Correlation vs. Causation

` 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!

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Who's afraid of Carl Sagan?

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.

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Accepting the Unexpected

` 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!

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The Importance of Comparison

` 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.

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