Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and
it is shameful to surrender it too soon, or to
the first comer: there is a nobility in preserving
it coolly and proudly through long youth, until
at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion,
it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.
George Santayana
'Scepticism and Animal Faith, IX'
'Pseudoscience' is all around us, trying to fool us
into believing something that is false.
What is 'pseudoscience'? It's a set of beliefs,
often hidden in a collection of scientific-sounding
mumbo-jumbo, that is usually put forward by people
who may be sincere in their belief, but often
are trying to make money by fooling you!
Here are some examples:
Worsley School | Science & Math
- Astrology
Astrology is the oldest pseudoscience. Astrologers claim that they can predict
your future by analyzing the position of the planets and the stars at the time
of your birth, using ancient rules and 'star charts'.
The basis for this pseudoscience is centuries old, and in fact its practitioners
were originally very scientific in their methods. They were the first to study the
heavens, and use their data to predict the positions of the planets. These
studies actually formed the beginning of the science of astronomy.
The original astrologers went a step further, however. They believed that the
positions of the planets and stars could influence events on earth; could in fact
determine the success or failure of individual human endeavours.
Our modern knowledge of planetary and stellar positions and the forces they
exert on us cannot suggest a method by which any such influence is possible.
Could the effects be caused by gravitational forces? No, not even remotely!
These celestial objects (the planets and the stars) are so far away that their
gravitational force is hardly measureable. You experience more gravitational
force from the Rocky Mountains while visiting Alberta than you do from the
planet Saturn; a person across the room pointing a finger at you is exerting
more force on you than even the nearest star is!
Modern science can suggest no force by which planets and stars can
influence human behaviour directly.
'Well, perhaps then the force they exert is one that science knows nothing about!'
This is a commonly used argument amongst the practitioners of pseudoscience,
and in fact it is a valid argument. Our body of scientific knowledge is
continually growing...we do learn new things every day!
Unfortunately, this is not a scientific argument! Until a thing can be observed,
until it can be measured, until some sort of explanation can be made, even a wrong
one, speculation about some unknown force is just that...speculation.
But Astrology can not be considered valid for other reasons. We have no evidence
of ancient predictions, but there certainly is enough modern-day astrology around
us to test its worth. Just about every newspaper has an astrology column. Aren't
they useful? Valid? Scientific?
Here are some reasons that should convince you that horoscopes are just a bunch
of bunk!
- Don't they seem to work? Sure they do! That's because the 'predictions'
are so vague that anything even remotely similar that happens to you could be
considered a fulfillment of the 'prediction'. On top of that, it's human nature to
forget about the three hundred times you read a horoscope and it was wrong...
but you'll remember the one time it accidentally got something right.
And for the millions of people who read them, the odds are they'll be right once
in a while!
- Do you think the people who write horoscopes really use the ancient tables
and data? Not likely! Probably 99% of them are made up!
- Aren't there some famous astrologers who do use the ancient 'scientific'
methods? You bet there are, and that's the really silly part! What may have been
accurate data hundreds of years ago is hopelessly out of date now. If you compare
astrological tables to modern data on planetary positions, it's obvious the data
is no longer correct. But astrologers continue to use it.
- Can't we test some of their predictions? Of course! Here's a little experiment
Get hold of some tabloids that contain the predictions for 1998 from the 'world's
most famous psychic astrologers'. Hang on to it for a year, and then see how
many of their predictions came true! Usually the result is somewhere under 2%!
(This experiment was actually done once, and a grade three class that was also
asked to make predictions for the year scored twice as high!)
Sadly, there are many people who won't believe that second-hand smoke
has an effect on unborn children, but will believe that mysterious forces
from planetary objects billions and trillions of kilometres away can influence
whether or not they should buy a lottery ticket!
People believe what they want to believe.
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- Psychics
We've already discussed astrological psychics, but this category also includes
mind-readers, Tarot-card readers, tea-leaf readers, spoon-benders, psychic
healers, and others.
Here are some facts. There is absolutely no scientific evidence for any
of these phenomena, despite what you may have heard or read somewhere.
'Scientific evidence' is merely a fancy way of saying that you'd like the spoon
bender to bend spoons for you under controlled conditions...ie: conditions under
which there can be no question that some 'psychic' force is involved. You may have seen reports that purported to prove that a psychic was for real.
Often these will involve the spoon-bender or psychic healer performing his stuff
in front of a respected panel of scientists. The scientists will report that what
they saw was amazing, and that they could detect no trickery.
Did you spot the flaw in this 'evidence'?
