Literary hoaxes

Now that Berkley Books has just cancelled Herman Rosenblat's Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love That Survived after the core story about how he met his wife while in a concentration camp was proven false, ABC News has put together a slide show of some other famous literary hoaxes.

The list includes, in addition to Rosenblat:

James Frey
JT Leroy
Norma Khouri
Margaret B. Jones
Misha Defonseca
Nasdijj
Anthony Godby Johnson
Lauren Stratford
Clifford Irving
Araki Yususada
Jayson Blair
Binjamin Wilkomirski
Forrest Carter
Kaavya Viswanathan
Tom Carew
Janet Cooke
The Hitler Diaries
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

There are a few others they could have covered--there are entire genres of hoaxes, like Christian conversion stories of fake Illuminati, witches, Satanists, Jesuits, and terrorists, stories of fake undercover agents and spies, stories of mind-controlled sex slaves, and so on. The Christian conversion stories are the ones I'm most familiar with, many of which have been promoted by Jack T. Chick of Chick tract fame, or have involved film producer David Balsiger (see especially footnote 7 of the linked article).

Anchoring and credit card minimum payments

"Anchoring" is the psychological effect that, when presented with a sample number prior to being asked to estimate some quantity, people tend to stick closer to that sample number than they would if no number were mentioned, even if the number is completely irrelevant to what's being estimated.

A study by Neil Stewart at Warwick University suggests that minimum payment amounts on credit card bills cause people to pay less on their credit cards per month than they otherwise would, since the minimum payment tends to be extremely low. While it has no effect on those who intend to pay off the full monthly amount (the only reasonable way to use credit cards, in my opinion), Stewart's work suggests that those who pay less than the full amount pay 43% less on average than they would if no minimum payment were specified.

While this might be interpreted as counter to the intent of a minimum payment, I suspect it's exactly the intended effect from the credit card companies--to drag out payments over the longest possible time and accumulate the most interest.

Books Read in 2008

Once again, here's my annual list of books I've read in the last year. I did somewhat worse than last year in finishing books I started, and I found last year disappointing. The piles of started but unfinished books are growing--but perhaps I can match last year's total by the end of the year (I'm only threetwo short at the moment). I've not done a good job of writing Amazon.com reviews of any of these, though I've put a few short comments on Facebook's Visual Bookshelf for a few of these. I owe Guy Harrison an Amazon.com review/blog review/etc. for his excellent book, which I recommend as a nice (and less threatening) companion piece to Julian Baggini's Atheism: A Very Short Introduction as an introduction to atheism.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel

Matthew Chapman, 40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania

Anderson Cooper, Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival

Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

Cory Doctorow, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

Joseph Finder, Paranoia

Guy P. Harrison, 50 reasons people give for believing in a god

Gene Healy, The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Presidential Power

Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War

Susan Jacoby, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism

Robert A. Levy and William Mellor, The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom

Maureen McCormick, Here's the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice

Mary Roach, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

William C. Speidel, Sons of the Profits

Jim Steinmeyer, Art & Artifice and Other Essays on Illusion

Jim Steinmeyer, Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Carl Zimmer, Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--And How It Changed the World

Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It

(Previously: 2007, 2006, 2005.)

Looking for donations, again!

I am once again asking for donations. I will be walking January 25, 2009 in the 1st annual PetSmart PetWalk to help raise funds for R.E.S.C.U.E.

Please visit my donations page and help out if you can, as always, donations are tax deductible.

Happy holidays!

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced with the most enjoyable traditions of religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. We also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2009, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make our country great (not to imply that the United States is necessarily greater than any other country) and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms: This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.

Disclaimer: No trees were harmed in the sending of this message; however, a significant number of electrons were slightly inconvenienced.

(From mlaw.org; a repost from 2006.)

The Hound of Mons

In the January 2009 issue of Fortean Times, Theo Paijmans reports the following story of "The Hound of Mons," quoted from the Ada Evening News, Ada, Oklahoma, 11 August 1919:

That weird legend of No Man's Land, the gruesome epice of the "hound of Mons," has, according to F.J. Newhouse, a returned Canadian veteran, been vindicated throughout Europe as fact and not fiction. For four years civilian skeptics laughed at the soldiers' tale of a giant, skulking hound, which stalked among the corpses and shell holes of No Man's Land and dragged down British soldiers to their death. An apparition of fear-crazed minds, they said. But to the soldiers it was a reality and one of the most fearful things of the world war.

