This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 15, Issue 2, from 2002.
There are only two things I disbelieve as a matter of principle: things that are false and things that are nonsense. The difference between the two is important, and is giving me a headache.
One useful philosophical principle that can help us decide what to accept as true or reject as false is the principle of charity. This requires us to interpret the position under examination in the way which makes it as rational and cogent as possible. Put another way, the principle states: don’t erect a straw man. I believe this principle is absolutely central to earnest intellectual inquiry. We are often tempted to portray the opinions of our opponents in such a way as to make them look as irrational and implausible as possible. This makes it easier for us to score points against them and confirm our own views. But our victory is hollow unless we test the strongest version of their claims. For example, if you want to prove you have a better football team than Manchester United you have to play their first eleven. Beat their reserves and you can always say “we beat Man U”, but you know deep down the contest was rigged. Similarly, you have only defeated your intellectual opponent if you have taken on the strongest case supporting their belief.
So, if you consider any view while following the principle of charity, by the end you should be able to decide whether it is true, false or whether the jury’s still out. Simple.
But what about nonsense? This is much trickier. The process of assessing a point of view or argument is much more straightforward if you can make sense of it. Unless we want to play at crude relativism, it is quite clear, for example, that the statement “it is safer to use MMR than not” must be either true or false. With nonsense, we don’t say it is true or false, we say it doesn’t make sense. Thus, “the yellow anger sung exponentially” isn’t true or false – it’s gobbledegook.
You might be tempted to say this is false, but problems arise if you do. Hence Bertrand Russell’s obsession with the statement “The present King of France is bald”. If there is no present king of France, to say this is false creates a logical problem because it would imply that “The present King of France is not bald” is true. But of course that isn’t true either. Philosophers love such logical conundrums as much as non-philosophers find them ridiculous.
Here’s the cause of my headache: how do you decide whether something is nonsense or whether you just don’t understand it? There are clear examples of both. Some nonsense is easy to spot, such as the rubbish I wrote above about yellow anger. On other occasions it is obvious that we are in no position to judge. Such would be the case if I failed to follow a lecture in theoretical physics. I know full well that I just don’t know enough about it to decide if it’s nonsense or not.
The problem arises in the intermediate cases, what we might call the Derrida problem. Someone with a British intellectual training who tries to read Derrida often becomes utterly confused. The trouble is, Derrida is not talking theoretical physics. His subject matter is the same as that of his British contemporaries. So there is an expectation that we should be able to understand him and when we don’t, it’s easy to think that he’s just talking nonsense.
But to do this seems chauvinistic. Surely the principle of charity, in this instance, decrees that the most charitable explanation of Derrida’s difficulty is that it just is difficult and you need to spend much more time studying him if you want to make sense of him. Until and unless one makes such an effort, judgement must be suspended. And it’s no good saying that certain of his pronouncements are just incoherent. We must at least allow for the possibility that Derridian discourse, though paradoxical from our viewpoint, is intellectually rigorous and just as capable of being rationally assessed as our home-grown philosophy. The semblance of contradiction, for example, may simply be an artefact of our way of reading him.
However, this is troubling. We want to disbelieve the false and the nonsensical. Indeed, many skeptics argue against certain beliefs (perhaps particularly New Age ones) on the grounds of their incoherence rather than their falsity. If the principle of charity demands that we suspend judgement when we don’t understand something – or when we think we understand it to be nonsense but others insist we just haven’t been thinking about it appropriately – it seems we might have to suspend judgement about too much.
Therein lies the cause of my headache. How do I best assess the views of those who, to the extent to which I do understand them, seem to be talking nonsense, but of whom some might say I just don’t understand them at all? It’s not just my problem – it’s one for all skeptics.
This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 15, Issue 2, from 2002.
The camera cannot lie – or can it? From the mid-Victorian era to the 1920s, thousands of people were hoaxed by photos which supposedly proved the existence of ghosts. A fascinating selection of such photographs has been put online by the American Museum of Photography.
Unscrupulous photographers made large sums of money by producing photographs of sitters accompanied by other-worldly “spirits”. These “spirits” were usually supposed to be the ghosts of the sitter’s recently deceased friends or relatives. Desperate for some reassurance of life after death, the bereaved sitters were unlikely to question the result.
The first spirit photographer was American William H Mumler of Boston, who produced hundreds of photos during the 1860s. Many of his victims had lost sons, fathers, brothers or husbands in the American Civil War and were desperate for consolation. One of Mumler’s most vocal opponents was circus impresario PT Barnum. He condemned Mumler as a fraud, and pointed out that the unscrupulous photographer was exploiting the vulnerability of people whose judgement was clouded by grief. Barnum gave evidence at Mumler’s trial for fraud in May 1869. Mumler was charged with having “swindled many credulous persons, leading them to believe it is possible to photograph the immaterial forms of their departed friends”. To show how easy it was to fake a spirit photo, Barnum and a photographer friend, Abraham Bogardus, produced a photo which appeared to show Barnum with the ghost of Abraham Lincoln.
Spirit photos were easy to fake. Popular knowledge of photography was limited at this time, and most people did not know that such pictures could be produced by a simple double exposure. Another method was even simpler. In this era, exposures of up to a minute were needed for photographs. So, while the subject was sitting still and gazing at the camera, the photographer’s assistant, dressed in suitably ghostly robes, would step into the picture and stand behind them, moving gently so as to create a “ghostly” blur which would render his or her features less recognisable. Alternatively, a dummy could be put into place behind them, and revealed by pulling back a curtain. Other methods involved tampering with the photographic plate during processing.
