Skeptical Dog

Crop Circle Insanity

nico — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 05:44:35 +0000

“I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.” - Carl Sagan

I witnessed a thread on a forum where someone had watched an old History Channel show on crop circles. Probably, it was being presented as an old re run, or in the context of the pop culture mayhem that this trendy hoax caused in the 80s and 90’s when people started doing them. This isn’t the message they took from the show.

Unfortunately, it seems despite all rational evidence and confessions and analysis that prove these are hoaxes, people still believe it’s aliens, geomancy, fairies, or the Mother Earth, sending us a message.

I don’t recall that class from lectures in plate tectonics and geological activity by the earth. Nor was it ever a topic in all the lectures on Coriolis forces. (So no, it’s not wind or the earth telling us things.)

Nor is it a big dog with an itchy butt, however points have to be assigned for that creative answer.

Just because you see a program on tv and you like what it says, it may not be the truth. When there’s a mountain of evidence to the contrary, believing that something is still “mystical” is likely the very definition of insanity. It makes for a pretty explanation, but it’s not real.

I was accused of being small minded and judgmental when I said it’s irrational to think it’s aliens despite the evidence otherwise, and that it discredits human ingenuity and creativity to mark it up to fairies or gnomes. We humans have done some wildly offbeat feats of imagination for a number of reasons, and attaching a mystical theory because you think science is too boring or dull, just insults all of us.

The polynesians learned to navigate the south seas by stars, alone. That alone’s pretty amazing. We learned to navigate our planet by sight, and careful observation and measurement. We learned biology, chemistry, and now it’s nicer to say it’s herbal folk remedie and fairies. When did we become Anti-Science?

I admit I got pissed off when one respondent claimed to be an earth scientist, but her profile listed none of the sort of thing one would associate with earth sciences education. An herbalist with faery wood wands is NOT an earth scientist any more than Hugh Laurie is a doctor.

And isn’t there enough wonder in science? I think so.

I don’t ordinarily rely on wiki, but these were coherently assembled, and quickly proved a point:

Crop circles were a hoax perpetuated from at least a century ago. A couple guys get to drinking in the 90’s and for a laugh, decide to resurrect said hoaxes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_circles

Crystal skulls were deemed to be a relatively modern creation using subpar quartz and modern carving tools, falsified or absent reports, and hoaxes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_skulls

Orbs: are a trick of the light common to modern cameras and flash and debris in the air. Wikipedia:Orb photography

Keeping an open mind is good. Questioning things is good. But somewhere along the line we’ve tossed logical reasoning and critical thinking out the window in favor of fake science, table rapping and conspiracies.

No one stops to ask WHY an alien life would travel for so far just to stomp in our cornfields. ( No one asks why aliens are fond of rectal probes and mutilating cattle either. It defies logic that an advanced race would be interested in our anuses and our cattle.) If they practiced anything like field biology, they’d tag us, measure us from snout to vent and release us.

Why is pseudoscience so much easier to accept? Why are people falling for this stuff?

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The Littlest Skeptic

xinit — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 20:21:26 +0000

If only it were that easy for a simple dog to communicate with the credulous.

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The Gentle Art of Homeopathic Killing - reprint

xinit — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 06:53:17 +0000

The following article was removed from the original host under threat of a libel suit. Using a trick that the alternative practitioners often accuse Big Pharma of, the British Society of Homeopaths is becoming what they hate. Under British law, the plaintiff is easily favoured in the case of libel. This is something of a surprise considering the sheer amount of tabloid journalism that you see coming from the Isles.

So, the Society of Homeopaths used the laws available to them and threatened Canard’s ISP. It’s not unlike every time I’ve debated a homeopath supporter; eventually they run away promising to return with Conclusive Proof or with Daddy, to shut down the argument. The SoH would appear to BE the thugs and criminals that they see in Conventional Medicine and Big Pharma. I guess it’s a case of having to be a criminal in order to recognize one.

Thanks to Respectful Insolence for the update on the story, and links to the Google Cache… it made reproducing the allegedly libelous article in whole much easier.

I say we organize a globe trotting trip for all the Homeopaths in the SoH, and allow them only homeopathic potions to protect them from malaria, typhus, bird flu, and whatever other deadlies we can arrange for them to run into in northern Africa. A swim up the ganges in Africa, a visit to a mosquito infested swamp in the middle of the summer malaria upswing, and maybe some meals of local delicacies involving broiled monkey. It will be a true test of Homeopathy if the Society will send its members out like this. Hell, let’s make it a variation on Survivor; Big Pharma will take their malaria meds, and the SoH team will imbibe only magical elixirs. 39 days; outlast, outplay, outlive.

