Tetherd Cow Ahead

♫ Everybody’s talks about a new world in the morning… new world in the morning so they say-ee-ay-ay… ♫ I myself don’t talk about a new world… Hey! WTF! What are you all doing here? Weren’t you killed by the earthquakes and the volcanoes and the asteroids? Goddamnit! Do you mean to say that I spent all that money on a Vivos Underground Fallout Shelter for nothing? You’re not going to tell me that noted astrologer Richard Nolle, who predicted apocalyptic events as the FULL moon approached perigee, and who was quoted on Space.com, ((Who, I hope, are still sitting in the corner with their dunce cap on…)) was wrong? Son of a bitch!

Yes loyal Cowpokes, it’s true. Once again, the unhinged blathering of a woo personage turns out to be categorically and unequivocally wrong. I’ll just say that again:



WRONG.

You can read about Space.com’s embarrassing article (which tries to pretend it’s not really quoting an astrologer), here, but for the real meat of this sandwich you need to read what Mr Nolle said, in his own waffly words:

Of course you can expect the usual: a surge in extreme tides along the coasts, a rash of moderate-to-severe seismic activity (including magnitude 5+ earthquakes, tsunami and volcanic eruptions), and most especially in this case a dramatic spike in powerful storms with heavy precipitation, damaging winds and extreme electrical activity. Floods are a big part of the picture in this case, although some of these will be dry electrical storms that spark fast-spreading wildfires. ((Gee, care to add anything else to that, Mr Nolle? Just in case that wide net misses something?))

No doubt Mr Nolle will do what all purveyors of this kind of nonsense do when they are shown to be WRONG, and start claiming everything in the vicinity as an endorsement of his prediction, including the recent tragic Japanese tsunami.

That makes this [the date of the ‘extreme supermoon’] a major geophysical stress window, centered on the actual alignment date but in effect from the 16th through the 22nd.

Geez. Even when he hedges his bets with the dates, he’s WRONG. ((I’m posting this on March 20, Australian time, so there are are still three more fudge days to go, but you know what? I’m saying here and now that in those three days nothing at all of any geophysical significance will happen. I’m sure Mr Nolle is well on his way, though, to claiming that what he REALLY meant by his predictions was that the UN would endorse military strikes on Libya. That’s the way this stuff invariably works…)) The Japanese tsunami occurred on March 11. Of course, that won’t stop him!

The March 19 SuperMoon is by far the most significant storm and seismic indicator this month, but it’s not the only one. Lesser geocosmic shock windows also up the ante for unusually strong storms ((‘Unusually strong’ could mean anything more than a bit of blustery wind.)) and moderate to severe seismic activity ((Moderate to severe? That’s really narrowing it down.)) (including ((Including??? There’s a weasel term if ever I heard one – the addition of ‘including’ actually means that this sentence says in effect: “Any earth movements of any kind”)) magnitude 5+ earthquakes, subsequent tsunami, and volcanic eruptions). These lesser windows include March 1-7 (surrounding the new moon on the 4th), March 23-26 (bracketing the lunar south declination peak on the 25th), and from late on the 31st on into early April. ((Into early April…? When’s ‘early’? April 5th? April 10th? Fuck me.))

Hahaha. Look at all that risible equivocating (I’ve enumerated all the hedging for you in the footnotes). That covers just about every possible day in March and every possible earthquake above a magnitude 5. Since the planet experiences more than 1500 earthquakes of magnitude 5 and above every year (divide that by 12 months and you get over 125 magnitude 5+ earthquakes somewhere in the world every month) Nolle can make a prediction like this with complete impunity. When you include his dates for the Super Moon, Nolle has every day in March covered except March 8 – 15 and March 27 – 30! That’s predicting 20 whole days of March might possibly have an earthquake of magnitude 5+ somewhere in the world! And he still missed March 11! Whoopsy. I guess a fucking ginormous earthquake that causes massive tidal surges and kills thousands of people is easy to overlook with that extreme spike in electrical storms and amongst all the floods and volcanic eruptions. Oh wait. None of those happened on March 19 either. ((I’ll just note here for the sake of amusement, the introduction to Mr Nolle’s pages which says in part “If you were expecting some kind of sun sign nonsense, forget about it. This is real astrology for the real world, not some mystical mumbo-jumbo word salad.” Got that? No mumbo-jumbo in this town, no way!))

So, let’s just see what scientists predicted for the approach of the Super Moon. John Bellini, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey:

Practically speaking, you’ll never see any effect of lunar perigee. It’s somewhere between ‘It has no effect’ and ‘It’s so small you don’t see any effect.’

Oh, lookit that. Once again, science is…



RIGHT.

___________________________________________________________________________

Earthquake chart purloined from IRIS with thanks. I’m pretty sure that, in the interests of proper science, they will be OK with it.

Cow Commenter DaveD brings to my attention the latest shenanigans from the makers of Shoo!TAG, the ridiculous superstitious trinket that is supposed to keep insect pests away from your pet (and now from humans too).

Regular readers of The Cow will be familiar with my call to Energetic Solutions (the company behind Shoo!TAG) to show us the science (that they keep boasting they have) that substantiates the efficacy of their ludicrous little piece of plastic. Well, we still haven’t seen any results from the ‘European trials’ that they have bragged about in the past, ((These supposed trials were either a lie or they produced negative results that Energetic Solutions don’t want people to see. Otherwise, why not provide the data? I’m betting that the former proposition is true.)) but it appears my niggling has made them realise that no-one will take them even remotely seriously if they can’t provide some proper scientific results to back up their claims.

