This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 4, Issue 2, from 1990.
Observers of the paranormal will frequently find themselves challenged by arguments along the lines of: ‘Such a coincidence could never have happened by chance – there must be some other explanation’ applied to surprising happenings of one sort or another.
In this article I will bring out two principles, both of which lead people greatly to underestimate the likelihood of ‘coincidences’. An understanding of these principles is indispensable in any attempt to examine the weight to be given to arguments of the above type.
The discussion is from a statistical point of view, but should be accessible to non-statisticians.
PRINCIPLE no. 1:People generally underestimate the chance of a coincidence, even in straightforward situations.
The principle is nicely illustrated by a familiar (to first year statistics students) puzzle usually referred to as ‘The Birthday Problem’. The BP concerns itself with the probability of getting coincidences of birthdays amongst a randomly selected group of people. This is a straightforward probability calculation about which there is no mystery, except that the answer is found to be surprising. Test your intuition on the following question:
The Birthday Problem: How large a random group of people do your need to take in order to have a 50% chance that there will be at least one coincidence of birthdays in the group? Don ‘t read further – stop and guess how big the group should be. Obviously a group of size 366 would give certainty of a coincidence, because there are only 365 possible birthdays (ignoring 29 Feb). By contrast, a group of size 2 only gives you a chance of 1 in 365 that the two have the same birthday. So somewhere between 2 and 366 is the correct answer.
The surprise is that the answer is 23. This is probably a smaller number than you guessed. Most people guess higher than 40 or sometimes higher than 100. For completeness here are some figures:
So you can see that with 50 people there is only a 3% chance that you don’t find a coincidence, and with 100 people there is a chance of only 3 in 10 million of no coincidence (i.e. all have different birthdays).
The point is that most people greatly underestimate the probability of a simple coincidence.
The above reasoning is generally true – there is nothing special about birthdays – they just happen to be convenient examples of uniform random quantities. Similar arithmetic applies if you randomly generate numbers, for example on a roulette wheel, or observe other random quantities.
People sometimes ask how the answer (23) can be correct. The arithmetic is certainly correct, but perhaps the following way of thinking will help explain how it comes to be: consider the converse – i.e. birthdays all being different. Imagine you have a calender on the wall with all the days in succession (e.g. by throwing darts blindfolded). What odds would you be prepared to lay that he would hit 23 different days? For the first few you might feel safe, but you would start becoming aware of the mounting odds of a coincidence as each successive dart would have a larger number of already selected days that it might hit. Fair odds would be about 50%.
Try the experiment yourself next time you have 22 or so random (?!) people in the room with you.
PRINCIPLE no 2:The mind is a much better a positeriori pattern recogniser than we realise.
In principle no 1 we talked about the probability of some a priori (from beforehand) specified event. In this principle we turn our mind to ‘coincidences’ that we weren’t thinking about a priori, but looking back from afterwards (a posterioi) we notice have happened.
Whenever I give a talk about the Birthday Problem, I also announce that some surprising coincidence (which I am careful not to specify) will emerge when we do an actual birthday test on the audience. These are some of the things that have happened on different occasions:
Identical twins were in the audience
It was someone’s birthday that day
The first birthday called out hit a match
The two people with the same birthday were sitting next to each other
The matching birthday found was also the date of the Windhoek air disaster. (According to a third member of the audience)
Here are some of the things that haven’t occurred (yet):
The first birthday called out is 1 January
Some sort of sequence e.g. 7, 8, 9 February or 1 January, 1 February, 1 March
Somebody doesn’ t know their true birthday
Somebody has two birthdays (registration error)
I hope these examples give you the idea: there are a huge number of events that we don’t ever consciously think about until after they have happened; then we suddenly think of them a posteriori as having been very unlikely. ‘What is the probability that when you do a birthday test you find twins in the audience? ‘-well, admittedly this is small, but the question is misleading. It should have been ‘What is the probability of twins or some other more or less similarly surprising event?’. Now, the answer is ‘pretty high’. I can’t be more specific because the list of ‘similarly surprising’ events is rather long and vague, as the examples above have probably conveyed.
The lesson is that the mind can find patterns in randomness, thereby misleading one ‘s subjective assessment of how surprising (and therefore inexplicable) some event is. The mind automatically picks up the occurrences of coincidences but never accounts the non-occurrences (from the long, vague list of these) thus giving a biased picture. Everyone has a favourite story about some ‘incredible’ coincidence that happened to them, but would be hard pressed to list all the incredible coincidences that didn’t happen. After all, 1 in a million chances do occur – about once every million times. Because your mind so effortlessly notices a surprising pattern, you never get to notice the 999,999 non-occurences of other patterns.
I hope these two principles (there are more!) will forearm you in the critical appraisal of the evidence lent by ‘coincidences’.
Should we be paying people to give parts of themselves away? More specifically should we be paying those with ovaries to donate their eggs? This is the question that has recently come to the fore in England with the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) announcing that from 1 October 2024 they will be increasing the compensation paid to egg donors from £750 to £986 per donation cycle. It is currently illegal to pay for eggs in the UK, but it is possible to offer compensation for expenses, which is what the £750/£986 figure represents. The maximum compensation for sperm donation is £35 per donation.
The reason given by HFEA for this increase is partly to reflect price rises. The amount paid to donors has been £750 since 2011 and it is therefore now worth significantly less than when the payment was introduced.
“It’s going up to just under £1,000 which the HFEA felt was a right balance between compensating people for their time but really recognising that, in the UK, egg donation is an altruistic act,” explained Clare Ettinghausen, director of strategy and corporate affairs at the HFEA, as reported by the BBC.
I am familiar with the old figure, as I have donated eggs on a number of occasions and have received this compensation. Young women (between 18 and 35) on social media may also be familiar with this figure, as it appears prominently in the many adverts they will likely have seen from fertility services seeking donors.
In addition to the inflationary explanation for the increase, it is also suggested that the increase will encourage more people to donate, as there is a shortage of donors, particularly from Asian and Black backgrounds.
The prominence of offers of payment, the reported shortage in donors and the imminent increase in compensation are a source of concern in some quarters, as set out in some detail by the Independent, where campaigners express the view that donation can in no way be considered altruistic when there is payment involved.
Helen Gibson of Surrogacy Concern, a campaign group which opposes surrogacy puts the issue this way:
We do not pay kidney or blood donors: why is an exception made to incentivise women to sell their eggs, which are then often sold on in packages by fertility clinics at huge profits? We are clear: this is exploitation of women.
The article also sets out a concern that disadvantaged women are being encouraged to damage their bodies and their own fertility for the wealthy.
I am fairly confident in stating that donating eggs is significantly more involved and taxing than donating blood, and somewhat less taxing than donating a kidney. I am as close as someone can get in the UK to a ‘professional’ body part donor; I do it a lot. I am on the bone marrow register. I have donated blood 45 times and counting. I have donated eggs on multiple occasions. It is only the strong objections of my loved ones that have kept both of my kidneys inside my body up to this point. I am working on it.
Blood donation takes around an hour of my time every 4 months. As a result, I experience mild discomfort from the needle in the arm and the need to take it slightly easier for the rest of the day. I am given biscuits and crisps and zero money.