— Quote begins;

The Gentle Art of Homeopathic Killing

Thursday, August 16, 2007

The Society of Homeopaths (SoH) are a shambles and a bad joke. It is now over a year since Sense about Science, Simon Singh and the BBC Newsnight programme exposed how it is common practice for high street homeopaths to tell customers that their magic pills can prevent malaria. The Society of Homeopaths have done diddly-squat to stamp out this dangerous practice apart from issue a few ambiguously weasel-worded press statements.

The SoH has a code of practice, but my feeling is that this is just a smokescreen and is widely flouted and that the Society do not care about this. If this is true, then the code of practice is nothing more than a thin veneer used to give authority and credibility to its deluded members. It does nothing more than fool the public into thinking they are dealing with a regulated professional.

As a quick test, I picked a random homeopath with a web site from the SoH register to see if they flouted a couple of important rules:

48 • Advertising shall not contain claims of superiority.
• No advertising may be used which expressly or implicitly claims to cure named diseases.

72 To avoid making claims (whether explicit or implied; orally or in writing) implying cure of any named disease.

The homeopath I picked on is called Julia Wilson and runs a practice from the Leicestershire town of Market Harborough. What I found rather shocked and angered me.

Straight away, we find that Julia M Wilson LCHE, RSHom specialises in asthma and works at a clinic that says,

Many illnesses and disease can be successfully treated using homeopathy, including arthritis, asthma, digestive disorders, emotional and behavioural difficulties, headaches, infertility, skin and sleep problems.

Well, there are a number of named diseases there to start off. She also gives a leaflet that advertises her asthma clinic. The advertising leaflet says,

Conventional medicine is at a loss when it comes to understanding the origin of allergies. … The best that medical research can do is try to keep the symptoms under control. Homeopathy is different, it seeks to address the triggers for asthma and eczema. It is a safe, drug free approach that helps alleviate the flaring of skin and tightening of lungs…

Now, despite the usual homeopathic contradiction of claiming to treat causes not symptoms and then in the next breath saying it can alleviate symptoms, the advert is clearly in breach of the above rule 47 on advertising as it implicitly claims superiority over real medicine and names a disease.

Asthma is estimated to be responsible for 1,500 deaths and 74,000 emergency hospital admissions in the UK each year. It is not a trivial illness that sugar pills ought to be anywhere near. The Cochrane Review says the following about the evidence for asthma and homeopathy,

The review of trials found that the type of homeopathy varied between the studies, that the study designs used in the trials were varied and that no strong evidence existed that usual forms of homeopathy for asthma are effective.

This is not a surprise given that homeopathy is just a ritualised placebo. Hopefully, most parents attending this clinic will have the good sense to go to a real accident and emergency unit in the event of a severe attack and consult their GP about real management of the illness. I would hope that Julia does little harm here.

However, a little more research on her site reveals much more serious concerns. She says on her site that ’she worked in Kenya teaching homeopathy at a college in Nairobi and supporting graduates to set up their own clinics’. Now, we have seen what homeopaths do in Kenya before. It is not treating a little stress and the odd headache. Free from strong UK legislation, these missionary homeopaths make the boldest claims about the deadliest diseases.

A bit of web research shows where Julia was working (picture above). The Abha Light Foundation is a registered NGO in Kenya. It takes mobile homeopathy clinics through the slums of Nairobi and surrounding villages. Its stated aim is to,

introduce Homeopathy and natural medicines as a method of managing HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria in Kenya.

I must admit, I had to pause for breath after reading that. The clinic sells its own homeopathic remedies for ‘treating’ various lethal diseases. Its MalariaX potion,

is a homeopathic preparation for prevention of malaria and treatment of malaria. Suitable for children. For prevention. Only 1 pill each week before entering, during and after leaving malaria risk areas. For treatment. Take 1 pill every 1-3 hours during a malaria attack.

This is nothing short of being totally outrageous. It is a murderous delusion. David Colquhoun has been writing about this wicked scam recently and it is well worth following his blog on the issue.

Let’s remind ourselves what one of the most senior and respected homeopaths in the UK, Dr Peter Fisher of the London Homeopathic Hospital, has to say on this matter.

there is absolutely no reason to think that homeopathy works to prevent malaria and you won’t find that in any textbook or journal of homeopathy so people will get malaria, people may even die of malaria if they follow this advice.

Malaria is a huge killer in Kenya. It is the biggest killer of children under five. The problem is so huge that the reintroduction of DDT is considered as a proven way of reducing deaths. Magic sugar pills and water drops will do nothing. Many of the poorest in Kenya cannot afford real anti-malaria medicine, but offering them insane nonsense as a substitute will not help anyone.

