Psience - Pseudoscience

Extraterrestrial Code in our DNA?

nospam@example.com (Rudis) — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 13:44:46 -0400

I was recently pointed to a hilariously absurd article called Scientists find Extraterrestrial genes in Human DNA. It saddens me that the site hosting this nonsense is associating itself with my favorite country.

Anyway, I'm sure most people would recognize this particular article for the idiotic drivel that it is (even most of the believer sites that I found referencing it seem to discuss it with an air of incredulity), but I thought it would be fun to analyze it in detail regardless. Let's look at the opening statement:

A group of researchers working at the Human Genome Project indicate that they made an astonishing scientific discovery: They believe so-called 97% non-coding sequences in human DNA is no less than genetic code of extraterrestrial life forms.

The non-coding sequences are common to all living organisms on Earth, from moulds to fish to humans. In human DNA, they constitute larger part of the total genome, says Prof. Sam Chang, the group leader. Non-coding sequences, originally known as "junk DNA", were discovered years ago, and their function remained a mystery. The overwhelming majority of Human DNA is "Off-world" in origin. The apparent "extraterrestrial junk genes" merely "enjoy the ride" with hard working active genes, passed from generation to generation.

Look at the wording of the first paragraph. It's written to imply that the astonishing discovery is that there is alien code in human DNA, but if you actually read what it's saying, the astonishing discovery is that they believe that there is alien code in human DNA. I wonder if that was intentional. Hmmmmmmmm.

They are talking about Junk DNA here. There are a lot of hypotheses as to what it is and how it formed--and I bet they are all a lot more credible than Sam Chang's "discovered" belief that it was planted there by aliens. Speaking of Prof. Chang, I did a search for his name at the Human Genome Project website, and there was nary a Chang to be found. I also checked their list of publications and, surprise, there was nothing there with any mention of extraterrestrials. A few PubMed searches showed many papers attributed to various S Changs, but none that talk about extraterrestrial origins of non-coding DNA.

Let's just think for a minute about what process would be required to scientifically test for the presence of extraterrestrial information in human DNA. The first (seemingly insurmountable) obstacle that must be overcome would be that you must know what extraterrestrial information in the human genome would look like. No problem, right? Just head on down to your local branch of Area 51 and ask the men in black for some sample data. Uh huh. Let's see how Chang approached this issue:

After comprehensive analysis with the assistance of other scientists, computer programmers, mathematicians, and other learned scholars, Professor Chang had wondered if the apparently "junk Human DNA" was created by some kind of "extraterrestrial programmer".

This paints a pretty clear picture for me. I can see the exchange now (doodity doo doodity doo doodity doo (those are the sounds of transition to a fantasy sequence in the TV show of my mind)):

Chang: I have done a comprehensive analysis of the human genome. I have called you all here to assist me.
Scientist: Who are you?
Computer programmer: You said there would be free donuts... But I don't see any...
Mathematician: Why are wee meeting in your mom's basement?
Chang: Hmmm. I bet this "junk DNA" stuff was made by aliens!
Other learned scholars: This is gay. We're leaving.

The article just gets more bizarre from there. Chang's grand hypothesis is that an alien race was working on coding an ultimate human race, the code for which is in our non-coding DNA. Due, however, to time restrictions from the alien programmers' bosses (or whatever), the aliens were forced to scrap the large code base for the ultimate humans, and release a stripped down basic version of their DNA program (ie., our coding DNA sequences). Since our "basic" version of DNA isn't as powerful as the scrapped version stored in our non-coding DNA, we are not immune to cancer (as we would be had the aliens' bosses given them an extension on the "Earth project"). The article also states in various places that this is all "verified fact" and that there is "absolute proof" to support this theory. Right.

So, let's recap:

Chang is probably not even a real person, and even if he is, he is grossly misrepresented in the article.

The article claims to be about science, but is in reality just a bunch of poorly thought-out childish fantasies.

The website hosting it is called The Canadian.

The Canadian also has articles titled AIDS is bio-terrorism created to kill billions some doctors and scientists say, Testimony claims crop circles made by "alien allies" of humanity, and Global Warming reveals that Stephen Harper and George Bush are not Christians.

What conclusions can we draw from this information? It's simple: Canadians, myself included, are full of shit, and you should never believe anything we say. Ever. Especially if it's on the Interweb.

What if "The Secret" were true?

nospam@example.com (Rudis) — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 21:05:49 -0400

What would it mean if The Secret were true, and there really was a Law of Attraction? Let's brainstorm!^*

Over 800 million starving people around the world simply don't want food badly enough.

Behold the power of The Secret™.

Millions of people who die from AIDS and cancer every year, didn't think about staying alive hard enough.

If only she knew The Secret™.

