The reason for this is probably obvious – skeptics are divided politically (this is an oversimplification but largely true) between liberals and libertarians, both of which seem to have strong and opposite opinions on the topic of global warming. As a result I have been simultaneously criticized for being too soft and too hard on global warming dissidents. I hope this means that I am striking an objective balance – but then, of course, I get criticized for striking a “false balance.” I have been told that I am losing my skeptical street cred, and that I have faith in global warming as a secular religion. Many people also seem to think they can divine my political persuasion from my opinions on global warming, but then proceed to make very incorrect assumptions on that score.

There has also been intense fighting on what to call global warming dissidents – the term I have settled on as the most accurate and neutral. Part of the problem is that dissidents come in a broad range of opinions. At one end of the spectrum there are what can only be described as deniers – those who engage in all the tactics of denialism against any notion of climate change. At the other end are those who accept the core scientific consensus of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), but are skeptical of some of the dire predictions and proposed fixes. And there is every permutation in between – defying easy categorization or labeling. So I use “dissidents” as a neutral catch-all.

What is most disappointing about the AGW controversy is the degree to which self-identified members of the skeptical community engage in less-than-skeptical discourse on this topic. I am mainly referring to the many dozens of e-mails I have received on the topic (every time I talk about it) but also on blogs and articles.

I would like to share with you an e-mail exchange I had recently with a global warming dissident. He is responding mainly to my recent discussion of “climategate” – which has really increased the nastiness of the discussion on AGW.

My personal understanding of the current state of climate science is this – the evidence is very solid that average global temperatures are trending up over the last century and that human forcing through CO2 production is the best current answer to explain this trend. If this trend continues (a somewhat big “if”) then there will likely be significant unwanted consequences – not for the earth, but for human civilization. Shifting around agriculture and shorelines will be inconvenient, to say the least. But there is admitted uncertainty in this, and we don’t know all the ways in which the environment will respond to CO2 and temperature increases. But, as is often the case with applied sciences, we have to act prior to certainty if we want to affect the outcome.

Further, the current plans for fixes to rising CO2 and climate change are as much political as scientific. I think the best solutions to focus on are those things that we would benefit from anyway. Let’s accelerate research and development into alternative energy sources and increased energy efficiency. Even if AGW is a non-issue, these will be good things. It’s a win-win.

I must admit I have not been impressed with those who have e-mailed me to try to convince me that AGW is pseudoscience, and that dissidents are the real skeptics. It seems that the more someone tries to convince me of this position, the more they push me in the opposite direction. The following e-mail exchange really is representative of what I receive. (Forgive the length of the exchange.)

Steve, I was heartened to hear your softened position on Global Warming in the Year End SGU, even though Rebecca is still rabid. Eventually, all of you will come to realize who were the real skeptics on this issue, and who were the Denyers. A quote from below article – if the shoe fits:

“The secular religion of global warming has all the elements of a Religious Faith: original sin (we are polluting the planet), ritual (separate your waste for recycling), redemption (renounce economic growth) and the sale of indulgences (carbon offsets). We are told that we must have faith (all argument must end, as Al Gore likes to say) and must persecute heretics (global warming skeptics are like Holocaust deniers, we are told).

People in the grip of such a religious frenzy evidently feel justified in lying, concealing good evidence and plucking bad evidence from whatever flimsy source may be at hand. The rest of us, and judging from polls that includes most of the American people, are free to follow a more rational path.”

from: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/How-climate-change-fanatics-corrupted-science-83396362.html

I responded with the opinion I outlined above, concluding:

When you dig through all the nonsense and look at the actual data – in my opinion it supports the conclusion that the planet is warming and anthropogenic forcing is playing a significant role. Where this will lead and what to do about it are less clear. There is still uncertainty, but one thing is sure – if we wait until we are certain about AGW it will be too late to do anything about it. It’s like waiting to treat a patient with possible cancer until after you are sure it’s cancer, because it has spread and is now incurable.

Here is part of the e-mailer’s response:

Thanks for the considered reply. We of course agree on many of the issues – I have always been in favor of pollution control, energy efficiency, alternative energy, recycling when efficient. But not Cap and Trade or Carbon Credits or other political/economic disasters. Regarding your cancer analogy, you don’t treat for cancer without the biopsy showing the actual cancer. If you saw the Walter Williams / John Coleman information I sent yesterday, the “warming” itself is now questionable because CRU dropped the coldest temperature data from the mix used to show global temps. And the anthropogenic forcing effect is very tenuous – and where we truly disagree on Truth and Relevance.

OK – this is where I like to dig in. Whenever I get a specific claim I investigate it for myself and try to find out what the real story is. It seems that when it comes to the AGW controversy the claims of the dissidents do not hold up under investigation. So, did the CRU drop data in order to create the false impression of global warming? Here is what I found.

Your point about the CRU dropping the coldest temperature data is a good example of why I am not impressed with the criticisms of AGW dissidents. You seem to be accepting uncritically the claims of the extremists on one side. My approach is always to investigate the claims first, see what both sides are saying, and then come to a conclusion.

