Michael Prescott's Blog

Some like it hot

Tom Bethell's book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science is, as its name suggests, a deliberately provocative and iconoclastic look at some of the scientific orthodoxies of our day. While it's hard to escape the suspicion that Bethell is not always giving us both sides of the story, his entry in the P.I.G. series is nevertheless a breezy, entertaining, and thought-provoking read.

Nowhere is this more true than in Chapter 3, cheekily titled "Good Vibes," which deals with the subject of radiation hormesis.

What is radiation hormesis? Hormesis is the principle that while high doses of something may be toxic, low doses may actually be beneficial. For instance, alcohol in high doses is very toxic; it's possible to die of alcohol poisoning. But at low doses, alcohol has well-documented beneficial health effects, particularly in regard to the cardiovascular system. Similarly, many of the ingredients in multivitamin tablets -- potassium, iron, etc. -- are toxic at high levels but healthful and even essential to life in trace amounts. Examples could be multiplied, and in fact Bethell spends all of Chapter 4 on chemical hormesis.

But radiation hormesis? Is it conceivable that any dose of radiation, no matter how small, can actually improve our health? Bethell amasses a pretty extensive stack of evidence to support this very contention.

Some highlights:

• A 1991 study showed that shipyard workers exposed to low levels of radiation while working on Navy nuclear reactors "had 24 percent lower death rates and 25 percent lower cancer mortality" than unexposed workers.
• British radiologists "were half as likely to die of cancer as other physicians who had not worked with X-ray machines."
• When a University of Georgia toxicologist visited Chernobyl, site of a catastrophic nuclear meltdown in 1986, he found that mice in the area were thriving. "They just seem to soak it up," he said, adding that life may be "far more resilient to high levels of radioactivity than we anticipated."
• A 1997 Washington Post article observed, "In Japan, site of the world's only nuclear attacks, radiation victims are outliving their peers.... As expected, the people closest to ground zero have died in high numbers ... But as one moves further from the blast site, the death rate plunges until it actually dips below the baseline."
• Colorado has roughly twice the average ambient level of natural radiation as low-lying areas of the United States, yet its cancer rates are only two-thirds of the national average.
• A comprehensive study of the relationship between radon exposure and lung cancer showed that lung cancer rates decreased as radon exposure increased.
• In Taiwan, Bethell reports, apartment residents lived in a building that had been "accidentally contaminated with cobalt-60 ... Over a period of 16 years, some 10,000 occupants were exposed to levels of radiation that should have induced cancers many times in excess of background expectations. Taiwan health statistics predicted 170 cancers among an age-matched [non-exposed] population of this size. But only five were observed."
• In the town of Ramar in northern Iran, the locals live in rock houses high in radium. But when their "blood samples were subjected to a 'challenge dose' of gamma rays, it was found that [they] had only half the number of chromosomal aberrations that had been induced in the normal controls."

Bethell closes the chapter by observing the new trend toward low-level radiation clinics and spas. So-called therapeutic radiation, obtained at "radon spas," is becoming popular in Japan, Germany, and Russia. Even the United States has such a spa, a radioactive silver and lead mind in Boulder, Montana, where customers can expose themselves to a radon concentration 400 times greater than what the EPA considers safe. Bethell also notes that "many of the famous European spas [of ancient times] correspond to radon sites." Although the ancients knew nothing about radiation, they apparently recognized the healthful properties of those particular sites.

What explanation could there be for this anomaly? Bethell speculates that life on earth evolved in a more radiation-rich atmosphere, and that our bodies, and those of other living things, function optimally in an environment that is relatively high in ambient radiation.

It's almost enough to make you hope Iran does get the Bomb.

Two great links

Matthew Cromer, a frequent and always welcome commenter on this site,  runs an excellent blog called Science is a Method, Not a Position. Today he has links to two newsworthy stories.

In the first, a man singlehandedly demonstrates how "ancient engineers" could have moved ten-ton blocks to create the huge monuments of Egypt and Mesoamerica. Having recently read Graham Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods, which makes elaborate (and, in my opinion,  unpersuasive) claims that a lost civilization with super-advanced technology built these monuments, I was happy to see a more sensible rationale being offered. It seems that old Archimedes was right when he said, "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I will move the world."

