It had to happen. Almost anything popular will be taken by the conspiracy fans out there to be a scheme for bringing about the end of he world and/or the extermination of our species. Nothing seems to happen for ordinary reasons. Nothing is just what it seems. Nothing is without sinister origins.
There have been many instances of products or companies falling prey to rumor campaigns. Remember Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority? I used to display a bumper sticker asserting that it was neither. Well, Falwell raised a big fuss about the Teletubby character Tinky Winky because it's purple — the "gay pride" color, he says, though I thought that was lavender (?) — carries a bag, and has an antenna shaped like a triangle — the gay pride symbol. Despite the facts that the triangle was upside-down, the bag looked just like the sort of schoolbag carried by students worldwide, and the Roman emperors also wore purple, Jerry got a lot of media space for his alarm. It amounted to nothing. For years, Procter & Gamble battled the rumor that its 132-year-old trademark, which shows the Man in the Moon and 13 stars representing the United States original colonies, is a symbol of Satanism and devil worship. They finally caved in and changed the symbol.
Now it's Nintendo's turn. When Uri Geller (remember him, the spoon-bender?) announced to a bored media that he was going to sue the company because they had a character that had offended his sensitive feelings, that fell into the cracks somewhere. (Do a search on our page to find November 24, 2000, and read about that exciting item.) But now a very large segment of humanity is stirred up over Nintendo for real, and this may actually mean something.
The word "Pokemon" is short for "pocket monster," and is the name given to the many fictional creatures found in a series of Nintendo video games, as well as related trading cards and cartoons. There are 250 types of Pokemon characters, and each has a specific name such as Pikachu or Charmander. It began in Egypt, when a newspaper assured readers that Pokemon is a Jewish company and that the names of Pokemon characters are all blasphemous. All that was news to Japan.
Pokemon itself is not new to controversy. In 1999, when the Pokemon craze reached its peak and was a billion-dollar-a-year business, Nintendo discontinued a card bearing an image similar to a swastika after the Jewish Anti-Defamation League complained. It also has been criticized in Mexico by a Christian church, which called it "demonic." In Malaysia, clerics are studying the religious offenses of the video game. In the Middle East, of course, there's more involved than the product itself; such notions serve to widen the chasm between Arab and Jew. Many schools in the United States have banned Pokemon from classrooms — though the reasons for that may be more properly grounded.
Growing up seems to be more difficult than we thought.....
Well, in March I sent a letter to the University of Arizona offering them a grant of one million dollars if Professor Gary E. R. Schwartz would provide evidence for his recent claims, and I promised to publish that letter if it was ignored for 30 days. It's been 30 days and another seven since I sent it, so here's what I mailed them:
Richard Imwalle, President
University of Arizona Foundation
P.O. Box 210109
Tucson AZ 85721-0109March 27, 2001
Dear President Imwalle:
I write you from the office of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I am James Randi, the founder and president.
As I'm sure you are aware, international attention has recently been given to research on "human energy systems" conducted at the University of Arizona by Dr. Gary E. R. Schwartz. The general interpretation of that research, though understandably hyperbolized by the media, is that evidence may have been produced to show that some persons have the ability to communicate with the spirits of deceased persons. This is a subject that greatly interests this Foundation.
To learn about the concerns and interests of the JREF, you may visit our website at www.randi.org.
This Foundation offers a million-dollar challenge to those who believe they can offer evidence of paranormal, occult, or supernatural matters. Dr. Schwartz has expressed no interest in taking this prize on behalf of the University, because of the terminology used. He writes:
Randi's prize is for "paranormal" research. We do not use the term "paranormal" or "supernatural." We use the term "human energy systems" which is based upon contemporary physics and systems science....Randi could always claim that our findings were not "paranormal" using these theories, and therefore not award the prize.Dr. Schwartz also has told us that:
... we do not apply for prizes. We conduct research. It is a fact that we apply for grants....The University of Arizona will accept gifts for credible things by anyone, including us.President Imwalle, I assure you that the JREF would never choose to withhold the prize by taking refuge in the terminology, as Dr. Schwartz suggests. And we understand that the word "prize" might be rather unsatisfactory to describe an academic goal, though the word "Nobel" does spring to mind. However, Dr. Schwartz has drawn the lines clearly, and we feel an obligation to try to meet his needs in the matter.
