Digital Bits Skeptic

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By Andy Kaiser
Article ID: 1332

Hi everyone, Andy Kaiser here. I’m interrupting the normal podcast with a public service announcement. And by “public”, I mean “Digital Bits Skeptic”. And by “service announcement”, I mean, “shameless self-promotion, though I honestly think you might be interested”.

I’ve been interviewed by our skeptical friends at “Warning: Radio“. Done by Bryan, Baxter and Nitor, the show is relatively unscripted and was recorded live. This is a good thing, as the conversation topics range far and wide, and you get to listen to what I sound like when I can’t edit my own audio.

All of my interviews so far have been quick little things, or brief Q&As on various websites, and that’s why I’m taking the time to mention this in-depth interview now.

Listen to the surprising-but-understandable origins of Digital Bits Skeptic, my thoughts on “The Skeptologists” TV show, the missing skepticality in pop culture, technology scams, Mystery Science Theater 3000, and comments on my contemporaries, including Joe Nickell, Brian Dunning, James Randi and The Skeptics Guide to the Universe.

Click HERE to listen to the full episode online.

The interview starts at the 19:50 mark, about a third of the way through the audio.

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By Navin Kumar
Article ID: 1331

The Phillips Curve is possibly the biggest blow-up in economics that ever happened. Economists – and just about every class of social scientists – are frequently (and rightly) accused of being so infatuated with a theory, that they ignore data if it doesn’t fit in with their model.

The Phillips Curve is a wonderful example of rigorous empiricism. In 1958, A.W. Phillips discovered a striking relationship between inflation and unemployment: periods of high inflation coincided with periods of low employment. Subsequent studies found this result held true across countries and time periods. This led to the belief that there was a “trade-off” between employment and inflation which could be exploited by policy makers: a government could reduce unemployment if it was willing to increase inflation and vice-versa.

The theory behind the data was fairly simple: if unemployment was low, businessses found it hard to hire workers and to increase wages. Higher wages causes goods to be more expensive to produce, so firms increase prices, and this causes inflation. Conversely, if the government caused inflation, there would be a gap in which wages are low in comparison with the price of goods. This is because the workers have not yet negotiated higher wages to compensate for higher prices. During this period, businesses take advantage of low wages by hiring more workers and stepping up production, reducing unemployment.

Higher inflation means increased production and lower unemployment. The empirical evidence and theory were flawless. Policies based on the Phillips Curve enjoyed some initial success. So why is it that in the 1970s the Phillips Curve collapsed, and the world saw “stagflation”: a bizarre situation which combined reduced production with inflation?

An answer came from American economist Milton Friedman: low unemployment, he explained, is the result of unanticipated inflation. If the government started intentionally causing inflation, inflation becomes regular and predictable. If it is predictable, employees started negotiating contracts in which wages increased in tune with inflation and there is no point at which wages are “cheap”.

This is an incredibly subtle difference. Note that the explanation hasn’t changed: the relationship is still the result of wages not keeping up with prices. The only difference is that the second uses a more sophisticated system than the first.

To illustrate what happened, consider the following example (used by Landsburg in his excellent book The Armchair Economist):

“Imagine an economist noticed that people purchased two boxes of cereal per week. Excited, he publishes a paper on the subject and it comes to the governments’ attention. The government – for whatever reason – decides that people should eat four boxes of cereal per week. People already buy two boxes, so if the government sends them [an additional] two boxes every week – yay! – they will eat four boxes a week!”

But that’s not how it plays in real life. After getting the two boxes, this won’t suddenly change consumer habits to four boxes – they’ll instead stick with two. Since the government just gave them two, they’ll buy no boxes at all! These are the perils of not including  people’s behavior when formulating an idea. But it’s even worse when we get a theory wrong. Imagine two economists bumped into the “two boxes a week” fact. One says, “People will always buy two boxes of cereal per week,” while the other says, “People will always eat two boxes of cereal per week.”

How can you tell which one of them is right? From the data, you can’t.  But once you change the rules of the game – by sending them boxes – you can. The first theory implies they will continue buying two boxes per week while the second predicts they will buy none at all. The second will be proven right.

Similarly, in 1958, if you had two theories which stated, “Inflation reduces unemployment,” and “Unanticipated inflation reduces unemployment,” it would be impossible to tell which is one of the two is right because, until now, all inflation has been unanticipated. But in 1980, we suddenly have a lot of data on anticipated inflation. We can now check which of the two theories is right. As it turned out, it was the second: unanticipated inflation reduces unemployment.

Fast forward to 2009. What caused the sub-prime lending crisis? Here are two popular theories:

1) The bankers were greedy. They knew the risks, but went on anyway because of the possibility of large profits that came with sub-prime loans.

2) The bankers were stupid. Despite all the PhD’s and mathematicians on their staff, they didn’t foresee the nationwide fall in house prices.

The first theory implies that banks should be more tightly regulated to prevent greedy bankers from taking risks that will hurt everyone. The second – which requires a bit of explaining – states that the banks created financial products (which are blamed for bringing down the system) in order to reduce the risk. And they did: they reduced the risk that came with a few defaulters (which allowed for cheaper loans) but increased the pain that would occur if a huge event happened – like the fall in housing prices.

