DOWSING FOR BOMBS.

I just stumbled across this appalling news about a British company selling millions of dollars of bomb-detection devices to Iraqi security forces.  What's so wrong with this, you ask?  That device is the ADE 651, basically, a fancy injection-molded dowsing rod:

These things were sold for, I shit you not, $16,500 to $60,000 each.  Disgusted yet?

Highlights include:

-American military advisors have desperately tried to convince Iraqi security forces not to rely on them.

-James Randi has offered the company that produces and sells them, ATSC (UK) Ltd., his standard million-dollar challenge.  The company has refused to attempt the request.

-The devices have no battery, solar cells, or any other power storage.  The user is supposed to walk in place for a few moments to "charge" the device.

-Surprise, surprise, no research has ever shown such devices to be more reliable than chance.

-The manufacturer itself states that it's only customers are developing countries; neither military or police force in any industrialized nation purchases it's products.

This would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic.  This is literally a case where we can be remarkably certain that people have died because of a combination of pseudoscience and corporations so unregulated that they can get away with such blatant fraud.

Dowsing and skating

On Sunday, a small group of people from the St. Louis Atheist group went ice skating at a local ice rink at Forest Park in St. Louis.

As per usual, conversation ranged from arranging us in descending order based on the number of times we fell on our asses, to whether or not one should come out as an atheist during a time in which one is receiving prayers from everyone due to a planned hospital visit.

One of the things we talked about briefly is dowsing.

I have this idea to hold a Skeptical Society of St. Louis workshop in which each member gets to make their own pair of dowsing rods. During this workshop each skeptic can learn just how much truth there is to the claim that when a dowser is holding a pair of dowsing rods, he or she has "no control" over the direction they turn. I think I'll have people make their choice of dowsing equipment: either a pair of dowsing rods or a pendulum, and then we will perform all sorts of dowsing experiments in and around the building.

There are a lot of ways to dowse for things, but there are three devices that are most popular. You can either use a forked stick, two rods bent at 90 degree angles, or a pendulum. Dowsers claim that dowsing can be used to find all sorts of things, including water running underground, playing cards, or immaterial future events.

The James Randi Educational Foundation has had several dowsers try out for the million dollar challenge, and none of them have made it through the preliminary trials. The Wikipedia article also cites several references to studies done on dowsing.

My theory and the theory of most skeptics is that dowsing relies on confirmation bias and the ideomotor effect. You'll note that all dowsing devices are always held in the hands. We never see dowsers asking psychic questions while the rods are mounted 5 feet away on a stand, away from any human touch.



(yes, I know the video covers up my sidebar. There isn't anything I can do about this)

Urban Health Fair, Pt.2

This is part 2 of my series on an Urban Health fair that I visited a few weekends ago. The first part can be found here.

After Michael and I were given advice on how to supplement our dog with Glucosamine and fish oil capsules, we headed over to another booth. To be honest, I don't really recall what this booth was showcasing exactly, except that it had a stack of fliers held hostage by a large, smooth rock, which prevented them from blowing away in the gentle breeze. This rock was immediately taken from the table by Michael's son – who was pretty much grabbing everything in sight.

Michael's son is blonde (in contrast to my brown hair and Michael's red hair), so Michael and I exchanged amused looks when a lady behind the table at the booth told us, "Oh, your son is so obviously an indigo child. Congratulations!" I said, "really?" She went on to tell us that if we really wanted to understand our son, we should learn to interpret his dreams – his dreams would be a window into his soul and understanding them will enable us to better harness his indigo traits.

Of course, we played along. I hugged Michael's son and told him, "You hear that kid? You're an indigo!"

I actually wrote a post on indigo children way back in the near-dawn of this blog, which can be found here.

Indigo children are what some new age individuals and organizations believe is the next step in the evolution of our species. Indigo children are supposed to be more creative and intuitive than non-indigo children, and many people believe they possess enhanced capability of paranormal powers such as telepathy or psychic abilities. Some of the traits of indigo children, as described by Olena Gill (An author of books about inidgo children, who is a self-proclaimed metaphysician, life coach and indigo, are:

They:

• Are highly intuitive – can be telepathic and show extrasensory capabilities.

• Will often say seemingly 'profound' statements and have a strong interest in God – they often seem wise beyond their years.

• Are very sensitive to the environment, (can include food & additives), energy fields, electrical currents, as well as emotional sensitivity to what is happening around them.

• Are strong willed – have a determination about them, often 'warrior-like' in their personality.

• Will often 'call them as they see them' and won't hold back from doing so.

