Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts

Thursday, February 29, 2024

If embryos are babies, then in-vitro fertilization is immoral

Alabama and the GOP are discovering what this blog pointed out 15 years ago--if you're going to adopt a policy that embryos are full bearers of moral personhood, then you can't allow in-vitro fertilization (IVF). From my five-part debate with Vocab Malone about abortion in 2009:

Once the zygote becomes a blastocyst, it forms into an outer layer of cells, which later becomes the placenta, and an inner cell mass of pluripotent embryonic stem cells, each of which is capable of differentiating into any kind of human cell. Only after this stage does the blastocyst implant in the wall of the uterus, about a week after fertilization, and begin taking nutrients directly from the blood of the mother--a dependency that can itself be of moral significance, as Judith Jarvis Thomson's violinist argument shows. As already mentioned above, a great many fertilized ova do not reach this stage. Further, the percentages of implant failure are higher for in vitro fertilization (IVF), a procedure which Vocab's criteria would have to declare unethical, even though it is the only way that many couples can have their own biological offspring.

I made the same point earlier in a comment on a podcast interview with atheist anti-abortion advocate Jen Roth (comments are no longer present but I reiterated it in response to Malone):

Was Jen Roth ultimately arguing that personhood is something that a human organism has for its entire lifecycle? At what starting point? Conception, implantation, or something else?

I find it completely implausible that an organism at a life stage with no capacity for perception, let alone reason, counts as a person. Nor that a particular genetic code is either necessary or sufficient for personhood.

I think every point that she made was brought up in a debate I had with a Christian blogger on the topic of abortion, who similarly argued for an equation between personhood and human organism. I wonder if she has any better rejoinders. Does she think that IVF and therapeutic cloning are immoral? IUDs?

The naive anti-abortion position is philosophically and scientifically unsupportable and leads to bad public policy, and today's GOP consists of a majority struggling to avoid it and a minority that is full-steam ahead and prepared to ban IVF and contraception.

The full debate between Vocab Malone and myself was spread across our respective blogs.  My contributions were:

Vocab Malone on abortion and personhood, part 1 (December 11, 2009)

Vocab Malone on abortion and personhood, part 2 (December 13, 2009)

Vocab Malone on abortion and personhood, part 3 (December 16, 2009)

Vocab Malone on abortion and personhood, part 4 (December 18, 2009)

Vocab Malone on abortion and personhood, part 5 (December 19, 2009)


And, finally, perhaps most apt to the current situation, was this exchange from the following year:

Does Vocab Malone understand the implications of his own position? (November 15, 2010)

Vocab's response is that he does think IVF is immoral, except perhaps for some hypothetical version he doesn't describe, that perhaps involves adopting all the "snowflake babies" and removing and reimplanting excessive multiple births into surrogates. (But that still doesn't address the implantation failure rate!)

Saturday, January 02, 2021

How Trump thinks he negotiates, versus how he actually does

 In the 1980s, Trump was concerned about nuclear proliferation and thought that he could do a better job negotiating a nuclear deal with the Soviets. In a 1984 Washington Post interview (which I believe you can see excerpts from in the film "Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn" about his mentor, Roy Cohn), he said:

"Some people have an ability to negotiate," he says. "It's an art you're basically born with. You either have it or you don't."

He would know what to ask the Russians for, he says. But he would rather not tip his hand publicly. "In the event anything happens with respect to me, I wouldn't want to make my opinions public," he says. "I'd rather keep those thoughts to myself or save them for whoever else is chosen . . .

"It's something that somebody should do that knows how to negotiate and not the kind of representatives that I have seen in the past."

He could learn about missiles, quickly, he says.

"It would take an hour-and-a-half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles . . . I think I know most of it anyway. You're talking about just getting updated on a situation . . . You know who really wants me to do this? Roy . . . I'd do it in a second."

Trump actually lobbied the George H. W. Bush administration to be the negotiator for arms talks, but the chief negotiator position went to Richard Burt, then U.S. Ambassador to West Germany, who later met Trump, and Trump explained what he would have done had he been the negotiator

He explained that he would have welcomed—very warmly—the Soviet delegation. He would have made sure the country’s envoys were comfortable—very comfortable—at the table.

Then, Trump told Burt, he would have stood up, shouted “Fuck you!,” and left the room.

This seems quite likely -- and then he would have either given in to whatever the Soviets asked for, or failed to get a deal at all, which is what has happened again and again during his time as president. Where Trump gets deals it seems to be in spite of his own negotiations, rather than because of them.

When Trump gave in and signed the second COVID-19 stimulus bill which he had been refusing to sign and which was at risk of a pocket veto, one person who correctly predicted four days earlier that Trump would sign the bill was tax lawyer David Miller, who was someone who was actually on the other side of the table in a Trump negotiation over the Trump Organization's deal to purchase the General Motors building in 1998.  Miller recounted the story in a thread on Twitter correctly predicting that Trump would sign the bill:

In 1998, I was the tax lawyer representing Conseco in a joint venture with the Trump Organization to buy the General Motors Building. 2/23 
Conseco put up 99.9% of the capital, Trump put up 0.1% of the capital, and Lehman Brothers loaned the rest. 3/23 
The joint venture agreement was very straightforward. Income and deductions were based on capital contributions. Everything was agreed quickly by the lawyers. 4/23 
However, on the day before signing, we were told that Mr. Trump would be arriving at 10pm at our offices to negotiate the deal (which had already been negotiated). 5/23 
He arrives with an entourage. A podium had been set up for him at the front of a long table in a conference room. 6/23 
He asks for some minor corporate changes. But then he demands that he get all of the depreciation deductions. 7/23 
Having negotiated, he put on his coat and left. 8/23 
All of the lawyers look at each other. The general counsel of Conseco said, “We put up 99.9% of the money; we get 99.9% of the depreciation deductions.” Trump’s lawyers say, “Don’t worry, he’ll sign.” I go home to sleep. 9/23 
The next morning my corporate partner and Trump’s corporate lawyer take the joint venture agreement to Trump Tower for Trump’s signature. I’m in my office. 10/23 
The phone rings. It’s my corporate partner. “Mr. Trump wants to speak to you.” 11/23 
“Yes, Mr. Trump,” I say. 12/23 
“Were you there last night?” he asks. 13/23 
“Yes, Mr. Trump, I was.” 14/23 
“Did you hear me last night?” he asks. 15/23 
“Yes, Mr. Trump, I did.” I reply. 16/23 
“So, does this agreement give me the depreciation deductions?” he asks. 17/23 
“No, Mr. Trump, it does not.” 18/23 
He’s angry now. “You were there last night, you heard me, and this agreement does not give me the depreciation deductions? Why not?!” 19/23 
I know that the agreement could have been structured for Trump to get depreciation deductions (if he was willing to provide a “bottom guarantee”). But it wasn’t, so I answer truthfully: “Mr. Trump, the law does not permit you to get depreciation deductions.” 20/23 
He’s furious now. “The law does not permit me to get depreciation deductions?!” 21/23 
“That’s right, Mr. Trump.” 22/23 

He slams down the phone and signs the agreement. 23/23 

Richard Burt's team successfully negotiated the START I Treaty, signed in 1991. Trump has withdrawn the U.S. from the Open Skies treaty for nuclear arms verification, and has so far declined the Russian offer to extend the New Start treaty, and has failed to negotiate a new nuclear arms treaty of any kind.