In the second link, a premonitory dream or vision led a man and his son to the remote site of a traffic accident, where they found - and saved - the badly injured accident victim. Let's rehearse the standard skeptical objections: coincidence, hoax, exaggeration, mistaken observation ... Now with that out of the way,  let's pause to appreciate the unmapped potentials of the mind, which obviously can do things that materialist philosophy simply will not permit. (And the materialists are in quite a snit about it, too. Imagine - a reality that doesn't conform to their expectations. The nerve!)

Atlas hyped

Spring is here, birds are chirping, trees are budding, and it's once again time for another round of rumors of an Atlas Shrugged movie project.

Fans of Ayn Rand (or ex-fans, as in my case) know that every few years, like clockwork, the gossip mill starts cranking out stories of the imminent production of a movie or mini-series based on Rand's 1957 magnum opus.

This time, it's Variety that's hyping the project, claiming that Lionsgate Films is planning a $30 million feature film of Atlas, and that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie - both described as Rand fans themselves - might be tapped to star as John Galt and Dagny Taggart.

Before anyone gets too excited about this prospect, a cold dose of reality is in order. The best analysis  I've read of the Variety story was made in the comments section of a podcast called Cinematical. The commenter, who runs his own blog called Check the Fien Print, astutely remarks:

The substance of the Variety story was just comical rumor-mongering. The writer obviously talked to the producers on the project who, trying to stir up interest, mentioned that they heard that Angelina Jolie was a big fan of Rand's book. It's sad that UN Ambassador and serial Third World adopter Angelina Jolie wouldn't see the irony of endorsing a philosophy in which her interventionist humanitarian efforts would be seen as futile. But that's almost secondary to the fact that the story gave no indication that a script was so much as finished, much less that a script had been sent to Jolie, much less that she had expressed an iota of interest in this specific project.

That's it in a nutshell. Anybody can throw around the names of stars to get attention. A few years ago, Al Ruddy was trying to revive his long-dormant Atlas Shrugged movie by mentioning Jude Law as a possible Galt. Then as now, there was no evidence that the actor in question had ever been formally approached to star in the movie - which never got made, anyway.

Over the years, names like Faye Dunaway, Robert Redford, Raquel Welch, and Tom Selleck have been mentioned in connection with Atlas. Welch and Selleck may actually have been interested. Dunaway and Redford, probably not.

As for Pitt and Jolie - who knows? But if the budget really is $30 mil, those actors will have to take a pretty substantial pay cut. Ordinarily their salaries alone would probably top that figure.

For the record, I think a $30 million feature film of Atlas Shrugged, if it was any good at all, would turn a profit. Enough people have read the book or heard of it to make a strong opening weekend very likely. And fans would buy the DVD in droves.

Notice I said, if it was any good at all. It might not be. The 1949 version of The Fountainhead, scripted by Rand herself, is mostly dreadful, and was a box-office bomb. On the other hand, an unauthorized Italian version of Rand's We the Living made during WWII was quite good - but We the Living is a much more realistic book than Atlas, and the plot is a lot simpler.

I see three main problems in filming the book. First, it's almost 1100 pages long, and compressing that much material into three hours is a daunting prospect. Most of the plot, characters, and dialogue would have to go. What's left would be so rushed that it might not make much sense to people unfamiliar with the story.

Second, the book takes place in the future - but it's the future as visualized in the 1950s, a future in which heavy industries like railroads and steel dominate the American economy. There's no hint of the high-tech revolution, and barely any mention of commercial aviation or TV. Even in 1957, the book's landscape was strangely dated. Today, it may be unworkably anachronistic. I suppose the film could be done in a "retro" style, but would this work for audiences? The most recent example of a retro-futuristic film I can think of is Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, coincidentally starring Angelina Jolie and Jude Law, both mentioned above. It laid a roc-sized egg at the box office.

Finally, can any contemporary actors really inhabit the larger-than-life characters of Atlas? I'm not sure Pitt and Jolie could do it, though they were pretty terrific in Mr. and Mrs. Smith. How about Keifer Sutherland and Keira Knightley? Clive Owen and Jodie Foster? George Clooney and Julia Roberts? Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo? Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer?

Or if you want a power couple other than Brangelina ... Vince Vaughn has said that The Fountainhead is his favorite book - how about Vaughn as Galt, and Jennifer Aniston as Dagny? Failing that, maybe David Arquette and Courteney Cox? (Okay, maybe not.)

Hey, I can play the what-if casting game all day, but it doesn't make me a producer.