• Can have a fiery temper and demeanor – rarely wavers from the one-track mind.

• Can often be confused with having a defiant attitude – will often do the exact opposite of what they are told to do.

• Have a strong need to help others, individually or globally.

• Are often introverted and a loner.

• Like to work alone most of the time or in groups where is there is mutual cooperation and respect.

• Are seemingly antisocial until they meet up with others like them.

• Are very technologically oriented – usually are whizzes at computers or other gadgetry.

• Deal often with depression, insomnia, or bodily issues such as chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and in extreme cases – energetic mania or freneticness.

• Can be misdiagnosed as ADD or ADHD.

Amusingly enough, even though I think the indigo movement is silly, in nearly all of the online "tests" for indigo traits, I score positively – what does that mean? If only there were some decent scientific studied on the phenomenon, but alas, there are… zero. Perhaps if there were decent evidence of psychic abilities, I might be inclined to believe that indigos were "evolving", but… There isn't.

Some of the "indigo" traits are vague enough that they can be said to be traits of any child, especially by a parent who already believes that indigo children are a real phenomenon. For example: being strong willed, "calling as they see them", having a fiery temper, being defiant (or "confused" for defiance), wanting to help, yet being introverted and antisocial and liking to work alone unless with their "kind", being interested in technology and experiencing depression. These are all things that children experience as they are growing from babies into adults.

The other traits – having ESP and being "sensitive to environment" are traits that are commonly misinterpreted due to cognitive bias and errors. Testing has shown again and again that psychic abilities, telepathy and ESP are indistinguishable from pure chance occurrences, except for in the all-too common instances in which outright trickery and deception are involved. Testing has also shown that "energy field" sensitivity is bunk – people who believe they are electrosensitive cannot distinguish between the presence or absence of electrical fields when properly blinded to them. Obviously, some people do have food allergies and sensitivities, but this is much rarer than people believe. The rest can be chalked up to wishful thinking – if you believe your child is psychic, you're much more likely to count the "hits", when a child says something that can be interpreted as "psychic" or "intuitive" while ignoring the misses.

A label like "ADD" or "defiant" might mean for a parent that your child is imperfect, damaged or somehow less than his peers. By labeling him an "indigo", a parent can turn this around, labeling him as evolved above his peers.

I think the whole movement is silly and possesses no scientific or rational basis. Everyone wants their children to be special, and parents should obviously nurture the natural gifts that children have – but one should not nurture and encourage defiance. Some indigo parents go so far as to essentially let their children parent themselves, saying things like, "I don't teach him, he teaches me. He leads me. He tells me what he needs".

As we walked away from the booth and grabbed some lemonade, the woman who told me my "son" was an indigo approached us and handed me a book – HOW to RAISE an INDIGO CHILD: 10 Keys to Cultivating a Child's Natural Brilliance by Barbara Condron – it was a gift! I thanked her, genuinely grateful that she wanted to gift me with a book on how to raise a kid – even if the kid isn't mine and I don't see any evidence that "indigo children" are a real phenomenon. I love getting books, even if they are on subjects that I disagree with.

Next up – nerve conduction tests and the wacky anatomy knowledge of chiropractors!

Ray a Day - 5:8

Well, we're in the last 30 pages of Ray Comfort's book, "You can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think: Answers to Questions From Angry Skeptics".

Today, Comfort's Angry Skeptic says:

Welcome to a dangerous new era - the Unlightenment - in which centuries of rational thought are overturned by idiots. Superstitious idiots. They're everywhere - reading horoscopes, buying homeopathic remedies, consulting psychics, babbling about "chakras" and "healing energies", praying to imaginary gods, and rejecting science in favour of soft-headed bunkum. But instead of slapping these people round the face till they behave like adults, we encourage them. We've got to respect their beliefs, apparently. ... Why should your outmoded codswallop be treated with anything other than the contemptuous mockery it deserves?

 I looked up this quote on Comfort's blog and noted something interesting - it is a quote by Charlie Brooker, from an article published in The Guardian. The blog commenter (or "angry skeptic", if you will) made it clear that he was quoting someone else, by clearly citing who he was quoting.  Comfort takes this quote and though he obvously knows from the original comment that this quote was authored by Charlie Brooker, he fails to cite the original author of this comment in his book.

I am not nearly this dishonest, so I will give credit where credit is due. The text above is from a column in the guardian. The entire column can be found here.  Charlie Brooker has been writing for tv and media for decades and has written several books.

I am fairly sure that Comfort could get sued for using quotes from an article written in the guardian without crediting the author. I do not think that it matters that the quote came from his blog comments (He can use his blog comments due to fair use laws) because the commenter was quoting from someone else, but I could be wrong.

