Vatican twaddle

The latest from the Vatican:

Cardinal William Levada, head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said the Catholic Church doesn't stand in the way of scientific realities like evolution, saying there was a "wide spectrum of room" for belief in both the scientific basis for evolution and faith in God the creator.

"We believe that however creation has come about and evolved, ultimately God is the creator of all things," he said on the sidelines of the conference.

But while the Vatican did not exclude any area of science, it did reject as "absurd" the atheist notion of biologist and author Richard Dawkins and others that evolution proves there is no God, he said.

What?! When did Dawkins say evolution proves there is no God/gods? Firstly, science is not in the business of offering proofs. Can't they (and journalists) get that into their skulls? Secondly, the worst or best (depending on your perspective) that evolution can say is that the various extant species came to be via natural processes--that the "some deity zapped plants, animals, and humans directly into existence" hypothesis has been dealt a coup de grace.

The Catholic Church might be finally learning. It's shoving its deity into those regions where science cannot follow it (the Church, that is). Sure, you can be Deistic and say "God is the creator of the universe." For now--and perhaps a long time to come--it's nonfalsifiable and nontestable. But those Vat boys better cross their fingers and pray that scientists don't take that away from them as well. There are already alternative naturalistic hypotheses, you know.

The Aviator

Imagine there's this top pilot, the best in the world. S/he can fly any plane blindfolded from the smallest to the biggest, commercial or military. Let's call him the Aviator. Not let's say a new electronic system has been invented that allows any plane to be flown by remote control from the ground. Given how this fly by wire(less) device can save a troubled plane from crashing this type of avionics becomes the new standard in civil aviation. The leading aircraft manufacturers Boeing and Airbus quickly retrofit all their existing short, medium and long-haul planes with this device. What's more, there need only be one remote control box (RCB) to manage all aircrafts. One merely has to punch in the aircraft's number into the RCB and, voila!, one immediately has total control of that particular plane with all the feedback from the sensors and gauges displayed right there on the colored LCD screen.

Imagine the Aviator is the sole individual authorized and certified to operate the RCB which he has with him all the time, 24/7. (It has various hi tech security measures that makes it practically impossible for some one with malicious intent to gain access to the RCB's functions). In case of an emergency the Aviator is informed and he can proceed to try and bring the plane of the crisis.

Now let's say Flight 576 bound for Tokyo, carrying some 300 passengers, has radioed in and reports that they've been losing altitude over the past hour. Nothing the pilots have done has been able to bring them back up to a safe altitude. Media has already picked up the exchange between 576 and the tower. The latest word is that the aircraft is now flying less than 500 meters above the Pacific Ocean.

At present the Aviator is in a pub in Dublin. By sheer luck the telly is broadcasting the news about Flight 576. The Aviator watches and knows of course that the situation is about to end horrifically. But instead of immediately pulling out the RCB he sits back and continues sipping his drink.

Someone in the pub recognizes him. "Mr. Aviator! It's you, right? Hey that plane's going down. Aren't you going to do anything?" He waves the guy away. "Neither the tower, the FAA nor the IATA, or any of those in charge has asked for my help. If they don't buzz me, well, that's just too bad for the crew and passengers." The man is incredulous. "What?! You're just going to let all those people die?!"

----

Do you think you the Aviator had an ethical obligation to use the RCB to try and prevent the plane from crashing? Do you think he should be ethically and criminally liable for ignoring the crisis, for not doing anything to help?

One of the latest air mishaps--real one this time--occurred in Buffalo, New York last week. Continental Flight 3407 dropped out of the sky and crashed into a house, killing one on the ground and all 49 on board.

Who do you think had the RCB that could've prevented this tragedy?

God.

We can be quite confident there were people on board who rung Him/Her/It up. They had beseeched their deity to save them from certain death. But even assuming not one supplication was beamed, this being is said to be all-seeing, all-knowing. This entity in a sense was watching the entire drama unfold on his heavenly 600-inch plasma tv. And what did it do? God just let all those people die horrifically.

If you're a theist who believes God had the power to prevent the accident, knew what was happening and what would eventually happen unless he stepped in, actually cares about human beings, is a good and loving being, then if you have the gall to tell me that your deity is not morally, criminally culpable then you are absolutely sick in the head. Conjuring up such explanations as "higher good" or "mystery" to absolve this being of responsibility is nothing but a quadriplegic excuse.

Theodicies are just psychological painkillers to stem the massive attack of cognitive dissonance.

It ain't woo; it's proven scientific fact

A group of women--at least two of whom are purportedly scientists--have started what they dub The Faith of Britain. And they have marked March 6 as the Faith of Britain Day.

For exactly two minutes on March 6th at 11.00am our consortium of psychics and healers will act as a channel for the positive thoughts of the entire country.

All those positive thoughts will be just that--thoughts. It will be what these psychics, healers and participants are going to do, how they will act that'll have an impact on their lives and on those around them.

I wouldn't even have bothered blogging about this if it weren't for the following claim of theirs:

It is a proven scientific fact that thinking about something often causes it to happen. Some call this quantum physics. Others simply call it "faith."

Gee, I never knew this is already a "proven scientific fact." For decades I've been endlessly thinking/imagining/fantasizing/visualizing of being in bed with Zeus knows how many big screen actresses but, by Jove, not one of them--any of them--has come within a trillion miles, much less landed beside me naked. Ah! I probably am not thinking hard enough. I better start having sex on my mind 24/7.

I fired off this email to Faith of Britain:

Hello. According to your homepage, "It is a proven scientific fact that thinking about something often causes it to happen." Does that mean that if I think of my mom's diabetes and cardiovascular diseases going away, then it will happen? If day and night I think of being a billionaire when will I become richer than Bill Gates? How long does a person have to think of something before it comes true?

Can you please point me to the scientific evidence showing that thinking about something causes it to occur? In particular please provide the controlled experiments that were conducted and which have been replicated. In which peer-reviewed journals were these published?

Thank you.

You'd think that having two scientists on board would've prevented them from making such an untenable statement as "it's a proven scientific fact." Which makes me wonder what exactly Lisa Elmore and Isabelle Bonnaire mean when they describe themselves as "Scientists." Conspicuously, they fail to mention whether they're biologists, chemists, physicists or whatnot.

If I ever receive a reply to the email I'll post it.

Truth in advertizing

In an ad campaign by atheists in London late last year they had buses bearing the slogan "There probably is no God. So stop worrying and enjoy life." I already had reservations about its impact, and now my concern with the wording of that ad has been voiced:

Where did that "probably" come from? It doesn't suggest the sales staff is overly confident about its product. If my pilot told me "This flight to Paris probably won't crash," I'd think about taking the train.

Indeed, I share the observation that "probably" does detract from the possible maximum impact the ad could've had. The lack of resoluteness, the apparent wishy-washiness of the proclamation all but kills the message. Contrast "There probably are no ghosts" with "There are no ghosts." By including "probably" the statement comes across to believers as "Gee, there's a chance that ghosts exist after all."

Unfortunately, we atheists, skeptics, "reality-based communities" will have to live with this problem. That there probably are no sky daddies is the truth. The reality is--our current state of knowledge is--not that "there is no god" but that those who claim its existence have not provided sufficient persuasive evidence. Were we to drop "probably" we'd have to lay on the table evidence which we simply don't have. Evincing such a universal negative is, needless to say, a tall order. It would've been great to emblazon vehicles with "THERE IS NO GOD!" But that would be a lie. We just don't know with 100% certainty. We don't have enough reasons and evidence to make that leap. And indeed proclaiming "there is no god" would be a leap of faith--belief that is disproportionate to the reasons/evidence at hand.