Every two and a half minutes, someone somewhere in America wanted to be sexually assaulted.

He can come for you, too, if you know The Secret™.

It didn't cross the minds of over six million Jews to think about not being slaughtered during the Holocaust.

Looks like they didn't know The Secret™.

Hundreds of thousands of people in New Orleans were wishing that their houses and lives would be devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

The Secret™ strikes again!

Thousands of soldiers in Iraq are dead because they didn't think enough anti-bullet and anti-explosion thoughts.

^** The infidels must never learn The Secret™, or we shall surely perish.

Not enough of the thousands of people who died on 9/11 were concentrating strongly enough on the buildings not collapsing.

If only the movie about The Secret™ had come out a few years earlier.

Let's not forget about Steve Irwin.

The Secret™: Not just for humans any more!

It's called blame the victims, folks. Oprah does it, so it can't be wrong! If you'll excuse me now, I'm going to go visualize me up some french fries and gravy. Yum!

^* Yes, I realize that this post is in incredibly poor taste. Hopefully it conveys how amazingly fucking stupid I think The Secret is.
Special thanks to Tombstone Generator and The Newspaper Clipping Generator.

A Closer Examination of Sheldrake's Trial Sequences

nospam@example.com (Rudis) — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 02:27:00 -0500

An idea struck me after reading the article at CSI by David F. Marks and John Colwell that provides a critical analysis of Rupert Sheldrake's staring experiments (see my previous post on the subject here). It occurred to me that the gambler's fallacy might be able to explain their results (as discussed in another previous blog entry here), and that I might be able to verify their conclusions for myself by means of a simple computer simulation. Being the complete uber-geek that I am, I immediately set to work.

The Program

I spent a few hours hammering out a fairly simple Perl script that could be used to simulate a few different kinds of trials. The source code can be viewed here. I've tried to make the code as easy to read as possible, with commenting where appropriate (an unbelievably ginormous leap from my normal coding practices). The program simulates staring experiments using either Sheldrake's trial sequences, or random sequences (generated using Perl's built-in rand() function). The virtual-test-subjects' guesses can be configured in any one of three ways:

completely random (using Perl's built-in rand() function),

using a gambler's fallacy algorithm applied to their own guesses, or

using a gambler's fallacy algorithm applied to the actual trial types.

It is possible to configure a yes-bias for the subjects (baseline increased likelihood that a user will choose yes instead of no)--this is set to 5% for the purposes of this article, since this is the number that seems to come up most frequently in the relevant literature.

The gambler's fallacy algorithm I used in the simulations essentially increases the subject's likelihood (configurable in the program, set to 33% for this article) of choosing the opposite answer on their next guess, if the previous trial or guess was the same as the current one. For example, using method #3 from above, the subject's chance of guessing yes on trial 1 is 55%. Say trial 1 is a yes. On trial 2, their chance of picking yes is still 55%. Say trial 2 is a yes. Now, since the previous trial (1) and the current trial (2) were both yes, the subject thinks it is less likely to be a yes on the next trial. On trial 3, the chance that he will guess yes is now 22%. If trial 3 were also a yes, then his chance on trial 4 would drop to 0% and stay there until a no trial came up which would reset him back to 55%. This is also applied conversely in the event of multiple no trials in a row. Using method #2 above, the numbers work the same, but instead of looking at the actual trial types to adjust the values, the subject bases the fallacy on his own guesses (essentially ensuring that the subject will never guess yes or no too many times in a row--instead spreading guesses out more evenly over a number of trials, as a real human might be more likely to do). Method #3 assumes that the subject is given feedback after each guess about whether he was right or wrong, method #2 assumes that he is not.

Got all that? Me neither, but that's the best I could explain it. Just learn Perl and look at the code if you're unsure. Let's move on.

When generating random trial sequences instead of using Sheldrake's sequences, it is possible to specify the number of subjects and trials to simulate. In either case, the gambler's fallacy modifier and "memory" of the previous trial is reset for each subject.

The source code linked above is in the configuration to run 20 experiments using Sheldrake's trial sequences, guessing method #3 from above, with a yes-bias of 5% and a gambler's fallacy modifier of 33%. These values and methods are all easily modified by adjusting the values of variables in the first few lines of code. Since Sheldrake provides 20 sequences of 20 trials each, the total number of trials that will be simulated when the program is executed is 8,000.

Upon completion of the simulated trials, the program outputs the following results for each experiment, and for the total run of all experiments:

total number of trials run across all subjects,

the total number of trials that were staring trials,

the total number of staring trials that were correctly guessed by the subject,

the total number of non-staring trials that were correctly guessed by the subject,

the total number of trials that were correctly guessed (#3 + #4 from above), and

the breakdown of subjects into Sheldrake's "plus or minus" categories, in which subjects who guessed correctly more often than incorrectly are labeled "plus" subjects, subjects who guessed incorrectly more often than correctly are "minus" subjects, and subjects who guessed correctly and incorrectly an equal number of times are ignored.

