The Skeptics' Guide to a Bit of Stuff

.


November 28, 2010

Outside my north-facing window, a steel cloud hovers like one of those mega-sized alien spacecraft that show up at the end of sci-fi movies. It’s as big as the neighbourhood, but there’s a little light sneaking underneath, and the day is brighter than most in November. Clumps of rotten snow huddle on the lawn from last week’s unseasonable flurries. The beech trees are budding out, already preparing for spring.

Last weekend, in the snow, I went to a taping of the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, just up the way at UBC. I’ve been listening to these guys for at least two years now, my Sunday-morning-with-baguette breakfast treat. I don’t remember how I discovered the podcast, or why I turned to it, other than the intriguing name, but thus began the beginning of a change in my world view. I was always a skeptic, more or less, with the occasional wishful dipping into unscientific ideas, but now I require good solid double-blind-study, reproducible evidence, if I’m going to believe anything. 

Steven Novella is the main host of the SGU. He’s an academic neurologist (Yale) who writes or contributes to numerous medical and skeptical blogs, including NeuroLogica, edits a couple of scientific journals, presides over the New England Skeptical Society, and posts the hour-long SGU podcast weekly. He has two young daughters, as best I can figure, whose science education he has undertaken since he finds the school system lacking in that regard. I don’t think he sleeps.

Steve’s little brothers, Bob and Jay, are on the SGU panel. Bob is pretty quiet, but brings a special interest in physics and astronomy to the table. Jay, the youngest, hippest brother, is a satirist who quips throughout the show. Also on the panel are Evan Bernstein, who seems to be the techie in the group, and Rebecca Watson, who also heads the Skepchick magazine and podcast, but who wasn’t present in Vancouver. Participating in the Vancouver show was George Hrab, who hosts another podcast, Geologica, and writes and performs skeptical songs. I find him abrasive, and his singing voice grating, but skeptics love him.

The format of the podcast begins with the news of the week, gathered from various scientific and media sources, often continues with a guest interview and listener questions, then includes a “Who’s that Noisy?”, in which the audience is asked to guess the content of a short audio clip, and a “Science or Fiction” segment where (usually) Steven sets up three scenarios and the panel members discuss and decide which of the three is the fiction. Somewhere in the show is a “This Day in History” bit, and a quote-of-the-week. The taping at UBC pretty much followed the regular format, with the Science or Fiction segment presenting research that all came out of UBC, which was fun. (Plus, I got it right, along with my seat neighbour and a very few other audience members, voting by applause, while all the panel members got it wrong!)

There is not a lot of point in recapping the entire show, as it will be put out  on iTunes or the SGU website as soon as the gang is back home, I presume. But to give a taste of what these guys are about, if any of my four readers don’t know, one of the news items presented was about Oprah’s presentation of John of God. (There was a sizable snigger at the mention of Oprah, goddess of The Secret, the anti-vaccine movement, miracles, angels, and many other indefensible and often destructive flavour-of-the-day notions. Jay jumped up and cried, “Who loves Oprah?” Response: one guy cheered in irony.)

John of God is a Brazilian psychic surgeon. We’ve all heard of the Philippino psychic surgeons, I presume, and their debunking several years ago when “tumours” removed from clients proved to be chicken guts. John of God is different in that he appears to actually make an incision. Without sterile technique. Ack.

A skeptic doesn’t automatically deny the possibility that extraordinary claims are true, but rather asks questions and waits for answers produced by scientific (blinded, reproducible) study. As Steven Novella said in the program, John of God, with his extraordinary claims, will likely be exposed as a fraud, then Oprah will have him on the show and yell at him. We can’t say for certain yet that he is a fraud, as our only evidence is that every case of similar claims in the past has been proven to be so. The irony is that it is by Oprah’s publicity that researchers will be moved to investigate John of God. 

Anyhow, Oprah says, “You be the judge,” then presents a documentary video. I’ll give you two videos and pose some questions, then you be the judge, how’s that?


Oprah:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9If9vSHQVQ

Skeptic James Randi:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxMGxz6-oTs



Does John of God allow scientific analysis of the pieces of flesh he supposedly removes from his clients? What are the long-term health effects of his services, if clients substitute his treatment for conventional medical treatment? What is the evidence that people do not get infections in the incisions he makes; does the reporter do any followup with the clients? Why were we not shown Dr Jeffrey Rediger’s response to the question posed at 3:37 on the video? How do we know that the people in the Oprah video are not shills for John of God? The reporter says he went to John of God looking for proof of the existence of god, and that he found it; is this not confirmation bias?

As a skeptic, I do not accept anecdotes as evidence for anything. People are notoriously poor observers and memory is remarkably faulty. People who say that “alternatives” to conventional medicine are not studied–because “big pharma” would lose money, or some other such conspiracy theory–are not actually looking at the literature.

If you like this stuff, I recommend the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, the James Randi Educational Foundation, Brian Dunning, and Science-Based Medicine, just for starters. A search for skeptics and skepticism (“with a ‘k’”, as they say) will bring up many blogs, websites and podcasts. In the end, weigh it all up, and judge for yourself.

“When you are studying any matter never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficial social effects if it were believed. Look only and solely at what are the facts.”

    .                                                                              ~ Bertrand Russell



.