Christian Science:

Neither Christian nor Scientific

For a long time now I’ve been promising to take a friend of mine to a Christian Science church service. He’s been interested in doing this because he was brought up in the church in America, but hasn’t been back since he was a child. Finally, last weekend, the stars aligned and we managed to arrange a visit.

We arrived a few minutes early, and headed into the Wellington Central building, which is interestingly designed – from the outside it looks a little avant garde, and that theme is continued inside with very organic looking columns that are reminiscent of bamboo, and a lectern made of wood, steel and rope strands.

Before the service it was obvious the church is not used to seeing new people walk through the door – we were asked if we were “good people” before we were let in, I guess as a way to make sure we weren’t there to cause trouble. Inside there were maybe a dozen congregants. The service started with a couple of hymns, and the organ playing so loud it was hard to hear anyone singing.

After the hymns came the sermon. So, what does Christian Science teach? Are they Christian? Well, yes, kind of, although I’m pretty sure most Christians would denounce them for being heretical. Like the Mormons, Christian Scientists have the Bible as their holy scripture from God, but also refer to a second, more modern text. With the Mormons, it’s the Book of Mormon, and with the Christian Scientists it’s “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” – a book written about 150 years ago by the religion’s founder, Mary Baker Eddy.

The sermon we heard on Sunday consisted of alternating readings from the bible and Mary’s book. What was impressed on us repeatedly throughout the sermon was that our physical bodies are not real, and that matter is just an illusion. We are made in the image of God, and because God is a spiritual being, we must be made of spirit too. Apparently it is the false belief that we inhabit a physical body which causes disease and death. Once you come to understand that matter is an illusion, you no longer have to suffer from disease. There was also repeated mention of the word “science”, but it didn’t seem to be the science we know and love today.

And that, in a nutshell, is what the church is offering – the ability to be free from disease and injury. Of course at times church members get sick. But this is the fault of the adherent, not the church’s teachings, and it is a product of their lack of belief. To help with this, the church runs a helpful service where you can talk to a person they call a Practitioner, who will help to remind you that reality is an illusion – for a small fee, of course.

This false belief that injury and disease are an illusion can be very damaging. Scientology’s belief that someone who has been through “counselling” and reached the state of clear won’t get sick forces adherents to pretend that they’re not sick, and avoid getting medical help. In the same way, Christian Scientists will avoid seeing a doctor for easily treated problems. 

After the service we were given copies of the latest edition of the Christian Science Sentinel. The current edition has articles on how racism is a product of the false belief that we inhabit a physical body, how trusting in spirit can help with dating, and some healing stories.

Before we left I asked if I could return to witness the Wednesday meeting, which my ex Christian Science friend tells me consists of church members giving testimonies of how their realisation of our spiritual nature allowed them to be healed from physical issues. I’ll report back when I’ve managed to visit them again.

UFO in Hawkes Bay

Apparently a UFO was seen in Hawkes Bay late last week. Several people reported seeing a large rectangular shaped object in the sky at dusk, with green and red lights, moving strangely.

A MetService meteorologist has suggested the sightings may be of lenticular clouds, which are common in the area and are fascinating dense clouds that can look like a solid object in the sky.

Green and red lights are also used by aeroplanes to let people know where the left (red) and right (green) sides of the plane are, much the same as boats have – red for port and green for starboard.

Descriptions of “unexplainable” motion are often caused by movement of the person observing the object in the sky, rather than movement of the object itself. This is especially true when these objects are filmed on a phone – shaky hand-held cameras can add the appearance of very erratic movement.

Although none of this is proof that people in Hawkes Bay saw clouds and aeroplanes rather than UFOs, on the balance of probabilities it seems like a much more likely explanation.

New Zealand isn’t the only country generating UFO stories at the moment. The US is awash in stories arising from the recent release of military videos of UFOs (or UAPs – Unidentified Aerial Phenomena). My understanding is that military pilots are expected to film anything unexplained they see in the sky – as there is a chance it could be a national security issue – so it’s no surprise that there are videos out there. Unsurprisingly they show nothing more than indistinct blobs, filmed either in visible light or infrared, and recorded from military planes.

Sadly the US media, including major networks such as Fox and CBS, seem to be taking this all way too seriously, recently interviewing people who have already made up their minds that UFOs are real – and seemingly prompted by a 60 Minutes special on UFOs. Some of these interviewees seem far too ready to put up their hands and exclaim that something is the product of advanced technology, before they’ve even done the basic work of trying to explain it by looking into the videos and attempting to find a natural explanation.