The Method

Using my program, I generated four sets of results (Set I, Set II, and Set III, and Set IV--roman numerals are t3h aw3s0me). Each set consisted of the 20 simulated experiments, each consisting of 20 trials on 20 different subjects, for a total of 8,000 trials each.

Set I

For the first set, I used randomly generated trial sequences, and guessing method #1 (no fallacy algorithm) from above. This was primarily to test the accuracy of my program under truly random circumstances. The results I expected to see were values that were statistically insignificant and no better than chance.

Set II

The second set used Sheldrake's sequences, and guessing method #3 (gambler's fallacy when feedback is provided). This would test whether or not Colwell's conclusions--that Sheldrake's sequences are sufficiently non-random enough to allow for statistically significant results without any paranormal effects (assuming that the subject is given feedback)--could be illustrated using my simple gambler's fallacy model. The results I expected were values that would show the subjects guessed correctly significantly more often than chance would dictate.

Set III

The third set used Sheldrake's sequences, and guessing method #2 (gambler's fallacy when no feedback is provided). This was purely for curiosity's sake, to see if the gambler's fallacy has any effect when applied even without feeback. Based on common sense and the conclusions drawn by Colwell et al in their experiments, I expected no significant results above chance to be shown in this set.

Set IV

For the final set I used randomly generated trial sequences, and guessing method #3 (gambler's fallacy when feeback is provided). I wanted to see if gambler's fallacy also could have a significant positive effect on truly random sequences, and if so how did it compare to Sheldrake's pseudo-random sequences. I expected a possible significant effect here, but not as strong as in Sheldrake's sequences.

The Results

First, I will provide a table of overall results from all four Sets, then discuss and further analyze each individually. For ease of comparison, I will use the same table layouts and graphing methods that Rupert Sheldrake presents in his paper The Sense of Being Stared At - Part 1: Is it Real or Illusory? (pdf).

Set	Trials	Right	% right	N	+	-	p	Raw data
I	8,000	4,013	50.16	400	160	167	0.6987	set1data.txt
II	8,000	4,143	51.79	400	187	140	0.0093	set2data.txt
III	8,000	4,040	50.5	400	165	162	0.8682	set3data.txt
IV	8,000	4,029	50.36	400	175	166	0.6260	set4data.txt

The sign scores are tallied the same way Sheldrake did in the paper mentioned above. Subjects who were more often right than wrong were scored +, subjects who were more often wrong than right were scored -, and subjects who were right the same number of times they were wrong are excluded. The p values are also calculated the same way Sheldrake did, using the chi-square test where the null hypothesis is that + and - should be equal.

As you can see, Sets I and III have high p values, indicating no significance beyond chance, as I had predicted. I expected a possible significance in Set IV, but this did not pan out in the actual trials. The fact that these three sets did not produce any significant results essentially means the following:

(Set I) when the trials are completely random, and the guesses are completely random, the results are dictated by chance (duh!);

(Set III) when Sheldrake's sequences are used, and no feedback is available to base the guesses on (but the guesses themselves are affected by the gambler's fallacy), the results are dictated by chance; and,

(Set IV) when the trials are completely random, feedback is given to the subject, and the guesses are affected by the gambler's fallacy, then the results are dictated by chance.

The interesting set was Set II, the one for which I predicted that the subjects would guess right significantly better than chance would dictate. This was the set that used Sheldrake's trial sequences, provided feedback to the subject whether each trial was stare or non-stare, and had guesses that were affected by my gambler's fallacy algorithm. As you can see, the very low p value tells us that, shockingly, I was right--the results are significantly above simple chance. Here are some charts made from my Set 2 data, also modeled after the ones Sheldrake produces in his paper:

Chart A gives the percentages of correct and incorrect guesses in staring trials, non-staring trials, and total trials. The findings that people did much better on the staring trials than non-staring trials is consistent with Sheldrake's findings.

Chart B gives the number of subjects who guessed correctly more often than incorrectly and vice versa in staring trials, non-staring trials, and total trials. Again, subjects did much better in staring trials than in non-staring trials (which is also consistent with Sheldrake's findings).

Conclusions

This little personal exercise has solidified for me that any experiments that use the trial sequences that Sheldrake provides on his website should be disregarded. Indeed, this is true for any experiments at all that use pseudo-random trial sequences arrived at using similar methods to those used by Sheldrake. The fact that a computer simulation implementing a simple gambler's fallacy algorithm can clearly produce statistically significant positive results in-line with Sheldrake's findings makes it an undeniable fact that this can happen even in the complete absence of any paranormal psi effects.

