Throughout Death Valley are remote cabins left over from the mining days. Many of them have been partially restored to various levels of livability, and are meticulously maintained by volunteers who frequent them. They’re often stocked with spare tools and supplies, and at least one I’ve visited even has running water piped in from a spring. Nearly all of them have shelves of knick knacks — bits and pieces of mining history collected from the surroundings — and always a lot of books.

We were at one such cabin in the Tucki Mine area. Visitors are always welcome in these cabins, and we signed the guest book. I flipped through some of the books on one shelf and found a small one I hadn’t seen before, a little storybook full of ghostly tales and legends of Death Valley. Here is the story I read:

In the late 1800s, borax mining was the principal business in Death Valley. Many Chinese laborers were employed in the borax mills. Lumps of borax called “cottonball” were scraped from the valley floor, crushed, and boiled in open vats made from adobe. This purified and crystallized the valuable chemical so it could be transported and marketed.

In 1885, a 7 foot, 7 inch tall Chinaman named Tong Yu was working at the Harmony Borax Works when he accidentally fell–or was pushed–into one of the large open vats of boiling borax. Workers fought to pull him out. Tong’s entire body was horribly burned, and his flesh was deeply saturated with the caustic borax.

He was brought into the living quarters, and a doctor was sent for. By the time the doctor arrived the next morning, Tong Yu was nowhere to be found. During the night he must have wandered away alone, perhaps in an agonized madness.

Today, visitors to the park often report a tall, thin, distant figure on the salt pan under the moonlight. Sometimes the wind plays tricks on the ears, sounding almost like a mournful cry. In 1974 a party of park rangers chased the figure on foot but could not get close. The Borax Man seemed to melt right back into the plain he came from.

The Borax Man was new to me, and I thought I’d heard them all. I took a pair of camera phone pictures of the pages. Unfortunately, fool that I am, I did not take a picture of the cover or title. I searched Google Books and the rest of the web to no avail. If anyone recognizes this story or knows the name or author of the book, please post it in the comments. I would love to get a copy. My favorite part is the awesome little illustration of what appears to be an alien from Close Encounters; I guess he’s pretty lost.

Apparently I am obligated to do the “skeptical” thing and give my thoughts on the likelihood of the story. I have been to some of the borax works and have seen the ruins of these vats. Those mentioned in the book, the Harmony Borax Works, are by far the best preserved and are today a major attraction at the park. I know that the refining process described is more or less accurate, but I had not heard before that the mixture necessarily had to be boiled. Sometimes these works had to be shut down during the summer months, since in order for the crystals to form, the solution had to cool to a certain point. In the summer it stayed too hot throughout the night, and no useful crystals could be produced.

I imagine it’s likely that guys did fall into these vats from time to time, but without knowing the water temperature it’s hard to assess whether they’d have been burned or not. Certainly with a full-body burn the way Tong Yu suffered, dehydration would be a major problem and I don’t guess he would have lived very long if he did wander away. He probably ended up like this unidentified gentleman pictured here.

Chinese workers did indeed work at these mills. The work was hot and horrible, the smell was awful, and the pay was poor. Chinese were unable to get better jobs because of racial discrimination, so employers were always happy to snatch them up for the worst work that nobody else would do. I’ve not found any sort of records for Chinese laborers — I don’t know how many tens or hundreds of thousands of them worked throughout California in the 19th century — so I will not presume to suggest whether Tong Yu was an actual guy or not.

I’d say most of the story is perfectly plausible. I did spend a few fruitless minutes trying to track down the one modern detail given, the 1974 chase given by rangers. No results. Next time I’m at the park, I’ll ask some of the rangers if they’d heard the story. If I learn anything interesting, I’ll post it here.

Click to see full size

Attached is a chart I threw together showing the five major spacefaring powers (the US, Russia, ESA, Japan, and China) and their current heavy-lift capabilities, compared to the upcoming commercially developed Falcon Heavy from SpaceX. As you can see at a glance, the SpaceX craft has capabilities that far exceed those of anyone else.

But note that the Falcon Heavy is still in development, while the others are all real and actually flying; and further, note that most of these spacefaring powers have larger craft in development. Yet even those don’t approach the Falcon Heavy’s capabilities (except for the United States’ Space Launch System, which has versions proposed to be even larger than the Falcon Heavy but these are not remotely to the development stage and may never be).

