Consilience: An African Science Podcast

I'm very pleased top announce that as of today, I am an official contributor to a real podcast from Africa, by Africans, about science!

That's right, ladies and gentlemen! This afternoon we officially launched with the very first episode of Consilience: An African Science Podcast. 

My esteemed co-contributors (co-conspirators?) are, as you might expect, Michael Meadon, of Ionian Enchantment, and Angela Meadon, The Skeptic Detective.

Unfortunately due to Apple's regulations you won't see us in the iTunes podcast directory yet (it takes a few weeks), but feel free to subscribe to our RSS feed for your weekly dose of African scienciness!

(Better yet, use Google Reader and Google Listen. Just sayin')

TMI About BMI

I don't know what this means.

If you've ever been anywhere near a gym, personal trainer or fitness magazine, you have, no doubt been exposed to the notion of Body Mass Index (BMI). It's a simple calculation that produces a number that allegedly defines how fat (and therefore healthy) you are. Awesome, right?

What Is It?

In essence it's a proxy, a rough way of estimating how much of your body-mass is made up of fat tissue. It works like this:

Your mass in Kilograms divided by your height in Meters squared:

Ideally, the result should be between 20 and 25. Otherwise you would fall somewhere on this scale:

It's that easy!

Smell too easy to you? Yeah, me too.

What's Wrong With It?

Well the most obvious shortcoming is that it tries to quantify something (body fat percentage) without actually measuring that thing. This would be understandable if it was prohibitively difficult to measure body fat. If that were the case, it would make sense to use some other trick as a proxy - an alternate measurement that can provide reliable information about the thing you're interested in.

So we have two claims now:

1. Body fat is too difficult to measure directly.
2. BMI is a reliable proxy for body fat.

Let's take them one at a time.

Measuring Body Fat

As with most things, the whole idea of fat is more complicated than we might think. Firstly, there's more than just one kind of fat. Actually there are three kinds. When it comes to the kind of fat which, when found in excess, is strongly correlated with all sorts of health risks, the one we're talking about is Abdominal or Visceral Fat. That's also the one that piles up on your belly (or hips & thighs if you happen to be of the female persuasion). So that's also the one that will most likely be of interest to people going to the gym.

Visceral Fat

When it comes to measuring the fat content of your body, there are actually quite a few different ways of doing it, ranging from the impractical to the useless. And some others.

On the impractical side of things, we have the Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry technique. This method involves a full body scan using two different X-rays in order to construct an image of your body's composition. Although this is an excellent tool for finding out exactly how much fat you've got, it's cumbersome and expensive. It's not exactly something you can do at home, or even at the gym. A qualified radiologist has to do it, not a personal trainer. And access to this sort of technology is better reserved for people who need it for medical purposes - like measuring bone density in patients suffering from Osteoperosis. Chubby-checking is probably low on their list of priorities, unless you're in obvious danger.

Skin-fold technique.

On the useless end is the skin-fold technique. As the name suggests, a section of skin is pinched with a pair of calipers, and its thickness is measured. While this is a perfectly good way of measuring the quantity of Subcutaneous Fat in your hypodermis, that's not the fat we're looking for. Visceral Fat doesn't live there.

But there is a ray of hope, and it comes in the form of a infra-red light! A beam of old-fashioned IR light can penetrate the skin and muscle tissue of your upper arm and, in doing so, reveals the quantity of Visceral Fat stored inside the muscle! Now, as we said, people tend not to store much fat in their biceps, but it's a pretty reliable extrapolation from the quantity of fat in your bicep (as compared to a statistical average) to the quantity in your abdominal region.

Fat Scanner Booth

The clear advantage of the IR beam technique is that it's reliable, inexpensive and easy. it can be done with a hand-held device, by a chimpanzee wearing spandex (or a personal trainer). Although it's not the sort of device you'd be likely to buy for home use, odds are your gym has at least one lying around. (If you live in South Africa and go to Virgin Active gyms like I do, that little Discovery Health booth that measures you in all sorts of ways, and records the results on your account, has one of these devices built in.)

Right, so, measuring body fat isn't really all that hard. Although getting a precise reading is difficult, it's easy enough to get a good, reliable result.


Reliability of BMI

Here's the thing: BMI was originally developed as a statistical heuristic for comparing relative body fat levels in populations against each other. And it seems to be pretty good at that. But it wasn't really ever intended for use by individuals as a diagnostic tool.

Firstly, it's based on some pretty heavy-handed assumptions about distribution of body fat in relation to height and mass. While it may describe the average person fairly well, outliers (like athletes, for example) will be poorly represented: weight-lifters generally register as "Obese" on the BMI scale (30 and over), while marathon-runners register as "Underweight" (BMI 16 - 18.5).

In addition, the BMI classification difference between Overweight and Normal doesn't seem to be supported by epidemiological data. There's no difference in life expectancy between those two groups.

The list goes on. BMI has its uses, but it's not really meant to help you track your own, personal health. It sucks at that.

So Then?

Essentially, if you're interested in tracking your body fat percentage as a metric contributing to your own health, it's probably best to steer clear of using BMI. Rather go with direct body fat measurements instead.

Better yet, talk to your doctor about what steps you can take to manage your health. Ask how much exercise you should be be doing, and whether or not you should see a Dietitian (NOT a Nutritionist!) about managing your diet. No website or magazine can give you a reliable estimate of how healthy you are.

And please remember that personal trainers, however muscly they may be, are not medically trained. If they were, they would be working in medical practice, not in your gym. That usually doesn't stop them from offering all kinds of advice on nutrition, supplementation and even medical interventions. You should take their advice on how many reps to do on the leg-press machine, but take everything else with a grain of salt. And when in doubt, check with your doctor.

Cell-phones and the Brain

I know it's popular to pick on established institutions and point out how much they suck lately. I'm going to resist the urge to do that, and simply point out on example of how a generally good institution, Scientific American, seems to have lost the plot.

(before I start it's disclaimer time: although I no longer work for a cellular operator, I'm a fan of cellular technology in general. So while I may have some emotional bias in this area, I try very hard to be rational about it - it's not like my livelihood depends on it or anything.)

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last ten years, you've no doubt come across the claim that cell-phones are somehow bad for your health. The most popular claim is that it somehow causes brain cancer.

While there's still scope for long-term epidemiological studies to provide further insight, the best data we have so far suggests that there is no such effect. And if there is an effect, it's probably so small as to be virtually indistinguishable from chance.

Not only that, but the whole idea that cell-phones could do any kind of damage like that is highly implausible. They just don't work that way.

For a more comprehensive look at the issue, head over to Steve Novella's Neurologica Blog. He knows way more about this than I do.

However data never got in the way of a good health scare, and misinformed people have been making a fuss over the health risks of cell-phone radiation as long as there have been cell-phones. And it's not a small fuss either - people have been losing their goddam minds over this. It's becoming a real problem!

