Talking to the Dead

When it comes to practitioners of the supernatural, for the most part I consider them relatively harmless, at worst they are con men, at best harmless kooks. When it comes to those who can claim to speak to the dead though, I think the exact opposite, while I hope that the majority aren't acting maliciously, I do believe that all of them are doing harm.

But before I get into why I think that, let's get this off the table first. No one can speak to the dead. There is not one shred of scientific evidence to support it, be it psychic energy or mystical powers. None, there is no science backing up anyone claiming to speak to the deceased. What all of these mediums are doing, whether they're aware of it or not, is an old stage trick called cold reading. If you ever watch these people you can see it in action. Basically it begins with throwing out extremely vague questions, and then allowing the subject to fill in the detail. If you'd like to see more on that, I'd suggest you Google cold reading and James Randi.

So what do I mean when I say that all these mediums are doing harm? Well first of all, they're lying to their subject. They aren't in communication with that person's dead loved one. And to say they are is just plain cruel in my eyes. While mediums are good at providing generalities, what they cannot provide to their clients are specifics, at least real ones anyway. What happens to the subject that needs specific questions answered? Only two possibilities exist in that case, the medium either cannot supply it, or they lie and make something up.

The other thing that they are doing is interfering in the grieving process. How exactly is someone going to come to accept that a loved one is gone when they can talk to them whenever they want through a medium?

Many will say that whether real or not, mediums can provide comfort to the grieving. To me it seems a false comfort though. Instead of being comforted by memories you shared with the deceased, the comfort is coming from lies told to you by a stranger. And while it may be comforting, all it's doing is prolonging the grief, because inevitably one of two things will happen. Either the subject runs out of money, and the medium move on to another paying customer(I don't know of any that provide this service as a charity), or the subject eventually realizes that they've never been in contact with anyone, let alone the person they lost. At which point the grieving process has to start all over again.

Perhaps I'm wrong on this, but to me, comfort through lies and deception, no matter how well meaning, seem like no comfort at all.

Government Subsidizing Bad Medicine

A little reported story went by last week in my province of British Columbia. It seems that our government will now be providing financial assistance to families with an income of under 28 thousand who wish to receive acupuncture treatments. For whatever reason, and I suspect it's political, the government of BC is saying that acupuncture is a legitimate medical treatment, and as such should be covered under our health plan.

As you can imagine, this is something I have a huge issues with. First and most importantly in my opinion, this is wasting money on bogus pseudoscience. Instead of using this money to do something like, oh I dunno, reducing the cost of prescription medication or hiring more doctors or nurses, taxpayer money is instead going to a treatment that is at best, dubious.

As far as I'm aware there are no credible studies that prove that acupuncture has any health benefit whatsoever, perhaps apart from being a method to help one relax. And as far as practitioners claims that it balances the energy in a persons body, aiding in the body's healing, well, I think we all know that is just plain old bullshit. All of the other claims of acupuncture, such as curing cancer and HIV/AIDS have been systematically debunked by medical science, leaving only the nebulous claim that it promotes overall healing.

Now if people want to waste their time and money on acupuncture, I have no problem with it. My beef here is that by paying for these treatments, the government of BC is tacitly saying that acupuncture is a legitimate treatment option. What I want to know is where is the medical opposition to this? Why have I not heard a peep out of the BC College of Physicians? Are there no patient advocate groups that see the dangers in this?

On top of all that, this decision by the government creates a dangerous precedent for the future. If acupuncture gets the government seal of approval, why not homeopathy? Hell, it has just as much legitimate medical research to back it up as acupuncture, that being none.

So I urge anyone reading this who is a resident of British Columbia to contact your MLA and voice your displeasure at this move by the government. We don't want to go down the same road Great Britain has, with the state wasting billions on pseudo scientific bullshit.

New Year, New Targets

Just briefly before I get started, I apologize for my absence in the last few months, hopefully that shouldn't happen again, as working on a few things to keep a constant, and perhaps increased flow of content coming to the site.

Homeopathy. This is a subject that has been a personal thorn in my side since I learned exactly just what it is. Homeopathy, at least in my experience, is something that not a lot of people are exactly sure what it is. Most people I've asked seem to think it is just another name for naturopathy, or some form of herbal medicine. And while I do have issues with these other types of treatments, at least they can claim to be working with real, tangible substances.

To bring it down to its essence, homeopathy is nothing more than magical water. It's based on the idea that the more you dilute a substance in water, the more powerful the medicinal properties of that substance become. Think about that one for a second. And the dilutions I'm talking about are minuscule. To borrow an example from Richard Dawkins, if you were to dilute a substance to it's recommended homeopathic ratio, one dose of medicine would contain as much active ingredient equivalent to a drop of water in all the oceans of the world. Tap water more likely contains more of any active homeopathic ingredient than the most expensive proscribed tincture.

If common sense isn't enough to convince you that homeopathy is nothing more than magical thinking, then there is also the rather overwhelming amount of scientific evidence that show that homeopathic treatments have no effect on patients whatsoever, with the possible exception of the placebo effect.

