Letters To The Editor (original) (raw)

The Age of Misinformation

“Surviving the Misinformation Age” (May/June 2017) offered my incredulous skeptical brain a real epiphany. We often simply cannot understand how the masses can possibly believe things that are, well, unbelievable. But people who read SI and our friends tend to be those who do know how satellites can tell us where we are, how surgery can change refraction of the eyes, and why the tides go in and out. I think David Helfand’s equating technology to magic really does explain how many people can see modern technology as magic—thus blurring the line between things that are simply technological innovations and unexplainable mysteries. This also explains to me why a number of science-fiction stories explain that microprocessors, fiber optics, and even velcro were provided by space aliens or time travelers. If you cannot understand the concept of layering one technology over another, then it seems like something impossible to invent with our (at least their) limited minds. The article doesn’t make clear how we could actually get a non-skeptic to sit while we explain science and technology in sufficient detail, but it did help to relieve my frustration with understanding how they might be thinking.

Brian Jay Gould
Plainsboro, New Jersey

The focus of the May/June 2017 Skeptical Inquirer on the Misinformation Age is very interesting reading. Although the emphasis is on today with false beliefs rejecting scientific truth and accepting pseudoscientific beliefs, David Helfand traces deliberate falsehoods back 2,400 years but blames their increase on our “technology saturated environment.” He notes Harris quoted a speech by Demosthenes of Athens, “Although a witness who perjured himself could be prosecuted … an orator who spoke in court could indulge in as much fabrication as he wished without fear of punishment,” and went on to state: “In short, nothing aside from the knowledge of the audience and the limits of plausibility restrained the orator from inventing falsehoods and distorting the truth.” If “orator” is translated as “politician,” this sounds very up-to-date!

David W. Briggs
Marion, Massachusetts

In Dr. David Helfand’s “Surviving the Misinformation Age,” he described how he presented public talks clearly showing why we can say that global warming stems largely from our burning of fossil fuels. He did it in seven steps that were “begging” for graphic support. So, I wrote him and asked if he had a set of slides or PowerPoint for doing that. He replied, sending me several slides he uses, but pointed out that his narrative always accompanied the slides (they aren’t self-explanatory). I offered to write a narrative based on his article in SI to accompany the slides, and he consented.

His classes over recently, he responded to my efforts, liked what I did, made a few minor modifications, and said it would be ok to make available to interested persons. Perhaps you’d like to make this known to your subscribers (and also on the SI website). I have prepared a Word document with slides and commentary included and also a PowerPoint of the slides. I think this would be ideal for any teacher wanting to teach about climate change. This is now posted on my website at http://www.indiana. edu/~ensiweb/main.source.global. warmng.html. [_CSI has also placed a link to it with Helfand’s article at http://www.csicop.org/si/show/survi ving_the_misinformation_age._]

Larry Flammer
Webmaster, ENSIweb
San Jose, California

Statin Denialism?

Thank you for the article by Harriet Hall on statins (“Statin Denialism,” May/June 2017). I have taken statins for four years with little to no side effects. While both my wife and I are skeptics, the anti-statin fearmongers had caused us concern. Are statins perfect? Of course not. But simply put, they save lives. We are happy that this topic was covered in Skeptical Inquirer. Overall, we both enjoy the quality and variety of articles in SI. Keep up the good work and I will keep subscribing.

Dan Dusa
Cincinnati, Ohio

I was very surprised—and disap-pointed—by Harriet Hall’s article in which she likens skepticism about statins to “alarmist misinformation.” Unfortunately, she highlights in great detail statements from self-proclaimed “expert” Leonard Coldwell, but then quickly dismisses the carefully researched, scientifically based books, articles, and blog posts of Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, a Scottish physician who has studied heart disease and statins for over a decade. Kendrick does not ignore the “vast body of literature that contradicts [him].” To the contrary, Kendrick carefully investigates the claims that these studies purport to prove.

