Breaking News: it appears that TV's "Crossing Over" with John Edward is not being renewed, though I'm sure we'll see re-runs for years to come. For sure, Edward will merely switch gears and continue to perform in-person for those with enough money but not enough judgment. You know, some time ago, several computer-crashes before the last one, a reader wrote me detailing an account of an in-studio experience with Edward where he inadvertently gave out some information which was then fed back to him when he was part of the studio audience — and though that data was wrong, the spirits whispered that wrong material to Edward to hand out. Another reader who recorded a studio session in person, found that the program as broadcast did not agree with his recording, since "creative editing" was resorted to. I'd like to hear from those folks...

Last week we ran Part One of a book review by reader Bruce Scott. Here's Part Two, the conclusion:

There are claims made for Therapeutic Touch, Iridology, Reiki, Homeopathy and Applied Kinesiology that seem like they would qualify for your [JREF] challenge. There are sixty-some modalities covered in the book, so I'm sure that testable claims are made in several other chapters as well.

Yes, they're all eligible, Bruce. But I'm not going to sit here waiting for applications to pour in on these subjects....

I know that some people are of the impression that alt-medicine is mostly harmless. This is simply not the case. Dr. Novey indicates (pgs. 792 and 819) that homeopathy is a therapy ideally suited as a vaccination alternative. Remember that this is water we are talking about, nothing more. Dr. Novey suggests that instead of giving genuine injections of vaccine, homeopathic vaccines would be a "therapy ideally suited for this condition." I'm not a lawyer, but it's hard to understand how this would not be considered medical malpractice. The book lists something on the order of 200+ medical conditions which homeopathy is ideally suited for treating. These include chickenpox and measles. Presumably the patient got these because they took Dr. Novey's advice, which he claims is "reliable" and "clear and factual," and used homeopathy as a vaccination alternative. They also include dyspnea [dizziness], hypertension, and asthma. The book claims that homeopathy is "one of the better therapies" for angina pectoris, arrhythmia, hypoglycemia, hypothermia, poisoning (any type), etc. This advice is potentially deadly.

Agreed. I'm seriously shocked that homeopathy should be prescribed for any ailment, but especially for serious conditions such as those mentioned here. This is totally, irredeemably presumptuous, and unprofessional behavior. Reader Scott has done well to inform us of these failings on the part of Dr. Novey, and I certainly hope that this review comes to the attention of those who can do something about the statements made in this book. Mr. Scott continues:

Dr. Novey, in a chapter called "The Dilemma of Evidence" (pgs. 7-9) indicates that traditional evidence is lacking for many of these alternative medicine modalities and gives several reasons. One of the reasons he claims is funding. "Most alternative modalities are in the public domain, as are common herbs and supplements. Without a patent, these services and products can be marketed through unrestricted channels. One company might fund research on its product and yet another company could sell a similar product under a slightly different formulation. This makes recapturing of research dollars much less likely and funded research for these products and services much more scarce." This of course completely ignores the fact that many studies are currently done on inexpensive and nonpatentable drugs such as aspirin or prednisone. It also ignores the fact that studies are done in areas such as determining the proper amount of bedrest after various types of back injuries. I suppose the vast and powerful Mattress Lobby probably funds that work.

Dr. Novey also points to inexperience in study design among alternative medicine practitioners. "Many alternative therapies are only newly emerging from their counterculture. The creation of properly designed and controlled studies is a learned skill and requires the same degree of rigorous thinking for alternative therapies as for their mainstream counterparts. These skills are not learned overnight."

I implore you, Mr. Randi. Can't you help these folks out? They apparently have neither the money nor the intelligence/skills necessary to conduct a scientific experiment. After they win your million dollar challenge, maybe they can fund some other worthy experiments. I wonder what excuse Dr. Novey will use for declining your challenge.

It particularly troubles me that Dr. Novey teaches medical students and resident physicians. Besides his alternative medicine text, Dr. Novey has also written a pocket guide and made some videotapes on physical diagnosis. From what I have seen, these are actually pretty good. I have limited experience in lecture with Dr. Novey, but he certainly does slip in dubious alternative medicine claims, without always indicating that they are in fact nonstandard.

I think it reflects very badly upon The Chicago Medical School and Northwestern University Medical School that they continue to employ this doctor to teach students.

