The Amazing Meeting 6 summarized, part five

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

Continuing my descriptions of Sunday's paper presentations...

Lee Graham on "Artificial Creatures, Real Evolution": Lee Graham, a Ph.D. student in computer science and member of the Ottawa Skeptics, gave a fascinating presentation about his 3D virtual creature evolution program (3DVCE), which he said was inspired by and based on 1994 work by Karl Sims of Thinking Machines Corporation on "Evolved Virtual Creatures." He developed software to evolve simulated creatures. The simulated creatures have perceptual sensors that detect surface inclines, contact, and proprioception (position of body parts), he measured fitness in terms of distance traveled, jump height, etc., and then engaged in selection of parents and reproduction based on that fitness, producing new offspring with both mutations and crossover (mixing of genes from the parents). While it is far from a complete model of evolution--lacking such features as food and environmental threats such as predators--it is sufficient to show that new complexity can evolve.

He showed a video of various creatures that evolved in the world, such as an interesting worm-like creature he called an "end-over-end worm," and then asked where does the complexity and information come from? There's the fitness function, the choice of primitive components, and the environment, each of which have counterparts in reality. But the real answer is from the process of variation plus selection. The development of complexity simply does not require top-down design.

Christopher French on anomalistic psychology: French, founder of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths College, University of London, gave a talk that was supposed to be about his own research, but there was a mixup with presentations and it was an earlier version of his talk. APRU does research, teaching, and public education on anomalistic psychology, a field that I believe was first named by Leonard Zusne and Warren Jones' book, Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking (the second edition from 1989 now sells for $129.45, I wonder what my first edition is worth?).

Tim Farley of whatstheharm.net on "Building Internet Tools for Skeptics": Tim Farley gave an excellent talk about developing new technological tools using the web in order to promote skepticism and critical thinking. His talk used a minimalist approach on his presentation, with slides containing individual words and phrases about each point he discussed (a technique promoted by Larry Lessig and known as the "Lessig Method" or the "Takahashi Method"). Farley spoke about the battle on the Internet between information and misinformation. Skeptics are using blogs, social networks, social linking, and search engines (e.g., Google bombing), but these methods are ad hoc and tend to promote preaching to the choir. We need to extend our reach and be more systematic, making use of new Web 2.0 methods for community, specialization, programmability, and mashups. Farley suggested the following steps to apply Web 2.0 to skepticism: work smarter, not harder--use services like Yahoo Pipes to filter RSS feeds to present on web pages. Specialize--find and fill a niche. Open up your data, so that others can make use of it in their web pages. Mash up data--combine geocoded data with Google Maps, for example. Appeal to people who are neutral.

He's working on creating a filter that searches just believer sites, which will allow the ability to search the entire web minus the believer sites. whatstheharm.net is a collection of victim reports, and a useful rhetorical tool for answering the question when people ask, "What's the harm in believing X?"

He suggested that all sites should publish their data using RSS, use iCal for calendar information, and use microformats like hReview so that you can show approval or disapproval of the things you link to.

Farley strongly advocated the use of geocoding and geoRSS, as well as KML (like RSS for maps, used by Google Earth) in order to put links on maps. He gave the example of the Church of Scientology in Boston on Beacon Street, where there are links to YouTube videos of protests in the intersection near the facility on Google Earth.

He gave the examples of disbeliefnet.com, promoting Bill Maher's new film "Religulous," which has a section called The Heretic Press which uses Yahoo Pipes to automatically pull in crazy religious stories.

Farley's new site of tools for skeptics is called skeptools.com, and you can find a version of his presentation there. Check it out.

Brian Dunning of the "Skeptoid" podcast, on "The Skeptologists": Brian Dunning, executive producer of "The Skeptologists," showed the whole pilot episode, which had some over-the-top music. He brought on stage his fellow executive producer and director Ryan Johnson, and they described the show. Where most pilots are kept secret, they are making theirs widely known in order to promote skeptical interest. He took questions from the audience, one of the most interesting was, "Do you have any plans to show things that turn out to be true?" Unfortunately, the answer was no, though that they will try to show real science for things "that have some similarity to the bogus claims." This makes it more of a preconceived debunking show rather than promotion of science and critical thinking.

Conclusion
At the end of the conference, Hal Bidlack suggested that next year's TAM may have a panel discussion on who's been sued and for what, along with a lawyer, on steps to take to avoid lawsuits.

There may have been a bit more after that, but things were a bit behind schedule and I had to rush off to catch a shuttle to the airport, so that was the end of the conference for me.

Christopher Hitchens gets waterboarded

Christopher Hitchens decided to experience waterboarding first-hand at the hands of experts, and he did so twice. He vividly describes the experience in Vanity Fair, which also has video.

David Byrne's singing robot

David Byrne has collaborated with David Hanson, the guy who made the Philip K. Dick robot at NextFest in 2005, to make a robot named Julio that sings, for a show titled "Machines and Souls: Digital Art" at the Museo de Arta Reina Sofia in Madrid.

Byrne writes:

I love where this is going. It brings to mind an image of someone sitting in a comfortable chair, maybe with friends, and maybe they’re having drinks—and at the same time Jentsch posits that layered over or under this image is the profoundly creepy, the deeply strange and disturbing. We’re in the land of David Lynch and Hitchcock. ET landing in the familiar U.S. suburbs could be viewed this way, or the various living dead and vampire movies.

More recently Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori proposed the existence of something called the uncanny valley. This “valley” is an area of emotional uncertainty and often revulsion experienced by an observer when a robot or computer animation (for example) approaches being human, is almost believable, but not quite.

He suggests that our emotional empathy with animations and robots increases as they get closer and closer to being human (or animal)—but then, at a certain point, they fall into the valley, and our empathy turns to disgust. In his view they switch from being a cute thing approaching humanity to a bad or faulty version of humanity. It is at this point that we see them as not merely slightly strange, but as a human with serious problems. If the creation can succeed in being a little bit better as a believable creature the feeling of revulsion disappears. For some viewers, recent films like Beowulf fall into this valley, while others find the almost humans acceptable.

Mori further suggests that this reaction might be innate—that it might be linked to our biological reactions to people who are physically or mentally ill—or to corpses. Evolution would have ingrained this reaction as a way of weeding out sick people from the social group. Hanson and others dispute the scientific veracity of the uncanny valley, but I think no one can doubt the strange and weird emotions that well up when confronted by one of these entities.