It would be interesting to see Atlas on the screen - it's a good story, and even as an ex-fan and non-Objectivist, I would still go see it - but I'm betting it won't happen.

I'm also betting that two or three years from now, the rumors will begin all over again ...

More on reincarnation

I picked up a book titled The Facts of Psychic Science, by A. Campbell Holms, at a used bookstore not long ago. The book was originally published in 1925; the edition I bought was a 1969 reprint. Though I haven't read the book yet, it looks like a serious and scholarly effort - an overview of parapsychology in the mid-1920s, when research into mediumship was in full swing.

Since I raised the subject of reincarnation in my last post, I thought I would see if this book had anything to say about it. Checking the index, I found the topic addressed in section 33a. Holms' comments were interesting to me, in that they dovetail pretty closely with my own view of the most probable explanation of Ian Stevenson's research (yet of course they predate Stevenson's work by decades).

Here's an excerpt:

Theosophists believe that the soul after death is sooner or later reincarnated or born again in other specimens of the human race. The various reincarnations, they say, are disciplinary or probationary, and that when the spirit is finally purged and perfected they cease. During the probationary period the individual's conscious memory does not extend beyond its present state, but finally, when perfected, all memories return....

Whether true or not, [this doctrine's] ethical value is evidently nil, because, in the absence of continuous memory and consciousness, the spirit during each reincarnation is virtually a new and distinct personality, and so cannot benefit by any former experiences; nor can be held responsible for wrongful behaviour during previous or future reincarnations.

The fact that the spirits of deceased friends communicate [via mediums] proves that they are not then reincarnated. Spirit [sic] long passed over, who appeared to discuss matters with moderation and caution, if asked about reincarnation, will usually say that, although it may be true, they have no knowledge of it. On the other hand, spirits communicating with reincarnationists -- who predominate on the continent -- all admit the doctrine; they seem to take their cue from the mental attitude of the sitters and medium, and, as they themselves believed in it when they passed over, they may still believe in it. But in their case, also, it is evidently nonoperative....

The doctrine would seem to be almost definitely exploded by Dr. Carl A. Wickland, whose wonderful work in curing obsession is noticed in [section] 80. According to statement [sic] made by earthbound spirits (when controlling Mrs. Wickland), it is not only false, but has caused insanity or obsession in young children, and much suffering to the obsessing spirits. Some of the latter stated that, being theosophists, they had thought reincarnation essential to their development, and accordingly, on passing over, had entered the aura of young children and obsessed them, mistakenly imagining that in doing so they were reincarnated themselves and working out their Karma, which they considered was a religious duty. Their experience, however, proved to be a long-drawn-out nightmare, for the weak and ailing obsessed child gave them a very poor time, and continuously disputed their control. The fact that their confession and enlightenment coincided with the return to sanity of the patient, proved clearly that they had been the cause of the obsession. Dr. Wickland also records a long communication purporting to come from Mme. Blavatsky, in which she expressed regret for having expounded the doctrine of reincarnation, which she now knew to be false.

Carl Wickland was a psychiatrist who used his wife's mediumistic abilities to treat mentally ill patients - people who had been confined to an asylum and had not benefited from conventional treatment. His fascinating memoir, Thirty Years Among the Dead, is available online in its entirety. (Also here, and as a zipped HTML file here. Also, a free online library of books about the afterlife, including Wickland's book, is found here.) 

I would not presume the judge the validity of the purported communication from Blavatsky (the founder of Theosophy), but the communications from Wickland's various "earthbound" spirits generally ring true, and his previously incurable patients were frequently cured as a result of the psychic intervention.

So perhaps many supposed reincarnation cases are actually instances of obsession or possession. This hypothesis may not address all the facts, but possibly it's a good starting point.

Many lives

I've never been too keen on the idea of reincarnation. The idea just doesn't appeal to me. While I admit that I have an emotional bias against it, I also think there are legitimate reasons to doubt this theory, even if, like me, you think there is good evidence for life after death.

Here, in no special order, are some objections to reincarnation that have occurred to me over the years:

1. Reincarnation is immoral. The theory of karma, which is central to most varieties of reincarnation, holds that a person who is born blind or deformed or dirt poor is being punished for sins committed in a prior lifetime. As such, the person does not deserve help; in fact, to help him would be morally wrong, since he must suffer in order to pay off his karmic debt. The practical result is the caste system of India, in which people of the lowest caste (the "untouchables") have been allowed to remain in horrific poverty for generations.