Mumler narrowly escaped conviction when the judge reluctantly decided that there was insufficient evidence against him. Others were not so fortunate. In Paris, Édouard Buguet and his associate M. Leymarie were imprisoned in 1875 after investigators discovered the dummies and cardboard cut-outs which they used to create “spirits” for their photographs.
Spirit photography enjoyed a revival in Britain after the First World War. One of the best-known spirit photographers, William Hope, took over 2,500 spirit photographs before being exposed as a fraud by Harry Price of the University of London Council for Psychical Investigation. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tried to rescue Hope’s reputation in his 1922 publication The Case for Spirit Photography. This book is lavishly illustrated with spirit photographs which Doyle felt proved his case. To the modern reader, these appear to be simple double exposures, but knowledge of the technical aspects of photography was less common in the 1920s, and many people appear to have been convinced by Hope and others of his kind.
Harry Houdini
Magicians such as Harry Houdini were indefatigable in their quest to expose such frauds. In 1922, the popular press gleefully reported the exposure of two fraudulent “spirit photographers” by a body of professional magicians: the Occult Committee of the Magic Circle. This body specialised in investigating the claims of self-styled mediums and psychics, many of whom used magician’s tricks to fool people into thinking they had supernatural powers.
One of the most notorious post-war cases was that of spirit photographer Ada Emma Deane. On Armistice Day 1924 she produced a remarkable photograph which appeared to show the spirits of dead soldiers hovering over the Cenotaph in Whitehall. The photo was published in the Daily Sketch, which asked whether any of its readers recognised the faces in the photo. Unfortunately for Deane, many of them did. The “spirits” were not dead soldiers but living footballers and boxers, copied from other photographs. The furious Sketch condemned Deane’s “clear intention … to play upon the feelings of unhappy people who had lost sons in the war”. It challenged her to produce a genuine photo under test conditions, offering her a reward of £1,000 if she was successful. Deane refused the challenge, giving the Sketch ample justification to proclaim her “a Charlatan and a Fraud”.
Spirit photography continued well into the late twentieth century. One incredible photo (reproduced to accompany an article by Matthew Sweet in The Independent on Sunday last year) shows Conan Doyle’s face apparently materialising in the middle of a blob of repulsive ectoplasm which is emerging from a medium’s nose. As Sweet comments, such “supernatural elements now telegraph their paste-and-paper fraudulence”. But to many people at the time they appeared to be proof of what they desperately wished to believe – that their loved ones had some kind of life after death.
Modern writers are rightly skeptical about spirit photographs. But spirit photography still exists, albeit in a slightly different form. Not long ago I visited a New Age fair where an enterprising photographer offered to take a photo of my aura for an extortionate fee. She seemed surprised when I declined the kind offer. But maybe spirit photography will soon be superseded by more modern technology. A recent UK television documentary featured a medium who claimed to be able to contact the dead via the internet. Now there’s a terrifying thought. Imagine being bombarded with junk email from beyond the grave!
References
Harper’s Weekly, 8 May 1869, p 289.
Harry Price: Confessions of a Ghost Hunter (London: Putnam, 1936), p 169.
Arthur Conan Doyle et al: The Case for Spirit Photography (London: Hutchinson, 1922).
See, for example, News of the World, 14 May 1922, p 12.
Daily Sketch 13 November 1924, p 10.
Daily Sketch 15 November 1924, pp 1, 2 and 15.
Daily Sketch 17 November 1924, p 13.
Daily Sketch 19 November 1924, p 2.
Daily Sketch 21 November 1924, p 1.
Daily Sketch 21 November 1924, p 2. An account of the Deane fraud is also given by Harry Price in Confessions of a Ghost Hunter.
Matthew Sweet: “They Saw Dead People” in The Independent on Sunday magazine, 23 December 2001. pp 18-21.
See for example, Fred Gettings: Ghosts in Photographs, The Extraordinary Story of Spirit Photography (New York: Harmony Books, 1978).
This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 15, Issue 2, from 2002.
The skeptic movement’s historic task is to counter the rise in belief in paranormal claims – a goal enshrined in the Humanist denunciation of astrology in 1975, in this case specifically to reverse the increased acceptance of astrology. The trouble is that none of the signatories of the famous statement had ever actually worked out whether acceptance of astrology was increasing. It was just assumed. No tests were done, no evidence was gathered. It was not considered necessary to do this in order to state what seemed to them to be a self-evident truth. But what if nobody takes magazine horoscopes seriously any more, as Lucy Sherriff argued? What if acceptance of astrology as a whole is actually declining? If that were to be the case scepticism would remain as an interesting intellectual activity, but the sense of cultural crisis that led to the creation of CSICOP in 1976 would disappear.
