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You'll recall the nonsense put out by the "Penta Water" scammers about improved "clusters" of water molecules (see www.randi.org/jr/08-24-01.html and www.randi.org/jr/08-31-01.html) and of course we know that the homeopaths run on about the "memory of water," as if the presence of a substance once dissolved in water is retained as the dilutions get to billionths of concentration. Now, the University of Toronto has shown that the "memory" of any distinct structures in water molecules will not last for more than 50 femtoseconds. That's fifty thousandths of a millionth of a millionth of a second, one tenth of what was thought previously by scientists. That means two things in the quackery field: if using Penta Water, you gotta open the bottle real quick and chug it down or the effect will surely go away, and in regard to homeopathic preparations it would be better for you to stand right on the Boiron Pharmaceuticals assembly line as those magic pills come down the chute, or you're apt to miss the therapeutic effect of this notion, because the "memory" only lasts 1/20,000,000,000,000 of a second!
How silly can this get....?
Reader Elizabeth Kowols tells us of another homeopathic bit of nonsense she found in The Vermont Country Store catalog, touting a product made by Washington Homeopathic Products Inc., out of Bethesda, Maryland. This is a medication said to relieve the itch and rash of poison ivy. Asks Elizabeth, quite sensibly:
The Vermont Country Store has some delightful items in its catalogs, but I think they really dropped the ball on this one. And just because the claim is that the pills are "registered with the FDA" doesn't mean they are FDA approved, unless "registered" and "approved" mean the same thing in drug language.
Aside from the thought that homeopathic "medicines" are a bunch of hooey, how does ingesting a couple of tiny pills (oh, the top of the label clearly states that they are "Sucrose/Lactose Pills"!) help heal a skin condition? Wouldn't it be better to oh, say, use a topical ointment or cream?
This is another example of equating genuine, proven, medical discoveries to quack claims, as we see from the ads and claims for these wonder pills:
...the next time poison ivy or poison oak strikes use this homeopathic remedy to stop the itching and spread of rash. These tiny pills work on the same principle as the vaccinations we're all familiar with by stimulating the body's natural healing process, making the rash and itching disappear far more quickly.
This is a false relationship, of homeopathy and vaccination; there simply is no such parallel. Of course, since we don't know how quickly the rash and itching would take to go away without the use of these magic pills, we have no way of evaluating the claim in that respect. I see that the catalog lists two items together here, perhaps because the first one doesn't ever work, and the other one works every time and never needs refills! I note that the same company sells other pills for "Relief for sinus headaches, runny or congested noses, and hawking coughs..." They state that these pills contain a
...homeopathic combination of antimonium, kali bichromium, mercurius bin, and spongia.
Gee, wondering what those powerful chemicals could be, I referred to my 968-page, 2-pound, 5-ounce "Condensed Materia Medica" of homeopathic nonsense (I wonder what the uncondensed edition weighs!) 
I find that these mysterious substances are, in turn, antimony sulfide, potassium dichromate, mercury, and "roasted" common sponge. That last ingredient is used — according to the "Materia Medica" — to treat a full 5-page list of symptoms, including:
Irresistible urge to sing, with excessive mirth
Fear of the future; tired of life
Sensation as if hair were standing on end on vertex
Teeth feel dull and loose when masticating
Rumbling in abdomen, worse evenings and mornings.
Though I've had a couple of these symptoms (no, not the third one!), I'm damned if I'll chew up any "roasted sponge." Those other ingredients listed are deadly poisons, but bear in mind that they're not really there; just the "vibrations" remain, as with all homeopathic nostrums. However, in Volume Two (709-page, one-pound, eleven-ounce) of the book by Samuel Hahnemann himself, he tells us that
Cases of slow poisoning by mercury, especially the trembling of gilders, are said to be relieved by electricity.
(The term "gilders" refers to those who work at plating metals, a process which once used highly poisonous mercuric compounds which induced nervous system problems. "Mad Hatters Disease" — erythism — was similar, since mercuric nitrate was used to make fur into felt for hats — the Mad Hatter of "Alice in Wonderland" (1865) would have been the victim of brain and kidney damage induced by the poison.)
How much "electricity," and what variety, would be required to treat these unfortunates, we are not told. Hahnemann was fond of these dropped-in hints and vague suggestions. A classic quack, in every respect.