Only one small problem… they don’t actually understand what science is.

The Shoo!TAG site is now making the following announcement:

Texas A&M University monitors Field Trial
74% reduction in mosquito bites with shoo!TAG™!

How many of you understood this to mean that Texas A&M University had something to do with these tests? Well, it won’t surprise you, I’m sure, when I tell you that you’re wrong. How many understood it to mean there were successful, properly run scientific trials that showed some amazing results? Wrong again.

Let’s re-word the Shoo!TAG announcement in a more factually correct manner, shall we?

Poorly-constructed Shoo!TAG™ test prompts an independent observer to suggest (on Texas A&M University letterhead) that results are statistically meaningless!

Ah, yes. The actuality doesn’t sound nearly so impressive, does it? But this scenario is nothing more than we’ve come to expect from Shoo!TAG: don’t let a bit of truth get in the way of some duplicitous self-aggrandizing! What, you think that the Shoo!TAG people couldn’t possibly be that disingenuous? Hahaha! You haven’t been paying attention!

But, for the sake of science, let’s examine the Shoo!TAG experiment and the actual conclusions of Dr Rainer Fink, the independent observer who viewed the proceedings.

The full report of the Shoo!TAG trial written by Shoo!TAG CEO Carter McCrary is here. In a few sentences from the begining of the abstract we get to this:

The Purpose of this Initial Field Test is to verify the claim that the shoo!TAG® significantly reduces the number of mosquito bites to humans when worn as instructed.

Whoopsy. Oh well, he’s not a scientist I guess, so you expect that kind of thing. Did you spot it?

‘The Purpose of this Initial Field Test is to verify the claim…‘

Uh-uh, Mr McCrary. You’ve scuppered your scientific credibility ((OK, I know I’m being generous in allowing that these people have any scientific credibility in the first place…)) in the very first paragraph of your abstract. Science is not done like that. Scientific tests are not set up to endorse something you’ve already decided to be true. If you approach science like this, you’re already demonstrating something that real scientists go a long way to avoid: bias. I don’t suppose you have the faintest clue how this works though, so I’ll forge on to some of the more egregious problems with your trial.

The ‘Methods’ section of the abstract outlines the procedural method of the test:

The study consisted of six participants who were divided into two groups.

You what? SIX people? Surely you’re not going to tell us that you’re going to attempt to do meaningful statistical science with a group of six people? ((Divided into two groups? Can three people even be considered a group?)) Oh. You are. Right. But that’s going to be really difficult for a double-blind trial… Oh, what’s this… it’s not double-blind. OK, you can still do worthwhile science with a blind trial… Oh… lookit that. It’s not a blind trial either.

Um. OK. Do you Shootaggers know anything at all about science, other than what you’ve seen on the SyFy channel?

OK, Acowlytes, let’s take a look at some of the other howlers in this escapade. I’ll synopsize a bit, but I urge you to read the pdf of the trial yourselves in order that you might see that I, at least, am not playing fast and loose with facts.

The next thing that happened is that the test subjects, 3 of whom were wearing Shoo!TAGs, and 3 of them not, were put in separate tents with mosquitoes. Bites were counted. Then there was some baffling shuffling of tags and people in and out of tents during which time mosquitoes also apparently were free to come and go.

It must be noted that a portion of the mosquitoes in the Group 3 tent escaped during the change-out or had already bitten the participants, thus the number of available mosquitoes was estimated to be only 250 during the second set of testing – the data was corrected by an estimated x2 factor to compensate.

Hang on, surely that can’t be right. I’ll read it again. An estimated number of mosquitoes flew away, an estimated number were excluded due to satiation and an estimated factor of magnitude was added in to ‘compensate’ for these estimations? If there were worse things you could do in a science experiment, its hard to imagine them. Especially in an experiment with a subject sample size of six people. ((Humans are notoriously bad at estimating. Try to imagine, if you will, estimating the number of mosquitoes flying around in a tent… could you tell the difference between oh, a hundred and two hundred? Try five hundred and six hundred?))

Quite incredibly, the Shootaggers then go on to attempt a statistical analysis of all this spurious data.

A total of 362 bites were recorded. The mean number of bites experienced by participants with the shoo!TAG® was 18, with a standard deviation of 15.87. The mean number of bites experienced by participants without the shoo!TAG® was 67.5, with a standard deviation of 22.45. There is a significant difference between the mean number of bites of subjects with the shoo!TAG® present and those without the shoo!TAG® present. The P- Value for the two-sample unpooled t-test between the means of bites is approximately 0.00538.

Let me translate that into something that makes more sense:

Numbers; more numbers; some more numbers; some fancy statistical language that sounds impressive but means nothing in this instance; completely fanciful conclusion.

Or, in one single word: bullshit. If you know anything at all about statistical data correlation, this whole exercise is one laughable step after another. The waving around of a P-Value is completely berserk in this ridiculously small sample. If the point of this experiment is to gain scientific credibility for the effectiveness of ShooTAG, it is a piece of unparalleled buffoonery.

