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Reader and contributor Claus Larsen in Denmark tells us:
A psychic, Tina Malmberg Schmidt from Augustenborg (about 50 km. from Svendborg), who usually deals in angels and Tarot, was contacted by some of Nicholas' very concerned friends. She told them that Nicholas was alive and held captive in a basement in the city. The group of friends started searching, and also contacted the police.
Incredibly enough, the police contacted the media, and asked people to look for Nicholas in their own basements. Now, occasionally, the police will do this, and people will of course comply, but since this was done by the prodding of a psychic, people started getting upset and scared. Some were upset because they couldn't see the use of this, but still felt obliged to participate in the search, while others believed the psychic and wondered where Nicholas was — and who was keeping him imprisoned. A janitor at a housing complex was even dragged from his bed in the middle of the night by Nicholas' friends, to search through the basement in the complex. Of course, they found nothing, and for good reason.
Nicholas turned up, as expected, in the harbor, drowned, not held captive in a basement by sinister people.
In the studio was Danish skeptic and magician Michael Leslie Ahlstrand. He explained what we as skeptics already know: that there is no evidence that clairvoyants have special powers, and that it is questionable that the police even trust what these psychics are saying.On March 3rd, the Danish National Radio had a half-hour show about police use of psychics. The background was a sad one: A 17-year old boy, Nicholas Povlsen from Svendborg had gone missing after a night of partying. The police strongly suspected that he had fallen in the nearby harbor, but couldn't locate the body.
Claus, we know of Michael Leslie Ahlstrand as a serious investigator of these matters — and his excellent reputation — from previous correspondence. Continuing:
Tina Malmberg Schmidt did not make a very good impression. She came off as self-serving, callous, and completely out of touch with reality.
There were also two politicians in the studio, but they merely danced around the issue. Yes, they trusted the judgment of the police. Yes, they could see that this was not all good. No, they wouldn't do anything to prevent this from happening again.
Even though it was a very good show, it doesn't look as if we will see any legislation barring proclaimed psychics from wasting police resources, and scaring the crap out of the population. But we did get a good look at how psychics behave before and after they are found out as fakes.The psychic was also interviewed, over the phone. She was quite in low — dare I say it? — spirits, even close to tears, but not because she had scared the living daylights out of a whole city, or because she was totally wrong about everything. Oh no, this psychic was on the verge of tears because she also felt the strain. She was just as devastated as anyone else, but she was not to blame in any way, she argued, because she only passed on the messages from the spirit world. Although she would never again participate in such a search again, she had no regrets about her psychic charade whatsoever. She had done nothing wrong, she wailed.
Claus, I note that Schmidt resorted to the same old "out" — that she could only pass on to inquirers what those giddy spirits told her. They're such playful rascals, as we all know. Even Sylvia Browne has those problems, but in her case, the spooks are uniformly wrong when they reveal the future to her....
A reader of this web page, Nicholas Lawrence, saw his opportunity to write the Letters section of the London Times, in response to an item that supported the dowsing delusion:
Many people can find water underground — in many places, there's a lot of it. Where it's scarce they use, consciously or unconsciously, the kinds of clues that Vitruvius described 2,000 years ago, such as vapor rising from the ground or condensation collecting in a bowl, over a concealed water source. They may sincerely believe that their forked twig (or whatever) twitches, but they are wrong. Sir, If dowsing really works (letter, February 21), how come no dowser has claimed the prize of $1 million that the James Randi Educational Foundation in the US offers to anyone who can demonstrate any paranormal, supernatural or occult power or event under controlled conditions?
Nicholas forwarded a copy of his letter to me, and I responded:
Otherwise, a good letter, very much to the point!Nicholas, you wrote: "They may sincerely believe that their forked twig (or whatever) twitches, but they are wrong." Not quite. The stick does twitch, or the pendulum swings, or the rods converge, but it's the dowser subconsciously doing it — the ideomotor reaction. Look on our web page, at: www.randi.org/library/dowsing.
