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Editor’s Note: Letters about the four ClimateWars pieces in our March/April 2010 issue ap -pear in the Follow-up section on pages 50–56.

How to Deal with Cranks

I enjoyed reading Martin Bridgstock’s articleon dealing with letters from the people hecalls “dissenters” (“Encounters with Aliens[the Local Kind],” SI, March/April 2010).

Isaac Asimov, who wrote both scienceand science fiction, probably had even moreproblems with such people. He once wrotean article somewhat similar to Bridgstock’s. Iregret that I cannot recall the source, but

what I remember of two of Asimov’s meth-ods might be of interest to your readers.

One suggestion was to respond pretend-ing to be your own secretary. First the “secre-tary” would disclaim the ability to under-stand the dissenter’s letter. Then the secretarywould write an assurance that if you (the dis-senter’s target) became once again able todeal with your mail within the next fewmonths, the dissenter’s letter would be oneof the items delivered to you for your con-sideration. This leaves the dissenter ponder-ing just what might have happened. Did yousuffer severe brain damage, or did you retireto a monastery in Tibet? Further correspon-dence, Asimov felt, would be unlikely.

The second suggestion was to prepare abrief handwritten letter with such poor pen-manship that not even a single word could beunderstood. This idea possibly goes back toMark Twain’s book Roughing It, Chapter 70.

Although dealing with too many dissentersmust be distasteful, I still feel a bit wistful. I amsuch an unknown that probably not even asingle dissenter will ever dump on me.

Philip [email protected]

I deeply sympathize with the problemMartin Bridgstock is trying to address with“Encounters with Aliens.” His suggestion forus to claim incompetence in the field soundsgreat. I am eager to try it out.

However, I feel the diagnosis and some

recommendations are not up to CSI’s usualstandards. I’d prefer that we encourage ratio-nal argument based on evidence.

As tempting as it may be, I am alarmed at theimplication to use ad hominem references—however annoyingly the dissenter behaves.

The temptation to categorize people ascranks for using “Howlers, Hijacking, andHurtfullness” rather than addressing theirarguments is itself a form of hurtfulness, andbecause it doesn’t address their issues, doesn’tthat fit his own definition of hijacking?

The history of science has an embarrass-ing surplus of “mainstream science ideas” thatwere overturned. Aether, phlogiston, Ptole -maic motion, and N-rays come to mind.Apparently N-rays were “confirmed” by some120 scientists in 300 published articles.

Were those who questioned Ptolemaicmotion or N-rays cranks?

Calmly explaining the criteria for a scien-tific hypothesis and holding their claims upto them can educate rather than denigrate.

I urge that we address dissenters by re -spectfully explaining how science reallyworks. Perhaps we can gain some enthusias-tic converts as allies.

David DilworthCarmel, California

Martin Bridgstock responds:

Like David Dilworth, I am all in favor ofspreading rationality and knowledge wherever wecan. The point of my paper is that where people

62 Volume 34, Issue 4 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER

average life expectancy has more than doubled andreal income has increased more than nine times. On ashorter scale, just since 1955 (“itself not a time of depri-vation”), writes Ridley, “the average human being onPlanet Earth earned three times as much money (cor-rected for inflation), ate one-third more calories offood, buried one-third as many of her children, andcould expect to live one-third longer.” And while therich have gotten richer, he says, “the poor have doneeven better.” Today’s people are “richer, healthier,taller, longer-lived, [and] freer” than ever before,Ridley maintains, and he goes on to elaborate anddefend this thesis, explain it in evolutionary terms, andlook critically at today’s leading “pessimisms”—all inlively, readable fashion. —K.F.