Given that the whole cell-phone health concerns thing is such a hot-button topic right now, why the hell would a publication that has a reputation for being a bastion for reason and rationality such as Scientific American publish a steaming pile of bullshit like this: "Cell phone emissions change brain metabolism - By Katherine Harmon"?

What's the Story?

In summary, this reports on a study being published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (how they got into that publication is a mystery to me). The study is an experimental one in which they expose healthy human subjects to cellphone radiation for a bit, then run them through a PET scanner to see what effect it had on the brain's glucose metabolism. And guess what? They found an effect.

Wow! That's hectic, right?

No. It's bullshit, and here's why. Without going into any deep analysis on their results, I see two huge problems with this study.

Problem the First

This was an experimental study in which they recruited volunteers to participate. Not 100 000 volunteers. Not  10 000. Not even 1000. Those would be pretty good studies. No, they recruited 47 volunteers. Forty seven.

I don't have to be a professional scientist to know that a sample of 47 is way too small to produce any meaningful results. All you need is one anomalous result and the whole graph is thrown out of kilter. That's not enough people!

Problem the Second

They found that the brain glucose metabolism in areas of the brain close to the active antenna were"significantly higher". What do they define as "significantly"? Seven percent. That's right, seven percent.

I don't have to be a professional statistician to know that 7% is not significant. It's around what you'd expect to see with random noise in the result. And considering they had such a small sample (forty seven!) that noise ratio would probably be even higher!

So What Am I Saying?

This study has produced practically nothing. At best this might be considered an interesting preliminary result, prompting further study. But I think even that would be generous. I don't think it's interesting at all - it looks like a negative result to me.

That said, I can't really fault the researchers here. Despite their willingness to speculate wildly on all sorts of ways cell-phones might be killing us, at least they're doing science (albeit bad science).

I don't even blame Katherine Harmon. While her piece was a little alarmist, she at least made an effort to include some sceptical opinion in there. While I think it leans a little too far towards the false balance side of things, at least there was balance of some sort.

No, the person I blame is the idiot Scientific American editor who put that sensationalist headline on the piece. It's clearly deliberately provocative. And thanks to that guy (or girl), the cell-phone radiation cranks will be all over this shit like teenage white girls on Justin Beiber. We won't hear the end of it!

Thanks for nothing, dumbass!

Holy Crap! 2012!

Apocalypse

Yes, I know, this topic has been done to death elsewhere, but I thought it might be fun for me to try my hand at it too. Hopefully it'll be fun for you also.

Okay, so what's the deal about 2012?

There's a popular belief that the world as we know it will end next year, in 2012. Some versions of the story suggest that it will happen specifically on the 21st of December. While doomsday prophecies are nothing new, this particular date, 21/12/2012, seems to be acting as a lightning-rod for a vast array of different foretellings of disaster.

I'll look at some of the more popular predictions in depth, but first let's try and figure out why this date in particular seems to have gotten into the minds of the eschatological amongst us.

The Mayans Predicted the End of the World

Right, so, centuries ago, ancient Mayans kept a calendar that is still regarded as being a very good one. It was all very complicated and clever, and even included a fancy decimal system for measuring smaller units of time within larger ones, and so on.

That calendar comes to an end in the 21st of December 2012. Obviously that means the world is ending on that day, right?

Long Count

Let's think about that for a minute. In Western society we use the Gregorian Calendar. It's also a pretty good one; it's complicated and clever and even includes a fancy decimal system for measuring smaller units of time within larger ones, and so on. About eleven years ago everyone in the world who uses the Gregorian Calendar had to stop writing the current year as "1999", and instead had to use a different digit to represent the thousands column of the date: "2000".

A thousand years before that, the Gregorian Calendar didn't exist yet, but it's predecessor the Julian Calendar did. One day, roughly 1011 years ago, everyone who used the Julian Calendar had to add an extra digit to the date in order to express the current year: they went from "999" to "1000". The hundreds, tens and units columns rolled over to zero, and a new column, the thousands, clicked over to 1.

That's what happens to the Mayan Calendar on 21/12/2012: the Long Count Calendar's largest column (called the B'ak'tun) ticks over to zero, initiating a new, previously unused column to click over to one. That's all. It's just a function of the decimal system in action, clocking over to a new column. No biggie.

But it's the Mayans' calendar, right? Maybe we should ask them whether they think the ticking over of the Long Count is a prediction of the end of the world.

(YouTube Link)

Right, so the Mayans didn't predict the end of the world. Not in 2012 or at any other time. Doomsday prophecies clearly weren't as important a part of their culture as it is a part of ours. Interpreting the "end" of their calendar as a prediction of the end of the world is foolish at best, and an outright lie at worst. So knock it off.

But Planet X!

One of the many apocalypses (is that the correct plural?) predicted by some to take place in 2012 is the appearance of the mysterious Planet X - a major planetary body somehow bound to our Sun that will pass through the inner solar system wreaking havoc upon the Earth, either by a direct collision or just gravitational or tidal perturbation.

This isn't a new idea, in fact 2012 is just the latest in a long line of dates put forward for this inevitable catastrophe. So what is Planet X?

Not a Planet

The term "Planet X" is one used by some astronomers to describe a planet in our solar system that was predicted to exist, but had not yet been observed (and therefore not yet named). In the past, both Neptune and Pluto were referred to as Planet X before they were observed and officially named. The Planet X referred to in these prophecies is neither Neptune nor Pluto, but rather another supposed planetary body that real scientists either haven't discovered yet, or are somehow keeping a secret from everybody.

Some sceptics might recognise this Planet X is the one often called "Nibiru" by the Ancient Astronaut Theory cranks (although as far as I know, the big names in Ancient Astronauts, Zecharia Sitchin and Michael Tellinger, aren't involved in the whole 2012 thing, a lot of their cohorts and fans most definitely are). The Nibiru notion goes that our sun has a companion object, either a large, massive planet or a brown dwarf star that's on a large, highly elliptical orbit. That orbit brings Nibiru into the inner solar system every so many centuries, and while it's here, it causes all manner of catastrophes.

That all sounds very interesting and terrifying. But what does the science say?

Nada. Not a thing. There's no evidence whatsoever of such an object existing. And if it did exist, and it was only a year away, not only would professional astronomers be able to see it by now, but amateur astronomers (such as myself) would be able to see it too. On any given night there are literally thousands of telescopes pointed at the sky, all of which would be capable of detecting such an object. Yet not a single person has reported seeing it. Not one. Are all those amateur astronomers also in on the conspiracy? Are they all just missing a giant fucking planet in the sky? Or did someone make this planet up?

Occam's Razor tells us which answer to go with. (Someone made it up.) Of course the cranks have plenty of photos of what they claim to be Nibiru, but to date, every single one of those has been shown to be either fake, or a misinterpreted image of something else entirely.