If you're feeling particularly sadistic, you should download and run my script with the settings from Set II, but with a way higher experiment number (for example 50 or 100). It is 100% consistent in showing huge statistical significance using the p value as calculated by Sheldrake, even with ridiculously huge trial numbers. (Just in case someone gets the idea that I cherry picked the best run to fit my hypothesis out of a billion runs, or something. The results I used were all first-runs with the specified settings.)

I do recognize the fact that the effect shown by my program is not as strong as the one that Sheldrake reports (mainly in the "% right" column from the results table). The human mind is a complex thing though, much more complex and clever than about 30 lines of code in a Perl script (most human minds, at any rate). It is no stretch of the imagination to presume that the subjects involved in real human experiments employ much more complex and effective strategies for guessing the correct answers (such as some kind of subtle pattern learning as suggested by Marks and Colwell) which could account for the slightly better hit rates. It might even be possible to tweak some of the variables in my program to improve the numbers. The ultimate fact remains that, when using pseudo-random trial sequences, such as the ones provided by Sheldrake, it is entirely possible to get statistically significant positive results in staring detection experiments due to reasons totally unrelated to psi or any other paranormal effect.

Q E (Oh man did I really waste two whole days on this?) D.

Rupert Sheldrake and Being Stared At

nospam@example.com (Rudis) — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 23:20:00 -0500

Somebody suggested to me that if I took a closer look at the work of Rupert Sheldrake, that it might persuade me from my skeptical opinion of ESP. In this post I'll take a look into the idea that people or animals can somehow sense when they're being stared at. Sheldrake also promotes other ideas, which I will probably further address in future posts.

I'm sure most of us have sensed it at one time or another--the eerie feeling that you are being watched. The rational and common-sense side of me says that there's probably nothing to it. There could be any number of other indicators that could alert you to the fact that someone's staring at you (other subtle clues that someone entered the room, for example--smell, movement in the corner of your eye, or noises). It could also be due to selective memory (for example, you often get the feeling that you're being stared at, and only remember the few times where it actually turned out to be true, ignoring the times when the feeling passed without any kind of confirmation). Fortunately, this seems like an ideal candidate for testing in a controlled, scientific manner.

Sheldrake has published a number of papers on the subject, all of which I have now read. Primarily, his claim is that simple experimentation can and does prove that this sense is real, and that these results are independently repeatable. A lot of the research he cites seems kind of suspect to me--namely, allusions to anecdotal accounts, experiments conducted by kids for school science fairs, the "NeMo experiment" which consists of an unsupervised computer display at a kid-oriented science center where people can test their own ability to detect stares, and equally unsupervised online tests where anybody can do the same on Sheldrake's website. Even excluding these questionable studies, however, the data that Sheldrake cites from his own experiments, which were performed by himself and several participating independent schools, seem to show that we really do have the ability to detect when someone is staring at us.

A little further investigation into the phenomenon, however, turns up some sources that make it appear that Sheldrake's results may not be as replicable as he would lead us to believe. A critique of Sheldrake's findings can be found here, which details an attempt to replicate his experiment in 2000 by John Colwell et al. In these trials, it was determined that the positive results were only apparent when the subject was given feedback after his answers (ie, told if he was correct or incorrect after guessing if he was being stared at). In trials in which no feedback was given, the results were not significantly better than chance. Further analysis of the results when feedback was given showed that the subjects tended to get better at guessing as trials went on. They hypothesized that the random sequences of staring versus non staring trials that they were using (the same ones that Sheldrake used in his experiments) were not truly random, and that the subjects were perceiving and learning patterns in the sequences which allowed them to more accurately guess the correct answers as time went on. Further analysis of Sheldrake's trial sequences seems to support this idea as well, by proving that they are not truly random.

Colwell conducted further experiments with new trial sequences that were truly random. In those trials, even when feedback was provided to the subject, the results were no better than chance, and the same "learning" effect was not observed. This further supports the theory that Sheldrake's sequences were a possible source of error in his experiments and the experiments performed for him by the independent schools. Sheldrake later responded to this critique, in which he makes some arguments against the idea that non-random sequences could fully account for the results obtained, and also mentions how their experiments involved different starers as a possible source of their contradictory findings.

Fortunately, there are other studies we can look at as well. This paper (pdf) by Eva Lobach and Dick Bierman documents three separate attempts to reproduce Sheldrake's findings, one of which was even designed with Sheldrake's input (though, they did not use his random trial sequences). All three failed to find any significant effect. To quote the discussion near the end:

The three studies presented above show a rather disappointing picture as far as the replicability of the staring effect is concerned. None of the studies found the large staring effects reported by Sheldrake. The straightforward conclusion must be that staring effects are not easily replicable, although they do indeed serve as great student projects.