2. Reincarnation is illogical. It is presented as a theory of life after death, or the immortality of the soul. But in what sense is the soul immortal if all of one's memories and experiences are wiped clean at the start of each new incarnation? We might as well say that we cease to exist after death, since nothing of us will remain anyway. Moreover, reincarnation enthusiasts say that we need additional lifetimes to build on the lessons learned in this life. But how can we build on our lessons if we are made to forget everything that we have already learned? If we start over from scratch with each new life, how are we going to get anywhere?

3. Reincarnation is based on dubious evidence. Ian Stevenson's case studies are the best evidence in this area, but I believe they can be interpreted as unconscious channeling, as I discussed in more detail here. Most of the other evidence for reincarnation comes from hypnotized patients who are regressed to past lives. The problem is that information obtained under hypnosis is notoriously inaccurate. Hypnotized people are prone to confabulate - i.e., to make stuff up. They seek to please the hypnotist by telling him whatever he wants to hear. And many hypnotized subjects report past lives that seem to be clearly fantastic - such as having lived in Atlantis or other (presumably) mythical locales. While some hypnosis cases may be more difficult t0o dismiss, most seem to be the product of wishful thinking and an overactive imagination.

4. Reincarnation is often claimed to be a suppressed part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but there is no good evidence for this. Many-lives enthusiasts like to quote isolated Bible texts out of context and to claim that a formerly widespread belief in reincarnation was suppressed by a conspiracy of religious leaders. This seems to be no more than the equivalent of an urban legend, based on a misunderstanding of the Biblical materials. For instance, when people are quoted as wondering whether Jesus might be the ancient prophet Elijah, they are not expressing a belief in reincarnation; they are speculating this way only because Elijah was said never to have died at all, but to have been taken up to heaven alive. Similarly, when people ask Jesus if a man who has been blind from birth is being punished for his sins, the question does not reflect a belief in karmic debt, but the belief (at that time) that a child could sin while still in the womb. Like most conspiracy theories involving the Bible, this one is of very doubtful historical validity.

I have not heard very good answers to these points. Usually reincarnation advocates get rather vague when confronted with moral, logical, or evidential objections. For instance, when asked how "you" will remain "you" after all your memories have been erased, the pro-reincarnation folks engage in hand-waving about "the essential soul," which somehow remains constant despite all the different personas it adopts and discards. Perhaps this answer is meaningful to some people, but it means nothing to me. If the soul is something other than our own identity - our memories, thoughts, feelings, character, aspirations, convictions, etc. - then what exactly is it? I understand the idea that the soul is different from (and more than) the ego, but is it supposed to be different from everything that we are? And if it is, then how is it really "us" at all?

Anyway, who knows? Maybe there is such a thing as reincarnation, and I'm just too dense to understand it. Or perhaps it works by a very different mechanism.

I suppose we'll all find out eventually, one way or the other.

Stealing faces

What is ITC? The term stands for Instrumental TransCommunication, and it is an offshoot of EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena). Essentially, the idea is that the voices and images of the deceased can be captured via technology - the voices on audio recording equipment, the faces on video gear. All around the world, there are people who are convinced that the sounds and images they pick up on their equipment are proof of life after death.

Although I think there is good evidence for life after death, I have been and remain skeptical of ITC and EVP for a variety of reasons. One reason is that many investigators in this field seem all too willing to accept the most dubious evidence, and very unwilling to address serious criticisms.

A case in point is found on the Web site of World ITC, the largest organization of ITC enthusiasts. It is the record of correspondence between a skeptical critic and the two Webmasters. 

Unfortunately I cannot link directly to this story, because the ITC Web site uses frames. If you want to read it for yourself, go to the World ITC homepage, then click on "For skeptics and realists" on the left-hand navigation bar (scroll down). Then select "Mr. X story" from the next navigation bar that comes up.

Mr. X (a pseudonym used by the Webmasters for someone who apparently was writing under his real name) challenged the ITC supporters over a photo that appears on their homepage. The photo supposedly depicts an engineer named Mueller in the afterlife, and was taken from a TV screen. Mr. X wrote,

The "evidence" provided on this site alone is completely laughable. Take for instance the pic of the dead Doc Mueller on the front page - it's the same frikkin pic as the alive one, but with his glasses photoshopped off. What a laugh!

