"What can we say to dispel the mystery of existence? ... I think we must frankly admit that
"This is not a new idea; ... This is the philosophy that guided the men who made the democracy we live under. The idea that no one really knew how to run a government led to the idea that we should arrange a system by which new ideas could be developed, tried out, and tossed out if necessary, with more new ideas brought in a trial-and-error system. This method was the result of the fact that science was already showing itself to be a successful venture. ... Even then it was clear ... that doubt and discussion were essential to progress into the unknown."
"It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress which comes from [the] philosophy of [admitting] ignorance, [and from the resulting] freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of that freedom; to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all future generations."
"If we want to solve a problem that we have never solved before, we must leave the door to the unknown ajar."
"[We must view all laws of science as provisional] they are not [to be regarded as] exact. There is an edge of mystery, always some place where we have some fiddling around to do yet. This may or may not be a property of Nature, but it certainly is common to all the laws [of science] as we know them today."
"People say to me, 'Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?' No, I'm not. ... If it turns out there is a simple ultimate law which explains everything, so be it that would be very nice to discover. If it turns out that it's like an onion with [an infinite number] of layers ... then that's the way it is."
"It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the planets, and all these atoms with their motions, an so on; all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil which is the view [creationists have]. The stage is too big for the drama."
"You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not ABSOLUTELY sure of anything. . . .
"I don't HAVE to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things. ..."
" ... Feynman's persistent skepticism, his unwillingness to accept any assertion [merely] on authority, would be useful [in the Manhattan Project]. If there was any baloney or self-deception in the idea ... Feynman would find it."
"To Feynman, looking on, it seemed like classic self-deception: a researcher believes in the result he is seeking, and he starts to overweight the favorable evidence and underweight the possible counterexamples. ...
"Later, experimenters at Caltech felt that Feynman's very presence exerted a sort of moral pressure on their findings and methods. He was mercilessly skeptical."
"He believed that it was not certainty but freedom from certainty that empowered people to make judgments about right from wrong: knowing that they could never be more than provisionally right, but able to act nonetheless. Only by understanding uncertainty could people learn how to evaluate the many kinds of false knowledge that bombard them: claims of mind reading and spoon bending, belief in flying saucers bearing alien visitors.
"Science can never disprove such claims, any more than it can disprove God. It can only devise experiments and explore alternative explanations until it gains a commonsense sureness. 'I have [debated about pseudo-scientific based claims] with lots of people,' Feynman once said. 'I was interested in this: they kept arguing that it is possible. And that's true. It is possible. They do not appreciate that the problem is not to demonstrate whether it's possible or not but whether it's [really happening] or not.'"
Both of the Feynman/Leighton books use the phrase
Capital "Cs" certainly seem appropriate for all of them!
Finally, a "freebie" from an essay not incorporated into the books reviewed here:
"Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. ... Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. ... Each generation that discovers something [of value] must pass that on with a delicate balance of respect and disrespect [as it must with the rest our] accumulated wisdom plus the wisdom that it may
1. As quoted by Leon Lederman in THE GOD PARTICLE
Insiders have cited: A 27,000 foot runway that "isn't there"; an estimated $14.3 billion that "isn't spent" for secret programs (which would seem to be one
The official denials
Now, a 737 with its landing lights on at night over unlighted terrain appears to sort of hover like a helicopter, since there are no good references for noting its progress. Mix that fact with a legendary UFO, "old faithful," that makes a regular appearance most mornings. OK next, envision the aerospace gang listening to a 4:45 AM "Janet" inbound while the UFO buffs are looking for "old faithful." The "Janet" 737 turns on its landing lights while it's still a fair distance out
INVISIBLE PROOF The UFOlogy crowd obviously recognizes a good thing when the don't see it. It take about three laps of circular reasoning to explain, however. Lap 1: The repressed memory types claim that failure to remember abuse "proves" one has repressed the memory. Lap 2: UFO abduction "therapists" use the same rationale to "prove" repressed abductions. Lap 3: The reason all those claimed abductions from inside large cities weren't seen by other people is that
That brings some interesting questions to mind: 1: Why is the invisibility trick supposedly used in places like New York and Washington, D.C., but not employed to hide Groom Lake? 2: Why do the "abductees" see the "invisible" UFO and aliens while others can't? 3: If the object is actually observed, does that mean it's
A REAL IFO Aerospace watchers at Groom Lake, NV, and Roswell, NM, have seen an aircraft that looks like a scaled-down B-2 with a lower aspect ratio (wingspan-to-length) planform. Like the B-2, it lacks vertical fins/rudders. Viewed from a bit to the side of its fore-aft centerline, and a like amount above or below the centerline, it displays a "squashed diamond" profile. (See accompanying drawing.) Any bets re: it showing up in the tabloids as a UFO?
