Skepticblog

The following excerpt is from the Prologue to my new book, The Believing Brain: From Ghosts, Gods, and Aliens to Conspiracies, Economics, and Politics—How the Brain Constructs Beliefs and Reinforces Them as Truths. The Prologue is entitled “I Want to Believe.” The book synthesizes 30 years of research to answer the questions of how and why we believe what we do in all aspects of our lives, from our suspicions and superstitions to our politics, economics, and social beliefs. LEARN MORE about the book.

Order the hardcover from shop.skeptic.com

According to a 2009 Harris Poll of 2,303 adult Americans, when people are asked to “Please indicate for each one if you believe in it, or not,” the following results were revealing:¹

• 82% believe in God
• 76% believe in miracles
• 75% believe in Heaven
• 73% believe in Jesus is God
  or the Son of God
• 72% believe in angels
• 71% believe in survival
  of the soul after death
• 70% believe in the
  resurrection of Jesus Christ
• 61% believe in hell
• 61% believe in
  the virgin birth (of Jesus)
• 60% believe in the devil
• 45% believe in Darwin’s
  Theory of Evolution
• 42% believe in ghosts
• 40% believe in creationism
• 32% believe in UFOs
• 26% believe in astrology
• 23% believe in witches
• 20% believe in reincarnation

Wow. More people believe in angels and the devil than believe in the theory of evolution. That’s disturbing. And yet, such results should not surprise us as they match similar survey findings for belief in the paranormal conducted over the past several decades.² And it is not just Americans. The percentages of Canadians and Britons who hold such beliefs are nearly identical to those of Americans.³ For example, a 2006 Readers Digest survey of 1,006 adult Britons reported that 43 percent said that they can read other people’s thoughts or have their thoughts read, more than half said that they have had a dream or premonition of an event that then occurred, more than two-thirds said they could feel when someone was looking at them, 26 percent said they had sensed when a loved-one was ill or in trouble, and 62 percent said that they could tell who was calling before they picked up the phone. In addition, a fifth said they had seen a ghost and nearly a third said they believe that Near-Death Experiences are evidence for an afterlife.⁴
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The Italian Government has charged their top seismologists with manslaughter because they failed to predict the devastating 2009 earthquake, which killed 308 people. The scientists, and the seismology community, are stunned – primarily because it’s impossible to predict earthquakes.

On it’s surface the story is pretty sensational and downright silly:

Judge Giuseppe Romano Gargarella said that the seven defendants had supplied “imprecise, incomplete and contradictory information,” in a press conference following a meeting held by the committee 6 days before the quake, reported the Italian daily Corriere della Sera.

That may have something to do with the fact that earthquake science is imprecise, incomplete, and often produces contradictory information. The scientists and their colleagues are calling this a witch hunt and warn that it will have a chilling effect on scientists, a very real concern.

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Just last week, a strange phenomenon occurred which casts light on the mindset of people inclined to believe in the paranormal. Among the Top 10  best-selling books this week is Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top-Secret Military Base by “journalist” Annie Jacobsen. In the genre of crazy books about aliens and UFOs, this one is the nadir. Not only does it recycle all the debunked garbage about Area 51 and the Roswell “alien crash,” but it strains the limits of credulity by claiming the Roswell crash wasn’t an alien craft, nor the weather balloon that the evidence has really shown was behind the myth. No, the Roswell crash was actually a Nazi-inspired Soviet aircraft sent by Stalin to make us think we were being invaded by aliens, and the “aliens” are malformed teenagers resulting from genetic experiments of Nazi doctor Josef Mengele. At last, a crazy paranormal story complete with UFOs, Area 51, Roswell, conspiracy, Communists, and Nazis, all rolled up into one!

