 Skeptic's
Dictionary Newsletter
35
December 21, 2003
"...rhetorical questions in philosophy ...
paper over whatever cracks there are in the arguments." --Daniel
Dennet
In this issue: an apology; winter solstice; a few new entries and a
couple of facelifts; creationism and chiropractic; photos from space and
Hampton Court; Nostradamus turns 500; Darwin Day; and good buys on hoaxes.
Note
I apologize to any of you who hit the reply button to send feedback to
the last newsletter. I forgot to put in the "do not respond to this e-mail"
notice. If you replied to the newsletter
return address, your mail is in cyberhell. Sorry.
Solstice
Today is the day the sun stands still. Or so it seems. Here in Davis,
California, and elsewhere in the northern hemisphere, the days start
getting longer and the sun starts rising further north each day until the
summer solstice. I've never been to Stonehenge, which many New Age druids
associate with solstice, but I've been to Newgrange in Ireland, a much
older structure (ca. 3200 BCE), where at sunrise on the winter solstice
the light from the sun enters a shaft above the east entrance portal and
illuminates the main chamber of the passage grave. However, evidence of an
even older site in Europe with astronomical significance was revealed
earlier this year. This one is in Germany near Goseck and has gates that
marked the sunrise and sunset of both the summer and winter solstice. It
is estimated that the Goseck site was built about 7000 years ago.
For a particularly beautiful photo of
Stonehenge at
sunrise
For more on Newgrange
For photos of
Newgrange at winter solstice
For more on
Goseck
Changes
I've added several new entries:
Both The Skeptic's Dictionary and The Skeptic's Refuge index pages have
had facelifts. Over the years, I have added a number of features to the
Web sites. Figuring out how to create easy and clear navigational links to
these features became more difficult as I added more features. I have tried to make the index pages easily navigable,
relatively quick to load, and with acceptable clarity on most monitors,
browsers, and
screen resolutions. I realize that nothing can please everybody but if you
are having any particular difficulty viewing or loading these pages, let
me know. So far, I've only received one comment on the changes. Ian
Johnson of the UK wrote, "I'm afraid I have no constructive criticism.
It's painful." I'm not sure whether the "it" refers to the changes or to
Ian's inability to come up with a constructive criticism. Anyway, here are
the links:
Skeptic's Dictionary
Skeptic's Refuge
While reorganizing, I dropped the New Books page. I haven't been
maintaining it with any consistency. I'll still mention new books in
newsletters or the Funk page. I also added a short biography:
http://skepdic.com/refuge/bio.html
Feedback
Laurie Fraser of Australia writes:
Thanks so much for your website, especially the "Creationism and creation
science" page. Very enjoyable, especially your urbane replies to the various
misguided souls who take you on. I teach a course in critical thinking at a
college just outside Sydney, Australia, and have been preparing my students
for a conference which is taking place near here in January.
The conference is being heralded as the "International" conference on
Creation Science (I know, I hate that oxymoron too), and I plan to have
myself and a few of my students do some serious disrupting during the 5-day
liefest. I know that our efforts will be of little effect, but it is hard to
sit back while these jokers are making inroads into the private, religious
school-system (which is expanding at an alarming rate under the leadership
of the most deeply conservative government we've had in my lifetime).
Anyway, thanks for your efforts - just thought you might like to know.
I don't know what you mean by "seriously disrupting," Laurie, but I hope
you and your students simply plan to ask some serious questions. For
example, Why should religious dogmatism be taught in science class? Would
the creationists like evolutionists to teach science in their churches?
And this from Jack Guest:
I have to confess that somewhat cynically I did a search for 'love' on
your site and was almost surprised that there wasn't a listing for 'love'.
Surely it's about as important notion as one could have, and I daresay there
are a number of sceptical arguments against many common conceptions as to
what 'love' is? E.g. Arguments along the line of 'love is a purely
biological/evolutional construct to aid in furthering the species etc. etc.
Curious to hear your thoughts.
Jack must have some other book in mind because mine does not claim to
have skeptical arguments about every important subject under the sun. In
The Skeptic's Dictionary you will not find me discussing weather
prediction, forgiveness, global warming, the migration of geese, anger,
stupidity, picture framing, the battered woman's defense, utilitarian versus
deontological ethical systems, nor beekeeping. Nor zillions of other
important issues. Why? I don't know. It has never occurred to me to write
such a book. I have chosen to restrict myself to topics on the paranormal,
pseudoscientific, supernatural, and occult. I have found it necessary to
include many entries on philosophical and psychological topics in order to
help readers see (1) how human reasoning can fail us and (2) why so many
people believe things for which either there is little or scant evidence or
there is strong evidence against. I have not tried to respond to every questionable claim made on any
subject under the sun. Nor do I plan to start now.
As for love...I think there is love pouring out of every page of The
Skeptic's Dictionary.
