South African Crank of the Week: Danie Krugel

Like last week's Crank of the Week, Michael Tellinger, Danie Krugel has made a name for himself in the media peddling some pseudoscientific nonsense.

Unlike Tellinger, however, I am now convinced that Krugel is not simply a self-deluded ideologue, but is, in fact, a deliberate fraud.

Trying to locate a better barber

That's an assessment I only made very recently, though. I'm not a detective or a court of law, so I can't make any legal claim that his actions are fraudulent. What I can do, however, is apply my sceptical insights and skills to the material available to me, and draw a conclusion based on that. And it what it looks like to me is an intentional fake.

Let's look at the history of the case.


Danie Who?

Danie Krugel is a former police officer from Bloemfontein who more recently became employed doing security work at the University of the Free State.

In 2007 he made an appearance on the bastion of journalistic integrity, Carte Blanche, self-applying the superhero moniker "The Locator", and claiming that he could find any person, living or dead, anywhere in the world.


What's He On About?

It seems that Krugel invented a machine that allows him to use DNA and Quantum Mechanics to somehow track people over vast distances. Seriously. That's what he claims.

Like Spock's Tricorder. (This explains the haircut too)

On his television debut, he was claiming that he had used his device to find the victims of Gert van Rooyen, a paedophile and serial killer who was active in Pretoria in the 1980's. Van Rooyen's victims' bodies were never found, but Krugel thought his magic box invention was up to the task.

Gert van Rooyen's victims

Although Krugel's search did yield a few human bone fragments, they didn't belong to van Rooyen's victims. Didn't stop Krugel (and Carte Blanche) from counting it as a hit.

A few months later, Krugel was in the headlines again, this time for sticking his nose into the case of the dissapearance of Madeleine McCann in 2007. He used his mysterious box to point out some spots where he thought the girl's body could be. The police rightfully ignored his interference, and nothing came of it. They also ignored a raft of other chancers using their gimmicks of choice to try and find little Maddie and make a name for themselves off the McCanns' tragedy.

Krugel seems to prefer little, blonde,
white girls.

Not long after, Krugel made some noise about adapting his device for medical purposes: using it to detect cancer inside people's bodies. Then he went quiet.

I don't know if he was active or not, but some years passed when there was no mention of him in the media. Until last week - the 5th anniversary of Maddie's disappearance.


Why Is He A Crank?

Well, because he's promoting nonsense. Not only is there no known mechanism through which his machine could work, but he also refuses to let anybody take a good look at it. In fact, only recently has he allowed anyone to see it in operation. Here's the video:

In case you didn't want to waste your bandwidth on it, let me give you a précis.

It starts off with Krugel sitting behind a desk, wearing an aluminium helmet and with a grey caterpillar on his upper lip. He goes into a long schpiel about the police ignoring his evidence in the McCann case. He says that he hopes they'll pay attention to him now "...for Madeleine".

Seems sweet and sincere, right? Sure. Why not.

He goes on to do a demonstration of his invention. First he takes a hair-brush which he says belonged to Madeleine McCann. He removes a hair from the brush and fastens it to a plate with a little hole in it. Behind the hole is what looks like one of those little LED presentation pointers, which Krugel calls a "laser". He doesn't explain how information can be passed from the hair to the "laser".

Krugel fires his "laser" across the hair and near to another device he describes as a "grabber". The grabber is literally a black box with a little blue button on it. He makes no mention of how the grabber works, only that it somehow picks up the "frequency" of the hair. Note he doesn't shine the "laser" at the grabber - he shines it past the device. He doesn't explain how information can be transferred from the "laser" to the grabber.

Then he takes the grabber and puts in on top of another device which is clearly labelled as the "KTT" ("Krugel Theory Tester", apparently). He just puts in on top of the large, circular display on top of the device and doesn't explain how information is transferred from the grabber to the KTT.

Then the camera angle changes. This is important. Up till now, he's been sitting behind a desk, with all the devices sitting on the desk in front of him. Now we're looking down, over his shoulder, as he's holding the KTT with one hand. In his other hand is the hair brush. As he waves the brush in front of the device, the needle on the KTT's display follows the brush like a compass follows a magnet (with a bit of a time-lag)

Looks pretty compelling, except for this:

Do you see it?

His left hand is hidden from view, underneath the device. Why is it there? Why isn't the device on the table? Why does he need to be touching it? 

He doesn't explain that. And I'm pretty sure I know why: he's operating some kind of switch or dial under there to make the needle move. I've watched the video many times, and because the quality isn't great, and the camera is hand-held and shaky, it's difficult to tell for sure. But it looks to me like his arm is flexing. That means his fingers are working under there. That's right: deliberate fraud.

As always, I'm willing to be proven wrong. I wrote to Danie in 2007 proposing that I assist him in doing a double-blind trial to determine the device's accuracy. He ignored it, but the offer is still open. Not only that, but if his device passes the test, I'll support his application to the JREF for their million Dollar prize. And I won't even ask for a finders fee when he wins the Nobel prize for physics.