Again, agreed. As always, I find it interesting to note that there is hardly any reaction to efforts to publicize such obvious errors and dangerous information. If past experience is any guide, The Chicago Medical School and Northwestern University Medical School will choose to ignore this situation to avoid embarrassment, and will lean upon various academic niceties to avoid doing anything about it. The persistent and pervasive Ivory Tower Syndrome is another medical condition that needs to be dealt with, in my opinion.

Reader Kevin Schaffer — along with several other interested persons, offered this additional pertinent observation on last week's comments on Novey:

The powers of the crystals described in your leadoff piece about Dr. Novey's crystal book are very interesting. He says that large plants (roses, unnamed seeds) germinate and grow faster with crystals around. Small plants and organisms (algae in pools, bacteria spoiling milk) grow more slowly. Something just doesn't add up!

I wonder if these people think about these things when they're makin' stuff up. Uhhh, the crystals must be sentient and know the desires of large-scale biological bipeds to decide whether to promote or retard growth.

Kevin, I'm sure this is just because we ordinary folks insist on employing reason and science in our thinking processes, in contrast with so many degreed "experts" and "authorities."

Reader/veterinarian Chris Maitland:

Jamie Mulcahy in this week's newsletter expresses his frustration that so many people believe in unproven alternative veterinary cures. As a fellow frustrated Veterinarian I can assure you that this practice is global. It is no coincidence that most of the quack medicines are used for conditions that follow an erratic course, such as arthritis. When does the vet or owner become concerned and decide to give treatment? Well, when the condition is in a bad spell, of course. And what usually follows a bad spell? An improvement! Presto, the magic medicine has worked again!

I intend to market a range of medicines that GUARANTEES improvement — provided that the treatment is given when the disease is at its worst point (think about it). Profits to JREF!

Chris, I'll have to go through my files and find a very interesting article written years ago by my friend Karl Sabbagh, a UK TV producer of some note. It pointed out how "healers" can hardly miss convincing a naive patient of the claimed powers, since interpretations can always be made of why and how the efforts failed. I'll try to find it, and post it here.

A brief note from reader Dan Howland:

There was a spot of pseudoscience I noticed recently on the celebrity gossip show Access Hollywood. They featured a hairdresser who made a special banana-based conditioner for each individual client, based on an analysis of the hair "at the molecular level." As the narrator said this, the hairdresser was shown combing someone's hair while peering through a magnifying glass. Apparently a very POWERFUL magnifying glass.

Yes, indeed. But this reminds me of a message I received last week from a man who suggested that, "people just don't think." He asked me to pose a question to the next ten people I met, namely, "At what time does the full Moon rise?" He said that people who don't know the answer to this question simply aren't thinking. I disagreed, and I wrote him that this wasn't a question about "thinking," at all, but rather about whether those who were questioned understood very much about basic astronomy. I'm certain that there are questions that I — as a reasonably well-educated person — could be asked, and for which I would have no answers because I would be ignorant of the basic facts of the situation. Any question about sports, for example, would, and does, zoom right over my head, no matter how much I might "think" about it...

So, what's your answer to the above question...?

My article about Norway licensing a witch brought this comment from Roger Malmstein:

What do you expect when a priest becomes Prime Minister? If you support one superstition, why not the other? As Norwegian law does not have capital punishment, we can't follow the laws of the Old Testament and have the witch stoned to death, it is better to put her under state-sponsored (controlled) supervision. Sadly this will most likely lead even more customers to her.

Prime Minister of Norway Kjell Magne Bondevik is also an ordained Lutheran priest. But Roger, perhaps Norway is better off than the USA. At least citizens of your country voted for your leader knowing that this affiliation existed. Here in the USA, our president's dependence on faith-based projects and in major political moves based on Biblical "truths" was not quite so evident when we first elected him. In every single speech he makes, he evokes prayer, heaven, or a deity. Now, to my personal dismay, I find that Howard Dean, the Democratic front-runner, has assured us that he, too, will invoke Jesus at every opportunity, as well. Our government is becoming a theocracy, Roger. Enjoy your democracy.

Reader Richard Tubman gives us this tool to use:

I see someone mentioned looking up prior predictions of Sylvia Browne on her website. Here's a great tool to do the same with other web sites where the webmaster might be clever enough to remove past blunders. It's http://www.waybackmachine.org/

I was disappointed that the headline in yesterdays travel section of the New York Times "A Skeptic Hits the Strip," was not about your upcoming visit to Las Vegas!

