Reed Esau on "Taking Ownership in Skepticism"

SkeptiCamp founder Reed Esau has finally taken the plunge and started blogging at "an illustrative account"--check out his interesting post on "Taking Ownership in Skepticism."

Why not put Rom Houben's facilitated communication to the test?

I've posted comments about the reasons to be skeptical about Rom Houben's facilitated communication at a number of blogs, where the response of some seems to be that there is no point of such testing. The reasons for not testing have included (1) that the videos are a "straw man"; (2) that criticisms from a stage magician and a philosopher/bioethicist are not worthy of attention; and (3) the testimony from Dr. Laureys, the facilitator Mrs. Wouters, and Houben's family is much stronger evidence than what we can see in the videos, and that Dr. Laureys says he already conducted a single-blind test which showed that the communication came from Houben, not the facilitator, and to reject that is irrational hyper-skepticism that assumes they are lying.

The first argument makes no sense to me. The videos clearly show the facilitator rapidly typing away with Houben's finger even while he's looking away or has his eyes closed, which is by itself a very strong reason to be skeptical, especially in light of the past record of facilitated communication. The second argument is not only ad hominem, but further refuted by similar analysis by a neuroscientist. The last argument is a bit better, but wrongly assumes that the only alternative is that the doctor and family are lying. Facilitated communication isn't a matter of conscious fraud, it's a matter of self-deception of the facilitator (enhanced by the expectations and reactions of the family). Given the possibility of unconscious cuing of the facilitator by the doctor, as well as his own vested interest in a positive result, the test he described doing is still far from sufficient to overcome the evidence plainly displayed in the videos.

Unfortunately, there is a very strong incentive to believe on the part of the doctor, the facilitator, and the family. To find that the communications are coming from the facilitator would be emotionally devastating, and detrimental to the doctor's credibility. To test further is to risk a huge potential loss of what has apparently been gained, and I suspect it's unlikely that we'll see it happen.

But look at it from Houben's own perspective--further testing is absolutely in his own best interests. For if the facilitator is the one doing the communicating, not him, then he is being further exploited for the satisfaction of his doctor, facilitator, and family, not for his own benefit. He's not being treated respectfully or as an end, rather than as a means. If he is, in fact, minimally conscious as the brain scans suggest, then speaking on his behalf without his genuine input is doing him even greater harm.

If you reject the idea that an hour or so of Houben's time should be used to do a conclusive, double-blind test to see whether the communications are coming from him or from the facilitator, is it because you want to believe, rather than to know? There is clear possible harm to Hoeben from not doing such a test. There is no harm to Hoeben from such a test, though there's clearly the risk of painfully dissolving an illusion for the doctor, facilitator, and family. But Hoeben's interests should be placed above that risk.

(Previously on Houben, a post with many links and references.)

UPDATE (February 15, 2010): Houben has been put to the test, and it turns out the communications were, in fact, coming from the facilitator.

UPDATE (February 20, 2010): David Gorski at the Science-Based Medicine blog has a bit more from the Belgian Skeptics, who were involved in the test.

What would be more horrifying than "locked-in" syndrome?

Numerous mass media outlets and blogs are reporting on the misdiagnosis of Rom Houben of being comatose for 23 years when he was really conscious, according to Belgian neurologist Steven Laureys, who has claimed for years to be able to treat patients allegedly in a persistent vegetative state with electric shocks and find that they were really in a minimally conscious state. Videos of Houben show him allegedly communicating via a keyboard which is pressed by a single finger on one hand--but his hand is being held by a facilitator, and he's not even looking at the keyboard. Some still photos show the facilitator looking intently at the keyboard, while Houben's eyes are closed.

James Randi observes that this looks just like the self-deception of Facilitated Communication that was promoted as a way to communicate with severely autistic people, and Marshall Brain at How Stuff Works seconds that conclusion.

I think it's a bit too fast to conclude that Houben's not conscious--brain scans could indeed have provided good evidence that he is. But what would be worse than having "locked-in syndrome"? Having somebody else purporting to speak for you with ideomotor-driven Facilitated Communication, while you were helpless to do anything about it.

I'd like to see some double-blind tests of Houben, where he's asked questions about events that occur when the facilitator isn't present, as well as fMRI results during the process of facilitation (since there are brain activation differences between active and passive activities, which have been used to study such things as the perception of involuntariness during hypnosis--it shows features of both active and passive movement). I'd also like to see further opinion on Laureys methodology and diagnosis--it seems he has significant self-interest in promoting this case.

UPDATE: Brandon Keim at Wired Science has finally asked the questions that those who have reported this in the mainstream media should have been asking.

Here's a 2001 review of the scientific literature on facilitated communication.

UPDATE: The video on this story shows the facilitator typing for him while his eyes are closed and he appears to be asleep.

UPDATE: A Times Online story claims that Houben's facilitator, Linda Wouters, spent the last three years working with Houben to learn to feel tiny muscle movements in his finger, and that Dr. Laureys did tests to validate the technique:

The spectacle is so incredible that even Steven Laureys, the neurologist who discovered Mr Houben’s potential, had doubts about its authenticity. He decided to put it to the test.

“I showed him objects when I was alone with him in the room and then, later, with his aide, he was able to give the right answers,” Professor Laureys said. “It is true.”

and

Mr Houben’s “rebirth” took many painstaking months. “We asked him to try and blink but he couldn’t; we asked him to move his cheek but he couldn’t; we asked him to move his hand and he couldn’t,” Mrs Wouters said.

“Eventually, someone noticed that when we talked to him he moved his toe so we started to try and communicate using his toe to press a button.”

It was a breakthrough but much more was to come when a fellow speech therapist discovered that it was possible to discern minuscule movements in his right forefinger.

Mrs Wouters, 42, was assigned to Mr Houben and they began to learn the communication technique that he is now using to write a book about his life and thoughts. “I thought it was a miracle — it actually worked,” she said.

The method involves taking Mr Houben by the elbow and the right hand while he is seated at a specially adapted computer and feeling for minute twitches in his forefinger as his hand is guided over the letters of the alphabet. Mrs Wouters said that she could feel him recoil slightly if the letter was wrong. After three years of practice the words now come tumbling out, she said.

This still seems hard to rationalize with the video footage of the typing occurring while he's apparently asleep. Mrs. Wouters admits the possibility of "tak[ing] over" for him:

“The tension increases and I feel he wants to go so I move his hand along the screen and if it is a mistake he pulls back. As a facilitator, you have to be very careful that you do not take over. You have to follow him.”

UPDATE (November 25, 2009): Neurologist Steven Novella has weighed in. He suggests that Houben may have recovered some brain function and be conscious, but that the facilitated communication in the videos is positively bogus.

I've noted on the discussion page of Dr. Steven Laureys' Wikipedia entry that the paper in BMC Neurology that purportedly included Houben as a subject claims that all patients in the study were in a minimally conscious state (MCS) but had been misdiagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). The criteria of the study say that those that recovered and emerged from MCS were excluded, which seems at odds with claims that Houben's brain function is "almost normal." A story in Nature 443, 132-133 (14 September 2006) by Mike Hopkin, "'Vegetative' patient shows signs of conscious thought," which quotes Laureys, is about a different patient, in a persistent vegetative state, who showed some signs minimal consciousness. When asked to visualize herself playing tennis, for example, she showed corresponding brain activity. But, as that article noted, that kind of neural response isn't necessarily a sign of consciousness:

But what that 'awareness' means is still up for debate. For example, Paul Matthews, a clinical neuroscientist at Imperial College London, argues that the brain imaging technique used cannot evaluate conscious thought; fMRI lights up regions of brain activity by identifying hotspots of oxygen consumption by neurons. "It helps us identify regions associated with a task, but not which regions are necessary or sufficient for performing that task," he says.

Matthews argues that the patient's brain could have been responding automatically to the word 'tennis', rather than consciously imagining a game. He also points out that in many vegetative cases, the patient's motor system seems to be undamaged, so he questions why, if they are conscious, they do not respond physically. "They are simply not behaving as if they are conscious," he says.

Owens counters that an automatic response would be transient, lasting for perhaps a few seconds before fading. He says his patient's responses lasted for up to 30 seconds, until he asked her to stop. He believes this demonstrates strong motivation.

He does admit, however, that it is impossible to say whether the patient is fully conscious. Although in theory it might be possible to ask simple 'yes/no' questions using the technique, he says: "We just don't know what she's capable of. We can't get inside her head and see what the quality of her experience is like."

