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2000 mules: why many Americans are convinced Trump won the 2020 election

Jim Cliff
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2000 mules: why many Americans are convinced Trump won the 2020 election

In the recent vice-presidential debate in the United States, JD Vance refused to answer a simple question. Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?

It’s not surprising that he didn’t want to admit it. While vice-presidential debates are rarely consequential, he couldn’t afford to lose support from either his notoriously thin-skinned running mate, or the Republican base, and as recently as August 2024 an ABC/Ipsos poll found that only 30% of Republicans believe that Joe Biden legitimately won in 2020.

Why does this belief persist, despite a total lack of evidence of widespread voter fraud? Part of the reason is Trump himself, who tells his supporters at nearly all his rallies that the only way he can lose in 2024 is if Democrats cheat “again”, like they did in 2020. But, when pressed, a significant portion of the Republican faithful will tell you that there is, in fact, evidence that Biden stole the election – all you need to do is watch 2000 Mules.

2000 Mules promotional film poster featuring a man dressed in black with his hood up and face covered, pushing ballots into a box.
Promotional poster for the ‘documentary’ 2000 Mules, written and directed by Dinesh D’Souza. ‘They thought we’d never find out. They were wrong’, reads the tagline.

Directed by conservative pundit and conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza, 2000 Mules is a documentary that purports to show exactly how the election was rigged, through a network of left-wing non-profit organisations who “harvested” ballots and used paid operatives, or “mules”, to distribute them around multiple ballot drop boxes in battleground states.

The theory was dreamed up by Catherine Englebrecht and Gregg Phillips of True the Vote, a right-wing group dedicated to uncovering “irregularities”, which in their view threaten the integrity of elections. While you might not know their names, you may be aware of their previous work – Trump’s 2016 claim that he “won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally” came directly from Gregg’s assertion that he had found evidence of three million “non-citizen votes”. Despite promising to release proof of this to the public, he never did. Similar unsubstantiated assertions form the backbone of 2000 Mules, but they are lent the veneer of legitimacy by the sciencey-sounding way True the Vote collected data to prove their case.

Gregg explains in the film that your phone is constantly emitting and receiving signals that include geolocation data, and apps gather that data. Sometimes that’s so that the apps can help you navigate, or help an Uber driver locate you, and other times apps will collect it so that they can show you ads relevant to your location, like if you’re close to a McDonalds, for example. The other reason they collect this data is that they can then sell it to data brokers.

True the Vote bought 10 trillion of these location data “pings” so that they could pinpoint where people had been during the election period.

In the US, mail-in ballots can be returned through regular mailboxes or by posting them in secure ballot drop boxes. True the Vote chose to focus their investigation on the five states that Trump won in 2016, and Biden won in 2020, and in each state they located each of the drop boxes and cross-checked their phone data to see who had visited those locations on multiple occasions.

Gregg and Catherine reasoned that a voter would visit a drop box when posting their own ballot, and perhaps they might find themselves near a drop box another time, but anyone who has more than a few visits starts to look suspect. They decided to set a threshold of 10 unique drop box visits and five visits to some unnamed non-profit organisations, which True the Vote theorised (for reasons never explained in the film) were being used as “stash houses” for harvested ballots; any individual who met that threshold is, by their definition, a “mule”. They use these terms because, they claim, this operation resembled drug trafficking or human trafficking, but in this case it’s ballots that are being trafficked. Using this method, they claim to have identified a little over 2,000 mules in the five states they studied.

In case the geolocation evidence doesn’t convince you that these people were up to no good, True the Vote also used Open Records requests to gather official government surveillance video of drop boxes, so that we can see the mules at work, and around 24 are shown in the film. Based on the phone data they have gathered, assuming each mule deposited an average of five ballots on each visit to a drop box, and further assuming that each of those ballots was voting for Biden, then Trump in fact won three of those five states, and enough electoral college votes to win the 2020 election.

Unfortunately for Dinesh, True the Vote, and Trump, it’s a bit more complicated than that.

Not Quite

First of all, there’s no reason to make those last two assumptions. Even if we accept everything else in the film, we can’t know who the votes were for. As for the average number of ballots, based on the 17 clips they’ve included in the film where you can at least kind of see what’s going on, the average is 2.8. The most we saw from anybody was six.

More importantly, they never show us any of their geolocation data, which makes it very hard to check. However, we can check the accuracy of phone data to see if it would even be possible to use this method to prove their claims. According to the US government “GPS-enabled smartphones are typically accurate to within a 4.9 metre (16 foot) radius under open sky”. However, that little phrase “under open sky” is crucial. To get the best accuracy, the phone needs to have line of sight to four satellites, so it’s worse near buildings, bridges and trees.

One study from the University of Georgia found that in an urban environment the average error for a smartphone using GPS was about 10 metres and in some cases was as high as 40 metres. It’s clear that proving someone was within 5-40 metres of a drop box isn’t the same as proving that they actually posted some ballots in the box.

But what about that video evidence, surely that must prove something?

Well, no. The only video footage they have is from Georgia, where it’s completely legal to deliver ballots on behalf of family members or people in your care or custody, so showing someone posting several ballots at once isn’t proof of anything. And, despite claiming several times that they have evidence of people going to multiple drop boxes, they don’t show any video of the same person at more than one drop box, or even the same drop box on multiple occasions.

In fact, one of the featured videos, of a man posting five ballots, was investigated by the Georgia State Election Board just days before 2000 Mules was released in cinemas in the US. Investigators identified the man, checked public records, and found there were five legal electors living in his home, all family members, and using the state’s voter verification system determined that ballots for all five of the voters were dropped at the drop box in question on the date the video was taken.

  • Screenshots from 2000 Mules, falsely claiming to show election fraud in progress
  • Screenshots from 2000 Mules, falsely claiming to show election fraud in progress
  • Screenshots from 2000 Mules, falsely claiming to show election fraud in progress
  • Screenshots from 2000 Mules, falsely claiming to show election fraud in progress

Unfortunately, this was the footage Dinesh chose to play while he says, in voiceover, “What you are seeing is a crime. These are fraudulent votes.” At the end of May 2024, the film’s producers, The Salem Media Group, paid the man a significant settlement, made a public apology, and removed the film from their platforms.

But the film is still available because, while Salem backed down, Dinesh and True the Vote refused to settle and are continuing to fight the lawsuit. You can still stream it on Dinesh’s locals channel and on Rumble, and election deniers still point to it as definitive proof of fraud because they refuse to check a single claim it makes in case their beliefs are shaken.

If Trump loses to Kamala Harris in November, I’ve no doubt these same claims will be repeated, and Trump and some of his most fervent followers will remain convinced that this film holds the key to why he lost.

2000 Mules and One Big Lie: A Stubborn Conspiracy Theory, by Jim Cliff is available now in print or ebook format.

Wim Hof: the self-described ‘Ice man’ whose extreme health claims leave many cold

Michael Marshall
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Wim Hof: the self-described ‘Ice man’ whose extreme health claims leave many cold

If you pay an attention to the world of alternative health, or the many, many podcasts and video series in which men (and it’s always men) talk about self-optimisation, you’ve almost certainly heard of Wim Hof. Hof has spent decades extolling the virtues of hyperventilation regimes and cold water plunges, claiming all manner of health benefits and protective qualities. He has made a career of illustrating the power of “The Wim Hof Method” via a variety of endurance demonstrations, building himself a lucrative brand as motivational speaker and quasi-spiritual guru along the way.

