Martin Gardner, RIP

The prominent skeptic Martin Gardner, mathematician, philosopher, magician, and writer, died today at the age of 95 (b. October 21, 1914, d. May 22, 2010).  He was one of the founders of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (now Committee for Skeptical Inquiry), and had been part of the earlier Resources for the Scientific Evaluation of the Paranormal along with CSICOP founding members Ray Hyman, James Randi, and Marcello Truzzi.  Long before that, he wrote one of the classic texts debunking pseudoscience, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (the Dover 2nd edition was published in 1957).  For many years (1956-1981) he was the author of the Scientific American column, "Mathematical Games" (taken over by Douglas Hofstadter and retitled "Metamagical Themas"), and he wrote a regular "Notes of a Psi-Watcher" column for the Skeptical Inquirer right up to the present.  His 70+ books included a semi-autobiographical novel, The Flight of Peter Fromm, a book explaining his philosophical positions including why he wasn't an atheist, The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener, and an annotated version of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland works, The Annotated Alice.

He had been scheduled to appear by video link at the upcoming The Amazing Meeting 8 in Las Vegas, where a number of other skeptical old timers will be appearing on discussion panels.  His death is a great loss.

I never met Gardner, but was first introduced to his work reading his "Mathematical Games" column in the late 70's, and then his Fads and Fallacies and Skeptical Inquirer columns.  Gardner, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, and James Randi were the first major figures I identified as skeptical role models.  One of the great honors of my life was receiving the Martin Gardner Award for Best Skeptical Critic from the Skeptics Society in 1996.

A Martin Gardner documentary that is part of "The Nature of Things" may be found online, and Scientific American has republished online its December 1995 profile of Gardner.  Here's a transcript of a February 1979 telephone interview between Martin Gardner and five mathematicians (thanks to Anthony Barcellos for transcribing it and bringing it to my attention in the comments below).

Various tributes:

• James Randi
• Phil Plait
• Wendy Grossman
• Richard Dawkins
• Douglas Hofstadter 
• Jeff Hecht (New Scientist CultureLab blog)
• Daniel Loxton
• Chris French
• George Hansen
• The Economist 
• A tribute in Spanish, with numerous links to other Martin Gardner tributes

UPDATE (June 11, 2011): An interesting chapter on Martin Gardner from George Hansen's book, The Trickster and the Paranormal, is available online as a PDF.

The Amazing Meeting 7: ethics of deception panel, Bauer, skepticism and media panel, Plait

This is part five of my summary of TAM7, now up to Saturday, July 10. Part 1 is here, part 2 is here, part 3 is here, part 4 is here, and my coverage of the Science-based Medicine conference begins here.

Ethics of Deception Panel
D.J. Grothe moderated a panel discussion on the role of magic in skepticism and the ethics of deception, featuring Penn Jillette, Teller, Ray Hyman, and Jamy Ian Swiss. D.J. began by asking whether magic teaches critical thinking, to which Jamy Ian Swiss responded yes, and pointed to Danny Hillis hiring a magic tutor for his kids so that they could learn how methods of deception work. Everybody else on the panel disagreed, beginning with Ray Hyman, who observed that there are kooky magicians. Swiss agreed that there are magicians who are gullible and that learning magic doesn't make you a skeptic, but said that it was useful to him. This brief exchange then occurred:

D.J.: Teller, did you have a comment?
Teller: No.
D.J. Just as we rehearsed.

As it turned out, Teller did have a comment--he said that while some magicians think that doing the trick and saying "this is not real" is just as good as explaining it, it isn't--and "you should explain it." Ray Hyman seconded the point, saying, "exposing tricks that can be done in multiple ways gives people a false sense of ability to detect fakery." Faraday's explanation of spiritualist table-tipping caused Alfred Russell Wallace to become convinced of the existence of spirits when a medium used a different method on him. Hyman said this is what is known as being "half-smart," which is the card cheat's term for a guy who knows something about card cheating. The card cheat then asks him what he knows, and then adapts his methods to not use those and not get caught. (Penn Jillette's recent book, How to Cheat Your Friends at Poker, discusses this very subject.)

The topic then turned to mentalism, about which Ray Hyman said, you can teach the methods of cold reading in one day. Mentalists will complain about it, but not magicians. About the Psychic Entertainers Assocation, Jamy Ian Swiss said "they are neither psychic nor entertaining." Hyman said that psychic entertainers are now mostly people competing with psychotherapists. Penn said that cold reading should be exposed, as it's being used to deceive people.

D.J. asked about the "poor man's psychotherapist defense" of such "psychic entertainment"--isn't it similar to Rogerian psychotherapy (named after Carl Rogers)? Ray Hyman pointed out that they can cause harm in many circumstances, such as their inability to recognize suicidal symptoms. Penn went further and said, "lying always does harm and is mmoral, it has no justification"--but then offered "exceptions for loved ones and medical situations." Hyman pointed out the distinction between lying by commission and lying by omission, and both he and Penn agreed that "lying by omission is also a lie" (quoting Penn). D.J. observed that that's a very uncompromising position on lying. But Penn then said, "how can you love someone without lying to them," and suggested that kindness and politeness requires lying of the sort that he made exceptions for in his previous statement.

D.J. then brought up mentalists who are also skeptics and who don't make psychic claims, such as Derren Brown and Banachek (who was at the conference, but unfortunately not part of this panel--I think his viewpoint would have been a very worthwhile addition). D.J. pointed out that Brown claims a "deep understanding of human psychology," while Banachek will say that he is drawing inferences based on posture or facial expression. He asked the question, "Are they equally unethical?"

Teller said that he has argued with Brown, and Brown is moving to a more honest position--his latest book says that he's doing tricks, and says things like "I have special ways of dealing with information," which is true. He said that in Penn & Teller shows, they give no hint of the supernatural, so "we get the credit." Penn said that there are two places in their current show "where I say I'm doing one thing and am actually doing another. I wrestle with the ethical implications. If you admit you're lying, it's more like an actor playing a role. But there are two places in the show where I pretend to be speaking earnestly but am not."

Ray Hyman said that Jerry Andrus was the most honest guy in the world, but he said that a magician on the stage has a license to lie. It's theater. (In my notes, I wrote--"But does 'it's TV' suffice?"--a topic that came up shortly.)

Jamy Ian Swiss says that he is working to develop some mentalist techniques which present things that are convincing looking, but which obviously cannot be happening. He suggests that the effect will be more impressive if he can give the audience confidence that he cannot do what he then appears to do.

Ray Hyman said that a distinction between magic and mentalism is that mentalism is boring, and can only be dragged on (to show length) if people think that it's real. "If you believe the stuff is real, what's the appeal of mentalism?" Teller seconded that point--"if you pretend it's possible, it's just nature."

D.J. brought up the example of Mark Salem, who "claims a well-developed understanding of the human mind," and asked, "why do we give skeptical mentalists a pass?" Jamy Ian Swiss then criticized Salem. Ray Hyman said that when he performed, he would say that he has no special powers, and "whatever I can do, you can do. There's nothing abnormal or paranormal about it." Teller said, "The correct answer to how it's done is--it's a trick." Penn said that if people come up to him after a show and really want to know how it's done, he'll tell them. But he gave the example of a very famous magic trick (he didn't say which one) that fooled everyone who saw it, is protected by a patent, that you can look up. There's a multi-page description of how it's done, but few people bother to read past the first few pages. He said, "[Jim] Steinmeyer says magicians are guarding an empty safe. If we explained the bullet catch trick, it would not be interesting. The tricks we expose are the ones where the secret is interesting and clever. In the bullet catch we're hiding messy ugliness. ... Valentino, the masked magician, couldn't reveal the real good-looking tricks because they don't have the 'aha!' cleverness." Teller observed that people have accurately described how the bullet catch is done online, but it still looks amazing. Penn pointed out that there are also inaccurate descriptions of the bullet catch on the Internet, so he'd hate to see somebody else try to do it. Teller suggested that Adam Savage put them to the test on Mythbusters.

D.J. said that "believers will always be with us--are disclaimers necessary?" (He observed that he was reformulating a quote from Jesus that "the poor will always be with us.") Ray Hyman suggested that disclaimers create an "invited inference problem," taking away any reason to challenge or question, and thereby promoting belief. Penn commented that "There was no Jesus, so the quote is wrong."

Finally, D.J. turned to the question of using magicians in scientific investigations, as James Randi has long recommended, to which Penn said, "it depends upon the magician." Ray Hyman said that "scientists do not do tests," and that "magicians can hurt the process." He pointed out that Milbourne Christopher was fooled by Uri Geller, and made up a bogus explanation for metal bending in terms of chemicals on his hands that became a parody scientific explanation like "swamp gas" for UFOs. Randi then came up and said that "magicians for parapsychology tests need to have a deep and broad knowledge of magic, not just know how to do a few tricks. Half-smart is not smart at all. Be all-smart or forget it." He went on to make his common point that Ph.D.s can easily be fooled even though they're not dumb. Randi also said that there is a place for "white lies," giving an example that will appear in his biography, being written by Tim Steinberg. He sent a letter to his grandfather shortly before his death at the age of 94, in which he said "I believe you will be with your wife at death," in order to give comfort in a situation where the lie did no harm. He said that he's glad to see Derren Brown coming clean, and said that "Uri Geller is trying to come clean, but he's fucked--he lied to governments and research institutions. ... He now says he wants to be known as a 'mystifier.'" He suggested that the media should ask Geller, "yes or no, have you ever used psychic powers that do not involve trickery," but when they do, he'll hang up the phone and refuse to answer the question.