But we all know, of course, that the point of the experiment is nothing of the sort. The real purpose behind these farcical proceedings is to fool people who know nothing of science into thinking that science has been done.

The Shoo!TAG report goes on to fluff out the abstract by adding in all kinds of equations and tables – none of which have any real meaning given the experimental protocol – and then ends with the most entertaining bit of all: two ‘references’ that are contextually irrelevant, and three attached ‘exhibits’, the first two of which are the Shoo!TAG packaging. It is to laugh. They think this is science?

The third ‘exhibit’ is the letter from the ‘independent observer’ of the experiment, one Dr Rainer Fink, and it is here that we find the real meat in the sandwich of this whole exploit. Dr Fink appears to be a bona fide scientist. According to his credentials on the letter, he is an associate professor (of what it doesn’t say) and a ‘director’ in an engineering department of Texas A&M University. Let’s give his credentials and his independent status the benefit of the doubt – he hasn’t disgraced himself in our eyes yet. His full report, in the form of a letter on Texas A&M University letterhead, is here.

First of all, I want to point out that Dr Fink details his ‘independent’ status quite clearly at the end at the end of his letter:

I have no financial interest in and have not been promised any financial interest in Energetic Solutions LLC, or in the product Shoo!TAG. I received no payment or incentive for my participation. My motivation was purely scientific.

Of course, having no financial interest in something doesn’t guarantee you don’t have some other interest – you might want to see your pals do well in their business, for instance, or you might hold unusual beliefs of your own that you’d like to see substantiated. ((I’m not suggesting at all that this is the case for Dr Fink, just making it clear that there are many kinds of motivations other than money.)) Certainly, Dr Fink’s professed motivation of science seems quite peculiar when, in his first paragraph, he makes the same partisan mistake as Mr McCrary.

The object [of the Shoo!TAG Field Test Study] was to prove [my emphasis] Shoo!TAG’s ability to repel mosquitoes from humans…

Interesting language for a scientist. Shoo!TAG’s ability to repel mosquitoes has never, ever, been scientifically established, so, as you can see, Dr Fink is already demonstrating bias. Which is, again, quite interesting given that his #2 self-reported reason for his involvement in the proceedings is given as:

2. [To] Oversee the Field Test Study to ensure it remained unbiased such that independent results are obtained.

Well, of course, as we have seen, this ‘experiment’ fairly reeks of bias from all quarters, so Dr Fink is already on the back foot.

Dr Fink outlines the experimental progress, and several episodes are detailed that don’t appear to have made it into Mr McCrary’s relating of events. This one is particularly good:

…during the time interval between exiting from Control Group 1 and entering the tent as Control Group 3, participants were asked to use their cellular phones to attempt to dissipate any remaining frequency based interferences remaining from the time they were wearing the Shoo!TAG.

Excuse me? What? Cell phones were waved around to dissipate ‘frequencies’ that were… what… hovering in the air. Or something? As an independent scientific observer, Dr Fink is starting to look like a prize idiot. He reports this as if it was an acceptable – conventional, even – scientific procedure. ((Even if you were dumb enough to buy into the sheer daftness of these concepts, representatives from Shoo!TAG have said in their own words right here on Tetherd Cow Ahead that the ‘frequencies’ that Shoo!TAG uses have nothing to do with cell phone frequencies.))

Oh boy. A loon ‘independently’ verifying, on University stationery, the antics of other loons. I’m sure you’re getting a vivid picture here.

Dr Fink goes on to relate all manner of other things, including completely unsubstantiated personal speculations such as this:

Once the participants left the tents, mosquitoes that had either escaped through the tent opening or were physically attached to the study participants aggressively attacked all the study contributors and observers with a complete lack of interest in study participants still wearing the Shoo!TAG. Leading to a possible conclusion that the Shoo!TAG caused the mosquitoes to preferentially feed on unprotected or less protected individuals in the area before biting Shoo!TAG wearers.

Such terrible subjective observations and conclusions are no better than the vapid testimonials that Shoo!TAG has trumpeted on their web site as ‘evidence’ that the daft thing works. It is most profoundly not the language you’d expect from someone calling himself a scientist.

But probably the most damning thing about Rainer Fink’s analysis of the whole affair are his conclusions. No matter how predisposed he is toward helping the Shootaggers out, he is smart enough to know that there are some things you just can’t put on the letterhead of your employer without risking your job. After some tabling of the numbers gathered in the test, he writes:

‘…… it must be noted that the size of the study conducted was insufficient to evaluate the statistical significance of the results.’

…and, again later in the report:

… the scale of the test was insufficient to establish the efficacy of Shoo!TAG performance to be supported by statistical data analysis.’

In other words, any actual data gathered from the experiment (as questionable as it is), is, in Dr Rainer Fink’s opinion, completely useless. In fact, the only outcomes that Dr Fink consider affirmative are of the spurious subjective kind that Shoo!TAG has already promoted ad nauseum as ‘scientific’.

One must question once more, in that light, the Shoo!TAG website boast of ‘74% reduction in mosquito bites with Shoo!TAG’ and their attempt to promote statistical success in their own reading of the data. They have again, as they have done many times in the past, just pulled a completely fictitious ‘fact’ from their asses and are using it to promote their product. ((This 74% figure is remarkably close to the ‘75%’ figure that Energetic Solutions has already bandied about a year or more ago. It seems to me that they had already decided this number WELL before this experiment was carried out; a number big enough to be impressive, but not so big that it rules out the odd usual flea that someone spots on their pet.))

