January 24, 2003

Sylvia Worried, Dowsing in Academe, Bearden's Bona Fides, More Santa Claus, and Omarr Passes Into the Zodiac.....?

Well, Sylvia Browne still isn't responding to the JREF challenge (508 days, so far!) but a reader who contacted the office heard from a Sylvia flunky who did answer:

It is not fear that keeps [Sylvia] from doing this [responding]. It is the fact the she knows it would be a set up and is not going to do this. God bless. Pam.

Well, we know that Sylvia would be in control to prevent any "set up," and she knows it, too. But this will keep the suckers satisfied....


Reader Simon tells us:

I am mailing because dowsing once again features in your esteemed commentary, and I had promised to update you about the inclusion of Dowsing in the archaeology text book recommended on my course.

I didn't have the opportunity to confront the author, who has apparently moved on to better things, but I did buttonhole a senior member of the faculty, who confirmed what I had suspected — that the section on dowsing in the course (which he pointed out was a mere paragraph or so compared to the chapters on legitimate techniques) had been intended as a sort of caveat rather than an endorsement. He told me that many serious text books on archaeology include at least a passing mention of dowsing, because there is a small — tiny in fact — section of the archaeological community who swear by the technique. He referred to an anecdote quoted by the author, of an amateur archeologist — a farmer — who, pulling a hazel twig from a hedgerow, successfully pin-pointed the location of an earthwork in one of his fields. This event becomes a lot less impressive when you consider that the feature in question had already been identified in crop-marks by aerial photography — the team were in the field to fix the location on the ground — an often tricky task, but one routinely accomplished by the twigless.

He also related a personal anecdote of how a team had wasted valuable time and resources digging for a Saxon burial ground that had been "located" solely by pendulum-swinging over an Ordinance Survey map. When some fragments of Roman pottery were found (pretty ubiquitous in some parts of England) the swinger claimed success, despite the find being totally unrelated to the original object of the dig. There was actually an interesting example of the intrusion of a dowser into a dig on a recent episode of a popular UK TV program on field archeology — Channel 4's "Time Team."

The team had been asking around the area in which they were digging, for local knowledge of the site, and their enquiries prompted one local to turn up with a crystal on a string, promising to locate an iron-age burial for them. Rather than his being escorted off the site, work stopped while he was given a chance to try his stuff. (I guess the producers thought it would make good TV.) He jumped into a trench (!), dangled his string, made it rotate with a few flicks of his wrist and confidently announced that a body would be found where he was standing. Watching the faces of the diggers in the background, I caught a lot of grinning and eye-rolling. When the dig leader was interviewed and asked if he intended to follow up this suggestion, he explained that the trench in question was about to be closed down — they were down to the "geology," i.e. undisturbed native soil — there was no further human activity. He had in fact picked the one part of the site where you could positively guarantee that there was no burial. However, I suppose this illustrates the dilemma of an archeologist — or any other investigator — when offered supernatural help. If you follow it up, you're wasting precious time and resources. If you don't, well, I'm sure that guy is even now telling everyone he can get to listen, how the Time Team could have discovered wonderful things if only they had taken his advice. While I was relived to be assured that few senior archeologists really believe in dowsing, I suppose I am disappointed by the "bemused tolerance" that seems to be displayed.

Randi comments: yes, tolerance of such nonsense, and failure to make a direct statement about it, contributes to belief in the misinformation. The paranormalists thrive on this situation, all because academics don't much care to use their influence. The Ivory Tower syndrome is strong....

My own tolerance is pretty thin these days, and for that I blame you, Randi sir! This Christmas, our faculty was "treated" to a special training day in which we had to attend a series of workshops in "crystal therapy,' "reiki," "reflexology," "aromatherapy," etc. Time was when I would have either just sat at the back chortling to myself, or found some excuse to absent myself. However, prolonged exposure to SWIFT and other elements of JREF, meant that I felt compelled to be more proactive and to challenge what was going on. I felt better for having done so, but it didn't achieve anything other than for the head of faculty to declare her "disappointment" in my negative attitude to alternative therapies. (I'll write the thing up for you, if you're interested.)

Yes, Simon, please do!

I think that one of maladies of our age is this attitude, held by many otherwise intelligent people, that there are somehow "alternatives" to truth. There is an insidious concept that science is just "one way" of looking at things, and alternative schools of thinking some how should be granted equal validity, even though they are based on ideas and beliefs unfounded in reality and calling for an outdated and disproven model of how the universe works. Remind me, have we just entered the 21st or 11th Century?

Finally, you may recall that in a previous message I predicted that the Horizon program, excellent though it was, would have minimum impact in persuading folks to abandon homeopathy. Does my uncanny foresight get me the million dollar prize, then?

Nope.


Take a peek at the site: http://www.remnantsaints.com/AlternativeUtilities/Beware/Bearden_Bogus_PhD/ and see that the pseudoscientist who has been peddling the "MEG" free-energy machine, Tom Bearden, appears to have obtained his Ph.D. by rather simpler means that most.

A reader has observed that Bearden's undergraduate and MS degree are apparently legit, but based on his own e-mail and the time frame (1999 to 2000) when he began claiming a Ph.D., Tom Bearden apparently received (or more accurately, purchased) his bogus Ph.D. degree from "Trinity College and University" in the U.K. Now, until April 2000, you could find this diploma mill at http://www.trinityuni.org, after which it vanished from the web. Fortunately, the Wayback Machine web archive (http://www.archive.org) still contains the old web pages from Trinity College and University.

