Conspiracy Theory

Yesterday I received an email that contained yet another argument that Obama’s birth certificate (the PDF’d scan of the “long form” certificate) was a fake, based on erroneous claims about the name of Kenya in 1961 and the name of the hospital which were already debunked at Snopes.com four months ago. But this prompted me to see if there were any more advocates of wild claims about the birth certificate, and I came across Douglas Vogt’s alleged analysis of the birth certificate and, more importantly, a very well-done, detailed debunking of that analysis by Kevin Davidson (known on his blog as “Dr. Conspiracy”), who has done a great job of responding to numerous Obama conspiracy claims. Check out his “The Debunker’s Guide to Obama Conspiracy Theories." Vogt, the author of the analysis which Dr. Conspiracy debunks, is also an example of “crank magnetism”–he is the author of Reality Revealed: The Theory of Multidimensional Reality, a 1978 book which looks like a classic work of crackpottery. Vogt bills himself as a “geologist and science philosopher” who: ...

Russ Baker’s new book, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, The Powerful Forces that Put it in Power, and What Their Influence Means for America, states that George W. Bush’s conversion to evangelical Christianity was staged as a way to wipe the slate clean of his past record of misbehavior. It further makes the case that his story of a conversion after a visit from Billy Graham was his second conversion, the first coming a year earlier after a meeting with evangelist Arthur Blessit, who was determined to be too controversial for the story Bush wanted to convey: … what was a starchy, Episcopalian heir to a blue-blooded Yankee political pedigree to do? And what of his reckless, apparently non-religious, playboy son? These were the intertwined questions faced by Vice President Bush and George W. in the 1980s as they planned Poppy Bush’s run for president in 1988–and W.’s political future. Baker’s chapter titled “The Conversion” features startling revelations that challenge the well-known narratives of the Bush family’s religious history– including the way they crafted a strategy for winning over the religious right, and the creation of a conversion legend for George W. Bush. The purpose of the latter was not only to position him as a religious and political man of his time, but to neutralize the many issues from his past that threatened to undermine his future in politics (and possibly that of his father as well). The plan probably worked far better than anyone could have hoped. “I’m still amazed,” Doug Wead, a key architect of the Bush family’s evangelical outreach strategy told Baker, “how naïve so many journalists are who have covered politics all of their life." ...

Orac at Respectful Insolence shows the deception from Bishop Richard Williamson, the formerly excommunicated Holocaust-denying Catholic bishop who was recently reinstated by Pope Benedict XVI. Williamson created a recent media firestorm because of his Holocaust denial, and has now apologized–not for his Holocaust denial, but for the fact that there was a media reaction to it. It’s a not-pology. Orac debunks some of Williamson’s falsehoods about the Holocaust, and points to some of the best sites for responding to Holocaust denial: Nizkor, The Holocaust History Project, and Holocaust Denial on Trial. ...

In the January 2009 issue of Fortean Times, Theo Paijmans reports the following story of “The Hound of Mons,” quoted from the Ada Evening News, Ada, Oklahoma, 11 August 1919: That weird legend of No Man’s Land, the gruesome epice of the “hound of Mons,” has, according to F.J. Newhouse, a returned Canadian veteran, been vindicated throughout Europe as fact and not fiction. For four years civilian skeptics laughed at the soldiers’ tale of a giant, skulking hound, which stalked among the corpses and shell holes of No Man’s Land and dragged down British soldiers to their death. An apparition of fear-crazed minds, they said. But to the soldiers it was a reality and one of the most fearful things of the world war. “The death of Dr. Gottlieb Hochmuller in the recent Spartacan riots in Berlin,” said Capt. Newhouse, “has brought to light facts concerning the fiendish application of this German scientist’s skill that have astounded Europe. For the hound of Mons was not an accident, a phantom, or an hallucination–it was the deliberate result of one of the strangest and most repulsive scientific experiments the world has ever known. Teeth Marks in Throats. What was the hound of Mons? According to the soldiers, the legend started in the terrible days of the defense of Mons. On the night of November 14, 1914, Capt. Yeskes and four men