To circumvent these problems, this Foundation will include "human energy systems" as an acceptable term to be included among those for which we will award our prize, subject of course to a more detailed description of what that term would encompass in any specified protocol. In addition, we will choose to re-designate our "prize" as a "grant," so that it might be more favorably considered.
The amount in question is one million U.S. dollars (US$1,000,000) presently held in the form of negotiable bonds. We are prepared to offer this grant to the University of Arizona, to be used for any purpose, without qualification, that the Directors of the University may designate. This offer is subject to the following conditions:
1. The data already gathered by the Schwartz group (transcripts, videos, audio recordings, notes, protocols, etc.) should be submitted to an independent Qualified Panel (see below) for evaluation.
2. Dr. Schwartz and/or his co-workers should be prepared to respond to specific inquiries made by the Qualified Panel following their examination of the data submitted to them.
3. Should that data and the responses to any questions be satisfactory to the Qualified Panel, the JREF will agree that the "preliminary examination" as designated in our official offer (see www.randi.org/research/challenge.html) has been accomplished. The next step would be to refine a protocol that would be satisfactory to the Qualified Panel and to the needs of Dr. Schwartz, to proceed with the formal test of the "human energy systems" phenomena.
As for the "Qualified Panel" we suggest, it would include these persons:
1. Stanley Krippner, Ph.D./psychology, Northwestern University. Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies, Saybrook Institute, San Francisco. Member of the American Society for Psychical Research. Author, and President of the Parapsychological Association, 1983.
2. Marvin Minsky, Ph.D./mathematics, Princeton. Mathematician, educator, author. Fellow of I.E.E.E., American Academy of Sciences, New York Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Science. Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, MIT.
3. Ray Hyman, Ph.D./psychology, Johns Hopkins. Professor emeritus of psychology, University of Oregon. Author and founding member of the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. Consultant, U.S. Government, Department of Defense, CIA, inquiries into "remote viewing."
4. Michael Shermer, Ph.D./History of Science, Claremont Graduate School. Editor and publisher of Skeptic Magazine, columnist for Scientific American Magazine, multiple author, host of the Caltech Science Lecture Series.
This is our suggested "Qualified Panel" of Ph.D. scientists who have agreed with this Foundation to examine the data gathered by Dr. Schwartz. They are all informed, willing, specialists, who I believe will be acceptable to Dr. Schwartz. I, James Randi, would not be involved in any evaluations made by the Panel.
Dr. Imwalle, this is a legitimate offer made by the James Randi Educational Foundation and its Board of Directors. We are genuinely interested in knowing more about the research data generated by Dr. E. R. Schwartz, and we feel that the public and the media should be properly informed of the quality and extent of the work being done at the University, rather than making uninformed assumptions. And, we believe that Dr. Schwartz will agree with us that we should "follow the data where they lead."
I await your response with great interest. Thank you for considering this suggestion.
Sincerely,
James Randi
William Grewe-Mullins, registrar at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History, writes:
Public Television in Atlanta is suffering the same Newageification that you mention in your 20 April commentary. Pledge weeks are particularly notorious, chock full of [Wayne] Dyer and [Deepak] Chopra, along with something that makes me very furious, Fung Shue, or however it is spelled "Chinese Geomancy." There is a program that treats this nonsense as if it were hard science, and they play it again and again and again, with many pledge breaks expounding how real it is, and that it really, really works. Didn't PBS bring us Nova, and Cosmos and Scientific American Frontiers? Wasn't it, until recently, a bastion of sanity and scientific reason in a sea of nonsense? I, and many others like me, are not going to give any pledge money to the station, as long as this continues. I know that the good programs will suffer, but if we continue to pay for this garbage, they will think we support it. I'd hate to hear what Carl Sagan would think of this situation, but I think I can safely predict it without John Edward's help.....!
I gave up supporting my local PBS outlet for quite the same reason. Local PBS outlets seem unaware of the intended content of their parent company. My complaints to the South Florida station have never, ever, been acknowledged or answered, so I guess they just don't care. They should. They insult our intelligence and ignore the basics of education and information when they reach out for money. Until they change that attitude, they'll have nothing from me. And, as I mentioned recently, radio station WLRN here is sponsoring "NewAge" claptrap, along with the Miami Herald, a powerful newspaper that used to support education, too.
It seems that the "Seti At Home" project we've endorsed here, now has some competition. Click in on http://www.phobe.com/yeti/project.html and see "Yeti At Home." Good buddy Andrew Skolnick alerted us to this. Enjoy!
