April 15, 2005 |
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Hollywood In Bondage, A Dragon In Your Drawers, Translating Officialese, TT Revisited, Look Here, Acorah Comeuppance, The Perfect "Out," Pezaro's Record, Questions About Astrology, A Serious Warning, A Good Example of Our Burden, Notice for Capital-Area Residents, and In Conclusion....
Table of Contents:
Actor Ashton Kutcher is apparently a devotee of the silly red string Kabbalah bracelet, or perhaps he's just following instructions from his press agent to get with the current stupidity that such brain trusts as Madonna have embraced to titillate the teeny boppers. According to a posting on the Kabbalah website, the string has these wondrous magical powers. It:
Kutcher was filmed wearing the string for his latest movie, "Guess Who," and test audiences "were really annoyed" by the bracelet, so Sony spent about $100,000 to use digital imaging technology to remove it from his wrist, which appeared in most scenes. Believers might well conclude that the removal of the bracelet contributed to the subsequent negative reviews for the movie....
Reader Heino Lepp writes:
The mind boggles at all the other sartorial possibilities and the associated advertising slogans. Thanks, Heino. I looked them up, and decided I'd have to struggle along without a dragon on my drawers, though I realize that I'm flying in the face of ancient tradition, mythology, and well-established superstition. I'll have to depend on Jockeys....
Reader David Crawford of Calgary, Canada, is surprised. He writes:
Following this line of reasoning, I would like to see the following courses added to your calendar as soon as possible: Prostitution, Gambling, Fraud, Drug Abuse, Internet Pornography, Quackery In Alternative Medicine (sorry that's already on offer), Pyramid Schemes, Naivete in the Academic Community (oops! that's there also), and Educational Institutions Suspending Rationality and Logic in Exchange for The Mighty Dollar (ditto).
Please reassure me that this crepuscular reasoning will not dictate or influence the course offerings in the regular school system, and/or that these offerings are under review with an eye to their suspension. Substituting logic and reasoning for quackery and fraud appalls me and should alarm anyone who cares for the educational standards in this community.
I hope this clears up any concerns you have regarding Continuing Education course content.
Yours truly, Cathi Ramsden I offer here my translation of this letter from Cathi. It was written in Officialese, a language with which I'm familiar, and one which requires much skillful interpretation to be expressed in real-world terms. What was actually being said, was:
I suspect that this is the last that David will be hearing from the Continuing Education Department....
Reader P.Z. Meyers, Division of Science & Math, University of Minnesota, tells tells us that the University of Minnesota has entered a new phase of higher education:
Now it seems my university has a unit babbling about a new variant, called Tellington TTouch. Read this description. It's stock pseudoscience:
The Tellington TTouch has been used successfully for:
Perhaps best of all is the general feeling of well-being that so many experience.
This gentle method is currently being used by animal owners, trainers, breeders, veterinarians, zoo personnel and shelter workers in several countries.
I am embarrassed. Why is my university hawking this snake-oil? Why, when money is tight, aren't we jettisoning this bit of quackery? The University of Colorado experienced something similar in 1994, investigated their nursing school's promotion of Therapeutic Touch, and despite concluding that TT was bunkum, decided to allow the School of Nursing to continue with it.
The report itself gives us a clue as to the justification for this decision: "TT is potentially a source of considerable income. Training in TT is not complex and arduous and the practice of TT does not require a large investment in equipment or personnel." Indeed, Quinn's Healing Touch training brings in a substantial amount of money for the nursing school. A set of three HT videotapes featuring Quinn sells for $675. Healing Touch classes cost $225 each for the first three levels and $325 each for the next two levels.
But training is not the only cash cow associated with TT. Recently, over half a million dollars of public tax money has been spent on Therapeutic Touch research. The National Institutes of Health has given $150,000 in grants, the Department of Health and Human Services has granted $200,000, and most recently the Department of Defense granted $355,000 to the University of Alabama at Birmingham all for studies of TT. The study at UAB, to be conducted on burn patients, was billed as being the study that would finally settle the question as to the effectiveness of TT.
I suspect something similar is going on here. The Center for Spirituality and Healing brags about bringing in the grant money. Dr. Meyers, thank you for this report. Please keep us informed if there is any reaction to your critique from the University of Minnesota....
Worth a good look: http://sciencepolitics.blogspot.com/2005/03/fifth-skeptics-circle.html
From reader Harry Eastham of Burnley, Lancashire, England, we hear this rumor:
P.S. I was going to say that we have as fine a crop of nutters as you guys, then I remembered George Bush. You win.