Reader Jim C. comments on my recent discussion on human sensory misperception, and shows us how he solved a few mysteries of his own:
1) I'm at a college party (yes, alcohol was present), and I look out the third floor window to see a large glowing structure away off in the sky floating toward me. So I'm repeating to myself over and over "I'm sure it's nothing mystical or extra-terrestrial" while at the same time wondering if I should warn everyone — perhaps by running around proclaiming, "the sky is falling..." There was definitely something there, and who knows, if ET did show up it would have to be someplace and sometime, why not here and now. Fortunately my agony lasted only about five minutes until I was able to make out that it was a Goodyear blimp going right overhead. I didn't know that they have light grids on the gas bag sides that flash advertisements at night.
2) While hiking down from a long mountain climb in miserable drizzly weather, I saw right in the middle of the forested trail ahead, a large glowing orb about six feet across hovering about two feet above the ground. Again, I'm thinking it surely must not be something supernatural, but can I ignore my own eyes? As I stoically continued down the trail trying to be alert yet not panicky, the object resolved itself into a light-colored stone about three feet across setting on the trail. Interestingly, the other person I was with had the identical perception and likewise was hesitant to say anything until after the perception was resolved. I suppose the true believer (of anything and everything) would claim that it really was a floating orb and either transmuted as we approached, or hit us up with one of those mind control beams.
3) Now this one was quite interesting. I'm driving home alone at night on a country road and I see a full moon clearly overhead — except that it is distinctly purple in color. Again I wonder "what's this" and again I am skeptical of what is really going on. I keep looking and looking and wishing someone was with me to look as well. My rational thinking brain is engaged — what's up with a fully purple moon? Could it be due to some alien raygun beam? Slowly the moon starts to return to its normal color, intermittently at first, on its lower part. Alas, this and my persistence led to the solution: I had been viewing this bright full moon through the upper tinted band on my car's windshield. As the car moved around and as I moved around inside the car to confirm my observations, I began seeing part of the moon below the tinted band and figured it all out.
4) And finally, something I come across all the time. I run and bicycle long distances a lot and I commonly traverse straightaways that clearly appear to be slightly uphill. One, in fact, is on a road on top of a wide dirt causeway across a lake. So, unless there is some weird gravitational effect in play (maybe a "Mystery Spot"), if the distance of the roadway above the lake water is constant, the road must be level. On approach it sure does look like the road is going uphill. Perhaps this has something to do with the brain assuming that something going off into the distance must be rising up toward eye level. This misperception also works with slight downhill sections appearing level. Changing my usual running or bicycling loop direction helps reveal these misperceived spots, teaching me that what I was wanting to chalk up as a great performance was actually my going level when I thought I was going uphill, or going level when I was actually going downhill.I was reading in the commentary archive and wanted to share some experiences that would have sent lesser people into a supernatural believing frenzy.
Jim, this last sensory illusion depends on two factors: first, your somewhat lessened ability to use the inner-ear proprioceptory system to orient yourself while you're in motion, and — more importantly — your tendency to accept learned indications of "level" such as that trees grow perpendicularly to the surface. If, due perhaps to a dislocation of the local soil surface, trees have been inclined to their original orientation, you can accept that clue and misperceive your orientation. What's level (or uphill/downhill) becomes more difficult to decide. Your comment about a "Mystery Spot" applies well here; this is the explanation for many such illusions.
In any case, my point about how often we can be misinformed by our senses, is supported — but Jim has given us examples of how a little thought and observation can "set us straight" [pun!] again.
While on sensory misperception, I'll tell you that I finally located a haiku that I vaguely remembered as expressing this subject. It's by Soseki (1867-1916) and shows that he was willing to consider that his immediate perception could be wrong. It's in this illustration....
Reader Peggy Catlin-Nesmith sends us to www.earthbounddog.com for a real hoot. As I responded to her, "Hilarious! But, one can't be too careful....!"
I received a number of comments about my criticism of Starbucks' knuckling under to their lawyers by disclaiming either belief or acceptance of a potentially (inescapably!) controversial quotation. See www.randi.org/jr/031105yet.html#8. Here's further evidence of how scared commercial enterprises — even those devoted to science and education — are of the threatened religious fanatics:
Imax is the super-big projection system with images up to 67 feet high and wrap-around digital surround sound. Several U.S. Imax theaters, including some in science museums, are refusing to show movies that mention evolution, or the Big Bang theory, or the geology of the Earth, for fear of protests from people who object to films that contain scientific facts contradicting Biblical mythology of the origin of Earth and life. Those theaters are found mostly in the South.