However, they calculated that such a huge event was unlikely to occur, so the risk was low. Any government regulator would’ve used the same methods to calculate the risk. They would, in other words, be as dumb as the banks themselves. They would do no good and might end up restricting genuinely good products. So we have two theories, both of which explain the crisis, but both make very different recommendations.

Which of them is right? Your guess is as good as mine. (Incidentally, both these theories agree that banks are now too large and should be trimmed so that a bank failure won’t cause the financial system to collapse with it.

Look at a star-shaped piece of ice sitting in the sun. We know what kind of puddle it will make. But we can’t later look at a puddle and figure out if the ice was originally star-shaped or heart-shaped or a cube.

These examples illustrate how difficult it is to figure out why something happened – and why it’s so important to know for sure. As human beings we must make decisions, but decisions which have a faulty foundation are doomed to fail.

There is nothing as useless as a fact without a theory. But theories themselves are incredibly hard to evaluate. One good measure of a theory is falsifiability. This basically asks the question: how can this theory be proved wrong?

The theory of gravity can be proved wrong if apples started falling up. Take Marx’s theory that “Industrialization alienates workers, and alienated workers will revolt against capitalism.” This can be proved wrong if workers in industrialized countries revolt less often than those in non-industrialized countries. If any theory is presented to you without a test, or is inherently untestable, be suspicious.

The moral of the story is not that we should reject all theories, but that we should look at all ideas on the table with an impartial eye. We should watch out for assumptions and differences between the experimental setting and the real world. We should remain politely skeptical of any theory that’s put on the table without a method of falsification. And we must be especially careful when such theories – whether they talk about religion, science, economics or politics – attempt to plot the direction of humanity.

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By Andy Kaiser
Article ID: 1330

Oprah Winfrey was nothing more to me than an unseen TV show. I knew she was there, but never wanted to watch. Why would I? Her show was usually about clothes and cooking and redecorating and various “women’s issues” that I just didn’t care about. I didn’t have time for all that. I was a MAN. I had to get things DONE. No time for what I saw as fluff. I had important video games to play.

Then years later, like some people do, I married a girl. My wife changed my viewpoint on many things, including how I felt about Oprah Winfrey. When I first realized my wife watched Oprah, I gave a long-suffering mental sigh. But, I figured I’d treat her Oprah-watching with the same respect she treated my video game playing: it would be tolerated, but never spoken about.

But as I overheard a few things and learned some facts, my viewpoint changed.

Oprah is a very good person.

In 2007, Oprah spent $40 million to build the “Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls” in South Africa. She did this to provide educational opportunities to gifted girls who may not normally have a chance to succeed.

In 2006, she raised money to help people recover from Hurricane Katrina. She got over $11 million in donations, and personally donated $10 million.

In 1998, she started “Oprah’s Angel Network“, a charity designed to improve the lives of the underprivileged.  As of this writing, the charity has raised more than $51 million. And none of it is wasted – any overhead like administrative costs is personally covered by Oprah. 100% of donations actually get to those who need them.

She’s known to be an extremely philanthropic celebrity, if not the most philanthropic.

I’m telling you these facts to show that Oprah herself personally cares about people, and she’s willing to spend major chunks of her time and money to help others.  I’m telling you this to make clear what I believe about her personality – that whatever she might believe or promote, she’s not malicious.

Now we come to the situation today. It was my wife that alerted me as to the events. She said, “I just read this really cool Newsweek article about Oprah. I think you might be interested.” The June 8, 2009 article was a long feature story on Oprah, detailing the medical quackery she’s had on her show, from ineffective New Age scams  to dangerous anti-vaccination medical advice popularized in multiple interviews with Jenny McCarthy. It pulled no punches. The piece was titled, “Crazy Talk: Oprah, Wacky Cures and You”.

Then, just a few hours later, the skeptical community virtually exploded in glee. The big skeptical names brought out their big cannons, and fired. People in and outside of the skeptical community wrote their own “open letter to Oprah“, expressing well-reasoned arguments as to why Oprah shouldn’t be doing what she’s doing, essentially bolstering and supporting the Newsweek article.

So Oprah got slammed by the mass media. Hard. And don’t get me wrong – she should be held accountable for popularizing such claims. Particularly when those claims go against the consensus of the medical community. Particularly if those claims could cause harm to others, either by intention or negligence. Particularly when Oprah is so influential.

But in the press that followed the Newsweek article, people seemed to really hate Oprah herself. In my Inbox right now, I have an email from someone with the self-righteous subject line, “Oprah gets what is coming to her“.  Reader’s Digest magazine followed up with an article, “The Trouble With Celebrity Science“. You’ll find plenty of not-so-polite opinion pieces. Some are intelligent. Some have titles like “Oprah is an idiot” and “Oprah fails at everything“.

Well, Oprah is not an idiot. She doesn’t “fail at everything”. This is clear. A smart person can be uncritical and taken in by ideas they hope are true. A good example is Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. The man who created the Holmes mythos is not an idiot. But Doyle was a spiritualist who believed in all sorts of kooky things, like the existence of fairies, and that his friend – magician Harry Houdini – wasn’t doing tricks. Doyle believed Houdini was lying, and that Houdini actually practiced real magic.

I’m not defending Oprah’s stance on the supernatural, self-help, or her support of people like Jenny McCarthy. She should be criticized. I’ve criticized her myself: in 2008, I wrote two DBSkeptic articles critical of Oprah-popularized nonsense, one about electric “vampire power” and the other one about the New Age scam “The Secret“.