of the London Fusiliers entered No Man’s Land on patrol. The last living trace of them was when they started into the darkness between the lines. Several days afterward their dead bodies were found–just as they had been dragged down–with teeth marks at the throats. Several nights later a weird, blood-curdling howl was heard from the darkness toward which the British trenches faced. It was the howl of the hound of Mons. From then on this phantom hound became the terror of the men who faced death by bullets with a smile. It was the old fear of the unknown. Howl is Heard. Patrol after patrol, during two years of warefare, ventured out only to be found days later with the telltale marks at their throats. The ghastly howl continued to echo through No Man’s Land. Several times sentries declared that they saw a lean, grey wraith flit past the barbed wire–the form of a gigantic hound running silently. But civilian Europe always doubted the story. Then after two years, while many brave men lost their lives with only those teeth marks at the throat to show, the hound of Mons disappeared. From then on the Germans never had another important success. “And now,” says Captain Newhouse, “secret papers have been taken from the residence of the late Dr. Hochmuller which prove that the hound of Mons was a terrible living reality, a giant hound with the brain of a human madman." Hound Had Human Brain. Captain Newhouse says that the papers show that this hound was the only successful issue of a series of experiments by which Dr. Hochmller hoped to end the war in Germany’s favor. The scientist had gone about the wards of the German hospitals until he found a man gone mad as the result of his insane hatred of England. Hochmuller, with the sanction of the German government, operated upon him and removed his brain, taking in particular the parts which dominated hatred and frenzy. At the same time a like operation was performed on a giant Siberian wolfhound. Its brain was taken out and the brain of the madman inserted. By careful nursing the dog lived. The man was permitted to die. The dog rapidly grew stronger and, after careful training in fiendishness, wa taken to the firing line and released in No Man’s Land. There for two years it became the terror of outposts and patrols.Back before the Internet, the local newspapers met our needs for fabulous hoaxes, and many of them applied, at least periodically, the journalistic standards of the Weekly World News–you only need one source. UPDATE (April 25, 2009): Fortean Times reader Alistair Moffatt writes in a letter in the May 2009 issue (p. 73) to point out that while F.J. Newhouse did exist, there was no Captain Yeskes of the London Fusiliers and Yeskes is an American or Canadian name, not a British one, suggesting a local origin for the above tale. He also notes that the Battle of Mons took place in August 1914, not November. He suggests that the tale may have originated from a propagandized and heavily distorted account of Captain Max von Stephanitz’s breeding of the German Shepherd. ...

Orcinus has an interesting article about Sarah Palin, prompted by the finding of a 1995 photograph of Palin at her Wasilla city council desk with an article from the March 1995 issue of the John Birch Society’s New American in front of her. Ben Smith at Politico has a more balanced piece on the same subject, which points out that there were lots of copies of that particular article sent out, and that Birchers themselves don’t appear to be particularly impressed with Palin. ...

Conspiracy theorists like to make arguments of the form “A is linked to B, B is linked to C, therefore A and C are in cahoots,” where the links between each entity may be extremely tenuous. P.Z. Myers at Pharyngula, following dogemperor at the DailyKos, maintains that “Sarah Palin’s home church is dominionist, with connections to Joel’s Army,” for which the evidence dogemperor provides is the following: A look at the home website of Palin’s church tends to be revealing. Among other things, a particular Assemblies buzzword associated frequently with Hillsong A/G and New Zealand Assemblies churches shows up (“Destiny”, here, is a buzzword for “Joel’s Army”, and is being preferred even as the phrase “Joel’s Army” is getting enough negative spin that even the Assemblies is now having to do some rather massive spin control); cell churches are promoted (of the same sort that are linked to short-term and longterm psychological damage and are among the most coercive tactics ever documented in spiritually abusive groups). The church, like a number of other large Assemblies churches, is the center of a dominionist broadcast TV center whose programming is carried across multiple channels in Alaska. ...

