communicating the nature of science skeptics and the ... · page 3 flim-flam remember flim-flam:...

number 72 - winter 2004

Communicating the nature of scienceSkeptics and the environment

Self-esteemThe value of laughter



content editorial

ISSN - 1172-062X

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Remember Flim-Flam 3

Tied up in cables 5

Dear Skeptics 6

Forum 8

Newsfront 10

Not clairvoyant enough? 13

Hokum Locum 14

Quackery Alert 16

Book review: The Ancestor’sTale 17

The Tertiary anti-Education Commission 18

The backward marchof reason 19

Dare to DisbelieveApparently mediums and the paranormal have replaced cop shows as

the latest television drama genre of choice – if you are to believe TV3'smarketing, whether news or promo puff pieces, there's fact behind thefiction. Yeah right....

TV3 has been heavily promoting their "Dare to Believe" (DTB) low-budget exploitainment series with performer Jeanette Wilson, stating onits website that the show reunites New Zealanders with loved ones whohave "passed". The channel shouldn't get a free run to exploit the grievingor recently bereaved in the name of mass entertainment and economicgain. To date, there's nothing more to it than the usual banalities, generalitiesand classic cold reading spiels seen time and time again.

Apologists for the industry often claim that it doesn't matter whethersuch performers are genuine or not, as all they are doing is simply providing"comfort". Deception and delusion, no matter how well intended, arenonetheless exploitative. That exploitation can take many forms, whethercausing unnecessary heartbreak for distraught parents of missing children,fleecing little old ladies out of their retirement savings, or breaking uprelationships through inappropriate advice – all of which we have seenoccur here and overseas.

What can you do? Write to TV3 and ask them where's the evidencefor them stating unequivocally that the spirits of dead people are lining upon demand. Challenge them to produce a real test of Wilson's capabilities.Better broadcasters and real investigative reporters overseas have donethis. Tell TV3 how they look sooo last century and, frankly, ignorant, inbreathlessly promoting the same old tired spiels as somehow cutting-edge. This sort of stuff was old hat to Houdini.

20/20 did a poor job last year in its initial promo item on Wilson, andgot the Bent Spoon Award for it, a sad thing to see in a once well-regardedcurrent affairs programme. Perhaps it's not surprising that an "infotainment"tabloid news show like Nightline can be used as a promotional vehiclefor the debut show of "Dare to Believe"

If you have concerns about this approach to news, or the poorjudgement shown by TV3 in supporting DTB as a programming choice,or what this says about TV3/CanWest as a company, by all means letTV3 know.

Or try a different tack. Write to the advertisers in the surroundingtimeslots and express your disappointment that they are being seen inconjunction with this form of low quality exploitainment, how it hurts theirimage to be associated with it, how you'll be switching to a competitorwhen making fuure purchases of their products or services.

Or just turn the TV off....

Vicki HydeChair-entity

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Remember Flim-Flam:How to be a Modern SkepticDaniel Engber

The international Skeptics’ movement has changed, or at least broadened its focus over the years.American writer Daniel Engber recently attended a conference where he reflected on times past – andmet a familiar face.

IN LINE to get my badge for this year’s skeptics conference in

Pasadena, California, I recognisedthe little man standing behind me.He was bald, with a full, whitebeard, and he looked older than Iwould have imagined. “Excuse me,”he said, “is this the line for theskeptics meeting?” When I nod-ded, he looked me up and downand replied, “Oh, I doubt that.”

Ladies and gentlemen, meetthe world’s most famous skeptic,the Amazing Randi.

I was in the seventh gradewhen I first came across Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns,and Other Delusions, Randi’s1980 classic of the early skepticsmovement. When I got on board– as a fan, if not a true believer –the group was entrenched in aslugfest with the flourishing occultbusiness. The skeptics were afeisty group of scientists, phil-osophers, magicians, and ath-eists, united by their dedicationto rational thought and theirintolerance of credulity. Randi, aprofessional magician and escapeartist who once dangled upsidedown in a straitjacket over NiagaraFalls, joined up with Paul Kurtz, aphilosophy professor in upstateNew York, who had himself takenon newspaper astrologers. In

1976, Kurtz formed the Committeefor the Scientific Investigation ofClaims of the Paranormal to ex-plain, expose, dispel, and debunkthe supernatural and all its prac-titioners.

For decades, CSICOP’s mem-bers did all of that with fiercepassion. But in recent years the

skeptics’ enthusiasm for debunkinghas begun to subside. Kurtz nowdisowns the practice, insteadfavouring what he calls a “positive”defence of science and reason.Michael Shermer, the historian ofscience whose California-basedSkeptics Society hosted the con-ference in Pasadena, also avoids

the D-word. He’d rather talkabout why people are fooled bysupernatural hoaxes than spend histime debunking them. His grouphas doused the activism of CSI-COP’s early days with a pro-gramme of research, lectures, andmeetings.

Why have the skeptics grown sodreary? Their tactics havechanged to reflect a new set oftargets. What was once amovement to take down tele-vision psychics and fortunetellers now concentrates onmainstream foes like PresidentGeorge W Bush, IntelligentDesign theorists, and opponentsof stem-cell research. A tediousbattle against the modern bug-aboos of religion and politicsdemands tedious tactics andmore manpower. Today theskeptics comprise an alliance ofinterest groups, only a subset ofwhom even call themselvesskeptics. A recent effort tochoose a common name for the

movement failed miserably – per-haps because the proposed appell-ation managed to sound botharrogant and New Age-y.

Many of these subgroups havetheir own societies and annualmeetings, and the Skeptics Societyconference I went to is one stop

The Amazing Randi: Almost retro.

Jeffe

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on the circuit. In keeping withShermer’s philosophy, the meetingin Pasadena had little to do with thesupernatural. A parade of invitedspeakers provided popular-sciencelectures on the workings of thehuman brain, without reference tothe paranormal or the occult. Whenthe Amazing Randi finally took thestage as the keynote speaker on thelast night of the conference, heseemed almost retro.

Randi had for decades used hisinsider’s knowledge of the flim-flamtrade to humiliate a generation ofoccultists. Chief among his trophieswas Uri Geller, an Israeli-born,disco-era mentalist who claimed,among other things, that he had theability to soften metal and move acompass needle with his mind.Geller appeared on talk shows andmagazine covers, and severalacademic researchers said they hadvalidated his powers in the lab.Randi cleverly challenged Geller asa magician. He mimicked Geller’stricks using sleight of hand and thenexplained how they were done. In1973, Randi went for the kill,conspiring with Johnny Carson(who was himself an amateurmagician) to trap Geller on live TV.At Randi’s instruction, producerson the Tonight Show provided allthe props for Geller’s act and didn’tlet him on the set before thecameras rolled. The plan worked,and a squirming Geller was unableto perform a single trick. The videoclip of his on-air collapse remainsa cherished keepsake of diehardskeptics. (Today Geller is best-known as a close personal friendto Michael Jackson.)

Since that glorious display ofpublic humiliation, the AmazingRandi has taken on levitators,psychic surgeons, dowsers, andastrologers. In 1999, he debunked

homeopathic remedies for insomniaby swallowing an entire bottle of‘natural’ sleeping pills in front of acongressional committee. Hisprovocative and grandiose style haslanded him in court more than once– Geller made several attempts to

sue him, for example – and Randisays most of the US$272,000MacArthur ‘genius’ grant he re-ceived two decades ago was spenton legal bills.

