutes, too, and so do crocodiles.
` You might be amused to know that I learned this while critiquing an article in Creation magazine that had a note inserted saying that 'reptillian' scales have less in common with feathers than previously thought, and this fact was discovered by a great biologist named Alan Brush - 'so there, evolution is wrong and God created everything'.
` So, I looked the article up and found that what Brush had actually discovered was that the molecular makeup of feathers are almost the same as those of scutes as well as other scales found on birds, including their beak coverings. Also, the genes involved in making scutes are the same as the ones for feathers (homologous structures come from homologous genes).
` On the other hand, 'reptillian' scales, which both lizards and birds have, were less similar in these respects.
` As the misleading article said, feathers aren't that similar to 'reptillian' scales - and this is because they came from another type of scale! Coelurosaurs certainly had feathers - though most of them had what would be called 'protofeathers', which are feathers that lack the microscopic structures to hold the fibers together.
` But, you have the basic equipment. The first birds - like the famous Archeopteryx - were basically mini-Velociraptors, retractile foot-claws and all.

` It's not like evolutionary biologists speculated that a tornado happened and suddenly the animal had feathers and wings and could fly. I believe the scientific term for that is 'magic'. Instead, they speculate that the animals already had something similar to wings and began climbing trees and/or leaping on prey, leading them onto a path that left the ground.

` Back to the flagellum argument: So Michael Behe says that a bacterial flagellum is so complex it could not have just been thrown together as, he claims, biologists think. Since that is not what biologists really think, so how is this an argument? Who does he think he's attacking?

[Caricature of Darwin]

` Not Darwin!

` Anti-evolutionists have said the same thing about eyes - what's the use of half an eye? If you look at something that actually has 'half an eye', like a flatworm, or a scollop, or even a single-celled organism, you would observe that very simple vision as opposed to complete blindness can be a matter of life and death.

[Eyes of all types]

` Each type of eye could realistically have descended from a less complex type that is similar to those in today's species - even the photosensitive cell itself: Though such cells detect light through a very long line of complex chemical reactions (something that ID proponents mention), these are almost identical to homologous pathways in other cells (which they carefully don't mention).
` Just as scientists are always learning new things about how eyes evolved, they are also learning about Behe's bacterial flagellum. For one thing, there are other, simpler types of flagella out there - 'half a flagellum' so to speak - which he curiously ignores.
` This overturns the idea that flagella are irreducibly complex; the reduced versions function perfectly fine, though they are used for different jobs. What biologists think really happened is that the flagellum Behe is talking about was put together from from these other molecular mechanisms, not by randomly clumping proteins together and accidentally making something useful.

` Now, back to birds for a minute; as I've mentioned several times, different parts and systems can evolve for one reason and then wind up being adapted for a different function later on.
` Birds once had grasping fingers, but modern birds' hands fuse into wingtips before they are born. Interestingly, the bizarre hoatzin's wings develop later than those of other birds, so it has useful opposable digits which turn into wingtips by the time it needs to fly from the nest.
` Speaking of baby birds, they are born with downy plumage - the most 'primitive' form of feather - before developing more complex 'adult' feathers. Partly for this reason, scientists think that dinosaurs had down before other types of feathers evolved.
` But what good is down? Keeping warm. Dinosaurs - as suggested by everything known about them to date - grew fast, moved fast and had high metabolisms. Especially the bird-like dinosaurs. So, it would appear that they were able to regulate their body temperatures internally.

` So, certain dinosaurs once needed 'wing' components to trap body heat and to grasp things. They had another purpose other than flight. It also turns out that each part of Behe's bacterial flagellum is homologous to other assemblies of proteins.
` A lot of them are actually found in pilins, which are structures used for exchanging genetic material between cells. The base of Behe's flagellum is homologous to at least ten proteins found in the Type III secretory apparatus, which is used for attaching to other cells and pumping chemicals into them (as found on plague bacteria).
` These 'reduced' flagellum parts are completely functional doing a different job - they don't need to be assembled 'just so' with all the other parts of Behe's example flagellum to be acted on by natural selection.
` How is Behe's complex (but not irreducibly complex) flagellum powered? Did the rotary motor just appear, like Behe says it must have for "evolution" to occur, or did it come from something else?
` Speaking to my fellow students; does anyone remember ATP synthase? It uses the energy from ions to produce a rotary motion. That very enzyme is the part. The 'irreducible' part.
` In fact, four different assemblages found in Behe's flagellum are found doing other things in other parts of cells. And, against what Behe says, cilia are also functional when disassembled.
` Well, who ever said, just because a part is being used in a particular structure, that this was its original purpose? Not this guy.

[Darwin]

` Maybe it was this other guy....

[Caricature of Darwin]

` To deny and change simple facts about biology, including the nature of evolutionary theory itself, is to create the illusion that it isn't in working order. That's what Intelligent Design Theory really is, because when you remove these distortions, ID ceases to exist.
` If it's not science, then why would anyone come up with ID 'Theory'? Instead of being put forward as an idea that could have some value for scientists, it was created to 'introduce' students to 'Jesus', as I've already shown.
` For these reasons ID proponents have been the ones working hard to sell rhetoric, not Darwin.

World's Scariest Ghosts - or World's Least Convincing Ghosts?

2007-10-23T23:36:00.000-07:00

` It's easy to be tricked by what you see. Especially if you feel absolutely sure that you know what you're seeing.
` I admit, I've been tricked this way many times - for example, just last weekend a prankster had me terrified, thinking that our downstairs neighbors were impersonating a police officer and later left me a message to tell my boyfriend that they were now going to 'get' him for calling the cops about that.
` It's a long story.
` I was glad when he came home in one piece so I could tell him that he was in danger - at the same time, the police had finally called us back. Just as they were on their way to arrest our neighbors we got a call from someone we know who said, "Oh, by the way, that was me! Wasn't that funny?"
` We told him how much it wasn't.

` It's things like this that help one realize how easy it is to be fooled - and mortally terrified by being fooled! An immature person on the phone seemed like a seedy thug to me, despite the fact that two of the details in the phone call didn't quite seem right.
` Similarly, though less frighteningly, one of my psychology teachers related the time he heard sounds that convinced him that were rats in the walls - only to find they were coming from a moth trying to escape from his skylight!
` Partial or sketchy information can evoke strong emotions - and it is for this reason that they are sometimes unwarranted. What you can't see your mind automatically makes up, or tries to, depending on what you're thinking of, and you don't necessarily notice how much of it takes place in your head. If you only think of one explanation, that explanation becomes your reality. Sometimes, though, it's the wrong explanation!

` That's why, as I've said, one of the objects of science is to rule out various explanations until you find the one that is most likely. Scientists are generally very serious about finding out the truth, though they may still accidentally pollute their own studies by being biased and then completely fail to realize it. (That's why other scientists are around to challenge them and repeat their experiments, etc.)
` It is actually normal to 'pollute' one's own life with one's own biases and opinions. Usually, this does not cause many problems, but sometimes it can - such as potentially arresting people for something they not only didn't do, but know nothing about.
` If one firmly believes in untrue things about, say, the nature of a group of people (positive or negative), or that certain people have a special privilege to impose whatever they like upon others, it's been known to sometimes create very large problems.
` If everyone looked at themselves the way scientists looked at the universe, more people would, for example, find more out about where their own ideas and attitudes come from, and in the process, better understand how easy it is to trick themselves.

` Though learning how to 'look before you leap to conclusions' would benefit anyone, it is sometimes discouraged and looked down upon here in America. This is reflected (and exacerbated) by the general lack of any serious questioning to extraordinary, questionable claims as presented on television shows (or in reams of books).
` Sometimes, when there is critique, either not much is shown or it is otherwise presented in such a way that it doesn't appear to make a dent in the claims. The evidence shown for them, on the other hand, is generally dubious or ephemeral, but is made to look as firm and substantial as possible.
` This is because the main point of television shows is to gain viewers. If people actually think that something is both dramatic and real, they are more likely to keep watching. In the days before I got rid of my television, I used to watch educational programming, and even then I observed that a lot of it had inaccuracies and flaws - sometimes atrociously so!

` To reiterate; for monetary reasons, proper representation on TV is less important than creating sensationalism or letting sloppiness and misunderstandings take hold. As far as criticizing extraordinary claims, there are only a few shows that actually have done so while many more only pretend to, effectively mocking skepticism by doing a splendidly bad job of imitating it - then taking the whole 'investigation' seriously!
` A lot of people, I am sure, do not know the difference between a real critical investigation and a cheap imitation, so this type of thing would be good enough at leading some of them to laugh at skeptics.
` Really, I think a good dose of learning how to ask questions, the way a scientist would, is just the sort of thing American citizens need more of.

` Since it's nearing Halloween, I thought I would post a critical review of a television show featuring both video and photographic 'evidence' that some people insist are real ghost activity. I will demonstrate how very easy it is to find much more plausible explanations for these 'haunting' images despite the fact that none are offered throughout the entire program.

` I am talking about one entitled 'World's Scariest Ghosts'. Long ago I may have believed these videos to be compelling evidence of real goings-on, but now I see a variety of other things happening, or potentially happening.

` Go ahead and start loading up the video now, if you like, so you can see exactly what I'm talking about.

` The opening announcement, concerning the ghostly cases presented in the show says, '...But none can be authenticated. Are they real? You decide.'
` Though this program supposedly involves 'paranormal investigators' and 'experts', all we really have is emotional eyewitness accounts and footage of things that don't look particularly supernatural. There are zero attempts to verify whether or not anything strange had gone on. That must be why the viewers are supposed to be the ones to decide!

Mysterious Liquid, Noises, and People Generally Freaking Out

` The first segment deals with a woman, 'Jackie' who kept feeling like there was an evil activity in her home, and says that it has to do with a reddish-orange liquid, which is pooled on a shelf in her cabinet - in addition, there is what appears to be dark yellow glue in a line above the top shelf.
` We see no one asking what it is or trying to find where it comes from. It could even be put there by someone, as we don't see it emerging from anywhere.
` This reminds me that there also used to be reddish-orange liquid dripping from my present bathroom's ceiling. These were probably 'stalactites' of nicotine stains left by the previous tenants. Well, at least they'd killed the mildew off.

` The stomping noises in her attic might conceivably be water dripping on metal or the roof changing shape due to temperature - I generally ignore similar sounds. (Though, many times I heard footsteps in the attic above me and they turned out to be from a homeless woman taking shelter during the winter.)
` I am slightly amused by how horrified investigator Jeff Wheatcraft looks when he went into the attic and was allegedly almost strangled by a cord hanging from a nail - he says a ghost was responsible for this. In truth, similar things have happened to me. I don't know how, but my head gets caught in things when I'm probing around with a flashlight and I don't see them until I back away and find that something is wrapped around my neck!
` Presumably, he could also have been staging this 'assault' - or exaggerating something that happened accidentally. He has good reason to because this is for a television show which requires drama. You know, like so-called 'reality' shows?
` Interestingly, this incident is not on tape, though if it had been, it supposedly would have been more compelling that a ghost was actually attacking the man. All we see is a photograph of a fearful-looking Jeff standing precariously on a rafter with his head stuck at an odd angle in a twisted cord.
` Then, towards morning, Jackie goes ballistic because she believes the ghost has attacked her baby. Why? Because she suddenly notices a red mark on the baby's forehead. It could be a bruise that took a while to appear, or - who knows? - it could be some of that dripping, reddish-orange stuff! Sometimes things happen that nobody notices. It's also really emotionally engaging when it's your baby you believe is in trouble.
` So says the narrator, Jackie moved out after that and the house has been quiet since then. Okay. That statement seems to tell us more about Jackie than the house.

` In any case, there is nothing that can be seen or heard that is really unusual - just the way the people are reacting - and we see no attempt to narrow down possibilities of what may be going on. Really, lots of spooky things happen all the time to me, though generally I figure out what's happened eventually.

Objects Moving With No Visible Cause

` The second segment is a bit better than the first because it supposedly shows actual poltergeist activity before our eyes! Now, poltergeist activity quite often turns out to be children (yes, even very young ones) who find that pretending they are being attacked by unseen forces gets them attention. Keep that in mind.
` On the other hand, the next video shows a glass being dragged across a table a few inches, the typewriter next to it being rotated by one corner, a reclining chair being rocked, and then the sound of the door being slammed again and again.
` The video after that, from an entirely different person, shows some invisible force grabbing the leg of a chair and pulling it offscreen, then a piece of sheet rock appears out of the new wall and is similarly pulled up through the air and off the other side of the screen.
` Invisible forces? Sure; fishing line is even more invisible on videotape than it is on film. The simplicity of the movements (i.e. objects moving from one 'attachment point' in a straight line) would suggest that this is what is being used.

A Family Secret?

` Here we have Ed and Lorraine Warren, who are well-known to have been entertainers and phony ghost hunters - that's right, they weren't even real ghost hunters! According to people who have investigated the Warrens, they were a kooky old couple that consistently distorted actual stories of hauntings and were very secretive about their very dubious 'evidence' of ghosts - some of which was actually exposed as being obviously hoaxed and/or misrepresented (the best-known case probably being The Amityville Horror).

` But, I digress - I'm supposed to be focusing on alleged effects by ghosts in this account: First, we hear some table-tapping in response to Ed's questions in a kind of 'séance'. It can easily be faked by any one of the people sitting around the table.
` I could mention here that the entire spiritualism movement (mediums, séances, etc.) was started in 1848 by the young Fox sisters, who found clever ways to trick people into thinking that their questions were being answered by ghostly rapping sounds.
` Later on, they came up with new tricks, such as producing lights, ghostly hands and 'spirit-writing'. By the time Margaret Fox began a tour of public demonstrations of how she could seem to produce rapping sounds from any part of a theater, spiritualism in general had far too long been out of her control to stop.
` So, who knows? Someone could be tapping the table with their foot or cracking their toe joint against it. The camera does not even peer under the table!

` Next, we see footage of the table itself, with Ed apparently alone and to the left of the video camera. One of the chairs moves toward the left of the camera where Ed must be, pulled by one leg. Was it fishing wire? (It's hard to say, as the legs of the chairs are difficult to see.)
` Then, the chair moves again while at precisely the same time the camera is also bumped - my guess is that this was Ed bumping the camera while pulling the chair himself. Then, "in the name of Jesus Christ", the entire table along with the chairs slides towards Ed. (Fishing wire is indeed strong enough to do that with.)

` Again at the table, we next find the little girl doing homework, and her elbows are firmly braced against the tabletop while her feet are wrapped around the front legs of the chair. It is very easy to lean the chair back on two legs from this position, which is what she appears to be doing. Try it and see!
` But what is said about this in the video? 'Oh, her feet aren't touching the floor, which means she can't be doing this herself; therefore, a ghost must be responsible.' That's a huge leap of logic, especially since the truth is really the opposite; you can't tip a chair like that without your ankles or feet 'grabbing' it like she is, because this motion is a sort of abdominal crunch rather than a pushing-down with the arms.
` All one has to do is lean against a table, hug a chair with one's legs, and lift up one's feet. The chair is easily picked up. If one tries doing the same thing with one's feet on the floor, the only thing that lifts up is one's feet.
` Similarly, when the table is 'pushed out' from under her, she simply appears to be pushing the table - which similarly can only be done if one's feet are hanging onto one's chair for leverage: If someone puts their feet on the floor and pushes, they are simply pushed away from the table. Try it yourself!
` It's simple body mechanics, really - I suspect that the only people who are fooled into thinking this video must be supernatural have probably never tried doing it themselves (or at least realized it if they were doing it).

Waking Up, Unable To Move

` Here are some eyewitnesses describing seeing people, feeling presences, etc. which I find to be perfectly plausible; I have had such experiences myself since the age of two. Most recently, I woke up one morning to find that I was on my side, looking over at the floor. I couldn't move. I thought, 'oh, this again'. Then, I heard someone walking towards me and I could feel the mattress sink as they stepped onto it.
` It was a man, who started saying some nasty stuff he was going to do. I said "No." he said "Yes."
` I couldn't see him, though, and I started to think for a moment that he was real and began to be frightened. I finally managed to move enough to roll over and found that I was alone - but that didn't stop me from having to calm myself down afterwards.
` I've had many similar experiences and have seen and heard many things, from a roommate I'd had at the time wrestling with the cat near the bed, to completely floating off through the wall and into an alien spaceship.
` It's called sleep paralysis - it can be a usual occurrence for some people, and can happen to seemingly anyone under certain conditions, especially if they are under a lot of stress. It's a period of time when some of your brain acts as if it's awake - so you might think you're wide awake - while other parts aren't yet.
` As a result, it can really appear to you as if something is watching you, as if your chest is being crushed (you can't gasp for air), as if you are being restrained, as if you are being raped, as if you are being lifted into the room, as if you are being rotated, as if small creatures of some sort are kidnapping you, and you may hear or see a variety of different things - often terrifying, even to people who study sleep paralysis.
` These can be very emotional experiences, and records of them go back thousands of years.

` Most noticeable is that you can't move. This starts because when you are dreaming, the part of your brain that allows voluntary movement is shut down. (On the other hand, acting out dreams occurs when that part of your brain is not turned off while you are dreaming; however, sleepwalking is different because it takes place between dreams when you aren't paralyzed.)
` During sleep paralysis, part of you is aware of the room around you while part of you is 'dreaming'. So, you are still unable to move as if you were dreaming, plus you may have strange and unusual sensations around you that are often influenced by the paralysis itself, including vivid hallucinations that you may or not be able to distinguish from reality.
` That doesn't mean you're crazy, of course, just that you're not fully awake, and you're not experiencing reality like you normally would.
` What these people are describing are textbook cases of sleep paralysis - being paralyzed, feeling as if they're being held down, being unable to speak, seeing figures, sensing telepathic communication, etc. Classic examples.
` So I would say that in this segment, we have typical examples of a phenomenon that's well-known, fairly common, and many people who have these experiences are convinced that something has happened in the 'real world' outside their heads.
` In other words, this isn't unusual. How is it evidence for ghosts?