The point about disgust brings to mind Antonio Damasio's work on emotions, as well as Pascal Boyer's comments about religious rituals for corpse disposal in Religion Explained.

In a subsequent post, as Julio nears completion, Byrne writes:

Like many animals, humans sing for pleasure, for sex, for attention, to express pain, to relieve angst and to join and participate in a social group. All of these urges seem, if not uniquely human, at least not at all machine like. To see machines mimic these aspects of human life, is to watch some part of our imagined souls being appropriated.

To see and hear video of Julio singing, check out Byrne's blog. The show "Máquinas y Almas: Arte digital" ("Machines and Souls: Digital Art") opened on June 25.

The Amazing Meeting 6 summarized, part four

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And why do we pass on viral videos?

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

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

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

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

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

On to TAM6 summary, part five.

More on CIA extraordinary rendition flights

I just figured out that Trevor Paglen, the co-author of Torture Taxi, a book about how planespotting was used to track information about the CIA's extraordinary rendition flights, is also the author of I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagon's Black World, for which he appeared on the Colbert Report. At his blog, I've learned that the pilots of the CIA rendition flights associated with Khalid El-Masri have been identified at Sourcewatch, where you can also find extensive information about the planes and the fictional owners of the companies that operate them (in particular see the companies Premier Executive Transport Services and Bayard Foreign Marketing, which have both owned the same Gulfstream V (PDF), nicknamed the "Guantanamo Bay Express").

El-Masri, a German citizen, was kidnapped in Macedonia and taken to a CIA black site called the "Salt Pit" in Afghanistan, where he was tortured, then later released in Albania after a second order to do so by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice (the first was ignored). He was taken because his name resembled that of suspected al Qaeda operative Khalid al-Masri.

El-Masri's lawsuit against the CIA and three private companies that operated planes involved with his transport was dismissed in 2006 on grounds of state secrets privilege, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied cert in 2007. He has also sued in Germany, where there are outstanding warrants for pilots Eric Robert Hume, James Kovalesky, and Harry Kirk Ellarbee. All three of these pilots work or worked for alleged CIA front company Aero Contractors Ltd., live in Johnston County, North Carolina and have been visited by the German press in unsuccessful attempts to interview them.

The German warrants were passed to Interpol, but the German government declined to ask the U.S. for extradition after an informal request was given a negative reply.

El-Masri was sent to a mental institution in 2007 after being arrested for arson and an assault on a truck-driving instructor.

Keith Olbermann flip-flops on telecom immunity

How sad to see political partisanship turn him into an advocate for bad legislation. The telecoms shouldn't get civil or criminal immunity for violations of our constitutional rights.

UPDATE (July 8, 2008): Ed Brayton comments on Obama's attempt to explain his change of position on this issue.

The Amazing Meeting 6 summarized, part three

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

Friday night was my one late night out, as I went with a group of Denver and Boston skeptics (and one local friend) to Gallagher's Steakhouse at the New York, New York Casino. On the walk down the strip, we passed some 9/11 truthers holding signs promoting a website promoting their views. I told one that he should check out 911myths.com, to which he responded, "That's funny." He ended up going off on a rant about how I was sticking my head in the sand, to which Iunproductively responded in an off-color manner about where he was sticking his head. We had a fantastic, though expensive, meal, and I ended up leaving my camera at the restaurant. Fortunately, I was able to retrieve it even though the restaurant had closed.

Saturday morning I had breakfast with an attorney from Florida and a regular attendee of hacker's conferences from Pennsylvania; we talked a bit about criminal hacking on the Internet and copyright law.

Michael Shermer on the Skeptologists and why people believe in unseen things
Michael Shermer gave the first talk of the day. He began by talking about how he recently accepted some money from the Templeton Foundation in return for editing a booklet of thirteen essays on the question "Does science make belief in God obsolete?", which he agreed to do on the condition that he could pick at least some of the people to write answers to the question. Respondents included Kenneth Miller, Victor Stenger, Christopher Hitchens, Stephen Pinker, and Stuart Kauffman.

He then showed a segment from a TV show pilot, "The Skeptologists," that is now being pitched to the TV networks. The show features Yau-Man Chan, Mark Edward, Steven Novella, Phil Plait, Kirsten Sanford, Michael Shermer, and Brian Dunning investigating claims using the tools of skepticism. The segment shown was of Shermer, Sanford, and Novella investigating health claims made for wheat grass, such as that because it contains chlorophyll which is molecularly similar to hemoglobin, it turns into hemoglobin when you consume it.

Shermer then went on to give a talk about "why people believe in unseen things," arguing that we engage in learning by association (something illustrated by Banachek's memory workshop) and have a tendency to make type II errors (incorrectly accepting a belief in something false) over type I errors (incorrectly rejecting a belief in something true). He gave a brief review of some evidence that when we process a sentence in order to understand it, we go through the same steps as entertaining that it is true, and to exercise skepticism about it requires additional effort; disbelief requires a subsequent process of rejection after the process of comprehension. This kind of acceptance of knowledge presented by others makes sense for a child growing up, especially in a hostile environment where survival is at stake.

Humans also tend not to be persuaded by or even remember being told that something is false--the negation can be forgotten while the statement being denied is remembered as true. A flyer put out by the CDC to rebut myths about flu vaccines turned out to have the opposite of the desired effect, at least by certain groups of people--after 30 minutes, they remembered 28% of the false statements as being true, and after three days the percentage jumped to 40%. (Also see Sam Wang and Sandra Amodt's op-ed in the June 27, 2008 New York Times, "Your Brain Lies to You.")

Shermer didn't mention the study I've linked to, but rather later near the end of his talk referred to some fMRI studies by Sam Harris, Sameer Sheth, and Mark Cohen (PDF) about evaluating statements as true, false, or undecideable, comparing reaction times to different types of statements.

Agency and the intentional stance
Shermer talked about the work of Pascal Boyer and Daniel Dennett on agency and the intentional stance--that we tend to assume by default that everything that happens not only has a cause, but is caused by an agent, and particularly one that means us harm. Such an assumption may make evolutionary sense to enable survival, though it clearly doesn't work well for accurate explanations of the world. But such appeal of agency lies behind intelligent design theory, and attributing supernatural intentions to natural phenomena. Shermer called this "The God Illusion" rather than "delusion," because he, like Boyer and Dennett, see it as a normal cognitive illusion rather than something delusional or pathological.