Ironically, the WHO has issued a press release today on cheap ways of reducing child and adult mortality due to malaria. Their trials, conducted in Kenya, of using cheap mosquito nets soaked in insecticide have reduced child deaths by 44% over two years. It says that issuing these nets be the ‘immediate priority’ to governments with a malaria problem. No mention of homeopathy. These results were arrived at by careful trials and observation. Science. We now know that nets work. A lifesaving net costs $5. A bottle of useless homeopathic crap costs $4.50. Both are large amounts for a poor Kenyan, but is their life really worth the 50c saving?

I am sure we are going to hear the usual homeopath bleat that this is just a campaign by Big Pharma to discredit unpatentable homeopathic remedies. Are we to add to the conspiracy Big Net manufacturers too?

It amazes me that to add to all the list of ills and injustices that our rich nations impose on the poor of the world, we have to add the widespread export of our bourgeois and lethal healing fantasies. To make a strong point: if we can introduce laws that allow the arrest of sex tourists on their return to the UK, can we not charge people who travel to Africa to indulge their dangerous healing delusions?

At the very least, we could expect the Society of Homeopaths to try to stamp out this wicked practice? Could we?

Labels: homeopathy

Originally from Quackometer, by way of Google’s Cache

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What? No Crocmunks? Damn it.

xinit — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 15:23:03 +0000

“All the living creatures in the fossil record appear intact and in their perfect forms. For instance, before crocodiles and squirrels, there exist no fossils belonging to any strange creature partly resembling a crocodile, and in other parts to a squirrel or other living creatures. Squirrels have always remained squirrels, and crocodiles have always remained crocodiles. All these facts reveal that the claim of the theory of evolution, that “Living beings have gradually evolved over millions of years of time” is simply a product of imagination.”

This seems to be the biggest ‘fact’ proclaimed by the Harun Yahya’s epic Creationist propaganda piece “Atlas of Creation.” There are no transitional fossils of any sort, no bridge between any species, and all living animals are the way that they have always been. I think that a Crocmunk (crocodile / chipmunk of course) would be a great pet; good security around the house, and cute with its erratic scampering.

“Some fossils preserve only certain parts of living beings’ bodies. Pictured is a 15-million-year-old trout tail. As is seen, there is no difference between a trout tail 50 million years old and one that’s 15 million years old and one that ’s alive today.”

Plenty of examples of marine life and trees that ‘prove’ evolution is complete fraud and conspiracy by evil scientists by simply not changing for millions of years. We can’t see any branching or speciation when we’re only looking at two examples; one fossil and one current model. Many of the examples of perch and trout provided have fins that look noticeably different between fossil and contemporary example, with one missing a dorsal fin entirely in the fossil. The sunfish shown doesn’t even bear any similarities in fin configuration to the fossil…

There are plenty of transitional fossils that have been well documented, but these are ignored entirely, or merely explained away as coincidentally similar appearing, separately created animals that have gone extinct.

“This insect, no different from those living today, is evidence that all living beings have been created.”

There’s an example of a lobster fossil with a description about how it remains unchanged today;

Fossils that were gathered in the last 150 years proved that living species never changed or evolved from one another. This fact is underscored by this 146- to 65-million-year-old fossil of a lobster, no different from its counterparts alive today.

The primary claw looks significantly different to modern lobsters, based on the photo of the fossil they chose to use to illustrate this point; the larger portion of the claw appears to be longer and narrower. I’d want to see a better copy of the fossil before stating that they were completely unchanged.

There’s a pair of side-by-side examples with a winged ant and a pseudoscorpion that have the images swapped, which is amusing in a book aimed at showing how wrong evolution scientists are.

After pages and pages of pictures of fossils that bear resemblances to current, living animals, the author goes into explanation of how Darwin is responsible for Communism, Fascism, racism, terrorism (and the 9/11 attacks on the United States);

Actually, when Darwinism is taken away, no philosophy of ‘conflict’ remains. The three divine religions that most people in the world believe in, Islam, Christianity and Judaism, all oppose violence. All three religions wish to bring peace and harmony to the world, and oppose innocent people being killed and suffering cruelty and torture. Conflict and violence violate the morality that God has set out for man, and are abnormal and unwanted concepts. However, Darwinism sees and portrays conflict and violence as natural, justified and correct concepts that have to exist.

For this reason, if some people commit terrorism using the concepts and symbols of Islam, Christianity or Judaism in the name of those religions, you can be sure that those people are not Muslims, Christians or Jews. They are real Social Darwinists.

It goes on, quoting Darwin, Steven Jay Gould, and a host of other scientists out of context and making leaps of faith like I’ve rarely seen before. It’s hard to read much of this book, but if you’re insane or looking to make yourself so, it’s available online if you’re not one of the lucky scientists that were mailed free copies of this volume of nonsense.

