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.

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!

Cover art for the single that will soon be on iTunes. A nickel for anyone who can identify the inspiration for the design.

Two weeks ago I gave my perspective on the production of Skeptoid #250, The History of Knowledge; which wasn’t perhaps the most insightful because I’m not a musician. I was just the dude standing behind the microphone trying to do what he was told. Some of the comments on the web transcript of the episode were asking for more information about some of the dozen tracks specifically, and so Peter Zachos, who composed and produced the piece, answered. Here are Peter’s remarks, which should interest the musically inclined among you, with [my comments]:

Some people have expressed interest in the behind-the-scenes production of “The History Of Knowledge”.  I’m happy to shed some light on how it was done.  I work primarily in Pro Tools, using an extensive library of sounds and plug-ins to produce each genre of music.  I work out of my studio, ClickClack, in Culver City.  This is where we recorded Brian’s vocals, as well as all the guitars and backup vocals.

I’ll go through each track and briefly describe the process:

1. Caveman – This I just made up. Needed to give two feelings here: 1) tribal, and 2) dumb. So I tracked maybe 20 overdubbed takes of me grunting as different characters (I even went so far as to choose certain voices that sounded like more “leaders” of the tribe and others that were the sheepish “followers”.)  Native Instruments “Battery” provided the one or two drums. Then it was just a matter of tracking Brian.  When Liz came in to record her vocals for the opera and swing, she heard the Caveman track and started laughing, and we put her in the tracking room just for fun; the result is the naive virgin going “yeah!” Total spontaneous addition.

2. Gregorian Chant: I wrote this around an aeolian mode with a sharp-VI scale degree. The half-step really gives it an ancient quality. Brian did all his vocals live with NO AUTOTUNING…  I only needed to track his lines with my voice first.  He had a much easier time singing to an already existing track than going it alone.  I loaded a nice cathedral impulse response into Altiverb 6 to give us a nice sounding hall.

3. Renaissance – I dug into my Norton Anthology of Early Music, listened to a ton of this stuff, and settled on these chords. Very standard for the era. Native Instruments Kontakt has a nice harpsichord, though I eq’ed it a bit to make it sound just right. Also used a soprano and alto recorder.

4. Opera – Most of these orchestral sounds come from The Vienna Symphony Library; Brian provided some great lyrics for this, and I just read them over and over to myself until I began to hear them musically.  It starts as Queen Of The Night, from Mozart’s “Die Zauberflot”, and ends with Wagner’s Overture to “Tannhauser”. The recitatives in between is just me messing around with some classical western tonality. [It's cool that this actually includes a perfectly serviceable little libretto, even in its brevity - BD]

5. It is O, Susanna! the original by Stephen Foster, and our first track to feature the amazing and multi-talented Kenton Youngstrom on guitars. I always underestimate Kenton; I ask him to bring three guitars to the session; two acoustic and one electric… and I don’t even think about a banjo. Meanwhile, we get to this track, and he says “Aw, man, I should have brought my banjo!”  And I feel like an idiot for not asking him to just go ahead and bring all eight hundred of his guitars.  Kenton improvised all the acoustic on this track and lent it a wonderfully authentic flavor.

6. This is an Al Bowlly-type ditty that was most influenced by “You Took Advantage Of Me.”  There are dozens of lo-fi, gritty audio emulators, but in the end, the freeware Izotope Vinyl was just what I needed to get that crackling sound of an early 78 platter, though I did need some liberal EQing.  Listening to Al Bowlly recordings, it’s amazing how much low frequency remains in spite of the age of the original masters. I used Waves Renaissance EQ to emulate the curve.  Brian had the style down from the beginning, and tracked his vocals in just two takes. I found a beautiful celeste in the Vienna Symphony library that fit well into the track. [The "Mammy" tacked onto the end is an homage to a character created by the great Al Jolson, to which Al Bowlly sometimes gave such a nod. I liked it so threw it in there, even though it doesn't mean anything in this context - BD]

7. You can’t do WWII Swing without a nod to the Andrews Sisters, but believe it or not, the inspiration came from this incredible and disturbing video of the Ross Sisters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DJVSP3N5a4 There’s a great misdirection in this production: strip away Elizabeth from the track and it sounds cheap and amateur. Her work is what makes it sound like the real thing.  I worked with her to get the unique intonation, note-sliding and bending inherent in this style of singing, and we did each harmony overdub one by one. Izotope Vinyl once again provided the lo-fi sound, though I let more mid-high frequencies in since it’s from a later decade. Brian did his lines in one take. [The part was named "Bing" in the score, but I won't make that claim. This piece poked fun at the martini-swizzling chauvinism of the day, as well as a quick shot at segregation - BD]