Today, the closest thing Randihas to successors are the magician-debunkers Penn & Teller (whose half-hour TV show, Bullshit, triesto avoid legal liability by calling con-men ‘assholes’ instead of ‘fakes’).As the man who inspired so manypeople to join the skeptics early on,Randi remains a principal attractionat society meetings, even as themovement officially heads in a new

direction. Before he took the stageon the last night of the conference,Shermer introduced him with theclip of Uri Geller’s unmasking onThe Tonight Show. Randi walkedon to multiple standing ovations; awoman bounded up from theaudience to give him a hug.

Shermer and Randi sat on chairsnear the front of the stage, as if fora quiet chat. But it wasn’t longbefore Randi began to sway withemotion. He choked up whiledescribing a little boy who had beendeceived by a charlatan faith healer.And then, in a burst of bravado, hisvoice surged to the last row of theauditorium: “They’re fakes, they’rephonies, they’re scoundrels … andthey need to be behind bars!”

The skeptics in Pasadena wentcrazy. After days of restrained,informational talks, here wassomeone with a flair for theatre – arabble-rousing activist. But ifRandi’s words inspired us, it wasn’tclear exactly what we were inspiredto do or to whom we should do it.To us, Uri Geller seemed small-time; the enemies we had in mind

In the end, it’s justmore fun to see a fake

like Geller squirm than itis to hear a science

lecture.

To page 7

BOB Metcalfe (Skeptic No 75) might have been reading

New Zealand Tone magazine:Bringing Technology to Life, Sept-Oct 2004. The front cover pro-mises “Hi-fi cables: science orhocus pocus”, and on p. 46 thereis an interview with Bob Noble,“sales manager for respected cablemanufacturer Chord”. On p. 47there is a review of three Chordcables. The only science in theinterview is the importance ofscreening to cables since cheapelectronics in homes today are“leaking interference back into thesame mains power ring that suppliesthe hi-fi. This degrades the finalsound considerably. If you don’tbelieve me, turn all those otherappliances off and see what it doesto your hi-fi sound.” Nobody putsthe case that there is any hocuspocus to cables.

Reviewer Paul Burgess found thesound of the first set ($275) “big,warm and easy to listen to” but“slightly hazy when compared to theother more up-market cables” sothey “would compliment [sic] asystem with a bright soundingamplifier or speakers ... (This is agood example of synergy where thecable works with the system togreatly improve overall sound)”.(Me, I would rather entrust equal-isation to electronics designed tohandle it.)

With the second set ($500), thereviewer Paul Burgess nearly madea big mistake:

“They are beautifully finished inred and black for left and rightchannel identification and haveeasy to read arrows showing thecorrect way to insert them intoyour system. This might sound abit over-the-top, but attention todetail can make a big differenceto the sound. At one stage Ithought my system sounded a bitunfocussed and upon checkingmy interconnects found I had putone in with the arrows facing thewrong way.”

This claim that cables are madewith a directionality is not new, butsince audio is carried by a verysmall alternating current that spendsexactly as much time going one wayas the other, how this can be soremains unexplained, and I daresay, inexplicable.

The third set of cables ($1200)is oddest of all:

“...for some strange reason, themusic appeared to slow downjust a tad every time I put theseinto my system. I put that downto the system synergy principal[sic] and got on with enjoyingthem. Another possible reason

could be that they may haveneeded more burn-in time. (Be-lieve it or not, most cable im-proves in sound after the first 100hours of use.)”

He could easily have tested thiseffect more thoroughly by pluggingin a different cable to one channeland seeing if there was an echo.One wonders if he imagines themusic backs up in the cable beforebeing let out more slowly...

Note that this is about inter-connects, between music playersand amplifiers. The increasinglymonstrous cables connecting amp-lifiers to speakers are another story.

I nominate Paul Burgess of Tonemagazine for a Bent Spoon.

Oddly, the reviews don’t tell youone thing (perhaps the only thing)you might want to know about thecables – how long they are.

By the way, I have a confession.A very long time ago, when stereowas new, I wrote to the Christ-church Press denouncing it as beingunnecessary for the reproductionof music: to hear the flutes on theleft and bassoons on the rightseemed like a gimmick. As soon asI heard good stereo I realised I waswrong – though not completely:stereo is good because more audioinformation is good, and hearingwhere the instruments are is a side-effect. I could be wrong again.

Tied up in CablesHugh Young

Can stereo cables really make a difference to the way your music sounds?

hi-fi


correspondence

Dear Skeptics...Occasionally, the Skeptics get correspondence from the general public. Chair-entity Vicki Hyderesponds to two such inquiries.

A question I have alwayswanted to ask you guys: Ifhumans are unaffected by theplanetary and other cosmicinfluences, as I understand yoursociety believes, then where isthe impermeable membranethat cuts you off from them?And your scientific proof for thisis?

Er, why do you think there hasto be an impermeable membraneto do this, rather than a simpleinverse-square law at work? Spaceis very very very big after all – andjust as well!

The inverse-square law has beendemonstrated so many times andunder so many conditions through-out the universe that it has beengiven the rare honour in science ofbeing termed a law, rather than atheory. It simply says that theenergy fields which we can measureunequivocally (ie regardless ofspiritual belief) have a limit to theirinfluence as the distance increases.

So, to use one hoary example,the gravitational influence of themidwife has much more effect thanthat of Jupiter on a newborn baby.Jupiter may be massive, but it’s alooooong way away. You don’tneed a membrane of any sort todilute it, just distance.

That said, there are planetary andcosmic influences which can affecthumans – the gravitational force ofthe Moon is demonstrated daily in

the tides; if we’re very very unlucky,we could all be wiped out by aneighbouring supernova. (Could dowith an impenetrable membranethen!)

But it’s a big jump to go fromthis sort of thing to saying that, say,a random collection of stars cate-gorised by the human eye at aparticular point in just one culture’sdevelopment (aka a constellation)has a specific and real effect on, say,my career choice. This concept isa matter to do with the psychologyof the human mind, not basicphysics, and the former offers some

very clear, simple explanations ofthe forces at work – and thoseforces originate squarely betweenthe ears....

Many people for a long timehave looked at various claims ofthis sort of nature and, to date, haveeither found major flaws in the

reasoning or alternative explan-ations which provide better an-swers. This is the nature of science.Its further strength is the capacityto discard an old explanation whenthe evidence becomes sufficient towarrant it. That’s something youdon’t get in areas likes astrology,which tend to remain very staticover time with very little capacityfor doubt or self-reflection.

I gave up doing horoscopeswhen I finally started to think aboutthe rather nasty psychology in-volved – all it was doing waspandering to stereotypes. If I find

it ethically objectionable to classifypeople by skin colour (nigger!) orreligion (Jew Christ-killer!), then it’sjust as offensive and demeaning todo it by astrological sign (Scor-pio!)....

Food for thought, I hope,

Vicki

Phot

o: C

lark

Mill

s

During chapel service at myschool, the reader took it uponhimself to close by telling astory about Darwin. Appa-rently, on his deathbed he toldhis minister he wished he haddevoted his life to the pursuit ofGod rather than the pursuit ofscience.

You were right to be skeptical.

This fabrication is known as theLady Hope story and is equallydiscounted by people as widelydivergent in other opinions asStephen Jay Gould and the crea-tionist folk at Answers in Genesis!

Here is the general gist of thespread of the story and its sub-sequent rebuttal, taken from thebook The Survival of CharlesDarwin: a Biography of a Man andan Idea by Ronald W. Clark,published by Weidenfeld & Nichol-son, 1985 (p. 199).