One of these feared films is "Volcanoes of the deep Sea," released in 2003 and sponsored in part by the National Science Foundation. It reveals the strange creatures that flourish in the hot, highly acidic, sulfurous environment in vents in the ocean floor, under incredible chemical and environmental conditions such as tons of pressure per square inch. Since these varieties of life are not mentioned in the Bible, and certainly could not have been taken aboard The Ark, fundamentalists must deny that they exist, and ignore any evidence presented. Dr. Richard Lutz, the Rutgers oceanographer who was chief scientist for the film, says "Volcanoes" has been turned down at about a dozen science centers because of its brief references to evolution. James Cameron, one of the producers of the film, said that another Imax documentary he worked on had encountered opposition during post-production, when some theaters requested that he change a line of dialogue relating to Sun worship by ancient Egyptians. The line remained, however. Cameron said he was "surprised and somewhat offended" that people were sensitive to the references to evolution in "Volcanoes." He said it was "obviously symptomatic of our shift away from empiricism in science to faith-based science."
Religious controversy has also adversely affected the distribution of "Cosmic Voyage," an Imax film which shows the scale of the universe running from the scale of subatomic particles to clusters of galaxies, a fact which offends the faithful. Another Imax production, "Galápagos," deals with the islands where Darwin arrived at his theory of evolution, and it naturally has been banned in some Imax theaters, too.
The director of marketing for the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History says about this sort of film, "If it's not going to draw a crowd and it is going to create controversy, from a marketing standpoint I cannot make a recommendation" to show it. Dr. Hyman Field, who retired from the National Science Foundation last year, said that censoring films like "Volcanoes" is not an option. He said that the film's producer got in touch with him when the evolution issue arose to ask whether the film should be altered. "I said absolutely not," said Dr. Field.
We see here an abandonment of science and education by centers that were set up to encourage those factors, in reaction to threats of boycott and demonstrations. It is, as James Cameron, said, a "shift away from empiricism in science to faith-based science."
But in November of 2008.....
We learn that Sonia Lorraine Adams, a 26-year-old woman in Longmont, Colorado who goes by the name "Psychic Victoria," persuaded people, often elderly, to give her large sums of money for "psychic" advice, "healing crystals" and other assorted miracles. She swindled eight people out of $111,000 in cash and jewelry before she was stopped. Adams was arrested last July after an elderly woman reported that she had taken $50,000 from her, promising to use the money to go to Canada to get certain "crystals" to heal her ailing son. When Adams then asked the woman for an additional $75,000, she called police.
Adams was — at first — sentenced to ten days in jail. She also was told that she had to pay back more than $70,000, or 75 percent of the monetary value of what she stole. However, the judge then decided against the jail term, and gave Adams only probation and the $70,000 payback order. She was ordered to have no contact with her victims and never to engage in similar ventures again; if she were to violate those probation terms, it could mean a prison term of four to twelve years. One of Adams' victims, upon hearing this outrageous decision by the judge, said, ""We've all been victimized twice, once by her and again by the District Attorney's Office for the meager proposed penalty. It sends a message that crime does pay in Boulder County."
Depend on it, there are other psychic scam artists working in Boulder County, and they will be encouraged by this judge's decision. What a great situation: you fleece the victims again and again, then if you get caught, you give back 75% of what you stole, and you move out of town, use a different pseudonym, and start up again!
Busy as I am preparing to run off for a couple of lectures, I decided to conclude this weekly page with a re-working and updating of some FAQs I ran here some years ago. You can go to www.randi.org/research/faq.html for a very comprehensive document of this nature, but these 12 FAQ's are more general in nature.... Herewith....
As might be expected, I find that when I'm interviewed by the media, I very often get the same questions tossed at me regarding my work and the handling of claimants for the JREF million- dollar prize. And e-mail correspondents ask many similar questions. Here are a dozen of the favorites, along with my brief responses.
(1) What's the toughest case you've ever had to crack?