Anyway, Comfort says that he agrees with Brooker. He agrees that we're surrounded by crazy people who'll believe anything. He says that he and Kirk Cameron once snuck a hidden camera into a psychic store, but they got kicked out because their "questions cut too close to the bone". He thinks healing energy and imaginary gods, seeing mary in a cheese sandwitch is all a bunch of bunk.

So far, we're with him, right? But what does he have up his sleeve? Oh, he says we should "go one step furthur and say to stop all this nonsense and to love and serve the Living God". He says that he's going to make a prediction, and that his prediction is this: his blog will make us mad, and when we read that we'll decide we aren't mad, and will then get confused about how to respond.

You see, to an atheist, or to someone incredulous, there isn't much difference between healing energy and non Comfortian Christian gods or comfort's particular brand of god. There is no more evidence for his god than for any of these other things. Why is it that Comfort can so easily dismiss the claims of other religions but is incapable of applying the same logic to his own? What is the difference between a "false god" and thw apparently "true god" Comfort believes in? Why is it so easy to dismiss other gods as foolish, but you can't let go of your own using the exact same tools you used to dismantle the others? I'll never understand this.

I am going to guess that Comfort and Cameron got kicked out of the psychic store maybe cause they... had a camera on business property. I don't really know, as I can't find any verification that this took place aside from in Ray's book - but since he seems to be a master heckler, I am going to go out on a limb and guess that he may have been heckling and creating a schene.

Oh and, Comfort's prediction was incorrect. This does not make me mad. It makes me think. When you're an outsider to religion, people's different religious beliefs sort of blur into a fuzzy spectrum (The Religion Spectrum). People who have beliefs that do not infringe on the believers' ability to function in daily life, are ethical, moral and do not undermine science or take away my rights don't particularly bother me, even if they are a fairly far cry from reality. To me, the only difference in the Christian and Muslim god, for example, are the behaviors of their believers and some minor specific beliefs. They both fall squarely in the categoy of "mythology".

Questions for my psychic

I must have been really bored, because I bought a psychic reading from a"psychic" on eBay for .99 - that's ninety-nine cents. She said I can ask twenty questions. So, in the comments section, I want you to give me questions to ask her.

Answers will be posted when she gives me her reading!

Your questions can be related to my own personal situation (from what you know of me) or off the wall, or satirical, or whatever you can think of.

How I became an Atheist, Pt.4

In high school, I sort of formulated my own ideas about religion. My friend Art introduced me to the idea of Empaths - that is, being able to feel what other people are feeling. He said he had this ability, and so we spent lots of time trying to figure out what people were feeling. We believed it was a supernatural power, a sort of telepathy.  We would go out to the woods to sit and meditate, to feel at one with the trees and feel the energy of the earth. I abandoned my ideas of Wiccanism and Pagansim - as cool as it was to chant spells and have alters, I never really believed any of it worked, and I never saw any evidence that it worked. This oneness and energy and Force - I could get that. After all, all of the atoms that make up our bodies were present at the Big Bang, connected in singularity to everything else, even time. Being one with the universe is basically true, all supernaturalism aside.

We spoke at length of what infinity really meant, who and what God was, and how we thought everyone else had it wrong. Art instilled in me a love of science and philosophy, so for that he gets my eternal kudos. I decided that I had made up my own religion - Krisaeism - which was basically a hodgepodge of pseudointellectualism, cosmology, pantheism, and a smattering of new age mysticism and misplaced quantum physics. I explained my ideas by using a safety pin as a metaphor for god, so all of my friends who considered themselves followers of Krisaeism wore safety pins on their pants to mark their affiliation. Here is what we believed, in short:

1. God is everywhere and in everything.
2. The universe is essentially determinist
3. The Multiverse is real, and in some other universe, we've all got tails (or whatever)
4. The universe and the Multiverses are infinite.
5. We are all connected, and we can tap into this connection via our senses to be empaths, psychics, etc.
6. Nothing is real, but that is irrelevant
7. Souls are real, and after we die, we are reincarnated or become one with the universe, obtaining all knowledge.

Really, our beliefs were not all that bad and admittedly, nearly atheism + irrelevant supernatural/mystical component. It was atheism for those who wanted an afterlife and needed mysticism in their lives to feel happy. It's sort of funny that I thought my idea was so revolutionary. Perhaps it was compared to those around me.