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Non-skeptical skeptics of the religious sciences

xinit — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 16:46:25 +0000

For giggle, I joined a Facebook Group for Red Deer based skeptics. They needed a bit of help in boosting the discussion and getting things moving, so I thought I’d stop in and see what would shake loose. Well, we found a True Believer who claims to be a skeptic… my favorite type of believer, to be honest.

The whole thread can be found at Facebook still, but for my own sake I’m clipping some of my own responses here in the event I need to use similar bits again.

Chris starts off with:

To make things plain, the reason I find creation much more plausible is due to the massive holes found it evolution (and they are massive!).

The second thing is to call evolution a science and creation a religion is shear non-sense. They are BOTH a religion. Neither can be proved. Both must be BELIEVED.

You don’t call science a religion and get away with it if I can help it; they’re not even close to being similar things. From this point, I’ll just paste my own pieces that stand on their own to some degre. There were other comments that were direct one-liner questions or replies that I’m not including as they aren’t complete.

I’m a fan of #8, personally.

*** 1

There is one common misconception that keeps popping up in these evolution vs. creationism “debates”; that these two topics are even comparable, let alone that they are mutually exclusive.

Evolution does not address, nor claim to address the following:

the origin of the universe
the origin of life on our planet

It is not logically impossible that evolution took over after the point of initial creation of life, whatever that spark came from; god or random organization of atoms.

Ask a farmer about artificial selection; breeding cows for a specific trait such as higher milk production, or sheep for thicker, better wool. This is evolution in a visible, real way. Natural selection merely removes the hand of man in the equation, such as with Darwin’s finches, in a geographically restricted environment.

This is evolution; the gradual genetic change and adaptation of beings over the course of generations to a more perfect form for their environment.

As for belief, anyone with a jar full of fruit flies can witness evolution in their own kitchen. There is no room, nor need for belief in this scenario; it’s raw data that adds evidence to evolution being viable.

You don’t have to believe in the evidence of science, but I would suggest that those who don’t forgo such impossible beliefs as modern medicine and the computer.

*** 2

Evolution has nothing to do with where light comes from, or where life itself comes from; it’s outside the scope.

You may as well expect an answer on why plants grow from a repair manual for a Dodge Dart.

*** 3

The evolution of life is entirely distinct from what you’re referring to as “cosmic evolution”, or the creation of the universe. So-called cosmic and organic evolution are entirely separate fields and different arguments.

Of course it’s ludicrous to suppose that a chicken would birth a dog, or grow a limb spontaneously from another species. This is a gross misunderstanding of the evolutionary process that often is tossed out by the creationist in such a discussion.

The only type of evolution that you will hear discussed by scientists is what you refer to as “variation”, also termed micro evolution by some non-scientists. Evolution as far as science is concerned is a slow process, that is visible over many many generations. Speciation is even slower, on the order of thousands of generations.

Science can be proven wrong through experimentation and direct observation, while religion can not really be disproved, as God or miracles or the existence of an afterlife are not generally falsifiable concepts; no amount of experimentation or observation can provide evidence to logically disprove them. This is where science is different, as each of the claims made are fully falsifiable.

This isn’t to say that the claims are false or likely false, but that the claims are subject to testing and observation which could conceivably prove them wrong. Religion, faith, heaven, and creation aren’t falsifiable concepts, and are distinct from science.

A scientist doesn’t have faith that gravity exists or acts on bodies in space; he has experimental data, all of which is logically falsifiable.

*** 4

I’m thinking that you aren’t even wanting to agree on definition of terms here, so I’m not sure how any discussion will progress…

The only people who believe in the macro-evolution you refer to are people who believe in creationism; more specifically they believe that scientists believe it. Scientific consensus does not now, nor has it ever, suggested that one creature spontaneously gives birth to a whole new species, phylum, or class of creature.

Find me a scientist that will agree with your assertion that science claims that spontaneous speciation occurs. You are taking one claim, that speciation, “Speciation is the evolutionary process by which new biological species arise.”

Often this is a result of geographical isolation; the birds on one side of the mountain possess these traits, and the birds on the other possess these traits. They evolved from a common ancestor, but over time have become separate species.

To suggest that a fruit fly could “turn into” a human is a ridiculous exaggeration. A 2 winged, red eyed fruit fly could beget a wingless variant and a winged variant, that continue to breed offspring similar to themselves. They might eventually be classed as separate species, but they both remain well away from the subphylum that homo sapiens occupy. Speciation may be observable in the lab under certain conditions, but the creation of whole a whole new subphylum? Not yet.

There is only one type of evolution that any scientist would suggest were real, and that’s what you’re referring to as micro-evolution or variance.

