Phactum sampling

Letters to the Editor

The discussions of alternative therapies in the June Phactum display some confusion about the nature of "evidence." Ken Barnes thinks that one piece of anecdotal evidence should be taken seriously. This may be true when you are dealing with a single person. For example, if I take a certain drug to relieve my allergy symptoms, then if I don't die or fall asleep and if the drug does relieve my symptoms, then I can say that the drug works for me. But does it work for the general population? I cannot say from one bit of evidence. The reason is that people are variable: what works for one person may not work for another.

As my former wife, the epidemiologist, used to say, "Statistics do not apply to individuals. Statistics apply to populations." Conversely, a single bit of evidence applies to one individual, but not to a population. For this reason, we need to obtain numerous bits of evidence in order to have "evidence" that a given drug is suitable for the entire population. Even then, most drugs, and other forms of treatment approved by the medical profession do not work on everybody. In the Physician's Desk Reference, a large volume listing the properties of all approved drugs, each drug comes with a chart showing its effectiveness. Prozac, a widely popular antidepressant, is listed as being "effective" or "highly effective" for only 50% of the population. 50% is better than nothing. When I was about to get an epidural injection to relieve sciatic pain, the doctor warned me that the treatment worked well on one third the population, worked somewhat on another third, and did not work at all for the final third. I belonged to the final third. So when I went to a surgeon for spinal surgery, he told me that his operation had a 90% effectiveness. That's the kind of statistics I like.

Conclusion: If alternative treatments can come up with statistics of this nature then I will have no difficulty in taking them seriously.

There is also some misunderstanding about double-blind experiments. The double-blind technique was developed by members of the Vienna Medical Society in 1844, over 150 years ago. The need for it arose because it was found that the results of clinical trials were skewed by the manner in which the doctors doing the trials presented the drugs being tested. The doctors giving the real drug tended to be optimistic because they were trying to prove that this drug was good. When they gave the placebo, on the other hand, they were not as optimistic. As a result, the patients getting the drug from the optimistic, cheerful doctor tended to say "Yes, I feel better." Not because of the drug but because of the power of suggestion, which should never be ignored. For that reason, it was decided that the doctors conducting the tests should not know which patients were getting the drug under test and which were getting the placebo. For further details about this and other errors in research see my book The Science Gap, chapter 11.

Moral: Those interested in alternative cures are likely to be enthusiasts who really want their tests to give positive results. Beware of a scientist who falls in love with his/her theories.

Milton Rothman

I enjoyed Bob's piece on alien abductions vs. time travelers in the April Phactum. However, time travel poses so many metaphysical questions it makes the head spin, as many sci-fi writers have noted. If the TTs were to change the past to prevent the crash, in what unexpected ways would they alter the future? Can they even, indeed, truly alter the past -- or is their voyage back in time to change events itself an unalterable part of the past? This is the modern version of Predestination vs. Free Will on which Calvin and so many other theologians cracked their weary brains. Recall that in conventional Christian theology, one of God's main attributes is that He is outside time, like Bob's hypothetical (I hope) TTs.

"They could opt for a more confrontational approach and come in blasting away ... the area 51 personnel wouldn't stand a chance." True, but it would create one hell of a stir. Surely the most efficient way would be to go back in time and prevent the parents of the inconvenient persons from conceiving them, a la Back to the Future and many similar fictional works. But that raises the question of whether someone else would simply be stationed in their places. If one were fated to encounter someone at the crash site, would it have to be a specific someone? Now you see why Calvin was such a sour, gloomy individual.

I don't see why alien abductors or TTs would be satisfied with only a thousand samples of homo sapiens to learn anatomy, any more than science teachers are satisfied with only a thousand frogs. Maybe the visitors, whether ETs or TTs, are the equivalent of sophomore biology classes on field trips. Every student gets his own human on which to experiment. I suppose we should be grateful they don't pith us, although with some of the alleged abductees, how could we tell if they had?

Theories about alien contact have an implicit fallacy at their core -- they assume that aliens would recognize us as an intelligent species worthy to be treated, if not as equals, at least with respect. Is it possible that advanced creatures from other worlds might look at our cities, roads and bridges with the same attitude with which humans view a bowerbird's nest or a honeycomb, and listen to our languages as we interpret bird calls and wolf howls; as products of instinct? I forget who said that when an animal does something we call it instinct, and when a human does the exact same thing we call it intelligence.

As for why the ETs have never tried to reclaim the bodies of their comrades at Wright-Patterson: Since, as far as I know, no one claims to have inspected these bodies recently, they may not be there anymore. Maybe the ETs already sneaked in and took them home.

Or maybe the ETs have a complex theology in which when good ETs (or bad ones?) die, they go to Earth. Or maybe they just don't care; even among humans, customs concerning the disposal of dead bodies vary widely. A friend of our family donated her body for medical school dissection; maybe the ETs believe that starring in an "alien autopsy" is the best possible use that could be made of their remains, and thus they kindly ship them on to us.

A. C. Willment