This blog is about being a skeptic in the bible belt and some of the crap that we have to deal with. Also, I'll be discussing items of interest, occasional rants and other things that pop into my head. I will answer any questions that people may have about skepticism, atheism, me, or life in general. Don't mind the rambling, it's part of my charm. Thanks for reading, and all feedback is welcome.
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Monday, December 28, 2015
We are experiencing technical difficulty.
Just a short note to let any loyal readers know that due to the new Oklahoma phenomenon of icenadoes, (thanks climate change deniers!) plus the holidays coupled with work issues, I'm going to be taking a brief hiatus. I hope to be back with new posts after the first of the year, and back on a somewhat regular schedule. Some of the topics I'm going to be looking into are GMOs, climate change deniers, psychics, Reiki, and I might dip my toes into the arena of political rhetoric. Plus, I am currently writing a book, and of course trying to get the first episode of Red Dirt Skeptics finished, edited, and published. So, Have a happy holiday, great New Years Eve, and I'll see you in 2016, unless some of the doomsday predictions happen to come true. If you have any suggestions for topics you'd like me to look into and butcher, feel free to leave a comment.
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
Chiropractic for the Beginning Skeptic
I hope that everyone is having a happy, safe, and joyous holiday season. This weeks topic is one that has bothered me for quite a few years, and I have personally experienced. I'm talking about chiropractic. As with many of the various alternative medicine practices, it makes a lot of claims about what it is able to do, ranging from helping with lower back back, which is the most likely, to helping with erectile dysfunction and asthma, which are very dubious claims.
History:
The story of chiropractic starts way back in the fog of ancient China and Greece. At least according to the American Chiropractic Association. They say that there are written records that describe spinal manipulation for lower back pain. I have no way to substantiate these claims, so I'll leave them alone. The official origin of chiropractic is a bit more recent. In 1895, Daniel David Palmer, who ran a magnetic healing clinic, tried the first adjustment on a partially deaf janitor in Davenport, Iowa. According to the stories, a few days later, the janitor remarked to Palmer that his hearing seemed to be a bit better. As far as I've been able to find, there were no tests done on the mans ability to hear before or after Palmer's treatment. Palmer began to promote chiropractic shortly afterwards, which was comparable to osteopathy. According to Mirriam-Webster, osteopathy is: a system of medical practice based on a theory that diseases are due chiefly to loss of structural integrity which can be restored by manipulation of the parts supplemented by therapeutic measures (as use of drugs or surgery). Notice that the definition includes the use of drugs or surgery. Chiropractic generally tends to shun the use of more modern medical techniques. Basically, it sounds a lot like physical therapy, except for the whole disease is caused by a loss of structural integrity bit. Both were based in many of the beliefs that drove the spiritualism movement at the end of the 19th century, including magnetism, vitalism, and naturalism, which makes it very difficult to use the scientific method to ascertain the efficacy of treatment. In 1897, Palmer started the Palmer School of Chiropractic, which is still around. Palmer had made the claim that adjustments, or as they are known in the business, subluxations, are the key to curing all disease. Since then, the interest and use of chiropractic had waxed and waned for decades, until the 1990's when there was a steady rise in the interest and use of chiropractic. There have been several schisms in the history of chiropractic. One of the first was over what Palmer described as "innate intelligence". This is directly related to the magnetism and vitalism ideas of the late 1800's. Many practitioners have moved away from this idea because they feel that it prevents them from being taken seriously in the scientific medicine community. Another schism occurred over the idea of chiropractic being the "only" treatment for disease, or as part of a suite of treatments. The straights, as Palmer called them, believed that chiro (yes, I'm shortening the word from here on out.) was not just the best treatment for all illnesses, but it was the only one. The mixers, which Palmer despised, thought that chiro could be used in addition to surgery and drugs. Palmer felt that the mixers were polluting the "specific, pure, and unadulterated" chiropractic tradition. His words, not mine. This schism still exists today, with the straights being in the minority.
As I mentioned earlier, Palmer started the first chiropractic college in 1897, and today, there are dozens of accredited colleges around the world. Many of them follow a similar education program, though some are regarded as being better than others. Most of the accreditation seems to be through the ACA (American Chiropractic Association) and not the AMA (American Medical Association) In regards to the US, each state requires practicing chiropractors to be licensed. This started in 1907, and Louisiana was the last state to require it in 1974. When it comes to monitoring and discipline of chiropractors, they are pretty much self regulated, reporting to the Federation of Chiropractic Licensing Boards. An interesting read on licensing, with a few notations, can be found at http://www.chirobase.org/05RB/AHCPR/05.html. To date, chiro is still viewed as an alternative or fringe medical procedure by the medical community at large, though holistic and integrated practitioners do include it in their services.