JV
JUNK SCIENCE IN THE LEGISLATURE Drunk-driver tests that employ Breathalyzer sampling has been challenged in some courts because of the fairly large amounts of "scatter" in readings that equate to specific blood/alcohol levels. (Blood/alcohol values, alone, apparently involve a scatter factor re: actual intoxication, so the
One state's legislature has proposed a remedy: They want to make a specific breathalyzer level the "scientific equivalent" of a (supposedly) corresponding blood/alcohol level. (If it's not
MACK ATTACKED? UFO abduction proponents have had a highly-credentialed advocate in Harvard psychiatrist John Mack. Mack, whose book about T.E. Lawrence won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1977, has a new book out from Scribners with accounts of 13 of his client's abduction cases. Mack calls those who claim alien abductions "experiencers," and has concluded that their stories describe real events and are not explicable as psychological phenomena. Despite the total lack of any corroborating evidence for these fantastic tales of spaceship rides, bizarre alien medical experiments, blue tractor beams and little gray men, Mack is convinced it has all happened as the experiencers say. He has hit the book-tour circuit to promote
But Mack's techniques and theory may come under some scrutiny after
Bassett says she acted her way through the regressions, feeding the receptive Harvard psychiatrist one fantasy after another, including the JFK/Khrushchev yarn. Mack bought it all, she says: Bassett rose through the ranks of the alien-abductee support group network, and Mack even made her the treasurer of an abductee-support group he ran. "John made it obvious what he wanted to hear," she says. She also claims Mack billed client's insurance companies for support-group sessions which he says are "therapy" and not research.
SN&V Contributors: MS - Mike Sullivan; JV - Joe Voelkering.
One of the most recent and dangerous trends is that of chiropractors seeking to take on the role of family physician and even pediatrician. Newspaper advertising along these lines has asserted that chiropractic adjustments are the "treatment of choice" for ear infections! Dallas/Fort Worth's KXAS-TV Channel 5 investigator Mike Androvette, in a special report aired in February of this year, recorded a local chiropractor who was consulted about a child's recurrent ear infections claiming that antibiotics "weaken the immune system." I have personally had area chiropractors tell me that children as young as newborns need to undergo regular chiropractic adjustments in order to prevent life-threatening illnesses including childhood leukemia and diabetes. One of the two main chiropractic organizations, the International Chiropractors Association, which is composed mainly of the "straight" practitioners, even produced a videotape designed to sell parents on the importance of chiropractic care for their children.
Palmer and Jennifer Peet, a pair of chiropractors in Vermont, are aggressively promoting routine pediatric care by chiropractors and asserted on a ABC-TV 20-20 program (also in February of this year) that untreated chiropractic "subluxations" in children can be life-threatening. In a book written by the couple, it's alleged that "every time a child receives a chiropractic adjustment it should be given as if their very life depends on it, because it does." The book also warns that "the dangers of vaccinations to the young child are profound," asserting that they can "increase a child's preexisting chronic disease tendency."