TOOLS OF CRITICAL THINKING: Metathoughts forPsychology, Second Edition. David A. Levy. Foreword byThomas Szasz. Waveland Press (www.waveland.com),Long Grove, Illinois, 2010. 298 pp. Softcover, $37.95. Awelcome new edition of a much-praised, well-orga-

nized, readable teaching guide tocritical thinking—perhaps the coreunifying theme of the skepticalmovement. Levy, a psychology pro-fessor at Pepperdine Uni versity,agreeably puts together what anystudent of psychology or would-bewielder of the tools of critical think-ing needs. The naturalistic fallacy, Barnum effect, corre-lation-causation confusions, “spectacular explanation”fallacy (extraordinary events do not require extraordi-nary causes), assimilation bias, confirmation bias, beliefperseverance effect, hindsight bias, availability bias,insight fallacy—these and much more are discussedhere in succinct and attractive form. —K.F.

WHY STATUES WEEP. Edited by Wendy M. Grossmanand Christopher C. French. The Philosophy Press,London, 2010. 204 pp. Softcover, £12.99. Since 1987 thequarterly magazine The Skeptic has been doing in theU.K. what the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER has been doing in the

U.S. and around the world. Writtenand edited in the U.K. (but now pub-lished by our Committee for SkepticalInquiry), The Skeptic is dedicated tothe examination of science, scepti-cism (the British spelling), psychology,secularism, critical thinking, andclaims of the paranormal—in short,the pursuit of truth through reason and evidence. Thiswelcome collection brings together the best articlesfrom the magazine’s archive in one lively volume. Itcovers a wide range of topics such as psychic fraudsters,claims of psychic healing and alien abductions, near-death experiences, false memories, miracle claims,untested medical remedies, weeping statues, and muchmore. Contributors include Susan Blackmore, RichardWiseman, John Diamond, Edzard Ernst, Lewis Jones,Gerald Woerlee, and the editors. With a foreword bySimon Hoggart. Highly recommended. —K.F.

—Kendrick Frazier and Benjamin Radford

N E W B O O K S

SI July-Auugst CUT pgs_SI MJ 2010 5/27/10 3:46 PM Page 62

SKEPTICAL INQUIRER July / August 2010 63

seem incapable of grasping such ideas, our time isbest spent on other activities, such as communi-cating with people who are likely to benefit.Judging by Philip McEvoy’s letter, Isaac Asimovhad reached the same conclusion as I have.

The methods I suggest do work, in that theywill usually stop the nuisance activity. IfDilworth has methods that demonstrably work,in the sense of educating these dissenters, then Iinvite him to share them with the skepticalcommunity. They will be a real breakthrough.

Every skeptic knows that scientific theorieshave often been overthrown. That is why skep-ticism is about “investigation” and not “de -bunking.” However, for every misunderstoodgenius there are thousands upon thousands ofpeople who will soak up your time and energyand give nothing in return. I gave some criteriafor distinguishing between the two. If there arebetter criteria, then I invite Dilworth, or any-one else, to contribute them.

Oprah’s Gullibility

The article by Martin Gardner about OprahWinfrey (SI, March/April 2010) was partic-ularly enlightening. Not being a fan of Op -rah or her show, I did not realize the type ofmisinformation she was promoting. It’s sadthat someone so beloved by so many andwho has the power to do so much good lendsher name to so much quackery and untruth-fulness. What a better world it would be ifshe would use her fame and fortune todenounce this kind of silliness. It is evenmore appropriate that the next page at theend of the article is a review of the book IdiotAmerica by Charles Pierce. Very appropriate.

Jim PhillipsNewcastle, Wyoming

Grandma’s Chromosomes

Kenneth W. Krause’s “Science Watch” col-umn “An Eye for the Ladies” (SI, March/April 2010) relates that a recent paper,“Grandma Plays Favorites,” offers strong evi-dence that paternal grandmothers “decreasea boy’s chance of survivorship.” MichaelBalter, in ScienceNOW, says about the samearticle, “Thus paternal grandmothers weremost beneficial to the survival of their grand-daughters and least beneficial to the survivalof their grandsons, while maternal grand-mothers showed an intermediate effective-ness.” I’d say that’s a pretty big difference.