Wednesday, January 01, 2020

Books read in 2019

Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2019.
  • Graham T. Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?
  • Ross Anderson, Security Engineering (3rd edition, draft chapters)
  • Herbert Asbury, The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld
  • Heidi Blake, From Russia with Blood: The Kremlin's Ruthless Assassination Program and Vladimir Putin's Secret War on the West
  • Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World
  • Oliver Bullough, Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World
  • Bryan Caplan and Zach Weinersmith, Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration
  • C.J. Chivers, The Fighters: Americans in Combat
  • Sefton Delmer, Black Boomerang
  • Nina J. Easton, Gang of Five: Leaders at the Center of the Conservative Crusade (bio of Bill Kristol, Ralph Reed, Clint Bolick, Grover Norquist, and David McIntosh)
  • Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators
  • Ronan Farrow, War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence
  • Ian Frisch, Magic is Dead: My Journey into the World's Most Secretive Society of Magicians
  • Anand Giridharadas, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World
  • Reba Wells Grandrud, Sunnyslope (Images of America series)
  • Andy Greenberg, Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers
  • Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement
  • Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq
  • Michael Lewis, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt
  • Jonathan Lusthaus, Industry of Anonymity: Inside the Business of Cybercrime
  • Ben MacIntyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal
  • Joseph Menn, Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World
  • Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power
  • Jefferson Morley, Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA
  • Sarah T. Roberts, Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media
  • Hans Rosling, with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think
  • Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City
  • Alexander Stille, The Sack of Rome: Media + Money + Celebrity = Power = Silvio Berlusconi
  • Jamie Susskind, Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech
  • Erik Van De Sandt, Deviant Security: The Technical Computer Security Practices of Cyber Criminals (Ph.D. thesis)
  • Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff
  • Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads
Top for 2019: Bullough, Farrow (Catch and Kill), Wu, Chivers, Rosling, Greenberg, Blake, Allison, Caplan and Weinersmith, Kinzer, Delmer.

I started the following books I expect to finish in early 2020:

Myke Cole, Legion versus Phalanx: The Epic Struggle for Infantry Supremacy in the Ancient World
Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (2nd edition)
Brad Smith and Carol Anne Browne, Tools and Weapons: The Promise and Peril of the Digital Age
Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History

Two books I preordered and look forward to reading in 2020:

Anna Wiener, Uncanny Valley: A Memoir (due out January 14)
Thomas Rid, Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare (due out April 21)

(Previously: 20182017201620152014201320122011201020092008200720062005.)

Thursday, December 12, 2019

CIA torture program

It was interesting to go back through the old posts on this blog about the CIA torture program in light of the new film, The Report, which can be seen on Amazon Prime.

One of the early posts on this blog resulted in a debate in the comments about the ethics and efficacy of torture, which the 2014 Senate torture report (PDF link) and the film resolve decisively against torture.  The CIA torture program was ineffective and unethical.

Jeremy Scahill's interview with Daniel Jones about the CIA program and the Senate investigations and report is quite illuminating, and highly recommended listening, as is the podcast associated with the film.

A couple other items of interest:

Jason Leopold's exposure of an accidentally leaked draft letter from John Brennan to Dianne Feinstein apologizing for hacking the Senate investigation.

Senator Mark Udall's questioning of CIA general counsel Caroline Krass during her Senate confirmation hearing.

New York Times book review of Frank Rizzo's memoir, Company Man, which confirms that George W. Bush was not briefed on the torture program but was a "stand-up guy" by lying and claiming that he was.

Saturday, June 08, 2019

The Phoenix Lights, 1945

From John Keeling, by way of the May 2019 Fortean Times (p. 28):
In 1945 a jittery American public was mistaking Venus for Japan’s FU-GO balloon bombs on an alarmingly regular basis. 9,000 of the 30 ft balloons with incendiary bomb payloads had been launched against the US in the hope of causing large-scale forest fires and spreading terror....On June 6th, Phoenix and several other Arizona communities had their first ‘Jap balloon’ panic. Telephone lines to the press, police department, sheriff’s office and weather bureau were reportedly jammed....Luke Field and Williams Field fliers, checking the object from planes, were able to report back definitely that there was no balloon where reported. And Phoenix Junior college’s 5 inch refractor telescope clearly identified the object as Venus. According to the Associated Press, Tucson had the same experience, with Davis-Monthan fliers being ‘sent to cut down the invader.’

Monday, July 20, 2015

Al Seckel exposed

"I believe that we are rapidly transitioning from an Age of Information to an Age of Misinformation, and in many cases, outright disinformation." -- Al Seckel, in an interview published on Jeffrey Epstein's website, "Jeffrey Epstein Talks Perception with Al Seckel"

Mark Oppenheimer's long-awaited exposé on Al Seckel, "The Illusionist," has now been published and I urge all skeptics to read it. Seckel, the former head of the Southern California Skeptics and a CSICOP Scientific and Technical Consultant who was listed as a "physicist" in every issue of the Skeptical Inquirer from vol. 11, no. 2 (Winter 1987-88) to vol. 15, no. 2 (Winter 1991) despite having no degree in physics, has long been known among skeptical insiders as a person who was misrepresenting himself and taking advantage of others. Most have remained silent over fear of litigation, which Seckel has engaged in successfully in the past.