But then again, as someone who's been reading a lot of literature on automaticity and voluntary action lately, it appears to me likely that a lot of our normal actions are automatic, the product of unconsciously driven motor programs of routine behavior.

Laureys is quoted in the article with a note of skepticism:

"Family members should not think that any patient in a vegetative state is necessarily conscious and can play tennis," says co-author Steven Laureys of the University of Liège, Belgium."It's an illustration of how the evaluation of consciousness, which is a subjective and personal thing, is very tricky, especially with someone who cannot communicate."

The article goes on to note that this woman, who is possibly somewhere between PVS and MCS, "seems to have been much less severely injured than the permanently vegetative Terri Schiavo" (as the report from her Guardian Ad Litem (PDF) made clear).

If Houben is in a minimally conscious state, which he apparently was in order to be included in Laureys' paper that his Wikipedia page says published the Hoeben case in 2009, that appears to contradict news claims that Houben's brain function is "nearly normal," unless he has recovered further function since that paper was written.

UPDATE (November 26, 2009): This footage of Houben and Mrs. Wouters from Belgian (Dutch) state television seems to be the most extensive footage of the facilitation process, and while it starts out looking slightly more plausible, it also clearly shows fairly rapid typing while his eyes are closed (and the camera zooms in on his face).

UPDATE (November 28, 2009): Dr. Laureys and Dr. Novella have had some interaction, which demonstrates that Laureys doesn't get it.

UPDATE (February 15, 2010): Dr. Laureys almost gets it now, and has done additional tests, which have shown that the communications are coming from the facilitator, not Houben.

UPDATE (February 20, 2010): David Gorski at the Science-Based Medicine blog has a bit more from the Belgian Skeptics, who were involved in the test.

Climate Research Unit email scandal

Hackers got access to a trove of private emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit that is being trumpeted by those who disbelieve in anthropogenic global warming as proof of scandal. I've looked through the data a bit myself--you can find a searchable archive of the emails here. I suspect this collection of emails may end up being put to good research use as the Enron email corpus was. While I found a few embarrassing things, I found no evidence of outright data fabrication or fakery.

The main email that has been cited as such evidence is an email from Phil Jones that says:

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.

Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate explains:

The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.

In other words, "hiding" in this case is using temperature measurement records instead of tree rings as a proxy for temperature records for a period of time where the tree rings are known not to be an accurate proxy, for whatever reason.

It's also claimed that these emails show a concerted effort to subvert the peer review process and stop publications by climate change skeptics, but most of those emails seem to center around an issue where the scandal was actually from the skeptics--the publication of a 2003 paper by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas in the journal Climate Research that was considered by 13 authors of papers cited to have misrepresented their work. Subsequently, half of the editorial staff of the journal resigned in protest at what they saw as a failure of peer review, and the managing director of the journal's parent company issued an apology (see Wikipedia's summary). The emails show that these scientists were upset by Climate Research's publication of bad science and encouraged protest and those resignations.

A few blog posts that seem to have good overviews of the issues:

• Skeptical Science, "What do the hacked CRU emails tell us?"
• Real Climate, "The CRU Hack" (followed by over 1,000 comments)
• Real Climate, "The CRU Hack: Context" (gives background on some of the issues, including the above Climate Research issue).
  
• Greenfyre's, "Climate change Deniers hoax themselves... again."
• Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, "Smoking guns in the CRU stolen emails: A real tale of real ethics in science" (what the CRU emails show about treatment of an erroneous climate science paper)
  

An interesting comparison to past scientific controversy is:

• Carbon Fixated, "Newtongate: the final nail in the coffin of Renaissance and Enlightenment 'thinking'"

And, to compare to the climate change skeptics:

• Bishop Hill, "Climate cuttings 33" (summary of the apparent worst issues)
• Essex County Conservative Examiner, "Hadley [sic] CRU hacked with release of hundreds of docs and emails"
• Climate Audit, "CRU Correspondence"
• Watt's Up With That, "Mike's Nature Trick"
• Watt's Up With That, "CRU Emails 'may' be open to interpretation, but commented code by the programmer tells the real story"
• Watt's Up With That, "Spencer on elitism in the IPCC climate machine"

The last of these posts, from Univ. of Alabama climate scientist and skeptic Roy W. Spencer, notes that:

If all of this sounds incompatible with the process of scientific investigation, it shouldn’t. One of the biggest misconceptions the public has about science is that research is a straightforward process of making measurements, and then seeing whether the data support hypothesis A or B. The truth is that the interpretation of data is seldom that simple.

There are all kinds of subjective decisions that must be made along the way, and the scientist must remain vigilant that he or she is not making those decisions based upon preconceived notions. Data are almost always dirty, with errors of various kinds. Which data will be ignored? Which data will be emphasized? How will the data be processed to tease out the signal we think we see?

Hopefully, the scientist is more interested in discovering how nature really works, rather than twisting the data to support some other agenda. It took me years to develop the discipline to question every research result I got. It is really easy to be wrong in this business, and very difficult to be right.

Skepticism really is at the core of scientific progress. I’m willing to admit that I could be wrong about all my views on manmade global warming. Can the IPCC scientists admit the same thing?

Another noteworthy comment, from Real Climate, is this one from caerbannog and Gavin Schmidt's reply:

Just a reminder: CRU is just one of many organizations focusing on climate research. The fact that its director has reacted badly (i.e. appearing to go for the “bunker” mentality) to repeated scurrilous attacks has no bearing on the validity of the science.

Hansen’s approach has been quite different — he’s basically said to his detractors, “here are all of the source code and data — go knock yourselves out”.

Under Hansen, the NASA/GISS data and source code have been freely available on-line for years. And all of the sceptics’ scrutiny of said data has uncovered only one or two minor “glitches” that have had minimal impact.

Just a quick question (or two) to Gavin, if you feel the need to spend even more of your weekend downtime answering questions here.

Given that all of your climate-modeling source-code has been available for public scrutiny for quite a long time, and given that anyone can download and test it out, how many times have climate-model critics have actually submitted patches to improve your modeling code, fix bugs, etc? Have you gotten *any* constructive suggestions from the skeptic camp?

[Response: Not a single one. - gavin]

I think this illustrates that it's far better to be completely open with your data and methods.

UPDATE (November 26, 2009): There's now an official response from the Univ. of East Anglia, the Climate Research Unit, and Phil Jones. Jones notes, regarding the Freedom of Information requests:

We have been bombarded by Freedom of Information requests to release the temperature data that are provided to us by meteorological services around the world via a large network of weather stations. This information is not ours to give without the permission of the meteorological services involved. We have responded to these Freedom of Information requests appropriately and with the knowledge and guidance of the Information Commissioner.

We have stated that we hope to gain permission from each of these services to publish their data in the future and we are in the process of doing so.

UPDATE (December 4, 2009): The journal Nature has weighed in on the controversy.

Climate scientist Judith Curry makes good points of criticism about climate scientists' behavior.

UPDATE (December 6, 2009): Univ. of East Anglia climate scientist Mike Hulme (author of Why We Disagree About Climate Change, a book that I read several chapters from in a class on human dimensions of climate change this semester) on the issue:

The key lesson to be learned is that not only must scientific knowledge about climate change be publicly owned — the I.P.C.C. does a fairly good job of this according to its own terms — but the very practices of scientific enquiry must also be publicly owned, in the sense of being open and trusted. From outside, and even to the neutral, the attitudes revealed in the emails do not look good. To those with bigger axes to grind it is just what they wanted to find.

This will blow its course soon in the conventional media without making too much difference to Copenhagen — after all, COP15 is about raw politics, not about the politics of science. But in the Internet worlds of deliberation and in the ‘mood’ of public debate about the trustworthiness of climate science, the reverberations of this episode will live on long beyond COP15. Climate scientists will have to work harder to earn the warranted trust of the public - and maybe that is no bad thing.

But this episode might signify something more in the unfolding story of climate change. This event might signal a crack that allows for processes of re-structuring scientific knowledge about climate change. It is possible that some areas of climate science has become sclerotic. It is possible that climate science has become too partisan, too centralized. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science.

It is also possible that the institutional innovation that has been the I.P.C.C. has run its course. Yes, there will be an AR5 but for what purpose? The I.P.C.C. itself, through its structural tendency to politicize climate change science, has perhaps helped to foster a more authoritarian and exclusive form of knowledge production - just at a time when a globalizing and wired cosmopolitan culture is demanding of science something much more open and inclusive.

UPDATE (December 11, 2009): PolitiFact gives its analysis of the CRU emails, which is fairly balanced.