Were we so audacious as to imply that we are certain of the nonexistence of supernatural beings, religionists would be right in slapping us with one of our own principles of clear thinking: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. (Of course the fact that there is a dearth of evidence--for any X--ought to restrain everyone from believing in X, for doing so would be irrational--why believe in X if good reasons for doing so are absent?)

Many ads mislead. I would even say it's the norm. Even preachers, pastors, priests withhold the whole picture and fail to mention to their congregation the epistemic fine print. So we're not going to make the same mistakes as the faith-heads. We are not going to commit the very errors we're exposing and critiquing. We're here to inform and shed light, not distort the picture.

It stands: There probably are no gods.

A deity-enthralled psychologist writes atheists

Months ago I came across news that psychologist David Myers was coming out with his latest book A Friendly Letter to Skeptics and Atheists: Musings on Why God Is Good and Faith Isn't Evil. After reading excerpts back then I had expressed reservations about it. Now having gone through A Friendly Letter I can say that I am hardly impressed and indeed don't consider his missive as addressing the major concern of religious skeptics.

Basically, Myer's opus is a defense of religion as a human phenomenon. He defends religion and religiosity by making an appeal to consequences. Not in the sense that he concludes his religion is the true religion and that his deity is real, rather in the sense that religion should be considered a positive force because it has in large measure produced good and made a great many people altruistic. For instance he shows through various studies and surveys that the religious have lower divorce rates, smoke less, and commit less crimes. The religious are into charities and hospital care and other pro-social activities. Towards the end of the book Myers does make it explicit that whatever comes out from religion does not validate his theistic beliefs, its consequences do not imply the existence or nonexistence of his deity.

I have no problem with the fruits of religions. It's empirically clear that various traditions (not just Christianity) have led to good (as well as evil as Myers freely admits). My primary concern is not whether belief in, say, Santa Claus produces better behaved children, but rather whether Santa is real or not, whether belief in Santa is warranted (by evidence and reasons at hand) or delusional. Other atheists may put more weight on religion's fruits but my main concern is with what's real and what's illusory. I'm concerned with the very core belief of theism, i.e., the reality of deities and the supernatural realm. Is there or is there not at least one god? Does the supernatural exist or not? Is belief in these things justified or not? Is there sufficient justification, reasons and evidence to warrant belief? Myers does not address these central, fundamental questions, which to my mind should be since he's addressing skeptics and atheists. He's more interested in showing how being religious, having a religion, having supernatural beliefs can be beneficial psychologically, emotionally, and socially. Reading Myers, I get the feeling he's telling me: Look at all the social, psychological, emotional benefits of harboring a delusion. Ain't it great! Well, feel free to climb on board. Plug into our beliefs; the Matrix is heavenly!

Very early on Myers wants to make it clear that he's one of us--a skeptic and one who espouses critical thinking.

[F]or the most part, my skeptical friends, I share your skepticism. As an appreciative longtime subscriber to The Skeptical Inquirer and to Michael Shermer’s interesting Skeptic’s Society mailings, I cheer on challenges to rampant irrationalism. Thus my Psychology (8th edition) begins with a chapter on “thinking critically with psychological science" and thereafter offers scientific analyses of alternative medicine, astrology, ESP, near-death experiences, repression, hypnosis, and lots more. I have critically examined the supposed powers of unchecked intuition (in Intuition: Its Powers and Perils). And I enjoy casting a critical eye on intriguing claims by asking “What do you mean?” and “How do you know?” (p.6)

Myers may share our skepticism vis-a-vis astrologers, sCAM, psychics, crop circles, and other extraordinary claims, but he certainly shields extraordinary claims he believes in--sectarian in this case--from the light of skeptical inquiry. Need we point out that rather than being critical he's being hypocritical? I'd really like to bounce back one of the questions he enjoys asking: How do you know that your theistic beliefs are true? How do you know that a god exists and that it is your brand that's the real McCoy? How do you know?

Myers reveals to us that "God loves us" (p.125). I'm just wondering how he knows that. And if he doesn't what makes him believe in that quaint, namby-pamby claim? Has God shown this love of his? If so what is Myers' evidence? I'm all ears. Or is it that Myers posits a nontestable claim--e.g., that God will express his love after we are with him in heaven? Or could it be that he just likes the idea and the attendant feelings that come from truly believing there is a transcendent parental figure who loves us all?

Myers is a staunch evolutionist. He will have nothing of creationism, including its latest mutation Intelligent Design. He even includes as an appendix the International Society for Science and Religion's statement on ID. Furthermore, Myers doesn't believe that prayer works. (That's an interesting revelation). He says that a lot of believers equate prayer with magic and God with some genie or heavenly Santa Claus. Myers is also well aware of the ultimate futility of God of the Gaps arguments. But mindful of how science will, given enough time, eventually shine light into every nook and cranny, he hides his god in a gap that science cannot hope to illuminate--the untestable and the unfalsifiable. Hence, Myers can keep his belief in a preternatural realm and in a nondetectable, nonphysical being.

Given that Myers is a psychologist and that he's addressing skeptics and atheists, what I didn't expect was a homily. He sprinkles his missive with such irrelevant and inappropriate sermons as::

So let us observe and experiment, believing that whatever God found worth creating, we should find worth studying. Moreover, let us do so freely, knowing that our ultimate allegiance is not to any human authority or human doctrine but to God alone. (p.18)

Myers should know better than to preach to skeptics and atheists. What could Myers have been thinking when he penned these lines? It's a mortal sin to preach to nonbelievers! They won't listen to such trash and will probably tune out. I almost did and nearly gave up reading.

Yet another thing that drives me (and I guess not a few atheists as well) up the wall is being subjected to interminable bible-quoting by faith-heads. It's like being nagged. And yet Myers does so as if he's preaching to the choir. Again, what could he have been thinking? Does he really think atheists are ignorant of his sacred text or that they'll be swayed by verses and passages?

The worst part, however, is that Myers reveals himself to be a cherry picker. He quotes from the bible, but he selects only those that affirm his beliefs, only those passages that are, shall we say, good and wholesome. Biblical teachings that are patently immoral or stories that are factually untrue and clash with science he's mum about. That a psychologist would fall into the trap of confirmation and selection bias is truly pathetic. In fact I say it's unforgivable. If one defends cherry picking as valid for one's sacred text then one has to accept that it's valid for any text. It also means calling it "sacred" is ridiculous since it's the reader who gets to pick and choose which parts s/he will hold sacred.

Myers admits that the "nasty practices" in Leviticus are not of the same ethical standing as those in Isaiah or the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament (p.15). This of course just shows that the bible is not inerrant, that it can't be the word of some perfect being. Moreover it shows that believers like Myers actively judge the bible, choosing to emphasize some parts, ignore others, and even dearly wish they could sweep the worst parts under the rug. But if cherry picking and the use of ethical discernment are valid in reading the bible then it is Myers who's creating his own god and his own religion. No longer is the bible sacred such that it as a whole dictates how Myers should think, live and eat but that Myers controls what he's going to accept as biblical in his life. He sifts through the text and highlights and heaps praises on those passages that he likes while conveniently turning a blind eye to those that he disapproves of and finds irrelevant.. Well, looks like Myers is just like most non-fundamentalist Christians--they fashion Christianity in their image.

