A common theme on this blog is irritation with the scientific illiteracy of much of the public. This is, it needs to be noted, different from a lack of educational achievement. While it is popular to divide the world into uneducated cretins and enlightened college graduates, this is complete bullshit. While certain forms of anti-scientific thinking are popular among those without degrees, things such as vaccine denial, hysteria over GMOs, and belief in bogus "energy healing" are extremely common among people with degrees.
In fact, my own experience is that those with degrees tend to be far more intractable in their false beliefs in large part because they have degrees. I have lost count of the number of times that I have had a conversation with someone who was spouting pseudo-scientific nonsense and had them respond finally with "well, I earned a degree from Stanford [or another major university], so clearly I'm smart enough to understand this!"
A degree from Stanford, or anywhere else, in literature or history does not make one knowledgeable about biology, medicine, or physics. Certainly, someone with such a degree can become knowledgeable about these subjects, but to rely on the fact that you have a degree and not on training on the subject in question is a sign of sloppy thinking.
Most of the time, people are simply accepting whatever is convenient for their social and political views, and ignoring any disconfirming data. So, people on the political right are perfectly willing to accept marginal and poorly done studies that conclude that there is doubt about climate change contrary to the general scientific consensus, but people on the political left are willing to accept equally dubious studies that allege harm from GMO crops; people on the social right are willing to buy all manner of nonsense about the alleged harms that homosexuals do to their families, but people on the social left are only too ready to accept dubious studies concerning the role of self esteem in crime.
Part of the problem is, I think, that there is a tendency to equate scientific literacy with acceptance of certain conclusions, a scientifically literate person is one who accepts that evolution occurred, to use one example. In truth, scientific literacy is about having a knowledge of the methods of science. Importantly, it is about knowing the parameters under which scientific knowledge is generated.
Let's take the example of the study by Andrew Wakefield that is used to make claims about a link between vaccines and autism. Many people either accepted it because it gelled with their social and political views (medicine bad, big pharma evil) or rejected it because it clashed with their views (vaccines are part of the progress of mankind!). Very few people who hold a strong view on it have actually read it.
I did read it. When I read it, I, like everyone else, was unaware that Wakefield had falsified data or tweaked his results. But I was struck by two things: 1) the causal mechanism that he suggested, wherein the thimerisol in the vaccine caused inflamation int he digestive tract that allowed infection leading to autism, didn't sound plausible. However, I am not a medical doctor and am aware that there may be something to this that I simply didn't understand (this recognizing of one's own limits in knowledge is an important part of scientific literacy). 2) The sample size was small, totaling 12 children. A small sample size is useful in trying to prove the plausibility of a basic concept, but is insufficient for actually proving anything medical because of the high odds of random chance interfering with a sample size that small.
So, after reading it, I went away thinking that it sounded implausible, but that I didn't know enough about the subject to judge that too strongly, and that the sample size was small and larger scale studies would be needed to find a link between vaccines and autism with any confidence. In other words, my own scientific literacy pointed to the problems with the study, but prevented me from ignoring it outright until such time as further data was generated. I continued to get vaccinations myself, and encouraged people with children to get them, as the general scientific consensus was still in favor of them, but I was open to the possibility that this might be wrong.
In time, large scale studies were performed, and they showed that there is no link between vaccines and autism, and Wakefield has since been revealed as an outright fraud. However, by that time, numerous people had jumped on the bandwagon of a hypothesis supported by a dubious small-scale study, leading to the resurgence of numerous nearly eradicated (and in some cases deadly) illnesses. A greater degree of scientific literacy would have cautioned people early on, and they would have considered the possibility of the study being accurate alongside the need for further study to test the hypothesis. Considering that children have been injured and killed because of vaccine denial, this is a case where a lack of scientific literacy resulted in very serious consequences.
Recently, studies have been published arguing that organic farming leads to healthier soil and that acupuncture is effective in dealing with pain. In both cases, people either jumped on board or rejected the claims based on their pre-existing beliefs, without ever actually looking into the contents of the studies themselves. The acupuncture study was riddled with problems (for a summary of it and similar studies, look here) that effectively eliminate it from consideration, while the organic farm studies are interesting and seem plausible, but tend to have small sample sizes and some methodological problems that decrease their ability to elucidate the issue. However, you would only know these things if you read the papers themselves and read the scientific discussions and criticisms of the papers, which most people don't. Most people go to Fox News or the Huffington Post and accept the summary from whichever source aligns with their social and political views without ever questioning the actual science itself. And, importantly, this is extremely common amongst educated people with degrees from well-respected universities.
Acceptance and rejection of many scientific claims often falls along political lines. Left-leaning individuals are more likely to accept that acupuncture is great, that organic farming improves soil, and that vaccines cause autism, all without seriously considering problems with and criticisms of the research; right-leaning individuals are more likely to embrace climate change denial and notions like intelligent design. Those with college degrees are most likely to be able to convince themselves that they are too smart to have been fooled and to be able to rationalize their conclusions, no matter whether they are debatable but possible (organic farming improves soil) or flat-out false (intelligent design). All are scientifically illiterate, and yet all think that they alone understand the world.
In sum: scientific literacy isn't about having the right knowledge, it's about having an understanding of how science works, which means knowing that one study doesn't "prove" anything, that multiple studies are necessary, the larger the scale the better, and that the criticisms of the studies are important - having certain base knowledge (the Earth orbits the sun, DNA codes many of our traits, etc.) is necessary and important but is no literacy in of itself. It's about knowing that you are not knowledgeable about any but a narrow range of topics, and that you have to accept that you may be wrong and that people ideologically opposed to you may be right on any given topic. It's about knowing that your educational background prepares you to evaluate information and ideas within the field that you studied, and does not make you more likely to be able to evaluate information outside of that field. And, importantly, being scientifically literate means understanding that the things that you wish to be true or that align with your beliefs may be false, and that you have to listen to criticism of ideas that you hold dear, for those criticisms might be correct.
Showing posts with label Pro-Science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pro-Science. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Thursday, July 19, 2012
So, You Want to be a Paranormal Investigator, Part 2
It's been a little while since I posted part 1 of this, but here I am with Part 2 (edit to add: part 3 is here). A quick re-iteration: there are many people who engage in activities that could be labelled "ghost hunting" or "paranormal investigations." This set of entries is directed at the sub-set of them who are genuinely interested in trying to do good, robust work, and not those who simply want to hang out in creepy places (which, it must be said, is something that I enjoy doing, so I see nothing wrong with it). So, here we go...
In the last entry in this series, I discussed the problems inherent in basic data gathering. Although I focused on eye-witness testimony, and specifically all that is wrong with it, the basic concepts (know what type of data you are collecting, what [if anything] it actually means, and why you are collecting it) apply to any situation in which you are attempting to gather information.
So, the last entry focused on some of the basic ways to think your way through data gathering, this one is aimed at saving you time and money by looking at the different tools of the trade. I am going to be focused on actual tools that measure actual things - not on the use of "psychic devices" ranging from a medium's impressions to dowsing rods (which certainly have their own problems, but other have explained the issues there more clearly than I ever could). I will briefly discuss some of the more "exotic" tools amongst the ghost-hunter's cache, but will spend a bit more time on two types of equipment that I have more direct personal knowledge of: cameras and audio equipment.
Now, many a ghost-hunting enthusiast will say "ha! Well, this guy admits that his experience with this equipment is limited, so why should you listen to him and not us, us who use this equipment all the time?" Simple: Unlike them, I actually bothered to read up on what the equipment actually does and does not do, and while my direct experience is limited, I have been able to find enough to figure out that they are either lying or else know even less than I do about these devices.
So, for starters, here's a run-down of some of the more common equipment, what it gets used for, and what it actually does (Much of this information is well-summarized here, for the curious):
For starters, the ghost hunters seem to have a love affair with everything infra-red, which is odd. Infra-red devices read heat signatures. That's it. They do different things with these signatures (create images, measure temperatures, etc.), but their purpose is, simply to read heat signatures. What's more, each type of infra-red device reads heat signatures in a specific way, and usually (though I can't swear that this is always the case), they read SURFACE heat signatures. So, for example, an infra-red thermometer reads the temperature of a surface - not the air, not gases, not ectoplasm, but a surface. So, if you point an infrared thermometer through a room, you will get the temperature of whatever object happens to be on the other side oh the room (most likely the wall), but not something insubstantial, such as gasses, smoke, or a ghost. What's more, depending on what the object that you hit is made of, and what is connected to it, you may get radical-seeming variations from fairly common things. Infra-red motion detectors do a similar thing, detecting either major changes in temperature or the movement of objects with heat signatures different from whatever the background field is. Even if one is claiming that there is a "cold spot", it would need to be of sufficient temperature difference and size to trigger the motion detector.
Also, there tends to be a bit of an inconsistency with how these objects are used by ersatz investigators - I have seen shows, and had conversations with people, wherein images from infrared camera showing warm, human-shaped areas were held up as evidence of ghosts, while "cold spots" were also used simultaneously. So what is it? Is the ghost cold or warm? The fact that both tend to get used depending on what the equipment is picking up indicates that these people are detecting randomness, not ghosts - in any sort of field of measurement, there will be natural "clumpings" of readings due to basic random distribution (remember, random does not mean "evenly distributed", it means "without pattern", and "clumps" will appear whenever a pattern is lacking). Whenever you see these clumps, they can seem striking, if you don't understand the nature of random distribution (one thing I have learned about ghost hunters - they are, to a person - very, very bad at understanding statistics). So, finding areas that appear hot or cold with an infrared device is not really useful information unless you can demonstrate a reason for it to be a different temperature (the common trope of "we can't explain these readings, therefore- GHOST!" grows out of a basic mis-understanding of how this works - there is always the possibility of seeming anomalies in randomness, the odd readings only mean something if you have good reason to expect them to be something other than what they actually are - and area that remains cold after being hit with a blow-torch, for example).
Anyway, unlike some other critics of paranormal investigation, I will not say that infrared equipment is useless. I will, however, say that it is only useful if you have a clear reason to be using it, and you have a sufficient understanding of both how the equipment works and of the environment in which you are deploying it to be able to know with some degree of reliability whether or not you should be getting one set of reading and not another - and knowing that tends to require alot of background knowledge of both the place where you are, and of the basic engineering that went into building it and selecting the materials to build it. If you haven't done this minimal research, then your readings are essentially meaningless.