Astrology occupies a sort of public front line in the whole debate about paranormal belief largely because of the high public profile achieved by sun-sign columns. For many years, as an unofficial “expert” in the history of astrology I have fielded questions from journalists who want to know (a) whether belief in astrology is increasing?; (b) if it is, then why?; and (c) how many people currently believe in it? The answers to these questions were pretty much already formulated in their minds as follows: (a) belief in astrology is increasing and has been doing so ever since the 1960s boom in alternative ideas; (b) the cause is the collapse in traditional church-going, which has opened a spiritual vacuum – which in turn is filled by horoscopes, tarot cards and so on; and (c) a lot of people believe in it. Although skeptics would replace the journalists’ (b) (which is in fact a standard Christian explanation for declining church attendance) with a lack of scientific understanding and education, the fact is that the answers to all these questions is a resounding “don’t know”. Between them Erich Goode and Glenn Sparks have seriously cast doubt on the established notion that belief in astrology is necessarily incompatible with either traditional religious faith or knowledge of science.
So how many people actually believe in astrology?
The figures for belief in astrology are usually based on questions about readership of horoscope columns or private visits to astrologers, which are activities assumed to indicate belief in the subject. It has been pointed out time and time again that, when people are asked direct questions about matters which impinge on their private beliefs, their answers depend on who is doing the asking and how they feel at that particular moment. And that’s before we even face the ultimate problem of how the question is asked. One way or another, the figures cited for belief in astrology in a range of studies over the last thirty years are, when taken together, so variable as to be almost meaningless. Recent research by Glenn Sparks found that 89% of church-goers and 91% of non-goers agree with the statement that “Horoscopes DO NOT contain accurate information”, suggesting a level of belief in astrology of around 10% across the population as a whole. Yet the weakness of such questions is clear: they invite the subject to make an evaluation of objective truth rather than asking them how they actually feel. At the other end of the scale Sue Blackmore and Marianne Seebold elicited much higher answers from a small group of women undergraduates at the University of the West of England. They found that 13% would consult an astrologer before settling down, 22% knew their moon sign (suggesting they had taken active steps to find this out), 24% had read a teach-yourself astrology book or had taken a course in the subject, 39% valued the advice given in horoscope columns, 70% regularly read such columns, 85% agreed that their sun-sign description suited their personality and 100% knew their sun-sign. So, how would we fix a level of belief from this sample? It’s clearly anywhere between 13% and 85%.
One solution is to fall back on attempts to distinguish “strong” believers from “weak”. Yet, here again the results vary wildly. In the UK Bauer and Durant established a figure of 5% for “serious believers” while in Germany Paulik and Buse’s “strong believers” were almost eight times as numerous at 38%. The existence of such a discrepancy between two such similar countries suggests fatal methodological flaws and essentially arbitrary judgements about what behaviour might differentiate strong belief from weak. It’s more likely that at one end of the attitude spectrum there is a tiny number of people who consult astrologers obsessively and at the other there is a small group who denounce it vigorously. The bulk of the population exists in a grey mass somewhere in the middle. They may have no strong opinions either way. They might think one thing in the morning and another in the afternoon, or they might quite happily hold contradictory beliefs at one and the same time.
And what does “belief” mean?
And then there’s the whole question of the definition of belief. Strictly speaking, the word’s definition is neutral, meaning simply “trust or confidence” in the object of belief and, in the examples given in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, the objects of belief can be either religious, intuitive, a matter of opinion or an accepted fact. Thus it is possible to believe both in the Virgin birth and the existence of gravity without implying that one is more true than the other. In this sense a belief does not have to be true but neither is it necessarily false: it is the perception of the believer that counts. However, in much of the skeptical scientific literature, a “belief ” is automatically defined as false unless, in rare cases, proved otherwise. A summary of the skeptical arguments is given by Robert Park, Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland in his recent book, Voodoo Science, well reviewed by Chris French in a recent issue of The Skeptic (Vol. 14 no 2). The book’s stature is endorsed by jacket-blurbs from Richard Dawkins and Paul Gross, author of Higher Superstition. Park’s argument is not only that beliefs are necessarily false but that they result from a physiological malfunction of the brain. In other words, belief is roughly equivalent to mental illness. The very word belief has become so loaded that it’s surprising that anyone admits to belief in anything.
Do astrologers believe in astrology?
With all this in mind I devised a questionnaire asking delegates at the 2000 British Astrological Association conference how they would respond to the question “do you believe in astrology?”, with four possible answers (a: yes, b: no, c: don’t know and d: other) to account for every eventuality, and invited them to explain their reasons. I sought a quantitative result, but one which could only be justified in the light of qualitative material, the respondents’ justification of their answers. I received forty-seven replies out of a total of 220 questionnaires distributed, a return of 21%. Although quantitative conclusions from such a small sample can be misleading, the responses were surprising. Only 27, or 57%, ticked “yes”, the other 43% opting for “no”, “don’t know” or “other”. A breakdown of these three options is also interesting. While 1 opted for “don’t know”, only 3 chose “no”, but 14 (30%) ticked “other”, disputing the basis of the question. Belief, according these astrologers, is not an appropriate word to apply to astrology.
What I found most surprising, though, is that the reasons given for each answer did not differ. The overwhelming response was that astrology is such an obvious part of the natural world that either (a) of course one believes in it, (b) of course one doesn’t need to believe in it because it works or (c) the whole question of belief is irrelevant. I’ve been backing up my questionnaires with interviews and so far I’ve spoken to about twenty astrologers in the UK and USA, all “opinion formers” in the sense that they are prominent writers or lecturers on the subject. Again, what I’ve found surprising is the almost uniform rejection of any religious dimension in astrology and the simple claim that one doesn’t believe in astrology because of the simple fact that it works. And that, of course, takes us into territory covered by the Barnum Effect, the argument, as applied to astrology, that astrologers believe that astrology works because they are inclined to agree with its statements and claims.