Oprah is not evil – she does genuinely good things for a lot of people – probably more than I will ever do to help anyone, even if I could live five times as long. That’s not meant to criticize me, but to compliment Oprah.

The problem is that Oprah Winfrey has a completely uncritical mind. What could be a forgettable eccentricity in a single person becomes in Oprah the ability to harm a lot of people.

I honestly believe that Oprah Winfrey is doing what she believes is right, and is doing what she thinks will help others live better lives. She’s not intentionally scamming or abusing anyone. Unfortunately, her lack of both skepticism and a science education is a dangerous combination.

Look at the big picture. Oprah is wrong on a lot of things. And we should bash her for the things she’s wrong about. But I’m frankly angry at the blanket assumption of so many that Oprah is evil incarnate, a horrible person who deserves to be punished. In just this recent example, I saw many skeptics who were – embarrassingly - unskeptical, eager to slap a label on Oprah that I don’t think is deserving.

If you call someone an idiot, and are later proved wrong, take a guess as to who the idiot actually is. Let’s focus the anger and energy where it belongs. Attack the issues, not the person.

At long last, I’ve implemented a feature that’s been hanging over my head for months.

We can now view a list of all articles written by a particular author: On any particular article page, look near the top of the article, and you’ll see something like “more by [author's name here]“. Click the author’s name to find all the stuff they’ve written.

You can also get a list of all authors that have written for DBS. Find them in the “View All” link in the top menu of every page.

This should help people find their favorite authors and the work they’ve written.

Thanks,

Andy

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By M Parrott
Article ID: 1329

In a previous article, I covered “How to be a psychic“, telling how to recreate common psychic supernatural abilities. But there are more important problems in the world. Not a politician’s expense claims, but fakirs. Fakirs convert people to religions by performing supposed miracles that people assume would otherwise be dangerous or impossible.

Before I begin: everything I describe here is dangerous and should not be attempted. If you hurt yourself or someone else with the techniques described here, it’s not my fault, it’s yours. I will describe how these things are done, and the science behind them, as much as I can. If you are so desperate to try these techniques, I can’t stop you. But I did warn you.

How to lay on a bed of nails

As many of you know, this trick is where someone just lies on a bed, and the bed is made from hundreds or thousands of upturned, pointy, sharp and dangerous-looking nails. The performer takes a snooze, gets up, and is unpunctured.

So the trick… actually, there is no trick. All that is needed is a real bed of nails. The nails must all be the same length. You need someone to lower you down so that your weight is evenly distributed over all the nails. You want your body to be pressing against as many nails as possible. Your weight being distributed means there is not enough pressure on any one nail to puncture the skin. When getting up from the bed of nails, make sure no extreme pressure is applied to any nail-covered area. There’s a similar (and much safer) way to perform this trick with eggs instead of nails. You can lay out a bed of eggs so that the top of the eggs – the pointy part -  are all facing upwards. Then lay down carefully in the same manner as you would on a bed of nails. If you mess up, at least it’s not painful. Just moist.

How to perform snake flossing

This is a trick where the fakir gets a snake, sucks it in through his nose and pulls it out of his mouth.

How’s it done? Well, you get a snake, suck it in through your nose and pull it out of your mouth. Any perceived “trick” is just due to human biology: right above your nostrils is the entrance to your nasal cavity. The nasal cavity connects to your throat near the same place your mouth connects to it. So the idea is you snort the snake in through your nose with sharp intakes of breath (I’d suggest tail first), grab it from deep inside your mouth and pull it through. Now obviously if you were stupid enough to not follow my earlier warning and are going to try this (which I thoroughly suggest you do not), don’t start with a snake. A thread of 100% cotton (I emphasise cotton) is best.

How to walk on broken glass

In this trick, a bed of broken glass is laid out. The fakir walks across the bed of glass from one side to the other. At the end of the journey, the fakir shows his feet, and they’re uncut by the shards of glass.

This relies on a similar principle to the bed of nails – weight distribution. Your pressure is spread out over enough pieces of glass that you won’t cut your feet. But there is another element to making sure this trick works. A lot of the glass shards will lay smooth side up – sharp edges will press against the ground, not against your foot – but this isn’t always the case. So, when you put your foot down, you must move it slowly back and forth, helping the glass settle into the right distribution so that you can put your entire weight on that foot without getting hurt. Do not transfer pressure to that foot until you are absolutely certain you won’t cut yourself. Then repeat the process. The idea is to take it slowly, for two reasons. One, you don’t want to cut yourself. Two, the slower it is done the more pain the performer appears to be going through. In reality, any pain is caused by walking on the broken glass too fast.

How to walk on hot coals – How to firewalk

A bed of burning hot coals. A fakir in bare feet, who then shows his resistance to pain by walking across the bed. No burns, no injuries, no skin grafts.

This technique is also worryingly used by new agers nowadays to show how you too can become a new person, overcome challenges, ignore adversity, and generic feel-good crap like that. Walking on hot coals works because your feet aren’t very good at heat conduction. If you stop in any one place, you’ll soon be walking on two well-done steaks, but if you keep moving, keep walking, you won’t be burned because there’s not enough time for heat to transfer from any coal to your feet.

How to cut off your tongue, swallow it, and restore it

A fakir takes a knife and grabs his tongue. He cuts off the end of his tongue, puts it back in his mouth and amazingly it’s restored.