Looking forward to TAM2!

As we are, Richard. We kick it all off on Thursday afternoon with the "Solved Mysteries Workshop," in which 70+ eager attendees will be put through their paces, being instructed in how to investigate those so-called "miracles" and other wonders of pseudoscience and quackery.

Doug Richardson tells us that Jewish World Review, a major on-line conservative publication, ran a column that asked the burning question, "Does Order in the Torah Make a Difference?" in its November 28th edition. A couple of paragraphs caught his eye:

The constellations in the Zodiac are instruments of G-d's [sic] will. The use to which G-d puts the two constellations, Pleiades and Orion, is revealed by the order in which they are mentioned in Biblical verses.

and

Pleiades is the source of cold in the world; Orion is the source of heat in the world. In Amos 5:8, the Pleiades (kimah) is mentioned before Orion. In Job 9:9, Orion (kesil) is mentioned before Pleiades. The Talmud (Berachos 58b) says that this means that G-d uses each constellation to balance the other. Pleiades keeps Orion from boiling the world to death; Orion keeps Pleiades from freezing the world to death.

Says Doug:

I admit that I know nothing about Judaism. Is this meant to be taken literally? And since when are Orion and the Pleiades part of the Zodiac?

Funny you should ask. While Orion is a constellation, and — as you point out, well outside of the 18-degree band of the zodiac and thus not a part of it — the Pleiades is not a constellation at all, being only a small group of stars within the constellation Taurus. Not only that, but the huge constellation Ophiuchus is certainly on the zodiac, and inevitably some people are going to be born "in" that constellation, even though it doesn't have a "sign" and is ignored by the astrologers. The writer of this article in the Jewish World Review is quite ignorant of the real world, but that doesn't stop him from running on in this juvenile fashion about subjects on which he is totally misinformed and uninformed. After all, he's writing about religion, so facts don't have to be part of his material.

I recently ran a piece on The Anchorage Daily News, and how that paper might do well to be a little more skeptical about what it published. Reader John Beaderstadt ("Beady") comments:

Back when [my wife Andrea] was a copy editor for the now-defunct newspaper, "The Anchorage Times," part of her responsibility was to oversee the daily horoscope column. One day she failed to notice that, as supplied by the wire service (or whatever), the item for Pisces was missing, and that day's horoscope was then printed without it. It was the paper's policy that an editor who screwed up handled all complaints that the mistake caused; my wife wound up explaining to a surprisingly great number of people that it truly was a simple omission, and that the prediction for Pisces was not so horrible that the paper had refused to print it.

The epilog was that Andrea asked how she should handle the problem next time an incomplete horoscope came in. The older hands all told her to either just make something up, or, if she was worried about accuracy, to use an older prediction from out of the files.

Beady's Corollary to Occam's Razor: "The likeliest explanation of any phenomenon is almost always the most boring."

A reader named Scott Nickell first tells me that he's related to professional skeptic Joe Nickell, and "fiercely proud" of it. He says that he may be a third cousin of Joe's, once removed, or so. Noted. Then he informs us:

I was going back through the [Swift] commentaries I missed while away for the holidays, and noticed some discussion of Ouija boards. A few years ago, I worked at a store that specializes in board games. We once had someone return a Ouija board they had purchased. It was defective, you see, because (and I quote), "it doesn't work."

We cheerfully refunded her money.

Well, Scott, that was the right thing to do, and I think that it should apply to any number of other items that we simply can't list here, as I'm sure you'll agree. It reminds us of the old guarantee offered by a parachute company: "If this chute doesn't open, we will cheerfully refund your money."

Say hello to Joe for me...!

Brazilian reader Gustavo Bastos Salles writes us about a TV appearance that got his attention recently:

A man, who I knew was a magician, although I did not know his name at that time, was performing… It was quite a surprise when I discovered that Lipan [Jr.], the magician . . . was doing that famous trick where cotton is introduced into an empty large pot, and some strange objects (bones, toys supposed to be voodoo dolls) are extracted from the pot by handling. This number can be very impressive to those who believe in black magic, contact with the dead, witchcraft, and so on — this kind of nonsense.