If you wanted to discover what part was malfunctioning in the engine of your car
and causing a strange knocking sound, would you invite several lawyers and
judges to have a look and give their opinion? You might, but you probably
wouldn't learn anything new!
Suppose that psychics are indeed charlatans and frauds. How do they manage
to fool teams of respected scientists? Easy...the scientists, despite their stature
in the scientific field, are NOT experts in the field they are observing, which is...
sleight-of-hand! Yes, magic!
In every single case where a psychic of any kind has been tested by a
professional sleight-of-hand artist (ie: magician), the psychic has either failed
miserably, or the magician has discovered the psychic's trick and exposed it
as nothing more than legerdemain! (Then the magician turns around and does
the psychic performance even better than the psychic did!)
It was reseach like this by magicians such as The Amazing Randi that eventually
exposed famous psychics like the Brazilian Psychic Surgeon ( who was even
written up in Readers' Digest) and the spoon-bender Uri Geller. ( Randi felt they
were giving magicians a bad name!)
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- Water Witching
This is my favourite pseudoscience, because so many otherwise-rational people
will swear up and down that it works, and they know this guy who found water
on a piece of land where nobody else could. They saw it, for Pete's sake..
it has to be real!
You know what 'water-witching' is, don't you? It's where some guy wanders
around your property holding a (usually) 'Y'-shaped piece of branch, and when
it starts to vibrate, he yells 'Dig here!'
O.K., so you won't accept the argument that there is NO known scientific
explanation for this phenomenon. Lets look at some other facts then!
- There is a water table below ground just about everywhere in North America.
It doesn't matter where you dig...you'll always find water!
- Water witching has been tested under controlled circumstances.
A very famous experiment involved having a well-respected practitioner of this
'art' do his thing in a field where, beforehand, various large tanks, conduits,
and pipes, all filled with great amounts of water, had been hidden under the
surface. He found none of them!
The reason why this pseudoscience is so believable is a reason that applies to
most false beliefs that we have been discussing here. It is human nature to ignore
the unpleasant, or the mundane. Water-witches don't claim a 100% success rate...
people don't remember the twenty-nine failures, just the one 'spectacular success'!
Whenever a water-witcher has been tested along with a regular person who is
'pretending', neither one has a success rate higher than what could be expected
from random statistical results (ie: pure luck).
Like all pseudosciences, water-witching fails to produce when put to the test.
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- Vegetarianism
Many people are vegetarians. It's a harmless activity, and most people who
practice this unnatural activity claim to feel better for it.
Actually, if the reason for their avoidance of meat is to steer clear of the multitude
of chemicals, colourizers, preservatives, and synthetic hormones that are used
in the meat product industry, then they may have a point! There has never been
any long-term research into the effects of these additives...and many scientists
suspect that their effects may show up in the long term, and may cause such
illnesses as allergies or immune deficiency diseases. But at present there is no
hard evidence for this.
Vegetarians who don't eat meat because of these additives are doing so for
a scientifically valid reason. But they must be consistent. Vegetarianism makes
sense only if you're trying to avoid consuming any added chemicals.
This means a vegetarian should not eat any fruits, breads, or vegetables that have
been artificially fertilized, preseved, enhanced, sprayed with insecticide, fungicide,...
or otherwise tampered with to make them nicer looking.
In other words, vegetarianism is a scientifically valid undertaking only if what you do
eat is organic! This rules out most vegetarians.
In fact, most people who practice vegetarianism are not that logical. They do it out
of a vague sense of unease about what's in meat, but mostly because they feel it's
not natural or proper, in the 20th century, for humans to continue to eat flesh.
The act of eating flesh itself is thought to be unhealthy or unnatural, or just plain
barbaric.
In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth! Eating meat cannot be unnatural
if the human race (and the prehuman races from which it evolved) have been thriving
on it for the last 50 million years!
In fact, humans are omnivores...our bodies have evolved to thrive on a mixed diet
of vegetable matter, grains, fruits, nuts, and flesh. For most of our existance as a
species, the main component of our diet has been flesh. Only comparatively
recently (say, the last 600 years), when standards of living for many people have
risen to the point where we have a choice, (other than basic subsistence), has vegetarianism become popular, let alone possible. There were no vegetarians
10,000 years ago...you ate meat (and thrived!) or you died.
Personally, I've never understood the fine line drawn by many vegetarians that
'allows' them to eat eggs, cheese, and other animal products (never mind the
chemical-ridden vegetables)...while prohibiting them from eating the animals
themselves. It sort of reminds one of the animal rights activists who show up to
protest the harvesting of fur from traplines...wearing leather belts and coats!