Later he elaborated,

I believe that you may THINK it isn't a hoax but I can assure you it is - I spend a good deal of my time spotting a lot better hoax pictures than that one. I could go to the trouble of overlaying the two faces over the top of one another if you like, so you see that the shadows appear in the same places. But there is no need to as it is as plain as day. The person who removed the glasses in photoshop didn't didn't bother removing the shadow to the bottom right of the right eye that was caused by the frames of the glasses.

The ITC folks did not have any particularly convincing answer to this, and the experiment of superimposing one picture on top of the other seemed so simple that I decided to try it myself.

First I copied the two photos from the ITC homepage. For simplicity I will call them LiveMueller (a black-and-white portrait shot of the gentleman) and GhostMueller (a monochromatic bluish image of Mueller's face on a TV screen). These photos are shown below. Click any image to enlarge it.

I then went to work on GhostMueller. I decreased the brightness and upped the contrast for better visibility. I rotated the image to align it with LiveMueller, and resized it to fit LiveMueller. I tried to compensate for the distortion of the image, which resulted from the TV screen shot being taken at any angle. To do this, I flattened the face vertically somewhat, expanded its lower left corner, and reduced its upper right corner. Finally I rendered GhostMueller semitransparent and superimposed the image on LiveMueller, matching the two images as closely as possible.

As you can see for yourself, Mr. X was quite correct. The shadows do match up exactly, and though the frames of Mueller's glasses were removed, the shadow of the frame is still visible on his face. In the comparison below, I have outlined the matching shadow patterns and other parallel contours.

The other noteworthy difference between the shots is that GhostMueller is showing a bigger smile; his upper teeth are exposed. But if you look closely, you will see that the curvature of his upper lip is unchanged. Clearly the teeth were either pasted in from another photo or simply painted on. Note that the open mouth of GhostMueller would have affected the position of his chin; the trickster avoided this problem by cropping the image so that the chin is out of frame. See the comparison  below.

How did the exchange with Mr. X end up? Rather badly. The ITC advocates made a few rather limp arguments - that software like Photoshop was not available in 1980 when the GhostMueller photo was received, that the photo was obtained by trusted friends of theirs, and that the other evidence on their site is overwhelming. Well, of course, photos can be retouched without the aid of a computer, so this argument goes nowhere. It's nice to trust your friends, but as Ronald Reagan used to say, "Trust - but verify." The rest of the evidence on the site may or may not be convincing, but it has nothing at all to do with this specific item of evidence.

The ITC people also asked how the "spirit image" could have gotten on a TV set if it was a fake. Well, gee, I guess someone could have shot a snippet of videotape of the still photo and then played the tape through the TV. This technology was available in 1980.

Increasingly annoyed, Mr. X wrote,

Even when faced with compelling evidence you choose to hold your hands over your ears and say LALALALLALA in a loud voice to drown out the truth. Can you not simply explain why there is a shadow on Muellers ghost face that was caused by the frames of his glasses that the fraudster who doctored the pic failed to remove?

Mr. X was understandably upset that the forum in which his comments appeared was promptly deleted from the Web site. He was so ticked off that he sent a mass-mailing email to everyone listed in the Web site's guestbook, alleging that the site was fraudulent.

The ITC folks responded that there was no fraud involved, and that they now needed to get on with their important work.

Rat tales

A few years ago there was a great deal of media hype about embryonic stem cell research and its vast potential to cure everything from Parkinson's to paralysis. Lately we haven't been hearing quite so much about it. A recently published book, Pamela R. Winnick's A Jealous God, may explain why.

Winnick presents a fascinating, albeit one-sided, survey of medical and scientific abuses of the public trust. It's one-sided because she gives short shrift to the amazing life-saving advances made by medical science in the past century. But that story has been told often enough in other books. Winnick's study shows us the dark side of progress - the eugenics movement, which advocated mandatory sterilization of "inferior" people; the infamous syphilis experiments in Tuskegee, Alabama, in which 400 African-American men diagnosed with syphilis were denied treatment for more than forty years, simply to "determine post mortem what the disease does to the human body" (p. 22); and the overhyped "miracle cures" that raise false hopes.