It did not take me long to find this: http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2010/01/kusi-noaa-nasa/
A very reasoned and referenced analysis of this claim.

First, as far as I can tell the claim comes from here: http://www.climategate.com/climatologists-drop-806-cold-weather-stations-in-a-single-year

The claim of dropped data results from anomaly hunting followed by admitted speculations:

“Absent any public statement from climatolgists for such a strange act, I can only speculate that this a deliberate attempt to cause an artificial warming of the data set. I can think of no other valid scientific reason.”

Ah – an argument from ignorance. Well, he should have investigated first.

It turns out that stations are not being dropped from the data. It takes years and even decades to put together the hand-collected data from many stations around the world. So as you look back in time, those stations whose data has not been made available yet “drop off”. As the author above explains – if you look at the number of stations providing data 30 years from now you may see a spike around 2010 in the number of stations. In other words – stations are not being dropped, there is just a delay in getting data from them.

Second – you need to ask what should be an obvious question – is there any evidence that the stations which are currently missing from the data (for whatever reason) would skew the temperature results in favor of a warming trend. The answer to this is a clear no, from multiple independent lines of evidence. First – satellite temperature data would increasingly depart from ground station data if the ground stations were being biased in one direction. No such trend exists.

Second, when you compare stations with current data and those without current data, there is no pattern or bias toward warmer or cooler temperatures. So the core claim that cooler temperatures are being systematically dropped is false.

As a side note, the claim is about the GHCN, not the CRU.

This is representative of the entire climategate affair, as far as I can tell – although I am reserving judgment until all the facts are in. It does seem the CRU scientists were not following the rules of transparency and had developed a bunker mentality. It remains to be seen if they were engaged in “pious fraud.” What I reject are the premature conclusions of dissidents who were quick to assume that climategate confirmed all of their most extreme opinions.

So far, when you dig down to the real information it turns out that the anomalies in the data were just an innocent part of the scientific process – in this case the lag in data collection. This is true anomaly hunting and confirmation bias.

I am still waiting to hear a legitimate scientific argument from AGW dissidents why we should reject the claim that global warming is happening and is likely anthropogenic. I am not impressed by political arguments, calling my position a religion, or weaving liberal conspiracy theories.

I may be wrong – if you think I am then let’s discuss the science. My challenge to those who consider themselves global warming skeptics is, if you wish to truly earn that mantle, is to focus on scientific arguments. My opinions can be changed on this topic, I really have no stake in the debate at all – except the one that every human on the planet has, which is only served by knowing the truth, whatever it is. I hope global warming is not happening, it is nothing but a major inconvenience and crimp in civilization. I would love to just continue burning fossil fuels and not have to worry about the consequences.

So if you disagree with me, show me some science. And spare me the name-calling and conspiracy theories.

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_14307819.

For $500.00 an hour, you can reach a dead loved one – but it’s not guaranteed. Rebecca Rosen makes no guarantees. Why not? If you can talk to one dead person, what’s stopping you from reaching another? I never understood that excuse. Believers in spirit communication can now get on her three year waiting list. As soon as her HarperCollins book, “Spirited”  hits the stands, her 20 city book tour starts and “Niteline” finishes with her, she will likely be booked far into the next decade. Better hurry.

Of course the G word gets it’s mention at the very end of the article and the reporter Karen Auge also quotes from the Book of Genesis, letting us know that Joseph could interpret dreams and predict the future.  This timely skill (according to Auge) not only got him out of Pharaoh’s dungeon but also made him rich. It’s good to know that mediums back then did so well isn’t it?

Nothing much seems to have changed since Genesis. Rebecca Rosen is no different than Joseph and like all the rest of the purveyors of this sort of nonsense, she seems to have all the right answers to every question. At least when the reporter is a believer anyway.  Mediums know how to lie very effectively. Please note that I have used the generic word “mediums’”  and not the actual name of Rebecca Rosen when I used the two words ”to lie.” Believers, book agents or would-be lawyers in sheep’s clothing can save their threats for some other website this time.

Telling the truth and lying are two very different ways of conveying information. If people who say they are talking to DEAD PEOPLE are not consciously lying, then they must be self-deluded. There are no two ways about this. You can talk to me about a third option, but talk is cheap.

Once again: Unless Mrs. Rosen can come up with consistent results that are verifiable by a credible third party, she has to be one or the other: dishonest or mentally unhinged. Pick one. There is no gray area or middle ground to be discussed. You can only play that card for so long. People who call themselves a medium can’t have it both ways. They can either talk to DEAD PEOPLE or they can’t.

Let me be a little clearer on this. If mediums are telling the world that they can do this, they may indeed have it both ways –  for awhile. But living in a world of deceit or mental illness can only get so many books published until looking in the mirror must eventually become unbearable. But then again this is by my standards and who am I to say?  Money makes the world go round. I can only state that I’m neither a liar or a whack job.

