ATTENTION SHOPPERS! Our next meeting takes place on Friday 16th March, at Blackrock Castle Observatory, starting at 8.00pm. The talk is by Rebecca O’Neill, founder of Dublin Skeptics In The Pub, podcaster with The Skeprechauns, and all-round science enthusiast nerd.
Confessions of a Former Health Food Shop Worker: Three and a half years behind the counter in a health food shop can be a learning experience in more ways than one. From vitamins and minerals to the latest celebrity-endorsed wonder supplement, no main street or shopping centre is complete without a purveyor of alternative therapies. Likewise, there are very few people who don’t associate vitamin C or echinacea with the treatment of colds or flu. If these ideas are so pervasive, one question is why? What is it about the sellers of these therapies that make them seem so valid or trustworthy?
Well, take it from a former believer: the answer is definitely not black and white.
Our next meeting takes place on Friday 2nd March, at Blackrock Castle Observatory, starting at 8.00pm. The talk is by author Ronald Green, and promises to be a very interesting discussion all about…nothing!
Why should nothing matter? If anything matters, why should nothing matter? And yet it does, for there isn’t anything, it seems, that nothing does not touch, or anything that does not touch nothing. History, philosophy, religion, science, art, literature, music – all look towards nothing at some point, stimulating questions that would otherwise not be asked.
Who, for example, could have believed that nothing held back progress for 600 years in the Middle Ages, all because of mistaken translation, or that nothing is a way to tackle (and answer) the perennial question “what is art?”? Ronald Green uses nothing in a genuine attempt to look at the world in a different way, to give new angles to old problems and so to stimulate new thoughts.
What is this nothing, that we can’t actually see, touch or feel? Is it absolute? Is it relative to everything else? If we are able to think about it, write and read about it, is it something, and if so wouldn’t it then not be nothing? This is precisely the mystery of nothing – that the more we think about it, the more there is to it.
Disarmingly invisible, the point of nothing – to paraphrase Bertrand Russell on philosophy – is to start with something so simple as to seem not worth examining, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
About The Speaker: Ronald Green is the author of “Nothing Matters – a book about nothing” (iff-Books). Philosopher, linguist, university lecturer and ESL teacher, with 13 ESL books published, Ronald has lectured and given workshops in Europe, North and South America and the Middle East on linguistics, ESL and the use of the Internet in education. His short stories have been published in Nuvein magazine, Tryst, Aesthetica, the Sink and Unholy Biscuit. He has completed a philosophical novel and co-authored a psychological thriller with strong philosophical underpinnings. For the past five years he has been thinking seriously about nothing, culminating in his recently-published book.
For our January meeting, David Robert Grimes gave us a comprehensive and entertaining talk on the misuse of statistics in the media. Starting with an explanation about how statistics can easily be distorted in the wrong hands (the maths bit), David talked about the reality behind cancer statistics and how testing for breast cancer at too early an age might actually be counter-productive. David also discussed problems with comparing relative statistics and misrepresenting small absolute changes in data as huge problems. He then considered the incursion of PR releases into journalism (“churnalism”) and false balance – the creation of artificial debates in an effort to create controversy where no scientific controversy exists. Examples of these are creationism vs evolution and climate change. David also hits on anti-vaccination and HIV denial. David finishes by suggesting what people can do to counter bias and error. It was a terrific talk, full of stories and examples.
David has a PhD in Medical Physics and is an accomplished actor and musician. His blog is Three Men Make a Tiger and he can be found on Twitter at @drg1985.
At our last meeting, I discussed some recent news items that might be of interest to skeptics. Here is some further information about these news items. I should also have David’s speech online soon too.
2012 Doomsday
The media hype over 2012 is an example of Numerology, where numbers and dates are accorded a kind of mystical significance without any empirical basis whatsoever. Examples in modern lore include Friday 13th, and Blue Monday.
The myth behind 2012 is associated with calendars used by the Mayan civilisation that flourished in Latin America between 250 CE and 950 CE. By some reckonings, 2012 signifies the resetting of the ‘Long Count’ Calendar – a period of about 5,000 years, similar to the recent change in our calendar from the 20th century to the 21st century. There is no evidence that the Maya expected the world to end or for there to be huge convulsions on our planet during this time. All sorts of strange ideas have been postulated, such as a close encounter with a planet from far outside the solar system, to unprecedented solar activity, to calamities caused by an alignment with the centre of the galaxy. None of these speculations have any support and are widely dismissed by astronomers.