Return to Index
- Wolves
O.K., you know the story...wolves are predators, and they are dangerous...
to people, livestock, cute little animals, and Red Riding Hood's grandmother.
Now are you willing to accept the truth?
Wolves have been with us for thousands of years. They slink around in the
dark, just out of range of the firelight, with their eyes glowing in the night...
wolves have terrorized humans for all of recorded history. There is a great
tradition in Europe, also dating back many centuries, that wolves are deadly
creatures, to be exterminated whenever possible.
Like all such superstitions, this one arose out of ignorance and fear, and
has never been corrected, mainly because wolves do everything possible
to stay away from people, so it is almost impossible to observe them in their
natural state. All we know about them we get from a few glimpses in the dark,
(those glowing eyes are scary!), the sound of their howling (eerie, to say
the least), and the evidence of their bloodthirsy ways (dead carcasses!)
Moreover, the myth of their evil ways is perpetuated generation after generation
in our fairytales, stories, and folk 'wisdom'.
The true nature of the wolf is also distorted because the few people who get
to see wolves in their natural habitat, for example, hunters, guides, or trappers,
misinterpret what they see. They may occasionally observe wolf packs trailing
or chasing herd of deer, or groups of moose. They see evidence of wolf kills.
Ranchers near isolated areas may see occasional kills of their livestock.
These are the people who perpetuate the myth that the wolf is a dangerous
predator that is a threat to farmers, ranchers, and the hunting industry.
Scientific studies of the wolf in its natural habitat have been conducted many
times. The results are always the same. Wolves stay as far away from people
as they can. Their diet is very often composed of small rodents; when they can,
they will kill larger animals, but just about always it's the weaker ones. (This
is actually good for the prey, such as deer, since it culls the weak and sick ones,
leaving the strong ones to survive and reproduce.)
This data is often supressed by governments, who have a vested interest in
appeasing the hunting, trapping, and ranching industries. You may doubt that
last statement...but that is exactly what happened with fish stocks on the east
coast of Canada...the government's own biologists reported that overfishing
was depleting the fish population, but the government, in the interests of
preserving jobs, covered it up as long as possible. This is not speculation...
you've heard the reports too!
So how does the unbiased scientific data on wolves, described above, explain
the conflicting attitude of people who work in the wilderness, and see the wolf
'first hand'? The answer is in the word 'scientific'...that's what this article is all
about, after all. An ordinary person making observations will, quite naturally,
make conclusions...often wrong ones...that are not supported if all the data is examined. Moreover, it is often in the interests of these people to see the wolf as competition for their livelihood...killing animals for profit...and to
ignore the conflicting evidence. That's why there is often still a bounty on wolves
in many places. But that's a whole other story...
Let's look at the facts one by one.
- Wolves are seen chasing herds of large animals
Wolves do this a lot. They're predators. They're looking for a good meal!
It's the way they determine if the herd they're following has any weak or
injured animals. Wolves that have been studied on an extended basis
will chase different herds many times, and never kill anything! Lions
in Africa do the same thing. They chase and chase for a week...and then
end up bringing down a cripple. But if they hadn't done all that chasing,
they never would have found it!
Trappers often report seeing wolf packs chasing groups of moose or deer,
and report to all that will listen that the wolf is a killer of these animals.
In fact, they kill them rarely, and then only if they're lucky enough to find a
sick one.
- Carcasses of big, apparently healthy animals killed by wolves have been found.
And they were killed by wolves. But even an experienced hunter or
trapper is not trained to do a complete forensic and toxicological study
of the carcass. An animal that looks healthy may not have been. In every
case where the carcass has been studied by trained persons in a laboratory,
the animal was found to have been sick! But such examinations are rarely
done. Wolves are seen to be chasing moose, and dead animals (that were, to
the untrained eye, healthy) are found, so it is assumed that wolves prey on
healthy moose. Perhaps a wolf pack could bring down a healthy moose...
but wolves aren't stupid. Why risk their lives, when sick or injured moose are
so much easier?
- Ranchers have had livestock killed by wolves.
This is true too, and there's the tragedy. Wolves will stay away from humans if
they can, but their instinct is to find the easiest meal possible, and cattle or sheep
are even easier prey than a sick moose. Can you blame the wolf? It is not its
nature to hunt and kill domestic animals, but as our wilderness areas disappear,
and with them the large animals the wolf hunts, it is only natural that the domestic
animals we fill the fields with will be a target. Does this make the wolf evil? Does
it allow us to label the wolf 'vermin', to be exterminated whenever the opportunity
arises? If your answer is yes, then we can only hope you are happy when the last
wilderness disappears, and there are Walmarts and pavement everywhere.