Egg donation has asked much more of me in a number of ways. In terms of financial commitment, it involves at least half a dozen trips to the hospital with parking costs and time out of work. There are invasive and uncomfortable transvaginal ultrasounds, frequent blood tests and medication with unpleasant side-effects. This includes taking the oral contraceptive pill for a period of time to control the timing of the cycle.
The donation process itself involves going through the first half of IVF. This involves the overstimulation of the ovaries to mature a much larger number of eggs at one time, as opposed to the usual one or two per menstrual cycle. This is done through the self-injection of various drugs/hormones on a daily basis for several weeks.
After that stage came the retrieval procedure, where I was sedated and the eggs retrieved through the vaginal wall with a whacking great needle. This led to some bleeding, period-like cramps, and feeling fairly delicate for the remainder of the day.
I have felt significantly unwell on a couple of occasions as a result of some of the medications and the retrieval procedure. It interrupts the usual menstrual cycle, and there are a long list of potential complications including a small risk of damaging my own fertility. I am at higher risk of Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome (OHSS) which is a potentially fatal condition. OHSS is a particular worry of Surrogacy Concern, which I will come on to.
Those are the practical and physical ramifications. There are also the emotional expenses. Pumping a large amount of fertility and contraceptive hormones into the body unsurprisingly has an impact on how you feel mentally. There is also the emotional impact of the importance of what you are doing: choosing to assist in the creation of a child or children, who you may never know anything about beyond their year of birth and assigned gender. There are then other lifestyle impacts, such as navigating the feelings of my own family and partner around the idea of my procreating but no one from my family playing a part in the children’s lives.
I had to have ‘implications’ counselling along with my partner. This was a lengthy interview with a counsellor going through my reasons for donating, and the potential implications for me and for others of donating. There was discussion around the small risk of damage to my own fertility, and my own plans in terms of children as well as how my personal relationships would be affected should any children born as a result of my donation choose to seek me out once they turned 18.
I was advised at multiple points about the potential risks of the treatment. In preparation for this piece, I have gone through the papers provided to me for each of my donations. They go into significant detail about the potential health implications for me and symptoms to look out for. In total each cycle has lasted several months.
I do have some criticisms of the process having gone through it a number of times. These are criticisms I have raised with the organisation that my donations were coordinated by. For example, a lot of the written material provided was generic, as it was to cover everyone who was undergoing the egg retrieval process – the vast majority of whom will be trying to create their own embryos and hopefully become pregnant themselves. The booklets recording my treatment also included sections for embryo transfer and pregnancy. Being provided with all of this information in addition to the information specific to me had the potential to make me feel like an after-thought – something that was all the more acute given the heightened hormone-induced emotional state.
Beyond this, however, I was given copious amounts of information about the impact on me, access to counselling, and the ability to pull out at any time up to the eggs being implanted in another person. While it is true that risks to the donor are not explicitly set out in adverts, they are thoroughly dealt with during the process. The same is true for blood donation, or indeed any form of elective medical procedure.
My reasons for donating are complex and personal to me. The £750 was never a factor in my decision. To some extent this may be because I am a professional with a good income. I almost certainly lost more money in lost work time than I gained in donation compensation. However, the highly involved nature of the process and the timescale make it hugely unlikely that someone would engage in this process purely for financial gain.
HFEA currently allow donors to create up to ten families, where multiple families could be created through one donation. Even if this involved ten donations and they took place every six months, this would equate to an annual income of £1972 over five years, if the donations were back to back. It’s not exactly lucrative, given the time of other work required – time a regular job may well not allow for.
I would submit that being paid £750 or £986 in expenses for this process is not particularly enticing or exploitative.
Surrogacy Concern also express the view that egg donation is too dangerous for donors, pointing to there having been two deaths related to OHSS in England in recent years. Looking into this, there are two reported deaths that occurred in 2005 and 2006 in the UK – they are recorded by the Office for National Statistics in a report recording deaths attributed to OHSS between 2001 and 2016. A cursory google also throws up an autopsy case report from 2022 for an OHSS death that occurred in India.
There is no information available about whether these deaths occurred in women who were simply donating eggs, or those going through IVF for their own fertility. The risk of OHSS was the biggest concern that was discussed during my own treatment, and a lot of mitigations were put in place to minimise that risk. While any death caused by treatment is a terrible thing, that there have been two reported deaths in the UK – almost 20 years ago at that – suggests the risk is well within the window of tolerance for medical procedures in the UK.
As the name suggests, Surrogacy Concern’s main issue appears to be with the broader concept of surrogacy – of which egg donation can play a part. Their website sets this out more explicitly:
We believe surrogacy to be a form of human trafficking. We do not believe it is right to separate a baby from its mother, and do not believe surrogacy is a legitimate way to create a family.
We believe the days and weeks after birth are crucial to a baby’s future development and health, and believe women’s bodies and reproductive capacity should not be exploited or commodified.
We do not believe the law should be liberalized on surrogacy, but that it needs to be significantly tightened.
Rather than a fear over the exploitation of women, Surrogacy Concern’s objection here appears to be more a moral or ethical one around the necessity or otherwise of being raised by a biological mother.
IVF egg donation and surrogacy are ways of creating families and very dearly wanted children who would otherwise not exist. I think this is something which should be celebrated. So, while groups like Surrogacy Concern seek to withhold this opportunity from families, I hope that the increase in compensation, as well as the subsequent publicity these reports have generated, will encourage more and a more diverse group of donors in the future.
This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 4, Issue 2, from 1990.
TH Huxley once said that in every branch of science he had explored, at some stage or other he came across a barrier labelled: ‘No thoroughfare. Moses.’ In Huxley’s day, the parsonry saw science as a camp full of subversives, who needed to be constantly watched. A wall was put up around it – not to keep people from getting in, but to make sure that no one got out and wandered into forbidden areas. The paths that led into areas unconnected with physics and chemistry were blocked by Moses barriers.
I wonder how surprised Huxley would have been to learn that in the 20th century, Moses barriers had moved inside the camp wall, and were trying to rope off sizeable areas within science itself. The barrier-guards no longer find it prudent to openly ally themselves with gods or religious sects. These days, their badge of office bears one of the most ominous of four-letter words: PARA. Their areas of expertise are said to be para-physics, parapsychology, the paranormal.
So far as one can tell, the prefix para- seems to mean ‘sort of’. They insist that their areas of study are scientific, but they will point out to inquirers that the PARA badge carries a special dispensation: their work begs to be excused from the rigors of objective testing. We are talking about the para-thinkers.
You know you’ve stumbled into a Moses barrier when a practitioner of alternative medicine tells you that a control group is not an ‘appropriate’ way of checking out their particular claim. (‘No thoroughfare’.) You can still hear claims that there are areas where science simply cannot go. As it was once expressed by Sir Oliver Lodge: ‘To explain the psychical in terms of physics and chemistry is impossible’. It is also impossible to explain it in terms of plumbing, though why this should be held against plumbing it difficult to say.
The paras are still living in the days when scientists were expected to know their place, and that place was well away from the human mind and body. Paras of time past would tell you that liverwort cured diseases of the liver, because the leaf was liver-shaped; and that the celandine flower cured jaundice (the juice is yellow, you see). This was the doctrine of signatures. Obviously, the Almighty had set his sign upon certain objects, and given us a heavy hint as to which was which by providing the object with a similar shape or colour to the ailment.