Similarly, electromagnetic field meters are often abused in the name of parapsychology. What an EMF meter does is measure the electromagnetic field. Electromagnetic fields are all around us - the Earth generates a giant one, and out bodies generate them as well, as do all electronics. These tools are useful in the hands of people who work with electrical equipment for a living, but tend not to produce meaningful results in the hands of anyone else. Why? Simple: there are many possible sources for EMFs, and someone who is accustomed to dealing with them will have an idea of what EMFs are anomalous, and which are to be expected. Moreover, when they find an anomalous one, someone with a background in electrical work is going to have an idea of what to look for as regards its source*. Moreover, the readings that one gets with an EMF meter depend in large part in the specifics of how one uses it. Many commercially available meters require multiple readings to be taken in a few different ways in order to find anything meaningful (so, someone walking into a room, taking one reading, and announcing that they have found something is a sign that the person in question hasn't a clue as to how to use their equipment). Similarly, the way one handles the meter may create anomalous readings: for example, my fiance and I once did a ghost walk during which we were all handed EMF meters, and she and I quickly discovered that we could make these particular models spike by flicking our wrists slightly while holding them - doing little to the electromagnetic field, but screwing with the sensors - it was fun watching the other tour members try to figure out why the ghosts wanted to play with her and I, and not any of them.
Similarly, people tend to like to use ion detectors and Geiger counters (although the Geiger counters are usually given another name). Ion detectors detect ions, atoms in which the total number of electrons are not equal tot the total number of protons and therefore have an electrical charge (positive or negative). Ions are both naturally occurring and can be created by a variety of different pieces of equipment. Geiger counters identify ionizing radiation from nuclear decay (alpha particles, beta particles or gamma rays), which, again, can be (in fact, usually is) naturally occurring, or can be the result of human activity. As with EMF fields and heat signatures, readings on these pieces of equipment are essentially meaningless unless you have a good reason to expect one type of reading over another.
In all of these cases, the infrared devices, the EMF detectors, the Geiger counters, and the ion detectors, the devices are not measuring something mystical, something weird, or something abnormal. They are not measuring paranormal energy, ghosts, or the Force. They are measuring properties that exist in the world, all around us, at all times. And all of them can only produce meaningful measurements if you know what should and/or should not be in a given location, which requires a whole heaping load of background research. Hell, in the case of things such as radiation and ions, a basic knowledge of local geology and weather is necessary to know what should or should not be present, and I rarely see a paranormal researcher consult a geology or meteorology textbook.
Okay, so now onto the items with which I have a bit more direct experience and a bit more to say.
While in college, I trained to be a radio DJ, but found that I had a much greater affinity for the recording and manipulation of audio than for the on-air hijinks that accompanied DJ-dom. I became pretty good at making the various audio devices to which I had access make all manner of weird sounds, manipulate signals in odd ways, and create audio effects unintended by the equipment's manufacturers. What's more, I learned of the many ways that audio equipment can pick up unexpected noise, and I learned that following a basic train of cause-and-effect, I could invariably find the source of the sound (which, often, was very different from what it initially sounded like on the recording). Now, mind you, I could track down the sources in a controlled studio environment - if the same sorts of things had occurred with a tape recorder out on the town, I'd have had a much harder time tracking down the source - it likely would often be impossible - but my experience in the studio had taught me that unlikely sources can create odd noise and effects in recordings.
Most commercially available audio equipment is different from the professional-grade stuio equipment in that it is usually more compact, and gives the operator less control - but it has all of the same basic parts and features, it just either pre-sets them to "typical" conditions, or else automates them into a few pre-sets. The point is, this equipment has pretty much the same ability to create anomalous sounds as the studio equipment that I used, but fewer ways for the operator to minimize interference or alter the sound produced to create a cleaner recording. What's more, outside of a controlled studio environment, things such as tape recorders picking up faint radio signals, as well as the re-use of old tapes creating "bleed through" is common.
Digital recorders avoid some problems (such as bleed through), but still have some of the same issues, and several new ones unique to digital audio.
To make matters worse, most enthusiasts of electronic voice phenomenon (EVP - the alleged voices of spirits captured on electronic equipment) advocate the use of white noise int he background when you make recordings. This is dumb. Dumb, stupid, foolish, and asinine. As you may recall from Part 1, the human brain looks for patterns in randomness, and in laboratory experiments it has been shown to be very, very common for people to swear that they have heard human voices saying specific, coherent things in randomly generated noise. So, if you create white noise and then sit and listen to it for voices, you are very likely to hear voices whether or not there is anything there.
So, when someone plays spooky noises that they recorded at the local cemetery, it probably goes without saying that I am singularly unimpressed. Even when they are sure that they hear a human voice answering questions, it is really, really unimpressive.
Now, am I not saying that audio equipment is useless. If you can routinely replicate certain types of phenomenon, and you are able to successfully rule out all common sources of interference, then you may have something. Now, what you have may be an uncommon problem with your equipment, or it may be something truly strange, and you will have to find different ways to further explore it, but you might (and note, I say "might" not "are") be on to something. In a more pedestrian sense, audio equipment, especially a good, simple tape recorder or digital voice recorder, is an excellent way to take quick, on-the-fly notes to help you out later. These things are useful pieces of equipment for any researcher, but as with everything else discussed here, you have to understand what they are and how they work, and how your brain interprets sound in order to get any real use out of them.
And now, onto cameras. I am a hobbyist photographer and have been for many years, so while I am not a professional photographer, I do know a thing or two about the subject. And when I see photographic "evidence" of hauntings, I am consistently underwhelmed.
First off, there's the fact that many of the things that are currently held up as evidence of ghosts - streaks, "orbs", etc. - are actually pretty well understood properties of how cameras function. A camera operates by bringing light in, and turning that light into an image, either on a photographic paper or through electronic sensors. Anything that reflects light will effect the image, and as cameras bring in light in a manner a bit different than how the human eye does, this means that objects may appear on film or in digital images that are not visible to the naked eye. Small objects that can reflect light (raindrops, motes of dust, insects, etc.) tend to reflect it in a spherical pattern that is not visible to the human eye, but does show up on camera. If the object is caught in a particular way or is moving quickly enough, this may show up as a "streak" rather than a sphere. Likewise, small light sources, maybe dim enough to not be noticeable to the naked eye, may show up on film as streaks if the camera or the object emitting the light is moving, even slightly, when the shot is taken. This is especially true in low-light conditions. Now, some people will say "well, this orb is translucent, that one is solid, therefore we know that this one is an artifact of light, BUT the other is a ghost!" Nope, sorry, both are artifacts of light, and anyone who tells you different is either completely ignorant of photography, or is lying to you.
Indeed, it is a sad fact that the reason why we have these obvious artifacts being held up as ghostly images is because most of us are familiar enough with special effects that we will no longer uncritically accept a modified image. As a result, those who wish to capture ghosts on film have tried to find ways to use unmodified images to support their claims. The problem there, of course, being that, to anyone who knows the ins-and-outs of camera functionality, these images are pretty clearly mundane. The fact that there are some photographers who are only to ready to jump on the spooky bandwagon (usually to make money off of selling either their services or their photographs) doesn't change the fact that these really are pretty damn mundane.
On a related note, it is common for people to take other types of photographs from other people as evidence of ghostly activity. Typically, the line goes something like this: a photograph appears to show something strange, it was taken to a photography expert who states that there are no signs of tampering with the image, and therefore the image really does show something strange!
Leaving aside the images created via pariedolia, there is another problem here. All of the images below are analogous to types used as evidence for paranormal phenomenon. None of them have been tampered with, and therefore would show no signs of tampering if examined:
Every one of them shows a vague human outline, or a human form that is insubstantial, or a face that seems somehow wrong. In some of them you will have to look closely, but these sorts of ghostly images are present in every one of them. Several have strange streaks of light or "orbs".
Those human shapes in the ghostly images are myself, and my friends Robin, Michael, and Robert. None of the images were created using photo manipulation software, studio editing, or any other form of image manipulation. In other words, not a single one was tampered with, and none of them would show signs of tampering if examined.
Which doesn't mean that there was no trickery involved. I used a variety of techniques to create these images: pinhole apertures, slow shutter speeds in low-light conditions, and a mix of digital and film cameras, utilizing properties unique to each of them. In some of the images, I intentionally used non-optimal settings (making the exposure to bright or too dark, putting the image slightly out-of-focus, etc.) to make the image look just slightly not-right before inserting the spooky element (this serves to prep the viewer to see the image as spookier than it really is). I used cameras with light leakage, or used flashes, to create the streaks and orbs. I created the images intentionally, knowing full well what I was doing, and what I was going to get when I was done. So, just because a photo has not been edited or altered doesn't mean that it is real, and this should be kept in mind whenever you are presented with a photograph as evidence.
But this also brings us to another issue: that, like the audio equipment, lower-end cameras (especially digital point-and-click cameras, but also many non-professional film cameras) have the same parts as higher-end cameras (lenses, film or sensors, apertures, etc.), but generally automate those parts or have them at pre-sets, limiting the ability for the user to manipulate them in order to cut out interference, creating numerous anomalies that may seem odd or even spooky to someone not familiar with how to intentionally create the same sorts of images. Moreover, an unwary user of a film camera is likely to end up with double-exposures, which can result in "a person who wasn't there appearing in the image!", and most people using these cameras on ghost hunts do not keep accurate photo logs in order to recall the precise conditions under which images were created.
Like audio equipment, cameras are useful tools. They can allow you to document conditions, act as a supplement to your field notes, and there is a small but real chance that you may even catch something in the image that might prompt further investigation.
While the IF devices and EMF meters, etc. are probably best left at home, cameras and audio equipment are legitimately useful, and should accompany someone who is trying to do real investigation. But you should always be aware of the limits of your equipment, the nature of your equipment, and of the fact that many of the things taken as evidence of ghosts are, in fact, easily explainable by someone who knows what the equipment is and how it works. So, bear all of this in mind when using it.
Okay, the next part, which I hope to post in the not-too-distant future, will focus on the basica problems inherent in the lack of theory and testable hypotheses in paranormal research, and what you can do to make things better.
* Fun fact: on occasion, a television show will bring someone in who is said to have the correct background to make sense of EMF readings. Assuming that they do (and given the way that paranormal television shows often play fast-and-loose with the qualifications of people who I have actually know the background of, I have little hope that they get anyone else's qualifications correct), the devices are almost always shown being used in a manner inconsistent with what is needed to get reliable readings. So, even in these cases, the devices are being mis-used.
In the last entry in this series, I discussed the problems inherent in basic data gathering. Although I focused on eye-witness testimony, and specifically all that is wrong with it, the basic concepts (know what type of data you are collecting, what [if anything] it actually means, and why you are collecting it) apply to any situation in which you are attempting to gather information.
So, the last entry focused on some of the basic ways to think your way through data gathering, this one is aimed at saving you time and money by looking at the different tools of the trade. I am going to be focused on actual tools that measure actual things - not on the use of "psychic devices" ranging from a medium's impressions to dowsing rods (which certainly have their own problems, but other have explained the issues there more clearly than I ever could). I will briefly discuss some of the more "exotic" tools amongst the ghost-hunter's cache, but will spend a bit more time on two types of equipment that I have more direct personal knowledge of: cameras and audio equipment.