An example of a legal threat from Seckel is this email he sent to me on May 27, 2014:
Dear Jim,
News has once again reached me that you are acting as Tom McIver's proxy in
spreading misinformation and disinformation about me. Please be aware that
I sued McIver in a Court of Law for Defamation and Slander, and after a
very lengthy discovery process, which involved showing that he fabricated
letters from my old professors (who provided notarized statements that they
did not ever state nor write the letters that McIver circulated, and the
various treasures who were in control of the financial books of the
skeptics, also came forth and testified that no money was taken, and McIver
was unable to prove any of his allegations. The presiding Judge stated that
this was the "worst case of slander and defamation" that he had ever seen.
Nevertheless, even with such a Court Order he is persisting, and using (and
I mean the term "using") you to further propagate erroneous misinformation.
Lately, he has been making his defamatory comments again various people,
and posting links to a news release article by the Courthouse News (a press
release service) that reports the allegations set forth in complaints. Just
because something is "alleged" does not mean it is True. It has to be
proven in a Court of Law. In this case, after a lengthy discovery process
(and I keep excellent records) the opposite of what was alleged was
discovered, and the opposing counsel "amicably" dismissed their charges
against me. The case was officially dismissed. In fact, the opposing
counsel has been active in trying to get the Courthouse News to actively
remove the entire article, and not just add a footnote at the end.
I note that you have been trying to add this link to my wikipedia page. I
have never met you, and am not interested in fighting with you. I am
attaching the official Court document that this case was filed for
dismissal by the opposing counsel. You can verify yourself that this is an
accurate document with the Court. So, once again, McIver has used you.
My attorneys are now preparing a Criminal Complaint against McIver for so
openly violating the Court Order (it is now a criminal offense), and will
once again open the floodgates of a slander and defamation lawsuit against
him and his family, and anyone else, who aids him willing in this process.
This time he will not have his insurance company cover his defense. This
time that axe will come down hard on him.
For now, I will just think you are victim, but please remove any and all
references to me on any of your websites, and that will be the end of it.
You don't want to be caught in the crossfire.
Yours sincerely,
Al Seckel
--
Al Seckel
Cognitive neuroscientist, author, speaker
Contrary to what Seckel writes, we have, in fact, met--I believe it was during the CSICOP conference, April 3-4, 1987, in Pasadena, California.  I am not an agent of Tom McIver, the anthropologist, librarian, and author of the wonderful reference book cataloging anti-evolution materials, Anti-Evolution, who Seckel sued for defamation in 2007, in a case that was settled out of court (see Oppenheimer's article). I have never met Tom McIver, though I hope I will be able to do so someday--he seems to me to be a man of good character, integrity, and honesty.

The news release Seckel mentions is regarding a lawsuit filed by Ensign Consulting Ltd. in 2011 against Seckel charging him with fraud, which is summarized online on the Courthouse News Service website. I wrote a brief account of the case based on that news article on Seckel's Wikipedia page in an edit on March 13, 2011, but it was deleted by another editor in less than an hour.  Seckel is correct that just because something is alleged does not mean that it is true; my summary was clear that these were accusations made in a legal filing.

Seckel and his wife, Isabel Maxwell (daughter of the deceased British-Czech media mogul, Robert Maxwell), rather than fighting the suit or showing up for depositions, filed for bankruptcy.  Ensign filed a motion in their bankruptcy case on December 2, 2011, repeating the fraud allegations.  But as Seckel notes, Ensign did dismiss their case in 2014 prior to his sending me the above email.

So why should anyone care?  Who is Al Seckel, and what was he worried that I might be saying about him? This is mostly answered by the Oppenheimer article, but there is quite a bit more that could be said, and more than what I will say here to complement "The Illusionist."

Al Seckel was the founder and executive director of the Southern California Skeptics, a Los Angeles area skeptics group that met at Caltech.  This was one of the earliest local skeptical groups, with a large membership and prominent scientists on its advisory board.  Seckel has published numerous works including editing two collections of Bertrand Russell's writings for Prometheus Books (both reviewed negatively in the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, see here and here).  He has given a TED talk on optical illusions and authored a book with the interesting title, Masters of Deception, which has a forward by Douglas R. Hofstadter.  Seckel was an undergraduate at Cornell University, and developed an association with a couple of cognitive psychology labs at Caltech--in 1998 the New York Times referred to him as a "research associate at the Shimojo Psychophysics Laboratory." His author bios have described him as author of the monthly Neuroquest column at Discover magazine ("About the Author" on Masters of Deception; Seckel has never written that column), as "a physicist and molecular biologist" (first page of Seckel's contribution, "A New Age of Obfuscation and Manipulation" in Robert Basil, editor, Not Necessarily the New Age, 1988, Prometheus Books, pp. 386-395; Seckel is neither a physicist nor a molecular biologist), and, in his TED talk bio, as having left Caltech to continue his work "in spatial imagery with psychology researchers as Harvard" (see Oppenheimer's exchanges with Kosslyn, who has never met or spoken with him and Ganis, who says he has exchanged email with him but not worked with him).

At Cornell, Seckel associated with L. Pearce Williams, a professor of history of science, who had interesting things to say when McIver asked him about their relationship. While in at least one conference bio, Seckel is listed as having been Carl Sagan's teaching assistant, I do not believe that was the case. The Cornell registrar reported in 1991 in response to a query from Pat Linse that Seckel only attended for two semesters and a summer session, though a few places on the web list him as a Cornell alumnus.

Seckel used to hang out at Caltech with Richard Feynman. As the late Helen Tuck, Feyman's administrative assistant, wrote in 1991, Seckel "latched on to Feynman like a leach [sic]." Tuck wrote that she became suspicious of Seckel, and contacted Cornell to find that he did not have a degree from that institution. You can see her full letter, written in response to a query from Tom McIver, here.

As the head of the Southern California Skeptics, Seckel managed to get a column in the Los Angeles Times, titled "Skeptical Eye." Most of his columns were at least partially plagiarized from the work of others, including his column on Sunny the counting dalmation (plagiarized from Robert Sheaffer), his column on tabloid psychics' predictions for 1987 (also plagiarized from Sheaffer), and his column about Martin Reiser's tests of psychic detectives (plagiarized directly from Reiser's work). When Seckel plagiarized Sheaffer, it was brought to the attention of Kent Harker, editor of the Bay Area Skeptics Information Sheet (BASIS), who contacted Seckel about it. Seckel apparently told Harker that Sheaffer had given his permission to allow publication of his work under Seckel's name, which Sheaffer denied when Harker asked. This led to Harker writing to Seckel in 1988 to tell him about Sheaffer's denial, and inform him that he, Seckel, was no longer welcome to reprint any material from BASIS in LASER, the Southern California Skeptics' newsletter. While most skeptical groups gave each other blanket permission to reprint each others' material with attribution, Harker explicitly retracted this permission for Seckel.

This is, I think, a good case study in how the problem of "affiliate fraud"--being taken in by deception by a member of a group you self-identify with--can be possible for skeptics, scientists, and other educated people, just as it is for the more commonly publicized cases of affiliate fraud within religious organizations.

This just scratches the surface of the Seckel story. I hope that those who have been fearful of litigation from Seckel will realize that, given the Oppenheimer story, now is an opportune time for multiple people to come forward and offer each other mutual support that was unhappily unavailable for Tom McIver eight years ago.

(BTW, one apparent error in the Oppenheimer piece--I am unaware of Richard Feynman lending his name for use by a skeptical group. He was never, for example, a CSICOP Fellow, though I'm sure they asked him just as they asked Murray Gell-Mann, who has been listed as a CSICOP Fellow since Skeptical Inquirer vol. 9, no. 3, Spring 1985.)

"Oh, like everyone else, I used to parrot, and on occasion, still do." -- Al Seckel (interview with Jeffrey Epstein)

Corrected 22 July 2015--original mistakenly said Maxwell was Australian.