"The death of Dr. Gottlieb Hochmuller in the recent Spartacan riots in Berlin," said Capt. Newhouse, "has brought to light facts concerning the fiendish application of this German scientist's skill that have astounded Europe. For the hound of Mons was not an accident, a phantom, or an hallucination--it was the deliberate result of one of the strangest and most repulsive scientific experiments the world has ever known.

Teeth Marks in Throats.
What was the hound of Mons? According to the soldiers, the legend started in the terrible days of the defense of Mons. On the night of November 14, 1914, Capt. Yeskes and four men of the London Fusiliers entered No Man's Land on patrol. The last living trace of them was when they started into the darkness between the lines. Several days afterward their dead bodies were found--just as they had been dragged down--with teeth marks at the throats.

Several nights later a weird, blood-curdling howl was heard from the darkness toward which the British trenches faced. It was the howl of the hound of Mons. From then on this phantom hound became the terror of the men who faced death by bullets with a smile. It was the old fear of the unknown.

Howl is Heard.
Patrol after patrol, during two years of warefare, ventured out only to be found days later with the telltale marks at their throats. The ghastly howl continued to echo through No Man's Land. Several times sentries declared that they saw a lean, grey wraith flit past the barbed wire--the form of a gigantic hound running silently. But civilian Europe always doubted the story.

Then after two years, while many brave men lost their lives with only those teeth marks at the throat to show, the hound of Mons disappeared. From then on the Germans never had another important success.

"And now," says Captain Newhouse, "secret papers have been taken from the residence of the late Dr. Hochmuller which prove that the hound of Mons was a terrible living reality, a giant hound with the brain of a human madman."

Hound Had Human Brain.
Captain Newhouse says that the papers show that this hound was the only successful issue of a series of experiments by which Dr. Hochmller hoped to end the war in Germany's favor. The scientist had gone about the wards of the German hospitals until he found a man gone mad as the result of his insane hatred of England. Hochmuller, with the sanction of the German government, operated upon him and removed his brain, taking in particular the parts which dominated hatred and frenzy.

At the same time a like operation was performed on a giant Siberian wolfhound. Its brain was taken out and the brain of the madman inserted. By careful nursing the dog lived. The man was permitted to die.

The dog rapidly grew stronger and, after careful training in fiendishness, wa taken to the firing line and released in No Man's Land. There for two years it became the terror of outposts and patrols.

Back before the Internet, the local newspapers met our needs for fabulous hoaxes, and many of them applied, at least periodically, the journalistic standards of the Weekly World News--you only need one source.

UPDATE (April 25, 2009): Fortean Times reader Alistair Moffatt writes in a letter in the May 2009 issue (p. 73) to point out that while F.J. Newhouse did exist, there was no Captain Yeskes of the London Fusiliers and Yeskes is an American or Canadian name, not a British one, suggesting a local origin for the above tale. He also notes that the Battle of Mons took place in August 1914, not November. He suggests that the tale may have originated from a propagandized and heavily distorted account of Captain Max von Stephanitz's breeding of the German Shepherd.

How to get on an atheist's good side

Greta Christina writes a list of "nine tips for believers who want to reach out" to atheists:

1: Familiarize yourself with the common myths and misconceptions about atheists -- and don't perpetuate them.
2: Familiarize yourself with what it's like to be an atheist, both in the U.S. and in the rest of the world.
3: Find common ground.
4: Speak out against anti-atheist bigotry and other forms of religious intolerance.
5: Be inclusive of atheists.
6: Don't divide and conquer, and don't try to take away our anger.
8: Do not -- repeat, DO NOT -- talk about "fundamentalist atheists."
9: Be aware of how religious belief gives you a place of mainstream and privilege.

Read her article for the details.

Rick Warren caught lying

Last Sunday, Rick Warren recorded a video for his congregation in which he denies ever comparing gay marriages to incest or pedophilia:

I have been accused of equating gay partnerships with incest and pedophila. Now, of course as members of Saddleback Church, you know I believe no such thing, I never have. You've never once heard me in thirty years talk that way about that.