The system that takes people up to the International Space Station is very small. Currently they use a Soyuz-FG rocket, with a Low Earth Orbit payload of only 7100 kilograms — that’s a bit more than half that of the smallest rocket shown on this chart. This raises a really obvious question: Since we have all these rockets flying with more than enough capability, why the heck do we have to hitch a ride on Soyuz???

Two basic reasons: cost, and human rating. Rockets have to be human rated to be considered safe enough to fly people. Nobody really cares if we blow up a load of ham sandwiches and toilet paper for the space station, but we care a lot if we blow up people. (The Soyuz-FG has a 100% success rate so far; Russia’s older Soyuz-U rocket, used for cargo runs, has failed about 3% of the 745 times it’s been launched.)

Russia’s big Proton M shown on the chart is not human rated either; it’s used mainly for gigantic spy satellites (as far as we know). Spy satellites are, in general, much larger physically than most people know; some are the size of a bus. They are the main reason why these non-human rated heavy lift rockets exist.

Human rating is one of those issues where there is perhaps more bureaucracy than there needs to be. There are two schools of thought: Make things as safe as possible, or make things as safe as we can reasonably afford to. Page through this document: Human Rated Delta IV Heavy Study: Constellation Architecture Impacts to get an idea. Realistically, the Delta IV heavy is not likely to ever be human rated (in my reasonably-informed estimation).

To one degree or another, these other operational heavy lift systems listed on the chart are not likely to be human rated any time soon either. The exception is that big one at the top: SpaceX designed the Falcon Heavy to be human rated from the very start. Founder Elon Musk has little interest in doing things halfway or in getting bogged down in bureaucracy. The Falcon Heavy has twice the capacity of a Delta IV Heavy, yet costs only a third as much to build and launch. And it qualifies to be human rated.

The Falcon Heavy’s smaller sibling, the Falcon 9, already has two resupply launches scheduled for the International Space Station in 2012, and two more in 2013. The Falcon heavy is scheduled for a demo flight sometime toward the end of 2012, which is slated to meet all of the qualifications for human rating.

So why can’t the US launch its own guys into space? If you want a single answer, it’s because governments’ resources are split. They need to buy big heavy-lift rockets for spy satellites on the cheap, and they need to create highly engineered human rated rockets. These are two different applications, and it’s simply too difficult to do both.

An animation I made of the northern end of Santa Catalina Island. The lighter, lower contrast frames were later in the evening. CLICK TO WATCH THE ANIMATION.

One of the benefits of living on the coast is that I’m frequently treated to some amazing mirages out over the ocean. I took the accompanying photographs in February, which is when this phenomenon is most dramatic. It’s the coldest water of the year, with an average temperature of 57F. The average high air temperature is about 69F, and that warmer air is blown out to sea by onshore winds in the afternoon. It’s at this time, when the warmest air is out there around sunset, that the effect appears.

Left to right: oil platform, cargo ship

As you may know, mirages happen when light refracts where a layer of hot air meets a layer of cold air. Such layers have different indices of refraction, and the image you see (which has some vertical height to it) gets progressively refracted as it enters the temperature boundary at an angle. If you look directly at a distant object on the horizon, and your line of sight does not pass through any such boundaries, you see it. But you can also see it by looking above it (or below it), depending on whether your line of sight passes up (or down) through such a boundary. This means you can see the same thing twice.

Double horizon, stretched ship, horizon appears triplicated at the tip of land: normal, inverted, and normal again (click for a full size image)

The most familiar example is seeing the reflection of a patch of sky on the road ahead of you, so it looks like a shimmering lake. The road is much hotter than the air above it. Since you see the patch of sky below the actual sky, we call this an “inferior” mirage. Many mornings, the ocean — a great big heat sink — is warmer than the air immediately above it, similar to that hot road, and the horizon becomes an unstable wavy line. One thing is happening, and I’m not sure which: either patches of sky are being refracted down below the actual horizon, or patches of ocean are being refracted above the actual horizon. Since there are shifting winds and waves out there, this assemblage swaps around quite a bit, and the line of the horizon is highly unstable.