Curiously, Hall praises the review article (“Interpretation of the Evidence for the Efficacy and Safety of Statin Therapy”) in the November 19, 2016, Lancet, saying it was “particularly thorough.” This study’s lead author is Rory Collins, head of the CCT (Cholesterol Treatment Trialists), a group that allows no one to see the data on which their conclusions are based! This seems the very antithesis of a skeptical attitude, which enjoins that the stronger the claims, the stronger the evidence must be. In addition, as shown in the “Declaration of Interests” in this Lancet review article, at least fifteen of the authors have ties to pharmaceutical companies. Why in the world should the scientific community accept interdicted data based on trials run by pharmaceutical companies? As Jerome Burne stated (http:// healthinsightuk.org/2016/09/13/ massive-statin-trial-that-aims-tosilence-all-the-critics-the-iron-fistin-an-evidence-based-glove): “Authoritarian support for the status quo is common in politics and religion [but i]t’s not supposed to be part of science.” I suggest that Skeptical Inquirer invite well-respected statin critics to respond to Harriet Hall.

My mother ended up in intensive care in 2002, having her kidneys flushed out owing to rhabdomyolysis caused by statin use. Perhaps I should be grateful that my mother’s doctor did not have the gall to say to us: “Statins: They work, bitches!”

Jan Behn
Madison, Wisconsin

I was surprised, and disappointed, to read the article on statin denialism. Dr. Hall failed miserably at presenting a skeptical analysis.

Raised in the Show Me State and the land of Mark Twain, you will find no more natural a skeptic than myself. For the record, I am not a denialist that “statins work, bitches.”

Statins have produced over $100 billion in revenue for drug companies. The first rule of skepticism is, “Where you find incredible amounts of money you will find incredible impetus for crimes ranging from fibbing all the way to outright fraud.”

Dr. Hall dismisses coq10 as if it were irrelevant. Numerous reputable studies and NIH recommendations would disagree.

She dismisses side effects as if they don’t exist. I suggest that they are drastically underreported by patients. Statins are most heavily prescribed to the older population who suffer with failing muscles and minds regardless.

The mounting evidence suggests that statins work, bitches, in the same vein that driving nails with a rock works, bitches. There simply has to be a better way, and we are likely being deprived of it by the conveyor belt of money that runs into the drug companies’ banks each day.

Earl McAllen
Cedar Park, Texas

As a recently retired physician and a skeptic, I found myself to be rather uncomfortable while reading the article “Statin Denialism.”

I am unfamiliar with Dr. Leonard Coldwell; however, based on his description in the article, I have no problem with the rather shrill criticism directed toward him.

However, as skeptics, we should take a more nuanced view of this subject.

A few years ago, I was in a medical review conference listening to a speaker who I had heard several times before. He was a biochemist who had studied lipids for many years and a physician, a board certified cardiologist with a special interest in the prevention of coronary vascular disease. He was an enthusiastic prescriber of statins as a means of lowering cholesterol levels in the blood and the risk of cardiovascular disease. On this occasion, near the end of his presentation, he lowered his eyes and wistfully shared with us that his more recent review of the literature casts doubt on the effectiveness of statins for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease. He shared his discomfort with this news and promised to keep a close eye on this issue in the future. I was impressed by his intellectual honesty.

My concerns are that, first, despite the enthusiastic endorsement of the statin drugs by this article, there are probably thousands, if not millions, of patients who are taking statin drugs who will not benefit from them. Some of them, perhaps only a few, will have serious adverse reactions to the medications. And second, that if we are to be true skeptics, we must be skeptical of all views of an issue. To simply say, “Statins: They work, bitches!” is to be condescending and intellectually dishonest to skeptics.

Charles Young, MD
Champaign, Illinois

The article “Statin Denialism” by Dr. Harriet Hall reflects the current understanding about commercial medicine to treat symptoms and ignore cures or understanding about why the situation arises at all. As the individual ages, they do not make as much of the precursor of 150 hormones in the body that are made out of the cholesterol in the blood. There are two models that are suggested here, an inhibition model as offered by Dr. Hall and a flow-through model as suggested by me. The inhibition model slows down the production of cholesterol in the liver by inhibiting the production of cholesterol. The flow-through model is one that provides a public domain drug called “Pregnenolone” that is available over the counter and is relatively cheap. It helps the body convert the cholesterol into the 150 hormones in the body and lowers the cholesterol better than the inhibition model.