When I graduated high school, I was dating Art and attending his church. I had read the Conversations With God books by Neale Donald Walsch, and they made a lot of sense to me. Walsch is a pantheist. I can still kind of jive with pantheism - it's really as good as atheism with an added bonus of mysticism and supernaturalism that is unnecessary but makes people feel good.

Here is something that I find a little odd to admit, especially because I am fairly certain Art reads this blog. When I attended church, it bothered me to see him worship. When our heads were supposed to be bowed in prayer, I would often look around, or look at him. I would see him saying his silent prayer - and it bothered me. It's been such a long time that I can't exactly recall why. But I remember being.. mildly disgusted. I never had any inclination that God answered prayers or even listened to individual people, even when I believed god was real. Perhaps I thought it was arrogant of him to assume his creator had given him a special place on this earth and would specifically listen to him. I've never believed in a personal god - one who answers prayers and gives people a special place in the universe. I never felt like I had a special place given to me by some other entity.

Upon graduation, I was allowed to give a youth sermon at the church I attended. So I did. You can find it transcribed here.

I am both ashamed and proud of this essay that I wrote. On the one hand, it's actually written fairly well. It takes the ideas of pantheism and presents them in a way that a church congregation can swallow without chasing me out of their sanctuary with flaming hate sticks. But, I still advocated using the heart over the mind.what can I say, I was a romantic little 18 year old. Really, the sermon no longer belongs to me - someone else could have written it for all the connection I still have to it. The sermon is probably one of the few things I wrote about God in life - I wish I had written more so that I could better chronicle the evolution of my thoughts. Alas.

By now you may have noticed, if you've been following, that my story of how I became an atheist has been broken into chunks based on my schooling. Pre-school, grade school, middle school high school. Up next is undergrad, and then graduate school. I'm not sure why this is but it just seems to work. Stay tuned.

Indigo Children: Your kid is special!

Everyone who has kids thinks they are one-in-a-million. Parenting circles overflow with proclamations that Mary or Jimmy is so incredibly intelligent and gifted. Everyone sees so much potential in their beautiful, perfect child.  Sometimes though, this perception of giftedness can move from typical parenthood to the unreasonable.

In new age circles, this giftedness has turned into what is known as "Indigo Children" or "Crystal Children". Indigo children are children believed to represent a higher state of human evolution, or the next step in human evolution. It is said that they exhibit a pattern of behavior not seen before in children, including abilities other non-indigo children do not posses. Many people believe they have psychic abilities and can communicate with spirits An excerpt from a website on Indigos:

Indigo/Crystal phenomenon is the next step in our evolution as a human species. We are all, in some way, becoming more like the Indigo and Crystal people. They are here to show us the way, and so the information can be applied more generally to all of us as we make the transition to the next stage of our growth and evolution.

  The Indigo Children have been incarnating on the Earth for the last 100 years. The early Indigos were pioneers and wayshowers. After World War II, a significant number were born, and these are the Indigo adults of today. However, in the 1970s a major wave of Indigos was born, and so we have a whole generation of Indigos who are now in their late twenties and early thirties who are about to take their place as leaders in the world. Indigos continued to born up to about 2000, with increasing abilities and degrees of technological and creative sophistication.

  The Crystal Children began to appear on the planet from about 2000, although some date them slightly earlier. These are extremely powerful children, whose main purpose is to take us to the next level in our evolution, and reveal to us our inner power and divinity. They function as a group consciousness rather than as individuals, and they live by the" Law of One" or Unity Consciousness. They are a powerful force for love and peace on the planet.

The Indigo and Crystal Adults are composed of two groups. Firstly, there are those who were born as Indigos and are now making the transition to Crystal. This means they undergo a spiritual and physical transformation that awakens their "Christ" or "Crystal" consciousness and links them with the Crystal children as part of the evolutionary wave of change. The second group is those who were born without these qualities, but have aquired or are in the process of aquiring them through their own hard work and the diligent following of a spiritual path. Yes, this means that all of us have the potential to be part of the emerging group of "human angels".

 There are, according to Indigo proponents, a list of traits Indigos have that we can recognize:

• They come into the world with a feeling of royalty (and often act like it)
• They have a feeling of "deserving to be here," and are surprised when others don't share that.
• Self-worth is not a big issue. They often tell the parents "who they are."
•  They have difficulty with absolute authority (authority without explanation or choice).
• They simply will not do certain things; for example, waiting in line is difficult for them.
• They get frustrated with systems that are ritually oriented and don't require creative thought.
• They often see better ways of doing things, both at home and in school, which makes them seem like "system busters" (nonconforming to any system).
• They seem antisocial unless they are with their own kind. If there are no others of like consciousness around them, they often turn inward, feeling like no other human understands them. School is often extremely difficult for them socially.
• They will not respond to "guilt" discipline ("Wait till your father gets home and finds out what you did").
• They are not shy in letting you know what they need.

