The Pseudoscience Constellation

Did you ever notice that buying into one form of pseudoscience often begets other kinds of foolishness? Phillip Johnson, the lawyer who had a religious experience after a messy divorce, is not only one of the founders of the modern intelligent design movement; he's also an AIDS denier.

Russell Humphreys, the young-earth creationist, also denies that global warming is a problem.

Recently I learned about another example, possibly one of the most impressive yet. R. Webster Kehr is a Mormon and ex-Marine who

- thinks "evolution is the most absurd scientific theory in the history of science!!"

- denies Einstein's theory of relativity and the photon theory

- thinks that the naturals and the reals are the same size, even though he admits there is no bijection between them. He also describes himself as the author of many mathematical papers, although oddly enough, MathSciNet doesn't list a single one.

- subscribes to cancer quackery

You have to work pretty hard to be so deluded in so many fields simultaneously.

Geologic Silliness

Earlier this year, at the Niagara Peninsula Gem and Mineral Show , there was a guy, Harry Johnston, selling what he called "The Mystery Stone", which appeared to me to be nothing more than common, ordinary quartz, being sold at rather high prices.

He's got a website in which he describes his rock as "a self cleaning stone of natural energies". It "enhances the energies of other stones, also clearing all Charkra points for most people". What does that even mean?

There was also a guy, Mars Islamov, selling Shungite, which is a form of noncrystalline carbon. Shungite is of genuine mineralogical interest, and there was an article about it by Buseck et al. in the Canadian Mineralogist 35 (1997), 1363-1378. But it's certainly not rare; the article of Buseck et al. says there are more than 10¹¹ tonnes of it near Karelia, Russia.

At his website you can find claims like "Shungite cures, purifies, protects, normalizes, induces recovery and promotes growth in living organisms. Everything which takes a toll on us, is killed; and everything health-giving is concentrated and restored by this miracle rock. Every scientist investigating shungite, declares it to be miraculous." This seems very dubious to me.

I wish geologists and mineralogists would speak up more strongly against these kinds of unsupported claims.

A New Self-Published Creationist Book?

Oh, lookie!

Our local creationists at the University of Guelph, Kirk Durston and David Chiu, have teamed up with wacky David Abel and Donald Johnson on a book!

(Kirk Durston is the creationist who thinks that his god magically calms angry bulls, and David Chiu is the guy who stuck in an irrelevant citation to Dembski's work in a paper having nothing to do with Dembski, and told me he did it as a "courtesy".)

Judging from this excerpt, it's not likely that real scientists will take it seriously, with laughably bogus claims such as
- "Fifteen years ago, it started to be realized that `junk DNA' was a misnomer."
- "All known errors during replication result in a decrease of both Shannon and functional information"

I wondered who would publish this drivel. It's a place called "Longview Press". Never heard of it? I hadn't either. But this page suggests that it's just David Abel's private little enterprise. Wow, what a surprise.

It's in keeping with the intelligent design vanity journal, Bio-Complexity, which seems to have a hard time finding papers to publish (7 in 2 years). But hey! It has no problem publishing papers by people who are on the editorial team. And look: David Abel is there, too.

And they wonder why we call it pseudoscience.

Addendum 1: even the University of Guelph library, where Durston and Chiu are based, doesn't have the book in its collection.

Addendum 2: Thanks to Bayesian Bouffant for pointing out the self-congratulatory description of the book on Amazon. I especially love this part: "Change in the FSC of proteins as they evolve can be measured in “Fits”— Functional bits. The ability to quantify changes in biofunctionality during evolutionary transition represents one of the most important advances in biological research in recent decades. See especially, Durston, K.K.; Chiu, D.K.; Abel, D.L.; Trevors, J.T. 2007, Measuring the functional sequence complexity of proteins, Theor Biol Med Model, 4, 47".

Well, if it's "one of the most important advances in biological research in recent decades", then it's amazing how few citations there are to this groundbreaking paper. ISI Web of Science lists exactly 4 citations, 3 of which are self-citations by Abel and Trevors. Wow, that is sure important and groundbreaking.

Free Energy Scam

Never mind that pesky 2nd law of thermodynamics! Get scammed by "free energy"!

Honestly, what kind of people fall for this crap?

Wi-Fi Hysteria

My local paper has a poorly-written Canadian Press article about a group of Barrie parents who are all worked up and worried that wireless internet in their schools are making their kids sick.

Whatever happened to good science reporting? The supposed effects form a classic list of vague symptoms that are likely to have a psychosomatic component: headaches, dizziness, nausea, racing heart rates. A good reporter should be more skeptical.

The article cites Susan Clarke, "a former research consultant to the Harvard School of Public Health", as claiming that Wi-fi "alters fundamental physiological functioning and can cause neurological and cardiac symptoms". But the article doesn't bother to quote any medical official or researcher to the effect that Wi-fi is safe. Nor does it cite any peer-reviewed studies by Clarke or anyone else on the subject.