Chris Richardson
Gold River, California

Harriet Hall, MD, replies:

Some readers found the language “Statins: They work, bitches!” inflammatory. It was not meant to be condescending or to insult anyone; it was intended to be the same humorous reference to an xkcd comic that Richard Dawkins used to defend science, as I carefully explained in the endnotes.

Ms. Behn is understandably concerned because of her mother’s unfortunate experience with a rare side effect of statins. But her confidence in Malcolm Kendrick’s research is unwarranted. I provided a link (endnote 11) to the Skeptic’s Dictionary article showing how Kendrick and his fellow “Cholesterol Skeptics” use distortions and deceptive techniques in their arguments. One reviewer of Kendrick’s book The Great Cholesterol Con (http://www. cholesterol-and-health.com/MalcolmKendrick-Great-Cholesterol-Con.html) describes it as full of sarcastic humor and says “readers with a background in the relevant science might also laugh at some of the egregious scientific errors in the book and some of Kendrick’s poorly conceived speculations.”

Behn’s criticism of the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists is also unwarranted. Her claim that they “allow no one to see the data on which their conclusions are based” is demonstrably false. Their process is transparent. They publish periodic meta-analyses of published studies that anyone can read, and they have published a protocol describing the methods they use in their analyses; see https:// www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/? term=ctt+protocol+1995. It is only natural that most of the studies of a pharmaceutical drug will be funded by the manufacturer. That doesn’t invalidate a well-done study; it only mandates careful scrutiny.

Mr. McAllen uses the cui bono fallacy to equate profits to a motive for crime. That doesn’t necessarily follow, and he has presented no evidence for “fibs” or “outright fraud” on the part of statin manufacturers. If companies have a valuable product that is used by a lot of people, they can make big bucks from selling it without any need for fibs or frauds.

I didn’t “dismiss” CoQ10. I didn’t even mention it, because it is not a part of the published expert treatment guidelines. And I certainly didn’t “dismiss side effects as if they don’t exist.” I devoted an entire three-paragraph section of my article to the evidence about side effects. And I provided references.

Dr. Young is confused. My article was about denialists, not about rational skeptics. Science-based doctors are the quintessential skeptics: they ask for evidence, reach provisional conclusions based on the best available evidence, and readily change their conclusions when better evidence comes along. Young provides no evidence, only an anecdote from a lecture he attended several years ago. The lecturer was probably right at the time: a few years ago, there was little evidence to support using statins in primary prevention. Now there is compelling evidence. A good skeptic wouldn’t rely on the opinion of a single individual from several years ago; he would consider the consensus of experts who are up-to-date on today’s latest research.

Young says thousands of patients are taking statins who will not benefit from them. That’s true, as I explained in my article and illustrated with the visual decision aid shown in Figure 1. In fact, most patients don’t benefit from most drugs. We prescribe antibiotics for sinusitis, but they only speed resolution of symptoms for one out of every fifteen patients (http://www. thennt.com/nnt/antibiotics-for-radiologically-diagnosed-sinusitis/). We have to treat 125 patients with blood pressure medications to prevent one death, 100 to prevent one heart attack, sixty-seven to prevent one stroke. We have no way to predict which individuals will benefit, so we are stuck treating many who won’t. I like to compare it to insurance. Most people insure their homes against fire, but not many houses burn down. Richardson offers an untested “flow through” hypothesis and claims that Pregnenolone lowers cholesterol better than statins. He offers no evidence from clinical studies, because there isn’t any. As Christopher Hitchens said, “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”

Teaching Evolution

Regarding “Helping Teachers Teach Evolution in the United States” (May/June 2017): My years of teaching Biology were at Las Cruces High School in Las Cruces, New Mexico. During many of those years, we had a unique biology program featuring a two-year rotating schedule of one-semester courses. All students were required to take human biology, which was offered every semester. besides it, they could take genetics and the cell (recommended for college bound), human physiology, marine biology, mammology, or others, or another science course. I taught the one-semester course on evolution.

