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MASS SUICIDE FAILURE IN BELGIUM
According to a recent report in Skeptical Inquirer, major health insurance companies in Belgium have decided to begin covering the costs of homeopathy, in response to popular public demand. This resulted in an "ultimate protest" by a group of skeptics there. Depressed by the willingness of the insurance companies to encourage quackery, 23 Belgian skeptics announced that they would commit mass suicide by drinking a homeopathic cocktail of lethal poisons including arsenic, snake venom, and belladonna. Knowing that the more diluted a homeopathic remedy is, the more powerful it becomes, they even increased the potency by preparing a "30c" solution of the cocktail.
Lest you fear that these brave volunteers were taking chances, that "30c" meant, one part of the poisons mixed with 1060 parts of water, which equates to the same concentration as a solution of one grain of salt in ten thousand billion spheres of water the size of the solar system. All newspapers and TV stations were invited to watch the death agonies of the 23 deranged suicides, who included a number of prominent citizens and professors of medicine, "and a few normal people armed only with common sense."
The media coverage was excellent, but the suicide attempt was a dismal failure, aside from a couple of encouraging burps. Drat!
A reader who wishes to be anonymous submits these observations:
I'm taking a quick moment to express to you what you clearly already know, and that is just how frustrating it is to try to "cure" irrational thoughts and practices. Embarrassingly, various ladies in my family continue to cling to a belief in psychics, guardian angels, and other such bunk. A typical interaction will be that they'll insist I watch something like the recent Primetime special on psychic crime solvers. I'll watch and point out how vague the "facts" are, how one-sided the "reporting" is, and how in the end nothing definitive was solved, and so on. Then I'll follow up later by sending them an explanation of the kind that you [JREF] and Skeptic.com recently offered for the Primetime special. Of course it is met with silence or they'll choose not to read it at all. Skeptics are party-poopers.Often the response is something along the lines of "Oh, who cares, this stuff doesn't really matter." As if what these psychics are doing is just for fun anyway, so we shouldn't put so much time into debunking. This is a defense mechanism — like, "Hey, I don't really take this stuff seriously." But the problem is that they do take it seriously. I had the luck to recently see an e-mail from one of my family members to another. The one was asking the other for the name and rates of a psychic so she can get a reading. The question: if she has another baby, will it be healthy? She (the inquirer) had just turned 40, so health concerns were valid. But to seek the advice of a psychic on such an important matter? It just makes me cringe. If I were to confront her about it, I'm sure she'd say that it's just one of several perspectives that she's getting, along with her medical doctors. She would try to downplay the weight that she's giving it.
I had a thought recently about why people cling so desperately to these beliefs, and I wonder if there's any validity to it. While I certainly believe that people who hold religious belief systems are predisposed to believing other non-rational systems as well, I also wonder if there's possibly some connection between the way we are raised with sports in this country and our propensity to "internalize" beliefs even in the face of overwhelming opposition. Consider:
In sports, growing up, we are not taught to appreciate the opponent's attributes and consider them rationally. We are taught to despise the competition — it's a very black-and-white thing. We learn to identify with the home team — win or lose. When the referee makes a call against our team, he's blind! When the call goes against our opponent, we cheer and even if we know the call was wrong, we'll never admit it because it was in our favor and we want to win — being right doesn't matter. We learn to cheat when the ref is not looking (a punch at the bottom of the football pile, etc.). We learn to try to cover up our violations when we make them (that wasn't a foul!). We learn to defend our goal whatever the cost, and attack theirs relentlessly. We don't learn to work with the opposing team to come to mutual understanding — we learn to exploit their weaknesses by relentless attack. We love the home team, and hate the rivals. For the home team to lose, is for us to lose. For the home team to be wrong, is for us to be wrong. It is for our identity to be damaged, somehow.
