How to lie about a science paper

J. Andrew Armour is a Canadian physiologist who has published quite a few papers on the regulation of the heart — a very complex subject. There are hormonal and external neuronal controls, and a specific tracery of internal neurons and neuron-like fibers that generate patterned muscle contractions. And muscle, of course, is itself called an excitable tissue because it has electrical properties that are essential for its function. There is a lot of cool stuff going on in cardiac research.

So, in 1991, Armour published on Intrinsic Cardiac Neurons in the Journal of Cardiac Electrophysiology. It’s solid work that summarizes these complex interactions, and explains how the heart has its own independent and relatively sophisticated independent electrical properties.

Physiological evidence indicates that afferent neurons, local circuit neurons, as well as efferent sympathetic and efferent parasympathetic neurons, are located in the mammalian intrinsic cardiac nervous system. Complex interneuronal interactions can occur between these neurons, as well as between such neurons and other intrathoracic and central nervous system neurons. A variety of neurochemicals have been proposed to be involved in such interneuronal interactions. Thus the electrophysiologic properties and synaptology of intrinsic cardiac neurons may be more varied than has been appreciated accounting, at least in part, for the variety of neuronal responses that in situ intrinsic cardiac neurons are capable of displaying. The various interactions that occur between intrinsic cardiac neurons and other intrathoracic neurons, as well as between neurons in all intrathoracic ganglia and the central nervous system, will have to be characterized in order to clarify the role of the autonomic nervous system regulating the heart throughout each cardiac cycle.

This is not revolutionary. It had all been pretty well known for decades, although Armour did a fine job of synthesizing all the pieces of the story.

In 2007, he also published a review of the importance of understanding cardiac circuitry, Potential clinical relevance of the ‘little brain’ on the mammalian heart, in Experimental Physiology. Again, this is good, useful, substantive stuff.

It is hypothetized that the heart possesses a nervous system intrinsic to it that represents the final relay station for the co-ordination of regional cardiac indices. This ‘little brain’ on the heart is comprised of spatially distributed sensory (afferent), interconnecting (local circuit) and motor (adrenergic and cholinergic efferent) neurones that communicate with others in intrathoracic extracardiac ganglia, all under the tonic influence of central neuronal command and circulating catecholamines. Neurones residing from the level of the heart to the insular cortex form temporally dependent reflexes that control overlapping, spatially determined cardiac indices. The emergent properties that most of its components display depend primarily on sensory transduction of the cardiovascular milieu. It is further hypothesized that the stochastic nature of such neuronal interactions represents a stabilizing feature that matches cardiac output to normal corporal blood flow demands. Thus, with regard to cardiac disease states, one must consider not only cardiac myocyte dysfunction but also the fact that components within this neuroaxis may interact abnormally to alter myocyte function. This review emphasizes the stochastic behaviour displayed by most peripheral cardiac neurones, which appears to be a consequence of their predominant cardiac chemosensory inputs, as well as their complex functional interconnectivity. Despite our limited understanding of the whole, current data indicate that the emergent properties displayed by most neurones comprising the cardiac neuroaxis will have to be taken into consideration when contemplating the targeting of its individual components if predictable, long-term therapeutic benefits are to accrue.

Here’s a diagram from that paper that might give you a visual depiction of what he’s talking about. It will look familiar to everyone who has taken a college level physiology course.

heartcircuitry

Now just take a moment and think about this. Here’s a piece of credible, robust science. How would an ignorant wackaloon interpret the story? Just close your eyes and let your imagination run riot for a while. Maybe you’ll come up with a wacky enough story that will make you rich. Or maybe you’ll come up with what you think is a crazy idea, but someone has already beaten you to it and published it.

After you’ve thought about a minute, you can go on and read the story of Gregg Braden. If you’ve got a loonier interpretation than he does, maybe you too can make good money on the New Age circuit!

[Read more…]

We may have to expand the War on Christmas

Shocking news:

Parents, though, are being urged to re-consider the ethics of the great Santa Claus lie. In an article published in the journal Lancet Psychiatry, two psychologists have raised the spectre of children’s moral compass being permanently thrown off-kilter by what is normally considered a magical part of the Christmas tradition.

The darker reality, the authors suggest, is that lying to children, even about something fun and frivolous, could undermine their trust in their parents and leave them open to “abject disappointment” when they eventually discover that magic is not real.

My first thought: does this also apply to parents who lie to their children about gods and prayers? They make it sound so dire.

Kathy McKay, a clinical psychologist at the University of New England, Australia and co-author, said: “The Santa myth is such an involved lie, such a long-lasting one, between parents and children, that if a relationship is vulnerable, this may be the final straw. If parents can lie so convincingly and over such a long time, what else can they lie about?”