“Shortly after [Darwin’s] death,Lady Hope addressed a gatheringof young men and women at theeducational establishment found-ed by the evangelist DwightLyman Moody at Northfield,Massachusetts. She had, shemaintained, visited Darwin on hisdeathbed. He had been readingthe Epistle to the Hebrews, hadasked for the local Sunday schoolto sing in a summerhouse on thegrounds, and had confessed:“How I wish I had not expressedmy theory of evolution as I havedone.”

“He went on, she said, to say thathe would like her to gather acongregation since he “would liketo speak to them of Christ Jesusand His salvation, being in a statewhere he was eagerly savouring theheavenly anticipation of bliss.” WithMoody’s encouragement, LadyHope’s story was printed in theBoston Watchman Examiner.

“The story spread, and the claimswere republished as late as Octo-ber 1955 in the ReformationReview and in the Monthly Recordof the Free Church of Scotland inFebruary 1957. These attempts tofudge Darwin’s story had alreadybeen exposed for what they were,first by his daughter Henrietta afterthey had been revived in 1922.

‘“I was present at his deathbed,”she wrote in the Christian forFebruary 23, 1922. “Lady Hopewas not present during his lastillness, or any illness. I believe henever even saw her, but in any caseshe had no influence over him in anydepartment of thought or belief. Henever recanted any of his scientificviews, either then or earlier. Wethink the story of his conversion wasfabricated in the U.S.A. . . . Thewhole story has no foundationwhatever.” (Ellipsis is in the book)

Clark’s source for Lady Hope’ssupposed quotations of Darwin isgiven as Down, the Home of theDarwins: The Story of a House andthe People Who Lived There by SirHedley Atkins KBE, published byPhillimore for the Royal College ofSurgeons of England, 1974. Henri-etta’s rebuttal is referenced morefully as: Mrs R B Litchfield, CharlesDarwin’s Death-Bed: Story ofConversion Denied, The Christian,February 23, 1922, p. 12.

If you’d like to read more on this,follow these links:

www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/ladyhope.html#Autobiography

www. ta lkor ig ins .org / faqs /hope.html

www.answersingenesis .org/c r e a t i o n / v 1 8 / i 1 /darwin_recant.asp

were fundamentalist ideologues,like the ones on the Kansas schoolboard who have tried to demoteevolution in the science curriculum.

That’s the conundrum of themodern skeptics movement: In-telligent Design theorists anddeniers of global warming may verywell be phonies and scoundrels, butno one is going to debunk them inthe classic sense. You can’t revealtheir hidden microphones or mimictheir tricks with sleight of hand.Intelligent Design, after all, is anattempt to recast (even to ‘rebunk’)creationism in scientific terms. Thebest weapon against it isn’t drama-tic exposé, but scientific argument.So a change in tactics makes sensefor the movement.

Still, the fervent response toRandi’s tirade suggests a deep-seated nostalgia for old-fashioneddebunking. In the end, it’s justmore fun to see a fake like Gellersquirm than it is to hear a sciencelecture. Supernatural scammersmay not be the most dangerousopponents of reason, but why notknock a few off every now andagain to rally the troops? After all,protests from academic scientistsaren’t exactly changing the world.Reports on climate change are stillvetted by industry flunkies, and thefederal government remains un-willing to fully support stem-cellresearch. With few victories toinspire us, let’s keep on debunking.If only for old-times’ sake.

From page 4

flim-flamcorrespondence


forum

Efficacy of Prayer - anUpdate

Since I wrote my piece basedon Bruce Flamm’s article in Skep-tical Inquirer concerning a researchpaper on the efficacy of prayer, DrFlamm has reported ”significantdevelopment”. Lest you jump tothe conclusion that the authors,Journal and University have ac-knowledged their serious error andhave retracted the paper, be at oncedisabused.

The significance of these de-velopments, to my mind, is theirminuscule and peripheral nature;nothing has really changed. Onecould reasonably grant a significantdevelopment to Wirth; he pleadedguilty to a 46-page indictment andis in jail for five years. Concerningthe “lead” author, Lobo, the journallater printed, at the bottom of theback page, an Erratum, that thisname had been included ‘in error’.

Young researchers often com-plain that senior colleagues insist ontheir names appearing on papersunjustifiably. In the topsy-turvyworld of this journal, people findtheir names put unknowingly onpapers they have had nothing to dowith!

Despite never acknowledgingany enquiries about this paper, andprinting no comments, the authorCha was eventually given space foran extended, and misleading,response to the criticisms (which thereaders knew of only from othersources).

The University set up a committeeto investigate the research, but, onDr Lobo withdrawing his name

from the paper, disbanded thecommittee, saying it was no longerneeded.

So, despite all the unsavouryaspects of this matter, no one isadmitting their mistake, and thisnonsensical paper remains in themedical literature as “evidence” ofthe efficacy of prayer.

Bernard HowardChristchurch

Colour therapy – ‘tis nopuzzlement

Some weeks ago I met up withan old golfing friend I hadn’t seenin years. He was fit and well and is

one of the few men I’ve ever metageing better than I am. He is aretired mathematician with verygood UK degrees, a solid skeptic,a fine golfer (handicap 8) down-to-earth and fun company. Anotherfellow, a man clearly unwell, whomI had also known as a professionalcolleague, accompanied us for theround.

Afterwards, Roy and I caught upon the 28 years since we hadworked in the same organisation

and the topic of health arose. Ourmutual friend, said Roy, had beengiven remission of his prostatecancer through colour therapy.

“Rubbish!” I responded. “Fur-thermore,” Roy continued, “I’veused the process myself to alleviatethe continuing effects of a bout offlu or bronchitis which I couldn’tshake off for months.” I demandedmore information.

Roy then explained how, withsome cynicism, he had been con-nected electrically to the colour-therapist’s machine for about sixhours while the device operatedwith a strand of red-dyed material(wool?) in an electrically-chargedstainless-steel cup. Afterwards,said Roy, his symptoms were goneand have not recurred. He roundlydenied the placebo effect...

A short while later, on anothergolf course, I met an old manpractising chipping. After we gottalking we discovered that we wereboth of a mind about the game, soplayed together a couple of times.

Bob told me that he had recentlyrecovered from a debilitating andlife-threatening illness he’d con-tracted due to varnishing his housefloor with a modern two-potmixture. For two years he’d beenin and out of hospital, talked toendless specialists and finally hadbegun to recover bodyweight whencertain (unspecified) aspects of hisdiet were changed.

I was invited to his home a littlelater and to my surprise dis-covered his wife is a colour thera-pist with a roomfull of equipmentand walls covered with charts. Atno time did Bob suggest his wifeever was able to give him relief usingher machine or techniques.

Skullduggery

Remembering the report of thechiropractor who did ‘cranialmanipulation’ on her new bornbaby, it occurred to me we couldcall it ‘Pate Tectonics’.

Bernard Howard

forum

Greenhouse Skeptics andCreationists no comparison

I am aware that the globalwarming subject has been ‘done todeath’. However, the Keith Gar-ratt item on skeptical environ-mentalism included several criti-cisms of my work which must beanswered. In the interests ofbrevity, I will respond only to themost insulting (insulting to me as askeptic).

He compares global warmingskeptics to evolution skeptics. Thisis utter balderdash. Deniers ofevolution are led by religiousnutters. Global warming skepticismis led by climate scien-tists, andthere are literally hundreds ofprofessional climate researcherswho have expressed their disquietat the current paradigm.

Lance Kennedy

(And that really is the last word!-ed.)

Darwin and religion

Following the article by AlisonCampbell in the Autumn 2005Skeptic I got on to the WaikatoUniversity website and clicked ‘Darwin and Religion’ and wassurprised to find a long article

which completely failed to mentionDarwin’s attitude to religion, or thedifficulty in reconciling evolutionwith religious belief.