So what do we do with astrologers who, in research done to date, should surely be classed as “strong” or “serious” believers in astrology, yet claim that they don’t believe in it at all? Can we argue that they really are believers – they just don’t know it? This solution is somewhat patronising, a little like well-meaning missionaries travelling the Empire lecturing the natives on the inadequacies of their religions.
The fact is that the argument that says that astrologers are necessarily believers may be flawed. Basically it runs like this: all research into astrology indicates that its claims are false, therefore nobody can accept it on the basis of the evidence and, finally, its adherents are therefore “believers”. We can then supposedly quantify the number of believers and reduce the total by convincing them of the evidence against astrology.
However, putting to one side for the moment the issue of whether astrologers’ personal observations of astrology actually working can be explained away, we have a number of other issues to consider. First, for those astrologers who are swayed by empirical research, there are in existence published positive results for astrology – and that’s without getting into the complex issues surrounding the Mars Effect. These results may be flawed, but then so is a great deal of research in all areas. That’s not the point. What matters is that they exist and have been published. Second, the astrological literature regularly contains trenchant responses to the skeptics. And third, there are schools of thought within astrology which argue for a range of philosophical reasons that scientific tests (including, as it happens, the positive ones) are irrelevant. That skeptics might dismiss these arguments as irrelevant overlooks the fact that they exist and are influential. So, are astrologers who form a perfectly reasoned assumption that astrological claims are true to be considered “believers”, as if they should know that the object of their belief is false? The waters are further muddied by research which tests levels of gullibility among skeptics, blurring the distinction between them and “believers in astrology”.
What I’m saying is, that half-way through my research into belief in astrology, I’m no longer convinced that belief is a useful category for measuring astrology – or anything. And, if anyone can convince me that it is, I’ll be very happy.
References
“Objections to Astrology: A statement by 186 leading scientists”, Humanist, September/October 1975, pp. 4-6. See also Kurtz, Paul, “A Quarter Century of Skeptical Inquiry: My Personal Involvement”, Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 25 no 4, July/August 2001, pp. 42-47.
Sherriff, Lucy, “Women are NOT from Gullibull”, The Skeptic, Vol. 14 no 3, p.7.
Miller, Jon D., “The Public Acceptance of Astrology and other Pseudo-science in the United States”, paper presented to the 1992 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 9 February 1992; Miller, Jon D., “The Scientifically Illiterate”, American Demographics, 1987, Vol. 9, pp. 26-31.
Sparks, Glenn G., “The Relationship Between Paranormal Beliefs and Religious Beliefs”, Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 25 no 5, September/October 2001, pp. 50-56. Goode, Erich, “Education, Scientific Knowledge, and Belief in the Paranormal”, Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 26 no 1, January/February 2002, pp. 24-27.
Jahoda, Gustav, The Psychology of Superstition, London: Allen Lane 1969, pp. 25-26; Bennett, Gillian, Traditions of Belief: Women, Folklore and the Supernatural Today, London: Penguin 1987, p. 27. Edwards, Allen L. Techniques of Attitude Scale Construction, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts 1957, pp. 3-5.13; Payne, Stanley L., The Art of Asking Questions, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1st edn. 1951, 1980, pp. 3-10.
Sparks 2001, p. 55.
Blackmore, Susan and Seebold, Marianne, “The Effect of Horoscopes on Women’s Relationships”, Correlation, Vol. 19 no 2, Winter 2000-1, pp. 14-23.
Bauer, John, and Durant, Martin, “British Public Perceptions of Astrology: An Approach from the Sociology of Knowledge”, Culture and Cosmos Vol. 1 no 1, 1997, pp. 55-72.
Park, Robert, Voodoo Science: the Road from Foolishness to Fraud, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000, pp 35-6.
Vaughan, Valerie, “Debunking the Debunkers: Lessons to be Learned”, The Mountain Astrologer, no 80, August/September 1998, pp. 11-17.
See for example, Cornelius, Geoffrey, TheMoment of Astrology, London: Penguin-Arkana 1994.
Glick, Peter; Gottesman, Deborah; Jolton, Jeffrey, “The Fault is Not In The Stars: Susceptibility of Skeptics and Believers in Astrology to the Barnum Effect” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 15 no 4, December 1989, pp 572-583.
I decided to make a New Year’s resolution this year: to stop being weird. It all began in the fruit and vegetable section of the supermarket where I was closely examining the parsnips as I always do at this time of the year, just before my final lecture to first-year Physics undergraduates on classical mechanics. As the final topic on my lecture course, I talk about Newton’s conic sections as these link the mundane with the cosmic and serve beautifully to illustrate the simplicity that often underpins the apparent complexity of the universe. What are conic sections? Well, if you take a solid cone and slice it in four different ways the edges of the different cuts form a circle, an ellipse, a parabola and a hyperbola respectively and these curves are precisely the orbits of celestial bodies — planets, comets and others — as they move through the heavens. Parsnips are the most conical vegetable in my supermarket and are easily sliced and so I have been using them for several years to illustrate conic sections in my lectures. All very logical and reasonable, you might say; however, that view didn’t appear to be shared by the young woman in a Tesco uniform who noticed me perusing the parsnips. “Can I help you”, she kindly enquired. “No it’s OK”, I replied. “I’m just trying to find the most conical parsnips”.
