Stuff Believers Like #9: Arguments from Ignorance.....

Yet another report on possible proof of the existence of Bigfoot, the cryptozoological equivalent of cold fusion, has emerged out of Japan. This time the proposed evidence comes from a Japanese team of explorers who had spent 42 days on a region of the Himalayas where, according to the Yeti Project Japan leader, one of the mysterious beasts had been seen before by him, from 650 feet away. They were unable on this, their third attempt, to obtain video footage of Bigfoot however they did return with photographs of footprints.

The team feels that despite having failed in their primary mission to record images of the Yeti in action, the footprints are all the proof they need. The footprints in question, of which only one image is provided alongside the article by the AFP, is yet another case of Bigfoot is in the eye of the believer. To me, an admitted amateur print analyzer, it looks only vaguely footprint like and could easily be explained by simple random noise of melting snow being misinterpreted by a group of people biased by their belief system. It hardly serves as extraordinary evidence.

The logical fallacy which seems to be at the root of the team's announcement is an argument from ignorance, or in the form I prefer, an argument by lack of imagination. The team leader explains, in reference to the proposed Yet prints, "Myself and other team members have been coming to the Himalayas for years and we can recognise bear, deer, wolf and snow leopard prints and it was none of those,". He adds that "We remain convinced it is real. The footprints and the stories the local tell make us sure that it is not imaginary,". Because the team cannot imagine that the prints could come from an animal that they know to roam the region where the print was found, they believe that by default it must have been left by a Yeti. That simply doesn't cut it.

Stuff Believers Like: #8 Ear Candling.....

I often take the time to discuss critical thinking, and the various forms of irregular medicine that feed off of a lack of it, with medical students, physician assistants in training, and residents. They usually don't have much to say because, unfortunately, they don't tend to have much knowledge on the subject. But several months ago I was suprised by the vigorous defense put up by one intern of the practice of ear candling, which is in reality simply the shoving of a cone of paper and beeswax into one's ear and setting it aflame.

The young physician was convinced of the efficacy of this dangerous and thoroughly useless endeavor. She had seen the results with her own eyes and she had felt the relief from her headaches that the procedure had provided. And despite all of my best efforts to explain in detail how easy it is for us to be fooled into thinking that a treatment works when it doesn't, and how ear candling has been shown time and time again to be ineffective and unsafe as well as completely devoid of any plausible mechanism of action, she remained stalwart in her conviction that she had reaped the benefits.

Such belief despite a lack of evidence and plausibility is concerning to me. My fear is that if a medical professional is able to disregard critical reasoning and accept such foolishness as ear candling, then that individual may also come to see other, perhaps even more dangerous, forms of quackery as legitimate and recommend them to their patients. There are already countless proponents of snake oil and flim flam at work in the world pushing bogus therapies like chiropractic and naturopathy, many of which include ear candling in their repertoire. A number of these trick and treaters place an MD after their name, and never fail to take advantage of the increased clout that fact brings despite also often attempting to establish a false dichotomy between so-called alternative medicine and science-based practice.

In my online research, done for the advancement of my critical reasoning skills despite the inevitable and near overwhelming sense of doom such activity typically leads to, I have perused hundreds of websites touting the positive health effects resulting from ear candling. The most recent, wwwDOTearcandlingDOTcom, reveals that "For thousands of years, a form of hygiene known as Ear Candling, was used as a way of naturally cleansing the inside of the ears and head." The claim of cleansing inside the head was something I had not heard before however.

According to the website, which is run by Sharon Caren, a massage therapist with a knack for clearing your soul (for a price), "It is believed as the candle burns, gentle warm smoke is drawn into the ear canal that softens and loosens candida, wax, and other debris through osmosis. This means anything on the other side of the eardrum turns into a gas form to pass through the ear drum membrane. It is then collected into the remaining unburned portion of the candle." Caren, a certified ear hygienist, goes on to state that ear candling can be enjoyed by infants and dates back centuries to ancient Greece where it was responsible for laying the foundation of Western civilization. Okay, I made that last part up.

Comical pseudohistory aside, these claims are dangerous and quite absurd. Even if accurate, there simply is no need for the overwhelming majority of folks to worry about earwax. One of the first medical maxims I learned as a student was to never place anything in one's ear smaller than one's elbow, and that includes Q-tips. It simply isn't necessary, despite what our mothers told us, for the overwhelming majority of people to clean out their ears. If you are truly interested in the diagnosis and management of cerumen impaction, please by all means check out the clinical guidelines recently released by the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery (AAO-HNS). It's a real page-turner.