Darwin was an unusually honestscientist. He came to realise thathuman evolution was not essentiallydifferent from the evolution of any

other creature, and that humanscould not therefore claim theexclusive privilege of a supervisingdeity or of an afterlife. Only one ofhis scientific colleagues, JosephHooker, was prepared to supportthis view, and it was opposed byhis wife and family. In CharlesDarwin’s autobiography, publishedposthumously, his son Fran-cis deleted the section on religionwith the excuse:

“It will be easily understood thatin a narrative of a personal andintimate kind written for his wifeand children, passages shouldoccur which must here be omit-ted; and I have not thought itnecessary to indicate where suchomissions are made.”

It was only in 1958 in the un-censored edition published by hisgranddaughter, Nora, Lady Bar-low, that we were allowed to

read Darwin’s true opinions onreligion, which were as follows:

“I was very unwilling to give upmy belief… But I found it moreand more difficult to inventevidence to convince me. Thusdisbelief crept over me at a veryslow rate, but was at last com-plete.”

“...the constant inculcation in abelief in God on the minds ofchildren producing so strong andperhaps an inherited effect ontheir brains not yet fully deve-loped, that it would be as difficultfor them to throw off their beliefin God as for a monkey to throwoff its instinctive fear and hatredof a snake.”

“I for one must be content toremain an Agnostic.”

In an interview with EdwardAveling in September 1881, thefollowing retort took place:

Aveling : “‘Agnostic’ is but‘Atheist’ writ respectable.”

Darwin, “‘Atheist’ is but ‘Ag-nostic’ writ aggressive.”

Many people have sought todistort Darwinism to remove Dar-win’s insistence that man is justanother animal. The most influentialwas Julian Huxley in his “Evolution:The Modern Synthesis” (1942)who claimed that humans were“different” and “unique”; so, pre-sumably, qualifying them for divineguidance, life after death, anddominion over all other organisms.

Vincent GrayWellington

What do I take from theseadmittedly flimsy accounts? Theoverwhelming thing I see is thatalternate techniques are generallytried when all else has failed, bywhich time it is very likely thatorthodox treatment is at last work-ing in conjunction with that greathealer, time.

Clive ShawThames


Compiled by David Riddellnewsfront

A spiritualist group has been given $2500 to teach people

to communicate with the dead, TheHerald On Sunday reports (15May).

The Foundation of SpiritualistMediums received the Aucklandratepayer money after an app-lication to an Auckland City Councilcommittee recently. Foundationpresident Natalie Huggard said itwas an essential service to Auck-land and was in high demand.

Many people, she said, hadproblems communicating with thespirit world and didn’t know howto deal with it. A lot of thesepeople, concerned about hearingvoices, went to doctors who toldthem they were schizophrenic andprescribed medication.

The foundation ran coursesteaching people how to com-municate with the dead and how toheal the sick and injured. Themoney would fund the foundation’sapplication to the New ZealandQualifications Authority for re-cognition as a recognised trainingbody.

She told the Herald On Sundaythe organisation suffered fromscepticism because of its ‘meta-physical’ focus and NZQA ac-creditation would strengthen itscredibility.

Dunedin writer Hayden Wallessaid in the NZ Herald (25 May)when Auckland sneezes, the rest ofthe country had to deal with theectoplasm.

He noted that Telecom and othercompanies “had shown unseemlylethargy in exploiting this untapped

corner of the telecommunicationsmarket, but not the Auckland CityCouncil.”

Dr Cathy Casey, the chair-woman of the community devel-opment and equity committee, saidsome members expressed con-cern, resulting in a reduction of thefoundation’s grant from the re-quested $4500 to $2500.

Perhaps the committee saw littlereason to give additional funding toYouthline to stop teen suicideswhen you can simply talk to themafter the event?

Dr Casey defended the grant,claiming the group contributes to thecity’s vision of a vibrant, colourfulcommunity. “Well, vibrations arecertainly involved,” Walles wrote.

“I’m worried, Auckland. Can Inow expect to hear that the trans-port and urban linkages committeehas been consulting eastern gurusfor advice on using levitation to easetraffic congestion?”

The trouble with cats

The plastic bottle scourge has hitJapan homes, writes investigativereporter extraordinaire Alice Gor-denker in The Japan Times (19May). They are around not justhomes and gardens, but cars aswell. Curiosity got the better ofGordenker, who decided to inves-tigate and found it’s all about cats.First of all, she says, petto botoruis the generic Japanese term fordrink bottles (PET stands forpolyethylene tetraphthalate, andhas nothing to do with pets shepoints out.) When filled with water

and placed outside, the bottlesbecome nekoyoke or scare-cats.The theory is that sunlight refractingin the water frightens away cats.(My cat sits for hours by and onfish tank, the sun refracting its heartout. The only thing that moves heraway is when the fridge door isopened – ed.)

Anyway, Gordenker spent hoursresearching the topic and reckonsit was all due to a TV show in themid-1990s which featured a wo-man who said she solved her catproblems this way. Of course, wein NZ know it all started in thiscountry, as a way to deter dogs,which as everyone knows arestupider than cats.

“The trouble is the bottles don’twork. As my friend Hiroshi, a self-anointed feline expert, says, ‘Thosebottles are an insult to the intel-ligence of cats.’”

Not only do they not work,they’re a fire hazard. A man inTakamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture putout a bottle. It acted like amagnifying glass, focusing sunlighton to the house, causing it to burstinto flames. The resulting firedestroyed the shutters and eaves ofhis house, then jumped and con-sumed the neighbour’s veranda.

Bet that kept the moggies away.

Lawsuit fired at Nasa

Hours after the Nasa probecrashed into comet Tempel 1, legalreverberations were felt in a Mos-cow court, according to the BBCnews (5 July).

Dead money

newsfront

Amateur astrologer Marina Bayclaims that by slamming the probeinto the comet, Nasa endangeredthe future of civilisation.

“Nobody has yet proven thatthis experiment was safe,” said MsBay’s lawyer. “This impact couldhave altered the orbit of the comet,so now there is a chance that theTempel may well destroy the earthsome day.”

Even if this doesn’t happen, MsBay believes any variation in theorbit or the composition of thecomet will certainly affect her ownfate and she says she is exper-iencing ‘a moral trauma’ – whichonly a payment of $300 million willput right.

While Moscow representativesof Nasa have ignored the courthearing, Bay’s legal team remainconfident, and are looking forvolunteers to join in on the claim.

“The impact changed the mag-netic properties of the comet, andthis could have affected mobiletelephony here on Earth. If yourphone went down this morning, askyourself why? And then get in touchwith us,” said the lawyer.

On that day my goldfish died.Clearly, Nasa has a lot to answerfor.

No hope for enlightenment

Still on the law suit front, a formeremployee of the New SantanaBand has accused musician CarlosSantana and wife of firing him fornot being ‘closer to God’, reportsthe NZ Herald (29 April).

In a wrongful termination lawsuitfiled in California, Bruce Kuhlman,59, said Santana’s wife, Deborah,went on a campaign to ‘terminate’

him after her spiritual guru de-termined through ‘calibration’ teststhat Kuhlman was too old tobecome enlightened. Kuhlman wasfired in 2004.

Shred of doubt about Shroud

A French magazine has carriedout experiments that again castdoubt on the authenticity of theShroud of Turin. “A medievaltechnique helped us to make aShroud,” Science et Vie said in itsJuly issue. After carbon-14 dating,the original was declared a hoax bythe then archbishop of Turin in1988. Debate flared again thisJanuary, following tests by USchemist Raymond Rogers whosuggested other parts might bethousands of years old. He reck-oned the radiocarbon samples hadbeen taken from a piece that hadbeen sewn into the fabric by nunswho repaired the Shroud after itwas damaged in a fire in 1532.

