If other countries took this kind of action there would be a lot less quackery in the world. Toronto police have branded ‘psychic healer’ Alex Orbito a fake, and charged him with fraud and the posession of the proceeds of crime.

Mr Orbito hails from the Philippines, where he has undoubtedly fleeced many poor and gullible people of their life savings. Mr Orbito uses the old and oft-debunked trick of pretending to push his fingers into the bodies of his victims and extracting blood and tumors. What he ‘extracts’ are, according to the Toronto police, parts from a chicken. For a two minute conjuring trick like this, he was charging gullible Torontonians $135 and managed to make $80000 in 3 days.

It’s sad to see that a trick that has been debunked so often and by so many people is still fooling the weak and desperate and separating them from their hard-earned cash. It’s heartening to see that the Canadian police are willing to step in and do something about it.

Apparently news of Mr Orbito’s visit was spread by word of mouth. Hopefully the news of his arrest and the arrest of his promoter will be spread in the same way.

Having hooked up with Tom Cruise, it was inevitable that she would get into Scientology too. Yes, to quote Katie Holmes: I have looked into [Scientology] myself and I really like it and I think it’s really wonderful. When will celebrities realise they’re being used to legitimize a criminal cult? Wasn’t Battlefield Earth enough of a clue? Don’t these people ever do a bit of research into what they’re getting into?

Scientology is a “religion” which was created on a bet by L Ron Hubbard, a hack sci-fi author with delusions of grandeur. His infamous quote:

Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous, If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way to do it would be to start his own religion.

Hubbard used his sci-fi background to create a creation myth involving an ancient galactic empire ruled by Xenu who hid billions of people in Earth’s volcanoes and detonated atom bombs in them to kill everyone. Yes, L Ron Hubbard was a complete nutcase (or a genius con-man, you decide).

I would imagine that unless the Scientology celebs ever visit places like xenu.net, they never hear about these dark secrets of the Scientology cult. They’re treated with kid gloves, the Scientology PR machine hard at work to keep them as figureheads and not freak them out by telling them the truth.

Scientology is a criminally convicted cult in Canada. They were fined $250,000 in 1985 when it was discovered that some of their members had infiltrated government offices and stolen confidential documents. They did this because those government organisations were perceived enemies of Scientology. It’s not just Canada either, this site has a list of all the countries where Scientology has been caught being a bad little organisation.

In 1995 Lisa MacPherson was declared dead on arrival at a hospital in Clearwater, Florida. Clearwater is where the HQ of the Scientology organisation is located. Lisa had been kept there in isolation for days after having a psychotic break. She was underweight, dehydrated, and covered in bruises and bug bits. This is what Scientology does to its members.

Tom Cruise, Jenna Elfman, John Travolta, Juliette Lewis, Kirstie Alley, and all the other Scientology celebrities are being abused in their own way. Their public profile is being used to promote a criminally negligent ufo cult which only exists to make money from the weak and the gullible.

Katie, have fun with Tom if you want, but please stay away from his “religion”.

Everything you need to know

The 7th Skeptics Circle is now online over at Thoughts From Kansas. Joshua has done a great job of compiling this set of skepticism, debunkery, critical thinking and hard science.

I particularly enjoyed this article about supernova 1987A. Fantastic writing, and a great rebuttal to young earth creationism.

Oh, and I have to mention a success from the last Skeptic’s Circle: It seems I managed to convince Lynn Ann Maker to stick to the private investigating side of her business and forget the psychic side. Let’s hope it’s in deed as well as in word.

I am a critical thinker. I am a skeptic. Sometimes that’s seen as a bad thing; I hear comments like “You should be more open to new ideas”, or “How can you be so skeptical when you haven’t tried it?”. Is being skeptical the same as being close-minded? I don’t think it is. I haven’t tried eating rat poison, but I know it will make me sick because I’ve examined the evidence. I have an open mind, it’s just not so open that my brain falls out.

Nearly seventy years ago, thousands of Americans were fooled into believing that a radio broadcast of War of the Worlds was real news, that their country was actually being invaded by hostile martians. I would hope that we’ve learned to think more critically in the past seventy years, but sometimes I’m not so sure.

Every year, thousands of people are scammed out of their money by lottery scams, pyramid schemes, “Nigeria” scams, psychics, astrologers, bizarre products with unfounded medical claims, faith healers, religions, cults, fake charities and more. It seems that when it comes to health, wealth or happiness, some people are willing to believe anything.

The people who believe these things are apparently unable to examine and evaluate the information they are given. They don’t understand the need to gather more information from other sources before accepting something. Would these people convict someone of murder just because someone told them he was a murderer?

I believe critical thinking should be a mandatory part of education throughout elementary and high school. It should be given as much importance as reading, writing and arithmetic. Children should be given the skills they need to evaluate information objectively and with healthy skepticism. Children should be taught to question everything and accept nothing at face value.

Let’s give our children the skills they need to survive in an information rich world and vaccinate them against gullibility.