I think that I see this learned behavior spill over into politics, for example. Now that we're adults, we apply what we learned as kids to whatever the adult topic is. Perhaps we see this with the extreme polarization in our modern political scene where we have "conservatives" and "liberals" screaming at each other, and nobody seems to be genuinely working towards effective solutions. We seem to have lost the ability to have constructive discussions and healthy debate. We only know how to cling to our own black-and-white loyalties and beliefs. Thinking back on my own experience, I know that I wasn't exposed to anything even remotely resembling critical thinking until college, but in K-12 I was groomed in an intense sports-centered environment — very black-and-white. We were always the good guys, and they were always the bad guys, period. Boys and girls alike had plenty of opportunity to learn this way of thinking — of seeing the world. Of behaving. That's what we learned how to do, so now that's what we do.So while I would never propose that the cause of this type of irrational thinking can be traced to one source, and I also recognize that sports can and does teach many valuable lessons, I do wonder if a strong contributing factor, perhaps an enabler, is the way that we learn to view sports growing up. And the other side-effect of a society-wide overdose on sports (which I believe we're in right now, along with celebrity worship and a few other things) is the tremendous waste of time — time that is not being spent thinking seriously about the role of science in society, or about what's really going on in the world — a very serious world in which religious zealots fly passenger planes into skyscrapers and expect to be rewarded for eternity in paradise.
Reader Dr. Clay Jones writes:
I like children, which is evident in the fact that I am a pediatric resident at Vanderbilt University. I polled some of my compatriots and was shocked at how many were unaware of what "homeopathic medicine" really entails. They thought it was just another word for "natural" or "herbal" remedies. They at least knew, for the most part, that the placebo effect is at work with these so-called therapies.
I recently had a run-in with my cat's veterinarian, who prescribed cantharis 30c, a well-known homeopathic "medicine," for a urinary tract infection. Thankfully, she also prescribed a real medicine as well, or the conversation would have been much shorter. She had no idea what the dilution factors such as "9x" or "30c" meant. In fact, she thought the fact that this preparation was "30c" meant it was more concentrated and thus better for my unsuspecting cat. But she reassured me that there are no side effects from cantharis, which is also known as Spanish Fly. I simply stated that of course there are no side effects from a homeopathic dilution, because there is no cantharis in this cantharis. I explained the "like cures like" philosophy and dilution factors of homeopathy, and argued that while the placebo effect will not work on cats, it will work on cat owners.She's a believer due to some suspect anecdotal evidence, and of course was not swayed. I like this vet and will not switch to another, but many vets, according to this one, only use homeopathic medicine. Scary, to say the least, and I don't even like cats.
I have very recently decided, after seeing your interview with Penn and Teller, to devote a large portion of my energy to dealing with the ignorance that abounds in my chosen profession when it comes to "alternative medicine" and pseudoscience. While only in the first year of my residency, I have already come across parents who refuse vaccinations for absurd reasons they found on the internet, and with acupuncture-practicing chiropractors. I feel that this will only get worse as I progress and that there needs to be more people like you — and now like myself — who are aware. I promise I will keep up the fight.
Reader Oke Millett — "usually from Vancouver, BC but currently in Afghanistan" — asks us for some guidance:
I thought I'd share with you some of the challenges I face in my current line of work — I work in International aid, specifically Taxation and Customs program reform. I have spent a few years in Dili, East Timor, and am currently working in Kabul, Afghanistan.The Timorese and Afghani people are very different, the Timorese being predominantly Roman Catholic combined with a healthy dose of Animist beliefs, and the Afghans are Islamic. It is a major challenge for me as a skeptic to work in these communities where so much of the daily life of residents is governed by religious doctrine.
My role here is not to change anyone's mind, so I try actively to avoid discussions on religious philosophy. However, in both countries, the residents enjoy learning about their expatriate colleagues and ask incessant questions about one's beliefs, one's family, etc.
In East Timor, access to the Internet was in its infancy, and the Timorese people consumed all the content they could find. Unfortunately, their "baloney-detection skills" were not well-developed, and I had to direct a number of them to the JREF archives to look up John Edward, as several of my Timorese friends were taken in by reports of his cold reading "abilities." I can only hope that they are applying rigor to ideas and discoveries as they broaden their horizons.
I have had a number of fascinating discussions here in Kabul with Afghans on the nature of Islam and my own skepticism. My Afghan friends here are shocked by my denial of the existence of a god, and simply cannot grasp the concept that there is another way to look at the world. Much of the legal framework governing the country here is bound in religious law, which poses a major challenge. For example, the sale and possession of alcohol is prohibited by law. (The number of excuses one hears on this topic is highly amusing — I have yet to meet an Afghan who has not tried alcohol at some point or another. Perhaps none of them "inhale"?) When setting up customs and taxation regimes, the typical western approach of levying taxes on the importation, sale and distribution of alcohol poses a major hurdle, as the government does not recognize the commodity, and therefore will not accept revenue from prohibited goods!