Even so, as a paternal grandmother living

with my son and his family, including a two-year-old grandson and a four-year-old grand-daughter, am I to believe that the presence ofan X chromosome, or lack thereof, has sucha tremendous effect on me that I will uncon-sciously discriminate between my granddaugh-ter and grandson, without my knowledge orthe ability to control my actions? If this is thecase, how can reason or logic be of any use tous? How can anyone complain about peoplewho believe in pseudoscience if a person whobelieves in logic and reason is unable to con-trol her actions toward two people whom sheadores because one has her X chromosomeand one does not?

Then again, in the same issue, PeterLamal has a book review of 50 Great Mythsof Popular Psychology: Shattering WidespreadMisconceptions about Human Behavior writ-ten by Scott O. Lilienfield, et al. He lists tencauses of myths, number 4 of which is “In -ferring causation from correlation.” Hmm.Maybe we should wait twenty years for moreresearch on this before we jump to any con-clusions about the effect of X chromosomesin grandchildren on the behavior of paternalgrandmothers.

Chris PryorHenrico, Virginia

Kenneth W. Krause responds:

Chris Pryor’s much appreciated comments focusbright lights on several frequently raised scien-tific issues. I’ll address them in the order given.

Though a fine science journalist, MichaelBalter didn’t participate in Knapp’s study eitheras a scientist or as a subject. Thus, his news reportis extraneous. More central is the original, peer-reviewed paper from the Proceedings of theRoyal Society B. Therein, Leslie Knapp’s inter-national and multidisciplinary team announcedits results unambiguously: “In all seven popula-tions, boys survive better in the presence ofMGMs [maternal grandmothers] than PGMs[paternal grandmothers]. . . . All of the popula-tions exhibit a detrimental effect of PGMs onboys. . . . Additionally, in seven out of seven pop-ulations, PGMs had a negative effect on grand-sons, and in six out of the seven populations,PGMs had a positive effect on granddaughters.”

Of course Knapp’s paper said nothing aboutgrandmothers who did not take part in herstudy. So clearly Pryor and her family are notdirectly implicated. But, arguendo, if Knapp’s“X-linked grandmother hypothesis” is applica-ble to Pryor, she would likely remain obliviousto her differential treatment and might verywell pen a letter to the editor entirely indistin-guishable from the foregoing.

Regardless, Pryor’s anxiety over genetic deter-minism and lack of conscious personal control isa more interesting and difficult problem. First,informed geneticists would never claim that genesalone predetermine complex human behaviors.Environment, they agree, is at least equally con-tributive. Second, our genome provides humanswith a talent for reason in addition to a capacityfor irrational behavior. Thus, a person’s intellec-tual environment can affect her tendency towarda range of behaviors, including reason and itsmore primitive emotional counterparts. As weknow, publications like SI endeavor to create andmaintain a more positive intellectual environ-ment for their readers and, given humanity’sevolved capacity to learn and adapt, I believe theycan be successful in doing so.

Pryor was also correct to highlight the essen-tial topic of scientific provisionality. Thoughimpressive, Knapp’s hypothesis—like all oth-ers—is subject to future revision or even inval-idation. Then again, we should never ignore orcriticize results merely because they leave usfeeling uncomfortable.

Wiseman Nullifies Positive Results?

Psychologist Richard Wiseman is a well-known British critic of parapsychology, fre-quently appearing in the British media to“debunk” psychic research. I would like torespond to some of the criticisms Wisemanadvances in his recent SKEPTICAL INQUIRERarticle “‘Heads I Win, Tails You Lose’: HowParapsychologists Nullify Null Results”(January/February 2010) and then demon-strate how, on at least one occasion,Wiseman has nullified positive results of aseries of parapsychology experiments.

