Help Talk Origins bid for "Expelled"?

The assets of Premise Media, including rights to "Expelled," are going up for auction.  The Talk Origins Foundation plans to bid for the film, which includes production materials.  Their stated plan seems to be just to determine what interesting information might be in the production materials or raw footage and make that known, not, as I've suggested, make an "MST3K"-style version, or a version that points out and corrects the errors.

UPDATE (June 28, 2011): The winning bid for "Expelled" was $201,000.  My guess is that the film would only be worth that much to somebody who plans to promote it as-is without any significant re-editing, and thinks they can extract at least that much value out of it--perhaps via charitable deduction by giving it to a creationist organization.  There was a bidding war at the end between two bidders that drove the price up this morning from $43,000 (last night's high bid) to $201,000, which caused the bid to be extended 10 minutes beyond it's scheduled end time in one or two minute extension increments.  It was at $122,000 at the original auction end time, so that last $79,000 increase occurred in the last 10 minutes.

Expelled up for auction

Premise Media Holdings LP is in bankruptcy, and its assets are going up for auction online between June 23 and 28.  Those assets include the film "Expelled."  Perhaps a few of us should get together and buy it, and reissue it in a "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" format?

UPDATE:  As Damian Howard and Bob Vogel pointed out on Facebook, this adds financial bankruptcy to the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the film.

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 Voyage That Shook the World

I finally had a chance today to watch the Creation Ministries International-funded film, "The Voyage That Shook the World." It's a 52-minute, professionally produced docu-drama. The cinematography is excellent, and there are high-quality graphics and effects. There's not a whole lot of acting to judge--most of it appears for visual effect during narration or interview voice-overs--but I saw nothing to criticize in that regard.

The documentary content itself starts off reasonably, with the only initial hint that this might not be a mainstream production being the emphasis put on Darwin "making up stories" as a child. The first experts to appear are professional historians. Apart from H.M.S. Beagle having the wrong number of masts (two instead of three), I didn't notice any obvious mistakes in the history, though I'm no expert.

Where it first veers into creationist territory is when the narration starts talking about Charles Lyell's influence on Darwin, with regard to uniformitarianism and "deep time," and it makes an odd assertion that the great age of the earth was a settled question in Darwin's time, unlike today. That's an odd assertion since the age of the earth is overwhelmingly confirmed by science today, and there is no scientific debate about the earth being about 4.5 billion years old. (Particularly odd was that this remark came from historian Peter Bowler, I believe, which makes me wonder about the original context of his remark.)

Several creationists and intelligent design advocates appear, though they are not identified as such. A CMI web page about the film does show who's who, but this is perhaps the most deceptive aspect of the film--using on-screen credential identification that puts recognized experts with well-established reputations on a par with relative unknowns without established reputations. For example, creationist Rob Carter is identified on-screen by where he earned his Ph.D. and as "marine biologist and geneticist," but he has no academic appointment, a scant publication record, and works for CMI. Stuart Burgess is identified as "Design & Nature, Bristol University" but he's a mechanical engineering professor at Bristol University. (UPDATE: Note that Burgess' title is, in fact, Professor of Design and Nature.) Emil Silvestru is identified by his Ph.D. and as a "geologist and speleologist," but he works full-time for CMI. Cornelius Hunter of the Discovery Institute is identified by his Ph.D. and as "molecular biophysicist and author" when he is an adjunct professor of biophysics at Biola University. That institution was originally known as the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, founded in 1908 by Lyman Stewart of Standard Oil, the guy who funded the publication and distribution of The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, from which fundamentalism gets its name. I consider this to be a deceptive equation of expertise, for which the film deserves criticism. (I gave the same criticism to "The Incredible Discovery of Noah's Ark," which used the same technique to equate creationists with little or no reputation with recognized experts.)

Creationist Emil Silvestru argues for a young earth and for the creation of geological features by catastrophic flood, though I noticed he mentioned "a flood" and not "the flood" at first, and while he mentioned the Channeled Scablands of eastern Washington as having been cut rapidly by catastrophic forces (true), he did not make the common grossly mistaken creationist assertion that this is how the Grand Canyon was formed. Silvestru also makes a polystrate tree fossil argument for rapid deposition (which may well be the case in the particular instance, but is not generally the explanation for polystrate tree fossils).

The creationism starts out fairly subtly in the film, with the remarks about the age of the earth, and at one points sets up a novel opposition between two views:

Science	Religion
Gradual change Fixity of species Old earth	Rapid catastrophic change Mutability of species Young earth

The film argues that Darwin was misled by his reliance on Lyell's worldview to initially miss the evidence for natural selection in the Galapagos islands, when he didn't bother labeling the finches he collected, and the film clearly asserts that species change can occur, even across genera (between which hybridization may also be possible), though it avoids addressing the potential implications for humans and other primates. The film suggests that the religious view is that the wide diversity and geographic dispersal of living things emerged in the last few thousand years since the flood of Noah, which entails a rapidity of evolution that evolutionary scientists would reject as implausible. I believe the film's offered cases of rapid morphological changes in finch beak sizes are correct, along with its cases of hybridization that include hybrids between land and marine iguanas in the Galapagos. CMI creationist Robert Carter asserts that this is evidence of a young age of the Galapagos islands, because otherwise all the species would have mixed rather than being distinct, rather than concluding, for example, that some of these species are reproductively isolated and others aren't. I almost had the impression that I was witnessing the evolution of a new form of creationism-as-hyperevolution, that required special creation only because a young earth didn't allow enough time to generate the diversity of current life on earth.