Now, many a ghost-hunting enthusiast will say "ha! Well, this guy admits that his experience with this equipment is limited, so why should you listen to him and not us, us who use this equipment all the time?" Simple: Unlike them, I actually bothered to read up on what the equipment actually does and does not do, and while my direct experience is limited, I have been able to find enough to figure out that they are either lying or else know even less than I do about these devices.
So, for starters, here's a run-down of some of the more common equipment, what it gets used for, and what it actually does (Much of this information is well-summarized here, for the curious):
For starters, the ghost hunters seem to have a love affair with everything infra-red, which is odd. Infra-red devices read heat signatures. That's it. They do different things with these signatures (create images, measure temperatures, etc.), but their purpose is, simply to read heat signatures. What's more, each type of infra-red device reads heat signatures in a specific way, and usually (though I can't swear that this is always the case), they read SURFACE heat signatures. So, for example, an infra-red thermometer reads the temperature of a surface - not the air, not gases, not ectoplasm, but a surface. So, if you point an infrared thermometer through a room, you will get the temperature of whatever object happens to be on the other side oh the room (most likely the wall), but not something insubstantial, such as gasses, smoke, or a ghost. What's more, depending on what the object that you hit is made of, and what is connected to it, you may get radical-seeming variations from fairly common things. Infra-red motion detectors do a similar thing, detecting either major changes in temperature or the movement of objects with heat signatures different from whatever the background field is. Even if one is claiming that there is a "cold spot", it would need to be of sufficient temperature difference and size to trigger the motion detector.
Also, there tends to be a bit of an inconsistency with how these objects are used by ersatz investigators - I have seen shows, and had conversations with people, wherein images from infrared camera showing warm, human-shaped areas were held up as evidence of ghosts, while "cold spots" were also used simultaneously. So what is it? Is the ghost cold or warm? The fact that both tend to get used depending on what the equipment is picking up indicates that these people are detecting randomness, not ghosts - in any sort of field of measurement, there will be natural "clumpings" of readings due to basic random distribution (remember, random does not mean "evenly distributed", it means "without pattern", and "clumps" will appear whenever a pattern is lacking). Whenever you see these clumps, they can seem striking, if you don't understand the nature of random distribution (one thing I have learned about ghost hunters - they are, to a person - very, very bad at understanding statistics). So, finding areas that appear hot or cold with an infrared device is not really useful information unless you can demonstrate a reason for it to be a different temperature (the common trope of "we can't explain these readings, therefore- GHOST!" grows out of a basic mis-understanding of how this works - there is always the possibility of seeming anomalies in randomness, the odd readings only mean something if you have good reason to expect them to be something other than what they actually are - and area that remains cold after being hit with a blow-torch, for example).
Anyway, unlike some other critics of paranormal investigation, I will not say that infrared equipment is useless. I will, however, say that it is only useful if you have a clear reason to be using it, and you have a sufficient understanding of both how the equipment works and of the environment in which you are deploying it to be able to know with some degree of reliability whether or not you should be getting one set of reading and not another - and knowing that tends to require alot of background knowledge of both the place where you are, and of the basic engineering that went into building it and selecting the materials to build it. If you haven't done this minimal research, then your readings are essentially meaningless.
Similarly, electromagnetic field meters are often abused in the name of parapsychology. What an EMF meter does is measure the electromagnetic field. Electromagnetic fields are all around us - the Earth generates a giant one, and out bodies generate them as well, as do all electronics. These tools are useful in the hands of people who work with electrical equipment for a living, but tend not to produce meaningful results in the hands of anyone else. Why? Simple: there are many possible sources for EMFs, and someone who is accustomed to dealing with them will have an idea of what EMFs are anomalous, and which are to be expected. Moreover, when they find an anomalous one, someone with a background in electrical work is going to have an idea of what to look for as regards its source*. Moreover, the readings that one gets with an EMF meter depend in large part in the specifics of how one uses it. Many commercially available meters require multiple readings to be taken in a few different ways in order to find anything meaningful (so, someone walking into a room, taking one reading, and announcing that they have found something is a sign that the person in question hasn't a clue as to how to use their equipment). Similarly, the way one handles the meter may create anomalous readings: for example, my fiance and I once did a ghost walk during which we were all handed EMF meters, and she and I quickly discovered that we could make these particular models spike by flicking our wrists slightly while holding them - doing little to the electromagnetic field, but screwing with the sensors - it was fun watching the other tour members try to figure out why the ghosts wanted to play with her and I, and not any of them.
Similarly, people tend to like to use ion detectors and Geiger counters (although the Geiger counters are usually given another name). Ion detectors detect ions, atoms in which the total number of electrons are not equal tot the total number of protons and therefore have an electrical charge (positive or negative). Ions are both naturally occurring and can be created by a variety of different pieces of equipment. Geiger counters identify ionizing radiation from nuclear decay (alpha particles, beta particles or gamma rays), which, again, can be (in fact, usually is) naturally occurring, or can be the result of human activity. As with EMF fields and heat signatures, readings on these pieces of equipment are essentially meaningless unless you have a good reason to expect one type of reading over another.
In all of these cases, the infrared devices, the EMF detectors, the Geiger counters, and the ion detectors, the devices are not measuring something mystical, something weird, or something abnormal. They are not measuring paranormal energy, ghosts, or the Force. They are measuring properties that exist in the world, all around us, at all times. And all of them can only produce meaningful measurements if you know what should and/or should not be in a given location, which requires a whole heaping load of background research. Hell, in the case of things such as radiation and ions, a basic knowledge of local geology and weather is necessary to know what should or should not be present, and I rarely see a paranormal researcher consult a geology or meteorology textbook.
Okay, so now onto the items with which I have a bit more direct experience and a bit more to say.
While in college, I trained to be a radio DJ, but found that I had a much greater affinity for the recording and manipulation of audio than for the on-air hijinks that accompanied DJ-dom. I became pretty good at making the various audio devices to which I had access make all manner of weird sounds, manipulate signals in odd ways, and create audio effects unintended by the equipment's manufacturers. What's more, I learned of the many ways that audio equipment can pick up unexpected noise, and I learned that following a basic train of cause-and-effect, I could invariably find the source of the sound (which, often, was very different from what it initially sounded like on the recording). Now, mind you, I could track down the sources in a controlled studio environment - if the same sorts of things had occurred with a tape recorder out on the town, I'd have had a much harder time tracking down the source - it likely would often be impossible - but my experience in the studio had taught me that unlikely sources can create odd noise and effects in recordings.
Most commercially available audio equipment is different from the professional-grade stuio equipment in that it is usually more compact, and gives the operator less control - but it has all of the same basic parts and features, it just either pre-sets them to "typical" conditions, or else automates them into a few pre-sets. The point is, this equipment has pretty much the same ability to create anomalous sounds as the studio equipment that I used, but fewer ways for the operator to minimize interference or alter the sound produced to create a cleaner recording. What's more, outside of a controlled studio environment, things such as tape recorders picking up faint radio signals, as well as the re-use of old tapes creating "bleed through" is common.
Digital recorders avoid some problems (such as bleed through), but still have some of the same issues, and several new ones unique to digital audio.
To make matters worse, most enthusiasts of electronic voice phenomenon (EVP - the alleged voices of spirits captured on electronic equipment) advocate the use of white noise int he background when you make recordings. This is dumb. Dumb, stupid, foolish, and asinine. As you may recall from Part 1, the human brain looks for patterns in randomness, and in laboratory experiments it has been shown to be very, very common for people to swear that they have heard human voices saying specific, coherent things in randomly generated noise. So, if you create white noise and then sit and listen to it for voices, you are very likely to hear voices whether or not there is anything there.
So, when someone plays spooky noises that they recorded at the local cemetery, it probably goes without saying that I am singularly unimpressed. Even when they are sure that they hear a human voice answering questions, it is really, really unimpressive.
Now, am I not saying that audio equipment is useless. If you can routinely replicate certain types of phenomenon, and you are able to successfully rule out all common sources of interference, then you may have something. Now, what you have may be an uncommon problem with your equipment, or it may be something truly strange, and you will have to find different ways to further explore it, but you might (and note, I say "might" not "are") be on to something. In a more pedestrian sense, audio equipment, especially a good, simple tape recorder or digital voice recorder, is an excellent way to take quick, on-the-fly notes to help you out later. These things are useful pieces of equipment for any researcher, but as with everything else discussed here, you have to understand what they are and how they work, and how your brain interprets sound in order to get any real use out of them.
And now, onto cameras. I am a hobbyist photographer and have been for many years, so while I am not a professional photographer, I do know a thing or two about the subject. And when I see photographic "evidence" of hauntings, I am consistently underwhelmed.
First off, there's the fact that many of the things that are currently held up as evidence of ghosts - streaks, "orbs", etc. - are actually pretty well understood properties of how cameras function. A camera operates by bringing light in, and turning that light into an image, either on a photographic paper or through electronic sensors. Anything that reflects light will effect the image, and as cameras bring in light in a manner a bit different than how the human eye does, this means that objects may appear on film or in digital images that are not visible to the naked eye. Small objects that can reflect light (raindrops, motes of dust, insects, etc.) tend to reflect it in a spherical pattern that is not visible to the human eye, but does show up on camera. If the object is caught in a particular way or is moving quickly enough, this may show up as a "streak" rather than a sphere. Likewise, small light sources, maybe dim enough to not be noticeable to the naked eye, may show up on film as streaks if the camera or the object emitting the light is moving, even slightly, when the shot is taken. This is especially true in low-light conditions. Now, some people will say "well, this orb is translucent, that one is solid, therefore we know that this one is an artifact of light, BUT the other is a ghost!" Nope, sorry, both are artifacts of light, and anyone who tells you different is either completely ignorant of photography, or is lying to you.
Indeed, it is a sad fact that the reason why we have these obvious artifacts being held up as ghostly images is because most of us are familiar enough with special effects that we will no longer uncritically accept a modified image. As a result, those who wish to capture ghosts on film have tried to find ways to use unmodified images to support their claims. The problem there, of course, being that, to anyone who knows the ins-and-outs of camera functionality, these images are pretty clearly mundane. The fact that there are some photographers who are only to ready to jump on the spooky bandwagon (usually to make money off of selling either their services or their photographs) doesn't change the fact that these really are pretty damn mundane.
On a related note, it is common for people to take other types of photographs from other people as evidence of ghostly activity. Typically, the line goes something like this: a photograph appears to show something strange, it was taken to a photography expert who states that there are no signs of tampering with the image, and therefore the image really does show something strange!