Homeopathists may not speak quite so often of the Almighty these days, but the Law of Similars is still alive and well under their tender care. The most effective medicine known to the older theology was holy water – a liquid whose purity was such that it was thought to be as highly diluted as any homeopathic draught. Even so, some ritual gestures were considered necessary to clinch matters. In those times, some reverential hand-waving did the trick. Today the agitation is performed with the container actually in the hand until succussion is complete.
In the mid-19th century, some young women in the French village of Morzine claimed to be possessed by the devil; speaking in tongues, and reading the secret thoughts of people around them. A certain Dr Tissot arrived from the medical faculty at Dijon, and invited the women to dine with him. Unknown to them, he added large amounts of holy water to their food and wine. The women went right on being possessed, and some of them went into convulsions for his benefit. When Tissot published the results of his simple test with control group, the clerics told him that this only showed how cunning the devil was, by hiding the effects of the sudden arrival of the holy liquid. As the result of the test was not to their liking, they dismissed it. In this as in many other matters, the clerics’ role has now been taken over by the paras.
Modern faith healing of course is no more than the divine touch, with the religious trademark still showing under the new label. Henry the Eighth and Queen Elizabeth the First were dab hands at this sort of thing. Charles the Second (described by Andrew D White as ‘the most thoroughly cynical debauchee who ever sat on the English throne before the advent of George the Fourth’) laid his healing hands on almost a hundred-thousand folk. In no other reign were so many people touched for scrofula (‘the king’s evil’), and in no other reign were so many cures vouched for.
But the bills of mortality offer a sad reflection on the para-thinking of the time, because in no other reign did so many people die of the disease. Not many members of royalty gave a patient the blessing that William the Third is said to have offered: ‘God give you better health and more sense’. Nevertheless, at the end of the Black Death, a huge proportion of the property of every European country was in the hands of the Church. In fact the whole evolution of modern history may have been largely affected by this transfer of wealth to the para-thinkers of the 14th century.
It explains the remark of the ecclesiastic who said, ‘Pestilences are the harvests of the ministers of God’. People just insisted on pouring money into the coffers of the agencies that made the loudest claims of the paranormal. Does this have a familiar ring? No one who wishes to be taken seriously uses the term miracles any more. Out of sight perhaps, but not out of mind. The trick is to switch in a para-label, and hope that no one will notice the difference. Because in the field of the paranormal, scientific laws are still claimed to fail in association with particular people.
The parallels with religion are too many and too various to be entirely coincidental.Often, the only changes are the labels. The evil eye is no longer with us, but hostile vibes are still available to account for demonstrations that don’t work. One label that has survived the crossover is the term ‘believer’. Paranormalists and the religious both refer to themselves in this way. But the atheist’s label has been exchanged for skeptic. An agnostic is an atheist without the courage of his convictions. He has never had a satisfactory answer to the question: ‘What are you agnostical about?’ In matters paranormal, his place has been taken by the sympathiser with the permanently ‘open mind’. To the question ‘What would disprove your belief?’ both the 19th century divine and the modern paranormalist have the same response: silence.
I sometimes think that the paras would like to be able to speak of ‘converting’ people. They would certainly not seem out of place knocking on doors in the wake of Jehovah’s Witnesses. But no. They have learned the trick of science-talk. (I have a fantasy of a paranormalist ringing my doorbell and asking, ‘Don’t you think it’s time for a paradigm shift?’) The religious-minded operate in two worlds, with one set of responses for ritual occasions, and a different set for dealing with the real world. In religious contexts, they pray to a listening divinity, but when real things need to be achieved, they get on with the job like the rest of us, just as if the gods had all broken their hearing aids. Even the most religious-minded architect does not include in his contracts a clause saying that owing to the possibility of divine intervention, he cannot be held responsible for the finished work. In like manner, the paranormalist forgets his faith as soon as something practical needs to be done.
You will have noticed that the telepathist has only one surefire way of communicating at a distance: he uses the telephone. And out here in the real world, clairvoyants achieve some of their greatest successes in keeping their names off the lists of lottery-winners. The paranormal apes religion even in the matter of duplicating its failures. Religion is not an independent source of knowledge: by definition, no system of dogma can ever light upon new information of any kind.
The paranormal is sometimes characterised as producing genuine information, even to the extent of being usable against an enemy in wartime. Dr SG Soal once asked his star subject Basil Shackleton to mark the card-guesses that he felt especially confident about. The upshot was that, in spite of Shackleton’s high scores, he hadn’t the faintest idea when he was guessing right or wrong. If Shackleton had been responsible for directing missiles at radar targets that he identified as ‘friendly’ or ‘hostile’, his decisions would have been catastrophic – about as useful as having a group of clergymen praying to the Almighty for information on the enemy’s gyroscopic systems.
Religion has laboured for centuries under the delusion that the mind is a thing, and that the soul is one of its aliases. Not to be outdone, the para has taken over the notion, and claims to have put the mind to work, even sending it over long distances to contact other minds. It sometimes seems as if the para still sees the mind as vaguely hanging around the brain like a medieval halo. It is as though, when you stopped your car, you expected to see the aura of its speed hovering over the hood (otherwise, where did the speed go?). The spiritualist takes the notion even more literally and claims to be in touch with with the bodiless mind (But why only the mind? Where did the indigestion go?).
Hubert Pearce with the parapsychologist JB Rhine, experimenting with Zener cards. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Outside of church communities of course the soul has long been booted out the front door. But it has re-entered by the window, in a teeshirt that bears the word SPIRIT. In fact investigation of the spirit’s survival after death was the motive for establishing JB Rhine’s laboratory at Duke University. The Society for Psychical Research was set up to demonstrate the survival of the soul empirically. Its first president, the Cambridge philosopher Henry Sidgwick, claimed that there was plenty of evidence ‘to establish the independence of soul and spirit’. Indeed, Frederick Myers said in his presidential address that the very aim of the Society was to supply a ‘preamble to all religions’. And he claimed, ‘Thus we demonstrate that a spiritual world exists’.
In more recent times, parapsychologist Charles Tart has gone on record as saying that parapsychology fits in with ‘spiritual views of the universe’. Religion has long snatched at any morsel of evidence that seemed to be in its favor, and poopoohed any data that refutes. It is no longer alone. When Margaret Fox produced unaccountable thumps, this was hailed as sure proof of the existence of a spirit world. But when she pointed out (and indeed demonstrated) that her big toe was the true fountainhead of spiritualism, her evidence was dismissed out of hand.
In short, the paranormal has taken over from religion the claim that its subject matter is non physical – on the basis of no evidence whatever. The result (and the intention?) is simply to remove it beyond all hope of experimental investigation. It might well have been a parapsychologist who said that if there are phenomena ‘which cannot be made to fit into the framework of Naturalism, Naturalism as a philosophy is overthrown’. In fact they are the words of Dean Inge, the Christian mystic who was dean of St Paul’s Cathedral until 1934. And he was wrong. The words need to be changed to read: ‘If any phenomenon contradicts Naturalism, then Naturalism fails.’
If the paras ever wish to be taken seriously, they are going to have to cut free of the religious habit of beginning their inquiries from an assumption of dogma. Every serious investigation begins with ‘I don’t know’. Bertrand Russell made the point long ago: ‘The method of ‘postulating’ what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil’.