But then more standard creationism begins to emerge, with arguments that there are limits (or "apparent limits") to biological change, "as any pigeon breeder knows," and that it is impossible for evolution to generate new information. Finnish creationist biochemist Matti Leisola asserts that random mutation cannot generate new information or novel structures, and that introducing randomness "causes information to disappear" and we only see new information arise from intelligent sources. He doesn't explain what notion of information he's using, but randomness does generate new information, and new information has been observed to appear in the lab, as well as in computer simulations using genetic algorithms. Leisola goes on to say that genetic engineering originally promised the ability to make arbitrary changes to organisms, but now promises much less--we can create bacteria that produce insulin, but we can't change bacteria into anything but bacteria. I wonder what Leisola would think of this?

The film is right that a role for catastrophes has been found in geology (but not to the exclusion of mostly uniformitarian processes over very long periods of time, such as evidenced in the Grand Canyon), and for bursts of rapid biological change, as well as that biology has been found to be more complex than originally suspected. However, these discoveries, made by evolutionary scientists, have not generated support for the creationist worldview, which has been remarkable for its lack of scientific fruitfulness. This points out another failing of the film, which is its complete omission of the overwhelming evidence in support of the common ancestry of all life on earth, the evidence of the great age of the earth, and the evidence of human evolution.

At one point, the film touches on Darwin's racism, and suggests that this is because of his evolutionary views, as opposed to religion which teaches the common origins of all human beings from Adam and Eve. But both views teach common ancestry of all human beings, and there was no scarcity of racist religious believers in the mid-19th century. The Bible offers no word of condemnation of slavery and both explicitly and implicitly elevates some people over others, with the Hebrews as the "chosen people" and descriptions of God ordering genocide and the taking of slaves. The Southern Baptist Convention in the U.S. owes its existence to a split with the Northern Baptists over the issue of slavery--the Southern Baptists were for it. The dichotomy of evolution-supporting racists vs. religious creationist non-racists is a false one.

Near the end of the film, the film points out that in Darwin's time, science was just beginning to emerge from philosophy, and argues that Darwin's project was philosophical and anti-religious as much as it was scientific. Philosopher Alvin Plantinga argues onscreen that Bertrand Russell's idea that we should only believe what is established by scientific evidence is a self-undermining thesis, since it is not a scientific statement, but a piece of philosophy or even theology. I think Plantinga is probably right that we can ultimately never avoid the need for philosophical argument, but he probably underestimates the degree to which philosophy can be "naturalized" and scientific evidence brought to bear on historically philosophical problems.

The conclusion of the film states that there are opposing views of evolution and creation, and that "some suggest that they can coexist, but Darwin himself resisted this position." (I guess this is one case where the filmmakers want you to believe Darwin, in his opposition to accomodationism between evolution and religion.) The final statement of the film is that questions about how we came to be here and why we are here refuse to go away.

In all, the film is somewhat better than I expected it would be, and the film itself could be described as trying to hide its own creationism, probably in hopes of working like a Trojan horse. I hope that its effect will be to encourage the children of creationists to become interested in scientific questions, as it does depict scientific research and discovery in a largely positive light. If it does, then some of them will come to discover for themselves the facts about evolution and creationism, perhaps with the assistance of online sites like the TalkOrigins archive.

UPDATE (August 2, 2009): I've received emails from Carl Wieland of CMI and from Steve Murray, the director of the film, offering a bit of additional explanation and rebuttal. First, the remark from Peter Bowler about dispute over the age of the earth was apparently regarding the fact that there was no young-earth creationist movement at the time of Darwin like there is today, and no indication that Bowler intended to suggest that there is a scientific dispute over the age of the earth today--as commenter Physicalist suspected. Second, Steve Murray pointed out that he was aware that the ship used didn't have the same number of masts as the Beagle, but they went with what they could find close to the size of the Beagle in Tasmania, and generally tried to hide the differences in how they shot the film. Third, both disclaimed any attempt to be deceptive in choice of on-screen credentials. Finally, Steve Murray chose the on-screen credit for Cornelius Hunter based on the fact that he learned of his work and selected him to be in the film based on his books.

UPDATE (November 30, 2010): A different version of the above review, co-authored with John Lynch, will appear in vol. 30 of Reports of the National Center for Science Education and is on their website.

UPDATE (June 2, 2011): The film's claim about Darwin taking the idea of natural selection from Edward Blyth is rather decisively and completely refuted by Joel S. Schwartz, "Charles Darwin's Debt to Malthus and Edward Blyth," Journal of the History of Biology vol. 7, no. 2, Autumn 1974, pp. 301-318, online at http://www.jstor.org/stable/4330617.

Deception in "The Great Global Warming Swindle"

Here's a nice short YouTube video documenting several cases of deception in the documentary "The Great Global Warming Swindle." And on the same subject, I'm rather fond of an exchange between Martin Durkin, the producer of that film, and geneticist Armand Leroi, journalist Ben Goldacre, and science writer Simon Singh, which prompted Durkin to respond, "you're a big daft cock" after Leroi pointed out that the film had used completely erroneous data that was possibly even faked.