Update 22 September 2015--an obituary has been published for Al Seckel, stating that he died in France on an unspecified date earlier this year, but there are as yet no online French death records nor French news stories reporting his death. The obituary largely mirrors content put up on alseckel.net, a domain that was registered on September 18 by a user using Perfect Privacy LLC (domaindiscreet.com) to hide their information. (That in itself is not suspicious, it is generally a good practice for individuals who own domain names to protect their privacy with such mechanisms and I do it myself.)

Update 24 September 2015: French police, via the U.S. consulate, confirmed the death of Al Seckel on July 1, 2015. His body was found at the bottom of a cliff in the village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie.

Update 21 December 2015: A timeline of Al Seckel's activities may be found here.

Update 14 April 2022: Al Seckel's death has been declared a suicide.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Summary of 1994 CSICOP conference

I just stumbled across an old Usenet post of mine which summarizes a small part of the CSICOP conference held in Seattle June 23-26, 1994 (PDF of conference program; PDF of conference announcement mailing) with Robert Sheaffer's reply. I don't recall if I wrote the further followups, and didn't find any in a brief search. My 1992 Dallas CSICOP conference summary and a number of others may be found at the Index of Conference Summaries on this blog.

Path: bga.com!news.sprintlink.net!hookup!yeshua.marcam.com!charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu!nic-nac.CSU.net!news.Cerritos.edu!news.Arizona.EDU!skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu!lippard
From: lip...@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu (James J. Lippard)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: News of the CSICOP conference?
Date: 11 Jul 1994 15:59 MST
Organization: University of Arizona
Lines: 110
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <11JUL199415590395@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu>
References: <forb0004.229.0036889A@gold.tc.umn.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

In article <forb0004.2...@gold.tc.umn.edu>, forb...@gold.tc.umn.edu (Eric J. Forbis) writes...
>I'm surprised that so little has been written about the recent conference on 
>this group. Please, any who attended, tell all!

I had intended to write up a summary of the Seattle conference similar
to the one I did for the 1992 Dallas conference (which may be found
in /pub/anson/Arizona_Skeptic on netcom.com, in vol. 6 somewhere, over
two issues).  Events conspired against me, however.  My flight did
not arrive until the conference had already begun on Thursday night,
and I was quite disappointed to miss Robert Baker's presentation in the
session on alien abductions.  I also brought only an old school notebook,
which I found contained only two blank sheets of paper in it.  Then I
planned to view Becky Long's videotapes of the sessions afterward, but
her camera's battery recharger broke.  So the following is all from memory.

I arrived at the conference on Thursday evening and was surprised to
find that the main conference room was completely full and an overflow
crowd was watching via closed-circuit television.  This was the largest
CSICOP conference to date.  I believe that for the alien abduction and
False Memory Syndrome-related sessions there were over 700 attendees.
(I seem to remember somebody telling me that, but we know how unreliable
human memory is.)
   I showed up in the middle of a presentation by Thomas Bullard, who was
very impressed by what he claimed were amazing consistencies between
the accounts of abductees.  He argued against the claim (made by Baker?)
that the motifs in abduction stories can be traced to "Close Encounters
of the Third Kind" by pointing out the same motifs in earlier abduction
claims.  (Yeah, but what about earlier appearances of "Grey"-like aliens in
other science fiction?)
   Next, John Mack spoke about why he was speaking at a CSICOP conference
and discussed the "intense polarization in ufology" between skeptics and
believers.  He said that he was a skeptic about UFO abductions and that
he considers it to be an unsolved mystery.  At times he sounded like
John Keel or Jacques Vallee--suggesting that aliens are interdimensional
creatures that can't be reduced to any known categories of human thought.
Like Bullard, he appealed to the consistency between testimonies.
I wrote down a series of questions he had for CSICOP and skeptics:

   1. Why so much vehemence in these attacks? [on him, on abduction claims]
   2. Why so much certainty?
   3. Why do we attack the experiencers themselves?
   4. Why do you attack writers of your own commissioned reports who
      don't come up with the conclusions you want?

I have no idea what the last question is supposed to be referring to,
since CSICOP does not commission research.  It sounds like a question
more appropriately addressed to MUFON regarding its treatment of
investigators of the Gulf Breeze UFO sightings.

   Since Nicholas Spanos died tragically in an airplane crash just a
week or so before the conference, at the last minute clinical psychologist
William Cone from Newport Beach, Calif. was brought in.  (He was already
a conference attendee.)  He began by saying that he didn't bring any
slides, but if the whole audience would just look at the screen, research
shows that about 2% of us would see things on it anyway.  Cone said that
he has worked with a few dozen abductees, including some in locked wards
of mental institutions.  He argued that abduction research that he has seen
is very badly done, with the researchers imposing their views on their
subjects.  He offered a number of possible answers to the question "Why
would anyone make up stories like this?":  (1) for the money (he gave
a specific example from his own experience), (2) for notoriety and
attention (he said that he's had abductees tell him they had never told anyone
about their experience before, and then show up on a tabloid TV show a
week later), (3) for identity with a group of people.
   He seemed to rebut most of the claims made by Bullard and Mack about
abductees.

   Also added to the program was abductee and hypnotherapist Sharon
Phillip (?), who was brought in by Mack.  She described her own
UFO sighting/abduction and promoted the usefulness of hypnotherapy.

   Also present was Donna Bassett, who passed herself off as an abductee
in Mack's group and then went public in the _Time_ magazine article
about Mack.  She stated that, just as women have been doing for
centuries, she faked it.  She had very strong words of criticism for
Mack's methodology and claimed that his clients are telling Mack what
he wants to hear, but say other things behind his back.  She accused him
of not getting informed consent from his clients about what they are
getting into.

   Mack replied by saying that he could not discuss her case because
of confidentiality, but that he was not convinced that she *wasn't*
really an abductee.  (He implied that he had reasons for thinking
this that he was not at liberty to discuss.)  He flat out denied
parts of her story, such as the part about his breaking her bed
while sitting on it from his enthusiastic reaction to her story about
being on a UFO with JFK and Kruschev.  He also suggested that Phil
Klass had put her up to her hoax, since her husband had worked with
Klass at _Aviation Week_.  This prompted the biggest outburst of
anger that I witnessed at the conference, from Klass, who stated that
he had not seen the Bassetts for many years and heard about the hoax
in the media like everybody else.  He subsequently contacted them,
and was responsible for Donna Bassett's being invited to the CSICOP
conference.

   There followed a series of audience questions and answers, including
several which expressed concern about Bassett being brought into the
conference without Mack's knowledge.  Some of these concerned audience
members changed their minds when told that Mack was already well aware
of the specifics of Donna Bassett's charges as a result of the _Time_
story.

Well, that was Thursday, June 23.  I'll comment further later about
the two Friday sessions and Carl Sagan's keynote address,
the three Saturday sessions and the luncheon talk about CSICOP and
the Law, and the Sunday session--or perhaps others can jump in.