The second dictum I learned was to never poke the skunk. This usually applies to ordering uneccessary labs and imaging studies but it also applies to ear candling. If you only need to know the serum sodium, you shouldn't check a basic metabolic profile because you can put good money on that potassium coming back falsely elevated, buying the patient another blood draw to confirm the result as spurious. Similarly, if a procedure isn't going to help don't do it, especially if it carries with it the risk of dripping hot wax onto the tympanic membrane, deafness, or burning your house down.

The devices aren't FDA approved and just about every legitimate medical organization has spoken out against them. Multiple studies have shown that ear candling doesn't create negative pressure, as theorized by proponents, doesn't remove ear wax or anything else from inside the ear (or sinus cavities), doesn't in any way lead to improved health or a boosted immune system, and is dangerous. Any residue left over after a session is the melted wax from the apparatus itself and nothing more. But at up to 18o dollars per session, that sense of emptiness in your wallet is probably very real.

Stuff Believers Like: #6 and #7 Bigfoot and Circumventing Peer Review.....

Bigfoot must be slipping, perhaps distracted by Michael Phelps' attempt to claim 8 gold medals in Beijing. He and others like him, Bigfoot not Phelps although he does wear a size 14, have managed to elude capture, and to avoid leaving any real evidence of their existence for the thousands of so-called cryptozoologists to find, for hundreds of years. But according to a CNN article released today, "Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, a pair of Bigfoot-hunting hobbyists from north Georgia, say they found the creature's [dead] body in a wooded area and spotted several similar creatures that were still alive."

They have stored the 7 feet, 7 inch tall 500 pound sasquatch/Halloween costume in their freezer and claim that extensive scientific testing is underway. They believe that they have the evidence to prove the existence of a new species of half-ape, half-man and that the only man to be trusted with handling the situation is Tom Biscardi, a well-known bigfoot hunter. All of this was announced to the world a few weeks ago on an internet radio program, and a follow-up press conference is to be held today.

Unfortunately for the bigfoot enthusiasts out there, this will almost certainly be a hoax. I will of course withhold judgement until all of the evidence is on the table but there are some major red flags. First and foremost is the fact that these gentleman, like the infamous Pons and Fleischmann before them, are using channels that circumvent peer review. They are going straight to the press and making big promises instead of working through reputable researchers to publish their findings in a scientific journal. Any other way of doing things in the world of biology is suspect. It doesn't mean it's bogus, but it don't look good.

And neither does the fact that Biscardi has been involved in a hoax oddly similar to this in the past, as described by Ben Radford in an August 13th LiveScience article. Also suspicious is the announcement by Biscardi that he will be saving the best evidence for his upcoming documentary, which I doubt will be freely distributed to the world. I'm skeptical to say the least, but who knows. The kid in me would love knowing that there are large undiscovered creatures still lurking out there, but I'm not holding my breath.

Stuff Believers Like: #5 Celebrity Death Triads.....

On Saturday, comedian Bernie Mac succumbed to pneumonia, only to be followed into the hereafter by iconic soul singer Isaac Hayes less than 24 hours later. It is only a matter of time before the question of who is next on the Grim Reaper's list is on people's minds. In fact, it has already begun.

Even as I am writing this post there are people pondering which black American celebrity will be the next to die. And this one example, in the form of an online discussion about the liklihood that Samuel L. Jackson is not long for this world, is representative of many more people pondering the same question in other forums. There are probably offices putting together celebrity death pools to bet money on whether it will be Jackson, Morgan Freeman, or, god forbid, Ernest Lee Thomas. I'm certain that at the very least there are thousands of atypically morbid family discussions going on at the dinner table or around the television, with everyone voicing their opinion on who next victim of fate is going to be.

As believers in numerology know, things, especially bad things, come in threes. They believe that numbers are magic and the number 3 in particular is very special. It is a powerful symbol of wholeness, of completion and of the endless cycle of existence. The Holy Trinity from the Christian tradition is the most commonly cited example of the potency of the number three here in America, but cultures throughout recorded history have set it apart as a number with supernatural significance. And throughout said recorded history, or at least as far back as I can google, the hypothesis that celebrities die in groups of three has been around, and example after example of folks pointing out these uncanny chains of demise can be found with a quick trip through cyberspace.