(Via the Deltoid blog.)

Science-based medicine conference, part 5: chronic lyme disease

This is part five of my summary of the Science-Based Medicine conference at TAM7, which will be followed by a summary of TAM7 itself. Part one, Dr. Steven Novella's introduction, is here. Part two, Dr. David Gorski on cancer quackery, is here. Part three, Dr. Harriet Hall on chiropractic, is here. Part four, Dr. Kimball Atwood on evidence-based medicine and homeopathy, is here.

The fifth session speaker was Dr. Mark Crislip, infectious disease specialist and host of the Quackcast podcast, on "Lyme from the IDSA to the ILADS to the ABA."

Like several of the other speakers, Dr. Crislip began with a disclosure of potential conflicts of interest, saying that he had "barely any" and "[hasn't] spoken to a drug rep in 25 years."

He started his talk with a description of Lyme disease. It's caused by a spirochete related to syphilis, that comes in three varieties, European, Asian, and North American. The latter is Borellia burgdorferi, a nasty little organism that lives in ticks, primarily deer ticks. It's transmitted via a tick bite, requiring 36 hours of attachment for transmission, and has grown in prevalence in the northeastern United States with the growth of the deer population. In the northeastern U.S., most ticks have Lyme, while in the northwestern U.S., only 1.3% of ticks have Lyme, because those ticks feed on the blood of a fence-sitting lizard that contains something that kills the spirochetes. (Here, Dr. Crislip joked that despite the presence of numerous fence-sitting lizards in Washington, D.C., the effect doesn't work there.)

North American Lyme disease goes through three stages:

1. skin rash, arthritis
2. spreads to whole body, causes meningitis
3. results in encephalomyelitis and neurological symptoms

There are drugs that work well to treat the disease at all three stages.

However, there are "also people who think they have Lyme but don't," or "post-Lyme disease."

Two Camps
Dr. Crislip identified two groups that have radically different views about Lyme disease:

1. The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).
2. The International Lme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS)

The latter says that Lyme is common, hard to diagnose, and "requires infinite antibiotic treatment." The former says nearly the opposite.

The New England Journal of Medicine published a critical appraisal of "chronic Lyme disease" which put the sufferers into four categories:

1. Symptoms of unknown cause, no evidence of B. bergdorferi.
2. Well-defined illness unrelated to B. Bergdorferi (e.g., ringworm).
3. No history of Lyme disease, but blood contains B. Bergdorferi antibodies.
4. Post-Lyme disease syndrome, chronic illness.

The study performed controlled trials of those in category four, and concluded that there is no evidence of B. Bergdorferi persisting beyond treatment, the name "chronic Lyme disease" is a misnomer, and there is no justification for continued antibiotic treatment of such persons.

Dr. Crislip then stated that the two camps present a false dichotomy, but that the truth is closer to the IDSA position. He asked, "is there asymptomatic Lyme?", and answered "yes." 7% of test subjects have asymptomatic seroconversion (show B. Bergdorferi antibodies) in vaccine trial placebo groups. He asked, "can [Lyme be] persistent due to antibiotic resistance?", and answered that there is no good data of that.

He pointed out that Borellia can exist in three forms, the spirochete, a cyst, and an L-shaped form with no cell wall. The cysts appear when the organism is stressed, but isn't found in humans (and is supported in fewer than 25 references in PubMed) and the L-shaped form can be made in the lab but doesn't survive in humans.

Diagnostic Testing
Dr. Crislip said that the standard test for Lyme disease is a two-step process, an ELISA test confirmed with a Western Blot (the same process used for testing for HIV). With classic Lyme disease, this is a very reliable method. It can also be tested with PCR and with antigen assays, and "there is genotypic variation in Lyme that could potentially make the two-step test less sensitive."

There are also labs which perform their own unvalidated tests, such as a lab in Texas that he says "almost always yield[s] positive results." These labs with unvalidated diagnostic tests have caused the CDC and FDA to issue warnings about non-valid Lyme tests.

Dr. Crislip posted a list of alleged symptoms of chronic Lyme disease, which was a very long list including "unexplained hair loss" and "feeling as if you are losing your mind," along with another list of alleged symptoms of chronic candida, and noted that they were quite similar. Using such lists, virtually any symptom is an indicator of these alleged chronic conditions.

The ILADS guidelines go even further, and say such things as:

• The labs are all unreliable, so treat for Lyme even if the test is negative.
• The primary symptom is that the patient thinks they have the condition.
• Physical findings are nonspecific and often normal.
• If the Western blot result is ambiguous, treat it as positive (the opposite of what you do with HIV).
• A comparison to tuberculosis and leprosy provides justification for long-term antibiotic treatment (even though those diseases are biologically dissimilar to Lyme).

In short, the ILADS guidelines provide a nonfalsifiable definition of Lyme disease.

The best trials in the NEJM treated Lyme disease patients with a month of cipro (and?) doxycycline. The "chronic Lyme disease" advocates say that the immune system is damaged with antibiotic use, and then Lyme disease increases as the immune response declines--based on no data.

If you don't have the data, sue
The state of Connecticut passed a bill "giving doctors immunity for giving infinite supplies of antibiotics" to patients purportedly suffering from "chronic Lyme disease." Since the IDSA guidelines are against long-term antibiotic use, the Connecticut Attorney General sued the IDSA. They couldn't afford $250,000 in legal expenses, so they settled the case.