So, to succinctly recap the some of the numerous problems with Shoo!TAG Initial Field Test:

•The test is riddled with bias: the conductors of the test expected to see positive results before they commenced the experiment. In short, they had already made up their minds about what was going to happen – the experiment was not about gathering impartial data.

•The trial was completely unblinded: experimental blinding is specifically designed to counteract bias. A lack of blinding combined with evidence of bias (as above) are strong indications of corrupt procedure and would, by themselves, get any serious experiment kicked out on its ass.

•The subject sample size was insignificant: an experimental base of six subjects is preposterous (and we don’t even know how the subjects were chosen – my bet is that they are all friends of the experimenters)

•The ‘experimenters’ made subjective assessments in numerous areas: there was no rigorous control of most vectors of the experiment. Guesses were made of variables and then taken as fact. This is a scientific dog’s breakfast.

•The ‘experimenters’ made spurious subjective data alterations: data was altered by ‘guessing’ and making unguided assumptions. Way to screw up your dataset.

•There is NO endorsement by Texas A&M University of this trial, although that is heavily implied: Texas A&M University is not shown to be endorsing this test. The test was not carried out on the premises of Texas A&M University nor with Texas A&M University supplied protocols. It certainly does not have the imprimatur of Texas A&M University. The fact is that a person who works at Texas A&M University was called on to be an observer and provided his observations on a University letterhead.

•The scientific credentials and bias of ‘impartial’ observer are questionable: Dr Rainer Fink’s statement exhibits bias and subjectivity as well as irrational thinking.

•The scientific endorsement of the trial is equivocal: The only definite conclusion made by Dr Fink is that there isn’t enough data to make any kind of meaningful sense from the results. In any other scientific situation this would mean that the test was useless and a better experiment was required.

In Shoo!TAG’s world, though, this translates as an outstanding success worthy of trumpeting on their website.

Here on Tetherd Cow Ahead, the call for Shoo!TAG to ‘show us some science’ has been frequent and firm. The Shootaggers vocally insist, at every opportunity, that their product is based on scientific principles, and is not (as I contend) just a pseudoscientific trinket that smacks of magical thinking. Critics might say that this first Shoo!TAG ‘Field Trial’ is at least an effort by Energetic Solutions to attempt to gather some scientific data on their product. I say it’s nothing more than a publicity stunt designed with the express purpose of deceiving potential customers into believing that there is some science behind Shoo!TAG when there is none.

Setting the hopeless errors of procedure aside, the mere fact that Energetic Solutions is leading people to believe that this test has the endorsement of a university, or has produced data that shows anything at all is a testament to their world view. They don’t care whether or not their product works, they just want your money.

And they’re prepared to lie to get it.

Acowlytes! Atlas has sent me some astonishing new evidence that demonstrates beyond all reasonable doubt that Shoo!TAG actually works! Yes, yes – I realise that after all my previous skepticism on this topic this about-face will seem completely unexpected, but… you see… Oh dammit, words can’t really do the job. I’ll hand over to the following YouTube presentation to do the explaining:

So, you see, putting it in scientific terms, there’s this, like, blurry light, that, like, makes a sort of glow all around the person and, like, all around the Shoo!TAG and it’s AMAZING! And when the Shoo!TAG gets close to the person, it’s all, like, glowy and yellow and white and stuff. Freakin’ awesome! That proves that there’s auras around Shoo!TAG! And those auras prove that Shoo!TAG keeps insect pests away from your pets! OMG! If that doesn’t convince you close-minded skeptics, well, I don’t know WHAT would!

What’s that you say? Some double blind scientific trials would be more convincing? Than an aura movie? Oh, come ON! Aura movies are the bomb. Why, I have a snap here that PROVES that Tetherd Cow Ahead HQ is haunted:

Pretty definitive, right?

The Shoo!TAG aura movie comes to the world courtesy of a product called WinAura, and although that sounds like the outcome of a psychic chocolate wheel, ((I wanted to put a link to an explanation of what a chocolate wheel is, for all the non-Australians, and it seems there is no actual definition available on teh internets. That’s amazing. So, for your enlightenment, let me inform you that a chocolate wheel is a kind of spinning wheel that is common at fétes and church fairs in Australia and New Zealand. It has numbers around its face, and participants are able to buy a ticket that is attached to a number. The numbers correspond randomly to prizes. When all the tickets have been sold, the wheel is spun (sometimes once, or sometimes three times), and when it stops on a number, the owner of that ticket collects their prize. Of course, most prizes are worth less than the price of the ticket, and there are usually only one or two decent prizes.)) it is in fact a gadget that supposedly captures movies of your aura. If you are so inclined, you can visit the home of WinAura and find out all about machines that photograph your aura. Or, you could just stay here and I could save you from wasting precious minutes of your life by telling you that these shonky devices merely use coloured LEDs, software algorithms and blurred overexposure to trick very gullible people into believing that what they see has some kind of mystical explanation. For an exorbitant price, naturally. ((I defy anyone to be able to find, anywhere on the AuraPhoto site, an indication of how much you’re going to be out of pocket for one of these things. I reckon you can infer from this page that they’re not cheap.))