While Myers may opt for delusion if that delusion bears sweet, succulent fruits, I on the other hand favor "reality at all costs" (a phrase by psychiatrist M. Scott Peck which he used in describing what mental health means to him). Christians are fond of saying "the truth will set you free." Which is pretty ironic and odd given how their entire belief system is predicated on beliefs for which there is no good evidence. The truth? The truth is that they merely wish and hope they have not believed in vain. Here's Myers position on truth:

If religion is, on balance, adaptive rather than toxic—if it bends us toward happiness, health, and helpfulness—that is worth knowing. But it still leaves truth up for grabs. And truth is what matters. If religious claims were shown to be untrue, though comforting and adaptive, what honest person would choose to believe? And if religious claims were shown to be true, though discomfiting, what honest person would choose to disbelieve? (p.128)

Let's emphasize that. Truth is what matters.


Thanks for trying to inform us and even tying to change our minds, Dr. Myers. But frankly I'd much rather reread Batson, Schoenrade, & Ventis' Religion and the Individual: A Social-Psychological Perspective. It's amongst the couple of psychology of religion works I loved reading cover to cover. The authors provided science, lots of it. You on the other hand brought in psychological studies alright but just as well talked from the pulpit and hosed your intended audience with theology and sectarian beliefs. The latter was a huge turn off. It mostly certainly detracted from the intention that your message be a "friendly" one.

Del Monte pineapple enema

Some months ago I came across a Del Monte pineapple juice ad that touted the product as an aid in ridding the body of toxins. Upon hearing the radio commercial I slapped my head and blurted, "Good grief! Even Del Monte has ventured into woowoo." In later versions of the ad campaign the company even hired a celebrity to get the detoxification message across. (I get a kick whenever a some star endorses woowoo--it just reinforces the stereotype that they're airheads).

I'm blogging about this just now because that Del Monte marketing inanity was the first thing that popped into my head when a friend shared this detox myth article.

There's more detox news from Dr. David Colquhoun and Ben Goldacre.

Happy not birthday to you, happy not birthday to you, ...

Hey, what do you know? Jesus' pretend birthday is coming up again. This dude is really special. The chosen one. The Son of a Gun. You see he's the only bloke who gets to celebrate his birthday on the day he wasn't born! Now that must take a miracle to pull off.

Rewinding a bit, nine months before his real birthday (whenever that was and if ever that was), Jeebus was conceived. Big problem though. No human father. No semen. No fertilization. No chromosomes except mama's. But somehow a zygote appeared which then became an embryo which eventually grew into a fetus. Ergo, Jeebus ought to be the Ever Virgin's clone. Hence, he was a she, and she was a Dolly? On the other hand since the fable says it was Sky Daddy who got Mary pregnant then ... Whoa! We've got a god screwing around with a mortal! Then again, why act surprised? The Babylonian king Sargon (c. 2300 B.C.E.) was born of an ordinary woman and a mountain god. Zoroaster, the Persian prophet who lived in the 6th century B.C.E. was God-begotten and virgin born. Cuchulain, an Irish hero, was the son of the god Lugh and the human female Deichtne. Okuninushi of Japan was one of the numerous sons of the storm god Susanowo and by the mortal woman Kishinada. The Aztec hero Quetzlcoatl was born of the virgin Chimalman, to whom the god Onteotl had appeared in a dream. The Greek god Zeus impregnated such women as Danaë resulting in the birth of Perseus; while the union of the god Apollo and Aria created Miletus. So it happens all the time, ok? Obviously the other gods have had their fill of female flesh. It was the Semitic deity's turn. It was but fair, you know--equal opportunity, no to discrimination, and all that jazz.

We can keep pedaling back all the way to the Garden where slithering reptiles had neocortices (biologists and evolutionists take note!) and so had the faculty of human speech and where an omniscient creator had not an inkling, mind you, of what was to happen next in the script he himself wrote, but then you get the point. This Bronze Age, Dark Age whackology is ten orders of magnitude more ridiculous than the worst trash Hollywood churns out. Which makes you really worry that not a few buy it as nonfiction.

How to turn anyone into a killer

Last Friday shoppers who'd been waiting outside a Wal-Mart for hours burst into the store, tragically trampling to death one of its employees.

Fists banged and shoulders pressed on the sliding-glass double doors, which bowed in with the weight of the assault. Six to 10 workers inside tried to push back, but it was hopeless.

Suddenly, witnesses and the police said, the doors shattered, and the shrieking mob surged through in a blind rush for holiday bargains. One worker, Jdimytai Damour, 34, was thrown back onto the black linoleum tiles and trampled in the stampede that streamed over and around him. Others who had stood alongside Mr. Damour trying to hold the doors were also hurled back and run over, witnesses said.

...

Some shoppers who had seen the stampede said they were shocked. One of them, Kimberly Cribbs of Queens, said the crowd had acted like “savages.” Shoppers behaved badly even as the store was being cleared, she recalled.

“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since yesterday morning,’ ” Ms. Cribbs told The Associated Press. “They kept shopping.”

The Milgram experiment among others has shown us definitively that ordinary citizens can become torturers and killers if you just nudge them inch by inch, initially asking them to do something trivially bad then gradually making them do worse things. That's how young idealistic recruits into government become bad.

In this case had the wave of shoppers been waiting only a couple of minutes I think they would in fact have become good Samaritans rather than homicidal. In fact they wouldn't have stormed the store in the first place. They would've been civil. It's the pressure of having been in line for hours, almost a full day if we are to believe the quote above, and in the cold(?) that turned these people into savages, as Cribbs describes them. Samaritan or otherwise, when under pressure, under stress, we all move closer to the edge. That said, stress and pressure may be contributing causal factors but they are not excuses. These people are guilty of having killed a person.

Since Cribbs was an observer she might've been closer to the back of the line. You'd expect people who've waited less and were less motivated to come and shop early to be among the more sober ones. Those who came earliest were the most motivated, the most "fanatical", therefore, the most dangerous, the most "savage."

In the aftermath I wouldn't be surprised if some of those shoppers directly responsible will even denigrate the deceased. They might call him stupid for putting himself in harm's way. These shoppers like all of us consider themselves decent, law abiding citizens. The psychological dissonance of having been party to a homicide demands an immediate resolution. In order to regain consonance, to maintain their self-image of being a good person, it is most likely they will pass the buck and blame--to the victim, to Wal-Mart, to the police, to circumstances. Admission of personal culpability/responsibility would be too painful a blow to their self concept. Needless to say, admission may get them incarcerated.

Is Weinberg right?

I have much respect for physicist and Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg. He's an atheist and has little qualms in calling a spade a spade when it comes to the irrationality of supernaturalism. But the following oft-quoted statement by him has had me disturbed for some time now.

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

If I read correctly Weinberg is saying that the only way for a good person to do evil things is if s/he becomes an adherent of or a believer in some religion. To put it in another way, Weinberg is saying that without religion good people would not do evil things. I haven't been able to put my finger on it but his assertion just didn't seem right. I am leery of blanket statements such as "_____ is the root of (all) evil." Dawkins said it plainly when he objected to his producers' entitling his atheism documentary Root of All Evil? In interviews Dawkins has averred that "no one thing is the root of all anything." (Unfortunately the producers just wouldn't change the title. The only concession to Dawkins' concern was the addition of the question mark.) Be that as it may, Dawkins uses the above Weinberg quote in his The God Delusion (Bantam Press, 2007, p. 249) in a way that implicitly gives the nod to Weinberg. (You've got two very intelligent and eminent scientists here--one making the claim and the other agreeing. I should probably doubt my doubting, shut up and just listen to these giants. But illicit appeal to authority isn't in the critical thinker's toolbox.)