Nicholas wrote in reply:
Thank you. Sloppy wording on my part, not ignorance; I meant "twitches driven by some external force" (or some such). But it's one step forward, two back. Today The Times has published this:
And Nicholas quoted this letter from Dr. Paul Murdin, Treasurer of the Royal Astronomical Society, a ringing endorsement of the "dowsing" phenomenon as he personally experienced it:
I expressed skepticism about the whole thing, so he made a dowsing stick by doubling some stiff aerial wire. He had me walk, elbows tucked in, palms and fingers facing upwards, with the wire sprung and horizontal, the two ends gripped in my fists in front of me.
To my amazement, the wire strongly dipped and uncontrollably kicked upwards as I repeatedly walked across the same area of the field where he had his radio-telescope.
I don't know if there was water underground, and I don't know if there was an external, physiological or psychological reason for the powerful twist.
As Galileo said of the Earth, I can sincerely say of the dowsing stick: Eppur si muove ("However, it moves").Sir, As a teenaged student scientist in the British Astronomical Association in the 1950s, I visited an amateur radio-astronomer near Clacton. Chatting, he claimed to be a water dowser.
Mr. Lawrence told me that he'd responded to Dr. Murdin:
Thanks Nick. I didn't know about the ideomotor effect, but the Randi article [www.randi.org/library/dowsing/] fully describes the circumstances and what I felt. It looks as if I experienced the ideomotor effect in full force, in spite of being a skeptic. It was such a powerful experience that I still remember it more than the radio astronomy that I heard that day.I wrote to Paul (an old colleague) referring him to your article [on dowsing] and he replied:
Delighted at this development, I wrote Dr. Murdin:
I hope that you won't mind if I include your experience on my web page. If this offers any problem, please let me know. Thanks.I have a few examples of persons who have been really astounded when experiencing the ideomotor effect, and have had a difficult time recognizing that their sensory system could so thoroughly deceive them. Your observations, coming from an obviously well educated and sensible individual, can add to my arsenal.
Dr. Murdin promptly replied:
It was an unforgettable (and unforgotten) experience and I remember it much more clearly after 45 years than the radio astronomy that I was told that day.
I said some of these things in the original letter to the Times but they were cut for reasons of space. If you want to add anything from these words of mine to the letter that was published I would have no objection to that either; I am flattered that you think that it is of interest.I have no objection to the reproduction of the letter on your site. It was a response to a previous letter that said that the twig doesn't move; it most certainly did for me, although I have always remained skeptical about the cause. And your article certainly described what I was asked to do, namely to tension my arms, held in a strained posture, against an unstable and powerful spring. I found on the several repetitions when I knew what to expect that I simply could not control the movement of the rod.
I hope that my readers will recognize what has happened here, a refreshing and encouraging exchange that demonstrates Dr. Murdin's willingness to recognize a common psychological effect — the ideomotor reaction — and to change his outlook, a conviction that the dowsing device he'd used actually moved on its own due to some mysterious force. I have handled well over a hundred dowsers — amateur, mostly, but some professional — and none of them have ever reversed their opinions after having been shown clearly and inarguably that they (a) could not perform as they had expected they would, and that (b) the dowsing device was being unconsciously manipulated by them so as to fulfill their expectations.
Reversing a firmly-held conviction is not easily done. Kudos to Dr. Murdin.
Reader Bob Gale reports on the latest "Psionic Kabalah Capsule" news:
There's actually some good news for our side regarding this item, which was offered for sale on Ebay last month with a starting bid of $49.95, and a buy-it-now (list) price of $89.95: it received zero bids!
Still on the "Red String," we learn by reading the website of the scammers, the Berg family, that:
The "Lost Cubit" is derived from the sum of the polar and equatorial circumferences of the Earth, in inches, divided into the speed of light. It therefore relates to Earth natural harmonics in a special way.
So what's "lost" about this measure? Okay, let's apply our talents to re-discovering this cubit. We'll indulge these nut-cases for a bit, and see if we can arrive at an answer. Let's see.... The sum of those Earth circumferences — using 24,902.4 and 24,860.2 miles as equatorial and polar circumferences, respectively — comes to 3,152,958,336 inches — though how we can seriously use a measurement accurate to one inch when measuring such a rough almost-sphere, I cannot imagine. Note that English units are used, because as we all know, they're closer to Biblical measurements....!