It’s sad that news organizations and major book publishers apparently don’t look into the same mirror that I do each morning and deplorable that the prosperous buisness of pretending to speak to DEAD PEOPLE gets so easily picked up and endorsed by publishers like HarperCollins. Doing so leaves no doubt in my mind that they know how to make a buck off people in pain too. They must ultimately share in the cuplpability for spreading superstition, ficticious babble and false hope into the lives of millions of gullible people.  Hey HarperCollins, would you be the slightest bit interested in the inside track about the spook racket and what really goes on it it, written by a person who has been there and back? I dare you to read my book, “Psychic Blues.” It’s not fiction, it’s fact.

It’s so simple really: I have said it once and I will say it again; If any medium anywhere  could truly do what they say they can do, it would be the most important breakthrough in modern science in history. So let’s have it.

Mrs. Rosen is mentioned by Auge as being the “medium of the moment.” How true.  It’s getting to be that mediums are like Metro trains. There will be another one coming along any moment thanks to writers like Karen Auge.

Is this really news?

The Duh Factor Again: People would be better served by seeking out a qualified bereavement counselor rather than a phony medium. Period.

And Again: Claiming to be able to speak to the dead is easy. Anyone can do it with a little training in magic, psychology and misdirection techniques. There’s only one way to make real news with people like Mrs. Rosen:

PROVE IT.

Karen Auge writes that in college Mrs. Rosen majored in advertising.

Right.

Rebecca Rosen is still majoring in advertising thanks to the Denver Post.

As you may or may not know, the Bible doesn’t even contain the word pyramid, at least not an online King James Version that I searched. This is quite interesting. All the evidence points to Herodotus of Halicarnassus as the originator of the tale of Jewish slaves laboring under Egyptian whips to build the pyramids [In fact Herodotus only mentions the number of workers on the pyramids, he did not identify them as either Jews or slaves. - BD]. However, the Book of Exodus was nearly exactly the same time as Herodotus wrote this in his book The Histories (about 450 BCE), and it seems strange that these two contemporaneous accounts would match up so well on all details except the one that should appeal most to storytellers: the pyramids.

The other glaring difference between the accounts of Herodotus and Exodus is the Exodus itself. Despite a few poor attempts by some Christian scholars to try and shoehorn other events recorded by Herodotus into excuses for an Exodus, it’s clear that the Biblical account, where Moses led hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees out from the Egyptian labor camps, is wholly absent from Herodotus’ version.

Whether they were slaves or not, Jewish or not, or had worked on pyramids or something different, no group that large could possibly have camped for even one day and left no archaeological evidence. We find prehistoric camps tens of thousands of years old where hunters spent a single night. To claim that a group of thousands (let alone hundreds of thousands) could camp for even a week (let alone forty years) and leave no archaeological evidence displays gross naivete. A group numbering anywhere close to a million would have constituted the world’s largest city in those times, and short of a tectonic subduction, entire cities do not disappear. Whatever the Exodus was, if it happened at all, was certainly not what was depicted in the Book of Exodus.

No, I’m not trying to be controversial, and not trying to rub Christians or Jews or anyone else the wrong way. But I would like to be enlightened as to why some who hold such texts dear sometimes regard them as mere lists of events, rather than being otherwise meaningful. Whatever value they have is demonstrably not as lists of events. Might it lie elsewhere?

The criticism I received has been of two general varieties. First, that I’m an “Exodus denier”. Well, sorry to say, it’s not me who’s denying it: It’s virtually every historian and archaeologist, based on the evidence. I merely report what has been thoroughly established – that the evidence that must necessarily exist if the Exodus happened has never manifested itself. Second, that the Egyptians never recorded their losses in battle, only their victories; and it is this that explains the lack of evidence for the Exodus. Whether this is true or just an apologetic argument is irrelevant. The lack of Egyptian corroboration is certainly consistent with the lack of archaeological evidence, but it is hardly the reason historians don’t support the Exodus story. Again, your beef is with the evidence, not with the researchers who report the findings.

I submit that all efforts to prove that which is to be taken on faith with scientific evidence are not only doomed to fail, they are ultimately illogical and counterproductive to the purpose of faith.

The paper has been found to be multiply and fatally flawed, with Wakefield and his work being thoroughly discredited. As the Lancet editorial itself states:

Following the judgment of the UK General Medical Council’s Fitness to Practise Panel on Jan 28, 2010, it has become clear that several elements of the 1998 paper by Wakefield et al. are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation. In particular, the claims in the original paper that children were “consecutively referred” and that investigations were “approved” by the local ethics committee have been proven to be false. Therefore we fully retract this paper from the published record.

That’s great news, especially after Wakefield had his head handed to him last week by the GMC over his unethical and irresponsible behavior that led to this horrible paper being published in the first place.

The Lancet statement is a bit bloodless… but they are a professional research journal and not a blog, so it’s not appropriate for them to call out Wakefield in more emotional — and utterly deserved — terms. It’s up to the blogs to call out Wakefield for his tireless efforts in creating of the modern antivaccination movement, which is becoming so successful that measles, mumps, pertussis, and other preventable diseases are on the rise again. And to note that not only was his research wrong, but that he may have faked his data. And to say that he has a huge conflict of interest here, since at the time he was involved in creating an alternative to vaccination that would make him very, very rich if people became scared to vaccinate their kids. And to inform people that Wakefield was in the pocket of lawyers trying to sue the vaccine industry. And to basically call out the entire antivax movement for the incredible damage they have done and continue to do to public health.