According to this article, Lynn Ann Maker used her psychic abilities to find the body of a missing man. 30 year old Greg Wallace disappeared after heading off to work one morning. His car was found abandoned near a pond. Let’s hear about the amazing work Ms Maker did:

For reasons Maker can’t fully explain, she felt the need to wade into a nearby pond in an area police had already searched.

For reasons she can’t explain? Maybe because the pond was near the abandoned car? Maybe because drowning is not an uncommon cause of death? Maybe because if a body can’t be found it’s likely to be buried or submerged? No of course it can’t be any of those things, it must be because she had a spooky feeling:

“I kept feeling he was near the car,” she said, which led her to the nearby lake.

Such incredible insight, she must be psychic, right? If a man had gone missing, and you found his car near a lake, where would you look?

On Maker’s Mystical Touch Web site, the 33-year-old psychic offers services as a medium, a palm reader and a “psychic detective” specializing in murder and missing persons investigations. She describes herself as a “psychometrist,” meaning she has to touch personal items to receive her visions.

It’s funny, I’ve searched around and can’t find any other success stories involving Lynn Ann Maker, and yet she claims to specialize in murder and missing persons investigations. I thought maybe her website (UPDATE: site is now dead) would have more incredible success stories, so I went and had a look around. The main page is “under construction” with no links, but digging a bit deeper I found a couple of other pages. Her services page says:

What I do is provide closure for families and law enforcement when ever possible. I feel there is nothing to loose. If I can’t find the person or solve the cold case, then what is lost. Nothing would of changed, But if I can assist in solving a cold case or find a missing person, then there is closure! That is why I do what I do! Closure for people!

Bad spelling, awful grammar, and a penchant for exclamation! Still no sign of any other success stories though, no evidence of her psychic abilities at work. What about the News page? That only has two articles about Greg Wallace. Maybe all her other articles are archived somewhere? Or maybe there aren’t any.

Her About Me page is so badly written that I can’t bring myself to quote any of it. Needless to say it doesn’t contain anything concrete.

Finally I found her References page. Now I must’ve hit the gold, right? Now I’ll find all the contact information for all of this incredible psychic’s successes. Wait, I just see another article about Greg Wallace, I don’t understand.

After exploring Maker’s credentials, I think I have to agree with the FBI agent on the case, so I’ll leave you with his words:

Gary Rothwell, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Perry office, confirmed that Maker found the body, but added, “In my opinion, it’s a coincidence.”

UPDATE: She updated her site today. She even approved my comment to her guestbook (sadly with the link removed, I wonder why?) It still doesn’t have any useful content though.

I came across this article at the BBC about a study that claims that Acupuncture ‘cuts blood pressure’. I found this a little hard to swallow, so I read on.

What the study actually found was Acupuncture combined with electronic stimulation can lower high blood pressure. So wait a minute, they’re sticking needles in rats, then passing an electric current through them. Is that acupuncture? I thought acupuncture was an ancient Chinese healing technique. Since when did the ancient Chinese have electricity?

Either it’s acupuncture, or it’s giving people/rats electric shocks. As far as I can tell there hasn’t been any attempt to test the electric shock treatment on its own, but the article does say: When the acupuncture was applied on its own, it had no effect on blood pressure. So in other words, acupuncture, that ancient chinese healing technique, did nothing.

The lead researcher, Dr Longhurst then goes on to say: “This suggests that acupuncture can be an excellent complement to other medical treatments, especially for those treating the cardiac system.” No, no, wait, it doesn’t suggest anything of the kind. It suggests that giving people mild electric shocks might have some temporary beneficial effect on blood pressure. The only thing it suggests about acupuncture is that it doesn’t do anything.

Misleading headlines like Acupuncture ‘cuts blood pressure’ give people false hope and keep the alternative medicine bandwagon rolling along. Shame on you BBC.

Last night I had a strange dream. In my dream I was walking to the train station, as I do most mornings, when I decided to steal a manhole cover. I managed to conceal it on my person until I was on the train, when I hid it under the seat.

The really strange thing is this (subscription required, sadly). Apparently Pointe Claire, the next village over from us, has suffered a spate of manhole cover thefts in the last couple of days.

If I wasn’t a skeptic, I might think I was psychic, that I’d had a premonition or a vision. Of course, that’s nonsense; It’s just one of those weird and freaky coincidences. Either it’s a completely random coincidence, or I subconsciously overheard someone talking about the thefts yesterday. Or maybe I’ve been sleepwalking and stealing manhole covers.

Did you believe in a god when you were six months old? What about when you were one? Or two?

The chances are you can’t answer those questions. Yet we as adults are quick to label our children. Jewish parents won’t say “We will teach our child about Judaism, and we hope she will grow to up to accept our faith”. Instead they will say “Our baby girl is Jewish”. Catholic parents will send their child to a catholic school, before that child has had a chance to decide his theological beliefs. Christian parents will have their child christened before she has any idea what that means. For some reason we see nothing wrong with imposing a belief system on an unformed intellect.

