I’ve decided to highlight some instances of positive portrayals of skepticism in the entertainment media. Considering how much woo is pedaled as entertainment it may seem like us skeptics never get to be the heroes, but occasionally there are good stories we can root for.

My first example is from comic book that came out quite a while back. The Dirty Pair are two scantily-clad law enforcement agents that starred in a series of sci-fi novels in Japan, and later in many animated movies and TV series. In 1988 the American comic book company Eclipse bought the rights to do a book based on the characters. The American Dirty Pair took the form of a series of mini-series, all written and drawn by Adam Warren, with the first three series being co-written by Toren Smith. The third series (1990-1991) was entitled A Plague of Angels, and that’s the series the scene below is from.

Set-up: Kei and Yuri are agents for the 3WA, an organization that enforces the law within the interstellar civilization that humanity has become by the 22nd Century. Though Kei and Yuri’s technical code-name is “Lovely Angels” they’re widely known as “The Dirty Pair” because of their wonton use of violence and the fact that most of their operations have tendency to go  horribly worng, resulting in innocent casualties sometimes on a planetary scale.

In an attempt to rehab the Angels’ image the 3WA has ordered them to spend time with a reporter, Cory, who in turn has be ordered to turn in a positive story about the Angels no matter how hard that may be. Cory takes Kei and Yuri to a club, hoping that perhaps alcohol will bring out their best side.

(Click on each image to see them full size.)

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I was very surprised to see this article on Slashdot claiming that recent numerical analysis of the collected writings of Plato “will transform the early history of Western thought, and especially the histories of ancient science, mathematics, music, and philosophy” (at least their claims aren’t grandiose) — maybe I’m naïve, but I thought Slashdot could generally be trusted to vet their submissions more thoroughly than this. Apparently they aren’t the only ones not bothering to verify their subject before reporting — it was also covered today by the Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Register, Mumbai’s Daily News and Analysis, as well as UPI, Geekosystem, and ScienceDaily.

First a primer on the numerological Bible Code: The premise is that, if you arrange the original Hebrew letters of the Bible in a rectangular array, then every 10th letter, or every 37th letter, or every 15th letter on alternating lines (take your pick) spells out something interesting. Basically, it’s an example of religious literary pareidolia of a pattern-seeking brain: If given enough essentially random noise, any desired pattern (or, at least, some interesting pattern) can be pulled out of it with a sufficient amount of work. And the Bible, when rendered into ancient Hebrew (which doesn’t contain vowels, word breaks, or punctuation) and when arranged in a rectangular grid and read at any arbitrary letter spacing and direction, yields any predictions one wishes to make — the end of the world, the rise of Hitler, the assassination of Kennedy; whatever! Good Math, Bad Math has excellent take-downs of the practice here, here, here, and here, as well as numerous other places.

The Slashdot piece — and the original journal article — is claiming something similar: That Plato, the “Einstein of Greece’s Golden Age” whose “work founded Western culture and science” left a bunch of Da Vinci Code-esque secret messages that “are set to revolutionise the history of the origins of Western thought.” I’m sorry, but when a university press release makes claims like that about its own researchers, I’ve got to call bullshit. Further:

The hidden codes show that Plato anticipated the Scientific Revolution 2,000 years before Isaac Newton, discovering its most important idea – the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics. The decoded messages also open up a surprising way to unite science and religion. The awe and beauty we feel in nature, Plato says, shows that it is divine; discovering the scientific order of nature is getting closer to God. This could transform today’s culture wars between science and religion.

Well, shit! As long as we’re not taking our research too seriously! “It also cures cancer, gets your whites whiter, and freshens your breath!” (OK, I made that last bit up.) But it does also claim that these ground-breaking results were published in “in [a] leading US journal.” Mm-hmm. Let’s just check into that, shall we?

