Philip Klass can take a vacation. The threat of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence has been eclipsed by that of a more awesome and powerful set of lurkers in our midst --- Time Travelers! Time travel is inevitable since people have all of eternity to figure it out. It turns out that TTs have been popping in and out of history to shape events to their liking. TTs are able to draw on the super-technology of tomorrow and then travel into their own future and obtain even greater technology. These fearsome menaces are therefore far more powerful than the comparatively inept ETs who have been trying to plunder our planet and people. Just consider some of the ETs' blunders. First off, their ships are too easily seen by the naked eye, movie and video cameras, Polaroids and radar. It seems you can't walk down the street or past a military airbase without sighting one. Where is their stealth technology or better yet their cloaking devices? No self-respecting alien would allow himself (herself?) (itself?) to be photographed, let alone have his likeness appear on an episode of Outer Limits. The TTs are more advanced. Not a single photograph of them or of their technology has been, or will be, produced! This is because if a photo did exist, they could repeatedly go back in time until they retrieved it. TTs are also responsible for the vast majority of computer viruses. The Crash at Roswell is source of embarrassment to the ET community. More than likely, such a small ship was an advanced scout for a larger Mothership. Unfortunately, either their long range scanners were too weak or their response to trouble was too slow. They were beaten to the site by farmers and townspeople. Not only that but the government and military agents who confiscated the ship and bodies had the ETs outgunned with mere rifles and pistols. The result was that all of the wreckage was carted away and the ETs didn't have a clue how to find it or get it back. The TTs would simply have gone back in time and prevented the crash by correcting its cause in the first place. Things are no better now for the ETs than they were 50 years ago, they remain stymied. The wreckage lies quietly tucked away at Area 51 and they still don't know how to get it back. If the TTs were in this predicament, they'd have several options even if they elected not to change the time stream. They could stop time and physically cart everything out. They could use their matter transporters and teleport everything out. Or they could opt for a more confrontational approach and come in blasting away with full phasers and nerve disrupters. The Area 51 personnel wouldn't stand a chance. The loss of their equipment and their brethren aren't the ET's only shortcomings. How many humans do they have to abduct and dissect before they figure out our anatomy? One or two maybe, but anything over 1,000 is overkill. TTs wouldn't even have to peel back a single layer of skin. Able to become totally invisible with their personal cloaking devices, their medical analyzers and their tricorders, TTs would be able to dissect people as they walked down the street without needing to touch them. TTs , continued from page 1: Then again, ETs' sexual habits are curious indeed. Why do they bother to kidnap people and fly them all over the universe, just to have their way with them? I guess a long trip through hyperspace really gets one worked up. The TTs could easily obtain cell samples from some choice specimens. Then they could clone their own herd of genetically altered, willing slaves. Once again the abilities of the TTs triumph over those of those blundering ETs. If all of this sounds like bad science fiction, it should. Maybe the only way to fight bad science fiction is with more bad science fiction. I now return you to your regularly scheduled newsletter. [I think Bob is joking but he might not be; once you admit government conspiracies, aliens and other planes of reality to your mind, there's no knowing where paranoia will lead you. (Of course the government knows all about the Time Travelers but it has decided not to tell us in case there is (was? will be?) a panic.) However, I do wonder about one thing. Those alien bodies have been festering away at Wright-Patterson or wherever for nearly 50 years. In all that time has there not been even one diplomatic request for their remains to be returned to their grieving relatives? Is there no ET-MIA group? Or do aliens just not care? Tom N ]
Mr A. has debilitating back pain. Sometimes he gets stuck in one position and can't get out of his car. Sometimes he has to stay in bed all day. There is no FDA approved medicine to relieve the pain. A surgeon has told Mr A. that surgical intervention has a 50% chance of success. If Mr A. were to have surgery he would be in the hospital for a week and flat on his back for six weeks. Is Mr A. rational to consider alternative therapies before he submits to high cost surgery that may not work? Should Mr A. listen to his Skeptic friend that once read a negative article on Chiropractors in the Skeptical Inquirer? Miss B. has been told that she has inoperable cancer. Chemotherapy has been suggested to her. The success rate of chemotherapy is not high for her type of cancer. The side effects of chemotherapy are known to be horrendous. She has heard about a treatment that is available in Mexico and not in the US. Miss B. learns of people with cancer similar to hers who say they have been cured by this treatment. Should Miss B listen to her Skeptic friend who says she read in the Skeptical Inquirer that this Mexico treatment involves pseudo-scientific claims and hasn't been proven? Mrs C. is bothered by headaches and fatigue. Her physician can find nothing wrong with her. Her friend recommends that she see a nutritionist. Should Mrs C. listen to her Skeptic husband that opposes any kind of alternative treatment on philosophical grounds? When will the community of Skeptics learn that they have been wrong about health treatment? When