Theory and Practices:
The basic theory behind chiro concerns subluxation, which is that there is a misalignment of the spine, which causes various illnesses and conditions. There are some interesting articles on the Science Based Medicine Blog and Quack Watch on this, as well as chiro in general, which I'll put in the footnotes. Many chiropractors, though not all, believe that a misalignment of the spine can cause problems in the nervous system, which in turn can lead to disease and problems with various organs. If you can fix the problem by manipulating the spine, then you can cure the disease. The way this is normally achieved is by attempting to move the vertebrae into what the practitioner deems to be a proper position, which often results in the familiar popping sound. Many chiros will use X-rays to see if the spine is out of alignment and try and determine what they will need to do to put it back. Many people do often report that they feel better for a while after one of these treatments, though how much is due to either endorphin release or the placebo effect is nearly impossible to tell. There is a minority of chiros that don't believe in the subluxation theory, and feel that chiro should be viewed more as a form of physical therapy or for relief of lower back pain. These folks are often dismissed by the larger chiropractic crowd. I would go into the details of what is involved, but almost everyone has some idea. Just in case you don't, basically it involves the practitioner contorting the patient's back and applying pressure along the spine in an attempt to realign the back. There are some minute variations, but that is basically the gist of it. Of course, there are some chiros that will incorporate TCM (traditional chinese medicine) such as acupunture and acupressure or they will include chakras, Reiki, crystals, herbalism, natural medicine, or homeopathy into their practice, but these are all separate topics, many of which I have already written about and don't feel like going into here.
The Claims:
Here is where we get into the fun stuff folks, what the believers in chiropractic claim it can do. Much like every other alternative medicine under the sun, there are a wide variety of claims. However, unlike many other types of alt-med, there are practitioners that will tell you it is good for 1 thing, and anything else, you need to see either a general practitioner or a specialist. Due to the various medical and advertising laws, many chiros are pretty careful about what they say they can do. They tend to avoid words like "cure" and "heal" and instead use more generic terms like "treat" or "relieve" or "help with". But they still make a number of claims on what they can do. According to the ACA, they can treat back and neck pain, headaches, injuries of the musculoskeletal system, and general health issues, because the structure affects overall health. You will also find chiros advertising that they can help with some of the following;
Evidence:
Now to pull the curtain aside and have a look at the evidence:
That's pretty much what I found. There is some evidence that chiropractic adjustments can have some effect on lower back pain, but that's really about it. Just using your Google machine, you'll find lots of reports on how well it can treat a wide variety of conditions, but most of these are pretty biased. Trying to find an unbiased view is actually fairly difficult. I don't want to rely too heavily on people like Steve Novella or Mark Crislip, who are well known in the skeptic communities as promoters of science based medicine. So I try and stick to relatively unbiased sites and just see what the studies and evidence happen to say. If you look at the CDC you'll see a few studies on the efficacy of chiro, and for the most part, they seem to show some effect for back pain, but not much else. The studies that claim to show efficacy for other conditions are poorly done, with few if no controls, rely heavily on anecdotal evidence, or are completely unrepeatable. If you look at the NIH, you'll see a lot of the same. If you look close, you'll see a lot of papers with a particular name on them. Edzard Ernst. He has spent most of his life studying forms of alternative medicine, including going through a chiropractic college. He has probably done more study into these issues than anyone else alive, and to be honest, I tend to believe what he has found. Here is a link to an article that he wrote on chiro, and just for the hell of it, here is his site. (Because I don't put enough links in my posts. :p) A major critique of chiro, as well as most other alt med practices, is a complete lack of well done studies that actually show a statistical significance for their efficacy, though this doesn't stop the believers from using them as evidence that they were right, and Big Pharma is trying to keep them silent on the issue. Yep, there is a minor conspiracy thread that is woven throughout most alt med mythology.
Risks:
The cost of going to a chiropractor may seem to be fairly small, with the average session costing around $65 or so (in the US), but consider that they will often want you to come back anywhere from twice a month to twice a week. That can end up being anywhere from $1,560-$6,760 a year, using the average cost per visit. Of course, some charge less, some charge more, and there are insurance policies that cover this. There are going to be risks any time someone is messing with your back and neck. This can be something as relatively minor as a pinched nerve or stiffness. However, there are much more serious risks, including paralysis, stroke, and even death. These risks are greater for infants and toddlers. Most chiros won't touch a small child, though as with anything else, if you look hard enough, you'll find one that does. According to the Mayo Clinic, some problems that can stem from having an adjustment done are a herniated disk or a vertebral artery dissection (a particular type of stroke). From the website chirobase.org, "There are well-documented medical cases of serious disorder to the cervical spine, cervical disc, cerebellum, spinal cord or to the cerebral arteries which ascend through the foramina in the cervical vertebrae, all of which are therefore subject to be bruised and injured with forceful manipulation. There are also well-documented cases of occlusion of cerebral vessels and injury to the brain stem which involves a key area for regulation of the head and neck and an area through which all important outgoing stimuli from the nervous System or incoming sensory data are fed. Such thrombotic lesions are productive of grave and permanent neurological defects, either by infection of the brain stem or stricture by injury to the arteries which supply these vital regions." Of course, Edzard Ernst has written an article titled "20 Things Most Chiropractors Won't Tell You". (I'll admit it. Yes, I am using a somewhat biased source here. That is mostly due to the fact that the chiro industry is pretty insular when it comes to reporting injuries and complications from any of their practitioners. They are, for the most part self regulating, so everything is done in-house, unless someone brings a lawsuit, or it gets into mass media.) And there is of course the reported cases of people being crippled or dying due to their treatments. In 2014, here in Oklahoma, a 30 year old man died after receiving a treatment and suffering a stroke on the chiros table. There was a systematic study done on deaths caused by adjustments, and the conclusion is that the risks do not out weigh the possible benefits. Tim Farley, of Whatstheharm.net has an article on there as well. There are also many stories of children being accidentally killed by chiros. These stories are pretty gruesome and depressing, so I'm not going to go into detail or post links to them. If you're in a really morbid mood, just Google the terms Chiropractic child death. I'm just going to say in plain and simple english "Never take a child to a chiropractor! It's a damn bad idea all the way 'round!" A child's skeleton isn't developed enough to withstand a chiropractic adjustment. They are still growing and developing, and these treatments can easily cause permanent problems that the child will have to live with for the rest of their life.