Reader Anthony Barcellos of Davis, California, guesses correctly:
Here's a statement that struck my eye in the March 2005 issue of Inside the Vatican: "[T]rue prophets never specify the time their prophecies will come true." Fabulous! In that one short sentence, Bishop Pavel Hnilica (beats me how you pronounce that) gives support to the observation that all prophets who do predict times have proved to be false prophets. Naturally, the good bishop does not even for a moment consider that this occurs because all prophets are false and do not know the future. Rather, he contents himself with the notion that prophets canny enough to avoid specifics may be truly gifted with prescience, a weak sort of gift if it cannot give any details. How true....
Reader Terry Spencer of Plantation, Florida, reminds us:
1. "An earthquake in Rome, Italy, thousands effected [sic]." Nope.
2. "A new Pope after the Pope passes on." It was the way to bet, but it turned out JPII held on longer than she expected.
3. "An avalanche in Switzerland." I'm sure there was.
4. "A lot of prosperity in 2004." For some, like oil execs, sure.
5. "A terrorist attack: in Las Vegas, in New York, in Athens, Greece, in Canada, in London, England, in Scotland, in Paris, France, in Canada (repeated), in Chicago, at Mt. Rushmore, at Niagara Falls, in St. Louis, Missouri, and against Air Force One the Presidential aircraft." Swung on and missed.
6. "A quasi missile will hit North America (a what-missile?) and a suicide bombing in North America." Nada.
If I had so many errors in one year, I'd be out of work. Ah, but only 18 major misses (at least) in one year won't slow down a really determined faker, Terry. Besides, I'm told that Nikki is "faith-based."
Reader George Sime suggests two excellent references for us when we're asked about astrology:
Yes, George, and Phil Plait comments on this:
Reader Isabelle Vella Gregory alerts us:
In the same vein, reader Travis Hurst of Plano, Texas, worked at a Whole Foods Market (see www.randi.org/jr/040105capitalizing.html#6) for about three years, starting in 2000. He writes, concerning those who serve the customers there:
On [one] occasion a fellow employee was complaining that her husband's doctors could do nothing to ease his back and neck pain. Apparently he had a rather serious ailment. "Luckily" for him he had vitamins and homeopathy to rescue him from the evil and inefficacy of modern medicine. After I gave her a quick rundown on the placebo effect I asked her a few questions about her husband's condition. Surprise! Her husband refused to take the medications his doctor's prescribed apparently he didn't want to be "pumped full of drugs" and neglected to follow their other orders. Surprise number two, upon embarking upon his journey into froo-froo "medicine" he initially enjoyed a brief reprieve from the pain see placebo effect followed by re- aggravation of the injury and no improvement whatsoever from then on.
But back to Whole Foods Market itself. In addition to their anti-major food corporation and anti-conventional medicine rhetoric, anyone venturing into a Whole Foods will find all sorts of sensationalism and mystical nonsense. They sell crystals, magnetic therapy, aromatherapy, they used to sell ear candles (see www.randi.org/jr/02-02-2001.html) but stopped at least at the store I worked at in Texas, I think there was a legal issue but don't recall exactly and even anti-vaccination books and virtually anything else purporting to be alternative or holistic. Did I mention they sell Penta water?
Thankfully I no longer work for their company, and can go home from my current employer with a clean conscience everyday. Incidentally, readers Markus Roder of Oakland, and Peter Ilott, of La Crescenta, California, both received the same response from Julie Merrill, Customer Communications Coordinator for Whole Foods, in answer to their letters of complaint:
With great interest, we await the results of the Research and Support Team....