At sea in the late afternoon, as illustrated in the pictures I took here, you can see a reflection of an object on the horizon above its actual position. We can this a “superior” mirage. I am no expert in mirages, but my experience is that this happens (again) when the water is warmer than the air. Standing on shore it’s hard for me to know the air temperature and the water temperature way offshore, so I could easily be in error.

Palos Verdes, afflicted by mirage action. I can assure you Palos Verdes does not actually look like this.

If any of you out there are more knowledgeable than I about mirages, I would love some clarification. Professor Google states, almost universally, that superior mirages result when cold air is at the surface and there’s a layer of warm air above it, suggesting that the water is colder than the air, as in the summertime. However I observe these in the winter, the air temperature (which fluctuates a lot) can often be colder than the ocean temperature (which changes quite gradually). Are my observations of the temperatures out there wrong, or are these distinct mirages the result of more complicated layering?

Either way, the visual show is super duper nifty.

National Marrow Donor Program kit

In the United States alone, about 10,000 people each year are diagnosed with a life-threatening illness for which a stem cell transplant is the best treatment option. The most common such illnesses are leukemia and lymphoma. Most of us know somebody who has had at least one of these: I have a friend who survived leukemia, and a close relative who did not.

Use the cotton swabs to brush the inside of each cheek to collect a few skin cells

To perform a stem cell transplant, a donor is needed. Bone marrow is extracted from the donor, which is then used to provide the stem cells. The most difficult part of this is finding a suitable donor. They must be a genetic match, and such matches are exceedingly hard to find.

The National Marrow Donor Program maintains a genetic database that’s searched whenever someone needs such a transplant. Unfortunately, these searches often fail to find a match, and all too often, a patient dies who might have been helped had a donor been matched.

Stick a barcode sticker on each swab, and place them in the little foam holder

Almost anyone can easily be added to this life-saving database, and it takes just a few minutes of your time. I did it this week, and I wanted to share with you how easy it is, and encourage you to do the same.

They will happily send you a little kit, free of charge, once you give them your address. The kit arrives in your mail, encoded with barcodes for your privacy. It consists of four cotton swabs, and all you have to do is rub the inside of your mouth with each. You place the swabs back into the provided holder, seal the postage-free envelope, and drop it in the mail. You’re done. It’s incredibly easy, and will be the feel-good highlight of your month.

Drop it into the mail. You're done!

About 1 in every 540 people who submit samples ends up being asked to donate. If you are fortunate enough to be matched with a patient whom you can help, the rewards speak for themselves.

If you have any questions at all about bone marrow donation, the program has an excellent page answering all the frequently asked questions.

Click here to order your kit now.

It’s something that most of us are probably subject to, to one degree or another. Many researchers, even hobbyists and enthusiasts, want for some one result in particular to be true. They’re always on the lookout for data that support their desired conclusion. This is not, by itself, pathological; but for some who take it to an extreme, it can become that way. Many famous cases of pathological science began as legitimate science, and often the researcher would become distracted by tiny results that suggested an effect when in fact there was none. Belief supplanted objectivity, and the science became pathological science.

Irving Langmuir

The term was first publicized by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Irving Langmuir in 1953, in a talk he gave discussing such cases. Anyone with an interest in scientific skepticism will immediately recognize the applicability of the term to many pseudosciences. In my own research of hundreds of pseudoscience cases, I’ve encountered many researchers who left the path of science in favor of wishful thinking. This includes legitimate professionals who get sidetracked by a poorly-supported belief, and also many armchair amateurs who often turn their beliefs into careers (think alternative therapy merchants, fad diet promoters, perpetual motion enthusiasts, Bigfoot and ghost hunters, and guys who think they’ve proven Einstein wrong).

A pathological science is usually triggered by a weakly positive result that is especially intriguing. For a scientist, this can be a result in a well-controlled experiment; for an amateur, it can be a personal experience that is misinterpreted or influenced by biases or external factors. Both compel further experimentation, and when the scientific method is thrown to the wind in favor of an emotionally-driven method — and the process becomes prolonged — a pathological science can result.

A pathological science differs from a pseudoscience in that it’s more about the method than the results. A pseudoscience has no sound foundation, or has perhaps even been proven wrong; whereas a pathological science is one that is single-mindedly pursued and driven by exaggerated results that do not justify the continued research. A pseudoscience is defined by its lack of validity; a pathological science is defined by the lack of its method’s validity.