All that’s left now is for the GMC to officially sanction Wakefield, disbar him, essentially, to finish this all up officially.

Of course, that won’t even slow Wakefield or the antivaxxers. They don’t care for the real world, based on evidence and fact. They are, for all intents and purposes, religious zealots now, believing in Wakefield, Jenny McCarthy, and the rest with such fervor that there is literally no amount of evidence that can ever sway them. And they will continue to spin, fold, and mutilate the truth, while we watch as diseases rise back from the dead, infecting hundreds of thousands of people, and killing many of them.

Never forget what’s at stake here. Never.

My thanks to the many, many BABloggees who sent me email or tweeted about this. Originally posted on The Bad Astronomy Blog.

Now, as I spend my day making videos, working on pitch materials for The Skeptologists and also making breakaway bottles for SMASHProps, I have a lot of time available to listen to many great podcasts. Most are skeptically themed and feature several of the authors that contribute regularly to this blog.

One podcast that I listen to regularly is the Tech Stuff Podcast, from the folks over at HowStuffWorks.com. Chris Pollette and Jonathan Strickland regularly take on topics related to technology from how fiber optics work to the best Easter eggs found in video games. When I scrolled through my menu of choices for my evening listening, last night, I saw that the latest offering from tech stuff was labeled “Ghost Hunting Technology.” I have to admit that I almost skipped it! My fear was that I’d listen to this podcast and have to stop listening to their future shows because of something that they said and I would have lost all “faith” in their ability to report on topics related to, well, anything!

This is a mainstream podcast. While tech-heavy, it’s aimed at a general audience and as such cannot be considered a skeptical podcast by any means. I generally tend towards programming from people who share at least a reasonable amount of similarities with my world-view. Luckily, I’ve found many.

So with some trepidation, I listened to the podcast and held my breath. Lucky for my oxygen-starved brain I didn’t have to wait long, because co-host Jonathan Strickland opened his part of the show by saying: “I’m going to preface this by saying, I am a Skeptic.” Whoa! I thought! he just came out! Ha ha! Not only that, he then very clearly and concisely explained what being a Skeptic was: “And when I say skeptic I don’t mean someone that automatically denies that something exists. When I’m saying Skeptic I’m talking about a person that requires there be some sort of empirical evidence that something exists before I just go ahead and accept it.”

Aw shucks Jonathan. What a swell guy. A great, clearly stated definition that many of us can really get behind. He further goes on to say that there is a an enormous lack of empirical evidence that ghosts exist. He is steadfast in his position and when Chris Pollette begins to give a little slack to the rope, Jonathan is quick to reign it in. They both continue through the podcast explaining the tools that are frequently seen on the popular ghost shows, and how it’s really all just props for entertainment value.

The reason that this podcast is important in my perspective is that these are people that produce a program in the mainstream media market, and Jonathan presented a great case for being a critical thinker and held his ground in an intelligent way, without being confrontational. He discussed skepticism in a way that anyone could understand and appreciate. Furthermore, he and his co-host took the time to go through many of the ghost hunters tools of the trade and in a simple fashion explained how there is no evidence that these tool can detect the presence of ghosts, or that there is any good evidence of ghosts themselves.

This type of rational, entertaining discourse is what we need to see more of. It’s not enough to simply cheer amongst those of us that know and understand the tenants of skepticism. It’s important to inject rationality and critical thinking skills –perhaps by using science and technology as a vehicle– to help people understand. The world that we live in is amazing and wonderful and although filled with many unexplored and misunderstood things, we should not work so hard to create industries that support unfounded claims of the paranormal and supernatural.

I highly recommend that you listen to TechStuff, and even drop them a line and let them know that there are a great many people out there that support this work.

While I remain hard at work to bring a mainstream TV series to viewers all over, I also stand and applaud those that are not afraid to wear their true colors and stand by their convictions.

To go directly to the rs feed for the Podcast Click here: feed://www.howstuffworks.com/podcasts/techstuff.rss

Tech Stuff can be found at www.HowStuffWorks.com

Which is how I came to frequent the popular cryptozoology blog site Cryptomundo. Presided over by the prolific Loren Colemen, Cryptomundo is updated constantly, and always a source of fantastic claims and speculations.

Screen capture from Cryptomundo.com

I get on quite well with Loren, who is one of the more skeptical and responsible pro-cryptozoology writers. (He has, for example, critiqued the “Jacko” story from sasquatch pre-history, writing, “in reality Jacko may have more to do with local rumors brought to the level of a news story that eventually evolved into a modern fable.”)

Before long, I found myself contributing regular comments on Cryptomundo posts. I knew something about the subject matter, and joined Ben Radford and one or two other “resident” skeptics at the blog site. I even contributed a guest post at one point. I love these mysteries, so it was pleasant to talk about them with others who found them interesting.