Her evidence for this bizarre story? It came allegedly a “retired unnamed engineer” from the government contractor EG&G (now part of URS Corporation). No one asked the obvious question about what a retired aerospace engineer would be doing examining bodies, or how he would know they were genetically and surgically altered. In fact, we didn’t even know the structure of DNA until 1953, so there is no way someone could do “genetic engineering” in the 1940s. And if the “teenagers” were genetically engineered by the Soviets using Mengele, they would have to have grown up remarkably fast in the two years from 1945 when Soviets occupied Berlin until 1947, when the Roswell incident took place. In addition, this supposedly all took place over 64 years ago, and this alleged “engineer” would have to be at least in his 30s to have the training and experience to hold such a job. If you do the math, he’s in his 90s or older. Doesn’t that strike anyone as suspicious? Doesn’t that fail the “smell test” of credibility for most people? When Jacobsen was questioned skeptically by interviewer Terry Gross of the radio program Fresh Air on NPR about the problems with the “engineer” story, all she could say is “I don’t think he is lying to me.”

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As most of you will have heard, Christian radio mogul Harold Camping’s predicted “Rapture” came and went on May 21st without so much as a trumpet sounding. This failure of prophecy unfolded to a clamour of Tweets and parties from the nonbelievers’ side of the aisle. There’s something undeniably funny about a confident prediction unfulfilled, and Camping’s prediction couldn’t have been much more confident: “We know without any shadow of a doubt it is going to happen.”

Still, personally, I had a hard time enjoying the circus. It seemed ghoulish to crack wise when so many hopes and dreams — and lives — hung in the balance. Belief, as we skeptics know all too well, cuts across lines. Beliefs unite the clever and the dull, the young and the old, the righteous and the wicked. Camping’s fear-mongering meant good people sold homes, quit jobs, broke up families, or spent the college money on apocalyptic billboards. I worried especially about the kids lying awake that week waiting for the end of the world, just as I worry about the kids suffering artificial, unnecessary terror over 2012.

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Scientists report in the Lancet a case of a 23 year old man paralyzed from the chest down who was able to learn to stand and walk with the aid of a spinal stimulator. This is an interesting advance, but news reports are careful to point out (correctly) that it is not a cure.

Rob Summers suffered an car accident in 2006 that damaged his spinal cord at the T1 level – just below the neck. This would mostly (although not completely) spare his arms, but render him weak in the legs. According to the case report he had no detectable leg movement and lost bladder control but had partial sensation in the legs. This is an important detail to put this case into perspective – Summers’ injury was partial, if severe. This means there were some neurons that were spared.

When I first read the news items but had not yet read the original report I thought this might be another case of using electrical stimulation for external control. There are already systems in existence, called functional electrical stimulation (FES), that allow paraplegics to externally stimulate their leg muscles, to make them contract in a sequence that causes them to take clumsy if functional steps. Simple devices strap onto the lower leg and can treat foot drop by stimulating the muscle that raises the foot at t the ankle. More elaborate devices consist of a walker with hand controls that stimulate various muscles of the legs and allow for a clumsy but functional gait.

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The latest from No Starch Press is another in their series of Manga guides, three of which I’ve reviewed here before (The Manga Guide to Calculus, and the Guides to Physics and Statistics). The idea is a simple one: Teach a subject that’s normally dry and boring, but do it in a narrative comic book format that provides so much fun you’re not even aware that you’re learning. That’s the idea, anyway.

It’s a good idea, in my opinion, but executed in a, well, pretty thin way. I wanted to like these books a lot (as an anime fan), and they’re OK. The thing is that relativity and all its funky cool effects (time dilation, changes in mass, etc.) can make great plot points. I’d expect these stories to be action adventures, where the physics of what’s happening play active roles in the story, and the characters need to understand and predict what’s going on. Learning on the fly, with millions of lives at stake! (continue reading…)