I suppose you have evidence of a teacher teaching that a cat has borne a dog or similar “macro evolution”?

*** 5

Macro-evolution has two main definitions as I’ve seen it; that of the scientific and the non-scientific. The scientific will allow macro-evolution as evolution that is the “compounded effects of micro-evolution.” This is not something that has been observed in the lab, but that has been THEORIZED based on fundamental similarities between different groups; apes and humans, hippos and whales, etc. This is not a belief, but a set of working theories that have evolved over time.

My suggestion that people don’t teach macro-evolution is based on your “Fly gives birth to a human” example, which I would also argue against being taught. I haven’t seen a high school text book in quite some time, but I happen to have recently acquired a new intro level college biology text, so I’ll take a flip through that to see what the current state is there. I don’t expect to see spontaneous macro-evolution there, but who knows?

*** 6

Quoting myself:

“The only people who believe in the macro-evolution you refer to are people who believe in creationism; more specifically they believe that scientists believe it. Scientific consensus does not now, nor has it ever, suggested that one creature spontaneously gives birth to a whole new species, phylum, or class of creature.”

I am referring to the kind of macro evolution you mention…. no scientist believes in this. Macro-evolution is a term applied to the effects of many speciation events; it is not an immediate, spontaneous event, and does not cause a link between a fruit fly and a human, no matter what you might think.

Twyla: my question regarding the age of the universe was specifically to see if we we dealing with a universe that is billions of years old or one that is only 6000 years old.

Let’s play “Spot the logical fallacies”!

See if you can find the following in this short thread:

Hasty generalizations
Appeal to consequences
Argument from incredulity
Appeal to ridicule
Appeal to probability
Others?

*** 7

“Science (from the Latin scientia, ‘knowledge’), in the broadest sense, refers to any systematic knowledge or practice. In a more restricted sense, science refers to a system of acquiring knowledge based on the scientific method, as well as to the organized body of knowledge gained through such research.” — Wikipedia on Science

Creation Science… where is the scientific method? Where is the body of knowledge? Even in the broadest sense of the word, there is no science in Creation.

As for being skeptical, the whole point of skepticism is not accepting anecdotal stories as evidence. The stories of the bible do not provide scientific evidence of any sort, and so is useless in determining the age of the Earth, the origin of life, or how life has evolved. What we do have as evidence is a boat load of radiometric data that establishes the age of the Earth quite well, as well as the age of fossils. We have geologists and biologists and astrophysicists and all sorts of -ists that have been working independently over centuries, adding to a wealth of knowledge about the world around us.

If Creation “Scientists” have evidence outside of the bible, they have been hiding it well. Please enlighten us as to the body of evidence that we’re missing.

*** 8

Chris: “I will openly admit that Christianity, and the Bible are religious. One must BELIEVE them to be true. Evolution is a religion masked as a science.”

Things I accept on “faith”:

There is a Paris, France
That 2+2 is, in fact, equal to 4 under most circumstances
That there is a planet slightly further out from us in the Solar System that we call Mars
That the sun is a huge ball of fusing hydrogen
That 2000mg of caffeine will stop the human heart
That anthrax can kill you if you snort enough of it
The moon will not come crashing down tomorrow, no matter how much I want to avoid work
That people continue to exist once I leave the room
Removing the brain from the skull is almost always fatal

There are whole reams of things every day that you end up taking based on the advice of authority alone. This is not in question. Why do we believe some things without questioning?

Empirical evidence.

I can look up a mathematical proof to show how 2 and 2 sum, if I so choose to question it. I can go to school and study hard and become a doctor in order to see what happens when you remove a brain. All of these things are verifiable to a certain degree of confidence, should you have the time and the inclination to do so. There is such a huge volume of data in the earth sciences that no one person could digest it all or understand it all, so some of it you’re going to have to trust to the experts or risk losing your mind.

The key is that it’s POSSIBLE to find the evidence, and with effort, all of that evidence and all of those theories are falsifiable. You might have to yell and scream and make pretty graphs, but with empirical data, you can sway people to your side of the argument.

Can I find an independent record of the loaves and fishes? Perhaps an independent witness to Moses descending the mountain with the tablets? How about someone to swear an affidavit to the whole resting on the seventh day thing? There’s no empirical evidence, and until there is hard data on creation, it remains non-scientific.

Again, as I do with my more common discussion “opponents” in the energy healing sector, I invite a single source of hard data to show that creationism should be allowed within 100 yards of science.

*** 9

I thought that this summed up the “Why Science isn’t a religion” argument well enough….

http://atheism.about.com/od/philosophyofscience/p/ScienceReligion.htm

“Calling science a religion should be instantly recognized as an ideological attack rather than a neutral observation of facts. Sadly this is not the case, and it has become far too common for critics of modern, godless science to claim that it’s inherently a religion, thus hoping to discredit scientific research when it contradicts genuine religious ideology”

*** 10

Using the word “science” while not utilizing the scientific method is disingenuous at best, and a bold lie at worst.