Leaving aside the images created via pariedolia, there is another problem here. All of the images below are analogous to types used as evidence for paranormal phenomenon. None of them have been tampered with, and therefore would show no signs of tampering if examined:
Every one of them shows a vague human outline, or a human form that is insubstantial, or a face that seems somehow wrong. In some of them you will have to look closely, but these sorts of ghostly images are present in every one of them. Several have strange streaks of light or "orbs".
Those human shapes in the ghostly images are myself, and my friends Robin, Michael, and Robert. None of the images were created using photo manipulation software, studio editing, or any other form of image manipulation. In other words, not a single one was tampered with, and none of them would show signs of tampering if examined.
Which doesn't mean that there was no trickery involved. I used a variety of techniques to create these images: pinhole apertures, slow shutter speeds in low-light conditions, and a mix of digital and film cameras, utilizing properties unique to each of them. In some of the images, I intentionally used non-optimal settings (making the exposure to bright or too dark, putting the image slightly out-of-focus, etc.) to make the image look just slightly not-right before inserting the spooky element (this serves to prep the viewer to see the image as spookier than it really is). I used cameras with light leakage, or used flashes, to create the streaks and orbs. I created the images intentionally, knowing full well what I was doing, and what I was going to get when I was done. So, just because a photo has not been edited or altered doesn't mean that it is real, and this should be kept in mind whenever you are presented with a photograph as evidence.
But this also brings us to another issue: that, like the audio equipment, lower-end cameras (especially digital point-and-click cameras, but also many non-professional film cameras) have the same parts as higher-end cameras (lenses, film or sensors, apertures, etc.), but generally automate those parts or have them at pre-sets, limiting the ability for the user to manipulate them in order to cut out interference, creating numerous anomalies that may seem odd or even spooky to someone not familiar with how to intentionally create the same sorts of images. Moreover, an unwary user of a film camera is likely to end up with double-exposures, which can result in "a person who wasn't there appearing in the image!", and most people using these cameras on ghost hunts do not keep accurate photo logs in order to recall the precise conditions under which images were created.
Like audio equipment, cameras are useful tools. They can allow you to document conditions, act as a supplement to your field notes, and there is a small but real chance that you may even catch something in the image that might prompt further investigation.
While the IF devices and EMF meters, etc. are probably best left at home, cameras and audio equipment are legitimately useful, and should accompany someone who is trying to do real investigation. But you should always be aware of the limits of your equipment, the nature of your equipment, and of the fact that many of the things taken as evidence of ghosts are, in fact, easily explainable by someone who knows what the equipment is and how it works. So, bear all of this in mind when using it.
Okay, the next part, which I hope to post in the not-too-distant future, will focus on the basica problems inherent in the lack of theory and testable hypotheses in paranormal research, and what you can do to make things better.
* Fun fact: on occasion, a television show will bring someone in who is said to have the correct background to make sense of EMF readings. Assuming that they do (and given the way that paranormal television shows often play fast-and-loose with the qualifications of people who I have actually know the background of, I have little hope that they get anyone else's qualifications correct), the devices are almost always shown being used in a manner inconsistent with what is needed to get reliable readings. So, even in these cases, the devices are being mis-used.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Yogurt, Science, and Lies
I was just listening to an episode of WNYC's Radiolab which focused on the digestive tract. One of the issues that is discussed in the episode is research into the role that intestinal bacteria play in altering brain chemistry, and therefore, mood. As goofy as this may sound, it makes a certain degree of sense when you look at the map of nerves within the body and the roles of the brain and the gut in making sure that we are nourished and surviving.
One researcher being interviewed claims that the results that he has gotten from altering the gut bacteria via diet is comparable to many anti-depressant drugs. These results have been published int he Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Specifically, the researcher used different types of yogurt. Now, this is one researcher, and there is still a long, long way to go in figuring out if and how these findings could be adapted into meaningful treatments. But, the research is interesting, and on-going, and does seem to show some promise.
I write about this not because it is interesting in and of itself, though it certainly is, but because this is precisely the sort of research that most people who subscribe to naturopathy claim isn't occurring, or claim is being suppressed by "big pharma" - and yet, here it is, occurring, being published in major journals, and being discussed in a national radio show. In other words, people who claim that non-pharmaceutical interventions are never examined or considered by doctors, because they are in the thrall of their "big pharma" overlords, you can point to this and call the claimant on their bullshit.
And this is hardly an isolated incident. Research into the role of diet in preventing/causing disease, and of general preventative medicine (including diet, but also exercise, emotional well-being, etc.) is done constantly in major labs around the world, and published in major journals. In fact, it is a rare occasion that someone will tell me that some non-pharmaceutical or surgical intervention is "not being studied because of big pharma" and that I can not immediately go to PubMed and pull up studies proving that the person making the claim is wholly ignorant of what is actually being done.
There are legitimate concerns with private industry funding research (though, it should be said, there are also benefits to it - it's not all bad or all good), and these issues do get discussed and are actually routinely brought up in the very professional journals that the naturopaths falsely claim won't publish findings critical of industry. However, there is a good deal of medical research funded via a number of different avenues with both public and private funds, and the research covers a wide range of subjects. Whenever someone claims that a particular subject is not researched because "big pharma doesn't want it researched" or because "there's no money in it" or because "scientists are afraid it will overturn what they want you to believe", you are dealing with someone who is wholly and completely ignorant of science, of medicine, and who is likely to hypocritically accuse others of "being sheep" while uncritically swallowing nonsense themselves.
So, there you go, regular old yogurt studied by legitimate scientists as a stress and depression control therapy. It's in it's early stages, but the research is on-going, and it's existence proves many of the popular claims regarding medical research oh so very wrong. Keep that in mind the next time someone tries to make you believe that some miracle cure isn't being studied because of some massive corporate conspiracy.
One researcher being interviewed claims that the results that he has gotten from altering the gut bacteria via diet is comparable to many anti-depressant drugs. These results have been published int he Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Specifically, the researcher used different types of yogurt. Now, this is one researcher, and there is still a long, long way to go in figuring out if and how these findings could be adapted into meaningful treatments. But, the research is interesting, and on-going, and does seem to show some promise.
I write about this not because it is interesting in and of itself, though it certainly is, but because this is precisely the sort of research that most people who subscribe to naturopathy claim isn't occurring, or claim is being suppressed by "big pharma" - and yet, here it is, occurring, being published in major journals, and being discussed in a national radio show. In other words, people who claim that non-pharmaceutical interventions are never examined or considered by doctors, because they are in the thrall of their "big pharma" overlords, you can point to this and call the claimant on their bullshit.
And this is hardly an isolated incident. Research into the role of diet in preventing/causing disease, and of general preventative medicine (including diet, but also exercise, emotional well-being, etc.) is done constantly in major labs around the world, and published in major journals. In fact, it is a rare occasion that someone will tell me that some non-pharmaceutical or surgical intervention is "not being studied because of big pharma" and that I can not immediately go to PubMed and pull up studies proving that the person making the claim is wholly ignorant of what is actually being done.
There are legitimate concerns with private industry funding research (though, it should be said, there are also benefits to it - it's not all bad or all good), and these issues do get discussed and are actually routinely brought up in the very professional journals that the naturopaths falsely claim won't publish findings critical of industry. However, there is a good deal of medical research funded via a number of different avenues with both public and private funds, and the research covers a wide range of subjects. Whenever someone claims that a particular subject is not researched because "big pharma doesn't want it researched" or because "there's no money in it" or because "scientists are afraid it will overturn what they want you to believe", you are dealing with someone who is wholly and completely ignorant of science, of medicine, and who is likely to hypocritically accuse others of "being sheep" while uncritically swallowing nonsense themselves.
So, there you go, regular old yogurt studied by legitimate scientists as a stress and depression control therapy. It's in it's early stages, but the research is on-going, and it's existence proves many of the popular claims regarding medical research oh so very wrong. Keep that in mind the next time someone tries to make you believe that some miracle cure isn't being studied because of some massive corporate conspiracy.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Truths, Damn Truths, and Statistics!
It happened again this week. While arguing about the safety of a medication, I pointed to statistical data regarding the medicine in question's effecacioussness and rates of pronounced side-effects. The person with whom I was arguing looked at me and said: "you, Mr. Armstrong, need to remember that each of those numbers you're quoting represents a person! A fact that you seem too ready to forget!"
No, I don't forget that each of those numbers represents a person. In fact, if I thought of them as just numbers and not people, I wouldn't be bothering to argue. I am very well aware that each set of numbers represents real, living people. People living complex lives in a world full of confounding circumstances that influence their behaviors, their beliefs, and their actions. Each number or set of numbers represents an individual, unique an irreplaceable in numerous ways, and describes in some way their experience with a medication, controlled substance, interaction with a government agency, etc. etc. etc.
I am aware that these numbers represent people. I am fully, sometimes painfully, aware of this fact. It is the people who accuse me of forgetting it who don't seem to grasp this fact.
How do I know this? Simple: the people who accuse me, and others in my position, of forgetting that the statistics represent people are all too ready to throw those numbers, each of which represents the experiences of an individual, away when they are inconvenient. When the numbers agree with what a person wants to believe, they are usually only too ready to accept and quote them. When the numbers disagree, well, they are to be forgotten, or better yet, disparaged. In effect, the experiences of individuals, of real people, that don't conform to the preferred outcome are ignored, insulted, or hand-waved away. Invariably, the statement isn't rooted in a desire to see individual cases as having value, but in the desire for the beliefs of the person making the accusation to take precedence over hard facts.
Of course, there are issues that aren't answered with numbers. There are questions that are not empirical in nature. And certainly, there are those who ignore this and try to apply empiricism where it doesn't belong. But these people are few in number, and invariably on the fringe. Likewise, there are those who will mis-use statistical tools to create false equivalences or show dubious correlations, or simply drown their opponent in a sea of data regardless of how relevant the data actually is (but, of course, these people can be stopped by the correct application of math, not the dismissal of it). Far more common are those who want to pretend that empirical questions are not empirical, who want to pretend that their personal assumptions trump physical realities. And you will find these people both advocating and opposing various positions. You will find them on the political right and the political left. You will find them in every issue, not matter how well settled the data actually is.
It doesn't matter what issue is being discussed: the safety or effectiveness of medicines, the effectiveness of crime-reduction techniques and measures, the effects of one sex-ed program vs.another as regards rates of STDs and pregnancies, the effects of various substances on pregnancy and on young children, the influence (or lack thereof) of religious belief on lawful behavior, the influence of concealed firearms on violent crime, and so on and so forth. If it's a question that is best answered with quantitative data based on the experiences of a large number of people, you will find people who readily dismiss the statistics, unequivocally the best way to gather such information and see the patterns. And those who want to dismiss the statistics will almost always say something to the effect of "you, Mr. Empirical-Data, are forgetting that these statistics represent people!"
