The Skeptic Digest

The Skeptic Digest Volume 21, Issue 4.

2009-03-25T12:45:53Z

The Skeptic Digest: Volume 21, Issue 4.

----------------
Contents
Features -- Little Atoms Podcast -- Events -- Dubious News -- Administrivia
----------------

Features
Columns:
Editorial (Lindsay Kallis and Chris French)
Hits & Misses (Mark Williams)
Skeptic at Large (Wendy M. Grossman)
Skeptical Stats (Mark Williams)
Philosopher's Corner (Julian Baggini)
Through a Glass Darkly (Michael Heap)

Humour: Sprite by Donald Rooum, Cartoons by Tim Pearce
Pictures: Hilary Evans' Paranormal Picture Gallery

Reviews:
Occult London; by Merlin Coverley (Tessa Kendall)
2012: The year of the Mayan prophecy; by Daniel Pinchbeck (Mark Newbrook)
The Paperback Apocalypse: how the Christian Church was left behind; by Robert M Price (Mike Hutton)
Counter-Knowledge: How we surrendered to conspiracy theories, quack medicine, bogus science and fake history; by Damian Thompson (Mark Newbrook)
Jinn from Hyperspace: And other scribblings - both serious and whimsical; by Alan Sokal (Paul Taylor)
Beyond the Hoax: Science, philosophy and culture; by Alan Sokal (Paul Taylor)

Little Atoms Podcast
Little Atoms, the official podcast of The Skeptic magazine, is produced and presented by Neil Denny, Padraig Reidy, Anthony Burn and (very occasionally) Richard Sanderson and broadcast every Friday from 19:00 to 19:30 GMT on Resonance 104.4 FM. It is a show about ideas and each show features a guest from the worlds of science, journalism, politics, academia, human rights or the arts in conversation.

Recent guests have included: Tracey Brown, Stephen Law, Andrew Copson, Nick Cohen, Steve Jones, Jonathan Heawood, Nick Davies.

The latest guests and news can be found here: http://little-atoms.blogspot.com/
while the podcast itself can be found here: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/littleatomspodcast

Events
In addition to the usual line-up of events, it would be worth noting the 3rd and 4th October 2009 in your diaries. The Amazing Meeting! (TAM) is being held in the UK for the first time, in London, later this year. The website http://tamlondon.org/ will go fully live soon, while a Facebook page and Twitter feed (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=58881253486 and http://twitter.com/tamlondon respectively) are in place to report the latest news.

A complete list of upcoming events is at www.skeptic.org.uk/events
This list includes events from:
Skeptics in the Pub in the UK: www.skeptic.org.uk/pub
Goldsmiths' Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit: www.goldsmtihs.ac.uk/apru
Center for Inquiry, London: http://cfilondon.org

Dubious News
Standing room only
When I first heard of the Atheist Bus Campaign, I was quite amused. Launched back in October, the campaign is essentially a joint venture from the British Humanist Association and Richard Dawkins, attempting to add balance to the religious propaganda which frequently appears on London public transport.

The campaign takes the form of a large red, yellow and pink poster plastered to the side of London’s buses, proudly proclaiming “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

Frankly, the posters are quite tricky to miss but if you don’t live in the capital then you can be forgiven for not having heard of them until now. Despite having exceeded the original £5,500 target (which Dawkins agreed to match, pound for pound) by around £140,000 at the time of writing (*152,000 at the time of circulating this digest email), the original intention was to adorn only 30 buses (of the 8000 vehicles operating on London’s 700 different routes each day) for one month. The campaign has however, become a lot bigger than initially expected. The British Humanist Association released a statement only a few days ago which officially launched the campaign in over 24 other locations and stated the adverts had already run on 800 buses, the London Underground and “two large LCD screens on Oxford Street”.

Now I realise that criticising the first ever atheist advertising campaign is unlikely to be particularly popular, especially when said campaign involves the Patron Saint of Atheism Himself, but to be honest, I don’t understand it.

I like the concept, it’s quaint and catchy; but if the slogan is truly to intended to stop people from worrying about the existence of God, in my opinion it has failed. It’s a great way to catch media attention and to perhaps make atheism a point of discussion but that’s all. I don’t believe anyone will walk away from the poster with a new confidence in the world and I certainly don’t believe it will make anyone question their faith.

While Alpha Course and other religious posters adorn the London transport system forcefully promoting all manner of books, seminars and revivals where God may be discovered, the atheist alternative simply offers a worry-free life, safe in the knowledge that there “probably is no God”. I don’t find that a convincing line and I’m not sure anyone else should either. My views about religion are based on my experiences and upbringing, the company I keep, but importantly also the available evidence. The Bible offers no substantial evidence for belief in a divine creator especially when considered against the available criticism. I won’t proclaim my approach to the topic has ever been neutral but the slogan does nothing to prompt theists to question their beliefs. If anything, the direction to “stop worrying and enjoy your life” is more akin to one of the Ten Commandments.

In discussing the slogan with another atheist, I was reminded of an exchange between James Randi and Chris French in an interview earlier this year. Towards the end of the interview (which should appear in print in the next issue, and online as a video around the same time), Randi volunteered: “All I want is just to get people thinking. Have them ask questions, have them think about what I have told them. Don’t believe me any more than you believe these other people who make these claims. I’m making a claim too; it may not be true, investigate it, think about it.” French echoed the same sentiment in return, saying: “The bottom line is, just think for yourselves, question everything. Question what I’m telling you and look at the evidence”.

Simon says
In the spirit of mobilising community members, the RSPCA also issued a statement in October urging the Church to consider and celebrate animals as it places new emphasis on making “Time for God’s Creation”. Seeking to promote awareness of, and a responsible attitude towards, animal suffering, the RSPCA’s press release states “Many people tend to think that animal abuse happens at the hands of just a few, but in truth as a society we need to think far more deeply about how our lifestyle impacts on animals and how we may be, directly or indirectly, permitting suffering”.

The call was timed to coincide with Animal Welfare Sunday (5th October 2008), while the RSPCA also published a “Service for Animal Welfare booklet, written by Professor Linzey, complete with prayers, readings and liturgies”. It would seem that Prof. Linzey is no stranger to animal ethics or religion, either. As employee of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, an Anglican priest, vegetarian and first holder of an academic post in Ethics, Theology and Animal Welfare, he is well suited to his role espousing the ethical lifestyle, a topic which is gaining increasing publicity in recent times.

Despite some questionable practices such as a controversial euthanasia policy (a topic which will be returned to at a later date), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have for some time approached celebrities sympathetic to their cause, producing campaigns to increase awareness about ethical lifestyles. Ricky Gervais, for instance, has recently written to Gordon Brown asking if his “office be so good as to prod [the Ministry of Defence] with a stick” as they are reluctant to discontinue the use of black bearskin for their Guards’ ceremonial caps. Simon Cowell appeared in a similar campaign stating “If you wouldn’t wear your dog, please don’t wear any fur”. Ironically, single campaigns such as these have a much greater potential for a long-term impact on the attitudes of future generations – Cowell was judged as more famous than either God or the Queen, coming top in a poll of 1600 children under te n.

Frankenstein’s microchip
Few will forget the image of the Vacanti mouse – the unfortunate rodent which, in 1997, received attention from world media due to the ear-shaped cartilage structure artificially created on its back. Since then, there have been developments towards the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos, with the Human Fertility Embryology (HFE) Bill passing its final reading in the House of Commons in October 2008, nearly two years after motions for the outlawing of such embryo research, with a majority of almost two to one.

Although the HFE will permit the creation of three types of hybrid embryo for stem cell research it is, remarkably, not the most striking development in recent times (not to mention the Roman Catholic Church calling for women to be permitted to give birth to human-animal hybrids, according to the Times). Researchers working on a project termed NACHIP at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry have successfully created a neuro-semiconductor interface. In essence, they managed to integrate living mammalian neurons and silicone in a new microchip. Fused to the microchip with proteins found naturally in the brain, electrical signals pass bi-directionally through the neuronal ionic channels. Once refined, the technology could enable the development of much more sophisticated drug screening methodology and, potentially, genetically powered hard discs. It’s perhaps not as sensational as a woman giving birth to a dog but it’s just as interesting.

A shot in the dark
The opportunity to criticise anything children hold dear gives me a warm, fuzzy, glow inside, and nothing epitomises the strict morality advocated by 1950’s childhood legends more than the Lone Ranger. Aside from Silver (who was quite clearly the unsung star of the show), one of the Lone Ranger’s trademarks (or more aptly, gimmicks) was his fashioned silver bullet which, as you’ve probably guessed, is just inaccurate.

The idea that the Lone Ranger could perhaps cast his own bullets or at least acquire them effortlessly simply doesn’t match the reality. Without a high heat resistant graphite mould from which to cast the rounds, it would be almost impossible to heat the silver to its melting point of 962 degrees Celsius to obtain a clean, shiny bullet, a fact Gun World staff discovered when they attempted this. They encountered similar problems when trying to find the correct mix of gunpowder to weight the bullet while maintaining an accurate shot.

The resulting article entitled Lone Ranger, Go Away is a lengthy analysis of their attempts and failures to forge silver bullets with typical tools. In short, if you’re an enthusiast wishing to re-enact scenes from the popular television program (or an assassin looking for a classy calling card), I’d suggest giving up on forging ammunition by campfire and using electrolysis as a method to obtain a silver-plated bullet instead.

----------------
Skeptical Digest is written by Mark Williams and e-mailed quarterly alongside published issues of The Skeptic; there may be occasional additional mailings. To subscribe to or leave the digest, visit http://skeptic.org.uk/mail/mail.cgi/list/digest (we do not sell, give away, or rent the e-mailing list)
----------------

Skeptical Digest 21.3 (Autumn 2008)

2009-02-08T17:35:47Z

CONTENTS

Dubious News - In this Issue - Little Atoms Podcast - Events - Administrivia

Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Plait

In recent times, the qualifications required for US politicians and political candidates have notoriously come under question. Certainly, with airtime given to Barack Obama's breakfast preferences and whether those expensive Italian shoes really make John McCain any less 'American', popular political discussion seems to be increasingly vacuous.

There is little doubt, however, that a certain newly elected President is actually very well suited to his new role, despite a penchant for t-shirts and baseball caps. At least one online (admittedly spoof) news portal declared the "Phil Plait Phenomenon" in full swing, and it only seems fitting to recognise the latest appointment to the ranks of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF).

Since JREF's foundation in 1994, James Randi has been at its helm in the role of President, figurehead, and general sceptical icon. The JREF press release issued on the 4th August, however, marked an end to this reign and a movement "up-and-sideways" for Randi, to the position of "Founder and Chairman of the Board". Meanwhile, Phil Plait adopts the vacated presidential position. Plait (a familiar name to many sceptics) runs the website Bad Astronomy, founded the blog of the same title in 2005, and recently rose to interstellar notoriety with an asteroid bearing his name.

Randi stated that the changes to the JREF structure would provide "the time and opportunity to finish my next two books: A Magician in the Laboratory, and Wrong!", though in the edition of SWIFT on March 19th 2004, he wrote: "I lose no opportunity to get to my keyboard and record my thoughts before the inevitability of time catches up with me. I estimate that I have two more books in me. Perhaps quantity will substitute for scholarship". Thankfully, with these latest offerings following a publication in 2005, that estimate is already Wrong! and I hope this paves the way for many further publications from Randi's hand.

Denver, the most inviting place on Earth

We now know that aliens not only exist, but are also exempt from criminal prosecution in America, or at least those are the implications of an article in the Denver Post. The reported story rests on an alleged alien visitation to Denver, in which a stereotypically grey, inverted pear-shape head, appeared at the window of a man who coincidentally happened to have a video camera pointing in the same direction with the belief that local deviants had been peering into his house at his young daughters.

Obviously it is easy to mistake a pervert for an alien, but the resulting worldwide attention given to the videotape goes to show precisely how frenzied the media can become when armed with a poorly taken video, an endorsement of authenticity, and a healthy imagination.

Validated by a film editor also from Denver, a reconstruction of the videotape was looped over and over on news channels while its owner, Stan Romanek, described his thoughts of the images. Details of the preliminary investigation and precisely how the tape was proven to be authentic are seemingly unreleased, but more interesting hoaxes have been uncovered in the past.

The Cottingley Fairies, for instance, started life in 1917, long before international media. They were a private joke between relatives but photos were soon endorsed and validated by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harold Snelling (an expert in 20th century fake photography) rendering them as a unique mystery. After debate lasting for 64 years, four of the five photos were eventually revealed as fakes through a confession from their creators. They were made using paper cut-outs and hatpins, though the authenticity of the fifth photo was always maintained.

In the Denver case, however, the story becomes wonderfully farcical with Romanek's claim that he has encountered aliens on over 100 other occasions. To keep allegedly authentic video evidence of an extraterrestrial visitation hidden for years is implausible for so many reasons, but to remain silent about countless other incidents including abductions and torture, suggests a completely different motivation than the promotion of public awareness, especially when the incidents are later revealed to the media.

A news conference was organised for Romanek and the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) by Jeff Packman, a local resident. Around 30 journalists attended with at least 12 further TV cameras present. At the conference, Packman suggested that the city develop an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission that would handle alien encounters.

What seems evident from the Denver case, the Cottingley Fairies, and countless other examples, is the impressively low threshold of evidence required for a vaguely inventive hoax to gain international awareness and become part of our culture. The perpetuation of poorly supported claims in the face of common sense and fundamental questioning paves the way for future dubious thought.

One thing is certain: if aliens genuinely were peering into Denver homes, no prosecutions would be brought for breach of privacy or trespassing. Their existence would become a worldwide news story and justifiably so. Rather than media sensationalism and willing liberal acceptance as a default position, what is perhaps required is a little reflection on the nature of claims and the suspension of belief until the discovery of robust evidence.

The end of the world is pretty

With this issue of Hits and Misses taking a decidedly extraterrestrial turn, it seems an appropriate time to mention developments with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the Conseil Europ�en pour la Recherche Nucl�aire (CERN).

Crudely explained, the LHC is a ring of evacuated piping, buried 100 metres under the Franco-Swiss border and surrounded by 9300 powerful, superconducting magnets, forming the world's largest cryogenic facility. Inside the 'beam pipes', protons are accelerated to speeds approaching that of light, travelling 11,245 times around the 26.6 km ring every second before intentional collisions between the particles are created. The energy and particles created as a result of the collisions are under study in an attempt to better understand high energy events and interactions.

Presuming the current tentative schedule is met, the LHC is due to begin testing and collecting data this September. It will be six to seven years, however, before any results can be analysed. The reason for this is that the particle events under investigation will only occur in a minority of the interactions and, even then, their presence will be masked by 'noise' generated from other interactions. The events are also very short-lived, lasting only for fractions of a second. As a result, data of sufficient statistical power will take the best part of a decade to collect.

At its core, it is hoped that the data from the LHC will support the existence of the Higgs boson, the only particle identified within the most accurate theoretical physical model (Standard Model) which has not yet been observed. Consequently, without the Higgs boson, our current understanding of physics would need revising.

Throughout the development of the LHC, controversy has existed about its safety, not least due to the fact that it is the most powerful particle accelerator ever developed. While physicists would likely consider the annihilation of Earth to be resounding proof of their hypotheses, such an event, though unlikely, would inevitably cause difficulties disseminating results in a peer-reviewed format. Trips to the CERN complex can be booked at its website, through which a frightening array of quite colourful equipment can be seen, so if nothing else, the end of the world is pretty.

Little Atoms

The Skeptic now has an official podcast; Little Atoms is "a show about ideas", and its hosts, Neil Denny, Padraig Reidy, and Anthony Burn, converse weekly with a guest about "freedom of expression, free inquiry, empirical rationalism, skepticism, the scientific method, secular humanism and liberal democracy". With past guests such as Christopher Hitchens, Jon Ronson, and James Randi, you can be guaranteed there is never a dull moment on-air! The Little Atoms podcasts can be accessed via our website and also on iTunes.

The Skeptic Vol 21, No 3 Autumn 2008

Features

Making UFOlogy History
David Clarke reviews three books on classic UFO cases published 60 years after the birth of UFOlogy

The recovered memory debate:
False memories of the memory literature? James Ost analyzes and critiques a body of false memory literature

Profits of the New Age
Jon Cohen reports on a sceptical day spent at The Mystic Arts Exhibition, 2008

Humour: Sprite, by Donald Rooum Cartoons by Tim Pearce Pictures from Hilary Evans' Paranormal Picture Gallery

Skeptical Stats:
A column based on the observation that sometimes statistics don't lie - they're just plain crazy...

Hits and Misses:
Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Plait
Denver, the most inviting place on Earth The end of the world is pretty
Little Atoms

Columns: Editorial (Lindsay Kallis and Chris French) Skeptic at Large (Wendy M. Grossman) Philosopher's Corner (Julian Baggini) Sprite (Donald Rooum) Through a Glass Darkly (Michael Heap)
Reviews: Science and Religions: A Very Short Introducion by Thomas Dixon The Satanic Scriptures by Peter H. Gilmore In God We Doubt: Confessions of a Failed Atheist by John Humphrys How to Be a Good Atheist by Nick Harding
Events: A complete list of upcoming events at Skeptics in the Pub in the UK, at the Center for Inquiry, London (http://cfilondon.org) and at the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths (http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/apru/lectures) are at http://skeptic.org.uk/events

Skeptical Digest is written by Mark Williams and e-mailed quarterly alongside published issues of The Skeptic; there may be occasional additional mailings. To subscribe to or leave the digest, visit http://skeptic.org.uk/mail/mail.cgi/list/digest (we do not sell, give away, or rent the e-mailing list).

Skeptical Digest 21.2 (Summer 2008)

2008-09-06T11:28:49Z

CONTENTS

Dubious News - In this Issue - New Website - Little Atoms Podcast - Events - Administrivia

Retired at twelve years old

The Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge was first pledged by James Randi on 6 March 1998 and during its existence to date, none of the applicants have passed even the preliminary tests. On 6 March 2010, however, the challenge is to be retired and the collective sigh of relief from fraudulent performers might even faintly shift the Earth's axis of rotation (of course that's probably unlikely given the inherent difficulty in accurately targeting a single focal point so as to avoid any cancellation effects from equal and opposing forces, but you get the idea). In any case, the termination of the challenge creates a rather notable absence in the sceptics' default defence against claimants of all things supernatural.

Although it will no longer be possible to follow Sylvia Browne's 'progress' with the challenge or to learn of further perfectly reasonable excuses for not taking JREF money and scientific acclaim, there are a number of organisations that still offer prize money for successful applicants.

In the UK, the Association for Skeptical Enquiry (ASKE) is currently offering �14,000 to anyone successfully demonstrating psychic powers, and the Indian Skeptics are offering 100,000 Rupees to be awarded by B Premanand himself, for any psychic, supernatural or paranormal demonstration. The list of prize funds continues too: $100,000 (AUS) from Australian Skeptics (including $20,000 for anyone who nominates a successful applicant), $50,000 (US) from CFI's Independent Investigations Group and, bizarrely, $2,500 (US) from Scientific American for a photograph of a spirit or a "visible psychic manifestation" under test conditions.

On its website, ASKE provides a list of 20 worldwide challenges which, at the time of publication, collectively offer over $1,500,000 in prize money in addition to the JREF prize. Randi states that the reasons for the discontinuation of the JREF challenge are to make available more funding for future projects and scholarships, and as he says in the first edition of this year's SWIFT, it will also bring an end to "hundreds of poorly-constructed applications, and the endless hours of phone, e-mail, and in-person discussions we've had to suffer through". So while one challenge that grew from a humble $100 (US) ends, many more are ready to continue in its place.

Blind guesswork?

The Ganzfeld procedure has its origins in 1930s Gestalt theory but has been used consistently as an experimental method for testing telepathy and remote viewing since the 1970s. In brief, the experiment is typically conducted using two rooms, in one of which the individual acting as the receiver is placed in effective perceptual isolation. They sit comfortably in a chair under a red light, with half ping-pong balls covering their eyes and listen to white noise (which is also coincidentally often used during military interrogation). Meanwhile, a set of images (or video clips) is randomly selected from a large pool of such stimuli and a particular target stimulus is randomly selected from that set. The 'sender' then concentrates on the chosen target in an attempt to telepathically transmit stimulus information to the receiver. The receiver, who typically enters a mildly altered state of consciousness, is asked to free-associate any images or sensations they experience during the isolation, and is asked to identify target images when taken out of the Ganzfeld state afterwards. The technique provides little information about the physical experiences of the receiver when in the Ganzfeld state, but a study conducted by Harvard researchers and published in The Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience combined technological and traditional measures to provide exactly that. This particular study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to observe the haemodynamic response and neural activity of participants who were presented with two images (two-alternative forced-choice tasks). Another individual, either biologically or emotionally associated with the receiver, focused on the target image, which was randomly selected from the two, and attempted to transmit this to the receiver.

Whereas the original Ganzfeld tests rely substantially upon participants' ability to match visualised images to target images, usually in the presence of distractor images, the imaging technique was hypothesised to highlight any telepathic effect as participants' brain activity (as measured by blood-oxygen level changes) would be distinctly different in response to novel images than in response to familiar ones. Previous (non-paranormal) research into familiarity effects had already reliably demonstrated such effects. Perhaps it is not a great shock to learn that the results were in line with chance expectation, but despite the counter arguments that ESP involves fundamentally different neural activity to normal perception, or that ESP effects are too weak to accurately measure in this manner, the study retains its methodological merit. If significant neurological differences are exhibited when studying 'normal' senses, perhaps a null result when testing ESP will add further weight towards a critical analysis of the alleged phenomenon. Or perhaps it's about time 'real' psychics were tested. I'm sure $1,000,000 should cover the research costs.

Only 64 years to live

Dr Yoshiro Nakamatsu plans to die in 2072, which is no small feat, since he will be celebrating his 80th birthday this year. Nakamatsu, or Dr Nakamats as he is more widely known, has no apparent morbid fascination; this date has simply been borne out of his research and his theory of devoting equal attention to food, drink, sleep, muscle training, spirituality, and sex. The Japanese inventor has over 3200 patents registered to his name, earning him a place in the Guinness Book of World Records and beating Thomas Edison, who registered a mere 1093. Dr Nakamats was the mind behind the digital watch, the floppy disk, the CD (devised because the popping noise from his vinyl copy of Beethoven's Fifth was a distraction from inventing), the DVD and the taxi-meter. He is also the only person to have licensed 16 patents to IBM. Nakamats eats only one meal per day consisting of no more than 700 kilocalories, and since 1971 has photographed every meal in order to recall those which might stimulate the best ideas. Dr Nakamats is not exactly 'normal'.

Nakamats is currently developing many projects, including: an energy self-sufficient house, bouncing shoes to decrease physical stress caused by walking, snack foods to improve mental performance, a revolutionary fluid to make sex more enjoyable (and designed to rectify Japan's falling birth rate), and paradoxically, a condom again intended to heighten pleasure, but also to rectify the world from AIDS. The common factor between all of these concepts, however, is that Nakamats devised them whilst underwater.

It would seem that the man who sleeps only four hours per day also finds inspiration whilst becoming slightly hypoxic. Nakamats immerses himself underwater in a feat of endurance in his own swimming pool until desperate for air or until ideas are forthcoming. He then emerges and scribbles the ideas on a Plexiglas tablet before continuing about the day.

In order to fulfil such a varied lifestyle with so little sleep, Nakamats naps in a device dubbed the Cerebrex, which is of course his own invention. It is a chair which, although comfy in appearance, also allegedly increases the blood circulation to the brain and increases synaptic activity in the brain through pulsating sound produced from headrest to footrest. Due to the unique technology contained within the recliner, Nakamats claims one hour in the chair has the same effect on the brain as eight hours of sleep.

The theory of power napping, however, is not new. Polyphasic sleep gives a supposed method to reclaim up to six hours that would otherwise be spent sleeping. It involves sleeping for a core period of a few hours and then taking strictly timed naps of 20 minutes or so throughout the day. In many cases a seemingly polyphasic schedule such as the one undertaken by Nakamats can simply be biphasic (normal) sleep with longer periods of sleep deprivation, but why so many notable individuals, such as Edison, DaVinci, Churchill, Franklin, and Napoleon, have been rumoured to keep odd sleeping patterns still remains unanswered.

The Skeptic Vol 21, No 2 Summer 2008

Features

Towards a Cognitive Neuroscience of the Dying Brain Jason J Braithwaite offers an in-depth analysis and critique of the survivalist's neuroscience of near-death experiences

Searching for Cressie, the Crescent Lake Monster Benjamin Radford recounts the story of his search for a monster that never was

An Evening with James Randi & Friends Jon Cohen reports on the evening that will be remembered for all eternity as the greatest night there ever was (probably)

Humour: Sprite, by Donald Rooum Cartoons by Tim Pearce Pictures from Hilary Evans' Paranormal Picture Gallery

Skeptical Stats:
A column based on the observation that sometimes statistics don't lie - they're just plain crazy...

Hits and Misses:
Retired at twelve years old
Blind guesswork?
Only 64 years to live

Columns: Editorial (Lindsay Kallis and Chris French) Skeptic at Large: eHealth (Wendy M. Grossman) Philosopher's Corner (Julian Baggini) Sprite (Donald Rooum) Through a Glass Darkly (Michael Heap)
Reviews: Who Shot JFK? by Robin Ramsay The Psychic Handbook by Craig & Jane Hamilton Parker DVD - Nick Pope: The Man Who Left the MoD - The UFO Phenomenon Unveiled directed by Philip Gardiner Quirkology: The Curious Science of Everyday Lives by Richard Wiseman

The Skeptic Website & Weekly Podcast

We've very secretly been working on a new website - with added podcast - to bring a bit more content and functionality to The Skeptic and hope you'll take some time to have a look and send us feedback on the new site. There are a few bugs and glitches to iron out and we will be adding more content over the next few months, but we'll attempt to make the transition to the new site as painless as possible.

We've also teamed up with the team behind Little Atoms at Resonance FM to bring you a weekly rationalist and sceptical talkshow, with a sprinkling of other interesting guests. We've already had over 3500 views and almost 2000 downloads since our test run last month and have 73 episodes ready to listen to, featuring; Ben Goldacre, A.C. Grayling, Simon Singh, Julian Baggini, Johann Hari, David Colquhoun, Francis Wheen, Christopher Hitchens, Jon Ronson, James Randi, David Aaronovitch and many notable others.

For a sneak preview, visit http://skeptic.org.uk/joomla

Events

Skeptics in the Pub

Leicester

The Real X-Files - Nick Pope
Tuesday, September 16

A Sceptical Look at Spiritualism - Emma-Louise Rhodes Tuesday, October 21

The Skeptic in the Courtroom - David Allen Green Tuesday, November 18

Authenticity and its Influence on Behaviour, Attitudes and Beliefs - Mike Heap Tuesday, December 16

http://skeptic.org.uk/leicester
Email: simon at skepticsinthepub.org

London

Bad Science - Ben Goldacre
Monday 15th September 2008

Why don't creationists just shut up? - Paul Taylor Monday 13th October 2008

Beasts on the Loose - Neil Arnold
Monday 17th November 2008

Skeptics versus Believers - Professor Chris French and Nick Pope Monday 8th December 2008

http://skeptic.org.uk/pub
Email: pub at skeptic.org.uk

APRU @ Goldsmiths, London

Is God a Dangerous Meme? - Dr Susan Blackmore Tuesday 7th Oct 2008

Conspiracy Beliefs: A Social Psychological Perspective - Dr Karen Douglas Tuesday 21st Oct 2008

Time to Rewrite Your Autobiography? - Dr Kimberley A. Wade Tuesday 11th Nov 2008

Psychoactive Plants and Psychic People: Does Psilocybin Really Cause Psi? - Dr David Luke
Tuesday 18th Nov 2008

Magical Beliefs and the Two Cerebral Hemispheres - Dr Christine Mohr Tuesday 9th Dec 2008

http://goldsmiths.ac.uk/apru
Email: c.french at gold.ac.uk

Skeptical Digest is written by Mark Williams and e-mailed quarterly alongside published issues of The Skeptic; there may be occasional additional mailings. To subscribe to or leave the digest, visit http://skeptic.org.uk/digest (we do not sell, give away, or rent the e-mailing list).

The Skeptic is published quarterly. For details see http://skeptic.org.uk/joomla.