This “study” was “published” in the “journal” Apeiron, which I’ve never heard of, but which is described by Wikipedia as covering “studies in infinite nature” [emphasis in original, and I have no idea what that means], publishing “theoretical and experimental work in a wide variety of fields within physics,” and being “especially noted for publishing alternative theories of cosmology, relativity and quantum mechanics.” Oh shit — alarm bells sounding. Furthermore:

Apeiron is applying a peer review system involving internationally established researchers, most of whom, however, cannot be regarded as mainstream. Apeiron has become a forum for “dissident” researchers and opinions not accepted by the conventional system.

Again, emphasis in the original. I did not thoroughly go through the history of the article, but there were some interesting tidbits in there (for instance, the final clause of that last-quoted paragraph was originally “mostly on the plea of speculation and fringe science.”) Also, this “leading US journal” (seriously, I know the UK has a low opinion of us, but come on!) doesn’t appear on the first page of a Google search for “Apeiron,” and it’s webpage looks like it was designed by a third-grader on GeoCities in 1996. I mean seriously, what credible journal quotes Anaximander of Miletus on its front page? Read: “I couldn’t get published anywhere reputable.” [Note: I've since found out that this article may be published in UT Austin's Philosophy Department journal also titled Apeiron, though I haven't been able to confirm it, as I can't find its articles online.]

Well, OK, let’s not be too hasty in judgement — what does the article itself have to say? Well, first of all, it’s practically impenetrable postmodernist deconstructionist bullshit. Next, it frequently tries to associate its Platonic numerology to Pythagoreanism and the Golden Mean — red flag alert! Next, the article is pretty much nothing but numerological BS about dividing various dialogues into 12ths and deriving some significance from that. It makes lots of mention of the fact that many historical authors included mathematical relationships in their writings. And it’s true that, for instance, Dante’s Divine Comedy had three 33 canto books plus and introduction, to make 100 sections; that each book ended with the word “stars”; and that the work was filled with many other numerical gimmicks and symmetries (as well as hidden literary meanings that couldn’t be safely politically expressed at the time). And Homer, Vergil, Ovid, and Shakespeare used line length (an obvious thing for a poet to do) to “encode” meaning — though I think it would be more fair to say they used cultural shorthand to convey an obvious message to their readers, not that they were secretly trying to get messages out past religious or societal censors. However, how much information do you think could be conveyed if, say, you decided at the age of 25 to have an overarching plan that contained your ultimate meaning in all of your writings for the next 50 years. If, as this paper claims, it’s in vague “meanings’ of each 12th part of each of your works, the answer is: not a whole hell of a lot.

And that’s the most surprising thing about this paper: There are no results! I mean, not a damn one result that accounts for all these grandiose claims! The paper can basically be summed up as saying: 1) Many of Plato’s dialogues can be divided into 12 sections of equal numbers of lines. If you use the right scribal copy (the oldest manuscripts for many of Plato’s dialogues are from 895AD — but that’s OK: I’m sure nothing got corrupted in 1300 intervening years). And translation. And break points. 2) Some of these same-numbered sections in different dialogues have similar themes. 3) Greek music theory used a 12-note scale! 4) Also, Golden Ratio! 5) Therefore Plato was a secret Pythagorean encoding universal truths too powerful to be exposed to the Ancient world.

“This is the beginning of something big. It will take a generation to work out the implications.”

Yeah, good luck with that.

MonsterQuest, the cryptozoology-themed show that runs on the History Channel every Wednesday, started its fourth season last month. I thought I’d take a look at the episodes that have aired, especially since most of them had some connection to Florida.

The season opened with the double episode “Monster Sharks,” which was about great white sharks allegedly becoming more dangerous along America’s coasts. I’m not an expert on sharks so I have no idea if we should be more worried about sharks now than in the past, but I do question the use of the term “monster” in this context. While “monster” is a somewhat fuzzy term, I don’t think it should be applied to completely normal animals living in their known ranges. If an animal was unusually large or unusually aggressive I might call it “monster,” or if it’s something unknown to science I might call it “a monster,” but the whole episode dealt with great whites of regular size doing what great whites usually do where they usually do it. Beyond that, “Monster Sharks” struck me as a lot of scaremongering. It’s even possible this episode contributed to the speculation, ultimately unfounded, that a shark attack victim in Stuart earlier this month had been killed by great whites.