On the other hand, if you did go to the AuraPhoto site, you could visit the What Color Is Your Aura page and get something just as useful as the results from an Aura Camera without spending a penny. That’s what I did! Here is a picture of my aura:

According to my aura reading I have a lot of lavender in my chakras (or something). Evidently I have some in my Third Eye as well, which does help explain why I was having trouble seeing out of it. The interpretation of my results says, in part:

Others are instantly attracted to you as you sparkle and glow with a mysterious inner light. You also seem to be a magical, fairylike creature, born of another world.

You’d rather talk about miracles, magic, and pots of gold at the end of the rainbow than anything ordinary or mundane. You want to share your miraculous visions with others. The beautiful world of fantasy, art, and the imagination is where you feel safest and happiest. You create a magical environment for yourself and others in which to live.

How accurate is that?!!! I think everyone would totally agree that I truly am a sparkly glowing fairylike creature who attracts admirers like a roo light attracts Christmas beetles. And there can be no dispute whatsoever that my my magical playground, filled with fantasy and art, is nothing other than the Realm of the Tetherd Cow! (I feel I should also point out that the lavender colours go extremely well with the TCA colour scheme).

As far as I can see, though, it doesn’t matter what colour your aura is on the AuraPhoto site, it’s impossible to come away with a reading that says anything that could be construed to be negative. Such as, for instance:

You’re a duplicitous and morally compromised swindler who is quite prepared to sell rigged computer software and tweaked camera hardware to credulous nitwits in exchange for exorbitant amounts of cash.

If we had a picture of that person’s aura, I imagine there’d be a lot of Dead Salmon and Cat Breath in their chakras. And probably a pronounced squint in their Third Eye.

Why are journalists so stupid? Or is that a question that I’ve asked so many times now that it seems rhetorical? The Melbourne Age this morning carries a story (in the Technology section, no less) that has been doing the rounds for the last few days about a ‘UFO’ that supposedly appeared over Temple Mount in Jerusalem on January 28. Here is the YouTube video of that event that is causing all the conniptions. Be sure to ooh and aah like the people on the soundtrack won’t you? ((We’ve see ’em in Mississippi like this, but never like that!, drawls one of the voices who I’m sure I recognize as one of the intellectual geniuses from the Paulding Light video.))

Now I’d like to contemplate the following image that anyone can freely download from Wikipedia Commons, and which took me, oh, all of ten seconds to locate.

Pay particular attention to the star shapes on the streetlights, the position of lighted windows and the haze in the air. Seem familiar? Here, let me crop it for you…

And blur it up a little bit…

And stick a blob of ‘light’ in it…

And add some lens flare…

What’s that you say? A bit too ‘Close Encounters’ with the lens flare…? You think?

Well, I doubt even that would have put Mr Tom Kendrick, from wherever-the-fuck, off the scent of this ‘elaborate hoax’ that he apparently thinks is going to ‘fuel debate for many a year.’ Seriously, I’m going to start campaigning for a minimal intelligence test before we let people, especially journalists, use the internet.

Now I know that these are only still images, but it would have been no more difficult, had I wished to waste the time, for me to have made an animated video that exactly matched the one posted on YouTube. THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY, Mr Newspaper Pillock! We all have computers with pretty good video and image editing software!

If you read the article in the Age (and seriously, I really don’t blame you if you’d decided to stick your tongue in the electrical socket instead) you would have also discovered that this is the second of two videos of this mysterious UFO. Here’s the other one:

This time we hear a couple of guys talking (I don’t recognize the language) and the ‘mysterious light’ drops from high in the sky down into the scene (it’s hard to tell if it’s ‘hovering over the Temple’, but hey, if they say so…). Then there are a couple of flashes of light and the UFO zips skywards, to the surprise of the onlookers. Needless to say, this would also have been a trivial thing to whip up in After Effects. Quite obviously, the first video was made by someone who thought it would be a hoot to give the second one some corroboration. Anyone with an ounce of brain matter can figure all this out in about three keystrokes.

It’s not really so surprising to me that people indulge in pranks of this kind. It’s fun and amusing. It’s not so surprising either, that when they post it up on YouTube we get all kinds of idiots debating its authenticity. What is surprising is the complete and utter incredulity of people like reporter Tom Kendrick, his employers and all the ‘news’papers who carry these brainless stories. ((Not to mention the dribbling sub-moronic attempt to draw a religious connection:

Sunni Muslims believe it was from the mount that Muhammad ascended to heaven, and it also represents one of the most important sites in the Jewish faith.

And that’s supposed to tie in with space aliens… how? Or is it an angel maybe? Or the Hand of God? Who the fuck left the Stupid Tap running?))

For Christ’s sake people – you look like drooling hillbillies with grass up your asses when you run things like this.

Hyuck hyuck… lookie Bobby Joe… there’n anutha one of them thar UFOs… go get pappy’s shotgun an’ we’ll see if we ken bag us a alyen!

Do you have your tin foil beanies on this morning Acowlytes? Have you supped well on your goji drinks, rubbed your ShooTag and cleansed your bowels thoroughly with colloidal silver? No? Well you might want to get used doing all those things and more, because that is certainly the future which awaits us if the current trend by some science magazines plays out to its inevitable conclusion.