Dr. Crislip concluded by pointing out that the cause of this unsubstantiated syndrome will be promoted by a new film coming out, called "Under Our Skin," which has the tag line "There's no medicine for someone like you." Crislip noted that of the two doctors in the film promoting this illness, one lost his license for diagnosing Lyme disease over the telephone.

(Part six of my conference summary, on online health and social media, and the final Q&A panel session, is here.)

Rifftrax

Mike Nelson of Mystery Science Theater 3000 is behind Rifftrax, a website that allows you to download commentaries to play along with DVDs you watch. One of the commentaries currently available is for Ocean's Eleven and features Mike Nelson and our friend Richard Cheese. Many of the commentaries also feature MST3K writer and the voice of Tom Servo, Kevin Murphy, and MST3K writer and the voice of Crow, Bill Corbett.

Others include Weird Al Yankovic joining Nelson on Jurassic Park, Neil Patrick Harris joining Nelson on Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and commentaries on Alien, Cloverfield, Forbidden Zone, I Am Legend, and the creepy short educational bicycle safety film from 1963, One Got Fat. Josh Fruhlinger, the Comics Cumudgeon, joins Nelson on the Spiderman 2 commentary.

Looks like they charge $2.99 or $3.99 for the feature film commentaries, $0.99 for the shorts, which are all DRM-free.

Check them out at Rifftrax.com.

Guillermo Gonzalez' new school

Guillermo Gonzalez, one of the proclaimed victims of oppression and infringement of his academic freedom in the film "Expelled," has taken a job at Grove City College, a Christian liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. The school has been under censure by the American Association of University Professors since 1963 for its failure to respect academic freedom. A report by the AAUP Investigative Committee concluded "the absence of due process [in the dismissal of professors at Grove City] raises...doubts regarding the academic security of any persons who may hold appointment at Grove City College under existing administrative practice. These doubts are of an order of magnitude which obliges us to report them to the academic profession at large."

More at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

Orson Welles meets H.G. Wells

A short conversation between Orson Welles and H.G. Wells (MP3) aired live on KTSA radio in San Antonio on October 28, 1940. The main subjects are the Welles' radio production of Wells' "War of the Worlds," from two years prior, the accuracy of Wells' science fiction, and a Wells-incited plug for Welles' "Citizen Kane."

(Via Alan Dean Foster's remembrance of Arthur C. Clarke in the July/August 2008 Skeptical Inquirer.)

The Amazing Meeting 6 summarized, part four

This is part four of my summary of The Amazing Meeting 6 (intro, part one, part two, part three, part five).

Phil Plait
Astronomer Phil Plait of the Bad Astronomy blog began by saying that the Internet is "a system for rapidly distributing sewage," but also for distributing astronomy. His talk went through the solar system from Mercury to KBO 2004 XR 190 a/k/a "Buffy," with interesting photographs and facts about various planets and moons along the way.

Mercury: The 2004 MESSENGER probe took photographs of the Caloris basin, the single biggest feature on Mercury, originally thought to be 1300 km in diameter but revised upward to 1550 km based on those photos. Because Mercury spins twice for every three times it revolves around the sun, this basin is directly under the sun, every other orbit. It's a gigantic impact crater that's 3.8 to 3.9 billion years old.

Venus: The hottest planet, a hell hole about the size of earth and with about the same amount of carbon and just a little bit closer to the sun, but it suffers from a runaway greenhouse effect. It's been photographed by the Russian Venera probes from 1962 to 1982 and by Magellan in 1990.

Earth: Plait spoke of an HD movie of Earth shrinking into the distance as MESSENGER departed.

Phobos: This moon of Mars has a giant crater--had it been hit by anything bigger, Phobos would have disintegrated. Phobos is apparently a captured asteroid, which orbits backward from other moons in the solar system. Unlike Earth's moon, it is gradually getting closer to Mars, and will collide with it in about the next 50 million years, causing an impact greater than the asteroid that created the Yucatan basin.

Jupiter's acne: The Great Red Spot (Cassini, named after Jean-Dominique Cassini, who first observed it in 1655), a 400-year-old hurricane, has now been joined in 2000 by another little spot. The new spot was white but has now turned red and is known as Oval BA (or Red Jr.)--it is as large as the Earth.

Iapetus: This moon of Saturn has one light hemisphere and one dark, and was recently discovered to have a 20 km high ridge almost perfectly around its equator. (I remarked that it looks like a Death Star.)

Uranus: It's tipped 98 degrees on its side in its orbit, likely as a result of an impact from something very large, perhaps Earth-sized.

Neptune: The other blue planet, it contains lots of methane and emanates 1.6 times the heat it receives from the Sun. It has 2,200 kph winds. Where is that energy coming from?

Pluto: It's not a planet, so we don't care about it.

KBO 2004 XR 190 a/k/a "Buffy": This is an odd trans-Neptunian object--where almost all objects in the solar system have very elliptical orbits, it is an object 8.5 billion km from the Sun--twice the distance from the Sun of Neptune--yet its orbit is circular.

Plait concluded by noting that he hasn't even talked about the Sun, Milleomeda (what the galaxy will be after Andromeda and the Milky Way collide), or countless other things that we don't understand. But this lack of understanding doesn't mean we know nothing. "The universe is cool enough without making up crap about it. That's why I'm a skeptic."