UPDATE (December 12, 2009): Deep Climate catches Stephen McIntyre engaging in quote mining of the CRU emails in order to mislead.

UPDATE (December 24, 2009): David Douglass and John Christy, in "A Climatology Conspiracy?", argue that the CRU emails show a concerted effort to delay the publication of their paper, publish another paper criticizing it along side of it, and deny them the right of final reply. Their case is somewhat weakened by the fact that the second paper points out a significant error in their paper and they have apparently not tried to publish a reply or correct the error.

Where is the academic literature on skepticism as a social movement?

Here's all I've been able to find so far, independent of self-descriptions from within the movement (and excluding history and philosophy of Pyrrhonism, Academic Skepticism, the Carvaka, the Enlightenment, British Empiricism, and lots of work on the development of the enterprise of science):

• George Hansen, "CSICOP and the Skeptics: An Overview," The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research vol. 86, no. 1, January 1992, pp. 19-63. I've not seen a more detailed history of contemporary skepticism elsewhere.
• Stephanie A. Hall, "Folklore and the Rise of Moderation Among Organized Skeptics," New Directions in Folklore vol. 4, no. 1, March 2000.
• David J. Hess, Science in the New Age: The Paranormal, Its Defenders and Debunkers, and American Culture, 1993, The University of Wisconsin Press.

I note that Paul Kurtz's The New Skepticism: Inquiry and Reliable Knowledge (1992, Prometheus Books) puts contemporary skepticism in the lineage of several of the other forms of philosophical skepticism I mentioned above, identifying his form of skepticism as a descendant of pragmatism in the C.S. Peirce/John Dewey/Sidney Hook tradition (and not the Richard Rorty style of pragmatism). But I think that says more about Kurtz than about the skeptical movement, which also draws upon other epistemological traditions and probably doesn't really have a sophisticated epistemological framework to call its own.

There's a lot of literature on parallel social movements of various sorts, including much about advocates of some of the subject matter that skeptics criticize, and some of that touches upon skeptics. For example:

• Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, "The Construction of the Paranormal: Nothing Unscientific is Happening," in Roy Wallis, editor, On the Margins of Science: The Social Construction of Rejected Knowledge, 1979, University of Keele Press, pp. 237-270.
• Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, Frames of Meaning: The Social Construction of Extraordinary Science, 1982, Taylor & Francis.
• Ronald L. Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design, 2nd edition, 2006, Harvard University Press.
• Christopher P. Toumey, God's Own Scientists: Creationists in a Secular World, 1994, Rutgers University Press.

The Toumey book doesn't really have anything about skeptics, but is an anthropological study of creationists in the United States which describes the connection between "creationism as a national movement" and "creationism as a local experience" that seems intriguingly similar to the skeptical movement, especially in light of the fact (as I mentioned in my previous post) that national skeptical organizations are independent of established institutions of science that provide the key literature of the movement and at least implicitly assume that the average layman can develop the ability to discern truth from falsehood, at least within a particular domain, from that literature.

In some ways, the skeptical movement also resembles a sort of layman's version of the activist element in the field of science and technology studies, based on positivist views of science that are the "vulgar skepticism" dismissed in this article:

• Michael Lynch, "Expertise, Skepticism and Cynicism: Lessons from Science & Technology Studies," Spontaneous Generations vol. 1, no. 1, 2007, pp. 17-24.

I think if contemporary skepticism wants to achieve academic respectability, it will need to develop a more sophisticated view of science that comes to terms with post-Popper philosophy of science and post-Merton sociology of science; my recommendation for skeptics who are interested in that subject is to read, as a start:

• Philip Kitcher, The Advancement of Science: Science Without Legend, Objectivity Without Illusions, 1995, Oxford University Press.

There's an enormous relevant literature on those topics, an interesting broad overview is:

• R.C. Olby, G.N. Cantor, J.R.R. Christie, and M.J.S. Hodge, Companion to the History of Modern Science, 1990, Routledge.

I welcome any new revelations about sources of relevance that I've missed, particularly if there is other academic work specifically addressing the history, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology of the contemporary skeptical movement--three sources ain't much.

UPDATE (September 27, 2014): Some additional works I recommend for skeptics:

• Harry Collins, Are We All Scientific Experts Now?, 2014, Polity Press.  A very brief and quick overview of science studies with respect to expertise.
• Massimo Pigliucci, Nonsense On Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk, 2010, University of Chicago Press. A good corrective to the overuse of Popper, easy read.
• Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry, Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem, 2013, University of Chicago Press. Good collection of essays reopening the debate many thought closed by Larry Laudan on whether there can be philosophical criteria for distinguishing the boundary between science and pseudoscience.

What are the goals of Skepticism 2.0?

Yesterday I listened to D.J. Grothe's interview with Ben Radford on the Point of Inquiry podcast about the latest issue of the Skeptical Inquirer (November/December 2009) about "Skepticism 2.0," the bottom-up grassroots expansion of the skeptical movement through Internet communications tools like blogs, podcasts, online videos and forums, and the real-world activities that have become possible through them, like meetups and SkeptiCamps.

Near the end of the podcast, D.J. asked Ben what he thought would be the results of Skepticism 2.0 in five years time. He said (1) more skeptics and (2) more cooperative projects between the three major U.S. skeptical groups, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, the James Randi Educational Foundation, and the Skeptics Society.

That struck me as a rather disappointingly modest set of goals, as well as rather "old school" skepticism thinking, and insular. Surely we can come up with ideas for something more exciting, interesting, and useful than merely the self-perpetuation and growth of the skeptical movement and cooperation among the traditional top-down skeptical organizations over the next five years.

A few thoughts that came to my mind:

• If skeptics want to promote public understanding of science and critical thinking, why not partnerships with other organizations that also have those purposes? The National Academies of Science, the National Center for Education, teacher's groups and school groups at a local level?
  
• If skeptics want to promote the activity of science, why not look at ways to help motivate students to enter science as a career, and support them in doing so? I've previously suggested to Phil Plait that JREF might partly model itself after the Institute for Humane Studies, an organization which provides support for undergraduate and graduate students who favor classical liberal political ideals, in order to help them achieve success in careers of thought leadership, including academics, journalists, filmmakers, public policy wonks, and so on. In order for skepticism and critical thinking to have a significant impact, it's not necessary that everyone become a skeptic, only that a sufficient number of people in the right places engage in and encourage critical thinking.
• If skeptics want to see more diversity in the skeptical movement, why not look at ways to reach out to other communities? The podcast did mention the SkepTrack at Dragon*Con, which is one of the most innovative ideas for outreach for skeptical ideas since the founding of CSICOP in 1976.
• If skeptics want to act as a form of consumer protection against fraud and deception, why not try to find ways to interact with regulators, investigators, politicians, and the media to get fraudulent products and services off the market? The UK complaints against chiropractors making false claims on their websites as a response to the British Chiropractic Association libel lawsuit against Simon Singh, or the Australian complaint against bogus claims by anti-vaccinationists (though see my comment on that blog post for some reservations) might suggest some ideas.

It seems to me that the skeptical movement should be concerned about more than just increasing its own numbers and getting the existing national groups to work together. I think that Skepticism 2.0 has and will continue to force the existing groups to cooperate with each other and with the grassroots movement if they don't want to become obsolete and irrelevant. And at this point growth is, at least for the near-term, a foregone conclusion. But in order to continue to grow and thrive, there should be some goals that have something to do with being useful and making the world a better place, by which the skeptical movement can measure its effectiveness and success.

I'm sure readers of this blog have further suggestions. What else?

Addendum:

By the way, with regard to my first suggestion, here's a question that may provide some motivation and food for thought: Why do the Parapsychological Association and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine have better and more formal ties to official institutions of science than any skeptical organization? The PA is a member of the AAAS, and NCCAM is an agency within the National Institutes of Health. The main difference between those organization and skeptical organizations is that they actually do and publish peer-reviewed scientific research.

Skepticism, belief revision, and science

In the comments of Massimo Pigliucci's blog post about the scope of skepticism (which I've already discussed here), Skepdude pointed to a couple of blog posts he had written on similar topics some time ago, about what atheists have in common and skepticism and atheism. He argues that skeptics must be atheists and cannot be agnostics or theists, a position I disagree with. In an attempt to get to the bottom of our disagreement after a few exchanges in comments on his blog, I wrote the following set of questions which I first answered myself, so we can see how his answers differ.

Do we have voluntary control over what we believe?