If there’s one area in which society appears to have a near-limitless supply of innovation and imagination, it’s in the marketing of products designed to make women feel insecure about their bodies – and the more intimate the body part, the greater the scope for marketable insecurity.
Take, for example, anal brightening products, like anal bleaching. These are products that usually contain acids that chemically exfoliate the skin of the anus, and often inhibit melanin production, which is the pigment that contributes to both natural skin colour and hyperpigmentation build up, which some people choose to correct.
More troubling than those products is a listing I came across on AliExpress – or, at least, a Twitter post screenshotting a product from AliExpress. The accompanying photo showed one of those glass vials that you often find vaccines in, filled with a reddish liquid, and bearing the label read “Labia Peeling. Ladies only. Private parts whitening. Restore the virginity. Chelnokova”.
What are chemical peels?
Chemical peels are non-surgical cosmetic procedures that can be used to correct a variety of skin complaints, such as acne scars and hyperpigmentation. For skin peels that are applied to the face, there are a range of options. At one end, there are very mild acids that you can apply topically at home – they aren’t strong enough to burn deeply into the skin so you can use them day-to-day as a mild chemical exfoliant. They lift the uppermost layer of skin cells and encourage new skin cells to grow. Most people will experience some mild tingling and redness, and then their skin might feel a little tight afterwards. At the other end of the scale, stronger acid chemical peels need to be applied by a professional.
There are three types of common chemical peels: superficial peels, which remove skin cells from the top layer of skin (epidermis), are applied for a few minutes and need to be repeated regularly to maintain effects; medium peels, which remove skin cells from the top and middle layers of skin, are applied for a few minutes, can cause burning and stinging sensations, and will last for up to six weeks but need to be repeated every six to twelve months; and deep peels, which may require a local anaesthetic and sedative under constant supervision, as they’re left on for thirty minutes or more.
With deep peels, your heart and blood pressure need to be monitored, because the chemical used (phenol) can affect your heart and kidneys. At the end, you’ll be left with some peeling, redness and discomfort for a few days, some swelling for up to two weeks, and some redness for up to three months. These have long-lasting effects, so usually they do not need to be repeated.
As you might imagine when it comes to applying acids to the skin, chemical peels come with some risks – these can include darkening or lightening of the skin (which can even be permanent), the return of cold sores in regular sufferers, scarring or an infection (although this is rare), and increased sensitivity to the sun as your skin heals.
Why are labia peels?
Labial peeling is a different thing entirely. Intimate peels are, these days, available from a wide range of cosmetic clinics. One practice based in Dallas says:
Ladies, it’s no secret that we pour a lot of effort into taking care of ourselves. From the hair salon to the nail salon to spa treatments and at-home pampering, we all perform regular rituals that indicate a healthy commitment to ourselves and our bodies. This is a good thing! Self-care is important to our overall wellbeing and confidence. So, why should the aesthetic appearance of our lady parts (more specifically the appearance of the skin “down there”) be excluded?
The routine daily maintenance that so many women do on their Hoo Haa can cause discoloration. The stress of regular shaving can leave dark patches. Many times in grown hairs can leave dark spots. Routine waxing can also stress the skin, causing areas of darker skin tone. This hyperpigmentation on the bikini line leaves women feeling uneasy. Intimate bleaching is a solution that many women are taking advantage of.
Personally, I’m neither for nor against feminine hair removal – women get to decide for themselves whether they remove hair, how they remove hair and which hair they remove. I love to see the backlash against its requirement, and seeing women proudly sporting armpit or leg hair. And I love seeing women have the confidence to invest in permanent hair removal if that is their preference.
But it is undeniably frustrating to see a cycle where women are expected by society to remove their body hair, and then they are encouraged to have chemical peels to undo the damage some of those hair removal methods have on our skin. Waxing damages the skin, because the skin can darken as it heals. All hair removal methods can cause ingrown hairs and those can scar leaving discolouration. This is the natural consequence of hair removal. And reversing that isn’t “self-care” or about our “well-being”. It isn’t empowering for women to spend time and money, and to endure physical pain, to fix insecurities that society and the wellness industry created in the first place.
If you do have serious insecurities about any skin discolouration, you’re welcome to go to a clinic and get a chemical peel. There are some additional things to consider, however.
In the UK, non-surgical cosmetic procedures are not currently regulated. That means you do not have to have any particular qualifications or license to apply a chemical peel in the UK. This is changing. At the end of 2023 the UK government published a consultation on “The licensing of non-surgical cosmetic procedures in England” in which they said:
The current regulatory framework places few restrictions on who can perform non-surgical cosmetic procedures. The government recognises the concerns about the lack of regulation in this field and the potential dangers that this poses to the public. We want to ensure public safety and public protection through a regulatory framework that enables consumers to make informed and safe choices when undergoing procedures which have the potential to cause serious injury or harm.
The UK government set out a plan to introduce a new licensing scheme that they say will identify the procedures that present a risk to the public, and introduce for them a practitioner licence and a premises licence. These licences will be administered and enforced by local authorities, and it will be illegal to carry out non-surgical cosmetic procedures without such a licence. They would also introduce a minimum age of 18 for those people seeking to receive these procedures.
It is not clear yet which procedures will be covered by the licensing scheme but, under the heading “Procedures in scope of the licensing scheme”, they explain that a ‘cosmetic procedure’ is something other than a surgical or dental procedure, carried out for cosmetic purposes, and including the injection of a substance, the application of a substance that is capable of penetrating into or through the epidermis, the insertion of needles into the skin, the placing of threads under the skin, or the application of light, electricity, cold or heat.
Sadly, this regulatory framework is still under development and, until its introduction, it is something of a Wild West when it comes to non-surgical cosmetic procedures. For now, there are two voluntary regulatory bodies that the UK government recommends. The first, called Save Face, is for doctors, nurses, dentists and prescribing pharmacists who provide non-surgical cosmetic treatments. The second, called called the Joint Council for Cosmetic Practitioners (JCCP), is for all practitioners working in the fields of cosmetic treatments. Both of these bodies carry PSA accredited registers and the JCCP also holds a non-PSA accredited register.
That AliExpress listing
So where does the AliExpress product come into play? On the (now geo-locked) listing on AliExpress, this product is called: “CHELNOKOVA Red Clitoris Labia Peeling Acid Virgin Mammary Areola Woman Clitoris Stimulator Powerful Sucker Clitoris Virgin TCA”.
They sell these at a variety of concentrations including 60% TCA, which is used for those deepest of deep peels – the ones that get into the deepest layers of the skin and do not need repeating because it has a near-permanent effect. These chemicals should absolutely not be used at home, and deep peels can cause scarring and long-lasting damage to the skin.
The sellers say:
Use a cotton swab, dip in a little liquid, and continuously wipe the labia/areola. After a few seconds, white frost will appear. At this time, spray neutralizing solution, wait for 5 minutes, then implement again, and then end the entire process. During the application process, there will be a tingling sensation, like flames burning on the skin. When white frost appears, it needs to be stopped immediately. Within 1-3 days, the stratum corneum will turn black, wrinkle, and then fall off. Within 10-28 days, a new stratum corneum will be formed, bringing you a shiny, fresh, and smooth new stratum corneum. The previous skin aging problem will be perfectly resolved. And it will become more sensitive. If necessary, it can be done every 2-3 months.
