Skepticism & beliefs

It seems that the military in Iraq has discovered a magical way to detect bombs, and they are spending millions of dollars to deploy it a checkpoints around the country.

The technology, however, is well known to be the equivalent of a dowsing rod and it is completely useless. Making fun of other people’s stupid beliefs can be fun, but when lives are on the line you have to be concerned.

More from the NY Times:

Iraq Swears by Bomb Detector U.S. Sees as Useless

Despite major bombings that have rattled the nation, and fears of rising violence as American troops withdraw, Iraq’s security forces have been relying on a device to detect bombs and weapons that the United States military and technical experts say is useless.

The small hand-held wand, with a telescopic antenna on a swivel, is being used at hundreds of checkpoints in Iraq. But the device works “on the same principle as a Ouija board” — the power of suggestion — said a retired United States Air Force officer, Lt. Col. Hal Bidlack, who described the wand as nothing more than an explosives divining rod.

Here is an important article from the email newsletter of the Skeptics Society. J.D. Haines, a doctor and professor from the University of Oklahoma, describes the numerous cases where neck manipulations done by chiropractors have led to death and serious neurological injuries.

Fatal Adjustments: How Chiropractic Kills

When Kristi Bedenbaugh wanted relief from a bad sinus headache, the 24 year-old former beauty queen and medical office administrator made the mistake of consulting a chiropractor. An autopsy performed on Kristi revealed that the manipulation of her neck had split the inner walls of both vertebral arteries, resulting in a fatal stroke.
…
The real tragedy is that cervical spine manipulation is totally worthless in treating problems like Kristi Bedenbaugh’s. So, however rare the incidence of adverse outcome, the risk always outweighs any perceived benefit. There is no medically proven benefit whatsoever to chiropractic manipulation of the cervical spine.
…
The public is led to believe that physicians disparage chiropractors out of some sort of professional jealousy. Yet there is only one reason that physicians judge chiropractors so harshly. Medicine is scientifically based, whereas chiropractic is not supported by a single legitimate scientific study.

Does “Cressie” swim the waters of Crescent Lake in Newfoundland? Sightings of this giant creature have been reported for years, much like the Loch Ness monster, but no evidence has been found. In this article from Skeptical Inquirer, Joe Nickell goes in search of the elusive creature.

Quest for the Giant Eel

Sightings of a “monster” in the lake date back to the turn of the last century when a resident known as “Grandmother Anthony” spied a giant serpentine creature while she was picking berries. From the 1940s to the present, there have been a dozen or so sightings, although without photographs to date. Most descriptions are of a dark, eel-like creature, up to twenty-five or more feet long.

Here is a new video from James (“The Amazing”) Randi on the role that the media plays in supporting nonsensical beliefs. In this clip Randi retells the story of The Carlos Hoax, where an actor posed as a psychic channeler and was able to garner all kinds of attention and free publicity from the Australian media. The story is important because it exposes the ease with which the media can be influenced to support unsubstantiated claims, frauds, or hoaxes as long as the story is interesting enough.

Here is a description of the impact from The Skeptic’s Dictionary:

For Alvarez, the creation of the character “Carlos” was a performance/experiment to see how far he could take his creation, but his purpose was not to make people look foolish. He hoped to liberate them from a false belief. However, the result of the performance seemed to demonstrate how easy it is to create a cult from scratch and how, even when the truth is revealed to them, some still refuse to accept it. The “Carlos” hoax also demonstrated how gullible and uncritical the mass media are when covering paranormal or supernatural topics. Rather than having an interest in exposing the truth, the members of the media were obsessed with “Carlos” the phenomenon and transformed his character from a hoax to a myth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0hgP3ioAeA

I thought that Canada had mostly avoided the Intelligent Design controversy, but it seems that we have not. This article describes a disturbing statement from our Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) concerning the rejection of an application to study “the detrimental effects of popularizing anti-evolution’s intelligent design theory on Canadian students, teachers, parents, administrators and policymakers.”

One Large Defeat for Science in Canada

For some reason, however, the adjudication committee that reviewed Alters’s application could not resist, in its statement of rejection, adding the following gratuitous comment:

Nor did the committee consider that there was adequate justification for the assumption in the proposal that the theory of Evolution, and not Intelligent Design Theory, was correct. . . .

This is the statement that caused concern among scientists around the world. Was SSHRC buying the creationist ploy of intelligent design, a shallow and obvious strategy to bring religion into the science classroom? Do people at SSHRC really think that the religious idea of intelligent design is just as valid as evolution?

James “The Amazing” Randi, “the Willy Wonka of scepticism, the Evel Knievel of debunking” was recently in London for what sounds like a very interesting evening…

An Evening with James Randi and Friends

[Randi] says the difference between a stage magician (or conjuror) and a self-proclaimed psychic is that the magician has an unspoken agreement with his audience. He will lie, cheat and generally employ all manner of deception in order to fool them; but this is part of the act. He is doing it purely for the benefit of their entertainment. Once the show is over, so too is the deception.

In contrast, the psychic demands the suspension of disbelief on a permanent basis. Randi draws the analogy of a Shakespearian actor asking the audience to accept that he really is the prince of Denmark. “Why are we not insulted by this?” he asked, “And why do such claims go largely unchallenged in our culture?”