I’m sure this kind of reporting is great for increasing viewership, but that’s not good enough. First and foremost, news companies should focus on reporting on the truth – and sometimes that requires doing some ground work and investigation. It turns out that a bunch of unpaid amateurs on YouTube have been able to do a better job than professional media companies have done, looking at these videos for information that can help figure out what the flying objects in question are.

Information such as data from a plane’s camera HUD (Heads Up Display) have allowed one YouTuber to figure out that one video shows an object about the size of a bird, flying at about the speed of a bird, and exhibiting movement like a bird’s flapping wings. Another has compared infrared footage of several of these UFOs with infrared footage, from behind, of known military and commercial jets, and shown them to be a very close match. A third has tracked down the type of night vision camera that has a triangular aperture, and made test videos showing that having the aperture partially closed and the camera out of focus can cause green triangles to appear on the screen when filming aeroplanes at night – triangles that look a lot like the ones featured in one of the most popular UFO clips circulating at the moment.

It’s not okay for the media to not do their job properly, especially when it doesn’t take long to find reasonable explanations for these “unexplained phenomena” online with a simple google search. And interviewing people who believe in UFOs, treating them as “experts”, is just unacceptable. At least our local paper, in this case the Hawkes Bay Today, managed to do a half-decent job of asking someone who knew what they were talking about if there was a possible terrestrial explanation for the recent New Zealand sightings.
 

Sue Grey court case

The week before last we saw Sue Grey, a Nelson-based lawyer and co-leader of the NZ Outdoors party, bringing a case against the NZ Government claiming that the rollout of the COVID vaccine was illegal under the Section 23 of the Medicines Act.

Section 23 of the act allowed the Minister of Health to grant access to approved medicines to a limited number of patients. Grey’s argument was that rolling out the vaccine to all kiwis over the age of 16 didn’t meet the criteria of being a limited number of patients. 

It does seem that it’s a stretch to call all people over the age of 16 a limited number of patients, and on this point Grey’s argument was correct.

However, the case was never about concern that the government was following the law on rollout of the vaccine, but instead was a full-blown anti-vax argument fest. A variety of arguments were introduced claiming that the safety of the vaccine wasn’t proven, and referencing the American VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) as proof that vaccines, in general, were risky and resulting in many cases of adverse effects and vaccine injury.

Grey was petitioning the court to rule the rollout illegal and requesting that the judge halt the rollout of the vaccine. 

As it turned out the judge, Rebecca Ellis, sided with Grey, advising the government that the act’s wording needed to be revised. However, the judge declined to stop the vaccine rollout:

“For now, I decline to exercise my discretion to grant the interim orders sought. The adverse public and private repercussions of doing so are too great, by some very considerable margin.”

If you really want to see what Sue Grey is all about, you can review her video she posted after the judgement came out. It turns out, she’s a full-blown rabid anti-vaxxer, including claiming that the “cure is worse than the disease”, that COVID can be managed by drugs such as Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine, and that people should “do their own research”. 

The case was supported by Voices for Freedom (complete with their supporters holding placards outside the courthouse). To me, trying to deny people access to the vaccine is the very opposite of freedom!

Simon Thornley

Yet another anti-hero of the COVID story is Dr Simon Thornley, of the COVID Plan B group who we’ve mentioned many times in the past. 

Thornley is an odd case in that he’s an academic at the University of Auckland, who should know better. (And he was an expert witness in Sue Grey’s case in the high court, mentioned above.)

Over this past weekend, Stuff published an excellent article by Charlie Mitchell on Thornley about how he’s gone down the rabbit hole and can’t seem to find his way back up again.

Though Thornley is a scientist, he seems to have a lot in common with the attitudes and behaviours typically seen in anti-vaxxers (and anti-science types in general), preferring to cling to flimsy, cherry-picked evidence, and holding on to positions even when the evidence is stacked against them. He’s certainly done his own research!

On one of Thornley’s theories that the COVID virus was circulating as early as March 2019. From the article: 

“At the end of his presentation, a slide notes many of Thornley’s references came from one place: A blog post purporting to describe “the manufacturing of the coronavirus crisis”, written by an architect in the United Kingdom who has no apparent medical or science expertise.

During a question and answer session, Thornley was asked if it meant Covid-19 had circulated undetected in New Zealand: “It’s very hard to believe we haven’t been exposed to the virus in quite a dramatic way”, he responded.