One of the theories used to support the existence of large insects (I’m not sure about mammals) is the high concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere.

At best a dome of water over the earth would have to ignore something called gravity, but assuming that there was a “sea above the sea” how would that contribute to larger animals through reduced radiation?

One of the reasons that I ask for empirical data from people I have discussions with is that they’re the subject matter experts in their field as far as I know. I have no idea where the “pro Creation Science” data is stored, and Google is of little help in finding raw data. I can find plenty of Kirk Cameron videos, but little quantitative data.

On a side note aren’t creationists just a little bit embarrassed to have Kirk and Rev. Comfort on their side after that banana video?

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The Bible Poster

xinit — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 16:26:46 +0000

Because all the works of science cannot equal the wisdom of cattle-sacrificing primitives who thought every animals species in the world lived within walking distance of Noah’s house

Found elsewhere

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I received a vision today

xinit — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 03:34:52 +0000

Lamb Chop appeared to me on a concrete wall and gave me a vision of exactly what’s wrong with the world. A real miracle, and the picture above is PROOF!

Bad news is that there’s a lot of killing to be done in the names of Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop. There’s going to be some fierce puppet retribution leading in to the End Times, people.

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One dose of 200C Homeopathic Water! Stat!

xinit — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 15:58:35 +0000

As seen on DC’s Improbable Science page

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The aliens or the angels were here!

xinit — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 14:10:46 +0000

I had my camera last night on the way back from the office, which is good, because it would seem that my alien visitors were gone by the time I could get a witness to go outside and verify my story. Isn’t it always the way? You see something spectacular that PROVES the existence of aliens and angels and God and that Global Warming is bogus, and you can’t get a witnes.

Of course, taking a picture of a tiny little light in the sky with a digital camera is a bit of a pain. They’re not the best at dealing with low light situations, so images can be open to a fair amount of interpretation. Is that photo with the little blurry blobs evidence of ghosts? Does the one with the blurry line show a ghostly species of rods? Does my green light photo show an alien ray lifting people up for anal probing?

Initially I was surprised to see a green glow in the clouds; it was dim and diffuse, like the last time I saw the Aurora Borealis, but that was in Alberta; I haven’t seen the Northern Lights in over a decade. The clouds shifted a little bit, and a non-organic shape emerged; a beam! Rat bastard aliens.

I switched off the auto focus on the camera, set the speed to 3200, and after editing, the above two images are the best you get. The beam appeared to originate somewhere on the Dalhousie campus; or terminate there if you’re into the alien theory. In reality it would appear to be a green laser… it wasn’t moving visibly, so I’m assuming that it was mounted in some way; telescope aiming, navigation, broken Pink Floyd laser show?

Update: Okay, it’s just LIDAR.

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Diluting Homeopathy

xinit — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 16:03:53 +0000

I once thought that the way to make money from homeopathic tinctures was through buying distilled water, and putting it into nice bottles with pretty labels, and selling those little bottles for $10 each. I’d even include a warning stating that the bottles contained absolutely no medicinal properties, and contained 100% distilled water. It would be a positive gold mine, even without the warning, as there is no way of testing a homeopathic remedy for effective ingredients, and so fraud could never effectively be proved in a court of law. However, I think that the real money is in ‘pure’ sea water, though, as it’s positively loaded with infinitesimal quantities of all sorts of things; maybe I’d even go with a name like Deep Sea Homeopathic Holistic Water.

I know people who purchase homeopathic products, and I was trying to come up with a good example to try to lay out the pure numbers on this, to try to show that what they’re buying is little more than diluted snake oil, with very little actual snake oil in it. I’ve seen proofs on web pages, but they tend to rely on numbers that other people have given, accepting them as gospel, and I wanted to know exactly how many atoms of something were in each bottle of 200C Snake Oil. I’m really surprised at just how little there is, and I think that the best example I can use to illustrate this is by turning the entire volume of Earth’s oceans and seas into a homeopathic cure. After all, covering 70% of the surface of the planet has to be a pretty visible metaphor.

“One approach is to use homeopathic remedies to target the tumors themselves. In this case, the homeopath selects remedies which match the symptom picture of the tumor itself (e.g. Conium Maculatum for hard immovable tumors that develop slowly). Homeopaths using this approach might also consider other symptoms (such as the individual’s food cravings, disposition, etc), but their primary focus is to target the tumor and reverse its growth. Some physician homeopaths also give remedies at the tumor site itself (in the form of an injection) to more aggressively stimulate a response. ” — The Cancer Cure Foundation

Conium Maculatum might be more recognizable to people as Poison Hemlock; the state poison of ancient Greece. Now, hemlock does have sedative and antispasmodic properties in small doses, so it’s not all about killing philosophers.