Wildland Music Video 'Figure'

` As for the supposed 'ghost' in the Wildland music video, shot in the former town of Glenn Davis. This one is extremely easy to explain, especially since nobody claims to have seen it in real life.
` The first thing I noticed is that it doesn't move. The second thing I noticed is that is doesn't look like a person. Now, this film is black and white, so all we have is a twisted, dark lump (metal?) that vaguely resembles the body of a human figure standing in and leaning against an opening in what is left of a wall. Because it does not overlap with the top and side of the opening, it would actually appear to be some sort of debris that has fallen from the building and was still propped up against it, just behind the wall.
` Above the first lump is another dark shape that appears to be of the same stuff, coming out from behind the wall just above the first lump - it looks to be part of the same object, curled around.
` It is positioned just so that it looks like it could be a hat. But there is no head - you can easily see a white panel on the building behind and a post, which create a continuous background both above and below the 'hat'. However, they are aligned with the edge of the 'hat' so as to create the illusion of a light-colored 'face' - though it is clearly visible above the 'hat' as well.
` If you don't notice that is is just part of the background, it may look like a disjointed parallel line where the face should be that moves at a different rate as the camera moves - and that is basically what the director of the music video is saying it is, except he also evidently thinks that this movement is evidence of being the face of a ghost!
` Why investigate the deaths of poor miners or priests who had once lived there? The dark part is clearly not something that overlaps with the top or sides of the opening in the wall, and it sinks behind it as the camera moves. Also shifting in perspective, relative to the dark parts, is the lighter part, which is clearly part of the background. It does not look like a face, and is obviously not even part of the same object.
` As the producer of the video said; "There's no doubt in my mind whatsoever that that was a ghost." Personally, I'd rather believe my own eyes.

A Projected Light

` This video is clearly a projected light that is moving across the surface of one side of the hallway wall, flittering over door frames and other objects, shrinking at the far end of the hall, and then growing again as it slides nearer, over the surface of the other long wall and off the edge of the screen.
` The shape is flat, narrow, and near the floor, apparently unvarying except for the fact that it is distorted by the objects it's hitting - it looks like it could be a reflection, or from a car headlight coming in from a crack beneath a curtain.
` But, the man who lives in the house, Edgar, thinks it's actually the ghostly arm of his mother, walking across the hall and into a doorway. (I don't see anything like an arm, nor do I see it entering a doorway at any point.)
` The reason he believes this, though, is because he set up the camera to film whatever's making the footsteps he hears at night. Okay, I used to hear footsteps coming from one part of the house I grew up in - the part of the house my grandpa had once lived in.
` I heard them from the floor above, I heard them from the basement. They generally happened only in the afternoon and at night. I had always assumed that it was the house expanding or contracting in response to the temperature.
` Silly me, it could have been my grandpa's ghost! I should have set up a video camera. But wait - I also heard them when he was still alive, and he was scarcely even able to walk. Wait a second....

The Greencastle Mansion

` Onto the photos of the abandoned mansion during a spooky lightning storm. First, there's a strong smell like sulphur and roses. I'm not sure what smells like sulphur and roses, though there's no reason a smell would be supernatural. Perhaps it's from something that's been rotting in there for a while?
` Then the photographer said he heard a heartbeat in his head, but it wasn't his. How can he be sure? I've heard my own heartbeat and not realized it was mine because I was paying too close attention to things that were frightening me. In fact, once I was so scared I didn't know my own hand was my own hand - I thought some weird, scaly thing was touching me until I looked down!

` As for the pictures of the 'ghosts' seen in the upstairs windows - they are obviously light reflecting off the 'melted'-looking old glass. Know how I can tell? Look closely - they are seen behind the outer façade of the building, but in front of the windowsill and frame on the interior of the room!
` The three photos of the 'pink lady' show exactly the same thing - a pattern in the wavy glass with a crack in it - though with slight variations which could be caused by shifting position slightly between photos. Whatever the light is from (the flash?) it's definitely on the glass.
` So, the 'photographic expert' saying that they're very interesting because they're really on the film has nothing to do with their authenticity. The 'computer graphics expert' is then shown distorting the images with a 'bas relief' filter (he pronounces is 'bass' relief), which I've observed exaggerates the depth of any image so that it makes small photos of real people look like skeletons, rotting zombies, or completely unrecognizable shapes. For that reason, I don't like using it.
` But our expert here is now baffled that the 'face' in the photo now looks like a skull. Yes, and so would a good number of other face-like images. I fail to be surprised.
` Somehow, it's then important to find out who once lived in the house. Fair enough. Apparently, there was a woman named Irene O'Hare. The name was also found scratched on the bedroom wall - there also appears to be more writing below that. Is a name clumsily written on a wall evidence of a dead person because they lived there?
` I have a friend whose bedroom closet was lined with writing and signed with the name of a girl who'd had lived in the house before him. Does that mean she had died, or rather would it suggest that nobody washed her closet wall before the family had moved?

` There's also the matter of the 'gold ghost'. It is similar to the 'pink lady' - it's a blobby shape and can be seen in front of the interior window frame, so once again it must be on the surface of the glass. This time, however, it's gold rather than pink.
` The clouds seen in the camera could be the cameraman's breath drifting through the flashlight beam - I have inadvertantly videotaped my breath sneakily doing the same thing, even when the weather is warm (but moist, like in a thunderstorm). It looks just like that; my face is on the left side of the camera because I, like most people, am holding it with my right hand, so it's coming from left to right, even with the same rhythm.
` On a related note, someone I know sent me a picture he took while working as 'the chainsaw guy' in a haunted corn maze last year... on which he was shocked to see a 'smiling' ghost! He quickly realized it had been his breath.

Strange Shapes in Photos

` After more bits of descriptions of random ghostly encounters, we move onto photos of a little girl named Carrissa.
` I have seen these exact same shapes - ribbons of various widths that have perfectly evenly-spaced ribs running through them. I don't remember what the people at the camera shop said they were, but I know that a lot of different ones I had were common defects and they see it all the time.
` As I was quite the aspiring photographer, it really bothered me when I took a really nice picture and a huge part of it had this thing that looked like mist or lightning or textured-looking ribbons all over it - sometimes they would extend across the film from one photo and into the next. Some, the camera shop people said, were due to light leaks in my camera, and some are due to this annoying thing that tends to be right at the end of rolls of film.
` When I got a new camera, I stopped getting some of those defects. Now, why it is that apparently nobody took those pictures to a camera shop or photo developing expert to ask what they might be, I can't say. Maybe they don't care what it is?
` Then, the narrator tells us that her story is "strangely similar to the film The Sixth Sense." Well, the girl hasn't said that she sees 'dead people', nor does she describe seeing strange things - only that something is scaring her - so what is the parallel again?
` Perhaps the next segment seems like a better match, but from the looks of it, not really.

A Little Boy's Story

` Photos of this boy, Justin, reveal very similar-looking shapes as ones seen in Carrissa. I'd say this may be due to a common kind of photo defect. He says, though, that he sees ghosts of people.
` So, maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. Children do seem to see things that are not there - like gnomes. Does that mean gnomes are real? Or maybe they are just pretending that they do.
` As he is telling his story, his wide-eyed nervous smile suggests to me that he might be lying and is so excited because he can't believe he's getting away with it. Especially the very animated way he's saying "closer, and closer, and closer, and closer...."
` The many-times-over-exposed fake, James Van Praagh, is precisely the wrong person to introduce into this situation, because his job is exploiting people for money - even if it's giving them his (as it turns out) completely wrong guesses as to what's happened to their missing child, etc.
` With Van Praagh 'investigating' on this scene, Justin looks like he is thinking 'Wow, I can't believe he is pretending, too!' If Justin is just making stuff up (and since it's been well-established that Van Praagh does the same thing) he is of course going to agree that the police sketches are what he sees.

Orbs

` The 'orbs' in the basement in the first house look to be moths flying in and out of the infrared spotlight - the camera guy is the one telling the woman that they're even there! I'm not sure what the 'V' shaped object could be, though it could be part of a cobweb slowly falling to the ground.
` Anomalous electromagnetic and temperature readings? How do they know where the orbs are if only the cameraman can see them? Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I don't see them doing any kind of control tests, nor can I tell what they're measuring, so how could I tell if they aren't the normal EM and temperature readings expected in this basement, or basements in general? (Basements are where hot and cold water, electricity, as well as heating and cooling generally spring from, so lots of fluctuations are possible.)

` And then the other people with the other house with the other orbs - those look more like out-of-focus specks of dust in a spotlight. I see them all the time in cameras.
` The furniture was moved? Maybe someone was in there! Or maybe they were mistaken, as people sometimes come home to be alarmed that their furniture wasn't where they'd thought they'd left it.
` Similar things are still vivid in my memory, like the time I toppled a four-foot tall houseplant, or the time someone accidentally knocked a hole through a wall where everyone walked, etc. Neither of my parents noticed these types of things, sometimes for months until just 'one day', one of them would walk in the door and stop being blind to it. (So, even if it wasn't my fault, as the family scapegoat I was severely punished for my parents' inability to see things when they first had happened.)

` I can tell that the 'backyard' orbs are definitely not in the backyard. To begin with, I fist noticed that they do not go farther away or closer to the camera - they move on a 2D plane. The announcer says that they go around the trees - I'm presuming, behind the trees - but I can't see what he's talking about.
` The smoking gun? Watch the one on the left. If you're not paying attention, it appears to move off the left edge of the sliding glass doorway... but on second glance, it ends right where the glass ends, not the edge of the doorway, which blocks the view of the yard!
` Anyone can see, plain as day, that it actually goes in front of the brick on the house - much like the 'pink' and 'gold' ghosts went in front of the inside window frames!

` That's right, these are just projections onto the sliding glass doors! So, then the narrator mentions that Steve, the guy who's doing the filming, does not think that these 'orbs' can be due to "any known camera tricks". How about the one where you turn off the lights in your living room and hold small lights, which reflect off the glass? I bet he knows that one!
` Up next, we have the giant, freaky, globby orb. It looks a lot like an oval mirror that may not be perfectly smooth, or a shiny platter or similar object that's reflecting a small light source. Just before moving into an area where it's light enough to tell whether or not someone was carrying it, it suddenly moves downwards and offscreen. (Yes, the 'trails' of light are normal on videos taken in dark places.)

McPike Mansion

` So here, we have images of what appears to be large droplets of mist, or particles of something, which are swirling around a small basement room. The people say that these were dry and felt electrically-charged. If they were, that might explain why they were rushing around the room so fast.
` It might also explain the described sightings of balls of light - naturally or artificially-occurring electricity can cause some very odd spectacles, including ball lightning and St. Elmo's fire.
` No attempt is shown to even ask someone who studies things like air currents, humidity, electrically-charged dust, etc. to take a stab at cracking what it could be. Though I myself don't know what it is, I would rather ask an expert in meteorology before jumping to the conclusion that it's simply unexplainable.

So...

` Overall, what this show presents are people's emotions and absolutely no images that can't be explained by some down-to-earth phenomenon - especially when the illusion is very apparent, or when there is none at all. Even so, I would expect that there are those who are taken in by some, if not all, of these very poor presentations of evidence for ghosts.
` 'But none can be authenticated.' That might be because they look authentically unimpressive.
` 'Are they real?' Maybe to some of the people on the show.
` 'You decide.' I've decided that anyone who thinks these video representations are of real ghosts probably has not tried to imagine other ways in which they could be created.
` I think that programs like this - not to mention ones of the Unsolved Mysteries sort - are an insult to human intelligence. They really do expect some people to believe it, just like that.

` Not surprisingly, the way in which I came to find it was when I frequented the Skeptic forum - it was chosen basically for it's 'insult' value. Basically, everyone there laughed at it.
` I'm sorry, but frightened people and effects that could be duplicated by almost anyone are not my idea of convincing images of ghosts. If I saw a video of something like a water glass that started floating through the air, turning all about, and changing directions, that would at least get my brain puzzling. (Many strands of fishing wire? Computer graphics?)
` In one of the other threads, the Skeptics all got together and recounted stories of when they were really fooled into thinking they had seen something they had not. I recall one participant relating the time it appeared as if a gnome wearing a pointed hat and a tiny dog were crossing the street, silhouetted in the sunlight.
` Upon further examination, in the shade, the 'gnome' with the little 'dog' turned out to be a skunk with its tail in the air; the contour of the tail just happened to look gnomish!
` Similarly, another forum responder told of the time, after her mother had died, she saw what looked like her mother's head of hair on her pillow! Then, it appeared to 'get up' and was out of view beyond the doorway. If she hadn't have stayed around to check out the situation, she might have thought something strange was going on - luckily, she stuck around to see the dog coming out of the room, and for the first time, she noticed that the dog's fur looked a lot like her mom's hair!
` Most creepy of all was the guy who told of attending his grandfather's funeral as a child - which, as is the case with children, he thought of as somewhat amusing, which made him feel guilty and nervous. After being very serious at the casket to assuage his fears, he turned around to see... his grandfather coming up the aisle! He thought his own grandfather's ghost was irritated that he wasn't showing more respect, and panicked.
` Seconds later, his parents were there to tell him that it was actually his grandpa's estranged twin brother that nobody ever told him about. He didn't talk to his parents for a few weeks after that.

` Of course, I can't verify that these claims are true any more than I can the claims of the people on World's Scariest Ghosts. But, at least the stories don't require an article of faith to believe that they are physically possible. They are at worst hypothetical examples.
` It's easy to be fooled by illusions. Remember - it's not that illusions aren't real, they are simply real things that appear to be something they're not. Even our own senses employ illusions so that our brains put together a coherent picture.
` Asking 'why' is only the first step in any part of science, or of events in everyday life. Narrowing down the most possible explanation - a process which I've written about on this blog, and will do more of in the future - is something that needs to be made familiar to everyone.
` If it were, I don't think that television presentations like these (or even ones only half as credulous) could be used to grab ratings right and left the way they are.

` In my opinion, when such ridiculousness is met with enough ridicule to make people in the television industry think twice about using it for ratings (unless these shows are made to be laughed at instead), then probably a great deal of progress would have had to have been made in familiarizing the public about how to evaluate how well 'evidence' actually matches up to whatever explanation is being presented.
` Credibility, not only of presentations or debates, but also perhaps of our society, would seem to be at stake.

John Kansius and his spectacular burning salt water

2007-10-04T19:56:00.000-07:00

` It would be darn useful if the most common liquid in the world - salt water - could be used as a fuel. John Kanzius, a Pennsylvania man, says that he accidentally discovered a way of doing this when trying to desalinize some saline water - with a radiofrequency field.
` Supposedly, his radiofrequency transmitter breaks up the water molecules and releases hydrogen, which can then be ignited and turn back into water - and the cycle continues.
` Kanzius is not a scientist, however; he's a former broadcasting executive. Speaking of broadcasts, this 'amazing new development' has been on news programs around the country, though curiously, it hasn't been much of a hit among physicists.

` Allegedly, the radiofrequency field breaks the oxygen away from the hydrogen in water, but my question is (besides "does it actually work?"); "if he really is doing this, then is more energy coming out of it than what was put in?"
` In fact, Kanzius says it can't, which indeed makes perfect sense because doing this would mean his device is the basis for a perpetual motion machine that uses salt water fuel. As you may know, any perpetual-motion machine - by definition - requires that the first law of thermodynamics (the conservation of energy) as well as the second (the law of entropy) be broken.
` So ask yourself, could he really do that?

` As my biology teacher has explained, certain molecules can be fuel because they contain stored energy. Carbohydrates, for example, are a plant's way to store solar energy, and when an animal's digestive system breaks them down, that energy is released.
` Water, however, it not one of them. Sure, people break the hydrogen atoms off the oxygen atoms all the time when converting water into hydrogen fuel.
` However, that takes a lot of energy - usually in the form of petroleum products (at least for now), which raises the question of whether or not hydrogen fuel technology is a good idea right now. See, burning hydrogen fuel cannot possibly make as much energy as it needs to be created in the first place, so exactly how is it more energy-efficient?
` Even so, hydrogen is still a fuel because it can be burned to create energy - and water. Water, on the other hand (with or without salt) requires a lot of force to break apart, and doing this to water merely drains an energy source rather than releasing energy.

` So really, water is an exhaust product, not a fuel, and every time someone says it is, they never do manage to demonstrate it. Some are even caught cheating the public by selling unwitting citizens their patented devices or water-based fuels.
` Stanley Meyer is one such hoaxer - self-proclaimed inventor of the 'water-powered car' - who was charged with "gross and egregious fraud" in 1996. Conspiracy theories about him spout that the oil companies did nothing but give him trouble, and eventually poisoned him at a restaurant in 1998. (The coroner said he died of an aneurysm, but he was bribed to say that, right?)
` No one ever did figure out how his fuel cell was supposed to work.

` In Kanzius' case, he does not claim that this process creates energy - all it really does is cause the radiofrequency emitter to eat brutal amounts of electricity - but he does insist on the possibility that the laws of physics will not get in his way.
` We shall see, Kanzius, we shall see.

The 'Hobbits' of Flores: Hasn't anyone figured them out yet?

2007-09-21T20:52:00.000-07:00

Last updated September 26.

` On the Indonesian island of Flores, the natives tell stories of a long-gone, diminutive and hairy 'cave people' called Ebu-Gogo. Ebu means 'grandmother' and gogo means 'one-who-eats-anything' - they were said to have lacked cooking skills. These human-like creatures are said to have constantly raided crops and eaten anything they were given, from raw meat to the gourd-dishes the food was placed on!
` They were said to be no taller than three feet with long hair, pot bellies, ears that stuck out a bit, longish arms and fingers, and a slightly awkward gait - they were clearly built for walking, but could also climb slender trees very well.
` Ebu-Gogo women were noted for their long breasts which they reportedly slung over their shoulders. (The women of the village Labuan Baju in the far west also have somewhat long breasts and therefore the 'LBJ' villagers are often made fun of for allegedly interbreeding with the Ebu Gogo!)
` Though they were said to be able to 'murmur' to one another in some form of speech, talking to the Ebu-Gogo was described as being rather like talking to a parrot - you could say whatever you wanted to them, but they would only repeat what you had said.