Following a method previouslyused by sceptics, Science et Viecarried out their own experimentand produced their own shroud andconcluded it was easier to make afake shroud than a real one.

Smithsonian to screen IDmovie

The Smithsonian Institution’sNational Museum of Natural His-tory has played host to a filmintended to undercut evolution(New York Times May 28, 2005).

The Discovery Institute, a groupin Seattle that supports ‘intelligentdesign,’ screened The PrivilegedPlanet: The Search for Purpose inthe Universe on June 23.

The film is a documentary basedon a 2004 book by GuillermoGonzalez, an assistant professor ofastronomy at Iowa State Univer-sity, and Jay W. Richards, a vicepresident of the Discovery Institute,that makes the case for the hand ofa creator in the design of Earth andthe universe.

Museum spokesman, RandallKremer, said the event should notbe taken as support for the viewsexpressed in the film. “It is incorrectfor anyone to infer that we aresomehow endorsing the video orthe content of the video,” he said.

The museum, he said, offers itsBaird Auditorium to many organ-isations and corporations in returnfor contributions - in the case of theDiscovery Institute, US$16,000.

When the language of the Dis-covery Institute’s website was readto him, with its suggestion ofsupport, Mr. Kremer said, “We’llhave to look into that.”

The president of the DiscoveryInstitute, Bruce Chapman, said hisorganisation approached the mu-seum through its public relationscompany and the museum staffasked to see the film. “They saidthat they liked it very much - andnot only would they have the eventat the museum, but they said theywould co-sponsor it,” he recalled.“That was their suggestion. Ofcourse we’re delighted.”

Mr. Kremer said he heard aboutthe event only on Thursday. Headded that staff members viewedthe film before approving the eventto make sure that it complied withthe museum’s policy, which statesthat “events of a religious orpartisan political nature” are notpermitted, along with personal


newsfront

events such as weddings, or fund-raisers, raffles and cash bars. It alsostates that “all events at the NationalMuseum of Natural History are co-sponsored by the museum.”

When asked whether the an-nouncement on the DiscoveryInstitute’s Web site meant to implythat the museum supports the filmand the event, Mr. Chapmanreplied:

“We are not implying in any sensethat they endorsed the content, butthey are co-sponsoring it, and weare delighted. We’re not claiminganything more than that. Theycertainly didn’t say, ‘We’re reallywarming up to intelligent design, andtherefore we’re going to sponsorthis.’”

Dutch headmaster createsstir over evolution

Meanwhile in the Netherlands,the headmaster of a Protestantschool has agreed to stay at homefor a few days after causing a stirby his insistence his teachersadhere to Creationism(www.expatica.com, 12 May).Peter Boon of Augustinus Collegein Groningen said in an interviewwith newspaper Dagblad van hetNoorden he could not tolerate oneof his teachers telling a class he wasa supporter of Evolution.

News agency ANP reported thatmany teachers in the school dis-agree with this and believe that theTheory of Evolution can go hand-in-hand with the Christian view onhow life – and humans in particular– has developed.

During a staff meeting, someteachers indicated to Boon they feltoffended and as if they were notbeing taken seriously. Boonthen

said he would create a “cooling offperiod” by staying away from theschool for a few days. He said heregretted his remarks to the paperbecause the subtleties of his argu-ment had been lost, but added thata teacher cannot simply state to hisor her class that humans descendedfrom apes. “People have to explainhow evolution theory relates toChristian belief,” Boon said. Apartfrom his position as headmaster,Boon is an active member of PrimeMinister Jan Peter Balkenende’sChristian Democrat party (CDA).

Botanic Man bungles

Whatever your opinion aboutglobal warming, it’s hard to excuseBritish botanist David Bellamy’suse of dodgy figures to argue, in a16 April letter to New Scientist, thatit is not occurring. George Monbiottook Bellamy to task in the Guar-dian Weekly (20 May) for his claimthat many of the world’s glaciers“are not shrinking but in fact aregrowing. . . 555 of all the 625glaciers under observation by theWorld Glacier Monitoring Servicein Zürich, Switzerland, have beengrowing since 1980”.

Because Bellamy is president ofthe Conservation Foundation, theWildlife Trusts, Plantlife Inter-national and the British Naturalists’Association, his statements carry agreat deal of weight, said Monbiot.And as a scientist, he should knowyou cannot credibly cite data unlessit is well-sourced.

After several requests, Bellamytold Monbiot the glacier statisticwas from a website,www.iceagenow.com, which wasconstructed by a former architectcalled Robert W Felix to promotehis self-published book about ‘the

coming ice age’. Hardly a reliablereference. Furthermore, the siteclaims only that 55%, not 555, ofthe glaciers under observation areadvancing. The discrepancy seemsto be due to sloppy typing byBellamy: ‘%’ is typed by pressingthe Shift and 5 keys together.

As for the 55% figure, this wassupposed to be from “a paperpublished in Science in 1989”. Butsearching the journal for that year,Monbiot could find no papers onglacial advance or retreat.

For the record, the WorldGlacier Monitoring Service hasrecords dating back to 1980 for 30glaciers in nine mountain ranges.These show a pronounced overalldecline in glacial mass during thattime.

Ghost Busters a bust

It seems TV2 has a new ‘para-normal investigation’ show, calledGhost Hunt, but according toFrances Grant (NZ Herald, 5 July)the main mission is to search for anyevidence of shiver-down-the-spineentertainment.

The national skills shortageobviously applies to ghost-busting,says Grant. How one of the teampassed her Paranormal Invest-igations qualification is a completemystery. Before she even got in thehouse, and still in bright daylight, shewas complaining about sufferingsomething called the “bejigglies”.

Grant concluded that the ghostwas actually rather challenged whenit came to producing blow-you-away special effects. Perhaps, inthe digital age, he should give upthe haunting and find a day job.

clairvoyant

Self-styled clairvoyant Maria Duval’s magic seems to have

deserted her. Her company haspulled all its New Zealand ad-vertising, following a complaint theConsumers’ Institute of NewZealand made to the AdvertisingStandards Complaints Board(ASCB).

Who or what is Maria Duval?

Maria Duval is the front-name fora scam operating all over Europe,North America, Australia and NewZealand. It is listed as a scam onthe Ministry of Consumer AffairsScamwatch website and our ownA-Z directory of scams.

We also published a news itemon Maria Duval in February 2005,questioning why banks and creditcard companies continue to profitfrom this scam.

The Ontario police, US Postalservice, agencies in five Australianstates, the New York Better Bus-iness Bureau and consumer agen-cies in Europe have all investigatedor warned against the Maria Duvalscam. We complained to the ASCBafter Sunday News and TimaruHerald published large adver-tisements promoting Maria Duval.

The ads promised to fulfil sevenwishes for no charge - “Nothing topay, everything is FREE!” itclaimed. Among other things, youcould expect to “win the lottery

jackpot within a fortnight”, suc-cessfully bet on the horses, and“solve [your] financial problemsonce and for all”.

The underlying reason behind theads was to build a list of potentialvictims, who would then be houn-ded to pay for dubious psychicservices.

We have heard from severalNew Zealanders who have paidlarge sums to the Maria Duvalscam, including some who havegone into debt. New Zealandconsumers aren’t the only victims– Madame Duval has peddled herdeception all over Europe, Australiaand North America.