Sheldrake does address these experiments in his writings as well. He states that error may have been introduced due to the fact that the subjects had to use a computer to enter their answers, which may have distracted them from the subtle effects that the staring caused in them--though, this would seem to contradict his inclusion of the positive results obtained from the unsupervised NeMo experiment and the online test on his own website earlier in the same paper.

Ultimately, I am unimpressed by the evidence I have seen so far, and unconvinced that there is anything to the staring-detection phenomenon. I get the overall impression that the only experiments that produce positive results seem to either be easily explained by experimental error, or somehow involve Rupert Sheldrake personally--whereas all of the properly conducted independent experiments show no positive results.

Dean Radin, Parapsychology, and Science

nospam@example.com (Rudis) — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 12:58:00 -0500

It seems to me that people who want to believe in something tend to hastily jump to conclusions when presented with a bare minimum of evidence that seems to support the belief. Believers of ESP seem to like throwing Dean Radin's name around, for example. Radin has written some books (which I admittedly have not read), and is involved in parapsychology, including some experiments that purportedly prove the existence of a type of ESP.

The experiments certainly are intriguing--they essentially involve recording a test subject's response to certain stimuli (pictures, for example) that are intended to either provoke an emotional response or a non-emotional response. In Radin's experiment, it involved serene pictures (landscapes, trees, etc.) versus erotic or violent images (at a 2 to 1 ratio). Radin claims that the results of the experiments seem to show that the test subject responded to the emotional pictures before they were shown (he coins the term "presponse" to describe the effect).

A detailed explanation of some of these experiments can be found here. Note that even Radin himself confesses that the results of his experiments could have possible non-paranormal explanations:

The major (and maybe only) source of normal explanations remaining after Radin's original analyses is the hypothesis that subjects developed anticipatory strategies that resulted in different anticipatory physiology preceding calm or emotional pictures.

The idea is that the test subject's emotional "presponse" was subject to what is known as the gambler's fallacy. Essentially, after each calm picture, the subject would (incorrectly) assess the probability that the next picture would be an emotional one as slightly higher (thus increasing the measures of their emotional response). Additionally, after each emotional picture they would relax, figuring (also incorrectly) that they're not due for another one right away. The net result of this process would seemingly be that there would be an overall higher measure of emotional response prior to the emotional pictures than to the calm ones. This would explain the results of the experiment without resorting to the paranormal.

Radin dismisses this possibility due to a number of factors. Namely (a) that his results seem to show different levels of presentiment before erotic versus violent emotional pictures, which could not be explained by a simple anticipatory build-up; also, (b) further analysis of the data in which presentiment was measured at equal intervals before calm versus emotional images (for example, a calm image presented after two preceding calm images versus an emotional image presented after two calm images) showed that presentiment levels were higher before the emotional image than before the calm image, which would also not be expected assuming an anticipatory build-up explanation; finally, (c) he developed some computer simulations to test the anticipatory build-up models, and concluded that although there was an effect shown by his models, they were not to the same extent as found in the experiment (and thus his experimental results must require a paranormal effect to completely explain them).

Now, I am by no means an expert in statistics, or even experimental science. These are just some ideas that strike me as a skeptical layperson when reading about his reasons for dismissing an anticipatory effect.

(a) I can conceive of a situation, even under an anticipatory model, that would allow for apparent statistical differences in emotional measures before erotic and violent images. While the two types of images may certainly generate emotional responses in a subject, they both won't necessarily have the same "resetting" effect on the subject's anticipatory level. Conceivably, a subject's emotional response to erotic images may be a positive one, compared to a negative one for violent images. In other words, there may be a complex interaction of independent anticipation levels for each type of image.

(b) Admittedly, an explanation for the further statistical analysis mentioned above escapes me, other than it also possibly being due to what I said about (a). Unfortunately I don't have the mathematical training required in order to assess these claims one way or another.

(c) The computer models seem the most frivolous method of rationalization to me. This is an area in which I do have some small degree of expertise (B.Sc. in computer science from the University of Calgary). The models used are described in the link I provided above as such:

The following anticipatory strategies were tested:

a) Increase anticipation by 1 unit after each calm target, and reset anticipation to 1 after each emotional target.

b) Double the anticipation after each calm target (to a maximum of 500) and reset the anticipation after each emotional target to either half of the previous value, or 1.

The simulated effects in the open-deck situation were never larger than 2% while the observed experimental effects in Studies 1 and 2 were generally larger than 10%. However, these analyses are by no means exhaustive and there may be less plausible statistical anticipation models that may result in larger differences. The major point in favor of the psi hypothesis is that there are no indications in the real data that support any of these sequential strategy models.