Only a seroprevalence survey – measuring the proportion of people with antibodies for the virus – would give the answer, he added.

Two months later, a seroprevalence survey was released. It determined only around 0.1 per cent of New Zealand had been infected with Covid-19. The finding “provides robust evidence to support New Zealand’s successful elimination strategy for COVID-19”.

Thornley, nevertheless, remains unconvinced.”

The article is well worth a read.

Vortex Water

From the hard to believe it’s real category, we found out about a revolutionary product being offered in New Zealand – Vortex Water!

From their website, they explain:
 

“In nature, water on it’s (sic) journey in a mountain stream twists and turns over rocks, always returning to circular or orbital motion. Constantly regaining it’s (sic) power and vitality to reinvigorate us and nature.

In today’s world we force water through straight pipes with hard bends after thrashing it through a centrifugal pump; leaving it lifeless. Then we add chemicals to make our water safe to drink.

Then we choose to store our drinking water in clear plastic bottles, to be destroyed even further by sunlight and heat. A journey destroyed before commenced.”

The site has some truly bizarre products available. (Notably, the site looks like it was designed in the early days of the web – somewhere around 1999. Of course, a slickly designed site is no guarantee of the quality or efficacy of a product…)

Navigating to try to purchase a product takes me to this page (http://www.unityconscious.org/) I can buy various items, including the Vortex Energiser for Household Vortex Water Revitalisation for the cost of $397.

Interestingly the picture accompanying the product seems to indicate that the water doesn’t even have to flow through the device to have its effect. 

GSoW

If you’ve spent any time on the internet you’ll likely have encountered Wikipedia – the community-edited encyclopaedia. Wikipedia gets a bad rap as it’s possible for anybody to edit the content and put misinformation on a page.

However, it’s a useful resource, and bad information does usually get weeded out. It’s a good first stopping point on a path to further research. 

Friend of NZ Skeptics, Susan Gerbic runs the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project (GSoW) which specialises in writing informative articles on Wikipedia, centering on science, pseudo science and the people of science (and pseudoscience).

From Susan:

“GSoW has just written 1,751 Wikipedia pages in many languages. Those 1,751 pages have been viewed more than 88 million times – that’s a lot of science communication.

The team has written 31 Wikipedia pages with a New Zealand focus, some of which include; Siouxsie Wiles, Puzzling World, Robert Bartholomew, Lance O’Sullivan, Claire Deeks, Andrew Digby, Christchurch Botanic Gardens, Margaret Hyland, NZ Skeptics, Jeanette Wilson, Immunisation Advisory Centre of NZ and more. These 31 Wikipedia pages have already been viewed over 201,000 times.”

An important aspect of this is that these articles provide important background about people of pseudoscience, often highlighting unflattering and inconvenient aspects that they would rather weren’t public. Case in point is the recently written page about Claire Deeks, of Voices for Freedom. When journalists are doing background research, Wikipedia is a good first stopping point, and having this information at their fingertips promotes a balanced (and not white-washed) view.

Susan is looking for new contributors from New Zealand. If you’ve got some spare time to devote to science communication, one of the most effective ways of doing this would be to join Susan’s team.

Susan personally provides full training on how to research, write, and maintain Wikipedia pages. And you get to be part of a secret community which runs on Facebook with over a hundred people from all over the world dedicated to promoting science and skepticism.

If you’d like to get involved, please contact Susan directly via her email: [email protected]

COVID’s worst places

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the situation in India with COVID and how bad it was there. It turns out that it’s not the worst place in the world to be (though certainly not anywhere near the best either!). There’s an interactive map hosted by the New York Times that shows, per country, the rates of infection per capita.

As expected, India and Brazil are doing badly, but there are some countries that are worse. Interestingly, Canada currently has a much higher number of infections per day than the US does – probably as a result of the impressive rollout of the COVID vaccine by the US. 

South America, overall, seems to be particularly bad – with Uruguay coming in at an average of 73 new cases daily per 100,000 population.

But almost as bad is Sweden, darling of the Plan B crowd, with 47 daily new cases per 100,000 population. 

Of course, the infection rate is just one dimension of the pandemic. The environment in which infections occur and how they’re handled and managed makes a major difference to the outcome of cases – and in India’s case, their health systems are overloaded resulting in deaths that might have been avoided in countries with better-equipped systems.

Who is considered a critical health worker?

NZ Skeptics were recently contacted by a journalist in response to an Official Information Act request which revealed the numbers of people and their occupations entering the country under the guise of being a critical health worker.