Skeptical Digest 21.1 (Spring 2008)

2008-05-03T15:25:00Z

>>>Skeptical Digest 21.1 (Spring 2008)

--Please forward as widely as possible without spamming anyone--

>>>CONTENTS>>>
>>>Skeptical Stats>>>Dubious News>>>In this issue>>>Administrivia>>>Skeptics in the Pub>>>

>>>SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1. Number of people who became ill, suffering from headaches, nausea and respiratory problems after inhaling fumes from a 65 ft wide crater made in Peruvian soil by a meteorite: over 200

2. Size of the family home currently being constructed for Arnold Chase, an American businessman, whose property is set to contain a 103-seat cinema: 50,853 square feet, approximately equivalent to 2.2 Wembley football pitches

3. Number of couples who simultaneously participated in a ten-second kiss on September 1st 2007, in an attempt to establish a new Guinness World Record: 6,980

4. Average length of a giraffe's tongue: 19 inches

5. Fastest recorded running speed of a giraffe: 34.7 mph

6. Lowest rate of success in correctly identifying the presence of cancer using mammograms, as found by a longitudinal study of 72 US health facilities: 27%

7. Date upon which the BBC declared in their radio bulletin "There is no news", promptly deciding to play piano music instead: April 18th 1930, Good Friday

8. Number of complaints received by police during a 20-mile naked walk in Dorset, raising money for the Marine Conservation Society: 18

9. Charge for attendance at a two-hour 'psychic training workshop' run by the Psychic Sisters Consultation Service in Selfridges, Oxford Street: £30 per person

10. Maximum number of people permitted to attend each training session: 8

11. Length of the adult education course entitled "An In-Depth Study of Psychical Research" run by Prof Archie Roy at Glasgow University, advertised with the tagline "Paranormal phenomena do occur": 20 weeks

12. Cost for the course, in which Roy addresses topics such as hauntings, apparitions, mediumship, and reincarnation: £120

13. Number of toilets contained within the new Wembley Stadium: 2,618

14. Combined size of the two giant screens in the new Wembley Stadium: equivalent to 1200 television sets

15. Length of the average blink: 0.3 seconds

16. Cost to provide a cow to a Malawian dairy farmer through Oxfam: £250 per month

17. Total amount of water used in the production of I kg of beef: between 13,000 and 100,000 litres, depending on production techniques

18. Total amount of water used in the production of lkg of wheat: between 1,000 and 2,000 litres, depending on production techniques

19. Mass of grain fed to a cow in order to produce lkg of beef: 7kg

20. Number of bottles of probiotic drinks sold annually in the UK: 830 million

21. Proportion of probiotic drinks which do not contain sufficiently 'robust' bacteria to even survive the digestive process, according to the Food Standards Agency: one half

22. Percentage of medical practitioners registered in the Chicago district who, in a survey by peers, admitted to having placebo treatments: 45

23. Most money ever spent on the internet in one minute, the "Mega Minute", as recorded by Retail Decisions, an internet monitoring company: £767,500

24. Longest episode of hiccups, recorded in Charles Osborn from Iowa: 68 years

25. Half-life of human taste buds: 10 - 14 days

>>>DUBIOUS NEWS>>>

>>>There seems to be an ever-increasing list of things which have been identified as detrimental to the health of the human body: saturated fat, drinking alcohol, not drinking alcohol, not sleeping enough, sleeping too much, masturbation, Cliff Richard and smoking, to name but a few. Interestingly though, Korean nationals can add another item to that list, specifically the humble fan. Writing in 2004 for the popular conservative Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo, writer Grant Surridge noted that there were generally in Korean newspapers "each summer from 1990 to 2004, about 10 stories related to someone dying in the presence of an electric fan". Although I would perhaps expect greater mortality rates among enthusiastic listeners of Richard's Mistletoe and Wine (I am assured there are such people) than among responsible users of electric fans, Korean society has seemingly genuinely assimilated the legend that, in some cases, fans can cause death. It is alleged that specific conditions are necessary for fans to cause these deaths. Doors and windows must be sealed creating a closed, and possibly airtight, room. The demise of the victim is supposedly caused either through hypothermic effects, asphyxiation due to the creation of an airless vortex (sometimes surrounding the victim's face), asphyxiation due to ever-depleting levels of oxygen (and/or increasing levels of carbon dioxide), or some bizarre combination of all of those. Belief in the phenomenon is not confined to specific circles either. Fan death has been 'endorsed' by some high-profile and well educated figureheads, while reports in the news and media are certainly not a rarity. So, why has fan death become such an entrenched belief? As Seo Min, a professor at Dankook University Medical School, wrote in a column on the topic, "It's not like Korea's air is any less oxygen rich". His personal theory is that in a country which already holds a belief in killer fans, making such conclusions is perhaps easier than examining the evidence for other causes of death. I also wonder though if fan death could be used as an explanation of certain types of suicide, in order to spare the emotions or social stigma for family members and to avoid wider disclosure of a clearly sensitive issue?

>>>Astrology offers many things, but never has the course of true love been more directed by the stars than in the case of P. Selvakumar, a 33-year-old Indian farm labourer who recently married a dog. Of course, when I said "true love" I actually meant nothing of the sort. Selvakumar actually approached his astrologer with a tale of cruelty and karma. As a teenager he found two dogs mating, so in an episode he has yet to explain, he decided to suspend their bodies from a tree, and stone and beat them to death. He stated, as reported by the Telegraph, that promptly afterwards "my legs and hands got paralysed and I lost hearing in one ear". His wise astrologer obviously interpreted this as Karmic consequence, advising Selvakumar that he would need to atone for his actions in order to avoid future adverse health and alleviate his disability. The issue here extends far beyond the role of astrology and life decisions, though. The penance Selvakumar was directed to suffer in order to atone for his sins and improve his karma, was that of marrying and maintaining his marriage to a further dog. Exactly how such an action is even remotely supposed to impact upon poor health is immediately questionable, but the penance is also fundamentally selfish, designed solely to negate the supposed moral consequences of Selvakumar's past behaviour. As any good offender rehabilitation scheme establishes, one important method of reducing recidivism lies within the acceptance that a particular act is legally or morally wrong. An inter-species arranged marriage simply does no such thing; it neither establishes responsibility nor does it instil any sense that stoning and beating two dogs to death (a method often used to kill dogs when they are to be eaten, due to the belief that the stress hormones released during the process will make the meat taste nicer) is actually wrong. What motivated the teenage Selvakumar to commit the actions he did is a question which remains open for explanation, but aside from the rather slim possibility of a rather substantial placebo effect, I sincerely doubt his new bride 'Selvi' will be the talisman to good health for which he had hoped. Either way, I pity Selvi and her future prospects.

>>>It always happens. Your least favourite child bought you a pair of novelty socks for Christmas when in fact you really wanted a pendant, an electronic gadget or a secret elixir to prolong and preserve your health. Your disappointment on squeezing those socks through the wrapping was almost visible to the little one. Thankfully Q-Link, a Bristol based company, has the product for you. It's a pendant, an electronic gadget and a secret elixir to prolong and preserve your health. Q-Link, who obviously take great pride in their highly scientific approach to their products which work "at the deepest or quantum level", produce a range of pendants which protect the wearer from terrifyingly harmful electromagnetic radiation. Endorsed by, among others, the Times, the Mail and television's London Today programme, few could fail to be convinced by the sculpted casing which hides a shiny, symmetrical circuit board. The manufacturer claims that "The Q-Link acts as a tuning fork that resonates with the ideal frequency at which the body's own energy system should vibrate." To me, the method through which this is achieved still seems a little fuzzy, however. The Q-Link Classic, for instance, contains a circuit board with etched pads as expected, in addition to a single component: a zero-ohm resistor. In essence, the pendant contains some metal and a bit of wire, all of which doesn't actually connect to anything. The product requires no batteries, has a lifetime guarantee, and for up to £119.95, promises to literally do something. Thankfully, with an order for the Q-Link Polished Silver Pendant, we will never again have to be concerned about the horrific nature of EMF radiation (such as light?). You're protected. That said, the possibilities to play practical jokes on radiographers who fail to take one visible x-ray while you're wearing the pendant are limitless.

>>>With George Bush's final presidential term coming to an end on the 20th January 2009, focus is inevitably being given to the policies and politics of his potential successors. Yet, to date, no Science and Technology policy debate has ever been held with hopeful candidates. With that in mind, now is the perfect time for the emergence of Sciencedebate. Billed as a "grassroots initiative spearheaded by a growing number of scientists and other concerned citizens", Sciencedebate 2008 aims to bring together the presidential candidates for the largest debate into what the organisers believe is possibly "the most important social issue of our time". Although none of the candidates address all of the eight primary areas of science and technology in their proposals, the topics of energy, the environment and digital technology are among the most contested, while Clinton is notably the only candidate to address the topic of space. Sciencedebate has attracted high-level support from Nobel Laureates, scientists, business leaders, university deans, writers and many other signatories, though no formal arrangements have been made for the debate. In the current climate, a mass-scale debate on science is essential. It would reveal which candidates are best suited to and most capable of addressing the urgent and contentious issues facing society, while raising scientific awareness especially within the American public. The organisers and signatories are requesting support from any suitable sources and it is possible to do exactly that by visiting http://www.sciencedebate2008.com.

>>>The Skeptic is changing...
Your favourite 20-year-old British sceptical magazine is changing. As we approach our 21st birthday, we think the time is right to find out what you like and what you don't like about the magazine so that we can give you more of what you want. With that in mind, we are collecting data via an online survey and we would be very grateful if you would spare a few minutes to complete it. Just go to the website of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit
(http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/apru) and click on the "Skeptic Magazine Survey" link. We not only want to hear from current subscribers but also lapsed subscribers and those who have never subscribed - so if you know people who fit those descriptions who might also be willing to help out, please send them the details. We are also considering adopting a new title. We are well aware of the negative connotations that the word "sceptic". Although we feel that such attitudes are based upon misunderstanding a new, more universally acceptable title could only be a good thing. Let us have your suggestions for a new title. If we adopt your suggested tide, we will let you have a year's free subscription to the re-launched magazine! Feel free to let us know what you think about The Skeptic by email too (write to edit at skeptic.org.uk). We want your opinions, both positive and negative, and your ideas for improvements. This is your opportunity to shape the future of your magazine - get in touch!
Thanks for your support!

>>>IN THIS ISSUE OF THE SKEPTIC (21.1, Spring 2008)

Features: Reincarnation: Overview of the work of Ian Stevenson (1918-2007) (Leonard Angel) Exposing the Myth of Alcoholics Anonymous. Part 2: Cult not Cure (Steven Mohr) Amazon's Amazing Admission (Mark Newbrook)
Columns: Editorial (Victoria Hamilton and Chris French) Hilary Evans's Paranormal Picture Gallery Hits and Misses (Wendy M. Grossman) Philosopher's Corner (Julian Baggini) Sprite (Donald Rooum) From Michael Heap Letters
Reviews: Ghost Hunters: The Victorians and the Hunt for Proof of Life After Death by Deborah Blum How to Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic by Madsen Pirie Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphor and Media into the Twenty-first Century by Marina Warner Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates by David Wootton

>>>SOURCES FOR SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1 Yahoo; 2 ABC News; 3 Telegraph; 4, 5 San Diego Zoo; 6 Chicago Tribune; 7 BBC News Newswatch; 8 BBC News; 9 Channel 4 News - Online; 10 AOL; 11 Scotsman.com; 12 Glasgow University; 13, 14 WNSL; 15 Bristol Neuroscience; 16 Oxfam; 17, 18, 19 Vegetarian Society; 20, 23 The Times; 21 The Guardian; 22 Reuters; 24 Guinness World Records; 25 Petersen, O.H. (2006), Human Physiology, p. 160.

>>>ADMINISTRIVIA>>>
Thanks to this issue's clippings contributors: Mark Williams, with suggestion for this copy from John Roberts. A special thank-you to Sid Rodrigues, who persistently and indefatigably keeps filling The Skeptic's blog (http://skeptic.org.uk/news) with news stories and pointers.

Editorial and other e-mail to The Skeptic should be addressed as follows:
Subscription inquiries: subs at skeptic.org.uk (please do not phone)
Letters to the editor: letters at skeptic.org.uk Contributions for Skeptical Stats and Hits and Misses: news at skeptic.org.uk
Book review section: reviews at skeptic.org.uk Article ideas and other editorial queries: edit at skeptic.org.uk

Unsolicited commercial email is NOT welcome at any of these addresses. E-mail one address ONLY. If you do not get a reply, it probably means that our reply email bounced.

The Skeptic (UK) Digest is written by Wendy M. Grossman (http://pelicancrossing.net) and e-mailed quarterly alongside published issues of The Skeptic; there may be occasional additional mailings. To sign up to receive the digest or to get off the list, visit http://skeptic.org.uk/digest (we do not sell, give away, or rent the e-mailing list).

The Skeptic is published quarterly. For details see http://skeptic.org.uk. A free sample issue is available in return for a self-addressed stamped A4 envelope. Subscriptions cost UKP15/year for UK residents. For pricing and availability of back issues and non-UK pricing, see our Web page or the back page of any printed issue. The Skeptic accepts payment by credit card or by cheques in pounds Sterling drawn on a British bank (sorry, but the banking charges for foreign cheques and postal orders are impossibly high). The Skeptic is no relation to the (more recent) American magazine or the (older) Australian magazine of the same name.

>>>ENDS>>>

>>>SKEPTICS IN THE PUB>>> Skeptics in the Pub meets (usually) on the third Tuesday of every month at 7:00pm at the The Penderel's Oak, 283-288 High Holborn, London WC1V 7HP (Nearest tube: Holborn and Chancery Lane). A £2 donation is requested to cover the guest speaker's travelling expenses and sundries. Non-skeptics welcome. Turn up at any time during the night. Detailed directions, a list of upcoming speakers and a map of how to get to the pub can be found at http://skeptic.org.uk/pub.

5th-10th May 2008
CFI London event 'The Sources of the Book'. An Anatomy of the Literary Beginnings of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Six evenings at Conway Hall, London. Registration fee £30. See http://www.centerforinquiry.net/london/events/the_sources_of_the _book/ for details.

Tuesday 6th May 2008
Mahlon Wagner: "Chiropractic - A 113 year struggle from pseudoscience to legitimacy"

Saturday 10th May 2008
Skeptics in the Pub Outing to the Mystic Arts psychic fair at Olympia

Tuesday 20th May 2008
Richard J. Evans: "Holocaust denial and freedom of speech"

Tuesday 17th June 2008
Dr. Ciarán O’Keeffe and Steve Parsons: "How not to investigate the Paranormal"

The talk will be followed by informal discussion in a relaxed and friendly pub atmosphere. Skeptics in the Pub is a regular evening for all those interested in and/or skeptical of the paranormal, alternative medicine, psychic powers, pseudo-science, UFOs, alien abductions, creationism, Fortean phenomena, cult religions, water-divining, lost civilizations, etc. Further information and mailing list announcements available from pub at skeptic.org.uk. Suggestions for speakers or offers to speak are gladly welcomed.

>>>END ANNOUNCEMENTS>>>

Skeptical Digest 20.4 (Winter 2007)

2008-02-10T15:57:52Z

>>>Skeptical Digest 20.4 (Winter 2007)

--Please forward as widely as possible without spamming anyone--

>>>CONTENTS>>>
>>>Skeptical Stats>>>Dubious News>>>In this issue>>>Administrivia>>>Skeptics in the Pub>>>

>>>SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1. Fastest zorb ride (a sport in which practitioners hurtle down a hill inside a giant, translucent, inflatable ball) as verified by police radar: 32mph over 820 metres

2. Proportion of snakes to people, residing in the village of Choto Pashla, West Bengal, where most of the reptiles are poisonous monocled cobra: 1:2

3. Number of people, spread over 70 different countries, said to be affected by high levels (above 10 parts per billion) of naturally occurring arsenic in drinking water: 140 million

4. Number of children in Britain aged between 5 and 19, taking hyperactivity medication: 400,000

5. Total value of two, 372-year-old, church bells, complete with inscription reading "Love God", stolen from a village church near Andover, Hampshire: £30,000

6. Value of a 40-million-year old Egyptian fossilised whale before it was allegedly destroyed by European diplomats who drove over it in two 4-wheel-drive cars: $10,000,000 (US)

7. Total mass of a light green, coconut-sized gemstone, believed to be a diamond by its owner who claimed it didn't scratch when tested with a garage grinder: 8,000 carats

8. Total fines issued to two 19-year-old Devonian boys, who tested deodorant and subsequently refused to pay for it as they didn't like the smell: £163

9. Fine issued by Chinese police to two lovers who hugged in public, on Qi Xi, the Chinese equivalent of Valentine's day: nearly £330

10. Number of people who were given a free outfit by a newly opened London clothing store, after responding to a company publicity stunt by queuing in the rain wearing nothing but underwear: 40

11. Number of legal appeal proceedings recently brought to the Kenyan High Court, by the group 'Friends of Jesus', seeking to overturn Christ's conviction and subsequent execution on the basis of a human rights violation: 1

12. Yearly number of road accidents in Britain, attributable to insects: 650,000

13. Average value of items carried in a typical school bag, by British children of secondary school age: £265

14. Number of people who signed an online petition requesting that the government did not slaughter 'Shambo', a black Friesian bull living in isolation at a Hindu temple in Wales, who tested positive for the bacteria which causes Bovine TB: 24,000

15. Percentage of the British public responding in 2005, who supported some type of ban on experiments which cause suffering to animals: 80
16. Percentage of British animal studies conducted in 2005, in which an anaesthetic was used: 40
17. Percentage of British animal studies conducted in 2006, in which an anaesthetic was used: 38

18. Average price of an ecstasy tablet in Portsmouth, UK: 50 pence.

19. Total amount gambled on the result of the latest series of Big Brother: 110 million

20. Average speed of the two Voyager space probes, launched 30 years ago to explore Jupiter and Saturn: more than 950 miles per minute
21. Number of languages in which a greeting was recorded, for inclusion with each probe: 54
22. Amount of power the Voyager craft need to function: the equivalent of 3 standard light bulbs

23. Equivalent power of the impact of the 320 metre wide asteroid dubbed 99942 Apophis, in the unlikely even that it collides with the Earth in 2036: 850 million tons of TNT.

24. Average number of handbags one woman is likely to own over her lifetime, according to research conducted by an Essex shopping centre: 111

25. Average total cost of these handbags: £8,436

>>>DUBIOUS NEWS>>>

>>>Barry L. Beyerstein, 19th May 1947 - 25th June 2007 Barry Lane Beyerstein was a sceptic. He held a Professorship in Psychology at Simon Fraser University, the chair position in the British Columbia Skeptics Society, and he was a co-founder of CSICOP. In addition to this, he was a husband and father. Whilst many tributes and accounts of Barry's life have focused on his achievements and extensive voluntary contributions to science and scepticism, the account on page 19 of the magazine gives the heartfelt sentiments of Barry's daughter, Lindsay. Her words immortalise Barry's personality far more appropriately than mine ever could.

>>>It's life, Jim... but not as we know it. The famous Star Trek quotation may perhaps be a tired line, but this time it might have an element of truth. In August 2007, the New Journal of Physics published a paper by researchers working for the Russian Academy of Science, the Max-Planck Institute, and the University of Sydney explaining that, under a specific set of conditions in space, inorganic material may adopt the characteristics of living organisms. The group's findings add significantly to the debate surrounding the existence of inorganic and alien life, although they are, for now, purely theoretical. The group took inorganic dust particles and used computer simulations to model their behaviour when immersed and held in a plasma (the fourth state of matter consisting of charged particles created when electrons are dissociated from the atomic nuclei of a superheated gas). The model demonstrated that the particles would absorb electrons from the plasma thus attracting positive ions, and that under zero gravity conditions the dust particles would sometimes form helical structures comparable to that of DNA. This dust-formed double helix has the potential to store and retain varying amounts of information through its two electrostatically stable states, while sections of the structure can be copied from one helix to another (bifurcation) and the chain can even in a sense metabolise, using new plasma to persist and grow. In these respects, the structures possess some of the characteristics attributed to 'life', but that doesn't mean that if they were to exist in reality they would be 'living'. More correctly, these findings further blur the boundaries of 'life.' Previously, most scientists held that life could only occur in the presence of liquids such as water, but as Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the California-based SETI Institute said, "If you could have life in the hot gases of a star, or in the hot, interstellar gas that suffuses the space between the stars, well, not only would that be 'life as we don't know it' but it might be the most common type of life." Shostak also noted that our existing ideas about what defines 'life' are already inadequate. The relevant principles the research paper considers are "autonomy, evolution, progeny and autopoiests". But under these strict categories, as Shostak pointed out, mules (the sterile offspring of a male donkey and a female horse) could not be considered as living. That leaves us facing the potential absurdity that inorganic dust structures fulfill the academic criteria for life, but hybrid mammals do not. Perhaps it's science itself that now needs to evolve.

>>>According to various newspapers, including The Times and the Daily Mail, in late 2007, beachcombers in Southwest England may find themselves inundated with colourful plastic bath toys that will have floated over 17,000 miles of sea to reach the shore. The story began on 10 January 1992, when a Pacific storm washed three 40-foot containers from a ship bound for America from Hong Kong. Inside the containers were packages containing 28,800 yellow ducks, green frogs, blue turtles, and red beavers, rubber bath toys produced by a Chinese manufacturer for the US company The First Years and packaged in fours. Their journey has taken them halfway around the world through Alaskan, Japanese, Hawaiian, Arctic, Atlantic, Canadian, Scottish and Cornish waters. The toys' progress has been meticulously charted by Seattle-based oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer; supposedly they have traversed the North Pacific from Alaska to Japan and back to North America in around 3 years. Their progress was twice as fast as the surface water during this trip, earning them the title 'hyper-ducks', but the toys averaged one mile per day even when challenged by Arctic ice. Two thirds of the friendly flotilla have already made their way successfully to foreign beaches, but the remaining internationally noted yellow icons are expected to be carried by the Gulf Stream to Cornish beaches in late 2007. Although their journey might seem trivial, the toys' adventure may contribute largely to oceanographic studies of water currents. This is not the first instance in which an accidental spill has aided study, either - in 1990, 61,000 Nike running shoes were lost overboard from another ship before being discovered on further beaches worldwide. Assuming scientists' models of surface currents are correct, UK residents may well find up to 10,000 brightly coloured bath toys in the near future. Each is now worth a £50 bounty from the manufacturer as its contribution to science.

>>>Spot the odd one out: acupuncture, saffron (the Middle Eastern spice), exercise, St. John's Wort, ketamine, electro-convulsive therapy and omega-3 fatty acids. Stop reading at the end of this sentence and really consider for a moment - which of the list has not been employed by health 'practitioners' to treat depression? The answer: all of them deserve to be listed, none are odd. While many treatments for depression historically vary on the (non-standardised) scale of barbaric to pseudoscientific, it seems one of the more unlikely weapons to be considered in the recent treatment arsenals is that of ketamine. The journal Biological Psychiatry published findings from a preliminary study conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), suggesting that the drug acts remarkably quickly as an antidepressant, relieving some patients' symptoms within two hours. The significance of these results is obvious given that the most common medications currently used to treat depression typically need four to six weeks to take effect. In fact, the small-scale research returned results showing that 71% of participants experienced a halving in their measured depression after one day. In studies with established medication, it took eight weeks for 63% of participants to experience the same effects. Unfortunately every silver lining has a cloud. Aside from apparently being a powerful, if short-lasting anti-depressant, ketamine is also a psychedelic and a dissociative anaesthetic often used in veterinary medicine. The drug is popularly abused in clubbing, producing hallucinogenic effects and out of body experiences at higher concentrations. Although only small (subanaesthetic) concentrations of ketamine were administered to research participants, the possibility of hallucinations remained. If participants did experience this, ketamine would be easily separated from the inert placebo, reducing the validity of results and making participants more likely to provide false positive reports of its efficacy. Either way, it would seem best to find a new but similarly acting medication. Ketamine was classified as a Class 'C' drug, effective in the UK from January 2006. Possession of the substance can now yield a two year jail term, while individuals caught supplying the drug can earn 14 years behind bars - certainly long enough to cause depression in itself.

>>>IN THIS ISSUE OF THE SKEPTIC (20.4, Winter 2007)

Features: Exposing the Myth of Alcoholics Anonymous. Part 1: History and (Lack of ) Effectiveness (Steven Mohr) Believe it or Not (Sally Marlow interviews Mark Vernon) Inside a Camphill Community (Matthew Provonsha)
Columns: Editorial (Victoria Hamilton and Chris French) Hilary Evans's Paranormal Picture Gallery Hits and Misses (Wendy M. Grossman) Rhyme and Reason (Steve Donnelly) Philosopher's Corner (Julian Baggini) Sprite (Donald Rooum) ASKE News Letters
Reviews: Paranormal Claims: A Critical Analysis by Bryan Farha How to Start Your Own Secret Society by Nick Harding The History of Witchcraft by Lois Martin Freemasonry by Giles Morgan

>>>SOURCES FOR SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1,3 ABC News (Australia); 2 AFP; 4,5 BBC News; 6 AHN Media - FeedSyndicate; 7,9,11 Reuters; 8,10 Metro; 12,13 Esure; 14 http://www.wevaluelife.org; 15 Ipsos MORI; 16,17, Home Office Research Statistics; 18 Drugscope; 19,24,25 This is London; 20 http://www.spaceflightnow.com; 21,22 http://www.astronomy.com; 23 NASA

>>>ADMINISTRIVIA>>>
Thanks to this issue's clippings contributors: Mark Williams, Sid Rodrigues, the Wizard's Star List, Skeptic News. A special thank-you to Sid Rodrigues, who persistently and indefatigably keeps filling The Skeptic's blog
(http://ukskeptic.livejournal.com) with news stories and pointers.

Unsolicited commercial email is NOT welcome at any of these addresses. E-mail one address ONLY. If you do not get a reply, it probably means that our reply email bounced.

The Skeptic (UK) Digest is written by Wendy M. Grossman (www.pelicancrossing.net) and e-mailed quarterly alongside published issues of The Skeptic; there may be occasional additional mailings. To sign up to receive the digest or to get off the list, visit www.skeptic.org.uk/digest (we do not sell, give away, or rent the e-mailing list).

The Skeptic is published quarterly. For details see www.skeptic.org.uk. A free sample issue is available in return for a self-addressed stamped A4 envelope. Subscriptions cost UKP15/year for UK residents. For pricing and availability of back issues and non-UK pricing, see our Web page or the back page of any printed issue. The Skeptic accepts payment by credit card or by cheques in pounds Sterling drawn on a British bank (sorry, but the banking charges for foreign cheques and postal orders are impossibly high). The Skeptic is no relation to the (more recent) American magazine or the (older) Australian magazine of the same name.

>>>ENDS>>>

Tuesday 19th February 2008
Paul Taylor "Why don't creationists just shut up?"

>>>END ANNOUNCEMENTS>>>

Skeptical Digest 20.3 (Autumn 2007)

2007-12-09T12:00:00Z

>>>Skeptical Digest 20.3 (Autumn 2007)

--Please forward as widely as possible without spamming anyone--

>>>CONTENTS>>>
>>>Skeptical Stats>>>Dubious News>>>In this issue>>>Administrivia>>>Skeptics in the Pub>>>

>>>SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1. Total increase, per minute, of personal debt in Britain: 115 million

2. Increase in sale of "No. 7 Preserve and Protect" serum in the 24 hours after a Horizon episode reported that research from Manchester University supported its claims to reduce wrinkles in aging skin: 2,000 percent

3. Days a cat survived without food or water, trapped in a crate of motorcycle helmets travelling by sea from China to America: 35

4. Percentage of websites a May, 2007, Google study showed can infect visitors' computers with malicious software: .01 5. Proportion of malicious websites press reports said that the Google study found: 1 in 10

6. Number of children, many with no criminal record, whose DNA has been stored without permission on the police DNA database: 521,901

7. Highest bid for 'Jon Malipieman', an imaginary friend for sale on eBay, before the service deleted the listing: $3,062

8. Number of years of no-claims bonus recently lost by Britain's oldest driver, 105-year-old Sheila Thompsons: 71

9. Number of counts the Advertising Standards Authority upheld against the Reverend Peter Popoff over ads for "Miracle Spring Water" and "Miracle Olive Oil" on the shopping channel Soap on Deal TV: 11

10. Percentage by which teens in a New York state study who watched more than three hours of TV per day were less likely to graduate high school: 82

11. Number of previous driving licence suspensions or revocations Michael Wiley, a one-legged, armless man, had prior to evading Florida police in a 100 mph car chase in the spring of 2007: 18

12. Height of the location of the world's highest swing, a viewing platform on a 1,100 foot TV broadcast tower in China: 700 feet

13. Cost of a nine-inch origami Hanji-paper bull moose from the website of expert folder Robert J. Lang: $800

14. Number of children of donors to the Nobel prize winners' sperm bank profiled in the 2005 book Who's Your Daddy?: 30

15. Number of copies sold as of February 2007 of the Left Behind book series, which imagines a contemporary Rapture: more than 43 million

16. Number of litres of water Americans use per day: 400 to 600 17. Number of litres of water most Europeans use per day, compared to Americans: less than half
18. Proportion of the world's people who do not have the level of clean water and sanitation services available 2,000 years ago in ancient Rome: nearly half

19. Amount by which world primary energy consumption increased in 2005: 2.7 percent

20. Amount for which entrepreneur Gary Kremen sold the domain name "sex.com" in 2006, after a 10-year legal battle to win it back after it was stolen from him: $12 million
21. Amount the court ordered the conman who stole sex.com, Stephen Michael Cohen, to pay Kremen: $65 million 22. Amount Cohen has actually paid: approximately $3 million in seized real estate

23. Proportion of drugs sold in developing countries that is fake: 25% to 50%

24. Potency of the frequently abused prescription drug Fentanyl compared to heroin: 80:1

25. Number of countries in which governments block access to Internet sites for political, social, or security reasons: at least 25

>>>DUBIOUS NEWS>>>

>>>Uri Geller recently offered to save Carlisle from an ancient curse which causes floods, pestilence, and sporting humiliation (according to Reuters, he offered to repurpose the city's "cursing stone" as a garden ornament), but it seems he still had time for legal action against a sceptical video posted to YouTube. Recently acquired by the Web search engine company Google, YouTube is a site where anyone may post video clips of up to ten minutes long, and millions do, anything from highlights of 1970s tennis matches to self-filmed personal thoughts on life. As you might expect, much of the material uploaded to the site is copyright to someone other than the uploader, and since the Google acquisition the pace of legal complaints has stepped up. Most of these complaints come from large media companies like Viacom, which not long ago followed up a failed licensing deal with a demand that all its copyrighted material be removed from the site. However, according to The Times, the latest workout of Geller's toned legal biceps focuses on a short video featuring James Randi bending metal using sleight of hand techniques. Geller is claiming he owns the copyright in ten seconds of this video excerpt, taken from the 1993 TV programme Secrets of the Psychics. Geller may have bitten off more than he realised. Suing individual sceptics is one thing, but in straying into the field of copyright claims he's taking on much bigger opponents. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a lobbying group focused on defending civil liberties online and a staunch opponent of over-reaching copyright claims, retaliated by filing suit against Geller for using "baseless copyright claims" to stifle free speech. The crux of the issue is the 'fair use' (in the UK known as 'fair dealing') clause in US copyright law which permits some limited use of copyright material for education, criticism, or parody without the permission of the rights-holders. In short, while it is questionable whether ten seconds of video footage falls within fair use, silencing sceptical review on this basis may similarly infringe the US First Amendment right to freedom of speech. YouTube removed the video rather than risk prosecution under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (1998). However, the EFF has posted all the relevant documents in the case, on its website (http://www.eff.org).