8. So…  James Taylor?  J/K….  This is probably my personal favorite from a production standpoint. Elvis recordings have a really difficult snare drum sound to emulate.  This was the best I could do.  Abbey Road 60′s drum kit, and the Waves API EQ.  I tried every compressor known to man, and in the end realized that it just sounded better without one, but it still wasn’t quite right.  Finally and quite by random accident, I placed the digidesign Lo-Fi plug on there and added just a tiny bit of distortion, and it worked.  The rest is all Kenton who really shines here and got that classic 50′s guitar tone just right. Brian did a fantastic Elvis as I knew he would. As before, I tracked my own version of the vocal for him to sing to, and erased it later when mixing.  But I’d left my “thankyouverymuch” at the end and it sounded more natural.  Brian kept querying me about his own “thankyouverymuch”; I think at some point I’ll need to mixdown another mix with his intact. [What some interpreted as "America bashing" in this piece was actually McCarthyism bashing - BD]

9. I can hear some Boston in there; also the four-part harmonies I did are from my love for Crosby, Stills and Nash (as well as America.) This was the only part of the whole episode that I had no initial idea of where to start musically.  I love prog rock and I would have liked to explore that territory, but hey, each of these segments had to be around a minute long.  Brevity is not one of prog rock’s strong suits.  Kenton did a great job with the guitars, though again I wished I’d asked him to bring a sitar. In the end I played a sampled sitar, as well as the Native Instruments B4 organ plug w/Leslie speaker. Brian came up with these great lyrics that mean absolutely nothing, and I muddled through something of a melody and tracked it for him.  Then he replaced my vocal with his and I overdubbed all the harmonies.

10. Since I grew up in the 80′s, this came easy to me. This resembles any corporate-80s AOR rock, but I liked the idea of combining Giorgio Morodor’s score to Top Gun with Sisters-of-Mercy-sounding vocals. (think the casino scene from Rain Man.) I found this great drum loop from Zennheiser samples; it sounded like a Phil Collins drum track, all compressed and gated and corporate. Then I layered it with Korg synth stabs and Kenton did a fantastic “Starship” corporate guitar solo.  In order to make it as slick and overproduced and annoying as possible, I chorused the guitar and then applied a doubler and then a stereo-spreader. Some of the drum beats come from classic drum machines that were in great use at the time, like the Oberheim DMX and the LinnDrum.

11. I confess. It’s Green Day, though the last couplet line is more Ramones than Green Day.  Native Instruments’ Guitar Rig has a built-in preset that’s a dead ringer for Billie Armstrong, so Kenton patched into that and overdubbed two identical guitar tracks, which I panned left and right.  The drums are a drum program called BFD, compressed with the Kramer PIE plug.  Brian tries hard to sound young, naive and stupid, and as he is none of these things, fails spectacularly. [I dispute that, I think the smell of hemp is palpable in my performance - BD]

12. Energy – I don’t know what I can say, really. This is the easiest music in the world to make. It’s the musical equivalent of making toast or a PB&J sandwich; hard to screw up. I just listened to a few Black Eyed Peas and Lady Gaga songs and followed suit, which is what those acts are doing anyway.  Brian wrote some great lyrics and I kept hearing the word “Energy” in my head and tried to feel its natural rhythm.  That’s how I came up with the chorus. From early one when we were brainstorming about the episode, I told him I had to include a part in this song where we list an assortment of woo.  So when it came down to it I wrote and performed the mini-rap in the bridge. But Brian jumps back in for the “Baby you balance my CHI”.  The delight on Brian’s face when he heard himself autotuned for the first time should have been videotaped.

It was a splendid time all around, and I can only hope to work on some great music with Brian again in the future. I hope this has been an interesting read; if you have even more detailed questions, I love tech talk, so feel free to email me.

Peter Zachos
peterzachos@me.com

The art at the top of this post will soon appear as the cover art for a full single of Energy which will be available on iTunes very soon. We hope you have as much fun listening to it as we had making it.

The History of Knowledge is Skeptoid’s third observance of the tradition of every 50th episode being a musical. For episode #150, Screwed!, I employed composer Lee Sanders to write a lavish Broadway piece. For episode #200, I used the ill-advised tactic of applying my own ignorance and lack of talent to the project, and produced Buy It!. This time, I got composer Peter Zachos (peterzachos.com) to knock it out of the park with a history not only of pseudoscience, but also of music.