Conclusion:
As I have said before, I'm not an sort of scientist or researcher. I simply attempt to look into the various issues I cover, and I do try and give everything a fair shake. (I guess that makes me a researcher of sorts?) That being said, most things I write about just don't have the evidence to support their claims, and chiropractic isn't any different. There is some evidence to support the claims of helping with certain types of lower back pain, and there is a small contingent of chiropractic practitioners that will send patients to general practitioners or specialists if it is something other than that. But the majority of proponents for chiro will claim it effective for a great many other problems, saying that they all stem from subluxations. This is another form of magical thinking. Yes, there are hundreds of studies claiming to show the efficacy of chiropractic and the believers will point out that there aren't nearly as many studies showing either little or no effect. It's simply a matter of quantity or quality. And before anyone says it, I'm going to go ahead and say no, chiro won't help with your childs ear infection, and if they have chronic ear infections, take them to a pediatrician damn it! Once again , any cure-all cures nothing. For once, I'm going to include a variety of other skeptical resources for you to look through. These guys are medical professionals and know what they are talking about. I'm just a simple jackass that tries to keep an open mind and look at all the evidence. So, until next time, Be Good, Be Skeptical, and Be sure to wash your hands.
Other resources:
http://edzardernst.com/
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/subluxation-theory-a-belief-system-that-continues-to-define-the-practice-of-chiropractic/
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/chiropractic-a-brief-overview-part-i/
http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/chiroeval.html
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-end-of-chiropractic/
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/top-10-chiropractic-studies-of-2013/
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/chiropractor-breaks-babys-neck-a-risk-vs-benefit-analysis/
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/stroke-death-from-chiropractic-neck-manipulation/
History:
The story of chiropractic starts way back in the fog of ancient China and Greece. At least according to the American Chiropractic Association. They say that there are written records that describe spinal manipulation for lower back pain. I have no way to substantiate these claims, so I'll leave them alone. The official origin of chiropractic is a bit more recent. In 1895, Daniel David Palmer, who ran a magnetic healing clinic, tried the first adjustment on a partially deaf janitor in Davenport, Iowa. According to the stories, a few days later, the janitor remarked to Palmer that his hearing seemed to be a bit better. As far as I've been able to find, there were no tests done on the mans ability to hear before or after Palmer's treatment. Palmer began to promote chiropractic shortly afterwards, which was comparable to osteopathy. According to Mirriam-Webster, osteopathy is: a system of medical practice based on a theory that diseases are due chiefly to loss of structural integrity which can be restored by manipulation of the parts supplemented by therapeutic measures (as use of drugs or surgery). Notice that the definition includes the use of drugs or surgery. Chiropractic generally tends to shun the use of more modern medical techniques. Basically, it sounds a lot like physical therapy, except for the whole disease is caused by a loss of structural integrity bit. Both were based in many of the beliefs that drove the spiritualism movement at the end of the 19th century, including magnetism, vitalism, and naturalism, which makes it very difficult to use the scientific method to ascertain the efficacy of treatment. In 1897, Palmer started the Palmer School of Chiropractic, which is still around. Palmer had made the claim that adjustments, or as they are known in the business, subluxations, are the key to curing all disease. Since then, the interest and use of chiropractic had waxed and waned for decades, until the 1990's when there was a steady rise in the interest and use of chiropractic. There have been several schisms in the history of chiropractic. One of the first was over what Palmer described as "innate intelligence". This is directly related to the magnetism and vitalism ideas of the late 1800's. Many practitioners have moved away from this idea because they feel that it prevents them from being taken seriously in the scientific medicine community. Another schism occurred over the idea of chiropractic being the "only" treatment for disease, or as part of a suite of treatments. The straights, as Palmer called them, believed that chiro (yes, I'm shortening the word from here on out.) was not just the best treatment for all illnesses, but it was the only one. The mixers, which Palmer despised, thought that chiro could be used in addition to surgery and drugs. Palmer felt that the mixers were polluting the "specific, pure, and unadulterated" chiropractic tradition. His words, not mine. This schism still exists today, with the straights being in the minority.