What’s that smell? Yes, it’s baloney.

This is a proper magic trick because there’s some real obfuscation going on.  Out of all the tricks here, this is the only one I would suggest you could follow along with. Unless you can’t trust yourself with a knife, then don’t do it.

First, you need something that resembles a tongue. Just make sure it’s edible and wet. In the book “Swami and Mantra” by Sam Dalal, Dalal suggests using a goat’s tongue, which is often the traditional tongue-replica used. Cut it into a shape that looks like the end of your tongue. And to be honest, it just needs to be approximate. If you perform the trick properly it won’t matter.

Hold the fake tongue (tip down) in your left hand held between your first finger and thumb. Cover the fake tongue by keeping your fingers closed around it. This may look dodgy, but will look fine with practise. The emphasis should be on the knife in your right hand. Just show it, and as you bring the knife to your mouth, bring the fake tongue up as well. Make sure you don’t  uncover the fake tongue until your fingers are next to your mouth. Spread your fingers so that only your finger and thumb are holding it next to your mouth. Now just pretend to cut and place the fake tongue in your mouth. Chew. Swallow. And reveal. You could also use a blood bulb or a blood pellet for even more disgusting realism.

How to be a human blockhead

This is also a classic used by “geeks” as well as fakirs. (A “geek” is a term for someone who does things that look like a trick, but they’re not hiding anything – the trick is as real as it appears to be.)

For the “human blockhead”, a fakir takes a nail and slowly hammers it into his nose. This is tough – I’ve personally never been able to do this anywhere near as well as the geeks or fakirs. Some can do this with a 5-inch nail! For some reason I’ve never been able to do anything more than a 3-inch nail. But, I can still easily describe what to do.

With snake flossing, I described the gap that’s above your nostril, leading into your nasal cavity. This is where the nail goes. Hold the nail horizontally to your nose and find that gap with the end of the nail. Then slowly push the nail in while breathing heavily through your mouth (it helps, trust me). With practice, you can insert it deeper and deeper. You’ll also learn other techniques, like those preventing you from sneezing. As I’ve said, do not try this yourself, but if for some dim-witted reason you’re going to anyway, please don’t use a nail. Start with cotton buds or Q-tips.

Conclusion

There are plenty of tricks out there performed by fakirs, designed to convince you of their supernatural or religious strength. Electric powers, chi, pushing nails or needles in and through various places.  If you’ve got a specific question or example not mentioned here, comment on this article. Or just drop me an email and I will help as much as I can. In some cases, we’re dealing with performed effects which I won’t reveal for the sake of others. But I’ve never seen the “tongue-swallowing trick” performed by a magician, for example, so I think I’m fairly safe in revealing how that one is done.

While these tricks are entertaining and fun to watch, there’s something more to be learned here. When someone makes a particular claim, there’s no inherent reason why that claim must be believed. Not when – as we learned here – deception, cons and tricks can be so much fun. And profitable. And easy.

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By Nicholas Covington
Article ID: 1328

Life may have been the result of intelligent aliens sending bacterium to Earth. This theory is called “directed panspermia”. It was proposed thirty-five years ago by Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA, and Leslie Orgel, a highly respected British chemist. I found the original paper they published. Here I examine it and provide some comments[1].

A common objection to the theory that aliens brought life to Earth is the problem of infinite regress: If life on Earth was created by aliens, who created the aliens? And who created those creators? And so on. Crick and Orgel get around this problem by speculating that some planets may have chemical properties that make the origin of life much more probable than it is on Earth. Although it’s not mentioned, I think it’s possible that there are forms of life more likely to originate from non-living matter (and without the guidance of an intelligent designer).

Citing the work of astronomer Carl Sagan, they conclude that life traveling on a meteor would probably be destroyed by radiation long before it would arrive at Earth. But what if an alien civilization designed a special radiation-proof microorganism-carrying ship? Then the “life-from-space” proposal would once again be plausible.

In the paper, Crick and Orgel say, “[I]t is quite probable that planets not unlike the Earth existed as much as [6.5 billion years] before the formation of our own solar system.” This allows life to originate, evolve and spread before Earth even existed.

They go on with arguments supporting their theory:

“Infective theories of the origins of terrestrial life could be taken more seriously if they explained aspects of biochemistry or biology that are otherwise difficult to understand. We do not have any strong arguments of this kind, but here are two weak facts that could be relevant.

The chemical composition of living organisms must reflect to some extent the composition of the environment in which they evolved. Thus the presence in living organisms of elements that are extremely rare on the Earth might indicate that life is extraterrestrial in origin.

Molybdenum is an essential trace element that plays an important role in many enzymatic reactions, while chromium and nickel are relatively unimportant in biochemistry. The abundance of chromium, nickel, and molybdenum on the Earth are 0.20%, 3.16%, and 0.02%, respectively. We cannot conclude anything from this single example, since molybdenum may be irreplaceable in some essential reaction – nitrogen fixation, for example. However, if it could be shown that the elements represented in terrestrial living organisms correlate closely with those that are abundant in some class of star – molybdenum stars, for example – we might look more sympathetically at ‘infective’ theories.”