We started by tossing around a few ideas. Peter’s idea was to visit several eras throughout history, but I was worried that trying to create 4 or 5 different songs would be too much work and put the deadline at risk. Then I realized Peter was talking not about 4 or 5 genres, but more like 15. Hmmm. I politely suggested alternatives that I thought were more attainable.

But he put together a demo tape, came by my house and played out some ideas on the piano, and I was hooked. In the end we whittled it down to 12 musical genres, each an example of how pseudoscience or bass-ackwards philosophies were popular in the day:

Caveman – Pagan superstitions
Gregorian chant – Astrology as medicine
Renaissance – Bodily humors
Opera – Magical objects
Americana – Dowsing
30s Jazz – Seances
40s Jazz – Sexism and segregation
Elvis – McCarthyism
60s Rock – The power of you
80s Pop – The power of me
Indie punk – Conspiracy theories
Autotune – Energy healing

Not that it’s a comprehensive list, but it’s a fun one. I quickly learned that writing 30 seconds or a minute of a song is little less work than writing the entire song. You still need all the elements. So, basically, we wrote 12 songs.

My main job was writing the lyrics. I’ve done this before, and it’s never been easy for me, and most of the results have been terrible. But for some reason, the muse was shining on me. I’m actually damned proud of most of it. The grunge, the flower power, the Elvis, they actually came together and sounded like actual songs from those eras. Peter wrote some too, the Renaissance and the 80s, and also tweaked all of mine to fit the music, and added lines or two where needed. It’s a pretty solid piece.

Peter had two jobs. First was to compose and perform and engineer all the music, and that was only the small job. The larger one was making it sound like I can sing. You’re actually hearing hardly any of my real voice in there, even though all the lead vocals throughout are mine. What you’re hearing is the combination of rough source material (me), Pro Tools, and a talented sound editor. Recording something rough, off key, and off beat, and watching it transformed into an actual lead vocal was (for me) a Master Class in how music is created these days. I would sing several takes, line by line, and Peter would pick and choose a word from this take, a consonant from that take, and blend them all together. It was really something else to watch.

Peter also sang all of the backup voices, and created The Skeptettes (to echo the Andrews Sisters) from a singer he works with named Liz (elizabethegan.com). A session guitarist was also brought in, who made child’s play out of any musical genre. For a muggle like me, it was really impressive to watch what real professionals are capable of.

Composing the music proved to be much easier than I had initially feared. Pop songs are pretty much made of Lego these days, and someone who’s handy with the craft can throw one together in minutes. “Oh, 90s grunge? (blop) There. How’s that?” “Oh, a Wagnerian opera? (glop) Bob’s your uncle.”

The full credits are at the end of the video. We presented this at the Skeptoid 250th Episode Party in Irvine on March 19, so Peter’s production assistant Kimberly put together a Powerpoint to display the lyrics for the crowd of about 140. That’s what you’re seeing in the video. I hope one day to do more with it; it’s a really neat piece of music and deserves a full blown music video. I’m going to start buying lottery tickets now.

I hope you enjoy it.

To sum up the criticism, it was overwhelmingly that I was too soft on it.

And then, interestingly, one commenter pointed out something I said in a really early Skeptoid episode, way back in 2006:

My dream is to start a church and become fabulously wealthy, with the world’s happiest customers. These customers are people who are already believers, whose minds are not about to be changed by a few skeptics. They are going to buy these services: and if they don’t buy them from me, they’re going to buy them from the psychic next door.

In other words, “Hey it’s OK to start a church and take people’s money, because otherwise they’re just going to give it to someone else.” It sounds like it’s not too different from something L. Ron Hubbard might have said. And here’s the kicker: That Skeptoid episode was about ethics.

When I read this comment, I’d completely forgotten about my old remark, and I’ll admit it was pretty eye-opening to have it pointed out. I was like, “Wow, am I really similar to L. Ron Hubbard? Is that why my Scientology episode was so soft?”

Scary thoughts.

I hope nobody’s ever gotten the impression from me that I believe I’m on some sort of pedestal and that I’m always right, just because I have a podcast. I’m not. I’m just a regular dude. I put my foot in my mouth as often as anyone else; I have crazy opinions like anyone else; I change my mind about things and I’m sometimes right and sometimes wrong, like anyone else. Producing Skeptoid, and its associated activities like blogging and tweeting, force a lot of stuff out into the open. Many of you reading this probably know me better than you know your next-door neighbors. Any shield of privacy I might have ever had is gone.