(It should be noted that there is an ongoing question as to whether the Sun does have a far-out, massive companion object, often referred to as Nemesis. But that object wouldn't ever come close enough to the Sun to cause any trouble to the other planets. If it exists, it's so far away that its existence is still in question... that should tell you something)

But There's an Alignment of Things and a Polar Shift!

No.

There's a cluster of different claims about the Earth coming into some sort of "alignment" with the other planets in the solar system, the centre of the galaxy or all sorts of other things which will either cause some sort of "polar shift" or bathe us all in deadly radiation or something. This is the one that was the basis for the movie "2012".

Variously, this story goes that in 2012, all or most of the planets in the solar system will line up, causing an unprecedented effect of combining all the gravitational fields in a row, which will exert a torque on the Earth, flipping it over on its side. Which would obviously be a bad thing.

Okay, so there are two ideas wrapped up in there. Let's pull them apart.

Idea 1: There will be a major planetary alignment in 2012. Nope. That one's just wrong. These sorts of alignments are pretty common, and they've happened a number of times during history, but there are none scheduled to occur in 2012... just the usual conjunctions that happen every year.

Idea 2: A planetary alignment of this kind could change the rotational axis of the Earth by exerting a torque on it. I'm not a physicist, so I stand to be corrected here, but the Earth is a sphere (more-or-less). Its own gravitational pull has forced it into that shape to ensure a pretty even distribution of mass. In order for another object to exert an appreciable torque on the Earth, there would need to be something for that force to grab onto - a major inequity of mass distribution. But there isn't one. There just isn't.

Of course there is some effect that the moon has on the Earth with its tidal forces, but that effect is so small it takes millions of years to become noticeable. The only reason we know about it at all is through very precise measurements using lasers bounced off reflectors on the moon's surface.

And, as mentioned in the previous point, these alignments have happened millions of times in the Earth's history. This effect has never happened before... why would it happen now?

Okay, but there was another aspect to this whole "alignment" thing - the alignment of the Earth with the centre of the galaxy or something. What does that even mean?

The thing is this: if you take any two objects and draw a line between them, they are aligned. By definition. So yes, the Earth will align with the centre of the galaxy in 2012... because it's aligned with the centre of the galaxy all the time. Even right now! Oh noes! It's an alignment! Run!

But Betelgeuse Will Explode!

This is a fairly new one. In the last couple of weeks there's been a news story circulating through the mainstream media that the star Betelgeuse will explode in 2012, fulfilling the Mayan prophecy.

Okay, so what's the deal here? Will Betelgeuse explode? Yes. Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star, one of the largest and brightest stars known, and in the top ten brightest objects in the sky. If you look at the constellation Orion, you'll notice that the star on his left shoulder has a reddish glow... that's Betelgeuse.

Red supergiant stars are stars many times more massive than our Sun that are nearing the end of their lives. They've spent most of their nuclear fuel and lost a lot of their mass... their gravity isn't strong enough to balance out the energy produced in their cores, so they puff out to many times their previous size. This is the last stage in a star's life before it explodes in a spectacular Supernova.

Will Betelgeuse explode in 2012? Maybe. The red supergiant phase of a star's life typically lasts for about a million years or so. The problem is we don't know if Betelgeuse has just entered the phase, or if it's been in that phase for a million years already. We just can't tell at this point. So, the odds of Betelgeuse going supernova in 2012 are around one in a million. If you want to narrow that down to the day, the odds of Betegeuse going supernova on the 21st of December 2012, that's about one in three hundred and sixty five million. You have way better odds of winning the lottery on that day.

When Betegeuse explodes, will it cause the end of the world? No. Paleontologists do theorise that some of Earth's mass extinctions in the past may have been caused by nearby supernovae, but Betelgeuse isn't close enough to us to pose a threat. Betegeuse is, however, close enough to give us a brilliant show. When it does blow, it'll likely be comparable in brightness to the moon, and may even be visible during the day.

Okay, So There Will Be Some Sort of Spiritual Change in 2012

Spiritual Person - Probably

This is an amusing claim. What's happening here is that some of the former doomsday prophets have started to see holes in their own prophecies. They recognise that when the 22nd of December 2012 rolls around, and the world didn't end, they'll have a lot of explaining to do. So they're backing away from making hard, testable claims, and instead are softening their predictions.

One that I've heard several times is that there will be some sort of "spiritual change" or "shift in consciousness" on that day, that will somehow have lasting consequences that may not be felt immediately. You see what they did there? They've made their claims so vague and wishy-washy that they've become completely untestable - in fact, they've become entirely meaningless. They can't offer evidence to support their claims, but also we can't disprove them.

These sorts of claims are what we like to call "not even wrong". They're just not sophisticated enough to even examine critically. So sure, there may well be a spiritual change or consciousness shift on that day... whatever those things mean. But you can make the same claim about any other day, and be just as right, wrong or not even wrong.

So Then What?

Since none of these predictions are likely to bare any fruit, I'm willing to offer a prediction of my own. December 21st 2012 will be a day like any other: the sun will rise, the sun will set. The tides will go in and out. People will die, others will be born. Just like every day before it, and every day after it. I, for one, will probably spend that day thinking about the fact that it's the summer solstice here in the Southern Hemisphere, and probably doing some Christmas shopping. Care to join me?

Cognitive Dissonance and Smoking

An important skill for a sceptic is the ability to identify cognitive dissonance in yourself, and in doing so, hopefully apply reason to the situation and thereby resolve it. I've managed to identify an instance of cognitive dissonance residing in my own brain, but despite my best efforts at reasoning through it, I can't seem to resolve it.

Let's start by defining the term: cognitive dissonance is a state in which you simultaneously hold two mutually exclusive ideas to be true. The classic example (and surprisingly relevant to my topic) is the person who knows that smoking significantly increases their risk of contracting lung cancer, but decides to smoke anyway. Such a person has found a way of resolving that dissonance, which usually involves convincing themselves of a lie... in this case, that for some imagined reason, their own odds of contracting lung cancer from smoking are diminished to such an extent that the short-term gain of the nicotine buzz is worth the long-term risk of a horrible death.

My own case of cognitive dissonance also relates to smoking, although I myself am not a smoker. Here's my dilemma:

I am, and have always been, pretty strongly anti-smoking. Not only am I convinced by the evidence of harm it causes, but I also find the whole thing pretty distasteful. I hate the smell, I dislike the appearance of it, and I find it unfair that smokers are accorded all sorts of privileges (like the right to take as many breaks during a work day as they like, so as to feed their addiction). Not to mention the fire hazard.

It's because of my strong dislike for it that I am somewhat grateful to the late moron, Manto "The Genocidal" Tshabalala-Msimang. Thanks to her new legislation placing strong restrictions on smoking in public, I'm not forced to deal with the unpleasantness of it as often as I used to be.

Here's where the dissonance comes in.

The problem is that Manto used a scientific argument to justify the implementation of her anti-smoking laws. And it just so happens that that argument had about as much scientific merit as all her arguments: none at all.