Wim Hof was a wellness expert on the Goop Lab, Netflix’s Gwyneth Paltrow collab. He was the star of Vice documentary Inside the Superhuman World of the Iceman. He fronted the BBC series Freeze the Fear with Wim Hof. He’s appeared on shows with Ellen DeGeneres, Joe Rogan, Russell Brand, Jordan Peterson, Stephen Bartlett, Brian Rose, and almost every other wellness channel and hustle culture program around, feted as an expert in what the human body can do, because of the record-breaking things his body has done.

Wim Hof speaks to Paltrow and Goop’s Chief Content Officer, Elise Loehnen, on Netflix’s Goop Lab. Via IMDB

It is undeniable that Hof has been capable of record-breaking feats of cold-temperature endurance. In 1999 he broke the Guinness World Record for farthest swum under ice, managing 50m without a diving suit, breathing apparatus or flippers, in his second attempt. His first, the previous day, ended abruptly after he tried without goggles, only for his corneas to freeze, temporarily blinding him. A year later, he went for the record again, extending it to 57.50m.

Hof’s record breaking wasn’t done, nor was his habit of seeing which bits of his body would freeze in interesting ways. In 2007, he ran a half marathon, on ice… barefoot. Hof completed the run in 2 hours 16 minutes, and his Wikipedia page lists it as the only current Guinness record in Hof’s name… though, as we’ll come to, that does not appear to be true.

In 2015, Hof took a team of 18 inexperienced climbers to the top of Kilimanjaro in just over 31 hours, without even first acclimatising them to the height. Hof said they could avoid altitude sickness by training in the Wim Hof Method, which is a combination of breathing techniques, ice cold water plungers, and meditation, which he believes is the key to his feats of endurance.

A photographer snaps pictures of Wim Hof, wearing a white headband, sat in a tank of ice that reaches up to his chin.
Wim Hof sitting in an ice bath. Image via aad on Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0

Finally, Hof broke the record for the longest time in direct, full-body contact with ice, spending 44 minutes in a box of ice cubes in January 2010. The he broke it again. And again. And 13 more times. Which is undoubtedly impressive. But is it really evidence that the Wim Hof Method is good for your health? To answer that, we must first understand what his method actually entails.

The Wim Hof Method

Hof’s eponymous method consists of taking regular freezing-cold ice baths, plus a breathing phase where you take 30-40 deep breaths in very quick and forceful succession, inducing hyperventilation, at which point you hold your breath for a while, and then take a deep breath and hold it. This has to be repeated three to four times. Doing this regularly, according to Hof, can have the kind of health benefits and protective qualities that allows him to pull off record-breaking feats of cold water exposure.  

Applications of the Wim Hof Method aren’t just limited to endurance feats. In interviews, Hof has claimed that it can cure headaches, which he says are caused by a lack of oxygen in the brain. He has also claimed that cold plunging and controlled breathing could be the answer for billions of people who suffer from high stress, anxiety, low motivation, inflammation, cardiovascular issues and other treatable conditions.

He told a journalist at the Guardian that his method will help treat osteoarthritis, and also depression. The Times reported that it can help with Parkinson’s, and according to Hof, will help you “live longer, never get ill or depressed”. In a 2014 interview in his native Netherlands, he intimated that he believed it could help cure cancer, saying:

I believe that every disease is an immune system that has gotten out of balance…
I absolutely think that, 95% of all diseases, including many forms of cancer, can be cured.

Unsurprisingly, the Wim Hof Method has been studied scientifically. In one study, Hof was injected with a harmless form of E. coli, which should cause flu-like symptoms, but he didn’t develop them, staying asymptomatic. So researchers took 30 participants, trained 18 of them in Hof’s breathing methods, and injected them with the same E. coli, noting that those 18 also escaped the worst of symptoms, compared to the other 12. But given that this was an incredibly small study with a wholly inadequate control arm, we can’t actually draw any conclusions from it.

However, even if this were a robust study, the findings might not be a surprise, because we already knew hyperventilation reduces the body’s inflammatory response via the release of adrenaline… but that isn’t always a good thing. The body has an inflammatory response for a reason, and you’re not always going to be in lab conditions getting injected with E. coli that’s designed to be harmless. And even if it were useful, the effect lasts while you’re currently hyperventilating – once your breathing returns to normal, your body goes back to normal. That’s what bodies do.

Unfortunately, it is not the only thing that bodies do when they hyperventilate – hyperventilation can also cause dizziness, and even passing out. Given that the Wim Hof method often involves people hyperventilating in or around ice water plunges, there’s a serious risk that proponents pass out in or into ice water. As of January 2024, journalist Scott Carney (who spent some time with Hof, and accompanied him up Kilimanjaro) had identified 21 reports of people dying while practicing the Wim Hof Method, mostly people passing out and drowning in various bodies of water of varying temperatures – and the total may even be higher. In June 2024, an exposé in the Sunday Times collated coroner’s reports from several of these deaths, citing a lawsuit in which the father of one victim argued that Hof and his company had been negligent.

Wim Hof and endurance

While the Sunday Times has much to say of the potential risks of the Wim Hof Method, they do not cover Hof’s claims as to his own remarkable feats of endurance. However, while interview after interview explains the many records Hof has broken, few interviews actually bother to follow up on those records to see where they currently stand.

Take, for example, Hof’s record of swimming 57.50m under frozen water. Hof no longer holds that record – the current holder is Czech free diver David Vencl, who in 2021 managed 80.99m… without the aid of an eponymous breathing ‘method’. Similarly, Hof’s barefoot ice half marathon record of 2 hours 16 minutes has been smashed by Josef Salek, Jonas Felde Sevaldrud, and most recently Karim El Hayani – the latter completed the feat in just 1 hour 36 minutes in 2021… without self-identifying as a super human.

Furthermore, while Hof held the record at 44 minutes spent in full-body contact with ice in January 2010, the current record is held by Lukasz Szpunar, who managed a colossal 4 hours 2 minutes, hours beyond Hof’s best attempt. But there are no Netflix or BBC documentaries about Szpunar and his mystical ability to endure the cold.

As for taking a group of inexperienced climbers up Kilimanjaro, the devil is in the details. The team didn’t reach the top – they went as high as Gilman’s Point, significantly short of the summit. And six participants had to turn around before making it to the top, because they got altitude sickness – around a third of the group. On top of those were the climbers who, while not reported to suffer from altitude sickness, were so exhausted by the climb they had to be brought back down by car… including Wim Hof himself.

This is important, because part of the usual climbing duration for Kilimanjaro involves giving yourself time and space for a safe descent – if you’re not factoring in being well enough to come back down the mountain safely, you can obviously move much faster. You can also undertake parts of the climb at riskier times, when it would usually be too dark to do it safely. If anything, then, Hof’s 31-hour climb was slow – in 2014, the record for climbing Kilimanjaro was set by Ecuadorian climber Karl Egloff at just 6 hours 42 minutes. Egloff actually went all the way to the top of the mountain – but you haven’t heard of him, and hustle-culture podcasts aren’t telling wide-eyed tales of his otherworldly ability to climb mountains.