No explanation for choosing these particular models is given, and it all seems highly arbitrary to me. The idea that a human brain and emotions can even remotely be modeled by these simple algorithms seems ridiculous--I could easily replicate either algorithm in 5-10 lines of computer code. It may very well be true that such models do not result in effects that are equal in magnitude as those shown in the experiment, but all that really says is that if there is a mundane anticipatory-effect that can explain the experimental results, that it is not governed by one of these two over-simplified algorithms. That's not really saying much when you consider the complexity of the human mind.

After a little more searching, I found a paper titled A Computational Expectation Bias as Revealed by Simulations of Presentiment Experiments (pdf), by Jan Dalkvista, Joakim Westerlunda and Dick J. Bierman. Interestingly, Bierman is one of the people who had originally replicated Radin's results in an independent experiment of a similar design (and is, in fact, the subject of the link I reference above regarding the experiment). This is pure speculation, but perhaps Bierman was not content in making the radical conclusions that Radin did, and instead went on to consider other possible explanations. The paper discusses the expectational bias, or anticipation build-up idea in much further depth, including more computer simulations that make Radin's dismissal of the effect seem a little hasty and premature. To quote the discussion from the end of the paper:

There is no doubt that the presentiment experiment could be afflicted by a potential statistical bias, based on an expectation effect: an effect of the expectation that the likelihood of an activating stimulus being presented increases with the number of previous consecutive calm stimuli – that is, a variant of the ”gambler's fallacy”.

Ultimately, given what information I have managed to gather, I remain highly skeptical of Radin's experiments and others modeled after them which replicate their results. I am not convinced that they inarguably represent a paranormal presentiment effect, and feel that the only reasonable conclusion to draw is that further study and experimentation should be performed. Fortunately, I am not alone in this, and other scientists have tried to further replicate the "presponse" phenomenon.

In a paper titled Exploring the Reliability of the "Presentiment" Effect (pdf), Richard S. Broughton details his attempt to replicate Radin's experiment. His design was similar, but the results failed to replicate the prior experiment. To quote the abstract:

The experiment did not produce overall evidence of a presentiment effect, nor did it demonstrate test-retest reliability. Since this experiment deviated from prior methods of analysis the data were examined without de-trending and automatic artifact removal, but there was still no evidence of a presentiment effect.

So, even using Radin's original statistical analysis methods, a similar experiment failed to show the same results. The possible reasons for this are discussed in the paper, but ultimately all it does for me is cast doubt on the original experiments. Add this to the innumerable additional scientific ESP experiments that have been performed over the years which decidedly fail to show any anomalous results, and it all further fuels my skepticism.

To add to the flames, I'll close this post with a couple links that I find particularly enlightening as to the state of parapsychology as a whole. The first is an entry in ex-parapsychologist Louie Savva's blog entitled Why I Quit Parapsychology. A short quote:

Evaluating parapsychology as a whole, it seems best described as a house of cards and one whose very foundations are extremely shaky and yet people continue to build on top, regardless.

Savva followed in the footsteps of Susan Blackmore, who also left the world of parapsychology in frustration. A quote from her website:

It was just over thirty years ago that I had the dramatic out-of-body experience that convinced me of the reality of psychic phenomena and launched me on a crusade to show those closed-minded scientists that consciousness could reach beyond the body and that death was not the end. Just a few years of careful experiments changed all that. I found no psychic phenomena - only wishful thinking, self-deception, experimental error and, occasionally, fraud. I became a sceptic.

Bull-Shuit

nospam@example.com (Rudis) — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 22:25:00 -0500

I've been doing some reading on Feng Shui recently. I think it's hilarious how these "ancient Chinese" pseudosciences get swept up by new-agers in the west and turned into almost cult-like movements. Feng Shui, acupuncture, Therapeutic Touch, and so on. All you have to do is tell an average American that you know the secrets behind something that the Chinese have been doing for centuries, and he will throw bushels of cash at you.

For those not in the know, Feng Shui is essentially a set of rules and principals for arranging spaces that "maximizes harmony with nature." At its core, it can seem like a perfectly reasonable idea. I don't think it's hard to imagine that your immediate surroundings can have an effect on you--for example, surrounding yourself with objects that remind you of something depressing will probably make you depressed. Feng Shui does address some of these kinds of common sense ideas, but it also goes much further. To quote the Skeptic's Dictionary:

Alleged masters of feng shui, those who understand the five elements and the two energies such as chi and sha (hard energy, the opposite of chi), are supposed to be able to detect metaphysical energies and give directions for their optimal flow.