Specifically she cited the "fact" that second-hand smoking (aka 'passive smoking', the act of sitting near someone who is smoking) has shown significant increase in risks of lung cancer and other smoking related illnesses. While on the surface it stands to reason that this should be true, there has been quite a lot of research done on this question (of varying quality). The literature isn't at all clear on the link between second-hand smoke and lung cancer (or any other disease) risk. Given that ambiguity, it's not really justified to claim it to be an established fact... doing so is basically a lie.

So there's my dissonance. On the one hand, I have a vested aesthetic interest in supporting the anti-smoking laws. But on the other hand, the reasons given for those laws are bullshit. And I'm not comfortable with supporting bullshit.

Given that South Africa is supposedly a liberal democracy, I can't support the notion of using the mechnisms of state to restrict people's behaviour without just cause. As long as a smoker isn't actually harming the people around him, he should be able to puff away to his heart's content. If he wants to take the risk of dying an early and excrutiating death, that should be his prerogative. As disgusting as I think it is, I kinda have to support people's right to smoke.

(There's a line that should be drawn here, and this is when the people smoking are in my family. If my spouse, parents or children were to smoke, that could have a knock-on effect on my life and wellbeing, and I would feel justified in being upset about it. I'm talking here about strangers and other people whose wellbeing doesn't directly influence mine.)

But there's another issue here: public health.

There is a substantial precedent of governments taking steps, using the mechanisms of state to manage threats to the health of society as a whole. For example: obligatory vaccinations.

Vaccines are a hot-button topic in sceptical circles. We've started seeing resurgances of vaccine-preventable illnesses in first-world countries as a result of people failing to vaccinate their children. In South Africa there is a precedent of making certain vaccinations mandatory, like in the case of the current rabies outbreak in Gauteng. It's my understanding that the CDC in the United States, and similar government organisations in other countries, are sometimes granted special emergency powers in order to deal with high-risk epidemics and outbreaks.

Since there is a precedent for government intervention on preventable illnesses, why shouldn't the government intervene in order to try and reduce instances of diseases like lung cancer, emphysema and heart disease?

I'm not talking about an all-out ban on cigarettes here. I'm talking about legislation which could make it sufficiently difficult to smoke that a statistically significant portion of smokers will be encouraged to quit, thereby reducing their risk of lung cancer. In other words, legislation not unlike South Africa's current anti-smoking laws.

I haven't seen the statistics on smoking rates since the introduction of the new anti-smoking laws (if such data exists), but I imagine there could potentially be an impact there. If I were a smoker, and the number of places I was able to smoke was reduced to rainy balconies and smelly smoking-rooms, I might be more strongly motivated to quit.

Right, so, to recap: I like the anti-smoking laws for selfish, aesthetic reasons. I can't support those laws on the basis that they impede freedoms without adequate justification. But I could see a potential alternate set of justifications for those laws which would, at least, be precidented, if not commendable and desirable.

Of course more research is needed. If the data does bare out my suspicions about the whole public health thing, that it would resolve itself. But until then, I'm stuck with these two ideas duking it out in my melon when I'm supposed to be concentrating on more important things.

In Defence of SETI

In the last few weeks I've heard a series of interviews with Massimo Pigliucci as he plugs his newly published book Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk. I haven't read the book yet, but I intend to someday. It sounds like a fascinating read. I do have one issue with it, however.

In one of the interviews (I forget which one it was now), Massimo was asked to explain his position on SETI (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence). Massimo classified SETI is "almost science", which he justified by saying that although SETI is employing scientific methods in their endeavour, their hypothesis (that extra-terrestrial intelligence exists) is virtually unfalsifiable. They could literally search for a million years without producing a single result, and still not have falsified their hypothesis.

I think that's a fair assessment, and I'm sure most (if not all) SETI researchers would likely agree with it.

But Massimo didn't stop there. He went on to describe the Drake Equation as being an inadequate theory, or even hypothesis. To which my response is "Yeah... so?"

(Before I carry on, I want to point out that Massimo isn't the only one who has advanced the arguments I'm dealing with here. Not by a long shot. I hear these things thrown back and forth between sceptics and other scientists and philosophers all the time. And they make my blood boil every time. I'm only picking on Massimo because his was the straw who broke the camel's back, and inspired me to finally sit down and write this post.)

The Drake Equation is a list of variables which, if each could be assigned an approximate number, should spit out the likely number of intelligent species in our galaxy right now. Some of the variables (by Frank Drake's own admission) are inherently unknowable, such as the average life-span of a technologically sophisticated civilisation. We only have one such civilisation as an example: ours. And by the time its life-span has ended, SETI won't exist anymore.

Others are knowable, but currently beyond the reach of our ability to determine, such as the average number of Earth-like planets around stars in our galaxy. We're getting closer and closer to that one, but we're still a way off.

Frank Drake often recounts the anecdote of his creation of the equation that bears his name: it was an agenda for a conference in the early days of SETI. It wasn't ever intended to to be either a hypothesis or a theory. It's little more than a way of framing the questions to be asked (and hopefully answered) as part of SETI's progress. It's a useful and important way of thinking about SETI, but it's not a hypothesis. SETI's hypothesis is far simpler: "Extra-terrestrial intelligence exists". That's it.

Another common argument Massimo put forward in the interview was this: SETI assumes that all life in the universe must be like us, and they are therefore not looking for anything other than life like us. They're only looking for radio transmissions, and are only interested in Carbon-based life.

This argument is complete bullshit.

SETI researchers will be the first to acknowledge the fact that extra-terrestrial life could take any form. While we know that Carbon-based life works (because the only form of life we know of is Carbon-based), there's no way of knowing how many other forms of life may exist elsewhere in the universe, or even here on Earth. Because we only know of one kind of life so far, that's what we're looking for. When it comes to life forms of some unknown type: how would we go about looking for it? How can you search for something if you don't know what it looks like? Nobody is assuming that all life must be Carbon-based. But nobody knows how to look for life that isn't Carbon-based.

Horta: not Carbon-based

Secondly, SETI isn't only using radio astronomy to search for signals. That was the first tool that was used (by Frank Drake himself who pointed his radio antenna at the sky back in the 60's), and is probably still the most widely used tool for SETI research. This choice is based on two things:

1. Our atmosphere is opaque to most of the elecromagnetic spectrum. Only sections of the radio and visible light parts of the spectrum can get through largely unhindered.
2. Radio astronomy is cheaper than optical. It's a lot easier to build giant radio detectors (like Aricebo or the VLA) than it is to build giant mirrors for optical telescopes. And since SETI has always had funding issues, thrift is a virtue.

Cheap

That said, Optical SETI is a real thing. Nobody's ignoring that part of the spectrum. SETI researchers who can get their hands on funding for it are going at it as hard as they can.

SETI isn't assuming that any intelligent species out there must use radio (or even light) to communicate with us. Once again, they're going with what they know: radio and light. Humans use radio and light for communication, so we know that it works, and there's a possibility that ET would know that too - and might decide to exploit it the same way we do.