In fact, what surprised me was not the number of objects (I have seen this before, and besides I am a Bright), but the flavor of Lipan's performance. With the presenter's help, Lipan imitated the gestures and the speech of a psychic but did it with a lot of sarcasm. Indeed, his intention was to discredit a lady who has been doing the same trick under the claim of paranormal powers. After the presentation, Lipan pointed out that everybody had seen that there was nothing inside the cotton (he used sealed packages, opened and checked by the audience), and that the pot was empty. He pointed out that there was no supernatural power involved in the show and assured us that is wrong to deceive others using this kind of trick. What a prodigy!! Congratulations to Lipan and SBT [the Brazilian network]!

The sad part is that presentations like this one are almost nonexistent. I mean, more often TV channels include in their schedule programs about occultism, chromotherapy, homeopathy. Probably, Lipan's performance had been featured only because the producers thought that it would attract a good number of viewers. I'll not be surprised if in the future the same program presents a long interview with a person who proclaims herself a gifted psychic.

Thank you, Gustavo. I would have included the magician's site address, but I suggest that you don't go looking for it. It's one of those locations that locks you into reading pop-up advertisements for products that you don't want, and you just can't get rid of them. It's a big mistake to get free services from some agency that ends up making you very unpopular with your readers!

Ever since I first mentioned the "magnetic hill" phenomena here, I've exchanged a great deal of correspondence on the subject with readers. I'm still astonished to find that so many people just can't figure out this phenomenon. Reader Tom Bryant, of Canton, Ohio, shares this adventure with us:

I thought I'd share a story with you that happened when I was about twelve years old. I had forgotten the experience until a few days ago when I was doing some web surfing on www.roadsideamerica.com. This event was probably the first time I ever used any critical thinking skills.

You are, I'm assuming, familiar with "Spook Hill" located at Lake Wales in your home state of Florida. Back in the early 70s, my family and I visited some relatives that lived in central Florida. They told us of a place where cars roll uphill. Naturally, I was excited, and wanted to see this. We drove to Lake Wales, and found the attraction known as "Spook Hill." The instructions on the sign read, "Pull up to the white line, put car in neutral, and the car will roll up-hill!" What struck me as odd, was that the line was painted at a point on the pavement at which the car would roll downhill slightly at first. I also noticed that the hill that the car rolled up (allegedly) was at a lower grade than the hill that the starting line was painted on.

Upon seeing these things, I thought, "Big deal! Roller coasters go uphill, too." Of course, if I had actually voiced this thought, I'd have been quickly reprimanded by my parents for being sarcastic and rude. I tried to get my uncle to drive forward to see if the car would react the same way if you didn't pull up to the white line, just to confirm my suspicions. He said, "Well of course it won't work. The sign says that you have to pull up to the white line!" This was as if the person who painted the line and the sign was some all-intelligent entity that had some sort of magical power that allowed them to make cars roll up a hill.

Oh well, at least it was free, and I wasn't paying for the gas that was burned up on the one-hour drive to get to Lake Wales and back.

Simon Nicholson comments on Adam Marczyk's contribution to a recent commentary, in which he wrote: "The potential for this [talking-to-the-dead] talent, if it were real, is so vast that it would be a crime for the people who really have it to waste it on syndicated talk shows, where the greatest height they aspire to, is to tell someone that their dear departed Aunt Ethel, who had brown hair and a connection to the month of February, is doing just fine in heaven, thank you very much." Simon writes:

This reminded me very much of a personal experience I had some years ago. I was at the funeral service for my grandfather, with whom I had been very close. I was approached by a member of the family who was some kind of minister in a Spiritualist church. Doubtless he meant well; my grief must have been very obvious to see. He told me that I had to "let go" because by grieving for my granddad I was "holding him to this sphere."

While I was trying to formulate a reply, he went on to say that Fred, my grandfather, was with us at that very moment, in fact, although I couldn't see him, he was standing just behind me. This relative, apparently, had "the gift" and could see and hear Fred, and wanted to pass on his messages to me. He launched into the usual platitudes, Fred was happy, there was no reason for me to grieve, death was just "moving into a different room," and so on.