It is possible to study evolution step-by-step, starting with the fact that evolution happens in populations, not individuals. An individual cannot evolve, an exception being hybrid plants that double their chromosomes and thereby become fertile. Next, there is variety in populations. We do not all look the same due to genes and DNA. Then, populations tend to increase in size at exponential rates. Put a pair of fruit flies in a jar and count them over time. . . .

There is selection for genes that are an advantage in the environment. If you have both black chickens and white chickens on a white background, the chicken hawk is going to kill mostly black ones because they are obvious. If the background is black, the hawk will kill mostly white ones.

This selection causes the frequency of genes in populations to change over time. The end. The change in frequency of genes in populations over time is what evolution is. What that has caused is a different matter. Also, such changes have been observed, which makes evolution a fact, not a theory.

One of the biggest problems in teaching evolution is that those who are against it do not know what it is.

Toward the end of the course we brought our Bibles for discussion. Without pounding the desk, I advised them, at their stage in life, to consider the nature of their belief in God. If God functioned in their life as the explanation for what they did not understand, then the more they understood, the less they needed God. They should consider making the nature and need for God more personal.

Roy Vail Mena,
Arkansas

APA’s Long Erosion

Douglas M. Stokes writes in the May/June 2017 Skeptical Inquirer (“Chicken Acceleration? APA puts Imprimatur on Credulous Psi Book”) that the publication by the American Psychological Association (APA) of a book presenting a positive view of parapsychology represents an “erosion of the APA’s scientific standards.” Regrettably, that erosion did not begin with the book that Stokes addresses; it has been going on for some time.

Consider these books published by the APA since 1999: Integrating Spirituality Into Treatment, 1999; A Spiritual Strategy for Counseling and Psychotherapy, Second Edition (“highlights the therapeutic possibilities religion and spirituality can offer”), 2005; Spiritually Oriented Psychotherapy (“examining the spiritual dimensions in therapy”), 2005; Spirituality and the Therapeutic Process, 2009; Spiritual Practices in Psychotherapy (“integrating spiritual and religious tools in therapy”), 2009; Spiritually Oriented Interventions for Counseling and Psychotherapy (which addresses “sacred themes in therapy”), 2011; Spiritual Interventions in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy (which addresses “use of prayer,” “sacred texts,” and “God images in therapy”), 2013; and APA Handbook of Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality, Two Volumes, 2013. And these APA videos: Theistic Integrative Psychology, Spiritual Awareness Psychotherapy, and Christian Counseling. The APA also publishes the journal Spirituality in Clinical Practice, which “encompasses spiritually oriented psychotherapy.” Finally, the APA heralded its publishing in 2014 of Complementary and Alternative Medicine for Psychologists (“from ayurveda to yoga [also Herbals, Aromatherapy, Chiropractic, and Reiki]. . . how these treatments actually work . . . making referrals to qualified CAM providers”).

I am awaiting the APA’s publishing Exorcism for Psychologists.

The membership of the Association for Psychological Science (APS), by the way, includes scientifically oriented clinicians. APS publishes the journal Clinical Psychological Science, which is edited by Scott O. Lilienfeld, a member of CSI’s Executive Council.

Kenneth G. Crosby
(APA retired fellow, APS retired member)
Livingston, Texas

Fairies and Furry Beasts

I was interested to read “The Return of the Fairies” in the SI (May/ June 2017) in which Polidoro mentions the Rossendale Fairies (not Rossdale as stated). I was born and brought up in Rossendale. Nothing ever happens there and although I have not lived in Rossendale for many years, I still receive the local paper The Rossendale Free Press, mainly to read the obituary columns.