He went on to talk about folk intuitions as being the engines of all sorts of beliefs. He gave examples from folk astronomy, folk biology (the elan vital), folk psychology (mind/brain dualism), and folk economics (centrally planned economies). He compared natural selection and Adam Smith's invisible hand, observing that many people misconstrue one or the other as being something magical or directed. He observed that we have folk intuitions that have evolved for a particular environment, yet do not work well at the huge or tiny scales.

Then, more controversially, he referred to folk politics, viewing societies as an extension of the family, and referred to "intelligent government theory," the "God of the government" theory, and "the government illusion," drawing an analogy to intelligent design, God of the gaps, and the God illusion, respectively. But where intelligent design says "I can't imagine how X could have evolved, therefore it must have been designed," he described "intelligent government theory" as based on the faulty reasoning that "I can't imagine how X could be done privately, therefore a government must do it." The difference here, as I've already mentioned, is that we know that governments exist and do provide services. The libertarian argument about private provision of services vs. government provision of services is one about whether government is necessary, or moral, or more efficient than private provision of services. To my mind, such arguments are well worth having, but come down to questions of competing values (e.g., liberty vs. justice) and empirical evidence about costs and benefits of competing approaches. It's not really analogous to the question of the existence or nonexistence of gods, unless perhaps one takes that to partly be an issue about the pragmatic value of belief in an illusion vs. truth.

Sharon Begley
Newsweek science writer Sharon Begley gave a talk titled "Creationism and Other Weird Beliefs: The Role of the Press," with a subtitle "hint: don't get your hopes up." She was very pessimistic about the press being helpful in promoting critical thinking. She began by telling the story of the Tichbourne Claimant. In 1854, Roger Tichbourne was lost at sea off the coast of Brazil. He had been raised in France to the age of 16, then in England. He was very thin, and had blue eyes and tattoos. His mother refused to accept that he was dead, and placed ads in newspapers seeking him. Some 20 years later, a man from Wagga Wagga, Australia contacted her, claiming that he had not previously contacted her because he wanted to achieve success on his own accord, under the name "Mr. Castro," but had failed to do so. This man, the Tichbourne Claimant, was obese, spoke no French, had no tattoos, had brown eyes, and was an inch taller than Roger Tichbourne, yet she accepted him as the genuine article.

According to Begley, the role of the newspaper is not to educate. In the early years of the AIDS crisis, public health officials asked for the press to run informative stories, and they complied, but this was not helpful because:

• The scientific ignorance of the American public.
• The capacity for rational thnking is not identical to the disposition to employ rational thinking.
• There is a disconnect between factual knowledge and belief, as exhibited in the case of Mrs. Tichbourne.
• Public attitudes towards the press are negative.
• The press has a commitment to "balance."
• Common sense is not common.

She gave some statistics on polls of Americans' agreement or disagreement with the statement that "Human beings as we know them developed from earlier species of animals":

1985: 45% agreed, 48% disagreed, 7% unsure.
2005: 40% agreed, 39% disagreed, 21% unsure.

By comparison the percentage of agreement in Iceland, Denmark, and Sweden was over 80%; of OECD nations only Turkey had a lower percentage of acceptance than the U.S.

Evolution, gay marriage, and abortion are all highly politicized in the U.S. in a way that they aren't in Europe or Japan.

But if the question was "Can natural selection explain appearance and change over time of animals," 78% of Americans agreed. Yet 62% agree that "God created humans as they are today." This, according to Begley, is because Americans have a view of human exceptionalism.

She went through a list of facts that are beyond dispute, which were presented to Americans for acceptance or denial. Two examples:

More than half of all genes in humans are identical to those in mice. 33% agree
More than half of all genes in humans are identical to those in chimps. 38% agree

Only 9% of Americans know what a molecule is. Because of this, while sports writers can use abbreviations such as ERA and RBI without explaining them, Begley says she cannot assume her readers know anything at all, and recently learned that she can't even refer to DNA and expect her readers to know what she's talking about.

She observed that a disposition to critical thinking is associated with being more curious, open-minded, open to new experiences, conscientiousness, being less dogmatic, less close-minded, less authoritarian, and likely to rely more on epirical and rational data than on intution and emotion when weighing information and reaching conclusions. But you have to both have the skills and want to think critically in order to apply them. In addition to Tichbourne as an example of someone who had the skills but didn't want to apply them, she noted that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's son was killed two weeks before the end of WWI, and he went to a medium who claimed to contact his son, which he very much wanted to believe. Alfred Russell Wallace, who formulated evolution by natural selection parallel to Darwin, was also a believer in ghosts, levitation, spirit photography, and clairvoyance. And she noted that a statement Penn Jillette made the previous day sounded like he was rejecting climate change on the basis of a dislike for Al Gore. (UPDATE, July 4, 2008: Sharon Begley wrote about this at the Newsweek blog, and Penn Jillette responded in the Los Angeles Times. I think Penn more accurately reports what happened than Sharon Begley did--he really did say that he didn't know, and that people he knows and considers reliable tell him that anthropogenic climate change is real. One thing Penn gets wrong is that Teller didn't mention Gore's name when he said that carbon credits are "bullshit modeled on indulgences.")

She commented on some of the negative letters she has received any time she writes about evolution or critically about claims like alien abductions. When she wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal about the discovery of Tiktaalik, she received several letters which she read excerpts of, three examples of which were the standard argument that "evolution requires more faith" than believing that God did it, a letter asking "where are the billions of 'transition fossils,'" and one asking, "if you are terminal will you call on Darwin or God?"

Don't count on the press
The "reality-based community" must contend with contrarian politicians, the masses' distrust of elites, and new sources of news. With regard to the last point, she pointed out that Googling evolutionary biology terms often brings up Answers in Genesis sites prior to sites with accurate information.

The journalistic conceit of objectivity, she said, is imported from political disputes where there are two contrary sides. (I actually think that notion of balance is as often mistaken in politics as it is in science--there may only be one side with any valid support, or there may be more than two sides deserving of representation, though the latter is more common in politics than in science. But dualism is a misrepresentation in both circumstances.)

Uncommon common sense
Begley made the following points, which had some overlap with Shermer's talk:

• Evolution is not intuitive.
• Common sense can mislead us about the physical world.
• Our brains are driven to see patterns.
• We have a habit of imputing consciousness to inanimate objects.
• Someone is staring at me from behind. (People tend to have and respond to such feelings. I can't remember if she actually discussed Rupert Sheldrake's studies of this, or of the skeptical critiques by Robert Baker or Richard Wiseman.)
  