Once again, it's a practical concern. Nobody is claiming that ET would only use radio to talk to us. Nobody is even claiming that ET would talk to us at all... we just hope they will, and we hope they'll use something we can detect.

The third claim Massimo made (although less strongly) is that SETI hasn't changed their methods at all since Frank Drake's first attempt in the 60s.

This claim is also complete bullshit.

Although it's certainly true that the biggest weapon in SETI's arsenal is the same one Drake used: radio astronomy, as I've said, SETI has added at least one weapon to that arsenal in that time: Optical SETI. Also, SETI is constantly looking for ways of refining their search: Figuring out new tricks and techniques for optimising their telescope time, and figuring out what they should be looking for.

SETI has been utilising data and ideas generated by the more mainstream ongoing hunt for exoplanets as a guide, and coming up with insightful and hopefully fruitful new methods. For example: spending more time surveying stars that line up with the plane of Earth's orbit around the sun, since inhabitants of those stars would be more likely to have detected our presence through the transit and wobble methods that today's exoplanet hunters employ. And therefore would be more likely to try and make contact with us, if they're so inclined.

The SETI Institute has a whole staff of Phd's whose job it is to figure this stuff out. They literally sit around all day trying to come up with new and useful ways of improving their search, new things to look for, what we should do about it if we ever pick up that signal and being totally awesome.

If you're genuinely interested in learning more about what SETI actually does, as opposed to what the general public opinion about them seems to be, I highly recommend listening to Are We Alone - a weekly podcast and radio show produced by the SETI Institute and hosted by Dr Seth "The Alient Hunter" Shostak.

Ensign Shostak waiting for a signal

And guys, please. Do a little reading before attacking people like SETI. Those guys are far too nice to stick up for themselves. They've got a hard enough job as it is. Can you imagine working in a career knowing that there's a significant probability that you may never find what you're looking for in your lifetime? Especially since finding what you're looking for could be the most important discovery mankind has made ever. Cut them a little slack, okay?

Hypocrites

Are you a hypocrite? Let's find out.

Do you believe any of the following things?

• Evolution didn't happen, or if it did, it doesn't explain the origin of the humankind.
• Climate change is all hype.
• Homeopathy works.
• The age of the universe is measured in thousands of years, not millions and certainly not billions.
• The Earth is flat, not spherical or spheroid.
• Quantum physics explains the existance of the soul.
• The pyramids could only have been build by aliens. Humans of that period weren't clever enough to pull it off.
• People can bend cutlery using only the power of their mind.
• It's possible to predict the future reliably by interpreting celestial signs, tarot cards, gazing into crystal balls or just thinking about it really hard.
• Vaccines cause autism.

If you do believe in any of those things (or anything similar), and you're reading this, congratulations! You are a hypocrite!

Why? I'll tell you!

The methods used to learn, parse, understand and apply the principles used to create computers and the Internet (the thing you're using to read this right now) are the very same methods used to understand the following reliable bits of understanding about the world:

• The Theory of Evolution (including the notions of common descent and natural selection)
• Anthropogenic Climate Change
• The Germ Theory of Disease
• The Big Bang Theory
• The Theory of Gravity (both Newtonian and the theories of Relativity)
• Quantum mechanics
• Structural and material engineering.

And so on.

So, I propose this: either rethink your belief in those crazy notions, or do the rest of us a favour and stop using the Internet - since it clearly doesn't fit into your "worldview". Also: stop using gravity.

Kthxbai!

Some Things I've Changed My Mind About

I argue that the defining characteristic of someone dedicated to the sceptical paradigm is the singular ability to change one's mind and opinions based on the presentation of new evidence. As soon as you're bound to a particular conclusion, you're no longer acting sceptically, and have become an ideologue.

It's the process of scepticism that's important, not the conclusions it leads you to. The "truths" about the world that scepticism reveals must, necessarily, be secondary - because they're always provisional, and should, ideally, constantly be re-evaluated based on new information.

With that in mind, I think it's a valuable exercise, as a sceptic, to pat oneself on the back from time to time, by identifying some of the things you've changed your mind about, based on new evidence or arguments coming to light. I hope to make this a regular series, but since this is the first instalment, I'm going to look at some of the biggest issues I've changed my mind about in my life.

UFOs

I've always been fascinated by space. Before I knew how to spell the word, I wanted to be an Astronomer (either that or a Paleontologist, which I also couldn't spell at the time). I was mesmerised by Saturday night presentations of Star Trek and Space 1999 (even though I barely understood them at the time). I was also transfixed by Carl Sagan's haunting speeches in the Cosmos series about the possibilities of extra-terrestrial civilisations, and the hope that we might someday communicate with them.

Somehow or other (probably through my school library) I came across the notion of UFOs and alleged encounters with extra-terrestrial beings. Being the credulous lad I was, I bought it. I was thrilled and terrified at the prospect that visitors from other planets were visiting us, and I eagerly awaited the day official First Contact would happen.

It never did.

One day, while looking for awesome pictures of Star Trek ships online, I stumbled across a website that astounded me: www.badastronomy.com. Phil Plait's simple, elegant and humourous explanations exposing the flawed assumptions, innaccurate information and simple logical refutations of the things I had believed were overpoweringly persuasive. After only a few days' worth of reading, I had no choice but to reverse my belief in UFOs. The evidence and logic where too clear not to.

Alternative Therapies

In my early twenties, one of my first full-time jobs was for a company planning a health and fitness expo. It was my job to cold-call possible exhibitors and then meet with them to try and get them to buy some floor-space at the expo.

I was terrible at it.

Nevertheless, I was encouraged to seek out anyone and everyone selling something relating to the pursuit of health. Since I didn't know any better at the time, I basically opened up the Yellow Pages to "H" and started calling. On the whole, I found the purveyors of alternative therapies to be far more willing to meet with me, and to buy floor space. During those few months I met with a bevvy of homeopaths, naturopaths, massage therapists, acupuncturists, iridologists and assorted other well-dressed people with fancy-sounding titles (including one lady who informed me with a giggle that she enjoyed sitting in her hyperbaric chamber between appointments with her "patients")

Like this. Seriously.

I recall being taken aback when I met with one man, an actual MD, who asked what sort of other exhibitors would be present. He was outraged when I mentioned the word "homeopath", and the sales call ended then and there. I hadn't the foggiest idea why at the time.

It would be years before I learned about the distinction between medicine and alternative medicine (aka: not medicine), and finally came to understand that doctor's reaction. I learned that the faith I had placed in advertising was misplaced... a faith that even three years of studying advertising at college hadn't shaken. I learned to mistrust people claiming to be authorities, and instead evaluate the claims on their own merit.