The speed of light — we'll assume it to be in vacuo, though they wouldn't know of that distinction — comes to 11,802,829,071 inches per second! I use inches here because any sensible person would use the same units in both conversions, and "per second" because otherwise the numbers are so huge I could not write them here on the page. Performing the calculation the spooky folks specified, in spite of the absurdity of it all, we get .374... (why bother with more digits?) But what unit is that? Inches? A fraction of a cubit? A cubit — until these idiots came along — was thought to be something like 20.62 inches — that value having been derived from examination of recovered ancient artifacts.
At this point, we must consider that Karen, Michael, Monica, and Yehuda Berg, the intellectual giants behind this inane scam are laughing themselves to exhaustion, to see celebrities (among them Madonna, Guy Ritchie, Marla Maples/Trump, Roseanne Barr, Sandra Bernhard, Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger, Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Courtney Love, Winona Ryder, Monica Lewinsky, Sarah Ferguson, Britney Spears, and Paris Hilton) fighting with one another to buy bits of magical red string to wear on their wrists. Unless our civilization is really going out of existence with a giggle rather than with a song, this is just vapid behavior by people with too much money and lots of idle time on their hands.
Reader Gloria Carr tells us, re the "Kabbalah Capsule," to shop more wisely:
I've seen those things before, or at least the capsule part. You can get them at any decent pet store. They're basically name tags for your dog or cat (falconers sometime use them for their birds, because they are lightweight and are less likely to get snagged in a tree than the usual dog, er, bird, tag). The usual purpose for them is to contain a piece of paper with the animal owner's name, address, and number, as well as other important information. They're supposed to be waterproof, too. I'm a bit surprised to see them being sold for $90, the pet store ones usually cost about $5-10, depending on size. I suppose this is another example of quacks turning a perfectly ordinary and useful item into something totally stupid.
We give you here an even better money-saving hint from reader Laura Appelbaum:
I got a really good laugh at the "Kabbalah Manifesting Capsule" piece on this week's Swift, given that we sell them at the store I work for at the low, low price of only $2.95 — that's a discount of over $88 off the "Life Technology Research International" price! (See this link.
Of course, the ones we sell are made in China and do not, to my knowledge, incorporate any "caduceus orgone generating coils."
Well, there's the rub, Laura. Without orgone, where are you? But I invite readers to compare the genuine Kabbalah Manifesting Capsule with your cheaper product, in the accompanying illustration. The real on is on the left, the imitation on the right. Or is it the other way....? In any case, I guarantee that each is equally magical in every respect.
I heard from my good friends Drs. Gyula Bencze and Gyula Staar in Budapest that the Randi Prize — a modest cash award I offer annually to a deserving Hungarian student who exhibits proper critical thinking about a pseudoscientific claim — has been given this year to one András Kovács, a student at the Puskas Tivadar Highschool for Telecommunication. He wrote an excellent essay, "Thoughts on the Neutral Current" which examined the strange claims of a device that is claimed to produce this exotic — and non-existent — current. András effectively showed the faults of the pseudoscientific claim.
I always feel privileged to honor someone in this manner, and I look forward to doing so again next year.
Commenting on the "B.C. psychic" item we ran here, in which the media decided that a person who found the clothing of a missing hiker after searching for nine months, did it by "psychic" powers, reader Bob Faulkner of Gulf Breeze, Florida, asks:
What about those hikers who discovered Ötzi, the Alpine Iceman, after he'd gone missing 5200 years! Bet they were "psychic," too! Certainly more than the local cops who nearly destroyed the corpse, trying to pry it from the ice using Ötzi's priceless bow as a lever.