Adam Savage
Adam Savage of "Mythbusters" brought a box of about 1,000 ping pong balls which were used to raise a boat from the bottom of Monterey Bay, and gave them out to members of the audience, and signed his autograph on many of them. He then gave a talk entitled "My Maltese Falcon," about his obsession with recreating a precise replica of one of the two lead sculptures from the movie of the same name. He did extensive research into its measurements, even paying to purchase used auction catalogs from Christie's to examine photographs. Joseph Warner gave one of the two lead ones to Joseph Conrad, one which Humphrey Bogart dropped and put a dent in. He sculpted one based on photographs, sprayed it with 75 coats of auto primer, then buffed and sanded it. He freeze framed every still from the original film in a scene where the statue was rotated. Someone offered to cast it in bronze for him, and he had two made--but the casting process caused it to lose size, and so his bronze model is 3/4" shorter in height at the beak, with the result that he hates it. At a conference he met the man who purchased William Conrad's lead statue, which he hopes to be able to scan and use to make the most accurate replica ever, which he'll report back on next year.

He showed a couple of world premiere viral videos--one in which he and Jamie simultaneously solved Rubik's cubes, one while blindfolded and the other with his feet. The footage was actually reversed--they started with solved cubes and then just messed them up. In a second video, he inhaled some helium and spoke with a high voice, then inhaled some sulfur hexafluoride (which he informed us is very expensive) and spoke with a deep voice, and everyone laughed. He said that someone (a producer?) thought that the cube video was cool, but that the balloon stunt was obviously faked.

He took questions and answers from the audience; a few highlights were that they want to do a full 60 minute show on the JFK assassination, Discovery has said no to "21 grams" (do we lose weight when we die), the Cheney shooting, vinyl vs. CD, and speaker cable vs. coat hanger.

His segment concluded with some footage of "explosion porn" from the show.

Matthew Chapman
Matthew Chapman, great-great grandson of Charles Darwin, screenwriter ("The Runaway Jury" and nine other films), and author (Trials of the Monkey and 40 Days and 40 Nights, the latter of which, about the Dover trial, I am currently reading), spoke about three things: Science Debate 2008, his love of America, and "Darwin, creationism, etc." He began with his love of America, noting that he had grown up in the 1950s and 1960s, raised by parents who read the New Yorker and were fans of Woody Allen, Mort Sahl, and Lenny Bruce, and so he always wanted to be an American. He moved to the U.S. to get into the film business, and went to L.A. A woman he knew to be educated asked him what his sign was--he thought she was kidding, but she was not. Ever since he has been fascinated with Americans' fondness for pseudoscience. He was invited to a "shack" (of the $5 million variety) in Malibu to see someone channel "Basha," and he couldn't help but laugh out loud. A woman present asked the channeler, "I have a potential development deal at Warner Brothers. What is Basha's advice?"

When he expressed indignation at such expressions of irrationality, he was told, "Oh, you're so rational" or "you're so British." He felt alone until he came across the Skeptical Inquirer magazine, and he promptly purchased and read every back issue. (I had a similar experience in my life--I read Skeptical Inquirer while still a religious believer, and also ended up purchasing and reading every back issue from cover to cover.) He became enraged by Scientology, UFOs, spontaneous human combustion, crystals, telepathy, Shirley MacLaine (who he's met), Nostradamus, pyramid power, etc. etc. While in an elevator with James Randi at an event in UCLA, he asked Randi if he'd heard of some Brazilian paranormalist (a psychic surgeon?), and Randi responded by pulling a pen out of his ear.

Despite the far more voluminous "loony bullshit" in the U.S. than in Europe, he still loves it here, and became an American citizen.

He next spoke about creationism. His book Trials of the Monkey was about his visit to Dayton, Tennessee to learn about the Scopes Trial, and he found that the people there today are much the same as they were back then. His newer book, 40 Days and 40 Nights, was written during and after his observation of the entirety of the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, which he witnessed from the jury box (where the press sat, since it was a non-jury trial). Through the Dover trial, he learned that it is possible to make science interesting to non-scientists.

Finally, he talked about Science Debate 2008. As the political debate season began, he watched all the debates, expecting to see questions about ozone, ocean health, climate change, etc., but only saw questions about lapel pins, religion, etc. There were more questions about UFOs than about global warming. He suggested the idea of a debate on science at the Atheist Alliance confernece, and Chris Mooney, who he had met earlier, got on board, along with his fellow Intersection Science Blogger Sheril Kirshenbaum. Soon thereafter, John Rennie of Scientific American became a backer, and Lawrence Krauss of The Physics of Star Trek (Chapman inadvertently said "Star Wars") also joined. They ended up starting an organization and collecting over 50,000 signatures, including the support of 51 colleges, 5 museums, 10 magazines, 112 science organizations, 14 Congresspeople, 7 presidential science advisors, 143 CEOs of science and technology companies, 28 Nobelists, 102 college and university presidents, PBS, Nova, the Franklin Institute, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and even Newt Gingrich. A Harris poll says that 85% of voters would like to see a science debate.

But so far, all of the candidates have said no or failed to respond at all. Chapman said that McCain was the most polite in saying no, and seemed to leave the door open.

They've now developed 14 questions and are preparing a new invitation to be sent to Obama and McCain.