After reading Mistakes Were Made (but not by me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, I've finally found reason for my unease. In this important and very enthralling work for the general public (which I most highly recommend to everyone more than any book I can think of right now) the authors show us how ordinarily good people can eventually commit rather atrocious acts. What it takes is baby steps--continually rationalizing and justifying the almost trivial immoral/unethical deeds that we do. One does not commit a really bad thing overnight (unless, perhaps, in a fit of rage). That takes time. One gradually moves down the "pyramid of choice," moving further and further away from a route we would've taken had we made a different choice when we started our journey. Tavris and Aronson articulate this process:

When the person at the top of the pyramid is uncertain, when there are benefits and costs of [sic] both choices, then he or she will feel a particular urgency to justify the choice made. But by the time the person is at the bottom of the pyramid, ambivalence will have morphed into certainty, and he or she will be miles from anyone who took a different route.

This process blurs the distinction that people like to draw between "us good guys" and "those bad guys." Often, standing at the top of the pyramid, we are faced not with a black-and-white, go/no-go decision, but with a gray choice whose consequences are shrouded. The first steps along the path are morally ambiguous, and the right decision is not always clear. We make an early, apparently inconsequential decision, and then we justify it to reduce the ambiguity of the choice. This starts a process of entrapment--action, justification, further action--that increases our intensity and commitment, and may end up taking us far from our original intentions or principles. [p. 33-34]

In the very famous experiment by psychologist Stanley Milgram some four decades ago, subjects were asked to deliver an electric shock to a person whenever this individual made a mistake, under the pretext that they were participating in a study on the role of punishment in learning. The subjects were also instructed to increase the voltage level as the person made more mistakes. The subjects weren't able to see this person but could hear him/her, and thus could hear the groans and pleas and cries as the shocks were applied. This unseen "victim" was in fact a confederate of the research team, and in reality no shocks were ever delivered. In front of the subject was an electrical panel with switches. The labels indicated that the voltage ranged from 10 to 450 volts. As the experiment proceeded the confederate deliberately committed errors and feigned various reactions proportional to the voltage levels. The results of this experiment are most interesting and disturbing.

When people are asked in advance how far they imagine they would go, almost no one says they would go to 450. But when they are actually in the situation, two-thirds of them go all the way to the maximum level they believe is dangerous. They do this by justifying each step as they went along: This small shock doesn't hurt; 20 isn't much worse than 10; if I've given 20, why not 30? As they justified each step, they committed themselves further. By the time people were administering what they believed were strong shocks, most found it difficult to justify a sudden decision to quit. Participants who resisted early in the study, questioning the very validity of the procedure, were less likely to become entrapped by it and more likely to walk out. The Milgram experiment shows us how ordinary people can end up doing immoral and harmful things through a chain reaction of behavior and subsequent self-justification. [p.37]

Thus, if Weinberg is saying that religion is necessary (but insufficient)* for good people to do evil things, then I'm afraid he's wrong. It is in our psychology to justify our actions even if we are mistaken. Self-justification is hard-wired in our brains. Though we may be good we can end up doing bad things, sometimes really bad things, because we have successfully and continually convinced ourselves we have done no wrong while all the while traveling down the road to perdition. Given the findings of social psychology it is plausible if not probable that religion is not a necessary condition for good people to do evil things (even if religion--or certain characteristics thereof--can be--and has been--a causal factor in tipping good people into committing evil).

And rather obviously, we need only find one good person--a nonbeliever--who's committed one evil thing to falsify Weinberg's claim.

That would be the end of my critique were it not for the glaring lack of what "good" and "evil" actually mean operationally. What criteria are we to use in determining whether a person is good or evil, in evaluating which deeds/actions/behavior are good and which are evil? How good is "good," how bad is "evil"? There is a need for clear definitions of these terms, these classes of people and action/behavior. And depending on how these are defined, Weinberg's aphorism may yet withstand falsification. I for one certainly would be most ecstatic if Weinberg's dictum holds.


------

* in philosophy a necessary condition is one without which some event E cannot occur (but which by itself alone may or may not cause the occurrence.of E). A sufficient condition is one which is necessary and which will cause E to occur. Of course, there may be a number of necessary conditions for E to occur. Taken collectively these will be the sufficient condition that leads to E. For example, a power source is a necessary condition for a lamp to give off light, but it is not a sufficient condition. Another necessary condition is the wire to conduct the electricity to the lamp. Power source and conductor together constitute a sufficient condition for the lamp to light. Given the presence of all necessary conditions the lamp must light. If it doesn't then the sufficient condition was in fact not a sufficient one, i.e., one or more necessary conditions were absent (perhaps there is a switch and we forgot to flip it!). Given that Weinberg says that with or without religion good people will do good things but that it takes religion for good people to do evil things, he is asserting that religion is a necessary condition but not a sufficient one. This means that good people who are religious have gained the potential to do evil things, which they would not have had they not been religious.

The wave of change

I am overjoyed that America has chosen its first African-American president. Barack Obama is the man of the hour and for the hour. I'm no fan of Oprah (on the contrary) but she just put in words how I feel today. Upon hearing of Obama's victory, she said that hope has just been born. Most certainly, indeed!

That said, I'm amused to discover that among Obama's foibles is his superstiousness. Apparently he has an election day superstition --playing basketball. I presume that given the co - incidence--of having played and won by a landslide--he will carry on with this ritual in the years and decades to come. And let's not even talk about his fantasies about invisible beings in the sky, a being whom he called to bless America.

And so I still have a dream--that within my lifetime there shall be that commander-in-chief of the most powerful country, male or female, of whatever color, who is uninfected by the mind viruses we call superstitions.

Poor Nikki

I just received the following spam SMS (formatting and caps as in original):

Hi there Nikki here

There is only ONE TRUE GOD.

Christians Unity. One Name. One God.

Thanks. :)

I promptly replied:

How about first proving your God and not mine is the real one? If you can't then mine is the true god and religion.

The logical fallacy therein is intentional. I opted to use jujitsu--using the opponent's own flawed reasoning against him.

Fueled by the arrogance and thoughtlessness of texting total strangers (whose religious or nonreligious orientation s/he's totally unaware of), I followed it up with the following long missive:

If you can point to your sacred text so can I. If you underscore the 2,000 years under your tradition's belt, I will remind you mine is 3,000 years older. If you say a billion believers cant be wrong, then count the number who believed the Earth is flat and the Sun and other planets go around the Earth. If you implore me to just have faith, then I shall beseech you to have twice the faith in my god, tradition and holy book.

No jujitsu there. Just sound reasoning in literary trappings in the hopes of enlightening such a naive, parochial, unthinking soul.

When adults are no more enlightened than their kids

In a city in Mindoro, Philippines, some two dozen students mostly female have experienced "seizures" in the past two months. The Inquirer reports that the children "were crying in pain as they suffered from seizures and shortness of breath in a paranormal [emphasis mine] phenomenon that has left a public high school here petrified and perplexed." The reporter has dutifully conveyed the symptoms to us readers. But how does she know the phenomenon is paranormal? How was she able to make the leap from observed facts to causal explanation? What's her definition of paranormal anyway?

So what could have afflicted these kids? School principal Henry Tungol tells us the students have been "possessed by evil spirits." Yep, the head of the school has promptly diagnosed the children as having been the victims of invisible supernatural entities. How did he come to know this? Through the process of natural ignorance of course. If something puzzles you, if something gives you goosebumps, if you have no medical expertise, if in your omniscience you can't explain it any other way, if all you can fall back on is the tradition of superstition you were raised in, then the phenomenon must be supernatural/paranormal. And if what's before you bathes you with a warm fuzzy feeling, then it must be good spirits, otherwise it's those pesky evil ones. Simple.

The Mindoro "epidemic" reminds me of St. Vitus Dance. A search on CSICOP revealed the following on what was known as tarantism, a disease that supposedly occurred during the summer months of July and August:

Symptoms included headache, giddiness, breathlessness, fainting, trembling, twitching, appetite loss, general soreness, and delusions. Sometimes it was claimed that a sore or swelling was caused by a tarantula bite, but such assertions were difficult to verify because the bite resembled those of insects. The dance frenzy symptoms resemble typical modern episodes of epidemic hysteria, in addition to expected reactions from exhaustive physical activity and excessive alcohol consumption.