But the reality is that celebrity deaths do not come in threes. They come in droves just like physician deaths, lawyer deaths, cosmetologists deaths and any other group of people you look at. But as pattern seeking animals that are enfluenced by pop mysticisms like numerology, believers will seek out groups of three amongst the recently dead without even realizing the fallacy in their thinking. That fallacy comes in many forms, but none more so than the all too human pastime of confirmation bias, or remembering the hits and forgetting the misses. We pay close attention and make mental notes of all the instances where three celebrity deaths share a temporal relationship but ignore the times when one, two, or five die around the same time. But is that temporal relationship of three dead entertainers even meaningful?

No, it isn't. As I alluded to above it is merely random noise generated by the most prolific and effective serial killer of all time, which is of course time. But even assigning three celebrities that die consecutively to some kind of magical death triad is rife with errors in thinking. What is the appropriate time limit that should be allowed between deaths? Many might say one week, others a month, while a few would probably allow a longer interval. And what degree of celebrity counts. Is it fair to group Arthur C. Clark and Gary Gygax with Jeff Healey? You might think so, and you might be right, but I don't. Who decides?

Ultimately, calling a celebrity death triad, as it were, is no different than any other kind of post hoc reasoning. There is no mystical force that governs the death of our celebrities and sorts them into neat little bundles of three. There are only coincidences that years of flabby and out of shape reasoning skills see as something more.

Addendum (9:30 PM): Just as I was about to publish this post, I was called to attend to an ill patient. On the way to the room I overheard two nurses discussing this very topic. Their money is on Morgan Freeman. I hope they're wrong.

Stuff Believers Like: #4 The Local News.....

While watching the local news one evening a few years back, I sat in disbelief as a bubbly young woman excitedly reported on an amazing occurence. Sadly, the story, though covered as if an accurate and newsworthy description of reality, sounded like one of my own Onionesque satirical posts: Local Man's Beard Stumps Scientists or something along those lines. "When area farmer Billy Bob Jenkins* awoke one cold Fall morning, his life was forever changed," I might have written. "He was shocked to find that his once clean-shaven face was partially covered by hair growth in the shape of a cross on his left cheek. He then basked in the glow of the miraculous sign from God and called the local news station to spread the glorious word."

As I inspected the man's stubbled face during the many close-up views provided by the camera operator, and the perfectly shaped cross there upon it, it was abundantly clear that this was no miracle in the supernatural sense of the word, nor was it even an example of pareidolia, the false perception of a meaningful pattern within what is merely random noise. I guess you could say that Occam's was not the only razor applied to this man's face that morning. Unfortunately, like so many similar credulous fluff pieces on the local news, the claim of supernatural influence on the natural world was met without the slightest hint of critical evaluation.

The absence of rational reporting which dominates most forms of mass media, but particularly with smaller local news outlets, is a frequent source of delight and ammunition to the holder of a variety of beliefs. Rarely does a week go by in most locales where there isn't a report lending credence to some form of pseudoscience or supernatural phenomena, misinterpreting the findings of published scientific studies, or inappropriately announcing findings of preliminary studies which haven't yet undergone peer review. I find it difficult to even refer to the majority of what is out there as actual reporting to be honest, for true journalism has standards far higher than what is being produced in most markets.

The offenders out there that able to cause the most damage due to their reach, the CNNs and Fox News type outlets, are failing miserably these days as less qualified journalists are being assigned the science and health beat and as, in my opinion, the seepage of irrational thinking into mainstream consciousness is becoming more torrential. In the world of print media it is even worse secondary to hemorrhaging budgets. It isn't pretty but all hope is not lost. The recent Time Magazine article on the subect of vaccine safety comes to mind as a stellar example of how journalism can be done right when it comes to controversial scientific topics. Unfortunately, until the situation improves consistently, believers will be able to cite news reports as evidence for their particular brand of irrationality.

*Name changed to protect identity

Stuff Believers Like: #3 Testimonials.....

Faster than a speeding case report. More powerful than a double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Able to leap peer review in a single bound. Look! Up on the internet! It's a story. It's an anecdote. It's a testimonial!