It is not the only mountaineering claim of Hof’s that warrants scrutiny. In 2007, according to his legend, he climbed Mount Everest wearing just shorts and sandals. By which he means, he undertook the start of the journey bare chested while his team accompanied him with all of the regular mountaineering gear, which he would put on when not actively moving.

This is obviously more impressive than any attempt I’ve made at the mountain, but, crucially, the risk on the lower and middle slopes of the mountain isn’t actually exposure to the cold – in good weather, you can reach as high as 6,400m and it can still be around 20°C. The highest temperature ever recorded at that altitude on the mountain is a sweltering 37°C.

In fact, given the temperatures, dehydration is more of a risk during that stretch, because climbers are usually carrying the equipment they’ll need for higher up the mountain, when it starts to get seriously cold (unless, like Hof, they have a team to do that for them). The website EverTrek explains that, in April and May, it is “not uncommon to see climbers wearing t-shirts all the way up to Camp 3”, an elevation of 7,200m. Hof’s climb took place in May.

When Hof and his support team got to 6,700m, he decided to switch to mountaineering boots, to allow him to use crampons for the trickier sections. He then abandoned the attempt at 7,400m – 200m past Camp 3 – due to what he called a recurring foot injury… which, as he told The Times in an interview, was actually frostbite:

“So I had a deep mental conversation with my foot and it reported frostbite. I appreciated it was the right thing to turn back,” he said. “Extreme cold is a teacher. The lessons come to you through the body. You just listen.”

Again, I have never even attempted to climb Everest, so to have achieved even that distance is impressive… but when Hof tells the tale, he describes it as climbing Mount Everest in a pair of shorts, and the people who buy into his guru-like mystique picture him reaching the summit in his underwear.

What we should recognise here is that while Hof’s feats of endurance are impressive, they’ve also been spun into a legendary reputation that’s afforded him a guru-like mystical quality, and one that he’s gone all-out to cultivate and preserve… even as his actual records have been comprehensively smashed by people who don’t present themselves as mystical, and don’t get invited onto podcasts to explain how we can all hyperventilate ourselves free of illness.

If Hof’s records being comprehensively beaten by people who boast no mystical spiritual fortitude were not problematic enough for his legacy, there’s a final nail that might hold that coffin fast. Wim has eight siblings, one of which is his brother, Andre. His twin brother, Andre. His identical twin brother, Andre.

Andre, from what we know, has a very different lifestyle to Wim, and doesn’t do punishing endurance training, extreme exercises, or cold water plunges. But despite all of that, his tolerance for cold temperatures is comparable to Wim’s. As best as we can tell, Wim and Andre are genetically better suited to enduring extreme colds than the average person, regardless of how much time they spend in cold water plungers and hyperventilation.

If Wim Hof’s – and indeed, Andre Hof’s – ability to endure cold temperatures comes from a genetic advantage, then it cannot be taught. Equally, if Hof’s remarkable feats of record-breaking endurance can be matched, and substantially bettered, by athletes who don’t employ hyperventilation regimes and cold water exposures, then any benefits of the Wim Hof Method are called into question – a troubling conclusion, if the Sunday Times is right about how many deaths and injuries have befallen those trying to emulate achievements that were at least partly due quirks of Hof’s genes.

Wim Hof is no stranger to giving interviews, in fact he may be one of the most-interviewed wellness gurus on the planet over the past 5 or 10 years. It is therefore a shame that, in all of those many conversations, his interviewers have chosen to fawn over his self-concocted legend, rather than asking the kinds of questions that would-be followers of the Wim Hof Method clearly need to hear.

From the archives: The Art of Fakery – Fakes and forgeries at the British Museum

Mike Howgate
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From the archives: The Art of Fakery – Fakes and forgeries at the British Museum

This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 4, Issue 3, from 1990.

They cannot destroy fairies by antediluvian tests, and when once fairies are admitted other psychic phenomena will find a more ready acceptance.
– from a letter to Edward L. Gardner from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 21 October 1 920.

The normal attitude of establishment science to such nonsense and the damaging effect it can have on the popular understanding of science is one of studied academic disdain. But occasionally, very occasionally, a major scientific or public institution makes a stand against pseudoscientific nonsense.

A few years ago the Natural History Museum featured a small gallery display entitled ‘The Feathers Fly’, which questioned Sir Fred Hoyle’s authority on evolution and in particular paleontology. Sir Fred and friends, who had put forward the notion that the famous intermediate reptile/bird fossil Archaeopteryx was a fake, have kept their heads below the parapets ever since.

A new exhibition at the British Museum, which runs until September 1990, is much larger and tackles a much broader spectrum of – this time – real fakes. Although it is primarily concerned with artistic and antiquarian fakery, there is much of interest to the student of scientific pathology. There is a potted history of faking, from pieces of the ‘true cross’ to the Cottingley ‘fairies’ photographs, a section on dating and detecting fakes and a look at some still problematic artifacts.

A famous 1917 sepia photograph featuring a girl with long hair decorated with some flowers, sitting in a garden in front of a waterfall, surrounded by 'fairies' (which are quite obviously not real, but many believed they were)
One of the Cottingley fairies photographs – these were taken in 1917 by Elsie Wright and her cousin Frances Griffiths. Via BBC News and the Leeds University Library

The first section of interest, section three of the exhibition and the catalogue, is entitled ‘The limits of belief: religion, magic, myth and science’. In it we are treated to a potpourri of the real outer limits of belief. Faked letters purportedly from J.C. himself, but Anglo-Saxon or Medieval concoctions, sought to provide extra Biblical ‘evidence’ for his curative powers and his gentile appearance. Reliquary pendants containing bits of saints, pieces of the true Cross and drops of the milk of the Virgin Mary launch us into a weird world of mythical beasts and alchemical transmutations. Griffin’s claws (ibex horns), Mermen (half fish and half monkey) and Sea Bishops (contorted Skates) lie alongside an iron knife with a golden tip.

An early James Randi noted ‘the Imposter with legerdemain trick, changing the plain knife, after its dipping, deceived the Eyes of his nimble motion, and brought forth the other with the Gold Blade; then again the Great Elixer being spilt on the ground, and pretended could never be made again… (it was) purchased by the late possessor, at a very considerable price.’

James Randi, an older white man with a white beard and hair, speaks into a microphone in a red room, holding a manilla folder or notepad
The late James Randi

These lead on to more ‘scientific’ frauds. The carved fossils used to hoax Professor Beringer of Wurzburg in the early sixteenth century. The penny didn’t drop until he saw his own name in one of the fossils. He then tried to buy up all the copies of his monograph on them. The same cannot be said of Conan Doyle who seems to have gone to his grave believing in the cut-out fairies of a pair of young Yorkshire lasses. This display could have been improved if a copy of Princess Mary’s Gift Book from which the cut-outs were taken had been included.