That's right, the Nobel prize. See, Danie's device simply cannot work according to the laws of the universe as we know them today. Although he talks about it being "science", the mechanism he claims is unknown to science today. If it were real, we'd have to throw out the laws of physics as we know them, and that would entitle him to a Nobel prize.

Danie claims not to me motivated by money (as far as I can tell, he hasn't asked for payment for his services so far), which is fair. But if that's the case, why won't he publish the design for his device for free online, so that everyone can build their own KTT and find their own loved ones? He doesn't explain that either.

I was once the administrator of a website called Stop Danie Krugel. I let it lapse because there hadn't been any reports of his activites in years. Looks like it's time to resurrect it. I'll gladly accept donations to that end, if you'd like to support it. Hit me up on Google+ if you're keen.


Do you have a crank in mind you'd like me to cover in future editions of this series? Head over to Google Moderator to vote on the ones already suggested, and feel free to suggest more.

Why Michael Tellinger Is Wrong - Part 1 of N

Given the popularity of my inaugural Crank of the Week post last week, I've decided that I'll need to spend some more time examining Michael Tellinger's claims more closely.

One thing: I'm not going to spend any money buying his books. I'm going to rely on the material he makes free on the Internet (of which there is a lot) and syntheses of his ideas from sources I trust.

Pictured: Buyer's Remorse

If you think my analyses could benefit from having his books around, I welcome donations to that end. If you bought a copy of Slave Species of God, which you're embarrassed to have sitting on your bookshelf, but can't bring yourself to throw away, here's your opportunity to get rid of it. Ideally I'd prefer an electronic copy though, if such a thing exists.

If you'd like to do that, drop me a message on Google+ and we'll make arrangements.

Right, with that out of the way, let's get started.

One of the claims that both Tellinger, and his intellectual progenitor Zecharia Sitchin, promote is that of a geographic pole shift caused by a gravitational interaction with the planet Nibiru 10 000 years ago or so. This claim doesn't exist in isolation, however - it's taken as fact (by them) in supporting many of their other claims.

So if we were to show this claim to be false, the rest of them should all come tumbling down like a house of cards. Getting them to admit that would be another matter altogether.


Why Do They Make This Claim?

As far as I can tell, the genesis of this idea is in the book of Genesis itself. (lol! See what I did there?)

The premise here is that ancient mythology should be read as if it's historical fact. Since the book of Genesis contains a story in which the whole world was flooded, that must, in fact, have happened.

So what could cause a global flood? Rain wouldn't do it, because there isn't enough water to achieve it. No, the only possible cause is a tsunami bigger than any tsunami ever recorded - one capable of travelling thousands of kilometers inland and engulfing, basically, everything.

Way, WAY bigger than this

And what could have caused such a tsunami? The sudden displacement of large bodies of water.

(By now you should be starting to see the tenuous nature of Tellinger & Sitchin's logic - an idea is postulated, then taken as the factual basis for the next idea, which is then the basis for the next, and so on. But we're not there yet, so let's get back to it.)

And what could have caused such displacement? A sudden, violent event that caused the ice caps of the Earth to simultaneously shift loose from their positions, crashing into the sea and instantly melting.

What could have caused that? A violent, geographic pole shift.


A What?

Basically this is when the geographic pole, the axis along which the planet spins, changes. Sounds feasible, right? I mean, why shouldn't that happen?


The Physics

So could a gravitational interaction with planet Nibiru cause a polar shift?

Nope.

First, there's no planet Nibiru. But I'll deal with that in more detail in a future post. For argument's sake, let's presume that it does exist. Time to put on your Let's Pretend Hat. Ready? Okay.

The silliness of the hat is
directly proportional to
the silliness of the claim.

Problem is, gravity just doesn't work that way. In order to cause the Earth's crust to shift around like that, the gravitational field from the other planet would need something to 'grab onto': a structure of significant mass that would make the planet irregular in shape. Although the Earth does bulge a little at the equator, the variance there just isn't enough to provide the torque necessary to move anything. You'd need a mountain several orders of magnitude taller than Mount Everest (or even Olympus Mons - the tallest mountain in the solar system). And there's no way a mountain that large could ever have existed on Earth.

It didn't work in Star Trek either

So what could do it? Well, according to Dr Stuart Robbins of the Exposing PseudoAstronomy blog and podcast, you could only do this if you had something like a tractor beam from Star Trek: a highly focussed gravitational (or whatever) field aimed specifically at one part of the planet.

And since there's no known mechanism for such a device, and since there's no apparent reason why any super-advanced civilisation (they'd have to be considerably more advanced than Sitchin's Annunaki are supposed to be - a Type II civilisation, or close to it) would want to do that, I think we can safely dismiss that notion.

A quick point here, the geographic pole has wandered a bit over time. Between that and plate tectonics, we know that the polar axis hasn't always been where it is now, in relation to the continents as they are today. But these changes are small and very, very slow. Certainly not significant in recent prehistory, or even since the first humans evolved.