She gave the example of an experiment with a sweater at Bristol University. Students were shown a ratty old sweater and asked who would be willing to put it on in return for a payment of twenty British pounds. Most indicated a willingness to do so. But if they were then told, oh, by the way, this sweater belonged to a murderer, many of the hands would go down--as though evil were a property that contaminated the object. What she didn't mention is that similarly, the value of something associated with someone of status has the reverse effect--e.g., if the sweater were claimed to belong to Einstein. The effect of status on objects is one that is clearly prevalent even among skeptics, who are as likely as anyone to enjoy collecting autographs and memorabilia, or objects like ping pong balls used on a television show (see Adam Savage's talk, below).

Derek and Swoopy
Derek and Swoopy, the hosts of the official Skeptics Society podcast, "Skepticality," gave a short talk about their show and noted that they now have about 35,000 listeners per program, and that the top two skeptics' podcasts, "Skepticality" and "The Skeptics Guide to the Universe," have over 4 million downloads between them. They reported that after some successful skeptical panels at science fiction conventions, Dragon*Con 2008 in Atlanta this Labor Day weekend, a conference so large that it occurs at four hotels, will have four full days of skeptical content, a "Skeptrack" featuring James Randi, Michael Shermer, Phil Plait, Ben Radford, Alison Smith, George Hrab, and others.

Steven Novella
Dr. Novella gave a talk on "Dualism and Creationism" covering the history of dualism in philosophy of mind, evidence from neuroscience, and a discussion of modern dualism. In his discussion of dualism in philosophy, he attributed to Descartes a notion of computation occurring in the brain and a position he called "consciousness dualism." I think perhaps that gives Descartes too much credit, though he did think that "animal spirits" flowing in the brain caused signals from perception to be projected on the surface of the pineal gland, which was the seat of the soul and consciousness.

He referred to the advocacy of property dualism/epiphenomenalism by David Chalmers, and observed that his views would not be acceptable to most of those who advocate dualism. Chalmers's position is that most mental activity is physical brain activity, but there's a remaining hard problem of consciousness posed by the conscious properties of perception and feeling known as qualia, which distinguish unconscious zombies that could behave just like us from real people. He gave Deepak Chopra as an example of an individual who is essentially a denialist about contemporary neuroscience, an anti-materialist who supports "quantum woo," Eastern mysticism, and what he called "substrate consciousness," a feature of the universe itself.

Evidence from neuroscience
Novella gave the following points to summarize the evidence from neuroscience:

• Brain anatomy and activity correlates with mental activity.
• There is no mind without the brain.
• Brain development correlates with mental development.
• If you damage the brain, you damage the mind.
• Different states of consciousness correlate with different brain states.
• Turn off the brain and you turn off the mind.
• The mind does not survive the death of the brain.
• MEG (magnetoencephalography) can be used to provoke specific mental effects, including inducing out-of-body experiences at will.

My notes on the last point suggest that Novella said that MEG could be used to induce OBEs. There were a couple of recent studies about two different methods for inducing OBEs, but I don't recall either of them using magnetic induction (e.g., this 2007 Science paper). I'm skeptical of Michael Persinger's claims of magnetic induction of religious experiences (also see this 2004 Nature article).

We're in the process of reverse-engineering the brain, and the materialist model of consciousness is working pretty well. The elements of consciousness are increasingly identifiable and localizable, and our ability to reconstruct them in artificial intelligence will be the ultimate test.

Novella defined consciousness as the moment-to-moment functions of the brain, when it is processing information reflectively, and presenting it to the part of the brain that is paying attention. (Is it really commonly accepted that attention is localized to a particular part of the brain?) We are trying to assess our consciousness with our consciousness.

The vitalism analogy
Novella stated, referencing Daniel Dennett, that just as life is an emergent property of living things, consciousness is the sum of the easy problems about consciousness, leaving no remaining residue of a hard problem, just as there is no elan vital for biology.

Egnorance
Novella then talked about neurosurgeon Michael Egnor, who he said makes the mistake of confusing the question of "does" with "how." That is, because we don't know the details of how consciousness is physically generated, it must not be the case. He compared this to the "God of the gaps" argument--whatever is currently unexplained must be caused by something supernatural.

Defenses of dualism
Novella then went through a few rhetorical strategies used to defend dualism. One is that any day now, evolution (or materialism) will collapse. But they've been saying this in the evolution case for 100 years. (Glenn Morton has a nice article titled "The Imminent Demise of Evolution: The Longest Running Falsehood in Creationism," which offers 178 years of such quotes.)

Another is to generate false controversy, and say that until the argument is resolved, it's legitimate to accept dualism.

Then there's the claim of impending acceptance, the converse of the imminent demise argument--that Deepak Chopra's views are about to be accepted by the entire world, for example.

The need to change science--Novella said that B. Alan Wallace, a Buddhist, has argued that we need to reintroduce subjective evidence into science. Novella suggested that subjective evidence can't be scientific evidence, which I think is a slight overstatement--a self report is a valid source of data, we just need to have a way to correlate those self reports with other evidence.

In his conclusion, Novella stated that the purpose of modern Cartesian dualism is to provide intellectual cover for a belief system--presumably including various religious views about immortality as well as Deepak Chopra's views.

It's worth noting that Keith Augustine of the Internet Infidels has done a lot of work presenting the evidence against survival of death and the possibility of immortality, as well as critical of claims that near-death experiences are evidence of survival. He has recently published a four-part series of articles in the Journal of Near-Death Studies on the subject, which have been accompanied by responses from NDE researchers. He is also working on an anthology which will respond to recent arguments for dualism. I urge Novella to contact Augustine, as he might have some contribution to make to that anthology.

Jeff Wagg
Jeff Wagg of JREF stated that there is a possibility of a future TAM in the UK, and that TAM7 will be in Las Vegas on July 9-12, 2009 at the South Point Casino. There will also be a JREF Mexican Riviera cruise in March, 2009, which still is looking for speakers.

Jim Underdown
Jim Underdown of the Center for Inquiry, Los Angeles reported that the Independent Investigations Group, a skeptical group that does paranormal investigations, would be giving an award for best TV show or movie that debunks pseudoscience to Penn & Teller's Bullshit!, and a lifetime achievement award to James Randi.