` Now, there are many convincing explanations for similar stories of 'little people' the world over (some that involve short humans and some that don't), though the Ebu-Gogo legend is distinguished by being the only such legend to potentially (maybe, perhaps, plausibly) have more literal credence since the discovery of tiny homonin fossils in a cave called Liang Bua.
` The small-brained people are tentatively named Homo floresiensis - and commonly are known as 'hobbits' - though it is unclear exactly how closely they are related to us. However, since the 'hobbits' may have gone extinct ten thousand years ago or further, the idea that the natives' stories were passed down from memories of living individuals is doubtful.

` Nevertheless, it is possible that the natives may have come across these small skeletons themselves and made up the tales to preserve the knowledge of the old bones:
` It is well-documented that people of other cultures have done the same thing. Among Native Americans for example, a gigantic vulture-like bird preserved in a cave seems to have sparked stories of a terrible bird that ate people; bird-like dinosaur footprints are used as religious symbols, thought to be the tracks of thunderbirds or sky-gods; mammoth skeletons were thought of as the bones of mythical giants or great beasts; skeletons of large mammals and dinosaurs seem to be represented quite often in myths about the development of the earth.

` In any case, there is proof of very small people who really did live on Flores - right alongside modern human beings, in fact! Since that discovery, in 2003, the question has been raging; how much like us were they? Are they even a different species?

` This was my take on the first reports of the first 'hobbit' find: Moisture-softened bones (like 'blotting paper') from several of these these Homo floresiensis were found spanning several layers in Liang Bua alongside those of animals such as giant monitor lizards, dog-sized rats, and miniature versions of prehistoric elephants of the genus Stegodon.
` In addition there were the remains of firepits (evidently they could cook) and numerous stone cores, flakes, reworked tools (points, blades, microblades) and anvils that look like they could have been made by our own species. The bottom-most remains dated at 94,000 years ago to the most recent at about 14,000 or 13,000 years back - and through it all, the tools stayed the same.

` The official opinion was that they might be a miniature version of something like Homo erectus, a species that lived in the region, which might have migrated to the island and become smaller after living there for several generations - much like the many miniaturized instances of other species, such as the pygmy Stegodon.
` In fact, every so often the Stegodons would go extinct and then more large ones would migrate over from the mainland and shrink, one population after another. Evidently, it was an easy enough place for them to get to, though they most likely swam considering that herds of elephants can sometimes be seen swimming out to sea towards islands. (Many islands, anywhere from off the coast of California to just north of Russia, were also populated by very small versions of mainland elephant species.)
` How H. floresiensis ended up there, no one can say. Though the nearby island of Java used to be populated by H. erectus, it had also been connected to the mainland by a land bridge. Flores wasn't, as far as anyone can tell. It is tempting to think that 'hobbit' ancestors were capable of making boats, though there is also no evidence of this. Whatever happened, once they got there, they stayed there, and assuming they had once been bigger, they shrank.

` Miniaturization is common in rainforests or islands (or rainforested islands like Flores), which are environments with few available nutrients. Presumably it happens because a healthy breeding population is not so easily supported on the available resources at the species' 'normal' size. In these types of environments, native peoples can be found who rarely grow much taller than five feet - this includes African, Melanesian, New Guinean and Southeast Asian groups.
` A complete female H. floresiensis skeleton shows an individual that was much smaller - only three feet tall and around fifty-five pounds in weight, with longish arms. From what is known about an individual known as LB1 (a.k.a. 'Ebu' or 'Our Little Lady of Flores') - they had a face similar to ours, yet the cranium was the size of a grapefruit, more like that of a much older human relative, the similar-sized Australopithecus.
` The team determined that the skull was from an adult individual - around thirty years of age - from many clues, not the least of which was that the permanent molars had all erupted and had undergone years of wear.

` Early on, the scientists wondered if a person with such a small brain could be capable of making tools that resemble those of our own species from many areas of the world, while Homo erectus fossils have never been associated with anything this advanced.
` It could be that they had gotten the tool ideas from humans - who lived alongside H. floresiensis for roughly 45,000 years - though from elsewhere, as humans had presumably arrived on the island thousands of years after H. floresiensis established their first colony and primitive technology.
` What seems to be much more likely is that they had figured it out on their own. After all, the largest genetic difference between us and chimpanzees concerns genes that affect the way the brain functions, and a human brain is structurally different from a chimp brain:
` Judging by the inner surface of the skull, H. floresiensis had a rather human-like brain. Though chimps and 'hobbits' had similar-sized brains, perhaps this is not quite as large of an issue as it seems!
` However the tools came to be, they evidently were made by H. floresiensis, as they were smaller than tools from H. sapiens, and not surprisingly, the right size for them. The little people were also apparently organized enough to hunt and butcher Stegodons, especially young ones, whose bones - which also show evidence of being cooked - were much more common in the cave deposits than adult remains.

` How unusual - a species that was incredibly small, seemingly had high intelligence, and yet what a small brain! It only got stranger.
` A bit later on in time I had read science reports that attempts to find similarities between the H. floresiensis braincase and those of people who were pygmies or who had dwarfism or microcaphaly had continued to fail.
` Archaeologists like Peter Brown and Richard Roberts reported that the fossils had many Australopithecus-like traits (besides those that occur from having a short stature), and interestingly none of these had been recorded in modern humans of any kind.
` Their detractors insisted that perhaps these were merely some growth-challenged people and that the skull that had been found just happened to be from a microcephalic - which is funny, because people with microcephaly don't tend to live very long.

` A few months later, I continued trying to find information about more published studies concerning the 'hobbits', but they seemed to have had stopped at the moment.
` Then I discovered a potential reason why when I came across interview transcripts from an Australia Broadcasting Corporation show called Lateline. The first transcript (Nov 25, 2004) is an interview by Tony Jones of the aforementioned Richard Roberts at the University of Wollogong.
` They discuss the huge amount of drama concerning a professor Teuku Jacob - who was not involved with the project - taking the team's findings and claiming that they were modern human bones! He allegedly kept them away from anyone who disagreed with his viewpoint and seems to have even told a few lies to help justify his behavior.
` This, in my opinion, is even more sensational than the idea of a tribal legend with parallels to a fossil species! I mean, scientists may be scientists, but sometimes there will be some who fail to act accordingly.
` Jones and Roberts comment on what had happened...

TONY JONES: It's an extraordinary situation. This was billed as one of the great scientific discoveries of our time?

PROFESSOR RICHARD ROBERTS: It is. It has moved beyond science now into the political arena. We're trying to take it back to the scientific arena which is where it belongs.
It shouldn't be used as a trophy to trade around as a power base. It is something for the scientific community to say; 'This is what it is or isn't.'
I don't object to Professor Jacob having a different view from ourselves. I think he should let others look at the material and he can come to his own conclusions as can everyone else.

` It is strongly implied that Jacob was not being objective. So, why do most of the archaeologists involved - or otherwise - think that Jacob's opinion was wrong? And why did Jacob insist he was right? I found this to be rather telling;

PROFESSOR RICHARD ROBERTS: ...Microcephaly is an extremely rare disease amongst modern humans.
The fact we have found a human with microcephaly would be an acheivement. The probabilities of finding it are vanishingly small. The fact that we now have seven indiviuals, from this cave, presumably all with microcephaly... the chances of that are utterly remote.
Let's take a point of argument that this particular individual with a small brain is a microcephalic individual, is such an individual. They have other features that indicate they're not suffering from microcephaly, they have unusual tooth structures - three roots to the teeth.
You find those in three-million-year-old people like Lucy in Africa, that only exist in very early Homo erectus. You don't find those with modern humans. We don't suddenly develop three roots to the teeth. Nor do you suddenly develop long arms if you have microcephaly. And that's what the hobbit has, they have slightly longer arming compared to ourselves.
The pelvis is wider than in modern humans. They have very thick eyebrow ridges. None of these are features of microcephaly. When you look at a complete set of features of the skeleton, one or two of them might be credible as being microcephalic problems, but the rest of them can't be explained by microcephaly.
If you pick some of the ones like Professor Jacob has done I can understand how he reached that conclusion. But not on the basis of all available features.

...None of the referees on the papers, and we had lots of them, of course they were looking for something simple like this, saying it's a modern human suffering from a medical problem, it's something the referees on the paper thought 'is this going to be the explanation?' and they quickly reached the conclusion, 'it's not the explanation.'
This is definitely a new species of human. In fact, so different, originally Peter Brown even thought this was a new genus of human, that's how different they are. Professor Jacob is really out there by himself.
Interestingly, it is history come full term again. Every time a new human species is discovered, suddenly everyone is saying it's some sort of demented modern human.

TONY JONES: I was going to say you have to be a bit philosophical about it. This is pretty much what happened with the Neanderthal man?

PROFESSOR RICHARD ROBERTS: That's right. They were first thought to be some poor cossack who got stuck in a cave and died or some demented human.
Same with the first Homo erectus, Java man, people thought; 'Oh, look, he's a sad case of a poor soul who's a demented human.' As the fossils began to accumulate, everyone says, 'No, that's not the case.' We've now got too many 'demented humans' for that to be an explanation. It's a new species.

TONY JONES: From Professor Jacob's point of view there's some history here. He refers to a Dutch Priest called Verhoven who made similar claims for a discovery in the 1950's, at least that's who the professor is saying. It appears he was directly involved in refuting those claims. Is history repeating itself for him?

PROFESSOR RICHARD ROBERTS: Verhoven was the first person who found this cave. He was a very talented archaeologist, be he was a full-time priest, or was supposed to be a full-time priest, but he did an awful lot of digging but never dug deeply, only about the first two or three meters, then stopped.
All he ever did find was modern humans. If Verhoven claimed it was another human species, Verhoven would have been wrong. So Professor Jacob might have been right then but I don't think he's right on this one.

` I then learned more about the controversy, both over Jacob's actions and concerning H. floresiensis biology. And where? Another Lateline interview (March 3, 2005) with Richard Roberts and one of the people who agree with Teuku Jacob.
` That person is Maciej Henneberg, who also claims that Jacob was not hoarding the specimens. Roberts disagrees, explaining that Jacob and the discovery team would have to agree before allowing a third party to look at the find. Jacob didn't do this. Roberts then claims that the only people Jacob let look at the remains were those few who actually agreed with him.
` Finally, he says that Jacob relinquished the find after he was forced to, though he wouldn't have done so voluntarily. (It was badly damaged from human handling as well.)
` He also talks about the comparison with the brain endocasts of various diseased human individuals and prehistoric species, and how the results oppose Jacob's (and Henneberg's) viewpoint.

TONY JONES: Maciej Henneberg, are you prepared to reconsider your position on the basis of the endocast results if they do indeed show that the brain of the hobbit is not a diseased brain as you seem to be suggesting it is?

MACIEJ HENNEBERG: I'm not, and the reason is that... [t]hey compaired [sic] it to one single brain of a person who has the kind of microcephaly that we never suggested the LB1, the skeleton in question, ever had. So it's like comparing a patient with tuberculosis to a patient with bronchitis or pneumonia. I don't think it bolsters their case in any way.

TONY JONES: Let's speak about your other objections or your other views about why this skull and the other bones are not the bones of a new species.

MACIEJ HENNEBERG: Well, I have now had an opportunity to study the skeleton. I must add that, when I did any discoveries on skeletal material, I welcomed my colleagues to come and have a look, especially those colleagues who had a different view because I thought that when they come and look at the original material they can change their minds, and I'm talking only about looking at the bones that were already described.
Those bones clearly indicate that the person suffered from a growth anomaly and this growth anomaly caused anomalous, very slow or retarded growth of the brain....

TONY JONES: Richard Roberts, I know you know some of Professor Henneberg's other criticisms. He is suggesting that, in spite of what you're saying - that it's... the brain of a hobbit, a new species of human, but a normal brain, not a diseased brain - how do you answer the claims that it is in fact diseased without referring to the endocast?

RICHARD ROBERTS: Professor Henneberg, in a paper which I've seen in a journal, not a referee's paper but one where he expresses a point of view, pointed out some features that he believed to be that of a microcephalic individual.
Peter Brown, our expert paleoanthropologist, pointed out in reply that, while individual features such as a very small brain, such as certain things like even perhaps a slightly receding chin or sloping forehead, are consistent with a microcephalic individual, lots of details are not consistent.
In fact, they've got nothing like that in microcephalic individuals ever reported. So, when you consider the whole package of features that we found in the skeleton, and not just the facial features but also the post-cranial features, the rest of the body, it has a very flared pelvis and arms that come down almost to the knees - these are not conditions that occur with microcephalic individuals.
So, when you consider the whole overall anatomy of this person, it doesn't wrap up into a microcephalic person.

TONY JONES: Is the problem here there's only one skull? I know there's a part of another skull - I think it's the mandible -

RICHARD ROBERTS: That's right. We've got two lower jaws, and they're both very, very similar to each other which again argues against the fact that we've now got two microcephalic individuals and we've got the remails [sic] of eight individuals now from the cave, so if they're all equally small, which they seem to be, then if Professor Henneberg is right we've found eight microcephalic individuals and it's an extremely rare disease and to find eight of that antiquity would be quite a remarkable find.

TONY JONES: Professor Henneberg, you couldn't possibly have a nest of diseased individuals in this cave, could you, so how do you answer that?

MACIEJ HENNEBERG: We don't. There is only one skull. The so-called seven or eight, they seem to be multiplying now in the discussions, individuals are represented by mostly a single bone or a little bone fragment, like a fragment of a Spinous process of a vertebrae. And those have nothing to do with brain size. The only thing they indicate is small body size of local population....
...there's only one - and I stress it - one brain case and actually one face attached to it, and this face is fitting into modern human range of sizes and has a lot of features Australian and Indonesian people who, yet again, live in Flores and islands to the east of Flores until today....
It's not normal to have this amount of asymmetry in the face. When we come to long bones, they are actually unusually wide in relation to their rather short length and, yet again, this is indicative of abnormal growth, not of growth that is compatible with a new species. Let me finally straight out say that we are not discussing fossils at all.
Neither the skeleton LB1 or any comparing remaining bones, but we didn't really study them, neither of these are fossilized. They're as fresh bones as those that are excavated - I have excavated several thousands of them - from cemetaries and burial grounds that are a few thousand to several hundred years old. This is not a fossil.

RICHARD ROBERTS: Preservation is a geological issue and the particulars of preservation in this case are a wet, damp cave environment can keep things soft for a very long time. It certainly isn't fossilized in terms of minerals getting replaced in the original bone but it's certainly an extremely old skeleton, about 18,000 years old.
The fact that it's not completely mineral-replaced is neither here nor there. It's a complete red herring....
He talked about a slightly deformed skull. Of course we found this skeleton six meters underground. A cubic meter of sediment weights 2.5 tonnes - you'd feel pretty squashed too if you were stuck under six meters of sediment.
So you're going to expect some amount of crushing of the original skeleton when it's that deep underground.....
...What he was saying about the fact that referees never had a chance to look at the skeletal material, it should be said that Professor Henneberg, three days after we published our paper, was quite happy to write himself in the Adelaide Sunday Mail what he thought about it without having seen a specimen himself and he had already made his mind up. All he's done by going to Yogyakarta is made up his mind further. It was always a microcephalic to him. No amount of data will change his mind on that subject.

` It certainly does sound like Henneberg is biased, though I thought his point about not having several skulls was a good one. Nevertheless, if you have a skull and then another almost identical, primitive-looking jaw (with no chin) that could well fit onto the same type of skull, it seems reasonable that they were once articulated with a similar skull.
` Not surprisingly, there is even another transcript from the very next day concerning the speciment' brain shape - and even its texture, which was convoluted like ours!

RICHARD ROBERTS: Foreward planning activity happens in the front of the brain, and that's where the hobbit brain is really well-developed. That explains a lot of mysteries that we had the first time around, which was; 'how could something with a brain the size of a grapefruit do so many sophistocated activities?'
...Importantly the study concludes that these features are almost certainly not from a modern human suffering from a brain disorder....

PETER BROWN: They are not consistent with the size and shape features which you might expect to find in a pathological or abnormal modern human. They are normal brains, they just happen to be different to modern humans and different from those in Homo erectus and much smaller than Homo erectus in overall size.

RICHARD ROBERTS: Professor Henneberg said they only looked at one microcephalic individual's brain, and that's true. But out of all the brains that they compared the hobbit to, the microcephalic's was the least like the hobbit's brain; that is, this brain was so distinctively different from the microcephalic it really is very, very improbably [sic] that it was somebody suffering from microcephaly.

` I wonder, then, what it is that tells them that there's no problem. How can anyone tell if there's something 'diseased' about a new type of braincase? I'm assuming there are telltale places of abnormal growth, though I still haven't been able to find what they are.
` Anyway, I know it's strange to be so clueless as where to find the latest scientific information that you will seek it out from television interviews - but as I later learned from science articles and news reports, this was a fairly accurate picture of what had been going on.
` For example, in Nature's July 1, 2005 EMBO 'Science and Society Report' was an article called Skullduggery by Tabitha M. Powledge. It described what had gone on with the archaeological community being in an uproar over Jacob, and that most other paleoanthropologists didn't agree with him. However, I was not aware that the bones had been damaged when Jacob finally returned them to Jakarta (February 2005):

The bones had been seriously damaged: the pelvis had been smashed, the second mandible had been broken and unskilfully repaired [glued back on at the wrong angle], and LB1's skull had been mutilated by latex moulding; Science published photos of the damaged pelvis (Culotta, 2005).
Morwood charged that bones with australopithecine traits had been almost destroyed. "The condition of some finds is absolutely appalling," he said. "This is not the action of responsible scientists." Jacob acknowledged taking moulds, but says he has photos showing that the bones were in perfect condition when they left his care.

Meanwhile, a study of LB1's brain, based on skull endocasts made before the bones were moved, was also published (Falk et al, 2005). First author Dean Falk of Florida State University (Tallahassee, USA) concluded that the brain was unique and somewhat erectus-like, but had advanced features, such as an enlarged prefrontal cortex, that hinted at respectable cognitive capacity.
Comparing it with a single skull from a microcephalic, the group also concluded that LB1's brain was not altered by disease. Falk is now studying additional microcephalic endocasts for comparison. "This was just a thrill," she said. "We said to them, 'We stand ready. If you find any more skulls, we'd love to analyze them!'"