The seizures did occur in the last two months, although as to the degree of difference in seasons/climes between Europe and Mindoro I don't know. The article doesn't say anything about "dancing" or any wild frenzied behavior so this may be a totally different type of hysteria we're dealing with here.

Among the various candidate explanations, there is one which for now I don't give high points. We're told that exams were just around the bend. It's possible that some of these high school kids conspired to play a prank on their community and feigned "possession," not least to disrupt exam week.

But whatever the nature of this Mindoro event, the most prudent course of action is to check mundane, natural explanations before even entertaining notions of paranormal, demonic, supernatural, or what have you. We know that children can be mischievous, we know that medical and psychological conditions exist. We work with and from what we know, not from that which has no empirical base to support it whatsoever.

Cracker mania

The brouhaha is now all over the blogosphere. Instead of swallowing the consecrated wafer given to him by the priest, a college student took it out of his mouth and brought it home to show some nonCatholic friend of his. Reports say that Catholics are outraged and some have even sent the kid death threats. Looks like loving one's enemies and turning the other cheek have gone out of fashion.

A student at the University of Central Florida says he's now getting death threats after he stole and later returned a wafer representing the "Body of Christ" from a Catholic Mass in Orlando.

The student senator, Webster Cook, originally claimed he merely wanted to show the Eucharist to a friend who had questions about Catholicism before consuming the host.

Cook, who was raised Catholic, said he decided to bring the wafer home June 29 after a church leader tried to physically pry it from his hand. Cook broke Church rules by failing to consume it immediately during Communion and then removing it from his mouth once seated.

The part about Catholics being furious and the scuffle with the church leader is most revealing. Take a second to digest that: Catholics are angry because the host/wafer/cracker has to be eaten but was not. The piece of bread has to be literally put in one's mouth and has to be literally swallowed. Keep in mind that in Catholicism the host is said to be literally the body of Jesus Christ, a being who's both fully human and fully divine (a god). Now go ahead and add two and two together. How much more literal does it have to get to understand that the Catholic Church not only accepts but in fact demands cannibalism and theophagy (the ingestion of gods)? In Catholicism opting out of eating Jesus is, to put it mildly, frowned upon.

This is the 21st century right? Forgive me for being in a daze, but WTF is this "church rule" about cannibalism being one's duty?!

Thai woo

Former Thailand prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has sagely advice for his troubled country:

Be patient with the headache-inducing situation until July 2. Mars moving close to Saturn causes the headache. When Mars leaves, the situation will ease.

It seems Thaksin relies on the heavens a lot:

Mr Thaksin has long placed his faith in astrology. When Bangkok's new airport opened he had the first plane land at 9.19am, which he believed was an auspicious moment. For a while as prime minister he cancelled his weekly press conferences, claiming that Mercury was not in a favourable alignment.

And you thought the Reagans were nutty.

A theistic psychologists's letter to skeptics and atheists

I just learned via psychologist of religion Michael Nielsen that later this year psychologist David Myers' new book, A Friendly Letter to Skeptics and Atheists: Musings on Why God is Good and Faith Isn't Evil, will be coming out.

The subtitle "Why God is Good" already makes me uneasy. It sounds as if Myers has already decided that the entity "God" exists and he will now just be providing arguments to establish its goodness. Pray he hasn't done so or he gets an immediate thumbs down from atheists.

From the looks of the pdf files of the preface and first two chapters it's going be a small format work and, given it runs only 160 pages, quite a slim one at that. Shouldn't take more than a day or two to go through it all. And if the substance of the excerpts provided is a preview of what is to come, there might not be much meat and food for thought. Sorry to say but my appetite isn't at all whetted. In fact I'm disappointed. I was anticipating much more from a psychologist, particularly good science.

Moreover, I'm bugged by what he says about his theism. In Chapter 2 he declares that among his assumptions is "there is a God." Perhaps he does so later in the book, but I don't know which entity he's referring to. He doesn't describe this "God" in any meaningful detail. Given his "biblical understanding" we can surmise he's talking of the Judeo-Christian deity. But is it that of the Catholic, fundamentalist, liberal, ... or his own trimmed down / souped up version?

Right after stating his assumptions Myers tells us that he believes "we should hold our own untested beliefs tentatively, assess others’ ideas with open - minded skepticism, and when appropriate, use observation and experimentation to winnow error from truth." Moreover, he tells us he "enjoy[s] casting a critical eye on intriguing claims by asking 'What do you mean?' and 'How do you know?'" Well and good. Those are what skeptics, including religious skeptics, would want everyone to learn to do. But has Myers cast a critical eye on his own theological beliefs? Hopefully he addresses that matter.

I also have a problem with his use of "faith." This early, he seems to be already using the word in at least two senses: religious/spiritual inclination and belief. If faith is understood to be belief without justification or belief highly disproportionate to the available evidence, then I for one find faith and reason irreconcilable. In such a context faith isn't reasonable.

I get the impression that Myers gives us thumbs up to the human activity we call religion including the belief in deities (although not all kinds of gods). The problem of course--and I think Myers is aware of it--is that even if being religious (in the Western world) is associated with goodness and happiness, it doesn't imply that the proposed supernatural entities believed in actually exist. Given the lack of any good evidence for them, it would be delusional to believe that they in fact are real, i.e., having faith in their existence isn't warranted.

I may be prejudging Myers. Hopefully there is more intellectually rigorous material in the rest of the book.

When you wish

Wishful thinking is part and parcel of childhood. The brains of the young are still very much in the process of developing "higher" faculties such as analytical thought. Children are credulous (for survival reasons, Homo sapiens may be evolutionarily selected to unquestioningly believe whatever adults say) and are just getting into grips with reality, distinguishing fact from fiction and fantasy. Hence, the young are given great leeway. In fact when they commit errors in thinking, inference, causal reasoning, and the like, we find it most amusing and sometimes even endearing.

But it hardly is charming when adults drag their childhood (or would that be "childish"?) ways into their adult lives [1]. Ironic, but Paul hit the nail on the head: "When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things" (1 Cor. 13:11) [2]. Wishful thinking is unbefitting of an adult. We either do away with it or suffer the ill consequences.

And nowhere are the consequences more tragic than in the area of health. Daily around the world are millions wishing themselves and others into health. A lot of this takes the form of utterances--both audible and silent--directed at invisible entities whose names have been around for millennia: Buddha, Kuan Ni Ma (Kuan Yin), Vishnu, Allah, Yahweh, Christ, Mother Mary (with the intact hymen). Whether a loved one figures in a vehicular mishap, or is undergoing major surgery, or fighting an invasion by pathogenic microorganisms, petitions flow from the minds and lips of "wishers" in the belief that mere wanting/desiring/chanting (coupled with closing of the eyes, bowing of heads, kneeling, waving of lighted incense, etc.) will in fact result in the intended effect (or fervently wishing that the act of wishing/wanting/praying would lead to the intended effect).

The harm of wishful thinking is readily and incontrovertibly apparent in cases when it is the only option taken for a life threatening condition, as was in the following case.

A 16-year-old boy whose parents rely on prayer instead of medical care died Tuesday [June 17, 2008] following an illness marked by stomach pains and shortness of breath, Gladstone police said.... The boy became sick a week ago and -- like all members of the religious order -- did not receive medical attention. His condition worsened Sunday and members of the church gathered for prayer....