Really, a little common sense would be useful here. With Wi-fi available in libraries, cafes, airports, and so forth, for years, wouldn't everybody be reporting these supposed effects?

I'm Sorry to Have Missed This

Reader Paul C. A. points out that I was too late to attend the International Remote Viewing Association's 2010 conference. Too bad, I would have liked to see so many woomeisters in one room.

Just think, for only $436 I could have heard

* Robert Jahn, formerly of PEAR, a parapsychology lab associated with Princeton that embarrassed them for years until it was finally disbanded in 2006;

* Noreen Renier, a self-proclaimed psychic whose attempts at solving crimes have been extensively debunked;

* Alexis Champion, who advocates "psychic archaeology";

* Paul Smith, who taught dowsing to participants;

* Courtney Brown, a political scientist at Emory University who, according to Michael Shermer, is not allowed to mention his affiliation with Emory when discussing remote viewing. Did I mention that he was a "yogic flyer"?

Oh, the fun I could have had! For example, in the description of Jahn's talk, he says, "repeated applications proved to diminish the yield, suggesting that disproportionate focus on the analytical components of the perception, rather than on the phenomenal gestalt, can result in obscuring the essence of the phenomenon and that the subjective quality of these experiences is more effectively enhanced when their inherent uncertainties are both acknowledged and emphasized."

Translation: we can't figure out why our discovery of tiny psi effects disappear when we do more trials.

Danish Hospital Hosts Wacko Medical Meeting

From the Copenhagen Post comes this article about how the Copenhagen University Hospital agreed to host the woo-fest called the European Quantum Energy Medicine Conference, to the disgust of Danish medical professionals. One is quoted as saying, "It's an extremely unfortunate signal to send when we're talking about a conference that primarily consists of completely undocumented claims, and products that don't have a shred of evidence supporting their effectiveness".

I wonder why they didn't get Radovan Karadzic to speak.

Hat-tip: Terry Polevoy.

Another Healie-Feelie Book

The recent flood in my basement ruined a perfectly good book. Actually, the book was perfectly awful: it is Healing Crystals and Gemstones: From Amethyst to Zircon by Flora Peschek-Böhmer and Gisela Schreiber. (I won't say how it came to be in my basement, but I will say that I don't own it.)

This book is typical of the "healing crystal" literature: a lack of understanding of basic geology and chemistry, combined with healing claims that are not substantiated in any way, resulting in dangerous advice for people with serious health conditions.

The book is littered with errors. Even the very first sentence is incorrect, when it claims that all gemstones originate from hot magma. (Opal, for example, can be sedimentary.) The authors claim "jasper ... always has a trigonal structure", when in fact jasper essentially doesn't form crystals at all. On page 150, the authors claim that fluorite is "also known as feldspar", when in fact feldspar is an entirely different mineral. On page 75, the authors confuse native antimony with the mineral stibnite, which is actually antimony sulfide. On page 85 the authors claim that that aragonite is silicon dioxide, not calcium carbonate. The mineral Charoite is consistently misspelled as "Chaorite". They claim that the crystal structure of Herkimer diamonds is similar to that of real diamond, when in fact they crystallize in completely different systems. They claim that kunzite is "aluminum acetate-lithium", when in fact it is a lithium aluminum silicate; no acetate at all is contained in it. They claim that Magnesite "consists almost entirely of pure magnesium", when in fact it is just magnesium carbonate. They claim that Magnesite "was first discovered in Africa", when in fact its co-type localities are in Greece and Italy.

The authors recommend the use of various minerals without noting health problems associated with them. For example, the authors recommend actinolite to stimulate "the inner organs such as the liver and the kidneys", but fail to note that the tiny fibers of actinolite have been associated with severe and potentially life-threatening respiratory disorders. They recommend using orpiment "externally as a powder to treat sexual disorders", but this is not a good idea, as orpiment is arsenic sulfide.

But the most serious problem with the book is the repeated and unsubstantiated health claims, all made without a single reference to any study in support of them. Someone with serious health problems might be persuaded to use the entirely ineffective remedies suggested in this book instead of seeking effective medical treatment. Cancer is unlikely to be helped by toumaline, sugilite, or lapis lazuli. High blood pressure cannot be improved with sodalite, lapis, or chrysoprase. Diabetes sufferers will find no relief with citrine or pyrite. Kidney ailments will not be improved with jade. For ulcers you should see your family doctor, not wear jasper or topaz.

Ahh, well, I doubt any of this will convince the healie-feelie crowd. When they're done with this, they can move on to the other immortal works of Flora Peschek-Böhmer, such as Urine Therapy: Nature's Elixir for Good Health. Urine therapy, in case you didn't know, consists of drinking your own urine. Great idea! You can use it to wash down some crystals of orpiment.

Lying for Jesus, Mathematically

I've previously commented about Marvin Bittinger's book, The Faith Equation: One Mathematician's Journey in Christianity. I called it a "combination of ignorance and intellectual dishonesty". Now that I've had a chance to read it more carefully, I find I was too kind. It is pure and utter dreck. Actually, "dreck" is far too kind. I find it hard to convey the self-satisfied stupidity that is found on nearly every page.