` I later found that Falk compared the LB1 endocast to those of nine microcephalics, showing that the brain had no discernible growth problems but did have its own unique characteristics, suggestive of being a different species.
` Really, the whole debate seems to have been fruitless for Jacob's part and the article ends by describing how this drama has been used as fuel by critics of science (especially of evolution) by giving them something to scoff at. You know, the old 'obviously they don't know what they're talking about' line! (A similar thing happened when Pluto was reclassified - what is going on in that case is that 'planet' is an ancient term and it has been hard to adapt as a scientific one.)

` So far, further attempts to place the fossils into our species have continued to be unconvincing. As recently at June of this year, a team led by Israel Hershkovitz et al published a study that supposedly demonstrates that LB1 is nearly indistinguishable from a person with Laron Syndrome.
` So, I looked the condition up and discovered that those with Laron syndrome do not have grapefruit-sized brains, along with quite the opposite of sloping foreheads. See for yourself.
` It turns out that Richard Roberts also considered this possibility, though he decided that it didn't make any sense for these reasons and others. Though there are some striking similarities with other characteristics, this could mean something else:
` What could it mean? That's not clear. I could speculate. It's dangerous, I know; Perhaps this is what happens to H. erectus when it has the Laron syndrome mutation? But then... all the individuals found - from different millennia, no less - would then appear to have had it. Plus, the tools in the caves seem to be dwarf-sized. There is also no evidence of larger individuals in the same deposits.
` Perhaps it represents a mutation that was adaptive? And now I seem to be getting back to the original hypothesis....

` Yesterday, however - this is actually what inspired me to throw this whole post together - I had stumbled into a Nature News article that describes how the wrist bones of H. floresiensis were characterized as being almost the same as those of Australopithecines!
` What?
` Matthew Tocheri from the National Museum of Natural History (Washington DC) led a team who made detailed measurements of trapezoid, scaphoid and capitate bones of various wrists including H. floresiensis, humans, Neanderthals, great apes and Australopithecus. Microcephalics and pygmies were left out, however.
` Still, the study concluded that the wrist bones of apes and Australopithecus were more similar to the H. floresiensis wrist than modern humans - including those with dwarfism - and Neanderthals. In fact, there's even a visual provided:

The ape-like trapezoid bones of the hobbits, for example, are tapered and wedge-shaped, in contrast to the 'boot-shaped' trapezoids of modern humans, Tocheri and his colleagues explain (see picture).

` If H. floresiensis inherited its wrist bones from a long line of primitive ancestors, their common ancestor with ours would have lived before eight hundred thousand years ago. Why? Because that is the age of the earliest-known modern human wrist - just the type of wrist to make tool use easier!
` So, our lineages would have split ways a long time ago, and possibly longer assuming that H. erectus also had modern wrist bones - of which none have yet been found, strangely.

` While I did consider that Roberts may be wrong for a while, I'd say that from this latest find that these might really be a different species from our own. At least, any argument for H. floresiensis as being mutant H. sapiens does not seem very impressive. Only further finds and barrages of tests will tell....
` And I'm sure once this is all worked out, maybe some people can move onto working themselves into a lather with even more enigmatic questions... such as; 'Do the legends of the Ebu-Gogo have anything to do with the extinct creatures of Flores?'
` I'll probably be taking a mental-exhaustion-induced nap.

Correlation vs. Causation

2007-09-11T23:31:00.000-07:00

` In science, there are two basic types of studies; correlational and experimental. One is to determine that two or more factors are related; the other is to figure out how.

` In a correlational study, scientists are basically trying to find patterns, often by comparing two or more very similar things - ideally with only one very important difference.
` An example would be looking at the medical histories of two groups of people in which the only important difference is that one smokes cigarettes and the other doesn't. Doing this has shown that smoking is associated with a high risk of developing certain health problems including poor circulation, emphysema, heart disease and cancer.
` You have to be careful here, however, because even though it's a sensible proposition, correlation in itself does not imply causation! It is true that, for instance, drowning rates increase whenever ice cream sales go up. But does buying ice cream cause drowning - or conversely, does drowning cause people to buy ice cream?
` The cause you're looking for, of course, is called 'summer' - one factor causes both results!

` So, how do we know that cigarettes are bad for us? That's what an experimental study is for!

` Experiments not only study correlation but actually cause the difference between the study groups. So, if we were to do an experiment on seeing if smoking can cause these health problems in human beings, we would have to round up a bunch of similar individuals and randomly divide them into two groups.
` One group would be forced to take up smoking, while the other would be kept from smoking at all. But, since that's unethical and practically impossible, scientists keep a most wretched tool around the lab; the domesticated rat.
` Let's say the scientists have a group of rats from one genetic strain, all living in the same type of cage and eating the same food. Basically, what the scientists need to do is make some of the rats breathe in cigarette smoke while making sure the rest don't.
` When the rats forced to breathe in smoke start developing health problems similar to the ones found in human smokers, it now becomes clearer that cigarette smoke is a major cause of the same kinds of disorders in both humans and rats!
` Sure, it's not one hundred percent certain that cigarettes are also a significant cause of these types of lung problems, etc. in humans - because we have not performed that experiment on our own species - but we can be reasonably sure it's legitimate.

` The great thing about science is that a) there are few things that are reasonably 100% certain (like the rising of the sun as Mercury mentioned, not to mention the law of gravity or the existence of molecules) and b) there are plenty of scientists with opposing viewpoints - and evidence to back them up - so therefore there is much discussion and speculation about various possible causes of events.
` At any one time, the general consensus among scientists for a given phenomenon is the best they know. New information is being added all the time, of course, and if someone has figured out something that really works better, then that becomes the new 'best'.
` This doesn't mean that knowledge derived from science is unreliable in itself; just that there is often more than meets the eye that is waiting to be discovered. While this usually puts a new spin on previous knowledge, it sometimes can completely invalidate a hypothesis.

` Take the case of a University of Pennsylvania Medical Center study that positively linked the presence of night-lights in young children's bedrooms with their development of nearsightedness. (A tentative idea to begin with.) However, a later study by the Ohio State University found that parents who were nearsighted were most likely to have nearsighted children - and that they were more likely to put night-lights in their children's bedrooms!
` In this case, the University of Pennsylvania's conclusion - as well as the massive amounts of media attention it received - seems a bit... well, myopic, as it now would seem that the vision problems of nearsighted parents are the common cause of both correlates.

` This is one thing that, indeed, scientists know well: Though one thing may appear to cause another thing, without clear enough evidence one must always suspect alternatives. You never know what new realizations the next batch of data will bring!

Context and the 9/11 Conspiracies - Part 2

2007-09-09T11:11:00.000-07:00

` Picking up from where I left off last time, I believe I was going on about how to make a conspiracy theory, and I exposed some of the claims made by the 9/11 conspiracy theorists concerning the destroyed buildings and the planes that crashed into them.

` On this post, I will cover a few other topics (though I will probably add more in the future).

The Other Plane

` The other hijacked plane had been headed for Washington - until the passengers overtook the hijackers and crashed it into an unoccupied area. How does anyone know this if there was no radio contact? Cell phone contact with passengers and the plane's black box made it all too clear.
` If you're a conspiracy theorist, you'll be actively looking for the scantiest evidence of a half-truth in order to support your view that the official story is wrong.
` It is no wonder that the creators of Loose Change attended the premiere of the movie, United 93, and to - as one forum member put it - "bite these bastards where it hurts, and have this Flight 93 movie backfire on them."[Quote.]

` There are two different ways you can go with this conspiracy theory, depending on what set of 'evidence' you want to go with.

` To the conspiracy theorists, there have been two outcomes of Flight 93, depending on who you ask. Some of them say that the plane landed safely, which stems from the initial AP reports saying that Flights 1989 and 93.
` Indeed, air traffic controllers at first believed 1989 had been hijacked. However, none of them claimed that 93 landed.
` It was the 'allegedly hijacked' Flight 1989 that landed in Cleveland Hopkins Airport and not 93; the AP did correct the error later on. [Kropko, M.R. 2002. " September 11 Tension Vivid to Controller ." Associated Press, August 15, 2002.]
` Though the plane (with its victims) was shredded - like many similar plane crashes - much of it has been recovered, and 1500 bits of human remains were found and identified as those who had been on board.

` The other conspiracy theory was that the plane had been shot down by the U.S. military. Since the flight data controller did not record any unusual functional readings (vibrations, air pressure changes, fuel intake, etc.) before the time of the crash, this does not seem likely.
` Some claim that the last few minutes of the flight controller recording was missing or being covered up - in fact, this is due to the plane simply having impacted shortly before they said it did.
` The conspiracy theorists also asserted that the main body of the engine and other large chunks were found scattered over several miles. Actually, we know that the engine was found 300 yards away, no doubt about it, and it was in a position that was consistent with the direction the plane had been moving. [" 9/11: Debunking the Myths ." Popular Mechanics. March, 2005.]
` The black box, also found, clearly records the struggle that had been going on before the crash.

` With errant planes on the loose, one might think that the other planes might have been shot down by the government - especially if they were capable of shooting down the one. However, NORAD did not have the capability of locating nor intercepting those planes.
` Taken into account all the planes that have needed to be shot down over the years, there have been only 67 other interceptions in history before September 11, 2001. Why?
` First off, the NORAD personnel have to radio contact the planes to rule out mundane problems, and then they must contact military personnel to scramble planes after them.
` The 9/11 case was actually much harder than usual because the terrorists had turned off or disabled the plane's radar transponders. Therefore, it would have looked like a moving blip among many others on NORAD's screens, making it impossible for them to even locate and intercept them in the short window of time available.

` According to the Popular Mechanics article:

In the decade before 9/11, NORAD intercepted only one civilian plane over North America: golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet, in October 1999. With passengers and crew unconscious from cabin decompression, the plane lost radio contact but remained in transponder contact until it crashed. Even so, it took an F-16 1 hour and 22 minutes to reach the stricken jet. Rules in effect back then, and on 9/11, prohibited supersonic flight on intercepts. [" 9/11: Debunking the Myths." Popular Mechanics. March, 2005.]

Other Silly Allegations

` Another conspiracy theorist 'puzzle piece' is that there was a lot of 'put' trading of airline stock, which is a huge gamble. They surmise that the 'insiders' knew what would happen, and so placed their bets.
` Now consider that this is a common event and that the general volume of put trading had also reached the same levels just earlier in the year. Plus, general bad news about the airline industry directly prompted investment companies to tell their clients that put options would be the best course of action.
` There was in fact a large spike in American Airlines trade, though this is hardly surprising: the company had just released a major warning because they had expected possible stock losses. ["AMR Corp Issues 3Q' 2001 Profit Warning." Airline Industry Information, September 11, 2001, " Plummeting Profit." Zeal Speculation and Investment. June 22, 2001.]
` So, what's the point in finding another way to explain it? Is that not sufficient?

` The conspiracy theorists also claim that FEMA arrived at the WTC on September 10, 2001 because they knew that the disaster was about to happen.
` This allegation was based on a statement by Tom Kenney of the Massachusetts task force to Dan Rather on Sept 13, 2001: "We're currently, uh, one of the first teams that was deployed to support the city of New York for this disaster. We arrived on, uh, late Monday night and went into action on Tuesday morning. And not until today did we get a full opportunity to work, uh, the entire site." [Schorow, Stephanie. 2002. " Independent Research." Boston Herald. 5 September (Arts & Life).]
` That seems a bit strange, considering that Monday was September 10. What seems to have happened there was that Kenney confused which day was which - something that commonly happens to people who are working for two long days in emergency response.
` What he apparently meant to say was that he arrived at Ground Zero on the eleventh, which he must have thought was Monday but was really Tuesday, and went into action on 9/12, and did not get a chance to work the whole site until 'today' or, 9/13. In addition, many different sources have documented the arrival of FEMA on 9/11, including Kenney's wife. [Schorow, Stephanie. 2002. " Independent Research." Boston Herald . 5 September (Arts & Life).]

` I could go on, though I hope that through these examples it becomes clear that the Truth Movement is not so much concerned with the truth as they are concerned with grossly distorting it.

The Ones They Refuse to Blame

` It should be noted that the Conspiracy theorists are curiously silent about al Qaeda, radical Islamic terrorists from Pakistan, or any of our recent history with the Middle East.
` Do they know about the fall of the Ottoman empire? Do they know about the fragmentation that occurred after WWII? Or the reaction of Muslims to the state of Israel, plus all the frustration about America's support for it? Do they know what Islamic fundamentalism is, or what Soviet Russia has to do with anything?

` The reasons why there are Islamic terrorist groups stem from all of that, and such people have been targeting and attacking America for decades:
` For example, in 1983 Hezbollah truck-bombed a Marine barracks in Lebanon , killing 241 Americans. In 1985, the Palestinian Liberation Front hijacked the Achille Lauro. In 1993, the WTC was bombed via truck , killing six people and injuring a thousand others (ironically, the memorial was destroyed in the 9/11 attack ).
` In January, 1995, thanks to funding by terrorists such as the head of Al-Qaeda (Osama bin-Laden), there was a plan to blow up twelve planes between the U.S. and Asia, though it was stopped.
` In 1995, bin-Laden had the U.S. Embassy buildings in Kenya and Tanzania bombed , killing twelve Americans, and 200 natives. In 1996, terrorists truck-bombed the Khobar Towers , killing nineteen U.S. military personnel and injuring hundreds more. In 1999, Ahmed Ressam became famous for his attempted attack on Los Angeles international airport.
` On October 12, 2000, Al-Qaeda arranged a successful suicide boat bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, killing seventeen sailors and injuring 39 more. [Strasser, Steven (ed.). 2004. The 9/11 Investigations: Staff Reports of the 9/11 Commission . New York: Public Affairs Books. More about radical Islam at Rashid, Ahmed. 2001. Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. New York: Yale University Press.]

` Clearly, Osama Bin Laden has been funding, organizing, and initiating such shenanigans against the U.S., and there is plenty of evidence to back that up. He has also issued two fatwas - one in 1996 declaring a jihad against the U.S. and one in 1998 "to kill the Americans and their allies — civilian and military is an individual duty for any Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it." [Strasser, Steven (ed.). 2004. The 9/11 Investigations: Staff Reports of the 9/11 Commission . New York: Public Affairs Books, and other sources.]
` Not only is there every reason in the world to think that this was their work, bin-Laden and Al-Qaeda have actually admitted to the September 11 bombings! [Bamer, David. 2001. "Bin Laden: Yes, I Did It." The Telegraph. November 11.] What would be the point of saying that they were not responsible?
` To all scrutiny, this is but the latest, and worst, attack on us by radical Islamic terrorists because they don't want our 'evil' U.S. foreign policy, along with everything else. Unfortunately, we didn't take them seriously, and so it was American civilians who paid the price.

` ...But how many people actually know about this stuff? The truth is, so many do not that it seems a bit odd when someone does know their history. Therefore, such conspiracy theories are perhaps believable to more people than they could be.
` A more emotional reason why some people like conspiracy theories - in general - is because they are able to keep their eye on what they believe to be dangerous, and so they know who to expect danger from! (Curiously, such people who supposedly believe that the U.S. is a 'police state', are interviewed on national television and radio and hold Truth Conventions in public without fear of being arrested!)
` Realistically, the real truth is what is most important to implement in the future, because only the truth can be used to prevent future terrorist attacks - and no, I don't think the 'War on Terror' has done anything of the sort.

How much brain do we really need?

2007-09-05T22:46:00.000-07:00

` Have you ever wondered that? A month ago, I was reading the Nature News item The man with a hole in his brain. (Free to non-paying members here.)
` I've always thought the myth that we only use ten percent of our brains was amusing. In fact, all parts of the human brain are active all the time; just enough to keep our neurons from dying, at least.
` However, at any given time, some parts of the brain are more active than others - for instance there are parts on the left side of the brain that contribute to different facets of language, and the entire occipital lobe (in the back of your head) is devoted to various aspects of visual processing.
` Astonishingly, there have been some normally-functioning people who have been said to have only ten percent of a brain! ...However, this is apparently an exaggeration. Nevertheless, the people I am referring to were hydrocephalics with large holes in their brains studied by such doctors as John Lorber, a former professor of pediatrics at Sheffield University.

` Hydrocephalus is a potentially serious condition where more cerebrospinal fluid flows into one's ventricles than out, resulting in a ballooning of pressure within the brain. The force is so enormous that it can squash the brain against the braincase and expand the as-yet unfused skull of an infant.
` Aside from causing seizures, convulsions and mental retardation, this condition can also be fatal if a shunt is not installed to allow the fluid to drain into other parts of the body. In several notable cases, however, such squashed brains have functioned almost normally!

` The Nature article talks of a case study made three years ago of man in Marseille, France. He had a wife, kids, an IQ of 75, and he worked as a civil servant. Three years ago, this man went to a hospital, informing staff of a weakened left leg.
` That was his only real complaint. Searching for neurological abnormalities, they found his brain wadded up into a thin layer to make room for the ventricles that took up most of the room in his braincase.
` "We were very surprised when we looked for the first time the CT scan," commented Neurologist Lionel Feuillet. "The brain was very, very much smaller than normal."

` I'll say. See for yourself!

` This man had probably been born with hydrocephalus. He had been given a shunt at six months of age, and had it fixed at 14 years when he had problems with his left leg. At 44 years old, this most recent complaint was the first time he had experienced neurological problems since then.
` How his brain had managed to develop normally currently escapes neurologists, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to explain:
` The pattern of the most prevalent difficulties in hydrocephalics (focusing and coordination) suggests that the areas immediately surrounding the ventricles are affected the most. If the brain retains a relatively normal structure during this stretching (despite damage), those would be the most-stretched areas.
` Importantly, the brain is able to re-route areas of functioning from damaged areas while it is developing; perhaps the pressure caused most of the brain deformation during development in the Marsielle man's case.

` It is hard to say just how his brain had developed; CT scanners were not around when he was having problems earlier in life. As for the his treatment outcome this time around, the fluid had been shunted once more, and his brain remained the same size.
` Who knows if we'll ever know. Perhaps he'll be kind enough to donate his brain to science when he's done using it?

Who's afraid of Carl Sagan?

2007-08-14T22:04:00.000-07:00

Last updated August 18.