In both countries, I also note an alarming number of "alternative healers," snake-oil salesmen, and various pseudo-scientific entrepreneurs setting up shop. People in East Timor and Afghanistan are desperate to seek help for a variety of medical and social ailments, and it is disheartening to see practitioners of homeopathy, "reiki healing," etc., take advantage of the already disadvantaged.
It seems to me that the challenges facing skeptics in North America/Europe are at a completely different level than what is faced in developing/re-emerging countries. The majority of people living in places like the United States, Canada, the UK, etc., cannot make a defensible argument (in my opinion) that they have been conditioned to accept a certain religious view from birth that dictates how they perceive the world, exclusive to any other ideas. Certainly in the schools I attended and in the family I was raised, I received an education in a variety of beliefs, attitudes and doctrines and was free to make up my own mind as to what I chose to believe or disbelieve. I believe that the majority of people are similarly raised, even if they are encouraged/biased from an early age to identify as Catholic/Protestant/Wiccan/whatever. Even if not, there are ways and means for people in these countries to obtain information and to make an informed decision.
Randi comments: Oke, it's not only access to information that provides an escape from superstition, but courage, as well. Just because Westerners have ample access to educational and informational sources, doesn't mean that they will automatically jump to embrace the answers provided. That also takes guts, to fly in the face of most of the rest of society, of the family, of employers and others on whom personal success may depend. Can you imagine an American politician allowing it to be known that his/her beliefs do not include a deity?
In the emerging/re-emerging world, however, there is not this luxury. Persecution, and indeed, your personal safety in some of these places, forces a framework of beliefs down ones throat. I would like to hear your thoughts and opinions on what can be done to try and make a positive change, and I'm not referring here to "going after religious beliefs," but more to encourage critical thought. To build up the baloney-detection kits of people who are the most vulnerable to crackpot ideas and pseudo-scientific claptrap.
Agreed, it can be more physically dangerous to oppose or disengage from generally-accepted ideas in other parts of the world. What's needed, both here and there, is a separation of religious and state functions, which we in the USA like to believe is one of our rights but is merely an idea that has been more and more ignored and trampled on in recent years.
Take a look at the item by "Andrew H" up ahead, to see someone who successfully managed this separation, but teeters on the edge of mysticism….
Reader Doug Krueger tells us:
Although I am an atheist, I teach a World Religions class at the Northwest Arkansas Community College, so I know a little about Islam. My degrees are in philosophy, so I also teach philosophy courses. By the way, my World Religions course is dynamite. My students really enjoy it, as I treat all religions the same way. I also draw many parallels between their own brand of religion (around here, it's usually Southern Baptist) and other religions.For example, at the beginning of the course we study "primitive" or basic religions, which are pretechnological religions and superstitions. I show them a vial of anti-black-magic perfume, which I bought in Mexico. It is part of curanderismo, the practices related to Mexican witchcraft. A little of this perfume behind the ears will keep evil at bay. The students have a good laugh at that. It's so silly, isn't it? When they finish laughing, I whip out a bottle of holy water from a local church. Attached to it is a tract that the church hands out with the holy water. Apparently the holy water does the same thing as the anti-black-magic perfume. The little tract states that the holy water can "drive away devils" and that "the Devil hates holy water because of its power over him."
The perfume smells much better, though.
Reader Andrew H. comments:
I've enjoyed your site very much since I found it, after hearing your name mentioned several times on the Coast to Coast AM show a few months ago. I now read your commentaries every Friday. You've added a lot of balance to my thought processes. While I may not agree with you on all things, I agree with Carl Sagan's quote on your site very much. I'm darn glad that there are others out there (like yourself), who combat the gross amount of nonsense and ignorance that is generated by the liberal, alternative community and the world of religious fervor. I grew up under the heavy yoke of religion and its mental slavery to fear, and the economic domination of the church in the name of God.Having graduated from high school only four years ago, these are events are still very fresh in my memory. I had to fight to attend college, because it would supposedly "lead me away from the faith." Guess what, it did. I went to a Christian college and left after one year. I was so shocked by all the hypocrisy of these so-called "godly people" that within a few months about ninety percent of my "faith" was gone. It took me about another year, but I soon lost the rest of these superstitions.