>>>It sounded like a glorified tour of Edinburgh's most 'paranormally active' (and media-friendly) areas, but the third annual Mary King's Ghost Fest (held 11-20 May, 2007) featured the world's first infrasound experiments in an allegedly haunted location. The research, led by Ciaran O'Keeffe of Most Haunted fame, complemented what the Ghost Fest website described as the "hugely popular overnight vigils in the shadowy Blair Street Vaults" and "Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) Workshops". Aside from the curiosity with which one might approach an EVP workshop — perhaps they teach you how to create the phenomenon after you die? — this experiment appears to be the most interesting event. O'Keeffe and Steve Parsons, an investigator from the research group Para.Science, were to play Pied Pipers, guiding the public through the notorious underground network beneath Edinburgh's Royal Mile. Along the way, Parsons would expose some of the visiting groups to an infrasound stimulus created by his custom-built generator. Because the generator operates at frequencies below 20Hz, the sound should be below the range the human ear can perceive. The idea is to establish whether, as O'Keeffe and Parsons' press release put it, "infrasound could be the cause of feelings associated with paranormal experiences or if such feelings truly are an inexplicable phenomena." The release also claimed that this research is the first of its kind to examine this question. The basis comes from the late Engineering and Design graduate and 'ghost hunter' Vic Tandy, who in "Ghost in the Machine", a 1998 paper published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, hypothesised that infra-sound of the order of 19Hz might be responsible for many ghost sightings, as it closely matches the natural resonant frequency of the human eye. Infrasound emitters such as traffic, trains, thunder, and wind are now common in everyday life, and infrasonic waves can carry over long distances with less susceptibility to interference or disturbance than higher frequencies. Testing Tandy's theory could, therefore, yield important and interesting results. We'll keep you posted.

>>>Geeks everywhere were groaning at the BBC's Panorama programme in May, when it ran "Wi-fi: a warning signal". In that story, Panorama claimed that wi-fi – also known as wireless networking – was potentially more dangerous than mobile phone masts. And it's in our schools! And children have skulls that are immature and unformed! A decade after people started worrying about mobile phone masts – during which time all those same worried people bought themselves and their children mobile phones – it's clearly time for the next Great Technology Scare. The programme obliged with all the necessary elements: a few scientists to say "We just don't know – so we're worried"; an MP to accuse the government of complicity with industry in ignoring the issue; a guy with a measuring device; and a miserable victim (because apparently no one has told the producers of Panorama that the plural of anecdote is not data). The victim in the case was a woman who claims to be so sensitive to electromagnetic radiation that she must shield her house with metal foil (helpfully supplied by one of the programme's worry-mongers). We would point out that at heart what wi-fi and mobile phones are is radios. The radiation they broadcast is radio waves. Yes, the right frequencies and intensities of radiation can be dangerous. But we've had radiation in the form of broadcast media for some decades now. It only matters that wi-fi gives off three times as much radiation as mobile phones (but much further from the head) if that radiation is dangerous in the first place. Should we do research into the long-term effects of the various types of radiation we're surrounding ourselves with? Certainly. Should we panic on the basis of a few vaguely ill people and rip out a technology being embraced by millions because it's useful and functional? No. If we are so concerned about children, shouldn't we be banning automobiles (which kill 170 and seriously injure 4,000 every year), pollution (the WHO found in 2004 that exposure to pollution or unsafe living conditions kills 100,000 European children every year), or poverty (another 1,000 a year in Britain alone)? The BBC's own technology writers were disgusted enough to publish their own critique of the programme on the BBC website. We can only be grateful no one told the Panorama team that wi-fi broadcasts in the same frequency band as microwave ovens.

>>>If there's one thing that's more galling than another, it's seeing the limited public resources for health care spent on things like homoeopathy rather than treatments with a sound basis of evidence. The good news is that homoeopathy on the NHS is under increasing pressure. According to The Times, more than half of English Primary Care Trusts are now refusing to pay for homoeopathy or severely restricting access to it, in part due to last year's letter from 13 scientists that opposed NHS support of unproven or disproved treatments. Two homoeopathic hospitals – Tunbridge Wells and the Royal London – are being threatened with closure. An NHS report published at the end of May concluded that what evidence there is to support homoeopathy is "very weak" and "the evidence of cost-effectiveness is lacking". (Clearly the evidence needs further dilution.) The report suggested that PCTs should reduce their coverage or eliminate it entirely. The biggest difficulty now may be convincing the public that this is a question of ensuring that funding goes to treatments that work, not of suppressing "consumer choice" or serving the interests of Big Pharma.

>>>IN THIS ISSUE OF THE SKEPTIC (20.3, Autumn 2007)

Features: Psychics on eBay (Emma-Louise Rhodes) Haunting the Bereaved (Mark Williams) R. E. Ality Check: An Alternative Approach to Religious Education (Damien Morris)
Columns: Editorial (Victoria Hamilton and Chris French) Hilary Evans's Paranormal Picture Gallery Hits and Misses (Wendy M. Grossman) Rhyme and Reason (Steve Donnelly) Philosopher's Corner (Julian Baggini) Sprite (Donald Rooum) ASKE News Letters
Reviews: Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way we Think edited by Alan Grafen and Mark Ridley The Occult Tradition: From the Renaissance to the Present Day by David S. Katz Fakers, Forger & Phoneys: Famous Scams and Scamps by Magnus Magnusson Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Beliefs by Lewis Wolpert

>>>SOURCES FOR SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1 Credit Action; 2 Observer Woman; 3 Ananova.com; 4 Information Week; 5 Google; 6 The Register, 7 Metro, wwwfastlanetransport.ca; 8 Ananova.com; Advertising Standards Authority; 10 New Scientist; 11 New York Post; 12 Gading.com; 13 www.langorigami.com; 14 Business Week; 15, 16, 17, 18 The New Yorker; 19 BP Statistical Review 2006; 20, 21 The Guardian; 21, 22, 23 Sex.com, by Meren McCarthy; 24, 25 The Guardian

>>>ADMINISTRIVIA>>>
Thanks to this issue’s clippings contributors: Mark Williams, Sid Rodrigues, the Wizard's Star List, Skeptic News. A special thank-you to Sid Rodrigues, who persistently and indefatigably keeps filling The Skeptic's blog (http://ukskeptic.livejournal.com) with news stories and pointers.

Editorial and other e-mail to The Skeptic should be addressed as follows:
Subscription inquiries: subs at skeptic.org.uk (please do not phone) Letters to the editor: letters at skeptic.org.uk Contributions for Skeptical Stats and Hits and Misses: news at skeptic.org.uk
Book review section: reviews at skeptic.org.uk Article ideas and other editorial queries: edit at skeptic.org.uk

Unsolicited commercial email is NOT welcome at any of these addresses. E-mail one address ONLY. If you do not get a reply, it probably means that our reply email bounced.

>>>ENDS>>>

Tuesday 11th December 2007
Dr. Mark Vernon "How to be an Agnostic and Why it Matters"

Tuesday 15th January 2008
Nick Pope "The British X-Files"

Tuesday 19th February 2008
Paul Taylor "Why don’t creationists just shut up?"

>>>END ANNOUNCEMENTS>>>

Skeptical Digest 20.2 (Summer 2007)

2007-06-24T12:00:00Z

>>>Skeptical Digest 20.2 (Summer 2007)

--Please forward as widely as possible without spamming anyone--

>>>CONTENTS>>>
>>>Skeptical Stats>>>Dubious News>>>In this issue>>>Administrivia>>>Skeptics in the Pub>>>

>>>SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1. Percentage of Kellogg's Frosties sold that are eaten by men over 18: 65

2. Percentage of the UK working age population that is disabled: 20

3. Number of her children that Ada Mason, who died Britain's oldest woman at 111 in February 2007, outlived: 5 out of 5

4. Average number of deaths in Britain annually that are attributable to vending machines: 12

5. Profits made, per second, by Tesco supermarkets: £77

6. In January 2007, number of Papua New Guinea women tortured into confessing they were witches and then murdered: 4

7. Number of spybots embedded in the official Web site for the 2007 Superbowl: 1

8. Number of different types of tools made by chimpanzees observed in Senegal: 26

9. According to a recent study from the Wrexham Maelor Hospital, number of women in Britain ever sexually assaulted after their drinks were spiked with Rohypnol or GHB: none

10. Annual income received by the Howard de Walden Estate from its 92 acres of real estate in Marylebone, including Harley Street, from which the Estate has banned abortions and cosmetic surgery: £47 million

11. Percentage differential between men's and women's prize money on the pro tennis tours despite Wimbledon's move to parity: 22

12. Number of people registered for surveillance in the first few years of the US National Security Entry-Exit Registration System created after the 2001 attacks: 80,000
13. Number of those investigated under NSEERS who were detained and/or sent for deportation hearings: more than 13,000

14. Date when MIT Media Lab head Nicholas Negroponte predicted the Internet would have one billion users: by the end of the 20th century 15. Date when the Internet actually had a billion users: late 2005

16. Number of tapes of angels singing placed online by Florida retired Air Force officer Jim Bramlett: 4

17. Number of UFO sightings added to an online database run by police officers over the last five years: more than 200

18. Amount of the Challenge prize offered by Sir Richard Branson to anyone who can come up with a way of removing one billion tonnes of carbon per year from the atmosphere: $25 million

19. Cost of equipment including an infrared laser thermometer used by Alabama's South-Eastern Paranormal Society to detect cold spots left by ghosts: $2,100

20. Number of children in China Orphaned by AIDS: 75,000

21. Number of former US vice-presidents who have won an Oscar: 1

22. Year in which swallowing live goldfish was a fad: 193923. The record number of goldfish swallowed: 300

24. Cost of the LawnBott Evolution, which can mow tip to 33,000 square feet of lawn on a single battery charge: $2,500

25. Annual cost, per capita, of the Queen (or a minute's attendance at theWorld Cup England versus Portugal game), in 2006: 62p

>>>DUBIOUS NEWS>>>
>>>Computer security professor Matt Blaze, a mathematician and cryptography expert at the University of Pennsylvania, claimed James Randi's million-dollar prize in January. In a posting on his blog (at www.crypto.com), Blaze explained the means by which he and his colleague Jutta Degener successfully visualized the contents of a box Randi had created as part of a remote viewing experiment. In creating such a challenge, Randi's foundation, Blaze explained, faces the problem of both hiding the contents of the box and assuring psychics and would-be challengers that the test is fair. Randi solved this problem by publishing an encoded description of the box's contents on the Foundation Web site (www.randi.org). It is: 0679
4388
66/27
5-14
After examining this code for a while, Blaze and Degener thought the first ten digits could be the ISBN of a published book. Looking it up, they discovered those digits are the ISBN of the 1995 edition of the Random House Webster's College Dictionary. In the library copy they eventually found, the 14th entry from the bottom on page 275 is the definition for compact disc. Blaze and Degener therefore concluded that's what the box contained, correctly. Blaze noted a couple of further points. Quite apart from the fact that they were able to crack the published code, because the rules for creating the code were not specified it would still be possible for Randi to cheat by claiming the code had a different meaning than the one the psychic divined. Second, that cryptographically encoding the string wouldn't help, in part because the workings of cryptography are too complicated for most people to understand. In the meantime, Blaze decided to forego collecting the million dollars. For sceptics, though, the story is abit alarming. If it's this difficult for Randi, with all his years of experience, to devise a test that can't be cracked and blocks cheating on both sides, what hope is there for the rest of us?

>>>In late February the journal Current Biology ran a paper by Jill D. Pruetz and Paco Bertolani from the Department of Anthropology at Iowa State University reporting that chimpanzees have been observed using tools to hunt other animals in Senegal. The chimps were seen identifying appropriate tree branches, breaking them off, removing the bark, and sharpening the tips with their teeth. The paper includes a picture of one of these spear-like tools; it measures about 28 inches long. Overall, chimps have been spotted using tools in over 25 different contexts: opening hard nuts, trying to extract bush babies from cavities in branches or tree trunks (one of the uses for those spears). Curiously, although hunting is a predominantly male activity among chimpanzees, tools are more commonly used by females and immature males. (Maybe not using them is the chimp version of being macho.) So far, no one has reported finding a large, black monolith nearby playing Thus Spake Zarathustra.

>>>The indefatigable Sid Rodrigues (thanks, Sid!) who maintains The Skeptic's news blog (ukskeptic.livejournal.com) recently included a pointer to a story from Continuity Central questioning the oft-repeated statistic that "80 percent of businesses affected by a major incident close within 18 months". Where, the writer, Mel Gosling, asked, does this statistic come from? Everyone quotes it as true, but no one cites a source. Vendors do, however, find it useful for frightening businesses into developing continuity plans (always a good idea in any case). We have quoted it ourselves. We have also tried ourselves to find a source - and failed. Gosling cited three examples suggesting it's not true. One: foot and mouth disease. No contingency plans among farmers and small rural businesses; after 18 months less than 10 percent folded. Two: Carlisle floods in 2005. Only 90 percent contingency plans; less than 20 percent closed. Three: the 1998 Omagh bombing. Probably no contingency plans; majority of businesses still trading in 2006. We would be interested in hearing from anyone who can cite a verifiable source for this statistic.

>>>The Advertising Standards Authority ruled in February that Channel 4 personality Gillian McKeith may not continue to call herself "Dr" after a complaint was submitted by a regular reader of Ben Goldacre's BadScience.net. Goldacre, who saw a draft of the adjudication - it went unpublished when McKeith agreed to stop using the title in her advertising - notes that McKeith's claimed qualification came from an unaccredited American correspondence course. McKeith was also recently censured by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency for selling herbal pills she claimed promoted sexual satisfaction.

>>>There's an American saying that goes like this: if it doesn't move and it should, spray it with WD-40; if it moves and it shouldn't, use duct tape. Duct tape (also known, in the film industry, as "gaffer's tape") is the cure-all for everything from rattling cars to terrorist activity. We had not, however, heard that in 2002 a small study suggested that duct tape was also the way to get rid of warts. Apparently, you're supposed to apply it to the affected area and leave it on for a week, then soak the area and rub it with pumice stone. Now it turns out that duct tape isn't as effective at this as they thought it was. The New York Times recently reported that a newer study that examined the data from 60 studies looking at different removal methods concluded that the most effective method is applying salicylic acid, which works about 73 percent of the time. The duct tape treatment only works 16 percent of the time, according to the latest tests. It's probably better this way. Now you can save your duct tape for the really important things - like eliminating rattles and squeaks that otherwise might make you think you were being haunted.

>>>IN THIS ISSUE OF THE SKEPTIC (20.2, Summer 2007)

Features: The Evolution Controversy (Nell Barrie) An Open Letter to the Public about Young Earth Creationism (Julian W. Kirchherr) Do 17 percent of people in Britain really believe in "intelligent design"? (Adam Buick)
Columns: Editorial (Victoria Hamilton and Chris French) Hilary Evans's Paranormal Picture Gallery Hits and Misses (Wendy M. Grossman) Rhyme and Reason (Steve Donnelly) Philosopher's Corner (Julian Baggini) Sprite (Donald Rooum) ASKE News Letters
Reviews: Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism by Paul Boghossian Newton: a Very Short Introduction by Rob Lliffe Contact With Alien Civilizations: Our Hopes and Fears About Encountering Extraterrestrials by Michael A G Michaud Science, Religion and the Meaning of Life by Mark Vernon Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach A Teaspoon and an Open Mind by Michael White

>>>SOURCES FOR SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1 Kellogg (quoted in The Guardian); 2 Disability Rights Commission 2006 briefing; 3 Guardian; 4 www.cherwell.org; 5 Evening Standard; 6 CNN; 7 The Register; 8 Current Biology; 9 Evening Standard; 10 BBC; 11 Daily Tennis; 12,13 Illusions of Security, by Maureen Webb; 14 personal interview; 15 Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox; 16 www.choicesforliving.com; 17 News Shopper; 18 www.virginearth.com; 19 Times Daily; 20 The Blood of Yingzhou District; 21 Academy Awards ceremony 2007; 22, 23 The Worst Case Scenario Almanac - History; 24 Business Week; 25 the Queen's accountants (via the Guardian)

>>>ADMINISTRIVIA>>>
Thanks to this issue’s clippings contributors: Judith Wood, Steuart Campbell, Tom Ruffles, Ernest Jackson, the Wizard’s Star List, Skeptic News, Phil McKerracher. A special thank-you to Sid Rodrigues, who persistently and indefatigably keeps filling The Skeptic's blog (http://ukskeptic.livejournal.com) with news stories and pointers.

Editorial and other e-mail to The Skeptic should be addressed as follows:
Subscription inquiries: subs at skeptic.org.uk (please do not phone) Letters to the editor: letters at skeptic.org.uk Contributions for Skeptical Stats and Hits and Misses: news at skeptic.org.uk
Book review section: reviews at skeptic.org.uk Article ideas and other editorial queries: edit at skeptic.org.uk

Unsolicited commercial email is NOT welcome at any of these addresses. E-mail one address ONLY. If you do not get a reply, it probably means that our reply email bounced.

>>>ENDS>>>

>>>SKEPTICS IN THE PUB>>> Skeptics in the Pub meets (usually) on the third Thursday of every month at 7:30pm at the Old King's Head, 45 Borough High Street, London (nearest tube: London Bridge). The entry fee is £2 to cover the guest speaker's travelling expenses and sundries. Free sandwiches and chips are provided first-come, first-served, at 7.00pm. Non-skeptics welcome. Turn up at any time during the night. Detailed directions, a list of upcoming speakers and a map of how to get to the pub can be found at www.skeptic.org.uk/pub.

Thursday 19th July 2007
Timothy Good "Need to Know: UFOs, the Military and Intelligence"

Thursday 30th August 2007
Victor Stenger "God: The Failed Hypothesis"

>>>END ANNOUNCEMENTS>>>

Skeptical Digest 20.1 (Spring 2007)

2007-05-26T12:00:00Z

>>>Skeptical Digest 20.1 (Spring 2007)

--Please forward as widely as possible without spamming anyone--

>>>CONTENTS>>>
>>>Skeptical Stats>>>Dubious News>>>In this issue>>>Administrivia>>>Skeptics in the Pub>>>

>>>SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1. Cost of a James Randi doll on which to perform voodoo experiments: $24
2. Number of pins included with the 12-inch doll: 3

3. Size of the McDonald's logo built out of tiles in the Nevada desert and visible from space: 8,120 square metres 4. Proportion of British children bullied at school: 7 out of 10

5. Cost of a 2007 "Skepchick" or "Skepdude" calendar: $20 (or both for $35)

6. Percentage of "high-risk" sexual offenders who do not reoffend: 90 7. Percentage of other types of offenders who are convicted of another crime within two years: 57

8. Age of Salem's official witch: 73

9. Number of blessings of lesbian marriages retired Archbishop Terence Finlay performed before losing his licence to officiate at weddings: 1

10. Cost of an Oakwood, Lanarkshire, home designed according to the principles of Feng Shui: £1.1 million 11. Number of drugs recommended by health food shops for depression that has scientific backing: 1 out of 13 12. Price of a four-day Tarot beginners' course in Richmond, Surrey: £360
13. Number, on October 9, 2006, of UK Web pages using the word "spooktacular": about 12,00014. Number, on November 20, 2006, of UK Web pages using the word "spooktacular": 18,700 15. Amount a parapsychology study in Northampton offers (June 2006) to pay volunteers: £250
16. Number of angels spotted over the Thames near the London Eye: 1 17. Proportion of people who normally hear voices in their heads: 1 in 25
18. Estimated number of illegal immigrants in the US: 20 million19. Number of US jobs held by undocumented immigrants: 12 to 15 million 20. Number of actions taken by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in 2005 against companies employing illegal workers: 3

21. Percentage of UK students who say they believe in creationism and intelligent design: 3022. Percentage of UK students who say they believe evolutionary theory is true: 56

23. Position of Derren Brown's book "Tricks of the Mind" on the Bad Psychics' site's list of top five Christmas presents: 1

24. Position of the Nintendo Wii: 5
25. Number of people who died of AIDS in 2006: 2.9 million

>>>DUBIOUS NEWS>>>
>>>Air travel these days increasingly requires the willing suspension of disbelief. At least, it does if you read security expert Bruce Schneier on the subject; he likes to call much of the harassment we go through "security theatre". That is, much of the searching, groping, and monitoring is, like anyone with commonsense suspects, done more for show than for effect. There is some justice for this scepticism: a Web site pilots and crew use to swap work gripes carried many stories of pilots and engineers being stopped by security from bringing through soup, toothpaste, and other substances during the worst of the scare. One rule for all, you say? Only fair? We have to ask: what's the point of stopping a guy from carrying in a flask of soup when he is the one who can decide where to drive the plane? Or who can sabotage it merely by loosening a few bolts? A particular annoyance for many people is the business of removing shoes so they can be put through the X-ray machines. The US Transport Safety Administration claims X-ray is "an effective method of identifying any type of anomaly, including explosives", as TSA chief Kip Hawley told a press conference in August, 2006. Not so fast: the Associated Press got its hands on a study by the Homeland Security Department that begged to differ, concluding that the X-ray images "do not provide the information necessary to effect detection of explosives". CBS News consulted MIT scientist Richard Lanza, who said an experienced screener could look at the shoe image and tell if it's been tampered with, but agreed it's not foolproof. This story ran about a month after the July incidents, in which British security services claimed to have foiled a plot in which terrorists planned to blow up planes using liquids brought with them onto aircraft. The snarky IT news site The Register ran a lengthy explanation of the unlikelihood of the liquid plot, which was believed to involve acetone peroxide triacetone triperoxide (TATP). The Telegraph, however, noted that other substances such as nitroglycerine or colourless liquid fuel might have been possibilities (the latter in conjunction with an oxidant carried separately). We are inclined to agree with comedian George Carlin, who said years ago that passengers should stop being such wimps. Live a little. Risk being blown up.

>>>There just isn't a lot of good news when it comes to science teaching in the UK. In mid-November, the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee issued a report on science teaching in schools indicating that:
- the quality of science teaching is dropping - kids are consequently being deterred from studying science - which in turn will lead to even fewer teachers being available - students are being forced to specialise too young - and the UK economy will suffer.
The STC made a number of recommendations. The testing regime should be altered so that teachers have greater flexibility. Improve pay for school science technicians. Improve school laboratory design. Look at practical ways of dealing with health and safety issues. Reduce the size of "golden hello" signing bonuses and instead offer to write off student debts in return for four or five years of service. There's a nice little table of numbers to show the extent of the problem. In the years from 1996 to 2005, the numbers doing A-level biology rose a bit; they fell in physics, chemistry, mathematics, and "other". But this drop isn't evenly distributed. The report quotes the Royal Society, whose testimony noted that half of all A-level entries in science come from just 18 percent of schools. Sceptics don't all come from science backgrounds; but the more widely science education is diffused through the population the more sceptics there tends to be. The trends noted in this report are not a good sign for the future sanity of Britain any more than they are for the economy.

>>>Darwin for free. Yes: his entire oeuvre is now online at www.darwin-online.org. Everything - published, unpublished, 50,000 searchable text pages, 40,000 images. With much, much more to come; simply a fabulous resource. Anyone want to fund an AOL sized DVD distribution?

>>>Apparently personality tests at Tottenham Court Road were no longer enough. Around the time Tom Cruise was marrying Katie Holmes as ostentatiously as possible in Italy, Scientology opened a fancy, new £24 million centre in London (the group claims 123,000 members in the UK, which would put the cost at £19.51 each). Watched from the sidelines by a small group of protesters bearing "Stop Scientology" signs, the opening ceremony featured Scientology leader David Miscavige and City of London chief superintendent Kevin Hurley. According to a number of newspapers, freedom of information requests revealed that the police presence was fuelled by a series of gifts - tickets to film premieres, invitations to banquets, donations to a children's charity, and the use of a jazz band - to the police force over the previous 15 months. We predict more controversy for the new centre.

>>>The Advertising Standards Authority has been displaying its sceptical colours again by upholding two complaints made to it over ads promoting bionetics, a food intolerance test that claims to be able to diagnose intolerance to 123 foods and ingredients from just a few strands of your hair. The technology, the bionetics people told the ASA, is well established, and is based on radionics and applied kinesiology. The ASA was not impressed by the longevity - thousands of years - claimed for these techniques in the absence of evidence supporting their efficacy, despite the submission of a number of testimonials from customers and the training bionetics claims to give its technicians. The agency has therefore ruled that the ad may not be repeated. "We concluded that testimonials alone were not sufficient to substantiate the efficacy of the testing methods", the ruling concludes. That's as well said as if we could have said it ourselves.

>>>Sceptics are fools, according to "Consultant palmist" Terry Stokes, writing in News Blaze, recently. Describing himself as "like a piano tuner", Stokes claims to be able to see people's futures from their palms; he traces his abilities back to his childhood, and told ESPress Magazine that when he was a seven-yearold Catholic schoolboy children used to line up on the playground to get him to read their hands. Most of his News Blaze piece discusses "Christian extremist" attacks on astrology. But our favourite bit complains that "the Denialism school of crackpot conjurer James Randi" attacks both the paranormal and alternative medicine. And he asks, "Which extremist group funds this man?"

>>>We note without comment that a user ID that matches the name of Uri Geller's brother-in-law, Shipi Shtrang, has been posting videos of Geller's commercials to YouTube. A search on Geller's name should pull them up nicely - along with other videos of Geller appearances bending spoons and keys (some with, um, interesting annotations).

>>>IN THIS ISSUE OF THE SKEPTIC (20.1, Spring 2007)

Features: From Psychic to Sceptic (JamesByrne) The Great Masturbation Delusion (Hilary Evans) Making up History (Steuart Campbell) Darwin Died an Agnostic (Donald Rooum)
Columns: Editorial (Victoria Hamilton and Chris French) Hilary Evans's Paranormal Picture Gallery Hits and Misses (Wendy M. Grossman) Rhyme and Reason (Steve Donnelly) Philosopher's Corner (Julian Baggini) Sprite (Donald Rooum) ASKE News Letters
Reviews: Opus Dei: The Truth About its Rituals, Secrets and Power by John L. Allen Just Another Day: The Science and Technology of our Everyday Lives by Adam Hart-Davis That's Bollocks: Urban Legends, Conspiracy Theories and Old Wives' Tales by Albert Jack The Nativity: History and Legend by Geza Vermes

>>>SOURCES FOR SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1,2 www.randi.org; 3 Metro; 4 Evening Standard; 5 www.skepchick.org (profits to fund scholarships); 6,7 Spiked Online (citing 2002 Home Office study); 8 The Scotsman; 9 The Times; 10 Daily Record; 11 Daily Mail; 12 www.psychicevents.co.uk; 13,14 www.google.co.uk; 15 http://nli.narthampton.ac.uk/ass/psych-stafflrsb/experiments/dmils.htm; 16 South London Press; 17 BBC; 18,19 Bear Stearns study, January 2005; 20 Business Week; 21,22 Guardian; 23,24 www.badpsychics.com; 25 San Jose Mercury News

Editorial and other e-mail to The Skeptic should be addressed as follows:
Subscription inquiries: subs at skeptic.org.uk (please do not phone) Letters to the editor: letters at skeptic.org.uk Contributions for Skeptical Stats and Hits and Misses: news at skeptic.org.uk
Book review section: reviews at skeptic.org.uk Article ideas and other editorial queries: edit at skeptic.org.uk

Unsolicited commercial email is NOT welcome at any of these addresses. E-mail one address ONLY. If you do not get a reply, it probably means that our reply email bounced.