A new peer-produced skeptical website, De-fact-o, has popped up to provide skeptical, fact-based evaluation of claims of history, politics, science, health, environment, religion, pop culture, conspiracy theories, questionable quotes, fake photos, and more. There’s a page per claim, and the claim is rated true, false, mostly false, probably false, or unknown. The site is reminiscent of (and not yet as comprehensive as) Snopes.com, but I hope to see it grow substantially with member-produced content. The articles I’ve checked out appear to be well-done. Those who register on the site can comment on articles, vote on their accuracy, and write new ones, but unlike Wikipedia, approval from the site owners is required before new articles get posted. All articles on the site are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). I would have preferred a Creative Commons license, myself, due to some oddities of the GFDL (see the Wikipedia article on the GFDL, which is where the term is linked to from this paragraph). ...

That’s the title of Vincent Bugliosi’s latest book, which just reached #14 on the New York Times bestseller list on Sunday despite having virtually no mainstream media attention. It has sold 130,000 copies, but ABC Radio refused to allow an advertisement for the book on the Don Imus show, and both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report declined to show any interest in having Bugliosi on as a guest. The book sets out a legal case for a criminal prosecution of George W. Bush as being criminally responsible for the deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Bugliosi, the former Los Angeles County prosecutor with a perfect record of murder prosecutions, including the prosecution of Charles Manson which he recounted in his book Helter Skelter 30 years ago, most recently authored the book Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a massive 1,612-page book that responds in detail to conspiracy theorists. That book is being made into a 10-hour miniseries by Tom Hanks for HBO. A shorter book, drawn from the content of Reclaiming History, has been published under the title Four Days in November.

BBC’s “The Conspiracy Files” investigative report on the collapse of WTC 7 will air on Sunday, July 6. They have some promotional videos on the web, including an explanation of their reporter’s statement that WTC 7 had collapsed before it did. The conspiracy theorists claim that it had to be a controlled demolition, because WTC 7 was not hit by a plane and was virtually untouched. But the latter claim is false–WTC 7 was heavily damaged by the collapse of the twin towers, with a giant hole in the southwest corner about 20 stories high. There were raging fires in a building full of diesel fuel and backup generators. The BBC investigation will no doubt report in more detail on the facts that the conspiracy theorists like to pretend don’t exist.

This is part two of my summary of The Amazing Meeting 6 (intro, part one, part three, part four, part five). Friday, the conference gets started More skeptics from around the world began to show up on Friday. Checking in at the registration desk entitled each person to a name badge, a folder of materials, a laser pointer/reading light (which many put to use during the conference, sometimes to the irritation of a speaker or emcee Hal Bidlack), and a copy of An Objectivist Secular Reader, edited by Dr. Edward Hudgins. The book argues for common cause between skeptics and Objectivists “and the often-related libertarian perspective.” I happened to sit next to Hudgins through part of the conference, and spoke to him a bit between sessions, and found that we have some common friends and acquaintances. He said that he thinks the libertarian viewpoint does fit well with skepticism, which was a point made later in the conference by Michael Shermer by drawing an analogy between anti-authoritarianism in the religious sphere to anti-authoritarianism in the political sphere–but of course governments actually exist, so the real underlying question is what legitimizes or justifies authority, which is a question also relevant in the scientific sphere. I’ll say more about this later when I summarize Shermer’s talk. Hudgins was working on a presentation for an upcoming speaking event which included statistics about changes in U.S. religious demographics over the last several decades, showing a rise in nonbelief. I asked to look at one page that showed a breakdown of U.S. religious adherents by sect, and pointed out the huge growth among Pentecostals (something I’ve previously written about here). This growth indicates to me that there’s more to religion than dogma and doctrine, and that a purely intellectual critique of beliefs and practices that are held for reasons that involve emotion and community is doomed to failure. I think that one of skepticism’s strengths is that it is a method, not a doctrine, and that turning it into dogma or trying to link it to a specific set of conclusions about religion or politics (or science, for that matter) is an enormous mistake that serves only to limit its appeal. Skepticism is at its best when it teaches people to think critically for themselves and at its