Jim Lippard               _Skeptic_ magazine:
lip...@ccit.arizona.edu  ftp://ftp.rtd.com/pub/zines/skeptic/
Tucson, Arizona           http://www.rtd.com/~lippard/skeptics-society.html

Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Path: bga.com!news.sprintlink.net!hookup!yeshua.marcam.com!MathWorks.Com!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!usc!nic-nac.CSU.net!charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu!csusac!csus.edu!netcom.com!sheaffer
From: shea...@netcom.com (Robert Sheaffer)
Subject: Re: News of the CSICOP conference?
Message-ID: <sheafferCsy5EI.n1t@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <forb0004.229.0036889A@gold.tc.umn.edu> <11JUL199415590395@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu> <Jul13.044226.32392@acs.ucalgary.ca>
Date: Thu, 14 Jul 1994 20:11:05 GMT
Lines: 31

>In article <11JUL199...@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu>,
>James J. Lippard <lip...@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu> wrote:
>>   I showed up in the middle of a presentation by Thomas Bullard, who was
>>very impressed by what he claimed were amazing consistencies between
>>the accounts of abductees.  He argued against the claim (made by Baker?)
>>that the motifs in abduction stories can be traced to "Close Encounters
>>of the Third Kind" by pointing out the same motifs in earlier abduction
>>claims.  (Yeah, but what about earlier appearances of "Grey"-like aliens in
>>other science fiction?)

I was going to comment about this at the conference, were it not such a
mob scene that getting to a microphone became nearly impossible:

Bullard was right to object to Baker's statement that 'all these grey
aliens come from the 1977 movie CEIIIK'. (Bullard went on to cite some
pre-1977 examples).

However, Marty Kottmeyer makes a pretty good case tracing the origin of the
_genre_ to Barney Hill who in March 1964 (date from memory: beware FMS)
sketched an alien that had supposedly abducted him. This drawing was
subsequently widely published. Marty found out, however, that an episode
of _The Twilight Zone_ had aired with a nearly-identical alien, just
A FEW DAYS before Barney made his sketch. (The individual sessions with
Dr. Benjamin Simon were all carefully dated and transcribed, and fan
books tell when each _Twilight Zone_ episode first aired.)

-- 
    
        Robert Sheaffer - Scepticus Maximus - shea...@netcom.com
  
 Past Chairman, The Bay Area Skeptics - for whom I speak only when authorized!


        "As women and as lawyers, we must never again shy from raising our
         voices against sexual harrassment. All women who care about
         equality of opportunity - about integrity and morality in the
         workplace - are in Professor Anita Hill's debt."

                     -- Hillary Rodham Clinton, 8/9/92, at an American Bar 
                        Association luncheon honoring Anita Hill

        "I want to make it very clear that this middle class tax cut, in 
         my view, is central to any attempt we are going to make to have 
         a short term economic strategy and a long term fairness         
         strategy, which is part of getting this country going again."   

                     -- candidate Bill Clinton, ABC News Primary Debate,
                        Manchester, New Hampshire, 1/19/92                        

Saturday, March 09, 2013

Isaac Funk and the Widow's Mite

One of the more interesting and better documented cases of surprisingly accurate information from a spirit medium that is described in Deborah Blum's fascinating book, Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death (2006, Penguin Books), is the case of Isaac Funk and the Widow's Mite (pp. 260-262).

Funk, of Funk & Wagnall's Dictionary, had been visiting a medium in Brooklyn, New York in February 1903.  About his third visit, he subsequently described the following (in Isaac K. Funk, The Widow's Mite and Other Psychic Phenomena (1904, Funk & Wagnalls), pp. 159-160, now in the public domain due to copyright expiration):
About eleven o'clock the control named "George," in his usual strong masculine voice, abruptly asked: "Has anyone here got anything that belonged to Mr. Beecher?" There was no reply. On his emphatic repetition of the question, I replied, being the only one present, as I felt sure, who had ever had any immediate acquaintance with Mr. Beecher: "I have in my pocket a letter from Rev. Dr. Hillis, Mr. Beecher's successor.  Is that what you mean?" 
The answer was: "No; I am told by a spirit present, John Rakestraw, that Mr. Beecher, who is not present, is concerned about an ancient coin, 'The Widow's Mite.' This coin is out of its place, and should be returned. It has long been away, and Mr. Beecher wishes it returned, and he looks to you, doctor, to return it." 
I was considerably surprised, and asked: "What do you mean by saying that he looks to me to return it? I have no coin of Mr. Beecher's!" 
"I don't know anything about it except that I am told that this coin is out of place, and has been for a number of years, and that Mr. Beecher says you can find it and return it."
I remembered then that when we were making "The Standard Dictionary," some nine years before, I had borrowed from a gentleman in Brooklyn--a close friend of Mr. Beecher's, who died several years ago--a valuable ancient coin known as "The Widow's Mite."  He told me that this coin was worth hundreds of dollars, and, under promise that I would see that it was returned to the collection where it belonged, he would loan it to me. ... 
I said to the control, "The only 'Widow's Mite' that has ever been in my charge was one that I borrowed some years ago from a gentleman in Brooklyn; this I promptly returned"; to which the control replied: 
"This one has not been returned." And then, after a moment's silence, he said: "Do you know whether there is a large iron safe in Plymouth Church?" 
I answered: "I do not." 
He said: "I am impressed that this coin is in a large iron safe, that it has been lost sight of; it is in a drawer in this safe under a lot of papers, and that you can find it, and Mr. Beecher wishes you to find it." 
I said: "Do you mean that this safe is in Plymouth Church?" 
He said: "I don't know where it is. I am simply impressed that it is in a large iron safe in a drawer under a lot of papers, and has been lost sight of for years, and that you can find it, and Mr. Beecher wishes you to find it. That is all that I can tell you."
Funk goes on to inquire of his business manager, who insists that it was returned, and of Mr. Wagnalls and Wheeler, who knew nothing of the coin, but Wheeler, a skeptic, suggests that it's a good test.  Funk asks a cashier, who remembers the coin, but also says that it had been returned, to investigate.  After twenty minutes, the cashier returns with an envelope containing two "Widow's Mites," which was located in one of two safes (the large iron one), in a drawer under papers.

The two coins are a smaller light-colored one and a larger black one, and Funk recalls that the smaller one was used for the illustration in the dictionary and that it was the genuine article, while the other was a fake.  He returns to the medium, and asks which coin is the right one.  Contrary to his belief, the medium (as "George") says that it is the black one, and that the friend of Mr. Beecher's to whom it belongs is a man associated with a large ladies' school in Brooklyn Heights.  Funk recalls that it was borrowed from Prof. Charles E. West, head of a ladies' school in Brooklyn Heights.

Funk sends both coins to the Philadelphia Mint for examination, and they determine that the medium is correct, the black one is the correct one, and the wrong one was used for the illustration in the dictionary.

Funk notes that the preface of the dictionary notes, regarding the illustrations, contains the description "The Widow's Mite (which was engraved from an excellent original coin in the possession of Prof. Charles E. West of Brooklyn, N.Y.)."