In reality, pediatric ear infections that go untreated with appropriate antibiotics can lead to hearing loss, invasive infections of the bones of the skull, and the formation of brain abscesses and other complications. And not only have childhood vaccinations proven to be extremely safe and effective tools which have virtually eradicated such disorders as polio, whooping cough, and measles, but they result in
In March of 1993 The Wall Street Journal exposed this latest attempt at an aggressive expansion of the scope of chiropractic and its irrational and potentially harmful consequences. The American Chiropractic Association, the larger of the two main chiropractic organizations which is composed mostly of "mixers," responded with a full-page advertisement stating that "any doctor of chiropractic who would seek to substitute spinal manipulation for antibiotic therapy in the treatment of bacterial infections ... is acting counter to accepted clinical practices" and gave a qualified endorsement of childhood immunizations. In defending its actions to even many of its own members who considered the action a betrayal, ACA officials noted that "The Clinton administration's health-care task force was literally making the cut on who was 'in' and who was 'out' of the minimum benefits package." In other words, they were concerned that the bad publicity might deny them a share of the nation's tax (Oops! ... I meant 'health care insurance premium') dollars.
Left unmentioned in the media attention devoted to the issue of chiropractors practicing pediatrics are two additional points. One is the enormous value inherent in inculcating an entire new generation with the belief that the human body cannot be truly healthy without regular chiropractic "adjustments." The other is that such "adjustments," even when given to healthy children, have a real potential for harm. According to Ron Slaughter, a Houston chiropractor who is a principal in a movement to rid his profession of pseudoscience, the manipulation of children can turn their normally pliable joints into unstable ones.
Slaughter is one of a minority of chiropractors who are seeking a legitimate place for chiropractic as a means of managing the variety of musculoskeletal disorders, and primarily low back pain related to trauma, in which it appears to be safe and effective. He is past president of the National Association for Chiropractic Medicine, an organization formed in 1984 which requires of its members a written pledge to "openly renounce the historical chiropractic philosophical concept that subluxation is the cause of disease" and to restrict their practice to treating "neuromusculoskeletal conditions of a nonsurgical nature."
This sort of approach is undoubtedly the only one which can ultimately lead to chiropractic's finding its place in the spectrum of legitimate scientific medical care. On the other hand, Stephen Barrett, M.D., has this to say in his chapter of Chiropractic in The Health Robbers: "If a chiropractor limited his practice to musculoskeletal conditions such as simple backaches, if he were able to determine which patients are appropriate for him to treat, if he consulted and referred to medical doctors when he couldn't handle a problem, if he were not overly vigorous in his manipulations, if he minimized the use of X-rays, and if he encouraged the use of proven public health measures, his patients would be relatively safe. But he might not be able to learn a living."
One thing is for certain: rational-minded chiropractors like Ron Slaughter, Charles Duvall (current NACM President), and others who share their ideas for reform are the only hope of their profession's being salvaged from the toxic waste dumps of medical quackery. However encouraging are its few signs of progress, chiropractic cannot look to M.D.s, D.O.s, and the rest of the scientific medical mainstream to save it from its errors.
This information is provided by the D/FW Council Against Health Fraud. For more information, or to report suspected health fraud, please contact the Council at Box 202577, Arlington, TX 76006, or call metro 817-792-2000. Dr. Gorski is a practicing physician, chairman of the D/FW Council Against Health Fraud and a North Texas Skeptics Technical Advisor.
Over the past year or so, I have become more and more despairing of American culture and of our mission of trying to foster rational, scientific thinking. We are selling Newton's apple and drawing few takers, while the peddlers of junk food for thought are deluged with customers. In the past month alone, several events have caused me to question why I keep trying, as W.C. Fields put it, to "smarten up the chumps." For example...
A recent episode of the syndicated
What was so disheartening about this was the reaction of the studio audience. One woman stood up and angrily demanded to know the skeptic's credentials! Did she think they couldn't compare to the psychics' "credentials?!" When the psychics tried the old dodge that they help people not just by telling the future, but by counseling them about their personal problems, the skeptic said that is a job for trained counselors and psychologists ... and the audience laughed and booed him!