In general, no. The credence we place in various propositions--our belief or rejection of them--is largely out of our voluntary control and dependent upon our perceptual experiences, memories, other beliefs, and established habits and methods of belief formation and revision. We can indirectly cause our beliefs to change by engaging in actions which change our habits--seeking out contrary information, learning new methods like forms of mathematics and logic, scientific methods, reading books, listening to others, etc.

How does someone become a skeptic?

People aren't born as skeptics--they learn about skepticism and how it has been applied in various cases (only after learning a whole lot of other things that are necessary preconditions--like language and reasoning). If skepticism coheres with their other beliefs, established habits and methods of belief formation and revision, and/or they are persuaded by arguments in favor of it, either self-generated or from external sources, they accept it and, to some degree or another, apply it subsequently.

When someone becomes a skeptic, what happens to all of the other beliefs they already have?

They are initially retained, but may be revised and rejected as they are examined through the application of skeptical methods and other retained habits and methods of belief formation and revision. Levels of trust in some sources will likely be reduced, either within particular domains or in general, if they are discovered to be unreliable. It's probably not possible to start from a clean slate, as Descartes tried to do in his Meditations.

Is everything a skeptic believes something which is a conclusion reached by scientific methods?

No. Much of what we believe, we believe on the basis of testimony from other people who we trust, including our knowledge of our own names and date and place of birth, parts of our childhood history, the history of our communities and culture, and knowledge of places we haven't visited. We also have various beliefs that are not scientifically testable, such as that there is an external world that persists independently of our experience of it, that there are other minds having experiences, that certain experiences and outcomes are intrinsically or instrumentally valuable, that the future will continue to resemble the past in various predictable ways, etc. If you did believe that skeptics should only believe conclusions which are reached by scientific methods, that would be a belief that is not reached by scientific methods.

Massimo Pigliucci on the scope of skeptical inquiry

Massimo Pigliucci, a biologist and philosopher at the City University of New York and regular writer for the Skeptical Inquirer, has offered up his thoughts about the relationship between skepticism, atheism, and politics. He wants to argue that skepticism and skeptical inquiry are identical with scientific skepticism, and mostly distinct from philosophy, religion, and politics. He restricts the domain of skeptical inquiry to "the critical examination of evidential claims of the para- or super-normal," and further restricts his notion of "evidential" to the empirical. (He subsequently refers to philosophical arguments and reasons as "non-evidence based approaches." I disagree, though this may be strictly a terminological dispute--I often use the word "evidence" to apply to reasons and arguments, not just empirical observations or reports of empirical observations, and I think this is common usage.)

He ends up drawing a Venn-style diagram which has an outer circle labeled with "critical thinking" and "rational analysis," within which is a series of three overlapping circles labeled "atheism," "skeptical inquiry," and "political philosophy." He argues that skeptical inquiry only overlaps with atheism where religions make empirical claims that are subject to scientific investigation, and likewise for political philosophy.

I offered a few critical comments at his blog, noting that it is odd that "atheism" is the only label on his diagram which is the name of a specific position rather than a method or discipline, and suggesting that it be labeled something like "views on religion." I also suggested that that circle extend beyond the scope of the "critical thinking" and "rational analysis" circle, though that's presupposing his diagram is descriptive rather than normative. [Note added 1:31 p.m.: If his diagram is understood as a diagram of what is appropriate subject matter for critical thinking, rational analysis, and skeptical inquiry with respect to atheism and political philosophy, then those two circles should arguably not extend outside the border of critical thinking/rational analysis.] Similar considerations should apply to the "political philosophy" circle. People hold religious and political views for reasons other than those produced as a result of critical thinking and rational analysis.

I also took issue with his identifying "skeptical inquiry" with scientific skepticism. Skeptics have always used philosophical tools as well as scientific ones, but I would find his diagram more accurate if the middle circle was labeled "scientific skepticism" or even "scientific inquiry."

I also have some skepticism about this taxonomic enterprise in general, which is arguably both philosophical and political itself--Pigliucci is not using scientific methods to set up this framework, it's philosophy, and there are political and pragmatic reasons for wanting us to accept it--to issue in a ruling that certain domains are off-limits for skepticism, namely the examination of religious and political claims that are not subject to empirical investigation.

I think there are good pragmatic reasons for skeptical organizations to restrict themselves in such a way--the methods of skepticism can be used by anyone, regardless of their political or religious views, and organized skepticism has tried to appeal to a broad audience to focus critical attention on paranormal claims where scientific methodology can be brought to bear. But I'm skeptical of this as a general picture of the applicable domain of the methods of skepticism or skeptical inquiry. (I should note that I don't think that atheism implies skepticism--thus the reason for extending a circle with that name outside the boundaries of critical thinking and rational analysis--nor that skepticism implies atheism. Skepticism is about the methods used, not the conclusions reached. An atheist might think that any consistent application of skepticism will lead to atheism, but that presumes both that atheism is true and that consistent application of skepticism is a guarantee of truth, which it is not.)

I agree with commenter Maarten that the boundaries of these circles are fuzzy--just as the boundary between science and non-science doesn't admit to a bright-line demarcation. People can conceptualize the boundaries differently, even granting Pigliucci's conception of "empirically investigatable" as the domain of skeptical inquiry or scientific skepticism. The boundaries between scientific disciplines are themselves fuzzy and they use different methodologies, with huge differences between experimental and historical sciences, for example.

Finally, I agree with commenter Scott (Scott Hurst), who observes that religious believers do make very specific claims "about the nature of the universe, how it works, and its history (including our own)," and specifically noting belief in the power of prayer. These things are empirically testable and do make at least some common (one could say "vulgar") conceptions of God and religion refutable by science. The fact that a more sophisticated believer or theologian can construct a view that uses the same words yet withdraws from the realm of the empirical doesn't mean that the vulgar conception hasn't been refuted. This is perhaps more obvious with modern religions such as Mormonism and Scientology, where in the former case historical evidence and DNA evidence falsifies some key claims, and in the latter case where scientific evidence falsifies a great number of its claims. Hubbard's cosmology, for example, includes the idea that Xenu dropped thetans into a volcano on Hawaii 75 million years ago, but Hawaii didn't exist 75 million years ago. His book History of Man includes Piltdown Man in the human lineage, even though that fossil was discovered to be a hoax shortly after the book was published. And so forth.

It's fine for Pigliucci to define and use the terms the way he wants, but I don't think he's given strong reasons for the rest of us to accept the specifics of his formulation.

UPDATE (October 24, 2009): Russell Blackford has written "Pigliucci on science and the scope of skeptical inquiry" at the Sentient Developments blog, which comes to similar conclusions with a somewhat more comprehensive argument.

Grassroots Skeptics website launched

The grassrootsskeptics.org website officially launches today:

Philadelphia, PA – 9/4/2009: Grassroots Skeptics today announced the official launch of its website, GrassrootsSkeptics.org. The website is the centerpiece of the group's planned outreach and advocacy in the skeptical community.

“There are a lot of passionate advocates and community groups working diligently to advance critical thinking,” said Grassroots Skeptics founder K.O. Myers. “We want to help increase their effectiveness, by making it easier for them to find new members, share resources, and identify methods for getting their message out.”

The group plans to use the site to gather and organize information about skeptical advocacy. At launch, the site will feature an index of local skeptics groups, information on many skeptical blogs and podcasts, discussion forums, and a calendar of skeptical events. The events calendar is a joint project, maintained in collaboration with the prominent skeptical website Skepchick.org.

“There is an amazing amount of information out there that could be helpful for people who want to start or join a skeptical organization,” Myers said. “We want to collect and organize it, to make it more useful for the dedicated individuals who volunteer their time to promote an evidence-based lifestyle.”

“Widespread misinformation about vaccines has lead to a resurgence in preventable illnesses; scam artists posing as 'psychics' prey on the grieving; 'alternative medicine' companies sell billions of dollars of dubious treatments, with almost no government regulation,” said Myers. “Critical thinking is more important than ever, and local skeptics groups are working hard to spread that message. With GrassrootsSkeptics.org, we hope we can make their outreach more effective.”

Future plans for the site include a skeptical speakers' bureau, a searchable map of skeptics groups and skeptic-friendly attractions, and a development kit for skeptics who want to start new groups. “We're excited about this launch,” said Myers, “but we're already looking forward to making GrassrootsSkeptics.org a richer, deeper resource for the organized skeptical community.”

Grassroots Skeptics is a volunteer organization that promotes critical thinking and a reason-centered worldview by helping local skeptics groups to share tools, information and strategies, and connect with skeptical individuals and activists both locally and globally.