Also, we should be careful not to confuse the notions of a geographic pole shift, which doesn't happen, and a magnetic pole reversal, which happens all the time - geologically speaking. A magnetic pole shift couldn't cause any flooding at all, and probably wouldn't even have been noticed by humans before the discovery of magnetism and the invention of the magnetic compass.


The Evidence

So what actual evidence is there that such a thing happened.

Well, there's the book of Genesis, the Epic of Gilgamesh, Unu Pachakati, Tiddalik, Khun Borom... and so on. The ancient world is full of flood myths, which Sitchin/Tellinger suggests (and then assumes to be fact) is evidence that there was, in fact, a global flood catastrophe - and that those myths are the historical retelling of that event.

Sounds plausible on the surface, right?

Sure it does. Except for the fact that there's no physical evidence supporting that notion. None whatsoever. Sure, people like Graham Hancock put forward silly notions about weathering on the Sphinx and such, but none of those are accepted by people who know what they're talking about.

So how is it that all these cultures seem to share the same myth?

Well, here's the thing: human communities tend to be near water. We need fresh water to drink, and the ocean provides a ready supply of food, as well as migratory and trading opportunities. When you live close to water, there's one thing that's certain: you're going to have to deal with things like floods and tsunami from time to time. Given how destructive and often surprising these events can be, it only stands to reason that those people would record those events in their oral and written traditions.

Does that mean that all those myths must be describing the same event? Nope. Each myth could be describing a separate event, or could even consist of fictionalised or combined accounts of multiple events, rolled into one. Most of these cultures probably experienced multiple catastrophic floods in their times. Also, as cultures move, conquer or are conquered by others, and share their stories with each other, it also stands to reason that their similar myths would blend together over time. This goes a long way to explaining why, for example, the different middle-eastern flood myths are so similar in form, even if they're different in the details.

Noah or Utnapishtim? There's no need to decide.

It also explains why cultures that don't come from near major water sources tend not to have flood myths.

In fact, the notion of a global flood that affected everyone everywhere is, in itself, impossible. Even though most of the Earth's surface is covered in water, there isn't really all that much water on the surface, relatively speaking. Even if the ice caps melted completely, there still wouldn't be enough water to cover everywhere.

See all those bits that aren't blue?

So Where Does That Leave Us?

Well, given that there's no reason to believe that there was ever a global flood, there's no reason to postulate a cause for said flood.

The premise is false, the hypothesis makes no sense, the evidence is misinterpreted (or just made up) and the theory is bogus. There's no reason to accept any of it, and the whole thing, from start to finish, is pure fiction. Jenga!

In other words, when it comes to the ideas of a global flood and a geographic pole shift, Michael Tellinger is wrong.

Science As Magic

A comment Michael Meadon made on the podcast the other day has had me thinking. He was trying to annoy me by saying that the Star Trek universe has magic in it.

Science!

I dispute that assertion because in the Star Trek universe, there's (at least the intention of) a scientific basis for everything. Even the truly exotic stuff like Red Matter, weird radiation at the galactic barrier and omnipotent aliens are never meant to be magical or supernatural - they're only ever natural phenomena that haven't been properly described (either to the characters themselves, or to the audience).

Let's also not forget that Star Trek is fiction, written by fallible humans who themselves don't have complete knowledge of all science.

But it got me thinking because Michael's ignorance of the world of Star Trek mirrors the ignorance most people seem to have of our own universe. To them, science is magic.

I can understand why that's the case. The level of scientific advancement our society has made today makes it impossible for any one person to understand all of it.

To most people, even well-educated ones, a cellphone must seem like a magical thing: a little box that lets you communicate with your friends in many different ways, lets you access the sum of human knowledge via Google, and basically lets you live a life beyond the limits of your biological self. All it needs to be recharged with a ritual of connecting it to the Earth and paying it regular tithes.

But of course there's nothing magical about a cellphone. People who know things about physics, chemistry and computer science understand most, if not all, the processes that make a cellphone do the things it does. They can describe the radio transmissions it makes, the data it processes, the chemicals it uses to store energy and all sorts of other things that are beyond my knowledge of the world.

If I, a scientifically literate person who relies as heavily on my phone as I do can't understand it, what hope does someone without my skills or interests have in doing so? None. To them, it may as well be magic.

So, that being the case, is it any wonder that people are mystified by and even distrustful of technology? Why shouldn't they also embrace other forms of magic when presented to them?

If a cellphone can make invisible rays that give me cancer (it can't, but just for the sake of argument) why shouldn't a crystal pendant use some other invisible process to protect me from those rays?

Obviously

If I can't explain how the pyramids were built, why shouldn't I accept that magical aliens built them? Surely alien magic is stronger than ours.

If I can't cure cancer with chemotherapy, why shouldn't I try Homeopathy and "natural" remedies instead?

It seems obvious that the solution to this would be education. That would certainly help the the next generation, but what about those of us on the planet now? What about the people thinking that our species is too stupid to invent its own civilisation, or even worse, the ones using crystals or herbs to protect them from cancer?