Chapman then took questions, and someone asked if there was any opposition from scientists on the grounds that this is politicizing science. Chapman said he's had negative reactions from about three scientists, one of whom was present at this conference.

After Chapman's talk, I had a chance to speak with him briefly (he noticed the NCSE Grand Canyon trip T-shirt I was wearing, and commented on what great people Genie Scott and Nick Matzke are), as well as with his wife, Denise, who was also present at the conference. Denise Chapman, a Brazilian who has acted in television and film (including "Kiss of the Spider Woman" and Woody Allen's "Radio Days"), is the daughter of composer and musician Humberto Teixeira, started Baiao music and was the composer of the popular Brazilian song "Asa Branca" ("White Wing"). She was pleased to hear that some friends of mine named their African grey parrot "Asa Cinza" ("Grey Wing") in honor of that song. She has been working on a documentary film about her father that will be premiering later this month at MoMA.

Richard Wiseman
British psychologist Richard Wiseman spoke a little bit about his book Quirkology, presented a few optical illusions, and commented about his obtaining a videotape of Indian "God-man" Sai Baba in which he was caught engaging in sleight of hand, which he then showed to us. (Sai Baba was debunked well in a book by Dale Beyerstein titled Sai Baba's Miracles: An Overview, which describes some other instances of Sai Baba being caught in trickery.

He then showed his now-famous viral video of the "colour changing card trick," and followed it up showing a video of how it was made (it took many takes to get it right; he showed some amusing failures). This video, which has had over 2.5 million views, demonstrates the phenomena of "change blindness," and they've used eye-tracking to study viewers of the video to see if they are not looking in the right place or simply failing to register the changes, and it seems to be the latter. This video has apparently now inspired a routine in Penn & Teller's show.

This was followed up by a spoon-bending lesson from an expert--Teller. Teller explained that there is a method, the trick that deceives the eye, and there is misdirection, the trick that deceives the mind. The spoon-bending trick is based on a pre-stressed spoon, but to allay suspicion he only does the trick about once every five times he creates a pre-stressed spoon, because he waits for an opportunity to swap the spoon with a neighbor, and then only does the trick if the conversation happens to turn in a direction that makes it seem appropriate. He told the story of how Danny Hillis (of Connection Machine and Long Now Foundation fame) was invited to a posh party at the home of Courtney Ross (widow of Steve Ross, CEO of Time Warner). At dinner, the conversation turned to Rupert Sheldrake. Hillis had pre-stressed his neighbor's spoon, and put his own spoon on a plate so that the waiter took it away. Hillis borrowed his neighbor's spoon and did the trick, bending and breaking the spoon and dropping it into his wine. His hostess said, "I can't believe you did that." He made a comment to the effect that it was a trick, and she said, "No, I can't believe you did that." She was horrified that he had destroyed one of a fixed number of identical place settings by some famous designer which she had painstakingly collected over the years. And that, said Teller, made it funny.

Wiseman then came back and said that we would now make the world's largest spoonbending video for YouTube. We were given one run-through of the simple script, and then did it on video, all 900 of us (though there were only 800 pre-stressed spoons, so the 100 in the back had to mime). The video will make its debut at www.spoonscience.com (which as of this moment still says "coming soon").

Panel discussion on the limits of skepticism
Goldacre, Daniel Loxton, Radford, Savage, Novella, Hrab, Randi, Banachek, and Saunders assembled on stage for this panel discussion, which I don't recall actually addressing a subject that I'd characterize as the limits of skepticism. Instead, it seemed to be pretty much a free-for-all Q&A about skepticism.

At one point, someone spoke of "winning the war" against irrationality, and Banachek said he preferred to think in terms of making a mark rather than winning a war.

Randi commented on the famous quotation attributed to him by Dennis Rawlins' "sTARBABY" that "I always have an out," suggesting that his then-$10,000 and now $1 million reward for the successful demonstration of a paranormal event is not fair. He stated that this quotation was out-of-context, and that what he actually said was "I always have an out--I'm right." Dennis Rawlins, however, says that this is untrue, and that Randi has only recently started appending "I'm right" to this quotation. In 2000, when Matt Kriebel made his "sTARBABY mini-FAQ," Randi had a different explanation, stating that the "out" was about his stage act rather than his challenge.

Adam Savage observed that at the last TAM he mentioned that he was an atheist, and now that's appeared on his Wiki page.

In answer to a question about what's the worst thing you've ever been called, Richard Saunders said he had been accused of being "a mouseketeer of evil."

Savage made the statement that "You might think the world has color before critical thinking, but when you start thinking critically, it goes to HD."

It was mentioned that skeptical materials are appearing in other languages--"Mythbusters" is now in 145 countries and 9 languages, and Benjamin Radford is editor of the Spanish-language skeptical magazine, Pensar, along with the Skeptical Inquirer.

Sunday conference papers
The final session of the conference, Sunday morning until noon, was for presentation of conference papers.

John Janks on the Marfa Lights: I regret that I missed this, since I published two papers on the Marfa lights in The Arizona Skeptic when I was editor, but I made the mistake of assuming the session would begin at 9 a.m. like previous days--nope, it was 8:30 a.m.