You can also follow Grassroots Skeptics on Facebook and Twitter.

Imitation, isolation, and independence

This post is going to be highly speculative, based on a few things that I've coincidentally just read over the last 24 hours and some past wonderings.

Last night, I read an article in the ASU State Press newspaper from Tuesday, August 25 about Robert Cialdini, professor emeritus of psychology and marketing who I had been interested in working with in my Ph.D. program because of his fascinating work on the subject of influence and persuasion. (He just "retired," though the article notes he is still working 60 hours a week on his research.) That article noted the phenomenon of "social proof," where people are more likely to do something if they think that other people do it:

Social proof is a simple way for people to decide what actions would be appropriate in a given situation, based off what others like them have done in similar situations, Cialdini said. Those kinds of norms have been very powerful in moving people to conserve energy, recycle and refrain from littering, he said.
...

Cialdini and his colleagues have recently done research on energy conservation in several hotels in the Phoenix area. The hotel managers allowed Cialdini to place different signs inside hotel rooms and depending on what the signs said, the colleagues were able to significantly increase the willingness of people to hang up their bath towels.

By simply stating that the majority of guests who stay in the hotel hang up their towels at least once during their stay, Cialdini and his colleagues were able to get 28 percent more people to follow that suggestion.

This morning, I read the following passage in Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate (p. 63):

Social psychologists have amply documented that people have a powerful urge to do as their neighbors do. When unwitting subjects are surrounded by confederates of the experimenter who have been paid to do something odd, many or most will go along. They will defy their own eyes and call a long line "short" or vice versa, nonchalantly fill out a questionnaire as smoke pours out of a heating vent, or (in a Candid Camera sketch) suddenly strip down to their underwear for no apparent reason.

Here, Pinker is referring to the Asch conformity experiments. He notes that there are two reasons for this kind of imitative behavior, "to benefit from other people's knowledge and judgment" and "the desire to follow the norms of a community."

A few more data points, and then I will do some speculative dot-connecting. In Pascal Boyer's book, Religion Explained, he devotes chapter 8 to answering the question of its title, "Why doctrines, exclusion, and violence?" He argues (pp. 292-296) that fundamentalism arises as a mechanism to increase the cost of defection from a group, in reaction to the cultural diversity of the modern world:

... the modern world is one of strident cultural diversity, where you are constantly made aware that people live in different circumstances, have different values, worship other gods, have different rituals. ... fundamentalists want to return to a (largely mythical) past when local values and identity were taken for granted, when no one was aware that there were other ways of living. (p. 293)

This could also explain the creation of distinctly Christian media (music, books, clubs and groups arranged around particular interests offered by megachurches) offered as a substitute for their secular counterparts, as a mechanism to insulate believers from contrary ideas. By keeping the believer in a community that is, at least to some extent, isolated from the broader world, the danger is reduced that a believer will be exposed to alternative views and practices which he might be likely to imitate through peer pressure, social proof, or social conformity.

But now to make a greater leap of speculation. Neurologist V.S. Ramachandran has argued that "mirror neurons" or "empathy neurons" play a major role in human (and other primate) imitative behavior that drives learning. Those neurons (if they exist, and there is some doubt) are in the inferior frontal and parietal cortex. Caltech neuroscientist John Allman (who spoke at the Skeptics Society conference on mind, brain, and consciousness in 2005) has argued that spindle cells in the anterior cingulate cortex play a role in sensitivity to social cues, and a deficiency of such cells may be a cause of autism. Perhaps there is a neurological explanation for some kinds of independent thinking that involves a lessened degree of sensitivity to social cues, or a lessened drive to imitation and conformity, that yields doubters and skeptics?

Now, this can't be the whole story--it may be more important that there are other positive drivers of independence and willingness to be an outspoken dissenter, and I suspect that leaders of dissenting groups tend to have a very high degree of sensitivity to social cues in order to be successful in persuasion. Further, once you have some dissenters in the population, they themselves can be exemplars to be imitated by people with high sensitivity to social cues. But the speculation it would be interesting to investigate is: are people who are skeptics about commonly held beliefs in the general population about the supernatural and paranormal measurably different in some critical way, psychologically or neurologically, that makes them less susceptible to such social pressures that provoke imitation and internalization of those views? Are the initial participants in such groups different from later joiners? Could this have anything to do with why organizing skeptics and atheists is like herding cats? Or why there's a high percentage of IT professionals in skepticism? Are skeptics and atheists less emotionally engaged and driven than religious believers? Is there a tendency towards Asperger's among skeptics and atheists? (Disclosure: I scored a 32 on this Asperger Test.)

Religious believers sometimes argue that there is a sensus divinitatis, a human faculty for perceiving God, and Dean Hamer has argued that there's a "God gene." It's possible that there's something to this, but that it's a bit simpler and a more of a matter of susceptibility to social conformity.

(Possibly related posts: "Unconscious decision-making," "The Rise of Pentecostalism and the Economist Religion Wars issue"; "An empirical test of the existence of sensus divinitatis in atheists" at the Secular Outpost.)

Skeptical Blog Anthology 2009 seeking nominations

From the Young Australian Skeptics:

Inspired by the annual The Open Laboratory, the Skeptical Blog Anthology is a printed anthology of blog posts voted the very best of 2009, managed by the Young Australian Skeptics in conjunction with the Critical Teaching Education Group (CTEG). The anthology is an attempt to bring a greater awareness of the skeptical content on blog sites and showcase some of the range and diversity in the blogosphere.

With an aim to provide text-​​based resources to classes and readers who may be interested or intrigued by what skepticism has to offer, entries from January 1st to December 1st 2009 are eligible for submission. Both a print and Portable Document Format (pdf) will be made available for purchase via Lulu​.com, with estimated printing early in 2010.

Entries can be self-​​nominated or proposed by readers of skeptical blog sites. The guidelines proposed by the popular Skeptics’ Circle are a fine indicator of the kind of content suitable for the anthology, including urban legends, the paranormal, quackery, pseudoscience, intelligent design, historical revisionism, critical thinking, skeptical parenting/​educating skeptically, superstitions, etc.

There's a submission form at the Young Aus Skeptics website.

Brian Dunning on debate

In Skeptoid #167, Brian Dunning argues that scientists should never engage in debate on pseudoscientific topics. His arguments include:

• It's a waste of time.
• It gives pseudoscience undeserved credibility by putting it on an equal footing with science.
• There are few people in the audience who haven't already made up their minds.
• Most of the people in the audience can't distinguish good from bad arguments.

His position is similar to that of Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education, who recommends that scientists not engage in formal debates with creationists.

While Dunning correctly points out some major flaws in how formal debates have frequently gone, and I agree that such debates should be discouraged, I think there are cases where they are worthwhile--it depends on the formulation of the resolution to be debated, the setting of the debate, and, perhaps most importantly, the quality of the debater. Too many creation/evolution debates have involved scientists who believe themselves to be good debaters, but who don't understand how debate works and aren't sufficiently familiar with creationist arguments to an appropriate breadth and depth. Unfortunately, many of those scientists think they won the debate or did a passable job when in fact they performed very poorly.

The resolution to be debated should be formulated so that there is a clear burden of evidence on the promoter of the pseudoscience, where it belongs. It's a mistake to formulate a debate resolution as a false dilemma, where if the scientist can't refute scattershot attacks, the pseudoscientist wins. Duane Gish of the Institute for Creation Research won most of his debates by not only engaging in such a shotgun approach (the "Gish Gallop"), but also by refusing to talk about the age of the earth or flood geology, thus freeing himself from having to present any positive evidence in favor of his view. (I spoke a bit more about Gish's debate success and how to successfully counter his debate strategies in my workshop session at this year's American Humanist Association conference.)

The setting of the debate is also important, and is relevant to Dunning's concern about audience. An academic debate at a university is more likely to have audience members who are actually interested in the evidence than, say, a debate at a church. It's also significant whether the debate is being recorded and will be distributed further--a well-done debate that is recorded and transcribed, and distributed in the form of a book, DVD, or online is going to have a much larger audience and may have much more significant consequences than the potential persuasion of five people in Dunning's example. There are also debates conducted in written form, which provide the possibility of much more comprehensive argument and references to other material than an oral debate on a stage or on television, which I think generally makes them preferable.