Reader Dave Eriqat comments on my item on the NBC-TV UFO program:
At that point I realized that belief in alien visitation bears a striking resemblance to belief in god. In both cases the entity emanates from the heavens; there is no physical evidence for either; people must have "faith" in each; both are capable of supernatural, or at least superhuman, feats; both have self-proclaimed human leaders and devout human followers; both have fictional histories. I think humans need to believe in things like this. It must satisfy some primal need. I recall reading Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason" some years ago and noting that 200 years after his optimistic predictions people still believe in god, in fact, it seems, more so today than ever. I think people will always believe in god and/or alien visitation. I really have no problem with that as long as their beliefs do not influence important decisions. But that is the problem today.My brother, who is a computer programmer like me, and I presume, an atheist like me, nevertheless has a religious-like devotion to the notion of alien visitation. We used to have laborious debates about it and I read all his alien books, but I eventually gave up trying to persuade him. I would always end up returning to the "show me the evidence" argument, to which he would end up rebutting that there was a worldwide, decades-long conspiracy to suppress the evidence. The fact that there was no evidence proved the existence of the conspiracy! He absolutely could not see the circular reasoning in his argument, and this from someone who's intelligent, analytical, and rational. At one point he told me that I just have to have "faith" that aliens are visiting the planet, to see the conspiracy!
Reader Michael Birbeck saw a UFO, he tells us:
Anyway, to cut a long story short, many years ago, I was camping on the top of Table Mountain in Cape Town South Africa. As you know, the mountain is so known for its flat top. At about 20:00 hrs, the stars were out when my colleagues and I were astounded to see a bright shimmering saucer appear on the horizon. The apparition had an intense affect on all of us. As a natural skeptic, I must admit that even I began consider the possibility of a hitherto unknown flying object and was reaching for my camera to record the "evidence" when it suddenly became apparent that what we were watching was the full moon materializing though a bank of cloud that had built suddenly on the edge of the mountain. The sudden onset of the South Easterly wind, the cause of the cloud, was a welcome and empirical relief to all us as we dismissed our previously deluded senses (and primitive responses to them) and enjoyed the true beauty of a fully Identified Flying Object.I am regular reader of your forum and an admirer of your curmudgeonly style in dealing with the assorted mumbo jumbo that assaults our lives, thoughts and existence every day. Your comments in your forum dated 4 March 2005 reference the ways our sensory perception can trick us, brought to mind my one and only UFO encounter. Before I continue, I must say that I am convinced that UFO's exist but, before you place me in your "woo woo" file, let me point out that I use the term Unidentified Flying Object in its strictest sense. As a pilot I have learned to accept that the UFO fixed in my field of sight is most likely to be another plane and that perhaps I should alter heading rapidly before I debate the infinitesimally low odds that what I am avoiding is a saucer full of green men from the plant Zarg.
Yep, it shore is purty, isn't it, Michael? But how could an admitted curmudgeon react to the Moon so romantically? Well, there are facets to me you don't know about.....!
Reader Marnie MacLean has an interesting observation:
For instance, one need only have a single prayer "answered" to consider prayer successful. The rest of the time, you hadn't earned it, or you didn't pray hard enough or god was working in his mysterious way.
For gamblers, one needs only an occasional win to consider gambling a success even if your losses far outweigh your gains. When one loses, it's often chalked up to lack of technique or lucky charms (the talismans not the cereal) as opposed to statistical odds stacked squarely against him.
This whole concept came particularly to mind while chatting with a young lady who considers herself Mormon after many years of soul searching. She's a bright woman and quite open to conversation without striking me as being defensive. At one point she mentioned that she had had a "testament of tithes." She claimed that every time she had been in financial need and had given tithes, she had "miraculously" found a way out of her dire situation.
I asked if she thought that might just be the cyclical nature of life where things seem to be harder at some points than others, at which point she poo-pooed me. I then pointed out that I've been a life-long atheist and never given tithes but could come up with many situations where I thought I wouldn't find a way to recover from an unexpected financial problem and yet have managed to come through in the end, sometimes at what appeared to be the proverbial "last minute."
The biggest problem with religious superstition is there is no way to conduct a double-blind study on a single person's life. I can't say to her, "relive your life and don't give 10% to the church." And what is the statute of limitation on turnaround for tithes? If you work things out in a day is that because of tithes? How about a week, or a month or a year? Was she giving tithes before that? If so, why did she hit financial trouble in the first place? If not, isn't it disingenuous to give only when you expect to get something back in return? Ultimately, I feel that churches can be like Vegas, everything is set up with enough smoke and mirrors to ensure that you don't ask the right questions and you keep coming back for more.