` By gum I've been busy: Finals are growing closer and yet I have been spending almost all of my waking moments hydrating and grooming my unwell kitten (and protecting her from my well kitten). [Note: She has recovered by now.]
` Since it's about time I updated again, I thought I would present for you some musings related to the philosophy of science. This time it has to do with a book by the late Carl Sagan called The Demon Haunted World, which I'm reading at the moment. (Or trying to!)

` A while back, I was looking at some reader reviews on Amazon.com about this book, and I noted that most of them were overall positive - even glowing - though there were a few which back up the general observation that his message does not seem to reach those who feel it threatens their very identity.
` So what is his message, and why? The beauty here is that I don't really have to say much because the reviewers have already done such a good job of that. (Thanks, everyone, my brain needed the rest!)
` I think William H. Fuller put the 'what' and the 'why' rather succinctly:

Sagan's definition of the scientific method of thought is marvelous. Such thought must be totally open, allowing all ideas to enter for consideration, denying admission to none.
However, once those ideas have entered, they must be subjected to the utmost skepticism, for only those that can withstand the examination of the skeptic, the doubter, the unbeliever, may be accepted into residency, and even that is not guaranteed for perpetuity, for, as new facts are discovered, what was once held to be true may no longer be so.

Do we need yet more justification to read Sagan's book? May I offer a few statistics from page 324?
"Sixty-three percent of American adults are unaware that the last dinosaur died before the first human arose; 75 percent do not know that antibiotics kill bacteria but not viruses; 57 percent do not know that `electrons are smaller than atoms.' Polls show that something like half of American adults do not know that the Earth goes around the Sun and takes a year to do it. I can find ... students who do not know that the ... Sun is a star."
You know, many years ago, I was asked by one of my own students if I was "prejudiced," and I shocked the entire classroom when I answered, "Yes." I went on to explain that my prejudice was not against a race or a gender but against refusal to learn, against the illusive comfort of ignorance.
Judging by the statistics quoted by Sagan, I still have a lot in this country to be prejudiced against. Do these statistics support Sagan's argument for better scientific education in America? Personally, I'd say that they do.

` I second that. As Sagan points out, much of our lives (including economy, medicine, transportation, environmental protection, even entertainment) rely on science, and yet not very many presidents of the United States have even had a very good grasp of what that is.

` So who are these people who fear the scientific method so much? As far as I know, they are generally people who believe they know what the scientific method is despite the fact that they actually don't (at least, not very well).
` This gives them the feeling that they are an authority on the subject, so there's no getting the point across to them that they aren't. Not only that, but many of them are extremely volatile and instead of being articulate and using logic skills in their arguments, they try to see just how offensive they can possibly be.
` (As a physics forum manager, my Worthy Science Sources sponsor has found much the same thing. This is why I do not accept such comments on this blog.)
` Why are they so hostile? Perhaps this whole 'I'm right about what I think science is' business is something they feel is the very essence of their being. So, if you challenge them, you threaten them in the most personal way.

` Assuming this is a somewhat widespread phenomenon, it may well account for the fact that the internet is rife with such reactions to skepticism/science.

` This reader review is entitled 'What an idiot!' by Violent A, made on April 25, 2007. I think the title sums it up, and it's a typical example of this type of 'anything goes' commentary.

Wow... just wow, this dude has no F-ing clue what he's talking about. Was he even trying? If this is the best skeptics can do to promote their ignorant, hypocritical view of what they consider science vs. pseudoscience, then that is all the more reason to believe in the paranormal!

This book is so pathetically devoid of information, the arguments within are so hypocritical when not illogical and baseless, I feel sorry for him if he is actually as stupid as he sounds in this book.

If I had met him I'd be glum just like the driver guy he describes in the beginning of the book, whose belief in ancient civilization like Atlantis and Lemuria he glibly dismisses due to lack of scientific evidence. That degree of brainlessness -he can't even grasp the difference between history and science!!- is depressing. I wouldn't know what to say; "No words... they should have sent... a poet..."

` Might I point out that history is also a science? Historians are skeptics; they don't just leap to conclusions. They are very careful about accepting things as true. That's why they suspend beliefs about Atlantis - just where the story comes from and what it is based on is not for certain, so it's open to interpretation.
` So were is Violent A's anger coming from, you ask? I think this statement makes it clear:

If you want to be an informed person, if you want a real candle in the dark, read works by Laura Knight-Jadczyk and David Icke.

` If that doesn't, then perhaps this response by Q-fever will:

You're joking, right? Icke and Knight-Jadczyk are mentally ill. They believe that the world is controlled by reptilian space aliens or some such nonsense. Knight-Jadczyk talks to reptilian space aliens on a ouija board!
I happen to know that the reptilains are actually subservient to an even greater race of half butterfly-half monkey super-aliens that have secret camps throughout the Brazilain rainforest (although they're originally from Neptune,i think). Anyways, you had me going there for a second, violentA.

` I can guess that this is why ViolentA is so... violent. (At least verbally.) When you've been fed this type of 'information' about skepticism, you view the words of scientists/skeptics as being totally dismissive, contradictory, uneducated and ignorant. When you integrate this belief into the very core concept of your being, you feel a strong urge to defend it ferociously.
` I know this because I used to be the same way, though I wasn't into believing that our world leaders are humanoid iguanas in disguise. I once felt threatened by the words of people like Carl Sagan. I would rant to myself; "What a bunch of closed-minded morons! And they're running science?"

Q: Well, what did I know about it?
A: Absolutely nothing. But I thought I knew a lot more than practically everyone, even scientists themselves!

` From a teenaged me, a book like Sagan's would have been greeted with retorts like, "I can't believe he thinks this skepticism stuff comes anywhere close to being spiritual!" and "He either doesn't know anything about science, or he's lying to everyone!" ...that is, if I could even be coaxed to read it.
` Never in my wildest dreams would I have come to realize that skepticism/the scientific method is only all about being cautious. You have to make sure you realize you're in a dead-end because it's usually overwhelmingly simple and easy to make major mistakes.
` The scientific method is all about anticipating, avoiding and finding such mistakes in any research so that we can build up our knowledge of the world as accurately as possible. Pseudoscience, on the other hand, is unlike science precisely because many or most of its mistakes are typically ignored, downplayed or covered up.

` However, I would have argued with this idea vigorously, because the fact that they disagreed with the 'sensible, open-minded' people whose preachings I believed were careful enough to qualify as scientific themselves, pretty much 'proved' that there was some kind of conspiracy against 'us'.
` Also, while I could believe that the most brilliant minds in science were being deceived (either that or lying), I did not stop to think that perhaps I - a complete know-nothing about the scientific method - could be the one being deceived!

` But I wasn't a know-nothing, I thought! I was one of those who saw through the delusion!

` Far from conspiring against who I believed to be valiant defenders of 'alternative science', dedicated scientists are constantly under attack from each other. The battles are not pretty, and the death rate of hypotheses is staggering.
` So, if you feel threatened by the prospect that you could be wrong about something you hold dear, or perhaps insecure in general, scientific debates and negotiations are probably not for you. A scientist must be comfortable enough to admit that nature (or people) can fool them!

` I noticed that one Amazon reviewer responded to an earlier review that had been removed from the website. I wonder what that person had written. Whatever it was, this response was precisely the type of thing that a) I needed to hear when I was younger and b) would have gotten angry at if someone actually expected me to believe it:

Some people see skeptisim as form of close-mindedness, and the writer of the review from June 14 "Science hmm" exemplifies that type of person.
Obviously anyone can tell that person is speaking without any basis, and its a very funny post, but also the reason why this book needs to be read (I'm sure that person, if he even read Sagan's book at all, did it with ingrained preconceived notions of the "evils of science")
This guy claims all of science is narrow minded and fascist (haha) but even many who aren't completely off their rocker, think skepticism is bad.
The skeptic mindset is to only [consider] facts at face value, and only believe when sufficient evidence is provided. This is the only way to promote a rational mindset. Those who think skeptics are narrow minded truely don't understand its purpose.

` No they don't. I certainly did not. You couldn't convince me, and I would have certainly laughed at anyone who said skepticism/science was a device that promotes open-mindedness.
` I was very glad to believe what I believed because I really thought that skeptics/mainstream scientists were completely brainwashed. If someone had told me I'd agree with them one day, I would have been horrified and perhaps would have wanted to kill myself just to avoid this outcome.
` These are the strong feelings that the most vehement anti-skeptics probably feel. Of course they're not going to listen! But I don't expect that most people, even believers in pseudoscience, are like this. Perhaps most can admit that scientists aren't as dismissive as they may have been taught.
` Like Naturopathic ND, many readers were surprised at this fact:

...I did not find Sagan to be as close minded and negative on this topic as I expected, he is open to new age ideas as long as they can validate themselves.

` While the book covers mostly paranormal topics, it does touch on religion here and there. However, one reader did find many quotes that compared religion to pseudosciences, and pointed out that this must indicate that Sagan was 'secretly anti-religious' and thought that all religious people must be a bunch of unreasonable extremists.
` As I had begun reading the book, however, I stumbled upon a paragraph that explains those statements:

In certain passages of this book I will be critical of the excesses of theology, because at the extremes it is difficult to distinguish pseudoscience from rigid, doctrinaire religion.

` Then he goes on to say that religion itself has fought these excesses, which has resulted in such groups as protestants and liberals.
` The '3D Artsit/ Brandi' "Brandi" is evidently one of the extremists, however. She left a comment called: 'to bad--Your Lost---This book is clueless':

What can I say,
The Devil is preety good at covering stuff up. He uses even the best Scientist and astronomers to crush anything spiritual.

Of coarse this book is garbage and I suggest that everyone who likes this book to please take yourself and your scientific thinking out of the box.

In the next coming years people you are gonna see some serious evil spirtual activity and because you have polluted yourselves with closing your mind of to it, you won't know or be ready for the things that are going to occur.

` I was amused to see that, on her profile, she had given her review but one tag; 'satan'. But by no means did many religious people respond this way (at least ones that hadn't been so hostile that they had to be deleted).
` Most did not have much issue with Demon-Haunted World, and some even corrected Sagan's ideas about things like exactly how and what they do or don't believe.
` Some, like M. Rodriguez, found it to be utterly mind-opening:

My first real read on skeptical thinking. I have just started to look at the world in a differnet way - steering away from the religious process. This book has opened my eyes and allowed me to see more clearly...

...He sticks to the Natural world - as he should since it's the only one we truly know about - and doesn't offend other methods, but does point out their fallacies (as he does for science as well).

` Note that, while science is the best method of discovery that we know, even it is not immune to criticism in the least. Sacred cow it is not.
` Some religious reviewers described specific, profound awakenings, as with E. Dennis Marasco and his story about how he was able to conceive of a world without God for the purpose of understanding Sagan's perspective:

...It forced me to look through critical eyes at all the parts of my everyday life. For example, to imagine how I could stand outside at night and look at Orion and not assume that God had 'hung' those stars there was foreign to me.
I grew up seeing stars and talking to God about my experience of them. To think about myself in the context of this existence without the awareness of myself in the context of my relationally-perceived world left me in touch with an abject aloneness....

` He relates this to the void left behind by the family dog being killed by a car.

...There was a 'presence' of some sort that was missing, even though she was only a pet. She was truly a being, and she filled the space of our home with some nondescript presence--really. This was suddenly missing. I could not now easily leave our two sons without the comfort of our former pet.

This simplistically is how I experience life with and without an ongoing relationship with God....

...The part that I find most amazing is that, in my view, Carl Sagan interacted with "Nature" as a respected, valued, trustworthy friend. He capitalized the word Nature. He treated it with what Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher, called an "I, Thou" relationship. Buber's concept (which Buber used to develop relational ethics) helps us see that there is a difference if we treat the 'other' not as an it, but as a "Thou."
Carl interacted with the universe as he saw it out of a set of beliefs that assumed that life can be explained from a rational point of view, that it is not an It, but a Thou. He held that which he studied in high esteem. I believe he treated it as God would really have wanted him to treat it (better sadly than almost all of those who call themselves believers).

` Aside from people with religious perspectives, many others nonetheless report that it is enlightening. Mr Sachmo, for instance:

...Well, it wasn't what I expected. Sagan didn't come at me with each controversial theory and rip it apart with his scientific mind. He did do this on a limited basis, but that wasn't really the focus of the book. This isn't Penn and Teller. It really boils down Sagan trying to educate people on the power of thinking.

` Perhaps this is what Violent A was referring to as the book being 'pathetically devoid of information'? As far as I can tell, Demon-Haunted World is more about how to think, rather than what to think, so it doesn't go into nauseating detail about every little fact.
` Mr Sachmo continues:

Did I agree with everything Sagan has to say on this subject? Of course not. Did Sagan help me decide which side of the fence I would live on? Nope. But this book did teach me about how to search for answers to things that I may accept without thinking, which seems the logical thing to do when people WANT to believe in something strongly enough. I also learned that searching for answers doesn't make you a cynic, just someone who likes to look before they leap.

...It's not a book debunking myths. It's more an illustration of Sagan's belief that those who think will achieve.

` Certainly this ability to understand how to figure things out and get ideas across is to one's advantage. That's why I encourage people to learn what this science stuff is all about. In doing just this, Sagan's book has completely turned around the points of view of some, as with CQLambdin:

When I read Sagan's book I believed in psychics. I believed in haunted houses. I also believed that people were being abducted by aliens. This book changed all that. Not only did it change my beliefs, it also single-handedly influenced me to return to college....
I was a college dropout working at a bookstore. I read Clarke's 3001, which in the appendix stated that The Demon-Haunted World should be required reading in every high school (I agree).
I then read The Demon-Haunted World. The book made me want to be a scientist, I found it so exciting. I re-enrolled in college, and now, over a decade later, I teach both graduates and undergraduates and am about to obtain a PhD. I thank Sagan for the influence, and for his WONDERFUL book, which IS a candle in the dark.

` What a breathtaking development - and just the kind of development I myself would like to cause! In fact, just understanding what science is was one thing that made me want to return to college.
` Finally, another reviewer who calls themselves 'My Uncle Stu' gives advice to those who might be confronted by people who argue against the validity of the scientific perspective:

...Whenever you get in debates with religious types, or with those self-appointed geniuses, the philosophy majors, they will always hit you with the fact that science is just another belief system, just like any religion or philosophy. They will tell you science can't answer all the questions and is often wrong.
Of course that is true, if you look at science strictly as a body of knowledge. But that is not what science really is. Science is a process. It is a way of approaching the world, a way of formulating and testing hypotheses.
If it is just another belief system, then it is a belief system that grows by virtue of challenging its adherents to challenge and disprove the current state of knowledge. It's the only belief system where you have to be a skeptic to be a zealot.

Debunking myths is part of the fun of this book, but an even [more] important aspect to it is investigating how the human mind works and why we are drawn to myths and magical explanations for things in the first place....

It is astonishing how many people get through four or five years of higher education without having developed the ability to think critically.

The lack of critical thinking in this country has real consequences. It is the reason that the anchormen on the national news can't convey a story about a scientific or medical topic in a meaningful way. It's the reason that you meet well-educated parents these days who are more concerned about side effects from vaccinations than about the lethal diseases being vaccinated against. ... It's the reason the majority of voters in this country voted to elect a President who openly confesses to having a concrete interpretation of the world.
Think about that for a second. We have come to the point where adults fail to recognize that seeing things in black and white, all good versus all evil, is a sign of stunted emotional and intellectual development, not a skill to be bragged about. We live in a time when the media tells us that being balanced means presenting peoples opinions from both sides of the political spectrum, as opposed to challenging the statements from an evidence-based, rational perspective.

` This is precisely why I am working towards being a popularizer of science, which starts both online and with a sci-fi novel I have been working on for the past year.

` I think it is ironic that when I was fifteen I was instead writing a sci-fi novel which basically sang the praises of pseudoscience and a particular New Age cult.
` In that long-gone writing attempt, a character that I perceived as being virtuous promoted the 'very amazing scientific theories' pointed out in in books such as The Holographic Universe and Beyond the Quantum by Michael Talbot.

` As I recall, the books took a mixture of normal scientific findings, combined with pseudoscience (including a complete and total misrepresentation of quantum physics) to create the idea that some perfectly normal phenomena could not be explained by anything but quantum physics - or at least this completely different idea that he called quantum physics.
` The phenomenon of twins? Since a split embryo results in two complete bodies rather than one body split in half, Talbot reasoned that this must be an example of quantum entanglement. Never mind that there is no reason to believe it can't be taken care of by molecular processes such as the activation of homeobox genes.
` Or what about groups of children who create a common language to unite two or more other languages, or deaf communities or schools in which the children develop a sign language of their own?
` Never mind that when a child learns language, they are constructing it afresh; they already have the framework to build any kind of language in their minds, and where it comes from matters not. Any language is a creative endeavor for them: The overwhelming need to communicate, and to fill this instinctual language framework, can spontaneously result in the construction of a new language, without much help from adults.
` Talbot claimed that this is really due to some kind of energy field that unites groups of people, even though there's no evidence for it (other than his interpretations of anecdotes about the behavior of wild Japanese monkeys, etc).
` Or what about rehearsing an action in your mind, which apparently improves your performance somewhat in the same way as actually practicing it does? Far from being a preparedness tool, he insisted that this ability has something to do with a piece of conjecture (which he also misrepresents) called the holographic principle, which is probably false and also has no logical connection with the way people's brains function - especially since they would be functioning within it.

` Because I had identified with the 'poor, beaten-down' Talbot, I didn't think to question his books one bit. I thought that scientists were mostly just a bunch of stubborn know-it-alls - as Talbot had maintained - and he was one of the few who actually stuck up for The Truth.
` With a light in my eyes, I vowed to carry on his work, to be 'the hero', to stick up for the underdog. It was all true, I believed, and it was only a matter of time before those 'nasty, venomous skeptics' realized his beautiful and stunning 'science' was real. (Well, it's been more than twenty years and its already-failed support only continues to get weaker.)