Oh boy. Seems I need to back up a bit on the Suzanne Somers item I ran here. A reader says:
I hope Mr. Randi will do a correction on his inaccurate comments about Suzanne Somers' cancer because the facts as I've seen reported on Dateline (even her doctors were interviewed) are that she had the tumor removed a year ago and is cancer-free right now. The chemotherapy would have been a second course safety measure to help prevent any return; hence, her decision to try a different approach, which she says she will abandon if need be. I'm suggesting that a correction be issued because Mr. Randi's extreme comments (in this instance) gives fuel to those who say that we skeptics don't even bother to do research before condemning someone or some new idea.
Right on, friend. I was unaware of this, and I'm happy to know that things are better than I reported. But I did check with an oncologist, and she told me that the type of problem that Ms. Somers has, can often result in metastasis, and follow-up chemotherapy is highly recommended. Live long and prosper, Suzanne. But giving yourself thirty-seven abdominal injections of worthless homeopathic quackery every week, seems a bit much to bear.
While we're on the subject, the use of "Iscador," the substance Ms. Somers is using, was first prescribed by Dr. Rudolf Steiner (18611925), the founder of Anthroposophy, a religion/philosophy that believes in tree- and rock-spirits, as well as astrology. The Steiner Schools, often known as the "Waldorf Schools" in Europe, are favored by monied parents who often don't know just what is taught to their children in that environment. Steiner said that the human body is subject to various forces,"lower organizing forces" and "higher organizing forces". It's sort of a Teutonic version of yin-and-yang. He believed that the balance between these forces determined an individual's susceptibility to cancer, a serious imbalance promoting the development of the cancer. He proposed that mistletoe preparations such as Iscador could stimulate the "higher organizing forces" that he believed were deficient in cancer patients.
"Therapeutic" magnets, so often discussed here, often resemble refrigerator magnets, though without the decorative buttons and ribbons, and have the magnetic ability to pull in over $4 billion in sales worldwide in 1999, half a billion of that in the U.S., we're told. I just saw a double-page spread in an airlines catalog offering neck, wrist, abdominal, and ankle magnets to cure everything from PMS to overweight. Did you ever get the notion that you're in the wrong business? I get that notion frequently.....
The St. John's Wort item of last week got much attention when I commented on it here. The Wall Street Journal had a serious objection to the report that the very popular herbal remedy had been found ineffective against severe depression. Reader Paul Murray notes:
St John's Wort, as I understand it, does contain an antidepressant. Likewise, willow bark really does contain aspirin and foxglove a heart stimulant. In fact, many of our medications were originally botanical. The fault in naturopathy lies not in claiming that their remedies work, but in claiming that mainstream medicine doesn't, or in the weaker claim that their medicines are better because they are natural.
{What we know as "aspirin" is acetylsalicylic acid, which is found, as Paul points out, in the bark of the willow tree. But the aspirin we consume is not obtained that way, being made synthetically. The stimulant present in the weed foxglove, is digitalis, also synthetically produced.)
Why take foxglove when you can take the active chemical in foxglove in a precisely measured dose? The only reason for taking the whole plant is if you think that nature put the plant there expressly for the benefit of man. An amusing notion, when evolution suggests that the reason these chemicals are there is that they are poisons [to deter animals from ingesting or destroying the host].Homeopathy is in a similar situation in relation to modern medicine. One observes that a person who gets measles will not get it again. Homeopathy tuns this into an array of medications based on notions of "like cures like." Modern medicine does systematic research and turns this same observation into vaccines. And yet the practice homeopaths are frequently most virulent about is vaccination, the modern version of their own mediaeval notions — "like cures like" and dilution.
In both cases, science has taken the basic observation spawning both fields (the observed efficacy of certain plants, the phenomenon of acquired immunity), and turned them into useful medicine. This is what applied science does. The root problem with fringe medicine is distrust of the processes of science and technology. Perhaps it's a lack of understanding, or math phobia. Perhaps there's a philosophical clash between people who think you can solve a real-world problem by thinking about it and spinning theories, and those who think you also have to try stuff out and see what happens. Between the rationalists (misleading word, that) and the empiricists.