In his famous 1953 talk, Langmuir described several such cases, and there’s a decent Wikipedia article that describes them, notably one where a physicist became so convinced of the reality of “N-rays” that he believed he saw positive results even when his machine was disabled. In shooting The Skeptologists, we pulled a really cheap trick on the ghost hunters who accepted it immediately as evidence of a ghost, when even the most basic application of science would have prevented such a conclusion. Television Bigfoot hunters accept practically anything as evidence of Bigfoot. All of these people are practicing not science, but pathological science. They’ve blinded themselves to any results but those which support their desired conclusion.

I try to take a lesson from these folks. I always keep in mind that I’m human and no less error-prone than anyone else, Bigfoot aficionados included. When I’m researching a old legend and I find the taste of hoax in the water, it’s easy to relentlessly pursue that hoax explanation. I could easily become a pathological “debunker”. What keeps me sane, I think, is the way I enjoy the unexpected roadblocks to the obvious explanations, and twists and turns that show even the popular “scientific” explanation is probably not right. Pursuing one desired result does not interest me. Finding new alternate explanations and turning over new stones does interest me. I suppose that, if anything, I’m at risk of becoming a pathological obscure-fact-finder.

Whatever your area of expertise, keep this possibility in mind. Never set method aside just to encourage a repeat of an oddball result. Keep your pathology and your science separate, such that never the twain shall meet.

Morgellons was invented (it would not be accurate to say diagnosed) in 2001, by a mom whose toddler son developed an unremarkable raw patch on his chin. When the scab collected fibers — almost certainly from the environment — she believed that they were being extruded from his skin. She took him to doctor after doctor, looking for one who would confirm her belief, but none would. A consensus rose among the doctors that she suffered from Munchausen by Proxy, in which an individual thrives on attention from doctors through presenting a family member as an extraordinary medical case. Reports are that she tried eight different doctors, and when none agreed with her claim, she coined the term Morgellons disease. An active community of Morgellons sufferers has grown worldwide ever since.

The general feeling among the medical profession (and with which I agree, based on my research) is that most of the patients who have self-diagnosed with Morgellons are suffering from acute stress or other psychiatric conditions. Among the many possible physical manifestations of acute stress is skin sores. The sufferer scratches, causing scabs. Environmental fibers become caught in the scab. Combined with other highly uncomfortable symptoms, and a bit of Internet research, the fibers convince the sufferer that Morgellons is the cause. It is noteworthy that prior to Morgellons’ appearance on the Internet in 2001, there were no reports of a strange disease in which the body extrudes colorful plastic fibers.

In accordance with public pressure to investigate Morgellons, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initiated a large-scale investigation of the reports, to determine whether a new medical condition had indeed been discovered. As noted in my Skeptoid episode, the CDC’s latest news was reported on a special web page, http://www.cdc.gov/unexplaineddermopathy/. Sufferers were able to keep up on the latest research.

And now, on January 25, 2012, the CDC has released its results. In short, they found no physiological cause, and that nearly all sufferers also reported other conditions considered to be psychogenic. An accurate summary of their findings is that the patients who believe their body is extruding fibers are wrong, the fibers come from elsewhere (cotton was the most common composition detected), and the condition is delusional (my words, not the CDC’s). The study, reported in PLoS ONE, concluded:

To our knowledge, this represents the most comprehensive, and the first population-based, study of persons who have symptoms consistent with the unexplained dermopathy referred to as Morgellons. We were not able to conclude based on this study whether this unexplained dermopathy represents a new condition, as has been proposed by those who use the term Morgellons, or wider recognition of an existing condition such as delusional infestation, with which it shares a number of clinical and epidemiologic features. We found little on biopsy that was treatable, suggesting that the diagnostic yield of skin biopsy, without other supporting clinical evidence, may be low. However, we did find among our study population co-existing conditions for which there are currently available therapies (drug use, somatization). These data should assist clinicians in tailoring their diagnostic and treatment approaches to patients who may be affected. In the absence of an established cause or treatment, patients with this unexplained dermopathy may benefit from receipt of standard therapies for co-existing medical conditions and/or those recommended for similar conditions such delusions infestation.

How will this news be received by the Morgellons community? Predictably, the findings will be rejected, in favor of their desired theory that an actual disease agent is present. There will most likely be claims of a Big Pharma conspiracy, or charges that doctors are afraid of discovering new conditions that “rock the boat” or conflict with “mainstream dogma”.