Randi came up and said that some years ago he had terminated his relationship with CSICOP because they had asked him to stop going after Uri Geller, who was suing him repeatedly (and had also sued CSICOP as a result). Randi said that Geller only won once, in the Japan case, where the judgment was lowered from slander to insult, and that while Geller was suing for millions he was only awarded a small amount. The amount was 500,000 yen against Randi, and a larger amount against the Japanese magazine which reported Randi's erroneous statement that Dr. Wilbur Franklin of Kent State University had killed himself after Randi discredited Geller, who Franklin had endorsed as genuine. Franklin had actually died of natural causes, and Randi attributed the Japanese magazine statement to a mistranslation of the phrase "shot himself in the foot," though Randi had been quoted in a U.S. publication in English making the same statement about Franklin killing himself out of embarrassment over Geller's exposure. Geller also won a case in Hungary for a statement by Randi that called Geller a swindler, though Randi was not named in that suit. After Geller sued Victor Stenger in Hawaii, CSICOP and Prometheus in England, and CSICOP and Prometheus in Miami, Prometheus Books added errata slips to Stenger's Physics and Psychics and to Randi's The Truth About Uri Geller regarding an incident where Geller was sued in Israel for breach of contract and not, as those two sources stated (Stenger relying upon Randi), "arrested." The Miami suit was eventually won by Prometheus and CSICOP on the grounds that Geller had knowingly filed after the statute of limitations had expired, and Geller paid them slightly less than half of the fees, costs and sanctions that were originally awarded and dismissed his appeal. Contrary to the impression Randi has sometimes given, the vast majority of Geller's lawsuits were not about paranormal abilities, but about accusations of other kinds of impropriety, such as fraud, criminal acts, plagiarism, and so forth. Geller gives his version of events on his web page.

Now, apparently as a result of this award, Randi said he would like to forgive and forget, and resume his relationship with CSICOP (now CSI).

The Skeptologists
During lunch was a showing of the full pilot episode of "The Skeptologists," which also included a segment on the tools used for ghost hunting, testing them aboard the Queen Mary in order to see what they actually measure. I missed all but the ending, but it was shown again on Sunday, about which more later.

There were several more speakers on Saturday--Phil Plait, Adam Savage, Matthew Chapman, Richard Wiseman, and a panel discussion ostensibly on "the limits of skepticism," but I'll save that for further summary tomorrow.

On to TAM6 summary, part four.

Summer sale on Teach the Controversy shirts

We've purchased a few of these designs, at 25% off... I didn't get them in time for TAM6, but I wore the element one this weekend. Kat and I each have one of the "because we know that dinosaur bones were really planted by beelzebub" shirts, and I've got the "because we know that the earth sits on giant elephants which in turn ride on an even gianter turtle" one along with the "because we know that the real periodic table of elements only numbers five" shirt.

The Amazing Meeting 6 summarized, part two

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

Friday, the conference gets started
More skeptics from around the world began to show up on Friday. Checking in at the registration desk entitled each person to a name badge, a folder of materials, a laser pointer/reading light (which many put to use during the conference, sometimes to the irritation of a speaker or emcee Hal Bidlack), and a copy of An Objectivist Secular Reader, edited by Dr. Edward Hudgins. The book argues for common cause between skeptics and Objectivists "and the often-related libertarian perspective." I happened to sit next to Hudgins through part of the conference, and spoke to him a bit between sessions, and found that we have some common friends and acquaintances. He said that he thinks the libertarian viewpoint does fit well with skepticism, which was a point made later in the conference by Michael Shermer by drawing an analogy between anti-authoritarianism in the religious sphere to anti-authoritarianism in the political sphere--but of course governments actually exist, so the real underlying question is what legitimizes or justifies authority, which is a question also relevant in the scientific sphere. I'll say more about this later when I summarize Shermer's talk.

Hudgins was working on a presentation for an upcoming speaking event which included statistics about changes in U.S. religious demographics over the last several decades, showing a rise in nonbelief. I asked to look at one page that showed a breakdown of U.S. religious adherents by sect, and pointed out the huge growth among Pentecostals (something I've previously written about here). This growth indicates to me that there's more to religion than dogma and doctrine, and that a purely intellectual critique of beliefs and practices that are held for reasons that involve emotion and community is doomed to failure.

I think that one of skepticism's strengths is that it is a method, not a doctrine, and that turning it into dogma or trying to link it to a specific set of conclusions about religion or politics (or science, for that matter) is an enormous mistake that serves only to limit its appeal. Skepticism is at its best when it teaches people to think critically for themselves and at its worst when it tells people what to think. I'll have more to say on this subject when I summarize Sunday's talks, which included one by Don Nyberg railing against "religious pseudoscience."

Friday morning I sat down to breakfast with a young couple from Texas, whose names unfortunately escape me. He had just completed a semester of medical school in Guadalajara, Mexico, and she had finished a degree in neuroscience. We were soon joined by Tony, an Australian who had been living with his partner in Mexico City for the last several years and was now on his way back to Australia by way of a trip around the world. There was a strong international presence at the conference, with dozens of Australians in particular, probably due to the strength of the Australian Skeptics organization.

After breakfast, I went up to the conference room to hear the end of the recording of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast which was being recorded live in the room, but somehow I completely failed to meet Steven Novella, one of the podcast's hosts, through the entire conference. I had hoped to at least say hello and introduce myself, since we were cosigners of a letter to Skeptical Inquirer back in 1999.

Hal Bidlack opens the event
The conference officially kicked off with an introduction by Hal Bidlack, who is running for Congress in Colorado Springs, CO, a part of the country which would be greatly helped by a critically thinking legislator. He mentioned that two prominent skeptics have died since the last conference, Arthur C. Clarke and Jerry Andrus. Andrus was a regular attendee of Skeptics Society conferences and JREF conferences, known for setting up his optical illusions and his willingness to explain them patiently to all.

Randi's welcome
Hal then introduced James Randi, who was looking more frail than the last time I saw him in person, though he said that his health is much better than it has been in the recent past. Randi pointed out that a light, a chair, and a table commemorating Jerry Andrus and his illusions was set up in the back corner of the conference room, and will be set up at future Amazing Meetings as well--while noting that this is for us to remember Jerry.

Randi announced that the JREF library is up to 2282 books, that this conference had about 900 attendees, and that it attracts more women and young people than any other skeptics conference. My impressions supported that conclusion. He also stated that there are UK and Dutch skeptical TV series in the works, and ended by saying that he wanted everyone at the conference to come up, greet him, and shake his hand (which I had already done on Thursday when I ran into him by the registration desk).