worst when it tells people what to think. I’ll have more to say on this subject when I summarize Sunday’s talks, which included one by Don Nyberg railing against “religious pseudoscience." Friday morning I sat down to breakfast with a young couple from Texas, whose names unfortunately escape me. He had just completed a semester of medical school in Guadalajara, Mexico, and she had finished a degree in neuroscience. We were soon joined by Tony, an Australian who had been living with his partner in Mexico City for the last several years and was now on his way back to Australia by way of a trip around the world. There was a strong international presence at the conference, with dozens of Australians in particular, probably due to the strength of the Australian Skeptics organization. After breakfast, I went up to the conference room to hear the end of the recording of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast which was being recorded live in the room, but somehow I completely failed to meet Steven Novella, one of the podcast’s hosts, through the entire conference. I had hoped to at least say hello and introduce myself, since we were cosigners of a letter to Skeptical Inquirer back in 1999. Hal Bidlack opens the event The conference officially kicked off with an introduction by Hal Bidlack, who is running for Congress in Colorado Springs, CO, a part of the country which would be greatly helped by a critically thinking legislator. He mentioned that two prominent skeptics have died since the last conference, Arthur C. Clarke and Jerry Andrus. Andrus was a regular attendee of Skeptics Society conferences and JREF conferences, known for setting up his optical illusions and his willingness to explain them patiently to all. Randi’s welcome Hal then introduced James Randi, who was looking more frail than the last time I saw him in person, though he said that his health is much better than it has been in the recent past. Randi pointed out that a light, a chair, and a table commemorating Jerry Andrus and his illusions was set up in the back corner of the conference room, and will be set up at future Amazing Meetings as well–while noting that this is for us to remember Jerry. Randi announced that the JREF library is up to 2282 books, that this conference had about 900 attendees, and that it attracts more women and young people than any other skeptics conference. My impressions supported that conclusion. He also stated that there are UK and Dutch skeptical TV series in the works, and ended by saying that he wanted everyone at the conference to come up, greet him, and shake his hand (which I had already done on Thursday when I ran into him by the registration desk). Ben Goldacre on homeopathy The first official conference presentation was by Ben Goldacre, M.D. of www.badscience.net, who spoke about “squabbles about homeopathy.” Goldacre described the basic arguments against homeopathy. The main argument against it is that its extreme dilutions are so extreme that a single molecule of a 30C diluted substance would be found in not an Olympic-sized swimming pool, but in ten thousand million million million million pools. A 55C dilution would be equivalent to a universe-sized sphere filled with water with a single molecule of the diluted substance in it. Goldacre observed that a label of a homeopathic remedy that says it is safe because it contains “less than 1 ppm” of the diluted substance is quite an understatement. The homeopaths respond that this is irrelevant; what makes the homeopathic remedy work is that “water has memory,” and its structure has somehow changed to reflect being in contact with the diluted substance. But, Goldacre asked, why does it remember the remedy and not, say, having been in Nelson’s colon or the Queen’s bladder, or in contact with countless other substances? The homeopathic answer to that is that the memory only comes into effect through “succussion,” when the remedy is in the water and the container is banged ten times firmly against a wooden striking board (for instance). As homeopaths do want to present their work as scientific, they have been willing to engage with skeptics. Goldacre reported that his website was given permission to reprint papers from the journal Homeopathy on water memory, which were then critiqued in the JREF Forums, and the critiques assembled into a response which was submitted to and published in the same journal. But Goldacre points out that the standard anti-homeopathy arguments have been made at least since John Forbes, Queen Victoria’s physician, made them in 1846, but they have proven ineffective in persuading homeopaths and users of homeopathic remedies from giving them up. He says the arguments are “irrelevant,” because homeopaths are persuaded that their remedies actually work. But that’s just not so, he argued. While one might think that homeopathy is like anesthetics where we don’t know how it works but it does, with homeopathy we have no good explanation for how it could work and we also have evidence that it doesn’t work any better than a placebo. He then went on to talk about how the placebo effect is a genuinely fascinating scientific anomaly far more worthy of interest than homeopathy. In pain