I don't have the solution, but that's one of the reasons I write this blog and produce the Consilience podcast - in the hope that I can reach someone, and convince them of the idea behind this quote:

"Throughout history, every mystery ever solved has turned out to be NOT magic." - Tim Minchin, Storm

And you thought it would be Arthur C. Clarke

While proper scientists are in their labs exploring the real universe, it's up to the sceptics and science communicators to try and get rid of all the other nonsense - the cargo-cult science and other magical-thinking-derived silliness.

And if you want to watch some Star Trek on the subject, I recommend the Next Generation episode Devil's Due. Excellent stuff.

What's Up With WhatsApp?

I'm continually astounded by the fact that WhatsApp is as popular as it is. It just doesn't fit in my brain. I have strong feelings about this.

In arguing with people about it, the same points keep being raised. Let's take a sceptical look at them, shall we?

But first...

What Is WhatsApp?

It describes itself as a  "...a cross-platform mobile messaging app which allows you to exchange messages without having to pay for SMS."

So, in other words, it's an app you install on your smartphone (or Blackberry) that's intended to replace SMS by letting you exchange short messages with your contacts through a different service that, at least by implication, costs less than SMS.



So What's Wrong With That?

Well, nothing. Except that it sucks.

Let's look at how WhatsApp works.

You download and install the app on your mobile device. You set up your account by punching in your cellphone number, then it scans your device's address book looking for other people who have their phone numbers associated with WhatsApp accounts. It then creates its own little contact list where you can initiate conversations with your contacts.

Sounds pretty much like any instant messaging application, right? Right. Except for that whole phone number thing. That was a bit weird.

And weird it is. In fact you cannot use WhatsApp anywhere but on a cellular device.

What if you're sitting at your PC and you want to send or receive messages from there? No can do.

What if you're using a device with a different phone number to the one on your phone, like a tablet for example? That device needs to have its own WhatsApp account with its own number. Unless your contacts have both numbers, they can't send/receive to that device.

What if you're on prepaid and you haven't topped up your data bundle? Can it still send and receive messages? Nope. (SMS can still be received when you're out of airtime, even if you can't send).

Are your conversations at least backed up in the cloud so you can refer back to them later, if your phone is stolen or something? Nope. You can export your data manually and upload it to Google Drive or something, but you have to remember to do it.

Are there open APIs so I can get WhatsApp to work neatly with other services like IFTTT? Nope. Nothing like that.

Is it really free? I'm glad you asked. That point seems to be a matter of dispute. Going to the WhatsApp website, there's no mention of any cost, and several references to it being free. But if you go to download the app, like in the Google Play Store for example, you're greeted with this sentence:

"First year FREE! ($0.99/year after)"

You'd think they'd mention that in their FAQ, but they don't.

Sure, R7.00 a year isn't much to pay. But why pay anything at all when you can get a better service elsewhere that actually is free? (This is in addition to the charges for data used in sending and receiving messages - but that's so little as to be negligible. That's what they mean when they say "...without having to pay for SMS")

What's Better Than WhatsApp?

Well, just about everything, really. My personal favourite is Google Talk.

Let's list the features of interest here:

• Completely free. No paying for anything ever. (except the same data charges you would pay in WhatsApp, which is also a tiny, tiny amount. And that only applies when sending/receiving messages over your data network, which isn't strictly necessary)
• Use it on any device connected to the Internet: phone, tablet, PC, netbook, wristwatch... whatever. One account everywhere. People can find you using either your Gmail address or by being in your Google+ circles. Start chatting on one device, and continue the conversation on another without missing anything.
• All your conversations are backed up to your Gmail account, so you can refer back to them later. This means not having to write down phone numbers, addresses or names. Just search.
• Runs on the open Jabber protocol, which means you can use any Jabber client to access your Gtalk account. Of which there are hundreds. Open APIs let you use it for various cool other things, like updating your Facebook, Tweeting or whatever.
• Includes voice and video chat. While these use more data that just text, they're still cheaper than an actual phone call (depending on how much you're paying for data - your mileage may vary)
• Embedded in the Google universe - use the same account and contact list for Google+, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Google Latitude and approximately a floppityjillion others.

Are There Any Good Reasons To Use WhatsApp?

Not that I can see. Podcaster Tim Haak makes a good case for using WhatsApp in addition to other IM, clients which seems to work for him. But I suspect his is an edge-case.

Here's the crux of my argument against WhatsApp and for Google Talk: when I send someone a message, I want to send it to the person, not the device. With WhatsApp (like with SMS) I'm sending a message to the phone, but with Google Talk I'm sending it to the person, no matter which device they happen to be using at the time.

Communication tools are intended to enable communication between people, not devices.


So What's The Sceptical Angle?

When you're comparing two different medical interventions, the rational approach is to look at the proposed benefits and weigh them against the risks, then decide based on that.

In my assessment, the "risks" (or rather, "cost") of WhatsApp is slightly higher than that of Google Talk (again, my favourite example, but it's actually one of many alternatives), but the benefits aren't as high.

I'm not calling for a boycott of WhatsApp or anything. I think it's a pretty good tool, by 2006 standards anyway. But this is 2012, and we have far better tools available now that cost less. Unless you have a very specific reason for using WhatsApp, why use it?