I wouldn’t say this has forced me to be more careful, and to choose my words better. Rather, it’s made me more introspective. I still say what I think, but I think about it more before I say it. Four years ago, I was a different person. Four years of spilling guts and running around naked in public has made me more reflective. When I say something now, it’s not saying it to four buddies in a bar; it’s saying it to a hundred and forty thousand people. I believe there’s less value in putting a diplomatic spin on your thoughts than there is in revising and improving those thoughts and sharing them openly.

So I will freely admit, yes, I have long thought that starting a church is a great way to make money. But let’s be realistic: That idea is hardly original with me. It’s not original with L. Ron Hubbard either. Half of you reading this have had the same thought, and the other half are liars. That’s not to say we’d actually do it; but we’ve all had the thought.

Four years after saying that, I now know myself well enough to feel confident that I would never do it. That’s not a way I could ever look back and feel proud of how I’d spent my life. But in my twenties, I actually did put some thought into this. Somewhere I still even have the notes I’d written. But to be fair to myself, it wasn’t a church so much as a New Agey kind of book club. When I did my Skeptoid episode on Rosicrucianism, I was surprised to learn how similar the Rosicrucian organization is to what I’d outlined. You pay a membership fee to join, and you purchase manuscripts that are equivalent to coursework. You achieve higher classification based on having completed more courses. That’s pretty much all there was to it; there was no malevolence, no ripoff. It had a built-in constant upsell pitch, but that’s hardly revolutionary. I never got as far as writing any of the documents, but I had every intention that they should be of some actual value to the readers. I’d gone through a bit of the self-help fad stuff in those days and I had some idea of how I wanted the content to be. Where I applied my creativity was in the adornment with Eastern words and names for the various philosophies involved. In those days I had no experience at all with things like Scientology and it never, ever would have occurred to me to do any of the totally creepy life-controlling stuff that Hubbard did. Rosicrucianism is harmless New Age cosmic babble, and Scientology is not. There are many lines that Scientology crosses that Rosicrucianism does not.

Even this line of reasoning of mine can be viewed as frighteningly similar to Hubbard’s. Scientology began not as a church, but as a dime-store counseling regime called Dianetics. He tried (and failed) to get it recognized as a legitimate psychiatric standard. I don’t know, but there may have been a point where he was honestly trying to help people. I doubt it, but I don’t know.

So yes, I did express an early thought that’s substantially identical to the one L. Ron Hubbard had, that he ran with and I didn’t. I think I can see where his mind was at, superficially. But having researched the man, I’ve learned why he ran with it and I didn’t. He was a lot of things that I’m not. He was fanatical, passionate, and utterly unscrupulous. An unscrupulous fanatic can do things with a baseball bat that I wouldn’t, and he could do things with the idea to start a church that I wouldn’t.

Positioning oneself as a promoter of consumer protection can be like a minefield, if you’re afraid of being found out as a hypocrite. I’m not afraid of that, because I’m always happy to admit that I’m as prone to error, weakness, immaturity, and bad judgment as anyone else. That’s why I can look back on my twenties and see what was good, what was bad, and appreciate the steps I took that helped me to learn and grow. Five years from now I’ll be blogging to tell you what a nincompoop I was today. Nincompoopery is immortal.

After I was finished researching and writing it, I had second thoughts, and decided for a few days that I would shelve it and not produce it, and said so on Twitter. Predictably, lots of people expressed their desire for me to reverse that decision, or that I had decided I was too afraid of Scientology suing me.

In fact, the reverse was true. I was afraid that the episode came out sounding too soft on Scientology. I did not want to be perceived as the pro-Scientology guy, and the episode turned out being less interesting than I’d hoped. But I eventually said “What the heck” and produced it anyway.

My thus-far-unpopular conclusion can be summed up thus: Despite how shocking Scientology’s brutal treatment is of its live-in members, that’s the lifestyle that works for those people. I’m sure psychologists could go on and on about what kind of personality thrives in an environment that is, at its worst, comparable to Abu Ghraib; but that’s the life they choose, and who am I to begrudge other people to do whatever they want with their lives. Are we now in a society in which everyone is required to conform to some rigid norm?

The emails and site comments started pouring in fast. The majority have been lists of the worst things Scientology has done, accompanied by comments like “I’m surprised Brian didn’t know about this” (as if my weeks of research missed the most obvious common-knowledge stuff that a cat could find on Wikipedia). The implication of many of the comments is that people are imprisoned against their will. Members of Anonymous have posted that when they protested at a Scientology branch, they were photographed or followed (as if it’s unreasonable to expect to be scrutinized when you put on a mask and go to someone’s home to protest their lifestyle).