Shockingly there were eight people who were listed as osteopaths and two chiropractors. Our concerns are that alternative health practitioners are considered critical health workers! 

While we are disappointed that these practitioners are being let in, we don’t find it surprising. It seems unlikely that the Department of Immigration is going to be au fait with the subtleties of which categories of medical providers actually have scientific evidence as a basis for their practice. We would hope that the Department of Health would provide robust guidelines as to which workers truly are critical, but this is probably not the case.

This time last year, in the early stages of NZ/Aotearoa’s response to the pandemic we saw chiropractors offering to be essential health workers. My reading of this is that is that the press release reads like a plea by chiropractors to retain some relevance. Chiropractors, who are largely a hands-on service, would have struggled with the reduced demand for their services during that time.

Of most concern in the era of COVID-19 and the vaccination rollout is that osteopaths and chiropractors often express vaccine hesitancy and outright anti-vax views.

It does seem that organisations representing these vocations are doing some back-pedalling when it comes to vaccination. Indeed, we’ve recently seen a very good paper written in the International Journal of Osteopathic Medicine that expresses exactly that concern:

“However, we are concerned with the negative sentiments, ill-formed views and in some cases frank scepticism regarding vaccines amongst what appears to be small sections of the osteopathic profession. There is global concern at the growing ‘anti vax’ sentiment that is expressed on social media and within other intra-health professional groups and settings”

To our mind we see this as a case of osteopaths telling their own to get their house in order. We wonder whether any osteopaths in NZ are paying attention to this warning.

Ultimately this issue falls to government policy, and appears to be a product of the less than stunning job that successive governments have done protecting Kiwis from alternative medicine practitioners making dubious, unsupported claims.

As mentioned above, the Medical and Dental councils have issued guidance to their practitioners. NZ Skeptics would challenge the respective organisations for chiropractors and osteopaths to issue similarly strong guidance to their members.

Long March 5B

The Chinese launch vehicle – Long March 5B has been in the news over the past week. The rocket was launched at the end of last month to carry the living quarters of China’s independent space station into orbit. 

While the launch of the rocket was controlled, its fall back to earth was not. The concern was that, with uncontrolled descent, it might land on a populated area. 

As I write this on Sunday afternoon, it has been reported that the rocket has crashed down near the Maldives, in the Indian Ocean, though there were tracking predictions that it could come down on Australia or New Zealand. 

From a skeptical perspective, it’s interesting to consider the concerns expressed about this, and the attention that it has captured. 

As most of the world is uninhabited (with much of the population being clumped into dense spots) the chances of it hitting an inhabited area are extremely low. The lifetime odds of a single person being hit by space debris are more than a billion to one. 

However, the law of large numbers kicks in, and while the chance of being hit by falling space debris is very low, it has happened. Lottie Williams, of Tulsa Oklahoma was walking through a park at 4am back in 1997 when she was hit by a piece of a falling Delta II rocket!

Of more concern about space debris is the large number of small pieces of space junk in low earth orbit that could cause catastrophic damage to satellites or to rockets being launched into space. NASA has estimated there’s in excess of 23,000 untracked objects that have the potential to wreak havoc. It’s counter-intuitive but even a tiny piece of metal, because of the energy it has due to the speed at which it’s orbiting, is capable of causing a lot of damage. 

At present there’s over 3,000 satellites in orbit but that number is set to increase immensely with the launch of systems such as Starlink which plans to put 12,000 satellites into orbit. What will be the fate of all these satellites at the end of their lives? And what happens if a piece of space debris hits an existing satellite setting off a “chain reaction”? This is the space debris we should really be worried about!

Influential Biologist in New Zealand

Normally I would be excited to hear that a prominent biologist is in New Zealand, but in this case the biologist in question is Dr Bruce Lipton – a figure who is well known to skeptics.

Bruce “works” in the field of epigenetics – the branch of biology which looks at the different ways in which factors outside of our DNA can influence gene expression, and consequently our development – how we grow. This is a real branch of science, with some really cool findings.

However, Bruce Lipton sadly doesn’t actually do any real research into epigenetic effects. Instead, he tells people that each of their cells is a homunculus – a small version of their own body, with a brain, lungs, stomach, etc. Then he argues that if people believe something hard enough, they can influence the brain in each of their cells, and this will cause their cells to behave differently, controlling how genes are turned on and off, etc. Using this, he says that we can cure diseases with the power of our minds. Of course this is all totally made up, and has absolutely no evidence underpinning it.