Funk's book provides a number of affidavits supporting the recounting of events, including that only two people present with the medium knew of Funk's connection to the coin (Funk and Irving Roney, the latter of whom provided an affidavit), that no one knew that the coin had not been returned, and that the cashier staff had no knowledge of the coin which was in the safe in their office.

The coin was returned to West's son, who also provides an affidavit stating that he was unaware that the coin had not been returned and assumed that it had been.  Funk says he dined repeatedly with the elder West prior to his death, and the coin was never brought up.

Funk proceeds to list a series of facts about the case and some possible explanations (pp. 168ff), and finds difficulties with fraud, coincidence, telepathy and clairvoyance, and spirit communications as explanations, though he appears to favor the last of these.

Funk presented the case to a number of eminent scientists of the day, including William James, Alfred Russell Wallace, and William Crookes, of which those listed were all associated with the SPR or ASPR and each suggested spirits as a possible explanation.  Many of the other scientists and philosophers, however, suggested fraud or deception (see table in Funk's book, pp. 177-178).

As presented in Blum's book, this case seems more impressive than it does with all of the details in Funk's account.  What I find suspicious are that the medium is located in the same city as the person from whom the coin was borrowed, that the connection between the owner of the coin and the illustration was published in Funk's dictionary (omitted by Blum), and that although the son had forgotten about the coin being loaned out, he thought "it altogether likely that his father told at the time other members of his family, and possibly some persons outside the family" (Funk, p. 174).  All that it would take for the fraud hypothesis would be that the medium had heard, second-hand, about the never-returned coin, and speculated that it had been forgotten and was kept in a safe (and perhaps offered a guess about which coin was genuine; that information has no clear source from the details recounted).  Funk infers that because West never brought up the coin that he had forgotten about it, but that is an assumption on his part--perhaps West made periodic complaints about it not having been returned, but didn't mention it to his son.  Funk suggests, based on class distinctions, that no one in the medium circle other than himself would have known that West even existed, which seems a highly questionable assumption.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Capitalist vs. socialist bombs

While reading Ross Anderson's massive tome, Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Systems (second edition), I came across this paragraph in section 19.7 on "Directed Energy Weapons" (p. 584):
Western concern about EMP grew after the Soviet Union started a research program on non-nuclear EMP weapons in the mid-80s.  At the time, the United States was deploying 'neutron bombs' in Europe--enhanced radiation weapons that could kill people without demolishing buildings.  The Soviets portrayed this as a 'capitalist bomb' which would destroy people while leaving property intact, and responded by threatening a 'socialist bomb' to destroy property (in the form of electronics) while leaving the surrounding people intact.
This reminded me of a science fiction story I read in Omni magazine at about the time in question, which Google reveals was "Returning Home" by Ian Watson in the December 1982 issue.  In the story, the Americans and the Soviets attacked each other, the Americans using neutron bombs which killed all of the Soviets, and the Soviets using some kind of bomb which destroyed essentially everything except the people.  The ending twist was that the surviving Americans ended up migrating to the Soviet Union and adopting the Soviet culture.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Skeptics and Bayesian epistemology

A few prominent skeptics have been arguing that science and medicine should rely upon Bayesian epistemology.  Massimo Pigliucci, in his book Nonsense on Stilts, on the Rationally Speaking podcast, and in his column in the Skeptical Inquirer, has suggested that scientists should best proceed with a Bayesian approach to updating their beliefs.  Steven Novella and Kimball Atwood at the Science-Based Medicine blog (and at the Science-Based Medicine workshops at The Amazing Meeting) have similarly argued that what distinguishes Science-Based Medicine from Evidence-Based Medicine is the use of a Bayesian approach in accounting for the prior plausibility of theories is superior to simply relying upon the outcomes of randomized controlled trials to determine what's a reasonable medical treatment.  And, in the atheist community, Richard Carrier has argued for a Bayesian approach to history, and in particular for assessing claims of Christianity (though in the linked-to case, this turned out to be problematic and error-ridden).

It's worth observing that Bayesian epistemology has some serious unresolved problems, including among them the problem of prior probabilities and the problem of considering new evidence to have a probability of 1 [in simple conditionalization].  The former problem is that the prior assessment of the probability of a hypothesis plays a huge factor in the outcome of whether a hypothesis is accepted, and whether that prior probability is based on subjective probability, "gut feel," old evidence, or arbitrarily selected to be 0.5 can produce different outcomes and doesn't necessarily lead to concurrence even over a large amount of agreement on evidence. So, for example, Stephen Unwin has argued using Bayes' theorem for the existence of God (starting with a prior probability of 0.5), and there was a lengthy debate between William Jefferys and York Dobyns in the Journal of Scientific Exploration about what the Bayesian approach yields regarding the reality of psi which didn't yield agreement. The latter problem, of new evidence, is that a Bayesian approach considers new evidence to have a probability of 1, but evidence can itself be uncertain.

And there are other problems as well--a Bayesian approach to epistemology seems to give special privilege to classical logic, not properly account for old evidence [(or its reduction in probability due to new evidence)] or the introduction of new theories, and not be a proper standard for judgment of rational belief change of human beings for the same reason on-the-spot act utilitarian calculations aren't a proper standard for human moral decision making--it's not a method that is practically psychologically realizable.

The Bayesian approach has certainly been historically useful, as Desiree Schell's interview with Sharon Bertsch McGrane, author of The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes’ Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy, demonstrates.  But before concluding that Bayesianism is the objective rational way for individuals or groups to determine what's true, it's worth taking a look at the problems philosophers have pointed out for making it the central thesis of epistemology.  (Also see John L. Pollock and Joseph Cruz, Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, 2nd edition, Rowman & Littlefield, 1999, which includes a critique of Bayesian epistemology.)

UPDATE (August 6, 2013): Just came across this paper by Brandon Fitelson (PDF) defending Bayesian epistemology against some of Pollock's critiques (in Pollock's Nomic Probability book, which I've read, and in his later Thinking About Acting, which I've not read).  A critique of how Bayesianism (and not really Bayesian epistemology in the sense defended by Fitelson) is being used by skeptics is here.

Saturday, September 03, 2011

The origins of Screaming Trees?

Here's a famous photograph of pulp fiction author and Scientology creator L. Ron Hubbard holding a tomato plant connected to an E-Meter.  Hubbard claimed in 1968 that tomatoes would "scream when sliced," as detected by the E-Meter. [UPDATE: The photo appeared in "30 Dumb Inventions" on Life magazine's website, attributed to the Evening Standard of January 1, 1968, but the claims and the photo appear to be from 1959, see below.]

Hubbard was likely inspired by Cleve Backster, who had made similar claims based on connecting plants to a polygraph starting in 1966.  Backster published his claims in the Journal of Parapsychology in 1968, and his work was subsequently popularized in the 1973 book, The Secret Life of Plants.