In one of the images provided, they say that if the white frost appears the acid must be neutralised immediately to prevent burning the skin.
I cannot stress enough how dangerous it is to buy an acid on the internet and apply it to your genital area.
Do not do it. Under any circumstances.
As for general intimate peels? They’re not regulated, they’re not medically tested and while they might not cause you harm, a variety of acids sometimes used for some chemical peels do have carcinogenic properties. I wouldn’t take the risk, I don’t think they’re necessary and I really do hate that we have a society that pushes women to have insecurities about their bodies in this way.
In recent years, there has been a surge in public discourse and academic research on misinformation. A search for the term “misinformation” on Google Ngram Viewer – a tool that tracks the occurrence of words and phrases in printed materials dating from 1500 to 2022 – reveals a sharp increase in its usage beginning in the early-to-mid 2010s. This upward trend shows no signs of levelling off, reflecting the still growing attention on this issue.
Google Ngram Viewer shows a sharp increase in mentions of the term ‘misinformation’
The rising interest in misinformation is not surprising considering its pivotal role in various tragic events in the last decade. In 2016, a man fired shots with an assault rifle at a pizzeria after encountering false stories claiming that Democratic Party leaders were running a paedophilia ring in the restaurant. In 2021, a mob stormed the US Capitol, resulting in several deaths and many more injuries, due to the unfounded belief that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against Trump. And in 2024, violent race riots broke out across England as a result of baseless claims that an attacker who had murdered three young girls was a Muslim asylum seeker (he was actually a British citizen born in Cardiff, Wales, to Rwandan parents). The list goes on…
To combat the negative impact of misinformation on society, researchers have developed interventions to help people detect false news. Among the most popular are inoculation interventions, which are based on the idea that misinformation is like an infectious disease. Much like a virus, misinformation spreads from person to person, and people become infected by misinformation much like they become infected by a disease. Inoculation interventions are described as metaphorical vaccines that deliver mental antibodies to fight and confer resistance against misinformation. They aim to do this by teaching people about manipulation techniques that are thought to be common in false news. The manipulation techniques that people learn about are considered weakened doses of attacking material that help foster immunity.
This biological analogy is appealing. It provides an easy way to conceptualise the issue of misinformation, especially given the Covid-19 pandemic. Indeed, both (mis)information and viruses are shared and propagated among people, making their comparison intuitively satisfying. It is therefore not surprising that the virus metaphor was also adopted by the World Health Organization, which describes too much false or misleading information during a disease outbreak as an ‘infodemic’. Nevertheless, as intuitive as it may be to use this epidemiological comparison when it comes to misinformation, there are concerns with its potential wider implications.
We can vaccinate people against many viruses but can we do so metaphorically, against the concept of misinformation?
A recent meta-analysis with data from 193,282 participants across 40 countries and all seven continents showed that people are generally able to tell apart true and false news before experiencing any type of intervention. Accuracy estimates from our own work are as high as 79%, and we found that even when people think they are guessing, they can distinguish between true and false news with 67% accuracy. Moreover, other research suggests that most people are generally sceptical rather than gullible when navigating news on social media, which may be one reason that their ability to distinguish between true and false news is naturally quite good. Perhaps as a result of this scepticism, people report using various strategies to detect misinformation, such as fact-checking and relying on traditional fact-based media.
But how do we reconcile these research findings with the real-world tragedies fuelled by misinformation? Well, it appears that certain groups of people are more vulnerable to believing misinformation than others. Factors such as conservatism and poor reasoning skills have been identified as contributing to this susceptibility. Note, however, that the susceptibility of conservatives to misinformation may be partially explained by the fact that widely shared false news tends to promote conservative positions. In line with this, the 2016 “Pizzagate” incident, the 2021 Capitol attack, and the 2024 England riots were all fuelled by right-wing misinformation and mostly carried out by individuals with far-right ideologies.
Therefore, while misinformation may not be an equally pervasive threat to everyone, it remains a significant issue, and there is still room for improvement. People are not perfect identifiers of misinformation, and there are individual differences in susceptibility to misinformation. Interventions could therefore be useful for boosting people’s ability to discern the veracity of news (which is already pretty good) even further, and targeting individuals who are most susceptible to misinformation. Ironically, using a virus analogy for misinformation, and thus a vaccine analogy for interventions against it, could alienate specific groups of people that may be most in need such interventions, such as vaccine sceptics.
In summary, it is not productive to use overextended, alarmist analogies that depict misinformation as a viral contagion that could infect anyone and everyone. Equally, anti-alarmist narratives should not be misconstrued to suggest that misinformation is not a problem – it is. There is a middle ground here, and to reach a consensus on the issue, we must view misinformation as the unique problem that it is, rather than relying on metaphors that provide an alluring but inaccurate perspective.
In recent years, more and more research has pointed to the importance of the microbiome – the set of microorganisms that inhabit our bodies, such as the bacteria and fungi in our intestines that aid in digestion, or the bacteria present on our skin or saliva – in various aspects of human health, both physical and mental. With this in mind, many companies have begun offering “microbiome tests” directly to the public. Companies sell the tests by claiming that they can detect whether a customer’s microbiome is “healthy” or “dysbiosis” (out of balance) and suggest that, if the latter is the case, it may be the cause of various health problems.
“Companies’ claims of being able to detect ‘abnormal’ microbiomes are not supported by research; their testing procedures lack analytical validity, and their results have no demonstrated clinical validity,” they write. “As a result, consumers may be financially exploited or harmed by the inappropriate use of test results that neither they nor their physicians understand.”
Independent assessment
The authors of the paper did not draw these conclusions out of thin air. As part of a project funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), they first conducted an online survey of companies around the world that are offering these tests, and reviewed the information they provide to the public about their services. The researchers also conducted interviews and focus groups – a qualitative research method – with microbiome researchers, physicians who treat chronic bowel and vaginal conditions, patients, and consumers who have used or have access to these types of tests. Finally, they assembled a working group of microbiome researchers, physicians, medical device and service regulatory experts, and industry and consumer representatives to discuss the regulatory challenges posed by these tests.
In all, the researchers identified 31 companies offering microbiome testing directly to consumers, 17 of which were based in the US. They found that the industry primarily attracts healthy people who are curious to learn more about their microbiome, as well as individuals suffering from chronic conditions that may be linked to it, such as Crohn’s disease, irritable bowel syndrome and bacterial vaginosis.
While most companies focus on the gut microbiome, some also offer testing of the vaginal and skin microbiomes. Again, their processes are similar to those used by genetic testing companies; consumers order a test kit, complete a health and lifestyle questionnaire, collect stool, vaginal or skin samples, and send them to a company lab for analysis.
This analysis generally describes the taxonomic composition of the microorganisms present in the samples and their relative abundance, and in some cases includes the metabolic functions present or observed of these microbes. It also includes an assessment, often using a graph, of whether the microbiome is in a “healthy” range or not, a conclusion supposedly based on comparisons with healthy people or those with chronic diseases or conditions.