Why are these traits seen as traits of Indigos? While these may not be traits of every child, these are typical, everyday traits in children and I fail to see how they serve as evidence of some kind of evolution. Let's not forget that evolution is not a directed phenomena. We are not evolving "toward" anything. People survive, those survivors make more people. There are no "stages", "next steps" or "higher states" that we are evolving toward. To thin that evolution has some ultimate purpose for mankind is to misunderstand evolution. I know they call it "natural selection" but really, no selection is occurring.

Here is a self-test to determine the probability of you being an indigo:

1. Are you always searching for your greater purpose in life but feel like the world isn't set up for your kind?
   
2. Do you sometimes feel wise beyond your years?
   
3. Do you have trouble conforming to the ways of society?
   
4. Do you feel out of place in today's world?
   
5. Do you perceive the world very differently than most people around you?
   
6. Do you have strong intuition about certain things that most others do not?
   
7. Do you often feel misunderstood when you try to talk to people about what's real?
   
8. Are you a truth seeker?
   
9. Do you feel like you were born to accomplish a special mission in life?
   
10. Do you feel isolated and alone in your beliefs?
    
11. Misunderstood by family?
    
12. Do you feel anti-social unless you are with people of like mind?
    
13. Are you emotionally sensitive?
    
14. Did you have a difficult childhood?
    
15. Do you often feel disempowered by too much authority?

 Of these traits, I would say that I align with all of them except for 9, because I would not be so arrogant to think I was born with a special mission, and 13, because I am probably more emotionally insensitive. So maybe I am an indigo! An atheist skeptic indigo... ha.

The writings on Indigos repeat over and over that these children should not be treated as though they are "above" other children - the implied message being that they are, in fact, above other children, but should be treated as normal so that they do not develop with a sense of entitlement.Many parents believe that their child, diagnosed with ADD, Autism, or conduct disorders do not have these disorders, but instead is an indigo. I can totally understand why a parent might want to justify his or her child's behavior on the basis that their child is a more evolved human being who simply doesn't understand his lower-order classmates and teachers rather than label your child as having a neuro-biological condition. ADD implies imperfection. Indigo implies beyond gifted.

If you scour You Tube or Google, you'll find accounts of teenagers or adults who believe and were taught by their parents that they are Indigo children. Parents are bound to foster narcissism and a sense of entitlement when they tell their children that they are more highly evolved than the children and adults around them. Children do not need a false sense of superiority foisted upon them and they do not need to have their tantrums and behaviors credited to that superiority instead of corrected like any other child. Further, imparting to your child a sense of being superior to other children may only serve to alienate them.

You know what? Some kids are going to grow up to be mediocre. Some kids are going to spend their lives on the cusp of getting fired from the local fast-food joint. Guess what? Your child is still one-in-a-million. So he's not psychic or a higher evolution of humanity. That's okay. He's still got a story worth telling. People need to accept their children for who they are, flaws and all, without resorting to believing that your child has the gift of transcendent spirituality and telepathic powers.

Faith Infiltration: 5th Spiritualist Church of St. Louis

This Sunday we visited the 5th Spiritualist Church of St. Louis. We walked in the building to find a modest sanctuary and about 20 different people - a mixed crowd of white and African-American.

Spiritualism, in a small nutshell, is the belief and practice that living humans have the ability to contact dead humans via Mediumship.  These contacted "spirits" can then pass messages from the afterlife to the living earth world. Spirits come in all sorts of forms, ranging from spirit guides to angels to dead loved ones. They also believe in a god, though this god can range from monotheistic to pantheist. Basically, what separates spiritualism from everything else is the belief in the ability to communicate with the dead.

The church has similar appearances to a typical Christian church: hymns, offering, sermon, with the addition of two things: a healing service, and a clairvoyant service. The churchgoers sang in a confident and ringing a cappella for the hymns, and then it was time for the healing service.

The healing service was almost reminiscent of a communion: six chars were placed at the front of the sanctuary, where six Reiki healers stood. Soft music played, and churchgoers could go to the front and sit while the healers worked their magic. Each of the healers performed similar sets of movements: placing hands on shoulders,  touching the base of the neck and flicking the air with their hands, and moving the hands down the body and then flicking away, as if expelling drops of nonexistent water. I went up there, and my healer asked if he could touch my shoulders. Sure thing. He touched my shoulders and I closed my eyes and listened to the music. I heard his hands as he rubbed his fingers together. I tried to believe in being healed. I think that if human energy fields exist, then they should be able to be manipulated regardless of the belief a person has about them.