The second episode of the season was “Hillbilly Beast,” which was about Bigfoot sightings in Kentucky. A big part of the episode was devoted to the photo that appears to the right, taken by a Kentucky man using a surveillance camera in his back yard last September. While the photo made waves briefly, it was soon revealed to be a picture of a black bird in flight. This obvious explanation was not offered until the very end of the episode, and was downplayed. It’s a shame, because the whole, sad episode shows how wishful thinking can find things in photos that aren’t really there.

“Giant Pythons in America” was entirely about the Burmese python population in the Florida Everglades. The episode opened with a dramatization of the tragic death of  Shaiunna Hare, a toddler who was killed by a pet python last summer. The MonsterQuest team then went into the Everglades and found some pythons, and there was a lot more scaremongering even though there’s no evidence that wild pythons have hurt anybody. The snakes are certainly an ecological hazard, but to imply that they attack people, as the show did, simply isn’t true. The show also made the completely irresponsible suggestion that the pythons might hybridize with local poisonous snakes, even though incompatible genitalia make that impossible. I also have big issues with the language employed in “Giant Pythons in America.” “Giant” should describe an animal significantly larger than normal, but, as far as I know, none of the wild pythons are particularly large for pythons. The term “taking over” was also used, which is also not correct.

My language gripes reached a crescendo with the next episode, “Giant Killer Bees.” Even if I grant calling Africanized honey bees “killer bees,” where the hell does “giant” come from? In fact, Africanized honey bees are slightly smaller than regular honey bees! The episode also threw around terms like “murderous rampage” to describe the Africanized population’s spread through the southern United States, which is a funny way to talk about one or two deaths a year. Far more people are killed by wasps and regular honey bees, and I don’t think we’d say they were on a “murderous rampage.” The episode was yet more scaremongering, with MonsterQuest people looking around Las Vegas for places killer bees might possibly live (though none were found), and there was a pretty neat demonstration that if you repeatedly poke your hand into a wild hive the bees will be really, really mad. That Africanized honey bees are often domesticated was completely glossed over.

This week’s episode, “Mothman,” might be the most unexpected episode of MonsterQuest yet. Why? Because it was almost… skeptical. Sure, the episode trotted out the usual silliness about Mothman sightings presaging the collapse of the Silver Bridge over the Ohio River even though there’s no connection between the two events that would make sense to anybody but delusional paranoiacs. The rest of the episode, though, gave a lot of play to Joe Nickell’s theory that many of the famous Mothman and Jersey Devil sightings may be people startled by barn owls. Nickell did a perception experiment that proved that people are bad observers of how large objects are in the dark, and another team demonstrated how striking eye-shine can be from even well-known animals. Someone who came into the episode with no knowledge of the Mothman would probably come away with the impression that the witnesses were seeing birds at night. As of this writing you can see the whole episode here.

Is this new skeptical angle an anomaly? Probably, but I have a little hope. I think MonsterQuest is running out of cryptozoological subjects to tackle (only two of the five episodes so far this season were cryptozoological at all), and the usual formula of looking for a creature for an hour and not finding anything is probably starting to get a little old, even to credulous audiences. Maybe bringing some of the searches to a conclusion, even if that conclusion is that the creature doesn’t exist, will be employed as a way to add drama to MonsterQuest going forward.

So I’m trolling Facebook this morning, and lurking in the right-hand column is an ad for the new del Toro-Hopkins movie “The Wolfman.” Part of the ad is a poll. “Do you believe in werewolves,” it queries.

Poll: Are you gullible?