But, of course, it's the person who wants the data dismissed or downplayed who truly is forgetting that the data represents people. It's the person who wants to engage in warm-fuzzy talk about how "we are all individuals, not numbers" who is ready to throw away the experiences of huge numbers of real individuals in order to win an argument. It's the person that tries to claim that statistics are somehow de-humanizing who is only too ready to dismiss the experiences of their fellow humans in order to avoid losing the argument or ceding the point.
No, I don't forget that the numbers represent people. But if you go about proclaiming that those with whom you disagree are ignoring the individual in favor of the numbers, then likely it is you who is ignoring that the numbers represent people.
No, I don't forget that each of those numbers represents a person. In fact, if I thought of them as just numbers and not people, I wouldn't be bothering to argue. I am very well aware that each set of numbers represents real, living people. People living complex lives in a world full of confounding circumstances that influence their behaviors, their beliefs, and their actions. Each number or set of numbers represents an individual, unique an irreplaceable in numerous ways, and describes in some way their experience with a medication, controlled substance, interaction with a government agency, etc. etc. etc.
I am aware that these numbers represent people. I am fully, sometimes painfully, aware of this fact. It is the people who accuse me of forgetting it who don't seem to grasp this fact.
How do I know this? Simple: the people who accuse me, and others in my position, of forgetting that the statistics represent people are all too ready to throw those numbers, each of which represents the experiences of an individual, away when they are inconvenient. When the numbers agree with what a person wants to believe, they are usually only too ready to accept and quote them. When the numbers disagree, well, they are to be forgotten, or better yet, disparaged. In effect, the experiences of individuals, of real people, that don't conform to the preferred outcome are ignored, insulted, or hand-waved away. Invariably, the statement isn't rooted in a desire to see individual cases as having value, but in the desire for the beliefs of the person making the accusation to take precedence over hard facts.
Of course, there are issues that aren't answered with numbers. There are questions that are not empirical in nature. And certainly, there are those who ignore this and try to apply empiricism where it doesn't belong. But these people are few in number, and invariably on the fringe. Likewise, there are those who will mis-use statistical tools to create false equivalences or show dubious correlations, or simply drown their opponent in a sea of data regardless of how relevant the data actually is (but, of course, these people can be stopped by the correct application of math, not the dismissal of it). Far more common are those who want to pretend that empirical questions are not empirical, who want to pretend that their personal assumptions trump physical realities. And you will find these people both advocating and opposing various positions. You will find them on the political right and the political left. You will find them in every issue, not matter how well settled the data actually is.
It doesn't matter what issue is being discussed: the safety or effectiveness of medicines, the effectiveness of crime-reduction techniques and measures, the effects of one sex-ed program vs.another as regards rates of STDs and pregnancies, the effects of various substances on pregnancy and on young children, the influence (or lack thereof) of religious belief on lawful behavior, the influence of concealed firearms on violent crime, and so on and so forth. If it's a question that is best answered with quantitative data based on the experiences of a large number of people, you will find people who readily dismiss the statistics, unequivocally the best way to gather such information and see the patterns. And those who want to dismiss the statistics will almost always say something to the effect of "you, Mr. Empirical-Data, are forgetting that these statistics represent people!"
But, of course, it's the person who wants the data dismissed or downplayed who truly is forgetting that the data represents people. It's the person who wants to engage in warm-fuzzy talk about how "we are all individuals, not numbers" who is ready to throw away the experiences of huge numbers of real individuals in order to win an argument. It's the person that tries to claim that statistics are somehow de-humanizing who is only too ready to dismiss the experiences of their fellow humans in order to avoid losing the argument or ceding the point.
No, I don't forget that the numbers represent people. But if you go about proclaiming that those with whom you disagree are ignoring the individual in favor of the numbers, then likely it is you who is ignoring that the numbers represent people.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Pregnancy, Children, and Pseudo-Knowledge
I promise that I will not be one of those bloggers who, upon finding out about impending parenthood, turns their site over entirely to baby stuff. However, this ties in with themes that I have often addressed in the past, so it seems appropriate.
I have long been aware of the ubiquitous presence of sloppy thinking that exists as regards pregnancy and child-raising. It ranges from holier-than-thou attitudes about "eating only organic food from the pygmies of Northern India in order to make it easier to give birth to a clairvoyant baby in a redwood Hot Tub on an ancient Native American holy site" to poorly-thought-out folk wisdom along the lines of "my granny used to dope her babies up on morphine to get them to go to sleep, so it's just fine for babies, good for 'em even, and you can keep your eggheaded book-learnin' science away from me!" What all of this has in common is just good (or, actually, bad) old-fashioned sloppy thinking and a heaping dollop of credulousness and gullibility.
Okay, let's start with the "my granny says that cocaine is fine for a collicky baby!" crowd first. Every now and again, I meet someone who informs me that all manner of things that are frowned upon by the medical community are fine for pregnant women and infants, because some relative (usually, though not always, the parent or grandparent of the person telling me this) continued to smoke/drink/shoot heroine/etc. when they were pregnant or nursing, and that person's kids turned out fine. When you point out to the person that a range of long-term, well-controlled and documented studies show that, actually, these things result in significantly higher odds of problems for the child and/or mother, they quickly respond by referring back to said relative who did this thing and their kid who allegedly turned out "just fine."
The basic problem here is a lack of grasp of statistics. An anecdote, assuming that the person even grasped the example upon which their anecdote is based, is a single data point. There are always anomalous data points. It doesn't matter what data set you are looking at. And when you deal with biological entities, such as humans, where there are a number of weird confounding variables, you should expect the number of anomalous data points to increase. That does not, in any way, change the fact that there will be clear trends within a larger data pool that will point to underlying causal relationships.
So, I don't care that your grandmother had a beer every day while pregnant with your dad and he came out okay. Your dad's one data point. When you look at a larger picture and take into account a large number of pregnancies, the fact still remains that consuming alcohol while pregnant increases the odds of problems. Note the way that I phrased it there: it doesn't guarantee that something will go wrong, but the chances of something going wrong are much higher. Given our growing understand of fetal and early childhood development, this makes perfect sense.
To make matters more confounding, the emerging understanding of the biology of a developing human is demonstrating that problems related to consumption of substances such as alcohol and tobacco during pregnancy or early childhood (which largely comes from parents using doses of alcohol to get their young children to go to sleep) may be subtle and may not be apparent until the child is older. Problems with coordination, brain development, behavior (related to brain development), etc. may become apparent long enough after the use of the alcohol that nobody without an advanced knowledge of developmental neurology is likely to link the two. Nonetheless, such problems have begun to become apparent in the scientific data, which gives further reason to question much of the folk wisdom regarding the use of various substances while pregnant or nursing, or during early childhood.
Now, flip that around to the "my womb is a temple to my child's purity" group, and you see the flipside of this misapprehension of basic mathematical and scientific concepts. Recently, Kaylia was having a hard time eating. She suddenly had a craving for chicken McNuggets, and she indulged. She has, by and large, been eating well (plenty of fruits and vegetables, good protein sources, etc.), but this one day she had a single thing from a fast food place (which she supplemented with a green salad and some milk). When she mentioned this on Facebook, she received a bizarrely negative reaction from a couple of people who insisted that she was somehow "poisoning her baby!" by eating the deep-fried chicken gloop. Every mother or expectant mother that I know has had a similar experience.
Part of this comes from people who fail to grasp reality just as badly as the people who think that drinking while pregnant is a fine idea. There are studies that show problems resulting from poor nutrition during pregnancy. However, what people who think that "Chicken McNuggets are poison!" fail to grasp is that it isn't some magical substance in the food that causes the problem (well, not usually*), but rather the problems result from chronic malnutrition resulting in women relying heavily on fast food or other nutrient-poor diets through a substantial portion of their pregnancy. Having Chicken McNuggets every now and again is not going to do you or your fetus any harm. In fact, much of the alarmist thinking regarding these sorts of things seems to derive from some of our deep-rooted mechanisms for avoiding contagion and pollution (the same mechanisms that, weirdly, also likely form at least part of our tendency towards bigotries), where we have a notion of "one drop pollution" built into our brains (and conversely, the real issue of dose size corresponding to response is counter-intuitive and therefore often ignored, even though it is actually true), which gets applied even when it is plainly, obviously wrong.
Another part of this seems to comes from the fact that people have a difficult time separating what seems gross to them from what is actually bad for them. This is probably related to our weird, and wrong, built-in cognition regarding pollution, but it seems to go wider. If you know the process by which Chicken McNuggets are made, it sounds pretty disgusting. However, the process does not result in anything that is dangerous (provided it is eaten in moderation). Indeed, during the Facebook thread, the majority of the comments attempting to take Kay to task focused not on any actual data regarding the content of the food, but instead on the perceived "grossness" of how it was made. The fact that these people were having such problems distinguishing food safety reality from their culturally-inculcated ideas regarding disgust made their holier-than-thou attitude about the matter even more annoying than they otherwise would have been.
One of the obnoxious issues that we have encountered is that it is very common for people in one of these two groups to not grasp that you are not from the opposing lunatic group when you disagree with them. Suggesting that someone might want to reconsider using whiskey to put their child to sleep (yes, I know people who have done this) is not the same as saying that you should only be feeding your child shaman-blessed dehydrated organic carrots from the Mongolian Plain. Likewise, being willing to feed your kid formula on occasion rather than a diet of all breast milk all of the time** doesn't mean that you are an unfit parent who would willingly let their kid shoot up heroine by the age of one.
Ultimately, we have made it as a species as long as we have because we are resilient, and we do alright in the long run. We don't need to have a moral panic over whether or not a pregnant woman has a hamburger. However, we now have tools, thanks to science, that allow us to find flaws in the folk knowledge that we have long relied upon, and to do better as a result, and those who choose to ignore them for the sake of tradition are being foolish.
*There are, of course, foods that pregnant women should avoid, and an even wider range that pregnant women should only have in moderation. These are well known, though you should check with a real doctor (the kind you'll find at a real hospital) and not the local naturopath, herb seller, etc. The research backing pregnancy diets is fairly good, but most people outside of medicine rely overly-much of "folk wisdom" that should more accurately be referred to as "folk misinformation."
**Oh, and the weird nations that people have about the magical nature of breast milk are pretty obnoxious, too. Yes, I grasp that the data does support the claim that breast feeding is best for an infant. That doesn't mean that breast feeding is the only, or even the primary, factor influencing success in life, and if you want to rant at me otherwise, then save us both the trouble and go stick your head in a pig.