The look on her face as she slowly backed away and said “Yes, OK . . .” in a sort of placatory way was one with which I am very familiar. For instance, on my very first flight across the equator, the fact that I spent 30 minutes locked in the toilet trying to determine which way the water went down the plughole (i) just north of the equator, (ii) exactly on the equator and (iii) just south of the equator seemed entirely reasonable to me. Unfortunately, the reply that followed my explanation of my temporary absence (“You what?!”) was accompanied by exactly the same kind of facial expression as that of my Tesco fruit and vegetable assistant. And there is the nub of the problem; a problem, by the way, that I imagine is experienced by all scientists whose nearest and dearest do not share their profession: the walk around the reservoir interrupted by the physicist trying to work out why the light reflected off the water is making that complex pattern on the dam wall or by the entomologist trying to understand why the crane fly is behaving in such an odd manner. Or perhaps, the afternoon on the beach with the meteorologist preoccupied with the odd movement of the clouds or with the chemist trying to understand the origins of the foam that flecks the water’s edge. All of these seem like entirely legitimate concerns to me (as do water in plugholes and conical parsnips) but unfortunately to most of the rest of the world they just come over as, well . . . weird. Thus my New Year resolution.
But then I got to thinking about it. Trying to figure out how little tiny little bits of the universe work is what my training and my profession is all about. But it also the underlying reason for my interest in all things paranormal. I am confronted with an apparently strange phenomenon and want to find the real explanation for it. The fact that many people interpret it as a UFO, a ghost, an angel, a perpetual motion machine or the direct intervention of God is really of no consequence to me and doesn’t much enter into my attempts to determine the true explanation. And that attitude is weird. I mean, if millions of people all over the globe believe that the virgin Mary is manifesting herself in Medjugorje or Lourdes how could I possibly fail to agree with them? Everyone knows that, although sun-sign/newspaper astrology can’t really work very well, when you go to a REAL astrologer and get a SERIOUS reading that you will really learn things about yourself that you didn’t know before and you may even get some genuine information about your future. I may be a physicist but what right does that give me to disagree with so many people? The royal family use homeopathic medicines so how can a mere commoner possibly query the clear beneficial action of a complete absence of molecules dissolved in water (nothing acts faster than Anadin!)? Anyone who disagrees with so many people, including royalty and Nancy Regan, must be foolish, arrogant and, well . . . weird!
So I had a good think about it and decided that I am going to withdraw my New Year resolution and continue asking odd questions and engaging in strange activities with parsnips and plugholes. In fact, although it is too late for a new, New Year resolution for this year, next year I am going to resolve to continue to be weird and perhaps to launch a campaign to promote my particular kind of weirdness. I’d write more about this, but I have just noticed that a little tiny drop of water on my computer monitor is producing a strange coloured pattern and I just want to figure out what’s going on . . .
Steve Donnelly is a former editor of the The Skeptic magazine and Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Salford.
An article by Malcolm Robinson on the Skeptics in the Pub meeting of 20th February 2002.
Someone once said, “I don’t believe in ghosts, but you’ll never get me in a haunted house!!” I quote these words quite often to show people what those skeptical of UFOs and the paranormal usually say to me when we are in discussion about such matters. They seem to be caught between a rock and a hard place and although they don’t believe in such things, it is difficult for me to tempt them to come on a haunting case with me!! This does not apply however to those more hardened skeptics who would gladly come with me on any Investigations. UFO and Paranormal research ‘needs’ skeptics. Skeptics keep us on our toes and make sure our feet remain firmly on the ground. So I decided to jump over the fence and enter into what some would say was ‘enemy territory’ I took in my very first skeptic meeting which was held at the Florence Nightingale pub near Waterloo Station, London on a very cold and wind-swept February night.
The bar was full and the atmosphere was pleasant and after purchasing a drink at the bar, I made my way upstairs to where the main meeting was being held. A number of people had already taken their seats and more were coming in. Scott Campbell who apparently had been the chairman in previous meetings broke into the chit chat and stated that he was now handing over the chairing of further Skeptic in the Pub meetings to a colleague of his, Nick Pullar. Scott went on to thank everyone for making his time so enjoyable in hosting these lectures and wished his successor all the best in his new position. With that the new chairman Nick Pullar took over. Nick was a bubbly and very confident chairman and I liked his humour and style immensely. He started by talking about what had been featured in all the British press that day, ie, that at 8:02pm the world would witness a time that is truly, triply palindromic, for the time will read 20:02 20/02/2002. One can read the time, day and month backwards or forwards in numeric form and the result will still be the same, this Nick told us, won’t come round for another 111 years. Now not only this, he went on to say, but the great Israeli psychic Uri Geller claims that at this precise time anyone who stares into his eyes on a photograph of him which is featured in the Sunday People newspaper, could make their dreams come true! With that, and immense laughter coming from all quarters of the by now busy room, Nick pointed to the dart board where someone had placed the said copy of the Sunday People newspaper which featured the photograph of Mr Geller. Nick went on to say that he had been in Uri’s web site and began to read statements from it that he found amusing, this raised many laughs from the 45 or so individuals in the smoke filled room. With his jovial statements over and moving away from the dart board with Uri’s face, he then introduced the speaker for the evening, Mr John Wall. John is a professional engineer who has been called a ‘snivelling, insinuating little worm’ by Graham Hancock, author of ‘Fingerprints of the Gods’. John was here to skeptically evaluate Hancock’s work and give an overview of the so called ‘Alternative History Movement’. He wasted no time whatsoever in firstly poking fun at Uri Geller and certain things that he stood for which again raised many laughs in the audience. Sitting there, I began to realise the stark difference between the society I run, Strange Phenomena Investigations (SPI UK) and this one. We never poke fun publicly at individuals who are working in the field; at best we will state publicly that we disagree with them, but never go so far as to publicly raise some laughs at their expense!!