The latest issue of New Scientist runs a cover article headlined ‘Ghost DNA; Nobelist claims he can ‘quantum teleport’ genes’. I can’t begin to convey to you how much this kind of half-baked pap passing as ‘science’ journalism pisses me off. ((This is the second of two New Scientist articles that have really gotten up my nose in recent months. The first was their uncritical reporting of the so-called statistical evidence for existence of precognition revealed in experiments conducted by ‘psi’ researcher Daryl Bem. The Bem work is so filled with problems as to be laughable, and has been subsequently comprehensively picked apart by scientists and statisticians alike. Experiments replicating those carried out by Bem have, predictably, not shown the same results he claimed to have found. But where is the New Scientist followup revealing all this? Not as headline-grabbing as ‘Evidence we can see the Future?’, I suppose.))

The story, in a nutshell, is that Luc Montagnier, a scientist previously awarded the Nobel prize for his work with AIDS, has published results of an experiment that he says shows that DNA can be remotely ‘imprinted’ in water. He further contests that the imprint can then be reconstituted into actual DNA via polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Writing it down like that makes it seem so patently stupid, that I had to go back and check that this was, in fact, what Montagnier claims. And yes, it is.

You can read the full process of Montagnier’s experiment here, if you can make sense of it. Essentially, Montagnier contests that when an electromagnetic field is applied to a flask of DNA, that field somehow picks up something from the DNA that can be somehow transmitted to an adjacent but isolated flask of purified water, somehow transferring something into the water. PCR is somehow able to amplify this something which results in actual real DNA being created in the previously-pristine flask. ((My initial response as a person with zero training in genetic chemistry was to want complete assurance that Montagnier’s experimental protocol had completely excluded the possibility of contamination. PCR experiments are notoriously prone to contamination problems. Occam’s Razor dictates here that, in the face of one experiment by one scientist who already holds partisan homeopathic views, the most likely explanation for Montagnier’s results is the actual explanation: that his ‘pristine’ flask was contaminated.)) As you can see, that’s more somehows and somethings than your average episode of Ghost Hunters.

Montagnier offers no mechanism that might allow DNA to be able to be recorded or transmitted electromagnetically in this manner, nor any method by which water might be able to receive this transmission and retain it. He also fails to offer any explanation of a process via which this ‘ghostly’ DNA could become corporeal DNA. Instead, his notes make reference to discredited homeopathy researcher Dr. Jacques Benveniste, and calls on the concept of ‘water memory’, a flimsy pseudoscientific notion that has resisted numerous attempts to give it any credence. All in all, there are so many hallmarks of fruit-loopery throughout Montagnier’s proposition that you really have to ask yourself why ANYONE is giving this ridiculous fluff the time of day. Well, of course, it is Montagnier’s Nobel credentials that are the angle here. He’s a Nobel laureate, so he has to be an all-round genius, right? Wrong. Having a Nobel prize doesn’t prevent you from being an idiot in some other area. New Scientist is indulging in a favourite tactic of woo-mongers: an appeal to authority. Montagnier’s controversial Nobel prize relates to work he did on HIV/AIDS. This does not make him an expert on everything. ((The New Scientist editorial attempts to evoke fairness by pointing this out. It’s a journalistic trick that truly annoys the crap out of me – stick in a bunch of reasonable objections to ‘show’ that you can see the logical flaws in your argument, but then go ahead and ignore what you just did by plastering ‘Nobel Prize Winner’ in the headline of your article. Scumbags.))

New Scientist’s editorial in defense of their decision to publish this information is the real killer, though. It is disingenuous and unctuous. They open with this:

As the old saying goes, it’s good to have an open mind but not so open that your brains fall out. This week we report claims about the way that DNA behaves that are so astonishing that many minds have already snapped shut.

Did you spot it? Yep, there’s New Scientist, a magazine that is supposedly offering proper science journalism, jumping on another defense beloved of practitioners of pseudoscience: ‘If you don’t immediately give credence to some outrageous claim, you have a closed mind’. New Scientist editors, double shame on you. ((And, I might add, making this statement in this context is a damn good illustration of exactly what you’re purporting to be declaiming with it – your ‘open’ mind is quite publicly leaking your brains all over the carpet.))

After a meandering attempt to appear like they’ve given the decision some thought, they arrive at their compelling reason for carrying the story:

We decided to go ahead because any bona fide experimental result is worthy of scrutiny, and the claims are nothing if not interesting.

No, let’s just have some honesty here. You decided to go ahead because this is the kind of thing that sells copies of your magazine. If you are pretending to any level of scientific credibility at all, you don’t just up and publish any old crap on the pretext that it has ‘interesting’ claims. If you were truly sincere about informing people of the science behind this story, you would have waited for some of the additional results from third party researchers that you admit are necessary for this experiment to have any validity. Of course, when that happens it will be a non-story (as I submit you are fully aware) and the headline ‘Scientists prove AGAIN that the concept of water memory is a crock of shit’ will not be nearly as lucrative on the news stand as some spurious one-liner involving ghosts, teleportation and ‘quantum’ magic. I further contest that if science was really your priority, you would have offered a little more depth on Luc Montagnier’s bona fides, including his predisposition towards believing in homeopathy (something you, yourselves have – quite hypocritically we must conclude – denounced previously as pseudoscience when it suited your headline).