The sermon was nice, though I could not help but notice that the speaker (a woman) believed in all sorts of kooky things, such as that each of us had 144,000 personal angels. Um... okay. She offered this analogy as proof of her angels: Her furnace was broken the other day, and she went outside to ask if any angels who liked working on furnaces would help her. She knows they came to help, despite the fact that her furnace is still broken.  She also insisted that miracles happen daily. How then, are they miracles, if they happen all the time? It seems like these miracles are just events you appreciate.

During the clairvoyant session, three clairvoyants took turns standing at the front podium. They would call out individual members by name or by pointing them out "To the guy with the black jacket…" and then give information said to be gleaned from spirit guides or lost relatives. There was much talk of "children running around" and "a grandma or great grandma holding you in their arms" and etc. All of the advice they gave out was general and could really apply to anybody: "Focus...Time is flexible, so don"t worry so much.",  "Sometimes you have to choose between two things and in the end you don't get what you want.", to a lady wearing a boot cast, "I sense some imbalance..."

There was also a distinct sense of reinforcement of the clairvoyants from the speaker and the church-goers as well. They got repeatedly told that they were gifted, or they got gracious thank-you's from church members. I really didn't see any evidence of a gift - they stood at the front of the room, closed their eyes, and ran with whatever thought came to them. I could tell they genuinely believed in their ability to talk to spirits.

Overall though, I have no moral or ethical quandaries with this brand of superstition, especially when information is handed out in such a vague manner. It is when spiritism takes place of rational thinking when making decisions, robs vulnerable people of their money and the precious memories of those they have lost, or causes them to shirk evidence-based medicine, that a dilemma emerges.

Flimsy: 

Like just about all religious belief, spiritualism is basically just a number of assertions for which there's no evidence.

They claim that people can get in touch with the dead, and as "proof" of this, the service even contained a number of "clairvoyants" who "received messages" and imparted them to the congregation.  One even picked me out, and told me that an acquaintance of mine who is now dead has finally mastered that one motorcycle trick he could never do here on the Earth Plane.  Incidentally, a friend of mine who owned a motorcycle killed himself a while back.  Unfortunately for those who would claim this as proof of psychic abilities, I never actually saw him ride it, he was not the "daredevil" that she claimed he was, and I never heard anything about a motorcycle "trick" that he wanted to do.

On the other hand, the beliefs of this church, while a bit silly (like most or all religions), are not as blatantly immoral as a literal reading of the Christian Bible, so . . .  *Shrug*

(Un)scientific psychic testing, V2.0!

Ever since Flimsy and I decided to roll some dice and try to see if we could guess the numbers, we've been curious about the results. Here were the results out of 40 rolls:

Me: 11 correct guesses - I guessed correctly 1: 3.63 times (Chance is 1:6)
Flimsy: 3 correct guesses. He guessed correctly 1:13 times.
Combined: Combined, we guessed correctly 1:6.15 (pretty much chance)

We've been playing Confrontation and Warhammer (I prefer Confrontation...) and seriously, Flimsy rolls TONS of ones. Last time we played Confrontation, I had the last man standing only because he was rolling ones like one out of every three rolls. I rolled maybe 3 ones during the entire 5 hour game. We always just grab random dice so I don't think it's the particular dice we use. Or is it?

Neither of us believe we can intuit where the dice will roll or influence dice rolls psychically or psychokinetically. But science is not about what you believe or don't believe - ever. Science is about where evidence, observation and rational thinking lead. So we've decided to extend our dice rolling experiment. We're going to perform two experiments:

1. Hypothesis: When attempting to guess where a die will fall when rolled, we will guess correctly 1:6 times, consistent with chance.
Subjects: Myself and Flimsy
Equipment: Random die chosen out of a bag of 100 6-sided dice, my kitchen table, and this computer to record our results
Method: Each subject will pick a die out of a bag of 100 dice. The subject will sit at the table, hold the die in his or her hand, and attempt to guess which number will land facing up on the table. The subject will call out the number they think the die will land on. The subject will cup the die between two hands and shake the die for five seconds. The subject will then drop the die on the table from a height of 6 inches. The subject will do this 50-100 times each night until the number of rolled die reaches 1,000. The number of times the die is rolled will be determined before die rolling begins.
Data collection: Either Flimsy or I will record the number of dice thrown, The number the subject guessed, the number facing up when the die stops rolling, and whether or not the subject correctly guessed the number rolled on the die.
Weaknesses: Obviously, Flimsy and I could lie about the number of hits or misses. The dice, being gaming dice and not perfectly weighted dice, could roll some numbers more often than others.