God

I was raised a Christian. Not the evangelical, biblical literalist kind. I was raised in a traditional presbytarian church. I didn't resist my religious indoctrination at all - I trusted my parents and other elders to give me the right information. I went to church every Sunday. I sang in the choir. In my late teens, I even qualified and practiced as a Sunday School teacher for a while. I bought it.

A likely contributing factor to why I bought it was the somewhat moderate nature of the doctrine I was fed. I was simultaneously taught about the scientific explanation of the origins of the world and about the biblical account of creation in Genesis. I was told that there was no contradiction between the two, since the former was scientifically accurate, and the latter was more of a metaphor, used by God to explain to bronze-age people the fact that he created the universe, not so much how he did so.

After my introduction to organised scepticism via Bad Astronomy, I did a lot of reading. It was a lengthy process in which I systematically evaluated and then abandoned a lot of my former beliefs. The last big one to go was God. For the better part of a year I remained ambivalent on the question of God. I wasn't a Christian anymore (although I still called myself a "Philosophical Christian", whatever that means"), but I wasn't ready to abandon the whole idea. I couldn't bring myself to adopt the label "atheist" or even "agnostic".

Only after reading The God Delusion was I able to shake off the invisible sky daddy once and for all. There was no magic bullet - no single problem that I wasn't able to reconcile. But if I had to choose the argument that I found most persuasive, it was Russel's Cosmic Teapot.

Jesus (twice)

After adopting the label of 'atheist', I wasn't sure what to do with my ideas around the historicity of the bible as a whole, and Jesus in particular. Just how fictionalised were the accounts contained therein? How much was metaphor, exaggeration, copy-error and pure fabrication?

The first person who helped me to answer this question was Robert M. Price, in his appearances in the Bible Geek episodes of the Infidel Guy Show podcast. Through Price I learned that whole sections of the bible had been copied from other, pre-existing documents; that there's little to no archaeological evidence supporting any of the "historical" narrative in its pages, and that at least a few serious biblical scholars doubt that there ever was a historical Jesus.

I found his arguments persuasive, and came to conclude that there likely was no historical Jesus. Or, at the very least, the one described in the bible had been so distorted that he likely bore no resemblance to any actual, one person.

Not an actual person

More recently, I've read some of Bart Ehrmans' work. In Jesus, Interrupted he argues that a substantial portion of the biblical account of Jesus' life was likely fictionalised, but that with careful scrutiny quite a lot of it can be determined to likely be historically accurate - suggesting that Jesus probably was an actual guy, a teacher of sorts who started some shit in ancient Palestine.

My interest in the bible and the origins of the Christian religion is ongoing. One of the things I'm particularly interested in is evaluating the claims about certain traits that Christians claims are unique to them. Are they unique to Christians? Where do they come from? Are the useful or not? Fascinating stuff.

Free Will (twice)

A tough pill to swallow has been the existence of free will. I think we all assume, probably automatically, that we have a will of our own, that is somehow independent of our circumstances and environment.

But in a deterministic universe (as I now believe to be the one I live in) it simply can't be so. Decisions are made in the brain, which is a physical structure that conforms to deterministic physical laws - it can't do otherwise. Even in a quantum universe, where randomness is always a factor, randomness isn't the same as free will. Free will, so defined, is a persistent illusion.

Don't think about a yellow beetle.

I've recently called this conclusion into question. Not so much because I think my assumptions about it are wrong, but rather because I think I've been defining the terms incorrectly. If, instead, I consider free will to be my own ability to make decisions free of imposition from other causal agents (in other words: other people) I'm happy that it's free enough to be considered 'free'.

Assuming I'm not under the influence of another person's manipulations, my decisions are effectively free. That's not to say that my brain isn't still a deterministic machine, subject to environmental influences - it's more of a metaphysical redefinition of 'freedom' in this context.

I can live with the fact that my brain will do what it does, because it can't do otherwise. But when I feel that my choices are being manipulated or forced by another person who is deliberately limiting my options, I start to get annoyed. That's when my 'free will' is being compromised.

It's because of this, that I'm starting to re-evaluate my long-held position in favour of some form of communism. I'll keep you posted on where I get to on that one.

Homeopathy Awareness Week

Yay! It's everyone's favourite week about nothing at all!

So, in celebration, I would like to repost this for your entertainment and edumacation:



So what's the harm?

In case you have no idea what I'm talking about, here's my Back to Basics post.

And just for fun, here's the one where I (metaphorically) punched a homeopath in the face.

Sceptics in the Pub!

Yes! It's that time again! Well, almost... it will be in about two weeks time.

Joburg sceptics will be gathering in a pub to be all sceptical!

This month we're back in the East at Dros on the corner of Modderfontein and Van Riebeeck roads, Edenvale.




View Larger Map

Fight!

A few months ago, in a private forum, I tried to engage in a debate with conspiracy theorist and climate crank Ivo Vegter on the subject of his nonsense climate change denialist rants.

I quickly found myself out of my depth. A combination of my own lack of familiarity with both the climate science and denialist pseudoscience, and Vegter's skill with the combo of logical fallacies Changing the Goal Posts, Gibberish and a bunch of others thrown in forced me to back down.

Fortunately, there are those among us who are more skilled than I at this sort of thing. Such a person, Michael Meadon of Ionian Enchantment, has stepped forward to engage Vegter on his nonsense.

Although I missed the initial exchange of fire on Twitter (cos I was on a beach somewhere when it happened), I recommend you read Michael's first broadside. And then Vegter's frenzied and limp response. (a game of Name That Logical Fallacy, anyone?)

Although I'm certain that Vegter himself is too ideologically bound to his position to budge, I do look forward to seeing a balanced, well-informed and rational counterpoint to his ravings being available on the Internets.

Grab the popcorn, folks. This one's gonna be awesome!

Put This In Your Face

Michael Meadon over at Ionian Enchantment has published a sceptical tour de force: In Praise of Deference.

Money quote:

The scientific method, far from denying human failings... exists exactly because of them: it is because the human mind is so prone to error and bias that we need this vast, expensive and seemingly inefficient set of institutions, norms and practices we call “science”.

Go on. Put it into your eyes. It will make them happy!

That's How I (Blog) Roll!

African science and sceptical blogs! Yay!

• 01 and the universe
• Acinonyx Scepticus
• Amanuensis
• Ambient Normality
• ASSAf Blog
• Botswana Skeptic
• Bomoko and other nonsense words
• Bullshit Fatigue
• Communicating Science, the African Way
• Defollyant's AntiBlog
• Effortless Incitement
• Ewan’s Corner
• Geekery
• Grumpy Old Man
• Hello Universe, This is Nessie
• Ionian Enchantment
• Irreverence
• Limbic Nutrition
• Lenny Says
• McBrolloks
• Nathan Bond's TART Remarks
• Orion Spur
• Other Things Amanzi
• Pickled Bushman
• Prometheus Unbound
• Psychohistorian
• Reason Check
• Retroid Raving
• Scorched
• Shadows Hide
• Stop Danie Krügel
• Subtle Shift in Emphasis
• Synapses
• Tauriq Moosa
• The Science Of Sport
• The Skeptic Black Sheep
• The Skeptic Detective
• Turn 2 Reason
• Word of the Blog

Note: The picture of toilet paper is, in no way, intended to imply anything about the content of the blogs listed above. I just think it's funny cos "blog-roll" sounds like "bog-roll". 