I have long been aware of the ubiquitous presence of sloppy thinking that exists as regards pregnancy and child-raising. It ranges from holier-than-thou attitudes about "eating only organic food from the pygmies of Northern India in order to make it easier to give birth to a clairvoyant baby in a redwood Hot Tub on an ancient Native American holy site" to poorly-thought-out folk wisdom along the lines of "my granny used to dope her babies up on morphine to get them to go to sleep, so it's just fine for babies, good for 'em even, and you can keep your eggheaded book-learnin' science away from me!" What all of this has in common is just good (or, actually, bad) old-fashioned sloppy thinking and a heaping dollop of credulousness and gullibility.
Okay, let's start with the "my granny says that cocaine is fine for a collicky baby!" crowd first. Every now and again, I meet someone who informs me that all manner of things that are frowned upon by the medical community are fine for pregnant women and infants, because some relative (usually, though not always, the parent or grandparent of the person telling me this) continued to smoke/drink/shoot heroine/etc. when they were pregnant or nursing, and that person's kids turned out fine. When you point out to the person that a range of long-term, well-controlled and documented studies show that, actually, these things result in significantly higher odds of problems for the child and/or mother, they quickly respond by referring back to said relative who did this thing and their kid who allegedly turned out "just fine."
The basic problem here is a lack of grasp of statistics. An anecdote, assuming that the person even grasped the example upon which their anecdote is based, is a single data point. There are always anomalous data points. It doesn't matter what data set you are looking at. And when you deal with biological entities, such as humans, where there are a number of weird confounding variables, you should expect the number of anomalous data points to increase. That does not, in any way, change the fact that there will be clear trends within a larger data pool that will point to underlying causal relationships.
So, I don't care that your grandmother had a beer every day while pregnant with your dad and he came out okay. Your dad's one data point. When you look at a larger picture and take into account a large number of pregnancies, the fact still remains that consuming alcohol while pregnant increases the odds of problems. Note the way that I phrased it there: it doesn't guarantee that something will go wrong, but the chances of something going wrong are much higher. Given our growing understand of fetal and early childhood development, this makes perfect sense.
To make matters more confounding, the emerging understanding of the biology of a developing human is demonstrating that problems related to consumption of substances such as alcohol and tobacco during pregnancy or early childhood (which largely comes from parents using doses of alcohol to get their young children to go to sleep) may be subtle and may not be apparent until the child is older. Problems with coordination, brain development, behavior (related to brain development), etc. may become apparent long enough after the use of the alcohol that nobody without an advanced knowledge of developmental neurology is likely to link the two. Nonetheless, such problems have begun to become apparent in the scientific data, which gives further reason to question much of the folk wisdom regarding the use of various substances while pregnant or nursing, or during early childhood.
Now, flip that around to the "my womb is a temple to my child's purity" group, and you see the flipside of this misapprehension of basic mathematical and scientific concepts. Recently, Kaylia was having a hard time eating. She suddenly had a craving for chicken McNuggets, and she indulged. She has, by and large, been eating well (plenty of fruits and vegetables, good protein sources, etc.), but this one day she had a single thing from a fast food place (which she supplemented with a green salad and some milk). When she mentioned this on Facebook, she received a bizarrely negative reaction from a couple of people who insisted that she was somehow "poisoning her baby!" by eating the deep-fried chicken gloop. Every mother or expectant mother that I know has had a similar experience.
Part of this comes from people who fail to grasp reality just as badly as the people who think that drinking while pregnant is a fine idea. There are studies that show problems resulting from poor nutrition during pregnancy. However, what people who think that "Chicken McNuggets are poison!" fail to grasp is that it isn't some magical substance in the food that causes the problem (well, not usually*), but rather the problems result from chronic malnutrition resulting in women relying heavily on fast food or other nutrient-poor diets through a substantial portion of their pregnancy. Having Chicken McNuggets every now and again is not going to do you or your fetus any harm. In fact, much of the alarmist thinking regarding these sorts of things seems to derive from some of our deep-rooted mechanisms for avoiding contagion and pollution (the same mechanisms that, weirdly, also likely form at least part of our tendency towards bigotries), where we have a notion of "one drop pollution" built into our brains (and conversely, the real issue of dose size corresponding to response is counter-intuitive and therefore often ignored, even though it is actually true), which gets applied even when it is plainly, obviously wrong.
Another part of this seems to comes from the fact that people have a difficult time separating what seems gross to them from what is actually bad for them. This is probably related to our weird, and wrong, built-in cognition regarding pollution, but it seems to go wider. If you know the process by which Chicken McNuggets are made, it sounds pretty disgusting. However, the process does not result in anything that is dangerous (provided it is eaten in moderation). Indeed, during the Facebook thread, the majority of the comments attempting to take Kay to task focused not on any actual data regarding the content of the food, but instead on the perceived "grossness" of how it was made. The fact that these people were having such problems distinguishing food safety reality from their culturally-inculcated ideas regarding disgust made their holier-than-thou attitude about the matter even more annoying than they otherwise would have been.
One of the obnoxious issues that we have encountered is that it is very common for people in one of these two groups to not grasp that you are not from the opposing lunatic group when you disagree with them. Suggesting that someone might want to reconsider using whiskey to put their child to sleep (yes, I know people who have done this) is not the same as saying that you should only be feeding your child shaman-blessed dehydrated organic carrots from the Mongolian Plain. Likewise, being willing to feed your kid formula on occasion rather than a diet of all breast milk all of the time** doesn't mean that you are an unfit parent who would willingly let their kid shoot up heroine by the age of one.
Ultimately, we have made it as a species as long as we have because we are resilient, and we do alright in the long run. We don't need to have a moral panic over whether or not a pregnant woman has a hamburger. However, we now have tools, thanks to science, that allow us to find flaws in the folk knowledge that we have long relied upon, and to do better as a result, and those who choose to ignore them for the sake of tradition are being foolish.
*There are, of course, foods that pregnant women should avoid, and an even wider range that pregnant women should only have in moderation. These are well known, though you should check with a real doctor (the kind you'll find at a real hospital) and not the local naturopath, herb seller, etc. The research backing pregnancy diets is fairly good, but most people outside of medicine rely overly-much of "folk wisdom" that should more accurately be referred to as "folk misinformation."
**Oh, and the weird nations that people have about the magical nature of breast milk are pretty obnoxious, too. Yes, I grasp that the data does support the claim that breast feeding is best for an infant. That doesn't mean that breast feeding is the only, or even the primary, factor influencing success in life, and if you want to rant at me otherwise, then save us both the trouble and go stick your head in a pig.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Fun with Fossils
A few months back, I wrote a post regarding my training as a paleontological monitor at the Fairmead Fossil Museum. Well, a couple of weeks back, Kaylia and I arranged a trip for Fresno SWAC*, though only a few of the members ultimately ended up attending. Still, it was fun, and I am once again monitoring (now for 10 hours a day, in a landfill, surrounded by loud heavy equipment, and in a landfill! Hooray!**) so I don't have a whole lot of time to write (though I will be trying to get a regular wordy post out later this week)...so, here's what amount to weekend trip photos to bore you all!
The museum houses both actual fossils and a large number of replicas of fossils that have been unearthed at the Fairmead Landfill site (located, surprisingly enough, at the Fairmead Landfill in Madera County). Hey, I've got photos! You want to see a picture of a landfill taken from the street? Of course you do!
The majority of the fossils recovered from the landfill are in storage until such time as the paleontologists at the museum are able to finish unpacking the plaster jackets in which they sit. Some of the others are kept at UC Berkeley despite attempts by Madera County to get them back (I think that UC Berkeley is full of bastards, but then I would***). However, a few samples are present at the museum for public viewing, the coolest of which was a mammoth skull and tusks suspended from the ceiling at the height that this animal's head would actually have been in life:
Articulated replicas of many of the skeletons found at the museum were also an display (though most of these replicas were of the other samples from the species, and not necessarily the precise fossils found at the Fairmead site):
What was fascinating about the fossils found at the museum is what the reveal about what California's San Joaquin Valley was like during the middle Pleistocene. The valley is now known primarily for 1) being one of the world's agricultural powerhouses; 2) being the place that most Californians either want to leave or are happy that they don't call home; 2) being the place where heat is manufactured for export to other places. Where it's not covered in farms, it's covered in invasive grasses and oak woodland with a few creeks and numerous seasonal waterways running through it. During the middle Pleistocene, however, the mix of plant and animal remains found in the region indicate that it was closer to the African savanna, and teemed with wildlife that most of us would consider rather exotic now, such as camels and large cats (saber toothed tigers, but also other types of large feline predators), species of elephant (the Colombian Mammoth - a larger, and non-woolly version of the mammoth), and giant ground sloths (huge versions of the sloth that you can now find living in Central and South America).
The landfill also has yielded several fossils of ancient horses - an animal native to the Americas but that migrated to Asia during the Pleistocene and eventually died off in the Americas.
While small, the museum is a good place to kill a couple of hours. The displays explain the science clearly, and the laboratory where the paleontologists work, while enclosed, is visible to the public (and some of the paleontologists like talking with the public).
In the end, it was a groovy trip, and if you are in Madera County or the surrounding area, it's worth checking out.
*SWAC = Skeptics Without a Cause, a group that originally formed in Santa Cruz after my better half witnessed an atheist group imploding. Some of the members of that group, my dear partner included, formed the original Santa Cruz SWAC as a place for those who value science, critical thinking, and just generally not accepting made-up-crap at face value to meet and socialize without having any particular political or activist agenda. When Kay and I moved to Fresno, we started a local branch.
**Curious note, one of the workers at the landfill where I am working had previously worked at the Fairmead Landfill and decided to make it clear to me what he thought of paleontologists, which wasn't anything good. I pointed out that I am an archaeologist and not a paleontologist, but he didn't seem to want to believe me.
***I attended UC Santa Cruz, which I like to say has a long un-acknowledged rivalry with UC Berkeley. We at and from Santa Cruz feel that we, as the other University of California campus in the Bay Area, that we could hold our own academically with UC Berkeley. The students at UC Berkeley, however, were surprised to hear that there was a UC campus other than Berkeley.
Seriously, they call their own campus "Cal" to shorten it for "University of California" because they are blissfully unaware that there are, in fact, nine other UC campuses. Oh, and all of them are considered quite good. In your face, UCB!
The museum houses both actual fossils and a large number of replicas of fossils that have been unearthed at the Fairmead Landfill site (located, surprisingly enough, at the Fairmead Landfill in Madera County). Hey, I've got photos! You want to see a picture of a landfill taken from the street? Of course you do!
The Fairmead Landfill, in all of it's glory.