will they begin making positive contributions to the health treatment debate rather than go on with their tirades, which no thinking person takes seriously? So often Skeptics mistakenly lump Alternative Health treatments with the truly bizarre. These Skeptics then dismiss all Alternative Health Treatments. The purpose of this article is to try to educate Skeptics to look at health issues from the point of view of the individual who must make decisions with less than perfect information. Health is a different issue than so many others that Skeptics are concerned with. While we may worry that people who believe in ghosts, astrology and alien abductions are somehow a threat to us, these people and their beliefs are usually at a distance from us personally. On the other hand, we all have a personal concern for our health. It is the rare individual that has not experienced a serious health concern either for themselves, for a family member or close friend. The risks to each of us are real. Some personal background will explain why I say that the Skeptical community has been looking at health issues from the wrong end. My doctors say that I have Multiple Sclerosis. MS is a disease that is poorly understood. Diagnosis is difficult. There is no treatment for it. My doctors could give me no suggestions as to what I should do to maintain my health or improve my condition. Meanwhile my condition was slowly deteriorating. Since the medical community had nothing to offer I turned to alternate therapies. The Skeptics' advice on these therapies was to do nothing since none of them were 'proven' effective. However, doing nothing is not an option for me. While looking at the alternate therapies I also looked at the Skeptics' arguments against them. This is when I saw the gaping holes in what the Skeptics had to say. The Difference: When people speak of Alternative Health Treatment they mean treatments that are not sanctioned by traditional, orthodox medical practitioners. Alternative practitioners characteristically treat the whole person and are concerned with the individual staying healthy. Their methods are noninvasive and safe. On the other hand, orthodox health care in the US is marked by high cost unnecessary surgery, the use of placebos, medical treatment on a trial and error basis, lying to patients about their condition, and extensive use of dangerous pharmaceuticals. Orthodox medicine is devoted exclusively to symptom suppression and crisis care. Specifically: 1. Orthodox practitioners have little to say about staying healthy because traditional health care is oriented toward acute care and crisis intervention. Alternative practitioners pride themselves on treating the whole person. Their goal is for us to stay healthy. This means that there are large gaps in what the orthodox practitioner can speak on, for example, they rarely have anything intelligent to say about food (including vitamins and herbs). What you eat has quite a bit to do with your long term health so of course people turn to 'alternative' sources. 2. Orthodox medicine tends to deal with symptoms and symptom suppression. Alternative practitioners see symptoms as an indication of an underlying condition. They want to understand and 'treat' that condition. 3. Orthodox medicine frequently involves dangers to the patient. With alternative treatments there is usually a clear understanding that if they don't work they won't hurt you. 4. Orthodox practitioners, because they are constantly under scrutiny by the FDA and their various conservative Boards, tend to require an unreasonably high level of what they call proof of any treatment mode. Alternative practitioners work from anecdotal evidence of what works. The experience of many practitioners in many places and over time are given the most weight. Each person is treated as the individual he or she is. About Evidence: Whenever you see the words, 'There is no evidence for ...' in an article on Alternative health care you can be sure the author is either dishonest or doesn't know what he is talking about. The concept 'evidence' is often considered in densely abstract philosophical treatises. People trained in the sciences understand the concepts 'evidence' and 'proof' as they apply to their special area of interest. How do these concepts apply to health treatments? When we think about evidence in evaluating health treatments many Skeptics focus on the double blind study as the only standard of evidence or proof. This approach is mistaken. Let me explain. We all know that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but we don't all know how this applies to health care. To me, one of the most extraordinary claims that a person can make is that he has invented a molecule (not found in nature) that will have some positive effect on the body, e.g., lower blood pressure, make headaches go away, stop cancer, etc. Because people throughout the world are skeptical of the extraordinary claims for pharmaceuticals they want solid proof that first, it is safe, and second, that it does what it is claimed to do. To provide this proof a sophisticated protocol of testing leading to double blind studies are called for. Since the manufacturers of these pharmaceuticals make huge profits when one of their molecules is thus proven, they can afford to do the extensive testing required. Vitamins, herbs and minerals are not and should not be held to a similar standard. Here is why. They are naturally occurring substances that for the most part have already been studied. For many of them we already know that the body needs them at some level. Herbs, which can be considered foods, occur in nature. If a person really understands them, they can make rational suggestions for their consumption. The question of evidence brings in many concerns about who we can trust. Even if a particular substance is proven by experts to be safe and effective, how do we know that in the hands of Dr X, who was last in his class, we will get the same results?