As I mentioned earlier, Palmer started the first chiropractic college in 1897, and today, there are dozens of accredited colleges around the world. Many of them follow a similar education program, though some are regarded as being better than others. Most of the accreditation seems to be through the ACA (American Chiropractic Association) and not the AMA (American Medical Association) In regards to the US, each state requires practicing chiropractors to be licensed. This started in 1907, and Louisiana was the last state to require it in 1974. When it comes to monitoring and discipline of chiropractors, they are pretty much self regulated, reporting to the Federation of Chiropractic Licensing Boards. An interesting read on licensing, with a few notations, can be found at http://www.chirobase.org/05RB/AHCPR/05.html. To date, chiro is still viewed as an alternative or fringe medical procedure by the medical community at large, though holistic and integrated practitioners do include it in their services.
Theory and Practices:
The basic theory behind chiro concerns subluxation, which is that there is a misalignment of the spine, which causes various illnesses and conditions. There are some interesting articles on the Science Based Medicine Blog and Quack Watch on this, as well as chiro in general, which I'll put in the footnotes. Many chiropractors, though not all, believe that a misalignment of the spine can cause problems in the nervous system, which in turn can lead to disease and problems with various organs. If you can fix the problem by manipulating the spine, then you can cure the disease. The way this is normally achieved is by attempting to move the vertebrae into what the practitioner deems to be a proper position, which often results in the familiar popping sound. Many chiros will use X-rays to see if the spine is out of alignment and try and determine what they will need to do to put it back. Many people do often report that they feel better for a while after one of these treatments, though how much is due to either endorphin release or the placebo effect is nearly impossible to tell. There is a minority of chiros that don't believe in the subluxation theory, and feel that chiro should be viewed more as a form of physical therapy or for relief of lower back pain. These folks are often dismissed by the larger chiropractic crowd. I would go into the details of what is involved, but almost everyone has some idea. Just in case you don't, basically it involves the practitioner contorting the patient's back and applying pressure along the spine in an attempt to realign the back. There are some minute variations, but that is basically the gist of it. Of course, there are some chiros that will incorporate TCM (traditional chinese medicine) such as acupunture and acupressure or they will include chakras, Reiki, crystals, herbalism, natural medicine, or homeopathy into their practice, but these are all separate topics, many of which I have already written about and don't feel like going into here.
The Claims:
Here is where we get into the fun stuff folks, what the believers in chiropractic claim it can do. Much like every other alternative medicine under the sun, there are a wide variety of claims. However, unlike many other types of alt-med, there are practitioners that will tell you it is good for 1 thing, and anything else, you need to see either a general practitioner or a specialist. Due to the various medical and advertising laws, many chiros are pretty careful about what they say they can do. They tend to avoid words like "cure" and "heal" and instead use more generic terms like "treat" or "relieve" or "help with". But they still make a number of claims on what they can do. According to the ACA, they can treat back and neck pain, headaches, injuries of the musculoskeletal system, and general health issues, because the structure affects overall health. You will also find chiros advertising that they can help with some of the following;
- Athletic injuries
- Allergies
- Arthritis
- Asthma
- ADD/HD
- Back and neck pain
- Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
- Chronic sinus issues
- Constipation
- Colic
- Ear Infections
- Gastrointestinal dysfunction
- Headaches/Migraines
- Herniated/Degenerative Disc
- Hip/Sacro-Iliac Pain
- Learning Disorders
- Menstrual dysfunction
- Menopausal symptoms
- Neurodevelopmental conditions
- “Pinched” nerve
- Poor immune system function
- Reflux
- Sciatica
- Scoliosis
- Stress
- Whiplash
(I pulled all these from a single chiropractic clinics website)
Evidence:
Now to pull the curtain aside and have a look at the evidence:
That's pretty much what I found. There is some evidence that chiropractic adjustments can have some effect on lower back pain, but that's really about it. Just using your Google machine, you'll find lots of reports on how well it can treat a wide variety of conditions, but most of these are pretty biased. Trying to find an unbiased view is actually fairly difficult. I don't want to rely too heavily on people like Steve Novella or Mark Crislip, who are well known in the skeptic communities as promoters of science based medicine. So I try and stick to relatively unbiased sites and just see what the studies and evidence happen to say. If you look at the CDC you'll see a few studies on the efficacy of chiro, and for the most part, they seem to show some effect for back pain, but not much else. The studies that claim to show efficacy for other conditions are poorly done, with few if no controls, rely heavily on anecdotal evidence, or are completely unrepeatable. If you look at the NIH, you'll see a lot of the same. If you look close, you'll see a lot of papers with a particular name on them. Edzard Ernst. He has spent most of his life studying forms of alternative medicine, including going through a chiropractic college. He has probably done more study into these issues than anyone else alive, and to be honest, I tend to believe what he has found. Here is a link to an article that he wrote on chiro, and just for the hell of it, here is his site. (Because I don't put enough links in my posts. :p) A major critique of chiro, as well as most other alt med practices, is a complete lack of well done studies that actually show a statistical significance for their efficacy, though this doesn't stop the believers from using them as evidence that they were right, and Big Pharma is trying to keep them silent on the issue. Yep, there is a minor conspiracy thread that is woven throughout most alt med mythology.