` At one point in my former novel, the 'virtuous' character discussed Talbot's ideas with two other characters, explaining that science is all about what one wants to believe, which is why Talbot's version of a holographic universe wasn't a mainstream idea.
` One of the other characters - who at first assumed that science opposed New Age spiritual beliefs and so was put off - marveled at this theory because 'real scientific experiments' obviously 'proved' these beliefs.
` The other one, a stodgy ignoramus I mistakenly labeled a 'skeptic', was expecting 'dogmatic' (actual) science and couldn't explain why these 'revolutionary facts' were wrong; she just grinned sheepishly and said she only knew they were wrong.
` In (painful) reality, I was the ignoramus because I had been the one who didn't know that there were any arguments to the contrary!
` The character who was doing the 'teaching' became angry and said (referencing Harry Harlow's baby monkey experiments); "Fine! Believe what you want! Cling to your terry cloth mother of dogma!"
` The 'skeptic' character then spent the next two chapters avoiding the 'virtuous' character until she finally realized how wrong she had been!

` I never thought I'd be going the other way, saying (to paraphrase a commenter of mine) that all the same, you have to be both open-minded when you want to be, and open-minded when you don't want to be.

` Surely, ignorance does play a large role in the reason why some people spit at skeptics and 'regular' scientists. There is the other thing, though; that feeling that one's identity is based on the pseudoscientific (or belief-oriented) point of view.
` Why else would anyone want to commit hara-kiri at the idea that they would one day oppose their current worldview? That worldview is part of their personality, their being. They don't believe that they can exist (or be sane) without it.
` Therefore, if anyone attacks the idea, it feels as if their very lives, sanity or souls are being threatened.
` In fact, just yesterday my psychology teacher was explaining to us students that mania can cause a person to come up with amazing, grandiose, and sometimes completely insane ideas (such as the belief that they can fly by jumping off a roof) and that it is trying to tell them they're not making any sense that causes them to believe that there is a conspiracy against them!
` I have experienced this very thing myself hundreds of times when my own father was in the throes of mania: He would be going on and on about some nonsense such as how Neanderthals from the Jurassic era genetically engineered marsupials and killed off all the 'normal' mammals of Australia so that these 'new, weird mammals' would have a place to live.
` Apparently, arguing with such beliefs (as well as unfounded accusations) bred conspiracy theories in his mind, and it is these that caused him to become convinced that I was one of many people who were trying to kill him.
` Finally, it makes sense to me: A similarly strong (though not necessarily manic) perception may be all that is needed to cause someone to believe that (because their view is unpopular with others, especially authority), there must be some kind of conspiracy against that view!
` Then, they come up with an explanation, such as 'they know the truth, but they won't admit it' or 'they're just a bunch of morons!' or 'they're so wrapped up in their own viewpoint that they can't see out!'

` What's funny is that, now that I'm a skeptic (a.k.a. critical or scientific thinker), I don't feel threatened at all anymore! Now I can see myself believing anything - talking Bigfoots who wear leisure suits, etc. - as long as there is equally incredible, though credible, evidence.
` My goal is now to carry on Carl Sagan's work - and that of numerous others - in explaining science to the layman, and perhaps even a few 'hopeless fearfuls' similar to myself in earlier days. I only wish to give people the message that it really isn't so scary after all, plus it's darn useful!
` Maybe someday people will be affected by my writing every bit as much as Carl's. I only wish he was still here so I could make him proud.

Context and the 9/11 Conspiracies - Part 1: Planes vs. Buildings

2007-08-04T23:04:00.000-07:00

*Updated*

` I must admit, the Truth Movement is pretty clever in their convolutions to make the government look responsible for the September 11 terrorist attacks. To the lay people, many of their arguments may sound impressive and well-researched because their 'evidence' is very intricate, if utterly transparent.
` The September 11 conspiracy theorists have accomplished this illusion by wading through the Sea of Context, plucking out many hundreds of tiny little details, and then wedging them into awaiting slots in their own personal mental schemes.

` How did they manage this? The first stage of coming up with a conspiracy theory is having the conviction that you are correct, without a doubt.
` This relates to what I said in a previous post about how two people can have very different opinions about what is going on in a certain situation:

` Human beings are able to come up with any idea they like to explain any phenomenon they choose, so goes our abstract nature. The problem is, there can be many sensible-sounding explanations for the same thing; plus, these different explanations can contradict one another!

` Even more, it can be easy to 'prove' many of them right, because quite often we can find what we're looking for as evidence to support our ideas: As long as we ignore anything that goes against our idea, it is easy to convince ourselves that we are correct even when we may not be - and even when other ideas actually make more sense than our own!

` Virtually any idea can have as much support as one wants, as long as one ignores any contrary evidence. In this way, one can claim an idea is proven even when it's been proved wrong!
` Exciting, huh?
` So, in case you wish to make your own conspiracy theory, I will take you step-by-step through the process and show you many examples of how this has been done in the case of 9/11! Shall we?

Ground Zero

` When a building is hit by a plane, what happens? Well, it depends on what type of building and how fast the plane was moving. In this case, the events that happened after the planes struck the Twin Towers were not actually surprising to the buildings' structural officials - other than the fact that the towers remained standing for far longer than had been predicted!
` (Note: The conspiracy theorists have provided 'evidence' that they believed otherwise, but this is an illusion due to careful manipulation of the officials' words.)

` As I shall explain, nothing unusual (and thus suspicious) has actually been observed, much of which I will directly back up.
` So, if we are looking to make a building appear to be blown up by human means, we have to find similarities between the actual events and other events in which buildings are demolished with explosives, and then milk them for all they're worth - and then some.

` Let's look at what did happen at Ground Zero, and how that overlaps with the conspiracy theory:

` First off, a large passenger jet plows into the center of World Trade Center 1 (the North Tower), killing masses of people and turning it into a smoldering mess. Shortly afterward, a second plane smashes through the corner of WTC 2 (the South Tower) a little lower down than the level the North Tower was hit. This is an important point; I'll get back to that.

` The fire in the North Tower was estimated at between 1,000° and 1,800° F, which is hot enough to make the steel beams lose about 90% of their strength. While this temperature is still well below the 2,800° needed to melt the steel, these beams still would have eventually gone limp.
` This especially would have been true if the steel was utterly exposed to the heat - it appears it would have been because the weakly-attached, spray-on insulation would have been jarred out of place: While the buildings were designed with low-speed (150 mph) plane impacts in mind (as in the case of a pilot lost in the fog), high-speed plane impacts are another story.
` Even more devastating, temperature differences from one part of a beam to another would cause dramatic warping, which would have in addition pulled various attachment points and supports out of place.

` Furthermore, the buildings were of a somewhat unusual 'perimeter tube' design, having a 27x40 meter empty space in the middle - about 95% of the interior was an open area. [Eager, Thomas and Musso, Christopher. 2001. "Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse: Science, Engineering and Speculation." JOM, 53(12), 8–11.] This unique, lightweight structure would inherently have exaggerated the problems of weakened steel:
` Joists were what connected the outer beams to the hollow core at each story, and it was these alone that provided a lot of the overall support for the weight of each floor. With the 1,000-or so-degree heat, the steel trusses would have eventually expanded at each end until they were too tall to support their floors at all.
` The collapsing floors are thought to have been enough to bow down the steel support columns toward the center of the buildings.
` When you think about it, collapse seems like the kind of thing that would happen next, doesn't it? But when you're convinced that it didn't play any significant role in the collapse of the buildings, you would instead file this bit of information away in your 'unimportant' drawer and find some more dramatic way of explaining it away.

` One way of doing this is to imply that one word means another word, so you can pretend that you're talking about the same thing as your detractors. In other words; be vague.
` David Heller did a good job of this in his popular article [2005, " Taking a Closer Look: Hard Science and the Collapse of the World Trade Center ." Garlic & Grass, Issue 6.]
` This should give one a good idea of how he does it:

The official story maintains that fires weakened the buildings.

` This first sentence is accurate; fires weakened the steel, causing it to twist and warp and lose its hold on the building supports.
` To further elaborate, the kind of steel used in those skyscrapers loses 50% of it strength at only 650° F, and as much as 90% of its strength at 1,800° F! [Eager, Thomas and Musso, Christopher. 2001. "Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse: Science, Engineering and Speculation." JOM, 53(12), 8–11.]
` Now, watch as he transposes the meaning of the word 'weakened' onto the word 'melted' - which would indicate a liquid state:

Jet fuel supposedly burned so hot it began to melt the steel columns supporting the towers.

` Now, melting a steel beam requires heat up to 2,750°F; even at less than a quarter of the melting point, steel does turn red and can be bent when under enough pressure (such as the pressure of a slowly-collapsing building).

But steel-framed skyscrapers have never collapsed from fire, since they're built from steel that doesn't melt below 2750° Fahrenheit.

` Ah, but that's just a tricky technicality; in actuality, six steel-framed buildings had actually collapsed from fires while only these two have been skyscrapers. (Another one was WTC 7.) [Jesse Beitel and Nestor Iwankiw, "Historical Survey of Multistory Building Collapses Due To Fire" Fire Protection Engineering].
` Though steel-framed buildings generally don't collapse from fires, this is generally because sprinklers and fire retardant slows the blaze and firefighters are quickly able to put it out. McCormick Place of Chicago, which was not fire-resistant in itself, collapsed from an electrical fire in a half hour despite the efforts of firefighters.
` One more very important point; none of these other steel-framed buildings had suffered substantial damage by huge planes traveling at high velocities.
` Even so, this is Heller's way of making this seem like an isolated event, like there's something... funny going on! Adding that collapse must correspond to melting, rather than weakening, is simply misleading and irrelevant.

No fuel, not even jet fuel, which is really just refined kerosene, will burn hotter than 1500° Fahrenheit.

` In addition to lending importance to the word melting, here introduces a potential misuse of the word 'fuel': In this case, the jet fuel is the accelerant, like kerosene is when you pour it on some wood to start a bonfire. But the wood is the actual fuel, and it burns hotter than the kerosene.
` Office furniture, such as the furniture in the WTC offices, is known to burn at over a thousand degrees Fahrenheit [Nominal Fires; One Stop Shop in Fire Engineering at University of Manchester], which is far hotter than what the steel would need to be weakened.
` (Note: Even the flames from a simple burning mattress heat up to over 2,200 degrees, which melts the steel springs ["Melted Steel; How Important?" The National Fire and Arson Report], though of course this is not the same type of steel.)

` While there is no conclusive proof of molten (i.e. liquid) steel at Ground Zero, there was nevertheless plenty of molten metal seen, and many of the steel beams which were visibly weakened, i.e. warped and glowing red.
` (Nevertheless, conspiracy theorists call them 'molten'. So when they say heavy machinery is handling molten steel - which would melt the heavy machinery itself and kill the operator - it obviously isn't.)

` I have also seen several photos showing warped steel perimeter columns (which had previously supported the floor trusses) uselessly sticking out from the buildings like broken guitar strings.
` To me, the idea that the buildings could have continued standing without a controlled explosion while a lot of the steel supports were wrenched out of place seems a bit far-fetched.

` Conspiracy theorist Steven Jones had a popular article about informal observations of flowing and pooled gray metal, claiming that it was actually steel - which is funny because steel turns from red to black as it cools. It seems more likely that this was something else, such as aluminum, which turns gray as it cools, and also melts at a much lower temperature.
` Whatever it was, no one can be sure of which gray metal it was because this cannot be determined by just looking: An eyewitness might naively say it was steel, because they know that the buildings were made of steel, but in reality not even an expert could determine what kind of metal it was unless some type of test - such as an atomic absorption spectrophotometry test - was performed. (This is why they are required in forensic investigations.)
` In other words, to claim that eyewitnesses - laymen or experts - know exactly what type of molten metal they are observing is ludicrous.

` Even if such a conspiracy proponent got through their head that melting and weakening are two distinct things, they would probably just file this in their 'unimportant' drawer and maintain that since all the other evidence supports their theory, it doesn't make a dent.

` What other evidence? Another allegation of the Truth Movement is that squibs - explosives used in controlled demolitions - can be seen in the videos as the buildings are collapsing.
` I will not contest that there are a few scattered sprays of debris flying horizontally from the buildings - which bear little resemblance to the fast-moving, organized lines of explosions made by squibs. In actuality, the mechanics of the buildings' collapse indicates a non-explosive cause:

` When you watch a controlled demolition, you can see the squibs going off in rapid succession from the first floor to the top, in all the major support points of the building. Just after that, the entire building - at the same time - free-falls to the ground.
` When you watch the World Trade Center towers falling, you cannot see any squib-like explosions going off at all prior to the building's collapse; nor do all the sections of either building collapse simultaneously. What you see is this:

` The parts of the buildings that were above the plane impact points begin falling first - meanwhile, the lower parts of the buildings are completely stationary until the top has collapsed upon them, subsequently causing supports and other structures on the floors below them to bend and burst like bubbles, blowing debris out the sides. [You can see for yourself in the PBS NOVA Documentary Why The Towers Fell.]
` In other words, the plumes of debris seen in the videos cannot be from squibs as they do not actually begin until after the buildings have begun to fall! They also do not move in any particular pattern other than what would be expected as a reaction to the building coming down. If they were controlled explosions, of course, they would have to go off before the collapse in order to cause it.

` Timing is everything in dealing with cause-and-effect!

` Instead, such plumes are clearly due to all of the immense pressure from the millions of tons of tower bending and popping, which is enough catapult chunks of concrete out of the windows!
` I could also add that, though conspiracy theorists claim the towers were at near-free-fall speed, the showers of debris fell a lot faster than the buildings themselves.
` Again, controlled demolitions do not collapse like this, though it is precisely what you could expect from such buildings that had been hit by airliners and went up in flames.
` Yes, one could argue that the buildings could be rigged to fall from above the impact points first, but it would be extremely difficult to predict beforehand just where the impact points would be!

` I probably should also note allegations that the towers were demolished via explosions going from the top down. This isn't really a good way to demolish a building, because it may explode or topple (especially with a plane embedded in it) more than it implodes.
` That's why demolitions teams only demolish buildings by removing the support from under each floor so it can fall straight down ('pancake'). In other words, the charges must be set in order from the bottom floor and move upwards.
` Buildings can 'pancake' from other causes, though, such as having enormous, growing weak spots - and having a hollow center doesn't hurt, either. This is consistent with the appearance that the partly intact tops of the buildings tired out the weak spots, starting a chain reaction that effectively blasted and crushed the parts below them.
` On further observations, looking at the South Tower (Building 2), you can clearly see that it did not fall straight down - as the North Tower had done - but indeed, the tower tilted toward the impact point and began 'pancaking' downward at an angle.
` This makes sense because the North Tower (Building 1) was hit between the 94th and 98th floors, the plane tearing through to the center of the building. The South Tower was then struck between the 78th and 84th floors, at an angle, which severely damaged the entire northeast corner. [2005. "9/11: Debunking the Myths." Popular Mechanics. March, 2005.]

` Therefore, when you compare the two towers, the South Tower sustained damage that was both lower down and less evenly distributed. The weakened point, therefore, had to support considerably more weight, which is why one could predict that it would be tilted and that it would have collapsed before the the other tower despite being struck afterward.
` Not surprisingly this is exactly what had happened.
` (I could also mention that the North Tower had four centimeters of fire insulation while the South Tower only had two, which couldn't have helped.)
` But what do the conspiracy theorists make of this? Well, since the South Tower was struck second but fell first, that is counterintuitive - that means that something weird must be going on!

` Addendum: Some have asserted to me that the firefighters on the scene insisted that there were bomb explosions, and that these were seen by people before and during the towers' collapse. This may be so; however, the firefighters who reported these explosions think they come from loud air pops from collapsing floors, fire hitting the jet fuel, and electrical panels or generators (of which there were a few in the WTC buildings).
` These types of explosions are seen in other fires, and they can resemble bomb explosions. But would that compel a conspiracy theorist to say that similar-looking explosions in other office building fires were caused by bombs as well?
` When quoting the firefighters, I might add, the conspiracy theorists have deleted just what it was that the firefighters thought the sounds were from, leaving their 'it was like a bomb' descriptions.

The Other Tower

` Of course, WTC building 7 also collapsed because, as it is often claimed by conspiracy theorists, there were other bombs there!
` On the website wtc7.net, one can see a typical claim: "fires were observed in Building 7 prior to its collapse, but they were isolated in small parts of the building, and were puny by comparison to other building fires."
` Revealingly, their one-sided argument seems to be intimately linked with their literally one-sided images of Building Seven! They only use the north-facing views, such as this one, note the smoke pouring up and out of the far (and non-visible) south side of the building.
` Most interestingly, I was amused to see this same photo on a conspiracy theorist website with a caption claiming that it was a view from the south!

` That's literally backwards!

` In fact, the only way that it could appear that this building was not extensively damaged would be if one did not see the south side (actual photo below - note, the sun is shining on this side of the building, which makes sense because this is the Northern Hemisphere).
` As is plain, the building was in fact missing the smoke-pouring side and was otherwise extensively ravaged by fire from top to bottom.
` Richard Banaciski, a firefighter who was working at the site, reports this very thing:

We were told to go to Greenwich and Vesey and see what's going on. So we go there and on the north and east side of 7 it didn't look like there was any damage at all, but then you looked on the south side of 7 there had to be a hole 20 stories tall in the building, with fire on several floors. ["World Trade Center Task Force Interview: Richard Banaciski ." Interview conducted on December 6, 2001. Transcribed by Elisabeth F. Nason.]

` Does that look 'puny' to you? (Here's an even more revealing picture.) It should also be mentioned that the emergency response workers who were there noted that the lower south section of WTC7 looked as if it might collapse by 3pm - almost two and a half hours before it did collapse. [" World Trade Center Task Force Interview: Richard Banaciski ." Interview conducted on December 6, 2001. Transcribed by Elisabeth F. Nason.]
` In other words, their assessment was that the building was doomed, and doomed even sooner than it was in real life.

` Also, the authors of the aforementioned web site claim that in order to cause the pancaking of this building, that the falling debris would need to be symmetrical from both WTC1 and WTC2.
` Looking at actual footage, one can clearly see that the south wall of the building gave in first - it did not fall straight down! - which makes sense because that was the side that was burning and crumbling in.
` Like the south tower, the way the building fell was consistent with what we know about it and damage done to it by flying objects - in this case, debris that was catapulted from a building which had fallen down and slightly to the side. There are no real mysteries here - it collapsed in the path of least resistance!