I know.

Carnival Time!

This month's Carnival of the Africans is up over at The Skeptic Detective. Go thither!

Answering "Dr" Prinsloo

My comrade-in-reason Angela, the Skeptic Detective, alerted me to an anomalous article she picked up on her Skep-dar. On his website named 'Biocura' a Homeopathic "doctor" named Johan Prinsloo (Jnr) has written a lengthy article in which he claims to address the questions and challenges to Homeopathy posed by sceptics.

He's certainly not alone in this attempt, and ordinarily I wouldn't have given the page a second glance, but Angela pointed out that he refers to lil' ol' me in his article, by name. I'm far too arrogant to let that slide, so here begins my response to his article.

(Update 2009-09-03: Since I posted this, Prinsloo has made some non-trivial changes to the text of the page. Luckily I saved a copy of the text as it was when I was composing my response. You can find that here. Google Cache has a copy of it too, that's here.)

He begins the piece with this:

"It is against my principles to debate the validity and efficacy of Homeopathy with ignorants."

Setting aside his attempt to turn an adjective into a noun, thus coining a new term, he then contradicts this assertion by launching into a tirade of no less than 5600 words attempting to do exactly that: debate the validity and efficacy of Homeopathy with "ignorants".

He then defines an "ignorant" as follows:

On this page, reference to the word ignorant shall mean :
Any so-called scientist or "expert" that expresses him/herself on the subject of Homeopathy, it's validity or efficacy, but who -

• Is not a qualified Homeopath;
• Has not studied Homeopathy to the extent that a Homeopath does;
• Has not conducted extensive research on Homeopathy in accordance with the scientific principles of Homeopathy under the supervision of a qualified Homeopath;
• Does not possess sufficient experience in the practical application of Homeopathy in a clinical setting;
• Who is not registered as a Homeopathic Practitioner in South Africa and / or does not meet the requirements for such registration;
• Who is not an expert on applied Homeopathy.(*)With respect to Homeopathy, that is an ignorant in my opinion and someone not worthy of my time.
  

(*) Howard Stephen Berg, The World's Fastest Reader, defines an expert as "someone who has read at least 25 books on a particular subject".

You see what he's doing here? This is a textbook case of the Argument from Special Pleading. In essence, he is asserting that only somebody with special knowledge (knowledge that he, himself, just happens to possess) is qualified to engage in any sort of meaningful discussion on the topic of Homeopathy. He seems to be of the opinion that this will allow him to summarily dismiss the arguments of anyone who does not already possess it as being worthless.

(Before we go any further: isn't it interesting that he excludes any and all Homeopaths who are not South African? What's that about?)

Let's play a game. Let's take his definition and see if we can apply it to another situation. I hereby coin a new term, I shall call it "Flarpojip". A Flarpojip is a person who is:

• Is not a qualified film and television producer;
• Has not studied buses to the extent that a film and television producer does;
• Has not conducted extensive research on film and television productions in accordance with the scientific principles of film and television producer under the supervision of a qualified film and television producer;
• Does not possess sufficient experience in the practical application of film and television producer in a commercial setting;
• Who is not registered as a Film and Television Producer in South Africa and / or does not meet the requirements for such registration;
• Who is not an expert on applied film and television production.

By Prinsloo's argument, someone who is a flarpojip can have no valuable positions when it comes to films or television. Just about any film critic you may encounter (like Barry Ronge) shouldn't be paid attention to, and you would be justified in refusing to discuss last night's episode of Lost with any of your friends or family who happen to be flarpojips.

It is interesting, then, that Prinsloo includes in his website a page he calls "Legal Stuff". Is Prinsloo a qualified attorney or advocate? If not, what justification does he use to post anything of a legal nature on his website? Has he even read 25 books on the subject? I doubt it.

Forgive my brief foray into an Argument from Absurdity... but I take it my point is made. It's not necessary to hold any sort of formal qualifications in a subject in order to have valuable and accurate information on it. While I can't guarantee that the information I possess about Homeopathy is either valuable or accurate, I can still present it in the context of an argument, in the interests of the pursuit of an adequately precise approximation of the truth.

And, unfortunately for Prinsloo, since I am the one advocating the Null Hypothesis, the burden of proof falls more heavily on him to substantiate his extraordinary claim: that Homeopathy works.

Let's move onto his argument.

No wait... looks like there's some more logical fallacies first.

Under the section entitled "Allow me to explain", Prinsloo asserts that

"the vast majority of medical practitioners and specialists have good working relationships with the South African Homeopathic fraternity and there exists a healthy mutual respect between the medical professions and the Homeopathic Profession in South Africa."

An interesting claim, to be sure. I'd be interested to see the evidence Prinsloo has to support it. But wait... he doesn't offer any.

Instead he continues his rant against "ingorants", and makes this alarming claim:

"Unfortunately, as with anything else in this world, there is always a small number of self-centred individuals with their own agendas and probably backed by some pharmaceutical company or grouping, that has to infect our healthy source of drinking water with some unwanted pest or virus."

Yikes. I certainly hope he was speaking metaphorically there. The suggestion that there is some sort of Big Pharma conspiracy working to contaminate the water supply is worrying. If he was speaking metaphorically, however, it's only slightly less worrying: it means that despite all the qualifications he claims to possess, Prinsloo can't seem to string together a coherent analogy... at least not one that makes any sense to me.

He then makes references to the three (yes, three) institutions who offer post-graduate courses in Homeopathy in South Africa. He points out that these courses are offered exclusively to medical post-grads... in other words, real doctors.

What he's attempting to do here is called the Argument from Authority. He's trying to usurp borrow an air of legitimacy by demonstrating that these otherwise respectable institutions and medical practitioners have offered some measure of endorsement to the enterprise of Homeopathy. Unfortunately, we can't infer that legitimacy at all. Only three institutions offerring courses seems a little low, and Prinsloo declines to mention any of the so-called medical practitioners by name who he claims support Homeopathy.

So not only was that a fallacious Argument from Authority, but it was a bad attempt at one too.

Okay, on to the actual argument.

No, wait. It seems we're not there yet. In the section titled "The creators of filth" Prinsloo takes some more time to cast scorn upon 'ignorant' experts who appear on television, radio and print media attempting to discredit Homeopathy. It seems that these authorities are not to be listened to, according to Prinsloo.

So let me get this straight: We should be paying attention to the experts who agree with Prinsloo, but not to those who don't. The sole differentiator between them, it seems, is the fact that they either agree with him or not... not on any other professional grounds. Interesting.

Okay, next stop... the argument.