Wiseman begins by writing: “Parapsy -chologists have tended to view positiveresults as supportive of the psi hypothesiswhile ensuring that null results don’t countas evidence against it” (p. 36). This, however,is committing the fallacy of confusingabsence of evidence with evidence of absence.The fact that we fail to observe positiveresults for a phenomenon in any individualexperiment does not count as evidence thatthe phenomenon in question does not exist.Individual experiments may fail to show pos-itive results for any number of reasons: theexperiment may not have been performedproperly, the sample size chosen may havebeen too small to reveal statistically signifi-cant effects, and so on. With psi we have theadded complication that we are dealing witha purported human ability, and few human



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abilities are perfectly replicable on demand.To use a baseball analogy, home runs are notperfectly replicable on demand, but thatdoes not mean that home runs do not exist.And our failure to observe even a singlehome run at an individual baseball gamedoes not count as evidence that home runsdo not exist.

Before we come to the conclusion that “psidoes not exist,” we must consider the data as awhole. In practice, this means employing thewidely used statistical technique of meta-analysis, in which the data from several exper-iments of the same type are combined andthen analyzed as a whole.

In fact, Richard Wiseman is familiar withthis technique and has used it himself toconduct a meta-analysis of the results fromthirty ganzfeld psi experiments. He men-tions this study on page 38: “In 1999 Miltonand Wise man published a meta-analysis ofall ganzfeld studies that were begun after1987 and published by the start of 1997,and they noted that the cumulative effectwas both small and nonsignificant.”

But what Wiseman does not mention isthis: it later turned out that Milton andWiseman had botched their statistical analy-sis of the ganzfeld experiments by failing toconsider sample size. Dean Radin simplyadded up the total number of hits and trialsconducted in those thirty studies (the statis-tically correct method of doing a meta-analy-sis) and found a statistically significant resultwith odds against chance of about 20 to 1(Radin 2007, 118, 316).

The thirty studies that Milton and Wise -man considered ranged in size from four to onehundred trials, but they used a statisticalmethod that simply ignored sample size (N).For instance, say we have three studies, twowith N = 8, two hits (25 percent), and a thirdwith N = 60, twenty-one hits (35 percent). Ifwe ignore sample size, then the unweightedaverage percentage of hits is only 28 percent;but the combined average of all the hits is justunder 33 percent. This, in simplest terms, isthe mistake they made. Had they simply addedup the hits and misses and then performed asimple one-tailed t-test, they would have foundresults significant at the 5 percent level. Hadthey performed the exact binomial test, theresults would have been significant at less thanthe 4 percent level, with odds against chance of26 to 1. Statistician Jessica Utts pointed thisout at a meeting Dean Radin held in Van -couver in 2007, in which he invited parapsy-chologists and skeptics to come together andhold presentations for other interested scien-tists. Richard Wiseman was present at thismeeting but was unable to offer any rational

justification for his botched statistics. Strangely, Wiseman made no mention of

the flawed statistical analysis in his SKEPTICALINQUIRER article and merely wrote that “thecumulative effect was small and insignificant.”

And this was not the only problem withthe study. Milton and Wiseman did notinclude a large and highly successful study byKathy Dalton (1997) due to an arbitrarycut-off date, even though it was publishedalmost two years before Milton and Wise -man’s paper, had been widely discussedamong parapsychologists, was part of a doc-toral dissertation at Julie Milton’s university,and was presented at a conference chaired byWiseman two years before Milton and Wise -man published their paper.

Here we have a case in which Wisemannullified a positive result by first arbitrarilyexcluding a large and highly successful studyand then by botching the statistical analysis.

ReferencesDalton, Kathy. 1997. “Exploring the links:

Creativity and psi in the ganzfeld.” Proceedingsof Presented Papers, The ParapsychologicalAssociation 40th Annual Convention, pp.119–134.

Milton, J., and R. Wiseman. 1999. “Does psiexist? Lack of replication of an anomalousprocess of information transfer.” PsychologicalBulletin 125(4): 387–391.

Radin, D. 2006. Entangled Minds. New York:Simon and Schuster.

