Nah, not really — that work has been independently confirmed many times over. Recently, though, Deepak Chopra has been praising Luc Montagnier, the Nobel prize winning co-discoverer of the human immunodeficiency virus, for tumbling down the walls of science — which ought to be enough to condemn the poor guy right there. But I had to take a look at exactly what Montagnier is claiming, and I’m afraid the only thing tumbling is his credibility.

Montagnier claims in several papers that the DNA of pathogenic bacteria emits an electromagnetic signal, and further, that if you dilute that DNA homeopathically so that no DNA is actually present, the water continues to emit that same signal. Further, if you put two vials of homeopathically diluted EMS emitting water next to each other, the signal can move from one to another. And further, only bacteria and viruses pathogenic to humans produce this signal; ordinary E. coli does not. It’s madness piled upon madness.

There is no sensible explanation given for this phenomenon, only some wild-eyed speculation that “water molecules can form long polymers of dipoles associated by hydrogen bonds” that may be “self-maintained by the electromagnetic radiations they are emitting”. More madness!

I’m not going to criticize the paper because it postulates a mysterious mechanism with no coherent physical cause, though. I read the paper and call it crap by virtue of the sloppiness of the work. I disbelieve it, not because I’m predisposed to find it unlikely (although I do), but because it’s an appallingly bad paper.

First, let’s look at the gadget he uses to record these signals.

Awesome, isn’t it? He uses a laptop PC with a Soundblaster audio card for analog to digital signal conversion, plugged into a hifi amplifer, which is in turn hooked up to a coil of copper wire. A vial contain the solution to be tested is dropped into the coil. Un-freaking-believable.

It’s not at all impossible to measure electrical signals with an apparatus like this. I’ve done it myself; when I was a graduate student, I built a fun little gadget which consisted of an electronic circuit board that I etched to create a fine meshwork of thin interdigitating copper lines, on which I would place a larval zebrafish, and with it I could record the action potentials from the Mauthner neuron, a large cell that mediates an escape reflex in the fish. It actually worked reasonably well, but was a bit finicky — the fish had to be oriented just right, there couldn’t be too much water on the plate or it would float away from the contact, and the signals were highly variable in strength. But yes, when an extraordinarily large cell fired off a massive signal (many tens of millivolts!) within a millimeter of the plate, we could pick it up with our apparatus. Of course, it was also wildly sensitive to all kinds of external signals — we’d do our experiments with the apparatus in a Faraday cage, and you could have great fun wiggling your fingers near the plate and picking up all kinds of spurious signals.

So now I look at Montagnier’s apparatus, which looks even more rinky-tink than my old gadget, and what I see is a sensitive noise detector. It’s little more than a fancy small-scale version of a Scientology e-meter, a gadget that picks up on noise in the environment and makes a needle on a dial wiggle.

Now look at the ‘data’ that comes out of it.

Detection of EMS from a suspension of Mycoplasma pirum: Left: background noise (from an unfiltered suspension or a negative low dilution). Right: positive signal (from a high dilution D-7 (10-7)). (a) actual recording (2 seconds from a 6 second recording) after WaveLab (Steinberg) treatment; (b) detailed analysis of the signal (scale in millisecondes); (c) Matlab 3D Fourier transform analyzis (abcissa: 0-20 kHz, ordinate: relative intensity, 3D dimension: recording at different times); Frequencies are visualized in different colors; (d) Sigview Fourier transform: note the new harmonics in the range of 1 000-3 000 Hz.

Apparently, all a Nobel prize winner can do is raw screen dumps from his PC, and he can get away with publishing that. But look at the raw data on the top — background noise from a cell-free vial on the left, and a massive homeopathic dilution of a Mycoplasma suspension on the right. Woo hoo! How many of you would like to be able to get crap data like that and publish it?

By the way, it’s not just my tiny reduction of the figure that makes the scale invisible. They don’t say anywhere what the magnitude of the EMS is. I suspect they don’t know; they just crank up the amp to the max to get a lot of jangly jitter, and don’t bother to calibrate anything.

There are a couple of other indicators that this is pathological science. They’re looking at a minuscule, variable result that is prone to be picking up all kinds of irrelevant signals, yet nowhere in the entire paper can I find the word “blind”. This is the kind of experiment that demands extreme rigor and care, yet the authors don’t even bother to describe the protocols used. That’s a warning sign.

Another sign is that the paper flits from topic to topic, doing quick superficial experiments with dilutions and crosstalk and chemical treatments. The paper itself is a welter of noise, and is one of the more unprofessional write-ups I’ve ever run across — and remember, I teach undergraduates. They are claiming the existence of a truly remarkable phenomenon. A good scientist would focus on one fundamental observation, the claim that they can record species-specific bacterial signals with their crude apparatus, and nail that one down good and hard and believably. But no. They show off some very poor raw data and then rush off to dilute the experiment a trillion fold and claim to see the same signal. I found the first observation dubious, why are you showing me something even more unlikely?

And finally, another suspicious sign are the dates. This paper was submitted on 3 January 2009, revised on 5 January 2009, and accepted on 6 January 2009. That’s an unbelievable turnaround, especially for a paper with such incredible results, and the revisions must have been trivial to be able to be whipped around in a day. Yet it’s an awful paper that I would have shredded in a sea of red ink if it had come to me. Who reviewed this, the author’s mother? Maybe someone even closer. Guess who the chairman of the editorial board is: Luc Montagnier.

The work does have some historical precedent, though. This is the same nonsense and the same apparatus that Benveniste was peddling. Is there something in the wine in France? I could almost believe this terrible waste of time was done under the influence of a hogshead or two of the cheap stuff.