Another Doomsday prediction
After the mad biblical ramblings of Howard Camping in 2011, we expected 2012 to put this issue to bed, at least for a while. Not so. A preacher called Ronald Weinland has predicted the end of the world on May 27th, 2012, and that those who don’t take his message seriously will ‘die of cancer’. Nice guy. His sect, “God’s Church on Earth”, previously announced the return of Jesus in 1975. As Jesus was unable to make it on this occasion, we all got to listen to Bohemian Rhapsody instead.
Worst Quackery of 2011
Forbes recently announced Battlefield Accupuncture as the worst example of quackery in 2011. Invented just 10 years ago, quack physician Richard Niemszow has solicited tens of millions of dollars from the US military to stick needles in the ears of army veterans, supposedly to cure them of their ailments. The evidence for this is the usual pile of anecdotes and hearsay. Before the negative publicity, Niemstzow was hoping to train up to 30 acupuncturists in the war-zone.
Nutritional Therapists in the Hot Seat
Which Magazine in the UK carried out a consumer study on Nutritional Therapists in the UK. The results were scary. Out of 15 consultations made, 6 consultations were classed as “dangerous fails”. One therapist who believes that the cure for cancer is to starve the cells of sugar. Another therapist advised the patient to cut out red meat where proper medical advice would advise the exact opposite. Another therapist diagnosed “leathery bowel syndrome” for someone experiencing infertility problems. Just one nutritional therapist received a “borderline pass” for their consultation.
Burzynski sued in Texas
Stanislaw Burzynski has been getting a lot of flak from the blogging community since he set his attack dog on a young blogger in Wales. The Texas based cancer quack has been making a lucrative income out of patients who have incurable tumours, even though his therapies have neither been licensed or proven to work. A former patient, Lola Quinlan, has now sued him for failing to disclose that his therapies were part of a clinical trial and for coecing her into overpaying for medicine. If she wins her case, this could put an end to Burzynski’s right to practice in Texas.
Richard Dawkins claims victory over creationism
Richard Dawkins, Richard Attenborough, and a number of leading scientists in the UK have succeeded in ensuring that funding is withdrawn for any school that attempts to teach creationism as science. UK schools have been receiving creationist materials from religious groups in an attempt to influence education policies.
Andrew Wakefield sues to protect his nonexistent reputation
Andrew Wakefield has filed a libel suit against the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and Brian Deer, the journalist who exposed him for his fraudulent and unethical study linking autism to the MMR vaccine. On foot of Deer’s findings, Wakefield has been banned from practicing medicine and the original Lancet paper has been withdrawn. Wakefield’s attorneys are actually trying to argue that the BMJ libeled Wakefield to protect its “big pharma sugar daddy”, the vaccine manufacturers. Good luck with that.
Shamanic Rain Payment
At the Under-20 football World Cup last year, organisers are accused of paying a shaman $2,000 to ensure that it did not rain during the tournament’s closing ceremony. The organisers are claiming vindication because it didn’t rain during the ceremony, but could the reason have been something other than a magic man uttering mumbo jumbo?
Science Spot
A new part of our meetings will be fascinating science discoveries. In our last meeting we mentioned that a tiny frog had been found, measuring less than a centimetre from head to toe, now claims the record for the world’s smallest vertebrate creature. We also celebrated the 70th birthday of Steven Hawking, and the announcement, based on Kepler discoveries so far, that the Milky Way galaxy could contain billions of planets. These months also commemorate 100 years since the fateful Amundsen and Scott race to the South Pole. In more serious news, it was announced that an untreatable strain of TB had been identified in India.
Notable podcasts
A video well worth a look is the Royal Institution Christmas lecture presented by Bruce Hood. In the lecture, he talks about the human brain, one of the most amazing structures in the known Universe. – Christmas Lecture http://tinyurl.com/79qagsk
Upcoming conferences
In March, we are heading to Manchester to attend QEDCon – one of the biggest (and best value) skeptics conferences in Europe. Tickets are still available.
A series of public science lectures are currently taking place in UCC. This is definitely worth a look.
The next meeting of Cork Skeptics in the Castle on Saturday 26th of November will be a double bill, with talks from Dr. Brian Hughes, of NUI Galway, and Síle Lane, of Sense About Science.
The Science of Misunderstanding: How Our Brains are Programmed to Make Mistakes.