The famous Piltdown Man hoax must, however, take pride of place in this section. The original skull fragments are on display as well as the associated fauna and artefacts, including the carved bone ‘cricket bat’! This must have been the real clincher that the British Piltdown Man was higher up the evolutionary scale than the continental Neanderthalers or Heidelberg Man. The discoverer, Charles Dawson, has always fallen under suspicion as the perpetrator, but there have always been other likely candidates and motives galore. However, further exhibits point the finger at Dawson as an inveterate local hoaxer.

It was a revelation to me that the infamous ‘Toad in the Hole’ (PG Tips Unexplained Mysteries of the World No.4) was communicated by the same Charles Dawson to the Brighton and Hove Natural History and Philosophical Society in 1901, 11 years before he announced Piltdown Man. Other ‘finds’ of Dawson’s have since been proved to be fakes. These include a supposed Roman cast-iron statuette (now considered 19th century), stamped Roman tiles from Pevensey Castle (early 20th century fakes), a Norman prick spur (no such thing says the BM) and a prehistoric hammer made from a recent Red deer antler. ‘Say no more’ as the saying goes.

The next section of interest to readers of the Skeptic is section 9: ‘The scientific detection of fakes and forgeries’. This has interesting examples of the techniques of ultraviolet and X-ray radiography, mass spectrometry and thermoluminescence as well as various dating methods. Central to the latter is the Turin Shroud. This is on display as a very effective life-size transparency, but although the accompanying caption states that the carbon-14 date is definitely AD 1260-1390 it pulls back from a definitive trouncing of the shroud by ending on a note of compromise: ‘However, until it can be properly established how this striking image came into being, the mystery remains incompletely resolved.’

A replica of the Turin Shroud in a Polish church, displayed under a Latin inscription "DISCIPULUS VIDIT SUDARIUM VIDIT ET CREDIDIT"
A shroud of Turin replica displayed in a Polish church. Photo by Krzysztof D. via Flickr, CC-BY-2.0

The final section, ‘The limits of expertise’ looks at some tantalising examples of where the experts agree to differ. The Vinland map, The Grime’s Graves female figurine and phallus and the ‘Aztec’ rock-crystal skull (PG Tips 23) which, although the teeth seem to have been incised by a jeweller’s wheel is still on the ‘problematic’ list.

Fake? The Art of Deception was an exhibition at the British Museum, Great Russell St, London WC 1, from 9 March to 2 September 1990. Admission £3, concessions £2. exhibition catalogue £16.95.

Menstrual masking: the inadvisable trend of treating acne… with period blood

Alice Howarth
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Menstrual masking: the inadvisable trend of treating acne… with period blood

Last year, my fellow writer and podcast colleague Mike Hall wrote in this magazine about ‘vabbing’ – the TikTok trend of using vaginal secretions as perfume, in order to attract a partner. Tiktok is, of course, filled with viral trends – some of which are completely fake.

One such was the ‘nyquil chicken’, where videos showed people cooking their chicken in cold medication; the hoax started on 4Chan. Another was the ‘porcelain challenge’, where tiktokers ground up porcelain dishes and pretended to snort the powder, mostly in a bid to upset their elders.

Whenever a new trend surfaces, it’s not always clear whether it’s something TikTok content creators actually believe or not. TikTok is also a platform with a lot of trending language, where slang is developed and quickly adopted to help prevent videos with certain content from being removed – much of said slang being incomprehensible if you’re not in the know. As such, it’s easy to misinterpret, misunderstand or miss the joke, which means that even if a viral TikTok trend started out as a gag, once it trends it’s entirely plausible that people might give it a go.

All of which brings me to a TikTok trend that ticks these boxes, where it’s hard to be certain if content creators actually believe in the technique they’re promoting, but even if they don’t, I am confident that the mere existence of the content will contribute to people trying it.

The trend I’m talking about is using menstrual blood on the skin as a face mask in order to reduce acne.

A calm-looking Asian man with jaw-length hair has a green face mask on. He's wearing a white t-shirt and standing in front of a green background
A man uses a face mask – thankfully, a green one. Photo by Monstera Production, via Pexels.com

What?

Glamour magazine wrote about this previously, in an article titled “TikTokers are smearing period blood on their faces in the name of beauty”. In fact, every piece of coverage I’ve seen has been universal in its condemnation; it’s safe to say, outside of TikTok, media outlets do not think it’s a good idea.

As a non-user, I’ve only seen this kind of coverage; reports that there are people who are recommending it. I’ve not actually seen anyone recommend it. But given that we know there are people out there who bathe in or drink urine, or use semen to reduce acne, it’s probable there are people who think menstrual blood has healing properties.

In fact, long before the TikTok trend began towards the end of 2023, there was content online about menstrual masking. In February 2020, Cosmopolitan published an article headlined “I Tried a Period-Blood Face Mask and, Uh, You Definitely Shouldn’t” with the subheading “Disclaimer: Cosmo seriously recommends you do not try this at home!”. It opens:

There’s no ~delicate~ way to say this, so please forgive me in advance. I…make face masks out of my own menstrual blood. Whew. Wow. Yup, I said that. And did that. Aaand you probably have some very valid questions running through your mind right now, like, Wait, WTF? and Are you alright? And I promise I will answer them all.

But first, an *~IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER~*: No matter how I feel about menstrual masking (I love it) and what it’s done for my skin (a lot), you should know that absolutely no medical professional – nor Cosmo – under any circumstances would ever (like, ever, ever) advise trying this at home. Menstrual masking is entirely my choice, and I do not encourage anyone else to take on this potentially dangerous, very questionable DIY. We all got that? Cool.

The author tells us they were inspired by a November 2019 article that listed uses for menstrual blood (other options were to make a nail polish or to paint with it…). The article led with a photo of Kim Kardashian, her face covered in something red; it is a photo I recognise from articles about the ‘vampire facial’, which involves platelet-rich plasma being removed from someone’s blood and then injected into their skin. As far as I know, Kim Kardashian has never talked about menstrual masking, but the misused photo of her was always going to drive interest.

This article from 2019 is the first one I could find that seemed to genuinely advocate for using menstrual blood this way. It starts by claiming:

Period blood is a highly dynamic and powerful substance. Mystically speaking, the main thing period blood represents is the idea of the cycle. Something that grows, holds, releases, and rests, like the seasons of the year. The blood that comes out of you is only one part of the cycle, but it carries the energy of the cycle as a whole, and of cycles in general. With that in mind, the period is just as much a symbol of life-generation or as it is a symbol of death and the underworld.

So far, so standard in terms of wellness woo. It continues, claiming that scientists have found that the lining of the uterus, and therefore period blood, is full of stem cells, which is probably true, but implying that stem cells would therefore be good when applied topically to intact skin is scientifically questionable.

The 2019 article then talks about blood magic, so it definitely fodder for those prone to magical thinking. The 2022 Cosmopolitan article, however, is targeted at your average young woman and eschews the mysticism, claiming that the mechanism is more to do with:

stem cells along with incredibly rich nutrients, like zinc, copper, and magnesium—all of which are also found in trendy beauty products and acne treatments on the market.