As if that’s not bad enough, Bruce is currently here as a “Visiting Professor of the New Zealand College of Chiropractic”, and has been giving talks about not just his epigenetic nonsense but also COVID silliness. He talked at the popular NZ Spirit festival recently, claiming that people aren’t really dying of COVID, but just from co-morbidities. He told the cheering festival crowd that vitamins will protect them from dying of COVID, and that governments have been using the pandemic to deliberately scare us.

Sadly, looking at the online reaction to his talk, it appears that far too many people are being sucked in by his nonsense. All too often, the people who have a loyal following use their influence to recklessly spread dangerous misinformation rather than help to educate people.

Triangular UFO “mystery” solved

An interesting video has appeared on YouTube which gives a rational explanation for a UFO video taken by US Navy personnel.

The UFO video, promoted by Jeremy Corbell who runs a website called ExtraordinaryBelief.com, features supposedly triangle-shaped UFOs. The site feels more like a throwback to The X Files, but I guess it’s targeting a specific demographic that is into that sort of thing.

The “take down” video, by Mick West shows exactly how the triangular images were produced – they’re an effect of the iris in the lens of the camera used – for any readers who are photographers, they’re just weird-shaped bokeh.

It turns out that the UFO in the video was actually likely to be a commercial airliner as the ship from which the video was taken was on the Los Angeles International Airport flight path. 

Mick West comments on his video:

“New reference footage from night vision monoculars (including the military standard PVS-14) demonstrates pretty conclusively that the supposed flying pyramid UFO actually looks exactly like a slightly out of focus light in the sky – quite possibly just a plane, as the ship was right under a flight path for LAX. 

Some of the other lights are identified as Jupiter and some stars. 

I don’t think that means the Navy got it terribly wrong. This was initially unidentified (with the UAP Task Force Investigates), and they maybe even thought it was a triangle for a few minutes. But it’s not. It’s just some lights in the sky. “

So, it would seem that the more prosaic explanation that the images are the result of easily replicable camera effects is much more likely than alien spacecraft. That won’t likely stop the believers though!

Essential Oils causing seizures

Essential oils are one of those trendy products that seem to be very popular at the moment, and they seem to be a great money-maker for their manufacturers and retailers, with the estimated market size of over $17 Billion dollars globally in 2017. 

Essential Oils are derived from plant matter, and are claimed to contain the “essence” of the plant, whatever that is. They’re typically used in Aromatherapy, via a diffuser, which puts the molecules into the air. Who doesn’t like an attractive smell in the air which may have some positive mental effects, but as far as providing actual proven benefits studies are usually small. 

One downside to using essential oils could be that they can potentially trigger convulsive seizures in some people according to a study in India, written up in The Academic Times. The study determined a correlation between the use of camphor and eucalyptus essential oils and seizures. While proving causation requires further research it seems there’s certainly an association, and it’s not implausible that inhaling these molecules might well have neurological effects. 

TV Psychic to pay £100,000 legal costs in failed case

TV psychic Maurice Amdur, star of UK TV shows Maurice’s Psychic World and Four Rooms has been left to pay £100,000 in legal costs after attempting to sue an insurance company for his loss of his psychic powers after a car crash. 

The psychic, who claims to have done readings for royalty, heads of state and movie stars, claimed that a car crash, where his car was shunted from behind at a roundabout in London, caused him to be so racked by pain for years afterwards that he “struggled with the intense concentration required to predict the future”.

Mr Amdur was suing for £250,000 in compensation, but the judge threw out the claim saying it had been undermined by fundamental dishonesty. He claimed that he was unable to do readings for two years, but in fact had done readings during the period.

It seems the judge was onto Amdur, stating:

‘I am prepared to accept that Mr Amdur does believe that he has a “gift” and that he considers that he behaves with integrity when working as a clairvoyant, unlike others in the field who are “charlatans” as he called them.’

Amdur would have been awarded over £10,000 for his crash injuries, but instead the judge dismissed the claim and so he must now pick up the legal costs for the case. Clearly he didn’t see that coming!

Disinformation’s Dirty dozen

Research by the American Center for Countering Digital Hate has revealed that almost two-thirds of all misinformation about vaccines being spread on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter arose from just twelve individuals and their associated organisations. And on Facebook they account for 73% of all anti-vax content.

The report makes excellent (and scary/frustrating) reading, particularly the appendices which profile each of the twelve “sources”.