I suggest that this quote from Luc Montagnier taken from an interview with Science magazine last month, might have added some context to his experiment:

I can’t say that homeopathy is right in everything. What I can say now is that the high dilutions (used in homeopathy) are right. High dilutions of something are not nothing. They are water structures which mimic the original molecules.

This shows us one thing very clearly: Luc Montagnier didn’t get his Nobel Prize for logical thinking. As is trivially easy to demonstrate, the high dilutions offered by homeopathy ARE, in many cases, nothing. After a certain level of dilution, a homeopathic substance is likely to contain not even one molecule of the original substance. What Montagnier wants us to believe, though, is that, by a mechanism that is pure speculation at best and has no basis in reality whatsoever, it’s not the molecules themselves that matter, but ‘something’ they leave behind. It’s crucial to understand that Montagnier is not building on any previous science ((All good science comes riding on the coattails of other science. In the 21st Century it is rare to the point of extraordinary for a major scientific discovery to pop out of nowhere.)) to assert this. It’s merely a magical belief. ((And it’s a belief that seems so simplistic and the counter-arguments so self-evident that I won’t even bother to tread that ground again. I’ll just point out once more that every glass of water you drink has ultra-diluted something in it. Pick anything: cyanide; sugar; apple juice; cow piss; snake venom. Whatever it is, its effects will be in operation in that water according to homeopathic ‘reasoning’. If you want to follow the ultimate absurdity of Montagnier’s experiment, you’re buying into a notion where you don’t have to even dilute the water in the first place – things can get ‘transmitted’ into the water from elsewhere! With all that dilution and transmission going on, there’s so much stuff in water that it’s a miracle it’s drinkable!))

All that being as it may, what Luc Montagnier is claiming to demonstrate with his experiment does not equate with claims of homeopathy anyway. ((Well, not with anything that homeopathy has claimed so far – I’m sure they’ll find a way to incorporate this new wonderful mechanism.)) Let me clarify: homeopaths contend that, by dissolving substances (whose efficacy is determined by nothing more than superstition) into extreme dilution in water they can achieve advantageous human health outcomes. The mechanism by which this is supposed to happen has no rational basis and can’t be scientifically shown to have any effect. But Montagnier’s experiment is (supposedly) demonstrating something else entirely: that he can transmit, via a process for which he has no explanation, something into water that wasn’t there in the first place and then reconstitute a biological product from it. He’s conflating a bizarre idea with an outlandish idea and then asserting that this makes BOTH ideas reasonable! What extraordinary nonsense.

New Scientist also neglects to mention that Montagnier’s Nobel Prize was the subject of prolonged antagonism, that (while Montagnier certainly contributed to the effort) the scientist who is actually now credited with demonstrating that the HIV virus causes AIDS was not Montagnier but Robert Gallo, and that one of the biggest issues in the controversy surrounding the Prize was sample contamination inside Montagnier’s lab – all factors that have bearing on the article at hand.

The magazine further tarnishes its image by including this spurious quote, as, geez, I dunno, some kind of ‘food for thought’ or something:

‘If the results are correct,’ says theoretical chemist Jeff Reimers of the University of Sydney, Australia, ‘these would be the most significant experiments performed in the past 90 years, demanding re-evaluation of the whole conceptual framework of modern chemistry.’

This kind of cheap sensationalism is breathtaking in its banality and has no place in a science journal. It’s a quote that means FUCK ALL. It’s a speculation that’s logically equivalent to saying ‘If pixies exist, we may never have to do the dishes ever again!’ It’s a NON quote. It’s vacuous journalism at its most pathetic.

Acowlytes. I’m sure you can feel my anger about this fairly radiating out of your computer screen. When a magazine like New Scientist runs an article lending plausibility to half-baked pseudoscientific concepts, they have an enormous detrimental effect on the already depressingly slow progress of critical thinking. We don’t need ‘scientists’ giving credence to every stupid idea that comes down the pike under the pretext of ‘it’s a valid experiment until the results prove otherwise’. The fact is that some ideas start out plain stupid, and never do anything more than traipse downhill into the vast bog land of Suck. It is the responsibility of periodicals like New Scientist, as purveyors of science news, to make decisions about framing a scientific world-view for their readers, not to encourage the flimsy philosophies and elliptical thought processes of those who espouse magical thinking by giving their silly ideas ‘scientific’ credibility.

What happens after an article like this appears is predictable and depressing. Searching the web for ‘luc montagnier’ in conjunction with ‘homeopathy’ delivers a flood of links to sites claiming that science has at last ((Or ‘again’, depending on how you look at it – homeopaths claim scientific endorsement of the stupid idea at the drop of a hat, and neglect ever to mention all those times when science has shown it to be a pile of horseshit.)) endorsed homeopathy. From the predictable brainless spew of Dana Ullman in the Huffington Post gushing that Luc Montagnier, Nobel Prize Winner, Takes Homeopathy Seriously, to the slack-jawed critical-thinking-free crowing of the various homeopathy advocates that Luc Montagnier Foundation Proves Homeopathy Works the woo-web is awash with brains-on-the-floor excitement.

For the sake of a salacious news stand headline, one dumb misstep by the Science press has all but undone the great work of skeptics over the last few years in demonstrating to the public just what a bunch of hokum homeopathy is.