I wonder, however, whether the inspiration for both of these crackpots came from a piece of fiction in the September 17, 1949 issue of The New Yorker--Roald Dahl's "The Sound Machine," which is reprinted in numerous short story collections, including his volume Someone Like You (1973). In this tale, a man named Klausner, obsessed with sounds beyond the ability of human beings to hear, builds a machine to convert higher pitches into human-audible sounds.  He discovers, to his horror, that plants and trees shriek with pain when cut.

Does anyone know of any documented references from Hubbard or Backster to Dahl?  Or is there another common ancestor I've missed?

My title includes a reference to the Seattle-area grunge band, Screaming Trees, whose Wikipedia entry doesn't comment on the origin of their name--but Dahl's story seems a likely inspiration there, too.

UPDATE (6 February 2013): It looks like the Hubbard photo pre-dates Backster, and was likely taken in 1959 or 1960!  It prompted a feature titled "PLANTS DO WORRY AND FEEL PAIN." in the December 18, 1959 Garden News.

UPDATE (10 February 2013): David Hambling's "The Secret Life of Plants" in the December 2012 issue of Fortean Times (p. 18) points out that Charles Darwin's 1880 The Power of Movement in Plants suggested that plants have something like a nervous system, and that Jagadish Chandra Bose published a 1907 paper on the electrophysiology of plants.  He puts Backster before Hubbard, making the same mistake of dating Hubbard's claims by the Life magazine photo caption.

Backster, by the way, was inspired by Bose's work.  He says that he started his work with plants on February 2, 1966, as reported in the introduction of his "Evidence of a Primary Perception in Plant Life," International Journal of Parapsychology, Vol. X, No. 4, Winter 1968, pp. 329-348.

UPDATE (21 October 2021): On a 1966 episode of the Joe Pyne Show, in discussion with Lewis Marvin, Pyne asserted that it has been scientifically proven that tomatoes scream when cut, likely referencing Backster.

UPDATE (5 December 2022): Not sure how I missed including the Jack Handy "Deep Thoughts" that goes: "If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason."



Thursday, September 01, 2011

Scott Atran on violent extremism and sacred values

Chris Mooney has a very interesting interview with anthropologist Scott Atran on the Point of Inquiry podcast, in which Atran argues that terrorism is not the product of top-down, radical religious extremist organizations recruiting the poor and ignorant, but of groups of educated (and often educated in secular institutions) individuals who become disaffected, isolated, and radicalized.  Much U.S. counterterrorism and "homeland security" activity assumes the former and thus is attacking the wrong problem.

He also argues that reason and rationalism are the wrong tools for attacking religion, defends a view of religion as a natural by-product of the sorts of minds we've evolved to have (very similar to Pascal Boyer's account, which I think is largely correct), and throws in a few digs at the new atheists for making claims about religion that are contrary to empirical evidence.

Some of the commenters at the Point of Inquiry/Center for Inquiry forums site seem to be under the misapprehension that Atran is a post-modernist.  I don't see it--he's not making the argument that reason doesn't work to find out things about the world, he's making the argument that the tools of science and reason are human constructions that work well at finding things out about the world, but not so much for persuading people of things, or as the basis for long-term institutions for the sort of creatures we are.  Atran shows up in the comments to elaborate on his positions and respond to criticism.

My compliments to Chris Mooney for having consistently high-quality, interesting guests who are not the same voices we always hear at skeptical conferences.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Obama conspiracy theories debunked

Yesterday I received an email that contained yet another argument that Obama's birth certificate (the PDF'd scan of the "long form" certificate) was a fake, based on erroneous claims about the name of Kenya in 1961 and the name of the hospital which were already debunked at Snopes.com four months ago.  But this prompted me to see if there were any more advocates of wild claims about the birth certificate, and I came across Douglas Vogt's alleged analysis of the birth certificate and, more importantly, a very well-done, detailed debunking of that analysis by Kevin Davidson (known on his blog as "Dr. Conspiracy"), who has done a great job of responding to numerous Obama conspiracy claims.

Check out his "The Debunker's Guide to Obama Conspiracy Theories."

Vogt, the author of the analysis which Dr. Conspiracy debunks, is also an example of "crank magnetism"--he is the author of Reality Revealed: The Theory of Multidimensional Reality, a 1978 book which looks like a classic work of crackpottery.  Vogt bills himself as a "geologist and science philosopher" who:
has funded and directed three expeditions to the Sinai desert where he was the first person since Baruch (Jeremiah’s grandson) to discover the real Mount Sinai. He discovered all the altars that Moses describes in the Torah. In addition he was the first person since Moses to see the real Abraham’s altar also located at Mount Sinai and not in Jerusalem. He has discovered the code systems used by Moses when writing the surface story of the Torah, which enabled him to decode the Torah and other earlier books of the Hebrew Scriptures.
His book features:
The first information theory of existence. explains many of the hardest phenomena in the Universe such as: the causes of the ice ages, polar reversals, mass extinctions, gravity, light, pyramid energy, kirlian photography, psychic phenomena, and more!
So in addition to a self-proclaimed expert on typography, conspiracy theorist, and "birther," Vogt is apparently a creationist, pseudo-archaeologist, Bible code advocate, and promoter of a wide variety of pseudoscience claims.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Skeptics and "backward masking"

Below these two videos is a post I made (perhaps to the Kate Bush fans' "love-hounds" mailing list, I don't recall) back in 1986 regarding a 1985 Christian "rock music seminar" about alleged Satanic backwards messages in rock music.  I was familiar with the claims of supposed "backwards masking" where the sounds of ordinary lyrics were interpreted to have different messages when reversed, as well as actual examples of recordings that were put into songs in reverse.  The former seemed to me to be examples of subjective validation, and I tested it myself by closing my eyes and covering my ears when the presenter gave their claims about what we were supposed to hear prior to playing the samples.  Subsequently, this became one of the first tests the Phoenix Skeptics conducted as a student group at Arizona State University in October 1985.  We invited the speaker to give his demonstrations before our group, but required him to play the samples first without explanation and have everyone write down what they heard.  The result was that on the first pass, those unfamiliar with the samples had a wide variety of responses; on a second pass, once the expectation was set, everybody heard what they were supposed to hear.

It's interesting that this demonstration, the key example of which was a sample from Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," made a comeback two decades later--being used by skeptics to show the power of suggestion and expectation, as these two videos from Simon Singh and Michael Shermer demonstrate.

Simon Singh, 2006:


Michael Shermer, 2006 TED Talk:


Date:  Wed, 5 Feb 86 15:35 MST
From: "James J. Lippard" 
Subject:  Christian Death/rock seminar
Reply-To:  Lippard@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA

Yes, I've heard of Christian Death, though I haven't heard much by them.  That
reminds me of an article I wrote in October for ASU's "Campus Weekly"
(alternative campus newspaper) about a rock seminar I went to, and here it is.
The article was never printed, as the newspaper folded.  (Note: There was
originally an additional paragraph about a fourth type of backwards
message--the kind that's at the end of the first side of "The Dreaming".)