Since we, as skeptics, expect claimants to provide evidence, we should give some thought as to what evidence we would find acceptable. In some cases, even if a phenomenon existed it might be difficult to provide proof. However, in the case of physical phenomena, providing evidence should not be too difficult. UFOs, Noah's Ark, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster --- if they exist, produce the hardware. Failing that, would a good photograph suffice? Should we be convinced, for example, by the much ballyhooed, and much derided, "Alien Autopsy?" About a year ago I spent a few hours in the company of an engineer who happens to be an evangelical UFO believer. He kept on asking me what it would take to make me believe in alien spacecraft. It was as if he had all the evidence on tap, he only had to dig out the right anecdote and I would suddenly be converted. Unfortunately I don't find anecdotes too convincing these days. On the spur of the moment I couldn't think of a really telling criterion but the next time someone asks me I am likely to answer, "Reading an analysis of alien technology in a peer-reviewed scientific journal." You see, being once bitten, I am twice shy. In my early teens I was convinced of the reality of flying saucers. It was photographic evidence which convinced me. Not one photograph, that I realized could be a fake, but two. They clearly showed the same object and they had ostensibly been taken by unrelated people in different countries. I was quite pleased with myself to have realized that these photos constituted proof since the author didn't raise the issue himself. However, the only place I had seen those photos was in a book written by George Adamski. The only evidence that they had been taken by different people was the author's word. Later in life I attained a higher level of skeptical sophistication. I realized that I had no independent evidence that the entire book was not a hoax --- which it was. However, my head was in the right place. If two unrelated people had photographed an object clearly enough for it to be identified as the same thing, and if it could not be shown to be some unusual but mundane object, then this would still constitute pretty hard evidence. Unfortunately, this is no longer true of any single photograph and, to some extent, never was. The possibility of faking photographic evidence has always existed, witness the Cottingley Fairies. Only under rather unusual circumstances can a photograph, even an undeveloped negative, be taken at face value. It would require the movement of the roll of film to be tracked by an independent witness from the store all the way to the processing lab. Just as having too perfect an alibi makes one the most likely suspect, anyone with the foresight to set up such an evidential trail risks condemning themselves as a would-be hoaxer. However, these days it is all too easy to fake photographs, check the tabloids at your neighborhood supermarket if you don't believe me. (Or, more surprisingly, see the cover of the February 1994, Scientific American. This shows a photograph of Marilyn Monroe, arm in arm with Abraham Lincoln.) The last hold-out for evidence of strange animals or spacecraft used to be movie film or video tape. Traditionally it has been much harder to fake moving objects convincingly, as dozens of bad science fiction movies demonstrate. Now that door too is closing. For some time it has been possible, even for patient amateurs, to use a computer to generate convincing images on video tape, either by modifying an existing recording or by creating complete images from scratch. Suitable hardware and software can be bought for less than $5000. Because of its higher resolution, it is more difficult to manipulate movie film with amateur equipment, though to some extent processing time can be traded for cost. With professional equipment the result can be indistinguishable from reality. Movie makers routinely insert computer generated images into their productions where it would be too expensive or impossible to film the real thing. Rather than rent three MIG-29s for a fly-over scene in Goldeneye, the producers created the shot, complete with motion blur, on a souped-up Amiga . They used a 3-D computer model of a MIG-29. If they had used a UFO model the results would have been just as convincing. In Forrest Gump, Gary Sinise played a legless veteran so well via computer trickery that his agent now worries that he won't be be offered any more walking roles. Remember Jurassic Park next time someone wants to show you a film of Bigfoot. However, even as advancing technology closes the door on visual evidence, it makes physical evidence more compelling. If flying saucers really are made of alloys unknown on earth, samples can now be analyzed non-destructively in ways which would convincingly eliminate a terrestrial origin. Wood from Noah's Ark could be accurately dated by carbon-14 or neutron activation analysis. If Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster are captured, or if the Roswell bodies ever emerge from cold storage, DNA testing will show their relationship, or lack of it, to other earthly organisms. Technology has upped the ante but, should you hold the right cards, the jackpot is easier to win than ever. Further reading: When is Seeing Believing?, William J. Mitchell, Scientific American, February 1994 The Digital Backlot, Robert Braham, Spectrum, July 1995 Premium Bond, Ben Vost, Amiga Computing, Issue 7 See also Tom Flynn's series in Skeptical Briefs.
PhACT Council member Eric Krieg presented "Does Astrology Work?" to 27 PhACT members and guests on Saturday, February 24. Rather than give a standard skeptical lecture about astrology, he challenged the audience with a balanced approach. Eric first discussed the things that people do not know about astrology. He pointed out that many astrologers do not consider it "psychic" and that many do not believe in fate. He then raised many eyebrows by listing eight invalid claims made by skeptics. The invalid claim that garnered the most attention was that few accurate predictions are made by astrology. This claim was the center of much discussion after the talk. Next, he proceeded to give some defenses of astrology such as the lunar effects on oysters and tides, and Gauquelin's correlation between the position of Mars and the fame of an athlete. Eric then wrapped up the pro-astrology side with some current explanations of how it works, including quantum physics allowing for miracles, self delusion, or a yet to be discovered energy. The second half of the lecture gave skeptics their due. Eric pointed out a number of invalid attacks which astrologers commonly made on science such as personal attacks on individuals, and claims that scientists are always defending the status quo, or that science is "dehumanizing." The views of skeptics were then listed, many being familiar to the audience such as the lack of universal views of astrology, and how the precession of the Earth through the ages make it unlikely. Eric followed these views with some examples of how to make an accurate test of astrology. The program closed with some reasons why people believe in astrology and some guidelines for skeptics when encountering this subject. The question and answer session that followed was lively and thought provoking, making it a fitting ending for a great program.