I cannot recall any mention of the fairies at the time (I understand they were photographed in Whittaker Park, where I used to play tennis and once had a brief job as a gardener). However, from time to time the newspaper features a report of the sighting of “The Huttock Top Beast.” Huttock Top is a rural area in Rossendale and some say that the mysterious beast is a lynx or a puma. Whenever the newspaper announces a new sighting there is a flurry of further reports of evidence of the creature’s presence (a paw print that “can’t be anything other than a puma’s”; a sheep “so badly savaged it could not have been by a dog or fox,” etc.). Interest then dies down until the next sighting.

In the 1980s, there were reported sightings of a lion wandering around but nothing came of it. In fact, big cat sightings have been a common phenomenon for many years in the British Isles and there are a number of groups and websites dedicated to reporting them. There is no convincing evidence that they actually exist (other than a couple of recaptures of escaped animals). Most recently one was caught on camera in Somerset (http://tinyurl.com/lj6hsrp). Some people think it may be two animals walking together.

Michael Heap
www.mheap.com

Nicely Subversive

Just loved “All the Skeptic Ladies” by Celestia Ward in the May/June 2017 SI [Last Laugh page]! I had never heard of her before, but Google was informative. She’s brilliant, and nicely vulgar and subversive (I particularly liked her nice, calm “WHY?”). And I’ve met some of her skeptical friends—Eugenie and Dr. Harriet. Let’s see more of her.

From a mere male,

Ray Ward
(a distant relative, no doubt!)
London, England

Statistical Fallacy about Nuclear Risks

Dr. Daniel A. Vogel’s essay “Nuclear Power and the Psychology of Evaluating Risk” (November/December 2016 and Letters, March/ April 2017) offers a thinking person’s version of the statistical argument that total deaths from nuclear power accidents are, as yet, far less than annual deaths from coal-smoke pollution. He claims, “There are risks millions of us take every day that vastly surpass that of operating Chernobyl and Fukushima on their worst days.”

But that is precisely the hole in Vogel’s argument. We do not yet know what a worst day, a worst scenario, might be for a nuclear power plant. Even the biggest disasters so far have been ones that, in the end, proved just possible to (partially) control and manage. We have not yet seen a true full meltdown. We have not yet seen a nuclear plant in the hands of suicidal terrorists or a psychotic individual. We have not yet seen a war in which missiles target nuclear power stations. In the early days of Fukushima, there was a small but very real chance of an explosion whose wind-blown fallout would make not just Japan but much or most of the Northern hemisphere uninhabitable. Such risks are small—per year. But in time they approach certainties because corners are always being cut, since in the real world nuclear power is run by private companies whose motive is profit, not safety.

Mark O’Connor
Canberra, ACT,
Australia

[Mark O’Connor has published a long review of Vogel’s argument on his blog at http://markoconnor-australianpoet. blogspot.com/.]

Daniel A. Vogel replies:

I had the pleasure of corresponding with Mr. O’Connor, who argues that my addressing the biases inherent when evaluating the risk of nuclear power failed to account for disasters that may not yet have arisen (e.g., a terrorist attempts to blow up a plant). It is true that I was considering prior accidents and not factoring in worst-case scenarios (although Mr. O’Connor is of course assuming that a rare attack would lead to one, whereas I was arguing that even including two prior worst-case scenarios, the average data on nuclear plants’ safety suggests a very good safety record, and thus their being well worth the risk). I was arguing that while many scientists feel nuclear power is the safest source of large-scale electricity, contributing minimally to global warming and being exceptionally clean, it seems possible to me that a bias is at work among nuclear energy opponents who will try to argue against that determination out of hand, as does Mr. O’Connor, looking for all sorts of strange loopholes such as a madman damaging a plant, rather than examining existing economical and environmental costs (storage of waste, high expense, time frame in building one, even a meltdown).

Is Mr. O’Connor’s argument part of a rational appraisal of the safety of one form of energy against another, especially when it could be leveled to critique almost anything? For example, crazy people did kidnap two planes and crash them into two skyscrapers, murdering 2,871 people, but would that be a valid argument against the average safety of airplanes or skyscrapers? (An average means that worst-case scenarios are included in estimating safety.) My small brain is fried thinking through all this, since after all we are living in a world with periodic outbreaks of terrorist attacks, however rarely, so I’ll leave the readers of Skeptical Inquirer to decide for themselves and, being curious by nature, I will hope that its editor will allow the juiciest responses further space in a future issue. I also think that ultimately this question is best settled by nuclear scientists, or at least physicists.