Crick and Orgel’s second argument for their theory is the genetic code. As you may know, the genetic code is universal[2]. It is the same in plants, animals, and bacteria. Crick and Orgel believed this means all life on Earth shares a common ancestor with a complete and fully developed genetic code[3]. They reasoned that if an alien civilization sent life to Earth, then it would have developed an organism with that same genetic code. On the other hand, if life originated naturally, the common ancestor of all living things may have simply had a primitive genetic code which coded for only a handful of amino acids (later on, this species would have split into several different lineages which had genetic codes that coded for more types of amino acids using the codons which originally did not code for anything). In this scenario, all life would have genetic similarities, but would also have significant differences. The moral of the story is that directed panspermia would show a universally shared genetic code. A non-panspermia origin could produce a single, universal genetic code, or many codes with significant similarities).

Admittedly, both of these evidences are very weak, yet it’s still an intriguing hypothesis.

With that said, the case for a natural origin of life on Earth is much stronger. For example, researchers have determined that the last universal common ancestor of all life (“LUCA”) used proteins constructed with amino acids, and these amino acids can easily be produced in experiments meant to recreate early Earth conditions[4]. Note: the last common ancestor was not necessarily the very first living thing. It probably evolved from an even simpler organism.

Another way of describing this is by the Miller experiment: in 1953, Stanley Miller attempted to recreate the early Earth’s atmosphere[1]. In the end, he produced several amino acids. Dozens of experiments like his have been done since then, many of them correcting mistakes that he made (for example, he assumed the atmosphere was composed of methane and ammonia, while recent evidence suggests that early Earth atmosphere was mainly composed of carbon dioxide and nitrogen[6]). The amino acids that these experiments produce in abundance are the most frequently used amino acids of the LUCA. This is surely to be expected if life arose naturally from the chemicals on the early Earth. Later organisms could’ve evolved ways to synthesize amino acids which were not readily available in the environment. Yet the very first organisms would not have had the ability to synthesize just any amino acid. They would have had to use what was readily available – the simple amino acids generated by Miller-type experiments. The fact that the LUCA predominantly used these simple amino acids means it likely evolved from an organism which used these simple amino acids exclusively (or almost exclusively). This is what we would expect if this form of life originated naturally.

In conclusion, the simplest explanation is that life on Earth arose naturally. This explanation should be preferred because of its simplicity, because it is less speculative than “directed panspermia”, and because of the evidence mentioned above concerning the frequency of amino acids used by the last universal common ancestor. Yet directed panspermia is still intriguing. I believe that we cannot completely rule it out, and any rational person ought to admit that it’s a possible explanation for the origin of life on Earth.

REFERENCES

[1] FHC Crick and LE Orgel, “Directed Panspermia” Icarus 19 341-346 (1973)
Accessed 5/14/09

[2] Or nearly universal. There are a handful of slightly different genetic codes which are clearly derived from the standard code.

[3] See my article for more information on the evolution of the genetic code (and why it is essentially unchangeable once it is in place).

[4] Brooks DJ, Fresco JR, Lesk AM, Singh M. “Evolution of amino acid frequencies in proteins over deep time: inferred order of introduction of amino acids into the genetic code.” Mol Biol Evol. 2002 Oct;19(10):1645-55.
Accessed 5/18/09

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_experiment
Accessed 5/18/09

[6] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=primordial-soup-urey-miller-evolution-experiment-repeated
Accessed 5/18/09

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By Navin Kumar
Article ID: 1327

Seatbelts save lives, right?

They secure people to the vehicle so that if an accident occurs, passengers are prevented from being thrown around and hitting interiors of the car and breaking their necks. They prevent passengers from crashing into each other or being thrown out of the car. Given their ability to prevent second impact, their life saving ability should be obvious.

Right?

Not really. One of the fundamental principles of economics is “People respond to incentives”. When the ‘cost’ (in terms of injury) of driving rashly is high – such as when the streets are  narrow and full of potholes – people respond by driving slowly. Conversely, when the cost is lower – such as when you’re driving along a deserted, straight, smooth, well marked road – you can drive faster with less fear of killing yourself. When a car is equipped with seatbelts, people drive faster since the pain and suffering they would experience if they crashed has been reduced.

If this sounds absurd, ask yourself: would you drive with greater care if – one fine day – you woke up and discovered that someone cut away your seatbelts? If the answer is yes, then it means you aren’t driving as safely as you can, right now with your seatbelt on.

People face trade-offs. They can spend an hour cleaning up the house or watching TV, but not both. They can have, within the hour, a clean house or the pleasure of having watched Ross get divorced, but not both. Similarly, they can drive fast and get home from work quickly (risking a car crash) or they can drive slowly and reduce the risk of getting into an accident (but come home late). The speed most people finally choose depends on their tastes, urgency and whether there’s something good on TV or not. If the risk of getting hurt in an accident is reduced, people “consume” some (if not all) of the increased safety by converting it into speed.

In essence there are two ‘effects’ of having seatbelts on the number of people who die in car crashes.  Seatbelts reduce the severity of accidents when they happen, and they decrease the number of deaths. But they cause people to drive faster and more recklessly, causing more accidents and increasing the number of people who die.

What then, is the net result? Do seatbelts increase or decrease the number of people who die? We can’t come to any conclusion using just theory. We need to research and at look at empirical data. And in 1976, an economist at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business – Sam Peltzman – set out to do just that. He discovered that mandatory seatbelts did nothing to the death rate. In other words, the two effects cancelled each other out, resulting in neither fewer nor more deaths.  More evidence came in 1982 from Professor John Adams (University College, London), who surveyed 18 countries (covering 80% of the worlds driving population). Adams concluded that countries with seat belt regulation fared no better than those without. In some cases, they fared worse. He succinctly phrased the Peltzman effect: “Protecting car occupants from the consequences of bad driving encourages bad driving.” Most studies following Peltzman have come to the same conclusion.