Great work guys. And every year you run whiney op-ed pieces about how science funding is being slashed. In case you haven’t managed to figure it out, that’s the logical outcome of dumbing down the world.

UPDATE: More fuming! Because I’ve been away, I’m working my way through back issues of New Scientist that have accumulated in my absence. This used to be a pleasurable pursuit, but it’s turning out this time to be a lolly-grab of stupidity. Last night I read this editorial, in which we find NS criticizing NASA for hyping up the science behind the search for extraterrestrial life.

IT’S life, but not as we know it,” trumpeted one headline. “Alien life may have been discovered – right here on Earth,” gasped another. Even The New York Times declared “Microbe Finds Arsenic Tasty; Redefines Life”.

The breathless write-ups followed NASA’s teasing announcement of a news conference “that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life”. And although the discovery of alien life, if it ever happens, would be one of the biggest stories imaginable, this was light years from that.

Oooh. They wouldn’t be anything like headlines that scream ‘Ghost DNA; Nobelist claims he can ‘quantum teleport’ genes’ or ‘Evidence we can see the Future?’, would they now you fucking hypocrites?

The editorial concludes:

Perhaps it (NASA) thinks that all publicity is good publicity, but one day the appetite for sensationalist alien life stories may be sated.

At which point I suggest that New Scientist might like to start fishing around for the log in their own eye rather than looking for the mote in their neighbour’s.

If you’re a purveyor of teh Woo looking to make yourself a few dollars at the expense of gullible people with damaged lives, what could be better than selling them water that does nothing, plastic cards that do nothing or plastic bracelets that do nothing?

Croation ‘mystic’ and healer, Braco, has discovered the answer to that question: you bypass the costly manufacture process entirely and sell 100% unadulterated nothing at all to your credulous victims .

This is how it works. Braco (pronounced ‘braht-zoh’) merely walks into a room full of people and stares ((Or ‘gazes’, as his followers say…)) at them. To understand the true magnitude of the vacuousness of this, you might like to watch Braco in action:

This kind of thing just makes me want to throw up my hands in despair. ((Or just plain throw up.)) Just take look at that audience of predominately white, affluent middle-aged women who probably owe everything they have to modern science, and wonder how it is that they have quite so comprehensively dropped their brains on the floor.

Braco’s website is a treasure-trove of idiocy and banality:

Experts are impressed that Braco has been able to have such a strong impact on his visitor, and began his work at the extraordinarily young age of 26

He began staring at people at the age of 26. Yep, that sounds like an extraordinary achievement. Why, I didn’t master the art of staring at things until last week!

Braco does not take any money for his help, he does not accept donations and the sessions are always free at his Center in Zagreb.

Can I have a job where I get flown all around the world and fêted at other peoples’ expense in exchange for doing nothing at all? Oh, and all those books and CDs I see advertised on the site. They’re free too, right?

“We all carry a seed inside, which can become a beautiful fruit one day.” – Braco.

I don’t know if I’ve ever heard anything quite so profound. I wonder if Braco came up with that all by himself, or if he has a team of writers?

Journalists and scientists who have studied Braco and his energy have been impressed by him and by the impact of his work

Braco’s website fails to give the names of any scientists so impressed. I think we can suppose that when they use the term ‘scientist’ they mean someone like ‘Doctor’ Charlene Werner or ‘Professor’ William Nelson. And as for journalists… yeah, they’re really known for their perspicacity.

Braco is a conduit for the Source energy that is not governed by linear time and space, and it instead unifies us beyond the constructs of the mind.

Or, to put it another way: ‘Baffling phrase appended to vacuous nonsense followed by equivocal waffling equals meaningless conclusion’.

And best of all, from the FAQ:

Children may be overburdened by the energy, so it is required that an individual be 18 years of age or over to attend a gazing session.

I wonder if they would explode?

Braco’s special thirteen-ray gold sun pendant (also sun earrings and rings) are ONLY available at live Braco events.

Oooh. I’d like one of those free pendants! They are free, right? ‘Cos, like, I know that Braco doesn’t make any money out of what he does… What’s that you say? $290??? But…

Braco himself does not explain the energy and the great healing and transformative effect this energy can have upon people.

It’s much easier that way. Provide a whole bunch of nothing at all and then avoid explaining why it works! The homeopathy crowd could really take a leaf from Braco’s book. All they need to do is dispense with all that tricky science stuff – things would be so much simpler!

Braco’s power is so strong that it can be lethal over the internet. Or something.

Whatever you do, don’t edit any of those Braco staring sequences into segments longer than seven seconds. Who knows what kind of chaos could be unleashed!

I leave you with this last fact from the Braco blog:

Special Travel Notice: Braco was officially granted an Extraordinary Talent Visa by the U.S. Immigration Department in October 2010. The approval of this specific Visa recognizes the importance of Braco’s work, and enables him to freely enter the U.S.A.

I want you to contemplate this deeply. The US Department of Immigration has given a highly sort-after ‘O’ class visa to some guy who does nothing more than stand on a stage and stare at the audience. That’s defined as an ‘extraordinary’ talent

Elsewhere, Braco’s power is explained as a phenomenon of ‘non local reality’. I think that’s another way of spelling ‘horse shit’.