Confusing Liberals and Skeptics?

I’m a full-blooded skeptic (no gods, afterlife, miracles, ghosts, paranormal realm, “energy,” quack medicine, or cryptoids). I’m also a straight out conservative: social, fiscal, and cultural as well as a lifelong science enthusiast. I constantly have to point out to Christian friends that I’m tolerant. The rude, militant, obnoxious, condescending intolerance they are used to from liberal atheists comes from the liberalism, not the atheism.

Now here comes Bill Fishman (Letters, May/June 2017) telling me I have mere beliefs. Facts are irrelevant to me, and conservatives act while liberals debate. (I remember when SDS members, not a conservative among them, proclaimed it was “time to stop talking and start killing.” Hello, leftists haven’t stopped acting since.)

Fishman hopelessly confuses liberals and skeptics, but liberalism and skepticism are incompatible for the same reasons skepticism and intense religious belief are incompatible. To the appalling extent liberals have taken over the skeptical movement they have smothered and prostituted it in exactly the fashion they smother and prostitute every other movement they hijack.

The conservatives I know are mostly decent, intelligent, thoughtful people, many well educated who enjoy serious reading, generally are more responsible, compassionate, and trustworthy than liberals.

Liberalism is a social and psychological substitute for religion for most of its adherents. It embodies most of the pernicious elements of extreme religion and few of its virtues and there are few better examples of its lobotomizing attributes of superiority, importance, and entitlement than Fishman’s letter.

Here is the defining question where liberals and conservatives disagree. I call it a fact and you can call it anything you want: you and your friends do not have the knowledge, intelligence, wisdom, virtue, or incentives to justify controlling my life to the overweening and debilitating extent you desire.

Norman Carlson
Busti, New York

And That’s No Bull

The articles on the Library of Congress (“Library Catalogs Deny Science Denial” and “Information Bias in Library Catalogs,” May/ June 2017) by Sanford Berman and Timothy Binga were fine introductions to problems in cataloging. However, I submit that the Library of Congress deserves our admiration, having chosen “BS” as the call sign for “The Bible” in their classification system.

Jerome Shedd
Ripton, Vermont

Why Respect Fantasies?

I’ve read the letter from Sharon Sheffield and Benjamin Radford’s reply to it (“Odysseys in Skepticism,” Letters, March/April 2017) regarding Radford’s earlier article, “Skepticism’s Big Tent.” There are billions upon billions of faith-believers among us. Faith is a firm belief in the truth of something based on hope and conjecture. There is zero proof that a transcendental personal god exists, or that any god exists, or that that god, the one given credit for creating carnivores who must inflict excruciating pain and suffering on innocent herbivores for food, is kind, just, or all-loving. I find the belief that an angel named Gabriel came down to Earth and dictated the contents of the Qur’an to an illiterate desert dweller over a twenty-three-year period to be preposterous.

Carl Sagan rightly observed that “the physical laws of the universe apply equally to everyone.” The notion that Jesus died on the cross and was dead for three days before rising and going to Galilee is equally preposterous. The brain, deprived of oxygen for ten minutes, is dead. Within an hour of death, rigor mortis begins setting in. Frankly, I find it virtually impossible to accord any degree of respect or dignity to those fantasies, to say nothing about the notion that the Earth was created by their god in six days. Those folks simply don’t know what they don’t know. I should respect that?

Richard Sutherland
Winter Haven, Florida

From the Editors

Benjamin Radford’s review of Robert Sheaffer’s book Bad UFOs (July/August 2017) noted that the book contained random words in boldface. Sheaffer notes in his introduction (which was not included in the preview copy sent for review) that the boldfaced terms denote Internet search terms in place of conventional footnotes or URLs.

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