Don Nyberg on "What Every Student Needs to Hear from Every Science Teacher": Nyberg, a physics professor who apparently plays a mean game of poker, said that he attacks pseudoscience, and especially "religious pseudoscience," in his classroom. Unfortunately, his talk didn't bother to define what he meant by this term, and his talk was a series of arguments by assertion, arguments from authority, and ad hominem that I thought was embarrassingly badly argued. He seemed to be arguing that anyone with a degree in science who expressed support for religion should have their degrees revoked, which prompted the moderator Ray Hall to ask Nyberg whether he thought that biologist Kenneth Miller, whose testimony helped produce the proper outcome in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case, should have his degrees revoked. Nyberg responded that yes, he should, if he's promoting his religious beliefs in the science classroom (a qualifier which hadn't been included in his earlier statement). I'd like to obtain a copy of Nyberg's actual materials to review, to see how they compare to his talk.

Steve Cuno: The head of an "evidence-based marketing company," he gave an excellent talk about myths in marketing. Such myths include:

• We control your mind.
• Creativity is magi.
• No one reads long ads.
• Awareness creates sales.
• Focus groups are predictive.
• Sales went up because of ads.

He gave some examples associated with each of these, and described some of the tests that his company had performed to test marketing campaigns to find what causes responses to direct mailings and what leads to conversions to sales. He suggested the classic book Tested Advertising Methods, and pointed out that he has his own book coming out in December, with an intro by Michael Shermer, titled Prove It Before You Promote It.

One of the questions asked was "is Seth Godin full of shit?" Cuno tactfully said that no doubt some of what Godin says is speculative.

Tracy King: She gave a talk on "The Most Popular Science Video in the World - How to Make Your Message Famous." She talked about Wiseman's "colour changing card trick" video, which got 80,000 views in the first two weeks and 2 million views by 18 weeks, and has now been seen by 80 million people on South American Globo TV, used in classrooms, and recreated by students.

She looked at other science videos that have been viral hits, such as the Diet Coke and Mentos videos, the first of which was uploaded in 2006 by Fritz Grobe, a juggler, and Stephen Voltz, a lawyer. They chose Diet Coke for its strong brand, and when it became a viral hit they received funding from Mentos to make more, and ultimately got a sponsorship deal from Coca Cola.

King pointed out that a lot of viral techniques are now illegal in the UK--you must be explicit about being paid to produce videos, for example.

She talked about the bogus popcorn/mobile phone video, which is one that would be in violation of the UK law today. It was created in multiple versions--English (where they're drinking orange juice), French (where they're drinking beer), and Japanese (where they have miso soup). These videos were made for Cardo Systems, a bluetooth headset manufacturer, and are clearly designed to encourage the idea that cell phones are dangerous to hold near your head. (Someone should make a viral video about bluetooth headsets.)

So what makes a successful viral video? There is no formula, but there are common themes--humor, surprise, fear/scaremongering, emotion, skill, embarrassment. One thing she didn't mention which I think was a factor in the success of the "colour changing card trick" video is that there were already multiple videos spreading widely with the exact same name, where the focus really was on that card trick. The Wiseman video was an interesting twist on what was already spreading virally, with the element of surprise and humor at the end. In essence, that video caught the wave of the other card trick videos, and then took it much farther. When I first saw the Wiseman video, I thought I was just seeing another version of that same trick.

And why do we pass on viral videos?

• Reflected glory.
• Being the first to know.
• Being part of a crowd with similar tastes.
• Being part of a shared cultural experience.
• (Participating in the formation of) the language of your generation.

She mentioned Ray Comfort's "The Atheist's Nightmare" as something which has effectively spread virally, but didn't exactly get the desired message across.

She ended by encouraging everyone to make videos promoting skepticism and critical thinking, and offered the following suggestions:

• Identify what your message is--don't be preachy or superior, which is a turnoff.
• Determine what your objectives are--to build website traffic, tell friend, etc.? If you don't have a call to action, your message may be lost.
• Find a creative concept--it may be explicit, subtle, or obscure.
• Make the video.
• Promote the video--it's not going to circulate itself, and professional seeding (e.g., making use of a company like hers that has relationships with bloggers, forum participants, etc. to promote things in a subtle, unobtrusive, and unspammy way).
• And finally, she explicitly listed: don't spam.

She ended by saying that while she can't recommend or encourage a "Jackass" approach to skepticism, it's something she'd certainly like to see.

On to TAM6 summary, part five.

"Expelled" producers win round one on "Imagine" lawsuit

In a decision issued today, the judge in the case of Yoko Ono against Premise Media ruled against Ono's motion for an injunction against the film, on the grounds that Premise Media and its attorneys at the Stanford Fair Use Project were likely to prevail on a fair use defense. So "Expelled" will be able to be released in Canada with its excerpting of "Imagine" intact.

This is an outcome I suggested would occur, and hoped for, despite the dishonesty of the defendants in this case. It remains to be seen if Ono will continue with the lawsuit and potentially set a useful precedent for copyright law.

(Via Pharyngula.)

Peter Gabriel's new filtering website

The Filter, officially debuting tomorrow but already available today, is a website that asks for some basic information about your tastes in film and music, and then makes recommendations about other things you'd like--music, movies, web videos, and TV. It's not clear from the CNN coverage how it compares to Amazon.com's recommendation engine or to sites like Pandora, but it looks interesting.

Ken Miller op-ed on "Expelled"

Brown University biology professor, textbook author, and Catholic Ken Miller has written an op-ed about "Expelled."