I guess it makes sense that sources are concentrated. People espousing anti-vax views are likely not coming to these conclusions independently, but instead parroting information they’ve consumed elsewhere.

The report calls for social media companies to do more to shut down these sources. Of course, there are then claims of breach of free speech rights (particularly in the US). 

It is frustrating that such misinformation is allowed to proliferate freely. But social media companies are driven by their profit motive. Allowing inflammatory misinformation to spread drives revenue to an extent. Ultimately the only solution is for people to be more skeptical of claims that diverge from science. That requires good education systems, and perhaps specialist skills in spotting false claims. As we all know, those sorts of skills are difficult to acquire as they tend to work against our human biases, and quite often take many years of careful honing.

Dahlias for Diabetes?

One of our contacts noticed an item on TVNZ news on the 7th March detailing a product being developed by the University of Otago for prevention treatment of type 2 Diabetes. A complaint was made to TVNZ but they have not upheld the complaint.

The item makes interesting viewing from a skeptical angle. It seems that a researcher – Associate Professor Dr. Alex Tups – has discovered a potential use of compounds found in Dahlia flowers to lower blood glucose levels. 

The item reported that a clinical trial tested the safety of the drug and that researchers are now looking for volunteers to take part in a clinical trial to determine dosage levels.

I would expect that there would have been a clinical trial which actually tested the efficacy of the treatment in humans. Previous reporting on the subject has discussed trials into the effect of the drug on blood glucose levels in mice. 

The item reported on a collaboration with Aroma NZ, a company that specialises in processing natural ingredients from New Zealand into nutritional supplements for use around the world. From their website they list a bunch of products that they process including Green-lipped Mussels, Oyster Powder, Collagen Powder, Abalone Powder and Fish Cartilage Powder. 

There’s little doubt that compounds found in the wild have effects when consumed – this is the origin of the pharmaceutical industry. Considering the list of products above there are some red flags raised there. Those products seem to fall into the category of supplements that are used by the “worried well” or those with “symptoms of advancing age” to self-medicate. Many of these products have been promoted by popular publications in response to flawed studies showing some potentially amazing efficacy.

It is interesting to read what Aroma NZ is claiming about the efficacy of their products. I followed one of the links about their Green Lipped Mussel products to their News and Resources page. This shows a study from the University of Queensland on just 23 patients showing self-reported reduction of pain. Now I’m no expert in clinical studies but even I can tell that this wasn’t a particularly well-designed study that would convince me of efficacy. Yet, the website trumpets:

“In a recent landmark clinical trial by the University of Queensland, arthritic pain was reduced by 59% for people taking Aroma’s GlycOmega-PLUS™. This was a huge result and endorsement for this product.”

It appears that their modus operandi is to promote a product then find confirming studies after the fact to boost their confidence they’re selling something that actually works.

It worries me that the University of Otago seems to be looking to commercialise a discovery before the product has been well studied and has had its efficacy proven (at least that’s not been reported) – seemingly putting the cart before the horse, and it should especially worry skeptics that there seems to be a low bar for commercialisation of products that appear to have some compound that might have therapeutic effects. And why go the “natural product” route when, if the compound is earth-shatteringly effective, might it not be better to turn it into a traditional pharmaceutical?

Worryingly the item also features Alex Tups claiming that the root cause of Type-2 Diabetes is brain inflammation. We’ve referred this claim to one of our expert medics who made the following comments:

“Had a look at the clip and certainly there is no evidence that I am aware of that diabetes is a result of brain inflammation – it is generally accepted as autoimmune destruction of pancreatic beta cells (type 1) for reasons unknown or unknown causes of insulin resistance (type 2). There is no rationale for the use of dahlia flowers presented to the listener so it not possible to comment on the science of this claim. I cannot see a link to the A.Prof you appended who seems a credible researcher. 

I agree this is a crap report which raises expectations without any apparent evidence although I assume there must be some logic somewhere. This type of reporting needs to be science based with credible logic (imho) before putting it out to the public which only serves to confuse them.”

Finally, promoting products that include active ingredients found in the wild is particularly dangerous when it allows people to self-medicate. There is potential for dangerous drug interactions that can occur when doctors prescribe medications to patients, being unaware of the “natural” products they’re also consuming. 

I’m aware that I write this from the relative privilege of middle age where few (though not none!) of the effects of aging are making themselves apparent. I’m aware of the powerful psychological drawcard that these alternative medicines and supplements can have on people trying to find relief for what ails them, particularly if the mainstream medical treatments are perceived to be lacking.

