I have already done a brief posting on yesterday's "Weird Science" event which I attended in London with three friends. One of those friends, the immensely thoughtful and knowledgeable Nick Hobson, crafted a report on the event for a mutual friend who could not make it. This account was too good not to share and, with his agreement, I now present it to you.
NIck Hobson's account of "Weird Science"
Weird Science was a great day; I'm sorry you missed it. At the start, Roger was saying he hoped there would be less of the glib ridiculing of the credulous that characterised the Randi meeting last year. There was indeed less of that, and the longer timeslots allowed the speakers to elaborate on their ideas.
What were the most noteworthy points? There were so many, ranging from the thought-provoking to the amusing to the banal, along with a certain amount of ridicule, in which one can sometimes take a guilty pleasure. (Is that acceptable, if not taken to excess?) In no particular order...
Chris French described his role in a TV programme about dowsing. You can pretty much guess how it went:
* Dowsers claim miraculous powers. Yes, of course they can exercise their power under controlled experimental conditions! Sure, that will be a fair test.
* Dowsers successfully distinguish between (transparent) bottles of water and bottles of sand when both are in plain view.
* Dowsers successfully distinguish between bottles of water and bottles of sand when they are placed in containers, and the dowsers can see which bottles are placed in which containers.
* When bottles are assigned to containers using a double-blind protocol, dowsers' performance drops to chance level.
Well, surprise surprise! The most interesting part, though, is how the dowsers rationalised their failure. One said that God wasn't with him -- I guess he was correct there! Another remarked that the experimental setup didn't reflect how she usually worked: the water should have concealed underground, and/or she should have been walking above it on a platform. Curiously, that didn't affect her dowsing abilities when she knew where the water bottle was!
More seriously, I actually think that skeptics are sometimes prone to what might be called "naive falsificationism". If the data do not match the predictions, do scientists automatically abandon the theory? No! It may come to that eventually, of course, but if a theory has been fruitful and explanatory, some effort will be made to keep it, perhaps in a modified form. Context is important.
Consider Newtonian mechanics. This successfully predicted most planetary movements, but it soon became apparent that it failed to account for the orbit of Saturn. Scientists did not abandon the theory, because it gave a uniform framework in which many problems could be solved. It had many observational consequences, most of which had been confirmed. William Herschel discovered the solution: a previously unknown planet (Uranus) was pulling Saturn out of position. A few decades later, similar discrepancies in the orbit of Uranus led to the discovery of Neptune.
Another discrepancy was in the perihelion precession of Mercury. This could not be explained by Newtonian mechanics and had to await Einstein's development of general relativity. But Newton's theories have not been "abandoned". Rather, they are now regarded as approximately valid, applicable for low velocities but not large masses (relativity takes over) or tiny masses (quantum theory). Arguably, all scientific theories are only approximately confirmed: there are no known experimental discrepancies in quantum theory, but we cannot assert it is "exact".
There are many other examples. Sometimes a new theory clashes with an already established theory. Darwin recognised that blending inheritance, the dominant theory of inheritance in his day, was incompatible with the theory of evolution. Sadly, Mendel's work, which overturned blending inheritance, did not become well known until after Darwin's death.
So I reject this form of naive falsification. There's more to the dismissal of dowsing than one experiment. (To quote Ben Goldacre: "I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.")
Chris French described an episode of Haunted Homes (good review here: Utter nonsense), in which he appeared as the token skeptic. During one all night 'vigil' at (I think) a former children's hospital, what sounded like a sneeze was heard, and was caught by the recording equipment. Naturally, it was surmised that this was the ghostly sneeze of a child, though as Chris French pointed out, the noise was indistinct and could be 101 other things.
It transpired the following night that the noise was actually that of an automatic air freshener located outside the toilet! Here was a rational explanation that would of course be included in the programme to rebut the fevered speculation of the ghost hunters... You guessed it: that piece of information didn't make the final cut. OK, maybe that wasn't so surprising, and is just an anecdote with no deep significance, but it impressed me as a very clearcut example of the basic dishonesty of this programme. Utterly repugnant.