Reader Nick Gessler had this inquiry:
I was waiting at the pharmacy in Rite Aid (Los Angeles) to pick up a prescription, and was shocked to find I was shoulder-to-shoulder with an aisle-end 6-foot high display of Boiron Homeopathic Medicines. I decided to read the labels but could find no explanation of their measurement of what they call their "active ingredients." Their "C" values were clear but not explained. Could someone please explain again what the "C" values mean in terms of dilutions? Lots of stuff at 6C and 30C. I asked the pharmacist (where did she get her working papers?) and she said (quite sincerely I believe) that she didn't know anything about these measurements. I was amused looking at their cough syrup's "Active ingredients" list and then comparing it to their "Inactive ingredients" where I found "honey" listed. Seems to me they've got these categories reversed. Honey therapy....They say on their labels that their products conform to the "Homeopathic Pharmacopeia of the United States." Who publishes that tome? They give a toll-free number of 1-800-264-7661. Their French website is http://www.boiron.fr/
Can someone give me a crash course on their measurement of dilutions so I can relate this to the store manager? I know this was discussed before, but the calculation is still unclear to me...
I responded, and I'll share that with you all:
Nick: You will note asterisks (*) used in some of the following numbers. Their meaning will be made clear.
The traditional method of making homeopathic dilutions is successively diluting the "active ingredient" 1 to 10, and repeating. A one-in-ten dilution would be referred to as, "1X" but it is NEVER used. Diluting one part of the 1X solution in 10 parts of water, would give one-in-one-hundred, or a "2X" dilution. Thus, for example, a "6X" dilution has one part in 1,000,000 parts of water.
However, the more popular, "modern," method of diluting is to put one part into 100 parts of water to get a "1C" solution, then proceeding as above. Diluting the 1C solution again, gives a "2C" dilution, or one part in 10,000 parts of water. And, of course, a "3C" dilution is one in 1,000,000 parts of water. And so on.
Thus, your "6C" and "30C" dilutions that you inquired about, are respectively, one part in 1,000,000,000,000 parts of water, and one part in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,0*00,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 parts of water.
Ah, but wait. We uninformed laymen might think that a 6C dilution is equal to a 12X dilution. Not so, because they were made differently! The same amount of "active ingredient" is there (or not there) but the therapeutic claims are not the same!
Because of this, most homeopathic preparations are made today in 10X,and 30X, and 100X "potencies" for each ingredient! That means that part of the preparation has a concentration of one part of "active ingredient" in 10,000,000,000, another part has a concentration of one part in 1,000,000,0*00,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, and a third part has a concentration of one part in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0*00,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 parts of water!
Incredible, but true.
Of course, after 23 such dilutions (that position marked by an asterisk) there is only possibly one atom/molecule of the "ingredient" present.... That's why arsenic, lead, and mercury are often used as "active ingredients" in homeopathic preparations. They're simply not present!
"Dave W" offers this:
A thought struck me the other day. For some reason I don't recall, the movie Dragonslayer (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0082288) came to mind, and I remembered this quote from near the beginning of the film (Hodge is the Wizard's old servant):
Hodge: Ah, so it's a test you're looking for. We don't do tests!Tyrian: No, of course not. They never do tests. Not many real deeds either. Oh, conversation with your grandmother's shade in a darkened room, the odd love potion or two, but comes a doubter, why, then it's the wrong day, the planets are not in line, the entrails are not favorable, or "we don't do tests"!
Tyrian is, of course, quite the evil character. How often, I wonder, are skeptics portrayed in fiction as this kind of nasty person? More often than not, going by memory.
Speaking of tests, will someone check my phone calls to see if Sylvia Browne has called me? It's been 59 days, now, after all!
No? No message from Sylvia? Strange indeed!
Finally, Mr. Geller is at it again, improving our human lot with his divine powers. Seems the retractable roof on the famous Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, has been stuck open for almost a month now. Geller is presently summoning the collective mind-power of all Britain to repair the roof. I suggest, knowing myself how best to achieve such a miracle, that everyone should put out the "vibes" just as the repair is being completed. Everything is in the timing.....
Okay, the angle-between-the-lines puzzle last week was well and truly solved, first by
Paul Nawrocki, and is explained in the illustration here. Several readers tried to get trigonometry to do it, but fell back on basic examination to produce the answer. Many agreed with me that it is a very interesting problem.
This week, I'm producing this entire page-change on Saturday, six days before it goes up, since I'm off to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, to Santa Clara, California, and to Tucson, Arizona, right through the week. Thus a rather tame puzzle:
Give me three words that have no rhyme in English. All of them are both nouns and adjectives, all well-known. No, no proper names — though one of them is used as such, aside from its more common usage....