Ben Goldacre on homeopathy
The first official conference presentation was by Ben Goldacre, M.D. of www.badscience.net, who spoke about "squabbles about homeopathy." Goldacre described the basic arguments against homeopathy. The main argument against it is that its extreme dilutions are so extreme that a single molecule of a 30C diluted substance would be found in not an Olympic-sized swimming pool, but in ten thousand million million million million pools. A 55C dilution would be equivalent to a universe-sized sphere filled with water with a single molecule of the diluted substance in it. Goldacre observed that a label of a homeopathic remedy that says it is safe because it contains "less than 1 ppm" of the diluted substance is quite an understatement. The homeopaths respond that this is irrelevant; what makes the homeopathic remedy work is that "water has memory," and its structure has somehow changed to reflect being in contact with the diluted substance. But, Goldacre asked, why does it remember the remedy and not, say, having been in Nelson's colon or the Queen's bladder, or in contact with countless other substances? The homeopathic answer to that is that the memory only comes into effect through "succussion," when the remedy is in the water and the container is banged ten times firmly against a wooden striking board (for instance).

As homeopaths do want to present their work as scientific, they have been willing to engage with skeptics. Goldacre reported that his website was given permission to reprint papers from the journal Homeopathy on water memory, which were then critiqued in the JREF Forums, and the critiques assembled into a response which was submitted to and published in the same journal.

But Goldacre points out that the standard anti-homeopathy arguments have been made at least since John Forbes, Queen Victoria's physician, made them in 1846, but they have proven ineffective in persuading homeopaths and users of homeopathic remedies from giving them up. He says the arguments are "irrelevant," because homeopaths are persuaded that their remedies actually work. But that's just not so, he argued. While one might think that homeopathy is like anesthetics where we don't know how it works but it does, with homeopathy we have no good explanation for how it could work and we also have evidence that it doesn't work any better than a placebo.

He then went on to talk about how the placebo effect is a genuinely fascinating scientific anomaly far more worthy of interest than homeopathy. In pain relief, four sugar pills are more effective than two, salt water injection is more effective than sugar pills, and commercial packaging make placebos more effective. He argued that the extent to which homeopathy works is indistinguishable from the placebo effect, as demonstrated by a proper meta-analysis of homeopathic trials, reducing the weight of those which have flaws such as poor randomization and poor blinding.

Keynote by Neil deGrasse Tyson
Neil deGrasse Tyson, who was clearly the rock star of skepticism at the reception on Thursday night, surrounded by adoring fans (perhaps it was his hat, as P.Z. Myers suggests), gave the keynote address to the conference. When he began, many people had been shining their laser pointers on the wall above the stage, and Tyson informed the audience that he would express his "geek dominance." He instructed everyone to point their laser pointers above the door on the opposite side of the room. Once everyone had done so, he pulled out his laser pointer--shining from farther away than anyone else, since he was up on stage--and shined a large green dot that outshone all of the red dots.

Tyson's talk was called either "Adventures in Science Illiteracy" or "Brain Droppings of a Skeptic" (a title cribbed from George Carlin). He began by saying that he had something to do with Pluto's demotion from being a planet, and that anybody who didn't like it should "get over it." The rest of his talk wandered over a large range of topics that have come up in the Q&A sessions of his lectures:

UFO Sightings: When people say they've seen a UFO, be sure to remind them what the "U" stands for. Typically, those who claim they've seen a UFO start by saying it was unidentified, then end up "inventing knowledge of everything" about it being an extraterrestrial spacecraft.

Alien Abductions: Tyson said that eyewitness testimony is the lowest form of evidence in science (though it's certainly not worthless, and even the scientific literature is a form of testimony about the results of experiments). He pulled out his iPhone and said that if he had one of these 10 years ago, he'd have been burned at the stake. If you get abducted by a UFO, you should take something not of this earth in order to prove your alien contact. He showed a slide of a cover of the book "How to Defend Yourself Against Alien Abduction" and said that "I bought it, read it, and heeded its advice--and I have not been abducted."

Inept Aliens: They travel trillions of miles to get here, then crash.

Conspiracy Theory: They tend to tacitly admit insufficient data. If an argument lasts more than five minutes, both sides are wrong.

Astrology: If you read a horoscope to a group of people and ask if it describes them, approximately 2/3 will agree that it fits them. Most Scorpios are actually Ophiuchans.

Birth Rates and Full Moons: Average human gestation is 295 days; the lunar cycle is 29.5 days. Full moon birth = full moon impregnation.

Behavior and Full Moons: The pressure of an extra pillow is a trillion times greater than the tidal force on a cranium.

Surviving Terminal Cancer: If someone gets three diagnoses from physicians giving them 5-7 months to live, then lives for five years, they credit God for their survival, rather than blaming doctors for a poor diagnosis.

Swami Levitation: Tyson suggest 1,000 cans of baked beans would generate sufficient flatulence to become airborne.

Moon Hoax: Modern technology is so advanced that some people can't believe it. But if you learn the rocket equation and look at how much fuel was in the Saturn V, if the launch was fake, what was all that fuel for?

Mars "Virus": In 2003, the Earth was the closest it had been to Mars than in the previous 60,000 years, which led to multiple stories (including in subsequent years) that some virus would jump from Mars to Earth. Tyson pointed to the side and said "Japan is that way." He jumped a few feet to the side in that direction, and then said he is now as much closer to Japan as Mars came to the Earth from its average distance.

Fear of Numbers: 80% of building on Broadway in NYC have no 13th floor, due to an irrational fear of the number 13. (Yet who actually does fear 13?) And why don't we use negative numbers on elevators for subfloors? Or negative numbers in financial ledgers, instead of parentheses? (Actually, I suspect that's to avoid ambiguity with hyphens in dollar ranges, rather than a fear of negative numbers.)

Naming Rights: Tyson pointed out countries that put scientists on their money--Isaac Newton on the English one-pound note, Einstein on Israeli money. The U.S. has only one scientist--Ben Franklin--on money, on the $100 bill, but with no symbolism to represent his scientific work--no kite, no key, no lightning rod. He also pointed to Gauss and the Gaussian distribution on British money as British support of science, but Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in The Black Swan, points out that the financial field goes grossly astray by trying to using Gaussian distributions to describe phenomena that are not Gaussian. Taleb points to Gauss on British money as ironic and inept rather than pro-science.