And therein lies the first problem, the authors of the article point out: it is not known exactly which databases companies use to make the comparisons, or what their composition is. In some cases it may be proprietary to the company, composed of the results of all its customers, and not representative of the population at large. The company may also have purchased data from patients diagnosed with certain diseases or chronic conditions, again not based on a representative sample of the population.
Additionally, if customers’ microbiomes fall outside the “healthy” range, companies supplement the report with suggestions for dietary changes or supplements to improve the “balance” of their gut microbiome. It is therefore no surprise that the authors of the paper found nearly half of the companies that sell these at-home microbiome tests also sell the supplements those reports recommend.
An array of supplement pill and drug bottles with their contents spilled out
Finally, companies also seek to keep these customers coming back by advising them to repeat the tests periodically to assess the effects of dietary changes and/or supplements. Some companies even offer subscriptions and nutritionist services, the authors of the paper note.
No scientific validity
The researchers then highlight that the three fundamental characteristics of the suitability and benefit of a test, in the context of human health, are: the analytical validity of the test itself, its clinical validity and its usefulness. These are characteristics these “home” microbiome tests do not have, they say.
Analytical validity involves, for example, establishing false positive and false negative rates, which, in the case of microbiome tests, would involve knowing whether they overestimate or underestimate the relative abundance of microorganisms in the samples. However, they say in the case of the microbiome this is impossible to determine, since the bioinformatics tools used by companies are not capable of recognising and identifying all microorganisms in the samples, thus not allowing for knowledge of relative abundances.
Clinical validity is based on the principle that the test is capable of determining the existence of a disease, which in the case of microbiome tests, means knowing whether they can actually define a state of health or disease. This, in turn, leads to their clinical utility. That is, whether this determination can lead to a useful clinical action – an intervention that could be applied to “treat” the individual. The authors emphasise that the clinical utility of microbiome tests is questionable, since there is little or no evidence supporting the interventions generally recommended based on the results of these tests such as diets, supplements, exercise or other lifestyle changes.
“Without analytical validity, the first of these fundamental characteristics of test suitability and benefit, test results are meaningless,” the researchers state. “Furthermore, determining whether a sample is characteristic of a ‘healthy’ state or not requires comparison to a standard. And, at present, there is no consensus on what constitutes a healthy human microbiome in any population or subpopulation.”
Worse, many of these tests have proven to be unreliable in their results, with variations in the analyses of the same sample performed by different companies, and even by the same company. The authors cite as an example preliminary results from an ongoing study by researchers at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in which three identical samples of standardised faecal material were sent to seven different companies. Despite the identical composition of all the samples, the results were discrepant both between the different companies and in the analyses performed by the same company.
Need for regulation
Given all this, the authors of the Science article advocate for stricter regulation of the marketing and performance of these microbiome tests. They note that although many of the companies claim that their tests are not for “diagnostic” purposes, their marketing strategies often imply this, leading people to believe that they are based on scientific and clinically relevant evidence. This also leads many people to believe that these tests are overseen by health regulatory agencies, when in fact they are in the limbo of unregulated health and wellness products, like dietary supplements.
“The lack of regulation of these tests may put consumers at risk of harm when they rely on inaccurate results and follow unproven nutritional or dietary supplement recommendations,” they say. “These harms may include erroneous self-diagnoses, delays in seeking medical treatment, and replacing prescription drugs with non-drug supplements.”
Another concern is for people who already suffer from diagnosed diseases or health conditions, another large audience for these tests, and who may see them and their results as a treatment alternative:
“Many individuals seeking these tests have chronic illnesses and are desperate to try anything to alleviate their pain and suffering. Because these tests are largely unregulated, they are not subject to reporting of adverse effects, but we have had cases reported by gastroenterologists of harm. In one of the focus groups we hosted, a paediatric gastroenterologist reported patients who developed dietary restriction disorders after following the microbiome testing companies’ recommendations to avoid certain foods.”
This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 4, Issue 2, from 1990.
There have been numerous reports recently concerning sightings of UFOs in the Soviet Union. The most dramatic have involved aliens perambulating in parks, or even dumping (presumably) unwanted debris from their craft. The bulk of these articles have originated from the official news agency, TASS, which one usually associates with announcements of industrial achievements, or synopses of leadership speeches. As well as fulfilling this prosaic function, it has become a kind of Russian Guardian, chronicling the adventures of aliens, psychic healers and abominable snowmen. This article will examine the Russian UFO stories which have been circulating in recent months.
On 23 June of last year [1989], TASS reported that, according to local newspapers, schoolchildren in the Central European region of Vologda had sighted UFOs on several evenings. On 6 June some children were outside the village of Konantsevo when they saw ‘a fast increasing luminous dot in the sky, which soon turned into a shining sphere’. The object landed in a meadow and rolled to a nearby river, the children standing no more than half a kilometre away. The sphere split and there appeared ‘something resembling a headless person in dark garb’, its ‘hands’ hanging lower than its ‘knees’. The craft melted into the air, and the creature headed off to the village. We are not told what became of it. Later, three more spheres touched down in the same meadow, two inhabited. These, like the first sphere, quickly became invisible.
On 11 June, a fiery ball had been seen by one individual above Vologda which ‘showed’ over the city for seventeen minutes but did not attempt to land. Another UFO was spotted by a school pupil the following night. The same TASS report mentions an incident which occurred on 24 April. ‘An enigmatic object allegedly thrice as large as an aircraft flew over the city of Cherepovetsk’, according to a local inhabitant, coasting noiselessly at an altitude of 300 metres, and leaving a ‘large radiant trail’. It carried blinking red lights.
A remarkable TASS story appeared on 9 July. It referred to an incident the year before when a UFO dumped about 60 kilos of detritus (‘gauzes, balls and glassy pieces’) on a hill near Dalnegorsk in the Soviet Far East. This debris had unusual properties supposedly beyond the capabilities of science on Earth. For example, a gauze heated to 900 degrees centigrade in the open air disappeared, whereas a piece refused to melt in a vacuum even at 2,800 degrees. The material would not conduct electricity when cool, but would when heated.
There were other marvels, vaguely reminiscent of the science fiction novel Roadside Picnic, but the UFO proponents did not have it all their own way. There was a dissenting school which claimed that the material was the result of a ‘plasmoid – a plasma product naturally produced by geophysical fields in response to agitation caused by technical experiments or solar-terrestrial physical factors.’ One would have thought that such an important event would have been reported more widely, but there seems to have been no follow up. The story was picked up from the newspaper Socialist Industry. This paper has been one of the main feeds for the TASS UFO stories, which would appear to be an unlikely role for an official organ of the Communist Party’s central committee, mainly covering the Soviet economy.
Socialist Industry is, however, not the only source for TASS‘s UFO watch. On 2 August, Trud reported a mysterious burnt spot, eight metres in diameter, despite being oval, which had mysteriously appeared on a lawn near Moscow at the end of July. Theories proposed by A. Kuzovkin, chairman of the ‘Ecology of Unknown’ seminar of the Vokrug Sveta magazine, ranged from a UFO landing spot to the site of a lightning strike, although the latter possibility was felt to be shaky due to the fact that the interior of the spot was still green. How this characteristic was consonant with a UFO landing was not made clear.