The concern about giving a pseudoscience proponent undeserved credibility is a real one, and for that reason it's probably a good idea for the debater to be someone of similar or lesser public stature, as well as someone well-versed in both debate and the details of the pseudoscience's claims. Proponents of pseudoscience often issue challenges to prominent individuals for the primary purpose of getting publicity from it, which they may get to some degree either from denial or acceptance--but much more from acceptance if they so much as appear to hold their own.

Dunning dismisses the concern that failure to debate leaves pseudoscience unchallenged, but I think there is a real potential concern here, as a refusal to debate can give proponents of pseudoscience a rhetorical weapon when there's the appearance that no one is willing to challenge their arguments. This can, to a large extent, be defused if you can point to resources that refute the proponent's claims in detail, and make the counter-argument that the proponents views aren't deserving of a public forum. But in cases where the proponent's views have received a large public following and there aren't comprehensive resources that refute them, or such resources are little-known, I think that builds a case for debate.

I think Dunning is right that it's generally better to produce direct responses to pseudoscientific claims in a one-way format, but even that can be a form of debate to the extent it actually engages the proponents and they respond. What's distinctive about a debate--at least a good one--is that it does involve engagement by both sides with the arguments and evidence of the other, and produces a record of that engagement for others to examine. That has advantages over siloed separate arguments that never directly respond to each other. I think that such engagement should be beneficial for scientists by identifying forms of misunderstanding that need corrections in the form of better communication, as well as locating possible weaknesses in their own evidence and arguments that need further work. It's also beneficial for the proponent of pseudoscience in that it puts them into a situation where they must, at least momentarily, think about the arguments and evidence against their positions.

ApostAZ podcast #17

ApostAZ podcast number 17 is out:

Episode 017 Atheism and Voluntarily Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! Special Guest Representatives of AZ Coalition of Reason Matt Schoenley, Jim Lippard, and Apostaz hosts Shannon and Brad. AZCoR, Who What what not Why and why not? Tam 7 and Skepticamp. http://arizonacor.org http://discord.org http://meetup.com/phoenix-atheists Intro- Greydon Square 'Cubed' from the Compton Effect. Outro- Vocab Malone 'Track 12'.

This was my first time sitting in on the whole recording, rather than just contributing a short skepticism segment. While this was mainly about the Arizona Coalition of Reason, I did talk a little bit about TAM7 and SkeptiCamp Phoenix.

The Amazing Meeting 7: Sunday paper sessions, Million Dollar Challenge

This is the sixth and final part of my summary of TAM7, covering the last day's events on Sunday, July 11. Part 1 is here, part 2 is here, part 3 is here, part 4 is here, part 5 is here, and my coverage of the Science-based Medicine conference begins here.

Sunday's continental breakfast was served while an old James Randi television appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show from 1986 was shown. This brought back some old memories--I think I have the show on videotape in my archives, as I think we showed it at a meeting of the Phoenix Skeptics. Randi appeared with a faith healer ("Amazing Grace"), a psychic (Joyce Keller), and an astrologer (Irene Hughes), which led to some entertaining and ridiculous exchanges of words. Randi showed his footage that exposed Peter Popoff using a wireless transmitter and receiver to fake the "word of knowledge," and did some spoon bending. Joyce Keller claimed she was entitled to his $10,000 prize, and Oprah mistakenly claimed that Randi had brought his own spoons, which she corrected herself about after a commercial break.

This was followed by the Sunday refereed papers, which were again organized and moderated by Ray Hall, professor of physics at California State University, Fresno and at Fermi National Labs.

Don Riefler, "Teaching Critical Thinking in a Therapeutic Setting"
Don Riefler, Direct Care Supervisor at the Jessie Levering Cary Home for Children in Lafayette, Indiana, gave a talk about strategies he's used to teach critical thinking to underprivileged/institutionalized children at the Cary Home, complete with positive reinforcement in the form of candy distributed to members of the audience who gave good answers. He discussed several categories of common "thinking errors" which included both logical fallacies and heuristics that lead to problems when overgeneralized. As part of his teaching, he has kids conduct ESP experiments with Zener cards, which he uses to teach them about erroneous inferences they draw about their skills. This provoked the first critical question (from regular ScienceBlogs commenter Sastra), asking whether his referral to "success" and "failure" in the Zener test suggests to kids that it's a matter of effort. (I neglected to record his response.) In answer to a question of how he deals with religion he said that he avoids it and shuts down talk of religion or ideology.

David Green, "Patently Ridiculous: The Perfect Sommelier"
David Green, a Senior Patent Examiner at the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, gave a talk that was essentially a sequel to a talk he gave at TAM5. He spoke about "The Perfect Sommelier," a product that claims to "align tannin molecules with magnets to age wine faster." He compared how the patent application for this product was handled in the U.S. vs. Canada.

In the U.S., patent examiners made two objections to the application, first, that it was obvious or already known, and second that the "subject matter is inoperable--the theory of operation cannot be correct." The first objection failed, since the invention was sufficiently different from prior art in various ways (such as having magnets at both ends of the bottle, not just at one end). And, based on the Longer ("lawn-jay") test, under which the description of the invention must be accepted as true unless there's a reason to doubt it, it passed on the second as well, and was granted two U.S. patents. Green said that it essentially comes down to a he-said/she-said debate, and the patent office has to be biased towards issuance of the patent.

In Canada, the same objections were made as in the U.S., along with a third. David Green had read a Swift article about a test of the product, so the third objection was a rejection on the basis of double-blind research evidence showing that the product doesn't work, published in the Journal of Wine Research. That study concluded that "no evidence was found to suggest that The Perfect Sommelier improves the palatability of cheap red wine." The manufacturers responded to the first two objections in the same way they did in the U.S., but for the third, they asserted that their evidence in the form of testimony overrides the double-blind research.

And then they abandoned their patent claim in Canada.

The reason they did this, Green explained, is because of "U.S. file wrapper estoppels"--that what you do in a foreign patent application can affect your patent in U.S. court. If they had continued with their claim in Canada and been denied--or if they had failed to file a response to the objections--that could have impacted their U.S. patent.

What this demonstrates, Green argued, is the importance of doing solid investigations and research on such products, and getting them published and spreading the information around (e.g., online), so that patent examiners can find it. It can make the difference between a nonsensical product getting a patent or being denied a patent.

At this point I took some time to chat with Ray Hyman, and came in a little bit late for the next presentation.

Adam Slagell, "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt: The Pillars of Justification for Cyber Security"
Adam Slagell, Senior Security Engineer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, spoke about claims made for security and security products that we should be skeptical of. He pointed out that there's no such thing as perfect security, and there are always tradeoffs to be made between security and usability/convenience/etc. He spoke a little bit about TSA "security theater," pointing out the gaping flaw in the "no fly lists" that comes from the separation of checking ID and boarding pass at the security checkpoint from checking your boarding pass at the gate. He also questioned the point of shoe removal, which led to the first comment on his talk from Ian, an airport security officer at Gatwick, who argued that forcing shoes to go through the X-ray machine does close a genuine vulnerability. (Ian also argued that the liquid restriction makes sense, though he didn't respond to Slagell's point that you can carry multiple 3-ounce containers and combine their contents with those of your associates after you go through screening. Most interestingly, Ian said that airport metal detectors go off randomly in addition to when they detect metal.)

Slagell argued that signature-based antivirus products are obsolete, since polymorphic malware and use of packers are extremely effective at eliminating signatures, and observed that companies are starting to create products based on white-listing, only allowing pre-defined sets of software to run on a machine. (At last year's New Mexico InfraGard conference, Anthony Clark and Danny Quist spoke in some detail about different kinds of packers, and offered a set of criteria for measuring AV effectiveness that included use of methods other than signature-detection, such as anomalous behavior detection.) He unfortunately didn't have time to talk about passwords.

Another questioner asked what users behaviors are useful to stay secure, to which Slagell replied that you should keep systems patched and backed up. (There is actually some argument, at least for corporations, to be somewhat selective in patching, since many patches aren't applicable, have other mitigations, and have potential for reducing availability themselves--but there is no substitute for having a vulnerability management program in place.)

Steve Cuno, "The Constructive Skeptic: Rebranding Skepticism at the Grassroots Level"
Steve Cuno, chairman of RESPONSE Agency, Inc., gave an excellent talk last year at TAM6, and he gave another great presentation this time as well. He started by saying that skeptics have a branding problem.

What is a brand? Is it a name and logo? A great slogan? What you say about yourself?

He gave some counterexamples for each of these, including some nice vintage ads (e.g., "They're happy because they eat lard" from the Lard Information Council). AIG had the slogan "The strength to be here." (He didn't mention any of my favorite unintentionally ironic bank slogans.)