(Go ahead, call me a Google cultist if you like. But you'll note that I didn't mention the new Google+ Messenger as a viable alternative, because it sucks too. Although it doesn't suck as much as WhatsApp.)

What Makes Humans Special?

A spider monkey

I see and hear this question all the time, even from scientists - in particular, scientists who study things like non-human primates, paleoanthropology and that sort of thing. Increasingly, however, that question makes less and less sense to me.

Basically, I don't understand why we need to come up with anything that distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Why should there be something like that?

I don't mean in the sense of describing Homo Sapiens as a species - there are plenty of anatomical and genetic markers for that. The question seems to be asked in a more general sense, as if humans are somehow not part of the animal kingdom, but somehow separate from it.

Reasons often listed include things like theory of mind, complicated language, abstract thought, technology (fire specifically) and so on. Granted, humans do seem to be better at those sorts of things that all the other animals (and the plants too, apparently). You'll note that those are all brain-related things, which only goes to show that our brains really are unique, at least in some respects, amongst all the animals.

But does that make us somehow special? Does it mean we're different in some really important way? People asking the question seem to think it does, but I disagree.

Problem is that distinction is arbitrary. It's as if people want to believe that we're somehow in class above the rest of life, and look to the most notable distinguishing characteristic as the defining thing that makes it so.

That seems like a pretty childish point of view to me. The sort of thing written about in ancient myths.

"And God blessed [man and woman], and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." - Genesis 1:28, King James version of the Christian Bible

An idea befitting a bronze-age nomadic culture, but hardly relevant in a society that knows as much about the world as we do today.

Better than you.

I can imagine a group of elephant philosophers sitting around trying to decide what sets their kind apart from the animal kingdom, and arriving at the conclusion that because no other animal has as marvellous a trunk, that all other species are inferior. Including those silly brown and pink apes with their pointed sticks.

Why should one, admittedly impressive, phenotypic trait somehow elevate a species above all the rest in any meaningful sense? It's one thing to consider your own species more important than the others because it happens to be your own. But to suggest that there's some objective dividing line between your species and all the others smacks of a level of intellectual dishonesty.

"There isn't a sharp line dividing humans from the rest of the animal kingdom -- it's a very wuzzy line -- and it's getting wuzzy-er all the time" - Jane Goodall

I don't have much more to say about it, other than to ask the question: why should intelligent, educated, critically-minded, modern people feel the need to distance themselves from other life-forms? It seems more meaningful to me to celebrate the similarities we share with our distant cousins, rather that drawing lines in the sand.

Help Me Choose A Crank

So my inaugural "South African Crank of the Week" post from yesterday went really well... the Tellingerites came out of the woodwork and vomited their silliness all up in my comments section.

Rude cat is rude

Thanks to each of you for the Google ads you saw - in three or four years I may be able to buy a cup of coffee.

Anyway, since it was so popular I'll definitely be doing more of those. I figured I'd ask you guys for some input on it. Which cranks would you like me to write about?

I've put a couple on a list on Google Moderator. Please head over there, vote on the ones you're interested in and suggest any others you can think of.

Thanks!

Naturally

I've touched on this one before, but I think it probably deserves a post all to itself: the appeal to nature.

This is the notion that things that are perceived as "natural" are somehow superior to other things (presumably unnatural things), simply by virtue of them being natural.

You'll most likely come across this argument when discussing food, health and clothing. I imagine because it's normal to feel a bit cautious about the things you put in and on your body - wanting to use only the best available things. And when presented with two options (of, let's say, face cream) most people would probably prefer the one branded as "natural" than the one that isn't.

Or you could end up looking like this.

And that's the key here: branding. Like "organic" and "free range", when you're using "natural" like this, it's essentially a meaningless marketing label. The implication is that 'natural' products are made with little to no human intervention.



But Things From Nature Are Good For You

Bullshit. I'll resort to the standard sceptical response to this one, because I enjoy hearing it every time. Here's a list of things found in nature (as in, not created through human intervention) that are not good for you:

• Botulinim Toxin
• Bees
• Tigers
• Destroying angel mushrooms
• Puffer fish
• Asteroids
• Black holes
• Lightning
• Ebola

This is not an exhaustive list. I think I need go no further to demonstrate that because something exists without human intervention, that it's somehow good for you.

Murder kitteh is not good for you either.

But What About Things That Are Good For You?

Well, sure. What about food and medicine that is known to be good for you? Is there a correlation between the amount of human intervention in their production and their quality?

Take two and call me in the morning

Another common example of this is Aspirin. Its benefits are well-established, both as an analgesic and as a blood-pressure management aid. Although it does have a few known side effects, they're rare and relatively minor. All in all, Aspirin is an amazing drug.

In it's "natural" state, it's found in the spiraea shrub and the bark of the willow tree. Would it be better to walk down to the river, strip off some bark and gnaw on that, rather than taking a pill for it?

In short, no. Reason being that in willow bark the salicylic acid (the bit that makes it work) has a variable distribution. In any given piece of bark, you might not get enough of the good stuff to sort out your headache, or you might have too much and overdose. There's no way of predicting the concentration of the acid with any degree of reliability.