***
This from Keith Livingstone, an Australian Christian
chiropractor:
I liked your article on placebo, and as a born-again Christian
chiropractor I guess our world views might be slightly different. However,
I am an Australian born-again Christian chiropractor, so I'll have a beer
or talk with anyone.
Some of your information on chiropractic is a bit outdated.
I am a
Governor of the Australian Spinal Research Foundation, a
chiropractic-funded research body that sponsors multi-disciplinary
research into aspects of functional neurology. It interests me that you don't have medicine listed under your list of
skeptic subjects. Noted Australian science broadcaster and author Dr Karl Kruszelnicki,
the Julius Sumner Miller Fellow at the University of Sydney, refers to
medicine as an "art, not a science".
According to Dr David Eddy, Professor of Health Policy at Duke
University, North Carolina, only 15% of medical interventions are
supported by solid scientific evidence, partly because only 1% of the
articles in medical journals are scientifically sound and partly because
many well established treatments have never been assessed at all.
Professor Eddy's interest in this area began some years ago when, as a
cardiothoracic surgeon, he became progressively concerned about the
evidence to support the treatments that he and other doctors were using.
Beginning with glaucoma, he searched published medical literature back to
1906 and could not find one randomised controlled trial of the standard
treatment. The same analysis was done for other treatments with similar
findings. In short, most treatments were simply handed down from
generation to generation!
Reference: Smith, R. "Where is the Wisdom... ? The Poverty of Medical
Evidence". British Medical Journal. (1991) 303:798-799.
Keep up your interesting work; I'll read anything too, and I like your
writing!
Keith, if I'm ever back in Australia, I'll take you up on that beer. In
the meantime, take a look at this Bunk page where I correct Professor Eddy's
claim:
http://skepdic.com/refuge/bunk8.html#myth3
Also take a look at "The evidence for evidence-based medicine" by R.
Imrie, and D.W. Ramey at
http://www.seanet.com/~vettf/CTiM.htm
In my FAQ, I respond to your concern about "medicine":
Q. Why do you criticize "alternative" medicine only? Why don't you have
entries that are critical of the questionable claims, practices, and errors
of medical science, such as vaccination or circumcision?
A. To expect me to be as skeptical of medical science as I am of
naturopathy, homeopathy, traditional Chinese medicine, therapeutic touch,
aromatherapy, etc., is unreasonable. It is not because they are fallible
that I am skeptical of these "alternative" health practices, but because
they are based upon false or questionable assumptions and generally do not
follow scientific methods to establish beliefs. It does not follow from my
criticism of "alternative" health practices that I think conventional
medicine is flawless. I do not criticize alternative health practices
because their practitioners err or misdiagnose. I criticize them because I
believe their methods are fundamentally unsound and incapable of weeding out
error.
Furthermore, "alternative" practitioners often do not care that their
methods are unsound because they deceive themselves into thinking that what
they are doing is justified because "it works," i.e., they have seen the
results (confirmation bias) and they have a lot of satisfied customers (the
pragmatic fallacy). These fundamental human tendencies are common in
pseudoscience, but are guarded against by scientists by requiring specific
logical and scientific tests of causal claims.
I do not believe that conventional medicine is infallible. I would
criticize conventional medicine if it were fundamentally flawed, i.e., if it
were based upon metaphysical or false or questionable assumptions. There may
be specific procedures which most medical doctors follow or recommend which
turn out to be harmful or useless. Nevertheless, I would not reject all
medicine because of errors by medical doctors. It would be foolish to reject
science because of errors by scientists.
See my dictionary entries on the following:
alternative health
practices
placebo effect
confirmation bias
pragmatic fallacy
***
News
The first visuals from the Spitzer space telescope have been released
by NASA. They are spectacular!
Check them out.
***
 As most of you
probably know by now, a "ghost" has been caught on film at
Hampton Court Palace.
We thought Richard Wiseman put this one to rest, but
apparently not.
Wiseman had this to say about the latest ghost sighting at Hampton
Court: "It is either a publicity stunt by the Palace, which I doubt, or it
is a member of the public thinking they were being helpful by shutting the
doors."
***
Nostradamus turned 500 on December 14th. I did an interview with Ed Butler of BBC radio for a program
commemorating the event. Anybody in the UK hear it?
Nostradamus
***
The Skeptic's Dictionary will be one of the sponsors of the
Darwin Day celebration in Sacramento, which will be held on February 7,
2004. The featured speaker this year will be Taner Edis, author of
The Ghost in the Universe: God in Light of Modern Science.
I hope to see some of you there. Look for me at the book table. More
later on exact times and place.
Darwin Day
***
Finally, I had a link on my Frauds and
Hoaxes page to CNET's Top Internet Hoaxes. The CNET page vanished into cyberspace.
So, I did a search on CNET for "hoaxes" and was taken to a page which
announced that there are great deals on "hoaxes" at eBay. I'm
sure there are.
Frauds and Hoaxes
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