Tyson also looked at the names of the elements, with slides of the periodic table that showed which ones were discovered when, and by which countries. While the U.S. was not the top country, it has discovered nearly all of the most recent elements. Tyson explained that Sweden has discovered so many elements because Ytterby cave was rich in undiscovered elements, and yielded the names of the elements Yttrium (39, 1795), Terbium (65, 1843), Erbium (68, 1843), Ytterbium (70, 1878), and Scandium (21, 1879).

Jury Duty I: Tyson described being called for jury duty. He was asked what he did, he said that he was an astrophysicist. When asked what he teaches, he said "a course on evaluating evidence and the unreliability of eyewitness testimony," at which point he was promptly dismissed.

Jury Duty II: Tyson was called for jury duty again, and made the first cut of jurors. The facts of the case were described--the defendant was charged with the possession of "2000 mg" of cocaine. When the jurors were asked if they had any questions, Tyson asked, "why did you describe it as 2000 mg instead of 2 g, about the weight of a postage stamp? Aren't you trying to bias the jury by making it sound like a large quantity of drugs?" At which point he was promptly dismissed.

Math?: Tyson pointed out a headline bemoaning the fact that "half the schools in the district are below average." He also pointed out an article that pointed out that 80% of airplane crash survivors had studied the locations of the exit doors upon takeoff as a suggestion that this is a good idea--but it didn't give the percentage of the nonsurvivors that had done the same. If 100% of the nonsurvivors had also studied the exit locations, would that be an argument not to do so?

Tyson responded to the common observation that the lottery is a tax upon the poor, saying that no, it's a tax on the innumerate. Similarly, he pointed to the subprime mortgage mess as a mathematical illiteracy problem.

Bayer ad in Physics Today: Tyson described an advertisement that Bayer placed in Physics Today asking how to get students interested in "why heavy things fall faster than lighter things." The ad was later changed to "why heavy things fall as fast as lighter things."

George W. Bush: Tyson said that he lives closer to Ground Zero in Manhattan than the height of the WTC towers, and showed some photographs he took on September 11. He attended a science medal presentation at the White House since he was on the presidential advisory committee; at that event Bush stated that "Our God is the God who named the stars." However, 2/3 of all stars with names have Arabic names, because from 800-1100 Islam was very supportive of math and science, giving us the names of algebra and algorithm, and the Arabic numerals. But in the 12th century, Imam Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111), the St. Augustine of Islam, stated that "manipulating numbers is the work of the devil."

There are 1.2 billion Muslims, yet they've only earned 2 of 579 Nobel prizes (one in physics, one in economics), while Jews, who are 1/80 as numerous, have earned 143 Nobel prizes, and thus have had 6,400 times the impact of Muslims on modern science. He wondered how much more contribution they would have made if it had not been for al-Ghazali's position of influence on Islam.

Intelligent Design: A 2004 SUV ad said, "In the world of SUV's, it's the survival of the fittest." In 2005, it was changed to "Its features are nothing short of a miracle."

Tyson argued that the intelligent design idea--stopping investigation with "God did it"--has historically stopped scientific inquiry. He argued that Newton could have developed Laplace's perturbation theory if he had not stopped his inquiry and appealed to God for the explanation of planetary movements that conflicted with his theory.

Stupid Design: Leukemia, vision loss with age, Alzheimer's, exhaling most oxygen we inhale, our inability to smell CO or CO2, the fact that we eat, drink, and speak through the same opening (vs. dolphin design--dolphins can't die laughing). Tyson also mentioned the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, which killed 70,000 people, mostly Christians who had gathered in churches that Sunday mornings.

Religious People in the U.S.: Tyson observed that most people in the U.S. are religious--about 90% believe in God. When you look at educated people, holding a master's or Ph.D. degree, it drops to about 60%. When you look at scientists, it's about 40%. The most elite scientists--Nobel prizewinners, National Academy of Science members, etc.--it drops to 7%, with physicists and biologists as the least religious. But he pointed out that the 7% is still a substantial number of people--you cannot blame the general public for being religious if we don't understand why 7% of the most educated elite people are religious and pray to a personal God.

Bible in Science Classroom: He observed that there aren't scientists picketing in front of churches demanding equal time for science, referred to Matthew LaClair's confrontation with his history teacher for proselytizing in the classroom (a story broken by this blog), and read his letter to the editor of the New York Times about the case:

To the Editor:

People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah's ark carried dinosaurs.

This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it's about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
New York, Dec. 19, 2006

Albert Einstein and God: Tyson pointed out the content of the recently published 1954 letter from Albert Einstein, and how religious believers who have claimed Einstein as one of their own have been in error.

Cosmic Perspective: Tyson went through a series of numbers with examples to clarify their magnitude: 1, or 10**0, a clear one. 1,000, a thousand, 10**3, kilo. 1,000,000, a million, 10**6, mega. 10**9, a billion, giga. There are 6,000 astrophysicists in 6 billion people, so astrophysicists are one in a million. (But someone observed that there were 3 astrophysicists present among the 900 attendees of the conference.) McDonald's has sold 100 billion hamburgers--which could encircle the globe 52 times, and then be stacked to the moon and back. At age 31, you will have lived for one billion seconds. 10**12, trillion, tera. 10**15, quadrillion, peta. The number of sounds emitted by all human beings who have ever lived. 10**18, quadrillion, exa. The number of grains of sand on an average beach. 10**21, septillion, zetta. The number of stars in the universe.

Tyson then made a list of the most abundant elements in the universe--hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen--and observed that, minus helium, these are also the same as the key ingredients of life.

He quoted the Bible's "and the meek shall inherit the earth and live in a world of peace"--and suggested that the correct translation should have been "geek" instead of "meek."

APS Conference in Vegas: Tyson closed by referring to a Las Vegas newspaper headline that said, "Meeting of physicists in town, lowest casino take ever."

Alec Jason on Peter Popoff and criminal forensics
Alec Jason, an independent forensic photographer and investigator, described how he helped James Randi in his investigation of the faith healer and televangelist Peter Popoff, who claimed to use the "word of knowledge" to obtain detailed information from God about the people he was healing. In fact, Popoff's wife Elizabeth was collecting the information from people before the show and transmitting it to Popoff via radio to an earpiece receiver he was wearing. Jason described how he went to Brooks Hall a day prior to the Popoff healing event to determine the normal background radio frequency broadcasts, and then scanned for traffic during the event while posing as a janitor at the facility. The device he used was an early Scanlock device, and although Popoff could have used countermeasures ranging such as frequency hopping, codes, spread spectrum, or encryption, none of these were in use and they quickly picked up the sound of footsteps and then Elizabeth Popoff saying, "Hi, Petey. I hope you can hear me, becasue if you can't, you're in trouble."