>>>ENDS>>>

Thursday 21st June 2007
Julian Baggini "Being sceptical of scepticism: Ways of being wrong"

Thursday 19th July 2007
Timothy Good "Need to Know: UFOs, the Military and Intelligence"

Thursday 30th August 2007
Victor Stenger "God: The Failed Hypothesis"

>>>END ANNOUNCEMENTS>>>

Skeptical Digest 19.4 (Winter 2006)

2007-03-04T12:00:00Z

>>>Skeptical Digest 19.4 (Winter 2006)

--Please forward as widely as possible without spamming anyone--

>>>CONTENTS>>>
>>>Skeptical Stats>>>Dubious News>>>In this issue>>>Administrivia>>>Skeptics in the Pub>>>

>>>SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1. Amount Professor Bruce Hood, professor of psychology at Bristol University, offers people to wear a used cardigan that has been thoroughly cleaned: £10
2. Number who agree to wear it when they find out it belonged to serial killer Fred West: "few"

3. Percentage of Americans who are obese: $10,000 4. Percentage of the American Baptists who are: 27

5. Number of practicing Scientologists according to the Scientology Web site: millions
6. Number of practicing Scientologists estimated by critics, based on surveys: 100,000 to 200,000

7. Amount raised by a sponsored firewalk for St Vincent's Primary School, Hull: £9,000

8. Number of spiritual healers working in Britain: 15,000

9. Amount paid in fees per week from publishers to booksellers to get new books promoted by retailers into the top ten: £40,000

10. Cost of getting your aura "imaged" by an aura reader at Liverpool Street Station, London: £45
11. Cost of the computer system she uses to read auras: £5,000

12. Proportion of patients surveyed at large London HIV clinics who are using complementary or alternative therapies: almost two-thirds 13. Percentage of those patients who were advised to stop because the remedies were compromising their HIV management: 11

14. Cost on US Airways of checking as baggage a set of antlers: $80

15. Proportion of the audience at James Randi's fourth Amazing Weekend who were women: over a third

16. Number of Americans injured annually by drug errors in hospitals, nursing homes, and doctors' offices: over 1.5 million

17. Amount New Jersey resident Jackie Haughn paid "psychic" con artist "Anne Marie" (Tammy Mitchell) over a period of months to remove a curse: $220,000

18. Date on which it became legal in the UK for homoeopathic remedies to make medical claims with no supporting evidence: September 1, 2006

19. Number of people who drank from a heavily polluted Arabian Sea creek after claims that its water had miraculously turned sweet and could cure illness until police stopped the rush on the grounds that the water was too dangerously polluted to drink: 5,000

20. Average number of minutes British men spend on foreplay: 17.44 21. Average number of minutes British men last from foreplay to climax: 18.64

22. Multiple by which the death rate among South African women aged 30 to 34 rose between 1997 and 2004, largely due to AIDS: 4.6 23. Multiple by which the death rate among South African men aged 40 to 44 rose in those same years, ditto: 2

24. Amount offered by filmmaker Adam Muskiewicz for proof that Elvis is alive: $3 million

25. Percentage of UK population that does not want public money spent on building laboratories to carry out tests on animals for medical research: 57
26. Number of animal experiments conducted in the UK in 2005: 2,896,000

>>>DUBIOUS NEWS>>>
>>>A study of Carmelite nuns conducted by Dr Mario Beauregard at the department of psychology at the Université de Montréal suggests that whatever causes belief in God it's not a specific physical structure in the brain. Fifteen nuns aged between 23 and 64 were asked to relive a mystical experience while undergoing a functional magnetic resistance imaging scan, a technique that images brain activity by mapping changes in blood flow. Previous tests with actors had established that brain activity in a particular emotional state is the same whether the subject is actually living the emotions or entering the same emotional state voluntarily. The upshot: Beauregard and his team found that a dozen different brain regions were activated during the mystical experience, but that there was no one "God spot" in which spirituality takes place. Writing angrily in the Telegraph the day after the news broke, Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London, demanded to know why anyone thought there should be and accused "the brain-scanning business" of losing its scientific basis. There's more to spirituality and consciousness, he argued, than simple biology. We had expected a different sort of angry argument. Surely someone out there will postulate that the sort of person who becomes a cloistered nun has the sort of brain that responds differently and more powerfully to mystical experiences. You know, like the difference between a social drinker and an alcoholic.

>>>We were fascinated to learn – from a Times clipping sent by one of our contributors – that Christ is buried in Japan. His brother, Isukiri, is buried nearby. No, we didn't know there was a brother either. According to the farming village of Shingo, Jesus spent most of his life in Japan. According to local legend (as filtered through a Japan travel site), Jesus spent 11 years in Japan, starting when he was 21. He returned to Judea at 33, where his teachings about Japan were considered too radical. It was not Jesus but his brother Isukiri who was crucified. Christ himself escaped with his disciples (and some locks of the Virgin Mary's hair and his brother's ear, it says here) and travelled across Siberia back to Japan. There, he made his way to Shingo, where he took the name Taro Jurai, got married, fathered three daughters, and lived to the age of 106. Our travel site describes Shingo as ultra-remote and consisting of just a grocery store and a "sprinkling" of farmhouses. If you'd rather make the somewhat easier trip to Jerusalem, we can't blame you. But hey – more trouble for the Shroud of Turin, dontcha think?

>>>After years of debate it's finally happened: Pluto isn't a planet any more. The reason is not that Pluto has fallen down on the job but that astronomers have agreed on a changed set of planetary criteria that Pluto just doesn't quite meet. Pluto now classifies as a "dwarf planet" or "trans-Napetunian object" and, to add insult to other insult, its former planetary status is being defended by some astrologers (others are writing it off as not terribly important in the first place). Russell Grant is, apparently, one such, telling the press that he would "continue to use Pluto because he gives me the ability to look into people's charts and see where they're coming from psychologically." Scorpios in particular are in big trouble: their sign is (was?) ruled by Pluto. Who wants to be born under the sign of UB313?

>>>A certain notoriety was accorded this year's Britiah Association for the Advancement of Science festival when the BA chose to include in the programme a panel featuring Rupert Sheldrake (presenting his phone telepathy research), Peter Fenwick (presenting his studies of near-death experiences), and Deborah Delanoy (recounting a study in which volunteers were asked to try to arouse or calm down another person by thinking about them). The panel, which included Chris French for some kind of balance, was organised by the Scientific and Medical Network, an organisation founded in 1973 that describes itself as "a trans-disciplinary forum for people exploring the interface of science, medicine, and spirituality". The controversy was amusing for a few reasons. First of all, if you object to the inclusion of such a panel in your science programme there's a simple solution: don't go to it and persuade other people to skip it, too. Second of all, the newspapers reporting on the incident on the science pages are, on other pages, perfectly happy to run uncritical articles featuring this type of research. Third of all...everyone wrote up the controversy over the panel, but so far as we can tell no one bothered to write up the panel's actual content. What happened there, guys?

>>>Some time back, we noted the curious case of the multi-faceted Matthew Parris, who in addition to being a Times columnist and former MP likes to conduct scientific experiments on himself regarding the effect of cosmetics. At the time, Parris had conducted a controlled experiment in which he daubed the dry skin on one of his legs with, for a month each in succession, moisturiser, Vaseline, and engine oil. All had worked approximately the same. More recently, Parris was in the news for not washing his hair for ten years. At least, that's the way some of the disgusted commentators put it. In fact, what Parris does is rinse it daily in warm water while massaging his scalp, a very different kettle of leave-in conditioner. The story came out when he challenged Andrew Marr to do the same.The reaction to this revelation says a lot about the kind of paranoia hair care product vendors have managed to sell. One of the five women who accepted a Daily Mail challenge to use the Parris method for six weeks, for example, became utterly unhinged by her conviction that her hair looked horrible (in the after photo, it looked absolutely fine). She gave up makeup and wearing nice clothes, and began going up to strangers on the street she thought were staring at her hair and telling them her hair didn't really look like that normally. The really startling bit was that these women averaged £40 a month on hair care products. They might do well to look at the Beauty Brains (thebeautybrains.blogspot.com), where two industry scientists combine inside knowledge and skepticism to explain how products work and why the same ingredients mean the £40 bottle of conditioner is the same as the £2.50 bottle. Since the hair fuss, Parris was in the news again for dismissing terrorism as nothing more than "a big, bloody nuisance". Not such a nuisance for him: other people may have to toss their shampoo at the security gate. Parris can find his anywhere he goes.

>>>Security must be seen to be done. Not in order to protect us, necessarily, but in order to make us feel protected. As long ago as the 1970s the TV series "Yes, Minister" recognised this when Humphrey Appleby explained that the purpose of Britain's defence policy was "to make people believe Britain is defended." No, not the Russians – the British. The American security specialist Bruce Schneier calls it "security theatre". Matthew Parris was just one of many commentators weighing in on the sense – or lack thereof – of, as one CEO put it on CNBC "fighting terrorism by throwing out toothpaste in North Dakota". The most interesting analysis came from Daniel Finkelstein, the son and sibling of a clutch of mathematicians. Writing in The Times, Finkelstein took on the argument that the costs of terrorism itself are not particularly significant (he cited Professor John Mueller, in a paper published by the libertarian Cato Institute). Finkelstein cited the Wall Street trader and mathematician Nassim Nicholas Taleb and his book Fooled by Randomness to explain that what matters is not the probability of an event but the extent of the damage should it occur. In addition, he said, it's wrong to judge the costs of terrorism as if anti-terrorist measures were not already in place acting as deterrents. So, he concluded, Parris was both right and wrong. Our view is somewhat different. We think that the fear of terrorism is being used to justify significant increases in surveillance and losses of freedom that the general public would never have accepted otherwise and that make no rational sense if the goal is to combat terrorism rather than increase the power of the state.

>>>While we were following links and finding stories for this issue, we discovered the existence of UK-Skeptics (www.skeptics.org.uk), administered by John Jackson and stating as one of its aims and objectives "To complement other skeptics' organisations and the work they do". We always like to be complemented. UK-Skeptics seem to be progressing nicely towards filling their Web site with the kinds of backgrounders we always thought we should do, and, since they are apparently more efficient than we are, they are already selling T-shirts (we like their legend "?keptic". So now the UK has three skeptical organisations. Anybody want to start a fourth so we can claim parity with the humanists? Or can we count Skeptics in the Pub?

>>>IN THIS ISSUE OF THE SKEPTIC (19.4, Winter 2006)

Features: Just Who Wrote the Passion of Christ by Emmerich? (Wolf Roder) What Colour is Four? The Perception of Synaesthesia in Art and Science (Stephen Moston) Alexander the Oracle-Monger (Adam Buick) A Physiological Reason why Superman Behaves like a Boy Scout (Robert Castro)
Columns: Editorial (Victoria Hamilton and Chris French) Hilary Evans's Paranormal Picture Gallery Hits and Misses (Wendy M. Grossman) Rhyme and Reason (Steve Donnelly) Philosopher's Corner (Julian Baggini) Sprite (Donald Rooum) ASKE News Letters
Reviews: A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives by Cordelia Fine The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland by Steve Roud Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy & Satanic Abuse in History by David Frankfurter Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive by Jared Diamond

>>>SOURCES FOR SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1,2 BBC News; 3,4 Independent on Sunday; 5 www.scientology.org/en_US/news-media/index.html; 6 The Observer; 7 Hull Daily Mail; 8 Edzard Ernst, in The Lady; 9 The Times; 10, 11 ThisislocalLondon.co.uk; 12,13 AidsMap.com; 14 US Airways Web site; 15 Skeptical Inquirer; 16 Institute of Medicine via Associated Press; 17 ABC News (via www.skepdic.com); 18 MHRA press release (via badscience.net); 19 The Observer; 20 21 Men's Health Magazine (via Manchester Evening News); 22,23 New York Times; 24 multiple sources; 25 Newsnight poll; 26 BBC

Editorial and other e-mail to The Skeptic should be addressed as follows:
Subscription inquiries: subs at skeptic.org.uk (please do not phone) Letters to the editor: letters at skeptic.org.uk Contributions for Skeptical Stats and Hits and Misses: news at skeptic.org.uk
Book review section: reviews at skeptic.org.uk Article ideas and other editorial queries: edit at skeptic.org.uk

Unsolicited commercial email is NOT welcome at any of these addresses. E-mail one address ONLY. If you do not get a reply, it probably means that our reply email bounced.

>>>ENDS>>>

Thursday 15th March 2007
Jean La Fontaine "Hidden Enemies"

Thursday 19th April 2007
To be announced.

Thursday 17th May 2007
Mike Heap "Suggestion, the paranormal and unusual claims"

The talk will be followed by informal discussion in a relaxed and friendly pub atmosphere. Skeptics in the Pub is a regular evening for all those interested in and/or skeptical of the paranormal, alternative medicine, psychic powers, pseudo-science, UFOs, alien abductions, creationism, Fortean phenomena, cult religions, water-divining, lost civilizations, etc. Further information and mailing list announcements available from pub at skeptic.org.uk or Nick Pullar on 07793 158697. Suggestions for speakers or offers to speak are gladly welcomed.

>>>END ANNOUNCEMENTS>>>

Skeptical Digest 19.3 (Autumn 2006)

2006-12-06T12:00:00Z

>>>Skeptical Digest 19.3 (Autumn 2006)

--Please forward as widely as possible without spamming anyone--

>>>CONTENTS>>>
>>>Skeptical Stats>>>Dubious News>>>In this issue>>>Administrivia>>>Skeptics in the Pub>>>

>>>SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1. Number of random drug tests carried out on pupils aged 11 to 18 at a school in Faversham, Kent, as a trial: 600 2. Percentage of parents who agreed to their children being tested: 86 3. Number of positive tests: 1

4. Proportion of British men aged 25 to 49 who visited a porn Internet site in April 2006: one in four
5. Percentage of British couples consulting Relate who cite Internet pornography as a factor in their troubles: 40

6. Number of people the World Health Organisation estimates die annually worldwide from tobacco-related illnesses: 5 million

7. Percentage of apples on sale in British shops that are home-grown: 40

8. Anniversary celebrated in May 2006 by Britain's longest-married living couple: 78

9. Average sentence length in novels appearing on the New York Times bestseller list in 1936: 22.8 words
10. Average sentence length in novels appearing on the New York Times bestseller list in 1996: 16.55 words
11. Percentage of the novels appearing on the New York Times bestseller list in 1936 that was dialogue: 2512. Percentage of the novels appearing on the New York Times bestseller list in 1996 that was dialogue: 35
13. Number of recognised miraculous healings at Lourdes since 1858: 6714. Number since 1978: 4

15. Estimated amount Britons spent on herbal, homeopathic, and aromatherapy products in 2005: £210 million 16. Percent by which sales of those products have risen since 2000: 27

17. Amount by which German doctors found that traditionally placed acupuncture needles reduced migraines in a study of 270 patients: about half
18. Amount by which German doctors found that randomly placed acupuncture needles reduced migraines in that same study: about half

19. Cost of an "original Cameron Aurameter" from the British Dowsers Society: £90

20. Amount paid at auction in Qatar for the mobile phone number 666 6666: £1.5 million

21. Number of pianos found inside a stone cairn at the top of Ben Nevis: 1
22. Number of pounds TV evangelist Pat Robertson, 76, claims his doctor can leg-press: 2,700

23. Amount of funding construction magnate Maurice Laing gave Exeter University to set up Britain's first chair in complementary medicine in 1993: £1.5 million

24. Amount of the population TMers (Transcendental Meditation) say is needed to reduce the social stress of the population as a whole: the square root of 1 percent
25. Fee for TMer's four-day course teaching how to meditate: $2,500

>>>DUBIOUS NEWS>>>
>>>In response to Prince Charles' campaign for increased access to alternative medicine via the NHS, 13 leading doctors have written to every NHS trust asking them to review their practices and cease promoting "unproven or disproved" treatments such as homeopathy and reflexology. The Prince, meanwhile, was busy making a speech to the World Health Organisation in which he lamented the loss of "valuable traditional knowledge and wisdom" and advocated a more integrated and "holistic" approach to illness. To be fair to the Prince, his speech wasn't that unreasonable. He did pay tribute to the successes of orthodox medicine in, for example, ending smallpox, and much of what he said was uncontroversial: obesity is on the rise, chronic illnesses due to unhealthy diets are increasing, and poverty, pollution and intensive farming contribute further to human ill-health. He never mentions homeopathy, staying with acupuncture and herbalism. It seems to be the Prince's view that using alternative therapies can save money. But this is the point that offends the objecting doctors most: "At a time when we are struggling to gain access for our patients to Herceptive, which is absolutely proven to extend survival in breast cancer, I find it appalling that the NHS should be funding a therapy like homeopathy that is utterly bogus," cancer specialist Michael Baum, emeritus professor of surgery at University College London, told The Times. Others of the group of protesting doctors are Edzard Ernst, Britain's only chaired professor of complementary medicine, Nobel Prizewinner Sir James Black, and six Fellows of the Royal Society. We certainly agree that if the NHS is having to lay off nurses and restrict access to drugs that are known to save lives it shouldn't be spending money - especially our money - on treatments that don't work even if they are emotionally comforting. On the other hand, it's hard to argue with the Prince's contention that people would be healthier if they weren't poor, ate better food, and lived in a less polluted world. Our brains might be just holistic enough to integrate both those views.

>>>Edinburgh has so many festivals: arts, film, books. Why not ghosts? In mid-May Scottish Paranormal organised what sounds like a pretty intriguing event at Mary King's Close, supposedly one of the most haunted locations in Edinburgh. Excursions (costing £8 to £37) included storytelling and a tour of the Blair Street Vaults, ghost hunting with "our guest psychic", various other psychic investigations, and, finally, a tasting of single-malt whiskies from a selection of haunted distilleries. We can't help feeling that the `on-topicness' of that last foray might be a little thin, though we'd love to know how well ghosts hold their liquor. Do the cleaning staff have to disinfect little piles of ectoplasm in the morning?

>>>At the end of March, the American Heart journal released the results of a decade-long $2.4 million study of intercessionary prayer funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Many media sources reported the story. Researchers divided 1,802 coronary bypass patients at six hospitals into three groups. One was prayed for and told they were; one was prayed for and not told whether they were or not; the third were not prayed for. The prayers themselves were delivered by three expert congregations (in St. Paul, Minnesota, Worcester, Massachusetts, and Kansas City, Missouri) who used the patients' first names and initials of their last names and were instructed to include the phrase, "for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications". There was no difference in complications or recovery rates between those who were prayed for and those who were not. However, there was a slight difference in outcome according to whether patients knew they were being prayed for or not - and knowing they were being prayed for didn't help. In fact, 59 percent of those who knew they were being prayed for suffered complications compared with 51 percent of the group who didn't know. On the other hand, 18 percent of the group who didn't know had major complications (heart attack, stroke) compared to 13 percent in the unprayed-for group. The researchers said both these results could be due to chance. So the conclusions are still shaky, especially since, as the New York Times reported, no one has yet come up with a way to control the biggest problem in such research: knowing how much extraneous prayer is being given to patients by friends, families, and prayers groups around the world. One thing we do know: most people want to do something to help sick people if they can. Good thoughts - wishes, "beams" (as they're called in some online areas), prayers - are harmless, cheap, and easy and quick to deliver, and they make givers feel like they're good people. Hard to stop.

>>>We complain about dumbing-down in the schools and in popular culture; but how about making miracles less miraculous? Monsignor Jacques Perrier, Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes, has decided to recognise three new categories of healings at Lourdes: unexpected, confirmed, and exceptional. Until the changes, the rules in force were those laid down by the Vatican 300 years ago, which required that the illness be incurable, that there be no medical intervention, that the healing be instantaneous and complete, and that no later relapse take place. A tall order. Under these rules, Perrier complained, no cancer cures could ever take place at Lourdes. Plus, there have been a couple of healings in the last couple of years these rules excluded that he felt were miraculous. Whenever the subject of miracles comes up, we always think of Basava Premanand, convenor of the Indian sceptics, who told us in an interview in the early 1990s that he debunks miracles because miracles are how religions sell themselves. Making Lourdes more competitive with evangelical congregations and all those showy faith healers on TV may not be uppermost in Perrier's mind (as he says it's not). But it might help keep those millions of pilgrims coming. Our prediction: 15 years from now there still won't be any wooden legs or toupees on the walls of the Lourdes grotto, just like Shaw noted.

>>>The Sun reports that Jim Dale, senior meteorologist with British Weather Services, is warning that this year's changeable weather could provide the right conditions for a hail of Bizarre Falling Objects - frogs, fish, hail of toads, perhaps. Good observation areas - should you wish to be splattered - include Great Yarmouh in Norfolk, east Manchester, and Ipswich. We note, however, that this story's only source seems to be The Sun, and also that BWS is a commercial enterprise selling consultations, weather risk management, insurance, and so on. They can't - surely - have just been looking for a spot of free publicity?

>>>Those with Web connections, MP3 players, and a liking for niche radio might like to check out the interviews our buddies at ASKE (www.aske-skeptics.org.uk) have been putting up on the Web. At the end of May, for example, Rick Wood interviewed Dr. Ron Milioni, the mind behind the specter detector gadgets on the Sci-Fi channel's Ghost Hunters series, about his efforts to recreate the Ark of the Covenant. Worth a listen.

>>>IN THIS ISSUE OF THE SKEPTIC (19.3, Autumn 2006)

Features: 'God's Truth', Others' Confusion? (L. J. Hurst) Is a Grey Heavier Than a Green? (Stephen Moston) Thomas Hobbes, Angels, Ghosts and Miracles (Adam Buick)
Columns: Editorial (Victoria Hamilton and Chris French) Hilary Evans's Paranormal Picture Gallery Hits and Misses (Wendy M. Grossman) Rhyme and Reason (Steve Donnelly) Philosopher's Corner (Julian Baggini) Sprite (Donald Rooum) ASKE News Letters
Reviews: The Hanged Man: A Story of Miracle, Memory, and Colonialism in the Middle Ages by Robert Bartlett The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity by Robert K Merton and Elinor Barber Parallel Worlds: The Science of Alternative Universes and Our Future in the Cosmos by Michio Kaku Jesus Never Existed by Keneth Humphreys

>>>SOURCES FOR SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1-3 The Times; 4,5 The Register; 6 Reuters; 7 Friends of the Earth; 8 The Independent; 9-12 The Nation; 13,14 The Observer, 15,16 The Independent; 17,18 BMJ via New Scientist; 19 www.britishdowsers.org 20 The Register, 21 Daily Telegraph; 22 CBN; 23 The Observer, 24,25 www.tm.org

>>>ADMINISTRIVIA>>>
Thanks to this issue's clippings contributors: Rachel Carthy, Sid Rodrigues, Steuart Campbell, Tom Ruffles, Ernest Jackson, and the Wizard's Star List. Thanks to Rachel Carthy for administrative support and Phil McKerracher for managing the digest subscription list and the Skeptic's Web site.

Editorial and other e-mail to The Skeptic should be addressed as follows:
Subscription inquiries: subs at skeptic.org.uk (please do not phone) Letters to the editor: letters at skeptic.org.uk Contributions for Skeptical Stats and Hits and Misses: news at skeptic.org.uk
Book review section: reviews at skeptic.org.uk Article ideas and other editorial queries: edit at skeptic.org.uk

Unsolicited commercial email is NOT welcome at any of these addresses. E-mail one address ONLY. If you do not get a reply, it probably means that our reply email bounced.

>>>ENDS>>>

Thursday 21st December 2006
Lord Dick Taverne "Sense about Science"

Thursday 18th January 2007
Krissy Wilson "Thanks for the Memories!"

Thursday 15th February 2007
Louis Constandinos "Clarion: A call to rational arms"

The talk will be followed by informal discussion in a relaxed and friendly pub atmosphere. Skeptics in the Pub is a regular evening for all those interested in and/or skeptical of the paranormal, alternative medicine, psychic powers, pseudo-science, UFOs, alien abductions, creationism, Fortean phenomena, cult religions, water-divining, lost civilizations, etc. Further information and mailing list announcements available from pub at skeptic.org.uk or Nick Pullar on 07793 158697. Suggestions for speakers or offers to speak are gladly welcomed.

>>>END ANNOUNCEMENTS>>>

Skeptical Digest 19.2 (Summer 2006)

2006-08-13T12:00:00Z

>>>Skeptical Digest 19.2 (Summer 2006)

--Please forward as widely as possible without spamming anyone--

>>>CONTENTS>>>
>>>Skeptical Stats>>>Dubious News>>>In this issue>>>Administrivia>>>Skeptics in the Pub>>>

>>>SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1. Number of people living in New Orleans as of February 1, 2006: 130,000
2. Number of people living in New Orleans pre-Katrina: nearly 500,000

3. Price, with seven days to go, of an "image of Jesus on a piece of sheet metal New", on eBay: $1.025

4. Percentage of 562 surveyed British children who thought their fathers were the smartest people in the world: 27 5. Percentage who thought their mothers were: 19

6. Number of weeks London mayor Ken Livingstone was suspended by the Adjudication Panel for England for comparing a reporter from the Evening Standard to a concentration camp guard: 4

7. Number of Fairtrade products available in Britain: 1,300

8. Number of psychics helping search for a prize-winning show whippet that escaped from a travel cage at New York's Kennedy airport: 12 9. Cost of a "Psychic Journey" at Uri Geller's and Jonathan Cainer's Psychic Museum in York: £30
10. Number of "Aura Photographs" included in the price: 1

11. Number of British children who run away every year: 100,000 12. Percentage that are under 11: 25

13. Amount the Department of Homeland Security spent on antiterrorism devices between September 11, 2001 and June, 2005: $4.5 billion 14. Amount that was found to be ineffective, unreliable, or too expensive to operate: almost all

15. Average percentage of the UK population that the British believe are immigrants: 21
16. Percentage of the UK population that actually are immigrants: 8

17. Number of networks that make up the Internet: 250,000

18. Estimated number of Chinese people who start their days by drinking their own urine: 3 million

19. Age at which babies have shown altruistic behavior: 18 months

20. Number of people in the European Union who identify themselves as Muslims: 20 million

21. Number of intergalactic lovers jazz singer Pamela Stonebrook claims to have had: 1

22. Amount pension obligations add to the cost of every vehicle General Motors produces: $675

23. Number of thymus organs German scientists discovered in 2006 that mice have: 2
24. Number chickens have: 10

25. Percentage of British children receiving the MMR vaccine: 81

>>>DUBIOUS NEWS>>>
>>>Science fraud giveth, and science fraud taketh away. The announcement that Woo Suk Hwang's claimed stem cell research had not after all produced a human clone continues to reverberate, and the news continues to get worse. Not only did Hwang violate ethical principles (duh), but some of his egg donors became ill from the drugs used to stimulate production, he can't account for $2.6 million in missing research funds, at least five investigations are continuing in South Korea and the United States, and some of those investigations are criminal. Next to all that, the simple retraction of his papers must seem almost minor. Why do they do it? We know that about 50 percent of elite athletes, when asked, have said that they would take a drug that would ensure victory even though it would kill them in five years, but at least in such a scenario the athlete gets the glory and satisfaction that comes with winning. Do fraudulent scientists really believe that they won't get caught? Wouldn't they be better off claiming results less likely to capture worldwide media attention and therefore somewhat less scrutiny?

>>>The Citizens Advice Bureau issued an advisory in February about psychic scams: fraudsters who promise to tell people their fortune but instead take the money and run. Or they send threats, demand money, and keep demanding it: in one case reported to a CAB, a clairvoyant sent an elderly man numerous letters accusing him of owing money from a past life. The CAB stopped short, however, of tackling the question of whether any horoscopes (or clairvoyance, predictions, and so on) were actually worth anything. "For most of us reading our horoscope is an enjoyable way of seeing if we can predict what is coming around the corner. But it can turn from harmless fun into an expensive and worrying problem," the press release reads. We have to say that these guys are just lazy. With all the horoscopes posted on the Net and in the newspapers, you'd think it would be just as easy to throw together a few meaningless sentences to send the dupes. Oh, for the old days, when a fraudulent psychic did a little honest work.

>>>A poster to alt.folklore.urban noted that on a recent weekend morning a Strange But True short sandwiched between a couple of cartoons he was watching with his six-year-old son made the claim that babies don't have kneecaps. It turns out this is not an uncommon myth (as anyone who's ever actually looked at a small child's knees might expect) and there are a number of Web sites both promulgating and debunking this myth. They have kneecaps. The kneecaps just aren't ossified yet, and so they don't show up on X-rays. They are formed when the foetus is about three to four months along in development, and are cartilaginous for the first three (females) to five (males) years of the child's life. In an unrelated development, the Association of British Science Writers not only couldn't find a worthy award recipient in the category for TV programmes for 2005, it couldn't even find anything worth shortlisting.

>>>You know, we don't love Harry Potter, and we made fun of JK Rowling and the water sprite she purchased with her Scottish castle, but it does seem a bit much that a Vatican official has accused her of luring children to devil-worship because her books are tainted by the Prince of Darkness. The Vatican official in question, Father Gabriele Amorth, is apparently best known for having carried out more than 3,000 exorcisms since 1986. But he's not alone: the current Pope, before he assumed the Papacy, said three years ago that the books held "seductions which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly". Kind of ironic, considering the source.

>>>We note without editorial comment that Ireland Online ran the story at the beginning of March that Uri teller, who publicly supported Michael Jackson during the Tatter's trial, has publicly criticized Jackson for lying to documentary maker Martin Bashir about having plastic surgery.

>>>Not exactly paranormal but definitely superstitious is the extreme paranoia with which parts of the US have begun to regard ordinary household dust and dirt. A recent article in Family Circle recommended: flushing the garbage disposal with bleach or anti-bacterial cleaner (and then cleaning the sink and counters to get rid of any matter that might have flown out); disinfecting can openers; closing the toilet lid before flushing lest bacteria fly out and contaminate your toothbrush; microwaving your sponges after use (and replacing them every two weeks); and cleaning sinks and counters with a solution of 10 percent bleach after they are touched with so much as a grocery bag. If that doesn't make you feel clean enough, change your towels every two to three days; dump your bar soap in favour of liquid because bacteria can grow on bars; get rid of all carpeting; disinfect doorknobs and remote controls; clean under the bolts holding down your toilet; and never, ever, ever wash your clothes with your underwear. The article doesn't say what to do to protect yourself if you actually dare to get dressed, brush your teeth, and venture out into the outside world.

>>>Science Magazine, the house publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, ran an interesting essay by Mexican biology professor Antonio Lazcano, of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, about the deep roots of evolution in Mexican society - despite the fact that the country is notoriously Catholic. Many Americans, Lazcano notes, are under the misapprehension that the teaching of evolution must necessarily be limited in his country. But no: the Catholic church does not advocate a literal reading of the Bible, and Darwin's ideas and Catholic ones manage a peaceful coexistence, unlike the controversy in some areas of Mexico's bigger and more powerful neighbour to the north.