The ASCB’s decision

The ASCB upheld our complaint.It stated that the “ComplaintsBoard was unanimously of the viewthat the advertisement would createunrealistic expectations of life-changing benefits”, and therefore“there was no doubt it would belikely to mislead and abuse the trustof the consumer.”

Following our complaint, Swissad agency Infogest suspended allMaria Duval print ads in NewZealand.

Martin Craig is an investigativewriter at the Consumers’ Institute ofNew Zealand. See Page 17 for anabridged version of the ComplaintsBoard deliberations on this case.

Not clairvoyant enough?

Psychic scammer Maria Duval failed to foresee trouble over “her” misleading advertisements. TheAdvertising Standards Authority (ASA) is funded by the advertising and media industries, and has thestated purpose of ensuring that advertising is socially responsible and truthful. The ASA administersthe Advertising Standards Complaints Board (ASCB), which is the body that hears complaints aboutads, and the Advertising Standards Complaints Appeal Board..

How to complainto the ASA• Don’t complain very often.Every TV ad for alcohol gen-erates a complaint from KateSheppard types who are op-posed to the product rather thanthe ad. To the ASA’s credit, everyone of these complaints is con-sidered before rejection.

• Be specific. The ASA hasset criteria for complaints. Someof the complaints it gets are veryvague – eg, two males kissing (ina safe sex ad) is disgusting andshouldn’t be allowed. Read thecriteria, say which criteria youthink the ad breaches, and saywhy it breaches them.

• Be realistic. The ASA hasno legal powers. It is a self-regulation tool used by the ad-vertising industry. In fact, to haveyour complaint accepted you mustwaive your right to use legalchannels. The ASA can have aspecific ad pulled but it cannotorder fines or damages. It can’torder retractions or apologieseither.

• The advertiser gets a rightto respond. One of the reasonswe made this complaint was todiscover who the Maria Duvaladvertiser is. Even if the com-plaint had been rejected, thisinformation would have beenuseful.

Martin Craig


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Body Enhancer’sbenefits areBogus

THE product Body Enhancer,marketed by the Zenith Cor-

poration, costs $95 per bottle andis “claimed to assist fat burning,muscle growth and liver detoxi-fication.” A judge, however, foundthat the product offered ‘bogusbenefits’ although the couple be-hind the company remained defiantand claimed that they were “scape-goats for the natural remedy in-dustry.”

Judge Lindsay Moore wasreported as describing LindsayGallot as ‘calculatedly dishonest’and accused his partner of makingblatantly false claims. This isperfectly understandable criticismas Mr Gallot is described as an ex-Geologist and his wife as an ex-Physics teacher. One would beentitled to expect that two peoplewith a scientific background wouldnot get involved in such pseudo-scientific nonsense.

In their defence the couple claimthat the product was tested by aMaori health provider and theirclinical advisor Dr Tane Taylor wasquoted as saying “he understoodthe results were positive.” Ac-cording to the NZ Medical Councilwebsite, Dr Taylor has a medicaldegree from Albania and I knowfrom my time in Auckland that hewas involved with a chelation clinic,

and I think that ends any scientificcredibility that he might lend to thesubject. For a full report aspublished in the Sunday Star Timesgo to: www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3303250a10,00.html

The next website, www.zenith.co.nz/ComComm_Rebuttal07.html, describes some kind ofpseudoscientific trial and then goeson to say that the results cannot bepublished on the web. Testimonialsare called on in support, which is ahallmark of quackery. It is not agood business practice to test yourown product and find that it isuseless. Much better to rip off thepunters who feel compelled afterwasting $95 to give it an en-dorsement. However, one unus-ually sceptical customer describedthe product as “the most putrid stuffI’ve ever tried”. I bet that tes-timonial was never used!

Guns will make us powerful;butter will only make us fat

Herman Goering obviouslydidn’t follow his own advice andnow it seems remarkable that hishuge frame ever fitted the cockpitof a World War One fighter aircraftwhere he was an acknowledgedfighter ace. Morphine addictionmust have addled his brains.

No such excuse for Kohn Keitzwho weighs 283 Kg and has beenbedridden since 1 August, 1998.He even cooks from his bed andthis recipe gives some clue to hisproblem: 6 chicken breasts, apound of butter……need I go on?John is now in receipt of disabilitybenefits and can be cared for in ahome funded by Medicare benefitsof US $313 per day. This sort ofgrotesque celebration of excess ismade all the worse by the excusesmade by those people who spec-ialise in medicalising human behav-iour and the denial of personalresponsibility. As Ivan Illich pointedout, the medical profession amongothers has always looked to extendits sphere of influence by “expro-priating the power of the individualto heal himself.” This means thatpeople exhibiting sick behaviourneed to be allowed to suffer theconsequences of such behaviour inorder to make changes. Here, aparody of the American dream of“success” is looked after in such away that he can afford to buy evenmore chicken breasts and evenmore butter. At least he had thegood sense not to bother with anyof the useless products from theZenith Corporation.

Dominion Post 2 July 2005

Something is rotten in thestate of Sweden (and Denmark?)

Dr Elinder was a paediatricianin New Zealand and after returningto his native Sweden he criticisedthe tendency of his colleagues toover-diagnose such conditions asADHD, minimal brain dysfunctionand autism spectrum disorder, aswell as the excessive use of Ritalinin treating such conditions. He wassupported by a colleague, Dr

Fresh from a visit to Iraq, JohnWelch is ready to embark on ajihad against quackery...

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Karve, who found serious flaws inthe work done by a group led by aProfessor Gilberg.

In 1998, Dr Elinder asked to seeProfessor Gilberg’s research databut this request was refused andsubsequently the data was de-stroyed with the connivance of theUniversity of Gottenberg.. Thissort of disgraceful behaviour is theantithesis of science, which dependson independent verification andreproducibility.

One tends to view the Scandin-avians as somewhat placid andserious people but all that changedwith the extraordinary attack onBjorn Lomborg (The SkepticalEnvironmentalist) by the DanishCommittee on Scientific Dis-honesty. Lomborg was cleared ofany wrongdoing but I sincerely hopethe DCSD is going to examine thebehaviour of Professor Gilberg.

NZ Doctor 18 May 2005

Remunerative Post TraumaticStress Disorder (RPTSD)

Is there anyone in New Zealandwho has suffered some traumaticexperience and not been diagnosedwith PTSD? I can think of my latefather who came back from thewar, handed in his Thompsonsubmachine gun, got on with his lifeand never spoke of the war again.Is there anybody else? I would liketo hear from you.

A woman has been denied ACCcompensation after having unpro-tected sex with a partner whoconcealed his HIV status from her.She has not contracted HIV but hasbeen diagnosed with PTSD, ormore properly called RPTSDbecause the motivation is to obtainmoney. I wonder whether the

doctors or therapists who endorsethis nonsense ever stop to think thatthey make themselves a laughingstock. I am reminded of the storytold by Andrew Malleson (NeedYour Doctor Be So Useless) wherea Housing Authority ignored peoplewanting better housing because allof them had the required letters ofsupport from their doctors.

Another woman tried to getACC cover because she was“retraumatised” while reliving a 20year old rape experience with atherapist. She alleged a “newinjury” on top of her existing PTSD.Why on earth somebody wouldeither want or need therapy forsomething that happened 20 yearsago is beyond me.

Perhaps I should ask JeanetteWilson to contact my late fatherand see whether he wants to file aclaim for PTSD from beyond thegrave.

I have never seen better exam-ples of Welch’s Law, where claimsexpand to take up the amount ofcompensation available.