If your disease is not the self-limiting type, if what you have is life-threatening, then taking no other measure except faith healing and prayer--i.e., wishful thinking--will make you very ill and may even lead to death. Why? Because it is no different from holding the hand of the afflicted. It is as (in)effective as Native American shaman chants, sacrificing cattle to Osiris, bathing in the waters of some sacred South Asian river, or reciting Tibetan Buddhist verses while manipulating prayer beads. As with all forms of shamanistic and paranormal forms of treating health problems, faith healing has no efficacy to speak of beyond placebo effects.

Two years ago I proposed the following thought experiment. Let's say that your toddler has accidentally ingested a large dose of poison and is doubled up from unspeakable abdominal pain. Which of the following would you do and which do you think would most probably save her/his life?

1. Do nothing. You carry on as if nothing out of the ordinary happened.

2. You sit beside him and assume the lotus position. You close your eyes, bring your brain waves down to the alpha level, and visualize white light dissolving the poison in his tummy. With more blinding white light you clean his entire digestive and circulatory systems. (For Old Agers out there, that's the Silva Method for treating any and all diseases)

3. You rush your child to a Chinese medicine man or a shaman or a chiropractor or a faith healer or a psychic healer or some "alternative medicine" practitioner.

4. You fall on your knees and start praying to Kuan Yin (the goddess of mercy), Allah, Buddha, Salus (Roman goddess of health), Feta (uh perhaps not), Baal, or whichever deity/deities you subscribe to.

5. In addition to #4 you run to the phone and call all your relatives and friends and ask them to pray with you. You also send SMS (text) messages to everyone in your address book to spread the word and get the whole world praying, chanting, lighting incense, ....

6. You rush her to the nearest ER or clinic and have doctors give her atropine (or whatever it is they give to counteract the effects of the poison) or get the poison out of her.

7. Number 6 and then #2, 3, 4, and/or 5. (#3 is done after her discharge from the clinic/hospital, while #2, 4, 5 can be performed while he's being treated by doctors).

If you choose #7, why do you think performing #2, 3, 4, and/or 5 in addition to #6 will or might help.

In cases where only wishful thinking (e.g. prayer, faith healing, Touch Therapy,... ) is employed those with acute, life-threatening conditions don't become better. Thus, in cases where it is employed in addition to proven evidence-based medical care we know that it is superfluous. It's like dancing while the doctors perform angioplasty on your parent--the jig is irrelevant to the arterial stenosis. Remedies based on wishful thinking are as relevant as the ritual performed by one aboriginal tribe, a ceremony which they believe is what causes the sun to rise everyday. Clearly, this society need only have forgone with the ritual for a week to experience disillusionment and enlightenment. Analogously, (if only it weren't so totally unethical) the delusion of FH could, at least on a rational level, be dealt a coup de grâce were we to treat with FH alone those patients with conditions that aren't self-limiting and don't spontaneously go into remission (e.g. acute appendicitis). If only we could perform such an experiment, we'd be able to definitively show FH as nothing but wishful thinking [3].

It's most tragic that children are dying because of parents who so unthinkingly rely on magic to treat them. We've already seen it again and again (among the children who've died from being treated with FH alone are Ava Worthington and Madeline Neumann). The faith healing delusion can and does kill! Will we ever see an end to these cases of manslaughter? Perhaps not. There have been and will always be children in adult's clothings who will believe that uttering words and beseeching silent invisible entities from some other dimension can magically make their wishes come true. It seems that Homo sapiens are hard-wired to fall into irrational thinking, magical and wishful thinking. Thus, until our brains evolve into dispensing with these natural predispositions only education in clear, rational, logical, critico-scientific ways of thinking can lead us off the natural path of muddled reasoning and out of the darkness of ignorance.

We all wish for this and that. But let us harbor no illusions. Wishing with all your heart and all your mind will come to naught. Now that you're no longer a child, do away with childish ways of thinking and reasoning.


----

Notes:

1. Interestingly, adults and culture are selective as to which instances of wishful thinking are afforded legitimacy--i.e., not considered to be forms of wishful thinking. Consider, for instance, the proposition "Ask entity X," where X = tooth fairy and X = the god of one's religion. While neither of the two entities are known to be real, one is relegated to fantasy while the other is taken most seriously as factually effective.

2. Since Paul was a supernaturalist, it is clear his assessment of himself was most flawed. Childish reasoning and thinking he most certainly was not able to completely banish.

3. We must not, however, underestimate the psychological power of cognitive dissonance coping mechanisms. Even with irrefutable evidence die-hard believers will still be able to maintain their belief in the efficacy of FH. For instance, in the face of such confuting evidence they may rebut by averring that their deity, say Kuan Yin, had already long ago planned to "bring back home" these very sick people at this time--that's the very reason why they are so ill. Such is the power of the mind to churn up imaginative, albeit unprovable, reasons just to shore up delusions.

Failure of wishful thinking modalities such as faith healing, prayer, animal sacrifices to appease unseen entities will be rationalized with explanations that cannot be tested and proved false, i.e., with nonfalsifiable claims. Thus, if the deity believed in is Apollo, then Apollo does answer prayers and does cure people when prayed to, but when the patient doesn't get well or dies, then it is inferred that Apollo has much bigger plans which we mere mortals cannot begin to comprehend. It is an Apollonian Mystery.

Of course anyone can resort to such a nonfalsifiable claim--a Hindu, a Zoroastrian, a Jew, a Muslim, or a Christian. In each case every deity can be said to answer prayers, implying that all these deities exist, which of course would entail a contradiction. Thus, the fact that your argument or explanation is unfalsifiable and cannot be refuted does not mean you can pat yourself on the back for a job well done. It probably means you've just created and embroiled yourself in a delusion. Religionists are famous for nonfalsifiable claims and rationalizations. It's a case of making delusions airtight. They begun with a far-fetched, unjustified belief (e.g. there are superpowerful, supergood invisible entities from some other dimension) and then made the beliefs irrefutable by making untestable claims to explain away confuting evidence.

Persist in asking "How do you know?"

I recently discovered that the Philippine Star has daily theological one-liners printed at the bottom margin of the back page. You can't miss it. It's in large type, with a bright yellow band background to highlight it. Some examples: "Persistence in prayer pleases God" (May 3, 2008), "If you fill your heart with God's Word, He'll bring spiritual health to your soul" (June 5, 2008), "God is always in control behind the scenes" (June 6, 2008). Given these claims, we can rule out the possibility that they're talking about the god of the Deists (who neither gave any commandments nor is interested in the affairs of the universe) or the god of Episcopalian Bishop John Shelby Spong or that of theologian Paul Tillich (a nebulous "force" which he defines as, among other things, the "ground of all being,").

But whoever the deity in question may be, what I'd like to know from those who declare and believe in the above declarations is how they know they are so. What method did they employ to discover these "facts"? How did they arrive at their knowledge of these things? Are they just parroting others? Could it be that they inferred them from various older claims, premises which are not yet known and haven't been evinced to be true? Did they merely find them in some ancient text; if so by what means did the author of that text discover their veracity? How can others--like you and me--determine/confirm the claims? (Can we, for example, have an audience with this entity and get it straight from the horse's mouth? What objective tests can we perform?) Or--Zeus forbid--could it be that those who say the above things merely believe and want/wish them to be true? Until the epistemological questions are answered the claims are unsupported and unsubstantiated. And just to repeat an epistemic heuristic: extraordinary claims demand extraordinary quality of evidence in their favor.