In the Q&A, the first question was about Criss Angel, David Blaine, and "street magic," and in particular the way that the TV audience doesn't see the same thing that someone there would see. Jamy Ian Swiss said that David Blaine made some early irresponsible claims. Teller said that when you watch TV, "it's the proscenium," which seems to me an erroneous comparison that could be used to justify all sorts of misrepresentation in the name of entertainment. Jamy Ian Swiss said that TV specials on magic have a credibility issue because of the possibility of editing and camera tricks, but that street magic was a good idea. Teller said it's an aesthetic issue rather than a moral issue, and that he sees editing to produce effects OK--that the rules aren't the same for TV. Penn said he didn't think David Blaine would entertain, and observed that "reality TV is fake. Lots of people know it, but some think everything on TV is real."

Another questioner said she appreciated Penn's comment on global warming as pseudoscience (which I didn't note in my notes and don't recall what he said), to which Penn responded, "Don't listen to me, I'm the least qualified to talk about" the subject, and said "we won't do a Bullshit! show on global warming." He said "If there is global warming, and there probably is, we don't know if we caused it. But if we caused it, and we probably did, we don't know if we can stop it. But if we can stop it, and we probably can, we don't know if socialism is required."

(Mark Edward, a skeptic who works as a mentalist who was also at TAM7, was disappointed with this panel and expresses his opinion in a comment at skepticblog.org.)

At this point I stepped out for a moment, while Robert Lancaster was given the Skeptical Citizen Award, and returned as a documentary film on Jerry Andrus was being shown. It told a bit about Jerry's life and his house, the "Castle of Chaos," filled with his inventions, including puzzles, optical illusions, magical effects, and mechanical and electronic devices of his creation.

Stephen Bauer on Jerry Andrus
Stephen Bauer, an attorney and member of Oregonians for Rationality, has attended every TAM, but this was his first time as a presenter. He gave the story of how he found skepticism--his mother was a big fan of woo including a believer in the psychic powers of Uri Geller, and to combat his skepticism she gave him a copy of The Magic of Uri Geller without reading it. As this was the original title of James Randi's debunking of Geller (now known as The Truth About Uri Geller), he found it very persuasive, though said his mother didn't care much for it when she then looked at it a bit deeper when he told her he thought the book was completely correct.

Bauer wrote to James Randi asking for an explanation of how ouija boards work, and he suggested that Bauer talk to Ray Hyman at the University of Oregon about the ideomotor effect. He then joined Oregonians for Rationality and began attending the summer Skeptic's Toolbox workshops at the University of Oregon, where Jerry Andrus came up and introduced himself.

He then told some stories about Jerry Andrus. At Halloween, Andrus would never give candy, only a trick. Sometimes he would answer the door as a floating disembodied head. One year he would open the door, then lean over beyond the point at which he should have fallen, and then straighten back up, then shut the door.

Andrus was a magician, a skeptic, and an inventor. He had been visited by film crews from three continents. He never married, had no kids. He lived in the same house for 80 years. He performed every six months at the Magic Castle.

His house, an 1891 Victorian home, was known as the "Castle of Chaos" and was filled with things that he had collected, designed, and built, though not a single piece of traditional furniture. He was an artist, photographer, poet, musician, composer, and agnostic.

He called Bauer for an estate plan, which ended up being a simple will that left everything to his brother George, who is 93 years old.

The Castle of Chaos contained a full printing shop in the attic, which required metal bands to be put around the room to keep it from shaking apart from its operation. Andrus printed his own books. He also had his own photo studio, from which three pickup loads of photo chemicals had to be disposed.

After his death, a group of volunteers from Oregonians for Science and Reason worked regularly on his house to catalog its contents, dispose of unsalvageable items, and put items into storage. Bauer spent his sabbatical working 12 hours a day on Andrus's house.

Just the recycled items included 32,000 pounds of scrap metal, 2 cords of scrap wood, 1,000 cubic feet of plastic, and fans, hair dryers, and "air moving devices."

The house had a ground-level crawlspace with four entrances, three of which featured a set of amusement park railroad tracks leading under the house, on which Jerry could lie down on a device of his own construction and push himself under the house, where he stored various items. Among those items included gigantic magnets, which he could use to make the planchette on a ouija board in his house spell out things.

He had a Hammond organ, heavily customized with his own additions, connected by a spaghetti tangle of wires.

And the house contained much that they couldn't figure out, like the wiring. A black sock hanging in the bathroom was pulled down, setting off a security system--which they didn't know existed. An electronic rat trap in one room turned out to be a device for launching tennis balls and spoons during simulated seances. He had a slide projector that he made from a motorcycle engine.

They found that he had all of the letters he received when he was a soldier in WWII, which will now be donated to a military museum. They collected 120 boxes of materials now being kept in a storage unit, which include 3 dozen boxes of letters, notes, and writings, 20 boxes of mixed media, and 4 volumes (2000 pages) of his daily journal of "Scribulations."

Stephen Bauer finished up with some thanks to the late John Lar, who died in 2008, for getting the Castle Chaos project started, and noted that Lar's wife had cared for Jerry in his final days. He told a little bit about Jerry's 93-year-old brother George, a musician with a "house of wonders" of his own, who has been making videos of soap bubbles featuring his own music (the linked video also features Jerry). He ended with a quote from Tycho Brahe, who left all of his work to Kepler with the comment, "Let me not seem to have lived in vain, let me not seem to have lived in vain."

Hal Bidlack then said, "A man should live his life so that when it comes time for him to die, he has nothing left to do but die. It seems like Mr. Andrus did that."

(I remember Jerry Andrus as a quiet and soft-spoken guy who was a regular fixture at all of the Skeptics Society conferences at Caltech. He would usually be found next to his table of his optical illusions, some of which will now always be present at every TAM, which he would be happy to help demonstrate to anyone who stopped by.)

Skepticism and the Media Panel
This was an unmoderated Q&A panel featuring Penn and Teller, Adam Savage, Bill Prady, and Jennifer Ouellette. A few of the questions and answers I noted (I missed most of them as I was trying to ask a question myself, which I previously tried to ask of the ethics of deception panel).

Q. Why can't the Daily Show or Colbert take down Jenny McCarthy?

A. Penn: That's not the sort of thing they do.

Q. What was the biggest media failure of skepticism recently?

A. Adam Savage: The NPR ombudsman taking the position that calling waterboarding "torture" is taking sides, and defending it on the basis of having to be balanced.

A. Penn: The truth isn't in the middle.

Q. Dave from Phoenix: Any opinion on TBN or Benny Hinn?

A. Jennifer Ouellette: I grew up in a fundamentalist household, went to faith healing meetings, etc. It's fantasy. My parents still beleive they can speak in tongues.

Q. The subtext here is on getting facts right and of leaders being of exemplary character. How can we promote character, service to the public, telling the truth, and owning the consequences of your actions?

A. Adam Savage: It's unattainable. There's a percentage of assholes everywhere.

A. Penn: Most people are good; there are 6 billion good people. Disagreement doesn't make them assholes, but I still call them assholes on my show.

Q. What about historical accuracy? The History Channel creating bogus doubt?

A. (Savage? Prady?) So what have you done about it? .. Hal took your mike away...

A. Savage: We're one of the few shows that goes back and corrects our mistakes. Wouldn't it be great if the History Channel came out and said all of their Nostradamus documentaries of the last 20 years were wrong? (Laughter from the audience.) Only skeptics and history teachers laugh at that. Many film crews don't care about truth. Mythbusters visited hurricane researchers who said they're always misrepresented.

A. Prady: We said on an episode [of "The Big Bang Theory"] that a Van Dyke is a goatee without a mustache. It's wrong, we will correct it.

Q. The ridicule of pseudoscience--what is appropriate, heavy ridicule, no ridicule?

A. Penn: I'm not in favor of heavy ridicule. We do it towards ourselves and allies as well as believers.

A. Jennifer Ouellette: Humor can be a powerful convincing mechanism. If it's mean spirited, though, that's different.

A. Penn: The joke of our show is that we're calling bullshit. The message is pro-science and respect each other, and Pollyanna-ish hippie shit. I love crazy people. I'm in the category of the wack job. When I went on "Politically Incorrect," a show that always has one nut, I looked around and I didn't see the nut. I straddle both sides--if a gun were held to my head and asked what are you, a skeptic or a nut, I'm the nut. .

A. Prady: "Big Bang Theory" was originally about computer programmers, but it was too hard to photograph [due to reflections from screens]. The message of the show is that everybody thinks other people have life figured out--and nobody does.

A. Teller: On the Orgasm episode of Bullshit!, we talk about a guy who has a crazy orgasm machine for a hot tub, and it turns out it's Penn. (Voiceover for Teller: "And then there's this asshole...") (The "Jill-Jet," U.S. patent #5,920,923.)