      Druids were Satanists.
      Van Morrison reads Celtic literature.
      Therefore, Van Morrison's music is evil.

   I had hoped this kind of feeble guilt-by-association reasoning applied to
rock music by religious fanatics had died off.  No such luck.  The above was
typical of the reasoning presented at a seminar on rock music on October 21 by
Christian Life.  Not only is the first premise false, the conclusion is a non
sequitur.

   Things looked promising enough at first.  A quote from the Confucian
philosopher Mencius about how the multitudes "act without clear understanding"
was projected on the large screen in Neeb Hall before the presentation began.
When the show finally started, the speaker gave some facts about the size of
the music industry and its influence on society.

   For a while things were rational.  Since the seminar was focusing on the
seamy side of rock, it seemed reasonable to show slides of Lou Reed shooting
heroin on stage, Sid Vicious, Kiss, and so forth.  Still, the impression was
given that this was representative of the majority of rock music.  Obscure
groups such as Demon, Lucifer's Friend, and the Flesh Eaters say nothing about
rock in general.

   Apparently the writers of the seminar were aware of this, because it then
shifted to analyzing album covers of fairly popular groups.  But this analysis
was taken to a ridiculous extreme, pulling interpretations out of a hat.  If
an album cover had a cross on it, it was automatically blasphemous.  Any other
religious symbols on an album along with a cross were putting down
Christianity by calling it "just another religion."

Other symbols also drew criticism.  From the following Bible verse, Luke
10:18, it was concluded that lightning bolts are a demonic symbol:
  And He  said to them,  "I was watching  Satan fall from  heaven
     like lightning."

   Since all lightning bolts are evil, the lightning bolts in the logos of
Kiss and AC/DC show that they are in league with the devil.  Interestingly, on
the backs of many electrical appliances is a symbol which serves as a warning
of potential shock hazard--a yellow triangle containing a lightning bolt
exactly like the one in AC/DC's logo.  Surely this is a more obvious source
than the Bible for AC/DC's lightning bolt, given the electrical symbolism in
their name and many of their album titles.

   As the Jesuits knew, if you teach a child your ways early, he will likely
follow them for the rest of his life.  But to conclude from this that Led
Zeppelin is trying to influence children because there are children on the
cover of their _Houses of the Holy_ album is absurd.

   In the interest of "fair play", quotes from several artists denying any
involvement with the occult were given.  But these were shrugged off,
including the disclaimer at the beginning of Michael Jackson's _Thriller_
video which says, in part, "this film in no way endorses belief in the
occult." Michael Jackson is a devout Seventh Day Adventist, so I seriously
doubt he had any more intent in promoting the occult through _Thriller_ than
the creators of Caspar the Friendly Ghost.

   Finally, the seminar got to its most entertaining subject: backwards
messages on rock albums.  There are several types of messages commonly
referred to as "backmasking," most of which were covered.  The first is a
message recorded normally, then placed on an album in reverse.  The example
given was from ELO's Face the Music album, which says "The music is
reversible, but time is not.  Turn back, turn back..." There is little doubt
about the content of such messages.

   The second type of backwards message is where words are sung backwards,
phonetically.  On Black Oak Arkansas' live album _Raunch and Roll_, there is
no question about what they are trying to do when the singer shouts "Natas!"
The conference speaker seemed to imply that this message was unintentional,
however, when he gave an example of a song by Christian Death.  The words are
sung backwards (as seen on the lyrics sheet), but pronounced in reverse
letter-by-letter rather than phonetically.  He seemed surprised that this
resulted in nonsense when reversed.

   The third type of backwards message is where a perfectly ordinary record
album is played in reverse to produce gibberish and creative imaginations
supply the translations for supposed messages.  According to the speaker, this
must occur in one of three ways.  Either they are intentional, accidental, or
spiritual.  They can't be intentional, because creating such a message is
unimaginably complex.  They can't be accidental, otherwise we would hear
messages saying such things as "God is love" or "the elephant is on the back
burner" as often as we hear messages about Satan.  Therefore, the messages
must be spiritual (i.e., Satan caused them to occur).

   This completely ignores what has already been well-established as the
source of these messages.  Someone person plays his records backwards,
listening for evil messages, and hears something that sounds like the word
"Satan".  He then tells his friends to listen for the message, and plays it
for them.  Since they have been told what to hear, their mind fills in the
difference between the noises on the album and the alleged message.

   This explanation was mentioned, but was dismissed out of hand because, the
speaker claimed, the backwards messages are as clear as most rock lyrics are
forwards.  He played the first message, in Queen's "Another One Bites the
Dust", without telling the audience what to hear.  I heard no message, but he
told us that we clearly heard "start to smoke marijuana".  When the tape was
played again, I could hear it.

   The rest of the messages of this type played at the seminar were
accompanied by text on the movie screen telling the audience what to listen
for.  I closed my eyes to ignore the hints, and was unable to hear anything
but gibberish.  The same method was used and the same results obtained by
several other audience members I questioned after the presentation.

   In addition, an anti-rock program aired a few years ago on the Trinity
Broadcasting Network stated that there were several messages on Led Zeppelin's
"Stairway to Heaven", including "here's to my sweet Satan" and "there is power
in Satan".  The rock conference, on the other hand, combined these two into
one large message which began "my sweet Satan" and ended "whose power is in
Satan".  Having heard the TBN version first, those were what I heard when they
were played at the conference.  If the words "there is" can be mistaken for
"whose", isn't it possible that the same is true for the rest of these
messages?

   Even the transcriber of the backwards messages had problems coming up with
words to fit the message.  The slide for Rush's live version of "Anthem"
played backwards read:
  Oh, Satan, you--you are the one who is shining, walls of Satan,
     walls of (sacrifice?)  I know.

   As any ventriloquist knows, many sounds can be mistaken for many other
sounds.  An m for an n, a t for a d, a c, a z, or a th for an s.  Given that
the most frequent letters in the English language are ETAOINSHRDLU, it is no
surprise that something sounding like "Satan" is quite common.

   With enough effort, evil symbolism and backwards messages can be found
anywhere.  Try visiting a record store and finding satanic symbols on
Christian album covers, or listening to some Christian albums backwards.  I'm
sure much can be found with little difficulty.

   It is true that most rock is not Christian.  It is even true that much of
it conflicts with the Christian faith in some way.  But to bury these points
in a mire of fuzzy logic and fanaticism by engaging in a witch hunt is
counter-productive.  Before the conference, I commented to a friend that if
"Stairway to Heaven" was played backwards, the presenters would have destroyed
any credibility they had.  That, unfortunately, was the case.


    Jim (Lippard at MIT-MULTICS.ARPA)

Additional information:

ReligiousTolerance.org has a good overview with scientific references on the subject.