Okay, I’m curious. I am fully aware that this is a non-scientific poll, being drawn not from a random sampling of the public, but rather from those who choose to respond to a poll in a movie ad on Facebook. But in order to see the poll results, one must vote.

It should come as no surprise that I elected to vote “No.”

I click my selection and await the results with a small degree of trepidation. This being teh Intarwebz, I mercifully haven’t long to wait.

Well. You can see the results. I suppose I should be heartened that a creature for which there is no evidence of existence is not believed to exist by a majority of poll respondents. But 29% say Yes?! And an additional 7% chose “I don’t know.”

Evidence, people. Evidence. Please require some.

Rocketboom FAIL!

This is fairly disappointing – generally Rocketboom has at least the quasi-skeptical position of big-city hipster intellectuals who are smart enough not to get suckered by bullshit. But this is total credulous Huffpo dreck.

(How does a multimeter work, exactly, without any probes? Or do they just wander around jabbing them into the atmosphere?)

One of the more frustrating situations for skeptics is when something has been thoroughly debunked and explained, yet remains in the public consciousness as valid. The idea that psychics help the police with missing persons and murder cases is one. Yet if you look at any given case where it’s claimed that a psychic helped the police, there’s invariably nothing there. So why is it an accepted “truth” that psychics help the police? It’s a combination of lazy reporting in the media and the self-promoting nature of psychics. A recent example from Tampa Bay area illustrates both these factors, caught in the act. Nothing so dramatic as a murder is involved, just a cat named Fluff.

The stories started last Saturday. I guess the lack of terrorist attacks on Times Square left the media with a slow news day or two. A cat named Fluff was reunited with his owner, who had lost the cat two years before. Here’s the important excerpts from the story as given on 1/2/2010 by the local ABC affiliate:

TAMPA, FL — Deitra Jones never gave up waiting for that phone call. This week she got it miles away while vacationing in Costa Rica.

Her beloved cat, Fluff had finally been found.

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“It was heartbreaking when he first left. I had flyers made. We literally went door to door at every single house talking to people trying to find him and we had no luck.”

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It was two years ago during the holidays when Fluff, a Himalayan, disappeared. Jones said he slipped out the door of their Oldsmar home.

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…

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It’s still a mystery where Fluff has been for the past two years. An unidentified woman turned up with Fluff at Hillsborough County Animal Services.

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“She told the person on duty she had the cat only for a few weeks. she said she could not take care of him because she has so many other cats to take care of. We have no idea where this cat (Fluff) had been.” said supervisor Melvin Dean.

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But Dean said they knew who to call thanks to a microchip in Fluff. The device as small as a grain or rice is implanted typically between the shoulder blades of a cat or dog.

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…

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In fact, Jones had contacted a pet psychic when Fluff first vanished.

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“I know that sounds crazy. But, I wanted him back so badly.”

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The psychic was optimistic she would see Fluff again. The prediction came true, two years later.

Among my favorite, free-time pastimes is to visit the site for the XKCD comic and to read the Twitter feed from Fake AP Style Book.  The former describes itself as “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”  The latter is an endlessly inventive spoof of the Associated Press Stylebook, which also has a Twitter presence.  Occasionally, skepticism finds its way into their respective content.

To wit, last week, Fake AP Stylebook had this to say: “Scientists are always ‘baffled,’ never ‘intrigued,’ ‘curious,’ or ‘not giving a shit about this Bigfoot evidence.’”  Haaaaa!  Too true.  The sad state of scientific journalism in mainstream media is its own post (err…more like series of posts).

Along the same skeptical lines, a recent edition of XKCD took on pseudoscientific quacks.

Don’t miss out on the mouseover title of that comic: “I mean, what’s more likely — that I have uncovered fundamental flaws in this field that no one in it has ever thought about, or that I need to read a little more?  Hint: it’s the one that involves less work.”

Just…pure gold.