Q. Richard Saunders: Does anyone on "The Big Bang Theory" do origami?

A. Prady: Sheldon knows origami but just doesn't do it on the show. You only see days something interesting happens. ("Oooh!" from audience.) Sorry, that was cheap.

...

A. Penn: Bullshit! in Sweden is called skitsnack--"shitcock."

...

A. Savage: There are partnerships involved here. There is huge strength in push-pull. We drive each other nuts, but the product is better.

A. Penn: We hope to get famous enough that only one of us has to show up.

Q. (To P&T:) Did you know George Carlin, and why don't we address comedy more often?

A. Penn: Carlin was a hero of mine. I spoke to him on the phone quite a bit. I don't think comedians, magicians, or skeptics matter--it's individuals. There are wackjobs in comedy. We shouldn't celebrate a form, just individuals.

A. Savage: I find it interesting that all practitioners say that their field is the only pure one. I knew a package design professor who said that package design is the only pure art form. Hal Bidlack: That was not thinking outside the box. (Big cheer from audience.)

Q. Can you offer words to young skeptics held down by the beliefs of their parents?

A. Ouellette: Voracious reading. I couldn't watch "Welcome Back, Kotter." My parents would burn non-Christian books. I left home at 17 for college.

A. Penn: You shouldn't manipulate, just say what is true. Don't talk to adolescents differently, just talk to a general audience. Don't try to "reach" adolescents.

Q. What do you think of fake skeptics on shows like "Ghost Hunters"?

A. Penn: House, Bones, Num3ers (pronounced "numb-three-ers"), etc. All have atheists. Atheists and skeptics have it good on major shows right now. We're not martyrs. Hitchens said we have no saints or martyrs. There are minorities being fucked over in this country, and we're not it. (Though atheists are more mistrusted than other groups.)

Q. What's the role of skepticism in broadcasting?

A. Prady: Make them central as characters, and stay on the air, and don't have a social message, just have fun.

A. Savage: We didn't set out to inspire scientists--if we set out to do that, we'd be pompous, pretentious, and fail. We've done our show for 7 years and want to do 5 more.

Q. (For Teller, about why he has a bottle of water in front of him despite the Bullshit! show on bottled water.)

A. Teller: I filled the bottle using the tap in the men's room.

...

A. Ouellette: To reach minds, reach for hearts, from your heart.

My question was something like, "The movie 'Expelled' received a lot of criticism for the deceptive way in which it obtained interviews from its subjects. Theology professor Paul Maier has made similar charges about his appearance in the Bullshit! episode on The Bible. I was glad to hear on the ethics in deception panel that you agree that lying by omission is wrong. Can you comment?" It turns out I misremembered Maier's criticism, which was about his views being completely mangled by the editing, not being deceived about what show he was on, though his comments make it seem like he was surprised about the nature of the show. I would have thought the title would be a hint.

Penn responded that he didn't know who Maier was, and didn't quite get the point of my question. I met up with him in the hallway between sessions, and pointed out that Maier was an actual guest on the show, not just some blogger writing about it, and he laughed at the misunderstanding. He said that the contracts for everyone who appears on the show state that the show is Penn & Teller's Bullshit!, but that just because he was given that information in the contract and signed it doesn't mean that he read it and knew it. (Bullshit! writer Michael Goudeau, standing next to Penn, concurred that the contracts name the show.) I offered to point him to Maier's critique, but he said that he had no interest in reading it and Maier can say whatever he likes. I don't find that entirely satisfactory given the strong stance against lying that Penn took during the ethics of deception panel.

I also discussed this on Friday evening with Michael Shermer, who was previously criticized by a commenter at this blog for his role in that same episode of Bullshit! on the Bible. Shermer pointed out that he had no idea of what Maier said and wasn't responding specifically to his remarks, but just answering questions asked by the interviewer. He also observed that Penn & Teller don't write the show, or do much more for any given show than show up to record their scenes and voice overs, though of course they bear some responsibility given that it has their names on it.

Phil Plait on Doomsday 2012
The final talk of the day was Phil Plait on "Doomsday 2012," the idea that the world will be coming to an end on December 12, 2012 based on the end of the Mayan calendar and an alleged Mayan prophecy of the end of the world, a popular topic for questions to NASA.

He began by saying that the Mayans were good astronomers and had a good calendar system, and had the largest centralized civilization of their time, but they didn't predict their own civilization being absorbed into others. The claim of an alleged prophecy of destruction is false--it doesn't exist--it's just that their calendar system ends and rolls over.

Back in 2003 at TAM1, Plait spoke about Planet X and Nibiru, and warned that this idea would come back, and he was correct.

He spent the rest of the talk looking at what could possibly cause the destruction of the earth in 2012, and what's the evidence. First, perhaps a "Sun of Doom"? Looking at solar flares and sunspots--would that activity peak in 2012? Sunspots will probably peak in 2013, solar flare activity in 2013 or 2014.

An asteroid or comet impact? None known to be on a collision path.

Next, perhaps a "Galaxy of Doom" or "Milky Way of Doom"? The Milky Way galaxy is 100 billion to 200 billion stars in a flattened disc, which appears to us as a strip, since we're in it. He talked about the Galactic equator, and that the sun is close to it. As an aside, he remarked that 75% of the American public doesn't know both that the earth rotates once per day and revolves around the sun once per year, let alone that the earth is at a tilt with the northern axis pointed at Polaris, which is the reason for the seasons. (Note: This stat seems somewhat dubious, since a 1999 Gallup poll found that 79% of Americans correctly answered that the earth revolves around the sun. Would that really drop all the way to 25% just by asking for frequency of revolution and rotation? And if so, how much of that is merely confusion between the terms "revolution" and "rotation"?)

He talked about the precession of the equinoxes, caused by the gravity of the sun and moon, which goes through one circle every 24,000 years, and the map position of the sun at the winter solstice crosses the Galactic equator. But that happened in 1998. So some have said that we are "in that era" of the crossing, which takes about 18 years; we're near the end of that era.

What about the idea that there's a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy that will do something? Plait said that, oddly, he hasn't seen this claim made--oddly because it's wrong. The sun is closest to the galactic center on December 19, 2010, too late by a week. And a black hole 260 quadrillion km away would have a gravitational force 1.5 trillionth of the sun. The gravity from Mars and the moon is significantly greater.

In short, Plait concluded, these claims are all "cosmic colons, full of astronomical crap."

JREF Update/Wrapup
The day ended with a JREF update, first from Jeff Wagg, noting that this was the first TAM being broadcast via streaming video, with a total of over 18,500 visitors, 850 at a time the last he looked.

JREF has done cruises to Alaska, Mexico, the Galapagos, and the Bermuda Triangle, and he took a poll of interest for another cruise next March, for which there was "mild interest."

He talked of SkeptiCamp, and the possibility of one occurring at the same time as TAM London, somewhere in the northeastern United States, possibly Boston, and asked those interested to contact him via email.

The JREF's Swift newsletter subscription readership is growing--there are twice as many today as there were in January of this year. There's a possibility of doing some kind of live video broadcast on a weekly basis.

He gave thanks to the JREF forum volunteers, and made another advertisement for the JREF scholarships, "if you're going to school, we will give you money."

Phil Plait said he was blown away by Dr. Joe Albietz's presentation on vaccination at SkeptiCamp Colorado, and gave an update on the vaccination drive--up to $8,500.

A. Kovacs, JREF director of operations, gave thanks to various people including one of the poker game participants who donated all of his winnings to the vaccination drive, and another donor who gave $1,000 but wanted to remain anonymous.

Matt Fiore was recognized as the most generous skeptic to the drive, and was given tickets to Lance Burton courtesy of Michael Goudeau.

And that wrapped up the regular conference programming for Saturday, July 11. Next up, a summary of the skeptical paper sessions for Sunday, and the Million Dollar Challenge that finished up TAM7.