(As you might expect, the skeptics at Cryptomundo did take some abuse. That’s a shame. I argue that name-calling and straw men are always ugly and counter-productive, whether coming from cryptozoologists, from skeptics, or from anyone else — see comments on the posts “Is Scoftic a Useful Term?” and “Speaking of Name Calling and Skeptics.” I’m not quite sure how I ended up becoming a cheerleader for civility, but there it is.)

Then, one day, I posted a comment only for it vanish almost immediately. It turned out my comment had broken a house rule: by raising a comparison between cryptozoology and other paranormal claims, I had posted “off topic.”

I found this discouraging, although there are good reasons for this rule. Serious cryptozoological enthusiasts believe cryptids are living species of animals, and wish the scientific world would make an effort to locate these “hidden” creatures. What mainline cryptozoologists do not want is to be lumped together (and further marginalized) with other “paranormal” topics like ghosts or aliens. They are especially touchy about this because a loud fringe within the cryptozoological community insists that cryptids must be understood in paranormal terms. (Like, “We can’t find Bigfoot because it’s a psychic shapeshifter from another dimension.”)

An Argument That Should Never Be Made Again

My deleted post was a mild rebuttal to an argument heard often in cryptozoological circles — an argument that should be immediately and permanently laid to rest. It’s wrong, and I think that’s easy to demonstrate to the satisfaction of almost anyone.

If I may paraphrase, this common pro-cryptozoology argument goes something like this:

There are thousands of sightings of Bigfoot! They can’t all be wrong. Sure, some may be hoaxes, and some are probably mistakes — but all of them? Come on. I think the skeptics are the ones making the extraordinary claim, there!

This “where there’s smoke there’s fire” argument is central to cryptozoology — and to most paranormal claims. That universal popularity is a huge red flag, and exposes a critical flaw.

Whether you’re a skeptic, a cynic, a mystic, a believer or what have you, I think you should join me in agreeing right here:

Yes, it is possible for entire categories of paranormal claims to be completely, 100% bogus. Yes, it is possible for hundreds or thousands of supporting testimonials to comprise nothing but mistakes and hoaxes.

To see that this is true, just scan this short sample list of paranormal claims. Stop as soon as you see something you’re persuaded doesn’t exist:

• Bigfoot
• fairies
• ghosts
• alien abduction
• telepathy
• mermaids
• visitations from angels
• “therapeutic touch” energy healings
• astral projection
• demonic possession
• the Loch Ness Monster
• reincarnation
• phrenology
• predicting future events using tea leaves
• Mesmerism
• dowsing
• miraculous weeping statues
• Satanic ritual abuse cults
• saintly apparitions

…and so on. We could add hundreds of similar things on this list. If any one of them is false it debunks the “where there’s smoke there’s fire” argument, revealing it as a non sequitur. Where there’s smoke, there’s smoke. (Note that my purpose today isn’t to assert that this sample list of paranormal claims are untrue — only to point out a flaw in one argument they share in common.)

It’s a fact that many people have claimed personal encounters with Bigfoot, ghosts, mermaids, and psychics. But, that fact is ultimately trivial: it does not, by itself, allow us to draw any conclusions about whether these things are real or not. (As the old saying goes, the plural of “anecdote” is not “data.”)

Comparisons Are Poisonous

Cryptomundo has good, practical reason to avoid paranormal digressions. Believe me, those are a genuine pain for anyone who wishes to do serious research on cryptozoological topics. As a purely administrative matter, I think they should continue to maintain some version of their “stay on topic” rule.

But, I submit that this habit of compartmentalization is wrong in principle. It’s artificial, and it’s deeply misleading. Pretending that one’s favorite claim exists in isolation is to reduce it to a kind of soap bubble or hothouse flower. Are cryptid cases so delicate that they cannot survive encounters with the wider literature on hoaxes, paranormal claims, and the ways in which thinking goes wrong?

In the case of Bigfoot, it is obviously relevant that people routinely report encounters with paranormal and supernatural creatures like aliens and angels. It is obviously relevant that people claim literal or de facto conspiracies to explain away absence of evidence for many different kinds of paranormal claims. (“Scientists are too dogmatic to consider psi/sasquatches/homeopathy/creationism because this would threaten their funding/world view.”) Trace evidence like ectoplasm is relevant to trace evidence like Bigfoot tracks. The existence of habitual, multi-year crop-circle hoaxers, professional fake psychics, and other scammers and practical jokers is relevant to arguments about cryptid hoaxes.

Confronting relevant comparisons is poisonous for many paranormal claims — and for some claims, lethal. But, I suggest that this exercise is necessary for any proponents who hope to move a paranormal topic away from the fringes….