We've tried here to show our readers just how difficult it can be to reason with those who inquire about the JREF million-dollar challenge, or to discuss the matter with them in a rational fashion. What follows here is an example of a very recent exchange between myself and an inquirer. Bear in mind that such discussions are the special responsibility of Mr. Kramer, to whom I transfer primary inquiries. Occasionally, as with the one I will relate for you here, I try to handle an inquiry when it appears that it could be done succinctly and that Kramer could be spared the brief exchange needed. As you'll see, I soon learned that I was not dealing with a rational person who could express himself clearly, and I also saw that this might be an ideal example of our basic problem communication that I could share with readers. I decided to see it through to its final groan, and document it here. I hope that Kramer will be better understood as a result of your reading what follows, and that his occasional outbursts of dismay and impatience will be more understandable. It began on Wednesday, April 06, 2005. A reader we will call "Sam" wrote with an enigmatic comment:
Not having heard of this recent boon to mankind from woo-woo land, I looked up "EFT" and found this site: www.emofree.com. I suggest that you might want to go there before reading further, to experience the effusive, New Age-flavored, mystical nature of this material. I can assure you, it did not bring me any fears that the JREF million dollars was going to be paid out for such fuzzy ideas, despite the list of 19 MDs and PhDs listed on the "EFT Advisory Board." A brief examination of the "Articles and Ideas" page will suffice to establish the nature of this course, which is offered on CDs or DVDs for US$360. The course inventor, Reverend Gary Craig, is not a health professional and offers EFT from the expertise of an ordained minister and a "personal performance coach." I responded to Sam's question, above, as both Kramer and I so often must, trying to clarify what our correspondent was getting at. I asked:
He answered immediately:
I trust that the reader will share my puzzlement at this point. Sam was obviously familiar with this "tapping" routine, and has probably invested his money in the course. I wrote:
Sam:
This, while not a huge surprise, had to rank with the top silliest notions we've ever come upon. Admittedly impatiently, I informed Sam:
Sam:
That's quite correct, though the therapeutic effects are probably about the same. I still wanted to have a complete protocol for examination, and had to start as we usually must trying to extract the information bit by bit:
He assured me:
I approached with a response that would examine each of his points:
Sam:
I asked about the second point:
Sam:
I asked:
Sam:
I asked about:
Sam:
I asked about:
Sam:
I was getting frustrated with trying to make sense of this dizzy notion. I fired back:
Sam:
Randi:
Sam:
Randi:
For a control, simply arrange to have the "tapping" done in the wrong way just as acupuncture test controls are done by inserting the needles in the wrong spots.... Sam suggested:
Randi:
Sam:
I asked:
Perhaps beginning to see the light, Sam answered:
Then he seemed to give up:
Gee, now I know why nobody has won the million bucks! Somebody makes a claim, and you just call it a silly game and say you're not interested! Everyone else I've explained EFT to understands it. And I even gave you a link to the site that has a manual to download that gives all the details, instructions and claims. I've read claims and counter claims on the net WRT your challenge. Now I know the truth, you are just plain full of it! Randi:
Sam:
Randi:
I'm now suspecting that this is a joke, though April 1 has passed. That anyone who can spell and operate a computer, actually believes that just saying magical words and tapping can cure a headache, has to be unbelievable. Sam:
Randi:
I received no response to this last entry, and told Sam that I was terminating the discussion because we were getting nowhere. I left him with this, regarding our exchange:
Sam answered one last time before I shut off the matter altogether:
I assured him that it would appear, and that's that. Again, I urge you to visit the page, see just how silly it is, and try to be more sympathetic to both Kramer and myself as we slog our way through all this rubbish. Handling it is tough, it's time-consuming, and it's thankless. These people just can't understand reality, cause-and-effect, and how the real world works. Sam's beliefs are mirrored currently by visitors to the crypt where the remains of Pope John Paul II are interred. Typically, a visitor purchases a commemorative medallion, then hands it to a guard at the tomb, asking that the medallion be touched to the enclosure where the body is located; this, in the magical way of thinking, transfers some "vibrations" or "aura" to the medallion and makes it somehow enchanted. That metal disc will be proudly and reverently displayed as having been imbued with some holy power or special quality because it was once in contact with the enclosure in which a set of boxes containing the body of John Paul II, is located.... Sir James Frazer (1854-1941) was a British anthropologist, historian of religion and classical scholar who traced the evolution of ancient myths, human behavior, magic, religion, ritual, and taboos, in his book, The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion, which first appeared in 1890. He would have recognized this sort of magical thinking that Sam has embraced; it's identical to notions that primitive societies adopted and perpetuated, far back in our early history. The "EFT" idea is simply a more recent version of the delusion adapted to the Computer Age. The imaginary miraculous points on the human body, the ritual tapping of these spots accompanied by incantations, are not at all new; they were probably believed in by tribes who had not yet discovered how to write down their ideas. Of course, if this EFT notion can be shown to work, it will win the JREF prize but it appears that it just can't be defined, applied, and tested by any means we can find. Prove me wrong.
NOTICE FOR CAPITAL-AREA RESIDENTS NCAS the National Capital Area Skeptics will be presenting "April ANTI-Fools" an afternoon and evening devoted to not being fooled. It takes place on Saturday, April 30th at the NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency] Auditorium at 1301 East-West Highway, Silver Spring, Maryland. You'll learn about "Scams, Cons, Fakes, and Frauds and How to Avoid Getting Taken," "Spotting Bogus Information on the Web," "Journalism Gone Bad Fakes and Frauds in the Media," "Sideshow Humbuggery," "Pros of the Cons A History of Professional Confidence Games, Swindles and Cheats," and "Street Scams Three Card Monte & the Shell Game"! Such luminaries as Todd Robbins [www.toddrobbins.com] and our very own Jamy Ian Swiss, will be on hand to entertain and inform you. For reservations or more information, please contact: 301-587-3827, e-mail april30@ncas.org or visit on the Web: www.ncas.org/april30.
Next week, the BBC goes bad, where the "voices" come from, and an immortal witch....!
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