The Arizona Skeptic online: vol. 1, 1987-1988

I've begun putting old issues of The Arizona Skeptic online as PDFs, starting with the old Phoenix Skeptics News, edited by Ron Harvey. Volume 2, 1988-1989, is here. An index to all issues by title, author, and subject may be found here. Phoenix Skeptics News vol. 1, no. 1, July/August 1987:

• Welcome!
• July Meeting
• Resource Library
• "Cold Reading" by Jim Lippard
• Local Radio Talk Show Features Psychics
• Modem Users Take Note
• "Foes Turn Up Heat: Fire walking is not so hot, skeptics of seminars say" by Simon Fisher, Tribune
• Postscript by Jim Lippard
• Book Reviews
• Local Conference on Health Fraud
• Upcoming Phoenix Skeptics Meetings

Phoenix Skeptics News vol. 1, no. 2, September/October 1987:

• August Meeting: Hans Sebald on witchcraft
• September Meeting: Charles Cazeau on prophecies of Nostradamus
• Surveyor Needed
• Randi on Faith Healers (interviewed by Jim Lippard and Mike Norton)
• "Health Fraud isn't 'snake oil' anymore" by Phyllis Gillespie, Arizona Republic
• "Charlatans can be spotted if you know common clues" (Arizona Republic)
• "Proper Criticism" by Ray Hyman
• Upcoming Meetings

Phoenix Skeptics News vol. 1, no. 3, November/December 1987:

• October Meeting: Halloween party at Hans Sebald's
• November Meeting: James Randi psychic surgery video, Randy Jones on psychic surgery
• Papers ignore disclaimer request on astrology columns
• Flyers needed
• Psychic fair
• "Focus on You" by Jim Lippard
• "Channeling: Believe It or Not" by Hans Sebald, Ph.D.
• "Book Review: The Faith Healers by James Randi" reviewed by Jim Lippard
• "On the distinction between nonbelief and disbelief" by Hans Sebald, Ph.D.
• "Book Review: The Psychology of Transcendence by Andrew Neher" reviewed by Jim Lippard
• Editor's Ramblings
• Upcoming Meetings

Phoenix Skeptics News vol. 1, no. 4, January/February 1988:

• December Meeting: Jim Speiser and Marge Christenson of MUFON
• January Meeting: Robert Dietz of ASU on creationism
• Philip Klass Lecture
• Skeptics Reorganized
• Skeptics subcommittees formed
• "Peter Popoff Came to Town" by Jim Lippard
• "Towards a more effective organization" by Bob Guzley
• "Update on the Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin" by Jim Lippard
• New Phone Number
• Editor's Ramblings
• Upcoming Meetings

Phoenix Skeptics News vol. 1, no. 5, March/April 1988:

• Important Announcement!
• February Meeting: Jeff Jacobsen on Scientology
• Philip Klass Lecture
• March Meeting: Mike Stackpole on claimed dangers of D&D
• The Organization Explained!
• "Frank Baranowski: Promoter of the Paranormal" by Jim Lippard
• "Book Review: The New Inquisition by Robert Anton Wilson" reviewed by Jim Lippard
• "Robert Anton Wilson and the H.E.A.D. Revolution" by Zak Woodruff
• Editor's Ramblings
• Upcoming Meetings

Phoenix Skeptics News, vol. 1, no. 6, May/June 1988:

• April Meeting: James Lowell on Mexican cancer clinics
• May Meeting: Jim Lippard on psychic detectives
• Press coverage
• "Turin Shroud Update" by Jim Lippard
• "Dr. Stranges Lives Up to His Name" by Mike Stackpole
• "Near-Death Experiences and TV" by Jim Lippard
• "An Artistic 'Phenom'" by Ted Karren
• "Psychic Detectives" by Jim Lippard
• Editor's Ramblings
• "TUSKS Tips" by Ken Morse
• Upcoming Meetings

The last issue of this volume was the first one also distributed to the Tucson Skeptical Society (TUSKS), and prompted a change of name to The Arizona Skeptic beginning with volume 2. This was also about the time I moved to Tucson to attend graduate school at the University of Arizona (August 1988).

The Amazing Meeting 7: Swiss/Randi, Ouellette, anti-anti-vax panel, Nickell

This is part three of my summary of TAM7, still on Friday, July 10. Part 1 is here, part 2 is here, and my coverage of the Science-based Medicine conference begins here.

Jamy Ian Swiss and James Randi
After lunch on Friday was a conversation between Jamy Ian Swiss and James Randi about Randi's early career, beginning with an old BBC live broadcast of Randi making a radio disappear, and an escape he did in Quebec as the "Amazing Randall." They discussed Randi's early appearances on Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show," and how Carson, himself a magician, would visit Randi in his dressing room when he appeared on the show, leading show staff to wonder who this guy was, since Carson never visited other guests. Other old footage included an underwater survival stunt on "You Asked for It," in which Randi stayed underwater for an hour and 50 minutes, breaking Houdini's record. Randi was embedded horizontally in a block of ice on Boston Common for the Dick Cavett show, somewhat reminiscent of the more recent stunt by David Blaine. Footage was also shown of Randi's water can escape when he was a closing act after David Copperfield and Shibata, which Randi commented was made more difficult for him by the fact that Copperfield and Shibata were standing on the catwalk above him cracking jokes while he was supposedly drowning in the milk can (but was actually already on top of it trying to look out-of-breath and using a sponge to make his head wet again before the big reveal).

Then was shown a lot of amusing footage from Alice Cooper's "Billion Dollar Babies" tour, for whch Randi played a mad dentist and created various illusions for the stage, culminating with Alice Cooper's head being chopped off by a realistic-looking guillotine. Randi told various stories of the tour and how he came to be involved with it, saying that it paid very well and he knew he was going to get alone well when he visited the offices of Cooper's Alive Enterprise and found it was full of potted plants, all of which were dead. A DVD of the film made during that tour was recently released on DVD, which includes the original version of the film rejected by the studies, which included a bunch of comedy sketches, a few of which feature Randi.

When the tour came to Phoenix, Cooper asked Randi to sit in the audience with his mother, who wasn't aware of the nature of his show. Randi kept reassuring her--the wife of a Mormon minister--that Alice Cooper is just a character being played by her son (Vincent Furnier). Randi said that he saw Mrs. Furnier again a couple of years ago at Alice Cooper's 60th birthday party, and she remembered him and thanked him for the reassurance he provided during that show.

Footage was then shown of two version of Randi's upside-down strait jacket escape, one in Niagara Falls in January. He said it was so cold that he beard became completely frozen and he was unable to speak when he had freed himself and was brought down, until hot water was poured over his beard. He said it took two years to get permission to do that stunt, and they had the whole area blocked off so that only the film crew was present. But while he was hanging upside-down, he saw a Chinese family standing there watching him--they had gone sneaking through the woods to get there and watch the performance up close.

The second version of the escape was for the Japanese show "Supermen" and was performed while hanging upside-down from a helicopter flying around Tokyo. Randi, who does not like heights, said he kept telling himself, "I'm doing it for the money."

Jennifer Ouellette on the Science and Entertainment Exchange
Jennifer Ouellette, executive director of the National Academy of Science's new Science and Entertainment Exchange project and author of the book The Physics of the Buffyverse, spoke about the project. She began with a short film clip from the TV show "Numb3rs" that illustrated a scientific point about geographic profiling by reference to the physics of water drops from a sprinkler head, which she used as an example of the productivity of having scientists and entertainment producers working cooperatively.

She observed that science and Hollywood have had a love/hate relationship. Hollywood sees scientists as nitpickers who don't understand entertainment, which she depicted with a reference to an episode of "The Big Bang Theory" which pointed out that the ending of the film "Superman" was unbelievable not because of the time travel but because if Superman caught Lois Lane while she was falling at 32 feet/second/second she would be cut into three pieces by the arms of the Man of Steel. (This reminded me of Larry Niven's classic analysis of why Superman can't have sex with a human woman, let alone produce a hybrid offspring, "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex.") Scientists, on the other hand, see Hollywood as promulgators of misinformation, a point she illustrated with reference to an anti-vaccination episode of "Eli Stone" and the fact that DNA results on "CSI" and "Bones" are always returned within hours (also illustrating the nitpicking point).

The Science and Entertainment Exchange provides producers of film, television, comic books, video games, novels, etc. with a free way to obtain accurate scientific information early on in a project, and has already worked with major productions including "Bones," "Tron II" (now "Tron Legacy"), and several that she was contractually forbidden to mention.

She told the story of how she met the showrunner for "Bones," and when she told him she was a scientist, "he instantly cringed, flinched, and apologized." She subsequently worked with him on the "Death by Physics" episode of the show.

She pointed out that this is a great time for science and skepticism, with the popularity of current programs like Numb3rs, Bones, Lie to Me, The Mentalist, House, The Big Bang Theory, and, "a fringe case," Fringe (one of the writers of the show is Glen Whitman of the Agoraphilia blog; and for those interested in the glyph code on that show, here's the solution).

Ouellette argued for the importance of this project by pointing out that a factoid about breast cancer which appeared in a soap opera was found to triple the knowledge of that factoid in its viewing audience (based on testing viewers before and after watching the episode), and that these new shows do a good job of humanizing scientists. When debunking messages come from sympathetic characters, that softens them and makes them more persuasive. She suggested that The Mentalist saying that there are no real psychics, or Lie to Me debunking the polygraph, has huge potential impact.

She closed by saying that the success of these popular programs suggests that critical thinking and science placed in an entertaining context do sell, and asking those with a science background who want to be consultants for her project to contact her--and CSI needs new ideas on how to kill people.

In the Q&A, the first questioner said that they don't like when scientists are depicted not acting like scientists--misusing words like "proof" and "theory," and misrepresenting the process of science. Another asked whether she could say anything about science on "Lost"; she said that scientists consulted and commented on the DVD extras about the temporal anomalies and "chronology projection conjecture," and that it's the best-selling TV show on DVD. One questioner asked whether there is any way to do something like this for the news media, as well as for entertainment; she answered that people in the news media need to be paid better (I presume she was referring to print reporters rather than talking heads on television), and those outlets are in their death throes. Another questioner asked why skeptics have to be depicted as dumb in shows with supernatural or paranormal phenomena, rather than showing them change their minds when presented with overwhelming evidence of these things.