I know this is all just stream of consciousness, here, but I think the human psychology behind it is the same. I guess it puts an unusually harsh spin on something that many wield for good causes, but since I am a godless heathen, it's flimflamery to me.I'm a big fan of your site as well as being a supporter of and subscriber to Skeptical Inquirer and Skeptic. I make an effort to keep myself well informed and try to encourage others, as diplomatically as possible, to think critically about their beliefs. One thing I've noticed among my gambling and praying friends is that the rationalization and thinking for both activities parallel nicely.
On a Starbucks takeout coffee container, under their bit of reading material titled, "The Way I See It #14," I see they used a quotation from famed paleontologist Dr. Louise Leakey:
1.6 million years ago a youth died in Africa. His body was swept into a swamp. In 1984 his bones were painstakingly excavated to reveal a species on the brink of becoming human. All people on earth have one thing in common. We share a single African ancestor; the same as this young boy.
But below that quotation was this, obviously from Starbucks' lawyers and spin-doctors:
This is the author's opinion, not necessarily that of Starbucks. To read more or respond, go to www.starbucks.com/wayiseeit.
My readers will not be surprised to learn that I felt I should respond, to provide my own comment on this situation, particularly since there was an invitation right there on the container to do so. I wrote:
In reference to The Way I See It #14, I find it depressing that Starbucks has to be politically correct by assuring the customer that the company does not necessarily embrace the findings of science and research rather than the mythology of religion. Or perhaps I've interpreted this incorrectly: did you mean to pacify the racists, who might be offended that Dr. Leakey suggests that homo sapiens began in Africa....?
Is EVERYONE running scared of the Religious Right and/or the rednecks...?
Reader Louise, in San Carlos, California, has learned a lesson, we hope:
Well, as your faithful follower, I figured I was through with all that psychic nonsense. Should have been. But, the death of my almost 17-yr-old orange cat, Norman, from kidney disease, triggered so much grief that I found this person on a website; she was cheap so I thought at least there would be a kind ear. Kept Norman alive with water injections for a year; then, he got too sick so had him put down at the vet. It was horrible.
Well, back to psychic reading from Barbara Morrison who advertises "pet psychic" on her website. I wasted a half hour and $60. Not one psychic item appeared in this reading — just generic junk about out-of-body this and that and annoying rambles. I did purposely feed her a bit of information, and, lo and behold, she didn't even go with that. Just couldn't cut it at all. Even gave her name of dead husband who loved Norman also and probably "met" him. She basically just rambled nonsense and something about a past life with Norman (well, can't disprove that one — they always do past lives because that can't be debunked — it's a routine). Her only description of Norman was that he followed me from room to room. Well, Norman did not follow me from room to room. He did his own thing whether I was in the room or not. When I asked what Norman had to tell me about our life together, her answer was, guess what, "He loved you." Well, Mr. Randi, no harm done except this person will prey on vulnerable people who have not been Randi-ized. It's just pitiful because grief looks for a kind ear anywhere. Let me know if you want the tape when I get it.
Oh, I can't wait to hear this! This set of grief-hustlers can't be much better than Sylvia and her tired guessing-games. As for cats, I'm partial to the red model, too. Did you know they're always male? Charlie sure was.... Miss him....
Regarding last week's aquarium "EcoAqualizer" item, reader David Stafford of Cornwall, England, made an inquiry of the site:
I was very pleased to see: "ECO-Aqualizer is completely safe for both saltwater fish and freshwater fish." Could this be because it actually does nothing at all? After all, the explanation of its modus operandi has no basis in science, does it?
I suggest that readers who have not visited the site, do so now in order to understand and perhaps share Mr. Stafford's puzzlement concerning what is presented there as the technical details behind this device/system. See it at www.ecoaqualizer.com/index.htm. Phillip Newcomb, the inventor of this fish-magnet scam, promptly responded to David, obviously despairing of his dismal lack of scientific understanding, and offering this much-needed enlightenment:
Water is H20. H2O is Oxygen and Hydrogen. Oxygen is Negative charged. Hydrogen is positively charged. Thus water is a POLAR substance. This polar nature allows water to be a univeral [sic] solvent.
Whether fresh or salt. H2O is H20. That's the basic science. Due to the polar nature of water, +'s and -'s bind up things. ECO-Aqualizer disrupts this binding as well as hydrogen bonding.