Further happenings were suggestive. A man who took soil samples felt his finger tips burning, and they turned red for several hours. Another fell ill on returning home, and rundown batteries placed on the spot somehow recharged themselves. However, Kuzovkin stressed that although the site could be characterised as that of a UFO landing, ‘that UFO was not a spacecraft with aliens, as many think, but a power plasmoid…’
The following day, TASS quoted Trud‘s more mundane suggestion, taken from an interview with the local fire chief, as to how the spot had appeared. Out went power plasmoids, in came a burning haystack, set fire to as a prank (the middle of the spot was unscorched because the fire had been burning from the perimeter and had not had time to reach the inside). The Vologda and Moscow incidents were reported in the Financial Times on 5 August, although the possible solution to the latter was not mentioned.
TASS put out another item on 7 August reiterating the view that the spot was caused by normal means, but using it as a peg on which to hang the views of Vladimir Surdin of Moscow’s Aviation Institute. He pointed out a few of the human made and natural objects with which UFOs can be confused, and went on to argue that although there might be alien life forms somewhere in the universe, it is odd that no proper contact has been made. ‘It is evident that such a hide-and-seek game is meaningless and does not accord with the wisdom of a civilisation, which must be at a higher level of development than our own’.
These reports have been picked up by the US press with great enthusiasm. On 10 August Associated Press carried an article which included a note, gleaned from Socialist Industry, on the experience of a milkmaid in Perm who had been confronted with an alien at 4:30am. She saw what appeared to be a dark figure riding a motorcycle. When she looked more closely, she realised that there was no bike, instead ‘something resembling a man, but taller than average with short legs.’ It did not possess a proper head, but rather sported a small knob. It became fluorescent and disappeared. A beekeeper saw a pair of fluorescent objects shaped like eggs and as big as aircraft, which hovered at a height of 200-300 metres. In mid-July more aliens with no heads were seen by unnamed witnesses.
After a three week gap, TASS carried a short item on 1 September concerning a sighting which occurred over the Mangyshlak peninsula in the Caspian sea. Again Socialist Industry was the source. The report stated that residents had seen a UFO shaped like a cigar but several times bigger than a passenger aircraft, which flew silently over the city until it vanished in clouds above the sea. This one too had tail lights, and these remained in view for a considerable period.
TASS does not have a monopoly in promulgating these stories. On 25 September the British newspaper Today quoted an article from the Soviet Military Review which put forward the view that the US Strategic Defence Initiative should be scrapped because of the possibility of shooting down a UFO by accident: ‘…lack of information on the characteristics and influence of UFOs increases the threat of incorrect identification’, it said. The only way that the danger, with the attendant risk of an alien backlash, could be averted, would be increased international cooperation. An unnamed US Embassy official was asked to respond: ‘It is a novel argument. I am sure the White House will take it on board in future negotiations.’
But the most famous Soviet UFO incident has to be that which allegedly occurred at Voronezh, 300 miles southeast of Moscow, in October. It received widespread coverage in the western media and highlighted the seeming obsession that the Russians entertain for alien encounters. The story broke in TASS on 9 October, when it announced that a landing in a Voronezh park had been confirmed by scientists.
Via Google Maps, Voronezh region (name highlighted in yellow), south of Moscow.
At least three visits had been made, according to eyewitnesses. On one occasion ‘a large shining ball or disk was seen hovering above the park, it then landed, a hatch opened and 1, 2, or 3 creatures similar to humans and a small robot came out.’ It was claimed that the aliens were three or four metres tall, but with very small heads, as in the Perm encounters. They strolled about near the craft and then went back inside. The experience caused those watching to be filled with fear lasting for some days.
Genrikh Silanov, head of the Voronezh Geophysical Laboratory, was quoted as saying that he had identified the landing site by means of biolocation, discovering a circle twenty metres in diameter, plus two mysterious pieces of rock. These did look like sandstone, but upon analysis it was discovered that they could not have originated on earth, although Silanov did concede that further analysis was needed biolocation was also used to track the route taken by the aliens, and it was found that the scientists’ and onlookers’ descriptions coincided.
The report ends by saying that there had also been sightings of ‘a banana-shaped object in the sky and a characteristic illuminated sign, as described in the US Saga magazine’. It is unlikely that residents of Voronezh could have read the magazine. Alas we are given no more information about either the object or the sign, but numerous journalists misread this throwaway ending, and assumed that the aliens who landed did so in a flying banana.
The Associated Press weighed in with a crib of the TASS item on the same day, throwing in references to the Perm milkmaid and Moscow haystack for good measure. Not to be outdone, TASS issued another release on 10 October saying that the reports had been confirmed in the current issue of Soviet Culture. More details, including names of several children who witnessed the events, were given. The aliens had landed on 27 September in a park crowded with people, with several dozen people waiting at a bus stop nearby.
At 6:30 ‘they saw a pink shining (sic) in the sky and then spotted a ball of a deep-red colour about ten metres in diameter.’ This ball circled the park, disappeared, reappeared and then hovered. A crowd which rushed across to it saw a hatch open in the lower half of the craft, with a humanoid standing in it. The figure was about three metres high, had three eyes, and was wearing a silver suit with a disc on its chest and bronze boots. The alien seemed to look the place over, the hatch closed and the sphere descended. After it had landed, the hatch reopened and two creatures, one of which seemed to be a robot, came out.
The first one spoke, at which point a triangle, about 30 by 50cm, appeared on the ground. It suddenly disappeared. The alien touched the ‘robot’ and this began moving in a mechanical fashion. One boy screamed but was quelled by a look from the alien, which paralysed him. The alien’s eyes were shining, and the crowd screamed. After a while, both the ball and the creatures disappeared, but we are not told in what manner. In about five minutes, though, they were back, the alien carrying what looked like a gun, a tube about 50cm long, by its side. This was directed at a sixteen year old boy, presumably the one who had been paralysed, and he vanished. The alien went inside the ball, it ascended, and the boy reappeared at the same time.
Later, militia officers and reporters interviewed the witnesses, and found their stories to be consistent Residents of Putilin Street also took the opportunity to mention the fact that they had seen UFOs between 23 and 29 September, presumably the other two contacts mentioned the previous day. The children at the park were still afraid, the report continued, and the affair was to be investigated by scientists, physicists and biologists. The same day the story circulated widely in the world’s press.
The Washington Post used the TASS material, but fleshed out with an interview with a Moscow scientist. After mentioning that the aliens had arrived in a ‘banana-shaped object’, the paper mentioned that the Communist Party’s youth newspaper had published two photographs on its back page, one of a ‘derby -like object’ and the other’ a bizarre ovoid flying over the flats of the Far East’ The scientist stated that hitherto the study of UFOs had been seen as an occupation of bourgeois scientists, but recently it had achieved much more popularity, with an increase in the number of sightings. Silanov’s observations were quoted, and the Post journalist added drily, ‘Silanov could not be reached for any further incomprehensible comment.’
An Associated Press release the same day quoted a TASS duty officer as saying ‘it is not April Fool’s today’. It transpired, though, that Soviet Culture had been the only major national daily in the Soviet Union to publish the story that day.
The Guardian recounted the TASS story but added information on another incident gleaned from Anatoly Listratov of the department studying anomalous phenomena at the All-Union Geodesical Society. He reported a sighting of a UFO by two pilots. One had been blinded, the other later died of cancer. Listratov added that officers engaged on space and missile work had reported a number of sightings.