In the interest of fairness, there are people – like Steven Levitt- who insist that the Peltzman effect is a lot more trivial than is presented.

The Peltzman effect has many applications outside regulatory economics, like in the area of risk compensation. Researchers have discovered, for example, that wearing a helmet while bicycling can cause drivers to drive closer to you because the amount of injury you suffer as the result of a possible collision is reduced. In fields outside safety and traffic, studies have suggested that condom usage might not reduce the spread of AIDS since they encourage people to have sex more often. At more dubious levels, it has been suggested that risk compensation is why people get into more accidents near home or why so many rapists happen to be relatives or friends of the victim.

William Rodgers, the UK’s Secretary of State from 1976-1979, said this about seatbelt regulations:

“On the best available evidence of accidents in this country – evidence which has not been seriously contested – compulsion could save up to 1,000 lives and 10,000 injuries a year.”

But unfortunately, this isn’t true. His estimates are based only on the direct effect of seatbelts: their ability to reduce the impact of accidents. It doesn’t include the fact that people will change their behavior in response to changes in their environment.

What’s the moral here? The most obvious one is that we should be extremely careful about introducing new safety regulations. This covers not only traffic related regulations but also – for example – child-proof safety caps for medicines. Here’s John Stossel’s take:

“In 1972, the FDA passed a law requiring child safety caps on many medications. It was supposed to keep kids from being poisoned by drugs like aspirin. But there is an unexpected side effect. Because safety caps are hard to get off, some people – particularly older people – leave them off, and some parents, feeling safer with the cap, leave the aspirin where kids can reach it.”

A study of this “lulling effect” concluded that, because of this regulation, an additional 3,000 children have been poisoned by aspirin.

There is a far more important lesson here: whether it comes from the government or the company HR department, be skeptical of any idea or policy which changes the rules and makes a prediction which doesn’t take into account how people will behave after the rule change. The condoms-might-accelerate-the-spread-of-AIDS hypothesis is an example.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that such policies shouldn’t be put into motion. What skepticism means here is that all such policies should be monitored to verify that the Peltzman effect doesn’t defeat the policy’s purpose. The implications of ideas like Peltzman’s study aren’t that things shouldn’t be done, but rather that the ideas should be evaluated by the results they produce  and that we shouldn’t be blinded by ideology – even on so “trivial” a matter as a seatbelt or a bicycle helmet.

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By M Parrott
Article ID: 1326

The ideomotor effect is a psychological accident that spans many new age traditions, séances, and other “woo-woo” practises. I must emphasise that these practises aren’t faked intentionally. People delude themselves into believing they are true. Examples of the ideomotor effect cover a wide range of supernatural games, from Victorian-era séances to examining the most harmoniously-vibrating new age crystal.

The ideomotor effect and the Ouija board

Ah, yes, one of the most popular séance tools! Today, Ouija boards are usually perceived more as a joke and a fun party game. We all know the basic principal and layout of the most common Ouija boards – you’ve got a flat board with letters of the alphabet printed on it:

You’ve got a “planchette”, which is a small pointing device that can be slid around the board. Participants put their hands on the planchette and concentrate on a particular problem, question or spirit communication.

The planchette will then start to move towards particular letters or symbols on the Ouija board, giving you a response to your question.

If you want to test this out as we go, it would be a great exercise and far superior to me just talking to you:

1) Get 26 small sheets of paper. Write the letters A-Z on the pieces.

2) Get a large table and remove any coverings (like tablecloths).

3) Place all the cards face up in a circle so it looks somewhat like the picture you see here. Candles are optional.

4) Get a strong wine glass (preferably one without wine inside). Turn it upside down and place it in the centre of the cards.

And there you have a homemade Ouija board. The next steps work better if you have more than one person, however you can try it alone if you want to tempt the Powers of Darkness all by yourself.

Turn one letter over so it’s face down. Place two fingers on the wine glass. Concentrate. Focus on believing that the wine glass WILL definitely move towards that one letter turned upside down. Don’t move your hand intentionally, but if the glass moves move with it. Keep concentrating. It will move if you concentrate. And it’ll speed up towards the letter and when it gets there it will stop at the letter. Now that may not have worked for all of you, but it will have worked for some. I also apologise if the wine glass shot off the table and smashed. If so, that just means you are really easy to manipulate.

Now you may be wondering how that worked and why the glass moved. You know for a fact you didn’t move the glass. So how did it move? Through a genuine spirit!

Nah, just messing with you. The movement happens because of the ideomotor effect.

The ideomotor is the mechanism which makes your reflexes kick in when your knee is tapped gently with a doctor’s hammer. But in this case what happens is, due to you focusing so much mental power on something, your body makes it physically happen. You may not think you are doing it, but you are, and the more you are convinced it is going to happen, the faster it happens. Which is why a Ouija board “works” better for people who use one more often. What evidence do I have for this? Easy: find a medium who will do the Ouija board blind-folded. Blindfold them, and then without telling them, turn the Ouija board around. As the “Ouijing” commences, the medium will move the planchette to the locations that they think the letters are, as if the board was rotated correctly. This shows the Ouija board is all in the user’s mind, and that it isn’t some spiritual communion.

