As long as I’m criticizing my allies…

Let’s pile on Phil Plait! He’s arguing against the whole “let’s bring the Pope to justice” idea. I will summarize his objections very briefly:

  1. This is not necessarily a skeptical cause, unless they bring a supernatural defense to bear.

  2. Need more tact: “We don’t always need warriors. Sometimes we need diplomats.”

  3. We’re outnumbered and would be pissing off 75 million Catholics.

What do you know…I mostly disagree with all of those points.

  1. It is a skeptical cause. The whole problem arises from the self-righteousness of an organization that believes its authority comes from a supernatural source. There is an assumption of privilege by the Catholic church that they believe justifies a cover-up (not the child rape; that’s deplored as un-Christian, fair enough, but there is a belief that the sanctity of the church must not be questioned.) It should be fair game for a skeptical organization to take on.

    That said, though, there is a ton of crazy out there, everywhere. It is entirely reasonable for a given skeptical organization to excuse themselves from this fight — we don’t expect everyone to fight every scrap of woo out there, all at once. However, do not hinder a group that wants to reasonably engage the Catholics by suggesting that this is not appropriate for skeptics. It is.

  2. Phil gets his modifiers wrong. We always need warriors, and we always need diplomats. Both have to be engaged. This is a conflict that has spurred a strong response by the “warrior” element of the skeptical community, but please note: every step of the way, what is being proposed is principled legal action. Not trial by combat. Not rampaging berserkers charging the Popemobile. Lawyers looking into justifiable legal options to address a great wrong being committed by a fabulously rich and arrogant organization.

  3. We’re outnumbered? Crap, so what else is new, and when did we decide that what is proper and true will be decided by popular vote? The fewer men, the greater share of honor; let him depart who has no stomach for the fight; I would not be one who, in his old age, was unable to say that he’d stood for what was right, because he feared the host of those who defended what was wrong. Even if we lose (and I have no illusions that the Pope will actually be perp-walked back onto an airplane and sent away from England), I’m not afraid to support reasoned efforts for an issue of basic human decency.

It’s fine that Phil wants no part of this particular effort. Not every fight can be everyone’s fight. But I think the best position, the strongest position, the noblest stance, is to declare that no institution, whether it is the Catholic Church or the USA or the Girl Scouts, can declare itself exempt from the common rules that regulate human conduct in our culture, and even if we are overwhelmed by the opposition, we must at the very least speak out against the abuse of power…and that includes the privileges that religion has demanded for itself.

But put crowns for convoy into Phil’s purse — just leave his name off the rolls. There’s no dishonor in that, and no honor, either.

Deep Rifts with the skeptics!

It’s been a long term issue: a lot of vocal skeptics want nothing to do with atheism. They see it as a difficult issue that could sidetrack campaigns to encourage critical thinking, even though a lot of prominent skeptics are also atheists. I’ve never quite seen the logic: they’re going to oppose the use of magic crystals to enhance your aura, but praying to a magical sky-primate to bring you a new bicycle…eh, it doesn’t hurt. It seems a little inconsistent.

Anyway, Rebecca Watson, a godless skeptic if ever there was one, wrote a bit in support of the Hitchens/Dawkins proposal to bring legal action against the perfidious pope, and she caught some flak for it — people claimed that opposing religion, even if it is a baby-raping religion, could ‘harm the cause’ (Oh, those three words…I have heard them so often). Watson has a good reply.

So is this effort going to somehow hurt the “skeptical movement?” You may notice that I use the quotation marks here, because I can’t bring myself to seriously consider a movement supposedly based on the defense of rationality that would turn its back on children who are raped by men they trust because those men claim a supernatural being gives them power, wisdom, and the keys to eternal life with a direct line to God’s ear. If we discovered that a world-famous psychic was leading a secretive cabal that protected child rapists, would we be silent? If a world-famous faith healer was using his heavenly persona to molest kids, would we say that it’s not our fight? You might. I couldn’t.

I would hope, though, that it wouldn’t take molestation of children to stir up a skeptic (although, apparently, even that won’t rouse some of them, if the culprit is a priest). Shouldn’t an organization that claims you’ll go to hell after you’re dead if you don’t give them money while you’re alive also be on every skeptic’s hit list?

More magic DNA snake oil

Klotho (KL) is an interesting gene. It produces an enzyme which seems to be involved in repressing cellular senescence by regulating the p53 pathway, mouse mutations in these genes produce the symptoms of accelerated aging, and there are even a couple of known human alleles correlated with changes in longevity and coronary artery disease. The current research is at the level of basic science, though, asking how this gene product fits into the regulatory web that maintains cell states; it is not ready for any kind of medical work, I don’t even know how we would take advantage of the information to tinker with aging processes, and as far as I know, there are no clinical trials of any kind in the works. So it’s promising and is useful information, but it’s not at all ready or even approachable for medical use, yet.

That doesn’t stop the quacks, though!

A commercial quack operation called Homeovitality is taking advantage of a tiny bit of research (to create pseudo-scientific buzzwords) and people’s ignorance to market fake therapies. One among several is based on a smidgen of truth about the Klotho gene and a lot of fakery.

Homeovitality® is an entirely new concept in health promotion. It is designed to help people achieve and maintain different forms of nature’s “super-health” and stay healthy. For the first time ever, Homeovitality® helps everyone to benefit from new “cutting-edge” genetic and other scientific discoveries right now using a safe, natural non-pharmacological delivery system.

You may be wondering how they are taking advantage of “cutting-edge” research. Here’s how.