Pharmacists and alternativeMedicine

I went into my local Pharmacyrecently and was astonished to seethat products that I would describeas “fringe” medicines dominated theOTC medicine section. A full pageinfomercial in a local paper wasclearly advertising one of theseproducts but there is no acknow-ledgement that it is an adver-tisement. I wonder at the ethics ofthis. The same Pharmacy had asimilar article promoting ear cand-ling and I hope the Conferenceorganisers are able to set up ademonstration of this bizarrepractice.

One such Pharmacy product isEsberritox. It contains variousherbal products such as echinacea.A Google search produced 25,000hits and ehinacea is also wellcovered on www.quackwatch.com

There is also a good article onthat site by Dr Barrett about theunethical behaviour of pharmacists,which has them selling unprovenremedies with a huge profit margin.It’s rather ironic that Governmentpolicies to restrict pharmaceuticalaccess to cheap and proven drugshas seen a parallel increase in theuse of quack remedies as pharm-acists stock them in order tomaintain their incomes.

Acupuncture Flunks, not oncebut twice!

A German study found that shamacupuncture was just as effectiveas “real” acupuncture for migraineheadaches. The study was pub-lished in the Journal of the AmericanMedical Association. I did thesame experiments over 15 yearsago and satisfied myself that theneedles could be stuck anywhereand the same results were obtained.It follows that acupuncture theoryand training is a delusion and as Idemonstrated at one of our meet-ings, an intelligent group of skepticscan become “trained acupunc-turists” after a 1 hour lecture. It isa disgrace and a fraud that ACCcontinues to fund acupuncture aswell as many other unproventreatments such as chiropractic andosteopathy. GP’s are able to claimcredits for acupuncture training.This should be stopped. It wouldbe interesting to do a study oftreating migraine with sham acu-puncture versus therapeutic touch.I predict that such a study wouldshow little or no difference in


outcome because both treatmentsare placebos.

Christchurch Press 5/5/05

This graph shows once again howsham acupuncture and “real”acupuncture achieve the sameresults. In contrast, oestrogenreplacement is very effective inreducing hot flushes in post-menopausal women. I will leavethe last word to the editor ofBandolier: “when will alternativetherapies really prove that theywork? While we wait, will theystop fleecing people of huge am-ounts of cash for doing nothing?”

Methyl Bromide and Hysteria

Workers at Port Nelson arecomplaining that the gas methylbromide is responsible for ill healthand has caused the deaths of formerworkers from motor neuronedisease. A local woman who lives300m from the fumigation facilityhas demanded that the Port Com-pany notify her of fumigation workso she can evacuate herself and herchildren. An investigation found thatthe more likely cause of the wor-kers’ complaints was not methylbromide but chemicals used in thepreservation of timber. The deaths

from motor neurone disease weredue to an epidemiological effectknown as clustering.

One worker is described ashaving symptoms of “chronicfatigue, a persistent dry cough andlack of concentration.” These aretypical symptoms of the fixedillness belief of “chemical poi-soning”. Note that the symptoms

are all subjective and therefore

QUACKERY ALERTTHE ACC-sponsored conference “Many Faces of Abuse” (Auckland,

10-12 August 2005) features a plenary speaker, Anne McDonaldfrom Melbourne, who cannot talk, walk or feed herself. Her minder,Rosemary Crossley, is the inventor of Facilitated Communication - atechnique whereby a facilitator supports the hand or arm of a severelydisabled person and thereby enables that person point to letters of thealphabet. This technique gives severely disabled people the miraculousability to spell out words, sentences and even whole paragraphs ofastonishing, unlikely and often wildly pornographic prose.

As a result of Facilitated Communication, hundreds of families andcaregivers worldwide have had their lives and careers destroyed bydevastating and subsequently-discredited allegations of sexual abuse.

Among responsible organisations and individuals concerned with mentaland physical disability there is now widespread agreement that FacilitatedCommunication is nothing more than a power-trip for manipulativetherapists who prey on the vulnerability and dependence of the severelydisabled.

In the US, in an unprecedented move, several major nationalprofessional bodies have adopted a formal position opposing theacceptance of Facilitated Communication as a valid mode of enhancingexpression for people with disabilities. In the United Kingdom DameElizabeth Butler-Sloss, President of the High Court Family Division,condemned Facilitated Communication as dangerous and declared thatit should not be used by British courts to support or reject allegations ofabuse.

Two of the other plenary speakers at the “Many Faces of Abuse”conference, Jo Massarelli and Marc Tumeinski, are followers of WolfWolfensberger of Syracuse University. Wolfensberger is a JewishHolocaust survivor turned born-again Christian who claims that the medicalprofession is now killing more handicapped people per year than theNazis did between 1939 and 1945.

For conference details see:imaginebetter.co.nz/mfoa2005_index.shtml

Lynley Hood

difficult to disprove. Staudenmayer(Environmental Illness: Myth andReality) has shown conclusively thatthese symptoms are caused bypersonal psychological factors.

Christchurch Press 26 July 2004,1 January 2005

John Welch lives in Picton and is aretired RNZAF medical officer.

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ALL life has a common ancestor. Or to put it

another way, every creature alivetoday, including ourselves, has anunbroken chain of ancestors goingback almost four billion years. Atcertain points along the path fromthen to now, lineages have split, andsplit again, to give rise to the millionsof species alive today.

A problem with descriptions oflife’s history is that it’s very easy togive the impression that it allculminates in us, and everything elseis “off the main line of evolution”.Dawkins avoids this by doing thehistory backwards, couching his

history in terms of a pilgrimageback through time to meet thecommon ancestor of all life: anevolutionary Canterbury Tale. Aswe head back, we meet up withother bands of pilgrims – first thechimps and bonobos, then thegorillas, and so on – the bands join,and we march on together. And aswith Chaucer, some of the pilgrimshave stories to tell, though Dawkinsmercifully decides not to have themdo it in the first person. Instead, hetakes the opportunity himself toexplain, for example, the geneticbasis of evolutionary novelty in TheHowler Monkey’s Tale, or theoccasionally surprising revelations

The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life, by Richard Dawkins. Weidenfeld & Nicolson,$79.99. Reviewed by David Riddell.

Climbing down the family tree

about ancestry disclosed by mol-ecular studies, in The Hippo-potamus’ Tale – it turns out theclosest living relatives of hippos arewhales.

In the hands of a lesser writer,all this could be overwhelming. ButDawkins has had plenty of ex-perience of this sort of thing. Hehas captured brilliantly what Dar-win, in the final paragraph of TheOrigin of Species, called thegrandeur of the evolutionary viewof life.

A version of this review wasoriginally published in the WaikatoTimes.

book review

THE Complaints Board notedthe Complainant, Consumers’

Institute, was of the view that theadvertisements abused the trust ofthe consumer by offering servicesthey could not reasonably deliver,and as such it was misleading.

The task before the ComplaintsBoard was to determine whetherthe Maria Duval advertisementwould be “likely to deceive ormislead the consumer” as stated inRule 2 and/or whether it exploitedthe superstitious, thereby breachingRule 6.

The Complaints Board advisedthat it was obliged to confine itsconsideration to the content of theactual advertisement rather thanconsidering the subsequent in-teraction between the advertiser

and the consumer as alleged by theComplainant. However, it did notethat the advertiser had been listedon the Ministry of Consumer AffairsScamwatch website, and this in itsview indicated that the adver-tisement had been found to bemisleading by that organisation. TheComplaints Board was unan-imously of the view that the adver-tisement would created unrealisticexpectations of life changing bene-fits, and thereby it effected a seriousbreach of Rule 2 of the Code, asthere was no doubt that it wouldbe likely to mislead and abuse thetrust of the consumer.

The Complaints Board was notrequired to make a ruling under Rule6 of the Code, as the issues

contained therein had been sub-sumed by Rule 2.