Risks:
The cost of going to a chiropractor may seem to be fairly small, with the average session costing around $65 or so (in the US), but consider that they will often want you to come back anywhere from twice a month to twice a week. That can end up being anywhere from $1,560-$6,760 a year, using the average cost per visit. Of course, some charge less, some charge more, and there are insurance policies that cover this. There are going to be risks any time someone is messing with your back and neck. This can be something as relatively minor as a pinched nerve or stiffness. However, there are much more serious risks, including paralysis, stroke, and even death. These risks are greater for infants and toddlers. Most chiros won't touch a small child, though as with anything else, if you look hard enough, you'll find one that does. According to the Mayo Clinic, some problems that can stem from having an adjustment done are a herniated disk or a vertebral artery dissection (a particular type of stroke). From the website chirobase.org, "There are well-documented medical cases of serious disorder to the cervical spine, cervical disc, cerebellum, spinal cord or to the cerebral arteries which ascend through the foramina in the cervical vertebrae, all of which are therefore subject to be bruised and injured with forceful manipulation. There are also well-documented cases of occlusion of cerebral vessels and injury to the brain stem which involves a key area for regulation of the head and neck and an area through which all important outgoing stimuli from the nervous System or incoming sensory data are fed. Such thrombotic lesions are productive of grave and permanent neurological defects, either by infection of the brain stem or stricture by injury to the arteries which supply these vital regions." Of course, Edzard Ernst has written an article titled "20 Things Most Chiropractors Won't Tell You". (I'll admit it. Yes, I am using a somewhat biased source here. That is mostly due to the fact that the chiro industry is pretty insular when it comes to reporting injuries and complications from any of their practitioners. They are, for the most part self regulating, so everything is done in-house, unless someone brings a lawsuit, or it gets into mass media.) And there is of course the reported cases of people being crippled or dying due to their treatments. In 2014, here in Oklahoma, a 30 year old man died after receiving a treatment and suffering a stroke on the chiros table. There was a systematic study done on deaths caused by adjustments, and the conclusion is that the risks do not out weigh the possible benefits. Tim Farley, of Whatstheharm.net has an article on there as well. There are also many stories of children being accidentally killed by chiros. These stories are pretty gruesome and depressing, so I'm not going to go into detail or post links to them. If you're in a really morbid mood, just Google the terms Chiropractic child death. I'm just going to say in plain and simple english "Never take a child to a chiropractor! It's a damn bad idea all the way 'round!" A child's skeleton isn't developed enough to withstand a chiropractic adjustment. They are still growing and developing, and these treatments can easily cause permanent problems that the child will have to live with for the rest of their life.
Conclusion:
As I have said before, I'm not an sort of scientist or researcher. I simply attempt to look into the various issues I cover, and I do try and give everything a fair shake. (I guess that makes me a researcher of sorts?) That being said, most things I write about just don't have the evidence to support their claims, and chiropractic isn't any different. There is some evidence to support the claims of helping with certain types of lower back pain, and there is a small contingent of chiropractic practitioners that will send patients to general practitioners or specialists if it is something other than that. But the majority of proponents for chiro will claim it effective for a great many other problems, saying that they all stem from subluxations. This is another form of magical thinking. Yes, there are hundreds of studies claiming to show the efficacy of chiropractic and the believers will point out that there aren't nearly as many studies showing either little or no effect. It's simply a matter of quantity or quality. And before anyone says it, I'm going to go ahead and say no, chiro won't help with your childs ear infection, and if they have chronic ear infections, take them to a pediatrician damn it! Once again , any cure-all cures nothing. For once, I'm going to include a variety of other skeptical resources for you to look through. These guys are medical professionals and know what they are talking about. I'm just a simple jackass that tries to keep an open mind and look at all the evidence. So, until next time, Be Good, Be Skeptical, and Be sure to wash your hands.