Levelling with your children so close to the big event may put a bit of a dampener on festivities, but parents must sometimes take the long view, according to McKay. “There is potential for children to be harmed in these lies,” she said.

Exactly what atheists have been saying all along. Jesus. Heaven. Hell. Blood redemption. Resurrections. All harmful lies. Stop lying to your kids now!

This means war

Last night, I had to make a run to the grocery store. On the way, I encountered traffic from the Festival of Lights, the annual Morris holiday parade. Then, in the grocery store, they were piping in Christmas carols already.

This is intolerable.

The 2016 War On Christmas begins today. Gird up your loins, atheists!

I have already made my assault plans, and am assembling my army. Next week, all three of my kids, and one daughter-in-law, are gathering at my house, and I’m going to propose an all-out attack to them. We’re going to travel north a few miles to the local tree farm to savagely cut down a pine tree, which we’ll erect in our house and festoon with fearsome glittering objects. We will drink hot apple cider. There will be reindeer-drawn wagon rides downtown the day after Thanksgiving — we will ride the hell out of them. We may even put up decorations in our windows, and I’m even tempted to get lawn ornaments, or maybe put up colorful lights around the door. We shall be blatant.

And when the believers feebly protest, But you’re atheists…, I shall tell them, “Yes, and this is my celebration of family and relaxation and a secular federal holiday, and it is a godless, humanist occasion. Why don’t you go mewl at ghosts in church, or more likely, trundle soullessly through a noisy shopping mall?” Because I’m taking over.

Bad news sites

One of the things that has made me angry are fake news sites that try to make people angry. I’ve been blocking lots of these places, but still, people circumvent my blocks by independently sending me links to the lie of the day, and it’s more than a little annoying. Melissa Zimdars has been doing something about it, though: she has begun compiling a long list of all the fake news/”satire” sites out there. Do check that list before you get annoyed at some fresh horror in the world — it’s entirely possible that it’s completely imaginary.

It has a long way to go to even approximate completeness, unfortunately, because new ones keep cropping up. It’s got some well known and infamous sites on the list, like Breitbart and everything Alex Jones has cobbled up, but it’s missing some, like the Drudge Report, and it can’t possibly cover all the dishonest wackaloons on the web — I’m currently getting flooded with crap from constitution.com, for instance, which seems to be trying to make a name for itself with histrionic conservativism.

But there has also been Snopes, which, for example, takes apart a lying claim that liberals are beating up innocent people from a site called christiantimesnewspaper.com. That’s not on the Zimdars list.

The bottom line is that you can’t rely on lists of baddies. You have to use critical thinking. Zimdars provides some good general rules to follow.

  • Avoid websites that end in “lo” ex: Newslo (above). These sites take pieces of accurate information and then packaging that information with other false or misleading “facts” (sometimes for the purposes of satire or comedy).
  • Watch out for websites that end in “.com.co” as they are often fake versions of real news sources.
  • Watch out if known/reputable news sites are not also reporting on the story. Sometimes lack of coverage is the result of corporate media bias and other factors, but there should typically be more than one source reporting on a topic or event.
  • Odd domain names generally equal odd and rarely truthful news.
  • Lack of author attribution may, but not always, signify that the news story is suspect and requires verification.
  • Some news organizations are also letting bloggers post under the banner of particular news brands; however, many of these posts do not go through the same editing process (ex: BuzzFeed Community Posts, Kinja blogs, Forbes blogs).
  • Check the “About Us” tab on websites or look up the website on Snopes or Wikipedia for more information about the source.
  • Bad web design and use of ALL CAPS can also be a sign that the source you’re looking at should be verified and/or read in conjunction with other sources.
  • If the story makes you REALLY ANGRY it’s probably a good idea to keep reading about the topic via other sources to make sure the story you read wasn’t purposefully trying to make you angry (with potentially misleading or false information) in order to generate shares and ad revenue.
  • It’s always best to read multiple sources of information to get a variety of viewpoints and media frames. Some sources not yet included in this list (although their practices at times may qualify them for addition), such as The Daily Kos, The Huffington Post, and Fox News, vacillate between providing important, legitimate, problematic, and/or hyperbolic news coverage, requiring readers and viewers to verify and contextualize information with other sources.

It’s always good to think when reading!

I almost forgot! I had a workshop at Skepticon

Oh, yeah, I did a workshop last Friday titled “Bad Evolution”. It was fun! Not quite as I anticipated, though.