After three days of applying menstrual blood to her face – something the author describes in extensive detail in the article, but I’ll leave to your imagination – she comments that the spot she had on her chin is much smaller. Now, I don’t know about you, but if I have a big spot on my face, it does tend to get significantly smaller and less red over the course of three days. Especially if I’ve been washing my skin thoroughly each day, as the author (thankfully) has.

Don’t try this at home

The author is convinced that the menstrual mask works for her, but for journalistic balance, includes a quote from a dermatologist pointing out some of the risks.

The biggest risk being that… it can actually make acne worse. This makes sense: a fair amount of acne is caused by bacteria, and while menstrual blood isn’t in itself unhygienic, it obviously contains bacterial risks. Our entire body is covered in bacteria, and typically the ways in which we collect menstrual blood mean that that nutrient-dense fluid is sitting in a warm environment for a few hours at a time, adjacent to the anus, which has a higher density of bacteria. Menstrual blood, once collected, is likely to contain bacteria. Plus, we’re unlikely to be very sterile with our hands and skin when we collect menstrual blood – not so much to be a cause of significant harm, but enough to potentially cause an acne flare up.

What’s more, menstrual blood is a waste product, filled with cells and bits of uterine tissue that the body no longer needs, which means it contains a lot of dead cells – dead cells that release pro-inflammatory factors, which can also increase the inflammation and redness associated with acne.

So those are the potential risks. As for the benefits… there are none. There is also absolutely no evidence it would help, in any way, at all. We have no idea if stem cells could cross the skin and do anything of value. We have no evidence that any of the “nutrients” contained within menstrual blood make any beneficial difference. In fact, many of the nutrients listed in the article that are added in to other skin care products have little-to-no evidence of efficacy either. There are very few skincare ingredients that are evidence based.

Ultimately, there’s just no point in trying this.

From the archives: The Weight of Evidence – Gyroscopes can’t levitate UFOs

Dave Love
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From the archives: The Weight of Evidence – Gyroscopes can’t levitate UFOs

This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 4, Issue 3, from 1990.

A Matter of Gravity – Hits and Misses (Steve Donnelly)

If you are an inventor of an antigravity machine based on spinning discs or rings (aren’t they all?) then a paper published in the highly respected physics journal, Physical Review Letters (PRL) on 18 December 1989 will provide scientific support for your claims. The paper, entitled ‘Anomalous Weight Reduction on a Gyroscope’s Right Rotations around the Vertical Axis on the Earth’ by Japanese scientists Hideo Hayasaka and Sakae Tacheuchi reported that measurements on a spinning gyroscope revealed that it became lighter when spinning in a clockwise sense (viewed from above) than when static or spinning in an anticlockwise sense.

Although the weight reduction, measured on three different gyroscopes, was only a few milligrams (corresponding to about one ten thousandth of the total weight) it is a much greater change than any current physical theory predicts. The experiments consisted of simply weighing the gyroscopes using an ordinary chemical balance whilst they were spinning at different rates and in different senses. To avoid any aerodynamic effects, the gyroscopes rotated inside a small vessel from which the air had been evacuated. The original manuscript had been received by PRL in March 1988 indicating that the journal, which prides itself on its prompt publication, did not take the decision to publish the paper lightly.  Unlike the Benveniste homeopathy publication in Nature, however, the gyroscope paper was published without any comment from the editors of the journal.

The authors obviously anticipated a critical response from fellow scientists as they devoted almost a page of their short article to listing and dismissing possible sources of error which could have given the same result. They concluded that ‘the experimental result is independent of the Earth’s spinning’ and that ‘the weight reduction cannot be explained by the usual theories’. If these results can be replicated by other laboratories and no mundane explanation of them can be found, then their effects on research into gravitation will be as profound as the effects of a successful demonstration of cold fusion would have been on energy research programmes.

New Scientist on 17 February, however, reported that other researchers feel that electromagnetic interactions between different components of the experiment or the effects of the transfer of angular momentum to the balance could explain the results. They report also that American researchers at a major U.S. government laboratory have repeated the experiments and failed to detect the effect.

Perhaps it only works in Japan and presumably also Melbourne, Australia where Sandy Kidd, the Scots inventor whose anti gravity machine based on gyroscopes was widely reported in the tabloids last year, is now living and developing his technology. A belated prediction for 1990 is that as a result of the Japanese research, Mr Kidd will rise again in the British media (if not in the air atop a spinning gyroscope).

Hits and Misses in the last issue carried an item on the rather unbelievable report from Hayasaka and Takeuchi [1] of a reduction in weight of gyroscopes dependent on their direction of rotation relative to that of the earth. There have been some recent (and probably final) developments in this episode of fringe science which are the subject of this article. Although there are some odd aspects to the first report, this affair does not seem to merit the label of pathological or pseudoscience as I and others have recently had recourse to describing ‘cold fusion’, for example: it was published in the appropriate place after prolonged peer review and presents an apparently clear-cut result from a fairly easily repeatable experiment which is not at the limit of sensitivity of the apparatus. It seems to have come to an unusually swift conclusion after a good deal of commotion involving crank inventors and UFO enthusiasts.

Gyroscopes simply consist of some sort of spinning wheel mounted in a framework which can move freely. They behave rather counter-intuitively, tending to move at right angles to the direction in which you push them. You may be familiar with the behaviour of toy gyros, like the one I had as a child and recently rediscovered, or with the classic ‘ top’ . For instance, if after spinning up the rotor with a drawstring you let one end pivot in a hollow and it leans over under the influence of gravity it merely rotates (‘precesses’) about the pivot as long as it keeps spinning fast enough. If you put it in a box and move it around it reacts back on your hand in a surprising way.

Even if you’ve never played with one of these interesting toys, you may have had the help of the gyroscopic effect of the wheels of a bicycle to keep you upright – ever wondered why you fall over when the wheels stop going round? This behaviour, although surprising, is perfectly well understood in standard mechanics [2], although only with the aid of some non-trivial maths. It is so well understood that gyroscopes form the basis of highly accurate navigation (‘inertial guidance’) systems which rely in various different ways on the gyro’s tendency to react against attempts to push it at right angles to the direction it spins.

A white, red and black ommercial plane taking off - specifically 9M-MRO, which disappeared
A Boeing 777-200ER – gyroscopic flight instruments of some description are used in most general aviation aircraft and in older commercial aircraft. (Specifically, flight 9M-MRO, which disappeared en route)

Better people than amateur ‘inventors’ like Sandy Kidd have concluded that gyros don’t obey the usual laws of mechanics and could be used as anti-gravity or free-space propulsion devices. Eric Laithwaite, Professor of Electrical Engineering at Imperial College, was once given an unfortunate opportunity to expound such views in an otherwise good series of the annual televised Royal Institution Christmas lectures for children. I don’t know whether he still holds such opinions, but they are odd coming from him since his electrical machines have some rather similar features. Apparently Hayasaka and Takeuchi have a history of similar opinions. There seems to have been no other motivation for their experiment

So, what did they claim, exactly, and why wasn’t it credible? They spun up gyroscopes to high speeds (over 10,000 rpm) and then weighed them on an ordinary chemical balance (familiar from school chemistry or physics classes) as they slowed down. The gyros were spun about a vertical axis both clockwise and anticlockwise. Apparently the weight increased as they slowed, but only for clockwise rotation. An anticlockwise-spinning gyro showed no change in weight. They ascribed this to some sort of interaction of the gyro’s spin with that of the earth about its axis, but did not present evidence to confirm this by repeating the measurement at different latitudes.