relief, four sugar pills are more effective than two, salt water injection is more effective than sugar pills, and commercial packaging make placebos more effective. He argued that the extent to which homeopathy works is indistinguishable from the placebo effect, as demonstrated by a proper meta-analysis of homeopathic trials, reducing the weight of those which have flaws such as poor randomization and poor blinding. Keynote by Neil deGrasse Tyson Neil deGrasse Tyson, who was clearly the rock star of skepticism at the reception on Thursday night, surrounded by adoring fans (perhaps it was his hat, as P.Z. Myers suggests), gave the keynote address to the conference. When he began, many people had been shining their laser pointers on the wall above the stage, and Tyson informed the audience that he would express his “geek dominance.” He instructed everyone to point their laser pointers above the door on the opposite side of the room. Once everyone had done so, he pulled out his laser pointer–shining from farther away than anyone else, since he was up on stage–and shined a large green dot that outshone all of the red dots. Tyson’s talk was called either “Adventures in Science Illiteracy” or “Brain Droppings of a Skeptic” (a title cribbed from George Carlin). He began by saying that he had something to do with Pluto’s demotion from being a planet, and that anybody who didn’t like it should “get over it.” The rest of his talk wandered over a large range of topics that have come up in the Q&A sessions of his lectures: UFO Sightings: When people say they’ve seen a UFO, be sure to remind them what the “U” stands for. Typically, those who claim they’ve seen a UFO start by saying it was unidentified, then end up “inventing knowledge of everything” about it being an extraterrestrial spacecraft. Alien Abductions: Tyson said that eyewitness testimony is the lowest form of evidence in science (though it’s certainly not worthless, and even the scientific literature is a form of testimony about the results of experiments). He pulled out his iPhone and said that if he had one of these 10 years ago, he’d have been burned at the stake. If you get abducted by a UFO, you should take something not of this earth in order to prove your alien contact. He showed a slide of a cover of the book “How to Defend Yourself Against Alien Abduction” and said that “I bought it, read it, and heeded its advice–and I have not been abducted." Inept Aliens: They travel trillions of miles to get here, then crash. Conspiracy Theory: They tend to tacitly admit insufficient data. If an argument lasts more than five minutes, both sides are wrong. Astrology: If you read a horoscope to a group of people and ask if it describes them, approximately 2/3 will agree that it fits them. Most Scorpios are actually Ophiuchans. Birth Rates and Full Moons: Average human gestation is 295 days; the lunar cycle is 29.5 days. Full moon birth = full moon impregnation. Behavior and Full Moons: The pressure of an extra pillow is a trillion times greater than the tidal force on a cranium. Surviving Terminal Cancer: If someone gets three diagnoses from physicians giving them 5-7 months to live, then lives for five years, they credit God for their survival, rather than blaming doctors for a poor diagnosis. Swami Levitation: Tyson suggest 1,000 cans of baked beans would generate sufficient flatulence to become airborne. Moon Hoax: Modern technology is so advanced that some people can’t believe it. But if you learn the rocket equation and look at how much fuel was in the Saturn V, if the launch was fake, what was all that fuel for? Mars “Virus”: In 2003, the Earth was the closest it had been to Mars than in the previous 60,000 years, which led to multiple stories (including in subsequent years) that some virus would jump from Mars to Earth. Tyson pointed to the side and said “Japan is that way.” He jumped a few feet to the side in that direction, and then said he is now as much closer to Japan as Mars came to the Earth from its average distance. Fear of Numbers: 80% of building on Broadway in NYC have no 13th floor, due to an irrational fear of the number 13. (Yet who actually does fear 13?) And why don’t we use negative numbers on elevators for subfloors? Or negative numbers in financial ledgers, instead of parentheses? (Actually, I suspect that’s to avoid ambiguity with hyphens in dollar ranges, rather than a fear of negative numbers.) Naming Rights: Tyson pointed out countries that put scientists on their money–Isaac Newton on the English one-pound note, Einstein on Israeli money. The U.S. has only one scientist–Ben Franklin–on money, on the $100 bill, but with no symbolism to represent his scientific work–no kite, no key, no lightning rod. He also pointed to Gauss and the Gaussian distribution on British money as British support of science, but Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in The Black Swan, points out that the financial field goes grossly astray by trying to using Gaussian distributions to describe phenomena that are not Gaussian. Taleb points to Gauss on British money as ironic and inept rather than pro-science. Tyson also looked at the names of the elements, with slides of the periodic table that showed