Other resources:
http://edzardernst.com/
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/subluxation-theory-a-belief-system-that-continues-to-define-the-practice-of-chiropractic/
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/chiropractic-a-brief-overview-part-i/
http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/chiroeval.html
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-end-of-chiropractic/
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/top-10-chiropractic-studies-of-2013/
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/chiropractor-breaks-babys-neck-a-risk-vs-benefit-analysis/
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/stroke-death-from-chiropractic-neck-manipulation/
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
Ghosts for the Beginning Skeptic
Ok folks, as promised, here is the next installment of the "Things for the Beginning Skeptic" series. I am going to try and stick to more researched topics for a while, so the lag between posts might be even longer than it has been. This is a topic that has interested me for years, mostly because I grew up listening to ghost stories that supposedly involved various family members.I'm not going to get into the various ghost hunting groups or the equipment that they claim to use. I'm just going to talk about the supposed types of ghosts.I don't mean Slimer, Casper, or Christmas Past. I mean poltergeists, haints, spooks, spirits, and hauntings. I guess that as usual we should start with a ....
Definition: According to Mirriam-Webster, a ghost is: a disembodied soul; especially : the soul of a dead person believed to be an inhabitant of the unseen world or to appear to the living in bodily likeness. A ghost could be most easily defined as the energy left behind by a person or event that has an effect on the visible world. I personally would define them as an illusion or a hallucination. Often, they are reported as a feeling of being watched, a shape seen from the corner of the eye, a shadowy figure, or any of a number of other vague descriptions. Ghosts, in their various forms, are often blamed for odd occurrences, such as a chair rocking when no one is in it, a door opening or closing on it's own, or a sudden chill. Like so many other things in the world of pseudoscience, instead of looking for natural explanations first, believers in ghosts jump straight to the end of the line and yell GHOST!
TYPES:
Let's take a look at the various types of ghosts out there. Like a lot of my previous Beginning Skeptic posts, I'm going to attempt to put them into classifications, though it's going to be a bit tricky with something as ephemeral as ghosts. (See what I did there?) One of the problems with this approach is that every region, and even every group, has their own way of defining what type of supernatural presence they believe they are dealing with. So I'm just going to wing it and try and group them by either what they do, or the claimed effect that they have. I know I'm not going to get to everyone's favorites, but consider this a rough list.
Visual: These would include things such as orbs, rods, shadow men, movement from the edge of vision, the stereotypical hazy humanoid, or in some cases creature, someone that suddenly disappears, someone out of place like a confederate soldier at a Starbucks, unless you live in Georgia, and so on. You get the idea. These are the ones that people either see directly, or indirectly through pictures, movies and reflections. The have a variety of names, such as ghost (which applies to nearly everything in these classifications), spook, specter, haint, phantom, and apparition. Some famous ones are The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall, Resurrection Mary (though she might actually qualify as a poltergeist), and Anne Boylen and several other in the Tower of London. I found a list of "!0 Famous Ghosts" on Listverse.com. The main trait of these types are that they are strictly visual. People claim that they see them pass through walls or other people, and there is no physical substance to them, and little to no interaction with the physical world. With the orbs and rods, these are normally only seen when someone is reviewing pictures. To be honest, I really didn't want to include them because they have been so thoroughly debunked for so long. In case you don't know, orbs are normally either dust or water droplets that are illuminated by the camera flash. The rods are most likely flying insects that are caught up in the flash and the light is reflected off of their bodies. You can read more about orbs and rods at the Skeptics Dictionary.
Physical: In this group, I'm going to include anything that folks claim can actually interact with the physical world. This would include poltergeists and spirits. These are the supposed sources of odd events happening, such as something falling off of a shelf, objects moving around seemingly on their own, people getting mysterious scratches or bruises or even cold chills. There are also reports of dishes being flung across a room, people being levitated or thrown, furniture being moved about or placed oddly. People have also claimed to have symbols or words appear on the walls, normally in a blood like substance. This is what the movie "Poltergeist" is based on. I believe that possessions would also fall into this category, and I'm not going to make separate categories for angels and demons. Sometimes, these are normally the result of someone seeking attention. Other times, they are normal events, such as a door that's not quite level shutting, that take on a creepy nature due to the mindset of the witness. There are some fairly well known events, such as the Coventry Poltergeist, the Bell Witch, and of course the Amityville House. Wikipedia has a decent article on poltergeists.
Auditory: I'm just putting this one in because I grew up hearing stories about banshees. Really quickly, if you hear the cry of a banshee, either you or someone close to you is going to die or have great misfortune, or someone has just died. A lot of the older clans seem to have a specific banshee tied to them, so if a family member hears their families banshee, they supposedly know that something has happened. Most likely, owls or some other night bird are the primary source for this story. The Best representation of a banshee can be seen in the movie "Darby O'Gill and the Little People". If you haven't seen it, watch it. If you have, watch it again. There are also reports of mysterious whispers, footsteps, laughing, and animal noises that "can't be explained" They can be explained. Someone in another room or even house talking, kids laughing, animals make noise, and feet make sounds. What most people aren't considering is that sounds can be transmitted through solid objects, and when they are, they get distorted. Also, many people don't seem to realize that sounds can carry for quite a ways, especially at night. I could crowbar EVPs into this, but they are going to be part of the Ghost Hunting post I'm currently working on.