>>>The news came through in early February that James Randi was in hospital after bypass surgery. The most recent word is that he continues to recover well. Anyone who wants to write to Randi or send a card may do so via the JREF, 201 SE 12 Street, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316. Anyone who wants to help is asked to consider donating blood to the Red Cross, or joining or making a donation to Randi's foundation.

>>>IN THIS ISSUE OF THE SKEPTIC (19.2, Summer 2006)

Features: Natural Science and the Spirit World: Part 2 (Friedrich Engels) Just Your Imagination? Part 2: Feel The Force (Martin Parkinson) Discord (Lee Traynor) Mia Dolan on Granada's This Morning (Tony Youens)
Columns: Editorial (Victoria Hamilton and Chris French) Hilary Evans's Paranormal Picture Gallery Hits and Misses Skeptic at large... (Wendy M. Grossman) Rhyme and Reason (Steve Donnelly) Philosopher's Corner (Julian Baggini) Sprite (Donald Rooum) ASKE News Letters
Reviews: A Beginner's Guide to Reality by Jim Baggott Vampire Nation by Arlene Russo Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science by Steve Fuller Will Storr vs the Supernatural: One Man's Search for the Truth about Ghosts by Will Storr

>>>SOURCES FOR SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1 Brookings Institution (www.brookings.org/metro/katrina.htm); 2 Reuters; 3 eBay; 4,5 Pocket-lint.co.uk; 6 press reports; 7 Observer; 8 Associated Press; 9,10 www.psychicmuseum.com ; 11,12 Children's Society, cited in Evening Standard; 13,14 Bruce Schneier's Weblog; 15,16 Harper's Index; 17 Vint Cerf, in testimony before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; 18 Outside Magazine; 19 Science (via BBC); 20 The New Yorker; 21 Metro; 22 Harper's; 23,24 Nature; 25 Durham University press release

>>>ADMINISTRIVIA>>>
Thanks to this issue's clippings contributors: Rachel Carthy, Sid Rodrigues,Steuart Campbell, Tom Ruffles, Ernest Jackson, the Wizard's Star List, Skeptic News,and Phil McKerracher. Thanks to Rachel Carthy for administrative support and Phil McKerracher for managing the digest subscription list and the Skeptic's Web site.

Editorial and other e-mail to The Skeptic should be addressed as follows:
Subscription inquiries: subs at skeptic.org.uk (please do not phone) Letters to the editor: letters at skeptic.org.uk Contributions for Skeptical Stats and Hits and Misses: news at skeptic.org.uk
Book review section: reviews at skeptic.org.uk Article ideas and other editorial queries: edit at skeptic.org.uk

Unsolicited commercial email is NOT welcome at any of these addresses. E-mail one address ONLY. If you do not get a reply, it probably means that our reply email bounced.

>>>ENDS>>>

Thursday 24th August 2006
Note: Date change! Martin Poulter "Scientology: It's worse than you think"

Thursday 26th October 2006
Note: Date change! Richard Wiseman "Television and the paranormal, the need for positive skepticism, religious belief, magic, and the science of speed dating"

The talk will be followed by informal discussion in a relaxed and friendly pub atmosphere. Skeptics in the Pub is a regular evening for all those interested in and/or skeptical of the paranormal, alternative medicine, psychic powers, pseudo-science, UFOs, alien abductions, creationism, Fortean phenomena, cult religions, water-divining, lost civilizations, etc. Further information and mailing list announcements available from pub at skeptic.org.uk or Nick Pullar on 07793 158697. Suggestions for speakers or offers to speak are gladly welcomed.

>>>END ANNOUNCEMENTS>>>

Skeptical Digest 19.1 (Spring 2006)

2006-05-28T12:00:00Z

>>>Skeptical Digest 19.1 (Spring 2006)

--Please forward as widely as possible without spamming anyone--

>>>CONTENTS>>>
>>>Skeptical Stats>>>Dubious News>>>In this issue>>>Administrivia>>>Skeptics in the Pub>>>

>>>SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1. Number of pounds of carbon dioxide emissions produced annually by the average American: 12,000
2. Percentage this represents of CO2 emissions worldwide: 36.1 3. Percentage the US represents of the world's population: 5

4. Percentage of executives at large companies who say their communications are unmanageable: 25

5. Number of UFO sightings in 2005 in the eight-mile of North Yorkshire between Scarborough and Filey: 85

6. Amount of money spent annually in Britain on gambling: £64 billion

7. Length of time it takes mass-produced British bread to rise, ready for baking: 3 minutes

8. Number of Britons who consult homeopaths each year: 470,000 9. Amount Britons spend annually on homeopathy: about £25 million 10. Percentage of British GPs who refer patients to homeopaths: up to 40

11. Percentage of British school-aged children who will be obese by 2020 if current eating habits persist: more than half

12. Percentage of airline passengers in 568 crashes between 1983 and 2000 who survived without serious injury: 95

13. Price of a magnetic device called MoodMaker intended to cure impotence: £49.99

14. Percentage of mercury found in Fufang Lulhui Jiaonang capsules by the MHRA in an unannounced April 2005 inspection: 13

15. Amount fraudsters operating a letter-writing scam and claiming to be clairvoyant asked Thames Valley residents to pay to protect themselves from an evil presence: £17

16. Number, out of nine, of Dover, Pennsylvania school board voted out after the debate over whether to teach Intelligent Design landed in court: 8
17. Percentage of the population who voted: 16 18. Kansas Board of Education vote to redefine science so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations: 6-4 19. Number of US states that have had some local or state level anti-evolution activity: 40

20. Percentage of Americans who go to church at least once a week who voted for Bush: 61
21. Percentage of American church attenders who never attend church who voted for Bush: 37

22. Estimated number of people in Britain who claim to have psychic abilities: 150,000

23. Number of pieces of peer-reviewed research that has been published about Flying Spaghetti Monsterism: 2

24. Number of cows a Leeds woman was told by a local healer to slaughter to save her relationship: 3

25. Percentage of US meals consumed in cars: 19

Thanks for contributions to Sid Rodrigues and Jason C. Snowden.

>>>DUBIOUS NEWS>>>
>>>Anyone who has an email address knows that a mainstay of the torrent of junk that bombards us daily is the offer of breast enlargement. Spammers are always coy about the exact method by which the enlargement will be accomplished (we refuse to say "enhancement"; bigger is not always better). Steve Burgess, who runs a National Therapy Centre in Beverley, North Yorkshire, however, has a method we suspect the spammers are not using: hypnosis. Yes. We first heard of Burgess via a clipping from the Hull Daily Mail sent in by one of our Yorkshire correspondents. It credulously recounted the usual stuff: depression, alcoholism, smoking, weight loss, past-life regression, alien abductions, in which he now believes because of his patients' stories, yada, yada, yada. And then we looked at his Web site, where he claims this more unusual service "really works". Exclamation point. Burgess claims that success in this area has been documented as far back as 1949, and says, "It's a well known fact within the hypnotherapy profession that the mind can effect phenomenal changes on the body". If, he argues, hypnosis can cure illness and get rid of pain, then it's only logical to use it to increase the flow of blood to the breasts and reposition fat. "The fat is usually taken from the waist area, so there is often a reduction in waist size or shape also." Of course, you can achieve the same effect with better posture... "Don't laugh," his Web site advises before explaining all this. Sorry. Will too.

>>>The Daily Mail revealed in October that the TV show Most Haunted was a fake, when one of its own stars, resident parapsychologist Dr Ciaran O'Keeffe, blew the whistle, saying people were being deceived by "showmanship and dramatics" and that, "In my opinion, we're not dealing with genuine mediumship". The Mail also said it had obtained unedited footage in which the show's presenter, Yvette Fielding, and her husband faked ghostly knocks and bumps. O'Keeffe, who is a psychology lecturer at Liverpool Hope University, is (according to his Web site, at www.theparapsychologist.com) working on a doctorate under the supervision of Richard Wiseman.

>>>There's been a lot of discussion lately about alternative remedies and their funding by the NHS. You can see why the alternative therapists would want it: there's a]ot of gold in them thar government hills. The government's own ideas are likely to be more divided between the expense of funding more types of treatments and the savings due to the fact that things like faith healing and homeopathy are cheaper than things like MRI scans and Avonex. Long-term, of course, while some people's bodies will heal naturally, with or without any kind of remedy, the really serious ailments will become much more expensive because the later you begin to treat a condition, the more expensive the treatment is likely to be. Opinions seem to be seriously divided, sometimes within the same publication. The Yorkshire Post, for example, wrote an admiring piece about the prospects for using acupuncture in A&E. And of course most publications frequently run credulous pieces about this or that fashionable therapy. One that stood out, however, was Nick Cohen, writing in The Observer, who argued that spending public money on alternative remedies, even if doing so is popular, is wrong because "the government is dealing in deceit...a government which is prepared to deceive about medicine will deceive about much else besides". Like that's a new phenomenon?

>>>Yet another prospective cold remedy has bitten the dust: a study in the New England journal of Medicine in July found that Echinacea does not protect against (or cure) the common cold (or what one friend calls "man-flu"). The Observer's writer, Dr John Biffa, didn't like the conclusion, and therefore carped about the study's methods, complaining that instilling rhinovirus into test subjects' nostrils isn't how people are actually exposed to colds in the real world. Well, it isn't - but it's how colds have been studied for decades. You might expect people to be more prone to catch a cold with such a method, but if Echinacea had a protective effect you'd still expect the symptoms to be less severe. We have a little more sympathy with Biffa's complaint about Wallace Sampson's editorial in the same issue of NEJM questioning why scientists test such remedies as Echinacea when they are unproven; rather, he thought that research and public funding should be focused on things that have a reasonable chance of working. Sampson's reasoning: people continue to use things like Echinacea even when they've been shown not to work, so why bother? In the end because, we think, consumers deserve to make an informed choice, even if the choice they make is a stupid one. Still, not much comfort if you have a cold: Echinacea doesn't work, vitamin C doesn't work, going to bed and drinking hot lemon and honey doesn't work. You might as well try the final suggestion from Mark Twain's How to Cure a Cold, written in 1863: two quarts of whiskey every 24 hours. "Let them try it - if it doesn't cure them, it can't do more than kill them."

>>>We may, just may, have seen the last of the sane phase of the fights over whether MMR vaccines are linked to autism. In late October, the Cochrane Collaboration released its systematic review of the literature and concluded that MMR is probably safe and not linked to autism. However, as Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, a GP and author of MMR and Autism: What Parents Need to Know, points out in a Spiked Online editorial, this hasn't stopped the Daily Mail from insisting that the Cochrane review has it all wrong, while Private Eye has gone on saying that the scare's originator, Andrew Wakefield, has been unjustly vilified but adding that it's been pro-immunization all along. Wakefield's original claim was published in 1998; we suspect it will go on being repeated for the rest of our sceptical lives. As "Bad science" columnist Ben Goldacre wrote in the Guardian, "Health scares are like toothpaste: they're easy to squeeze out, but very difficult to get back in the tube". We couldn't have said it better ourselves.

>>>It was with a heavy heart that we read online that Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, the comic strip that exposes the utter absurdity of modern office life, has posted a defence of Intelligent Design on his blog (http://dilbertblog.typepad.com). A careful reading of what Adams actually said shows this isn't true: what he says is, "I'd be surprised if 90 percent-plus of scientists are wrong about the evidence for Darwinism. But if you think it's impossible you've led a sheltered life." After all, he argues, in a corporate setting lots of reasons are given to justify beliefs that when examined don't hold water. The ID people allege that within each field where evidence is found to support Darwinism there are some experts who are not convinced. Therefore, isn't it possible that scientists are giving in to peer-pressure? Naturally, we hope that science doesn't work like any of the corporations Adams has known. Unfortunately, there are human beings everywhere, so you never know. Meanwhile, the best argument we've heard comes from a friend who is seven months pregnant: "No one would make ribs this unbendy if they had planned such a large person to be kicking them / fitting behind them along with all the other stuff that normally takes up the space. Intelligent design my arse".

>>>The Center for Inquiry, the parent organization of CSICOP (which assists us with production, printing, and posting The Skeptic), has been granted special consultative status as a non-governmental organization under the United Nations Economic and Social Council. This status will allow the Center for Inquiry to participate in meetings and conferences open to NGOs, which can only be good news for the endeavour of spreading scientific rationalism. Congrats to CSICOP.

>>>IN THIS ISSUE OF THE SKEPTIC (19.1, Spring 2006)

Features: Second Sight? Or Just the Blind Leading the Blind? (Krissy Wilson) Just Your Imagination? Part 1: Acting (Martin Parkinson) The Mystery of Hellfire Pass: Part Three (Paul Chambers and Robert Bartholomew) Natural Science and the Spirit World: Part One (Friedrich Engels)
Columns: Editorial (Victoria Hamilton and Chris French) Hilary Evans's Paranormal Picture Gallery Hits and Misses Skeptic at large... (Wendy M. Grossman) Rhyme and Reason (Steve Donnelly) Philosopher's Corner (Julian Baggini) Sprite (Donald Rooum) ASKE News Letters
Reviews: Darwin's Legacy: What evolution means today by John Dupré Eight Preposterous Propositions by Robert Ehrlich The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson The Science of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Michael Hanlon

>>>SOURCES FOR SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1 The New Yorker; 2 BBC; 3
http://www.bep.treas.gov/store/section.cfm/73/435; 4 Business Week (McKinsey report); 5 Yorkshire Post; 6 The Times; 7 Daily Telegraph; 8,9,10 The Independent; 11 Barnardos research study; 12 Skeptical Inquirer (statistic from NTSB); 13 www.dash.co.uk; 14 www.mhra.gov.uk; 15 BBC; 16,17 Austin American Statesman; 18 Independent; 19 National Center for Science Education; 20,21 Business Week; 22 Channel 5; 23 The Panda's Thumb blog (www.pandasthumb.org); 24 Yorkshire Post; 25 Harper's (Culinary Institute)

>>>ADMINISTRIVIA>>>
Thanks for contributions to Sid Rodrigues and Jason C. Snowden. Thanks to Rachel Carthy for administrative support and Phil McKerracher for managing the digest subscription list and the Skeptic's Web site.

Editorial and other e-mail to The Skeptic should be addressed as follows:
Subscription inquiries: subs at skeptic.org.uk (please do not phone) Letters to the editor: letters at skeptic.org.uk Contributions for Skeptical Stats and Hits and Misses: news at skeptic.org.uk
Book review section: reviews at skeptic.org.uk Article ideas and other editorial queries: edit at skeptic.org.uk

Unsolicited commercial email is NOT welcome at any of these addresses. E-mail one address ONLY. If you do not get a reply, it probably means that our reply email bounced.

>>>ENDS>>>

Thursday 22nd June 2006
Note: Date change! Lynette Davidson "Bad History?"

Thursday 24th August 2006
Note: Date change! Martin Poulter "Scientology: It's worse than you think"

The talk will be followed by informal discussion in a relaxed and friendly pub atmosphere. Skeptics in the Pub is a regular evening for all those interested in and/or skeptical of the paranormal, alternative medicine, psychic powers, pseudo-science, UFOs, alien abductions, creationism, Fortean phenomena, cult religions, water-divining, lost civilizations, etc. Further information and mailing list announcements available from pub at skeptic.org.uk or Nick Pullar on 07793 158697. Suggestions for speakers or offers to speak are gladly welcomed.

>>>END ANNOUNCEMENTS>>>

Skeptical Digest 18.4 (Winter 2005)

2006-04-03T12:00:00Z

>>>Skeptical Digest 18.4 (Winter 2005)

--Please forward as widely as possible without spamming anyone--

>>>CONTENTS>>>
>>>Skeptical Stats>>>Dubious News>>>In this issue>>>Administrivia>>>Skeptics in the Pub>>>

>>>SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1. Percentage of conclusions drawn in papers published in scientific journals that are arguably false: 50

2. Government's estimate of cost of the national ID card: £5.5 billion 3. LSE's estimate of cost of the national ID card: £19.2 billion

4. Percentage of UK hospital consultants suffering from poor mental health and emotional burnout in 1994: 27 5. Percentage of UK hospital consultants suffering from poor mental health and emotional burnout in 2002: 32

6. Average length of calls to phone psychics: 30 minutes 7. Average cost per minute of those calls: $1 to $4

8. Number of acupuncture colleges in the US: 20

9. Cost to spend 32 hours in Montana's Radon Health Mine: $150

10. Bookmakers' odds that Elvis is still alive: 1000/1

11. Percentage of Americans who think that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public schools: nearly 67

12. Percentage of the human and chimpanzee genomes that are the same: 96

13. Number of divorces in Britain in 2004: 167,116

14. Number of years the Home Office would like Britons to go to jail for downloading violent pornography: 3

15. Amount psychic Miriam Gifford charges for "soul retrieval": £35-£50

16. Cost of a holiday for your teddy bear offered by a German travel agent: £68 to £100

17. The answer to the puzzle "(first 10 digit prime in consecutive digits of e).com" that Google posted on billboards in Silicon Valley in 2004 as part of a recruitment drive: 7427466391

18. Amount Scientology charges actors for workshops at its Los Angeles Celebrity Center designed to help them succeed in show business: $17

19. Percentage of voices in hallucinations (among both men and women) that are male: 71

20. Height of a statue of St Anthony of Padua, patron saint of lost and stolen items, that disappeared from a Peterborough church in July 2005: two feet

21. Amount for which athletes swimming in Loch Ness as part of Scotland's July 2005 triathlon were insured against monster bites: £1 million

22. Amount for which a Russian astrologer sued NASA in "moral damages" for molesting a comet (using the Deep Impact probe) and disrupting the moral balance of the universe: £310 Million

23. Date of the first wedding in Britain legally carried out by a humanist celebrant: June 18, 2005

24. Percentage of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by the UK: 3 25. Percentage of the world's population that lives in the UK: 1

Thanks for contributions to Sid Rodrigues and Jason C. Snowden.

>>>DUBIOUS NEWS>>>

>>>As if the Kansas Board of Education didn't have enough problems trying to decide how the world began, in June 24-year-old Bobby Henderson of Corvallis, Oregon, sent them a letter saying that if they were going to require Intelligent Design to be taught in Kansas science classrooms alongside evolution, he felt strongly that they should include the "alternative theory" of Intelligent Design he espouses. To wit: the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster, who continues to change scientific measurements relating to evolution with His Noodly Appendage. "We have evidence" he wrote, adding, "it is disrespectful to teach our beliefs without wearing His chosen outfit, which of course is full pirate regalia." Henderson included - and has reproduced on his Web site at www.venganza.org - a graph showing the correlation between the declining number of pirates in the world and global warming. Henderson's letter has been joined by many others from Pastafarians, as Flying Spaghetti Monster worshippers are known. And the cult is growing, supported by sales of T-shirts, coffee mugs, and other items. BoingBoing, a blog run by three California technologists and writers who post about pop culture oddities, posted a small item about Pastafarianism's growing popularity, which in turn got them a large mailbag of complaints from ID supporters. Some of these pointed the BoingBoing writers at the work of Kent Hovind, who founded Creation Research Evangelism in 1989 and who has a standing promise to pay $250,000 to anyone who can give any empirical evidence for evolution. BoingBoing, not to be outdone, made a counter-offer: "We are willing to pay any individual $250,000 if they can produce empirical evidence which proves that Jesus is not the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster." After reader donations flooded in, BoingBoing raised its prize to $1 million but has capped it there "in part because the number contains a lot of pretty, round zeroes that resemble holy meatballs". Three members of the Kansas Board of Education have said they will support the inclusion of the Flying Spaghetti Monster in the science curriculum. It is as 'logical' as any other theory", wrote one.

>>>In August, The Lancet published the results of a Swiss-UK review of 110 trials of homeopathy, matched with 110 conventional medicine trials, and concluded that "the clinical effects of homeopathy are placebo effects". The article noted that in both types of trial smaller, lower quality trials showed more beneficial treatment effects than the larger, higher quality ones, suggesting that bias might be a possible explanation for any positive findings. The journal's editors took advantage of the article's publication to stage a militant attack on homeopathy's continued popular acceptance, saying "For too long, a politically correct laissez-faire attitude has existed towards homoeopathy...Now doctors need to be bold and honest with their patients about homeopathy's lack of benefit, and with themselves about the failings of modern medicine to address patients' needs for personalised care". Investment in research should stop (despite the editors' comment, "The more dilute the evidence for homeopathy becomes, the greater seems its popularity"). The editorial also notes that the Swiss government has withdrawn insurance coverage for homeopathy and four other complementary treatments "because they did not meet efficacy and cost-effectiveness criteria". Meanwhile, the Patients Association has called for all GPs to provide patients with the choice of using complementary medicine - although this demand is qualified with "where it has been proven to work". We psychically predict no such sanity will hold sway in Britain as long as the Royal Family and other celebrities continue to support homeopathy. And they do: not content with issuing a guide to alternative therapies earlier this year, Prince Charles commissioned a report from an independent economist, published in autumn 2005, into how much money alternative therapies could save the NHS. We have to suppose the answer will be 'lots': cheaper therapies, and then the patients die faster.

>>>At last, a practical reason not to indulge in paranormal beliefs. The Times recently reported on the case of Herve Vandrot, a French amateur psychic studying botanics at Edinburgh University. It seems that Vandrot placed the crystal ball he uses for his psychic pastime on his window sill and sallied forth to Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Garden. By the time he came back, sun shining through the crystal ball - nice, clear, round glass, filled with liquid, a perfect concentrator for a sunbeam - onto a pile of washing had started a fire, and both his flat and two others had been destroyed. Several more were uninhabitable. Vandrot spoke up in defence of his crystal ball, but the fire-fighters were adamant it had caused the fire. Now, we know you're going to say he should have known...

>>>The US has sent a proposal to the International Telecommunications Union, which is responsible for the broadcasts that allow us all to synchronize our watches, to the effect that the practice of adding leap seconds should be abandoned. The problem in a nutshell: GPS can't handle them. Currently, time as we know it is measured in two ways: first, the atomic clock whose electrons decay at precisely the right intervals; second, the rotation of the earth. Because the earth's rotation is uneven, every so often the difference between the two times must be corrected by adding (or subtracting, though this has so far never happened) a leap second. Humans barely notice. But time and location are intimately connected, and the difference between atomic time and universal time (formerly known as GMT) has reached 32 seconds, with GPS stuck in the middle, 19 seconds behind atomic time (TAI) and 13 seconds ahead of universal time (UTC). Give it a while longer, and your taxi may not be able to find your house. But the converse problem exists for astronomers, who are enraged by the proposal, which would decouple time from its physical meaning. As Mike Hapgood, the geophysical secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society explained it, "One second off will be within beam, but once you disconnect, within two to three years a spacecraft wouldn't be in the radio beam and you wouldn't be able to communicate with it". The ITU discussed the proposals at its November 2005 meeting.

>>>In August, residents of South Wales experienced a second wave of "curse letters" - letters that threaten that the recipient's life will be destroyed unless the person tears the enclosed Jack of Spades into four pieces and sends them, along with £10, to an address in Austria. The purported sender, a clairvoyant named Samantha, can't be all that clairvoyant, since several of the residents so targeted contacted the South Wales Echo, which promptly alerted readers to the scam. Anyone receiving such a letter is asked to contact Trading Standards.

>>>Sadly we report the death of Philip J. Klass, who spent much of his 50-year career researching aviation technology and much of his spare time debunking UFO claims. Born in Iowa, Klass was a senior editor for Aviation Week & Space Technology, author of five books on UFOs, and a founder of CSICOP. He died without ever having had to pay out the $10,000 reward he offered to anyone whose claim to have seen a UFO or been abducted by an alien could be confirmed by the FBI.

>>>Between issues, read our blog at www.livejournal.com/users/ukskeptic. An RSS feed of The Skeptic's discussion forum is available at www.skeptic.org.uk/forum/rss.php.

>>>IN THIS ISSUE OF THE SKEPTIC (18.4, Winter 2005)

Features: Alien abduction or Bad Medicine? (Jamie McCartney) The Mystery of Hellfire Pass: Part Two (Paul Chambers and Robert Bartholomew) The Problem of the Existence of God seen through the Eyes of a Physicist (Alfred Bahr)
Columns: Editorial (Victoria Hamilton and Chris French) Hilary Evans's Paranormal Picture Gallery Hits and Misses Skeptic at large... (Wendy M. Grossman) Rhyme and Reason (Steve Donnelly) Philosopher's Corner (Julian Baggini) Sprite (Donald Rooum) ASKE News Letters
Reviews: The Sense of Being Stared At and Other Aspects of the Extended Mind by Rupert Sheldrake The Rise of the Indian Rope Trick by Peter Lamont Stripping the Gurus: Sex, Violence, Abuse and Enlightenment by Geoffrey D. Falk

>>>SOURCES FOR SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1 Epidemiologist John P A. Ioannidis, in Public Library ofScience Medicine, www.boingboing.net/2005/08/30/journal_article_50_o.html; 2 November 2004 estimate,
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/fbc6527a-4276-11d9-8e3c-00000e2511c8.html; 3 LSE report, June 2005,
www.lse.ac.uk/collections/pressAndInformationOffice/newsAndEvents/archives/2005/IDCard-FinalReport.htm; 4, 5 The Lancet; 6, 7 www.e-phonepsychic.com; 8 American Chronicle; 9 www.radonmine.com; 10 Channel 4 News; 11 New York Times, July 2005 poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life; 12 Nature; 13 Office for National Statistics; 14 Theinquirer.net; 15 www.psychicfayres.co.uk; 16 Ananova; 17 mathematician John Allen Paulos, writing in the Guardian; 18 ads in Backstage magazine; 19 BBC, reporting on a study in NeuroImage; 20 BBC; 21 Guardian; 22 Pravda; 23, 24, 25 BBC

Editorial and other e-mail to The Skeptic should be addressed as follows:
Subscription inquiries: subs at skeptic.org.uk (please do not phone) Letters to the editor: letters at skeptic.org.uk Contributions for Skeptical Stats and Hits and Misses: news at skeptic.org.uk
Book review section: reviews at skeptic.org.uk Article ideas and other editorial queries: edit at skeptic.org.uk

Unsolicited commercial email is NOT welcome at any of these addresses. E-mail one address ONLY. If you do not get a reply, it probably means that our reply email bounced.

>>>ENDS>>>

Thursday 27th April 2006 (note changed date!): Benjamin Radford "Applying Science to the Paranormal: The Case of Psychic Detectives"

Thursday 15th June 2006: Lynette Davidson "Bad History?"

The talk will be followed by informal discussion in a relaxed and friendly pub atmosphere. Skeptics in the Pub is a regular evening for all those interested in and/or skeptical of the paranormal, alternative medicine, psychic powers, pseudo-science, UFOs, alien abductions, creationism, Fortean phenomena, cult religions, water-divining, lost civilizations, etc. Further information and mailing list announcements available from pub at skeptic.org.uk or Nick Pullar on 07793 158697. Suggestions for speakers or offers to speak are gladly welcomed.

>>>END ANNOUNCEMENTS>>>

Skeptical Digest 18.3 (Autumn 2005)

2005-12-19T12:00:00Z

>>>Skeptical Digest 18.3 (Autumn 2005)

--Please forward as widely as possible without spamming anyone--

>>>CONTENTS>>> >>>Skeptical Stats>>>Dubious News>>>In this issue>>>Administrivia>>>Skeptics in the Pub>>>

>>>SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1. Percentage of drugs approved for use in the US by the FDA that have not been comprehensively tested on children: 75

2. Cost of 1Gb Ghost Radar USB memory stick: £149.99

3. Percentage of people in a study by Richard Wiseman reporting unusual phenomena in "haunted" locations in Mary King's Close in Edinburgh: 78 4. Percentage of people in the same study reporting unusual phenomena in other locations in Mary King's Close: 48

5. Number of US states that between 2001 and 2003 challenged the teaching of evolution at either the state or local level: 40

6. Ratio of the population density of Manhattan to the US as a whole: more than 800:1

7. Number of people in Britain phoning psychic lines every month: 75,000
8. Number per month seeing psychics at fairs and in the psychics' homes: 2,000 to 3,000

9. Number of new species of rodent found on a market stall in Laos: 1

10. Number of black rhinos in Africa a century ago: 1 million 11. Number now, due to the demand for rhino horn in Chinese medicine: 2,500

12. Percentage of mercury (by weight) found by the MHRA in the Chinese remedy Fufang luhui jiaonang: 11.7

13. Age at which, in 2002, a Hackney girl was nearly drowned in a bag when family members accused her of being a witch: 8

14. Cost of an on-demand mobile phone Tarot reading by Russell Grant: £1.50

15. Date on which the new Broadcasting Code, which restricts programmes from presenting paranormal phenomena as real before 9pm, comes into force: July 25, 2005

16. Number of confirmed cases of mumps in the UK in 2004: 8,104 17. Number of confirmed cases of mumps in the UK between 1998 and 2003: 3,907

18. Date by which BT futurologist Ian Pearson believes that death will be "not a major career problem": 2050

19. Date by which a "Top TV psychic" working for TV Commerce Group says that Blair will quit and be replaced by someone other than Gordon Brown: before mid-November

20. Number of glaciers botanist David Bellamy claimed in an April 16 letter to New Scientist were growing instead of shrinking: 555 out of 625
21. Number Bellamy told Guardian "Junk Science" writer George Monbiot he actually meant to type: 55%
22. Percentage that the World Glacier Monitoring Service says is actually retreating: most

23. Number of British homes psychic television channel operator TV Commerce has access to via Sky Digital: 7.5 million

24. Number of years German scientist Michael Werner claims to have lived off nothing but sunlight and a little fruit juice mixed with water: 4

25. Amount for which a Russian astrologer is suing NASA over its Deep Impact project, claiming its plans to bombard a comet will "disrupt the natural balance of the universe": 8.7 billion roubles

>>>DUBIOUS NEWS>>>

>>>It seems to be a rule in skepticism that nothing ever stays proven or undisputed. Somebody always has to find a loophole. In this case, it's the evergreen Turin Shroud. When last heard from, the Shroud had been carbon-dated by a team of scientists in 1988, who studied the fabric and concluded: it's a medieval fake from somewhere between 1260 and 1390 A.D. That, you might have thought, should have been that, especially after 1998, when Walter McCrone analyzed the shroud and found traces of chemicals used in common artist's pigments in the 14th century. In the immediate shock, some Shroud supporters came up with an explanation for that. The Shroud, they patiently explained, had been artificially youthened by radiation Jesus emitted at the moment of death. Other complicated attempts to prove that the Shroud was not a fake revolve around pollen grains. Teddy Hall, however, the late scientist who led the Oxford carbon-dating team, never had any doubts about the results of the 1988 test. We suppose some Shroud believers must have found that too difficult to believe, because in November 2004 Raymond N. Rogers, a retired chemist from the Los Alamos National Laboratory published a new study in the journal Thermochimica Acta that claims that the sample used for the carbon-dating research was taken from an "expertly rewoven patch". The Scotsman, which covered the study in January, simply called the journal "peer-reviewed". The journal's pages on the Elsevier Web site describe it as "An International Journal Concerned with All Aspects of Thermoanalytical and Calorimetric Methods and their Application to Experimental Chemistry, Physics, Biology and Engineering". CSICOP's Joe Nickell, however, has pointed out that there's no way for Raymond to be sure, since the small sample used in the carbon-dating tests was destroyed in the process.