I was also sent great lists of lawsuits filed by the church trying to silence its critics, and cases where Scientologists have been found guilty of crimes. Most notably, Operation Snow White, some 35 years ago when Hubbard was still alive, was the largest infiltration of the U.S. government in history when Scientologists took jobs where they had access to destroy IRS and other documents pertaining to Hubbard and Scientology. That’s a crime, and 11 church executives appropriately went to jail. There’s no excuse for that. In this case, Scientology does indeed stand out from any other “church”. This is something I probably shouldn’t have left out.

What I tried to do in my episode, whether this was a good choice or a bad one, was to focus on ordinary Scientologists. Every organization and church in the world has every kind of people in it, including criminals, and I don’t think it’s fair to characterize any group based on the actions of its worst apples. In short, this is the essential reason I didn’t spend time talking about the church’s worst actions. I don’t want to focus only on the rare exceptions, the kids forced unwillingly into the Sea Org by their parents, or overt criminal acts. I could probably do an expose on Sesame Street and uncover some producer’s drug habit. That wouldn’t be a fair treatment either. I wanted to talk about ordinary Scientologists who had nothing to do with Operation Snow White and have never beaten someone with an ax handle, as that’s the largest representative group.

My analysis was that people who have the right psychology to want to live a Sea Org lifestyle find their happy place when they’re under psychological pressure. Thus, Scientology must apply that pressure (Scientology and the Sea Org being essentially the same entity). Part of that pressure is making it real. It can’t just be threats. So they actually do harass and sue people who leave the church or speak out against it. They actually do barricade them into their rooms. They actually do require them to cut off their family and friends. It’s a twisted dance between narcissists and codependents. To you and I, that’s pretty messed up. For them, it works. This is my own conclusion, and my opinion. Clearly, most disagree with me. But it’s a perspective that I don’t think enough people consider.

And that’s just the Sea Org, the full timers. Most Scientologists are your neighbors down the street, whose expensive auditing sessions fund the Sea Org. I thought I gave the ordinary Scientologists a fair shake in the episode. These include the celebrities you know, the John Travoltas and Tom Cruises, who live regular lives but love what Scientology auditing has done for them. Nobody who’s had a good experience talking through their problems with a therapist, friend, or barber should be surprised that auditing can be a powerful and fulfilling experience. If it wasn’t, Scientology wouldn’t have the income stream that it does. That income stream does indeed exist, and so whether detractors like it or not, ordinary Scientologists are enjoying their auditing, regardless of whether it has any legitimate psychiatric value. I went into this point in detail in my episode, so won’t repeat any more of it here.

So in conclusion, I just wanted to make it a little clearer why I talked about the points that I did, and why I glossed over or omitted other things. No Skeptoid episode pleases everyone. Every week I get “I agree with all your episodes except this one,” and I’ve gotten at least a fair share of those this week. As I often say, whether I’m right or wrong is not nearly as important as whether I suggest something new for you to consider.

Strangely, a few people have not seemed to grasp that this is a fictional concept, with Clarke’s characters even pointing out just a few of the many reason such a thing is foolishly implausible:

• An RTG could never possibly create an atomic explosion.
• An atomic explosion could never possibly convert a gas giant into a sun.
• A planet of the mass or composition of any of ours could never possibly achieve fusion.

For the details on any of these wild “could never possibly” claims of mine, see the episode transcript. So how, in light of these barriers, do the conspiracy theorists believe their prediction is going to come to pass?

Via two basic mechanisms. First, explaining an unknown with another unknown: alien intervention. The aliens are going to figure out a way to make it happen. Second, the invention of whole new versions of natural sciences (“suppressed discoveries”) that will somehow make the impossible possible.

I offer, for your enlightenment, an example. This is a reply to my Lucifer episode written by a young man in Spain named Conrado Salas Cano, who granted permission for me to reprint his reply in its entirety here.

A REPLY TO BRIAN DUNNING’S ARTICLE ON THE LUCIFER PROJECT

My animosity against the organized “Skeptic” movement in general and against Brian Dunning’s take on “pseudoscience” in particular should not keep me from granting credit where credit is due.  So I must begin by saying that I have found Mr. Dunning’s Skeptoid website beautiful and, if read critically, quite educational. (Some promoters of so-called “Skepticism” and “critical thinking” appear to act as if “critical thinking” is a necessary attitude only when addressing what fundamentally disagrees with their professed opinions).

At any rate, I would wish then to sincerely thank Brian Dunning for putting the Skeptoid site together and for taking the effort of podcasting his articles in addition to posting them. I always look for authors that I can not just read but listen to .