This gives us a frightening glimpse into the thought processes of America's TV talk show culture: the psychics were embraced, despite no evidence for their claims, simply because they say they care so much about their clients. The skeptic (who, admittedly, was rather strident, humorless and combative) was rejected along with all trained psychoanalysts by most in the audience, because they embrace scientific rationality and appear cold and uncaring. It was obvious that most audience members believed every horror story they've ever heard about incompetent psychiatrists ... but they could not accept testimony against these nice psychics, even with their victims right there in the studio to accuse them.
It all reminded me of a scene in Steven Sondheim's musical fairy tale, "Into The Woods." The witch tells the townsfolk the unpleasant truth about what they must do to save themselves from a vengeful giant. They refuse and instead blame the witch, because she is cold and heartless to suggest such a thing. The witch then sings a song in which she says, fine, don't listen to me ... "I'm not 'good,' I'm not 'nice' ... I'm just right!"
Rationality is taking a beating, friends, from religious fanatics on the right, from political correctness proponents on the left, from the mass media, from purveyors of psycho-babble and victimology, from people whose financial interests are served by fostering widespread belief in superstition and relativism. Truth is not enough, in fact, it doesn't count for anything anymore. In the TV talk show culture, "truth" is a subjective concept, "reality" something that we all create for ourselves as we blunder through the day. Many Americans prefer to listen to a seemingly "caring" person who would lead them over a cliff, rather than to a "coldly rational" person who honestly tries to warn them that they are about to fall to their doom. Don't believe me? Ask a Branch Davidian, if you can find one.
Another example of this mentality can be found in several recent nationwide political polls, all of which showed roughly the same results. About half the respondents said that they believed the president had not been honest in his financial dealings in the past, and is not being truthful with the public in explaining them. Yet over 70% also stated that the press shouldn't spend so much time investigating the subject, because it might distract the president from fulfilling promises made to them in the campaign (health care reform, etc.).
Please, before you send me letters, note that I am NOT taking a stand either way on whether the president is or is not honest. I am not questioning the president's honesty ... I am examining the thought processes of the people who answered the poll. If the numbers are accurate, then at least 20% of respondents held both of the above opinions simultaneously. These people are saying, in effect, "I think the president is a liar ... but I don't care, because I like what he promised." But if you truly believe that any person is not honest, then what difference does it make what he promises you?
Another example of the spread of fuzzy thinking: the April 25 edition of
The common denominator in all this is "niceness," the attribute Sondheim's witch eschewed in favor of being correct. The president's supporters say he cares about them more than previous presidents did. The people in the talk show audience believed the nice psychics care more about their clients than trained therapists do. People line up to buy spiritual how-to guides, because they believe they must change themselves and their society because nobody cares about anybody anymore. People are so desperate to think that someone cares about them, that there is more to life than the dismal things they see on the news every night, that they will cling to their idols, even while admitting that they personally believe the idol is not honest, or when they have hard evidence before them of the person's chicanery (such as the psychics' victims on the talk show).
So, given the prevailing mindset, where does this leave skeptics? It seems to me we have two choices:
1. Adopt the truly cold attitude of H.L. Mencken, who once argued (perhaps only partly in jest) that quacks should not be policed, because they help the human race progress by insuring a high death rate among idiots. In that case, we should throw up our hands and say, "To hell with it, you all deserve to be taken!" Or
2. Be even more careful about the way we present our viewpoint. Too often, we appeal solely to people's minds when the occultists already have control of both their minds and their hearts. We must maintain our sense of humor and control our tempers (which the skeptic on the talk show did not, and thus alienated the audience), and remind ourselves constantly that the people we are seeking to convince have an emotional investment in these beliefs. We must make a calm, clear case against the belief itself, or else the believer will think it is a personal attack and become defensive. We must be considerate of the victims' feelings even as we debunk a belief, remembering that nobody likes to be perceived as foolish or gullible in public.
It is not necessary to soft-pedal our arguments to accomplish this. We simply must remind the audience repeatedly that we do this because we honestly do care about people ... that we care about elderly people who have their life savings taken in order to "lift a curse," about sick or disabled people whose hopes, lives and money are stolen away by quacks and faith healers, and about students who are being taught bad science and fuzzy thinking that will put them at a disadvantage for the rest of their lives.