The title of John’s talk was, ‘Alternative History and the Ma’atians From Cyberspace’, subtitled, ‘Weighing the Evidence for Alternative History’. John was only about 5 or 10 minutes into his talk when chairman Nick Pullar stood up and told us all to be quiet as it was now 8:02 and that palindromic moment that he referred to earlier was now upon us. He asked each and every one of us to look at the dartboard with Uri Geller’s picture on it, and stare at Uri’s eyes. He asked out loud, “Can anybody see anything thing? Is anyone getting anything?” It was hard to hear Nick for the loud belly laughs that came from all quarters of the room. As some people were wiping the tears away from their eyes, Nick quickly apologised to the speaker and asked that he resume his talk.
John then continued with references of ancient civilisations throughout the world by that early pioneer Erich Von Daniken. John showed how in his belief, Von Daniken’s work and conclusions were very flawed, he went on to say, “I personally would never trust anyone with the initials V.D. in a name”. Needless to say, this got the desired result and the audience fell about once more. To his credit, John Wall opened my eyes to a lot about the work of Graham Hancock and others. He spoke about the face on Mars and showed how very different that face was now owing to recent photographs taken of it by NASA. In 1976 the Mars face was clear as a bell, whilst fairly recently (and he showed the slide to prove it) you wouldn’t think it was a face at all (if it ever was in the first place!) He presented some fascinating stuff about the pyramids of Egypt and told us that when he was there, the pyramids smelt of smelly western tourists! John might have raced through his slides, but there was no denying he knew his stuff, and a subject like this requires more than the time allocated to him. His humour was admittedly at the expense of Graham Hancock and whilst as I mentioned earlier these two chaps may not get on and disagree about each other’s work, it’s nonetheless not professional to raise laughs at the expense of others. I also found John’s discussion on the famous Piri Reis map fascinating. He clearly showed that the original promoter of that map, one Charles Hapgood, only saw what he wanted to see, for as John Wall pointed out, the map that Hapgood looked at clearly had the words ‘conjecture’ on it! At this point chairman Nick Pullar said that there would be a short 10-minute break for everyone to refresh their glasses. Needless to say I partook of this clever advice, but before doing so got talking with a gentleman sat next to me. Like me, this was his first meeting and he said that he was on a search for the truth, “I think we all are”, I replied. This chap never came back for the second half!!
Resuming the talk John went into many many aspects of ancient civilisations, and brought up the name of Zechariah Sitchin. Sitchin too has claimed many wondrous things regarding ancient civilisations and men from the stars. Mr Wall stated quite categorically that in his opinion, Zechariah Sitchin was an out and out fraud and that he was more than happy to say slanderous things about him. The audience was then shown underwater walkways and steps, although as John pointed out these were all ‘natural formations’. Slide after slide after slide was shown by John all of ‘natural formations’ which Hancock and others believe were either terraces or walls of some ancient and forgotten culture. “Nonsense” said John. Looking at the slides of these underwater formations and hearing John point out the alternative explanation, well, it seemed he had a point! He then showed how flawed Hancock’s work was in regards to the three Egyptian pyramids and their alleged precision and alignment to the stars on Orion’s belt. Hancock, Wall said, misled his readers with shoddy assumptions, whereupon John with his descriptions and drawings showed that there were no correlations from the pyramids to the stars. John called the book ‘The Fingerprints of the Gods’ which was written by Hancock, ‘FOG’, as presumably it clouded the reader’s judgement on matters discusses by Hancock. John then had a go at Astrology and gave it as much credence as he did the works of Hancock.
‘Signs of the Sky’ is a book by one Adrian Gilbert, it too, said John, is heavily flawed, as is ‘The Book Keeper Of Genesis’ by Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval and also ‘The Message Of The Sphinx’. And in regards to Graham Hancock’s latest book, ‘Underworld’, well John thinks it would have been better called ‘Blunderworld’ and would make a great door stopper. He also said that Graham Hancock is an ancient world Jilly Cooper!! He didn’t stop with these ancient civilisation authors; a number of interesting articles on ancient civilisations have been featured in the Daily Mail of late and John asked the audience had anyone read the ‘Daily Fail’. So dear reader, you can see the feelings that the guest speaker had towards his fellow ‘seekers of the truth’!
All the above may sound very ‘picky’ by me and I really don’t mean it to be so. John Wall presented a thoroughly fascinating lecture which, believe you me, made me sit up and think. We as researchers need to see what the skeptics are presenting; we need to attend their meetings and shouldn’t alienate ourselves from them. Far from it, we need to work side by side with them where we can both hopefully share in discoveries and put our hand on our heart when either ‘we’ or ‘they’ are wrong. My attendance at the Skeptics in the Pub (as they call it) meeting was an exercise for me to practice what I preach. I am always banging on about how there are two sides to every coin and for us never to take any story at face value. Good and honest research may well uncover hidden treasures, which will be a benefit to us all.