But the true problem is that many such patients will continue to go untreated, due to their hostility toward a psychiatric diagnosis which (in my experience) they misinterpret as “calling them crazy”. After all — they reason — the fibers are there, real, and physical; how could it just be psychological? Acute stress and other psychiatric conditions can be highly disabling and can cause physiological symptoms. No one is “calling them crazy”; it’s simply a different diagnosis than the one they prefer.

Even assuming the CDC’s findings are correct, they will likely have very little impact helping the sufferers. And that’s the real tragedy of Morgellons.

Obviously this is an English language blog written by primarily American authors, so we cannot extrapolate this data to indicate the relative popularity of skepticism in general in each country. But there are two surprises.

The first surprise is that the United States is not the country where we’re most popular. We’re most appreciated in Canada. Either this means that our lone Canadian blogger, Daniel Loxton, is more popular than the rest of us put together; or that Canadians generally appreciate this content more than Americans. There are all kinds of demographic reasons that this may be true. Without surveying our readers for their demographic information and comparing that to the population at large, we can only speculate what some of these are. The United States has higher religiosity than Canada, and the population is generally less educated. But far be it from me to assert that only an educated public would appreciate this blog; it’s all speculation.

Similarly, New Zealand takes second place, relegating the United States down to third. What are the reasons that New Zealanders visit SkepticBlog more often than Americans?

The second surprise is that a block of three non-English speaking countries, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, have snuck in there higher than Ireland and the United Kingdom. Much of their population is bilingual and reads English without a problem, but it’s still their second language; we’d typically tend to expect more readers from the UK on an English language blog than from Scandinavia.

Scandinavia has a reputation for having low religiosity and low poverty, so perhaps this shouldn’t be so much of a surprise. My personal experience with attendees at skepticism conferences and talks that I give on the road has been that all socioeconomic levels appear to be well represented, but that’s my own informal observation only, and could well be wrong.

The Amaz!ng Meeting has had two conferences in London and one in Australia. Maybe it’s time the JREF threw one in Sweden?

I’m posting this blog not so much to make you aware of it, but to solicit your feedback. The show is called inFact with Brian Dunning and is now in its second season. Today’s episode, season 2 number 8, is about conspiracy theorists. Must we assume that they’re nuts, or is there a more rational explanation for why belief in conspiracies is so widespread? See how I answered this question:

I’m trying specifically to hit these points:

• The videos are intended for the general YouTube audience, and presumes little to no previous experience with scientific skepticism.
• The videos must be no more than about 3 minutes. Data shows very clearly that most viewers only watch short videos all the way through, and almost nobody even starts videos that are much longer than this.
• All content is legal. All backgrounds, images, and music are rights released (most are purchased, sponsored, or public domain).

Now obviously, there is far more that could be said about this particular topic. What I discussed – which many of you may recognize as agency detection – is only a single bullet point. When limited to a 3-minute runtime, I have to do my best to make a single strong point. And I have to make it to an audience that I assume has no previous exposure to the subject. Considering my previous experience with Skeptoid, I also assume that many of the viewers are going to have preconceived notions that make them hostile to my message, so I try to be engaging rather than confrontational.

I’ve heard many times from teachers who use the series in classrooms (which is obviously encouraged and free). So far, they like the single subject nature of each video, which allows for focused discussion. And I think the language and presentation is a good mix between accuracy and simplicity.

It’s also noteworthy that inFact is crowdfunded. I’m pleased to report that this has worked quite effectively; it’s meant I’ve not had to spend money out of my own pocket to produce the series since season 1, or to miss a paying workday to work on it. The pace of per-episode funding has not been as fast as I’d hoped, but if we can improve the show and gain a larger crowdfunding base, perhaps that will change too. (The show is ad-supported too, but so far that’s a pittance that’s not even worth counting.)

I’m interested on your thoughts on the show’s content and its direction. I’m less in need of production notes; everyone is Cecil B. DeMille and I do already have talented people continuing to help me with some of the lingering production issues. But your thoughts on content and direction are most welcome. Thanks!