Wolves have the most complex social order of any animal alive. They mate for life, they teach their young to play, they have a great sense of humour, and they're innately curious.
Do you know what the strangest thing is? Because of the wolf's mythical image
as a killer, even a killer of humans, people are afraid of wolves. But they'll stop
at the side of the road in a national park to feed bears, which have a warm, cuddly
image (again thanks to hundreds of years of fairy tales!). In fact, there are dozens
of cases every year of unprovoked bear attacks on humans...but there has never
been an authenticated case of a healthy wolf killing a human, ever!
I don't know about you, but if I was lost in the bush somewhere, a howling wolf-pack
might not bother me too much...but the knowledge that a grizzly bear was in the area
would have me sleeping in a very tall tree!
Return to Index
- Sobering Up a Drunk
You're at a party, and ready to leave. Your friend has had way too much to drink,
and is barely capable of standing, let alone driving. How can you sober him up?
Lots of people have answers for this one...you've probably used one or two of them
yourself. Stand him up, get him moving around. Give him something to eat, maybe
bread, to soak up the alcohol. Lots of black coffee. Fresh air.
The truth is, none of these remedies do a darn think to make a person less affected
by alcohol! Before we look at why, lets examine a few facts.
Alcohol affects your coordination and reaction time, which is why you shouldn't
drive if you've been drinking. Any amount of alcohol will have an effect...
even just one drink. It may be less noticeable on heavier people, or more
experienced drinkers, but the impairment in coordination and reaction time, even
if slight, is measureable.
In an emergency on the road, when split seconds and good judgement count,
even a tiny decrease in your skills can cause an accident.
However, the legal definition of impairment is considerably higher...for simplicity,
we'll call it '80 units of alcohol' in your bloodstream (in Canada).
This is an amount that, while it is impairing your reflexes, may not be noticeably
doing so if you are of average weight. You may legally drive a vehicle, despite your impairment.
The question we want to deal with here is how to reduce your impairment if your
alcohol consumption has left you with far more than 80 units in your bloodstream.
Let's say your reading is 140 units. What can you do about it?
As already stated, the answer is 'nothing'. Here's why.
Your reading of 140 units is a measure of how much alcohol is already
in your blood. Your body has the ability to remove this poison from your
bloodstream, but it can do so at only 15 units per hour. This number is a function
of the working of your internal organs, such as your liver, and cannot be changed
by you. Short of having total blood replacement in a hospital, there is nothing you
can do to speed up this process. If your blood alcohol level is 140, and you need
to reduce it to 80 in order to legally drive, the only thing you can do is
wait 4 hours (15 less every hour, remember?).
So what about all the common remedies for drunkenness? Well, mostly they
just improve the person's appearance of soberness, and the way he
feels. You may even get him looking and feeling completely sober. But
those 140 units of alcohol are still there in the blood, slowly disappearing at the
inflexible rate of 15 per hour!
Coffee makes you a wide-awake drunk, as does fresh air and exercise. Eating
and drinking may in fact soak up some of the alcohol in the stomach, but
that's not what's making you have a high reading...and it will be released to
the blood eventually. All you are doing is preventing the blood alcohol level
from going above 140!
So is there anything you can eat while you are drinking to keep you below the
'80 units' mark? Well, yes... eating while drinking slows the absorption of alcohol
into the bloodstream slightly, so if you are drinking slowly enough, it might help.
The problem is that most people, because they are not feeling impaired
so quickly, tend to drink more. And the snack foods that commonly accompany
alcohol are usually high in salt content, which also makes you drink more!
The simple answer? If you have had anything to drink at all, don't drive; and if you're
over the legal limit, the only thing that will make you 'legal' (ie: impaired, but not
legally so), is time.
Return to Index
- Fire Walking
 People can walk on a bed of hot coals and not burn their feet. Usually not.
This is true.
The ability to walk on fire has been ascribed to many things, depending on who does it ... faith, intensity of religious belief, trance, or purity of soul.
In fact, the real reason it works has to do with heat conductivity.
Magicians who handle hot metal rods, or put molten lead in their mouth, or plunge their hand into liquid nitrogen, all know that a layer of moisture on the skin protects it, briefly, from intense cold or heat.
