Pscience & Pseudoscience
So the White Queen says to Alice, “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Lewis Wolpert uses this as the title for his book on the evolutionary origins of human beliefs (Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, W.W.Norton). We can’t do justice to it here, but it’s a fascinating synthesis – tying together three of the milestones on the road to becoming human: tool use, language, and the habit of causal inference. In his schema, the human trait of thinking in terms of cause and effect was engendered, or at least reinforced, by the use of tools, eventually developing the basis of all science and technology.
Trouble is, when we can’t identify the cause, we make one up. Or, we believe some conjecture, fable, or fairy tale that someone else made up – which opens the floodgates to religious and paranormal beliefs, superstitions, miracle cures, conspiracy theories, and political spin.
Folked-Up Medicine
On the subject of miracle cures and believing impossible things, chemistry professor and Washington Post food science columnist Robert L. Wolke has found a treasure trove of examples and shares them with the readers of Skeptical Inquirer in their January issue.
Dr. Wolke ran across an issue of a tabloid called Lighthouse, which calls itself “a chronicle of meaningful living.” Actually, it’s mostly adverttising, and he compiled lists of the therapies being offered, the promises they make, and the academic degrees claimed by their practitioners. A few are recognizable – MBA, MD, PhD, and RN – but then there are ABMP, DMQ, LPC, NBCCH, SSRM, and 21 others including AISI, which I’ve always thought stood for the American Iron & Steel Institute.
The catalogue of therapies, products, and services runs to 156 entries, so we can only cite a few: ioncleanse detoxification, lymphatic therapy, Lomi Lomi (I and II), mandala assessment, angel cards, group angel parties, hermetics (comes from the Greek for “We ain’t telling”), Vedic vibration technology, and regression therapy (disclosure: in a prior incarnation, I was a dial tone).
And what wonders might you experience from such esoteric nostrums? Again, a few of many promised epiphanies:
Being in touch with your totem animals, freedom from undetected obstacles to your soul, stronger connections to guides and angels, enhancement of your stem cells, the opening of your third eye (and the procurement of new glasses?), the clearing of your aura, and of course health, wealth, strength, success, and fulfilled desires.
All this, and trembling in anticipation of Lomi Lomi III.
Chimps vs. People
Creationists bristle at any mention of the fact that we share 98% of our genes with chimpanzees. Well, they had better stop bristling and hit the books because they’re being left in the dust by five year old chimps.
Japanese researchers set up a carefully monitored match of young chimps vs.young adult humans in tests of short-term memory, and the chimps won. These particular chimps had been taught the order of Arabic numerals 1 through 9, which may be more than some creationists have mastered, but the chimps had to compete against bright college students. Shown a screen displaying the numbers in random arrangement, the chimps and humans were to touch each one in numerical order. But when they touched #1, the rest turned into blank squares, so to finish the job they had to remember where each number was positioned.
On that test, the chimps made the same number of errors as the humans but finished faster. On a similar test using only five numbers – flashed on the screen for just two to four tenths of a second — a chimp named Ayumu beat all nine student competitors by a wide margin.
One consolation: Ayumu’s mom did even worse than the college students. Apparently, this is a skill that dissipates with age in both species.
Glowing Report on Cat Cloning
If anyone asks permission to clone your cat, say no.
South Korean researchers from two universities report they have cloned three Turkish Angora cats, modifying them in the process. They took skin cells from a cat and inserted a gene that codes for a red fluorescent protein before transplanting the modified cells into eggs.
Result: the cats glow in the dark. What an achievement.
It’s the first time cats with modified genes have been cloned, and the scientists say that such animals will be enormously useful in developing new cures for genetic diseases.
Me, I saw that report and threw out every red fluorescent protein in my medicine cabinet.
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