2. Hypothesis: When attempting to influence the number facing up on a die when rolled psychokinetically, subjects will roll a number corresponding to the number they attempted to influence 1:6 times, consistent with chance.
Subjects: Myself and Flimsy
Equipment: Random die chosen out of a bag of 100 6-sided dice, my kitchen table, and this computer to record our results
Method: Each subject will pick a die out of a bag of 100 dice. The subject will sit at the table, hold the die in his or her hand, and attempt to influence the number that rolls psychokinetically. The subject will try to influence the way a die rolls in consecutive order, I.E. Attempting to get the die to roll a 1, then a 2, then a 3, then a 4, then a 5, then a 6 then a 1 and so on. The researcher will tell the subject which number he or she is attempting to roll. The subject will cup the die between two hands and shake the die for five seconds. The subject will then drop the die on the table from a height of 6 inches.The subject will do this 50-100 times each night until the number of rolled die reaches 1,000. The number of times the die is rolled will be determined before die rolling begins.
Data collection: Either Flimsy or I will record the number of dice thrown, The number the subject attempted to roll, the number facing up when the die stops rolling, and whether or not the number the subject was attempting to influence was the number rolled.
Weaknesses: Obviously, Flimsy and I could lie about the number of hits or misses. The dice, being gaming dice and not perfectly weighted dice, could roll some numbers more often than others.

Our guess (which you should have gathered from the hypotheses) is that our individual and combined results will be consistent with chance. So what do we do if our results are far above or below chance? What does that mean? It will be interesting to discuss flukes, coincidences, poor methodology, etc. Should we record video of each test for analysis?

I will keep you updated on the nightly numbers by posting them with my 8:00 AM post. They will appear at the bottom of the post in this format:

(Un)scientific psychic test update:
Ziztur: correct guesses out of the number of dice rolled, and ratio from the previous night and overall total.
Flimsy: correct guesses out of the number of dice rolled, and ratio from the previous night and overall total.

Therapeutic Touch: disprovable by children

Therapeutic Touch, or TT, is a practice first developed by Dr. Dolores Krieger, RN and Dora Kunz, in 1972. It is used widely by nurses as a purported means of healing the body. Many practicing nurses today have learned how to do TT, and TT is taught in seminars and college courses throughout the US and other countries. More than 100,000 people have been taught the technique.


TT practitioners claim that humans have energy fields that can be manipulated by a TT practitioner by touching the energy fields of the individual with the hands. The TT website states that the Therapeutic Touch process works like this:

Centering - bringing the body, mind, emotion to a quiet, focused state of consciousness. Centering is using the breath, imagery, meditation and/or visualizations to open one's self to find an inner-sense of equilibrium to connect with the inner core of wholeness and stillness.

Assessing - holding the hands 2 to 6 inches away from the individual's energy field while moving the hands from the head to the feet in a rhythmical, symmetrical manner.  Sensory cues such as warmth, coolness, static, blockage, pulling, tingling are described by some practitioners.
Intervention- Clearing also called unruffling - facilitating the symmetrical flow of energy through the field.  Unruffling is achieved by using hand movements from the midline while continuing to move in a rhythmical and symmetrical manner from the head to the feet. Balancing, Rebalancing - projecting, directing and modulating energy based on the nature of the living field; assisting to re-establish the order in the system.  Treatment is accomplished by moving the hands to the areas that seem to need attention - energy may be transferred where there is a deficit or energy may be mobilized or repatterned from areas of congestion.
Evaluation/Closure - finishing the treatment - using professional, informed and intuitive judgment to determine when to end the session.  Reassessing the field continuously during the treatment to determine balance and eliciting feedback from the individual are cues as to when to end the TT treatment.

 So, TT practitioners claim that humans have an energy field, and by manipulating the energy field air 2-6 inches away from the client with their hands, TT practitioners can heal people. Obviously, if nurses all across the country are getting certified as TT practitioners, there must be plenty of evidence that it works, right?

Not so much.

In the 1998, a fourth grader named Emily decided to test TT practitioners as part of a science experiment. (Rosa et al., 1998; Glickman & Gracely, 1998) She reasoned that if this human energy field existed, and if TT practitioners claimed to be able to manipulate it to help heal people, and if TT practitioners claimed to be able to feel the energy fieled (it would be pretty hard to manipulate it if you could not sense if it were there or not) then they rightfully should be able to detect it.