The YouTube UFO phenomenon (or “YouFOs” – yes, I just coined that) is a good way for budding skeptics to practice their skilz. This is purely armchair skepticism, unless you want to do some actual investigation, which can be fun too. But armchair skepticism has its place – it is an exercise in logic and plausibility. Someone is presenting you with evidence and you analyze it critically. You may not have the time or resources to do investigative journalism, or to replicate experiments. But asking good critical questions is an essential part of science, and since the burden of proof is on those making the claim it seems reasonable that they should be able to answer our questions.

Recently I was sent a link to this video:

Take a look and see what you think.

Here are the questions I typically go through when confronted with these videos. Keep in mind – no one would be more thrilled than I if we finally had convincing evidence for alien spacecraft visiting the earth. I am looking at these wanting to find compelling evidence. So far, I have not seen anything even remotely compelling, and this current video is no exception.

Detail and Perspective

The first gestalt question I ask is – can what I am seeing in this video be anything other than a large technologically advanced spacecraft? The answer, so far, is always a disappointing “yes.” This usually comes down to detail and perspective. This video, like most, is at such a distance and resolution that we can make out only a provocative hint of what we are seeing – but insufficient detail to really know what it is. It appears to be a hovering object with lights. Can it be a floating object, like a blimp? Sure. Can it be a small model? Yes.

Regarding perspective, it is remarkably difficult to judge size and distance (and therefore velocity, although not relevant to this video) when viewing an object against the sky, with no foreground objects for reference. We simply cannot tell how big this thing is.

Provenance

In order to be compelled by a video I would also like to know where it comes from. Often the source is unknown, with the lame claim that person does not want the attention. Equally dubious is when the dedicated UFO hunter comes up with the video. Encountering a real alien spacecraft would be a rare low-probability event. The chance that a UFO hunter happens to be the only one to capture such video is curious. In this case the video comes from ofuhunter, who has his own UFO page. Other than that, I have no idea who this guy is.

How long is the footage?

Let’s say you walk out of your house early one morning and see a flying saucer in the sky. You rush back into your home, grab your video camera, and start shooting. This is the real deal, and you are filming it. How long would you train your camera on the object? Would you get bored after a few minutes and stop? I know what I would do. I would film it for as long as it was visible. I would try to zoom in as far as possible and make sure the camera focused on the object. I would call my family members to get my still camera so I could take high resolution stills at the same time. I would call friend and neighbors.

But maybe I would not have time. Maybe the object would fly away after a few moments – but then at least I would have footage of the object flying away.

So why is it we get 24 seconds of the object just floating there? Ofuhunter tells us the rest of the footage is being examined by “experts” but we never seem to get the full footage. It just seems like an attempt to explain away what is a typical feature of either hoaxed footage, or video of something mundane. We are being shown a select bit of the video  – I suspect that bit which seems the most impressive but lacks any of the details that would help us determine what the object actually is. Let’s see it fly away. Let’s see it move in front of something so that we can get some perspective.

Of course, hoaxing a short video is easier than hoaxing a long video. And often when the entire video is viewed we can see some embarrassing elements.

Where is all the other footage

This is being presented as a UFO hovering over a populated area. So where is the video from all those other people who would have likely seen it also? Where is the official investigation? Where is the news media? This video is being presented as “final proof of UFOs” but the reaction is underwhelming. Showing the object from different angles by different cameras would help demonstrate its authenticity.

Cameras and video cameras are now ubiquitous. When unusual events happen, everyone can whip out a camera and start filming. If we were being visited by alien spacecraft that occasionally decided to hover over populated areas flashing lights to get attention, there would be numerous videos of the event. Eventually someone would capture compelling video. But it has just not materialized. We are getting the same ambiguous pictures and video we have always seen.

Conclusion

Whenever I express my assessment of the dismal state of UFO evidence, always a UFO believers comments that there is video that has one or more of the features I list as a mark of a compelling video. The problem is, there is no video that has all these features at the same time – and that is what it would take. This is just good science – a scientist asks, “can we know that this is really an alien spacecraft – have we ruled out every other plausible alternative?” The answer is always no.

So it seems Bonnie Vent is more than a little bent out of shape about her claim to be able to talk to the deceased Michael Jackson.  The real question is not one of legality of freedom of speech as far as I’m concerned. (See Steve Novella’s follow-up blog written in response to Vent’s threat to sue myself, Steve, the Skepticblog, and the Skeptics Society if we did not remove my opinion of her claims).  It’s more about taking a stand against blatant exploitation of a deceased individual; namely, Michael Jackson.  So where does all this go from here? I would suggest that the focus now be taken away from the apparently offensive suggestion that I was previously made aware of through an internet press release (that was taken down) that this medium is taking money for taking to Michael Jackson,  to the real question at hand: Why are they doing this?

In my opinion, they are doing it for the publicity it brings them to gain customers for regular readings.  that is, if you’ re the psychic whom Michael Jackson has blessed with communication from the dead, then you must have special powers indeed.

Look at the Google and this person’s Youtube stuff. Do you think that saying you channel Michael Jackson might increase your chances of selling a reading to someone who misses the poor guy? You betcha folks. That’s showbiz.  I’m tempted to call myself.  Maybe it goes something like this…

MEDIUM: Yes, I see you have a new love interest coming into you life in mid April. Your spirit guide is named Phyllis and I see travel for you during the summer months. Watch out for rocks in your shoes and you also have to watch out for Venus when in goes into retrograde… gaining weight may become an issue. Anything else I can help you with?