Chris CarterAuthor of Parapsychology

and the Skeptics

Richard Wiseman responds:

Chris Carter’s letter provides an excellent exampleof exactly what is wrong with present-day para-psychology. In 1999 I coauthored a meta-analysisof ganzfeld telepathy studies that had been con-ducted between 1987 and February 1997. Thisanalysis followed other meta-analyses that hadexamined earlier sets of ganzfeld studies andobtained evidence of highly significant effects.Our meta-analyses did not reveal any evidence ofa significant effect. The “heads I win, tails youlose” procedures kicked in. Some parapsychologistssuggested that our analysis should have used a dif-ferent statistical procedure (even though they hadnever criticized the earlier meta-analyses, despitethem using exactly the same procedure) or thatstudies conducted after our analysis should beadded (thus defeating the entire notion of havinga cut-off point). Some parapsychologists searchedthe data-set for pockets of significant studies (seethe analyses by Palmer, Bem, and Broughtondescribed in my original article). In short, theyshowed exactly the type of reluctance to embrace

the null hypothesis that I describe in my article. IfChris Carter and others are confident that psieffects are genuine, then I invite them to organizea prospective meta-analysis in which the types ofstudies, cut-off points, and analyses are pre-speci-fied in advance of the studies being conducted.Any failure to do so will reveal a great deal abouttheir true level of confidence in such effects.

Moral Facts?

The recent debate between Massimo Pig liucci(“The Moral Duty of a Skeptic,” SI, Nov -ember/December 2009) and David Kessler(Letters, SI, March/April 2010) over the exis-tence of “moral facts” is surprising to find inthe pages of SI. The surprise for me is inPigliucci’s eventual admission that he sub-scribes to a “virtue ethics view of the world.”

Most prominent skeptics assume a clusterof highly consistent philosophical positions,generally including atheism or agnosticism,hard determinism, materialism, empiricism,moral relativism or consequentialism/utilitari-anism, humanism, naturalism, and logicalpositivism. In this worldview, as Kessler pointsout, moral facts “do not exist outside humanthought.” Pigliucci claims they “are arrivedat—in ethical philosophy—by reason, not byobservation.” He just knows, for example, thatseeking the truth is always the right thing todo. But claims as to what are moral facts havevaried wildly, and 4,000 years of just reasoningabout them have gotten us precisely nowhere.We should have been empirical in our searchfor them all along.

Pigliucci ponders that “moral rules may bemore akin to logical propositions or mathe-matical theorems.” But the above record showsthat moral facts are a human construction tobe detected empirically. He indirectly admitsthis by nowhere justifying virtue ethics byshowing how truth or knowledge are virtues inand of themselves but several times appealingto consequentialist/utilitarian arguments, suchas “It is indeed important to thoughtfully con-sider . . . whether our single-minded search fortruth . . . ends up doing more ill than good.”

With the expanding ability that we nowhave to objectively study humanity, its desires,and its means to achieve these—somethingacknowledged by Pigliucci—hopefully we willbe less often waylaid or even hijacked by pow-erful individuals who just know what is rightfor us.

Gary BakkerLaunceston, Tasmania,Australia


SKEPTICAL INQUIRER July / August 2010 65


Gödel’s Theorem

I was disappointed to see Massimo Pigliuccimisunderstand Gödel’s incompleteness theo-rem in his response to Dr. Kessler’s letter inyour March/April 2010 issue. The theoremproves that under a sufficiently complex sys-tem of premises, there will be some truthsabout the system that can’t be proved logi-cally from the premises. It says nothingabout the truth of the premises. It’s impor-tant for skeptics to understand this theorembecause it’s often inaccurately used to justifyblind faith or intuition.

R. Allen GilliamWinter Park, Florida

Massimo Pigliucci responds to Bakker andGilliam:

Bakker is surprised to see a skeptic endorsing aversion of virtue ethics, but I am surprised at hissurprise, given the existence of books by human-ists on virtue ethics, for example Richard Taylor’sVirtue Ethics: An Intro duction (Prometheus).

Moreover, there is nothing particularly “con-sistent” between atheism and any given school ofthought in ethics, and some of the schools men-tioned by Bakker—particularly moral rela-tivism and consequentialism—are most cer-tainly not logically consistent with each other.