I don't know what kind of experiences you've come across from those who grew up being forced to swallow the heavy poison of religion. These beliefs need to be eradicated from society and especially from impressionable children. I can't begin to tell you the years of 24/7 mental anguish fearing demons, sin, pleasure, Satan, an angry God, Hell, or some other form of damnation in which one is not even sure of how they offended the Deity to deserve such a thing in the first place. When you're being fed this propaganda from the time you're born it makes it very hard to fight through this nonsense; this is a very unacknowledged form of child abuse, in my opinion. By about the age of ten, I knew something was terribly wrong with all this and I've been fighting my way out ever since. I'm very grateful to find others like yourself who have overcome and continue to combat these fear ridden lunatics that try to subjugate our society to their truly malevolent goals. What I went through was awful, but I'm sure it doesn't hold a candle to the witch hunts and burnings-at-the-stake of the past. So again, I'm very grateful that you continue to fight these superstitions and oppose those who would have us descending into another dark age.
That said, I'm writing you specifically about the excerpt from [last] week's commentary entitled "Another Possible Modus" concerning ASP (Aware Sleep Paralysis). This is where our views may diverge, but while I vigorously maintain that the world of exoteric religion offers us very little other than suffering, fear and domination by the clergy, priests, clerics, etc., certain mental and physical exercises found within many of the lesser known or so-called esoteric belief systems such as Yoga, Kabala, Alchemy, etc., can have profound effects and even benefits (not all profound effects are beneficial [smile]) for those who intelligently practice them. I personally exercise, diet and meditate regularly in accord with some of these traditions, because of the benefits it gives me in terms of mental and physical health. I sometimes think it is the only way I've remained sane through all of the religious crap I've endured.
Randi comments: Agreed, to a limited extent, Andrew, but my major concern is that when mystical attributes are given these philosophies — and Kabala is certainly mystical! — they become dangerous because they can induce superstitious, paranormal beliefs — beliefs to which you seem immune….
My point in mentioning all of this is not to argue the benefits of a rather nebulous and broad subject, but to discuss what I've experienced through it. I've been meditating for some time and have experienced the buzzing sensation that is mentioned in this article on ASP several hundred times. It can be induced though many methods, deep breathing, focusing on certain points within your body, entering the upper stages of sleep while still consciously meditating. This buzzing sensation can result in paralysis, usually starting in the facial muscles and then the forearms, hands, abdominal muscles and eventually the whole body. I've seen bright lights moving around the room while in this state, usually in the periphery of my vision. Once I had a bright stationary light start to shine at about a thirty degree angle above my straightforward line of sight, while I was in one of these states. I've experienced many things while doing serious meditation.I say serious, because I'm not doing superfluous things such as meditating on purple pyramids or pink crystals. When I meditate I'm attempted to reach into these different areas of the mind and explore what I can each time. I'm a psychology student and these things absolutely fascinate me. How far do these things go? Many of these experiences have very simple, straight forward explanations, although I find it humorous when some individuals pray or work themselves into a frenzy and see lights or others such experiences that they quickly attribute to something mystical, as opposed to nerve impulses on portions of your brain that are associated with vision, induced through mental stress or exercise.
It seems that so much of this nonsense is generated by just one wish: average ordinary people, trying to find a reason (no matter how far fetched it may be, so long as it makes sense to them) that they are already special and shouldn't have to do anything else in order to be so. It's the old pain-versus-pleasure mentality, if I'm psychic or can see ghosts, then hey, I'm better than you already and have an excuse to be lazy. I guess a fool is always wise in their own eyes.
I'm of the opinion that we're all pretty special, in some way or another, if only we'll let the smart stuff show itself without assuming that it's some sort of a divine gift.
We reported last week that after a three-year trial, our good friend Piero Angela has won a legal battle with the Italian homeopaths. Here's a more full account. The Court of the city of Catania acquitted the popular TV host from the charges of defamation brought against him because his TV science show Superquark originally aired on July 11, 2000, had included an item about homeopathy, where Angela criticized this "alternative medicine."
Following the airing of the show, an article in the science journal Nature [412, 261, 19 July 2001] stated:
A leading Italian television presenter is being sued by two homeopathy organizations for failing to include their views in a broadcast of his prime-time science program Superquark.Millions of Italians use homeopathic products — which purport to treat diseases using vanishingly small doses — and the homeopaths claim that the broadcast was unfair and could threaten their business. They complain that Piero Angela, who produces his own show, selected only interviewees who were critical of homeopathy for a show that was broadcast last July. But Angela has received strong backing from the scientific community. He says that he has received many letters of support from individual researchers, including Nobel prizewinners Renato Dulbecco and Rita Levi-Montalcini. Angela says that Italian public television archives show that 14 times more programs had been broadcast advocating homeopathy than criticizing it. His program sought to redress the balance, he says. He also argues that it is not his job to tell viewers what they want to hear: "Science is not like philosophy, where viewers can listen to both sides and decide for themselves," he says. "Science cannot be decided on by the vote of viewers."
