Carnival of the Africans #6

The 6th edition of the Carnival of the Africans is out over at The Skeptic Detective. Highlights: subtle shift in emphasis on Danie Krugel's pathetic dowsing and on the homeopath Jeremy Sherr's irresponsible promotion of quackery in Africa, Simon at Amanuensis on transitivity in the rhesus macaque, and Doctor Spurt of Effortless Incitement on how values influence taste. There's much more to explore -- so get check it out!

The Lay Scientist will host the next edition of the carnival on February 28th. If you'd like to participate, have a look at the guidelines and contact to host. If you'd like to host the carnival itself, contact me...

Financial feng shui bollocks

The world faces its greatest financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression. If there was ever a time to make prudent, rational, decisions based on a clear-sighted analysis of the facts, now is it. And yet Reuters decided to publish this piece of utter nonsense about what feng shui “masters” predict for the rest of the financial year. (I first saw it syndicated in the business section of South Africa’s Sunday Independent). Apparently, 2009 is the “Year of the Ox” and also a “yin earth” year, which means it “will be the most peaceful year globally since 2000” and the markets will thus be “calmer, if subdued”. Vincent Koh, a Singaporean feng shui “master”, advises that you avoid “high-risk assets” and remain patient. He also thinks banks will “continue to be reluctant to lend”, diseases will spread and natural disasters (landslides, floods and earthquakes) will strike the northern hemisphere (but not exclusively).

Sigh. I probably don’t need to say this, but there is just no reason at all to think that feng shui is anything other than silly superstition invented when humanity didn’t know any better. (Yes, it’s ancient. But that doesn’t mean anything). Feng shui may be interesting, or stimulating, or valuable in some vague sense, but it’s very likely false and it’s almost certainly worthless as a tool for predicting the future or ‘attracting wealth’. Look at those predictions again: they’re almost all either uselessly vague or high-probability hits. You don’t need a magical ability to detect 'metaphysical energies' to tell you 2009 will likely be calmer than 2008 – last year was so tumultuous that regression to the mean alone predicts that. And of course diseases will spread, landslides will occur, floods will sweep in and earthquakes will strike. That happens every year. And of course most of these will occur in the northern hemisphere: there are more people there (so we’re more likely to hear about it) and there is more land there (so they’re more likely to occur in the first place). And, of course avoiding “high-risk assets” is a good idea. But my gran could have told you that. And of course banks will still be reluctant to lend, it’s still not clear how much certain toxic assets are worth (if anything at all), so banks continue to be risk averse.

Despite some token skepticism in the article about how financial feng shui doesn't have a great track record, overall, the article is credulous crud. The Reuters editors ought to be ashamed of themselves for publishing such irresponsible and irrational bollocks.

Encephalon #62

The 62nd edition of Encephalon is out at The Mouse Trap. Highlights: Maria Goddard at Brain Blogger on the psychology of face transplants, Neurological Correlates on the neurology of stalking, Highlight Health on metabolism, evolution and schizophrenia, and The Neurocritic on voodoo correlations in social neuroscience.

Carnival of the Africans -- call for submissions

The wonderful and HAWT Angela from The Skeptic Detective is hosting the next edition of our little skepticism and science carnival, the Carnival of the Africans. If you'd like to participate, check out the guidelines and then send your submissions to skepticdetective(at)gmail{dot}com... Also, Angela's call for submisions is here.

Homeopathy in Africa

Image via WikipediaI just found out via the excellent Lay Scientist that a homeopathy quack, one Jeremy Sherr, is up to no good in Africa. Sherr, apparently a big-time homeopath (whatever that amounts to), thinks homeopathy is the solution to the AIDS pandemic in Africa, so he decided to travel to Tanzania to treat patients and conduct trails. To document his activities and garner support, he started a blog, Jeremy's Journal from Africa. Inexcusably and pathetically, once he was called-out, he started deleting and editing posts, and censoring comments. Luckily, several of his posts were saved so we can confirm that he really is an irresponsible loon who has no business near any patients, let alone ones who suffer from a serious, life-threatening illness.

Mr. Sherr, get the hell out of Africa and take your silly magic water pills with you

Skeptics' Circle #103

The 103rd edition of the Skeptic's Circle is out at Bug Girl's Blog. Highlights: Dr. Aust's Spleen on Rath vs Goldacre and also on Singh vs the British chiropractors, The Skepbitch on psychic hotlines, and Mike's Weekly Skeptic Rant with a primer on skepticism.

I, Procrastinate

Sometimes I procrastinate. Tonight, I spent a good 5 minutes creating a tag cloud out of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1st edition) using the very cool Wordle.net... Nothing surprising, but still pretty interesting.


(Inspiration: this Marginal Revolution post).

Hypnogogia

The NYT op-ed columnist David Brooks writes in his latest piece, "In Defense of Death," about prominent religious leader Richard Neuhaus and how he "used death to mystify life". What struck me is that Neuhaus seems to have had a hypnogogic hallucination, which he then misinterpreted as a message from beyond. Here's Neuhaus' description of the event, in full.

It was a couple of days after leaving intensive care, and it was night. I could hear patients in adjoining rooms moaning and mumbling and occasionally calling out; the surrounding medical machines were pumping and sucking and bleeping as usual. Then, all of a sudden, I was jerked into an utterly lucid state of awareness. I was sitting up in the bed staring intently into the darkness, although in fact I knew my body was lying flat. What I was staring at was a color like blue and purple, and vaguely in the form of hanging drapery. By the drapery were two “presences.” I saw them and yet did not see them, and I cannot explain that. But they were there, and I knew that I was not tied to the bed. I was able and prepared to get up and go somewhere. And then the presences—one or both of them, I do not know—spoke. This I heard clearly. Not in an ordinary way, for I cannot remember anything about the voice. But the message was beyond mistaking: “Everything is ready now.”

That was it. They waited for a while, maybe for a minute. Whether they were waiting for a response or just waiting to see whether I had received the message, I don’t know. “Everything is ready now.” It was not in the form of a command, nor was it an invitation to do anything. They were just letting me know. Then they were gone, and I was again flat on my back with my mind racing wildly. I had an iron resolve to determine right then and there what had happened. Had I been dreaming? In no way. I was then and was now as lucid and wide awake as I had ever been in my life.

This is classic hypogogia: it was night, so Neuhaus was quite possibly falling asleep or waking up as he had the experience, he was awake and lucid (but stationary), he experienced a proprioperceptory illusion (thinking he was upright when he wasn't), and there are ill-defined "presences" in the room. Neuhaus then simply interpreted his experience in the light of his pre-existing Christian beliefs.

In one of the very first posts on the blog, I wrote about how compelling an illusion like this can be and how we should take the experiences seriously and not belittle those who have them. Nonetheless, the interpretation of any such experience is a matter for science and, in this case, it seems clear hypnogogia is a far better explanation than visiting spooks.