In particular, firewalking (not to mention the thought of firewalking!) causes the feet to sweat profusely. This layer of moisture, appearing between each footfall, vaporizes to form a protective sheath over the sole of the foot. But this alone is not enough to protect the foot from third degree burns; another far more important property is involved here. The bed of coals through which firewalkers walk can reach temperatures of up to 1600 degrees. However, as they walk through the coals, participants in a fire-walk have their feet actually in contact with the coals for only brief instants ... perhaps half a second or so of actual contact, for each step. Unlike steel or other metals, skin, and particularly foot-sole skin, has very low thermal conductivity. It doesn't pass heat easily. During the short time each foot makes contact with the coals, not enough heat can penetrate the foot to do damage.
Interestingly enough, if the temperature of the coal bed is raised to closer to 2000 degrees, the temperature becomes high enough that heat will penetrate the skin of the foot in the fraction of a second it is in contact, and the fire-walker will get burned. Firewalking traditionally is done in coal beds where the temperature does NOT exceed 1600 degrees.
Nothing mysterious at all. In fact, curious skeptics (with no faith whatsoever) have tried it many times, and it works just as well for them as the 'mystically inclined' participants.
You've done something similar if you've ever licked your finger before testing a hot iron. Or juggled a very hot potato between your hands. As long as the contact is brief, you don't get burned.
Return to Index
- Faith Healing
We all know what faith healing is. A person sick with some ailment is touched on the forehead by a TV evangelist, and they are remarkably cured. At least, for a little while.
You're probably expecting some sort of explanation involving fakery, or accomplices, or mass hysteria; ... sorry! Not this time.
Probably most of the time, when a faith healer 'cures' someone, that person, at least for a short while, does recover, and does feel remarkably better. The disease or affliction may even be permanently cured or removed!
What? You thought this was a pseudoscience? Actually, it's probably very good science, just one we don't understand very well yet. What it actually is, is pseudoreligion!
Doctors and medical researchers have been discovering some remarkable things about the human body in the past few years. In particular, they have learned that our bodies have a remarkable ability to heal themselves, and to lessen pain. The exact mechanism is not yet fully understood, but we do know that your body can fight disease, can heal itself, and can turn pain on and off with its own chemicals.
Recent studies involving 'placebos', or fake medicines, given to thousands of patients who thought the medicine would really work, by doctors who also thought it would work, and were very supportive, showed a cure rate for many illnesses, and a lessening of pain, equal to that involving patients using the real drugs!
The body can lessen the effects of many diseases, cure some ailments itself, and reduce the pain you feel! The stimulus for this to happen is simply that you believe it will!
If you have a very strong belief that you will start to feel better, or progress toward wellness, your body is somehow triggered into action, releasing chemicals and antibodies to combat the illness and pain. This is now a well-documented phenomenon, and one that occurs under controlled conditions.
Any strong belief, via whatever agent, will trigger it:
If you are a Buddhist, and believe in your heart that meditation will ease the pain, ... it works.
If you are an atheist, but believe in your doctor, and the medicine you are taking, ... it works.
If you are a born-again Christian, and believe that the faith healer is touched by God, and will cure you, ... it works.
It's not the agent that causes the relief, it's the belief. The actual agent is your own body!
Return to Index
- Your Comments
Do you have a favourite pseudoscience you'd like to see debunked here?
Perhaps instead you'd like to reply to one of the topics discussed above.
(Perhaps you'd like to state in no uncertain terms that the author is a cretin!)
Here's your chance! Tell us what you think!!!
We will print your thoughts, observations,...or vilifications...
...all you have to do is click on the link below, and fill in your message!
Our only requirement is that you sign your submission, and that you
have a valid e-mail address, in order that we can verify your entry.
Make your contribution !
- Responses
A Mr. Jerome Cherry, from Edmonton, has reponded to our article on
vegetarianism. Mr. Cherry writes:
Here are some reasons why a person should become a vegetarian.
- Do you know what's in a hotdog?!?
- Soybean curd icecream has 0 calories.
- Arnold Schwartzenegger is a vegetarian. Need we say more?
- Bugs Bunny eats nothing but carrots. And when was the last time he
was outsmarted by Wile E. Coyote?!
- Have you ever heard of anyone having to corral, rope, and slaughter a
potato?
- Vegetables make wonderful pets. Just water them and watch them grow!
No whining. No breaking down fences. No messes to clean up.
- Zucchinis may be the universal food. How many times have you had
to turn down the offer of some from a neighbour, because your freezer is
already full of zucchinis. When did your neighbour ever offer you meat?!?
- Popeye eats spinach. What superhero was ever sustained by pork chops?
- Mark Antony liked Cleopatra's yams. What else need be said?!
- What is 'Gatorade', anyway? It sure ain't made from alligators!
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Worsley School | Science & Math
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