which ones were discovered when, and by which countries. While the U.S. was not the top country, it has discovered nearly all of the most recent elements. Tyson explained that Sweden has discovered so many elements because Ytterby cave was rich in undiscovered elements, and yielded the names of the elements Yttrium (39, 1795), Terbium (65, 1843), Erbium (68, 1843), Ytterbium (70, 1878), and Scandium (21, 1879). Jury Duty I: Tyson described being called for jury duty. He was asked what he did, he said that he was an astrophysicist. When asked what he teaches, he said “a course on evaluating evidence and the unreliability of eyewitness testimony,” at which point he was promptly dismissed. Jury Duty II: Tyson was called for jury duty again, and made the first cut of jurors. The facts of the case were described–the defendant was charged with the possession of “2000 mg” of cocaine. When the jurors were asked if they had any questions, Tyson asked, “why did you describe it as 2000 mg instead of 2 g, about the weight of a postage stamp? Aren’t you trying to bias the jury by making it sound like a large quantity of drugs?” At which point he was promptly dismissed. Math?: Tyson pointed out a headline bemoaning the fact that “half the schools in the district are below average.” He also pointed out an article that pointed out that 80% of airplane crash survivors had studied the locations of the exit doors upon takeoff as a suggestion that this is a good idea–but it didn’t give the percentage of the nonsurvivors that had done the same. If 100% of the nonsurvivors had also studied the exit locations, would that be an argument not to do so? Tyson responded to the common observation that the lottery is a tax upon the poor, saying that no, it’s a tax on the innumerate. Similarly, he pointed to the subprime mortgage mess as a mathematical illiteracy problem. Bayer ad in Physics Today: Tyson described an advertisement that Bayer placed in Physics Today asking how to get students interested in “why heavy things fall faster than lighter things.” The ad was later changed to “why heavy things fall as fast as lighter things." George W. Bush: Tyson said that he lives closer to Ground Zero in Manhattan than the height of the WTC towers, and showed some photographs he took on September 11. He attended a science medal presentation at the White House since he was on the presidential advisory committee; at that event Bush stated that “Our God is the God who named the stars.” However, 2/3 of all stars with names have Arabic names, because from 800-1100 Islam was very supportive of math and science, giving us the names of algebra and algorithm, and the Arabic numerals. But in the 12th century, Imam Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111), the St. Augustine of Islam, stated that “manipulating numbers is the work of the devil." There are 1.2 billion Muslims, yet they’ve only earned 2 of 579 Nobel prizes (one in physics, one in economics), while Jews, who are 1/80 as numerous, have earned 143 Nobel prizes, and thus have had 6,400 times the impact of Muslims on modern science. He wondered how much more contribution they would have made if it had not been for al-Ghazali’s position of influence on Islam. Intelligent Design: A 2004 SUV ad said, “In the world of SUV’s, it’s the survival of the fittest.” In 2005, it was changed to “Its features are nothing short of a miracle." Tyson argued that the intelligent design idea–stopping investigation with “God did it”–has historically stopped scientific inquiry. He argued that Newton could have developed Laplace’s perturbation theory if he had not stopped his inquiry and appealed to God for the explanation of planetary movements that conflicted with his theory. Stupid Design: Leukemia, vision loss with age, Alzheimer’s, exhaling most oxygen we inhale, our inability to smell CO or CO2, the fact that we eat, drink, and speak through the same opening (vs. dolphin design–dolphins can’t die laughing). Tyson also mentioned the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, which killed 70,000 people, mostly Christians who had gathered in churches that Sunday mornings. Religious People in the U.S.: Tyson observed that most people in the U.S. are religious–about 90% believe in God. When you look at educated people, holding a master’s or Ph.D. degree, it drops to about 60%. When you look at scientists, it’s about 40%. The most elite scientists–Nobel prizewinners, National Academy of Science members, etc.–it drops to 7%, with physicists and biologists as the least religious. But he pointed out that the 7% is still a substantial number of people–you cannot blame the general public for being religious if we don’t understand why 7% of the most educated elite people are religious and pray to a personal God. Bible in Science Classroom: He observed that there aren’t scientists picketing in front of churches demanding equal time for science, referred to Matthew LaClair’s confrontation with his history teacher for proselytizing in the classroom (a story broken by this blog), and read his letter to the editor of the New York Times about the case: To the Editor: People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah’s ark carried dinosaurs. ...