Scientology follow-up

Last week Mark wrote an interesting item in the newsletter around Scientologists using deceptive means to lure people in to their “courses”. We got some feedback from a reader in the US – we love getting feedback! – so I thought I’d share it. Ray from Philadelphia writes:

I live in Philadelphia. Many years ago in the early 1980’s, I was on a business trip to Boston. In the evening I had little to do and while wandering about the city I went by an old church that had a small sign outside advertising a personal  communications course the next two nights for the sum of $25. I had never heard of Scientology before that time, so why not attend? It was something constructive to do. 

So, the next evening I was there, paid the $25, and gave my name and address. Then it started. I am not sure exactly what “it” was. There was a very short introduction by a young “minister” after which people were instructed to face each other in pairs and stare into eyes and not to squirm.   That went on for a while and then the small group in attendance was introduced to the E-meter. And that was about it. The e-meter revealed that I had personality problems. It was a crazy one hour adventure.

I did not go back for night 2.

Not long thereafter, perhaps a week, I began getting mail at home discussing my course attendance, my personality disorder, and how I might correct it. There was a mountain of propaganda pushing very expensive courses and books, tapes, etc. And the mail kept coming for the next 20 years. Finally I wrote to them requesting removal from the list. That worked mainly, but I still get occasional propaganda mail.   

Scientology is as tenacious as it is crazy. 

Follow up

Just a quick follow up on the Oumuamua story we featured in our newsletter this week. It turns out that local Victoria University Senior Lecturer in Astrophysics, Dr Stephen Curran talked to Kim Hill this past weekend, following up on and challenging Avi Loeb’s claims.

Have a listen to that!

Cheers…
Craig Shearer

Havana Syndrome – caused by directed microwaves?

Apparently, back in 2016 dozens of American Embassy diplomats in Cuba felt sick, and this has been dubbed Havana Syndrome. I’d never heard of this, but it came to my attention through an article written by local skeptic Robert Bartholemew. 

I met Robert a few years ago when he hosted Joe Nickel here in Auckland. Joe is a veteran skeptical investigator who’s done tons of investigations over the years. (And I’m the proud owner of one of Joe’s trademark Wooden Nickels!). Anyway, I digress! 

Robert is an author and specialises in mass psychogenic illnesses – basically social contagions where a lot of people exhibit some complaint where there’s no actual infectious agent.

The Havana Syndrome has been investigated by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and they concluded that the syndrome was likely caused by pulsed RF energy! This seems unlikely to me (but what do I know?). However, Robert has written an article in the Skeptical Inquirer about this explaining the problems with that explanation, and that mass psychogenic illness is much more likely.

ETs and Penguins

A couple of weeks ago, I spent an enjoyable weekend away with some friends up in Russell, in the Bay of Islands. A couple of points from a skeptical perspective; firstly, one of my friends told me about an interview he heard with Kim Hill on Radio New Zealand, which I’ve since listened to (detailed below), and the second was a conversation I overheard which illustrated to me how “fake news” and misinformation is innocently spread.

You may recall back in 2017 our solar system was visited by a mysterious object sighted by telescopes in Hawaii. The object, dubbed Oumuamua (which is Hawaiian for “scout”) exhibited some strange behaviour.

That ship, and NFTs

This week has seen the news of the ship (the Ever Given) that’s been stuck for days in the Suez Canal. Interestingly, having glanced at the headlines and pictures, in my mind the ship was called the Evergreen, but that’s the name of the company that runs it (Evergreen Marine). 

There are some interesting points about the grounding and blockage of the canal. The first of which is how counterintuitive things are around such objects outside our ordinary human experience. There’ve been plenty of people on the internet offering helpful suggestions as to how to free the ship.

Amusingly, there’s a website that’s sprung up dedicated to whether the ship is still stuck: IsTheShipStillStuck.com. (And yes, as of this writing, it is). 

And, the internet, being the rabbit hole that it is, led me, from that page, to see that the site has been placed on OpenSea, a market for bidding on NFTs.

So, what is an NFT?, I hear you ask. Well it’s a Non-fungible Token. NFTs are the latest craze on the internet, but may well be the future of digital art. This article is a good explainer. Will NFTs be the future of being able to own unique digital art? Only time will tell!

2019 Conference Videos

Thanks to some wonderful help from Susan Gerbic, we’ve now got a few of the 2019 conference talk videos up on our YouTube channel.