And so it is for all other theological claims. The query "How do you know it's true?" invariably exposes the absence of a valid epistemic grounding for the belief. Thus were we to ask, "How do you know that the phenomena 'God' and 'soul' you speak of in the above claims in fact exist and are real?", we would be met with answers that don't at all substantiate the claims. It goes without saying that it would be imprudent or even foolish to believe in anything lacking sufficient justification/evidence. One can choose to believe or one can prefer to believe rather than withhold belief, but there is no rational imperative to do so. In fact it would either be nonrational or irrational to choose/prefer to believe.

Psychologically, it is intriguing to note that while most people will be skeptical were you to tell them that a new animal species has been discovered, say, a whale with legs and feet, the same people will not blink but instead swallow hook, line, sinker, and even fishing pole when you tell them there exists an invisible, undetectable entity that is over 14 billion years old, one that has an understanding of chemistry, biology, and physics that surpasses a billion Einsteins combined, that has perfect telekinetic, telepathic and clairvoyant abilities, that can speak and understand any language (past, present and future), including all animal talk, and one which wants you to verbally communicate with it regularly but more importantly enjoins you to share with it part of your income every Sunday through human delegates (albeit self-appointed). Thus, while we would expect that the more implausible (the more outrageous) the claim the more skeptical people are, in reality, it doesn't follow. The fact is there are very implausible, extraordinary claims for which there is no good evidence whatsoever that people believe in through and through (quite unthinkingly).

How do you know I'm telling the truth were I to say that I always carry a million Euros--cash--on me wherever I go? Why is it that your gut reaction is to be skeptical? How do you know that you've really been cured by a Touch Therapist after she repeatedly passes her hands 3 inches above your body for several minutes? How do you determine the efficacy of this treatment modality? And even prior to that, given our fund of anatomical/physiological understanding, how do you know whether Touch Therapy is even remotely plausible? How do self-proclaimed "alien abductees" know that the bruises and marks on their bodies were really caused by extraterrestrials and not by some other means? How do you know they've explored and ruled out all other possible explanations? How do you know that goddess Kali is real, alive, and is truly out there somewhere in some dimension? How do you know she isn't? If you don't know she isn't and can't ever prove she isn't, then how do you know that some other deity (perhaps your own) is the real one if the reasons for saying it exists and is the real one are no better, no more persuasive (much less conclusive) than those for Kali?

How do you know it's true? How do you know when you should believe and when you should remain skeptical, how much to believe in claims and how much to question them?

How do you know?

Ducks unlimited

It's one thing when the man and woman on the street trips and makes a logical booboo. It's brow-raising and elicits incredulity when someone with acronyms suffixed to their name commits a rudimentary fallacy.

Woodson Merrell, MD is a "board member of the New York State Office of Professional Medical Conduct, a member of the American College of Physicians, American Medical Association, New York State Medical Society, and New York County Medical Society, and an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at ... the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons." You'd think that with such stature he'd know better than Tom, Dick and Harry. Unfortunately, Merrell is into "integrative medicine" otherwise known as complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), a phenomenon that before its marketing makeover was known simply and unobfuscatedly as quackery.

The same set of practises that was called quackery or fringe medicine in the mid twentieth century was renamed "alternative medicine" in the 1960s and 70s. The term "complementary medicine" was coined during the 1990s.... Further rebranding has given rise to the notion of "integrated medicine." (Rose Shapiro, Suckers: How Alternative Medicine Makes Fools of Us All, London: Harvill Secker, 2008, p. 1)

However, Merrell's plunge into quackery isn't the error I'm referring to. James Randi reports that, "In an interview with the American Pain Foundation, Merrell said:"

We use whatever is safest, gentlest, and most effective for the patient regardless of what tradition it came from. As much as possible, we use an evidence-based approach, but certainly would consider an herbal remedy that's been around for twenty-five hundred years – that's a significant enough empirical trial.

Merrell was already was on track with the "effective" and "evidence-based" bits, but that last clause sabotaged his entire credibility. Given his argumentum ad antiquitatem, it may be that he doesn't really understand what evidence-based medicine is about, why randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled clinical trial (RCT) is the gold standard of medical research, that bias is the number one enemy of objective testing and that the twenty-five-hundred-year "empirical trials" he's alluding to are precisely loaded with such biases.

James Randi elucidates on the fallacy. He's addressing Merrell:

Doctor, the idea of a Flat Earth has “been around” far longer than that, and was tested countless times; the Earth always looked flat, everyone knew that! The fact that a really bad idea has been around for centuries, doesn’t make it correct, it only makes it old. Yes, many, many, herbal remedies work very well, and were discovered by experiment, long ago: digitalis, aspirin, so many remedies we still use today. But we don’t use them because they’re old, we use them because they’ve passed the “evidence-based” trials that you mention are advisable when “possible.” For half a century, calomel was raved over as a cure for just about everything, and doctors prescribed it freely – until they noticed that not only the ailment went away, so did the patients. They died from mercury poisoning, because calomel is mercurous chloride…

In the same issue of Swift, Randi shares with us yet another fallacy (an epistemic one) from the producer of the television program "Healthcast." In one of its episodes the show featured Tong Ren (Chinese origin perhaps?), a quack treatment that essentially consists of "tapping on a doll with a small hammer." After seeing the show, a skeptic wrote and complained to producer Laura Stebbins. As part of her reply she wrote:

Hundreds of people from all over the world have testified that this therapy has helped them...

Hundreds of people have also testified that arsenic, bloodletting, cupping, Laetrile, healing touch, ... have helped them. But there is no objective evidence that any of these are effective. In fact your eyes probably (and rightly) popped when you read "arsenic"--some things that people swear by are in fact downright harmful. Actor Steve McQueen availed of Laetrile (among other snake oil) for his cancer, and yet Laetrile contains a non-insignificant amount of cyanide.

Perhaps Stebbins is unaware that a thousand testimonials is as good (or bad) as a single one. There are very good reasons why the FDA and medical researchers don't accept and don't rely on testimonials or even case studies as evidence for the efficacy or safety of any treatment modality. They are so laden with confounding factors (including the biases we talked about above) that anecdotes are completely useless as evidence. At best they are starting points and incentives for further research.

If one person can commit the fallacy of false cause, so can a hundred. If one piece of evidence is invalid or unreliable, many more pieces of invalid or unreliable evidence don't make the case any stronger. This means that the many testimonials offered by practitioners or users to promote a favorite therapy generally don't prove much of anything--except perhaps that some people have strong beliefs about certain treatments. (Theodore Schick, Jr. & Lewis Vaughn, How to Think About Weird Things:Critical Thinking for a New Age. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 1999, p.203)

In other news, Yale University is going to the ducks. It now has an Integrative Medicine program and in April held its first annual Integrative Medicine Scientific Symposium. I think there must've been a typo there. They must've meant "Ist Annual I.M. Pseudoscientific Symposium." There! Now we've done away with the oxymoron.

I'll have Dr. David Colquhoun introduce the premier woowoo during the symposium.

David Katz, MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP, is founder and director of the Integrative Medicine Center (IMC) at Griffin Hospital in Derby, Connecticut. He is also an associate professor, adjunct, of Public Health and director of the Prevention Research Center (PRC) at the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut.

That sounds pretty respectable. But he is into not just good nutrition, exercise, relaxation and massage, but also utterly barmy and disproved things like homeopathy and ‘therapeutic touch’.

In his talk, Katz rallied for a "more fluid concept of evidence." In other words do whatever is necessary to make sure that candidate modalities that flunk the exam still get to graduate and be certified. This includes accepting case studies and anecdotes as objective evidence for efficacy. In his speech Katz brings up various treatments (e.g.., CoQ10, vitamin therapy, homeopathy) and the lack of solid hard evidence for them and yet he defends them--lamely--with the aphorism "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Indeed if I can't see radio waves it doesn't mean they aren't there. However, if treatment X is in fact ineffective then there's nothing else to witness but absence of efficacy! (Likewise with any other claim: if Y doesn't exist and isn't real then you won't find any evidence for Y.) Needless to say, believing that X works (or that Y is real) until good evidence is at hand is unwarranted.