>>>At this year's annual general meeting of the Association of British Science Writers, Imperial College scientist and journalist Sunny Bains raised a question: why were British scientific organisations allowing their research to be funded by money from the American religious right? She meant the Templeton Foundation, which sponsors fellowships for science journalists at Cambridge University's Department of Theology, a $100,000 essay competition, and a prize for "Progress Toward Research On Discoveries About Spiritual Realities", whose most recent winner spoke (expenses paid by the Templeton Foundation) at the Royal Society. It has also donated £1 million to the Oxford Centre for Science of the Mind. The Templeton Foundation was created by Sir John Templeton, who made his money in the financial markets; the Foundation also funds three prizes for religious journalism and a number of purely religious activities. In one sense, it doesn't matter where the funding comes from if the science is sound. But Bains's point in part was that the Foundation's president, Templeton's son, is also the founder and chairman of a fundraising organisation for the Bush campaign, supporting an administration that is notoriously anti-science. The Foundation itself says it "seeks to focus the methods and resources of scientific inquiry on topical areas which have spiritual and theological significance" and "the Foundation seeks to unite credible and rigorous science with the exploration of humanity's basic spiritual and religious quests." It has several different grant-making programs. First is funding for advanced research in three areas including "religion, spirituality, healing, and health outcomes"; second is funding for research into the emergence of biological complexity, which includes "evolution directionality and convergence". Finally, there is a smaller program for local societies of "anyone actively engaged in the science and religion dialogue", intended "to promote a balanced and exploratory dialogue between the discoveries of the natural and social sciences and the wisdom of the world’s faith traditions." In general, skeptics have avoided criticising religion: there is no point in arguing matters of faith. We stick to things that can be tested and look at the evidence. But studies such as Cynthia Crossen's 1994 book Tainted Truth have shown that research generally returns the results its funders would like. Because of the uneasy recent history of religious involvement in scientific subjects such as evolution and medical issues such as abortion, stem cell research, and cloning, it's worth keeping an eye on the Templeton Foundation's research support.

>>>Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal, published an essay in the May 2005 issue of PLoS Medicine (from the Public Library of Science) claiming that medical journals have become an extension of the marketing arm of pharmaceutical companies. The problem, he explained, is not the one everyone thinks of first, the pages of advertising that help fund the journal's existence. Instead, he argued, most clinical trials are funded by pharmaceutical companies, and favourable trials net them not only pages of apparently objective coverage in the journal itself through research papers but media coverage around the world. Unlike advertisements, which doctors and the public read critically, coverage of research trials is likely to be viewed as credible. The companies know this, and in some cases spend as much as a million dollars or more on reprints it can distribute globally. What makes this all even more sinister is that these trials rarely produce unfavourable results, according to a 1994 study by Paula Rochon and others. (We might mention Cynthia Crossen's Tainted Truth again here.) Between two-thirds and three-quarters of the trials published in the major medical journals are funded by the industry. Peer-reviewing doesn't solve the problem, because although editors ask authors to send them related studies, they don't know about related unpublished studies – the largest part of the background. In any case, there are other problems with peer review. Smith points to a study published in a medical journal to support this contention, but as long ago as 1992 Marcel C. LaFollette devoted an entire book, Stealing Into Print, to the problems with peer review. Smith's solution is that journals should critique trials, not publish them. More trials should be publicly, instead of privately, funded. Trials should be registered, and researchers, not funding companies, should control publication.

>>>We always have to admire chutzpah in marketing. It's been some years now that you could buy little memory sticks that can hang on a keyring and plug into a computer via the omnipresent USB port. These things can carry up to a gigabyte or two of data – say, three to six hours of illegally downloaded TV shows – and they've become standard giveaways at technical conferences. Part of the secret there is that a USB port can be used to power small devices, even, given the right cable, charge up a mobile phone. There are USB Christmas trees that light up, USB fans, even USB coffee warmers. Now, there is USB "Ghost Radar", which is essentially a memory stick that beeps and lights up in weird patterns. According to its Web page, "Its sensors detect and combine any significant related changes in electro-magnetic turbulence, heat, light, and biometrics which may accompany mysterious apparitions." It looks cute, geeky, a little like a game, and a little spooky (what with its ultraviolet LED). The belief that it might detect ghosts or look fashionable will cost you as much as £48 points (for the 128Mb version) over an ordinary memory stick that evokes no such beliefs. On the other hand skeptics may find Ghost Radar useful – for detecting the gullible.

>>>When most people think of creationism in the US they think of Kansas (these days; they used to think of Tennessee, home of the Scopes trial). But the school district in Dover, Pennsylvania, a town of 25,000 about 25 miles southwest of the state's Harrisburg capitol, is currently imploding over the teaching of evolution. The acute phase of the trouble started last October, when the local school board voted six to three to add the following statement to the biology curriculum: "Students will be made aware of gaps/problems in Darwin's Theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design. Note: Origins of life will not be taught." A group of parents, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans for the Separation of Church and State, are suing to block the teaching of Intelligent Design. Three school board members have resigned, and candidates to replace them are being evaluated according to where they stand on the controversy. Expect fireworks and international coverage of what would ordinarily be the smallest and sleepiest of local elections.

>>>It is, of course, well known that Hollywood celebrities are experts on every subject, especially when they have a new film to promote. Tom Cruise, not satisfied with telling every media outlet that would listen about his new romance with the 26-year-old leading lady of another new release, has been displaying his Scientology beliefs in a new and aggressive fashion. He began by criticizing actress Brooke Shields, who recently went public with the emotional troubles she went through after giving birth, for taking prescription medication to alleviate her post-partum depression. He went on to rail against psychiatry – a favorite target of Scientology – calling it a fraud. This all goes some way to explaining why a spoof site ran a piece claiming that Cruise had told the TV program Access Hollywood that anesthesia was "dangerous pseudo-scientific drug abuse". That part wasn't true – but, sadly, the rest was.

>>>Those who follow The Skeptic's and ASKE's Web sites may have heard the story of how five skeptics were pulled into a laboratory on the premise of testing a psychic. The "psychic" was comedian Marc Wootton, and the programme was not, as we had been told, a "documentary exploring spirituality in Britain" but a light entertainment series in which Wootton played a rather hostile, extreme "psychic" to various types of audiences. The series aired on the digital channel in March/April on BBC Three, and is to be repeated on BBC2.

>>>Want more skeptical news? Take a look at The Skeptic's blog (www.livejournal.com/users/ukskeptic). You'll find links to stories as they appear online, most of them collected by the indefatigable Sid Rodriguez. If you're not familiar with blogs, they are a cross between a diary and a ship's log – the word "blog" is short for "Weblog". Special software makes it very easy to update them by adding the latest news to the top. Anyone can post comments to the entries that appear, but only authorized posters can post new stories. Let us know if you're interested in joining that group.

>>>IN THIS ISSUE OF THE SKEPTIC (18.3, Autumn 2005)

Features: How Do I Know What To Believe? (Martin Parkinson) The Mystery of Hellfire Pass: Part One (Paul Chambers and Robert Bartholomew) Who The Devil Are You? (Ben Fridja) Skrapbook (David Langford) Rescue (Scott Wood)
Columns: Editorial (Victoria Hamilton and Chris French) Hilary Evans's Paranormal Picture Gallery Hits and Misses Skeptic at large... (Wendy M. Grossman) Rhyme and Reason (Steve Donnelly) Philosopher's Corner (Julian Baggini) Sprite (Donald Rooum) ASKE News Letters
Reviews: The Sense of Being Stared At and Other Aspects of the Extended Mind by Rupert Sheldrake The Rise of the Indian Rope Trick by Peter Lamont Stripping the Gurus: Sex, Violence, Abuse and Enlightenment by Geoffrey D. Falk

>>>SOURCES FOR SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1 The New Yorker; 2 http://www.ghostradar.co.uk; 3,4 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4564383.stm; 5 The National Center for Science Education; 6 The New Yorker;7,8 British Psychic Registration Board; 9 The Times; 10,11 Tiger Bone and Rhino Horn: The Destruction of Wildlife for Chinese Medicine, by Richard Ellis; 12 Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency; 13 The Times; 14 http://sourcewire.com/releases/rel_display.php?relid=21663; 15 Ofcom; 16,17 Bad Science, The Guardian's Bad Science; 18 The Observer (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1489635,00.html); 19 The Times; 20,21,22 Guardian, www.monbiot.com; 23 www.sharecast.com; 24 Ananova; 25 The Australian daily newspaper, The Herald Sun

>>>ADMINISTRIVIA>>>
Thanks to Rachel Carthy for administrative support and Phil McKerracher for managing the digest subscription list and the Skeptic's Web site.

Editorial and other email to The Skeptic should be addressed as follows:
Subscription inquiries: ...@skeptic.org.uk">s...@skeptic.org.uk (please do not phone) Letters to the editor: ...@skeptic.org.uk">lett...@skeptic.org.uk Contributions for Skeptical Stats and Hits and Misses: ...@skeptic.org.uk">n...@skeptic.org.uk
Book review section: ...@skeptic.org.uk">revi...@skeptic.org.uk Article ideas and other editorial queries: ...@skeptic.org.uk">e...@skeptic.org.uk Unsolicited commercial email is NOT welcome at any of these addresses. Email one address ONLY. If you do not get a reply, it probably means that our reply email bounced.

The Skeptic (UK) Digest is written by Wendy M. Grossman (http://www.pelicancrossing.net) and e-mailed quarterly alongside published issues of The Skeptic; there may be occasional additional mailings. To sign up to receive the digest or to get off the list, visit http://www.skeptic.org.uk/digest (we do not sell, give away, or rent the e-mailing list).

The Skeptic is published quarterly. For details see http://www.skeptic.org.uk. A free sample issue is available in return for a self-addressed stamped A4 envelope. Subscriptions cost UKP15/year for UK residents. For pricing and availability of back issues and non-UK pricing, see our Web page or the back page of any printed issue. The Skeptic accepts payment by credit card or by cheques in pounds Sterling drawn on a British bank (sorry, but the banking charges for foreign cheques and postal orders are impossibly high). The Skeptic is no relation to the (more recent) American magazine or the (older) Australian magazine of the same name.

>>>ENDS>>>

>>>SKEPTICS IN THE PUB>>> Skeptics in the Pub meets on the third Thursday of every month at 7:30pm at the Old King's Head, 45 Borough High Street, London (nearest tube: London Bridge). The entry fee is £2 to cover the guest speaker's travelling expenses and sundries. Free sandwiches and chips are provided first-come, first-served, at 7.00pm. Non-skeptics welcome. Turn up at any time during the night. Detailed directions, a list of upcoming speakers and a map of how to get to the pub can be found at http://www.skeptic.org.uk/pub.

Thursday 22nd December 2005: Louis Constandinos "Misuses of Science"

Thursday 19th January 2006: David Allen Green "Incitement to Religious Hatred: should it be a crime?"

The talk will be followed by informal discussion in a relaxed and friendly pub atmosphere. Skeptics in the Pub is a regular evening for all those interested in and/or skeptical of the paranormal, alternative medicine, psychic powers, pseudo-science, UFOs, alien abductions, creationism, Fortean phenomena, cult religions, water-divining, lost civilizations, etc. Further information and mailing list announcements available from ...@skeptic.org.uk">p...@skeptic.org.uk or Nick Pullar on 07793 158697. Suggestions for speakers or offers to speak are gladly welcomed.

>>>END ANNOUNCEMENTS>>>

Skeptical Digest 18.2 (Summer 2005)

2005-09-16T12:00:00Z

>>>Skeptical Digest 18.2 (Summer 2005)

--Please forward as widely as possible without spamming anyone--

>>>CONTENTS>>> >>>Skeptical Stats>>>Dubious News>>>In this issue>>>Administrivia>>>Skeptics in the Pub>>>

>>>Skeptical quotes for 2005: "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." -- George W. Bush.

>>>SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1. Number of changes in the National Geographic Atlas between 2000 and 2005: 17,000

2. Number of mobile phones left in London cabs in the last six months of 2004: 63,135
3. Percentage of those mobile phones later returned to their owners: 80

4. Amount the BBC spends per month on taxis: £1 million

5. Number of American households bankrupted by medical problems in 2001: 700,000
6. Fraction that had health insurance when the illness began: About three-quarters

7. Percentage of US police car chases that end in a crash: 40 8. Percentage of those car chases that relate to misdemeanours: 90

9. Date on which Pope John Paul II beatified Anne Catherine Emmerich: October 3, 2004
10. Date of release of The Passion of the Christ, the Mel Gibson movie based on Emmerich's "visions": February 24, 2004

11. Percentage of the world's food crops that are irrigated with sewage: about 10

12. Cost of attending a seminar on the risks of MMR vaccine run by the company What Doctors Don't Tell You: £40

13. Number of adults in Britain who are overweight or obese: 24 million 14. Number of adults in Britain who were obese in 1980: 2.5 million

15. Number of "alternative" practitioners thought to be practicing in the UK: 40,000
16. Percentage of the British population thought to use "alternative" therapies in any given year: 25

17. Number of small metal egg-shaped objects Uri Geller claims was given to him by John Lennon, who was given it by aliens: 1

18. Number of houses in the Adalusian village Belmez de la Moraleda in which faces appear in concrete floors: 2

19. Number of ghosts reported as regularly seen at Burton Constable Hall: at least half a dozen
20. Number of those ghosts that is said to be that of a dog: 1

21. Percentage of American voters on Election Day 2004 who believed that the US was safer now than before September 11, 2001: 54

22. Cost of a one-hour astrology and Tarot reading in London's Cecil Court: £45

23. Number of pulses to be found in each wrist according to Chinese medicine: 12
24. Number of different types of acupuncture needles: 9

25. Number of supplements inventor and computer scientist Ray Kurzweil takes every day in his quest for immortality: 250

>>>DUBIOUS NEWS>>>

>>>As if he weren't busy enough trying to get his wedding off the castle floor in early 2005, Prince Charles was involved in publishing an alternative health guide. Well, he probably didn't do it personally. The Prince of Wales' Foundation for Integrated Health has put out a 50-page booklet (downloadable from
http://www.fihealth.org.uk/fs_publications.html) intended to help people find their way through the maze of treatments available, whether those come through the NHS, private practitioners, or charities. The government, which helped fund the booklet, has also given the foundation £900,000 to help improve regulating standards. The Foundation's six key principles sound unobjectionable if only because they're somewhat vague: for example that healthcare should have an evidence base, that individuals should take more responsibility for their own health care, and to promote "an holistic and integrated approach to health care which engages with all aspects of a patient's being". Most of the guide is pretty sound advice. It includes some general information, such as a list of questions to ask a practitioner - any practitioner - before embarking on a course of treatment. There are loads of resources, both print and Web, for getting more information; this seems reasonably well-balanced, and includes orthodox medical journals and indexes as well as associations of alternative practitioners and the like. And the guide includes a section on each of the most common therapies people seek out - acupuncture, Reiki, homeopathy, herbalism (both Western and Oriental), reflexology, aromatherapy, shiatsu, massage, spiritual healing, yoga. Each of these sections includes a brief explanation of what the therapy is, how much it usually costs, what happens in a consultation, and the names and contact information of any regulatory body. It also talks about the dangers of drug interactions between substances like St. John's Wort and antidepressants. It's respectable consumer advice, and tells you to disclose to all practitioners the full list of everything you're taking, whether or not it was prescribed. What the guide doesn't do is pass judgement on the efficacy of any of these therapies. It warns you not to mix aromatherapy and homeopathy (though how an interaction between these two could be dangerous it doesn't specify), and also advises that if you are seeking reflexology and have cancer you should look for a reflexologist who is specially trained in cancer treatment. Other than these two 'what-the-huh?' moments, the guide is sound and unobjectionable enough. Still, we're helping to pay for it, folks, so if you have objections, you have the right to voice them.

>>>Findhorn has been in the news again, this time as a destination for large companies searching for new ways to motivate their staff. According to the Sunday Times, outfits like Shell, BP, and PriceWaterhouseCoopers have sent staff there to commune and pick lettuce. All part of the vogue for "emotional intelligence", which is becoming the buzzphrase du jour. Still, the shift to consulting for large companies has to be a help in dealing with the Findhorn Foundation's debt, which was as high as £850,000 in 2001. Not that we should be snide about this. There's nothing wrong with spirituality in a gardening community; doubtless the skeptics would sell consultancy if we could think of a way to convince people they should pay consultancy fees to listen to us whine about pseudoscience and the need for solid evidence before accepting a claim as proven. Such as, for example, the claim that the Findhorn founders grew fantastically huge plants, herbs, and flowers by intuitively contacting the spirits of the plants. We don't wonder about the results, just the method.

>>>Interesting to discover that there's yet another ghostbusting outfit operating in the UK: the Paranormal Research Organisation (www.paranormalresearch.org.uk). "The Paranormal Research Organisation is dedicated to professional and authoritative research into ghosts and other strange and supernatural phenomena," the group's mission statement reads. It sounds serious. Both the press coverage we've seen and a portion of the group's Web site talk about the group's interest in "orbs" – little blobs of light that appear on high-resolution photographs taken by digital cameras in the process of investigating phenomena. Strange. We thought those were UFOs.

>>>As Halloween grows in popularity every year, we suppose it's inevitable that more protests about the nature of the occasion will surface. Last year, the Yorkshire Post reported that the minister of a Leeds church wrote to Asda to complain about the supermarket's selling plastic crosses at its Pudsey store as part of its range of Halloween goods. The offence: that a symbol of faith should be turned into a toy. The store told the paper that it included the crosses in its range in the context of the many fables linking crosses with warding off vampires. But with cheap plastic? Maybe it's the vampires who should be offended.

>>>The tabloid newspapers got very excited in mid-February when single mother Sharon Creighton told them that her £8.8 million Lottery win had been predicted by a psychic. The story is less impressive than it sounds at first: Creighton noted that the psychic had given her this happy prediction in a letter that was probably a circular. In other words: a bulk mailing that might have included millions of folks predicted a big win for all of them, and was successful in one case. What were the odds on that?

>>>You can see why people get frustrated with science: progress is so slow and contradictory. Like many complementary therapies, acupuncture has been criticized for a lack of supporting evidence. In 1989, when the British Medical Association released a survey of the many therapies, it concluded that in a small percentage of cases acupuncture seemed to be effective for managing pain. A couple of recent studies confirmed and maybe disputed this. The first was one of the bigger scientific trials of acupuncture, conducted by a research team from the US National Institutes of Health. It concluded that acupuncture might be effective in helping provide pain relief and improving function for people with osteoarthritis of the knee. The study had 570 participants aged 50 or older who had significant knee pain but had not used steroids or other injections and had not had surgery within the previous six months. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: acupuncture, sham acupuncture, and control. Overall, the study concluded, those who received acupuncture had a 40 percent decrease in pain and a nearly 40 percent improvement in function. The second, a smaller British trial of 124 patients between 18 and 80 published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that both sham and real acupuncture appeared to reduce neck pain. These trials won't, of course, settle the matter. For one thing, in the second trial the same practitioner inserted the needles for both the sham and real groups. Is it the practitioner or the needle locations? Only your acupuncturist knows for sure. Personally, we like aspirin, which seems to work no matter what.

>>>India Daily reported in mid-February that the Indian Defence Research and Development Organization has come up with a novel theory as to why we don't see thousands of UFOs around us all the time: they create an intense electromagnetic flux around them and we can't see through it. The flux, the article states, can be created either by "very advanced applications of super conductors" or "through spiritual concentration by any human being." So the DRDO guys are experimenting with a device they hope can see through this obfuscation. According to India Daily, dogs and cats can see energy levels beyond this flux, and are probably seeing UFOs all the time; they just can't tell us about them. Perhaps this explains that invisible mouse you thought your cat was chasing.

>>>One of the first sets of documents set free because of Britain's Freedom of Information Act, which came into effect on January 1, 2005, is a set of letters and documents relating to the famous 1983 Rendlesham UFO incident. Many skeptics have long been satisfied with the explanation promulgated by astronomy writer Ian Ridpath, who was able to match up the taped descriptions of the sighting with the pulses of light from the nearby lighthouse. These letters don't add any startling revelations, and they're unlikely to change anyone's mind about what happened, but it's always nice to see the original records.

>>>Anyone who has email is familiar with the junk messages that arrive almost daily offering "penis enlargement". No one we know has ever responded to one. But in fact, as the recent book Spam Kings documents, these ads are remarkably lucrative for the spammers. Someone must believe the claims, although presumably they are all too embarrassed to say so. In February, Reuters reported that a New Jersey man filed a suit when the 30-day supply of Alzare pills he paid approximately £32 for failed to perform as spammed. Mysteriously, the companies that sell these products tend to vanish – shrink? – after they've been sued, as if they had been dunked in an ice-cold lake. The US-based Center for Science in the Public Interest has filed complaints with the Federal Trade Commission over ads for such products, pointing out that there is no evidence that any of the common ingredients have any enlargement effect. It seems incredible that anyone would believe they do, but hope apparently, as they say, springs eternal.

>>>IN THIS ISSUE OF THE SKEPTIC (18.2, Summer 2005)

Features: Why Creation Science Must be Taught in Schools (Tom Stafford and Andrew Brown) An Anaesthesiologist Examines the Pam Reynolds Story; Part 2: The Experience (Gerry Woerlee) The Angels of Mons and Elsewhere; Part Two: Even More Tales of Supernatural Rescue (Scott Wood)
Columns: Editorial (Victoria Hamilton and Chris French) Hilary Evans's Paranormal Picture Gallery Hits and Misses Skeptic at large... (Wendy M. Grossman) Rhyme and Reason (Steve Donnelly) Philosopher's Corner (Julian Baggini) Sprite (Donald Rooum) ASKE News Letters
Reviews: Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes and the Meaning of Life by Alister McGrath; The Whole Story: How Science Could Bring Together Conventional and Alternative Medicine by Toby Murcott; Fabulous Science: Fact and Fiction in the History of Scientific Discovery by John Waller; The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life by Richard Dawkins

>>>SOURCES FOR SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/11/1119_041119_atlas.html; 2,3 Survey by Pointsec
(http://www.pointsec.com/news/news_pressrelease.asp?PressID=2005_January_24Nop); 4 Ariel (BBC in-house magazine); 5,6 Health Affairs Journal 10.1377/htlhaff.w5.63
(http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/abstract/hlthaff.w5.63v1); 7,8 ABC News; 9,10 various; 11 Harper's; 12 The Times; 13,14 "Choosing Health: making healthier choices easier," Department of Health white paper, November 16, 2004; 15,16 Guardian; 17 Uri Geller, writing in the Sunday Telegraph; 18 The Times; 19,20 Hull Daily Mail R&R; 21 The New Yorker; 22 sign in Watkins window; 23,24 The Times; 25 Associated Press

>>>ADMINISTRIVIA>>>
Thanks to Rachel Carthy for administrative support and Phil McKerracher for managing the digest subscription list and the Skeptic's Web site.

>>>ENDS>>>

>>>SKEPTICS IN THE PUB>>> Skeptics in the Pub meets on the third Thursday of every month at 7:30pm at the Old King's Head, 45 Borough High Street, London (nearest tube: London Bridge). The entry fee is £2 to cover the guest speaker's travelling expenses and sundries. Free sandwiches and chips are provided first-come, first-served, at 7.00pm. Non- skeptics welcome. Turn up at any time during the night. Detailed directions, a list of upcoming speakers and a map of how to get to the pub can be found at http://www.skeptic.org.uk/pub.

Thursday 20th October 2005: Wendy Grossman (Topic to be announced)

Thursday 17th Novenber 2005: Andrew Clifton "The scope of skepticism"

The talk will be followed by informal discussion in a relaxed and friendly pub atmosphere.

Further information and mailing list announcements available from ...@skeptic.org.uk">p...@skeptic.org.uk or Nick Pullar on 07793 158697. Suggestions for speakers or offers to speak are gladly welcomed.

>>>New Forum>>>
An online discussion forum for skeptical chat has been created at http://www.skeptic.org.uk/forum. If you have any questions or comments about this digest, that's the ideal place to discuss them.

>>>END ANNOUNCEMENTS>>>

Skeptical Digest 18.1 (Spring 2005)

2005-05-22T12:00:00Z

>>>Skeptical Digest 18.1 (Spring 2005)

--Please forward as widely as possible without spamming anyone--

>>>CONTENTS>>>
>>>Skeptical Stats>>>Dubious News>>>In this issue>>>Administrivia>>>Skeptics in the Pub>>>

>>>SKEPTICAL STATS>>>

Price Uri Geller charges for a personally signed and dedicated 32cm plate of his own design and artwork: £75
Number of accused witches executed in 17th century Scotland: 3,500
Number of new video games in which the heroes develop paranormal powers: 2
Number of years since the founding of CERN: 50
Year by which lunar scientist Bernard Foing, of the European Space Agency, says humans could be living on the Moon: 2024
Speed with which the Arctic is warming compared to the rest of the planet: 2:1
Amount of prize money earned in 2004 by the male number 100 professional tennis player: $235,411
Amount of prize money earned in 2004 by the female number 100 professional tennis player: $126,122
Multiple by which native speakers of Mandarin Chinese are more likely to have perfect pitch than native-born Americans: 9
Price of a 20-minute nap in one of New York firm MetroNap's eight adjustable chairs: $14
Likelihood of a tortoise's being born with two heads: about 1 in a million
Frequency with which two-headed tortoises make the news: about once a year
Cost of a four-month online course of homeopathy, supplied from India: $120
Weight of each Mars Exploration Rover sent up by NASA: 174kg
Number of Britons thought to be following the Atkins diet: 3 million
Amount the Securities and Exchange Commission has accused Lord Conrad Black and deputy David Radler of stealing from Hollinger International, owner of The Daily Telegraph: at least $85 million
Minimum investment amount for an individual management account with the Astrologers Fund: $1,000,000
Year that "Pet Psychic" Sonya Fitzpatrick began appearing on Animal Planet: 2002
Amazon.com ranking of Sonya Fitzpatrick's book What the Animals Tell Me: 106,15
Date on which an unidentified sonic boom was heard over Norfolk: November 8, 2004
Number of "white substances" the Hallelujah diet bans as harmful to the human body: 5
Final cost of the Athens Olympics: $11.6 billion (plus infrastructure costs)
Cost of security at the Athens Olympics: $1.39 billion
Amount of time saved on housework by those who own five or more labor-saving appliances compared to those who don't, according to an Australian study: zero
Number of cutlery items found in a spoon bender's suitcase challenged by security guards at Dublin Airport: hundreds (and they still let him on the plane)

>>>DUBIOUS NEWS>>>

>>>The 2004 Ig Nobel awards for "achievements that cannot or should not be reproduced" included one sort-of-British winner: the Coca-Cola Company of Great Britain. Coke's UK subsidiary won the Chemistry prize for converting mains tap water into a "transparent form of water" known as Dasani, which was later temporarily cleared from UK shelves when it was discovered that the water was contaminated with the cancer-causing chemical bromate. Other winners included the Vatican, which received the Economics prize for outsourcing prayers to India, where priests undertake work the US's declining numbers of clergy can't complete themselves, such as remembrances of dead relatives and other "intentions". Daisuke Inoue of Hyogo, Japan, was awarded the Peace prize for inventing karaoke, "thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other". The Health prize went to Steven Stack and Jim Gundlach, of Wayne State University and Auburn University respectively, for their work studying the link between country music and suicide rates. The winners were feted with paper airplanes and told, "Better luck next year." The Ig Nobel awards are presented annually by Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research (www.improbable.com). The next Ig Nobel tour of the UK and Ireland will take place March 11 to 20, 2005.

>>>Some months back, 23 Belgian Skeptics decided to mount a mass suicide to protest against the decision by major Belgian insurers to cover 20 percent of the costs of homeopathy in the range of treatments they covered. To this end - and, of course, to garner maximum publicity - they decided to commit suicide by drinking lethal poisons: arsenic, snake venom, belladonna (deadly nightshade), dog's milk, petrol, and cockroach. To maximize the toxicity of these poisons, they bought 30C homeopathic dilutions of these substances. Making a 30C dilution involves diluting to a 1:100 solution, then shaking - "succussing" - the dilution 30 times in succession. After Willem Betz gave a brief lecture on the workings of homeopathy, the group drank their selected poisons under the watchful eye of Belgium's media, whom they had invited to witness the death agonies of the skeptics. They didn't die, but they did get a lot of media coverage.