There’s now four videos up on a variety of topics from Jacinta Cording, Susan Gerbic, Mark Edward and Steven Novella. 

Fluoridation

Big news this week is that the government is taking water fluoridation powers off local councils and giving it to the director general of health, Ashley Bloomfield. 

This is a good decision as it aligns with the science around the benefits of having a tightly controlled amount of fluoride in our water supply. Local councils have, in the past, fallen victim to vocal opponents to fluoridation, most of whom seem to make arguments that aren’t informed by good science.

Prior to the pandemic, the director of health would likely have had little name recognition, but Ashley Bloomfield is now a fairly popular public figure.It is difficult to see how opponents of fluoridation will be able to play this to their advantage if it involves demonising Ashley!

We must also give a shout out to Making Sense of Fluoride, a NZ-based website, run primarily by Daniel Ryan, that advocates for science and evidence-based approaches to decisions around fluoridation of our water supply.

Near death experiences

NDEs were in the media this week. Radio New Zealand did an interview with Professor Bruce Greyson who has a book out After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond. 

The interview on RNZ is worth a listen. Jim Mora did a reasonable job of asking lots of skeptical questions. 

Greyson describes various reports about the experiences of those who’ve come back after having an NDE. The interesting point is that we have no objective recording of what actually happens. People are describing their memories of the experience, and we know that memories are very much subject to modification with retelling, though in the interview Greyson claims that retelling of these NDEs doesn’t vary over time. To me this seems a little nonsensical.

From what I’ve understood from those who have expertise in neurology it seems more likely that the brain is filling in blanks after the fact and putting together a coherent story about the experience.

Throughout the interview Greyson claims to be a “materialist skeptic” (and uses that term in a pejorative fashion) though he believes that potentially part of ourselves continues after we die. I think this is a giant leap supported only by anecdotal evidence. 

One of the examples given in the interview is of a patient who was unconscious being able to supposedly give an account of a conversation Greyson had with her roommate down the hall, describing what they were wearing and what was discussed. This would imply that some external senses of sight and hearing are able to exist separate from our own eyes and ears and record these into memories in our brains. I see a big disconnect here in the implications of this. We close our eyes or block our ears and those senses are muted, but not so when having an NDE. How does this work? These would be the questions that I’d expect that a skeptical researcher would be asking.

There are some fairly extraordinary claims being made in the interview. As always, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. To me, many of the stories presented might well have more prosaic (materialist skeptic!) explanations. 

A particular difficulty with this interview is that Greyson is presenting his own re-telling of anecdotes from interviews he’s done with patients over the years. Perhaps his own investment in the field has coloured his thinking.

What we have though is a bunch of anecdotes, but no hard evidence, and a lot of implausibility. I’m reminded of a story that various skeptical surgeons and nurses have put notable and highly visible signs up high in operating theatres that would be noticed (and reported) by patients were they really leaving and floating above their bodies during operations. Such reports have not been received. Incidentally, out-of-body experiences are common during anaesthesia, and it’s certainly possible to induce these experiences in people’s brains through various techniques.

Greyson has appeared in a Netflix series – Surviving Death, which I’ve not watched. It does seem that the publication of Greyson’s book is tied in with the Netflix show, which does make me a little cynical!

The COVID vaccine honeymoon period

I read a very good article today in The Atlantic explaining some of the subtleties around the COVID vaccine. In particular we shouldn’t be surprised when vaccinated people get infected. 

At the moment there’s a lot of relief and celebration that the vaccines are being rolled out. In the eyes of the layperson, once they’re vaccinated they consider themselves immune, and are resuming normal life as if they’re bulletproof. 

“Vaccination is actually more like a single variable in a dynamic playing field—a layer of protection, like an umbrella, that might guard better in some situations than others. It could keep a lucky traveler relatively dry in a light drizzle, but in a windy maelstrom that’s whipping heavy droplets every which way, another person might be overwhelmed. And under many circumstances, vaccines are still best paired with safeguards such as masks and distancing—just as rain boots and jackets would help buffer someone in a storm.”

As always, reality is a lot more complex than people assume.

Canterbury big cats again

A few weeks ago I wrote about big cats reported sighted in Canterbury, and opined that what had been seen was likely a feral cat.

This weekend, Stuff did a piece about how Jesse Feary had actually shot a “big black creature” he sighted. Turns out he was then able to get the DNA analysed, and surprise, it turned out to just be a cat!

The article is a good read though, covering various skeptical points about the possibility of big cats existing in the wild in the South Island.