Her experiment was simple: get 21 TT practitioners, have them sit on one side of a cardboard screen and put both of their hands through holes in the screen. Then, she stuck her hand over either the left or the right hand of the TT practitioner, a few inches above it.

The results were:  The TT practitioners guessed the correct placement of her hand 44% of the time - less than chance. Emily's study was eventually published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and she became the worlds youngest person to ever be published in a peer-reviewed research journal.

Emily's study has been criticized, of course, by the proponents of TT. Among other things, it was argued that her study contained too few subjects, and should not have been performed by Emily herself, as she developed the study design. 21 subjects is plenty, actually, and researchers often conduct studies they themselves design. If the design is sound, there is no reason for them not to do so. It was also suggested that having the intention of doing the greatest good for the person being treated was not present in a nonhealing task like choosing between two hands and therefore invalidates the findings. Intention or not, if you can't detect the energy field you claim you can detect, that seriously weakens your claim.

Another criticism of the research is that:

mainstream medical journals are grounded in money and power and not likely to publish research on alternative treatments that save consumers money.

 Here we come upon the greatest insult to medical professionals it is possible to make - that we really don't want people to be healthy and will try to suppress treatments that are effective and save money. Of course we want people to be healthy. We spend our entire lives researching ways to make people feel better, to make treatments cost effective, and to make sure the treatments we have actually work. To suggest otherwise is disgusting. Further, the beauty of "mainstream medical journals" is that they are cutthroat and peer-reviewed. We remove the ivory tower, arguments from authority by offering up our research for criticism by anyone who wants to bother to read it. The beauty of science and evidence-based medicine is that it is not grounded in money and power - the evidence leads where it leads. If research is not sound, it does not matter whose research it is.

Other studies have found that TT is no more effective than a placebo. Of course, TT practitioners make reference to quantum physics without explaining how quantum physics supports TT (Mathuna, 2002). Because quantum objects have properties not found in the macroscopic world, problems arise when people try to philosophically or metaphysically interpret quantum physics. (Spector, 1990) TT practitioners have failed to incorporate mixed or negstive findings in reports of TT efficacy, and among the research conduscted that shows a positive result of TT efficacy, most of them are methodologically flawed. As such, TT research reviews misrepresent research results. (O’Mathúna, 2000). that Mathuna studies concluded that:

it is unethical and reckless
to promote TT, or to practice TT on any patient
who has not been expressly forewarned as to the
speculative and unproven nature of its claims and
who has not been properly advised about evidence-based
alternatives to TT.

References:
Rosa L., Rosa E., Sarner L. & Barrett S. (1998) A close look at therapeutic touch. Journal of the American Medical Association, 279, 1005–1010.Spector M. (1990) Mind, matter and quantum mechanics. In: Philosophy of Science and the Occult, 2nd edn (ed. P. Grim), pp. 326–349. SUNY Press, New York.
Mathúna, D.,  Pryjmachuk, S., Spencer, W., Stanwick, M., Matthiesen, S. A critical evaluation of the theory and practice of therapeutic touch. Nursing Philosophy (2002) 163-176
O’Mathúna D.P. (2000) Evidence-based practice and reviews of therapeutic touch. Journal of Nursing
Scholarship, 32, 279–285.

Super (un)scientific psychic testing!

A friend of mine e-mailed me after I sent her a link to this blog proclaiming that one of us must be psychic. Her reasoning: She was thinking of starting her own blog on her own web domain yesterday, and today when she got online, she saw that I had done exactly that. She knows I don't believe in the supernatural, and that includes psychic abilities, so she joked that since I refused to admit it was me, it must be her.

So I decided to test my psychic abilities.
My guy and I performed two tests:


1. Try to guess the number that will come up on one rolled die.
Out of 40 rolls, I guessed correctly eleven times. This is actually far above chance. To be average, I would have had to have six or seven correct guesses. My Guy guessed correctly three times - far below chance.

2. Try to guess whether the other person is thinking of the number 1, or number 2. For this, my guy or I would say, "go" and then think, " 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1" or " 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 ". The other person would try to guess. We did this 12 times each. I guessed correctly 6 times, and he guessed correctly 5 times.

Some people might say that I am slightly psychic, and my Guy is slightly unpsychic due to the dice rolling test. But statistically, even though I had an above-average number of hits, this one test alone does not put me outside of the realm of standard chance. It's simple statistics to realize that if you've got 40 dice rolles, most people will get an average number of hits, some people will get a below or above the average number of hits, and some people will be VERY above or below the average number of hits. One test is not enough to show anything at all. Now, if I performed this test 100 times and still scored above average, we might have something going on.