The majority of the fossils recovered from the landfill are in storage until such time as the paleontologists at the museum are able to finish unpacking the plaster jackets in which they sit. Some of the others are kept at UC Berkeley despite attempts by Madera County to get them back (I think that UC Berkeley is full of bastards, but then I would***). However, a few samples are present at the museum for public viewing, the coolest of which was a mammoth skull and tusks suspended from the ceiling at the height that this animal's head would actually have been in life:
The hovering mammoth skull, coming soon
to a theater near you, in horrifying 3-D!
Articulated replicas of many of the skeletons found at the museum were also an display (though most of these replicas were of the other samples from the species, and not necessarily the precise fossils found at the Fairmead site):
The cast, in order of appearance: Short-faced bear, bear and friends,
smilodon and giant ground sloth, dire wolf, Kaylia (not a fossil) and the
ground sloth, camel (yep, camels once lived in California, during
the Pleistocene)
What was fascinating about the fossils found at the museum is what the reveal about what California's San Joaquin Valley was like during the middle Pleistocene. The valley is now known primarily for 1) being one of the world's agricultural powerhouses; 2) being the place that most Californians either want to leave or are happy that they don't call home; 2) being the place where heat is manufactured for export to other places. Where it's not covered in farms, it's covered in invasive grasses and oak woodland with a few creeks and numerous seasonal waterways running through it. During the middle Pleistocene, however, the mix of plant and animal remains found in the region indicate that it was closer to the African savanna, and teemed with wildlife that most of us would consider rather exotic now, such as camels and large cats (saber toothed tigers, but also other types of large feline predators), species of elephant (the Colombian Mammoth - a larger, and non-woolly version of the mammoth), and giant ground sloths (huge versions of the sloth that you can now find living in Central and South America).
The landfill also has yielded several fossils of ancient horses - an animal native to the Americas but that migrated to Asia during the Pleistocene and eventually died off in the Americas.
Yipee! Horse skulls!
While small, the museum is a good place to kill a couple of hours. The displays explain the science clearly, and the laboratory where the paleontologists work, while enclosed, is visible to the public (and some of the paleontologists like talking with the public).
Thrill to the office space of the paleontologist!
In the end, it was a groovy trip, and if you are in Madera County or the surrounding area, it's worth checking out.
Kaylia runs in terror from the re-animated
skeleton of a short-faced bear!
The members of SWAC who attended the trip - Jerred, Eric, Robin, and Kaylia,
photo by me.
*SWAC = Skeptics Without a Cause, a group that originally formed in Santa Cruz after my better half witnessed an atheist group imploding. Some of the members of that group, my dear partner included, formed the original Santa Cruz SWAC as a place for those who value science, critical thinking, and just generally not accepting made-up-crap at face value to meet and socialize without having any particular political or activist agenda. When Kay and I moved to Fresno, we started a local branch.
**Curious note, one of the workers at the landfill where I am working had previously worked at the Fairmead Landfill and decided to make it clear to me what he thought of paleontologists, which wasn't anything good. I pointed out that I am an archaeologist and not a paleontologist, but he didn't seem to want to believe me.
***I attended UC Santa Cruz, which I like to say has a long un-acknowledged rivalry with UC Berkeley. We at and from Santa Cruz feel that we, as the other University of California campus in the Bay Area, that we could hold our own academically with UC Berkeley. The students at UC Berkeley, however, were surprised to hear that there was a UC campus other than Berkeley.
Seriously, they call their own campus "Cal" to shorten it for "University of California" because they are blissfully unaware that there are, in fact, nine other UC campuses. Oh, and all of them are considered quite good. In your face, UCB!
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Cern, Neutrinos, and Good Science
So, you may have heard that scientists at CERN found Nuetrinos moving faster than the speed of light, something that should be impossible according to Einstein's Theory of Relativity. The thing is, it's not certain that they actually observed that, and for all the time that the media spends talking up the discovery, the researchers have been much less certain. They have stated that their work appears to show that the neutrinos can move faster than the speed of light, but they have released their data and have requested that other scientists confirm their results and try to replicate their experiments to make sure. While they did annoucne this to the press, it was after careful internal review of their data, and the simultaneously provided their data to the research community at large rather than claiming to have made a massive discovery and hiding or falsifying the data.
This is how good science works. Contrast this with the way that various other groups do it: creationists (both of the young-Earth and the Intelligent Design camps), global warming deniers, vaccine deniers, cold fusion enthusiasts, etc. etc. They find a study that seems to vindicate their position, don't look too closely at the study itself or the reasons why it was put together (media attention? money to be made?), declare that it is the "final word" on the subject (even when it clearly is not - Andrew Wakefield supporters anyone?), and then refuse to engage with critics in any meaningful way. How many times has someone announced that their idea will replace dominant scientific thought and overthrow "the dominant paradigm"...only to fade into the background.
By contrast, these scientists (whose work actually could overthrow - or at least greatly change - the dominant models) are requesting that others check their work and make sure that it is correct. They are well aware that they may have made a mistake, and they want someone to find it as they have failed to do so. They are, in short, well aware of their responsibilities, and are looking to make sure that they are not fooling themselves.
That is good science.
This is how good science works. Contrast this with the way that various other groups do it: creationists (both of the young-Earth and the Intelligent Design camps), global warming deniers, vaccine deniers, cold fusion enthusiasts, etc. etc. They find a study that seems to vindicate their position, don't look too closely at the study itself or the reasons why it was put together (media attention? money to be made?), declare that it is the "final word" on the subject (even when it clearly is not - Andrew Wakefield supporters anyone?), and then refuse to engage with critics in any meaningful way. How many times has someone announced that their idea will replace dominant scientific thought and overthrow "the dominant paradigm"...only to fade into the background.
By contrast, these scientists (whose work actually could overthrow - or at least greatly change - the dominant models) are requesting that others check their work and make sure that it is correct. They are well aware that they may have made a mistake, and they want someone to find it as they have failed to do so. They are, in short, well aware of their responsibilities, and are looking to make sure that they are not fooling themselves.
That is good science.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
What's Wrong With the Natural World?
I'm off to Portland for a few days, but in the meantime, I thought I'd leave you with this - an essay by my friend Dave - see the link on the left-hand side of the page for his amazing puppet shows. As so often happens, Dave has written an essay that corresponds with my own ideas, but is far more eloquent than I could have written. Enjoy:
What’s so Bad About the Natural World?
There are lots of various reasons that people give for believing in gods or the supernatural. It's neither my purpose nor desire to coerce anybody out of their beliefs provided they are not using these beliefs to cause harm. However, I do think that there is a spectrum of quality for these arguments for belief, and that while I personally subscribe to none of these arguments, I can concede that there are some arguments which are better than others.
There is one particular reason that people give for believing in the supernatural that I have always found spectacularly bad. Unfortunately, it is one of the more common reasons that people give for their faith. The reason is this:
"I believe in ______ because I just can't imagine that this is all there is."
If people mean by this that there has to be more to life than just waking up, going to work, paying your bills, growing old and dying… well, yes. There's a great deal more to life than that, I wholeheartedly agree. But if you're saying that there has to be more out there than just the natural world… well, frankly, I'm a little bit stumped. Are people even looking at the natural world?
On this planet right now there are an estimated 5-10 million species of animal life on the planet – that's animal life, not counting flora. We live on a planet with naked mole rats and anglerfish and venus flytraps and kangaroos - and yet the current state of Earth's species is the briefest snapshot of the planet's four billion year history of life. Four billion years! Can you imagine it? We've had a history of life so incredibly diverse that the human imagination, when trying to invent mythological animals, can do little more than rearrange the wonderful designs that nature already gave us.
And that's just Earth! The Hubble telescope once took a deep field image which showed approximately ten thousand galaxies. The average galaxy can have anywhere from a few million to one trillion stars. That photo represented only one thirteen millionth of the night sky – and that's only the observable universe!
So when I hear people say things like, "Well, the natural world can't be all there is," it positively boggles my mind! The horizon of the natural world is so vast, that the word 'infinite' seems so shamefully inadequate as to seem insulting. How can people look at that, roll their eyes and say, 'is that all there is?' (Unless, of course, you happen to be Peggy Lee, in which case, you can do it because you're awesome)
I suspect that for some people, the vastness of everything is part of the problem. I fear that for a certain type of person the belief that 'there has to be more than just this' really means 'there has to be more than just this for me.' The universe has to have a plan for me. There must be an underlying meaning that involves me. My spirit and my soul and my ego have to survive death. I can't imagine the universe could work any other way.'
I like to think that particular outlook is the minority position. Not to be unkind, but the perception that we have to have a cosmic plan involving us really is rather childish. The universe does not owe us some grand importance, no more than it owed importance to dinosaurs, trilobites or amoebas. Our lives can certainly have meaning or importance, of course, but they are the meaning and importance that we ourselves choose to strive for; a freedom that sounds far more appealing than being pawns in a cosmic chess game. We cannot expect to be handed our significance.
I'd like to think that childish entitlement towards the universe is rare. I hope that most people are simply unaware of the wondrous complexity of the universe around them, or that in their day-to-day activities they tend to overlook it. It's easy to do. When you've got a splitting headache at work, you're not thinking about how amazing your circulatory system is. When your boss is yelling at you, you don't marvel at the gradual development of human language. But it is all still amazing. Even when we take it all for granted, or get distracted by trivial minutiae's, the natural world is still more brilliant than anything that any mind could ever imagine.
I can almost understand people who say that they have to believe in the supernatural because the universe is so beautiful and amazing that it must certainly have a loving intent behind it. I don't necessarily agree with the sentiment, but it can still resonate with me – a belief in the supernatural based upon awe for the natural.
The point of this essay is not to try to discourage people away from their faith. But if I can be so bold, I would like to make a humble suggestion. This is a suggestion for non-theists and theists alike. Every once in a while, just stop and really pay attention to the natural world. Take a moment to put aside both your day-to-day life and the afterlife. Try to take the time to look at the world, not as something to transcend, not as something to shuffle off when you go to your perceived heaven, but as an amazingly beautiful thing in and of itself. Don't blow off the universe.
After all, that's one of the things the Wiccans get right.
"Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of this astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy"
- Carl Sagan
What’s so Bad About the Natural World?
There are lots of various reasons that people give for believing in gods or the supernatural. It's neither my purpose nor desire to coerce anybody out of their beliefs provided they are not using these beliefs to cause harm. However, I do think that there is a spectrum of quality for these arguments for belief, and that while I personally subscribe to none of these arguments, I can concede that there are some arguments which are better than others.
There is one particular reason that people give for believing in the supernatural that I have always found spectacularly bad. Unfortunately, it is one of the more common reasons that people give for their faith. The reason is this:
"I believe in ______ because I just can't imagine that this is all there is."
If people mean by this that there has to be more to life than just waking up, going to work, paying your bills, growing old and dying… well, yes. There's a great deal more to life than that, I wholeheartedly agree. But if you're saying that there has to be more out there than just the natural world… well, frankly, I'm a little bit stumped. Are people even looking at the natural world?