No wait, another delay. First we must stop at the section labelled "But why not?" in which Prinsloo summarises and restates the article so far. Nothing new here. Let's press on to the argument.

So, we're about a third of a way through, and we finally see something that seems to actually be about Homeopathy: the section entitled "Highly Diluted Immeasurable Substances". Hooray!

This is where it starts getting confusing.

Prinsloo asserts that not all Homeopaths advocate the Homeopathic "Law of Infinitessimals", or the dilution of preparations to the point where not a single molecule of active ingredient remains. (Actually he says that "The issue of dilution of Homeopathic substances has NOTHING to do with Homeopathy." That's a pretty blatant falsehood, but I'll generously chalk it up to hyperbole, and give Prinsloo the benefit of the considerable doubt). Again he declines to provide any evidence of this, but luckily I happen to know how to use Google. It seems that there really is an ongoing debate over this amongst Homeopaths. I find this encouraging... it means that not all Homeopaths are quite as insane as I thought. Thanks for enlightening me, Prinsloo!

Perhaps I've misjudged Prinsloo. Maybe he's not a complete idiot.

Oh dear.

"one milligram / 1mg means one part per million(1:1,000,000) of the active ingredient".

Um, no. It seems I have been too generous. One milligram (1mg) of ingredient diluted into 1mg (one milligram) of solution is a ratio of 1:1. It seems that Prinsloo suffers from the same inability to count zeroes as his super-diluting colleagues do.

Prinsloo then gives us a brief, inadequate and inaccurate lesson on Homeopathic dilution codes. The innacuracy stemming from the error I mentioned above. It seems that they don't teach arithmetic at Homeopathy School.

Then he says

"You will find that most Homeopathic medicines on the open market fall within [the range of 1:10 and 1:10 000]. Now where is the "highly diluted", immeasurableness in that?"

Another interesting claim. I wonder what he bases it on. Unfortunately I'll have to continue wondering, as he yet again declines to provide any citation. (I guess since he's the expert, we're just supposed to take his word for it.)

Next stop, the section labelled "Lack of Scientific Research in Homeopathy".

To summarize Prinsloo's argument here, he claims that it is humanly impossible for any given practitioner to possibly read any and all research papers that are published, and that some selection bias is at work. Therefore, when a medical practitioner claims that there is insufficient research into Homeopathy, he is only revealing his own selection bias, in that only Homeopaths would take the time to read the research papers on Homeopathy. (That's a pretty heavy summation... Prinsloo seems to lack the rhetorical sophistication to use terms like "selection bias". Perhaps he prefers to invent new words, like using "ignorant" as a noun, or "murking".)

Surprisingly, this argument is actually logically viable. I quite like it. Or rather, I would like it if it weren't profoundly misinformed. ("profound" is my new favourite word. I wonder if I can turn it into a noun.)

The thing is, we are now living in the 21st century. Research papers and scientific journals are still published on paper, but fewer and fewer people use them that way: because its inefficient. It's far easier and quicker to use a search engine, like Google. That's what I use. Alternatively there are services that archive reputable journals digitally, and make them available to the public online... one such service is PubMed. Any seeker after truth with adequate access would likely use one of these resources before making a claim that research into Homeopathy is infrequent, of poor quality or sparse.

In fact, quite a few seekers after truth have done just that, and guess what they found? That there is a considerable amount of research into Homeopathy. They also found that the trend in this research suggests that the better the study, the smaller the purported effect, and the best studies show that Homeopathic preparations perform no better than placebo.

So, Prinsloo: good argument. But wrong.

Now we get to the good bit. It's good because I'm in it: "The IGNORANTS" (his allcaps, not mine).

Prinsloo starts by making this curious statement:

"The one thing that always catches my attention is the fact that generally the skeptics of Homeopathy also tend to be anti-religion or at least skeptical of religion." (emphasis not mine)

Funny... I've noticed the same thing. Here's my question: so what? He doesn't appear to draw any connection between that observation and whether or not the criticisms we sceptics offer are viable. A poorly executed attempt at Poisoning the Well perhaps? Who knows?

He points to the South African Skeptics forum as being the lair of "another typical bunch of ignorants". For those of you who are not familiar with it, it's pretty much what is claims to be: a web-based forum for South African sceptics. I've posted there from time to time, but I don't participate as often as I'd like to.

First, he cites the post I made about my Homeopathic Suicide Attempt. He offers a very erudite and well-measured evaluation of my argument:

"Quite amusing".

Seriously? That's all you have to say? I thought it was hi-freaking-larious! You don't even want to take the time to address the glaring errors and logical fallacies I employed in those videos? Fine.

Prinsloo then picks on a user called johanvz (with whom I am not acquainted. Johanvz commented on the thread wothout offerring any real criticisms of Homeopathy. I suppose that's why Prinsloo chose him: Prinsloo doesn't seem to like dealing with actual arguments.)

Then... oh then... Prinsloo makes the mistake of setting his sights on the aforementioned Skeptic Detective. Oh dear.

He starts by referring to Angela's jokes about Christianity. Again, so what?

Thankfully, he doesn't stop there. He quotes a comment she made in some or other article he posted online, in which she cites some of the examples in which Homeopathy was shown to be ineffective (specifically James Randi's expose of Jacques Benveniste's flawed research back in 1979).

Prinsloo's rebuttal (paraphrased): "James Randi and Jacques Benveniste are not Homeopaths". Wow. That was awesome. Tell us again how that makes Angela's comment innaccurate? I think I missed that part.

In the next section, "A Few Surprising Facts on Research in Medicine", Prinsloo lists about thirty "facts". He doesn't mention any citation for those "facts", nor does he provide any context on how they relate to his argument. I guess we're just supposed to assume that they support it, and that we should take his word for them.

In the following section, Prinsloo quotes an article from the Royal Society of Medicine which states the (pretty obvious) claim that research papers submitted by teams who recieve funding from the pharmaceutical industry will tend to demonstrate a degree of bias in favour of the intervention being tested. Again, he does so without making any allusions to how (if at all) this study supports his argument or refutes those of "ignorants".

It seems that at this point in the article, Prinsloo has grown as weary of writing as I have of critiquing his babbling. Instead of concluding his position, he finishes off by posting another lengthy article from the Alternative Medicine Digest (a clearly impartial source) ill-informedly (see what I did there? Turned an adjective into an adverb!) dismissing the concepts of "science" and "proof". And again, Prinsloo neglects to demonstrate the relevance of it.

So, what have we learned from all of this?

Well, I learned that the Law of Infinitessimals isn't adhered to by all Homeopaths. I also learned that if his thinking is an incoherent as his writing, it doesn't surprise me at all that "Doctor" Prinsloo has devoted his professional career to the advancement of a nonsense pseudoscience, and the unethical "treatment" of patients with intervetions that have no reasonable support for their efficacy.

Oh, and we learned that you don't have be an expert terminologist in order to be able to make up words.