None have been particularly difficult. The hardest part has always been to get the claimant to state clearly what he or she thinks they can do, under what conditions, and with what accuracy. Most are very vague about these aspects, and very few have any notion of how a proper test should be conducted. We at JREF sometimes take months getting those matters settled, only to have the applicant suddenly drop out of the negotiations. But the actually solving of what's happening, or why claimants believe that they have powers — if that state of negotiation is ever reached — is easy, because the range of claims is rather small and nothing really new is ever offered. The claims are sometimes interesting variations on very old misconceptions or delusions, but seldom is there anything that surprises us or that requires very much heavy analysis. Of course, there are some situations where not enough information has been given by the applicant, even though we try to get all the needed data, so in these cases we are not able to ever determine what the claim might actually be.
(2) Has there ever been a time when you thought, "This is the one that will take the prize?"
No. I wish there were some really challenging offers or claims, just to add some excitement to my job, but it's pretty well the same old material, endlessly repeated. And never have I ever even been much surprised at a claim, though I'm often surprised at the fact that anyone is actually fooled by it, even for a moment.
(3) To date, how many persons have been tested for the million-dollar prize offered by JREF?
That's not a simple question to answer. Many hundreds have applied, and most have had to be instructed to reapply — sometimes several times — because they did it incorrectly or incompletely. There are, at any given time, about 40 to 60 applicants being considered, but from experience we know that the vast majority will drop out even before any proper preliminary test can be designed. Of those who get to the preliminary stage, perhaps a third will actually be tested, and some of those will quit before completion. To date, no one has actually passed the simple preliminaries and arrived at the formal test stage, though a couple hundred have completed and failed the preliminaries. So, no one has been formally tested for the big prize, though we're ready and willing.
(4) Why does it appear that you only test persons with very minor and even frivolous claims, and not the prominent "psychic" performers and/or scientists who appear on television and in the media, and who write books about their careers?
We can only test persons who either apply to become claimants for the million-dollar prize, or who will actually submit themselves to undergoing proper test procedures. The "stars" never do this, and in fact they do anything they can to avoid us and our challenge; they would rather just run on about past glories, point to anecdotal evidence, or grandly ignore our genuine offer to test them. The people who do apply are probably honestly convinced of their abilities, and have no fear of discovery. Where are James Van Praagh, Sylvia Browne, George Anderson, John Edward, and the rest of the current "big names"? And why hasn't Uri Geller, the professional spoon-bender (remember him from the 70s?) snapped up this easy cash? One can only wonder.
We at JREF must offer to test any and every applicant, because we cannot be the judges of whether a claim is likely to be valid. Only occasionally, we encounter a claim that is just so silly or dangerous, that we do not offer to go ahead with negotiations. Example: a person claimed to be controlling every event in the world just by wagging his head back and forth, and he even sent us a video of himself in action. He also "fed" a spirit living in a black stone, through a hole in that stone. We are tolerant, but not quite naive enough to spend time discussing such a claim.
(5) What harm does it do to simply let people believe in silly things? Why do you take away their pleasant delusions?
The potential harm is very real, and dangerous. Belief in such obvious flummeries as astrology or fortune-telling can appear — quite incorrectly — to give confirmatory results, and that can lead to the victim pursuing more dangerous, expensive, and often health-related scams. Blind belief can be comforting, but it can easily cripple reason and productivity, and stop intellectual progress. We at JREF never try to impose our beliefs or philosophies on others; we only try to inform them, and suggest that there are alternate choices to be made. Examples of personal tragedies resulting from an uncritical embrace of supernatural claims, are plentiful.
(6) Why do you continue to preach critical thinking about the paranormal, superstition, and quackery, if you can't ever really disabuse people of their errors?
We feel that an effort must be made, particularly to get young people thinking critically and bravely about these subjects. Those who have not completely surrendered to careless acceptance of flim-flam, can be brought to think about their decisions, and in many cases can and will change their minds. Others, we realize, will retain their delusions because they have so much invested in them. Not to at least try to communicate what we know to be true, would be unethical.
(7) Will you ever win the battle of rationality over superstition?
We think that "war" will never be won, because the scam-artists and the honestly deluded promoters of nonsense are constantly being replaced with others. And though Barnum never said it, there does appear to be "a sucker born every minute." So, we have predators and prey, and that is a natural and expected condition of life; it has ever been thus. The JREF only hopes to teach those who — through no fault of their own — are unaware of certain facts of the real world, to be harder prey for the predators to catch. But there's a difference between winning a "war" and winning a "battle." We win battles every day, when someone walks through our doors and announces that we've added in some way to their understanding of the world. Every class of kids that we speak to, every audience in any part of the world, wins us a battle. That's why we stay with it.