Colquhoun on Katz's speech:

Dr Katz goes through several different trials, all of which come out negative. And what is his conclusion? You guessed. His conclusion is not that the treatments don’t work but that we need a “more fluid concept of evidence.”

Dr. Steven Novella summarizes the Katz approach: "When studies of 'alternative' modalities are negative, proponents want to change the rules after they see the results." When former Chair of the Society of Homeopaths Felicity Lee was asked why she still practices homeopathy after the best studies have shown it to be no better than placebos, Lee replied that science and RCTs aren't suited to testing homeopathic remedies (although when questioned as to why this is so, Lee was stumped).

On the other hand, should a battery of independently performed RCTs unquestionably show that the modality works, the quacks would accept the robust design and methodology and hail the trials as definitive proof. In other words, these CAM and IM practitioners want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to keep their belief whether the evidence is positive or negative. I find psychiatrist M. Scott Peck's observation of psychiatric inmates cogent. According to Peck, in effect these people say, "Don't disturb our delusions." Merrell, Katz, Lee, and other proponents are not loonies. But they're certainly grossly deluded (clinically defined as continuing to believe even in the face of overwhelming rational arguments/evidence to the contrary).

In the same talk Katz describes medical schools' emphasis on evidence as indoctrination. Colquhoun calls this "a pretty graphic illustration of his [Katz's]deeply anti-scientific approach to knowledge." It can't be emphasized enough: there is no other way to test the efficacy of therapeutic modalities except through scientific means, the best and most reliable being the RCT.

More than a touch of bias

Just got wind of a 3-year Stanford University clinical trial that's underway to study the efficacy of Healing Touch (HT) [1]. What is HT? It's very much akin to Therapeutic Touch (TT). Duh! Ok, ok. It's basically a laying of hands on the sick. In TT the hands don't actually touch the person. In HT, the hands can be in physical contact. Both techniques are said to be based on the manipulation of some human "energy field." Here's how one of the researchers of the Stanford study describes the basis of HT.

"It's based on the belief that our bodies are surrounded by a field of energy and our bodies themselves are a denser form of energy," [Kathy] Turner said. "The belief there is that once the body's energy is cleared and balanced, our bodies have the innate capacity to heal themselves."

The underlying technique is age-old, advocates say, and intends to balance and align people's energy fields so they become "whole in body, mind, emotion and spirit" - although no one knows quite how it works.

And here's how HT is performed.

People remain fully clothed. A lot of it is actual touching, but if someone has just had surgery, the healer can work above the person's body. Healing Touch International Inc. runs a certification program across the country that many nurses take, but it's open to everyone.

[Anne] Broderick, a former corporate executive turned psychotherapist, provides Healing Touch to Lydia Li every week. Both survived breast cancer and took part in Healing Partners at Stanford.

Earlier this month, Li arrived at Broderick's Palo Alto office with shoulder pain and a headache. She lay on a massage table, and Broderick covered her fully clothed body with a white sheet. Broderick, 69, then silently told herself, "I set my intention for the highest good," and began methodically touching Li to the sounds of running water and quiet music, occasionally sweeping her hands above her. At times, she firmly held a foot, knee or wrist. At others, she seemed to play an imaginary piano on Li's back.

Often, Broderick begins sessions by holding a crystal (although she said a "lifesaver on a string" would work just as well) 4 inches above Li and watches it circle over the seven chakras - energy vortices - that run along the length of the body. Clockwise is a good sign. No movement or one that's counterclockwise means the person could use some help getting healthy energy flow, she says.

To most people, a scientific study is a scientific study. And once a study has shown that there is evidence therapy X is effective you'd think that's that; X does work. Well, as with cars, not all studies are of equal quality. You'd of course trust a Rolls and a Ferrari over the China-made Chery. So it should be with clinical trials. And guess what? The Stanford trial is a poorly designed study. It has two major flaws even at the outset. Participants are not randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups, i.e., there is either self-selection--the patients choose in which group they want to be in--or the researchers get to determine the group assignment [2]. Secondly it employs neither single nor double blinding (masking), i.e., the participants know whether they're receiving HT or not and the researchers know which patient is assigned to which group. What all this boils down to is massive propensity for bias and hence unreliability of the forthcoming results. Thus, even at this stage we already know that this clinical trial won't lead to any conclusive findings. In fact should the findings be positive it would be most suspect precisely because of the lack of blinding and randomization--two very crucial factors in any clinical trial that's able to guard against experimental biases.

Another potential problem lies in the control group. If a sham/faux HT procedure is possible then one group ought to be provided this "treatment," just as is in the case of tests of acupuncture where the control group is given sham needling. Therefore, a better designed trial would've involved actors who have no training in HT whatsoever perform the sham HT, with the participants blinded to this fact. If it turns out that patients in the sham HT group fare worse than those in the HT group then there would be good reason to say that there is favorable evidence for HT.

As we said both HT and TT claim the human body possesses an "energy field." Traditional Chinese Medicine likewise claims the body has an energy called qi (pronounced as chi). However, there is absolutely no evidence for this energy field or aura. And in a JAMA study conducted to evaluate TT, the practitioners (most if not all who practice TT are nurses) who claimed to be able to detect and exercise control over this energy field failed to even detect it. Given our knowledge of human anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, and given the experiments thus far conducted the plausibility of the theory of both TT and HT hovers around zero.

Be that as it may, the physical presence of someone who commiserates probably does have a psychological (and even detectable physiological) effect on patients. So does a loving touch--a friendly hand clasping the patient's for instance Or for that matter, embrace and companionship by the patient's loved ones. There's nothing controversial or implausible about these. In fact we would expect these behaviors and events to be helpful in some way, even if only to calm the patient and counteract the stressors s/he's experiencing. But let's dispense with all the energy field, chakra, and crystal poppycock.



Notes:

1. Learned of this study via Now What, Cat? a site that I think is owned by Cathy. I left a short and rough version of this blog entry as a comment. Moderation is active. Wonder if she'll post what I wrote. If not does that mean I'm persona non grata whatever the content of my comment?

2. The SFGate article made a booboo, describing the Stanford trial as randomized when in fact it isn't.

He's baaack!

That deluded priest Fernando Suarez is back in the country. At the end of this month the Pied Piper is leading his flock to Montemaria, Batangas for more imaginary healings. If you're a believer then go ahead, pack up your gear, make a beeline for that mountain lair of his and have an endorphin-enkephalin-opioid rush. Your deity has imbued humans with an innate storehouse of these drugs to give you a high. Avail of it. Be faithful and have faith in faith healing. Be charmed by Suarez. Believe in his curative powers. And feel better. I swear!

Just don't expect your diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, amputated limb, Down syndrome, spina bifida, hemophilia, et al.to be a thing of the past when you come down from cloud nine. That placebo effect you just experienced? It'll wear off soon enough and has no therapeutic value vis-a-vis diseases, as is with the effects of heroin, opium, morphine, booze, and other narcotic substances your deity created but failed to make inherent in your physiology.

Guess I'm really dumb to be a skeptic. Now I'll never be able to enjoy the narcotic, pain-killing, feel-good benefits from delusions of magical supernatural healing and SCAM (Supplements, Complementary and Alternative Medicine). Drats! Somebody give me a delusion quick! Turn me back into a stupid, credulous, gullible ignoramus.

Sigh. Indeed, ignorance is bliss. And Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor in mind, for they shall reap the fruits of the placebo effect."