The idea is that Nature is an actual entity that breaths energy, or chi, and that by arranging furniture and other things in a space correctly, you can maximize the flow of good chi, and minimize bad chi. The alleged benefits from utilizing Feng Shui range anywhere from improving your love life, to increasing your income, to losing weight.

I don't mean to insult the ancient Chinese or anything--I mean, they lived thousands of years ago and did not have the same kind of scientific understanding of the world that we do today. But in this day and age, I think if such a thing as chi existed, we would have discovered it by now (or at least observed some kind of evidence that could only be explained by the existence of this elusive "energy"). I've said it before, and I'll probably say it many times to come, but energy is a very well understood and defined thing in science. The idea of chi is analogous to something like the idea of the aether. The aether was introduced to science by Aristotle to answer some questions that eluded understanding by scientists and philosophers at the time. Advances in modern science have eliminated the need for the aether to answer those questions, so the theory has been discarded. The concept of chi should have shared a similar fate--but since it's Chinese, it's somehow managed to survive even into present day. Why do people give so much credence to something purely on the basis that the Chinese have been doing it for a long time? Like the Chinese are somehow not bound by the same physical laws of the universe, or something.

Anyway, my main beef with Feng Shui is the so-called "consultants" that charge people to come in and redecorate their houses, or sell retarded little knick-knacks like crystal balls and funny-shaped mirrors at outrageous markups in the name of increasing good chi flow. It's a form of legal con-artistry. Just look at any website advertising the services of these so-called experts--they will often make vague and general wishy-washy statements about the environment's effects on your physical and emotional well-being, as well as imply that their services can help you in an astonishing wide variety of ways. Some examples:

From SanDiegoFengShui.com:

Scientific studies prove that our environment greatly influences our mental, physical, and emotional well - being. When our homes feel safe, nurturing, and inspiring, we have better health, a more positive outlook, improved relationships, and greater success. So many people today lead hectic and stressful lives. They want to come home to a place that creates a sense of peace, beauty, security, and comfort. A Feng Shui consultation with Cathleen will help you do just that.

Not the use of the word "science" used to throw off viewers. I defy anyone to find or conduct a proper double-blind scientific experiment that proves the existence of chi or any beneficial qualities of using Feng Shui above and beyond simple common sense.

From MJGDesigns.com

If you want to lose weight, avoid stimulating, bright colors in your dining room, and add some black accents. Finally, wear a black crystal bracelet to add some wealth and wisdom to your life today.

I agree that rearranging your furniture might help you lose weight--but not for the same reasons that a Feng Shui consultant might suggest. Especially those ready-to-assemble furniture kits from Walmart and the like. That stuff can get damn heavy! (It should also be noted that the words "black crystal bracelet" in the original source linked to another page on the same site that conveniently was selling just that for only $36. In fact, every single item they recommend using to enhance your life or attract positive chi is also sold by them.)

From FengShui-Consultants.co.uk:

By following our Feng Shui advice, our clients have improved their marriages, got on better with neighbours, retrieved money that was owed them, doubled the turnover of their businesses, improved their children’s performance in school, calmed family friction, got better jobs and improved their health.

Those are some pretty hefty claims--backed up, of course, by nothing but the glowing testimonials from poor saps who probably paid hundreds or thousands of dollars for these services and would read any little thing as a sign that they hadn't just flushed all of that money down the toilet for nothing.

I found an interesting article here on the Tampa Bay Skeptic's website detailing a skeptic's experiences when taking a Feng Shui class at USF. It makes mention of another amusing look at Feng Shui by Penn and Teller in their Showtime series Bullshit. In the Feng Shui episode, they hired three different Feng Shui "masters" to apply their "science" to the same house, and all three had widely differing and contradictory results. If Feng Shui really is a science, shouldn't all of the experts come to at least remotely similar conclusions about the same space?

Some other amusing applications of Feng Shui I found were Feng Shui in web design, cell phones, even poker. (I wonder if Casinos try to maximize negative energy so that people lose more. I bet there could be lawsuits in it if the employees at the casino also started gaining weight, having lousy relationships, and not making as much money.)

Ultimately, Feng Shui is pseudoscientific nonsense. There are surely some common-sense ways to arrange your working and living spaces that are better than others, but I assure you that they have nothing to do with Nature's chi breath or multi-faceted crystals and mirrors used to attract mythical energy. To spend any amount of money on fraudsters trying to push wares or services that supposedly improve energy flows and the like is pure foolery.

Some other Feng Shui references:
Feng Shui at Religious Movements Homepage
Summary of the Feng Shui episode of Bullshit on TV.com
Feng Shui Hippo's Feng Shui

Faking Scientific Research

nospam@example.com (Rudis) — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 17:32:58 -0500

The scientific method is an important tool to help us learn about the universe around us. It essentially involves making observations, forming hypotheses about what is being observed, and then testing those hypotheses to see if they hold true under different controlled circumstances. Pseudoscience generally skips the last part, and often the first as well--forming wild theories for unscientific reasons, which would completely crumble if ever held up to the experimental standards of real science.