Because of Dr. Matsumara’s work and completion of the Human Genome Project, the complete DNA sequence of the KL gene has been worked out. Therefore, to target your KL gene, a DNA molecule was prepared that was identical in sequence to 273 base pairs of an active part of everyone’s KL gene. The sequence of the KL targeting molecule is as follows;

5′- ACTACCGCTT CTCCATCTCG TGGGCGCGAG TGCTCCCCAA TGGCAGCGCG GGCGTCCCCA ACCGCGAGGG GCTGCGCTAC TACCGGCGCC TGCTGGAGCG GCTGCGGGAG CTGGGCGTGC AGCCCGTGGT CACCCTGTAC CACTGGGACC TGCCCCAGCG CCTGCAGGAC GCCTACGGCG GCTGGGCCAA CCGCGCCCTG GCCGACCACT TCAGGGATTA CGCGGAGCTC TGCTTCCGCC ACTTCGGCGG TCAGGTCAAG TACTGGATCA CCA -3′.

The KL targeting molecule, as well as the others was prepared, purified and sequenced by one of Australia’s leading genetics laboratories.

So they get onto the easily accessed NIH site and get the gene sequence, and then they order a vial of the purified DNA from a commercial outfit (this is trivial: the NIH even includes a link to suppliers of cDNA clones).

Now what?

I mean, really, just having a strand of DNA with the sequence of Klotho does nothing — it’s the action of the gene product in the cell that plays a subtle role in aging. What we need for a therapeutic use of this information is a way to regulate the activity of the protein in cells in a predictable way. So what does Homeovitality® have people do?

Drink it.

Drink a DNA solution? Are they insane? That’s just going to get broken down and do nothing, and besides, it’s not as if your body contains some shortage of Klotho genes — every cell in your body has a copy. Of course, even that objection is pointless, because you aren’t actually drinking any DNA. This is a homeopathic solution.

Homeovitality® products have also been succussed at each dilution stage so they will also help to promote desirable forms of hybrid vigour in a “like promotes like” mode of action involving some of the mechanisms (4) described by Dr. Kratz, (http://kulisz.com/how_does_homeopathy_work.htm).

Homeovitality® products are safe because firstly, they are used at similar dilutions to classical homeopathic disease remedies and secondly, hybrid vigour is a completely natural biological process that has been developed by nature over millions of years to enable all creatures to enjoy “super health” and disease resistance.

They’re selling bottles of water and pretending it’s medicine, with a cloud of pseudo-scientific hokum to justify it.

And here’s another sad fact: the creator of this snake-oil, Peter Kay, has a legitimate degree and a good collection of scientific publications to his name, some of them in topics with which I am familiar. None of them justify this homeopathic DNA nonsense. It looks like someone has realized that science doesn’t pay as well as grifting.

Fresh scientological meat!

I know many of you are occupied with batting around an obtuse creationist named JohnHamilton, but if you need a break, there’s a nice post here that has drawn out a couple of scientologists. They’re actually trying to defend the fantasies of L. Ron Hubbard as “science”!

Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning “knowledge”) is, in its broadest sense, any systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a correct prediction, or reliably-predictable type of outcome. In this sense, science may refer to a highly skilled technique, technology, or practice, from which a good deal of randomness in outcome has been removed.

Dianetics and Scientology processes fit that description.

Why, no it does not, since Scientology has no reliable, testable outcome other than the separation of the suckers from their money.

Turn off your TV

You could also smack it with a hammer and set it on fire. More mass media lunacy is looming, with a new show on TLC called Paranormal Court.

Robert Hansen, a psychic medium famous among people who believe in psychic mediums, will mediate disputes between family members squabbling over possessions left behind by the deceased.

You know, if somebody I loved died, and a fraud like Robert Hanson came along to tell me what that person believed, I think I’d be a bit pissed. And no, I wouldn’t accept that he had any authority or knowledge to determine the state of mind of the deceased.

Oh, and TLC (it stands for The Lamebrain Channel, I think) descends a few more notches in credibility.

Everyone knows that if you want to be beautiful, you have to put the apples in your cheeks

Nikki Owen is “a practitioner of neuro-linguistic programming and TV commentator who is described as Britain’s leading charisma expert.”

Let that sink in. You just know she’s got to be an utterly astounding dingbat, and you wouldn’t be wrong.

Anyway, she has made an incredible claim that is testable (that last bit is probably the most astonishing part of it all — these gomers usually run away from anything that can be evaluated as fast as their little legs will take them). Owen says that if you slice an apple in two and talk lovey-dovey to one half, and spiteful meanness to the other, the loved half will stay prettier longer…or the hated half will decay faster. And what’s more, because faces are just like apples, you can make yourself prettier just by sweet-talking yourself in a mirror. Now I think that confidence and cheerfulness can improve your attractiveness, unsurprisingly, but this claim that it is a physical effect that can even impinge on non-sentient vegetables is a bit much.

Rebecca Watson is taking Nikki Owen on. She’s going to replicate the experiment, with blind assessment and a control.

This is excellent. Some people are complaining about the deviation from the Owen protocol by the addition of mustaches on the jars, but that’s irrelevant, since all of the jars get them — since we know already that mustaches make one youthful, lovely, and sexy, all they’ll do is uniformly preserve all the apple slices for a bit longer. No worries.

Rebecca also has a facebook page on the experiment. You can join in!

I have to admit that I’ve been doing a slack variant of this experiment for a while. I’ve got this stash of consecrated crackers in a baggie, and every day I tell them how much I hate them, taunt them with a nail, and tempt them with dominion over the earth, and creepily, they have stayed exactly the same. Lo, behold the power of preservatives, or perhaps the complete absence of nutritional value. Not even bacteria or mold wants a bit out of Jesus.