He gave an example slogan for skepticism: "Skepticism: Doubt worth believing in." He called all of these proposed brand definitions "brand flatulence: you may like the sound and smell of your farts, but nobody else does."

He gave as his prototypical example of what branding really is the example of Nordstrom's. There's no particular logo or slogan involved, but people think of Nordstrom on the basis of the values that are expressed by the company through its employees and the experience you have as a customer. The essence of creating a brand is creating a positive customer experience.

And the way for skeptics to give skepticism a good name is by self-policing "to deliver positive brand experience."

He suggested that the way to do this is to delay giving yourself a label, and when you do identify yourself with a label, anchor it in something positive. Instead of saying "I don't believe in ...", think through and express what you do support. For example:

• I believe in what the evidence supports.
• I believe in honesty, integrity, equal rights, and treating one another with dignity and respect.
• I believe in and defend the right of all people to believe as they choose.

Do things that are positive. He gave the example of the GLBT protests at the annual April Mormon Church Conference, which, rather than picketing and protesting, engaged in protest by cleaning up parks, visiting shut-ins, and doing positive and helpful things in the name of their cause. The result was to get tons of positive press.

He heartily endorsed TAM7's vaccination support and food drive, and further added that we should play nice. Being controversial and using insults may work for media figures, but not for the grassroots. Be sure that messages are well-timed. And remember that some people just don't care--to quote Will Rogers, "Never miss a good opportunity to shut up."

A summary of Cuno's talk may be found on his blog.

Brian Dunning, "What Were the 'Lost Cosmonaut' Radio Transmissions?"
Brian Dunning's talk was a sequel to one of his Skeptoid podcasts on Achille and Giovanni Judica-Cordiglia, a pair of Italian brothers who built equipment to monitor radio transmissions from spacecraft at an installation they called Torre Bert. They successfully recorded the October 1957 launch of Sputnik I, Sputnik II with Laika the dog in November 1957, and then a few oddities. In February 1961, they recorded what they reported as a "failing human heartbeat," when there was no known flight. In the same month, they recorded a "voice of a dying man," again with no known flight. In May 1961, they recorded the voice of a woman, Ludmila, speaking about how she was "going to re-enter," which they attributed to a secret female cosmonaut mission that resulted in her death.

There are no corroborating reports of these transmissions, despite the fact that the U.S. Defense Early Warning system began in 1959. And there were no female cosmonauts in 1961. The female cosmonaut program wasn't approved until five months after the recording, and the first five women selected for the program a year later. Yuri Gagarin had just launched in Vostok 1 in May 1961, and for the Vostok 2 launch in August 1961, they had to scavenge Gagarin's space suit to make a suit for the second cosmonaut. So there was no way there was a female cosmonaut launch in May 1961.

At the time, the U.S. was flying X-15s. Did the Soviets have some kind of space plane? The Soviet Kosmoplan never got off the drawing board, and its Raketoplan was developed, but wasn't ready for testing until 1962.

A jet fighter? The YC-150 didn't fly high enough. Dunning also ruled out the Mig-21 and high-altitude balloons.

The conclusion--get your own Russian translators. Dunning got four Russians to listen to the recording, and found that it didn't say what was claimed, but instead was almost 99% unintelligible, with the rest being numbers. He also found that the source of the transmission was not moving, but was at a fixed position.

Although he didn't come to a definitive conclusion, he was able to at least eliminate a number of possibilities--sometimes that's the best you can do.

Christian Walters and Tim Farley, "How Are We Doing? Attracting and Keeping Visitors to Skeptical Websites"
Tim Farley was another return speaker, this time with Christian Walters. They talked about how the over 650 skeptical websites should measure acquisition of visitors and take actions to keep them and to obtain high search engine rankings.

First, how you're acquiring visitors can be measured by looking at rankings on search engine result pages (SERPs), Google PageRank, and Yahoo link strength measurements. These measures are all increased by receiving links from other web sources, of which important sites are social media sites like digg, reddit, delicio.us, Facebook, and Twitter.

Another important factor is having good page titles, which include popular search terms. The META keyword tags are no longer so important. By using the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, you can find what popular search terms are. Sometimes they are surprising--for instance misspellings of some terms (like accupuncture) get more search hits than the correct spelling.

It's also a good idea to put the keywords from your title into the URL, rather than use URLs as some blogs do that only have a page ID in them.

The anchor text of hyperlinks to your pages should also contain the appropriate keywords, and so your internal links within a site should make a point of using them.

It's important to describe your site with an XML SiteMap or via RSS feed, which you get for free with blogs. When you link to other sites, you are dividing up your own link strength among the sites you link to, unless you use the NOFOLLOW tag, which you should do when linking to sites you don't want to promote in search engine results. NOFOLLOW is also a good idea when linking to sites that may engage in spam or other abuse, to prevent that abuse from reflecting on your site, as it might in Google search engine results, for example.

The Million Dollar Challenge: Dowser Connie Sonne
Everyone had to leave the auditorium for preparation for the JREF Million Dollar Challenge, with Danish dowser and former police detective Connie Sonne (who has described her alleged powers in an interview with Alison Smith of JREF). Everyone had to sign an agreement to remain silent and not disturb the proceedings before filing back in--and everyone remained quite quiet for the hour or so that it took for the test.

This was a preliminary test, with a 1 in 1000 probability of success by chance, which, if successful, would allow Connie Sonne to go on to the official challenge for the JREF's $1,000,000. The protocol for the test was developed in conjunction with Connie Sonne and both sides approved. She signed paperwork describing the protocol and agreeing that she woudl go ahead with the test.

Connie Sonne claimed to be able to use a pendulum to identify playing cards without looking at them, and she successfully did this when she was able to see the cards. Sets of playing cards, A-10, for each of three suits were placed separately into envelopes. Each of those envelopes for the same suit was placed into a larger envelope, with the suit written on the outside. Banachek ran the test (I thought to myself at the time that this was a likely source of future complaint, given his skill at illusion), opening each of the three suit envelopes, one at a time, and rolling a 10-sided die to indicate which card from the suit Connie Sonne was required to locate. The ten individual card envelopes were spread out in front of her, and she used the pendulum to identify which envelope she believed contained the appropriate card. For the first set, she was supposed to find the 3 of hearts, for the second, the 7 of clubs, and for the third, the ace of spades. The cards she picked were the 2 of hearts, which was in the second envelope of the first set, the ace of clubs, which was in the seventh envelope of the second set, and the 2 of spades, which was in the first envelope of the third set. Banachek opened all of the envelopes from each of the three sets so that she could see that there was no trickery, and she agreed that all was done fairly.

At the subsequent press conference, she continued to maintain that all was fair, but that there was some reason she wasn't supposed to reveal her powers to the world yet.

But by the next day, she decided that she had been cheated somehow by Banachek. Her main point of evidence was that Banachek identified the ace of spades from the third set before pulling the card out of the envelope--but it was the last card of the set to be opened, and he identified it after the end of the envelope had been cut off and as he started to pull it out. The cards were visible inside the envelopes once the ends were opened.

On July 13, she made her accusation of cheating on the JREF Forums:

Hi out there...now I know why Banacheck was "the card handler". I have been cheated. I did find the right cards. And there is one more thing. At the stage, Banacheck said to me BEFORE he even looked in the envelope I had cut...and here is spade ace, the one you looked for!!!! I first hit me now about that ....but maybe you can see it yourself if someone get the video. I don`t care about the money, that wasn`t the reason why I came. So no matter what you think out there......I was CHEATED!!!!!

Connie

It was a typical response to the Randi challenge from an honest proponent of a claim who doesn't understand why the claim failed under test conditions, resolving the cognitive dissonance by placing blame on the experimenter.

That concludes my summary of TAM7--I look forward to attending TAM8 next year.

The Arizona Skeptic online: vol. 7, 1994

Concluding the postings of The Arizona Skeptic; you can find volume 1 (1987-1988) here, volume 2 (1988-1989) here, volume 3 (1989-1990) is here, volume 4 (1990-1991) is here, and volume 5 (1991-1992) is here, and volume 6 (1992-1993) here. Volume 7 was edited by Mike Stackpole.

An index to all issues by title, author, and subject may be found here.