>>>Sylvester Stallone's mother, Jackie, isn't one to shrink from the limelight, and toward the end of September she announced that her "psychic" dogs were predicting a 15 percent victory for incumbent George W. Bush over the Democratic candidate John Kerry. A believer might focus on the prediction that Bush would win, but back then a lot of people were predicting victory for Bush, who was ahead in the polls until a late surge favoring Kerry in the last week or two before the election. We prefer to focus on the fact that Bush won by 2 percent, not 15. The United Press newswire, which ran this story, noted that, "Jackie Stallone has said her dogs channel messages from the spirit world and send them to her telepathically." We would like to predict now that one of Ms Stallone's dogs' other predictions will be wrong: the US will not get through a Constitutional amendment to allow foreign-born, naturalized citizens to stand for President in time for the Republican party ticket in 2008 to be Arnold Schwarzenegger and John Edwards. But it could be that we're eating the wrong kind of dog food.

>>>Skeptical Inquirer scored a coup in reviewing the Columbia University prayer study, which claimed to have demonstrated that infertile women who were prayed for by Christian prayer groups were twice as likely to get pregnant as those who did not. The study, authored by Kwang Cha, Rogerio Lobo, and Daniel Wirth, was published in the Journal of Reproductive Medicine, and made headlines only a few weeks after the September 11, 2001 attacks, a time when the US particularly needed a miracle to believe in. Bruce L. Flamm, a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, Irvine, reported that of the study's three authors, Cha has left Columbia and refuses to comment; Lobo claims he did not know about the study until six to twelve months after it was completed, and Wirth, along with his assistant, was indicted for fraud in 2002, finally pleading guilty in May 2004. The study itself, he notes, was marred by a complicated and confusing design that left many possibilities for error and possibly, given that third author's history, may never have even taken place. Flamm reserves special bile for Columbia University and the JRM, arguing that both are at fault for submitting and publishing such a study. Faith healing, he writes, has no place in the domain of science. Peer review, which is supposed to save us from such things, failed in this case. It was not, after all, careful examination of the study that caused its retraction, but newspaper reports of Daniel Wirth's trial for fraud. As we keep saying, science is a process, and on this occasion the process didn't do its job.

>>>Halloween 2004 was a big day for the Scottish town of Prestonpans, which took advantage of the occasion to pardon 81 local people executed for witchcraft in the 16th and 17th centuries. Often, the evidence was minimal: perhaps they owned a black cat, or were in the habit of concocting homemade remedies. Alternatively, as in the Salem, Massachusetts witchcraft trials immortalized by playright Arthur Miller in The Crucible, there were witnesses who claimed they felt the presence of evil spirits or heard voices. The last execution for witchcraft in Scotland was in 1727. In 1735 the Witchcraft Act made it a crime to pretend to be a witch, but outlawed such prosecutions. The pardons were granted by Gordon Prestoungrange, the 14th baron, just weeks before his feudal court was abolished. Overall, approximately 3,500 Scots, mostly women and children, as well as their cats, were killed in Scottish witch hunts, with the area of Prestonpans being one of the most prolific. Fifteen local descendants were invited to the ceremony, and Witches' Remembrance Day will now become an annual Prestonpans event every Halloween. The court also pardoned the relevant cats.

>>>Meanwhile, in Cobb County in the US state of Georgia, science textbooks carry stickers warning that: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered." In the (naturally) resulting court case, Cobb County called a single witness to defend the stickers, which were placed on the inside covers of biology textbooks in 2002 after 2,000 parents signed a petition complaining that the books made no mention of alternative theories of the origin of life. George Stickle, head of science education in Cobb County, says the stickers give teachers more freedom to answer questions, and that only evolution is taught. However, earlier this year the Georgia Secretary of Education proposed to replace the word "evolution" in science teaching with the euphemism "changes over time". A lawyer for Cobb County schools claims that the stickers "improve the curriculum while also promoting an attitude of tolerance for those that have different religious beliefs." Like those Scottish witches, perhaps.

>>>Is a ghost good or bad for business? According to the Telegraph, it all depends. If you're buying or selling real estate, for example, ancient ghosts may add value to the property, especially if they're mostly harmless, but the ghosts of more recently deceased folks are more likely to bring the price down. The actress Joanna Lumley said she was forced to sell a house when a ghost dressed as a workman demanded that she leave. (The Telegraph doesn't say whether she was half asleep when this happened.) For this reason, buyers and real estate agents are unlikely to inform prospective buyers if a house is haunted. Now, we know what you're going to say. You're going to say, "Well, of course not, because the house isn't haunted. It's probably got a creaky staircase, or faulty draft excluders, or weird optical effects, or something." But for agents it nonetheless came as a relief in 1999, when a Derbyshire couple lost in court when they claimed to have withheld the last payment on a house they had bought because, they argued, the seller should have informed them when they agreed to buy it that it was haunted. This could be the next lucrative property service: scanning houses for ghosts on behalf of prospective owners. And then, we suppose, exorcising them on behalf of prospective sellers. Meantime, if you'd like to own a ghost, Magdalene Chapel in Arrat near Montrose was (at the time of the Telegraph article) for sale for £179,000 including a ghostly horseman. A steal, really.

>>>Japanese sociologists and psychologists claim to have come up with the world's best chat-up line: "Rainen no kono hi mo issho ni waratteiy-oh", which means "This time next year, let's be laughing together." We welcome reports from anyone who is foolhardy enough to try it out in an appropriately rigorous scientific manner.

>>>It's a rare researcher into the paranormal who is respected by both skeptics and believers, but Robert Morris, who died in mid-August, was that researcher. He came to the UK in 1985 from New York state's Syracuse University to become the first holder of the Arthur Koestler Chair in Parapsychology at the University of Edinburgh. He was Britain's first professor of parapsychology, and leaves behind many researchers into the paranormal who studied under him, the best known of whom is probably Richard Wiseman. He was a kind and patient man even to those who didn't know him well, and we extend our condolences to his family and friends.

>>>If you feel bereft when you finish reading your copy of The Skeptic, drop by our blog, at http://www.skeptic.org.uk/news, where the indefatigable Sid Rodrigues and a few others regularly post news and titbits. We would be glad to hear from anyone interested in helping keep the blog full of interesting new material.

>>>IN THIS ISSUE OF THE SKEPTIC (18.1, Spring 2005)

Features: The Angels of Mons and Elsewhere; Part One: The Bowmen and Other Legends (Scott Wood) An anaesthesiologist examines the Pam Reynolds story; Part 1: Background considerations (Gerry Woerlee) In Search of ET (Dene Bebbington) Overcooked (Martin Parkinson)
Columns: Editorial (Victoria Hamilton and Chris French) Hilary Evans's Paranormal Picture Gallery Hits and Misses Skeptic at large... (Wendy M. Grossman) Rhyme and Reason (Steve Donnelly) Philosopher's Corner (Julian Baggini) Sprite (Donald Rooum) ASKE News Letters
Reviews: Trust: From Socrates to Spin by Kieron O'Hara Brainwashing: The science of thought control by Kathleen Taylor Mortal Minds: A Biology of the Soul and the Dying Experience by G. M. Woerlee The Problem of the Soul: Two visions of mind and how to reconcile them by Owen Flanagan

>>>SOURCES FOR SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1 http://www.urigeller.com; 2 CNN/Associated Press; 3 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3727768.stm; 4 CERN press information; 5 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3161695.stm; 6 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4008761.stm; 7 WTA Tour; 8 ATP Tour; 9 University of California, San Diego study; 10 http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,65669,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_4; 11,12 expert correspondence; 13
http://www.e-homoeopathy.com/online.htm; 14 NASA; 15 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4012659.stm; 16 Reuters; 17 http://www.afund.com; 18 Animal Planet; 19 Amazon.com; 20 Eastern Daily Press; 21 http://www.hacres.com - white fat (meat), pasteurized milk, salt, sugar, white flour; 22,23 San Francisco Chronicle; 24 The Sunday Times; 25 Edinburgh Evening News

>>>ADMINISTRIVIA>>>
Thanks to Rachel Carthy for administrative support and Phil McKerracher for managing the digest subscription list and the Skeptic's Web site.

Editorial and other email to The Skeptic should be addressed as follows.
Subscription inquiries: ...@skeptic.org.uk">s...@skeptic.org.uk (please do not phone) Letters to the editor: ...@skeptic.org.uk">lett...@skeptic.org.uk Contributions for Skeptical Stats and Hits and Misses: ...@skeptic.org.uk">n...@skeptic.org.uk
Book review section: ...@skeptic.org.uk">revi...@skeptic.org.uk Article ideas and other editorial queries: ...@skeptic.org.uk">e...@skeptic.org.uk Unsolicited commercial email is NOT welcome at any of these addresses.
Email one address ONLY. If you do not get a reply, it probably means that our reply email bounced.

>>>ENDS>>>

>>>SKEPTICS IN THE PUB>>> Skeptics in the Pub meets on the third Thursday of every month at 7:30pm at the Old King's Head, 45 Borough High Street, London SE1 1NA (nearest tube: London Bridge). The entry fee is £2 to cover the guest speaker's travelling expenses and sundries. Free sandwiches and chips are provided first-come, first-served, at 7.00pm. Non- skeptics welcome. Turn up at any time during the night. Detailed directions, a list of upcoming speakers and a map of how to get to the pub can be found at http://www.skeptic.org.uk/pub.

Thursday 16th June 2005: To be announced

Thursday 21st July 2005: Dick Taverne "The March of Unreason"

Thursday 18th August 2005: Henry Marsh "Frontal Brain Damage and the Human Soul"

The talk will be followed by informal discussion in a relaxed and friendly pub atmosphere.

>>>END ANNOUNCEMENTS>>>

Skeptical Digest 17.4 (Winter 2004)

2005-03-06T12:00:00Z

>>>Skeptical Digest 17.4 (Winter 2004)

--Please forward as widely as possible without spamming anyone--

>>>CONTENTS>>> >>>Skeptical Stats>>>Dubious News>>>In this issue>>>Administrivia>>>Skeptics in the Pub>>>

>>>SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1. Cost of completing Emma King's psychic development course: £544

2. Number of four-colour photographs of the President used to illustrate the 2004 US budget: 27
3. Number of such photographs that appeared in previous budgets: 0

4. Date on which Japan's Pana Wave Laboratory cult believed the world would end: May 15, 2003

5. Percentage of catastrophic events in Europe since 1980 that are attributable to weather and climate extremes: 64 6. Percentage of economic loss due to catastrophic events that is attributable to the above: 79

7. Number of live posts per minute to the popular blog (i.e. shared online journal) site LiveJournal in August 2004: 149

8. Number of psychics employed by Star Temple, a UK-based psychic phone line: 50
9. Number of readings they conduct per month: 6,000

10. Year of founding of the oldest known business in the world, the family-owned Japanese construction company Kongo Gumi: 578 AD

11. Cost of a three to five day "street retreat" in the UK in which business executives pretend to be beggars to relieve their stress: £150

12. Number of new US state laws passed in the last eight years restricting a woman's right to choose abortion: 335

13. Amount in funding withheld in the last two years by the Bush administration from the United Nations Population Fund: $34 million

14. Percentage of voting machines provided by the US'S biggest voting technology vendor: 30
15. Number of states that vendor's CEO promised to "deliver to Bush": 1

16. Estimated percentage of British food poisoning incidents caused by consuming bottled water: 12
17. Number of germs found on the average computer keyboard, per square inch: 3,295
18. Number of germs found on the average toilet seat, per square inch: 49

19. Likelihood that God exists, according to calculations carried out by Dr. Stephen Unwin, author of The Probability of God: 67 percent

20. Percentage of men's brains that according to a Cambridge University study followed female patterns: 17 percent 21. Percentage of women's brains that according to a Cambridge University study followed male patterns: 14 percent

22. Number of residents of the Italian village Canneto di Coronia evacuated due to a rash of spontaneously combusting appliances: 39

23. Percentage of 988 adults living below 110th Street in Manhattan surveyed in October and November 2001 who had been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of the 9/11 attacks: 7.5
24. Percentage in a March 2002 survey who suffered from prolonged Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: 1.7

25. Number of pages in the US Senate's ethics manual: 562

>>>DUBIOUS NEWS>>>

>>>In August, the European Environmental Agency released a comprehensive report on Europe's changing climate, and the picture isn't pretty. Alpine plants are being crowded out by lower-altitude species that are creeping upwards along with the tree line, agriculture is likely to move northwards as the south gets drier and hotter, and we can expect to see a lot more catastrophic weather events like flash floods, wild storms, heat waves, droughts, and so on. The good news: fewer people are likely to die in cold snaps. The bad news: more people are likely to die in heat waves, and tick-borne diseases are likely to become a much bigger problem. If we don't change our policies and habits to adapt, we might all be doomed. Drawing on climate data and research from centres and projects all over Europe, the report doesn't spend much time speculating on how much of global warming is attributed to human activity, because in the end it doesn't really matter compared to whether warming is taking place. By 2050, no one is likely to be arguing about that.

>>>One amusement in looking up global climate change as it's likely to affect Europe, is the number of Europe-based sites on the subject that have felt it necessary to post scientific reviews of the recent movie The Day After Tomorrow, in which a rapid (say, about 24 hours) shutdown of the thermohaline circulation sends three hyper-hyper hurricanes rampaging through the US and Europe, first massively flooding both regions and then freezing them solid at a speed just slow enough for the movie's heroes to run away and escape. The good news is that the cold front stops at the Mexican border, allowing the US to set up temporary government south of the border, from which location it can grovel to the rest of the world about its having wilfully ignored the warnings about global climate change. What's surprising is that most of these scientific analyses regard the movie as helpful in raising public awareness of the problems we face. By contrast, William Hyde, a paleoclimatologist at the University of North Carolina, who was forced to see the movie when a bunch of people from an online discussion group raised the $100 he said it would take, posted a lengthy review that made it clear just how laughably silly not only the "science" but the "plot" and "characters" of this movie are. We think a movie that doesn't make scientists giggle is more likely to be helpful in alerting the public. On the other hand, we have to admit that a movie in which the world's climate went to hell over a period of 10,000 years or so might be a little dull to watch. But then, so was The Day After Tomorrow. The reviews were much more fun.

>>>Much of the summer was occupied with debates about creationism in schools, which subject gets plenty of attention in this issue of The Skeptic, too. The story in brief: the Department of Education, recognizing that a number of schools - many, though not all - in northern inner cities, were failing to give their pupils even the most minimal education, decided to allow private companies, organizations, and individuals to step in. For approximately £2 million, you can buy yourself a state-funded school, and this is precisely what Sir Peter Vardy, a multimillionaire car salesman, did. Vardy, like the principal and at least some of the staff of the first school he funded, is a creationist. At least one journalist who has visited the school says all the staff agree that creationism is not taught there in science lessons. In addition, the school's league table results are impressive. We'd still argue that if the state is funding a school the state should be in charge of deciding what is taught there, and £2 million shouldn't buy you total control, and that the abdication of control is the real story here with creationism being just a detail - but that's a different ball of political wax.

>>>Sceptics scratching their heads over finding more lucrative careers may like to take a hint from Dr. James Houran, whose early work included studying hauntings at Edinburgh Castle with Richard Wiseman. Houran recently surfaced in - of all things - a press release promoting an Internet dating site True.com (formerly TrueBeginnings.com), which has taken to publicizing itself via bits of media-friendly research. In one such exercise, Dr james Houran, director of psychological studies for True, found that many single people are depressed by St Valentine's Day - depending on whether or not they were given gifts. In another, he found that celebrity worship led to success in life as people strive to emulate the celebrities they admire. Most recently, Dr Houran has examined the psychometric tests other dating sites claim will make sure-fire matches for their users and found them unscientific. He believes dating sites should allow their methodology to be peer-reviewed - like, of course, True.com. We found True.com kind of creepy: it boasts that it screens all members through the US's largest criminal database, checks marital status against public records, and will actually prosecute people who lie about their status. We feel that someone who isn't sufficiently well versed in the online world to be able to tell whether or not the person they're corresponding with is telling the truth probably isn't for us. But our own chain of trust assures us that Dr Houran is a good scientist, and that, yes Virginia, there really are scientifically verifiable relationship compatibility factors. What isn't clear is whether True.com checks to make sure its members aren't ghosts.

>>>Sometimes advertisers seem to go just a little too far in playing with our sense of reality. We have recently noticed a new type of ad, in which real people who are famous fictionalize their own lives. Example: in an ad that runs frequently on Eurosport during major tennis tournaments, a young, blonde woman records a song in a studio, dreaming of her boyfriend, French tennis player Arnaud Clement, and then meets him with ecstatic hugs at the airport when he comes home. Clement is real, and so is the girl: she's Danish singer Natasha Thomas doing her hit "It's Over Now". But Clement's actual girlfriend is the French player Camille Pin. Another example: an ad currently running on US television shows a six-year-old boy hitting tennis balls with American player Taylor Dent. After Dent, mystified, is unreservedly defeated, the kid's parents show up to collect him: they are Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi. Graf and Agassi are, of course, actually married, but their real son, jaden Gil, is still only about two years old. A few years back, we heard about an ad campaign that involved getting real actors to ride the tube all day ostentatiously reading and discussing a book whose publicists hoped would become a bestseller. We now see that the American version of the Sci-Fi channel decided to publicize its documentary about film director M Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Signs), who likes to fill his movies with the paranormal, by claiming that the director had turned against the documentary project, which had turned into a "disturbing expose". A month later, Sci-Fi admitted none of that was true, and neither were parts of the documentary. The justification: that Shyamalan's films leave moviegoers unsure what is real and what is not, and therefore it was appropriate to make a documentary about his life that did the same thing. We feel that anyone who has trouble telling that Shyamalan's movies are not real probably shouldn't be allowed to make things called documentaries. Meantime, we can only suggest a rule of thumb. Things in ads: not real. Things in movies: also not real. Things in documentaries: research to make sure. Warning! This video may contain truthful parts!

>>>Interested in licensing is medium Emma King, who was written up in the Edinburgh News when she announced she intended to run in Edinburgh a 15 week course to teach people to become psychics, to add to similar courses she already ran in Glasgow and Dunfermline. According to The Scotsman, King, a 50 year-old mother of four from Glenrothes, also fishes competitively for Scotland. The Scotsman's writer attended a class, which she described as enjoyable, though she seemed surprised that the other attendees were an apparently normal cross-section of the public. Interestingly, a Google search turns up only these two write-ups, republished in various locations. Surprisingly, for a medium who has claimed to be so successful at her trade that she has advised MPs and celebrities, helped in criminal investigations, and been in business for more than 30 years, King seems to be invisible on the Net. Even the 'Psychic and Medium Society' of which she is president, accredits her courses, and issues a diploma, gets only one hit: www.mariesimpson.com, which is the Web site of San Antonio, Texas-based medium Marie Simpson. It must be that shyness effect we hear so much about.

>>>IN THIS ISSUE OF THE SKEPTIC (17.4, Winter 2004)

Features: Psychoanalysing God: Freud on Religion (Ian Fairholm) Motivated Distortion of Personal Memory for Trauma (Mark Pendergrast) How (not) to talk to aliens (Mark Newbrook) Scepticism and the Kennedy Assassination (Jeremy Bojczuk)
Columns: Editorial (Victoria Hamilton and Chris French) Hilary Evans's Paranormal Picture Gallery Hits and Misses Skeptic at large... (Wendy M. Grossman) Rhyme and Reason (Steve Donnelly) Philosopher's Corner (Julian Baggini) Sprite (Donald Rooum) ASKE News Letters
Reviews: Defending Science - Within Reason: Between Scientism and Cynicism by Susan Haack; Fundamentalist World: The New Dark Age of Dogma by Stuart Sim; Intuition: its powers and perils by David G. Myers; Only One Sky to Fly in: Embracing the Reptiles by Jacqueline Maria Longstaff; Sense and Nonsense: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour by Kevin N. Laland and Gillian R. Brown

>>>SOURCES FOR SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1 Edinburgh News; 2,3 Harper's; 4 Scotland on Sunday; 5,6 European Environmental Agency; 7 LiveJournal.com; 8,9 Sunday Herald; 10 http://www.familybusinessmagazine.com/oldworld.html; 11 The Independent; 12,13 syndicated columnist Molly Ivins; 14,15 e-voting expert Rebecca Mercuri; 16. Harper's; 17,18 BBC; 19 Education Guardian; 20,21 Evening Standard; 22 Scotsman; 23,24,25 The New Yorker

>>>ADMINISTRIVIA>>>
Thanks to Rachel Carthy for administrative support and Phil McKerracher for managing the digest subscription list and the Skeptic's Web site.

>>>ENDS>>>

Thursday 17th March 2005: Matt Morgan "Creation and the 2nd Law--Exposing Misconceptions"

Thursday 21st April 2005: Paul Lee "Ghosthunters and me"

The talk will be followed by informal discussion in a relaxed and friendly pub atmosphere.

>>>END ANNOUNCEMENTS>>>

Skeptical Digest 17.2-3 (Summer and Autumn 2004)

2004-12-05T12:00:00Z

>>>Skeptical Digest 17.2-3 (Summer and Autumn 2004)

--Please forward as widely as possible without spamming anyone--

>>>CONTENTS>>> >>>Skeptical Stats>>>Dubious News>>>In this issue>>>Administrivia>>>Skeptics in the Pub>>>

>>>SKEPTICAL STATS>>>

Amount Comcast pays per year for content to carry to TV cable subscribers: $4 billion
Amount Comcast bid to acquire Disney on February 11: $66 billion
Percentage accuracy claimed by Seattle's Relationship Research Institute in predicting the success of marriages: 94
Number of Barbie dolls sold worldwide every second: 3
Amount the typical British family spends raising a child: £140,000
Britain's rank in spending on children across Europe: 1
Percentage of prints lifted at crime scenes from knife hilts, guns, and windows panes that are palms, not fingers: at least 30
Average number of crimes committed per year per New York burglar: 300 to 400
Date on which a Bangladeshi tribalwoman was swallowed by a python: 21 November 2003
Number of priests accused by children of sexual abuse in the US between 1950 and 2002: 4,450
Number of carats in a 'diamond star' 1,500 km across, 50 light-years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus: 10 billion trillion trillion
Amount, pro rata, JK Rowling earned last year per word of The Order of the Phoenix: £388
Rowling s position in the list of the UK's top 500 earners: 5
Monthly cost of membership in the Astronaut Autograph of the Month Club, proceeds to benefit the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation: $49.95
Number of memberships available: 350
Percentage of the UK public who believe the UK should not implement the Kyoto Protocol if doing so would harm Britain's economy: 57
Number of women who die each week in Britain at the hands of their spouses or partners: 2
Year when Hubble will prematurely die, since NASA has announced it will cease servicing missions to the telescope: 2007
Cost per minute of calls to Russell Grants Interactive Astrology line: 60p
Cost of Grant s packages of computerised horoscopes, psychic tarot readings, dream interpretations, and numerological analyses: £3.99 to £29.99
Amount of water available per person per year in Kuwait: 10 m^2
Amount available per person per year in French Guiana: 812,121 m^2
Rank of UK out of 122 countries surveyed for water quality and availability: 4
Rank of Belgium on same survey: 122
Amount by which global water availability is expected to drop over the next 20 years: a third
Number of cattle tested for BSE in the UK in 2003: 394,685
Number that tested positive for BSE: 373
Number of Britons who stay indoors on Friday the 13th to avoid risking danger or bad luck: 1.3 million
Drop in number of pairs of house sparrows in Britain over the last 30 years: from 12 million to fewer than 7 million
Number of terrorist attacks on Israeli targets in 2003: 3,838
Number of influential scientists who signed a February 2004 statement asserting that the Bush administration had systematically distorted science fact in the service of policy goals: 60
New character added to Morse Code in February 2004: @ (.--.-.)
Number of years since last character was added: at least 50
Annual turnover of Boiron, maker of a line of 1,500 homeopathic remedies: $270 million
Amount two New York-based companies have agreed to pay in consumer redress for claims that their devices blocked harmful radiation from cellphones and video display units: $85,000
Amount of grant given to Lena Skarning by the Norwegian government to fund her business. Forest Witch Magic Consulting: £4,500
Distance the average American forkful of food travels to reach its consumer: l,500 miles
Number of Asians killed each year by air pollution: more than 500,000
Percentage of American adults who believe God is female: 1
Speed at which retired Fife headmaster Archibald Lawrie believes the position of each sub-atomic particle is recorded in a vast universal "memory system': 14,000 times the speed of light
Date when Arnaud Mussy, leader of Nantes' New Lighthouse sect, expected the world to end: October 2002
Date when former Wimbledon champion Margaret Smith Court was awarded an honorary Bachelor of Law degree by the US's Oral Roberts University: May 2001
Number of companies on New York investment house SalomonSmithBarney's 1999-2000 list of 15 companies expected to out-perform the market over the following 12 months that went bankrupt amid accusations of corporate fraud by mid-2002: 2
Number of chains, out of a possible 160, completed in one of Stanley Milgram's famous "six degrees of separation" studies: 44
Price of sending a message to the dead via the Web-site Afterlife Telegrams via terminally ill volunteers: $5 a word (five-word minimum)
Number of messengers the site currently has available: 1
Amount a Jesus Christian could be fined for going through with the sect's offer to donate a kidney to a stranger, for free: £2,000 and three months in prison
Amount of time by which Irving Tobin lagged in his daily reading of the entire New York Times in December 2003: one year, five months, and four days
Price of Craig Hamilton-Parker's What to do when you are Dead, a "travel guide to the afterlife": £11.99 plus P&P
Fraction of US gross domestic product that is accounted for by consumer credit: two-thirds

>>>DUBIOUS NEWS>>>

>>>People in this country love to recommend arnica for any injury from a mild bruise to a broken leg. We don't just mean friends, fellow club members, and casual acquaintances met on the street. We mean physiotherapists and doctors, too. Yet, given that arnica is a homeopathic formulation, the best we can say about it is that a little massage - as, say, you might have when someone rubs cream into a part of your body - never did anybody any harm and is known to help lots of different types of aches and pains. When it comes to reducing bruising, the thing arnica is supposed to be best at, you can see where massaging the affected area might help to disperse blood lurking at the suite. As it turns out, however, you can't even say that. In a study conducted by researchers at the University of Exeter and the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital and published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, arnica turned out to have no more effect than a placebo. Three groups of patients who were about to have surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome, a quite painful inflammation of the wrist caused by overuse, were given, respectively, "high-potency" (30C) arnica tablets, "low-potency" (6C) arnica tablets, and a placebo. The patients kept pain diaries and recorded their use of painkillers, while researchers analyzed photographs of the patients' wrists, measured changes in swelling, and used computer software to measure exact shades of bruising. The result: no discernible difference among the three groups. Head researcher Professor Edzard Ernst suggested that arnica's reputation had come about because of "positive selection bias". In other words, people who recover quicker than others and say they took arnica give the stuff a good name. Just for counterbalance: we heal quickly, and we never touch the stuff.

>>>Early February saw a new menace in the skies: the phenomenon of the hyperreligious pilot. On Friday, February 6, passengers on American Airlines flight 34 from Los Angeles to New York were alarmed when the pilot, Roger Findiesen, asked all Christians on the flight to skip the movie and begin an interfaith dialogue with nonbelievers in seats nearby. After landing and hearing of complaints in the cabin. Findiesen reportedly apologized; the airline says it is investigating the incident. In fact, the story seems to have been that he had just been on a mission in Costa Rica and was filled with what you might call residual zeal. You have to admit that pilot proselytizing is technically harmless - we are reminded of Willie Nelson's famous aphorism that "Any landing you can walk away from is perfect" - but on the other hand, reports say that the mood in the cabin was extremely tense after Findiesen's exhortation, in part because a number of passengers thought Findiesen had lost his mind and was preparing them for death. In an exclusive interview with the American gay magazine The Advocate - which got the interview because its editor happened to be on board the plane - the pilot believed the mysterious disappearance of a problem with the braking system was a sign from God that he should use the PA system to talk about his Christian faith. Whether his comments were against the rules depends on the exact terms of American Airlines' rule book. But the best one can say was that it was an error of judgement. And good judgement, unfortunately, is the thing you most want a pilot to have. Well, that and good eyesight.

>>>The Daily Telegraph ran an obit detailing the life of Jack Temple, "homeopathic dowser healer", who died at 86 in late February and believed he could trace 120 previous lives and his origins back 97,000 years. His clients included Diana, Princess of Wales, the Duchess of York, and Cherie Booth. According to the Telegraph, central to Temple's theory (and practice) was dowsing (using a crystal pendulum), which he used to detect "weak spots" in the body's electromagnetic field. He believed that we begin with a particular energy level at birth, which is progressively sapped by illness, stress, "unnatural" foods, vaccinations, and even bottle feeding, which he thought disconnected the baby from its birth sign. (Don't you love the way all these different beliefs get jumbled up together?) Temple had on offer a vast collection of remedies, which were to be strapped to the body along meridian energy lines, and kept samples of clients' hair and fingernail clippings in alcohol-filled bottles so he could diagnose them remotely. He had expected to live to the age of 140. The most amusing story in the obit concerns his diagnosis that Diana, Princess of Wales, suffered from lead poisoning after seeing the way she bowed her head on TV. After he relayed this diagnosis to the Princess via the Duchess of York, the Princess confirmed that she had pierced her right cheek with a pencil as a schoolgirl, and the point had broken off in her cheek. He was able to extract the "poison" and help her hold up her head again. Apparently he managed this without ever discovering that pencils are made out of graphite, not lead.