SITTER: Hmmmmm. That’s okay I guess. But what I really wanted to do was ask Michael Jackson a question through you like it said on Google and at your site. Can I please talk to him. I miss him so…. Please?

MEDIUM: Er, …ahhhh yes. Well …I can’t really do that right now… You see I don’t take money for seances with Michael…

SITTER: Really? I read all about you doing seance for him right after he died and everything…

MEDIUM: Er, …uh…well I, ….eh.

SITTER: Does this mean I’m going to have to sit here and spend the next twenty seven minutes just listening to stuff about me? If so, I want my money back!

And what about the Jackson family? Don’t they have anything to say about this travesty? Hey Jermaine! Yo La Toya, Tito, Marlon and the rest of the First Family of Soul! Is this the kind of publicity you want for your dead brother? Can you allow someone like this to even pretend to disturb his resting in peace with such sideshow antics? And speaking of soul, what do you think Michael himself would make of all this?

What’s the impact of this entrepreneurial excess? Huge. As we get deeper into economic chaos, we can expect more and more of this type of insane exploitation. There’s no watchdog for this mess, no rules and no regulation whatsoever. In the worst cases, when faith and religion gets invoked, we lose even the tiniest chance to suggest critical thinking. These reprobates take every advantage of the faithful. I can only hope that because of blog interventions like this one, when net surfers look at so-called “paranormal research” sites and see adverts fo Eddie Munster dolls and “Buy/Sell Haunted Houses” listings, a few rational thinking minds might pause and consider that purveyors of this kind of garbage are nothing but snake oil salesmen (or saleswomen). In our present condition as a free-falling society, snake oil might be a viable option since there is so much of it is around. How much is snake oil per barrel anyway?

This new breed of low-brow marketing and yard sale mentality only makes the possibility of any serious discussion or scientific research into things supposedly paranormal less and less credible or approachable. I will make the debatable assumption that the regular readers of this blog have some basic common sense. Millions of other people don’t have a clue.

Let me make a few other things clear: Anyone can say they talk to spirits and dead people. Whether you sit at a computer and type it out, talk it on the telephone or sit at a seance table, it’s easy to talk the talk. I did it myself for 14 years at Hollywood’s Magic Castle. The difference is; I did what I did for entertainment purpose only and it has always been clearly labeled as such in my publicity and on my website. When I’m invited into the homes of clients to provide that entertainment, join in the party atmosphere and pretend to bring back the spirits of dead celebs like Hendrix, Elvis, Bela Lugosi or whoever, it is clearly understood by the hosts that we are out to have a good time. There is never any intention to convince anyone that I’m doing anything other than a dramatic send up of the traditional Victorian seance. If I have added in the words “Who knows?” in regard to whether or not something “real” might happen at one of these performances, that’s part of the mystery I’m selling. Magicians and mentalists have been doing this for centuries. Look at any of the advertising posters for Keller, Houdini or Thurston from earlier decades. There are cartoon demons and ghosts crawling all over them, sitting on there shoulders and whispering in their ears.  I have an agent, not a spirit guide! In my performances, as far as I can control there is never an expectation of actual spirit contact or blessed relief from bereavement. If some people in the seance circle are more susceptible to seeing things in the dark or have overactive imaginations, I cannot control that anymore than a movie theater owner can take responsibility for a viewer having a nightmare after watching an effective horror film. Creating suspense, tension and release of that tension through pacing and theatrics is what I do. I have never taken money to do a seance for a grieving family. That’s not fun. In my many years of experience in the field seeing the damage that can occur by messing with epole’s hearts and minds in that way is only one thing: wrong.

If you set yourself up as a real spirit medium and say you are doing these things for real, regardless of whether or not you take one dime for what you say you do, you are eventually going to come up against forces that will question what you do, ask for proof and yes, likely be hostile to you. It’s a nasty business. If you are consciously defrauding the public with unsubstantiated claims, you put yourself squarely in the cross-hairs of the people of honor. In the absence of said authorities who refuse to recognize their duties,  there will be people like myself  to out your nefarious activities. If you are feeling abused, defamed or rejected after all this is said and done, there’s really only one way to put this whole situation truly to rest :

PROVE IT.

I received a forwarded email from the University of Pittsburgh’s Critical Care Medicine Group email list:

Absolutely enthralling video of David Blaine explaining how he held his breath for 17 minutes! Interesting the assistance he received from the medical fraternity, including trying liquid ventilation with perflurocarbons.