Then there was the old business of the supposedly satanic lyrics of Stairway to Heaven, when played backwards. I'd heard about this, but I confess I'd never actually listened to the backwards version. Chris French, again, first played about 30 seconds from the song forwards, then asked us if we could make out the "satanic lyrics" when the same section was played backwards. To me, it sounded hopelessly garbled, and I could just about hear "six six six" -- though I might not have spotted that if I hadn't known about the satanic connection!
Then he played it backwards, again, this time with the supposed lyrics captioned -- and it was uncanny how the same section could sound so different once you knew what you were supposed to hear! French wasn't claiming the satanic lyrics are really there -- more (I think) that it's an interesting sensory phenomenon and a curious coincidence. Here it is, presented exactly as French did: Michael Shermer discusses Stairway to Heaven message. (Plus you get the bonus of the marvellous story about Katie Melua, Simon Singh, and the Nine Million Bicycles, which I think I've sent you before!)
Stephen Law mentioned an amazing statistic: according to an Opinion Panel Research poll, 19% of British undergraduates said they were taught creationism as fact at their main school! Roger and I were both astonished, and a little sceptical. How reliable is the survey? Were the students taught creationism in science class, or maybe in R.E.? (The former would be much worse, I think.) The poll didn't ask that question. Here is Law's recent blog post on the matter: How Many British Schools Are Covertly Teaching Young Earth Creationism "As Fact? Amazingly, too, 12% of the students professed to believe in young earth creationism and 19% in intelligent design.
As far as I can tell, Opinion Panel Research is a reputable organisation. Their question -- "People have different explanations about life on earth and how it came about. Which of these statements best describes your view?" -- seems fair enough. However, their 'evolution' answer -- "The 'evolution theory' - Humans developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life. God had no part in this process." -- is potentially ambiguous. I interpreted "this process" as referring to the millions of years of human evolution, not to the preceding billions of years or to the creation of the earth or the universe itself.
However, Toni interpreted it as denying God any role in the universe and its creation (maybe prompted by "how it came about" in the question), and thus would have selected the "other" answer. Yet she believes in a God who created the universe billions of years ago, and then allowed natural physical processes, including evolution, to produce human life. (Without constant tinkering by God. (Though she does also believe in prayer.)) I wonder how many students were similarly deterred from selecting evolution?
Richard Wiseman, as always, was an entertaining speaker. Apparently, he was very tired because he and Derren Brown had been up most of the night investigating a 'medium', but that didn't show. I'd seen most of his material before, but it's always a pleasure to see it again. For example, the colour changing card trick, Seance, and Firewalking. (Re Firewalking, missing from the Google Video is the woman who, having witnessed several guys getting burned feet, decided not to go ahead with her walk. Wiseman asked her why she had changed her mind; did she no longer have faith in the ability of her mind to shield her feet from the heat? Oh no, she replied, it doesn't work like that for her. She is protected by a guardian angel, and, just before she was about to start the firewalk, the guardian angel disappeared from her shoulder! Classic!! Was she sincere, or was that clever improvisation, I wonder...?)
Ben Goldacre's talk was excellent, delivered in the relaxed manner of a stand-up comedian; a real raconteur. He had slides from a previous talk, but only got through three of them! He went off on so many tangents that Roger was assigned the task of remembering where he had left off! (We were sitting in the front row.) His hair is longer now, and he bears a resemblance to the young Art Garfunkel. (Ben, not Roger.) ;-)
Possibly even more impressive than his talk was the assured manner in which he responded to questions. He was asked for his thoughts on alternative health practitioners fleecing the gullible. Somewhat surprisingly, he said he regarded this as a form of self-imposed tax on morons! A bit harsh, methinks, especially if someone is seriously ill and desperate. He did soften his stance, though, by saying that when someone who is seriously ill, maybe with cancer, is pressurised by their family to try alternative treatments, and told they are not doing all they can to get better if they do not pursue such treatments -- he finds that "vicious". Indeed.
As I said, a great day!