>>>One of the great intrigues of the late 1990s and early 2000s has been the boom and bust of the dot-com bubble. Vernon Smith, a professor at Virginia's George Mason University, won a Nobel Prize in economics for developing theories about these types of movement. Smith set up his own market in a lab in which students from Purdue University and the University of Arizona could trade a phony security with a definite fair value, usually about $3. Despite knowing exactly what the security was worth, his students bid the price up to create a bubble until, eventually, enough traders began refusing to pay the premium price to crash the market. Rerunning the experiment with the same group formed a second, although smaller, bubble. A second rerun had the security largely trading at its real value. Smith went on to repeat these experiments multiple times, sometimes with graduate students and sometimes with finance professionals. Financiers, you will be maliciously pleased to know, created bigger bubbles than the students did. However, when it comes to the actual stock market, Smith points out that big drops don't happen twice in rapid sequence. Historically since 1926, he told Forbes magazine, downturns are separated by at least two years. He doesn't expect another bubble until memories of this one have faded. We're tempted to say, "Past performance is no indicator of future results." If the pace of change is getting faster - and the advent of electronic markets is making trading a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week hyperspeed phenomenon - those cycles, too, could shorten.

>>>Perhaps because the Atkins diet is currently such a cult phenomenon, the media seem to jump eagerly on any report that seems to discredit the low-carb, high-fat guru. February saw The Wall Street Journal check out the New York medical examiner's report and publish a claim that it pegged Atkins's weight at his death at 258 pounds - high enough, at his six-foot height, for his body-mass index to qualify him as obese. The newspaper also claimed he had a history of heart attacks and heart disease. All these claims were eagerly repeated by many other media. Atkins's widow, however, and a doctor from the Atkins Physicians Council objected first of all to the newspaper's having obtained the report, which they claimed was illegally sourced and then sent to the newspaper by doctors opposing the Atkins diet, and second of all to the details of the report. They claimed that Atkins in fact weighed a normal 200 pounds when he had the accident that put him in the coma that eventually led to his death, and the 58 additional pounds were due to fluid retention and bloating as his organs failed. He had developed cardiomyopathy, thought to have been caused by a virus, not by diet, about three years before his death, and did have a heart attack in April 2002, which he speculated openly might have been related to this known illness. This little incident does not reflect well on anyone. While death certificates are public record, medical records are not; Atkins's records should have been a private matter for his next-of-kin. If Atkins were obese during his lifetime, someone would surely have noticed. More important for our purposes, whether the Atkins diet is healthy needs to be established by good science, not by a single example, no matter how maliciously entertaining. It is undeniably true that there are seriously obese people who have lost weight on it. Which is unhealthier: the diet or the weight?

>>>The general panic that the triple measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine might be a cause of autism and bowel disorders began in 1998, when Dr Andrew Wakefield published a study in The Lancet that raised the link. Unknown to The Lancet until a journalist made the allegation in February 2004 was the fact that Wakefield had also accepted £55,000 from the Legal Aid Board to investigate whether children allegedly damaged by the MMR vaccine could sue for compensation. In addition, some of the children used in his research also formed part of the Legal Aid Board study. Other than research by Wakefield and co-authors, studies conducted since have not confirmed the link. There have been several of these, including work by the Medical Research Council, a 14-year study of three million children in Finland, a major statistical analysis published in the British Medical Journal, and a new study at the Royal Free Hospital. Meantime, the rate of measles infection has been growing among the group usually most likely to take up vaccines - the educated middle class - as fears that the vaccine is dangerous have taken hold. The number of cases of measles reported per year has more than tripled since 1997; there were 360 in the first nine months of 2003.. Wakefield has, however, stuck to and repeated the claimed link over the years. In 2001, Wakefield left the Royal Free Hospital, where he was a reader when he published his original research but where funding for his work had been drying up, and took up a job at the International Child Development Resource Center in Florida as Director of Research. He is still there, as Director of the Inflammatory Bowel Disorder Group. The Lancet now says it would not have run Wakefield's original study if the editors had known then about the conflict of interest. Richard Horton, the journal's editor, told the BBC that although he still believes there is a link between autism and bowel disease, he no longer believes there is any link between either and autism. It was reported last summer that some 1,500 families that claim their children suffered health problems after taking the faccine are planning to bring a class-action suit against GlaxoSmithKline, the largest manufacturer of the MMR vaccine.

>>>If you don't like something, change the name. In late January, the state of Georgia's school superintendent, Kathy Cox, proposed striking the word "evolution" from the state's biology curriculum and replacing it with the phrase "biological changes over time." You can see her point. Why take on angry parents if you can avoid the whole issue with a little judicious editing? According to CNN, the state's schools would still teach the concept of evolution, but they'd avoid the word in order to alleviate the pressure on teachers in socially conservative areas. After a work or two of increasing pressure on Cox from everyone from parents to former president Jimmy Carter, Cox alleviated the pressure on herself by recanting and saying she had misjudged the situation.

>>>As a second entry in the language category, we have the County of Los Angeles, which in November 2003 actually did request that vendors of computer equipment avoid the common industry term "Master/Slave" in product descriptions and labeling. If you're not familiar with this usage, it's commonly seen in explanations of how to connect up multiple hard drives and removable media drives (such as DVD and CD-ROM). The master is the primary drive; the slave the secondary drives. The fact that an explanation of these terms can be so compact makes it plain that in fact the terminology can be changed without great difficulty. The urban legend-busting site snopes.com went so far to check out this tale by calling the LA County Purchasing and Contract Services division. The story is true. And the reason is that a black employee of the county's Probation Department filed a discrimination complaint with the Office of Affirmative Action Compliance after spotting these labels on a videotape machine. So they had to do it. On the one hand, it seems a trivial matter; what matters is surely not the accurate use of language to describe a relationship between hard drives but the laws governing the treatment of human beings. On the other hand, given that the labels are so easy to change, what's the diff? Except, of course, to make the US look even more humorless and litigious to foreigners than it already did.

>>>Somehow we stumbled across the Web site of The Weekly (http://www.theweekly.co.uk), which seems to specialize in creative weirdness, some of it to do with science. One of the many features on its site is a sort of Doris Stokes emulator (http://theweekly.co.uk/4301/cooee_loves/). You think of a dead, famous person, and the site tries to guess who you're thinking of by asking a series of questions. It's clear from the questions themselves that whatever success the site has at doing this is based on that old familiar saw, population stereotypes. A lot of people must pick JFK, for example ("Has your assassination implausibly been attributed to a lone gunman?"), Abraham Lincoln, or Jayne Mansfield. "Doris" failed to spot our own pick, Katharine Hepburn, which leads us to believe that the page was created before Hepburn's death in 2003. We're not sure the site would fool anybody with its loaded questions, but working out how the questions branch through its knowledge base is a kind of mild geek entertainment. At our last visit, "Doris"'s accuracy was trailing the rest of the world by 3,713 to 4,464.

>>>As if there weren't enough spurious ways of reading personality in the shapes of body parts, a number of stories have come our way about the work of Liverpool University's John Manning, who has been measuring fingers. According to Manning, the genes which control the development of the fingers are the same genes which control the development of the testes and ovaries, and the development of the ring finger in particular is under the influence of testosterone. The consequence: men have longer ring fingers than women do. Women, he says, tend to have index and ring fingers that are roughly the same length. "Testosterone affects the development of the right side of the brain," he told Australia's ABC television. "The right side of the brain is where visual special ability is." Therefore, he concluded, the longer the ring finger, the greater the inherent sporting ability in games like football, where you have to judge distance and the consequences of kicking it. In other stories, such as one run by the Sunday Times, Manning has claimed that the relative lengths of the index and ring fingers provide clues to reading people's personalities. Risk-taking, communications skills, verbal aptitude, assertiveness, and fertility are, he claims, all traits that can be read this way. If that weren't enough, he also says that men with long ring fingers have a reduced risk of heart attack, and there are also links between finger length and breast cancer, autism, vulnerability to depression, and dyslexia. Finally, longer ring fingers on men's left hands tends to be correlated with their being gay. Maninng has laid out all this in a book called Digit Ratio, published by the Rutgers University Press as part of its human evolution series. According to R A Lippa, author of an article studying the relation between finger length and sexual orientation published in the July 2003 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, research into ring-to-index finger ratios is on the rise. Lippa's article suggests that gay men do indeed have shorter left ring fingers, but also notes that this pattern does not extend to lesbian women. He also says, we think significantly, "There is so much variation in 2D:4D ratios among men and among women - and among gay men, heterosexual men, lesbian women, and heterosexual women - that 2D:4D ratios are a very poor indicator of a person's sexual orientation. For that matter, 2D:4D ratios are also a poor indicator of whether a person is male or female." He goes on to say that the link between prenatal hormones and sexual orientation is not proven, and the factors leading to variations in finger length ratios are not understood. The thing about a single measure that is supposed to correlate to so many human traits is that the breadth and number of the claims makes our skeptidar twitch. The claim that the exact mix of hormones that wash over the developing fetus in its first trimester of growth has a profound effect on its development seems utterly logical. But the claim that this mix of hormones is reflected in ring-to-index finger ratios and lengths seems to us unprovable until or unless you have some way of sampling the in vitro hormone mix and correlating it to finger length later in life; you'd also need to prove the correlation between that in vitro mix and the various illnesses and personality traits. In addition, many factors shape personality: nature versus nurture is a long-running argument. We suspect that there will be milage in the sex hormones theory, but that measuring index fingers will go the way of measuring brains as a method of quantifying intelligence.

>>>Historical novels have always had to tread a fine line between historical accuracy and telling a good story. Or, as the New York Times pointed out recently, in the case of The Da Vinci Code, a fine line between pseudohistorical accuracy and telling a good story. Much of what Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown claims as "fact" is in fact lifted from a group of other books, primarily Holy Blood, Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln (whose own sales have been lifted by the popularity of the Dan Brown thriller). Reviewer Laura Miller points out that one of the keys to Brown's thriller's success is its use of bits of "non-fiction" that gives the book what she calls its "frisson of authenticity". However, she says, both books are based on the notorious hoax concerning a group called the Priory of Sion, founded in Jerusalem in 1099. A small cache of fabricated clippings planted by a man named Pierre Plantard in the Bibliothèque Nationale was responsible for this society's later favor among conspiracy theorists as a nine-centuries-old vehicle for world dominance. In fact, Miller notes, the Priory of Sion was a small group of friends founded in 1956. Several French books and a 1996 BBC documentary debunked the hoax, but like all good conspiracy theories, apparently it refuses to die.

>>>We hadn't heard of Boiron, which claims to be "world leader" in homeopathy with a 20 percent market share, until it sent out a press release claiming that its Oscillococcinum "homeopathic medicine", which sells in a box of six doses for $11.65 (it says here) had been shown in clinical studies to decrease the duration and intensity of flu symptoms. You are supposed, they tell us, to take it at the first sign of flu. The press release is intended for a US audience, and so it notes that Oscillococcinum is regulated by the FDA and that it is "widely used in Europe". We looked up the product in a couple of online shops, and noted that the product information warns that because the pills contain sugar they are not suitable for diabetics. Since the press release also advised that Boiron is a public company listed on the French stock exchange since 1987, it occurred to us that it was time we knew a little more about the companies behind alternative medicine; they are getting bigger and more influential day by day. To be sure, they're not in a class with Big Pharma: GlaxoSmithKline has 14.8 times the revenues ($40.09 billion). Still, the company has been growing steadily - sales up 7.9 percent in 2002 (the last year for which its annual report is available) over 2001, with further growth in the first half of 2003. Its biggest market is France, which accounts for 68 percent of its sales, but it also has substantial operations in the rest of Europe, primarily Italy and Spain. The US represents about 63 percent of the 8.5 percent of its net income that derives from North America; the Caribbean and Canada divide the rest about equally. Its US income grew 12.7 percent in 2002, its fastest-growing market outside of France (where its net income grew by 22.5 percent). The Boiron family holds 64.1 percent of the voting rights. So far, the market for homeopathy is small - 0.3 percent of the world pharmaceutical market, according to Boiron's 2002 annual report, with the self-medication (non-prescription) market accounting for 13.4 percent. The company's corporate plan is simple but alarming: "For each physician in the world to integrate homeopathic medicines into daily practice." To this end, it finances the Boiron Institute, which was set up in 1985 and now counts 150 physicians in more than 30 countries. The company spends approximately 2 to 3 percent of its annual sales on research.

>>>IN THIS ISSUE OF THE SKEPTIC (17.2-3, Summer and Autumn 2004)

Features: The Truth about Rendlesham (James Easton) Britain's Roswell? (Dr David Clarke) The Rendlesham Incident: Some lessons for UFOlogy (Jenny Randles) Forgive Us Our Trespasses (Peter Brookesmith) Reflections on a Rendlesham Skywatch (Andy Marriott)
Columns: Editorial (Julia Nunn and Chris French) Hilary Evans's Paranormal Picture Gallery Hits and Misses Skeptic at large... (Wendy M. Grossman) Rhyme and Reason (Steve Donnelly) Philosopher's Corner (Julian Baggini) Sprite (Donald Rooum) ASKE News Letters
Reviews: Why We Exist: Inferences from Science for an explanation of Human Purpose by Eugene Bell-Gam Hoaxes, Myths and Manias by Robert E Bartholomew and Benjamin Radford Inamorata by Joseph Gangemi Pseudoscience and the Paranormal by Terence Hines Fifty Key Thinkers in Psychology by Noel Sheehy The Scientific Study of Society by Max Steuer How Mumbo Jumbo Took Over the World by Francis Wheen Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe by Victor J Stenger Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid by Robert J Sternberg (Editor)

>>>SOURCES FOR SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1,2 CNBC; 3 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3484981.stm; 4 Mattel; 5,6 Centre for Economics and Business Research; 7,8 The New York Times; 9 Reuters; 10 the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (via CNN); 11 Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (BBC); 12,13 Sunday Times; 14,15 Kennedy Space Center press release; 16 Hyperphysics, Georgia State University; 17 BBC; 18 The New York Times; 19,20 Sky Digital, www.live-astro.com; 21,22,23,24,25 The World Water Development Report, March 2003; 26,27 DEFRA statistics; 28 Office of National Statistics (via Harrah's Entertainment press release); 29 DEFRA statistics; 30 Israeli government statistics; 31 The New York Times; 32,33 http://www.cjonline.com/stories/021704/pag_morsecode.shtml; 34 Boiron corporate documents; 35 Federal Trade Commission; 36 BBC; 37 The New Yorker; 38 Business Week, 39 Harris Interactive; 40 Sunday Times; 41 Sunday Times; 42 Sunday Telegraph Wimbledon guide; 43 Personal archives; 44 The Times; 45,46 http://www.afterlifetelegrams.com; 47 The Guardian Weekend; 48 The New Yorker; 49 http://www.psychics.co.uk/shopuk/book-what-to-do-when-dead-uk.html; 50 Federal Trade Commission

>>>ADMINISTRIVIA>>>
Thanks to Rachel Carthy for administrative support and Phil McKerracher for managing the digest subscription list and the Skeptic's Web site.

Editorial and other email to The Skeptic should be addressed as follows.
Subscription inquiries: ...@skeptic.org.uk">s...@skeptic.org.uk (please do not phone) Letters to the editor: ...@skeptic.org.uk">lett...@skeptic.org.uk Contributions for Skeptical Stats and Hits and Misses: ...@skeptic.org.uk">n...@skeptic.org.uk
Book review section: ...@skeptic.org.uk">revi...@skeptic.org.uk Article ideas and other editorial queries: ...@skeptic.org.uk">e...@skeptic.org.uk Unsolicited commercial email is NOT welcome at any of these addresses. Email one address ONLY. If you do not get a reply, it probably means that our reply email bounced.

>>>ENDS>>>

>>>SKEPTICS IN THE PUB>>> Skeptics in the Pub meets on the third Thursday of every month at 7:30pm at the Old King's Head, 45 Borough High Street, London (nearest tube: London Bridge). The entry fee is £2 to cover the guest speaker's travelling expenses and sundries. Free sandwiches and chips are provided first-come, first-served, at 7.00pm. Non- skeptics welcome. Turn up at any time during the night. Detailed directions, a list of upcoming speakers and a map of how to get to the pub can be found at http://www.skeptic.org.uk/pub.

Thursday 16th December 2004: Geoffrey Dean, "Challenges in Behavioural Research: Astrology meets Meta-Analysis"

Thursday 20th January 2005: To be announced.

The talk will be followed by informal discussion in a relaxed and friendly pub atmosphere.

Further information and mailing list announcements available from ...@skeptic.org.uk">p...@skeptic.org.uk or Nick Pullar at (07740) 450950. Suggestions for speakers or offers to speak are gladly welcomed.

>>>END ANNOUNCEMENTS>>>

Skeptical Digest 17.1 (Spring 2004)

2004-05-31T12:00:00Z

>>>Skeptical Digest 17.1 (Spring 2004)

--Please forward as widely as possible without spamming anyone--

>>>CONTENTS>>> >>>Skeptical Stats>>>Dubious News>>>In this issue>>>Administrivia>>>Skeptics in the Pub>>>

>>>SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1. Number of members of Cambridge's Ghost Club: 280

2. Cost of The Spirit of Diana DVD, a series of live seances conducted by Craig and Jane Hamilton-Parker: £11.99

3. Amount of air a breatharian needs a day to replace food: 1,000 pounds

4. Cost of a 1999 mission to Mars that crashed because contractor Lockheed Martin had made calculations using Imperial instead of metric measurements: $125 million

5. Average number of mistakes a driver makes every two miles: 1

6. Percentage by which human DNA differs from that of chimpanzees and bonobos: 1.6

7. Year when Lord Haddington predicts crop circles will cease: 2012

8. Year in which the Vinland map of America, forged by a Jesuit priest 70 years ago, was supposed to have been drawn: 1440

9. Estimated annual value of wildlife crime: more than £5 billion 10. Average number of items from endangered species, both plants and animals, seized per day: 570

11. Number of colours needed to colour a map drawn on a torus: a maximum of 7

12. Estimated percentage of the population that is allergic to peanuts: 2

13. Number of people who have died in crowd disasters since 1990: over 2000

14. Number of graphologists hired by the National Art Collections Fund to examine the last letter written by Mary, Queen of Scots (the conclusion: her mind was tortured): 1

15. Number of questions each month in the Australian Skeptics' online Dr Bob's quiz: 6

16. Estimated number of Americans who have been victims of identity theft in the last five years: 27.5 million

17. Number of times a single holidaymaker claimed on insurance for having his appendix removed: 9

18. Number of test subjects used by Halifax Bank of Scotland for voice-stress testing security software in a three-month trial beginning September 2003: 300 to 400

19. Date of World Angel Day (Los Angeles): 4 October 2003 20. Date of World Angel Day (London): 28 September 2003

21. Number of children an October 2003 National Public Radio survey found had actually died of poisoned candy handed out on Halloween: 0

22. Year by which two physiologists writing in Nature in 1992 predicted the gap between men's and women's running times for the marathon would close: 1998 23. Year by which the same two physiologists predicted the gap between men and women would close over shorter distances: early in the 21st century

24. Average number of major sporting events per day, worldwide, that sports marketing company IMG is involved in: 9

25. Percentage of US households that own shares in mutual funds: 50

>>>DUBIOUS NEWS>>>

>>>Drowning in exabytes
It's not enough for the US to account for about a quarter of the world's energy consumption while holding only about two percent of the population, but it is even further ahead in the information business. According to the 'How Much Information' report, updated for 2003 by the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California at Berkeley, the US produced about 40% of the world's new stored information in 2002, including 33% of the world's new printed information, 30% of the worlds new films, 40% of the new information stored on optical media, and about 50% of the information stored on magnetic media. Note that magnetic media (like hard drives) account for about 92 of this stored information. The study estimates that the amount of new information stored on these four media about doubled between 1999 and 2003. If this goes on, it won't be people the Earth drowns in, it will be information. About 17.3 exabytes of the stuff was transmitted electronically last year. (In case you didn't know, one exabyte = 2^60 bytes = 221,152,921,504,606,846,976 bytes.) For the sake of comparison, the report estimates all the words ever spoken by human beings at 5 exabytes. The study makes no attempt to quantify the relative value of the information stored in these different media, so we don't get to find out how much of that is pseudoscience. They say it's new information, but unless they've been listening to all those phone calls, how can they possibly know? But if you believed them when they said that computers would do away with the need for paper you'll be happy to know that paper use as a storage medium was up by about 36% between 1999 and 2002.

>>>Trust no one
Did you know that hotel key cards contain your personal information? A thief could take the card, run it through a reader, and steal your credit card. Actually, that's not true. But it makes a good Internet-borne conspiracy-type rumour. So do the claims that the CIA killed JFK, MI5 killed the Princess of Wales, aliens are living among us, and the US government knew about the September 11 attacks well in advance and chose to do nothing because they wanted the oil. The truth, as they say, is just no fun. Plus, it's still putting its boots on while those lies skid around the globe like demented quarks. The last of those theories - the one about the September 11 attacks ? surfaced in the mainstream media recently, when former environment minister Michael Meacher espoused it publicly in The Guardian. Cue for The Times, not ordinarily known for shunning conspiracy theories that might sell a few papers, to discuss What's Happening to Us and get in a few digs at the competition. What's happening, essentially, is that the more uncertain we feel the more we believe that The Powers That Be are plotting against us. In the case of folks like Diana, JFK, and Elvis, these figures are so much larger than life to so many people that a significant percentage simply can't believe that they were taken out by something as ordinary as a drunk driver, an assassin, and a heart and/or drug problem. The real problem, of course, is that there really are conspiracies in the world. It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you. For debunking of conspiracy theories specifically, see www.truthorfiction.com; for debunking of a broader variety of urban legends, see www.snopes.com.

>>>With her head tucked underneath her arm ... There are good sceptical theories and bad sceptical theories, we know this. Bad sceptical theories dismiss people's experiences; good sceptical theories try to take account of and explain them. Increasingly, this is an important point; we should be looking at people's emotional reactions as interpretations that may be mistaken but may also have real causes that, if understood, can help us understand why so many people believe so strongly. The University of Hertfordshire's Richard Wiseman recently did a nice study in the good sceptical line by sending a load of people to wander around Hampton Court Palace, the supposed home of the ghost of Catherine Howard, Henry VIII s fifth wife, with floormaps and pencils and getting them to note how they felt at various points along the way. The team also took readings of lighting, temperature, smell, and magnetic fields, and compared the sets of data. Sudden changes in lighting and air currents, for example, increased the likelihood that someone would report a haunting. The conclusion: that people's brains are responding to environmental cues.

>>>High on Delphi
According to Scientific American, the Oracle of Delphi's visions have more to do with her breathing than her intuition. The oracle chamber was sited above intersecting fault lines in petrochemical-rich layers through which seeped ethane and ethylene gases. She was, in short, likely to have been in a narcotic state when she gave advice and uttered her dire warnings. In Plutarch's description, the chamber smelled sweet - as ethylene in fact does. Ethylene fumes also produce trances, euphoria, out-of-body sensations, and amnesia among test patients. It is known to have caused spasms and death - which was also the fate of some of the oracles. It's an interesting theory - and another of those cases where we may learn more from accepting the descriptions observers give than by dismissing them, as well as another of those 'trust no-one' cases.

>>>Breast implants: the return In late 2003, an advisory panel to the US Food and Drug Administration voted to lift the ban on silicone implants, which was brought in a decade earlier when a number of women and their lawyers claimed that the implants had made the women ill. There was a lot of what you might call consequential damage. The lawyers won a record $4.25 billion settlement against the implant manufacturers, causing the bankruptcy of Dow Corning. Marcia Angell, then executive editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and now teaching at Harvard Medical School, wrote first a scathing editorial on the FDA's decision and then a book. Science on Trial, which contended that there was no evidence backing the claim that the implants harmed the women. Angell was in turn raked over the coals by everyone except the manufacturers. Studies of breast implants, however, have shown they do not cause the damage claimed.

Angell recently told the Boston Globe that she blamed the whole mess on the adversarial nature of courtroom battles. Lawyers seeking to prove a case look for the most extreme viewpoints they can. Science, however, is best served by moderation and careful thought. Let us hope the Daubert rules that require expert witnesses to cite well-accepted research and techniques will help in future. But there are plenty of other issues - mobile phone health scares, genetically engineered foods, MMR vaccines ? where the science is at least somewhat at odds with the popular reaction.

>>>Lightning strikes twice
Looking likely to join the ranks of strange stories about movies - you know, like the old saw that playing Superman is bad luck for anyone who does it - is the new film The Passion of Christ. Two people connected with the production, actor Jim Caviezel and assistant director Jan Michelini, have been struck by lightning while they were on a shoot in a remote location in Italy. OK, here's the fun part: Caviezel plays Jesus, and they were only a few hours from Rome. Michelini in fact has been hit twice in this production. See this movie at your peril.

>>>Let there be light
It's not often the local press run stories debunking stories of the paranormal (or the national press either), but the Richmond Informer recently published the news that two local residents had shown that pictures the Informer ran in April of a purported UFO in Richmond Park were a hoax. Two giveaways. First, the original claimants said the ball of light they'd seen and photographed was moving, but close examination of the pictures showed that it was in the exactly the same place in all of them. Second, the investigators were able to create near-identical images using Photoshop.

>>>IN THIS ISSUE OF THE SKEPTIC (16.4, Winter 2003) Features:
Death and the Microtubules - Susan Blackmore shows that even experienced interviewees can be hoodwinked. The Mosaic of Memory - Chris French considers the nature of memory. From Medicine To Miracle - Peter May questions the remarkable healing of Dr Mary Self.

Columns: Editorial (Julia Nunn and Chris French) Hilary Evans's Paranormal Picture Gallery Hits and Misses Skeptic at large... (Wendy M. Grossman) Rhyme and Reason (Steve Donnelly) Philosopher's Corner (Julian Baggini) Sprite (Donald Rooum) ASKE News Letters
Reviews: Galileo's Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science by Peter Atkins; Immortal Remains: the evidence for life after death by Stephen E Braude; Are Universes Thicker than Blackberries? Discourses on Gödel, Magic Hexagrams, Little Red Riding Hood, and other Mathematical and Pseudoscientific Topics by Martin Gardner; Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology by Scott O. Lilienfeld, Steven Jay Lynn, Jeffrey M. Lohr (Editors); Love and Eugenics in the Late Nineteenth Century by Angelique Richardson

>>>SOURCES FOR SKEPTICAL STATS>>> 1 The Times Magazine; 2
http://www.psychics.co.uk/shop/spiritofdiana.html; 3 Wiley Brooks, http://www.gettingit.com/article/344; 4 Business Week; 5 New Yorker; 6 Financial Times; 7 Daily Telegraph; 8 Sunday Times; 9, 10 Interpol, The Guardian; 11, 12 Scientific American; 13 The Sunday Telegraph; 14 The Times; 15 http://www.skeptics.com.au/features/quiz/quiz.htm; 16 Federal Trade Commission; 17 Association of British Insurers; 18 BBC; 19, 20 Diana Cooper School of Angels and Ascension; 21 National Public Radio; 22, 23 http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.winship/op2003.htm; 24 IMG (www.imgworld.com); 25 CNBC

>>>ADMINISTRIVIA>>>
Thanks to Rachel Carthy for administrative support and Phil McKerracher for managing the digest subscription list and the Skeptic's Web site.

Editorial and other email to The Skeptic should be addressed as follows.
Subscription inquiries: ...@skeptic.org.uk">s...@skeptic.org.uk (please do not phone) Letters to the editor: ...@skeptic.org.uk">lett...@skeptic.org.uk Contributions for Skeptical Stats and Hits and Misses: ...@skeptic.org.uk">n...@skeptic.org.uk
Book review section: ...@skeptic.org.uk">revi...@skeptic.org.uk Article ideas and other editorial queries: ...@skeptic.org.uk">e...@skeptic.org.uk Unsolicited commercial email is NOT welcome at any of these addresses. Email one address ONLY. If you do not get a reply, it probably means that our reply email bounced.

The Skeptic (UK) Digest is is written by Wendy M. Grossman (http://www.pelicancrossing.net) and e-mailed quarterly alongside published issues of The Skeptic; there may be occasional additional mailings. To sign up to receive the digest or to get off the list, visit http://www.skeptic.org.uk/digest (we do not sell, give away, or rent the e-mailing list).

>>>SKEPTICS IN THE PUB>>> Skeptics in the Pub meets on the third Thursday of every month at 7:30pm at the Old King's Head, 45 Borough High Street, London (nearest tube: London Bridge). The entry fee is £2 to cover the guest speaker's travelling expenses and sundries. Free sandwiches and chips are provided first-come, first-served, at 7.00pm. Non- skeptics welcome. Turn up at any time during the night. Detailed directions, a list of upcoming speakers and a map of how to get to the pub can be found at http://www.skeptic.org.uk/pub.
Tuesday, June 17, 2004: Norman Hansen, "Thinking about Creationism: A practical application of the 'Baloney Detector" The talk will be followed by informal discussion in a relaxed and friendly pub atmosphere.

Skeptics in the Pub is a regular evening for all those interested in and/or skeptical of the paranormal, alternative medicine, psychic powers, pseudo-science, UFOs, alien abductions, creationism, Fortean phenomena, cult religions, water-divining, lost civilizations, etc. Further information and mailing list announcements available from ...@skeptic.org.uk">p...@skeptic.org.uk or Nick Pullar at 07793 158 697. Suggestions for speakers or offers to speak are gladly welcomed. >>>END ANNOUNCEMENTS>>>