Anti-anti-vaccination Panel
Steven Novella, David Gorski, Joe Albietz, Harriet Hall, Michael Goudeau, and Derek Bartholomaus made up the panel to criticize the anti-vaccination movement. Novella began by recounting the Andrew Wakefield case, a study published in Lancet allegedly connecting measles/mumps/rubella (MMR) vaccination with harmful effects in children, which subsequently turned out to be a thoroughly bogus study ("if I can use that word," he said, referring to the Simon Singh lawsuit). But that study caused a decline in MMR vaccination in the UK, and a corresponding leap in news cases of measles, mumps, and rubella. When Novella blogged about this, journalist David Kirby contacted him and argued that thimerosol (sodium ethylmercurithiosalicylate), was the issue. Novella read Kirby's book arguing that thimerosol causes autism, Evidence of Harm, and did 3-4 months of research. (Novella's Skeptical Inquirer article on the subject is here; a reply to Kirby on Novella's blog is here.) He said Kirby's book was a terrible piece of journalism but a good collection of data sources to start with. By 2005 there was strong evidence of no link between thimerosol and autism. Novella's panel intro is now on YouTube here; Dr. Joe Albietz's talk is on YouTube here.

Back in 2002, thimerosol had already been removed from routine vaccine schedules, and Kirby said that autism rates would subsequently plummet to pre-1990 levels. Novella said no, If I'm right it will continue to increase until it hits some ceiling--and the autism rates have continued to rise for the last four years. Kirby moved the goalposts for his prediction out to 2007 and then to 2008, but there is no more room to move them now, said Novella--thimerosol is demonstrably not the cause of autism.

Novella said that the antivax movement has grown as evidence has accumulated against them, spearheaded by promotion by Jenny McCarthy and Generation Rescue.

David Gorski talked about how "I'm not antivaccine" is the biggest lie of the antivaxers. They will say things like (quoting Jenny McCarthy), "I'm not anti-vaccine, I'm pro-safe vaccine. I'm anti-toxin." Examples of people making such statements include Jenny McCarthy, Dr. Jay Gordon, a frequent visitor to Gorski's blog, and J.B. Handley, the founder of Generation Rescue.

He quoted a statement from Jenny McCarthy saying that mercury, the "second worst neurotoxin in history" is injected into children, but noted that she's not so anti-toxin as to avoid injecting the worst neurotoxin, botox, into her face. He also noted that despite claiming not to be anti-vaccine, she has also said, "If I had another child, I wouldn't vaccinate at all. Never, not ever."

Claimed toxins in vaccines include aluminum, ether, and mercury. Generation Rescue claimed in 2005 that autism is a misdiagnosis of mercury poisoning, then they've shifted to being caused by heavy metals, to being caused by toxins, to being caused by too many vaccines, too soon--but it's always about the vaccines.

Gorski suggested the following questions for those who say they are not anti-vaccine, yet are still challenging vaccines in this way:

1. You say you want safer vaccines. By what measure?
2. What toxins would you remove? What's the evidence for toxicity?
3. What evidence would it take to persuade you that vaccinations are safe with respect to the risk of the disease (i.e., using the vaccines saves significantly more lives than not using the vaccines)?

Dr. Joe Albietz then spoke on how every major medical breakthrough and development to save lives pales in comparison to vaccination. This was a powerful talk that I'd like to see turned into a viral vaccination video for YouTube.

Smallpox vaccine has saved over 300 million lives. In 1967, a global eradication campaign was begun, at an estimated cost of $10M-$15M/year over 31 countries. After ten years--in 1979--the disease was officially eradicated at an expense of about $23M/year.

Dr. Albietz presented a list of vaccine-preventable diseases, and noted the number of incidents per year before and after the vaccines. For just the top ten diseases, over 1.1 million lives per year have been saved from disease by vaccination.

He noted that polio and measles are scheduled for eradication. In 2008, the number of cases was 1,652, which amounts to over 5 million cases of paralysis prevented. Measles used to be the second leading cause of infectious disease death, killing 1 million children per year. The goal is to reduce measles cases by 90% by 2010, which will probably be missed.

The anti-vax movement not only affects the lives of children who are not vaccinated, the reduction of the rate of vaccination reduces the herd immunity of the population, making it more likely that even those who are vaccinated will get the disease.

Dr. Harriett Hall spoke on "Two False Alarms," which gave much more detail about Andrew Wakefield and Neil Halsey. She began by talking about Andrew Wakefield's 1998 Lancet paper on MMR vaccines, which used no controls and had an honest conclusion ("we did not prove a link"), but Wakefield called a press conference saying that the MMR vaccine should be stopped and made into separate vaccines--without disclosing that he had just filed a patent for such single vaccines. This resulted in measles again becoming endemic in the UK, Wakefield's study was retracted after problems were found in it, and Wakefield was exposed as unethical. He had been hired by a lawyer to find a link between vaccination and some harm in order to sue drug companies, and was paid 500,000 pounds for the purpose. His study was performed on the children of plaintiffs in the legal case, there was no ethics committee approval, and he didn't disclose his conflicts of interest.

Neal Halsey raised warnings about thimerosol, which contains ethyl mercury. We knew that methyl mercury can cause problems, but not ethyl mrcury. Experiments on adults with amounts 20,000 times higher than in thimerosol in vaccines have caused no symptoms of mercury poisoning. Halsey didn't raise autism as a concern, just mercury poisoning, but two mothers of autistic children who learned of his claims decided, incorrectly, that the symptoms of mercury poisoning were the same as the symptoms of autism. Today 2/3 of the U.S. population incorrectly think that mercury causes autism.

Michael Goudeau, juggler in Lance Burton's Las Vegas show and writer for Penn & Teller's Bullshit!, briefly spoke about his experience as a parent of an autistic child, and pointed out in his closing statement that nobody can hold up a healthy kid and say "Look, my kid got vaccinated and didn't get autism." But maybe, he suggested, the parents of those whose children get measles, mumps, or rubella as a result of the spread of the disease from unvaccinated children can effectively raise that issue. He said that Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy are assholes, and you shouldn't base your opinions on the science of celebrities (or jugglers).

Derek Bartholomaus spoke about how he decided to try to find the "Jenny McCarthy body count"--the number of preventable deaths and illnesses caused by non-vaccination--as a result of hearing Steven Novella make references to such a body count on the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast. He announced his website, jennymccarthybodycount.com, on Twitter and Facebook three months ago, and it has received tremendous traffic as a result of links from the Pharyngula, Bad Astronomy, and Respectful Insolence blogs.

In the Q&A, Hal Bidlack said "my wife died of cancer, and I'm still angry at her surgical oncologist. I understand these people--does calling them stupid help?" Dr. Novella said that Jenny McCarthy needs to be called out on her misinformation, but the rank and file are victims and we have nothing but sympathy for them--our interpretation of the evidence is diametrically opposed. Dr. Gorski said that it's human nature to want to blame someone. A child born with a disability is painful, but they shouldn't be allowed to use that as a shield against criticism--but they do it because it's effective.

Another questioner asked whether Oprah can be made aware that there is a Jenny McCarthy body count to try to put a stop to McCarthy's TV show. Dr. Gorski suggested that giving McCarthy her own show might have been "a woo too far" provoking blowback in the form of criticism of Oprah such as appeared in Newsweek.

One questioner whose sister is a pediatrician in L.A. said she sees the most resistance to vaccination from high-income people in Beverly Hills. Dr. Albietz said you're 23 times more likely to get whooping cough if not vaccinated, and that he sees nonreligious vaccine refusal as the top reason for children not being vaccinated, but others are still not being vaccinated due to poverty and lack of access, which was the reason for TAM7's vaccination drive.

Another questioner asked if anyone had heard of an increase of cases of polio in India due to anti-vaccination superstition. Dr. Novella said that there were rumors of polio vaccine being tainted with AIDS in Nigeria, which resulted in an outbreak of polio due to lack of vaccination. Harriet Hall said that there were antivaxers back at the beginning of the smallpox eradication effort, but it was nothing like the current scale of opposition.

Someone asked whether we're just speaking in an echo chamber, or is someone working to craft a media message. Dr. Albietz pointed out the Rethinking Autism videos, and observed that we should bring the fight to every front that the anti-vaccination movement uses.

Anti-vaccination is being pushed by chiropractors and practitioners of alternative medicine, observed another questioner, and it won't stop until we stop them. How can we do that? Dr. Hall said that she reported a homeopath to the Department of Homeland Security, since he claimed to be making homeopathic smallpox vaccine, which requires access to smallpox. Dr. Gorski said that we're also combatting the view that natural is better, that getting a disease naturally is a better outcome than vaccinating and not getting the disease. Dr. Albietz pointed out that you cannot strengthen your immune system any better than by vaccinating, and that the keyelements of vaccines are natural ingredients. Dr. Hall observed that delaying the vaccine schedule is based on the misguided idea that it will lessen negative impact to immune systems, when in fact vaccinations promote immune response.

In closing, Dr. Gorski said that most antivax parents are probably persuadable, but he fears that the return of vaccine-preventable diseases will be what it takes to persuade them. Dr. Novella said that if anything is going to help mitigate the problem, it is probably going to come from the people in the room.