I'm afraid that my emotional state at the time did not predispose me to tolerance, even if this chap was trying to offer comfort. What got to me was that my grandfather and I had discussed exactly this scenario, and he had said that if ever he found himself "on the other side" he would do his damnedest to communicate some concrete information, some proof, rather than silly assurances that he was happy. I asked the spiritualist to confirm what he was saying — he could see and hear my grandfather, he could communicate with him? Yes, he could. So could he pass on a message to granddad from me? Again the answer was quite a confident yes. Right, I said. Could granddad explain to me again the derivation of Kepler's Second Law?

The guy looked really surprised. I don't know what he thought I was going to ask, but evidently he wasn't prepared for anything so specific. Apparently, this resulted in my granddad looking "hurt and confused." But, I said, this had been the subject of one of the last conversations we'd had. Granddad had been prepping me for a physics exam. Surely he remembered.

Then the guy made a stab in the dark. They don't need electricity over there, he said.

Now, my granddad had been an electrical engineer and inventor, so this chap was obviously making a guess that Kepler's laws had something to do with electricity rather than planetary motion. My stony response threw him a little, but he soon recovered, and went on to explain that people are often confused and forgetful when they first crossed over. Besides, "such things just don't matter over there," so "materialistic" questions such as that have no meaning, and only make the spirits sad.

That seemed to be his ultimate cop-out to all failure to produce any tangible evidence of genuine communication. My granddad had been an intelligent and articulate man, but apparently in the afterlife we become all daft and can only speak in gooey platitudes! Non-existence is a harsh concept for some to embrace as the state that follows life, and I can understand the wish-to-believe in some kind of continued existence, but if interest in science and truth, and all evidence of a focused, aware intellect evaporate on crossing over, then it seems to be a fools paradise indeed!

I took my leave with something of a snarl. The experience had left me angry, and it still annoys me to hear of charlatans churning out this familiar drivel. I often find myself wondering about the motivations of that chap. As far as I know, he has never charged anyone for his services, so he is not in it for profit. Obviously he could be after the ego-boost of having a special talent or gift, and the adoration of believers, but surely he must know what a fraud it all is, or can self-delusion run so strong that he really thinks he is getting messages?

I've no answer to that, Simon...

Reader David Rice is really infuriated:

This type of scam greatly angers me, and yet EVERY SINGLE COMPLAINT I have sent to the FDA, AMA, FCC, and FTC has been ignored. What the hell does it take to get these agencies to do the job we pay them to do? As sold by Scientologists: the "Biomonitor" at www.aeriallong.com/The_Biomonitor.html which is the same as the "Clarity Meter" www.clearingtech.net which is nothing more than the sinister Scientology cult's "e-meter." And only $795! What a deal, for a "medical" device that performs nothing less than magic!

David quotes from the site the purpose of these devices:

To help us find and release the negative energy that contains the unwanted thoughts, emotions, and sensations in and around your body and energy field, I use a galvanic skin response meter (GSR) that monitors energy. This effective tool quickly pinpoints the unwanted or "charged" energy hidden just below the level of conscious awareness. Because this method of discovery makes our work much faster than more traditional forms of counseling, my clients are amazed at the speed in which their issues are uncovered and resolved.

One of the earliest tools of psychological research and the first published paper on the psycho-galvanometer was presented by Tarchanoff. The Tarchanoff Response is a change in DC potential across neurons of the autonomic nervous system connected to the sensori-motor strip of the cortex. This change was found to be related to the level of cortical arousal. This instantaneous physiological response is different than the slower speed of a sweating response.

And he asks the same question I've been asking for years now:

What I want dearly to know is, WHY DOESN'T THE FDA PROSECUTE THESE CRIMES?!

Richard Bartholemew, in Osaka, Japan, writes:

I am currently reading Tariq Ali's "The Clash of Fundamentalisms." The first few chapters provide an entertaining romp through the history of Islam from an atheist's perspective, including a discussion of various rationalist movements that emerged from medieval Islam. In particular, Ali writes of one ninth-century thinker, condemned by the religious authorities of his day, who demonstrated that "miracles were simply the hocus-pocus of magicians" (p. 55). Delightfully, the man's name was "Ibn Rawandi". Near enough to suggest that perhaps reincarnation exists after all (Just kidding)?

No prize, Richard...

The whole office is off to Las Vegas for TAM2. I'll try to scrape together a new page for next week, but much will depend on time and opportunity. We'll see...