Hauntings: These are interesting because instead of an individual person being affected, it's a general area, location or even an item. Often people report seeing events from the past being replayed (also referred to as time slips) or seeing people from a different era walking about. Hauntings can actually fall under every category of ghost because there can be claims of visual happenings, like people suddenly appearing or disappearing, physical events, such as furniture moving or unexplained injuries, and auditory, like voices coming from the walls. These are normally older structures which are going to have a lot of creaks, drafts, rattling pipes, ans squeaky boards. You'll often see the hunter groups go into these places, get the shit scared out of them, and then, in a very professional manner, say it was because of ghosts. Now then, haunted items are an interesting beast in and of themselves. These are objects that are believed to have some sort of a supernatural force attached to them. There are dolls, knives, cabinets, blankets, and tons of other things that some people feel are possessed by some type of spirit. A common report you'll often hear is "When we brought X into the house, suddenly Y started happening." This is normally a case of association. They notice something, say a pipe rattling in the wall, after bringing a supposedly haunted object in. Just because they never noticed it before doesn't mean that it wasn't happening and they ignored it. It could also be a coincidence that whatever the problem is started at the same time as the object coming into the house. Another factor that a lot of these haunted houses, and even the objects, have in common are young children and teenagers. Now, I will admit that trying to explain a haunted battlefield is quite a bit harder, at least for me, as I have never been to one. The odds are more likely to be in the favor of a delusion or hallucination combined with the areas history as well as folk tales that have probably been told since right after the battle ended.
Demons and Angels: There are folks that believe demons and angels can directly interact with the physical world. Of course the best known examples of each are possession with demons and guardian angels, though there are small groups that seem to believe angels can possess people too. Once again, this is a squishy area, as demons get blamed for many other types of spirit events. Of course, these also have a religious undertone, and this is where exorcisms some in, which would be a whole other topic. Many reports of demons and angels often involve either children and teens, or people who are suffering from some serious mental issues.
Conclusion:
While I can't say definitively that ghosts don't exist, I can say that the odds of there being some form of extinct person walking around scaring the hell out of tourists is highly unlikely. All the gadgets and tools used by, and I do laugh a bit at the term, professional ghost hunters simply show that they have no idea what they are doing. There has never been any actual proof of ghosts. There have been pictures, yes. People have had odd experiences too. Weird thing have happened in spooky locations with a history. However, most of the time, these can be explained with more mundane theories. Once again, pareidolia, and a lack of critical thinking rear their ugly heads. An interesting thing to note is that while reports of ghosts have been steadily decreasing in the modern world, they are rapidly being replaced by reports of aliens. The stories are almost identical, but the perpetrator has changed. As always, if someone can produce actual, testable evidence, I'll change my mind on the matter. Until then the closest you'll probably get to see a ghost is...
Thanks to the guys at Blurry Photos podcast and C-Webb's Paranormal Skeptic Academy for giving me the idea of how to approach this.
Monday, December 7, 2015
Science, skepticism, and the wonders of the world (Opinion)
Hope that everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving holiday, or if you're not in the U.S., your Thursday. As always, things have been a bit hectic here at the Skeptical Okie headquarters. We're hoping to begin the Red Dirt Skeptics podcast pretty soon. The first episodes should be coming out in January, though that is subject to change. Another bit of fun that's cropped up recently, and completely unrelated to this post, is the resurgence of a group that I was sure was dead and gone. This group is called "Oklahomans for Vaccine Choice" This is a blatantly anti-vax group, plain and simple. For several years, their website was basically dead. They recently did a show, and yes, I am using show instead of talk, at UCO. Luckily, Caleb Lack and the UCO Skeptics were there to try and have a discussion with them. I'm going to do an interview with Caleb later on this, so I'll try and keep you posted. I know I've done a couple of opinion pieces in a row, and I'm hoping to have another For the Beginning Skeptic article out soon. Now on to the main point of todays article.
Often, I hear people saying that science just wants to get rid of all the wonder in the world and replace it with facts and numbers. It's not just the pseudoscience crowd that says this, it's often just regular people that don't fall into either the skeptical or pseudoscience camps. I really feel that this does a great disservice to science and skepticism. Yes, science wants to know how and why things work, and be able to describe them in a quantitative manner. That doesn't mean that the wonder of the world would be destroyed. In all honesty, it increases it greatly. Look at it this way:
Step outside and look at a flower. Then consider this: In order for you to see the flower, even if it's a simple dandelion, there so many things that had to happen first. The photon that bounces off of the flower and enters your eye started in the heart of our sun. It took up to a million years for the photon to leave the core of the sun and reach it's surface. Then it has to leave the sun, travel 91 million miles (at it's closest point) and reach Earth, which it does in 8 minutes. That single photon then travels through the atmosphere, avoiding hitting anything else, hit the petals of the flower and ricochet into your eye and then your eye and brain translate that into a visual image.