Note that many legitimate universities have the word "Trinity" in their names. Legitimate Ph.D. degrees granted by such institutions require actual graduate course credits, at least one year of residency at the university itself, and an oral defense of a dissertation in front of a qualified faculty examination committee.

On the other hand, there isn't a legitimate university in the U.S. or the U.K. that will give a person a doctorate based on "lifetime achievement" and the submission of a dissertation by mail, particularly when that person doesn't even live in the same country!


Another reader notes:

Since January 13, 2002, Oregon Health Sciences University has been treating patients at an "alternative medicine" clinic. This clinic is targeting patients "with complex, chronic health problems that have not been successfully treated by mainstream medicine." If OHSU has the money to hire these "practitioners," why don't they have the money to test some of these outrageous claims? This sounds to me like they want to dump their difficult cases. Loren Pankrantz of OHSU and NCAHF is quoted in the newspaper article (Oregonian, 1/4/03) as saying this has no place in a medical school. As a chronically ill person, I think it is an insult to patients.

My comments on Santa Claus continue to provoke... A reader, I think it was Henrik, commented:

I have been thinking about this whole Santa Claus deal a lot lately, and I have come to the conclusion that if done properly, a child can be let to believe in Santa Claus for a few years, and then deconstruct that belief with good outcome. But how?

Several writers have been worried about the integrity parents should show to their children. However, is it absolutely necessary for parents to always tell their children the truth? I argue it is not. I've had one distant relative whose parents were vehement on never, ever, lying to their child, not even little white lies. End result: when school age came, the child was totally unequipped to deal in social situations with other children who used normal amounts of lies, coercion and deceit to reach their goals. However, by once deconstructing a strongly held belief, a child might actually start to understand that there are people who are, by deviousness or ignorance, promoting questionable ideas.

If a child believes in Santa Claus, the truth can be told in many ways, the worst being the in-your-face-tough-luck-way. On the other hand, this can be a great opportunity to teach the child that even adults hold many common beliefs that aren't necessarily true at all. Could there be that there's nothing wrong with Friday the 13th? Could it be that dowsing just isn't true? On the other hand, how can we be certain that Newton's law of gravity works? What are the fundamental differences between belief and knowledge, flim-flam and science? This can be an incredibly valuable lesson in skepticism that may last for a lifetime. It also may help the child understand that things aren't true only because many people believe in them.

Admittedly, the deconstructing phase may be a little tough. My brother had some trouble in believing anything my parents told him after he was told the truth some 20 years ago. Too bad I hadn't yet thought about this scheme then.

Just my 2 euro-cents worth.


Reader Robert C. Spikol adds, quoting Dr. Deutsch:

"Being taught lies and irrational modes of thinking during this period runs a coach and horses through a person's attempts to make sense of the world." Has any study ever been performed that addresses this assertion? Can psychologists quantify a child's ability to make sense of the world? I believe that they can, to some extent. I wonder what data Dr. Deutsch uses to back up his assertions? Can he quantify the damage to a child's sense better, than using the metaphor of "coach and horses"? I actually feel a bit like Dr. Deutsch on this matter. However, in conversation with my wife, who is an excellent debater, I found myself severely wanting in facts.


Reader David J. Schuller writes:

In the 17 January 2003 issue of Swift, reader Peter Fox reported on a presentation by Rupert Sheldrake:

"[Sheldrake] also attacked intellectuals for not believing in items that "ordinary" people took for granted, such as telepathy."

This reminded me of a quote from A. G. Cairns-Smith:

"It is characteristic of thoughtful people that they don't understand some things that to others are as plain as a pikestaff."

Although the comments are superficially similar, I suspect the intent behind them was quite different.


Mogens Winther tells us, referring to an article that ran a couple weeks back:

Yesterdays killing of 11 people in the Middle East Area (Jan. 13) so far has only resulted in 9 article hits within World News. However, the death of one single astrologer, Sidney Omarr, who they claim shall continue to "forecast the future from beyond the grave, " results in nearly 28 article hits.

And this irrespective of the fact that most of Mr. Omarr's predictions were wrong! See the statistical investigation of Roger B. Culver and Philip A. Ianna — "Astrology: True or False?" — page 170. The investigation concerned 3011 predictions as given by a number of leading US astrologers, and 89% turned out to be wrong. And as Culver and Ianna write concerning the few "correct" hits:

"In each case, any prediction which could have been attributed to shrewd guessing (the SALT talks will continue to be stalled for another year), vague wording (there will be a tragedy in the eastern United States during the spring months), or 'inside' information regarding the person(s) involved (starlet A will be married to director B before Christmas) were all counted in the astrologers "successful" columns."

And, on the comparative accuracy angle, they point out:

"At this point, the stark contrast between the accomplishments of modern astronomy versus those of modern astrology is perhaps best illustrated by a single comparison of the results with the 100 percent success rate for the many thousands of predictions annually made by astronomers for the positions, configurations, and behavior of celestial objects."

Just think — maybe we could even have a peaceful planet, if people really did care about war and peace as much as they do care about egocentric superstition...?


Short update this week, caused by my very busy schedule trying to get The Amazing Meeting in shape. Looks VERY exciting, though. I'll see many of you there!