If they were correct, the size of the effect should depend on latitude, disappearing at the equator and switching direction in the southern hemisphere. If they really believed in the effect it seems surprising that they didn’t dispel more doubt by arranging a trip to a lab at a different latitude. The size of the effect, incidentally, is quite small – the gyroscopes weighed a bit under half a pound and the claimed change in weight was up to about 10 mg, which is roughly the weight of a stamp.

It is interesting to consider whether there is evidence from other sources for or against such an effect, ie whether like many paranormal claims, it flies in the face of evidence to the contrary. It seems that there isn’t much, but maybe you can think of some. One place where it might show up is in the motion of the planets in the solar system, which is well understood in terms of standard gravitational theory.

A spin-dependent contribution to the weight should lead to inconsistencies in the description of the motion of the planets and moons, which all influence each other to some extent. Note, for instance, Venus spins in the opposite direction to the rest of the planets. However, the rotational speeds involved (once per day in the case of the earth) are so much smaller than than those used by H&T that such an effect would probably not have been observed. Whether there is good evidence against it from other sources like navigational gyros, I don’t know, but it does seem plausible that any such effect could have escaped detection previously.

So why should there be such a problem accepting the result? Unlike Benveniste ‘s water with memory or Fleischmann and Pons’ cold fusion, it is not so much because it flies in the face of established physical theories and measurements, but rather because of deep ideas about the form such theories should take (and always do). The angular momentum of a gyroscope, which is proportional to its mass and speed of rotation, is a ‘vector’ quantity as obviously is the corresponding quantity for the spinning earth. Vector quantities have both a size and a direction, in this case the speed of rotation and the direction in which the axis about which the rotation occurs points.

When you write down a mathematical equation which describes an effect due to the interaction of two vector quantities it can be such that the effect either is the same or reversed when you reverse the direction of one of the vectors. H&T’s supposed new physical phenomenon does not work like this; the effect which is apparently seen for the vectors with one orientation just disappears when one is reversed, contrary to the the general principle.

The Scottish UFO image - what appears to be a diamond shaped ship in a cloudy grey sky
The ‘Scottish UFO image’

Well, this result became widely known. It was immediately obvious to some that the effect was responsible for powering UFOs, despite its reported very small size. Many claimed to have thought of it first, although they didn’t publish it like H&T for some reason – they can’t say that the establishment rejects such things out of hand. There were even stories of patents having been granted previously on the basis of such an effect, although I am surprised that they would be granted any more than for perpetual motion machines. Physics departments in the US, at least, got a lot of callers, although I haven’t heard of too many in the UK.

It didn’t cause a stir to the extent that cold fusion did, but rather more than another recent slightly fringe suggestion of a flaw in gravitational theory, the ‘fifth force’. I’m not sure why, especially as the fifth force could be interpreted as ‘antigravity’ and presumably could also power UFOs; and crackpots are always gunning for Einstein. For some reason, his theory of gravitation (general relativity) which both the filth force and H&T’s result disagree with, doesn’t seem to attract the same amount of knockers as his theory of special relativity, which describes motion at very high speeds.

Well, the fifth force now seems to be ruled out after a year or two of investigation. Rather faster, I’m sorry to have to tell any experts in UFO propulsion, H&T’s result has also been squashed, as widely expected by physicists. Two groups, experts in the weights and measures game, have repeated the experiment with improved apparatus and published null results [3 ,4] . The American group [3] found no effect with an improved gyro design. They did not suggest what error there was in H&T’s result although they did point out that vibrations had a big effect on the balance readings. Vibrations had been blamed for the effect previously [5]. The French group used a different, more sensitive balance and did observe the effect However, they could account for it in terms of temperature variations and the subtle effect of the twist applied to the balance pan as the gyro rotor slowed down. The effect of vibrations was also evident in their work.

The lesson, as in the case of cold fusion, is that you have to be careful of anomalous results like this obtained by non-specialists (H&T don’t seem to have a metrological pedigree.) Unfortunately the careful, reliable results from the experts only come along rather later after unnecessary fuss from UFO buffs and aggrieved ‘inventors’ in this case. Fortunately this period has been unusually short this time, and there has been no sign of the reprehensible behaviour on the part of the originators of the claim as there was with cold fusion. This appeared to be a clear-cut result from a simple measurement in physics, but turned out to have serious problems not appreciated by the experimenters. One is tempted to extrapolate the lesson to (para)psychology experiments with all their additional complications to trap the unwary compared with the behaviour of a simple chemical balance.

References

  1. H. Hayasaka and S. Takeuchi, Phys. Rev. Lett. 63 (1989).
  2. See, for instance, The Feynman Lectures, volume I, or many mechanics or general physics books.
  3. J.E. Fuller et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 64 (1990) 825.
  4. TJ. Quinn and A. Picard, Nature 343 (1990) 732.
  5. S.H. Salter, Nature 343 ( 1 990) 509 and R. Baker, ibid p.518.

The Sullivanians, psychoanalysis, and the worst therapy in the world

Carlos Orsi
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The Sullivanians, psychoanalysis, and the worst therapy in the world

Note – contains references to sexual assaults

This story was originally written in Portuguese, and published to the website of Revista Questão de Ciência. It appears here with permission.

Between the 1950s and 1980s, a group of people in New York City decided to abandon monogamy and the traditional notion of family. Women who wanted to have children were encouraged to have sex with a large number of partners, in order to obscure the identity of the parents as much as possible. Couples who were too attached and who preferred to have sex only with each other were warned and criticised. Children were raised communally and, preferably, as far away from their biological parents as possible.

At first, this alternative model of life was adopted and maintained more or less freely and voluntarily. However, as time went by and charisma and power became increasingly concentrated in the hands of the leader, the psychological and emotional pressure to obey and conform to the group’s rules took on an increasingly authoritarian tone.

The leadership began to claim responsibility for authorising (or not) members to have children; women who refused to have sex with any member of the community on request (and especially with the leader) were ostracised. One reticent girl was told: “Shut your mouth and spread your legs.”

The members led normal lives during the day – doctors, lawyers, artists, writers – but at night they returned to the collective’s communal apartments. In these environments, deviations from the group’s norms and expectations were recorded and pointed out by informants. Delinquents ran the risk of public humiliation or expulsion.

It sounds like a religious cult… but it was ‘psychotherapy’. The community was made up of patients, students and therapists linked to the Sullivanian Institute for Psychoanalytic Research, a group established in Manhattan in 1957 that dissolved in 1991 with the death of its founder and supreme guru.

The story is told in a recently released book, “The Sullivanians,” by Alexander Stille, a journalism professor at Columbia University. Its founders – psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Jane Pearce and her colleague (and, at different times, lover, husband and adversary) Saul Newton – took the group’s name and its initial inspiration from the work of American psychoanalyst Harry Stack Sullivan, who died almost ten years before the Sullivan Institute opened its doors.