“To produce different remedy potencies, the mother tincture is diluted in an alcohol/ water mixture according to one of two scales, the decimal (x) and the centesimal (c). Between every stage of dilution the diluted tincture is succussed (shaken vigorously) in the decimal scale the dilution factor is 1:10 and in the centesimal it is 1:100. To produce a 1c potency of the allium remedy for example, one drop of the mother tincture is added to 99 drops of an alcohol/water mixture and succussed. To produce a 2c potency, one drop of the 1c mixture is added to 99 drops of an alcohol/water mixture and succussed. The number of a homeopathic remedy shows how many times it has been diluted and succussed, for example, Allium 6c has been diluted and succussed six times.” — Healthy New Age

ABCHomeopathy.com lists a 15mL, alcohol-diluted bottle of “3X” Hemlock for $8.99 and explains the different potencies of dilutions “Chronic illnesses should be treated with high potencies (30x-200c) and acute conditions with low potencies (6x or 6c)… Really high potencies such as 200C.” See, the more you dilute something, the stronger it is. The lower the chance that there is even an atom of Hemlock in that bottle, the more powerful it is…

“DECIMAL - potency based on the ratio of 1 part substance to 10 parts dilution. Designated with a X (in Europe designated with a D) after the remedy name. X potencies are considered low potencies. X potency is often used for children, sudden illness and first aid treatment.
CENTESIMAL - potency based on the ratio of 1 part substance to 99 parts dilution. Designated with a C (or left blank in Europe) after the remedy name. C potencies are considered medium potencies. C potency is often used for seasonal problems and chronic conditions.
MILLESIMAL - potency based on the ratio of 1 part substance to 1000 parts dilution. Designated with a M after the remedy name. M potencies are considered high potencies. M potency is used by practitioners for constitutional treatment.”Elixirs.com

Back to sea water. Using numbers from a 1968 publication, it appears that there are 0.0009 ppm of Copper, 0.021 ppm of Barium, and 0.0026 ppm of Arsenic in your average sample of sea water (Sea Friends - a part per million can be seen as mg / L); these are all valuable homeopathic tintures on their own, and would likely need to be diluted even further in order to approach the “potency” of a 200C mixture.

So, for the “C” scale, the Mother Tincture is a 1:100 mixture of water and/or alcohol to the essential ingredient. Let’s just say we start with a gram of the active ingredient and it’s diluted in a Liter of liquid; 1g/L. This isn’t exactly how the dilutions are made, as they tend to refer to “drops” of the tincture to solvent, but as you’ll see in a second, once the numbers get to where they are going, the difference in volume between a 1 mL ‘drop’ and a full Liter are insignificant. Even a kilogram of product diluted into a Liter of water to make the Mother Tincture, were it even possible, would yield little more effective compound in the 200C dilution.

Nevertheless, (in my experience) in cases of deep pathology (such as cancer), most patients have a profound level of resistance to feeling their feelings. Usually this is because of a built-in survival mechanism which protects them from feeling feelings which could destablize them and/or be more destructive than the disease itself (e.g. suicidal feelings). As a result, patients with deep pathology will tend to either have very moderate reactions to homeopathic remedies (because of the built in protective mechanism), or the remedies will release thoughts, emotions, and memories which are extremely toxic and destabilizing. In either case, there is strong initial resistance to the release process.

When patients are able to release suppressed toxic emotions (via homeopathy or other means), the optimal scenario is for the patient to work with accompanying practitioners (psychotherapists, counselors, healers, etc). Some homeopathic practitioners will provide some support, but often other professionals are needed. ” — The Cancer Cure Foundation

C indicates a power of 100, and X indicates a power of ten. 6X actually refers to a 10⁶ dilution, not the 1:6 most people would assume. As 10⁶ and 100³ are mathematically identical, a 6X dilution is scientifically, atomically, identical to the 3C product.

Assuming that you take the full Mother Tincture and produce the absolute maximum volume you can of a 200C solution, you’re looking at a huge resulting volume.

A 1C dilution is the mother Tincture diluted by 1:100; resulting in 100L of solution holding that same gram of ingredient.
2C is diluted from 1C at 1:100 to yield 10,000L (100²)
3C is diluted from 2C at 1:100 to yield 1,000,000L (100³)
200C is the same thing again, 198 steps later, where we’re now at 100²⁰⁰ L of solution

That’s 100²⁰⁰, or a google², or with all the zeroes;

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 L

All of the world’s oceans and seas contain an estimated 1.370 * 10²¹ L of water, or

1,370,000,000,000,000,000,000 L (Encarta)

What if we were to take that gram of initial product and dilute it to fill merely all of the world’s oceans? The resulting mix could be labeled as approximately “10.5C”, as 1.370* 10²¹ is mathematically the same as 1.370 * 100^10.5.