Ouija boards aren’t the only evidence of the ideomotor effect in new age superstitions.

Dowsing

Dowsing is traditionally thought of as the process of finding underground water or oil using Y-shaped sticks or wire. To a large extent, this is the process. But dowsing has widened its spectrum of effect. A few years ago, I saw a dowser trying to find human remains on a British Archaeology programme called “Time Team”. To be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw someone out there claiming they could dowse to find cancer.

There are two main ways to dowse. One way is with wooden or metal sticks. Another way is with a pendulum (often, for some reason, with a crystal hanging off the lower end of a string). Here are instructions on how to dowse:

1.       Make a pendulum. Use the aforementioned string and crystal if you want, but a rope with a nut tied on the end will work just as well.

2.      Get six small, watertight, opaque containers. I used film canisters.

3.      Fill one container with water.

4.      Lay the containers out on a table. Make sure you know where the water is.

5.      Hold the end of the rope with the tips of your fingers.

6.      Now pass over each container letting the pendulum come to a rest. When it comes above the water-filled container, it will start moving left to right. It will. Concentrate on this fact as you hover the pendulum over each container.

7.      Run the pendulum over all the containers, again and again. Do this about thirty times and record how many times it works.

8.      Now repeat the process another thirty times. But before you do, get someone to shuffle the containers so you don’t know which one is water-filled.

If you actually did this, then I am sure that you’ll have a very low rate of success on the second test, the one where you don’t know where the water is. Why? Because now the process is completely down to chance. You will theoretically dowse the correct container once out of every six times.

This is all there is to dowsing: the dowser unconsciously moves the pendulum or sticks. Now you may be wondering how people come to believe that dowsing works. Well… People tend to forget what doesn’t fit to their beliefs. Or they ignore evidence and statistics, and use a special pleading to explain away negative results. This isn’t necessarily intentional. Studies have shown that when people believe in the paranormal, those people often think they will have tested better than chance, regardless of the actual statistical results.

Table tipping and table turning

Here’s another classic séance favourite. Table tipping is where several people put their fingers on the outside of a table and the table moves round the room or tips over. How’s this done? You guessed it; the ideomotor effect. Now how can we prove the table isn’t actually being moved supernaturally? One way is to put a sheet of glass over the table. Supernatural theory states that the table is directly affected, and a sheet of glass wouldn’t affect the results. However, the sheet of glass will move. Why? Because the séance participants are physically moving it with their hands. There is no mystical effect targeting the table itself.

How to identify the ideomotor effect

It’s a bit redundant now to go through every single example of the ideomotor effect for two reasons. One, I don’t know them all, and two, it would get very boring. But it’s important to know about the ideomotor effect itself so you can identify it when you see it.

If you see someone with a pendulum, their fingers on a glass, around a table, and the object moves supposedly paranormally, then you could put money on the ideomotor effect. The important thing to remember is that the ideomotor effect is an unconscious effect. People do not know they are doing it. Unfortunately for them, they don’t have special powers or supernatural blessings. Such results are just the subconscious mind affecting the physical body.

A video by James Randi, demonstrating the ideomotor effect in action

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By David Annis
Article ID: 1325

Atheism and evolution are two topics that I write about and discuss with my religious friends. I encounter the same objections for both. Repeatedly.

The wing of the Atlas moth: you can't see it evolve, but you can see the evidence of evolution

Myth: “If you do not believe in God, you have no basis for morality.  Anything is permissible.”

I can and do have a system of morality. It’s based on what kind of world I want to live in, not on belief that a supernatural being wants me to behave in a certain way.  Wars, genocides, pogroms, holocausts, discrimination, terrorism, and slavery have all been justified based on religion.  I donate to charity, know that murder is wrong, and teach my children right from wrong (there are no toy guns in our house).

Show me empirical evidence that the religious behave in a more moral way than non-religious and you might have an argument, but the evidence is not there.  I know many atheists that donate to charity, love their wives, abide by the law, and otherwise act in a moral way. And I know many religious people that do not.

If you maintain that belief in God is needed as a foundation for a moral system, is any God sufficient?  Are Xenu, Shiva, Allah and the Christian God, all equally moral?  If so, isn’t picking a God just taking the easy way out?  Instead of grappling with the difficult questions you are swallowing a belief system whole. Since you took the easy way out, if a premise fails you end up with a moral structure that can’t support itself. If all Gods are not equally moral, how can you be sure that your God’s system leads to real morality?

Myth: “You can’t prove a theory, so the Bible may be literally true.”

This argument falls into two pieces.  The first piece says that an omnipotent being could change the Universe in all sorts of ways.  Physical laws that work one way today may have worked differently years ago, so we should not believe the evidence before us.  Carbon may decay at a different rate then than it does now, geological process may have been different one thousand years ago, and so on.  Yet, those who make this claim also assume their refrigerator, car, and home heating system will still work just as well tomorrow. They rely on medical and agricultural systems built upon scientific methods.  That’s intellectually dishonest.