It was a workshop. As I understand it, a workshop should involve audience participation, not just lecturing at them, and that’s what I prepared for. I had an exercise prepared, and I came with 50 handouts, just in case a lot of people showed up.

About 120 people showed up. Whoops. I might suggest that, in the future, Skepticon have some kind of workshop registration that allows us to set limits on the audience size, because that was too many, and it was kind of chaotic. Chaotic fun, rather than chaotic evil, so I guess it was OK, but it was still a little overwhelming.

Also, it was in a room with rows of chairs lined up, all facing straight ahead, which is also not conducive to workshopping. At least that was easily disrupted, and I had everyone destroying the tidy arrangement of the room.

Anyway, what we did is fairly simple. I talked for a bit, giving an overview of good strategies for handling discussions with creationists. I gave them this list of suggestions:

  1. Don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know.” Honesty is always a good idea.
  2. Go meta if you’re asked a difficult question. Do they know the answer? Why are they asking you? Is it a sincere question?
  3. If you have an answer, don’t let them dodge it. Follow up. Pursue a line of argument.
  4. Focus. It’s better to skip an opportunity for a good jab in order to build a strong story.
  5. Ask questions of them. You are not a passive oracle at their bidding.
  6. Question their assumptions. Be prepared to have your assumptions questioned.
  7. Demand sources. Science is built on the shoulders of giants, they must be acknowledged.
  8. Patience pays off. You’re not engaged to go in for a kill, you’re having a conversation.
  9. You will not convince the creationist, or “win”. Resign yourself to that.
  10. Keep your perspective and a sense of humor. These people are ridiculous.

I walked them through a couple of simple examples (“If evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?”), and then handed out a long list of much more difficult, more subtle creationist claims, and had one person in the group pretend to be a creationist, present one claim, and then let the others try to rebut them. The main point was to both cultivate a little empathy for the creationist argument, stupid as it might be, and to show that even someone on the side of science might be stymied fairly easily.

For example, here’s one question from my list (which was taken from a collection of bad arguments from the mindless pen of David Buckna):

Microsoft programmers utilized complex codes to create the Windows 95 software. The genetic code, which is more sophisticated, controls the physical processes of life and is accompanied by elaborate transmission and duplication systems. How does evolution, using natural processes and chance, solve the problem of complex information sequencing without intelligence?

The average person would have difficulty responding to that. I think it’s important for us to not take for granted that the answers are always obvious…even when I might find anyone question easy to answer.

Go ahead, try to answer it in the comments, but note that “You’re stupid” and “Citations to the peer-reviewed literature or GTFO” are not on my list of recommended strategies.

Creationists are outliers in another way

Popehat is looking for someone to defend yet another science blogger from a lawsuit.

Pepijn van Erp blogs about science and pseudoscience from the Netherlands. He praises good science and skewers and critiques the bad. Wait a minute. Is that the Jaws theme playing? Yes. Yes it is — because blogging about junk science is a great way to get threatened or sued. In my experience, purveyors of “non-mainstream” science are unusually litigious and sensitive to criticism. You’ve seen it here at Popehat with “atavistic” cancer theorists and vaccine truthers and naturopaths and fans of questionable cancer remedies and AIDS deniers. I blame the crystals.

He’s being sued by Ruggero Santilli, a physics crank. However, I realized something as I was reading about it. I’ve become something of an unwilling expert in this area — I’ve been threatened with lawsuits so many times that I’ve completely lost count. I now regard cease-and-desist letters as ho-hum, and getting told I’m going to be sued for over 2 million dollars just triggers an eye-roll. But you know what’s weird?

I’ve never been threatened with a lawsuit by a creationist.

Notice that they aren’t present in Popehat’s list, either. The people who get most indignant about criticism seem to be people who are trying hardest to gain undeserved credibility from mainstream science, and that includes certain skeptics and atheists. Creationists love to steal scientific cred whenever they can, but it’s for the purpose of suckering Christians and Muslims, not for winning the respect of the scientific community.

I’ve also pissed off Catholics, but even they didn’t threaten to sue me. They threatened to kill me and my family and destroy my life, and repeatedly told me I was going to burn in hell, but not a whisper of dragging me into court over maltreatment of a cracker.

I’m going to have to file this datum away in my head as a reference to use in determining which are the “safe” targets of criticism. Religious nuts may talk a loud game about bashing your skull in, but they don’t hire lawyers to harass you.