As you may know, I am a huge proponent of the technology of genetic engineering of crops (full disclaimer). Compared to old-school, trial-and-error cross pollination, GMO is like using a word processor instead of a manual typewriter. It’s the difference between a plant that’s naturally resistant to pests and naturally able to thrive in the native conditions, versus a plant that must be doused with expensive pesticides and fertilizers. So I wanted to know the true story behind these headlines.

It goes all the way back to 1964, when the Maharashta Hybrid Company (Mahyco) was founded with the same Rockefeller money that created the International Rice Research Institute in Asia, whose products now feed most of the world. Located in Mumbai, Mahyco developed a successful Pusa Sawani Okra, still a staple product, and has been a principal developer of crops specialized for India ever since.

In 1998, Monsanto acquired a 26% stake in Mahyco, which they still own today.

In 2003, India passed the Biological Diversity Act of 2002 which, among other things, established regulations governing the sources of genes used in biotech research. In reality, the BDA was a thinly-veiled line drawn in the sand to discourage foreign companies from doing research on Indian varieties without paying major licensing fees.

But Mahyco is not, and never was, a foreign company. They’re big on eggplant, which has long been a major crop throughout India. There it’s called brinjal, where crops suffer terribly from butterflies and moths, requiring expensive pesticides that Indian farmers can’t always afford. Mahyco inserted a gene from a soil bacterium into brinjal, creating what they called Bt brinjal. Bt brinjal proved highly resistant to the pests, and was formally approved by India’s Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) in October 2009. It was India’s very first genetically modified crop.

Then, in 2010, GMO opponents in India pressured the government to delay its release. The environment minister announced a moratorium on its release, pending further study of possible environmental effects, even though such studies had already been completed. And so the pest resistant Bt brinjal has sat on Mahyco’s shelves, and Indian farmers have had to continue spraying pesticides.

The other shoe dropped in October 2011, when India’s National Biodiversity Authority decided to sue Mahyco and its much better known (and deeper pocketed) minority stakeholder Monsanto. The allegation is that Mahyco violated the BDA by not obtaining proper authorization for collecting the bacterium from which the crucial gene in Bt brinjal was drawn. In fact Mahyco did not collect this gene; it was provided by the University of Agricultural Sciences at Dharwad, royalty free. So although the lawsuit is not likely to succeed, it is likely to be lengthy and expensive, and has refocused attention on the biotech industry in one of the world’s hungriest countries.

GMO opponents in India like Gangula Ramanjaneyulu, director of the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, express enthusiasm over the lawsuit:

This is a victory for India’s food sovereignty, preserving the control of seeds and food in the hands of our farmers and consumers instead of a few multinational corporations like Monsanto.

But Indian scientists are less thrilled. Govindarajan Padmanabhan from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore:

Our national labs have all the genes for rice improvement, we do not need Monsanto. The moratorium will actually affect the indigenous effort [to create GM crops that could feed India's rapidly growing population].

Shanthu Shantharam, a biotechnology consultant in the United States:

I am simply appalled that NBA’s lawyers have given such a poor advice for it to prosecute the developers of Bt brinjal. By this reckoning, all genetic improvements done so far to develop all these local varieties and hybrids would also constitute a violation of the biodiversity act, which is absurd.

Ananda Kumar, project director for plant biotechnology at the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) in New Delhi:

We have no less than ten GM products to get into the regulatory system for trials — including brinjal, chickpea, sorghum, sugar cane, castor [oil plant], rice and potato — that took 15 years to develop and a lot of money. All scientists associated with these projects are disillusioned.

So that’s what actually happened, if you’re wondering what’s behind the “Monsanto Biopirated India” headlines. Somehow I don’t foresee these same activists charging their favorite superfruit and nutraceutical importers with biopiracy, but that’s another subject for another time.

Main sources:

• http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100210/full/news.2010.65.html
• http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/08/indias_biodiversity_agency_to.html
• http://www.mahyco.com/milestones.html

I had never heard of this before, so I read the story with interest (and, of course, a touch of skepticism). It begins with a woman who reported that her husband, a psychologist, learned something extraordinary from his patients in the military:

I remember clearly an evening when my husband came back to our apartment on Doctor’s Circle carrying a thick official looking folder in his hands. Inside were hundreds of pages of certain studies commissioned by the government. He was in shock from the contents. What he read in those documents completely changed his life. From that moment on my conservative middle of the road husband grew his hair and beard and never cut them again. What is more, the VA Medical center let him do it, and other very conservative men in the staff followed his example.