100¹⁰ == 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 L
100¹¹ == 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 L

Diluting that gram of initial product to somewhere between 10C and 11C would referred to as a medium or high potency dilution according to sources I’ve found.

1.370 * 10⁹ km³

1.370 * 10²¹ L

1 cubic kilometer = 1,000,000,000,000 (10¹²) L

By way of explanation, let’s take something inert like sand and make that into a homeopathic remedy to cure… oh, I don’t know. Let’s say this dilution will cure sun burns, because those have been seen to occur on sandy beaches.

We’ll use a gram of pure Silica sand, finely ground of course, with the chemical formula SiO₂; composed of 1 Silicon atom, and 2 Oxygen atoms.

How much does this molecule weigh? Well, Silicon weighs 28 atomic units, and Oxygen weighs 16 atomic units, for a total of 60 atomic units

Thanks to high school chemistry and the periodic table, we know that there are 6.023 x 10²³ atomic units in a gram. From there we can find that there are 6.02 x 10²³ / 60 = 1.00 x 10²² SiO2s in a gram, or 3 x 10²² atoms in a gram. Of course, when those atoms break down beyond the groups of three that make up SiO₂,

30,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms. that’s plenty, right?

If we were to dissolve that gram of sand in all of the water that comprises all the Earth’s oceans and seas, complete with agitation and re-dilution again and again, and assuming absolutely perfect distribution of the sand atoms, we would see

(3 x 10²² atoms) / (1.37 x 10²¹ L == 21.8978102 atoms per L in all of the world’s oceans. If you look at the huge number above for 200C, you can readily see that a small amount of water such as that contained in all of the Earth’s oceans would need to be diluted many many more times at 1:100 to yield the full volume of 200C. Once we have surpassed 22 times the oceans’ volume, we have dropped past the point where you might statistically be able to expect a single atom to exist in a Liter of water, but yet this is a very strong product?

(3 * (10²²))atoms / (1.37000 * (10²¹)) Liters = 21.8978102 atoms / Liter if that one gram of silicon were spread equally throughout the world’s oceans and seas. That’s pretty impressive, actually, considering that that one little tiny gram of sand could be spread throughout the entirety of the world’s oceans. One might even be able to see seven full SiO₂ molecules in that Liter if you were lucky.

The problem comes that we’re dealing with a relatively small amount of solvent (water) as far as homeopathy is concerned. This is only 10²¹ L of water, not the 10⁴⁰⁰ L of water that a proper dilution to 200C would require. With the sample of sand, we’re limited to 3×10²² atoms; any dilution past that point becomes problematic. Once you have 10⁴⁰⁰ L of dilution,

(3 * 10²² atoms) / (1 * 10⁴⁰⁰ L) == 3 / 10³⁷⁸

There are only enough atoms to have THREE of them in 10³⁷⁸ L of water. Three individual, effectively indivisible (no amount of simply shaking the water is going to split them up, anyhow), atoms. How many 15mL bottles would you have to consume to statistically be able to say you had consumed 3 whole atoms worth of active ingredient to get both your Silicon and Oxygen atoms? Had we started with one kg per L of product, we’d still only have 1000 times as much product, or 3/ 10³⁷⁵; statistically insignificant difference, as you’d still need to consume the world’s oceans many times over to be certain that you had consumed your handful of atoms.

Interesting volumes that don’t come close to being large enough to hold a fully diluted 200C elixir;

Earth’s volume is roughly 1.0832 * 10²⁴ L

The Sun which we orbit is said to be able to contain 1.3 * 10⁶ Earths, for a total volume of 1.4082 × 10³⁰ L

That’s not much volume either, so how about a sphere that has a radius that’s a full light year?

1 light year = 9.4605284 × 10¹⁸ decimeters

(4 / 3) * PI * ((9.4605284 * (10¹⁸))³) = 3.54678441 * 10⁵¹ L

Not even close, but imagine that single gram of sand, held in your hand, with its 3 x 10²² atoms. See how not every Liter in that massive sphere that is so massive it would take light from the center a full year to escape the the orb could contain even one single atom of the original material? Not even close.

Water doesn’t have memory, or it would be able to remember all the fish crap it had in it over the years; that couldn’t possibly be good for you. To believe that zero quantity of a medicine is effective in curing what ails you is to believe in real magic. Expelliarmus! Hmmm… nope.

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