One of the guests on Angela's show was Antonio Cassone, head of the department of bacteriology at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Italy's national health institute, who is a member of the ministry of health's ad hoc committee on homeopathy. On the show, Cassone says, he merely offered the opinion that safety information should be provided on all homeopathic products, and that efficacy information should be provided on anything that is to be injected. "I would have had no objection to a homeopath sharing the show," he says, "because it would have been even more convincing to the viewers that arguments of homeopaths against providing information are untenable." But he fully supports the way Angela produced his program. The suits, one civil and one criminal, have been brought by the Catania-based Italian Association of Medical Homeopathy and the Rome-based Italian Federation of Associations of Medical Homeopathy. The cases should come to court in the autumn.
Well, they did, and the drawn-out trial lasted for three years! At the conclusion, the judge found that the content of the show "could not be in any way considered offensive or defamatory, since it only presented facts that are perfectly matched by reality." Angela's lawyer stated to the press that he had "simply stated the plain truth, and backed it with scientific arguments." Another important aspect of this judgment is that the Court not only acquitted Angela, but has de facto expressed a sentence against homeopathy. The Judge said that:
Science is not a simple category of opinion. The international scientific community has always requested scientific proofs from homeopathic medicine in order to validate it, but those requests have gone unanswered. Homeopathic medicine lacks entirely this kind of solid foundation, and remains essentially a medicine of emotions.
Mr. Angela added that the sentence also explicitly protected the freedom of the press:
A TV show like Superquark must give voice to theories and practices that have already gained the favorable opinion of the scientific community. . . . [I] would air the same show again, since the real danger for those that choose homeopathy is that they may end up neglecting those traditional cures whose effectiveness has already been tested.
We thank correspondent Flavio Rizzardi of Padua, for this welcome information.
Reader Carmen Margiatto asks, re the "Hollow Earth" notions of Rodney Cluff, discussed here last week:
Has anyone ever brought to the attention of Mr. Cluff the very basic fact of physics that the net gravitational field inside a hollow sphere is zero? This means that all the missing tribes of Israel, the UFO headquarters, the city of Enoch and all others are all floating around in an environment not unlike that inside the space shuttle. And don't let off those who offer as an excuse on "offset region" from the true center, as a way to allow for some net gravity, as the "Inner Sun" would then simply fall onto all those that inhabit same.How does a brain that invents such nonsense make it past age 2?
Well, Cluff didn't even invent the idea, he just chooses to fall for it. Go to Google.com and do a search on "Hollow Earth" to see how pervasive this nonsense is, and how often it's been re-invented.
And reader Jon Bartlett tells us that courtesy of the Hanover College Department of History, you can go to http://history.hanover.edu/texts/voltaire/volastro.html to read what Voltaire said in his Philosophical Dictionary on the subject of astrology. Do so, to observe just how well this intellect handled this ancient flim-flam.
The graphic representation of information is an art that has always interested me. Here's an example of just how badly a graph can be presented; leaving the design of such items to artists can be catastrophic. First, look at the "gavels" version, which appeared in USA Today recently. Glance at it and decide — from the graphics alone — how much more the "1992" gavel-image on the left shows, than the "2001" gavel image over on the right. Then look at a proper "bar" graph, as also shown here to the right. Yes, the numbers are the same, but it's much clearer in the bar graph that the left-hand (1992) bar represents less than twice as much as the right-hand (2001) one! Communicating data isn't that hard to manage, folks!
Celebrity Poker Showdown premiered last week on Bravo Channel. The JREF will be part of it, on the episode showing Thursday, July 15th, 2004, with players Angie Dickinson, Jeff Gordon, Kathy Griffin, Penn Jillette, and Ron Livingston. It's at 9 p.m.
Next week here on the page, some quotes from Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay, news from Australia, a discussion of the electronic "QXCI" gismo, and much more on "Aware Sleep Paralysis," among other subjects….!