Mommy

A photograph of Sigmund Freud - an older, white, straight-sized man with a white beard and thinning hair. He's wearing a three piece suit and looking at the camera quite sternly
The famous Sigmund Freud

Sullivan, a neo-Freudian, emphasised the psychological importance of adult friendships and peer relationships, in addition to the childhood relationship with parents, which was the focus of Freudian orthodoxy. As Stille succinctly put it, “Sullivan believed that personal growth comes from relationships with others, even in adulthood.” In Stille’s words, Pearce and Newton “took these ideas much further.”

They essentially argued that the family was a toxic structure, and that the worst thing that could happen to a child was to be raised by his or her biological mother: “Pearce and Newton believed that the nuclear family caused most psychological problems and that the mother inevitably crushed the vitality of her children.” 

Read this way, in the journalist-historian’s objective text, the phrase “the mother inevitably crushes the vitality of her children” sounds like the tired old joke that, from the point of view of the psychoanalytic tradition, all problems always end up leaving a trail that leads back to the mother. But this is not exactly a cliché or a joke. It is much more a reduction to the absurd, what remains after the small talk and rhetorical flourishes are put in parentheses and, finally, we have a clear view of what is, in fact, being said, without beating around the bush.

Consider, for example, this excerpt from an overwhelmingly positive 1964 review of Pearce and Newton’s book, “The Conditions of Human Growth,” published in 1963:

…the self-system is shown here acting (…) in an attempt to prevent the eruption of the unbearable anxieties caused to the infant by the mother’s inevitable withdrawal and rejection of certain aspects of its vitality. Thus, from the very beginning, socialization becomes a form of unconscious and painful hypocrisy (…). The cliché of not throwing the baby out with the bathwater is not much fun for infants, especially if their mothers are sensitive to dirt or nudity.

Let us remember that none – absolutely none – of this has the slightest basis in evidence. As is often the case in the psychoanalytic tradition, what we have are armchair musings, supposed introspective insights based on concepts that derive from armchair musings and previous insights, sometimes illustrated by case histories, always of dubious credibility and cherry-picked.

Much of “The Sullivanians” is made up of testimonies from former members of the group, some traumatised survivors, others with more positive memories. All of them, however, point to Saul Newton’s inflated ego, the autocratic, cruel and misogynistic nature of his personality, his megalomania and paranoia. There is the moment when he starts demanding oral sex from patients during therapy sessions, declaring rape part of the therapy. There is the moment when he carries out a “coup d’état” that excludes Jane Pearce from the leadership of the Institute.

The collapse of the Sullivanian community began in the 1980s, after a young mother, unable to accept the separation from her baby imposed by the group’s doctrine, “kidnapped” her own daughter and then went to the press, seeking support from the people and the authorities.

Analytical culture

One issue that Stille only touches on in his book is the extent to which psychoanalytic culture facilitated, enabled, or fuelled the Sullivanian sect. That “psychoanalytic culture” is the milieu formed by artists, intellectuals, and professionals, united by reverence for the image (academic or popular) of what psychoanalysis is or should be, its aura of authority, and its inflated claims to validity. It stems from an atmosphere where what one breathes are the ideas and words of Sigmund Freud, as filtered by other intellectuals, thinkers, and popular culture; an environment in which these ideas, words, and their multiple versions become part of the everyday lexicon and are accepted as part of the common sense of educated society.

It is no coincidence that the Sullivanian experiment began at a time when psychoanalysis was at the height of its prestige,” the journalist writes. And further on: “In the mid-20th century, psychoanalysis reached the culmination of its prestige, popularity and authority, especially in the United States (…) Time magazine put Freud on the cover three times between 1924 and 1956.

Early on, in the 1950s, the Sullivans had their moment in cultural fashion: in 1955, Clement Greenberg, then New York’s most influential art critic, began seeing a disciple of Saul Newton and was enchanted.

At a time when it was – to paraphrase an art historian interviewed by Stille – almost impossible to be taken seriously in society, as an artist or intellectual, without having to sit on a couch, Greenberg’s seal of approval gave the Sullivans a chic, “hip” air, even before the institute was formalised. Jackson Pollock, facing a creative crisis, decided to seek treatment from a Sullivansian therapist, following what might be described as an emphatic suggestion from “Clem” Greenberg.

Describing the scene on the Upper West Side, a section of Manhattan favored by musicians, artists, and journalists in the 1950s, Stille writes:

The area was teeming with intellectuals and psychiatrists: a common joke was that if you threw something out a window on the Upper West Side, you were likely to hit a shrink.

At the right hand of the Father

Fanaticism, isolation, disconnection from reality, blind and abject obedience to the leader-guru – these are pathologies normally associated with religion, esotericism or political ideology. The idea of ​​psychotherapy as the raw material of a fanatical sect seems difficult to process. But psychoanalysis has characteristics that make it vulnerable to this type of degeneration.

Psychologist Robert Jay Lifton, a scholar of “thought reform” systems – “brainwashing” would be a more melodramatic term – identifies two characteristics that are always found, together or separately, in the formation of sectarian movements. One is ideological totalism, defined as “an all-or-nothing set of ideas that claim to contain nothing less than absolute truth and virtue.” The other is the presence of an omniscient and infallible guru, or, as Lifton defines it, a “mental predator.”

It is very difficult to deny that psychoanalytic doctrine – both Freud’s original and its more popular dissenting theories – has totalist pretensions. For those who really take it seriously, psychoanalysis is the interpretative key that opens the doors not only to psychopathology, but to all human behaviour, to the political-economic situation and to the very essence of civilisation.

The predisposition of psychoanalysis to produce gurus venerated as omniscient, targets of idolatry, is also a historical fact, starting with Sigmund Freud himself. The stenographer in charge of taking notes on Jacques Lacan’s seminars, Maria Pierrakos, describes, in an autobiographical pamphlet (“Lacan’s ‘Scouter’”) and in terms worthy of a New Testament narrative, the atmosphere surrounding the French theorist’s speeches:

… the Master arrives, goes up on stage and begins to speak; a mystical silence sets in (…) would it be possible to miss a single word? (…) On stage, only a privileged few (…) I saw a very beloved disciple ascend to the right hand of the Father….

In a famous series of lectures given in 1975 (“Nostalgia for the Absolute”), one of the great intellectuals of the 20th century, George Steiner, placed Freud’s work on his list of “meta-religions” or “mythologies,” intellectual systems used to fill the emotional and social vacuum left by the loss of prestige of Christian dogmatism in the West.

Steiner lists the characteristics of these meta-religions: they are “totalising”; they have, in their conception, a “prophetic vision”, a narrative of origin with a genius-hero as protagonist; this genius-hero establishes a group of faithful disciples, from which some heretics break away; they are systems endowed with their own symbolic scheme, with jargon, emblems and metaphors that are specific to them.

“These great movements, these great gestures of the imagination, that have tried to replace religion in the West, and Christianity in particular, are very similar to the churches, the theology that they seek to replace,” he points out.