At the close of the meeting I spoke to chairman Nick Pullar (calling him John, oops how embarrassing!) where Nick proceeded to tell me that he had checked out the SPI web site and found it interesting but didn’t share my views on our research into the ‘Devon Case’. I expressed the view that this was not a conclusive and researched case, that article basically just told it as it was but I was impressed by his comments nonetheless.
All in all, my decision to attend the Skeptics in the Pub meeting was a good one, there were around 45 people there and the guest speaker was very knowledgeable. And although they kept poking fun at other researchers, which I felt was over the top, the evening was a thoroughly good exercise in ‘peering over the garden wall’ into the next door neighbours garden!!
This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 15, Issue 1, from 2002
The story of the missing airmen concerns the last flight of Pilot Officer Donald Ramsay Stewart and Flight-Lieutenant William Conway Day, both of whom went missing over the Persian desert on 24th July 1924. Seven days later their intact plane was found sitting on the Arabian sands, miles from civilisation. There was no sign of the airmen apart from two sets of footprints leading away from the aeroplane but which stopped abruptly after 40 yards. It was as if the two pilots had suddenly vanished into thin air in mid-stride. Fort remarks that no meteorological or mechanical reason could explain why the pilots needed to land in such a remote location and that their sudden disappearance was inexplicable to all. Their remains were never found.
Although not a classic in the annals of the paranormal, the case of the vanishing airmen has nonetheless been repeated a number of times, most notably by Frank Edwards in High Strangeness (his report is lifted entirely from Fort’s Wild Talents) and from a number of ufology web sites, most of whom cite Edwards as their source. Like most sudden disappearances, the case of the “vanishing airmen” is most commonly cited as an early example of alien abduction. One assumes this means that a UFO must have forced the plane to land before kidnapping the pilots as part of some dastardly intergalactic plot.
This case caught my attention a couple of years ago and for some reason remained at the back of my mind. I recently found myself at the British Newspaper Library and, having finished my own research, thought that it would be worth trying to track down the facts of the vanishing pilots’ case.
Charles Fort obtained his information from two articles in the Sunday Express (21st & 28th September 1924). These were easy enough to find, and sure enough there was the story of the “vanishing airmen” portrayed in such a way as to make their disappearance look highly unusual.
It was apparent that several weeks had passed between the incident itself, which occurred on 24th July, and the SundayExpress articles in late September. I felt that the next logical step was to look through the newspapers for the weeks after the disappearance itself for more contemporary accounts. Sure enough, The Times and Daily Mail (31st July 1924) both carried a small notice announcing the discovery of the plane and that the pilots had been missing for a week. It was from this that the first inconsistency became apparent.
The SundayExpress, Fort, Edwards and others were all keen to stress that there was no logical reason why the pilots had to land where they did. The plane was intact and there was no sign of injury to the pilots. The weather had been fine. The implication was that some mysterious power or incident had forced them from the sky.
However, both TheTimes and DailyMail state clearly that the two pilots had had “…to make a forced landing during a sandstorm” and that their machine had been “…found in a damaged condition”. So there was no real mystery as to why they needed to land. Bad weather forced them to land during which process the plane probably became damaged and was unable to take off again.
Neither TheTimes nor DailyMail make any mention of abruptly finishing footprints although they do report that both men appeared to have been trying to walk towards a railway track eighteen miles away. This suggests that footprints were probably found at the scene.
The next mention comes from the DailyMail (8th August 1924) when the father of Flight-Lieutenant Day complains about the Royal Air Force’s lack of progress in tracing his son. The RAF issued a denial which was printed the next day. After this come the two aforementioned articles in the SundayExpress which firmly turn the case into a paranormal mystery by describing the suddenly finishing footprints, but neglect to mention the sandstorm or damaged plane. The Express acknowledges the enigma but suggests that Bedouin tribesmen might be to blame, kidnapping the officers and then sweeping away their footprints as they retreated.
Charles Fort dismisses this idea, while most later writers ignore it altogether, suggesting instead an explanation which centres on bug-eyed extraterrestrial beings bent on mischief. In this form the mystery has stood for over three quarters of a century, a potential classic in the annals of ufology. It was, however, a mystery that took less than five minutes to solve.
Having found some original articles relating to the disappearance, I then turned to the computerised Index for The Times 1905-1980. I typed the airmen’s surnames and within seconds was presented with an entry for 12th March 1925. It had the headline “Missing R.A.F. Officers’ Bodies Found”. I ordered up the microfilm and there was the solution to the mystery which had regrettably been missed by Fort, Edwards and others.
The Times article provided a detailed history of the whole case. The damaged aeroplane had been forced to land in a sandstorm, apparently injuring Flight-Lieutenant Day whose blood was found inside the cockpit. Although no written note was found, there was a set of footprints heading into the desert which became obscured by blown sand after 40 yards. An examination of the plane revealed that the pilots had taken food and water supplies and then set off in the direction of Jalibah railway station, 12 miles to the north. They did not reach it and after months of searching by RAF crews, their two bodies were eventually found together in the desert.
The Times says that “. . . from the positions where the remains were found it was obvious that the unfortunate officers had lost their way . . . in view of the time of day and the season during which they were subjected to exposure, there is no reason to doubt that death ensued from heat exhaustion.” Mystery solved and not an alien in sight . . .