On March 23rd, Phil Klass did over forty of us proud! Not only did we get his presentation, "Bringing UFOs Down to Earth," but we got a second hour's talk on "What the Media won't tell you about Roswell." The subsequent discussion session lasted until the library staff threw us out at 5pm. About twenty of us then moved on to Fisher's where the discussion continued over an excellent meal. We only broke up about 7.30 because Phil had to catch his train back to Washington. Phil pointed out that UFOs are real and that reports of many events have been made by multiple credible witnesses. The problem is whether the reported events can be identified as alien spacecraft or whether investigation will reveal them to be misidentifications of mundane phenomena. He gave as an example an eye-witness report, from a distance of 1000 feet, which contained such details as windows and riveted-plate construction. This turned out to be the re-entry of a Soviet booster rocket seen at a distance of many miles. Another multiple report was of a mothership and several scout ships which flew close by three aircraft in turn, swerving to avoid the third. All three pilots had seen a meteor fireball with glowing fragments breaking off it. It hadn't passed within 300 feet of the planes, it had been 50 miles away. It was only identified because someone on the ground happened to photograph it. After the Air Force gave up collecting UFO reports in 1969, the amateur groups took over. Their principle was to assume an extra-terrestrial origin if no immediate prosaic explanation could be found. As Phil pointed out, this encourages sloppy research, particularly as the UFO groups have a tendency to refuse to publish, or even to fire, investigators who probe too far and burst their best cases. However, even the UFO groups have had difficulty swallowing the Gulf Breeze photos which Phil convincingly showed to be a (highly profitable) hoax. Phil then fielded questions on SETI, John Mack, multi-dimensional worlds, David Jacobs and the needless fear of alien abduction. On the Roswell Incident, the alleged recovery of a crasher saucer in 1947 and the subsequent government cover-up, Phil revealed that the recovered debris had come from a highly secret spy project and that, to that extent, the "weather balloon" story had been untrue. However, there had been no alien spacecraft. His proof was photocopies of once secret CIA and Air Force memos from the years just after 1947. In these the people who would be expected to know most about the "crashed saucer" are plaintively asking each other, "Have you any idea what these UFO things are?" One theme to which Phil kept returning, both in the discussion session and in his Roswell exposée, is the extent to which UFOs are a media conspiracy. Though he has been interviewed many times for TV programs, little of what he has said has made it past the cuttingroom floor. The saucer proponents and conspiracy theorists get all the publicity but the man who can show that there is no government cover-up can't get a hearing. Despite all this, Phil keeps looking, as he has been doing for 30 years, still hoping to find the evidence for a real extra-terrestrial spacecraft.
As I write this, Comet Hyakutake is speeding across the northern sky. In days gone by comets were regarded as astrological portents of doom. Today, at least in the newspapers I read, they are treated as innocent spectacles worth half a page of diagrams and some advice on how best to see them. What the press has not emphasized is why Hyakutake is bright and fast moving. It is passing the Earth very rapidly and, by astronomical standards, very close by. Another thing not being emphasized is that this comet was first spotted on January 30th. (By Yuji Hyakutake, a Japanese amateur astronomer. Did any astrologers or psychics predict its coming?) In other words, we had about eight weeks warning of a sizable comet headed almost straight at us. The nucleus of Hyakutake is about as big as the asteroid which took out the dinosaurs. Being ice rather than stone, it is somewhat lighter but, arriving more rapidly, it might easily have had more impact energy. We were lucky this time, but the day a comet does have our name on it we could get those same eight weeks of warning. Were we a forward-looking, technologically advanced and space-faring species, we would be keeping a close look out for incoming objects. We would have spacecraft available to intercept them and to nudge them off course. We might even have self-sustaining colonies on some of the other moons and planets of our Solar System. Right now, the only difference between us and the dinosaurs is that we will have a few weeks notice in which to contemplate our extinction. Should that day come, no amount of feel-good faith will make a bit of difference. If we retreat from science and technology, to wallow in credulity and mysticism we will, some day, be every bit as extinct as the dinosaurs. All material is copyright © 1996 by PhACT. All rights reserved.
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