I’m a computer programmer, but if I have a child I won’t say “he’s a computer programmer”. I don’t want to choose my child’s profession, and I certainly don’t want to choose my child’s religious beliefs. All parents influence their children in some way, and maybe a child of mine will grow up to be a computer programmer, or an atheist, or a Formula 1 fan, or a blogger. Until she is old enough to decide those things for herself, I won’t be applying any labels.

The third edition of the Skeptics Circle is now online, hosted excellently by Radagast. Don’t forget to check out the archive site for details of previous and upcoming Circles.

Occasionally I lose socks. This usually happens at laundry time. I think that when nobody is watching, sock gnomes break into the washing machine or tumble dryer and steal socks. I think they use them to make little suits out of to keep themselves warm.

I’ve just covered the first two steps of the scientific method.

1. Determine the problem: Why do socks go missing at laundry time?
2. Make a hypothesis: I think sock gnomes are stealing my socks. (in layman’s terms this could be called a “theory” which is why there is often confusion between hypotheses and theories. More on that later.)

Now if I’m going to prove my hypothesis, I need to experiment. What I’ll do is install a small camera in my washing machine and record what happens when the machine is left unattended. If there are sock gnomes, the camera will catch them (unless they’re invisible sock gnomes; ut oh my experiment needs fine tuning, possibly involving a bag of flour).

Of course a key piece of the scientific method is replication. If I do see sock gnomes in my washing machine, that won’t be enough for most scientists because they are suspicious and skeptical by nature. They will want to reproduce my experiment on their own washing machines and see the sock gnomes for themselves. If everyone sees sock gnomes, then my hypotheses has been validated.

Once we have data from many experiments (not just with cameras, those scientists are smart, they will come up with different ways to detect the sock gnomes, maybe even catch one!), then we can analyze the data and come up with a scientific theory.

There’s that theory word again. This is where people get confused. In layman’s terms, a theory is a hypothesis, something you might say to your mates over a few beers. “I reckon if you tied a piece of bread butter side up to the back of a cat, then dropped the cat, it would float”. That’s a hypothesis, and your average non-scientist might call it a theory.

It is not the same as a scientific theory. Aerodynamics is a scientific theory. We don’t say “I don’t believe in aeroplanes, aerodynamics is just a theory!”. That’s because a scientific theory is the conclusion of a repeatedly tested and validated hypothesis. A scientify theory has a wealth of analyzed data and observation backing it up. A scientific theory is something we can rely on.

So can a scientific theory be wrong? Well sadly yes it can, but the chances are, if the theory has experimental data backing it up, it is at least partially right. It might need tweaking here and there, it might be missing some crucial details, it might need refining, but that data tells us we have a firm foundation.

Evolution is a scientific theory. It is the conclusion of repeatedly tested and validated hypotheses. It has a wealth of experimental data and observations backing it up.

Sadly my sock gnome hypothesis will probably never become a scientific theory. Sock gnomes could exist and could be stealing my socks as we speak, but I doubt I could get funding for a serious research project into the sock gnome hypothesis. There is as much proof for my sock gnomes as there is for Creationism.

The second Skeptics’ Circle is now online. Orac has done a fabulous job of collating all the articles and presenting them in a fun way. Reading it I felt like I was there enjoying that fine ale and those fascinating speeches.

Almost two weeks ago, the first ever Skeptics’ Circle happened over at St Nate’s blog. I was inspired by this to write something for the upcoming second Skeptics’ Circle.

I was having trouble coming up with a topic, until I overheard a strange conversation on the train home from work the other night. A girl was telling her friend how she wanted to get colour contact lenses. Her friend then went on to explain how if you wear them for too long, you will be blind or see everything really brightly for a while after you take them off, and how someone who had to wear them to play a part in a movie went completely blind. This had a definite urban legend ring to it, so I decided to investigate further.

The first thing I found was this Usenet article about an editorial published in Eye and Contact Lens. Although the article talks about coloured lenses, the main problem seems to be that these are over the counter purchases, with no prescription. The problem is that the lenses may not fit right, and cause rubbing. This results in infection and potential blindness.

Eyecare professionals will take careful measurements before prescribing contact lenses, to ensure that these problems do not occur. Buying over the counter contact lenses, coloured or not, is dangerous and can lead to blindness. Getting prescription contact lenses, coloured or not, seems to be fine.

I did discover that the colouring of lenses is an applique, which gives the lens a microscopically less smooth surface than regular lenses, which could potentially cause irritation. Not for the reasons suggested by the girl on the train though.

Also on this page we find the possibility that the coloured part of the lens can potentially enter your field of vision, if the lens moves or the pupil is very dilated. Still nothing about brightness or blindness though.

As for the movie star going blind, I could find no references. Apparently coloured contacts have been used in movies since Audrey Hepburn used them to play a blind women in Wait Until Dark in 1967.