This is a reply to the article in Skeptoid in which Brian Dunning attempted to debunk the Lucifer project conspiracy theory -

Brian Dunning resorts to the usual old argumentative tricks characteristic of professional self-styled “debunkers”. One instance is his treatment of maverick NASA and space program conspiracy researcher Richard Hoagland. Hoagland may have been mistaken on a few counts or bought into flaky, sensationalistic arguments, but his research is generally sound and the likes of Brian Dunning only predispose readers new to the subject to not approach Hoagland’s findings with an objective mind. But then I suspect that biasing readers against Hoagland, against those “who still believe in the Face on Mars” and against anyone who thinks outside the Scientific American box, is the whole intended purpose of Brian Dunning’s work. Since Brian Dunning, playing the role of the poor publicity underdog so mastered by the theatrical professional “Skeptics”, requests donations as a means of support for his work, I would strongly encourage Mr. Dunning to approach bodies such as the CIA or the NSA for such funding, if , that is, Mr. Dunning is not in cahoots with these already. I think that Brian will find individuals there delighted to give a boost to his debunking mission.

Brian Dunning typically associates the word “believe” with the “Face on Mars” and hence with the entire demoted “fringe”, making use of that old word trick of professional “Skeptics” which may not work for much longer. I shall strive to enlighten souls to the fact that all knowledge is experiential, and hence that the Face on Mars and the other “fringe” aspects that Dunning likes to scorn are all ultimately amenable to scientific inquiry and knowledge. I do my best not to believe anything, since believing to me entails giving one’s mind away, as in religion or traditional superstition; but I suspect that the Face on Mars is real and, after having been where I’ve been and experienced what I’ve experienced I just don’t trust NASA or JPL pictures anymore.

Little does Dunning mention that another co-author in a previous edition of a book, The new solar system, that he references in his Lucifer project article, was Brian O’Leary, an old friend of mine and I, think, still very much a “believer” in or, rather, an investigator and a knower of the reality status of, the Face on Mars. Nor does he mention that the very Arthur C. Clarke, so central to the Lucifer project “conspiracy theory”, in his last years cried for an open, proper investigation and explanation of the Cydonia anomalies, and embarrassed his Planetary Society fellows by openly asserting that he was seeing worm-like formations or other indications of life or intelligent activity on Mars.

Brian Dunning’s patronizing conclusion that we ought not to conflate Arthur C. Clarke’s science-fiction with the science beamed to us by Cassini and other probes ignores the cardinal role that Clarke’s poetic fiction has played at not just inspiring NASA’s endeavors in space, but coding aspects of the secret space program.

I was preparing a paper in which I looked at depth at the feasibility of igniting Saturn or Jupiter into a mini-sun, something which I find extremely unlikely but perhaps not altogether impossible, if we add up the physical properties we have not been clearly apprised of regarding the plutonium load in RTGs, to the unconventional mechanisms of low-energy nuclear reactions (“cold fusion”) on which I happen to have done my M.S. work on, under John Dash’s guidance, at Portland State University. Also, given all the incredible suppressed findings of the Apollo program, as well as the large-scale alien presence in the solar system (as evidenced by the mind-blowing exposé of Bob Dean and others at the ’09 European Exopolitics Summit in Sitges, Barcelona, which I attended), I venture that about nothing is impossible when these alien super-intelligences are concerned. Alien intelligences are for the most part benign, but there are those with ill intentions. Stanley Kubrick codified very impressive, silenced knowledge in 2001, and the sequel 2010 is a worthy successor.

In the end, there was so much material to be covered in this projected paper that I have decided to cancel its preparation and fuse the material with an encyclopedic history of real science I sort of have started as a very long-term project. The origins of Project Lucifer seem to go back a long way, and Brian Dunning does not mention in his article Bill Cooper’s reference to Project Lucifer in Naval Intelligence documents that Bill saw in the 1970s or so. Maybe the Project was undertaken or seriously contemplated for some time but later it was aborted or tabled. Maybe it was tried on Jupiter with Galileo and it failed, leaving only Olivier Meeckers’s puzzling dark feature on Jupiter’s atmosphere in October 2003. Maybe it’s been rescheduled for Saturn with Cassini.

In conclusion, I am very sure that the skies on Earth will not be soon graced, or rather cursed, in this year of 2010 by the sudden appearance of a second, mini-sun or bright star, in the place of Saturn , when Cassini is disposed of in the atmosphere of this giant, so beautifully ringed, planet.  But Project Lucifer is perhaps not altogether impossible, especially if alien intelligence is involved.