This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 15, Issue 1, from 2002
How difficult is it to convince academics of the truth of something totally false? Frighteningly easy. Sometimes you don’t even have to try, as was proved by a recent unintentional hoax which fooled several supposed “experts” on nineteenth-century culture.
One of the leading internet resources for nineteenth century scholars is an e-mail discussion list which includes over 1000 academics working on Victorian history and literature. Whatever you need to know about the Victorians, someone on the list will have the answer. To spare members’ blushes, I won’t give the list’s name.
During the 2001 summer vacation, list members began to have fun. One member made a passing joke about a pet elephant belonging to Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell. Of course, no such creature ever existed. Picking up the joke, another participant replied with tongue firmly in cheek, “But I thought everybody knew about the elephant?”. More people joined in the fun, and over the next few days a series of delightfully frivolous emails constructed a complete fictional biography for the mythical elephant, whose adventures grew stranger and stranger.
According to these imaginative academics, the elephant was presented to Mrs Gaskell by an Indian fan. It arrived by post, in a crate with a rhinoceros. Mrs Gaskell sent the rhinoceros back, but the elephant became her constant companion and accompanied her on reading tours. She dosed it with opium to keep it from following its natural instincts during the mating season. It used to fall into drug-induced slumber in the doorway of the Reverend Gaskell’s study, preventing him from getting in to compose his sermons. In 1859 the elephant was murdered by a jealous rival who had found out about Mrs Gaskell’s passionate affair with Branwell Brontë. Mrs Gaskell was heartbroken and kept the elephant’s left tusk as a memento. Three different museums now claim to have the tusk in their collection.
So far, so unbelievable. Then the story got even more extravagant. The elephant had, of course, arrived complete with its mahout, Ahmed. Ahmed’s memoirs are under lock and key in the India Office, after being found in a trunk bought from a white elephant sale. The only other copy of them was lost a few years ago in an air crash (the plane, of course, being a jumbo jet). The memoirs are too politically sensitive to release, as they reveal that he was a double agent in the Indian Mutiny. He used a code based on elephant diseases to communicate with Mrs Gaskell, who was in fact the first head of MI5.
Would anyone believe this? Surely not. But it suddenly became evident that several unwary academics had fallen for this unintentional hoax, and believed firmly in the elephant’s existence. The perpetrators apologised profusely and retreated in embarrassment. As one list member commented, “Elizabeth Gaskell’s elephant is actually a shaggy dog”.
But the story raises serious points about academic credulity. Over the past year or two newspapers have carried claims that Byron was a psychopath, Charlotte Bronte was a murderer and Victorian painter Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper. Are these any more believable than Mrs Gaskell’s elephant? The press are happy to promulgate such unlikely theories, and can usually find a “rent-a quote” academic or two to back them up. But what has happened to academia when such things can so easily be accepted as true?
Maybe it’s time I gave up serious academic work. I’ve just had this great idea for a money-spinning book about how Florence Nightingale murdered Prince Albert during her lesbian affair with Queen Victoria. After all, if people believe in Mrs Gaskell’s elephant, they’ll believe anything!
This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 14, Issue 4, from 2001.
Did Nostradamus foresee the attack on the World Trade Centre, and does he predict terrible events to come? According to an e-mail doing the rounds in September 2001, the 16th century astrologer and cookery writer warns us:
“In the year of the new century and nine months, From the sky will come a great King of Terror… The sky will burn at forty-five degrees. Fire approaches the great new city…”
“In the city of York there will be a great collapse, 2 twin brothers torn apart by chaos while the fortress falls the great leader will succumb third big war will begin when the big city is burning”
This would be quite amazing if it were accurate. In fact, the lines have been cobbled together from different sources and changed to fit the situation. The main body of Nostradmus’ predictions are the Centuries, each of which contains100 four-line verses.
From Century 10, there is the famous quatrain 72:
“The year 1999, seventh month, From the sky will come a great King of Terror:”
So we’re a couple of years late on that one.
From Century 6, Quatrain 97:
“At forty-five degrees the sky will burn, Fire to approach the great new city:”
Except that New York is at 41 degrees latitude, not 45 degrees. 45 degrees would be more like Montreal, or, as it happens, Belgrade.
The 9/11 memorial in New York, taken by Petr Kratochvil
The next three lines are not Nostradamus at all. They come from Neil Marshall, a Canadian student who used them as an illustration of a vague prediction that could be interpreted many ways. His actual words were somewhat different:
“In the city of GOD there will be a great THUNDER Two brothers torn apart by chaos While the fortress ENDURES the great leader will succumb”
(My emphasis on the changed words)
The final line, about the third big war, appears to be a complete fabrication.
This kind of forgery is all quite unnecessary. With so many hundreds of quatrains to choose from, all written in cryptic ambiguities, you can always find something to fit the case with a little creative interpretation.
Century 2, Quatrain 83
“The Great Trade of a great Lyons changed, The most part turns to early ruin Prey to the soldiers swept away by pillage: Smoke through the mountains.”
“The Great Trade” is the World Trade Center; “a great Lyons” is New York (like Lyons it is not the capital but a major banking centre), and the “mountains” are the skyscrapers of Manhattan. How amazingly accurate … I may have creatively translated “fog” as ‘smoke’ and left out the reference to Switzerland, but how many people are likely to notice that? Or that the quatrain was previously regarded as an uncannily accurate prediction of the siege of Lyons in 1795?