The second piece of this objection is that science only proves that a theory is highly improbable. It doesn’t say something is impossible. A scientific theory can be overthrown.  I can’t prove that I can’t jump to the moon.  I can’t prove that I can’t pray my way there.  Using the scientific method, however, I can prove that it is highly improbable that either method will put a man on the moon.  Gathering insights about how the universe behaves is what allowed Neil Armstrong to take his giant leap for mankind.

Myth: “I can’t see evolution happen.”

Some people protest that they can’t see evolution happening right before their eyes.  Plant speciation has been observed and used by farmers for hundreds of years, though not under laboratory conditions.  In a previous post, I discussed macro-evolution occurring in the laboratory, but still got a response saying something like, “Gee, that’s a long way from seeing a bacterium turn into a horse.”

So, why don’t we see a bacterium turn into a horse right before our eyes?  It’s because we observe over too short a period of time.  My 10-year-old son is growing, but he looks no taller now than he did last week.  There is rich evidence of evolution in the fossil record, in the genetic sequences of the plants and animals alive today, in our ability to breed new varieties of plants, pets, and livestock, and in the changes we observe in the natural world around us.  We can’t see changes within our lifetime because these changes normally take hundreds or thousands or millions of years. Does this mean we should conclude these changes aren’t happening? If my son isn’t taller this week compared to last week, does this mean he’s not growing? In both cases, you can’t focus on a comparatively small timeline to see these changes. Look at the big, long-term picture.

Myth: “Evolution has missing evidence.”

This brings us to the last big objection that I want to discuss: missing evidence.  Creationists will say that there is a missing link between X and Y.  Indeed, not every single intermediate evolutionary form will be found.  However, ask yourself if you need, or would even expect a complete record of evolution.  Many things I believe in: Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, my oldest son’s fourth birthday party, the fact that my socks all came in pairs, have some of their supporting evidence gone missing.  We believe in many things for which there are incomplete records.  Why insist on a standard that can never be met?  Furthermore, just because evidence is missing now doesn’t mean it will remain so – and we see evidence being found all the time like this fish fossil or these ants.

Conclusion

The clarifications and facts mentioned here may not change anyone’s mind about the topic, but they will clarify the viewpoint of the critical thinker and skeptic. Honest debate is healthy. We need it in order to best understand our world. Detailing what I believe – and why – will hopefully lessen confusion and bring clarity to conversations that desperately need it.

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By Andy Kaiser
Article ID: 1324

Thanks to everyone who contributed to the “Death from the Skies!” promotion. Per my request, you DID generously help me to run out of supplies! Sadly, all the books are gone – there’s no more to give out – but you can still purchase “Death from the Skies!” at this link.

I’m keeping the text below for archival reasons, but am crossing it all out to make sure you realize it’s no longer valid.

Thanks,

Andy

Hi everyone, Andy Kaiser here.

Do you know who I mean when I say “Phil Plait”? He’s the president of the James Randi Educational Foundation, appointed by James Randi himself. Phil is an astronomer who, along with a healthy understanding of critical thinking and skepticism, writes as the “Bad Astronomer” for his “Bad Astronomy” blog.

Do you know what I mean when I say “Death from the Skies!” That’s the title of Phil Plait’s latest book.

Here’s a brief summary from Publisher’s Weekly:

“Plait… presents in loving detail the many, many ways the human race could die, from temperature extremes and poisonous atmosphere to asteroid impacts and supernovae explosions. Such a state of destruction existed some 65 million years ago, when a giant meteoroid struck Earth, sending up so much flaming debris that the whole planet caught fire and the dinosaurs were wiped out. Solar flare activity could bring on another Ice Age. Worse yet would be a gamma ray burster, a collapsed star whose radiation would be comparable to detonating a one-megaton nuclear bomb over every square mile of the planet. Plait discusses insatiable black holes, the death of the Sun and cannibal galaxies—including our own. Balancing his doomsday scenarios with enthusiastic and clear explanations of the science behind each, Plait offers a surprisingly educational and enjoyable astronomical horror show, including a table listing the extremely low odds of each event occurring. He gives readers a good scare, and then puts it in context.”

Sounds fun, right?

So, I contacted Phil Plait. After an enjoyable conversation, I’ve got my eager hands on a bunch of hardcover copies of “Death from the Skies!” And they are all autographed by Phil Plait himself.

I want to give this book to you.

At the time of this writing, Amazon has “Death from the Skies!“ for $17 USD. Throw in shipping, and you’re somewhere over $20.

In what is honestly a complete coincidence, a Digital Bits Skeptic membership is $20 per year.

We’re all pretty smart here, so you see where I’m going with this: if you sign up for a DBSkeptic membership, I will send you an autographed, hardcover copy of “Death from the Skies!” for free. You’re paying about the same cost you’d pay to get the book, AND the copy you’ll get from me is autographed by Phil Plait, AND you’ll become a Digital Bits Skeptic Supporter, which means you get that cool badge next to your name every time you visit DBSkeptic.com and leave an article comment.

I’m actually losing money on this for the short term, since I have to pay for the book, as well as packaging and shipping to you. But I’m willing to do it if you can commit to supporting Digital Bits Skeptic. With that said, I can only ship to locations in the United States – overseas shipping is outside my price range.

If you were planning to buy “Death from the Skies!” anyway, now’s your chance to get it autographed, and at a discount. If you were thinking about supporting Digital Bits Skeptic, now’s your chance to do so, and to get a cool book while you’re at it. I’ll continue this offer until I run out of supplies.

Please, help me to run out of supplies.