If you feel it don't [sic] work — don't buy it. Keep doing what your [sic] doing. It's the only aquarium product with a full 180 Day Money Back Guarantee.
Thank you in advance...Hello David,
Now I'm worried. Any system that "disrupts" the binding between hydrogen and oxygen, as well as between hydrogen atoms, might really spoil the entire universe! We need those +'s and -'s, friends! Oh, wait.... electrolysis does that, doesn't it? These high-tech matters confuse this old brain....
What worries me even more is that water is a "universal solvent." That means it dissolves everything, so the planet Earth is currently going into solution! Stand back! This won't be pretty!
Just what ever gets into these amateurs like Newcomb that makes them think they've got science going for them? Too many comic books, perhaps?
Reader Nick Brealey, commenting on my item last week concerning the fallibility of human observation, writes:
In a similar vein, in Richard Rhodes "The Making of the Atomic Bomb," there is an amusing incident recalled by Oppenheimer: "Very shortly before the test of the first atomic bomb, people at Los Alamos were naturally in a state of some tension. I remember one morning when almost the whole project was out of doors staring at a bright orange object in the sky through glasses, binoculars and whatever else they could find; and nearby Kirtland Field reported to us that they had no interceptors which had enabled them to come within range of the object. Our director of personnel was an astronomer and a man of some human wisdom; and he finally came to my office and asked whether we would stop trying to shoot down the planet Venus. I tell this story only to indicate that even a group of scientists is not proof against the errors of suggestion and hysteria."
Nick, as a 19-year-old, I lived at the YMCA residence in Toronto in an effort to recover from the serious back fracture I'd had in an accident. We residents would receive occasional visits from the local police department who would enlist two or three of us when they needed to fill a suspect line-up with appropriate "control" individuals. We always co-operated, and in fact found it interesting to see if we could tell which of the group was the actual suspect. They used a total of six people, and the "extras" had to match the real suspect in several parameters: race, facial hair, gender, with similar characteristics, wearing similar clothing, the same general size and shape. They had to be so similar that the witness would not be led to choosing any particular one except by means of specific memory or unique characteristics, yet not so similar that the witness might be confused.
Imagine my surprise and concern when on two different occasions, I was pointed out as the culprit! Once, my friend Ken was also identified, and though I can't say for certain that he wasn't the right choice, I do know for sure that I wasn't! But my concern, then and now, was that other innocent persons might very well have been picked out in similar errors of recall or sensory information, leading to convictions or at least serious court actions. In one of the instances in which I was wrongly selected, the woman who erred was very, very, certain that she'd been correct, and commented that she could never forget my face. That has to get your attention!
But I must say that even at that age, I'd not have gone out gunning for Venus....
Dr. Elizabeth Loftus at UC Irvine has written a powerful book on this subject titled, "Eyewitness Testimony," and I guarantee that it will surprise and scare you if you're not familiar with this field....
You might recall the chap named Matthew Ireland in the ABC-TV "John of God" story whose brain tumor was shown to be smaller after he visited Brazil for healing. He also claimed that he had not received any medical procedures prior to seeing John, but it now turns out that he had taken treatment from an acupuncturist and "energy-healer" named Tom Tam for about nine months prior to going to Brazil. Now, I have no delusions that this had resulted in any healing, but during that time, he told Tom that a medical test had shown his tumor to be reduced as a result of Tom's efforts. This means that Matthew had been shopping around for "alternative" treatments, and was prone to find improvements from them, perhaps only to encourage himself. And, I don't believe for a moment that he'd had no legitimate treatment for his condition — but I cannot find him to make further inquiries.
The reaction to my article on the ABC-TV News handling of the "John of God" item continues to pour in. But, of course, no response of any sort from ABC. Surprise, surprise.
We've had a good number of orders for the "Critical Thinker" wristband since I mentioned it here. You can see and order it at www.randi.org/shopping/index.html#merch as long as supplies last....
When you're not occupied with carefully studying this site, take a peek at http://skepticscircle.blogspot.com for some interesting items...
Next week, that X-Ray Girl is back, and NPR gets some well-deserved lumps.