Embryonic stem cell (ES cell) research may fall into the latter category. What most people know about ES cell studies is that "the rats walked." That is, rats with spinal cord injuries were able to walk again after being injected with ES cells. This naturally led people to think that a cure for paralysis was at hand - an optimistic projection encouraged by celebrities like Christopher Reeve, as well as by some of the more media- savvy researchers themselves.

But as Winnick observes, the rat studies suffered from several problems that got lost in the hype.

First, rodents - unlike humans - have some natural ability to recover from spinal injuries. Thus, any comparison between rodents and humans in this area is inherently problematic.

Second, the rats who were helped by ES cell injections had only moderate injuries and retained some mobility in their hind legs (and full mobility in their forelegs). Rats with more serious injuries showed no improvement.

Third, the treatment was effective only when administered within seven days of injury. If the rat had been paralyzed for a longer period, the ES cells did no good. This suggests that the treatment would be of no benefit to people who are paralyzed now.

Fourth, and perhaps most important, ES cells have a disconcerting tendency to grow into tumors. Because these cells are "pluripotent," meaning that they have not yet acquired specialized characteristics, they can grow into almost anything. In one series of tests, 25% of rodents injected with ES cells developed fatal tumors. In other  studies, the rats were routinely killed for postmortem examination before enough time had elapsed to allow for tumor growth, leaving unanswered the question of whether or not tumors would have developed.

These drawbacks to the research were rarely acknowledged in public. Instead, scientists and their supporters drew a rosy picture of a revolutionary advance in the treatment of spinal injuries - a new day about to dawn.

Why all the hype? Winnick persuasively argues that the drug companies involved in this research saw an opportunity to jack up their stock prices through favorable media coverage. Since many of the leading researchers in this field owned stock options in these companies, they stood to benefit from a big market move. Hype also allowed the drug companies to persuade California voters to fund ES cell research to the tune of $3 billion, a sum the cash-strapped state could hardly afford.

Meanwhile, considerably more promising results have been obtained using non-embryonic stem cells, also known as adult stem cells. (The latter term is somewhat misleading, inasmuch as non-embryonic cells include those taken from the umbilical cord.) By 2003, adult stem cell treatments were being tried on human beings, not just rodents. Doctors in Portugal and South Korea have claimed significant results in treating patients with spinal injuries, using adult stem cells. Whether or not these early studies will pan out remains to be seen. But it is hard to escape the conclusion that ES cells have been unduly promoted, while adult stem cells have been unfairly ignored. Money, politics, and media hype have all played a role.

Perhaps it will turn out that ES cells do have valid medical applications. But clearly, the hype about a miracle cure for paralysis and other disorders was premature and overblown. And the real victims are the people suffering from paralysis, Parkinson's, and other medical problems.

It's good to give people hope - but not false hope. Pamela Winnick's book is a timely reminder of this fact.

Ready or not

Guy Lyon Playfair has an interesting essay on a reformed skeptic (so to speak) named L. David Leiter, who offers some insights into the psychology of hardcore skepticism.

Leiter is all for what he calls ordinary skepticism which 'acts to refine and improve scientific enquiry', but 'organised skepticism' struck him as something very different and rather alarming. Its adherents, he noted, tend to be people 'whose mental processes are continually and rigidly out of balance, in the direction of disbelief'.

What particularly worried him was that organised skeptics tended to be pretty ignorant about the subjects they were hoping to debunk. Some would even deliberately avoid reading anything that was contrary to their views as if they were afraid of being contaminated...

His most interesting finding was that all the hard-line skeptics he came to know personally (getting on quite well with some of them) admitted that they had had 'an unfortunate experience with a faith-based philosophy, most often a conventional religion'... They had lurched from one extreme to the other, embracing science as the ultimate non-faith- based philosophy but unfortunately doing so 'with one thing no true scientists can afford to possess, a closed mind'...

[A skeptical friend] contributed generously to [an] on-line lending library, offering books of his own for loan on a number of subjects other than skepticism including religion, parapsychology, UFOs and even creationism. Leiter asked him how many [skeptics] had availed themselves of his offer of access to his private library. The answer was - 'None'. His friend had come to suspect that some of his fellow skeptics 'may actually have a phobia about reading material that is contrary to their own views'.

When I was a skeptic, the only books I read about the paranormal were skeptical works by people like James Randi,  Martin Gardner, and Carl Sagan. I remember once going into a New Age bookshop at a friend's insistence, and feeling intensely uncomfortable there. The "strange" titles and covers of the books, and the general atmosphere of "irrationality" (as I perceived it), made my skin crawl. I couldn't wait to leave. I certainly didn't buy any of the books, and I doubt I even opened one. 