But if chemists can isolate the active ingredient, synthesise it, and put it into a form where the dosage is constant and known (like a pill, for example), we can control the precise amount we take in, and make informed decisions about it. Hence modern pharmacology trumps herbalism.

What About Food?

In food the argument is slightly different. Here it's about using modern farming methods to produce crops with the highest nutritional content, best appearance and flavour, while keeping costs down using the least possible amount of land, fertilisers and pesticides. Conventional farmers will look to just about any practice that's been shown to be safe and cost effective so they can produce the highest possible yield of product that people will actually buy. Not only that, but they have to manage the environment of their farms - doing damage to the soil, surrounding flora and fauna or the water table would hurt them just as much as it would anyone else.

Those methods include, but aren't limited to, irrigation, selective breeding and hybridisation, genetic manipulation, chemical pesticides and fertilisers. 

Contrast that with so called "organic" farming methods, where efficiency and quality are frankly irrelevant - they take a back seat to the philosophy of it. The efficacy of the methods are unregulated and have usually been tested and found to be sub-par (as a rule, organic farmers use the same methods and tools conventional farmers were using half a century ago - you know, when there were half as many humans on the planet).

Test after test after test shows that conventional farming methods produce crops that are as good if not better than organic ones (which are usually branded as being more "natural"). That quality is measured in nutritional content, flavour and looks. There's no meaningful metric where organic farming wins.

Wild banana. Yum.

Add to that the fact that even the products made on organic farms are hardly free from human intervention. Human agriculture has been around for millennia, and over that time farmers have bred better and better food crops and livestock through selective breeding and hybridisation. Almost nothing on your plate, in your fridge or in the organic section at your supermarket bears any resemblance to the wild forms of those creatures. Our food is as much a product of our civilisation as smartphones and skyscrapers.

So Should I Avoid Buying Things Labelled "Natural"?

No. Not unless you particularly want to. I usually do avoid it, because I resent being lied to so transparently by advertisers. But in reality those products probably aren't any worse than the ones that aren't similarly labelled. "Natural" shampoo is the same as regular shampoo, but in a green bottle. If you like the product, buy it.

The notable exception here would be medicine. If it's labelled "natural", odds are it's unregulated and hasn't been properly tested. It probably wouldn't kill you but your money is likely better spent on something else.

South African Crank of the week: Michael Tellinger

I'm calling this "Crank of the Week" because it's something I'd like to write every week. It's an ambitious goal, given my dearth of blogging recently, but I'm determined (at least I am today) to make this a regular thing.

In this series, I'm going to be doing little summaries of the pseudo-science of a number of notable South African cranks - people advancing dodgy, and often demonstrably false, factual claims about the world, who have made a bit of a name for themselves in the media.

I chose Michael Tellinger for my inaugural edition because he was one of the very first cranks I blogged about, back in the day. And, interestingly, that post is still the most popular one on my blog. (The fact that I didn't write it myself is a perpetual thorn in my ego, but what can you do?)

Okay, let's get started.

Michael Who?

Look! A Rock! Aliens!
(image from www.michaeltellinger.com
used without permission)

Tellinger's been around. His only formal qualification is as a pharmacist (the height of that career seems to have been appearing in a Sentrum ad a decade or so ago as the designated pharmacist - even though he wasn't practicing at the time). His CV also includes having been a rapper in the 1980's. Word.

But we don't care about that. The interesting parts start in 2005 when he published Slave Species of God.

What's He On About?

Slave Species is essentially a plagiarism retelling of the ideas of Zecharia Sitchin. The idea goes like this:

There is another large planet in our solar system, unknown to science, named Nibiru. It spends most of its time in the outer solar system, but its highly elliptical orbit brings into the inner solar system once every 3600 years or so. When that happens, it has weird gravitational interactions with Earth, causing all manner of catastrophes including, but not limited to, geographic pole shifts.

Nibiru is also inhabited by a super-intelligent race of aliens called the Annunaki. From time to time, they've visited Earth and its inhabitants, meddling with, creating and enslaving the local apes - essentially founding the Human race, as well as laying the foundations for all our technology and our entire civilisation.

If the terms "Nibiru" and "Annunaki" sound familiar to you, you'll recognise that they are names that arise from Sumerian mythology. Sitchin and Tellinger use a creative silly wrong set of translations of ancient Sumerian texts and symbols to "prove" that just about all ancient mythology should be taken as literal, historical fact - just replace terms like "gods", "angels" and so on with "aliens", and you're all set.

Built by aliens, obviously!
(image from 
http://www.viewzone2.com/adamscalendar44.html
used without permission)

Tellinger has taken this notion a step further, applying it to the South African context. In Slave Species and his subsequent two books, he's gone touring around South Africa, looking for interesting and old archaeological sites (as well as uninteresting rocks) and making up stories about how they were built by aliens as landing pads for their spacecrafts or whatever.

Why Is He A Crank?