Believe me, I know how tempting it is to go after these miscreants with a meat ax. I do it here all the time (although, I hope, with humorous effect), and there is a time and a place for blunt language and strong accusation, when the facts warrant it. But, when we go out into the world to argue for logic and rationality in front of a general audience, let's all remember: in the current intellectual climate, a little niceness really helps sell the product.
I finally got around to watching the Fox TV special on the worldwide UFO cover-up conspiracy, and I want my time refunded! It was an outrageous rehash of stories like the "Guardian" case of 1990, also known as the Carp case, which even UFO proponents long ago declared a hoax. As our fellow skeptics in Nebraska noted in their newsletter,
As for NBC's shows on prophecy, sorry, having wasted an hour on the first special, I didn't have two hours to waste watching this one. I'll talk about it next time. But to underscore my earlier point about the American hunger for the metaphysical, you might be interested to know that NBC was deluged with so many requests for tapes and transcripts of the show, they repeated it in prime time only a month after originally showing it. I've got to get around to watching this thing ... but not tonight, because
Hard Copy recently presented a story on the murder of an extremely wealthy and successful Japanese psychic. The tabloid reporter seemed troubled and mystified as to how this woman, who saw the future for so many others, did not foresee the danger headed her own way. Imagine that!
Update on last month's false memory syndrome article:
Speaking of large, angry women brings us back to Roseanne, who is divorcing her husband, Tom, claiming that she was a battered, abused wife almost from the beginning of her marriage, (which she described as idyllic as recently as three weeks ago) but only now suddenly realizes that he was constantly hitting her. I wonder how long it took Rodney King to realize that somebody was hitting him?
Finally, Gary Trudeau is running a series on the subject in
Sounds like Gary Trudeau is fully qualified to be a hypnotherapist!
(Ed. note Since Pat wrote this article Rosanne and Tom have made up. It's hard to keep up with the fast pace of TV stars.)
What Do You Care ...
Richard Feynman; GENIUS
James Gleick; GENIUS
Richard Feynman, WHAT IS SCIENCE?1
Open forum
This column is the forum for Skeptic readers to contribute news items of interest to critical thinkers. Please send your items to the Editor by the 15th of each month for inclusion in the next month's issue.
A UFO CALLED JANET A recent (March 1994) issue of Popular Science had a well-researched article on the super-secret Groom Dry Lake Test Facility in Nevada. Some data in it seems worth passing along: Also known as Area 51, The Box, The Pig Farm, The Ranch, Watertown Strip and (officially) "a remote test facility" Groom Lake has been the initial home of "black project" aircraft such as the U-2, A-12/SR-71, F-117A, etc. Current "non-existent" projects reportedly include a hybrid hypersonic aircraft known as Aurora, Senior Citizen or Senior Smart.
The high level of secrecy surrounding the facility has been used to advantage by "UFOlogists" who claim the activities include hush-hush UFO testing. Thus, it's become a mecca for saucer seekers. Of course, they contend official denials that the base exists "prove" their allegations. Serious aerospace watchers have been exchanging information on the base, and associated edge-of-the-envelope projects, for decades. Thus, aerospace buffs find both the denials and the UFO contentions rather amusing.
JV
JV
Drawn by aviation expert Bill Sweetman, these overhead and front outlines of the stealthy aircraft are based on sightings by Douglass and aircraft spotter Mark Farmer of Juneau, Alaska. Farmer saw the plane in May 1993 near Groom Lake, Nev.
JV
MS
Chiropractic
By Tim Gorski, M.D.
[Editor's note: This is the second part of Dr. Gorski's article on chiropractic begun in the April issue of The Skeptic.]
The third eye
By Pat Reeder
Before I recount the weird news of the past month, I'd like to take a moment to ask a rhetorical question: why bother?
And now, let's clear out a whole lot of news items fast ...
Up a tree: a skeptical cartoon by Laura Ainsworth