(8) But you're not a scientist. How can you speak on these matters with authority?
Authority does not rest with scientists, when emotion, need, and desperation are involved. Scientists are human beings, too; they can be deceived and self-deceived. We at the JREF are skilled in two directions: we know how people are fooled by others, and we know how people fool themselves. We deal with hard, basic, facts, and we try our best to make them known. We try to protect people from influences that might obscure the true danger of uncritical thinking. We often succeed. And we have very substantial and eminent scientific authorities on hand to provide the advice and specialization we require.
(9) Scientific papers have been written supporting paranormal events and talents. Therefore, how can you deny them?
Scientists can be wrong — sometimes, very wrong. The history of science is replete with serious errors of judgment, bad research, faked results, and simple mistakes, made by scientists in every field. The beauty of science is that it corrects itself by its own nature and design. By this means, science provides us with increasingly clearer views of how the world works. Unfortunately, though science itself is self-correcting, sometimes the scientists involved do not correct themselves. And there is not a single example of a scientific discovery in the field of parapsychology that has been independently replicated. That makes parapsychology absolutely unique in the world of science.
(10) What projects are you working on at this moment?
In some cases, we can't say. Sorry. There are always investigations underway, but because of their very nature, those matters cannot be openly discussed. But, TV specials are being developed and written, books are nearing completion, and lectures are being contracted, all over the world. We try to keep folks informed via our web page — which presently gets about 100,000 page-hits a day, on an average.
(11) If what you say is true, that the supernatural powers being claimed every day in the media are unproven, why is it that scientists themselves don't speak out against those claims?
It's truly a pity that more concerned scientists don't trouble to make statements when they see their colleagues going overboard on some matters. Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Isaac Asimov, B.F. Skinner, and a spectrum of scientific luminaries who dared stick their necks out and make their opinions clearly heard in the media, are gone now, and we have Michael Shermer, CSICOP, JREF, and other persons and agencies struggling to fill those shoes. We need more clear voices of reason to be heard, more often. It's unfortunately quite true that by and large, scientists tend to prefer to live in "ivory towers," and do not choose to become involved in public controversies. We knock on those tower doors regularly....
(12) Are countries other than the USA also plagued by incredible beliefs and claims of quackery, pseudoscience, and magic?
Oh, yes. It's difficult to determine or define a "silliness factor" for any culture, but we can say that all parts of the Earth are currently getting deeper and deeper into such nonsense. Though the "flavors," languages, and costumes of the beliefs may vary, they are all there in full bloom. In one place, medieval medical notions may be in full effect, while in another location the populace is enamored — at the moment — with summoning up spirits. And, it's not getting any better. Quite the contrary.
A few years ago in Padua, Italy, I attended the annual convention of CICAP — the Comitato Italiano per il Controllo delle Aftermazioni sul Paranormale (Italian Committee for Control of Claims of the Paranormal). Having thereby attained a bit of a profile in the local press, I became the subject of some angry questions and accusations. One fierce-looking woman approached me festooned with beads and crystals, hair awry and determined to slap me down with The Big Question. Through an interpreter, she demanded that I give her "the chemical formula for the soul." I feel that this person, in common with so many others, really thinks that such a question is one that surely must floor me instantly. She placed her statement, then smiled triumphantly, awaiting my confusion — which did not materialize. I looked her right in the eye and simply told her that she wasn't making sense, and that she did not understand the nature of the matter she was trying to discuss.
It is a delicate matter, this process. While not ridiculing the honestly self-deceived, we must try to show them where they've gone off-track. We also have to handle them firmly but gently, so that we can move on to other matters. The charlatans seldom come to us, but when we must deal with them, we do so with great care, ever conscious of the litigious society we are immersed in, willy-nilly. Of course, when confronted with a particularly incredible claim like "remote viewing" (the current version of "clairvoyance") we can easily stop short and ask ourselves just why we are involved with such obvious nonsense. But this is the job we chose to take on, and it has its rewards in the feedback we get from those who have listened, learned, and benefited from our efforts. That's the payoff.
And it's worth the battle.