Instead of giving a detailed critique, in the spirit of the Carnival of Mathematics, I'll focus on some of the questionable mathematics that Bittinger uses.

Christian apologists have long been fascinated by the power of mathematics. My colleague Wesley Elsberry has taken apart an argument from 1925 here, where the author claims that the current rate of growth in human populations implies a young earth. The writer of that bogus argument claimed that "Figures will not lie, and mathematics will not lie even at the demand of liars." Unfortunately, the reverse is true: it's easy to lie for Jesus, mathematically. And probability theory is one of the easiest tools to abuse.

In The Faith Equation, tiny probabilities are assigned, often with little or no justification, and probabilities are multiplied together with no evidence of independence. These tactics are particularly evident in Chapter 4, "The Probability of Prophecy". In this chapter, Bittinger concludes that prophecies in the Bible constitute an event of probability 10^-76, which is a miracle that proves the accuracy of the Bible and the existence of God.

As I've already pointed out, Bittinger ignores significant criticism about his claimed prophecies. Tim Callahan's Bible Prophecy: Failure or Fulfillment?, Farrell Till's Prophecies: Imaginary and Unfilfilled and Jim Lippard's Fabulous Prophecies of the Messiah all take issue with many of the prophecies claimed by Christians. I see no sign that Bittinger has read these critiques; he certainly hasn't cited them in his reference list.

I'm not going to get into the accuracy of individual prophecies here; instead, I want to comment on one tool that Bittinger uses to justify his small probabilities. On page 93, we read:

"There is a concept from probability that we use often in these arguments. Suppose an assertion, such as God promising never again to flood the earth after the time of Noah's Ark, occurred t years ago, and to date the prophecy either has not been fulfilled or was just fulfilled. Statisticians would then estimate the probability of the event to be approximately one over twice the number of years: 1/(2t). We refer to this as the time principle and use it extensively."


There are two problems here: first, the "time principle" is completely nonsensical and second, it is not used by "statisticians" as Bittinger claims.

The "time principle" is nonsensical for several reasons. First, it is based on years, an entirely arbitrary way to measure time. We can get any probability we like from the formula 1/(2t) simply by changing the unit of measurement. If we measure time in centuries instead of years, the probability increases by a factor of 100. If we measure time in seconds, the probability decreases by a factor of about 31,000,000. Second, a well-established principle of probability is that if a space is partitioned into events, the sum of all the probabilities must be 1. But the sum of 1/(2t) for t from 1 to n can never be 1, since it is .91666... for n = 3, and 1.041666... for n = 4. Third, it doesn't take into account the character of the assertion. If I asserted in 1975 that "people will write the year 2000 on their checks", this would clearly not be fulfilled until 25 years later. Yet it would occur with probability 1 (or at least close to 1), not 1/50 as the "time principle" suggests.

Is the "time principle" used by statisticians, as Bittinger claims? I used MathSciNet, the online version of Mathematical Reviews, a review journal that attempts to review every noteworthy mathematical publication. I found no references to this principle anywhere in the literature. I then consulted a statistician down the hall at my university, who had never heard of this principle and agreed it was nonsensical.

So Bittinger's "time principle" is pseudomathematics, and is not used by genuine mathematicians. I asked Bittinger where he got it from, and he replied, "Your point is well-taken and I must admit that in some ways the time principle is a stretch. I did "develop" it on my own, and had it corroborated by a top-notch statistician in my department - mathematicians do that you know. I should have said something to this effect, and not "from probability."" I am glad that Bittinger admits that his "time principle" is bogus, and I hope to see a forthright admission to this effect on the website for his book.

Chapter 6 of The Faith Equation discusses the power of prayer. He begins by discussing a controversial study by Randolph C. Byrd that appeared in Southern Medical Journal 81 (7) (July 1988), 826-829, which claimed to show that heart patients showed a statistically signficant benefit from intercessory prayer. Bittinger does not acknowledge any criticism of the Byrd study; indeed, he says, "To a statistician, Byrd's study proved intercessory prayer was effective." But Tessman and Tessman (Skeptical Inquirer (March/April 2000), 31-33 pointed that Byrd's study is bogus for three reasons: the analysis of the results was conducted in a non-blinded fashion by Byrd, the criteria used for evaluating the outcomes were created after the data had been collected, and the study's co-ordinator was non-blinded. Bittinger does not cite the work of Tessman and Tessman, nor other critiques by Sloan, Bagiella, and Powell (Lancet 353 (1999), 664-667) and Posner (Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine 4 (1) (Spring/Summer 2000). By refusing to acknowledge informed criticism of these prayer studies, Bittinger abdicates his responsibility as a professor and an academic.

These two examples should suffice to show how the case in The Faith Equation is so transparently weak that even non-mathematicians should be able to spot the flaws.