For that flower to deflect the photon, there has been million years of evolution, with the ancestors surviving various weather conditions, not being eaten, adapting to different environmental conditions, and finding a suitable partner to reproduce with. They have also had to be able to compete with other lifeforms for valuable resources, and this flower in particular had to germinate in a suitable location, survive insects and herbivores, lawnmowers and herbicides, and develop and grow a flower bloom. Also consider the very interesting fact that, in the case of the dandelion, the flower isn't actually yellow. It's every color except yellow. The way that color works is that the one you see is the one that is reflected back. All the other colors like red, green, blue, etc, are actually absorbed by the flower, and because yellow light isn't absorbed by the flower, it is the one that you see.
In order for you to see the flower, once again there was millions of years of evolution, starting from single celled organisms, with your direct ancestors surviving multiple mass extinction events, changing and adapting to a wide range of climates. They also had to spread around the planet, develop senses to interpret the world around them, and in the case of humans, develop a brain capable of appreciating the environment around them. Then consider the fact that your parents, their parents, and so on and so on, had to meet, create a child, and that child grow to maturity and procreate themselves. If they had met a different person and had children with them, you might not exist. There are around 100 million sperm trying to reach an egg, and you are the one that won the race. And to up the odds of your existence even more, roughly 50% of all pregnancies end in miscarriages.
Back to the single photon hitting your eye. You had to develop an optical system and brain capable of capturing the photon, and translating it into a visual image that is understandable. Then, you had to be in the correct place at the correct time for that individual photon to leave the sun, travel through space, get through the atmosphere, bounce off the flower and enter your eye. If you're a statistician, try figuring the odds on all that.
Science and skepticism aren't trying to destroy all the wonder in the world. They actually enhance and improve the wonder, especially when you consider the odds of anything actually happening. This is why I prefer science to bullshit. There are enough amazing things to see, learn, and experience in the world without making more up. You don't need spirits, monsters, magic powers, or mysterious magical medicine when there is physics, biology, science, and actual medicine to study and enjoy.
Often, I hear people saying that science just wants to get rid of all the wonder in the world and replace it with facts and numbers. It's not just the pseudoscience crowd that says this, it's often just regular people that don't fall into either the skeptical or pseudoscience camps. I really feel that this does a great disservice to science and skepticism. Yes, science wants to know how and why things work, and be able to describe them in a quantitative manner. That doesn't mean that the wonder of the world would be destroyed. In all honesty, it increases it greatly. Look at it this way:
Step outside and look at a flower. Then consider this: In order for you to see the flower, even if it's a simple dandelion, there so many things that had to happen first. The photon that bounces off of the flower and enters your eye started in the heart of our sun. It took up to a million years for the photon to leave the core of the sun and reach it's surface. Then it has to leave the sun, travel 91 million miles (at it's closest point) and reach Earth, which it does in 8 minutes. That single photon then travels through the atmosphere, avoiding hitting anything else, hit the petals of the flower and ricochet into your eye and then your eye and brain translate that into a visual image.
For that flower to deflect the photon, there has been million years of evolution, with the ancestors surviving various weather conditions, not being eaten, adapting to different environmental conditions, and finding a suitable partner to reproduce with. They have also had to be able to compete with other lifeforms for valuable resources, and this flower in particular had to germinate in a suitable location, survive insects and herbivores, lawnmowers and herbicides, and develop and grow a flower bloom. Also consider the very interesting fact that, in the case of the dandelion, the flower isn't actually yellow. It's every color except yellow. The way that color works is that the one you see is the one that is reflected back. All the other colors like red, green, blue, etc, are actually absorbed by the flower, and because yellow light isn't absorbed by the flower, it is the one that you see.
In order for you to see the flower, once again there was millions of years of evolution, starting from single celled organisms, with your direct ancestors surviving multiple mass extinction events, changing and adapting to a wide range of climates. They also had to spread around the planet, develop senses to interpret the world around them, and in the case of humans, develop a brain capable of appreciating the environment around them. Then consider the fact that your parents, their parents, and so on and so on, had to meet, create a child, and that child grow to maturity and procreate themselves. If they had met a different person and had children with them, you might not exist. There are around 100 million sperm trying to reach an egg, and you are the one that won the race. And to up the odds of your existence even more, roughly 50% of all pregnancies end in miscarriages.
Back to the single photon hitting your eye. You had to develop an optical system and brain capable of capturing the photon, and translating it into a visual image that is understandable. Then, you had to be in the correct place at the correct time for that individual photon to leave the sun, travel through space, get through the atmosphere, bounce off the flower and enter your eye. If you're a statistician, try figuring the odds on all that.
Science and skepticism aren't trying to destroy all the wonder in the world. They actually enhance and improve the wonder, especially when you consider the odds of anything actually happening. This is why I prefer science to bullshit. There are enough amazing things to see, learn, and experience in the world without making more up. You don't need spirits, monsters, magic powers, or mysterious magical medicine when there is physics, biology, science, and actual medicine to study and enjoy.
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