Joe Nickell on Bigfoot and Aliens
Joe Nickell gave a visual travelogue of photos of Bigfoot-related signs and places in the Pacific northwest, which included all sorts of Bigfoot-related oddities. The Bigfoot Highway, the Bigfoot Museum at Willow Creek, Bigfoot Rafting, Bigfoot Ave., Little Foot Ct., Bigfoot Breakfast, Bigfoot Motel, Bigfoot Crossing signs, Bigfoot Burger, Bigfoot Books (with big selection of books on bigfoot, as expected). He showed murals of Bigfoot, Bigfoot chainsaw sculptures, and Bigfoot statues. A lot of it was tongue-in-cheek, but some was serious and some included religious elements--he observed that some think that Bigfoot is supernatural.

He covered aliens and UFOs in a similar manner, starting with photos of Roswell, the Mac Brazel ranch house, and the famous photo of Jesse Marcel and the pieces of foil, sticks, tape, and rubber. He did an experiment with boxkite-like devices (corner reflectors) on a train attached to a weather balloon, that was shot down to see what the wreckage looked like. He also discussed Alien Autopsy "fakelore" and showed a timeline of alien evolution. Hypnagogic experiences that used to be reported as ghosts or demons are now commonly reported as aliens.

In both the cases of aliens and Bigfoot, he sees them as mythical creatures, and remarked that Bigfoot seems to be used as something like an "eco-messiah." Aliens have also been used in the employ of environmental causes.

In the Q&A, the first question was why there seems to be a rise in alien abduction claims, rather than UFO sightings, and whether this might be related to the rise of camera phones. (If I can reconstruct the reasoning, I think the issue is that there are more people out there with cameras at all times, yet fewer UFO sightings, while if there were really alien spacecraft, you'd expect more successful photographs. But if it's more of a psychological or mythical phenomenon, then perhaps it transforms to fit the evidence.) Nickell responded by observing that alien stories have evolved and continue to change. In my notes I commented that there seems to be a shift in the UFO community from "alien spacecraft" to "another reality" as an explanation of UFOs, and even some creationists have gotten in on the latter sort of view with the claim that UFOs are demonic influences. That view was expressed by Norman Geisler's testimony in the McLean v. Arkansas creationism case back in 1981, and has more recently been propounded by Gary Bates of the Australia-based Creation Ministries International.

That concluded the regular conference programming for Friday, July 10.

Saturday continued with a very special Skeptics Guide to the Universe recording session, Michael Shermer, and Adam Savage, summarized in part four.

The Amazing Meeting 7: Steele, Plait, Lancaster

This is part two of my summary of TAM7, still on Friday, July 10. Part 1 is here, and my coverage of the Science-based Medicine conference begins here.

Sorry for the delay in posting this--it was a combination of other distractions and hoping that Dr. Steele would reply to the email I sent him asking for some details on his slides, without any such luck. Unfortunately, I was manning the SkeptiCamp booth at the back of the room during his talk, which both impaired my ability to take notes and made it impossible for me to read much of anything on his slides. If any readers have better notes or memory, I would be happy to make revisions to correct mistakes or add further detail. (I had wanted to point out a semi-ironic comment that Dr. Steele made before he began, but I couldn't remember exactly what he said and failed to note it.) [UPDATE (March 21, 2010): Now that Randi has officially come out, and I've remembered approximately what was said, I'll note it here--Steele began by saying something about being preceded by "two straight men" (apparently meant in both senses), who were Phil Plait and James Randi.]

Dr. Fintan Steele
Dr. Fintan Steele, a gay (and legally married in Massachusetts) ex-Benedictine monk with a theology degree to accompany his Ph.D. in genetics, spoke on the subject "Personalized Medicine or Personalized Mysticism?", a talk which bore some resemblance to his paper in Future Medicine, "Personalized Medicine: Something Old, Something New" (PDF). He said that he's moved from the monastery and theology to science, and that he (we?) wants to keep them separate, suggesting something along the lines of Stephen Jay Gould's non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) view, which argues that science and religion are separate domains which do not overlap. It's a view that hardly any advocates of either science or religion hold, and it's hard to see why they should. When religions make empirical claims, that's surely the domain of science, and it's also surely the case that philosophical arguments should be informed by relevant scientific data. The argument in the other direction is, I think, a bit more difficult to make, at least until religion develops methods that are reliable, reproducible, and objectively demonstrable--but at that point it would be science.

He began with a familiar quote from Hippocrates that also appeared in Dr. Val Jones' presentation at the Science-based Medicine conference, "Science begets knowledge, opinion begets ignorance." To which he commented, "but not always." He then gave a Webster's definition of personalized medicine, and said he will argue that this is a mystical rather than a scientific definition.

Dr. Steele proceeded to go through a brief history of medicine, arguing (like in his paper cited above) that personalization of medicine is nothing new, but has been with us since Hippocrates, who used thought that medical treatment was a matter of putting the four humours into proper balance, idiosynkrasia (idio = personal, synkrasia = mixing or blend, or, in the context of the humours, temperament). Galen went on to do "tests" of patients to determine proper treatments, and Paracelsus introduced environmental factors and the concept of proper dosage.

He then briefly talked about the science of DNA and what is being learned as the cost of sequencing becomes cheaper and the volume of data increases. He said that there is "tons of sequence variability" and we're learning about ways that DNA can be "turned on and off." At his current place of employment, the Broad Institute, he said that they have a very large amount of genetic information on servers. He talked about the genome and made reference to a Bligh study (?) and to genome-wide association (GWA) studies. These studies involve genotyping lots of individuals and looking at where they differ. For example, he noted that you might compare the genomes of 10,000 people with Type 2 diabetes to 10,000 people without it, and then look at the differences in order to find areas that are associated with the disease.

The catch of these studies is that the genome information collected is incomplete, relying upon samples of specific single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within a haplotype block, which Dr. Steele characterized with the analogy of using a single house in the block to stand as a representative sample for the block--the method of finding a difference can tell you that there's a fire in the block, but you still have to go house by house to find the blaze.

He noted that this technique has been successfully used to find genetic correlates to a variety of diseases and conditions, including Crohn's disease, breast cancer susceptibility, coronary disease, prostate cancer, macular degeneration, and schizophrenia. The research has started to fragment diseases into finer-grained categories. We've gone from blood diseases to leukemia vs. lymphoma, to 38 leukemia subtypes and 50+ lymphoma subtypes.

He seemed to be approving so far, but indicated that there is then a line that people cross and draw wrong conclusions. He identified a number of the genetic testing companies, such as Navigenics and 23andme, as culprits. These companies, he said, will tell you something like "Because you have a particular variant x, your risk of disease y goes up by z%. So go eat more vegetables." But, he said, "It's a lie. Reasoning and expectations have gone astray."

He then turned to theology to draw an analogy that I'm afraid completely escaped me. He asked us to conduct a reasoning experiment about constructing an ordered list of things you can find in Las Vegas by moral acceptability, from premarital sex to rape, including bestiality, incest, masturbation, and contraception. Constructing such a list relies upon some kind of underlying principle based on beliefs. He then offered the Roman Catholic Church's ordering, based on the out of print Handbook of Moral Theology (by Anton Koch, volume 2 is online), which gives an ordering of sexual sins based on gravity, and puts masturbation as the very worst, homosexuality less bad, incest less bad still, etc. Why? Because "Sex is primarily for procreation. That's a scientific statement," he said.

I have a couple of problems with his argument so far. First of all, I think his "scientific statement" plays on an equivocation on purpose vs. function. The reason sex exists--its function--is for procreation, but that doesn't make it our primary purpose in having sex. Second, even given that fact, the proposed RCC ordering doesn't follow. Homosexual behavior is no more likely to produce offspring than masturbation, and thus should be equally bad--if that's the only relevant factor, then each act should be ranked based on the probability that offspring will be produced. By the same token, premarital heterosexual sex should be on the good side of the spectrum. Third, probability of procreation is clearly not the only relevant factor in making such an ordering, even if we limit ourselves only to other "scientific statements" such as "people tend to seek pleasure and avoid pain" and "consensual relations are less likely to produce physical or psychological harm than involuntary relations."

He then asked the question where do we get the principles based on beliefs that we use to construct such orderings? He answered that we get them from two places, 1. rational observable scientific thought, and 2. metaphysics. He then said something about science resting on metaphysical claims where I missed the details. I'm not sure if he was asserting that all science rests on certain metaphysical claims (which I think is quite plausible--we tend to assume that there is an objective external world which can be measured, that we're not brains in a vat or solipsistic dreamers), or that the science of the companies he's complaining about are making unwarranted metaphysical claims. I think the latter was more likely his point.

Dr. Steele then asked, "What explains the popularity of these genomics startups? [The view that] DNA is the fundamental part of your being. That's a load of shit." Here again, I think he's made a somewhat ambiguous statement, depending on how one caches out "fundamental"--clearly, our DNA is a very important determining factor in who we are.

He objected that these companies are engaged in hype and overselling, and so is the NIH, in order to allow for continued funding. But, he said, it's based on "a mystical interpretation of genes. Biology is hugely complex and we're just beginning to understand it."

He then offered a diagram with two triangles listing some bullet points or statements, and drew a dividing line between science and mysticism. I was unable to see his diagram or where he drew the line, and I cannot tell from my notes or memory of hearing his talk what he used as his criterion for drawing the line.