Well, because his ideas are demonstrably false, and yet he continues to promote them. Zecharia Sitchin promotes obviously wrong interpretations of Sumerian and Akkadian artwork (mistaking depictions of regular stars for depictions of the planets of our solar system, for instance) and claiming that these, and other, ancient people had knowledge they lacked (as well as lacking knowledge they had).

Most of what Tellinger and Sitchin say sounds reasonable and even plausible to the uninformed lay-person, but doing just the slightest bit of real research reveals it all to be nonsense.

But it doesn't stop there. Tellinger is also actively involved in the local UFO community, having organised a UFO conference late last year. In addition, he's currently trying to get out of paying his bond on a property in Midrand by suing the banks for being, um, banks. Oh, and he's just started his own political party based on a platform of communism (that he has transparently rebranded "contributionism"). How he intends to buy his way onto the ballot with his currency-free-society platform remains unanswered.

Although I haven't actually met the man, he and I do have a number of acquaintances in common. Based on what I've heard of him, seen in his videos and read in his books, my assessment of the man is that he's clearly very bright, and even a rational person. I have a hard time accepting that he seriously believes the stuff he publishes, although I can't be certain of that. He's clearly a charismatic character, and has surrounded himself with a dedicated (dare I say 'cult-like') following of truth-seekers who buy every word he says.

As a sceptical community, I think Tellinger bears watching. His influence is hardly diminishing, and his nonsense shouldn't go unchallenged.

Argumentum Ad Googlum

So, in listening to a podcast this morning, I came across an argument that I hear far too often, what I call "The Argumentum Ad Googlum"

(I'm not the first person to coin this term, but all the other versions I've found so far are silly, so I'm taking it back.)

I don't know either lol.

It's an argument used by both believers and sceptics alike, so I'm not pointing the finger at anyone in particular. Essentially the argument goes something like this:

If you do a search on Google for "Homeopathy is a scam" you get 955,000 results, but if you Google "Homeopathy is real" you get over 8,000,000 results. Therefore more people believe that homeopathy is real than those who believe it isn't.

This is wrong on several levels.

On the face of it, it's a subset of the Argumentum Ad Populum, also known as the Bandwagon Fallacy: the more people that support a notion, the more likely that notion is to be true. Suffice to say that's nonsense.

But there's a second layer to this argument's wrongness: the premise is bad. In two different ways!

The first way is essentially publication bias. All this tells you is that more people included the words "homeopathy is real" in their website than those who included "homeopathy is a scam". That doesn't tell us anything about whether or not that represents the beliefs of the population in general.

In my paragraph above, I hinted at the second way it's wrong. As sophisticated as Google's algorithm might be, it's not magic. It can't (yet) figure out what the words you type into the search box mean, only what the words themselves are.

In other words, when you type in "homeopathy is a scam", Google won't return all the websites that convey the general idea that homeopathy is not legitimate medicine, it'll only return the ones using those specific words, and not even necessarily in that order. It will also often overlook short words, like "is", "a" and "and". That means it'll include sites containing any of the following phrases:

1. Homeopathy is a scam.
2. Homeopathy is not a scam.
3. People claiming that homeopathy is a scam are themselves scammers.
4. People who hate homeopathy are perpetrating a scam.

And so on.


Even if you get clever by using Google properly, using quotation marks to ensure it looks at the exact phrase, your search would still include #3 above, which is probably not what you're looking for.

Google is an essential tool in the utility belt of every Internet user. But if you're making an argument by counting the number of results Google comes up with, you're doing it wrong.

Sorry, but there are no shortcuts here. If you want to find out what people on the Internet actually say about things, you're going to have to go beyond the Google page, and into their actual sites. Google is a directory, not a source.

Organically Free Rangified

Having had occasion to wander through Woolworths a few times of late, I couldn't help but notice the astounding abundance of food products labelled "organic" and "free range". Which is fine. Although interestingly these products tend to be priced a little higher than their counterparts that aren't similarly labelled.

Could your food be killing you?

I must admit that after the scathing rebuttles of "organic" products I've come across both on Skeptoid and Penn & Teller's Bullshit, I'd written the whole notion off as a silly marketing gimmick and simply avoided buying those products myself. My co-conspirator Angela Meadon wrote about the relative health benefits of organic food (or the lack thereof) too.

But recently I've gotten to thinking: although the "organic" and "free range" labels are effectively meaningless when it comes to American products, is the same true here in South Africa? Are the same standards applied in both places?

More simply: when I pick up a bunch of "organic" bananas or a dozen "free range" eggs at my local Woolies, what does that mean?

(I'm picking on Woolies because they make a lot of fuss about their organic and free range products, but all the major retail chains in South Africa sell their own counterparts)

One might assume that these things are mandated by some sort of legal standard - that the government has laid down what they are supposed to be, and enforces those standards through some sort of certification and inspection process. One would be wrong.

The South African government has made no such determination, and it's up to the food industry itself to create, manage and enforce those standards. The SAGov only requires that food be safe to eat, that the food be properly labelled when sold to the public, and that no misleading claims be made about the contents of a food item. Here's the Act, if you need help getting to sleep - you'll note that the terms "organic" and "free range" do not appear in it.