But Rachel Maddow shows that he made exactly that comparison:

I'm opposed to having a brother and sister be together and call that marriage. I'm opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that a marriage. I'm opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.

Q. Do you think those are equivalent to gays getting married?

Oh, I do!

Rick Warren has been caught lying, in addition to being anti-gay and anti-evolution. He should ask to be taken off the agenda for the inauguration, and if he doesn't, Barack Obama should just withdraw his invitation to speak.

Blindsight

At Not Exactly Rocket Science is a video of a man navigating a hallway filled with obstacles, even though he's completely blind--he has zero conscious awareness of visual perception and his visual cortex shows no activity when given visual tasks (most of which he fails), but he does have an ability known as blindsight. He became blind as a result of strokes which caused damage to the occipital lobe of his brain, including his visual cortex. Yet his eyes still function and there is still some visual processing occurring without rising to the level of conscious awareness. He can perform a number of visual tasks with perfect accuracy, even though his conscious perception is that he is simply guessing.

(Hat tip to Dan Noland for the link.)

Anthropogenic global warming debate

I just came across this post from Duae Quartunciae from July about the American Physical Society's publication of pro and con arguments on the subject of anthropogenic global warming, and I direct it to your attention now because it has a very lengthy, detailed, and respectful debate in the comments.

I recently heard Jane Orient of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons speak about global warming (she thinks it's a pseudoscientific scam), in which she promoted the paper she published by Arthur and Noah Robinson and Willie Soon and the Petition Project. Before the event, I sent an email to the event organizer with links to Michael MacCracken's critique of that paper (PDF) and a wiki page critiquing the paper and the Robinsons' Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (where Dr. Orient is listed on the faculty as a professor of medicine; she also teaches a course on "global warming controversies" for the Schlaflys' Eagle Forum University). While my links weren't redistributed to the other attendees of the talk, I did get a chance to express my skepticism in the discussion, which led to an email exchange with Dr. Orient.

She took the position that advocates of anthropogenic global warming are engaging in pseudoscience and are biased by their own need to keep up the hype in order to continue to receive government funding, but will ultimately be refuted by a growing disconnect between the projections of the climate models and the facts--she seems to think that the recent warming trends have been the result of solar irradiance and that we are now on a cooling trend. She stated in her talk that James Hansen is unreliable because he falsely claimed that 1998 was the warmest year on record, and was forced to retract it and admit that 1934 was the warmest year on record; and similarly was forced to retract an incorrect claim that October 2008 was the warmest October on record after Steve McIntyre found that there was an error in some of the reported data. I pointed out that her first claim is incorrect--1998 is still the warmest year on record for global temperatures, but the second-warmest for the contiguous 48 U.S. states after 1934, which is what Hansen said. And while she was correct about October 2008, after the correction it still remains the fifth-warmest October on record. The top three years for global temperatures are 1998, 2005, and 2002; the eight warmest years on record are all since 1998; the fourteen warmest years on record are since 1990.

I also pointed out Skeptic magazine's recent critique of the Petition Project, which she dismissed as a criticism of Robinson for not using methodology to do something he was not trying to do; that all he was trying to do is show that there is no consensus among scientists. I compared the Petition Project to the Discovery Institute's "Dissent from Darwinism," which she said she did not see as analogous.

We found some points of agreement--we both support the legitimacy of questioning, and of science over pseudoscience, though we disagree about who's doing science and who's doing pseudoscience.

UPDATE (December 16, 2009): The "Petition Project" isn't a petition of scientists, it's a petition of people with at least a bachelor's degree in a science-related field. Whittenberger at eSkeptic points out that the signature breakdown by level of education was 29% Ph.D., 22% M.S., 7% M.D. or D.V.M., and 41% B.S. or equivalent. By field, it was 12% earth science, 3% computer science or mathematics, 18% physics and aerospace sciences, 15% chemistry, 9% biology and agriculture, 10% medicine, and 32% engineering and general science. The percentage of Ph.D.s in relevant areas isn’t available, but it’s clear from the breakdown that at least two thirds have less than a Ph.D. and at least 80% do not have education in a relevant field. I conclude that it's not possible to conclude on the basis of that petition that there's dissent among scientists with relevant credentials--it is just like the DI petition in that regard.