Dr. Steele then went on to say that he's not trying to dismiss the genomics studies, but what's more important than the genotypes is what we are learning about pathways of interaction. For example, in the case of diseases that affect vision, what becomes important are things like the photo-tranduction pathway, which is implicated not only in vitreoretinopathy, but a certain type of colon cancer and other diseases. He suggested that medicine will become more about pathways than about individual organs. But this won't be personalized at the level of an individual, but rather on the categories of pathways.

The genomics/personalized medicine language is popular, he suggested, because it's narcissistic. And it costs a lot, so people infer that it must be worth something.

He also said that "it doesn't take a wacko to shovel nonsense"--the press regularly gets it wrong. For example, he said that "there is no gene for kidney disease." He suggested that journalists challenge the scientists promoting personalized medicine to explain how they think it will produce the results they claim.

In the Q&A session, he gave a specific example of an acquaintance, a D.C. lobbyist, who purchased his Navigenics portfolio, which told him he had a low risk of heart disease and glaucoma--but he already had glaucoma. In answer to a question about gene patents, he said that the Broad Institute, which is an offshoot of the Whitehead Institute, doesn't do patents, and that he thinks the problem that gene patents are causing for chip-based assaying of genes is ultimately going to cause them to be thrown out. In response to a question about the ability to tailor drugs specifically based on genetic information, he agreed that yes, this can occur "for certain very rare things," but that "DNA is just a recipe, environmental changes have huge impact. Few diseases are related to just a small number of genes. ... Genes that encode [such things as] drug transport molecules ... will be useful for ... drug dosages."

(Orac commented a bit on Dr. Steele's presentation in his post-TAM summary. A video excerpt of Steele's talk may be found here.)

Phil Plait
Phil Plait spoke briefly about the vaccination drive, gave more thanks to the JREF staff, and had Paul Anagnostopoulos talk about the JREF scholarships. Paul noted that 41 people were attending TAM7 as a result of scholarships, donations for which were at an all-time high despite the economy. He also noted that JREF is offering $10,000 in academic scholarships this year, and encouraged students to apply. (The deadline is rapidly approaching--they must be received by August 1.) Those scholarships are due to a grant from a generous family in Florida.

He then gave up the rest of his time to Robert Lancaster of the Stop Sylvia Browne website.

Robert Lancaster
Robert Lancaster came up to the front of the stage in a wheelchair after being introduced by his friend J.C. He explained that he suffered a stroke last August, and has spent the last 11 months in the hospital and in rehabilitation, and so many of his planned newer sites (Stop John Edward, Stop Benny Hinn, and Stop Peter Popoff) are still in development. He noted that last year he had jokingly referred to Stop Phil Plait at TAM6, and someone registered the domain while he was still speaking.

He said that he planned to talk about strokes and skepticism, and wanted to talk to other skeptics who have had strokes, of whom he talked to only one, Derek Colanduno of the Skepticality podcast, who has made a full recovery. He warned that he suffers from emotional lability, a condition of excessive emotional reactions and mood changes, and that this would explain if he suddenly became a blubbering idiot.

After telling a few stories of his rehabilitation, he gave thanks for the generosity of members of the JREF Forums who have helped him out. He told the story of his first discovering James Randi by seeing him on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show in the 1970s, and "opening a can of skeptical whoopass" on Peter Popoff in 1983. Randi, Lancaster said, had showed him that skepticism can be a form of public service, and that's what he's tried to emulate with his websites.

He first contacted Randi, via email, in 2001 after seeing John Edward on television. He figured Randi was the right guy to deal with Edward, and came across the randi.org website and sent an email, figuring some staff member might read it and give it to Randi. To his surprise, he got a personal response from Randi--which he characterized as "use the search engine, putz." (I'm hoping that weren't Randi's actual words, but Lancaster's feelings about the answer, which was that there were already multiple articles exposing Edward on the JREF website.)

Lancaster then returned to the story of his stroke recovery, and how after his previous wife left him, he found Susan via match.com, and they exchanged photos, email, and phone calls. After they had met in person, he asked her why she hadn't commented on his initial photos--she said they were "scary" because she thought he "was a biker." She concluded that no, "he was a teddy bear." They married five years to the day after their first date, on June 1, 2007. Without her, he said, I would be dead right now, and that without her, his life would not be worth living. He asked her to come on stage with him.

He then told the story of how he came to have his stroke. He said that 15 years ago, he had a bad headache that he should have gone to see a doctor for, but he went to bed, and woke up with the same headache. He went to his doctor's office, but the doctor was out, and the first assistant to take his blood pressure said, "That can't be right," and went to get another. Two more assistants took his blood pressure, were confused, and called the doctor to report. The doctor told him to either drive himself immediately to the emergency room or to let them call an ambulance for him, because his blood pressure was 300/180.

I had been a little queasy and light-headed listening to the references to strokes, for a variety of reasons that include a bit of hypochondria, drinking a cup of coffee, having little for breakfast, and having a bit of a hangover. Having a persistent sinus infection that I'm still fighting today wasn't helpful, and the pain in the left side of my neck (which I now know was lymphadenopathy from that infection) served as creative material for my hypochondria. I ended up having to leave the room and have a seat in the hallway to turn my thoughts to more pleasant subjects.

I waited until I heard applause from inside, and returned to the SkeptiCamp table sans camera, to find that Lancaster was actually still continuing on about various subjects. At some point I believe his wife assisted in cutting it short (he had gone some ways into lunch time), and I ended up still being a bit shaky through lunch.

I ended up losing my camera for the rest of the day, and getting it back from the registration desk the next day (thanks to both whoever turned it in and the gentleman who told me via Twitter that it had been turned in).

(Part three of my TAM7 summary, on Jamy Ian Swiss and James Randi, Jennifer Ouellette, the anti-anti-vax panel, and Joe Nickell, is here.)

The Amazing Meeting 7: intro, Bidlack/Plait/Randi, Prady

The James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF)'s eighth "The Amazing Meeting," TAM7, took place July 9-12, 2009 at the South Point Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. (The eighth is number 7 because there was a smaller TAM5.5 event in Fort Lauderdale in January 2008 as the annual event transitioned from occurring in January to occurring in the summer.)

This post begins my summary of The Amazing Meeting 7, which I plan to complete and post in parts over the next week or so, similar to the summary I wrote up of last year's TAM6. Other summaries of TAM7 may be found here:

• By Michael at Young, Hip and Conservative: a skeptical blog.
• In six semi-liveblogged parts at The Atheist Experience blog: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
• At the Anxiolysis blog: Preamble, Day 1, Day 2, Final day
• By Geeky Atheist.
• By Action Skeptics, with some interesting criticisms: Thursday and Friday, Saturday and Sunday
• At the TAMazing blog (many posts)
• D.J. Grothe's wrap-up of TAM7 at CFI's blog
• antiheroine at the Central Ohioans for Rational Inquiry blog
• Brownian at JREF's Swift blog
  

Photos of TAM7 may be found here:

• Dean Baird's photos.
• Michael's TAM7 photos at Picasa.
• Flickr photos tagged "tam7."
  

This was the first TAM at this location south of the strip, and I was a bit worried about the convenience factor, since there wasn't the diversity of restaurants within walking distance that you get with a hotel on the strip. That concern proved unfounded, as there was a good variety of food available within the hotel, ranging from deli sandwiches to a steakhouse, and I never left the hotel during the conference. Those who did visit the strip were able to catch a bus across the street for a few dollars, if they didn't just bum a ride from somebody with a car. I did hear a few complaints about the food--that the buffet wasn't great, nor was one of the mid-range restaurants, neither of which I visited. There was also some displeasure on the part of vegetarians about the lack of meat-free options for the first day's lunch. I was somewhat disappointed that the morning's continental breakfasts were served in the main conference hall rather than in a separate dining room with round tables more conducive to conversation like last year, but the lunches were served in that manner and I did get to meet a few people that way each day. Overall, I thought the location was excellent and it has already been booked again for next year's TAM8, which will take place from July 8-11, 2010.

This year, rather than attend any of the pre-conference workshops, I attended the excellent Science-Based Medicine conference which was held in conjunction with TAM7. TAM has tended to avoid having a particular theme or focus, and it was nice to have a day that was concentrated in a particular field, and which drew an audience largely of people with expertise in that field. I think this has been one of the strengths of some of the Skeptics Society conferences that have focused on particular subjects, such as its 1996 conference on evolutionary psychology, its 2005 conference on "Mind, Brain, and Consciousness" (which was quite critical of evolutionary psychology), and its 2007 meeting on the "Environmental Wars." At the same time, the diversity of TAM and its audience is also valuable, so having a second conference as an optional complement to TAM strikes me as a good way of getting the best of both worlds.

This year was the first TAM with over 1,000 attendees, of whom 30% were women, the highest percentage of female attendees to date. When the question was asked, "how many are here for the first time?", it appeared to be about half the audience members who raised their hands. The first TAM had about 140 attendees, and last year's TAM6 had just over 900. There seemed to be a pretty good geographic diversity, with large contingents from Canada, the UK, and Australia like last year. It would be nice if attendees could voluntarily allow some information about themselves to be published in an attendee directory, such as name, JREF Forum handle, and home location.