` If one were to add on a planned demolition hypothesis, then how could one explain why the collapse began where the damage was most extensive? Did the conspirators know exactly where the debris would strike WTC 7?
` Indeed, the tower did not fall ' straight down into a convenient pile ' as alleged by creators of the documentary Loose Change. The rubble was 12 stories high, 150 meters across, and blocked!
` And what about the other buildings, the ones that remained standing long afterward? Were they laced with explosives just in case they were hit by debris as well?

` For further evidence to fuel the conspiracy, adherents are usually quick to mention that in a September 2002 PBS documentary called America Rebuilds, Larry Silverstein says:

I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, "We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it." And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse. ["America Rebuilds " PBS Home Video, ISBN 0-7806-4006-3.]

` The conspiracy theorists - such as Alex Jones at prisonplanet.com - will tell you that this is damning evidence of a confession that he gave the okay to detonate the building, because they assume that 'pull it' means to demolish the building.
` And why? To get insurance money - despite the fact that he lost billions of dollars!
` Apart from Jones, I have also been sent a clip from the documentary by an anonymous proponent that includes the demolition team shouting "pull" just before WTC 7 collapses, along with the comment that this proves the word pull means to detonate a controlled explosion.

` What's going on here?

` It turns out that these are two completely separate uses of the word 'pull' - one by firefighters and one by demolitions teams.

` First of all, let's look at the demolition team video: I took a few minutes to watch this segment of the documentary; first of all, Luis Menendez from the Department of Design and Construction describes how concerned he is about where the damaged Building 6 will fall. We also hear a man with a distinctive voice shouting; "We're about to pull building six!"
` This is where the conspiracy theorists' video cuts off. Crucially, about thirty seconds after this part, the man with the distinctive voice is then shown describing how they are attaching cables to Building 6 and are planning to pull it down with heavy machinery!
` This, they do - completely shattering the conspiracy accusation!
` But, as the conspiracy theorists have learned; if you only show part of the documentary that 'proves' your point, and not the one that completely disproves it, not many of your followers will question your evidence.

` Could the term 'pull it' also mean an explosion? According to this article, from the point of view of a demolitions expert:

'We have never, ever heard the term "pull it" being used to refer to explosive demolition of a building, and neither has any blast team we've spoken with. The term is used in conventional demolition circles, to describe the specific activity of attaching long cables to a pre-weakened building and maneuvering heavy equipment (excavators, bulldozers. etc.) to "pull" the frame of the structure onto its side for further dismantlement.'

` One might also ask; what about when firefighters say 'pull it'? As in the military, 'pulling it' refers to giving up and pulling out your group. Soldiers are 'pulled' as well as firefighters. (In fact, I was amused to see that the term is used to refer to men in footage used in the conspiracy documentary Loose Change.) So, if firefighters are being pulled, it's because they are expected to be crushed by the collapsing, burning building.
` For an example of the term, another first responder said that there were "tremendous, tremendous fires going on. Finally they pulled us out." ["World Trade Center Task Force Interview: Richard Banaciski." Interview conducted on December 6, 2001. Transcribed by Elisabeth F. Nason.]
` So yes, it appears that Jones is taking this way out of context. On top of this, to clarify what Silverstein had meant, spokesperson Mr. Dara McQuillan said on September 9, 2005:

In the afternoon of September 11, Mr. Silverstein spoke to the Fire Department Commander on site at Seven World Trade Center. The Commander told Mr. Silverstein that there were several firefighters in the building working to contain the fires. Mr. Silverstein expressed his view that the most important thing was to protect the safety of those firefighters, including, if necessary, to have them withdraw from the building.

Later in the day, the Fire Commander ordered his firefighters out of the building and at 5:20 p.m. the building collapsed. No lives were lost at Seven World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

As noted above, when Mr. Silverstein was recounting these events for a television documentary he stated, "I said, you know, we've had such terrible loss of life. Maybe the smartest thing to do is to pull it." Mr. McQuillan has stated that by "it," Mr. Silverstein meant the contingent of firefighters remaining in the building. [See " 9/11 Revealed? A New Book Repeats False Conspiracy Theories."]

` The 'story' that there had been many firefighters evacuating the tenants in the building, and that they worked there until shortly before the collapse occurred, is backed up in abundance. For another example, Daniel Nigrois said in a NYT interview:

The most important operational decision to be made that afternoon was [that] the collapse [of the WTC towers] had damaged 7 World Trade Center … It had very heavy fire on many floors and I ordered the evacuation of an area sufficient around to protect our members, so we had to give up some rescue operations that were going on at the time and back the people away far enough so that if 7 World Trade did collapse, we [wouldn't] lose any more people. We continued to operate on what we could from that distance and approximately an hour and a half after that order was [given], at 5:30 in the afternoon, World Trade Center collapsed completely. ["World Trade Center Task Force Interview: Daniel Nigrois ." Interview conducted on October 24, 2001.]

` Indeed, there is large agreement between McQuillan's response and the testimony of the firefighters, including facts such as firefighters being at the WTC 7 site, rescuing and evacuating people until late in the afternoon, that they predicted that collapse was imminent, and that they acted on this by pulling back and waiting for the building collapse at around 5:20 pm.

` If you are a conspiracy theorist, however, you might just ignore this because you are convinced that you are correct, and that maybe even if this is an accurate counterargument, possibly, it doesn't stop all the other evidence from being true.
` Right, like the melting steel and the 'puny' fires in Building 7.

` When I look at the Truth Movement's story about WTC 7, I find that it is full of gaping holes, much like the ones found on the buildings themselves, and so inevitably cannot stand up to scrutiny.
` Larry Silverstein could not have destroyed the WTC building for all of those reasons - plus the fact that his alleged confession was on a PBS special and therefore seen by millions seems a bit weird.
` Furthermore, he does not have any link with the U.S. government (besides being a landlord of government agencies), which are supposedly the real terrorists.

` What I'd like to see those conspiracy theorists explain is that if buildings 1 and 2 both needed to throw debris out to hit WTC 7, and then all three buildings need to be wired for demolition in order to collapse, why bother? Why not just blow the buildings up with bombs and then blame terrorists? (It's been done before.) Why would they need planes?
` On top of that, prepping a building for demolition takes a considerable amount of time - first, it needs to be partly gutted, and then extensively wired! And those were huge, 110 buildings, so that would take... what?
` The Landmark Building collapse - which is compared to the WTC collapses by conspiracy theorists - took four months just to wire up, and that was only thirty stories. So, probably over a year.
` So how could they Especially with all those people working there!
` How could nobody notice that? Or were they in on the secret? Maybe they're really still alive? It depends on which conspiracy theorist you ask. In any case, the baseless assumptions are wearying.

The Pentagon

` Many of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists also believe that the Pentagon was not struck by Flight 77 but a strategically-fired missile or even a bomb.
` Thierry Meyssan wrote in his book Pentagate, that the damage done to the Pentagon was too limited to have resulted from the crash of a Boeing 757. Loose Change claims that the damage was "a single hole, no more than 16 feet in diameter," totally without remains of an airplane.

` Such only appears this way from photos taken at certain angles.

` The 9/11 conspiracy theorists selectively use pictures taken at such a perspective that shows that the damage to the Pentagon looks small, and try to ignore pictures that show - more accurately - the full extent of the damage.
` And what do we see? There is indeed a large, gaping hole in the side of the Pentagon - larger in photos that haven't been cropped by conspiracy theorists. This is expected for the damage done by a high-speed fixed-wing aircraft smashing into nine feet of reinforced concrete. While the plane could slam through the wall, the wings would shear off like aluminum foil.
` (Interestingly, there are several photos of a smaller round hole in the side of a wall, said to be the outside wall by at least some conspiracy theorists. However, this wall is one of the fortress-like layers inside the building, and the 'official story' holds that the hole was made by the landing gear - a total misrepresentation of the data once again.)
` Aircraft wings are extremely delicate, one should note, and can only leave noticeable imprints in buildings that are softer than the Pentagon, especially if they have a lot of glass on the outside (like WTC 1 and 2). The only place an airplane can smash through nine feet of reinforced concrete and leave wing-prints is in the cartoons.
` Yet, this point is exactly what conspiracy theorists push as being evidence that it wasn't a plane. That's right; though wing-prints aren't realistic in this case, the fact that they aren't found is suddenly... well... suspicious!

` As for the alleged absence of airplane parts, numerous photos show that there are parts of an airplane in the wreckage! Parts that have clearly been fragmented and charred by plowing through nine feet of reinforced concrete at four hundred miles per hour or so. Their condition is fairly typical of plane wrecks in which the plane has hit a very solid object.
` For example, you can see the landing gear, the engine, curved chunks of fuselage - even a wheel hub, which is indeed among the wreckage (to the right of the man). Here is a piece of the wreckage strewn on the lawn - that is no missile!

` Said conspiracy theorists generally write these off as 'planted' plane wreckage or faked photos. And they will ignore anyone's eyewitness accounts such as the one from blast expert Allyn E. Kilsheimer, who was the first structural engineer at the crash site.
` He describes (in an article in Popular Mechanics) what he himself observed:

I saw the marks of the plane wing on the face of the building. I picked up parts of the plane with the airline markings on them. I held in my hand the tail section of the plane, and I found the black box....
...I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts. Okay?" [" 9/11: Debunking the Myths." Popular Mechanics. March, 2005.]

` Accounts such as these are not important for conspiracy proponents to consider since, because most of them disagree with the conspiracy point of view, they must be fictional.

` Another thing proponents claim is that CNN correspondent Jamie McIntyre told Judy Woodruff that he couldn't see anything of a plane crash. When one believer informed me of this for the first time, I admit I was baffled and didn't know how to explain it.
` I later found that the answer is clear when you look at the transcript:

WOODRUFF: Jamie, Aaron was talking earlier — or one of our correspondence [?correspondants] was talking earlier — I think — actually, it was Bob Franken — with an eyewitness who said it appeared that that Boeing 757, the American jet, American Airline jet, landed short of the Pentagon.

Can you give us any better idea of how much of the plane actually impacted the building?

MCINTYRE: You know, it might have appeared that way, but from my close-up inspection, there's no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon. The only site is the actual site [?side] of the building that's crashed in, and as I said, the only pieces left that you can see are small enough that you can pick up in your hand. There are no large tail sections, wing sections, fuselage, nothing like that anywhere around, which would indicate that the entire plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon and then caused the side to collapse. [Transcript.]

` Clearly he is explaining that the plane made it inside of the Pentagon, rather than crashing beside the Pentagon! On the other hand, there is an ambiguous sentence: "From my close-up inspection, there's no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon."
` If you take away the context, you can twist that sentence to mean that there was no plane debris anywhere, as opposed to the fact that he could not see evidence of the plane touching down 'anywhere outside of but nearby the Pentagon'.
` This is exactly the line my conspiracy theory-believing friend had been fed. As one can plainly see, it is a ridiculous and intentional misrepresentation of what really was said.

` Though I could write far more on the subject, I think it's time I gave it a rest. Part 2 of this post will deal with parts of the conspiracy theory that do not involve planes crashing into buildings.

Accepting the Unexpected

2007-07-27T19:22:00.000-07:00

` In science, as in life, you have to be prepared to accept what you don't expect, or even think is possible. You never know what you're going to find - thus is the importance of keeping an open mind.
` Sometimes people are even forced to accept what they least expect, as in the case of a friend of mine:

` One night, she was awoken by a plaintive meowing from outside her bedroom window.
` 'Oh, the cat wants in', she thought. So, she got moving in the direction of the window - only to be stopped in her tracks.

` A giraffe's head was peering in from the roof!

` Needless to say, we don't expect to see giraffe heads where we think our cats should be.
` In this case, her cat had gotten hold of a giraffe mask and was carrying it dutifully to his human family, just as he had with assorted toys, leaves, pieces of cardboard and numerous gloves.

` In science, of course, surprises are to be expected and any personal preconceptions are to be criticized if they don't seem to match reality. As they say, there are no 'sacred cows' allowed!
` This is what allows scientific hypotheses (and occasionally full-blown theories) to change as more information is discovered. Mistakes, therefore, can be corrected. After all, part of a scientist's training is learning that that they don't know THE truth - they only know what is likely to be the truth, with the information they have at the time.

` That's why the misconception about the portacaval shunt (which I wrote of in this post) is no isolated incident: Scientists are quite often wrong about things, which is the reason for their peers to both review studies (challenge them with their knowledge) and repeat them (challenge them in 'real life') - there is always a chance that the results were due to an explanation that has been overlooked.
` After all, the first priority of the scientist (and the science-minded person) is to keep up with reality, regardless of what they may personally believe. The knowledge derived from the scientific method is ever-evolving.

` If I may use a quote-within-a-quote from Adam Zeman's Consciousness; a user's guide:

In the first place scientific knowledge is always provisional: it is uncertain which beliefs will stand and which will fall during the constant process of revision. As the Oxford physician Sir William Osler warned a group of newly qualified doctors at the turn of the century: 'Gentlemen, I must tell you that half of what you have been taught is wrong, and we don't know which half.'

` So true! It is easy to be wrong, largely because it is easy enough not to see alternative explanations. One famous and easy-to-grasp example is the horse named Kluge ("Clever") Hans.
` A hundred years ago, a German schoolteacher presented a horse that appeared to have learned reading, spelling and arithmetic! Notably, every time Hans was presented with a math problem (either verbally or written), he would tap his hoof a number of times.
` Eighty-six percent of those times it was the correct answer. Clearly, this could not be explained by chance!
` Enter the psychologist Oskar Pfungst. He determined that yes, it was not a trick; Clever Hans' trainer was not perpetuating a hoax. Indeed, Clever Hans could get the correct answer even when the trainer was not around!

` One might expect that since the horse really could get the answer right, and that it had nothing to do with signaling from his trainer, then he must really understand math problems! This is the proposed explanation (or hypothesis) held by a lot of people of that time.

` But what about a less obvious possibility?

` Pfungst also found that when the person asking Hans a question did not know the answer, or if Hans could not see the questioner, he would continue tapping his hoof after the correct number had been reached.
` From this, Pfungst managed to work out what was going on; when someone asked the horse a question, they subconsciously leaned forward to a barely-perceptible degree. The horse then tapped his hoof until the correct number was reached, upon which the questioner leaned back, cuing the horse to stop.
` Even when made aware of it, Pfungst still couldn't stop himself from leaning slightly - apparently it is too great a reflex!

` In that way, our intuition can lead us into believing in the strangest and most wonderful ideas, even when they aren't true. While human intuition is useful, it is also what makes a magician's illusions seem so mystifying!

` Similarly, just as Hans' ability to answer correctly could not be separated from his being able to see people who knew the answer, experiments involving alleged psychics show very much the same type of thing.
` For example, people who say they can psychically 'read' someone must be able to see or hear the person - or even someone who is familiar with them; already know something about the person themselves; or at the very least, make extremely vague statements lest they wind up miles away from the mark!
` In fact, you can even deliberately mislead these people by reinforcing any kind of nonsense that you tell them, or that they guess, about your life! However, I think I'll save the details of conscious - and even subconscious - cold reading for another day.

` What really gets me is that subtle cues (as well as obvious ones) are not only used by horses and charlatans; they can easily fool the ordinary person into believing that they have psychic abilities themselves!
` In fact, this very same thing was constantly happening with myself as a teenager. Much of it had to do with avoiding my sadistic and mentally ill father, who would unpredictably and severely punish me on a whim. This was one of many reasons I could generally be found as a wide-eyed, twisted heap of taut muscles and tendons, collecting cobwebs in a corner or scuttling out of sight.
` Needless to say, avoiding him at all costs was imperative. So, I developed the amazing ability of predicting that he was about to head towards whatever room I was in. I didn't know how I did it, but somehow I learned that whenever I would feel a deep panic and start sweating, that meant I had thirty seconds to either get away or look half-dead so he wouldn't bother me.

` This is why I suspect that I was subconsciously hearing some kind of cue in his footsteps - even when I was unaware of hearing anything at all - which, by association with his approach, filled me with terror. Puzzlingly to me at the time, this often happened when I could hear that he was standing relatively still. I can guess that it probably had something to do with the way he shifted his weight.
` Since I couldn't explain where my 'gut feelings' were coming from, I figured that they were some kind of psychic ability. So, I read a lot of library books on the subject and found that I could relate to the people who wrote about their experiences. Not only that, but I 'discovered' that I had a few more 'psychic abilities' as well!
` So, for a while I was a firm believer in these things, heedless to anyone's logical arguments, until I properly learned about the scientific method and fully understood its emphasis on not jumping to conclusions.

` One of many examples of this is the 'staring' experiments by Rupert Sheldrake, who declared that the feeling of 'being watched' by a hidden observer is a psychic ability. Indeed, his results showed that participants had a lot more than a 50% chance of guessing whether or not someone out of view was looking at them.
` This would be amazing if his testing sequences were also random, thus giving his subjects a 50-50 chance of being correct. In actuality, there are noticeable patterns in the sequences he used: A lot more alternations (A, B, A, B, A, B) can be found in his sequences compared to other possibilities (A, A, A, B, A, A) which would normally occur in equal proportions in a truly random sequence.
` Such were the findings of Colwell, Schroeder and Sladen (2000): To see just how much these testing sequences had to do with Sheldrake's results, they did a couple of experiments to see if they could separate the sequences from positive results.

` Here's what they did:

` In the first experiment, they had seven men and five women (all believers in the 'staring effect') in a room by themselves where they sat with a one-way mirror to their backs. Meanwhile, someone else was behind the mirror, staring at them, or not, according to Sheldrake's sequences of 'staring' and 'not-staring'.
` Each participant was given buttons to press for indicating whether or not they felt like they were being stared at. For the first sixty trials of this experiment, they were given no feedback whatsoever as to whether or not their responses were correct.
` For the rest of the trials - 180 more of them - they were shown the words 'correct' or 'false', depending on their success at guessing.