As for the existence of “moral facts,” ofcourse they are not facts in any empirical senseof the term, hence my analogy (and it was onlyan analogy, not an equivalency) with mathe-matics: numbers do not “exist” as independentfacts, but one cannot thereby conclude that theyare arbitrary human constructs.

My reference to the consideration of whetherskeptical inquiry leads to more ill than goodwas simply motivated by the fact that there arecontrasting ethical demands at play here, wherethe search for truth (which I consider of highethical value) may clash with other values (suchas compassion for fellow human beings, regard-less of whatever irrational notion they mayentertain). There is no contradiction betweenclaiming that ethics is not (entirely) a matter ofempirical facts while also arguing for consider-ation of whatever facts inform us about theactual human condition.

As for Bakker’s final comment about societybeing hijacked by individuals who “just know”what is right for us, I would argue that a com-bination of science and philosophy is preciselythe right antidote against that possibility, whilescience alone has all too often failed us in thatrespect (think of eugenics).

As for Gilliam’s impression that I misunder-stood Gödel’s theorem, I do not see on what suchimpression is based. I would agree with Gilliam’s

summary of the significance of the theorem,which is precisely in line with my argumentsabout the incompleteness of logical systems.However, I certainly never implied that suchincompleteness somehow “justifies blind faith.”As for intuition, it is not at all a form of faithbut, as recent research in cognitive science shows,a subconscious form of information processing bythe brain. Often, but not always, it results in cor-rect educated guesses on how to solve a particularproblem, guesses that are not apparently arrivedat through the type of linear logical thinkingassociated with conscious deliberation.

I Really Don’t Know What I Saw

Last night I was cruising through the chan-nels when I came face to face with James Fox’stelevision show I Know What I Saw. Hereinwas packaged many, if not most, of the typi-cal tricks of false logic wound up in the sin-cerity of authoritative eyewitnesses and theshallow dismissal of skeptical critics. To elab-orate on all of these pitfalls and seductionswould take a documentary in itself.

Purportedly appealing to some scientificcredibility, it used the appeal to authority toauthenticate the supposed close encounters.We saw astronauts, generals, pilots, and evena president recounting their experiences. Ifthese people see UFOs, surely they must bereal! However, it was precisely against theassertion by authority that science began inthe first place, and “nulla in verb” remains themotto of the first ever formal scientific society.To utilize authority in this fashion is disingen-uous unless the goal of the program is simplyratings. It is not disputed that many of theseprofessional individuals perceived somestrange visual (and potentially tactile) event,but quite clearly most of these people are thefirst to admit that they don’t “know what theysaw.” Most apparently, what were recountedwere perceptual experiences, yet no perceptualpsychologist or vision scientist was featured. Ifthese are anomalies and represent the veryedge of normal perception or peri-normalrather than paranormal phenomena, then theneurosciences and the experimental andempirical elements of the psychological sci-ences need to be very much to the fore.Tellingly, in Fox’s treatment such individualswere patently missing. Neither were the verybrief flashes of skeptics who appeared only inmomentary and derogatory clips indicative ofthe vast body of more rationale informationconcerning some of the more prominentreports featured.

If this program, and the clever but intrin-sically deceptive fashion in which it was pre-sented, is the only source of information thegreat American public receives, it is littlewonder that many people believe in extrater-restrial visitations. Herein, the blame lies notwith the public but elsewhere. And strangely,I believe the blame lies with the skepticalcommunity. Where are our documentariesthat debunk such confabulations? Why arewe not prominently featured on the ScienceChannel, the Discovery Channel, etc.? Whyis the truth of a situation not capable ofbeing communicated as intriguingly andentertainingly as these outlandish and oftenexplicitly sensation-seeking presentations? Itis apparent we are in a fight, and irrational-ity is winning.

P.A. HancockProvost Distinguished

Research ProfessorUniv. of Central Florida

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