Skepticon highlights

#inappropriatefistpose

#inappropriatefistpose

I’m back from Skepticon, and I’m feeling good. This is the most relaxing conference around for me — it’s a gathering of non-believers, but of non-abrasive, open-minded non-believers who also think there’s a heck of a lot more to being an atheist than expunging “god” from our coinage. It was all good, but here are my favorite events:

  • Margee Kerr talked about the physiology and psychology of fear. She’s been checking spooky places, like Eastern State Penitentiary, to try and figure out what it is about these supposedly “haunted” places that triggers fearful reactions in people. It turns out that the fear is real, but ghosts are not.

  • Jennifer Raff analyzed some outlandish claims about genetics: that Peruvians are descended from Nephilim and white Europeans, and genetic astrology. There were some particularly effective bits in their where she contrasted the lengths she goes to to extract and isolate DNA without contamination, with the rather sloppy stuff people like LA Marzulli do.

  • Alix Jules discussed the reality of racism. It’s not just loud people with southern accents, pickup trucks, and confederate flags: casual racism is everywhere, and it just won some big elections.

There was lots of other good stuff: Rebecca Watson made a triumphant return to the stage, there were lots of conversations about the state of secular activism, there was a taco truck parked outside, and of course lots of happy socializing. I also had to miss the entire last day — I had to fly back and get ready to teach this morning — so I didn’t get to see Jerry DeWitt or Debbie Goddard or the other people who finished up the conference with a bang.

Skepticon 10 will be held on 10-12 November 2017, so clear your calendars now.

This is what I call self-care

I’m flying off this afternoon to lovely Springfield, Missouri for Skepticon. I’m taking a break from distressed students to go hang out with distressed atheists and humanists. It’ll be good for me.

I’ll be teaching a workshop on explaining evolution to people who don’t understand it at all tomorrow, which might be fun. I hope. I’ve got a little bit of an outline of major points I’ll be telling attendees, but mainly I’m going to provide some challenging questions and making the participants do all the work. Yeah, that’ll draw them in — come to my workshop, I’ll make you do everything!

I suspect that there might also be spontaneous outbursts of planning and activism, since it’s that kind of crowd.

I also have dinosaur stickers to give away. I might end up giving them all away on the first day, so hit me up early if you want something decorative for your badge.

The power of self-delusion

the-exorcist

William Friedkin, the guy who directed the Exorcist movie, has written a rather unreliable account of the activities of an official Catholic exorcist, Gabriele Amorth. I say unreliable because, I’m afraid, he sounds rather confused.

I am an agnostic. I believe the power of God and the human soul are unknowable. I don’t associate the teachings of Jesus with the politics of the Roman Catholic Church. The authors of the New Testament—none of whom, it is now generally believed by historians, actually knew Jesus—were creating a religion, not writing history.

I had no particular interest in the spiritual or the supernatural when the writer Bill Blatty asked me to direct the film of his novel, The Exorcist.

…

More than any film I’ve directed, The Exorcist inspired me to the point of obsession each day as I made it. I rejected all constraints, creative and financial. The studio, Warner Bros., thought I had taken leave of my senses. I may have. I made the film believing in the reality of exorcism and never, to this day, thought of it as a horror film.

There is a video of a woman undergoing exorcism. She thrashes around violently, she growls and howls, she curses in Italian. There is absolutely nothing supernatural on display, although it is also illustrated with a still from The Exorcist of a possessed girl levitating. This woman does not levitate. Her head doesn’t spin around on her neck. It’s all sadly mundane and shows a person suffering from some kind of mental illness, nothing more.

So Friedkin takes the video to some real doctors. They are non-committal; this is a problem they wouldn’t know how to treat, they come right out and say “this isn’t demon possession”, they suggest that there isn’t necessarily anything they could do, they agree that religion may be a useful palliative, and they explain that they have a patient with similar symptoms, and “we’re treating her with medication, giving her psychotherapy, creating a safe environment. She gets better.” How does Friedkin interpret this? As an affirmation of the supernatural.

I went to these doctors to try to get a rational, scientific explanation for what I had experienced. I thought they’d say, “This is some sort of psychosomatic disorder having nothing to do with possession.” That’s not what I came away with. Forty-five years after I directed The Exorcist, there’s more acceptance of the possibility of possession than there was when I made the film.

No there isn’t. It’s astonishing how he imposes his own beliefs on a natural phenomenon. And then he has the confidence to say of Amorth that He has performed thousands of exorcisms successfully. That makes no sense. Even the specific person he describes in this account he has to admit has been “exorcised” nine times, and at the end of the story is still having these seizure-like episodes. Is he going to call these nine successes?

I don’t believe in demons, but this account sure convinces me of the power of people to lie to themselves. There’s nothing heroic or noble in that, and in particular, there is nothing admirable about a man who uses religion to perpetuate damaging dishonesty about human behavior.