The Arizona Skeptic, vol. 7, no. 1, Summer 1994:

• "Oh No--Spooks in a Skeptic's Home" by Hans Sebald
• "Skeptics Predictions for 1994"
• "Meeting Schedule for 1994"
• "Where Have We Been?"
• "What Harm Superstition?" by Michael A. Stackpole
• "Skeptically Entertaining" by Michael A. Stackpole

While that was the last issue of The Arizona Skeptic published, there have been at least two published lists of skeptical predictions by the Phoenix Skeptics, for 1996, 2006, and 2007, and the group continues to meet on a monthly basis--at 12 p.m. (noon) on the first Saturday of each month at Jim's Coney Island Cafe in Tempe, 1750 N. Scottsdale Road, on the southeast corner of Scottsdale Road and McKellips.

There is also now an active Phoenix Skeptics in the Pub meetup group, which meets at 7 p.m. on the first Wednesday of each month at D'Arcy McGee's Pub at the Tempe Marketplace, 2000 E. Rio Salado Parkway.

UPDATE (March 18, 2010): Phoenix Skeptics in the Pub now meets at Four Peaks Brewery--see the meetup group link.

UPDATE (September 17, 2014): The Phoenix Area Skeptics Society has been active since 2012.

The Arizona Skeptic online: vol. 6, 1992-1993

Continuing the postings of The Arizona Skeptic; you can find volume 1 (1987-1988) here, volume 2 (1988-1989) here, volume 3 (1989-1990) is here, volume 4 (1990-1991) is here, and volume 5 (1991-1992) is here. Volume 6 was edited by Jim Lippard and has been available online since original publication as ASCII text. An index to all issues by title, author, and subject may be found here. The Arizona Skeptic, vol. 6, no. 1, July/August 1992 (text version):

• "Science and Dianetics" by Jeff Jacobsen
• "A Healthy Dose of Sarsaparilla" by Jerome L. Cosyn
• "Book Review: Combatting Cult Mind Control by Steven Hassan" reviewed by Chaz Bufe
• "Michael Persinger and Tectonic Strain Theory" by Jim Lippard
• "Rutkowski's Work" and "Other Critical Works" (bibliography of papers critical of TST assembled by Chris Rutkowski)
• "Book Review: Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric by Howard Kahane" reviewed by Jim Lippard
• "Book Review: Sai Baba's Miracles by Dale Beyerstein" reviewed by Jim Lippard
• Media Update
• Newsletter Production Volunteers Needed
• Electronic Version of the Newsletter
• Upcoming Meetings: September speaker Chaz Bufe on Alcoholics Anonymous
• Articles of Note

The Arizona Skeptic, vol. 6, no. 2, September/October 1992 (text version):

• "How Much of Your Brain Do You Use?" by Mickey Rowe
• "Phoenix Skeptics and the Sedona Harmonic Diversion" by Mike Johnson
• "Jehovah's Witnesses and Earthquake Frequency" by John Rand (pseudonym for Alan Feuerbacher)
• "The Institute for Creation Research and Earthquake Frequency" by Jim Lippard
• "QUAKE DAY - Minus 7" by Mike Jittlov
• "New Skeptical Group/Magazine" (Skeptics Society/Skeptic magazine)
• Upcoming Meetings: October speaker Peter Lima on the search for the historical Jesus
• Articles of Note

The Arizona Skeptic, vol. 6, no. 3, November/December 1992 (text version):

• "Report on the 1992 CSICOP Conference: Part One" by Jim Lippard
• "A Visit to Dinosaur Valley State Park" by Richard A. Crowe
• "The End of Crop Circles?" by Chris Rutkowski
• Next Issue
• Upcoming Meetings
• Articles of Note

The Arizona Skeptic, vol. 6, no. 4, January/February 1993 (text version):

• "Predictions for 1993"
• "Jeane Dixon Predicts Bush Victory"
• "Report on the 1992 CSICOP Conference: Part Two" by Jim Lippard
• "Book Review: Impure Science: Fraud, Compromise and Political Influence in Scientific Research by Robert Bell" reviewed by Jim Lippard
• "Book Review: Taking Time for Me: How Caregivers Can Effectively Deal with Stress by Katherine L. Karr" reviewed by Michael A. Stackpole
• Upcoming Meetings
• Reader Survey
• Articles of Note
• Magazine/Journal Subscription Information

The Arizona Skeptic, vol. 6, no. 5, March/April 1993 (text version):

• "CSICOP Questions Truth of Movie Based on Travis Walton UFO Abduction"
• "MIS-Fire in the Sky" by Chris Rutkowski
• "Linda Napolitano UFO Abduction Case Criticized" by Jim Lippard
• "Book Review: The Retreat to Commitment by William Warren Bartley III" reviewed by David A. Snodgrass
• "Camille Paglia: Astrologer"
• Skeptical News
• Upcoming Meetings
• Books of Note
• Articles of Note

Volume 6 concluded my editorship, and volume 7 returned for one more issue edited by Mike Stackpole.

The Arizona Skeptic online: vol. 5, 1991-1992

Continuing the postings of The Arizona Skeptic; you can find volume 1 (1987-1988) here, volume 2 (1988-1989) here, volume 3 (1989-1990) is here, and volume 4 (1990-1991) is here. Volume 5 was edited by Jim Lippard and has been available online since original publication as ASCII text. An index to all issues by title, author, and subject may be found here. The Arizona Skeptic, vol. 5, no. 1, July/August 1991 (text version):

• "Rosenthal Lecture" by Jim Lippard
• "Book Review: Philosophical Essays in Pragmatic Naturalism by Paul Kurtz" reviewed by Bill Green
• "Book Review: Pitfalls in Human Research: Ten Pivotal Points by Theodore X. Barber" reviewed by Jim Lippard
• "Book Review: They Call It Hypnosis by Robert A. Baker" reviewed by Jim Lippard
• Editor's Column
• CORRECTION: To "Dissension in the Ranks of the Institute for Creation Research"
• Upcoming Meetings

The Arizona Skeptic, vol. 5, no. 2, September/October 1991 (text version):

• "Dianetics: From Out of the Blue?" by Jeff Jacobsen
• "Book Review: Bryant's Law and Other Broadsides by John Bryant" reviewed by Jim Lippard
• "Hypnosis and Free Will" by Jim Lippard
• Next Issue
• Upcoming Meetings: October speaker Don Lacheman of Sun Magic, November speaker Louis Rhodes of the Arizona Civil Liberties Union
• Articles of Note

The Arizona Skeptic, vol. 5, no. 3, November/December 1991 (text version):

• "Postscript to 'Some Failures of Organized Skepticism'" by Jim Lippard
• "Book Review: The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie" reviewed by Hans Sebald, Ph.D.
• "Book Review: The Unfathomed Mind by William R. Corliss" reviewed by Jim Lippard
• "Book Review: Labyrinths of Reason by William Poundstone" reviewed by Mark Adkins
• Letters (from Mark Adkins, Beth Fischi)
• "Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road? An Episode of Human Folly" by Mark Adkins
• Articles of Note
• "October Meeting: 'Magical Moments'" by Ron Harvey: speaker Don Lacheman
• Next Issue
• Upcoming Meetings: December: 1992 predictions, January: Rene Pfalzgraf on neuro-linguistic programming

The Arizona Skeptic, vol. 5, no. 4, January/February 1992 (text version):

• "Predictions for 1992!" compiled by Mike Stackpole
• "Comments on Lippard's Review of They Call It Hypnosis" by Robert A. Baker
• "Book Review: Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure? by Chaz Bufe" reviewed by Terry Sandbek, Ph.D.
• Next Issue
• Upcoming Meetings

The Arizona Skeptic, vol. 5, no. 5, March/April 1992 (text version):

• "About 'The Vitality of Mythical Numbers' and 'Truth Almost Extinct in Tales of Imperiled Species'" by Jim Lippard
• "The Vitality of Mythical Numbers" by Max Singer
• "Truth Almost Extinct in Tales of Imperiled Species" by Julian Simon
• "Book Review: Space-Time Transients and Unusual Events by Michael A. Persinger and Gyslaine F. Lafrenière" reviewed by Jim Lippard
• Next Issue
• Upcoming Meetings
• Request for Submissions
• Articles of Note

The Arizona Skeptic, vol. 5, no. 6, May/June 1992 (text version):

• "An Observation of the Famous Marfa Lights" by James Long
• "The Marfa Lights" by Hal Finney
• Letters (from John Bryant)
• Editorial Note Regarding the "Mars Effect"
• "Book Review: The Mind Game by Norman Spinrad" reviewed by Jim Lippard
• Upcoming Meetings
• Articles of Note

Volume 6 continued for just short of another year under my editorship, with five issues published for 1992-1993.