I was in a big hurry and needed to pick up a strong cold medication for sinus congestion before going to a Skeptic Society meeting. Not knowing any better, I stopped a health food chain store in Pasadena—and was stunned by what I saw. Everything was advertised as “organic” (even though studies show no clear evidence that organic is significantly healthier, or that all foods labeled “organic” are indeed grown or raised that way). Everything was WAY more expensive than conventional grocery store prices. The place was crawling with yuppie couples in Birkenstocks and expensive designer clothes from Land’s End and L.L. Bean. It was a two-story chaos, with lots of dead ends and confusing and poorly laid-out aisles. It was almost like a casino, which is designed to slow you down and make you see as much of the floor space as possible. Consequently, it took me quite a while to find the cold products. By this time, I was running late. Because the clerk recommended it, I grabbed a box off the shelf called “Umcka cold care”. When I reached the checkout, I discovered it cost $17 for just 20 tablets!

When I got back to the car, I looked closer. In tiny letters, the box said “Homeopathic”! I guess I should have expected that in a heath food store, there would be homeopathic remedies, but I didn’t realize that they would ONLY have quack medicines. Readers of this blog are probably familiar with the problem with homeopathy. Most homeopathic medicines are diluted down so much that they contain few or no molecules of the active ingredient, and so they are literally just drinking water. In the case of these pills I bought, there is a long list of inactive ingredients, and just a tiny amount of the Pelargonium sidoides plant, a South African herb that MIGHT have some effect on reducing cold symptoms—although the medical studies are inconclusive, and most colds go away as our immune systems take care of the viral infection. (continue reading…)

In the last week I have received a flood of e-mails asking my opinion about an article, “Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice.” The sensational theme is a familiar one – scientists hit upon a cure for cancer, but since the drug in question is already off patent (or is “natural”) the pharmaceutical industry is not interested in developing it. The more conspiracy-minded take it a step further and declare that “Big Pharma” will keep anyone else from developing it either.

Most of those e-mailing me saw the skeptical red flags in this story, but still many found the idea intriguing. Like most urban legends – something about the story resonates with our hopes and/or fears. The story rides this emotional wave, now supercharged by social media.

In fact, this is an old story about DCA (which I will get into below). The article that has been going around is four years old – there is no date on the article itself, but I recognize the story from several years ago (it has made the rounds numerous times) and there are four-year-old comments on the article. But, someone posted the article on their Facebook page, and someone else tweeted it, and it was retweeted and linked to by other Facebook pages and voila – the magic of the internet has breathed life into a dessicated urban legend.

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It’s a question that’s asked a lot, and should be. Keeping our finger on the pulse of our own success lets us know when we need to turn up the heat, and where we should refocus our efforts. I’m reminded of a panel on which I sat at The Amazing Meeting Australia in late 2010 when that question was put to us. I felt somewhat lonely in that my answer to the question seemed to be much more doomier and gloomier than the others.

I said I thought skepticism is losing ground, and also that I expected that trend to continue and worsen.

Why? Primarily because of money. I see the public’s level of skepticism to be largely media driven. Those whose message reaches the most people are likely to win the battle of hearts and minds. Reaching people via the most common media requires money. And money is where skeptics are going to continue to lose ground. The reason is that skeptics are not selling anything; indeed, we caution consumers not to buy certain items. Conversely, the opposition — the charlatans, the hoaxers, the ripoff artists, and the honestly deluded — are there specifically to sell products. Miracle cures and magically easy solutions to every problem in life are the real enemy. And, so long as human natures encourages most people to throw their money in that direction, the promoters of those quack products and services are going to continue to be in the driver’s seat. If you have nothing to sell, as skeptics have, you have no economic engine driving your message. And this is why I believe we’re going to continue to lose ground. (continue reading…)

Hey Everybody within shouting distance of California (and beyond), The SkeptiCal 2011 Conference is just around the corner! It will be held at the Berkeley Doubletree on May 29, 2011. Tickets are available for purchase now. Last year’s conference sold out past capacity, so please buy your tickets as soon as possible! (continue reading…)