Randi exposed Popoff on the Tonight Show, and Popoff's career seemed to have been derailed, though it took months for his followers to get the message. But now Popoff is back--and while he was making $12 million a year before, he's reporting over $24 million a year today. The message was a demoralizing one for skeptics--even the exposure of a blatant fraud like Popoff's is not sufficient to keep him from continuing to take money from the gullible and live a life of luxury.

There were some technical difficulties during the first part of Jason's talk, and I found it mostly to be old hat--I've read Randi's The Faith Healers, seen his Tonight Show appearance, and viewed multiple presentations about the Popoff exposure.

The remainder of Jason's presentation was about his work in some criminal cases. In a case in Africa, a body was found with a SIG Sauer P226 pistol on its chest. The question to resolve was whether this was a suicide or a homicide--after firing, the gun remains cocked and has to be manually decocked. A photo of the crime scene was too fuzzy to see clearly whether the gun was cocked, but Jason was able to compare reflectivity hot spots of a cocked vs. a decocked gun to determine that the gun was decocked. As it turned out, this didn't show that it was a homicide, as the first officer on the scene said that he had picked up the gun and turned on the safety--there is no safety on the pistol, and what he had actually done is decocked it, and thus the gun was shown to have been still cocked when the body was found.

Jason also went into a lot of detail in the Frank Zupan case, where Zupan was found at the scene of a vehicle accident where his wife was behind the wheel of their car and dead with gunshot wounds to the head. Zupan testified that they were driving at 25-30 mph when an oncoming car approached, and he thought rocks came through the window and hit his wife, which he then attributed to gunshots. Jason showed that a gun cannot be shot at faster than 10 rounds per second, and if gunfire came from a car approaching at 20 mph, there would be 3 feet of movement per shot. Since Zupan's wife was shot twice in the head and there was no damage to the front windshield, there's no way Zupan's account made sense.

Penn & Teller Q&A session
Penn and Teller had no prepared material, but simply answered questions from the audience. They talked about a wide-ranging variety of subjects, including Penn's radio show (which may come back in a different form), Teller's short film that appears on George A. Romero's "Diary of the Dead" DVD, and the fact that their show Bullshit! is "fair and extremely biased." In response to a question about what they may be wrong about, Penn said that he has symptoms of a believer with respect to his views on art and his libertarian politics. When asked what's the line between reasonable concern for the environment and environmentalist nuttery, Penn answered "I don't know," and Teller said, "carbon credits are bullshit, modeled on indulgences."

Penn stated that he thinks Obama is very classy and positive, but that he doesn't agree with him about anything.

Teller showed a video made by Jeff Levine about cold reading, called "The Cold Reader," based on a story by Matthew Simmons.

George Hrab's music
George Hrab came onstage briefly to play a couple of songs, one titled "God is Not Great" inspired by Hitchens' book, and another about being a skeptic.

P.Z. Myers on bat wings
P.Z. Myers gave a talk that presented some actual science--he first gave a brief description of his field and his own work, and then a summary of work by Chris Cretekos on the genes that control the development of bat wings, and what happens when they are put into rats. Rather than attempt to summarize this myself, I'll point the interested reader to Stephen Matheson's description of the same work.

Richard Saunders on himself and educational materials for kids
Richard Saunders of the Australian Skeptics, author of 17 books on origami, creator of the origami Pigasus for JREF, founder of the Sydney Skeptics in the Pub group, former president and current VP of the Australian Skeptics, chief spoon bender for the Australian Skeptics, and producer of the TANK vodcast, said that he's about to be the most famous TV skeptic in Australia. He will be the skeptical judge on "The One: The Search for Australia's Most Gifted Psychic" show. After spending a lot of time talking about his past and coming achievements, he did a nice demonstration of a dowsing investigation for use by educators to teach children scientific methods. He had six volunteers from the audience as dowsers to try to find a bottle of water placed under one of six plastic bins. First he found the best dowser at detecting the bottle when it was out in the open, then did trials first blind and then double-blind.

Panel discussion on identifying as a skeptic
The day's events concluded with a panel discussion between James Randi, P.Z. Myers, Michael Shermer, Margaret Downey, Phil Plait, Hal Bidlack, and a member of the NYC Skeptics (I didn't catch the name) about skepticism and identifying as a skeptic. Shermer began by saying that we start by assuming everything is false and require evidence to demonstrate that anything is true. I'm not sure that's actually a sound methodology--it's a lot easier to dig yourself into a philosophically skeptical hole where you doubt the existence of an external world and other minds than it is to get out. Our actual belief methods start out with trust--trust in our own senses and in the testimony of others as we learn language and concepts--not with Cartesian skepticism. In my opinion, something like "trust but verify" and "determine the limits and faults in belief-forming methods, and avoid them" is a better procedure than trying to build up all knowledge from nothing or from indubitable foundational premises. In answer to a question about various kinds of deniers referring to themselves as skeptics, Phil Plait observed that skeptics demand evidence, while deniers deny evidence. Those who deny the Holocaust or that man landed on the moon are not skeptics, they are deniers.

At one point, Margaret Downey made a statement that testimony from individuals who claim remarkable experiences are not relevant because "first-hand reports are just hearsay." But this is a mistake--they may be characterized as hearsay to others, but not to those who are making the reports who have actually had the experiences. Further, reports themselves may be collected and correlated with other objective evidence and used to draw scientific conclusions. I think it's a huge mistake to reject individual experience out of hand in the manner suggested; it's generally possible to take a report of an experience and identify possible explanations for what could cause the experience (or the report of an experience and the false belief in an experience).

There was an excellent audience question about how those of us with limited scientific knowledge can come to conclusions about complex scientific topics where we lack expertise to evaluate the evidence ourselves--aren't we taking results on faith? Randi responded to the question, but I don't think he really got the point. I went and spoke with the questioner afterward, and she agreed that he seemed to be answering a different question. I made the point that in such a case we need to determine who are the reliable experts, the trustworthy authorities, and that we have a number of clues we can use to help identify them.

On to TAM6 summary, part three.