Montagnier L, Aissa J, Ferris S, Montagnier J-L, Lavallee C (2009) Electromagnetic Signals Are Produced by Aqueous Nanostructures Derived from Bacterial DNA Sequences. Interdiscip Sci Comput Life Sci 1: 81-90.

I will not be at this one…I wouldn’t want you to think I was verging on a state of godlike omnipresence. It should still be fun and informative, and has a good lineup: It’s the Northeast Conference on Science & Skepticism, on 9-10 April in New York City. Of course, it’s not set in the Pacific Northwest, so it does have an inferior venue (NY? Who’s heard of that strange place?), but you’ll learn stuff there anyway.

Back in the dim and ancient days of usenet, I used to take astrologers apart for fun. They had such goofy ideas, and they were so serious about it. But fortunately for us, astrology is unlike creationism in that it is mostly powerless and unpersuasive, and only the deeply gullible and ignorant can fall for it any more. And it’s so darned inconsistent — even the rationale that forms the foundation of the belief doesn’t hold up. I’ve tended to ignore the irrelevancies of astrology most of the time, but the Star Tribune had a short piece on astrology, and it’s nicely dismissive — so I’ll mention it again.

“When [astrologers] say that the sun is in Pisces, it’s really not in Pisces,” said Parke Kunkle, a board member of the Minnesota Planetarium Society.

Indeed, most horoscope readers who consider themselves Pisces are actually Aquarians. So instead of being sensitive, humane and idealistic [Hey, I’m a Pisces, that’s a perfect description of me!], they actually are friendly, loyal and inventive.[Oh, wait…that’s also a perfect description of me! Maybe there’s something to this astrology mumbo-jumbo}

Or not. [I think I’m going to go with that choice]

There is no physical connection between constellations and personality traits, said Kunkle, who teaches astronomy at Minneapolis Community and Technical College. “Sure, we can connect harvest to the stars,” he said. “But personality? No.”

That’s the case. There are no good correlations even between astrology and personality, and definitely none that match the claims of astrologers. All horoscopes are is a crude form of cold reading.

The funny thing about this article is that it has smoked out a kooky astrologer, who is quite irate. He fulminates about the article, explaining that there are three kinds of zodiacal interpretations, the Sidereal, the Tropical, and the Constelllational, and while those wicked scientists may have nitpicked away at one of them, they haven’t touched his zodiac. He does medieval astrology which has its own specific set of pulled-out-of-his-ass presumptions and assertions and funky clunky rules.

And then he goes further and declares that Scientists should stay the hell out of astrology. Why? It’s hilarious. Because science doesn’t support his lunacy and works to debunk his beliefs.

Why would astrologers even CARE what modern science has to say about astrology? Modern science is almost universally hostile to astrology; and modern scientists who do have some sympathy for our Art usually are trying to “help” by proving astrology on scientific grounds. Being a Spiritual Science, if you will, astrology will never be proven correct, true, or valid to the satisfaction of the modern academy, which is still held captive by the materialist/atheist world view. I’m not suggesting that astrologers ignore everything that modern scientists say about astrology (or any other field), but why would we give it such weight? Is their goal to work with us? In most cases, their goal is to debunk astrology completely. Do you think that these scientists who “corrected” the zodiac dates actually consulted with an astrologer? Of course not! If they had, they might have realized how absolutely ridiculous their “corrections” are.

This is the attitude I recall from all the astrologers I used to argue with, and it’s the same stuff we get from any pseudoscience or theology. In the rare cases when astrologers made specific and testable claims, they didn’t work. So they demand exemption from the way the universe works; their art doesn’t actually have results that can be assessed empirically, or measured, or even seen…which makes one wonder how astrologers and theologians ever came up with their claims, and why we should care about the operation of invisible rules that simply don’t function.

But maybe some astrologer out there will try to defend his superstitions here. If they show up, try not to break them right away — they can be fun, but they’re very fragile.

Your problems are over: Justin Bieber is praying for you.

I’m afraid us atheists lack such privileged access to cosmic powers, so any of you readers who might want to help — pitiful as any of your efforts might be in contrast to the awesome majesty Bieber has brought to bear on the flooding — you can donate to Queensland Flood Relief.

Those fine folks behind Skepticon are already planning ahead to the next event, and have begun fundraising so they can keep the convention cheap to attend. They are smart people. However, the way they’re trying to raise a little cash now is by selling Valentine’s Day cards. Don’t they know that godless skeptics are heartless, cold, unfeeling people who don’t know what love is?

Anyway, if you choose to buy some for amusement — you know, so you can aloofly ponder in a detached, intellectual way the strange rituals of these emotional hu-mans — you know where to go. You can put custom messages in them, or use some of their pre-designed cards. Which is where it gets a little disturbing. This is one of them.

Oooh, that’s not going to work at all.

1. My wife is definitely going to outlive me. She’s inherited all these amazing Scandinavian longevity genes, plus she’s got the body of a hot 20 year old, while I’m already lurching into senescent crepitude. Now if the card suggested you were waiting for the TrophyWife™ to be freed up…

2. The only way I’ll ever be single is if she gets fed up and leaves me, and then I’m the type of guy who’ll spend the rest of his life mooning about his lonely, empty house, pining away for his one true lost love, and my last words on my deathbed will be to whisper her name. I’ll be adding “pathetic” to “unsexy” in my résumé.

3. It’s setting the bar rather low, don’t you think? No one in my entire life has ever found me romantically or sexually attractive, making this message rather ironic. They should also have another card with the message “Sure, you can be my valentine, at least until Quasimodo over there gets done ringing his bells.”

So please do help them out and order their Valentine’s cards, just don’t get that one. Unless there’s someone you really want to insult.