Video here <http://www.ted.com/talks/david_blaine_how_i_held_my_breath_for_17_min.html>

OK, well enough. This is pretty much what has been publicly broadcast about the stunt. Nothing new here. But then another poster replied:

I love magic and I very much respect David Blane`s skill as an illusionist and the training he does for his stunts. The talk is, indeed, enthralling. Blane is a superb magician and , even though the people at TED took his talk at face value (including some aspects of his medical assistance), I do not. A number of David Blane`s and Chris Angel`s stunt-illusions (including the prolonged breath holding under water) have been recreated by the nefarious “masked magician” with a reveal of the underlying principles of the illusion. To me, the “face emersion in a sink full of perflurocarbons” and some of the other medical discussion add to the illusion but don’t give a cogent alternative explanation to the true aspects of the illusion. An important part of the fun/magic of an illusion is the magician convincing you that there is no other explanation to what you believe you are seeing. You can find the “reveal” of the illusion on the net if you are so inclined.

Well, neither do I take the perfluorocarbons explanation at face value. Another poster replied with this:

My father participated in some of the original experiments with the SEALS using perflurocarbons.  After watching James Cameron’s “The Abyss”, which attempted to show the liquid breathing effects on rats and people, he remarked it was reasonably accurate.  The ‘panic’ reaction of holding one’s breath for as long as possible until being forced to breath in the fluid was an issue, and once the subject was breathing the liquid, they were unable to perform tasks because it took so much effort to breathe.

There is good reason to be skeptical of David Blaine’s feats. His famous TV show “Street Magic” is widely known to have been largely accomplished with post-production editing. For example, his “levitation” was a cleverly edited conflation of a parlor trick called the Balducci and a demonstration of using a wire rig for flying onstage (and I don’t think I’m violating any magician’s trade secrets by pointing that out). Should we not be equally skeptical of his breath holding trick? It was performed on Oprah, for FSM’s sake; and it’s not like no magician has ever taken advantage of the limited view television offers its audience.

Pretty much all of the authorities accept Blaine’s record as legitimate, though short-lived (it was broken only a few months later). Blaine’s problem is that he has established himself as the boy who cried wolf. Whether his feat was genuine or a trick along the lines of the Masked Magician’s reveal, his audience has good reason to doubt its authenticity.

What do you think?

The problem is that for a lot of this so-called alternative medicine, there is no evidence it works, and in fact evidence it doesn’t work. Worse, a lot of its biggest purveyors actively try to denigrate real medicine, the stuff that, y’know, works, in an attempt to bolster their alt-med claims. And you have to be a little suspicious when they hawk their wares on their sites, too.

So I question the motivations of some of these people, including one Mike Adams, about whom I wrote a couple of days ago. When called out for what is apparently voter fraud for a Twitter Shorty Award, he threw an epic tantrum that displays a decided lack of grip on reality (assuming he honestly believes what he’s selling). After that fact-free diatribe he followed up with a rant about skeptics that’s so far off the mark that it’s hard to believe anyone could post something like that honestly. Steve Novella takes him down on that one.

And as if these word spasms from Adams weren’t enough, he posted a third article where he completely gets science wrong, claiming water and quantum mechanics are magic, and then a fourth about the Shorty Awards where he once again ramps up the paranoid conspiracy theories.

Sigh. The irony is that he makes my job easy since he’s self-debunking, but also makes it harder because so many people swallow what he says whole without even giving it a moment of critical thought.

Joe Mercola, the other "victim" professing to have the vapors over this Shorty Award nonsense, decided to jump into the fray as well. Instead of using facts — because why start now? — he thought it was a good idea to say that Rachael Dunlop is fat:

An arrogant group of science bloggers that have vilified me for the past few years have started a campaign to have an Australian shill to win a health award on Twitter. This overweight non-physician has arrogantly bashed nearly every alternative therapy and encourages reliance on drugs.

Rachael is a woman who has tirelessly fought quackery and the dangerous wares of many alt-med purveyors, and of course Adams and Mercola are squarely in her crosshairs. She has called out many an antivaxxer, and was a key player in the travesty involving Dana McCaffery (an infant who died of pertussis) and Meryl Dorey, an antivaxxer who claims no one dies from pertussis anymore.

So when faced with someone like Rachael who has years of experience and who wields science, evidence, and reality, Mercola decided to stick out his tongue and call her fat.

Wow, folks. There’s your alt-med hero.

And yes, I am engaging in an ad hominem, an attack directed at someone instead of their arguments. But it’s not always wrong to do so; in this case Steve Novella, Orac, Rachael, and many others, including me, have already shown that people like Mercola and Adams are full of it. But sometimes that’s not enough. I think it does a lot of good to see how vile these people can be, and something like this is not only warranted, but needed, especially when these alt-medders set themselves up to be victims, claiming to be sympathetic and only wanting to help. They don’t help; they hurt.

Happily, some of Mercola’s followers are starting to see through him.

Look. We’re not talking about goofy nonsense like ghost-hunting or UFOs here. We’re talking about people’s lives. Alt-medders like Adams and Mercola reject treatments that we know to work, that we know can cure illnesses, that we know can relieve pain and suffering on a massive scale, and that we know can save lives. That’s what you’re turning your back on when you listen to them.

And I still endorse Rachael for the Shorty Award in health. Keep fighting the good fight.

Originally posted on the Bad Astronomy Blog