I would strongly encourage people to press NASA not to dispose of Cassini in this fashion in Saturn’s atmosphere when its mission is completed. I find that there would be an unnecessary risk there, for us people on Earth.

For more cutting-edge information about what’s really happening in our solar system, and links to the sources with the evidence, readers can consult my website:

http://conrado.50gigs.net

Best,

Conrado Salas Cano

I invite your comments, or your replies to his reply, in the comment section below.

It is an interesting conference. Although 99% of it is a celebration of geek culture, fantasy, sci-fi, gaming, entertainment, comics, art, and just about anything else you can think of, its Skeptic Track (under the capable guidance of Skepticality’s Derek Colanduno) has grown to be one of the world’s largest critical thinking gatherings. Its differentiating factor is that outside the door of the 350-seat Skeptic Track room pass 70,000 other conference attendees, and it’s thus uniquely positioned for outreach. And outreach it did: Talks by James Randi and Adam Savage draw such large audiences that they are out in the main halls, where hundreds of non-skeptics hear them. Both discussed The Amazing Meeting and skepticism by name. Both probably piqued a lot of interest, if not converts, and probably put curious butts in the seats of the Skeptic Track room.

Skeptoid has a bare bones budget, and as such, I have to be very careful about where I spend money. Dragon*Con is fun, but it’s not right for me to spend my budget (most of which is donated) on fun. It’s best spent on outreach, which I define as anything that increases the size of the audience. This year turned out to be unexpectedly successful for me as far as outreach is concerned, as I was fortunate enough to win the Parsec Award (one of the most prestigious podcast awards, and given out at Dragon*Con) for Skeptoid. I got direct feedback from a number of people who only learned of Skeptoid because of that, and tuned in as a result. The Parsec will, no doubt, continue to be an ongoing source of promotion for Skeptoid, and by extension, for critical thinking as a whole.

To be honest, I very nearly did not attend this year, because I was dubious of the value. Dragon*Con is very expensive. The hotel is full 5-star hotel priced, for 5 nights, and it’s a cross-country flight. It’s the most expensive conference I’ve attended on behalf of Skeptoid by a wide margin. I ended up going, and only at the last minute, only because so many east coast fans emailed to ask me to come. Flattery gets my fans everywhere, so I went, and had a fabulous time with everyone. (The camaraderie is by far the best part of the conference.)

Much discussion was had among myself and the other speakers about outreach, and how best to leverage such conferences. I was surprised to learn that there is not a consensus, and that some folks prefer that conferences be only for the enjoyment of the attendees and not about reaching new audiences. I disagree, and consider outreach to be, overwhelmingly, the most important reason to have a conference. Randi and Adam, and other popular names like Brian Brushwood and Jamy Ian Swiss and George Hrab, accomplish this in spades. When these folks gave their talks, the rooms were bursting at the seams with non-Skeptic Track attendees, and this put huge smiles on our faces. I wouldn’t spend Skeptoid money on a conference that was for my enjoyment only, but I would spend money on a conference that increases the visibility of critical thinking and helps to make it more mainstream.

Without a doubt, the quality of the lineup that Derek assembled for Dragon*Con 2010 rivaled that of any other critical thinking conference I’ve attended. Kudos to him for putting on a fabulous show (and to Swoopy for her equally fabulous podcasting track), and I hope to see many more in the future.

I don’t have an army of clones like Mr. Atoss, and I do not believe Lisa could consider herself a podcast widow, given my top prioritization of family time. So you might fairly ask (and many of you often do): How the heck do I manage to do all of this??

In an earlier career, I was a software project manager. The only truly valuable thing I took away from that was the concept of time management. There are various formal models and software tools, but none of those work for me; I don’t have the patience or attention for formalized methodologies. I took the part that does work for me and I incorporated into a curriculum that I sometimes teach to small businesspeople looking to become software entrepreneurs in addition to their current business. This means working two jobs at once, something they rarely realize, and rarely take seriously. Generally, they consider their software business to be a sort of side project, and they treat it as a hobby, working on it at odd hours, whenever they happen to find a spot of spare time.

Many podcasters and bloggers treat their project as a hobby as well. The difference between a hobby and a profession is that one is taken seriously, while the other is not. One is an obligation, the other is done at your pleasure. If you work on your podcast or blog whenever you feel like it, whenever it pleases you to do so, whenever some spare time happens to rear its head, you are doing what I call Farting Around. That’s a hobby. I always knew that’s not what I wanted Skeptoid to be.