Every implausible and unproven quack therapy, from acupuncture to quantum healing, comes bearing testimonials of its effectiveness. They are typically brief, to the point, extremely powerful, and, across the board, absolutely worthless. To anyone with a skeptical filter in place, the use of testimonials is an obvious sign of a complete lack of credible support for one's claims. Yet to the believer there is no introductory phrase more meaningful than "In my experience". And no amount of published contradictory data or number of explanations from critically minded experts can match the effect on believers from just one of the seemingly neverending supply of these uncontrolled, unblinded, and often tall tales.

Sadly even outright harm and suffering, or the complete lack of achieving the claimed benefit, are unable to shake the faith of one who has stepped over the line that seperates blind credulity from a more critical approach to one's health. It is far too easy for them to rationalize away these failures, placing the blame on themselves or the medical community, when the stranger whose gout was cured by taking goat urine supplements is trusted more than the family doctor. Perhaps the believer doesn't realize that the near totality of these testimonials are fabricated, or that many, especially in the case of the many fraudulent cancer cures floating around cyberspace, when investigated are found to be the former words of the now deceased, victims of their disease process, their lack of critical thinking skills, and the bastards profiting off of them.

Stuff Believers Like: #2 Talking to Dead People.....

Whether invoking the aid of St. Anthony of Padua in finding their lost set of car keys, or tearfully discussing a long lost relative whose name starts with an A, L, M, P, R, T, or Y with douchebag medium John Edward, there is no doubt that believers like to talk to dead people. And though it is not inherently delusional, since many rational human beings speak to those who have expired as a form of symbolic exercise meant to bring about an emotional catharsis, the rub lies in the fact that in the mind of the believer, the dead talk back.

The fascination with contacting the deceased stems in large part from the belief that there are dead people to talk to, though just where they are thought to congregate differs depending on the individual believer's particular fantasy. A large majority hold dear the thought of their friends, family, and significant others ("Hi Susan, this is my wife Nancy. Oh boy, this is awkward.) waiting for them beyond the pearly gates, while many accept that there are other locations existing beyond the natural world where spirits and specters dwell. Naturally these spirits are ever ready to be contacted by psychics and other charlatans so that they might communicate once more with the living.

Many believers are taken in by opportunistic emotional predators like the aforementioned Edwards and his ilk, whose cold reading skills are more than a match for the underdeveloped critical thinking often employed by those plagued with both belief and and the loss of a loved one. The most prolific of these sinister shysters do rather well for themselves financially, with some even starring in popular television programs based on their deceitful mentalism, while desecrating their victim's most cherished memories. But this pales in comparison to the societal damage which has occured throughout recent human history as a result of the dialogue that occurs between the believer and the ghost of a 2,000 year old carpenter.

Stuff Believers Like: #1 Pareidolia

(The goitered Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich)

For most people, burn marks on a grilled cheese sandwich look like, well, burn marks on a grilled cheese sandwich. They might notice, if it is pointed out to them, that the combination of two charred and somewhat rounded areas located adjacent to each other, and above two vertically oriented additional marks, look somewhat like eyes, a nose and a mouth. They will then go about their business which, in this case, probably entails eating a grilled cheese sandwich. But for believers, burn marks in a grilled cheese sandwich might look like something entirely different.

In one famous example, which also involves a grilled cheese sandwich, a Florida believer saw an image of the Virgin Mary on her cheese toastie and went on to garner 15 minutes of fame and $28,000 from an online auction. And there have been countless similar discoveries involving religious figures in or on food, notably the Nashville NunBun and the Lake Arthur Jesus Tortilla, but not all involve culinary canvases or religious characters. Believers have found holy icons on bank windows and dental x-rays, sometimes drawing crowds of thousands of fellow believers, and seen the evidence of ancient civilizations on nearby, relatively speaking of course, planets.

Nonbelievers are quick to point out that these patterns discerned within random and meaningless noise, the psychological phenomenon known as pareidolia, almost always involve faces because of hard-wiring in the human brain. They might quote somebody like Carl Sagan or go on about the evolution of pattern recognition based survival mechanisms, but such ramblings will fall on deaf ears. The believers will continue to see images related to their delusion of choice in the knots of pine doors or satellite photos from Mars while the rest of us will be satisfied with looking at cloud animals.