Why should psychologists and other professional men suddenly decide to stop cutting their hair? Surely there must be some compelling reason. I read on with interest.

The native American trackers, renowned for an almost supernatural ability to track anyone over anything, were recruited and sent into action in Vietnam. But:

Once enlisted, an amazing thing happened. Whatever talents and skills they had possessed on the reservation seemed to mysteriously disappear, as recruit after recruit failed to perform as expected in the field.

How could that be? Evidently, the trackers themselves offered the answer:

When questioned about their failure to perform as expected, the older recruits replied consistently that when they received their required military haircuts, they could no longer ‘sense’ the enemy, they could no longer access a ‘sixth sense’, their ‘intuition’ no longer was reliable, they couldn’t ‘read’ subtle signs as well or access subtle extrasensory information.

No skeptical red flag yet. It’s not surprising at all that people might attribute a skill to something that’s got nothing to do with it. I know very little about whatever culture these men may have come from (the tribe was not specified in the article) and it’s perfectly plausible that they might attribute much to a hairstyle. The hair is probably not actually doing anything, but that wouldn’t stop the men from believing that it would.

So the testing institute recruited more Indian trackers, let them keep their long hair, and tested them in multiple areas. Then they would pair two men together who had received the same scores on all the tests. They would let one man in the pair keep his hair long, and gave the other man a military haircut. Then the two men retook the tests.

Time after time the man with long hair kept making high scores. Time after time, the man with the short hair failed the tests in which he had previously scored high scores.

And, apparently, based on that, the psychologist decided to stop cutting his hair. This struck me as odd. I was intrigued by the idea that some testing had found that hair length affected tracking ability, and was curious to learn more. Perhaps the testing methodology was weak (which happens all the time) or perhaps there was some unknown, uncontrolled factor (also common), or perhaps there’s something there: a very exciting thought. But none of this suggests a reason why a psychologist should let his hair grow, unless he’s planning to become a tracker. Reading a little further gives the answer:

Hair is an extension of the nervous system, it can be correctly seen as exteriorized nerves, a type of highly evolved ‘feelers’ or ‘antennae’ that transmit vast amounts of important information to the brain stem, the limbic system, and the neocortex.

Ummmm… no, hair is not correctly seen as “exteriorized” nerves or antennae. Hair is dead tissue that has no metabolism, yet hair can also sense air vibration, like it does in the ear. Could this article perhaps be woo?

Not only does hair in people, including facial hair in men, provide an information highway reaching the brain, hair also emits energy, the electromagnetic energy emitted by the brain into the outer environment. This has been seen in Kirlian photography when a person is photographed with long hair and then rephotographed after the hair is cut.

Unfortunately the answer seems to be yes, the article is simple woo. Kirlian photography merely shows a corona discharge when any conductive object is connected to an electrode. Whether your head hair has been cut would not affect the conductivity of your hand if you place it on a plate for a Kirlian photograph.

Are any other miraculous benefits claimed?

Cutting of hair is a contributing factor to unawareness of environmental distress in local ecosystems. It is also a contributing factor to insensitivity in relationships of all kinds. It contributes to sexual frustration.

Ah! I see they are. Big surprise.

But whether this article’s author is a woo-believer or not says nothing about the validity of the research with the native American trackers. That’s interesting regardless, and I still wanted to know more. So I scrolled to the bottom of the article hoping to find the references. Instead I found this:

Comment: SOTT can’t confirm this story or the research it suggests took place, however, we have wondered on many occasions, what is the use of hair and why so many legends refer to hair as being a source of strength, from Samson, to Nazarenes, to the Long Haired Franks.

Nice. Willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, I spent a few moments asking Professor Google if he knew anything about this research, but he didn’t. Though many native Americans served in Vietnam, I found no record of any special “tracker” units, or anything remotely suggestive of the research mentioned in this article. Every indication is that someone just made it up to support their woo belief in not cutting hair.

Note: Since 1972 the Immigrations and Customs services have maintained a tiny unit of 15 native American trackers called the Shadow Wolves who follow drug smugglers across the border in a law enforcement capacity, but this was not formed until after Vietnam, and I’ve seen no reference to hair length being a tool they employ. If anyone has more information about the alleged Vietnam test unit and their long hair, please let me know.