When I set out to plan my daily schedule, to delineate projects I take seriously from hobby projects, there were four basic items I wanted to accommodate:

1. My full time job. I can’t control the hours I work, basically 9 to 5 Monday through Friday, so this the first thing on my calendar.
2. Being a dad. I only get one shot at this, so I assign it all the time that the kids and are both home. That’s every day after 5pm, and every weekend.
3. The Skeptoid podcast. After the above items, it’s obvious that not a lot of time slots are left. The time slots I found are in the early morning. My Skeptoid day starts at 5:30 in the morning, every day, and ends when the family gets together for breakfast.
4. All of my other projects are hobbies. I work on them whenever I get a chance. There are always short days at work, days off, times when Lisa and the kids are gone, or the kids are out with friends. All my random stuff is done at these odd times.

An exception is the inFact with Brian Dunning video series. This was a purely speculative project, and it required a considerable allocation of resources to do properly. So I talked with my family and we agreed that I would devote a series of Sundays — otherwise family time — to the production, plus two weeknights of editing for each episode. This was acceptable to all of us because it’s a finite project; it’s one season of 13 episodes. If it ultimately proves to be a worthwhile investment and continues, it will replace one or more workdays during the week, and will not affect my other scheduled time. If such a deal can’t be worked, then it’s a deal I won’t make.

I am not moved by the complaints of anyone who tells me they don’t have time for some pet project, but who sets their alarm clock any later than I set mine. If you’re serious about your project, treat it seriously; if you’re not willing to hard code it into your daily schedule, call it what it is: a hobby.

But all of this is only half the issue. Finding the time is one thing, but managing the time once you have it is something else. This is where project management comes in. At a minimum, you must at least delineate the steps and milestones and set deadlines for each. You must be prepared to redline any items you’re not going to have time to complete. The basic steps in a Skeptoid episode are research, writing, editing, recording, audio editing, referencing, posting, and promoting. I know how much time each of the latter steps takes, so sometimes I have to reluctantly cut short the research and writing. I plan for this in advance, and always start with a general outline, and I know what research is going to take the longest. Sometimes I have to make big decisions earlier. For example, the JFK assassination episode is still a long ways off because I know that research has to include reading Vince Bugliosi’s massive book.

So that’s the long answer to the question of how I manage to do everything I do. It’s simply basic time management, and the discipline to stick to a planned schedule. Although, if I could superposition and do multiple things at once, that would be pretty cool.

Their presentation purports that there are only three possibilities to explain the UFO sighting: Hoax or hysteria; experimental aircraft; or an object of extraterrestrial origin. Actually, that’s four possibilities, since a hoax and mass hysteria are two completely different things.

After we eliminate hoaxing, hysteria, and experimental aircraft, the only remaining possibility is that this was an extraterrestrial object. Let’s hope Australian television audiences are outraged by that insult to intelligence.

I’m going to help out the show’s producers. They left out the two overwhelmingly most likely possibilities: mistaken identification, and unknown. Their list should have read like this:

1. Hoax – Not very likely in this case, but always a possibility.
2. Hysteria – Highly unlikely. Mass hysteria does not create shared visual hallucinations.
3. Mistaken identification – Most likely. The witnesses did see something, they were simply unable to identify it. Maybe it was seen from an odd angle, maybe it was something weird looking they weren’t familiar with. This doesn’t mean nobody would have known what it was.
4. Unknown – We do not have an explanation for what the witnesses reported.
5. Extraterrestrial object – I’ve struck this one out because it’s not a supportable conclusion. In order to positively identify the Westall object, we’d have to be able to reliably test it against a known sample. We don’t have a known sample of an “extraterrestrial object” to compare it against, so there’s really no way to get past #4 on this list and make a positive identification of “alien spaceship”.

Before this “documentary” came out, I was able to scoop it on my Skeptoid podcast by a few days, thanks to a heads-up from Maynard in Australia, who also provided this screen capture (many thanks, sir). On that show, I found that there are indeed some good possibilities for what the witnesses saw. The first half of the sighting coincided with a weather balloon, known to be in the area at the time, and sounding quite a lot like what some of the witnesses reported. The second half of the sighting is harder to pin down, so I’m completely comfortable with calling it unidentified. I’m reasonably comfortable saying it was probably a misidentification, and there’s a good explanation of that if you want to check out my episode.

Remember: “I don’t know” does NOT mean “I do know, and it was an alien spaceship.” To those who say this is the only possible explanation, I invite them to show us exactly how they were able to match up the Westall story to what’s known of alien spaceships. If they can’t, I invite them to revise their conclusion to admit that maybe the explanation is unknown.