In retrospect, I did have "a phobia about reading material" that ran counter to my deeply engrained - but inadequately grounded - views. Perhaps I feared that my entire belief system would crumble if I allowed the smallest opening for the "irrational." A worldview is a powerful thing; it provides meaning and focus and a sense of control, a sense that the world is understandable and can be managed. A threat to one's worldview can precipitate a crisis of meaning. No wonder I was scared of investigating "the other side," or even giving it a hearing.

But the thing to remember is that any such crisis is more apparent than real. Losing one's worldview can be temporarily disorienting, but in most cases the mind begins to construct a replacement paradigm almost at once. And often, the replacement is more fulfilling and more satisfying (intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually) than the outmoded views one has left behind.

Still, if a given person is not ready to make this jump, don't press the issue. Everybody operates on his or her own schedule. It's not a question of what people "should" do, but of what they feel ready for. You know the old adage: When the student is ready, the teacher appears.

Ha

Browsing in a bookstore today, I looked at Jon Stewart's America. Stewart is the host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show, and America is a parody of coffee table books about American history.

The back of the dust jacket is festooned with blurbs attributed to famous dead people like Abraham Lincoln and Cicero, all of whom are recommending the book.

One of these fake quotes made me laugh:

"This book is similar to my works in that anyone who reads it will be an asshole for at least a month afterwards."   - Ayn Rand

Yawn

There's a new "scientific" study of near-death experiences, in which "scientists" claim to have explained away the phenomenon as a neurological reaction in which a person starts dreaming while awake. Naturally, "reporters" are playing up the story - for instance, in USA Today.

Why the promiscuous use of quotation marks in my intro paragraph? Because science, scientists, and reporters are all supposed to be about one thing: facts. Yet this new theory fails to explain (or even acknowledge)  the most interesting and well-documented facts of the NDE. The "scientists" did not even consider these facts before formulating their theory, and the "reporters" didn't bother to undertake the most rudimentary research, which would have uncovered these facts.

What facts are these?

1. Many people who have experienced an NDE had no measurable brain activity at the time. In some cases their brains were being carefully monitored in an operating room, leaving no room for doubt that all significant brain wave activity had stopped. In the famous Pam Reynolds case (discussed in the above-linked Web page), even the activity of the brain stem - the most primitive part of the brain and the last part to shut down - was monitored and found to be nonexistent at the very time when Pam was having her NDE.

2. In many cases, people who have had an NDE bring back information they have no normal way of knowing. They can report what was happening in the ambulance or operating room - specific details, such as the equipment used, the words spoken, and any mishaps that occurred. Sometimes they also accurately report on what loved ones are doing at that moment, even if the loved ones in question are miles away.

3. NDEs are also known to change people's outlook on death, and often lead them to reevaluate their priorities, institute moral improvements in their lives, and seek out knowledge, love, and spiritual insights. Dreams and hallucinations seldom have any such effects.

4. There are rare but well-documented cases of people blind from birth who reported experiencing vision for the first time during an NDE . They were able to substantiate these reports by describing what they saw - things they could not have known by their four working senses, even if they had been conscious and not comatose at the time.

5. NDEs exhibit striking similarities from case to case, across cultural barriers and even over the centuries. (Medieval NDEs were reported. In "Ascent to the Empyrean," Hieronymus Bosch painted souls ascending into a tunnel that led to a bright light.) If an NDE were only a kind of dream, why would everyone's dreaming be so similar? 

Bosch, "Ascent to the Empyrean" (click to enlarge)

(For a comprehensive overview of the facts of NDEs, see  http://www.near-death.com/evidence.html .)

The sleep theory of NDEs is just another attempt to explain away the phenomenon by fitting it into a materialistic box. NDEs are profoundly threatening to those who hold a reductionist worldview. These people have to make the phenomenon go away, and they will cobble together any hypothesis that can convince the uninformed that it answers all the questions. In this instance, the researchers themselves must know that their theory does not address the main facts ... but they are counting on the public not to know it.

This is not science, but advocacy. It's also boring, because we have been down this road so many times before.

To these sleep researchers I would say, "Wake me when you come up with a theory that actually fits the facts."