Now I have no problem if a person wants to drink magic water in the hopes of a cure for whatever is ailing them. The problem I have is that valuable resources are being wasted on this thoroughly debunked group delusion. Resources that could be so much better spent in the pursuit of real medical research.

My advice to anyone thinking of pursuing a homeopathic remedy for some ailment, find out how much a homeopathic doctor would charge you for that treatment. Take that money and instead donate it to an organization that deals in funding proper research for your illness. Then stay at home, scrunch your eyes up really tight and hope really really hard that you'll get better. At least my way you might actually achieve some good for somebody...

Time

It seems like almost every week my attention is drawn to yet another scam regarding peoples health. Now usually these are targeted at people who have relatively small ailments or cosmetic complaints. While I have huge problems with almost all of these treatments, from herbal remedies to homeopaths and naturopaths, by and large the damage these con artists are doing is purely financial, with relatively little physical effect to their victims. The people that truly sicken and disgust me are those that prey on the people out there with chronic, incurable and often fatal diseases.

First of all, they are stealing large amounts of money from these people, sometimes every scent they have and usually they don't stop at that, they'll take anything they can get from desperate friends and relatives as well. Now I hate to sound cold here, but speaking purely pragmatically, not only will these "cures" not work at all, the purveyors of this snake oil are leaving families in financial ruins, all for nothing.

Worse yet though is the sense of false hope that these charlatans are selling. To me this is the most insidious thing that is done with all these bullshit cures on the market. I know a lot of people see it a a good thing, or a least don't see the harm in giving someone hope in the face of a potential illness. I couldn't more strongly disagree. With giving people false hope, what they are also doing is stealing what I consider to be the most precious thing these people have left, time.
In the worst cases that's all these people have left, medical science has done all that it can, and they will die. Now I don't know about you, but if I knew that I only had so much time left, I'd want to spend that as much of that time as I could with those that I care about the most. But instead of doing that, these people are instead wasting that precious time in the offices of these quacks receiving bogus treatments or else chasing down the money for their next treatment. This is time all wasted in the pursuit of a hopeless dream, time, I argue could be far, far better spent.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I suffer from a chronic, currently incurable, disease. While what I have isn't fatal, it does limit my activity. Because I only have so much energy I have to be very careful in deciding what I do in a day in order to maximize either my productivity or the time I can spend out with friends. I've come to understand just how important it is to have the time to do the things you love, with the people you love.

Time really is one of the few things that each of us have in a finite quantity, and to steal that from someone, to me is one of the greatest crimes a person can commit.

Science is the Poetry of Reality

The title of today's entry is a quote from the new program on Channel 4 in the UK called, "The Enemies of Reason." It's a two parter, the first episode aired last night, and concludes next Monday.

It is hosted and written by Richard Dawkins, and I urge all of you that have the capabilities to check this program out, it says more about science, skepticism and the supernatural than I could in several pages, and far more eloquently.

That's all I have for this week, please check out this wonderfully insightful program, to borrow a term from the religious, it's quite illuminating.

Astrology - More Harmful Than You Might Think

Probably the most common and accepted pseudoscience today is astrology. Most papers have daily or weekly horoscopes. Almost everyone in the world knows or is aware of their astrological sign. It's fair to say it's commonplace, even when submitting my birth date to this website it spits out my zodiac sign. It's pretty safe to say astrology is so prevalent in society most people don't even notice its presence.

And that's my concern. While most people, I hope, look at astrology as nothing more than an amusing distraction or worse, a silly superstition, for me astrology is far more serious. And it's not astrology itself I'm worried about, but peoples reaction to it. Most people have astrology pegged, they know it's scientifically baseless, and its predictions are either so vague or incorrect as to be practically meaningless. It's the fact that people allow astrology to continue to enjoy it's present level of popularity (despite lack of belief), that causes me concern. There are people who do believe that the position of stars and the planets really do dictate one's personality, emotions and fortunes. And society's tolerance of astrology only encourages and supports these beliefs.

If all of astrology consisted only newspaper horoscopes, I might be okay with the state of things, (Okay, I wouldn't). It's the fact that there are so many predators, shysters and, frankly, criminals out there that are more than willing to prey on the beliefs of these people. People who, for whatever reason are vulnerable to these con men. But not only are these con men taking these peoples money, they are also re-enforcing the belief in this ancient superstition, and this is where I believe things can become dangerous.

If you believe in astrology, and have those beliefs re-enforced, I think it leaves you open to other, more dangerous beliefs. If science has been proven wrong in your eyes regarding astrology, perhaps science is also wrong about the healing powers of prayer, crystals or reiki. In my mind it's the practitioners of these so called "alternative" therapies that are extremely dangerous, because if you can be convinced that the position of Jupiter affects your love life, maybe you can also be convinced that crystals, not chemotherapy, can cure your cancer.

Now I realize that this sounds extreme, and it is, I admit it. But if only one person is duped into accepting these types of treatments, instead of proven medical science, and is harmed because of it, that's one person too many.

Am I saying astrology is responsible for the death of those who forsake traditional therapies, no.
But I do think that tolerating such pseudoscience and superstitions like astrology creates an atmosphere where people are more willing to explore more dangerous beliefs.