Steiner is not alone. The philosopher and anthropologist Ernest Gellner, in his book “The Psychoanalytic Movement”, also accuses psychoanalysis of being a religion in disguise: with irony, he says that the official history of the movement could very well be called “The Life and Passion of Saint Sigmund” (the house where Freud lived in London, converted into a museum, certainly resembles a shrine full of relics. The photo that illustrates this article is of the office, preserved today as it was in the 1930s).

It should not surprise us, therefore, that the similarity between psychoanalysis and religion, detected by Steiner, Gellner and so many others, includes the tendency, found in Christianity, Islam and the most varied creeds, to occasionally inspire fanaticism.

In any case, this is a curious risk for something that is presented as a therapeutic proposal. If psychotherapy came with a leaflet, it could be included on the list of possible adverse effects that should be carefully observed.

Dr Flint Dibble wins 2024 Skeptical Activism Ockham award

Michael Marshall
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Dr Flint Dibble wins 2024 Skeptical Activism Ockham award

Dr Flint Dibble, an archaeologist who earned international plaudits when he appeared on Joe Rogan’s show to debate and comprehensively debunk lost city of Atlantis claims, has today been named the 2024 recipient of the Ockham Award for Skeptical Activism.

Dr Flint Dibble, 2024 recipience of the Ockham Award for skeptical activism

After the airing of the Netflix show Ancient Apocalypse, there was a boom in myths about Atlantis and the existence of a highly advanced but long-extinct ancient civilisation. The star of the show, writer and pseudoarchaeologist Graham Hancock, was often to be found giving interviews to advance his ahistorical theories, especially in arenas unaccustomed to assessing and critiquing outlandish and sensationalist claims – including the most prominent such arena, the Joe Rogan podcast, where his claims were comprehensively debunked in conversation with Dr Flint Dibble.

Michael Marshall said: “Dr Flint Dibble’s four-hour appearance on the Joe Rogan show in April showed that it is possible to offer an authoritative, comprehensive and persuasive retort to even the most sensationalist of claims. What’s more, to do this on Joe Rogan’s show – whose audience has arguably been primed and conditioned to reject reason when more exciting and eye-catching explanations are on offer – was enormously impressive. Dr Dibble went into the belly of the beast, and gave a calm, well-reasoned and enormously patient account of himself and of the evidence, showing that skepticism can be brought to even the most theoretically hostile of audiences, if presented thoughtfully and skillfully.

“With Netflix recently releasing a second series of Ancient Apocalypse, this time inexplicably featuring Keanu Reeves, I’m sure Dr Dibble’s comprehensive knowledge and incredible reserves of patient will once again be invaluable.”

The ‘Skeptical Activism’ award was announced as part of The Skeptic’s annual Ockham Awards at a ceremony that took place during Saturday’s QED conference on science and skepticism in Manchester. Also awarded during the event was the 2024 Rusty Razor award for pseudoscience, which went to Twitter owner Elon Musk, with entrepreneur and Dragon’s Den star Steven Bartlett claiming the runner-up spot.

Elon Musk beats Dragon’s Den star Steven Bartlett to Rusty Razor pseudoscience award

Michael Marshall
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Elon Musk beats Dragon’s Den star Steven Bartlett to Rusty Razor pseudoscience award

Twitter owner Elon Musk has today been named the 2024 recipient of the “Rusty Razor” award, the prize given by The Skeptic to the year’s worst promoters of pseudoscience

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Prime_Minister,_Shri_Narendra_Modi_meeting_Mr._Elon_Musk_in_New_York,_USA_on_June_20,_2023_(2)_(cropped)_(b).jpg
Credit: Prime Minister’s Office (GODL-India), GODL-India, via Wikimedia Commons

After his takeover of the platform in 2022, Musk was responsible for firing half of the company’s moderator team, and a third of its global trust and safety team, enabling the widespread proliferation of misinformation, scams, inauthentic accounts and hate speech. In the past year, Musk has intervened to restore the accounts of hundreds of conspiracy theorists, including Sandy Hook ‘truther’ Alex Jones, misogynist and alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate, and far-right leader and anti-vaccine conspiracist Tommy Robinson – the latter of whom Musk would later cite and retweet on multiple occasions.

The Skeptic Editor Michael Marshall said: “Since Musk’s takeover, Twitter has become a breeding ground for all manner of misinformation and pseudoscience, with Musk personally intervening to remove the checks and balances, under the pretence of a commitment to free speech – apparently as long as that free speech aligns with his personal views. Musk has not only welcomed back some of the most damaging spreaders of harmful untruths, but he has actively engaged with and amplified their voices.

“Where Twitter once ran adverts for brands like Apple, Amazon and Adidas, now the platform’s ads consist of cryptocurrency scams, blue-tick AI bots, and demonstrably fake products. Conspiracy theories around vaccines, climate change, and chemtrails flourish on Musk’s website, while hate speech around race, gender and sexuality has risen significantly. From the invasion of Ukraine, to the war in Gaza, to the UK’s recent race riots, Twitter has become the go-to place for spreading propaganda and politically motivated misinformation, and has happened in no small part due to the deliberate decisions Musk has taken.

“It is therefore hard to deny that Elon Musk is responsible for promoting the most harmful pseudoscience and misinformation of the past year, and that he is a deserving winner of the 2024 Rusty Razor award.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Bartlett_(businessman)#/media/File:Steven_Bartlett2024.jpg
Credit: Steven Bartlett, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Coming in second to Elon Musk for the Rusty Razor this year was Steven Bartlett, star of BBC’s Dragon’s Den and the Diary of a CEO YouTube channel. Bartlett has been a regular source of controversy over the last year, including backing and championing pseudoscientific businesses on the hit BBC One show, platforming health misinformation on his hugely popular podcast, and misleading his viewers with adverts for products he has invested in.

Marshall explained, “In his role on Dragon’s Den, Bartlett has praised and promoted a psychic business that sells healing crystals and spells to break evil curses, a cacao drink that was claimed to use shamanic energy to fight depression, and some stick-on ear decorations whose founder claims can cure ME and fertility issues. All of these products are quite clearly pseudoscientific, and make health claims that are potentially harmful to sufferers of serious conditions, yet they received nothing but praise from Bartlett and some of his fellow Dragons.

“Meanwhile, Bartlett uses his Diary of a CEO YouTube channel to bring to his 7 million followers controversial anti-vaccine figures such as Bret Weinstein, Russell Brand, and Jordan Peterson. Health guru Wim Hof claimed in his interview for the show that his breathing techniques could kill bacteria and viruses – a false claim that went unchallenged, which has now been viewed over 1.6 million times. Bartlett, similarly, gave nothing but uncritical acceptance to the claims of Dr Aseem Malhotra – whose misleading claims around the Covid vaccine earned him last year’s Rusty Razor award.

“Bartlett’s podcast episodes have more than half a billion views on YouTube – with an audience that size, he has a duty to scrutinise the claims of the people he chooses to platform. Instead, he uncritically accepts all manner of misleading and false health claims, with apparently little to no care as to what is actually true.”

The ‘Rusty Razor’ award was announced as part of The Skeptic’s annual Ockham Awards at a ceremony that took place during Saturday’s QED conference on science and skepticism, in Manchester. Also recognised during the event was Dr Flint Dibble, who won the 2024 award for Skeptical Activism.

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