` In the sixty no-feedback trials, everything went as predicted - the average guess fell almost exactly on the mean chance expectation. However, in the trials with feedback, they quickly became more and more accurate, until their guesses were far above chance!
` Why? Since Sheldrake's sequences were not random, the participants could use the feedback - if subconsciously - to catch onto the fact that there are a lot more alternations in the sequence than chance would allow.
` Put another way, the participants learned to switch their guesses most often to 'not-staring', after being told that the previous trial had been 'staring', and vice-versa (even if they had not guessed the previous trial correctly).

` Of course, a believer in Sheldrake's hypothesis could easily say that the real (and least simple) explanation for the improvement is simply because the subjects became more sensitive to their psychic ability.
` Fair enough.
` So, in their second experiment, the researchers took some random sequences of their own, analyzed them to make sure they were really random, and then tried those out on the same participants.
` Plus, to make it as easy as possible for them to use their 'psychic abilities', the subjects knew if they had guessed correctly or not in all of the trials! But, with no pattern to learn, they were unable to do better than chance. Their alleged ability 'disappeared!'

` So there you have it - apparently Sheldrake's non-random sequence is what had influenced the outcome of his 'staring' experiments. In other words, his hypothesis has been falsified.
` And yet, Sheldrake continues to believe in his results and encourages other people to download his skewed testing sequences from his website in order to prove that they, too, have the same ability! Sure enough, that seems to be what they really do find, and you can too - unless, perhaps, you flip a coin instead!

` Naturally, a very real feeling of 'being watched' does exist, even when you don't see the watcher. If I had to guess, part of this probably has to do with the fact that for thousands of years, human beings have been both predators and prey - even towards each other. And, as with my own 'dad-alert' ability, it probably has to do with hearing, because an animal suddenly tries to be stealthy when it becomes aware of a human.
` But is the animal being stealthy in order to hide, or stealthy in order to strike? Either way, sensing this is to your advantage!
` It's a reasonable hypothesis, sure. But to explain the feeling of being watched also as a psychic ability? Even cases where it seems to be true are, well, not what they seem.

` Such revelations are the consequences of having a curious and open mind. After all, you never know what you're going to discover. Especially back when there seemed to be inexhaustable amounts of discovering being done all the time!
` When British explorer Harry Johnston set out into the jungles of the Congo to find a striped animal once nicknamed the 'African unicorn', he suspected it was some type of zebra.
` As governor of Uganda, he rescued some Wambutti pygmies from a German showman, who intended to display them in Europe. On the way back to their jungle home, the grateful pygmies told Johnston about the animal he sought, and even showed him its hoof-prints!
` But these were not zebra tracks; they were cloven! So, Johnston changed his mind about what was going on, and instead suspected it was a type of eland. But when the pygmies were able to show him some remains, he found that it was neither zebra nor antelope; it was closely related to giraffes!
` In his honor, this sacred animal of the pygmies, which they called o'api, was scientifically named Okapia johnstoni.

` I guess one could say; sacred cows (or zebras) aren't allowed if they are sacred okapis. Oh, stop groaning!

` Unfortunately, while people are not usually afraid of finding new species, astronomical objects, or genes, they often are afraid to discover new ways that they have been deceived. They don't want their preconceptions to be dashed.
` Is it any surprise that these people are the ones who have told me that I am too ignorant to understand that the scientific method and the logic that goes with it (generally referred to as modern skepticism) is not a problem-solving tool at all? Science has very little to offer, they say, because it is just another dogmatic religion.
` Dogmatic religion? Ultimately bowing down to reality, rather than someone's rigid, preconceived framework, is what science is all about! But no, they say, I am the one who has been deceived; I am the know-it-all whose faith in science is so blind that I cannot see how narrow my mind has been made!

` To be fair, I used to take this view myself saying the same harsh words towards scientists and skeptics. How dare they say that psychic powers are an illusion? I had them! Or ghosts? I'd seen one! Or alien abductions? Well, about the alien abductions; by the time I'd had my second one I was fairly certain they were illusions.
` Though being paralyzed and floating through my window into the mothership seemed real enough, I managed to take control, turning the aliens purple! I started laughing, and then I noticed that I was 'suddenly' still in bed!
` Those experiences, by the way, were my second and third episodes of sleep paralysis - and I've had others of various different types since then. (I will certainly have to write about these some time!)

` It is for the people who think they cannot be fooled that I once wrote a little story:

` Grig and Danald are two stone-age pioneers, still discovering a strange new continent. They are among the first people ever to set foot in this place, and are trying to determine the identity of a mysterious scavenger.
` It seems that every time they carry off the first load of a Pleistocene-sized kill to their tiny settlement, the carcass has been completely stripped by the time they get back!
` They know that the carnivorous marsupials they have encountered could not be the culprits, as the tracks left around the carcass are not paw-prints: Instead, they look like they were left by the dragging gait of a large reptile.

` One day, Grig and Danald brought down quite a large wombat-like animal (Diprotodon to you and me), and have smoked and packed up much of the meat. It is then that the topic of the mysterious scavenger came up.
` Grig volunteered a hypothesis; "You know, I think that those tracks were left by some sort of crocodile."
` "But we're not even near any large-enough watering hole," said Danald. "Don't crocodiles usually stay around water almost all the time?"
` "That's true," said Grig. "But these tracks are very similar - you can even see the tail! Maybe it's just a different kind of crocodile." He looked around nervously and picked up his pack. "In that case, we'd better leave!"
` "Well, you know what I think, Grig?" Danald said, picking up his own pack. "The reason we never see this thing is because it's not a living animal at all; it's the wandering spirit of a lonely and hungry crocodile that was shunned by its brothers and sisters. That's why it doesn't have to be around water."
` "That doesn't make much sense," said Grig. "Everyone knows that spirit crocodiles can't leave tracks, nor do they drag unsuspecting animals under the water to eat them. They live in a whole different world we can't usually see! I say, it's a big animal with sharp teeth, whatever it is!"
` "Maybe spirit crocodiles can't hunt animals," said Danald, "but what if they can eat something that's already been killed?"
` "Danald," Grig sighed, "to say the least, I think a council with the shaman is in order."
` "Good! Then maybe he will prove me right!"
` Hearing a noise behind him, Grig turned to see that they were being monitored by dark eyes and a long, flicking tongue.
` Alas, both of the hunters' hypotheses had just been dashed to bits upon their discovery of the half-ton monitor lizard, Megalania prisca.
` "What the..." Danald gasped and looked around for Grig.
` But he was already running for his life.

` Award-winning it's not, but the moral is; without objectivity, you could wind up getting bit on the... well, in this case, possibly several areas at once!

Manipulating the Placebo Effect?

2007-07-22T14:31:00.000-07:00

` *Newsflash!* I have just read a Nature News article that there is some headway in understanding the placebo effect! (As published in Neuron.) This may one day lead to doctors actually using it to help patients, which I've always thought they ought to!

` The presence of the placebo effect - which is basically a benefit that is perceived apart from (or in absence of) medical treatment - has long been known to complicate medical trials (as I have mentioned in my first/last post).
` It explains why an ailing patient can feel as if they are improving, even dramatically, though they have received no real treatment at all. As it turns out, the presence and even the strength of the placebo effect has been linked to activity in a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens.

` This brain structure is known to activate when we anticipate a future reward. Not only that, but when it is overactive we can develop addictions to things like drugs and gambling.
` According to the head of the study, Jon-Kar Zubieta of the University of Michigan, "This is driving the idea that you can manipulate the placebo effect, to increase it for therapeutic treatment."
` One way it could be done is to urge doctors to be more optimistic about their patients' treatment options and, says I, to give them more undivided attention. Seeing as how much of 'alternative' medicine seems to rely on this principle, that seems reasonable to me!

` On the other hand, methods to reduce or otherwise control the placebo effect might actually improve the accuracy of telling the effects of placebo apart from those of the actual treatment during medical trials.

` Zubieta and team have tested it out this way: They injected salt solution into the cheek of each of their thirty volunteers. Then, the subjects were given a mystery injection that was either a painkiller or a placebo.
` What they didn't know was that they had all gotten placebos!
` Some of the volunteers were also re-injected with the salt solution, but not offered anything else. That time, most of them reported that the mystery injection had been more effective than nothing. And yet, it was - technically - nothing!

` Interestingly, there was a lot of variation in the level of each person's placebo effect, and the team figured it might have something to do with the nucleus accumbens. So, they scanned the brains of fourteen of the volunteers, and sure enough, they measured more dopamine being produced in that area - a sign that indicates a reward being anticipated.
` They also found that the more dopamine that was being produced in the nucleus accumbens, the stronger the placebo effect was.
` The people with the highest dopamine output (and placebo effect) also had the most optimism concerning future rewards, which was revealed later when their brains were scanned while they played a gambling game.

` As neuropsychologist Chris Frith at University College London notes; "The doctors who do best are the ones who are most deluded that their treatments do work."
` Incidentally, this is exactly what science writer Toby Murcott says keeps alternative medicine practitioners in business. But that's a Whole 'nother Story.

The Importance of Comparison

2007-07-18T21:30:00.000-07:00

` I welcome all who come here to my critical thinking and science blog, and encourage my readers to comment on any of my posts.
` The only downside to this is that some visitors probably won't be familiar with how critical thinking and science really work. I know for a fact that most people don't quite understand these things and even worse, many are intimidated by them!

` If you will indulge me, I'd like to try writing about why we have scientific methodology:

` Human beings are able to come up with any idea they like to explain any phenomenon they choose, so goes our abstract nature. The problem is, there can be many sensible-sounding explanations for the same thing; plus, these different explanations can contradict one another!

` Even more, it can be easy to 'prove' many of them right, because quite often we can find what we're looking for as evidence to support our ideas: As long as we ignore anything that goes against our idea, it is easy to convince ourselves that we are correct even when we may not be - and even when other ideas actually make more sense than our own!

` I'm sure most of you know exactly the type of thing I'm talking about.

` Just for kicks, let's say you have this idea that cats are vile, nasty creatures. Therefore, every time you see a cat hiss and spit at someone, you might think to yourself; "Good for nothing cats!"
` But what if you believe that cats are quite nice by nature? Seeing the same cat hissing and spitting would have you thinking; "Aw, the poor kitty feels threatened!"
` Needless to say, that's why two people can see the same thing and have two different opinions about what is going on!

` The fact that more than one interpretation is possible for one event is arguably the main reason for the scientific method: You can make all the observations you like, but that is only the first step in figuring out what is actually going on.

` If you have two potential explanations for something - hypotheses - and you find just as much evidence for either one, how can you decide on one over the other? For a common experience we'll say your car won't start, and you figure it's because the battery is dead. So, you install a new battery and it starts up just fine.
` But, you ask, what caused the battery to go dead to begin with? One hypothesis is that there was a problem with the battery. Another hypothesis is that your voltage regulator went haywire at some point and drained your battery.
` How can you tell which one is right just by thinking about it? Face it, you're stuck! The only way to resolve the issue is to try to falsify each hypothesis - in other words, do your best to prove them wrong! In this case, examine the dead battery and the voltage regulator, and run the engine to see if the battery goes dead again.
` Of course, you can't just try proving one wrong, because proving one wrong does not automatically make the other right; the real explanation could be something you didn't even think of! (Perhaps one of your map lights was on all night? What about the alternator?)
` Clearly, you must try to prove both of them wrong! And if you find nothing wrong with either the old battery or the voltage regulator, well, let's just say you may find that cars are very complicated things.

` In a way, science is all about creating a large number of hypotheses with our big imaginations (and our ability to make logical inferences) and then 'weeding out' the wrong ones: Most of the ideas scientists think up in fact do turn out to be wrong.
` Though one cannot actually prove anything right, at least the hypotheses that are left are most likely to be true!
` So, how does one go about this 'weeding' business?

` Just the other day, I had been reading a bit of Keith Stanovich's How to Think Straight about Psychology. It gave me a few ideas about how to explain this:

` Stanovich says that one thing you need to understand is the importance of comparing one thing to another. If we are looking for patterns in the world, we cannot rely on one isolated event. In other words, if you're walking down the street and see a cat flying through the air, does it make sense to assume that you'll be likely to see this again, or that any cat could fly?
` Of course not, you say!
` That's why we must be careful of jumping to conclusions with our interpretations of events. A bit further investigation might show that the 'flying' cat was actually flung from the window of a nearby house by a person who is of the opinion that cats are nasty and vile!

` So, the way scientists find patterns is - drumroll, please! - observe a lot of instances of the same type of thing. That way, they can compare all their data and thus have a better idea of whether or not something is particularly unusual. It's a commonsense thing - really, it's the best way to figure out what to expect from the world.
` Patterns, in other words.
` The way scientists generally do this is to create (or find) very similar situations to observe, so that the events they are comparing really are comparable; apples to apples, rather than apples to oranges.
` Within those confines, the difference that one change makes is more noticeable. Also, by isolating events from various types of influences, you narrow the possibilities of what can happen.
` This is referred to as control, which Stanovich notes is the second main thing one needs to understand about scientific thinking.
` A typical example is lab experiments with hapless rodents. Let's say we have sixty lab rats of a particular genetic strain, all of which have a problem; someone has severed a nerve in the left hind leg (which the rats are probably thrilled about). So, they're all very similar in that way. They are also similar in that they all live in the same kind of cage and eat the same amount of the same type of food.

` What we have here is a controlled situation in which the only real hypothesis that would explain any healing of the rats' nerves would be that it just healed by itself. Not much chance of any interference, is there?

` That is, unless those people in white lab coats did their own interfering: In this experiment, twenty of the lab rats are left alone, twenty are injected with Drug X, and twenty more are injected only with saline solution (which basically does nothing).
` Why would scientists pump a third of the rats full of IV fluid? Because, the mere act of injecting the rats with something has an impact in itself! By injecting one group with the drug and another with an inert substance, they should be able to tell if the act of injecting the drug does anything different from only the act of injecting.

` This is especially important in medical studies using human beings; taking a fake medication or even a fake dietary supplement can have drastic effects on one's well-being. It can not only make pain go away, but it can even make one's condition improve! And yet, the person has actually swallowed nothing but sugar or saline!
` That's called the placebo effect, if you've never heard of it. Now, the main reason I refer to Stanovich in particular is because he brought up a very good example of what happens when you're not good enough at creating comparable groups:
` It is the case in which the portacaval shunt - a device which lowers blood pressure in the liver - was recommended for treating cirrhosis. Many doctors (and patients) swore by it, and it was quite popular until the mid-1960's.

` What happened?

` In 1966, a pattern was found among all the various studies which demonstrated the shunt's effectiveness: The conditions were not very well narrowed down.
` Many of the studies had no control group, so there wasn't anyone who thought they had the shunt implanted when they didn't. Among those studies, 96.9% were judged to show that the shunt was at least moderately effective.
` Some other studies did have a control group, though the patients were not assigned randomly to each group. Since people aren't as alike as lab rats, it's important to randomly assign people for treatment to make sure that similar patients tend to wind up in different groups, preventing a selection bias.
` In other words, if the people selected for the 'real' treatment have a lot of help and support from their families or are chosen specifically because they are 'good candidates', that's not very random is it? You're just rounding up the ones that have a better chance!
` In fact, it seems this really did happen because in 86.7% of these studies the shunt was deemed at least moderately effective: And yet, in the studies that employed random selection and a control group, doctors found that only 25% of them showed at least moderate effectiveness.
` That's not nearly enough evidence to show that there's any more to the shunt than a placebo effect or being implanted in people who had an advantage, so it stopped being used for treating cirrhosis.

` So you see, if the scientists involved hadn't realized that the only studies that had shown good results were ones without proper controls - and thus having poorer comparisons - medical doctors would continue installing the portacaval shunt in a situation where it wouldn't have done anything!
` More than that, if other, similar mistakes had not been caught in medical science... well, I personally don't care to think about that! But as I've said, the scientific method is to help us figure out which hypotheses don't make sense.
` In this case, the hypothesis that the portacaval shunt helps treat cirrhosis is one that doesn't make sense (though it has been shown effective in treating other disorders). The only really convincing explanation for why so many doctors held this hypothesis is that it was based on flawed studies.

` Scientists (especially medical scientists) have a lot of pressure on them just to make comparisons, don't they? It's easy to be wrong in this world. And, if anyone is going to get good at being objective, this is one thing they have to do.
` It is also one thing that separates science (or even simply critical thinking) from something that isn't. I find this to be particularly evident for things that tend to shock and confuse people: Say you're walking through a field one day and come across a dead cow whose eyes, mouth, tongue, udders and sex organs seem to have been removed with surgical precision.
` Disturbing reactions aside, the question you ask is "Why?"
` One can come up with any number of hypotheses for what has happened to the cow. I know this because it's been done.
` First of all, you must make comparisons: Is this somewhat unsettling sight very common? As it turns out, it is: This is merely what happens when animals such as crows and maggots eat out the softest tissue of an animal carcass. (Cow hide is particularly tough to poke a hole through, so they just eat what they can get.)
` Then, typically the carcass swells up to the point where the edges of the holes are stretched until they appear even more clean-cut than they had.
` In other words, this is a fairly normal condition of the remains of a cow (or other large animal) that has died of natural causes - something that just happens occasionally.

` Many other people don't take that view, however, commonly preferring to believe that extraterrestrial beings have been picking up cows all around the world, cutting certain parts of them out, and for some odd reason, dropping the carcasses back in the field where the cow once lived.

` Sure, I suppose the evidence seems to fit both explanations equally well - especially to people who think cows with missing soft parts is unusual - but seeing as this has spurred some people to actually watch these same changes happen to animal carcasses left out in a field, is there anything else to explain?
` In this instance, though, no hypotheses were technically proved wrong - instead, this is a case of the fact that simple and straightforward explanations tend to make more sense than ones in which all kinds of speculative and unnecessary factors are introduced. I'll have to write about that some other time.
` The case of the Swiss cheese cow, of course, is a bit more complicated than that: Nevertheless, I think it's a good - if morbid - example of something which spurred two very different hypotheses to leave you with.

` ...One more thing; if anyone is curious, a similar study to the one I described involving rats with severed nerves was actually carried out. The drug used was a chemical that stops scar tissue from forming, and the rats injected with it had a near-complete recovery while the other two groups only had a fairly good recovery.
` So, the scientists have pinpointed, scar tissue (at least in rats and probably in humans) seems to prevent nerves from healing.