So, in other words, the group that has the most to gain by potentially inventing and propagating a bogus marketing term is the very same group charged with doing so. Charged by whom? Themselves. That's not to say they're not doing a good job of it, just that it's seldom wise to put the fox in charge of the free range hen-house. Conflicts of interest like this are seldom a good place to start.

But start we shall. Let's look at what the standard definitions are for these two categories:

Organic Food.

The trouble here is coming up with a single, unified definition. Since it's not a legal definition, each certifying body (of which there are a considerable number) is free to come up with their own. And they do.

Not that kind of "organic", apparently

But after going through the ones that are available online (I couldn't be arsed to try and track down the ones that aren't, but feel free to do so if you like), I've come up with what seems to be a fair synthesis of what they put forward (I encourage you to check my work here, and see if I got it wrong):


Organic food is produced according to organic farming methods. These methods are intended to:

1. Increase the biological diversity of the agricultural system
2. Improve the biological activity and long-term fertility of the soil
3. Rely on renewable resources (like recycling plant and animal waste)
4. Minimise pollution
5. Steer clear of processing methods that alter the food in any substantial way.
6. Avoid use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs)

Now that all sounds pretty reasonable, doesn't it? I mean who doesn't want to increase biodiversity or minimise pollution? (Although the "animal waste" bit is not cool... poo-flavoured organic bananas! Yum!).

The fifth and sixth points seem a bit silly to me, but that could just be my pro-science and pro-progress bias talking. It should be noted that pasteurising milk or milling wheat would render that milk or wheat uncertifiable by most organic standards. Heaven forbid we should apply such cutting edge, modern technology to our food!

The unstated major premise with all of this is that organic farming methods somehow achieve these ideals, whereas conventional farming methods do not. Brian Dunning's done a much better job of explaining why that's not the case than I could, so I suggest popping over there for a bit before carrying on here.

Back? Okay.

In addition to the above definition (which, frankly, is more of a mission statement than a technical definition) the various certifying bodies list endless pages of specific practices that they require farmers to adhere to in order to be certified. Without a degree in agricultural engineering, I can't really parse them effectively, which is, in itself, a bit of a problem. If I, a scientifically minded, fairly bright person, can't tell if organic farming practices are really healthier, more eco-friendly or otherwise superior to conventional farming methods, how is an average consumer supposed to tell the difference?

I'm kinda forced to rely on the synthesised opinions of other sources who I've grown to trust (largely), and substitute their better-formed opinions for my own. Given that, at least superficially, South African organic standards seem to closely resemble American ones, I'm going to stick with my initial assessment: it's just a bogus marketing label designed to attract first-world consumers. It confers no benefit to the consumer in terms of quality of the food (either the flavour or nutritional content), and is actually worse for the environment than conventional methods, due to it's relatively low yield.

Okay, that's sorted. Now let's look at:

Free Range

It's a lovely term, isn't it? It conjures up images of really chilled cows, hanging out in lush, green meadows, calmly chewing on juicy grass, enjoying the sunshine.

Free range?

Again, there's no legal definition. And even with my excellent Google-fu (applied over almost an entire minute of arduous searching), I wasn't able to track down a single Free Range certification body in South Africa. If they exist, they're not making themselves easy to find. It seems the only body in SA with a real interest in using the term "free range" is the South African Poultry Association (SAPA).

Their definition of free-range farming is:

1. Chickens are provided with fresh water and the appropriate feed.
2. They're given adequate shelter
3. They're given veterinary care
4. They have enough space to be themselves (I kid you not - their wording is "Allowing for the freedom to express natural behavior by providing sufficient space in suitable facilities and the company of the animals’ own kind.")
5. They're protected from fear and distress

As far as I can glean from the handful of related sources, "free range" refers to a kind of animal farming that is supposed to be the antithesis of "factory farming". Both are nebulously defined, and no clear guidelines are given about how any of those things should be achieved. Once again, we're looking at a mission statement, rather than a technical definition.

As far as I can tell, if you had a one square meter pen with ten chickens in it, inside a warehouse, with a sufficient supply of water and antibiotic-laced feed, that should satisfy the requirements. How is that different to "factory farming"?

(Note: I can't say that that's what the poultry farmers are actually doing, but the "free range" label on your egg carton doesn't tell you that they aren't. That's my point.)

When it comes to other kinds of livestock, the South African Feedlot Association (SAFA) outlines an extensive list of criteria for the ethical treatment of animals which is equally flowery and vague, but at least they decline to apply the apparently meaningless marketing label "free range" to its adherents.

Conclusion

As I expected going into this investigation, "organic" and "free range" are silly marketing buzz-words designed to part you from your hard-earned money. Buy those products if you want, but do so knowing that you'll be paying an extra R2 (or whatever) per dozen eggs for absolutely no reason.

I haven't looked into it yet, but I'd be willing to bet money that the related terms "grain-fed", "biodynamic" and "barn" are equally meaningless. Hit me up in the comments if you've looked into those ones.

And just because no post of mine would be complete without one, here's a lolcat: