Heaving Dead Cats » woo

Sometimes It Sucks To Be A Skeptic

Neece — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 12:15:30 +0000

I think I understand what it’s like to be lost in a world of woo thinking. Maybe even an inkling of what it’s like to believe in Jesus as your personal hero.

Butch, my awesome husband, came home Friday night and told me he felt awful. He and I both got a cold about 3 weeks ago and he shook if off in about 4 days while I suffered with a nasty chest cold, congestion and laryngitis until just the other day. I didn’t want to hear that he was sick again. It was my birthday weekend, we were supposed to go out to dinner on Sunday (last night), and I was hoping we’d both be feeling well for a change.

Alas, it was not to be. He had a fever, the chills, and was completely miserable. And here’s where I realized I felt totally helpless. I can’t stand seeing someone I love sick. When Butch or my dogs or someone I care about has a problem or is in pain, I want to fix them. I want to make them at least feel better. But sometimes there’s nothing you can do.

Butch seemed to have the flu, which is a virus, and really all I could do was make him a hot toddy, be extra nice, and send him to bed to sleep it off.

Recently my older dog, Koku went through some weird emotional thing where whenever I gave the dogs treats, he would suddenly act like there was thunder and lightning and he would practically jump in my lap and shiver. Which is also new. He just developed a dislike of thunder last year. Poor little fella is anxious like me, I guess. But again, there really wasn’t anything I could do for him, except give him some affection and make sure that he was physically alright. (I can put him on doggy prozac, I guess, but that would make him sleep all day, so it’s a last resort.)

But it’s painful to watch the ones I love suffer. I hate it. In my previous life, I was into taking vitamins and airborne. And before that I (shamefully admit) I believed in energy healing. But back then, I had solutions. I could turn to a concoction or my hands with authority and say, “this will make you feel better.” Butch didn’t believe in the energy stuff, but sometimes he’d let me do my woo woo magic. Because when you’re sick, you just want to feel better, even if it’s a long shot.

Then I figured out that energy healing was totally bogus. Which meant I lost a huge security blanket. It was all a placebo, nothing more. Recently the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, along with other podcasts and science news, helped me to become a full fledged Skeptic. (I have a badge and everything!) I learned that taking vitamins have been found to actually shorten your lifespan (a recent study), mega doses of vitamins can be very harmful, and taking airborne as suggested is dangerous, and that it was never properly tested. So, now I have no security blankets at all. It’s just me and bare naked facts and science.

Most times that is quite liberating, not to be weighed down with lies and nonsense. But when my loved ones are sick and there’s nothing that can really be done except fluids and bed rest, (oh, and TLC, of course), I feel really naked and frustrated.

So I guess I understand why people turn to crackpot pseudo-science. I see why they buy ridiculous remedies, books for crazy diets, books for strange magical ways to improve their lives. I guess I even understand people who pray to Jesus for a cure. It might be a long shot, but at least they’re doing something.

Of course, prayer is actually doing nothing. You’re just wasting time and energy on a god that doesn’t exist. But I guess it makes sense, in a way, if you really believe it’s going to work. Maybe it’s just the knowing, the confidence that Jesus wouldn’t let you down, that whoever wrote that stupid book you read really does have the answer and really wants to help you achieve perfect health and happiness. Whatever it is, it’s doing something, it’s keeping you from realizing that the world is often harsh and cold.

But turning to a god that isn’t there, or a pill that doesn’t do anything useful, or a book that is full of lies isn’t doing anything. It might seem like it’s helpful, but really it’s worse than nothing. Sure, you might feel like you have a bit of control over a bad situation, but you don’t. You’ve given what little control you might have had to the invisible god, the sugar pill, or the guru who wrote the book. See? You’re less in control than ever. With no hope of ever getting any of it back when you believe in lies and let them lead you and control your life.

It sucks. I know. But reality is a harsh mistress.

So, I kissed my husband on the forehead, reminded him that a mild fever is the body’s natural way of fighting infections, and told him I loved him. He was upset about my birthday dinner, but I told him it can wait. No big deal, just feel better. Sometimes all you can do for someone is love them. So that’s what I did. Love is good medicine, at least.

The Law Of Attraction- And The Secret -Are Bullshit

Neece — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:42:10 +0000

There is no plainer way to say it, The Law of Attraction is complete pseudo-scientific nonsense.

Here is the premise of the Secret, as well as other systems that use the principle of the law of attraction. You can call it whatever you like, positive affirmations, the power of positive thinking, Bernie Siegal’s Love, Medicine and Miracles, Deepak Chopra, and on and on.

Put on your thigh high wader boots, and cover your ears, the bullshit meter is about to sound off loud and long:

Thoughts have an energy that attracts like energy (sometimes borrowed from Quantum Mechanics, minus any evidence). You must control this energy by practicing four things:

Know what you want.
Ask the universe for it.
Feel and behave as if the object of your desire is already with you, or is on its way to you.
Be open to receiving it.

Of course, if you think negative thoughts, the universe will manifest those negative thoughts in your life as well. So you must think positively at all times so that the universe will manifest all of your desires.

Before the Secret was around, there were plenty of other similar methods of thinking – positive affirmations and the like. As I’ve mentioned before, even though I was an agnostic in my late 20’s and early 30’s, I was very spiritual. I believed this bullshit 150%. I’d read books, learned from “gurus”, had a few college teachers, doctors and nurses suggest these techniques, and even had success with it. I taught others how to manifest their dreams, too. In a way it was the core belief of my spirituality.

When I fully embraced the fact that there is no god about 9 years ago, and acknowledged that there is no evidence of a benevelent creator or universal force that watches out for me, I still didn’t quite give up the positive affirmations. They had seemed to work in big ways in my life. But they started really messing with my head, too. And this is where I realized that they can be quite dangerous.

If you believe you have control over events and objects in your life based solely on your thoughts, you feel you are much more in control than what reality supports. While I believe we all must be responsible for our actions, thinking like this goes grievously too far.

Examples:

I developed this fear that my thoughts controlled my husband’s success or failure at driving to and from work. If I had a worry based on the weather conditions that he might have an accident, I would panic and had to tell him to drive carefully, and I had to think only positive thoughts while he was on the road. This became an obsession in which I had to tell him to drive carefully before leaving or he would crash. It didn’t have anything to do with his driving skill, the safety of our well-maintained car, or anything else. It was all down to my thoughts. The problem is, the more I tried to avoid thinking about accidents the more they filled my mind. If he did have an accident it would have been my fault entirely. It wouldn’t have anything to do with the stupid deer that stand in the road, the patch of black ice, or the idiot that stopped dead at a green light because he was texting his girlfriend.

This then led to other obsessive thoughts that seemed to be incredibly important for our happiness and safety. Innocent random thoughts became terribly important. Mild concerns harbored doom if they weren’t countered with positive thoughts. A mild and common worry about leaving the coffee pot on would lead to thinking of the house burning down, a brief worry that would turn into a horrid panic. I had just sealed my fate by having that flash in my mind. It doesn’t help that my mind is graphic and vivid in technicolored detail for such things. That only led me to believe I actually had power over such events.

Sure, I do have some power. I can remind my husband to check the brakes or replace the tires on the car. I can make sure I don’t leave appliances on that could overheat if left alone for a long time. But I do those things anyway, just like the rest of us. And sure, mistakes happen, which can lead to accidents and misfortunes.

But the idea that your thoughts alone are so powerful as to change physics, to affect physical objects and the will of other people is crazy. You use your thoughts to make decisions on what to say or what action to take. Nothing more. I’m happily surprised I didn’t start wearing a tinfoil hat to keep those pesky negative thoughts inside my skull.

A lot of people use this belief system to try to gain wealth and money. Of course I did it too. This is where it seemed that I had the most success. But like everyone else, I would cherry pick the results of all the thousands of times I controlled my thoughts and forced myself to repeat positive affirmations over and over to just those few that were amazingly, positively successful. That’s anecdotal evidence, my friends. It isn’t scientific. It isn’t reality.

Of course I felt I had full power over our finances, just by my thoughts. When I write that and read it, I see how insane it is. Our financial successes and setbacks had nothing to do with the economy, the job market, my husband working 2 jobs at one point, the housing market or anything else? No, it was all due to my thoughts. Yes, that’s crazy, I know.

Once I realized how far I’d gone with crazy thinking, I forced myself to do a test. For a week, I didn’t tell my husband to drive carefully when he left for work. If I had worries and negative thoughts, I tried to rationally remind myself that they were simply that: irrational worries. I didn’t force myself to repeat positive affirmations. And you know what? He didn’t get in an accident. I tried different mind experiments after that, every one unscientifically confirming that my thoughts were staying in my head and simply causing stress and worry. Nothing more.

Here’s another angle. If you get cancer, it’s your fault for being afraid of cancer and worrying about it. If you are a woman and you get mugged and raped, you were afraid of being attacked and you attracted it to you. Again, your fault. That’s the way that screwed up belief system works. Blame the victim because it strengthens the flawed and unproven system as “effective”.

But it’s completely unscientific and downright cruel to tell a cancer victim, a child with leukemia, or a rape victim that they did this to themselves just through negative thinking when there is absolutely no evidence to such bogus claims.

I used my personal examples to explain this insidious system of false belief, hoping you could learn from my errors. Even an intelligent nonbeliever can fall into the trap of the law of attraction. In fact, the reason I am writing this is because I hear people say “what you think about is what you attract to yourself” or some variation thereof, even within the atheist community.

It leads me to understand that not all atheists are critical thinkers or skeptics. But in this case, it’s a good idea to examine the evidence (NONE) for our thoughts controlling objects both near and far, physics, and the actions of others. Seems silly when you think about it. Your thoughts are in your head. So don’t fall into the same trap that I got stuck in. Think for yourself. You’ll be glad you did.

I have written some follow-up posts to this one:

I Need A PrayerMAX 5000!

Neece — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 06:09:13 +0000

I saw this commercial for the PrayerMAX 5000 awhile ago on Pharyngula, but I was busy and never actually watched it. Silly me! This is awesome! I need two of these things!

Amusing Pseudoscience and Religion Images and Comics

Neece — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 04:12:26 +0000

I’m having a DAY today. I’m sure you’ve had days like this, when you just can’t focus, and things you want to get done just don’t happen, and you just end up frustrated with nothing to show for it. So, let’s see some funny pictures! Woot!

This is what the christians would use for a science textbook. Oh, how they long for the dark ages!

Every person should have to take this test to see if they qualify for reproducing.

godless America! if only!

Well said cartoon about how rationality loses in the political mainstream.

Great logic! Keep up the good work!

Main Features of Pseudo-Science

Neece — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 12:52:43 +0000

Yesterday I confessed my addictions to woo and how I realized it was all a pack of lies and nonsense. It’s been hard to learn to think more critically and skeptically about pseudo-science (the fancy grownup term for woo). Unless someone teaches you how to think critically, there’s really no way to easily pick out the slick pack of lies and shiny bullshit for what it is.

For instance, I just found out last month that Airborne is not only pseudo-scientific and completely useless, but can also be harmful. And here I was, just the day before, trying to get my husband to take it for an oncoming cold. Sigh…. The battle never ends.

For me, my bullshit radar with religion is very sensitive. Then again, if it’s about an invisible man in the sky, it’s complete nonsense, so that’s pretty easy. But when it comes to products on the market, any kind of scientific sounding news or claim, I am less sure about what to accept or what to reject.

A couple of days ago, I was listening to The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe podcast and they took the time to talk about how to spot pseudo-science for what it is. Since the list is so important and helpful, I took the time to write it down for all of us. Hopefully this will make it much easier:

Some Main Features of Pseudo-Science by Dr. Steven Novella on the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. Episode 164, September 10, 2008.

Hostility towards scientific criticism. So if you make a scientific claim and the scientific community calls you out on it, you complain that you’re being picked on, or that there’s a conspiracy against you. In fact, that’s just how good science is done, under scrutiny and criticism.
Making a virtue out of ignorance. Someone with no background in science says that’s a good thing. In fact, the best science is the most creative, and the way to get creative is to be well educated and knowledgeable about what you’re investigating.
Heavy reliance on testimony and anecdotal evidence rather than specifically referenced research. Very applicable in the medical realm.
Fundamental principles are often based on a single case. For example the founder of chiropractic thought he healed someone of deafness by manipulating a man’s neck, when in fact the hearing pathway never goes anywhere near the neck.
Claims often promise simplistic solutions to often complex problems or questions. The ”theory of everything” is a huge red flag here. There is no one simple scheme or answer to explain all that there is. So the more someone tries to explain with less, the more skeptical you should be of it.
Starting with the conclusion and working backwards. So if you have a fixed conclusion already, then you can just retrofit the information to suit your conclusion. So then you can cherry-pick all the information that supports your conclusion while ignoring all the information that refutes it. This is the heart and soul of pseudo-science. The key to science is that you have to move forward. You start with a hypothesis and you revise your predictions based on observations of your testing and experiments. If you start with the answer, you are not doing science.
Having a fixed belief. Never changing a hypothesis. So for example, straight chiropractic is saying the same thing they were saying a hundred years ago. Homeopathy has never changed what it says, never takes in new information and modifies how it works. Creationism is a fixed belief. Fixed beliefs are not science.
Techno-Babble. Using scientific language but ultimately meaningless jargon. Language is used properly when it increases the precision and makes things less ambiguous. If you listen to a pseudo-scientist, they use big words to add complexity without increasing precision is a red flag. Or using words that are made to confuse or impress.
Using bold or absolute statements rather than conservative qualifying statements that a careful scientist uses.
You can’t prove me wrong. Attempting to shift the burden of proof away from the claimant. This is backwards. If it’s your theory the burden of proof is on you to prove it correct.
Overturning established science left and right for your one theory. This is just incredibly implausible.
Making vague references to data. Scientists have shown, there is data etc, but nothing people can check up on or look at themselves.
Failure to consider all hypotheses. Cherry-picking the information again. Limiting the hypotheses to the one they want and a few token supporting ones, so that it looks like it’s well received. But when the list is prematurely or falsely limited, they’ve rigged the game.

Confessions Of A Recovering Woo Addict

Neece — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 20:42:40 +0000

Lately I’ve been talking to Jane. (not her real name) I am having trouble talking to her, and I think I figured out why. We knew each other about 10 years ago in a state far, far away. We were acquaintances, but we had a lot in common. (here’s where I tell you some dark secrets) We were into many different kinds of woo.

Woo: (n or adj) when you uncritically believe unsubstantiated or unfounded ideas. Short for woo woo, according to the Urban Dictionary, definition 4.

I was into reiki, divination, numerology, you name it. While I was an agnostic back then, I still clung to the idea of a kind of Universal Energy. Not really an intelligence, but kind of “magical” principles to energy that science just hadn’t quantified or qualified yet. I held to the beliefs that ancient societies knew secrets that had been lost. Like the Chinese were better at medicine than modern science, or the Mayans had some secret knowledge about the Universe that we were missing out on, as seen in their calendar stopping in 2012.

My main thing was reiki. If you don’t know anything about it, basically you channel energy from the universe through you into your subject. You get an “attunement” where “sacred symbols” open you as a channel. A reiki master has to administer this attunement which is basically a short ritual.

I’ve never been one for ritual. But I really wanted to cure myself of all that was wrong with me and help people, so even though I didn’t like that part of it, I accepted it. And reiki worked for me. My hands would get really hot when I “channeled” this “sacred healing energy” for people. People would feel better when I did my “healings” for them. They would get better. The anecdotal evidence was positive.

I became a reiki master, actually. I then “attuned” other people so that they could go on and be a practitioner, or better yet, go on and attune others. I really enjoyed it and thought it was doing good for people.

I did a lot of reiki for awhile. I held “reiki circles” where we’d all do reiki on each other to “clear our channels” and heal ourselves. I even had a reiki “healing” center with some friends of mine. We offered “healings” and “attunements” in a clinic. We did talks at different places. One talk was at the hospital for cancer patients who wanted alternative healing methods.

I totally believed in reiki. I developed a set of “reiki runes” which had Japanese writing on them. I then gave divination readings with them. I was pretty good at it too. People came back to me again and again for readings and advice.

I can’t believe I’m telling you this. Personally I’m very embarrassed by how much woo I believed back then. But I’m telling you for a reason. I was really wrapped up in this kind of belief in “magical energy”. It made sense to me. It worked for me. I was good at it. I was helping people.

After awhile, I started noticing several things. At first, since they went against what I was practicing, I tried to ignore them or write them off with different woo thinking. What happened was that one of the women I had the clinic with got really sick with pneumonia for quite some time. At first she still tried to do healings with us, before she knew it was pneumonia. But she would cough and hack and we finally all agreed that she needed to get herself better before she could heal others.

This disturbed me. If we’re healing people by channeling this amazing, loving energy from the universe, how could she get so sick? But this was explained that she wasn’t doing reiki correctly. She was supposedly taking on the illnesses of the clients, instead of simply channeling the energy into them. Basically she was doing it wrong and that is what made her sick. She did it to herself.

She ended up in the hospital. She almost died because she was trying to treat it herself with woo magic at home, instead of the medicine she really needed. Of course, we dutifully went to the hospital to give her more reiki healings.

The other thing that I noticed was that it really didn’t matter much what I did. If the person I was working on “believed” I was healing them, they got better and felt a difference. If they didn’t believe, or were resistant to change, they stayed the same.

It was all about psychology. I did some testing of this theory, more so in the readings I did for people and found it to be blatantly accurate once I was aware of it. If the person believed I was channeling awesome energy, the reading was successful. Even if I didn’t feel connected.

After noticing that it was all about psychology, I finally realized there’s no evidence that this stuff does anything at all beyond the power of the human mind and the placebo effect. And that’s when I started letting go of woo. It has taken some time and education, but now I think I’m actually getting somewhere with skeptical thinking.

Of course, now there’s a skeptical community that I can tap into and get new information from. Which is very nice.

Anyway, back to Jane. She’s still very much into all kinds of woo. Talking to her makes me ashamed of who I was. I think back on how I used to think 10 years ago and I feel embarrassed. I can’t believe I embraced all that nonsense.

Of course, the way that woo is packaged and delivered to people is very slick and shiny and palatable. It’s easy and simple and will cure all your ills if you believe the lies.

I’ve rambled enough for one day. But tomorrow I will have a list of some of The Main Features Of Pseudo-Science. This list is quite helpful for figuring out what is nonsense and what is based on real scientific fact and research.

Heaving Dead Cats » woo

Sometimes It Sucks To Be A Skeptic

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