It noted that all Maria Duvaladvertisements had been suspendedfrom publication in New Zealandby the advertiser and that legalcounsel would be sought in thepreparation of new advertisementsto ensure they complied with theAdvertising Codes of Practice. Italso noted the responsible attitudetaken by the media concerned withregard to future advertisements forMaria Duval, and that the Scam-watch website, having been broughtto their attention, would be checkedbefore publication of such adver-tisements in the future.

The Complaints Board ruled touphold the complaint.

The Maria Duval Decision - deliberations of theAdvertising Standards Complaints Board (Abridged)

clairvoyant


comment

The Tertiary anti-EducationCommissionRaymond Richards

THE Tertiary EducationCommission (TEC) is gaining

a reputation as a Mickey Mousegovernment organisation that harmsthe reputation and integrity of NewZealand’s tertiary institutions.

In April, I called publicly for theActing Chair of the TEC, KayeTurner, to resign. Her defence ofthe teaching of homeopathy at NewZealand’s tertiary institutions is anembarrassment. She insisted thatthe TEC would continue to supportthe teaching of homeopathy be-cause students want it and there arejobs for people with qualificationsin the subject. Thus, skeptics andother taxpayers are forced tosupport courses in mumbo-jumboif the courses sell. Dr Turnerexpressed indignation that I calledhomeopathy nonsense, and shecalled it an alternative to antibiotics.The TEC thus helps to spread dan-gerous twaddle; quackery can bea matter of life and death.

The TEC is also responsible foranother abomination afflicting ourtertiary institutions: the Perfor-mance-based Research Fund(PBRF). The PBRF process ranksacademic staff from “A” for worldclass to “R” for research-inactive.It then allocates millions of dollarsto polytechnics, universities, privatetraining establishments, wanangaand colleges of education, ac-cording to their rankings.

The most important part of thePBRF round requires staff to listtheir Research Outputs over theprevious six years. A panel ofexperts then examines each list andawards a grade of A, B, C or thedreaded R. There are major prob-lems with this procedure thatgenerate unfair and invalid results.

First, the PBRF process assumesthat there is a single model of whatconstitutes good research. Thisassumption may hold true in math-ematics, medicine and the hardsciences, where other scholars canreplicate work. In these subjects,the process of peer-review canwork well.

But there are other areas ofacademic endeavour, such as theArts and Social Sciences, wherethere is no agreed model. Scholarswho rely on empirical research clashwith radical postmodernists andacademics who insist that there areways of knowing other than therational. Politically Correct fashionscome and go. A peer-reviewerrejected one of my history articleson the grounds that it did notcontain “a feminist/pacifist per-spective.”

And on what grounds will thepanellists rate the research? Thehistory of intellectual activity is fullof examples of work that was

dismissed by experts at the time,only to be recognised later asinsightful. On the other hand, peer-reviewed journals have publishedgarbage. The hoax perpetrated in1996 by Alan Sokal is telling; hedeliberately submitted a non-sensical article to the peer-reviewedjournal Social Text, which pub-lished it. And in September 2001the Journal of Reproductive Med-icine, a peer-reviewed medicaljournal, published a paper abouthow a Columbia University studyshowed the power of Christians’prayers to help patients at a fertilityclinic to conceive (see NZ Skeptic75).

The PBRF process distortsresearch activity because it rewardsacademics for churning out quickprojects, such as articles, at theexpense of big efforts. Books in,say, history, often take years toproduce. The scholar has to readfirst all the books and articlesrelevant to the field, then piles ofdocuments that may be kept in far-flung collections. Then the writingbegins, with each key assertioncarefully footnoted to a reliablesource. It is not uncommon for suchefforts to take ten or more years,and sometimes a lifetime. But thePBRF process focuses on a six-year period. Scholars who aredevoting time to long-term projectsreceive the inaccurate and offensive

New Zealand’s tertiary institutions have some strange ways ofmeasuring academic performance

last word

Bernard HowardThe Backward March of Reason

Anthroposophy in DarmstadtChildren’s Hospital

The Darmstadt Children’s Hos-pital has acquired an “Anthro-posophical Ambulance” thanks tothe efforts of a fully qualifiedmedical doctor who has extendedhis healing abilities by embracingSteiner principles. This hospital isa teaching hospital attached to theFaculty of Medicine at the Uni-versity of Frankfurt-on-Main. Themedical director has welcomed thisdevelopment.

Feng Shui ritual causesapartment fire

Three Bavarian ladies tried to ridtheir apartment of bad spirits byopening doors and windows, andsmoking them out with the aid ofanother spirit, that of wine (alcoholto us moderns). The fire ritual wentamiss, the building was badlydamaged by fire, the ladies werehospitalised, and the local authoritywas considering charging them withcareless use of fire.

Founding of GermanAstrological Academy. Dr.

Astrol anyone?

A group of German astrologershas founded the “German Academyfor Astrology”, in the hope that itwill open the way to State-recog-nised academic teaching of theirsubject. This despite the uproar inthe French scientific communitywhen notorious astrologer Elisa-beth Teissier received a doctoratefor her study of the sociology of thesubject. There was a well groun-ded fear that the degree would lend

“There’s no need for your organisation. We’re all skepticsnowadays.”

a false appearance of validity. TheUniversity of Paris forbade theteaching of astrology in 1666.

University of TCMestablished in Vienna

The Traditional Chinese Med-icine Academy in Vienna hasprevailed upon the Minister ofEducation to grant it the status of aprivate university. Though it is yetto produce any research results, theinstitution will teach Diplomacourses in Massage, Midwifery,and Physiotherapy, and courses forBachelor and Masters degrees inAcupuncture, Pharmacology, andTuina-massage. This year, expecteven Dr. Sin. Med. graduates.

Vortex Therapy

From that well known centre ofspin, the British Prime Minister’soffice, comes news that his wife,Cherie Blair, has embraced thelatest ‘altmed’ fad, vortex therapy. The Scotsman reports that, “Youplace a hand on the part of thebody from which the negativeenergies need to be drawn out, andpoint a long rod at a small blockwhich is filled with correspondingnegative energies.”

As her husband thinks PresidentBush can make the world safe fordemocracy, these two can havethe satisfaction of meeting atbreakfast knowing they have eachalready believed somethingimpossible. Acknowledgments. Items 1 to 4,“Skeptiker”; 5, “New Scientist”.

label of “Research Inactive,” as ifthey spend their time snoozing in ahammock. A Waikato Universitysenior manager pointedly urged ahistorian to abandon a lengthybiography because it is an unwiseresearch choice in the PBRFenvironment.

The PBRF process is distortingwork at universities because itpressures academics to play agame. The university tearooms arefull of talk about how to work thesystem. Some academics team upwith friends who are referees inorder to publish a couple of articleseach year. The PBRF discouragesin-depth projects and those aspectsof the job such as teaching pre-paration and community servicethat do not help PBRF scores. Itfrustrates academic freedom byshaping research plans to fit itsarbitrary scheme.

The PBRF also encouragesdepartments to downgrade theimportance of teaching so that thetrend will be for them to becomelike some overseas departments Ihave seen, where graduate studentsdo much of the teaching whilelecturers lock themselves away toturn out articles. The TEC’s latestplan, to introduce ratings forteaching, inspires no confidence.Perhaps lecturers will score well byteaching homeopathy to lots ofstudents.

While thinking about this subjectI benefited from discussions with DrRon Smith of the University ofWaikato.

Dr Raymond Richards is a SeniorLecturer in History and AmericanStudies at the University of Waikato.He can be reached [email protected]

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