For centuries it was believed that human reasoning was distinguished by logical thinking, clarity, and general accuracy. More recent studies have shown that human reasoning is in fact characterised by repeated mistakes, errors and wrongheadedness. It is argued that reasoning errors are often side-effects of otherwise useful mental shortcuts that have been used in the wrong way. While such concepts are useful, they do not quite explain how audiences often find bogus information to be much more attractive than accurate information. It may even be the case that our tendency to make frequent mistakes has given us a considerable evolutionary advantage. This talk will look at biological, evolutionary, and socio-cultural research on how our tendency to misunderstand can help us, both as individuals and as a society. We will also look at research which suggests some unexpectedly negative effects of enhanced logical reasoning, on both mental and physical health.
Our speaker, Dr. Brian Hughes, is the director for the Centre for Research on Occupational and Life Stress (CROLS) in NUI Galway. He is the author of The Science Bit blog, where he writes frequently about science, pseudoscience and scepticism. He holds Ph.D. and B.A. degrees in psychology from NUI Galway, and an Ed.M. degree in public science education from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He served as founding Head of the Psychology Department at Dublin Business School and as President of the Psychological Society of Ireland (2004-2005).
The Ask for Evidence Campaign
Sense About Science is a UK charity that works with scientists, the public and the media to challenge misinformation, whether about the age of the earth, the causes of cancer, wifi radiation or homeopathy for malaria. This is often very effective but no sooner is attention turned elsewhere than misleading claims creep back up again. Sense about Science run campaigns and produce documents to help equip people to make sense of evidence themselves, but to make a permanent difference, they need more members of the public to be evidence hunters. That’s why they launched a national campaign, Ask for Evidence, to encourage consumers, voters and patients to scrutinise every claim they see and to give people who come across dubious scientific claims somewhere to go with their questions. Organisations that seek to persuade people to try treatments or cures should expect questions about their evidence.
Cork native, Síle Lane is Campaigns Manager at Sense About Science. She joined Sense About Science in February 2009 from a career in stem cell research. Síle works with regulatory bodies, civic society organisations, patient groups, medical research charities, the media and policy makers in the UK to ensure the public always has access to the best science and evidence. Since June 2009 Síle has run the Keep Libel Laws out of Science campaign which this year led to the UK Government bringing forward legislation to reform the libel laws to protect scientific and medical discussion. Síle became Campaigns Manager in 2011 and is developing a new dedicated campaigns unit to popularise our approach to standing up for science, including launching a national campaign to Ask for evidence.
The talk will start at 8.00pm, on Saturday November 26th (please note that this is a change from our usual Friday night schedule). It is free to attend, and all are welcome. For directions to Blackrock Castle, see our Skeptics In The Castle information page.
Tomes on science and critical thinking are not everyone’s cup of tea, so to speak. But anyone who is interested in separating fact from fiction, or simply interested in knowing more about the universe around us is going to notice that there are certain subjects that keep cropping up: the Big Bang, evolution, cosmology, geology, relativity, Quantum Theory, gravity. For many of us though, these weighty subjects can be daunting and even overwhelming. However, help can be found in the unlikeliest of places.
Most people have heard of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, even if they do not enjoy comical fantasy themselves. Stories set in a highly fantastical world of magic, wizards and simian Librarians would not appear to be the place to go if you would like to learn the basics about planets, placental mammals and the Pleistocene. But Pratchett has teamed up with mathematician Ian Stewart and biologist Jack Cohen and produced a trilogy called The Science of Discworld that does exactly that.
The Science of Discworld
This story is Discworld with a bit of a difference. The wizards at the Unseen University are mucking about with world-building, aided by Hex the ant-based computer. Only this world turns out to be nothing at all like they’ve seen, based on physics rather than narrativium. Chapters featuring well-loved characters from the Discworld are interlaced with chapters explaining the science behind the story, and thus the enticing journey into cosmology, particle physics and evolution is begun.
One of the great strengths of the trilogy is however light-hearted the fiction part of the book may be, the authors take their readers seriously and treat them as an intelligent audience. The science is explained clearly and carefully without dumbing it down and common misunderstandings of science are highlighted and explored. This is an invaluable primer that spans the range of natural science and explains some of the universe’s greatest mysteries and humanity’s greatest quest to make sense of it all with insight, learning and humour.
These are probably the most accessible science books I’ve ever read, and will leave you scientifically literate and confident to take on other more specialised books.
Cork Skeptics 