Scott Bloch gets raided by the FBI

Bush's head of the Office of Special Counsel at the Department of Justice, Scott Bloch, has had his offices and home raided by the FBI. The FBI raided his offices in D.C. yesterday, seizing computers and shutting off email. Bloch himself was interviewed. It's not clear exactly what prompted the raid, but Bloch has long been under fire for refusing to investigate claims of discrimination based on sexual orientation. There are also allegations that he has retaliated against employees and obstructed investigations.

Bloch also has a tie to the Sternberg case, the crown jewel of "Expelled," in that one of his like-minded appointees, James McVay, a man with no previous experience in employment law, whistleblower law, or federal sector work, took on the Sternberg case and wrote a preliminary report on it despite having no jurisdiction. His preliminary report managed to draw conclusions in contradiction to the actual evidence.

UPDATE: The New York Times also covers the story.

UPDATE (October 27, 2008): Scott Bloch has been fired.

UPDATE (March 30, 2011): Scott Bloch has been sentenced to a month in jail for destroying evidence on his computer.

Michael Behe: Expelled from Expelled

Intelligent design advocate Michael Behe was interviewed for the film "Expelled," and even included in one of the trailer previews, but does not appear in the final film, even though he has been one of the most prominent ID advocates. Why not?

There are several likely explanations:

1. He is a counter-example to the claim that intelligent design advocates are being persecuted by academia. He is an intelligent design advocate who is also a professor at Lehigh University. (Point due to Tegamai Bopsulai.)

2. He has become something of a heretic in intelligent design circles as a result of his latest book, The Edge of Evolution, in which he affirms common ancestry, he calls using the Bible as a science textbook "silly," he doesn't think intelligent design is necessary to explain lower taxonomic levels of life such as species, genera, families, and orders, and he doesn't see the need for continued miraculous interventions into the process of evolution by God. (Points due to Larry Arnhart.)

3. His latest book conflicts with the idea of The Fall when he argues that malaria was intentionally designed to kill people. (Where's Ben Stein on this one? Point due to RBH.)

It appears that ID's big tent has become too small to allow Michael Behe to remain inside.

Via:

Larry Arnhart at Darwinian Conservatism
Brian Switek at Laelaps
John Lynch at Stranger Fruit

Ben Stein thinks science leads to killing people

In an interview in Christianity Today:

I believe God created the heavens and the earth, and it doesn’t scare me when scientists say that can’t be proved. I couldn’t give a [profanity] whether a person calls himself a scientist. Science has covered itself with glory, morally, in my time. Scientists were the people in Germany telling Hitler that it was a good idea to kill all the Jews. Scientists told Stalin it was a good idea to wipe out the middle-class peasants. Scientists told Mao Tse-Tung it was fine to kill 50,000,000 people in order to further the revolution.

In an interview on the Trinity Broadcasting Network with Paul Crouch, Jr. (video is available if you follow the link):

Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.

Crouch: That’s right.

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Crouch: Good word, good word.

Note that he offers no qualifiers. He doesn't say science must be complemented with ethics. He doesn't say that science (like any knowledge of truths about the universe) may have negative as well as positive consequences. He simply says that science leads to mass murder.

If Stein really believes this, then he must be a genuine opponent of the practice of science, and his promotion of "Expelled" can be seen as an aspect of that anti-scientific attitude, despite the fact that he certainly takes personal advantage of many of the positive contributions of science. If he doesn't genuinely believe it, then he's not only engaging in a defamatory slur against scientists, he's also dishonest.

Either way, he's demonstrated that he is a despicable character.

And some people claim not to understand why scientists are angered by this film and its creators.

Others on this subject:
John Lynch at Stranger Fruit
Larry Moran at The Sandwalk
P.Z. Myers at Pharyngula
Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars

History and future of the Discovery Institute

Ross Anderson, journalist and former Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute, gives an interesting history of the founding of the organization. He describes how DI got into the intelligent design business, which has proved to be its major source of funding.

About two years ago, the Discovery Institute founded the Biologic Institute to perform scientific research. At long last, they finally have a website up, and its cast of characters contains many names recognizable from the film "Expelled." Still no scientific theory of intelligent design, however.

More on Mike Edmondson and the Expelled viral video

Simon Owens at Bloggasm interviewed Michael Edmondson, creator of the "Beware the Believers" viral video that was widely acclaimed by critics of the film "Expelled" for its humor and polish. Apparently the segment was originally intended to be in "Expelled," but the producers decided to turn it into a viral video instead, since it didn't fit with the character of the film. (Insert your choice of snarky comment about how it didn't fit here.)

Mathematical misunderstanding by Marks and O'Leary

Jeff Shallit has a post at his Recursivity blog about some "comical misunderstandings" by intelligent design advocates Denyse O'Leary and Robert Marks. In O'Leary's case, the misunderstanding is expected, but Marks is an engineering professor at Baylor University who should know better.

David Berlinski, King of Poseurs

Jeff Shallit talks about Discovery Institute Fellow David Berlinski, notable as one of the few advocates of intelligent design who is not an evangelical Christian. He's also not a scientist or a mathematician; he has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton. Although that's a top school for philosophy in the U.S., Berlinski hasn't been working as a professional philosopher, either.

Of course, he was touted as an expert in "Expelled."