There was a good-sized contingent from Arizona this year, including several participants from SkeptiCamp Phoenix, Phoenix Skeptics in the Pub, the Skeptics of Tucson, and Flagstaff's Northern Arizona Skeptics. The conference kicked off with its usual Thursday evening meet-and-greet with hors d'oeuvres and a cash bar, during which I managed to chat with people from all of those groups, some for the first time. We'll be holding another SkeptiCamp Phoenix next year, and I expect we'll be able to double our participation.

Friday, July 10
The conference formally began on Friday morning with opening remarks from emcee Hal Bidlack. Hal noted the growth in participation at TAM, talked about a ghost tour at the Stanley Hotel (where "The Shining" was NOT filmed), and noted that Uri Geller had appeared on NBC News as a commentator on Michael Jackson's death.

Hal kicked things off by quoting Plutarch ("The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled") and noted that skeptics are a family: "Welcome to the Randi family reunion." He remarked on the power of the individual to make change, and singled out for particular note Reed Esau for his part in the origination and expansion of SkeptiCamp, and Robert Lancaster for his stopsylviabrowne.com website.

He noted that there is an audience tradition of "pretending not to like my jokes" and that Randi once accused him of using "homeopathic humor."

And he offered a "cautionary note" that "we aren't cookie cutter, we do have areas of disagreement." By coming together in a group there are "dangers to individualism." This is an inclusive, "large-tent organization," and the topic of religion in particular has been "a source of tension" in previous conferences. Skepticism, he said, is about examining testable claims, and he noted that he, among others, is not an atheist. While I encountered many atheists at the conference, there was little, if anything, in the way of explicitly atheistic material presented (though I don't remember any last year, either, except for some Objectivist material that was handed out to attendees, which was disappointingly both overtly anti-religious and political, though it was not a subject of discussion in any presentation that I noticed).

Phil Plait then offered his first opening remarks as president of JREF, stating that the organization has "reached critical mass" and "become the mainstream skeptics movement of the people." He said that people come to TAM for three reasons--to hear speakers, to see Randi, and to participate in the skeptical community. We don't necessarily agree on all of our positions, but we agree on how we reach conclusions. Like Hal Bidlack, Plait also called out both Reed Esau and Robert Lancaster for their contributions.

Dr. Plait spoke a bit about the Randi $1 million challenge, saying that it had started to become an albatross because of the amount of effort required to deal with potential claimants. It was "hard to determine what the claim is" from many people, let alone how to properly test it and come to an agreement on protocol. So it had been announced that the challenge would be discontinued in order to put the funds to better use and save the effort. But it has also been a useful tool, and he was happy to announce that it will be continued after all, in some form, the details of which are still to be worked out.

James Randi then came up on stage in a red and white striped shirt that he identified as his "happy shirt." He was pleased at the steady growth of TAM. In a more somber note, he commented on "my subdued appearance" and explained why he was unable to shake hands with anyone at TAM this year. He was the recipient of an "unwelcome visitor" (cancer), for which he's had surgery and will be undergoing chemotherapy. He explained that this is why he hasn't made many videos of late.

Randi gave special thanks to Sean McCabe, his personal assistant for the last year, who is now going back home and back to school, and to Brandon K. Thorpe, who will be his new assistant. He went through a long list of people that he thanked, including the JREF staff and volunteers, and various speakers and entertainers whose participation makes TAM a success. He ended by noting that the first TAM to be held outside of the United States, TAM London, to be held on October 3 and 4, was oversubscribed in less than an hour.

Keynote: Bill Prady, creator and executive producer of "The Big Bang Theory"
Bill Prady started by saying that the "keynote sets the tone" for a conference, and that if so, this conference will be "disorganized and ill-prepared." He said he looked at the JREF website's description of his talk for clues as to what he should talk about, and saw that he stated that he "makes sure each episode is full of science" and that in a recent talk at Comic-Con, he had the audience laughing so hard they were rolling in the aisles. After reading that description, he said, "all I can do is disappoint you horribly." With that, he showed a few short clips from "The Big Bang Theory" which he thought would be "of interest to this group," which included a debunking of astrology based on Bertram Forer's work, a reference to intelligent design, some magic tricks, and more references to astrology. The clips were fairly amusing, but my wife and I made an attempt to watch this show after hearing recommendations from friends, but gave up without completing two shows due to the painful laugh track. (A recent Twitter remark from Australian skeptic Richard Saunders suggests a similar experience.)

After the clips, Prady described his own background--that he earned pocket money doing magic shows from about age 12 to 16, and had an International Brotherhood of Magicians pin that he wanted to bring but was unable to find. He said that he read both Linking Ring and Genii, and frequently saw Randi on the covers, and was honored to sit next to him at the conference. He said he was a college dropout, then worked as a computer programmer before getting into television.

He observed that the chicken or egg problem was resolved by evolution--the egg came first--but then posed his own chicken-egg problem: "Do people who think like us become computer programmers, or does computer programming make people think like us?" He stated that there are two qualities common to such people: 1. critical thinking, and 2. lack of judgment about each other. As an example, he gave a friend named Ken, who would not go anywhere he hadn't been before without being shown by someone else, even if it was yards away from somewhere else he had already been. He could do hex-decimal conversions in his head, but when told it's customary to tip between 15% and 20% based on quality of service, he couldn't calculate tips on his own because he didn't know how to measure that. When his friends suggested he just always tip 17.5%, he refused, because then he would be overtipping half the time and undertipping half the time. (And I can't resist noting that this response makes an unwarranted assumption about the distribution of service quality received by an individual diner.)

Prady offered a few remarks about the characters and his show. The character Leonard is based on him. There was a story line about Penny offering herself to him in a distraught moment, with Leonard blowing it because he insisted on making a true statement about an analysis of their situation, which Prady stated was based on a true story. He said he's proud of all the characters on the show, and wanted to depict "other views as complex, not stupid or paper tigers." E.g., Penny's belief in astrology and Sheldon's mother's religious faith. He said that "people's belief systems are the things that get them through the day. ... they're not saying 'oh, please help me abandon the thing that gets me through my illness, my unemployment, my kid who doesn't understand me.' This is the thing that gets them to the night so they can go to sleep so they can get up and do it again. People's beliefs are not a contest. You don't win. You don't win at the end of the day."

His original plan was to have the show about computer programmers, but apparently having the characters in front of computers raised too many difficulties for filming, due to reflections from monitors as well as the difficulty of depicting what they were doing.

He wanted to read some angry letters of complaint received by the show, but was unable to locate any. There was a folder marked "disturbing letters," but these were mostly letters from inmates in love with actress Kaley Cuoco. He called CBS, but they had not received a single angry letter. He took that as offering a bit of assurance for skeptics, that an audience of 12 million people per week could watch a show that begins with the history of the universe in 20 seconds to a Barenaked Ladies song and promotes science and critical thinking without being upset by it.

Prady concluded by saying that when Phil Plait and Adam Savage asked him to speak, he knew his title should be "We Can Continue Telling Women in Bars That Astrology Isn't Real, But We Won't Get To Have Sex." He suggested (presumably addressing only the straight men and lesbian and bisexual women in the audience) that while you're here in Las Vegas and you meet a woman who is very complimentary and interested in you, be skeptical. He also suggested (to the same audience) that if you're enjoying a conversation with a woman who says "I'm a Sagittarius," try performing a study with two different responses. 1. Give a detailed explanation of the time twins study from England as a refutation of astrology, or 2. Say "wow, you have the most incredible eyes," and see which response is more likely to lead to a positive outcome. (These remarks have led to some criticism of Prady for obvious reasons; Prady responds here. The topic is discussed further on the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast #211, interview with Skepchick Carrie Iwan (starting at 43:30). Gender and skepticism was also the topic of discussion of the August 7th episode of Skeptically Speaking. The Podblack Cat blog discussed women, science, and skepticism earlier this year.)

In the subsequent Q&A session, Prady said that the science content of the show comes from technical advisors. He said "lots of people think the show mocks people like us--but if you were in the writer's room you'd say it's an idealized picture of who they'd like to be." He recounted how when the character Ross on the show "Friends" went to a paleontology convention (he was supposedly a paleontologist), there was nothing in the dialogue that went beyond 6th grade science. He didn't want his show to be like that. They use David Saltzburg, a UCLA astrophysicist, as a consultant. They asked him, "What's new in physics," to which his answer was "not much in the last 40 years," which they wrote into the script. Saltzburg said "oh, string theorists will get mad at me." He then said something disparaging about string theory (I missed it in my notes), and they put that into the script, too.

In response to a questioner who asked why women are depicted as stereotypically ditzy and scientists as maladjusted, Prady defended his portrayal. He said that Penny is not portrayed as ditzy but as a "pragmatic intelligence--the best character on the show at getting through life and getting things done." He said there will be more female scientists on the show in the future.

The final question was a comment from someone in the audience who has a son that is like the characters on the show. On the show, Sheldon uses a board to fold clothes. The questioner's son looked online to find such a board to use himself, and dubbed the board "Sheldon."

(There's a transcription of Prady's talk here. Randi's opening remarks are transcribed here. Part two of my summary of TAM7, on Dr. Fintan Steele, Phil Plait, and Robert Lancaster, is here.)