On this planet right now there are an estimated 5-10 million species of animal life on the planet – that's animal life, not counting flora. We live on a planet with naked mole rats and anglerfish and venus flytraps and kangaroos - and yet the current state of Earth's species is the briefest snapshot of the planet's four billion year history of life. Four billion years! Can you imagine it? We've had a history of life so incredibly diverse that the human imagination, when trying to invent mythological animals, can do little more than rearrange the wonderful designs that nature already gave us.
And that's just Earth! The Hubble telescope once took a deep field image which showed approximately ten thousand galaxies. The average galaxy can have anywhere from a few million to one trillion stars. That photo represented only one thirteen millionth of the night sky – and that's only the observable universe!
So when I hear people say things like, "Well, the natural world can't be all there is," it positively boggles my mind! The horizon of the natural world is so vast, that the word 'infinite' seems so shamefully inadequate as to seem insulting. How can people look at that, roll their eyes and say, 'is that all there is?' (Unless, of course, you happen to be Peggy Lee, in which case, you can do it because you're awesome)
I suspect that for some people, the vastness of everything is part of the problem. I fear that for a certain type of person the belief that 'there has to be more than just this' really means 'there has to be more than just this for me.' The universe has to have a plan for me. There must be an underlying meaning that involves me. My spirit and my soul and my ego have to survive death. I can't imagine the universe could work any other way.'
I like to think that particular outlook is the minority position. Not to be unkind, but the perception that we have to have a cosmic plan involving us really is rather childish. The universe does not owe us some grand importance, no more than it owed importance to dinosaurs, trilobites or amoebas. Our lives can certainly have meaning or importance, of course, but they are the meaning and importance that we ourselves choose to strive for; a freedom that sounds far more appealing than being pawns in a cosmic chess game. We cannot expect to be handed our significance.
I'd like to think that childish entitlement towards the universe is rare. I hope that most people are simply unaware of the wondrous complexity of the universe around them, or that in their day-to-day activities they tend to overlook it. It's easy to do. When you've got a splitting headache at work, you're not thinking about how amazing your circulatory system is. When your boss is yelling at you, you don't marvel at the gradual development of human language. But it is all still amazing. Even when we take it all for granted, or get distracted by trivial minutiae's, the natural world is still more brilliant than anything that any mind could ever imagine.
I can almost understand people who say that they have to believe in the supernatural because the universe is so beautiful and amazing that it must certainly have a loving intent behind it. I don't necessarily agree with the sentiment, but it can still resonate with me – a belief in the supernatural based upon awe for the natural.
The point of this essay is not to try to discourage people away from their faith. But if I can be so bold, I would like to make a humble suggestion. This is a suggestion for non-theists and theists alike. Every once in a while, just stop and really pay attention to the natural world. Take a moment to put aside both your day-to-day life and the afterlife. Try to take the time to look at the world, not as something to transcend, not as something to shuffle off when you go to your perceived heaven, but as an amazingly beautiful thing in and of itself. Don't blow off the universe.
After all, that's one of the things the Wiccans get right.
"Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of this astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy"
- Carl Sagan
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Shifting Emphasis
I recently had a conversation with someone about one of my favorite subjects: ghosts. I do not believe in ghosts, but I find the stories fascinating.
On the other hand, the person that I spoke with does believe in ghosts , and she thought that she could easily show me the cases that would convert me. Each case that she described could easily be explained by a basic knowledge of either sleep physiology (basically, when we are resting, our brains do some rather interesting things that, if you are not familiar with them it is easy to mistake for ghosts), or else basic psychology (a few common traits in human perception and behavior can easily be mistaken for the paranormal if you aren’t aware of them).
And it was here that a huge difference between us became apparent. She conceded that I had a point in my explanations of her cases, and she was disappointed. I, on the other hand, was excited – not because I had won the argument, but because the subject of how we perceive things and how this can backfire is really fascinating. Basically, by pushing away the ghosts and getting at what really happened, something much more interesting, complex, and wondrous – the functioning of the human brain – was revealed. She was solely interested in the fact that her pet hypothesis was gone, and seemed immune to the amazing facts about us that the perception of ghosts revealed.
And I have to wonder if this may be one of the primary things that separates “believers” and “skeptics” – she was disappointed at having these ghosts “taken away”, while I was elated at the fact that the “ghosts” gave us an understanding of something bigger than a few spook stories. She felt that something was lost when the stories were explained, while I felt that the world gained more wonder – after all, if our minds can produce these specters and spooks with such real-feeling intensity, what else can they do? It opens up a world of possibilities!
And this makes me wonder if perhaps I should look carefully at my tactics when I discuss these sorts of things. Perhaps I can give something to people when I disagree, rather than simply threatening to take their cherished belief or idea away. If, perhaps, the next time someone comes to me with a story about how ancient Israelites/Celts/Egyptians/etc. built the pyramids of Central America, I emphasize the engineering prowess and complex culture of the native people of that region rather than simply go at the absurdity of the claim of old worlders coming over to engage in a bit of monument building, I’ll make more headway and make the same point. Perhaps the same holds if, the next time someone tries to convince me of the “falseness” of evolution, I talk about the amazing things that we know about it rather than emphasize the poor reasoning behind the anti-evolution claim.
That’s not to say that the absurdities of some of these views shouldn’t be shown, but perhaps the emphasis of the discussion should be shifted by the skeptic. Contrary to being bitter and boring people with no regard for the world, people skeptical of the paranormal tend to be filled with an awe of reality. If we can emphasize that, if we emphasize the amazing beauty of reality rather than simply attacking the absurdity of the nonsensical claims, we might have more luck in winning people over.
On the other hand, the person that I spoke with does believe in ghosts , and she thought that she could easily show me the cases that would convert me. Each case that she described could easily be explained by a basic knowledge of either sleep physiology (basically, when we are resting, our brains do some rather interesting things that, if you are not familiar with them it is easy to mistake for ghosts), or else basic psychology (a few common traits in human perception and behavior can easily be mistaken for the paranormal if you aren’t aware of them).
And it was here that a huge difference between us became apparent. She conceded that I had a point in my explanations of her cases, and she was disappointed. I, on the other hand, was excited – not because I had won the argument, but because the subject of how we perceive things and how this can backfire is really fascinating. Basically, by pushing away the ghosts and getting at what really happened, something much more interesting, complex, and wondrous – the functioning of the human brain – was revealed. She was solely interested in the fact that her pet hypothesis was gone, and seemed immune to the amazing facts about us that the perception of ghosts revealed.
And I have to wonder if this may be one of the primary things that separates “believers” and “skeptics” – she was disappointed at having these ghosts “taken away”, while I was elated at the fact that the “ghosts” gave us an understanding of something bigger than a few spook stories. She felt that something was lost when the stories were explained, while I felt that the world gained more wonder – after all, if our minds can produce these specters and spooks with such real-feeling intensity, what else can they do? It opens up a world of possibilities!
And this makes me wonder if perhaps I should look carefully at my tactics when I discuss these sorts of things. Perhaps I can give something to people when I disagree, rather than simply threatening to take their cherished belief or idea away. If, perhaps, the next time someone comes to me with a story about how ancient Israelites/Celts/Egyptians/etc. built the pyramids of Central America, I emphasize the engineering prowess and complex culture of the native people of that region rather than simply go at the absurdity of the claim of old worlders coming over to engage in a bit of monument building, I’ll make more headway and make the same point. Perhaps the same holds if, the next time someone tries to convince me of the “falseness” of evolution, I talk about the amazing things that we know about it rather than emphasize the poor reasoning behind the anti-evolution claim.
That’s not to say that the absurdities of some of these views shouldn’t be shown, but perhaps the emphasis of the discussion should be shifted by the skeptic. Contrary to being bitter and boring people with no regard for the world, people skeptical of the paranormal tend to be filled with an awe of reality. If we can emphasize that, if we emphasize the amazing beauty of reality rather than simply attacking the absurdity of the nonsensical claims, we might have more luck in winning people over.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Teach the Controversy
I'm sure that many of you have heard the pro-indoctrination-into-religion-in-public-schools folks use the slogan "teach the controversy" in trying to get creationism (including the mis-named "intelligent design") taught in public schools - the implication being that there is a controversy over the truth of evolution, which, well, there really isn't.
I could write a lengthy diatribe about how this is really just people making up a non-existent controversy in order to further their own agenda without regard to the truth, and how if you're going to claim that there's controversy about evolution you also have to accept that there is controversy about whether or not UFOs built the pyramids - seeing as how the reasoning behind claiming there is a controversy in the science world over evolution is no different than the reason in claiming that there is controversy as to the pedigree of the pyramids.
But I'm not going to - someone else has done something that is much funnier, sums the matter up, and I really can't top:
BEHOLD THE POWER OF THE T-SHIRT
I think I know what I'm gonna' be spending some money on...
.
I could write a lengthy diatribe about how this is really just people making up a non-existent controversy in order to further their own agenda without regard to the truth, and how if you're going to claim that there's controversy about evolution you also have to accept that there is controversy about whether or not UFOs built the pyramids - seeing as how the reasoning behind claiming there is a controversy in the science world over evolution is no different than the reason in claiming that there is controversy as to the pedigree of the pyramids.
But I'm not going to - someone else has done something that is much funnier, sums the matter up, and I really can't top:
BEHOLD THE POWER OF THE T-SHIRT
I think I know what I'm gonna' be spending some money on...
.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Dave Makes Arguments Fun!
Every time that the issue of evolution comes up in public, it seems that we hear the same false claims, tortured logic, misdirection, and outright fallacies from the folks who are opposed to it being taught as the fact that it is. With very few exceptions, most of the extremely vocal folks have shut off their critical faculties and are unwilling to actually hear what anyone else has to say, as that might cause them to actually think about the matter.
As you might expect, this leads to alot of frustration on the parts of people who actually know something about evolution. But my friend Dave (see the link at the left side of the page) has a solution. A new game that makes this debate much more enjoyable for those of us who are in favor of actually teaching science in science classes - Creationist Bingo!
For the original, go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shadowcircus/2364924675/
A similar deal, specific to "Intelligent Design" can be found at: http://skeptico.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/09/23/id_bingo_card_2.jpg
As you might expect, this leads to alot of frustration on the parts of people who actually know something about evolution. But my friend Dave (see the link at the left side of the page) has a solution. A new game that makes this debate much more enjoyable for those of us who are in favor of actually teaching science in science classes - Creationist Bingo!
For the original, go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shadowcircus/2364924675/
A similar deal, specific to "Intelligent Design" can be found at: http://skeptico.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/09/23/id_bingo_card_2.jpg
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