Often, proponents of pseudoscience will simply say that their claims exist outside the realm of modern science, and are therefore untestable by standard methods. This is a bit of a nonsensical cop-out, that essentially admits that the pseudoscience has no measurable effect in the real-world (and thus might as well not be true, since it wouldn't make a difference anyway). Obviously, there are pitfalls to this particular argument (mainly that it renders their claims moot). Another common way for proponents of pseudoscience to support their claims is to provide evidence that sounds scientific, but in reality is not. This tactic is one in which advocates of one pseudoscience team up with advocates of another pseudoscience in order to support each other's claims.

Kirlian photography is often used to promote pseudoscience. If you research this particular form of photography, you will undoubtedly come across many references that push it as a way of photographing "auras"--alleged fields of energy that surround living things, and reflect certain aspects of the thing's emotional state and/or physical health.

Kirlian photograph of a leaf.

Most of the sites that make these claims will also be promoting other pseudosciences--very often in the alternative health field (such as chiropractics, acupuncture, homeopathy, or other crazier energy healing systems). The truth of the matter is, "auras," as promoted by pseudoscience, do not exist.

The concept of energy is a very well understood and defined one in science. None of the pseudoscientists seem to be able to grasp this idea, however, and use the word energy in a more loose way to define some mystical force uniquely present in living systems. In reality, the kinds of energy emitted by living systems are indistinguishable from those emitted by other non-living electrical systems. In this day and age, we understand biochemistry and physics well enough to fully account for the differences between living and non-living systems--there are no mysteries that need to be solved by the presence of a mystical life-energy.

So what is actually being photographed when using Kirlian methods? The answer is that it is a corona discharge. From the Wikipedia:

...a corona discharge is an electrical discharge brought on by the ionization of a fluid surrounding a conductor, which occurs when the potential gradient exceeds a certain value, but conditions are insufficient to cause complete electrical breakdown or arcing.

Essentially, the electromagnetic field produced by the devices required to produce Kirlian photographs provides enough energy to rip the electrons off of atoms in the air, causing the air to become ionized. Air is normally insulating, but when ionized it allows for conduction of electricity. When you place an object into the ionized air above the photographic film, the electric fields produced by the apparatus interact with the moisture given off by the object in the ionized air around it, which in turn interacts with the chemicals in the photographic film to produce the colorful photographs. That is why any object that contains moisture, not just living things, give off auras in Kirlian photography. It is also why no auras can be photographed when the process is performed in a vacuum (since there is no air to become ionized in the electro-magnetic field).

Despite a very thorough scientific understanding of the images produced by Kirlian photography, many pseudoscientists still claim that it is more than just that. They often point to examples where photographs were taken of people during different "states," such as before and after consumption of alcohol. The problem with this is the number of variables that come in to play to determine the appearance of the photograph. Differences in the amount of moisture around an object, moisture left in the area from previous uses of the apparatus, the force and angle of pressure that the object puts on the plate, the humidity of the air, atmospheric pressure, the frequency of the voltage applied to the plate, and a number of other factors can drastically change the appearance of the photo, so it would be impossible to pinpoint the cause of any changes to other less mundane factors (such as emotional or biological states). The fact remains that auras can be photographed around non-living things, and no aura at all can be photographed in a vacuum where there is no air or moisture--if the photographs really were due in any part at all to some life-force energy, they should survive in a vacuum, and they don't.

Kirlian photography and similar processes have also been called Kirlian electography, bioelectrography, Gas Discharge Visualization (GDV), Resonant Field Imaging (RFI), Polycontrast Interference Photography (PIP), and I have even found one site that refers to it as Biological Emission and Optical Radiation Stimulated by Electromagnetic Field Amplified by Gas Discharge with Visualization Through Computer Data Processing. Try saying that three times fast. Hell, try saying that one time fast. The point is, even though the terms may sound scientific, the ways in which they are being applied are deceptive and false. All they are doing is recording interactions between moisture and ionized air in an artificially generated electromagnetic field--no life-force required.

Pseudoscientific claims cannot be proved by pseudoscience. This is only one example of pseudoscientists trying to fake the experimentation phase of the scientific method, but the tactic comes up in many other forms as well. A firm understanding of the scientific method and a good measure of critical thinking should always be applied when evaluating any claims purporting to be supported by science.

Some other references:
Quackwatch on Kirlian photography
Energy Crisis - The Abuse of the Concept of Energy by Pseudoscientists
Great Moments in Science - Kirlian Aura Photography