The following day, 11 October, Today provided a profile of The Aetherius Society which mentioned the Voronezh episode, although devoting more space to a South African encounter in which a UFO had been shot down and its two occupants captured alive. Yes, we were being invaded, according to the Aetherius Society, but the aliens were friendly. This was known because the Aetherians’ founder president Sir George King was receiving messages from them by telepathy. Spokesperson Chrissie Aubry called on Britain’s Ministry of Defence to open its UFO files. ‘TASS never jokes and if they take it seriously so should the authorities here’, she said.
Also on 11 October, Associated Press reported how a drawing by a child who had witnessed the events at Voronezh had been seen by millions on television. The drawing took the form of a ‘glowing two-legged sphere with a smiling stick figure inside.’ Film of the landing site was also broadcast. An eyewitness gave further details of the main alien. It merely had a hump, not a head and shoulders. This it could not turn, but could only swivel its middle eye. It also had two holes rather than a proper nose. An aviation engineer from the area said that he and his colleagues had found intense magnetic activity at the landing site.
A list of items detracting from the credibility of the story was also presented in the TV programme. No adult witnesses had appeared, although an apartment block overlooked the park; the story spread only after an article appeared in a local newspaper a week after the event was supposed to have occurred (uncharacteristically TASS had not quoted a source in its 9 October release); and Silanov’s rocks turned out to be terrestrial after all. The TV reporter concluded that more research was needed, distinguishing between experts and ‘Voronezh enthusiasts’. TASS hit back with a release the same day on the US reaction to Voronezh, listing the TV shows which had mentioned it.
One critic had been dismissive, saying that glasnost had gone too far, and asking what the Academy of Science thought of it all. Others admitted that the TASS involvement had given the story credibility. There were also questions about biolocation. A NASA representative said that they did not have enough information with which to form an opinion, but pointed out that the Russians had not been in touch with them to discuss the case. The conclusion seemed to be that the story was not taken particularly seriously. It was a very candid release, not at all defensive, considering how much prestige TASS had invested in the story.
The Washington Post the same day rehearsed the main events and, after the banana joke, wondered what had happened to all the people who were supposed to have been waiting for a bus when the UFO landed. It also quoted the Yugoslav news agency Tanjung, which appeared as po-faced as TASS was supposed to be. ‘If the Soviet press and TASS news agency are to be trusted, aliens have carried out a real invasion in the Soviet Union over the past few days’. In view of this, it wondered, where was a reaction from the Defence Ministry? After this the story seemed to slip from sight.
So from apparently sketchy articles in local newspapers, these alien stories spread until they reached international prominence, and just as suddenly disappeared. Commentators outside explained the UFO fever in the Soviet Union variously as the effects of glasnost or to a deep need in the Russian psyche for mystery. Whatever the reason, it is true that Russian UFOs are part of a much livelier paranormal movement than exists in the West.
Despite being the homeland of dialectical materialism, these phenomena have always been taken seriously. The difference is that now we can hear about it more easily. The episode still leaves one wondering about TASS, though. During the Voronezh incident especially, people seemed inclined to give the agency the benefit of the doubt, simply because it was TASS. Later, however, an Associated Press article carried a quotation which casts this view into question. Complaining that he had been misquoted, Silanov said: ‘Don’t believe all you hear from TASS‘.
Last month, Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was awarded £13k from the West Midlands Police and given an apology for her wrongful arrests in November 2022 and February 2023 when she was detained by the police while silently praying on the street.
Put that way, the case sounds like a huge infringement on her right to practise her religion without persecution. Put that way, it sounds like egregious over-policing, bordering on thought crime, which should appal every right-thinking person who loves freedom. Put that way, she is a hero. And it has certainly been put that way a lot – by people like GB News regulars, Darren Grimes and Calvin Robinson. The former tweeted a video of her arrest, saying:
This is the most depressing thing I’ve ever seen the police do. She’s *silently* praying. Yet the police routinely choose not to investigate burglaries, muggings and fail to prosecute knife crime. How pathetically puerile our cops have become — a woman praying is now enemy #1!
And Calvin Robinson tweeted a video of her second arrest, saying:
Isabel Vaughan-Spruce has been given a fixed penalty notice by the Thought Police.
Clearly not protesting. Clearly not harassing anyone. Clearly causing no harm.
Arrested for silently praying in her head, again!
However, as is often the case when the likes of GB News pick up on a culture war cause célèbre, there is some vital context missing from their reporting. Vaughan-Spruce was not arrested on the street at random – she was standing outside an abortion clinic, and had been for several days.
When the police asked if she was protesting, she said that, while she is part of an anti-abortion protest group, she was not acting in that capacity and was merely praying “in her head”. When asked if she could do that somewhere other than outside an abortion clinic, she said she wanted to pray in that spot, because it is an abortion clinic.
Whether she admits it or not, choosing to spend several days standing outside an abortion clinic in silent prayer, in full view of the people working at and visiting it, is undeniably a protest – and I say that as someone who has travelled around the country to hand out advice leaflets about cold reading, outside psychic shows. What I was doing was a protest, and what Vaughan-Spruce was doing was also protest; she travelled to a location for the specific purpose of engaging in a public action against something she disagrees with.
Her actions were chosen in such a way as to send a message to the people using the clinic – after all, if this were really about prayer, her omniscient god would have received the message regardless of where she was when she sent it. It is the definition of a protest, whether her actions were vocal or silent; to deny that is an act of cowardice, rather than a principled stand against over-policing.
The denial of the protest, however, was deliberate and tactical; Vaughan-Spruce’s colleague filmed her on both occasions, as the police ask if she is aware of the Public Space Protection Order in place outside the abortion clinic, and she confirms she was aware. They ask her to move along and to answer some questions and she refuses, which ultimately leads to her arrest.
Her protest on those days, and the several others, was designed to test those Public Space Protection Orders, which is why she made a point of filming throughout. That might be a reasonable and principled stance, to protest against anti-protesting legislation – but not if she denies that what she’s doing is a protest.
In my opinion, the purpose was not to protest against the unjust nature of anti-protesting laws. It was a stunt designed to create exactly the kind of headlines GB News and dozens of other outlets delivered, where it appears that an over-zealous police force is clamping down on thought crimes, to the point where even existing in public as a Christian makes you a target.
Isabel Vaughan-Sprice and March for Life
I first heard of Isabel Vaughan-Spruce in 2016 when I reached out to the organisation she runs, March for Life, to invite them onto an episode of my podcast, Be Reasonable. March For Life organises anti-abortion marches and protests around the country. At the time, they were preparing for their big 2016 event, and were too busy to be interviewed, as they were all volunteers working on their anti-abortion protests in their spare time.
For the last eight years, I’ve been on their mailing list, receiving regular updates on their marches, their protests, and their organising. I’ve had emails from them about “pro-choice training days”, where they train you to make your anti-abortion protests more effective – what rhetoric to use, which buttons to push, which beliefs to hold back, and how to frame an anti-abortion position in as palatable a way as possible.
On June 24 2022, I received an email update headlined: “ROE V WADE IS OVERTURNED – WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE UK?” In it, they celebrated the ruling in America, and highlighted that they wanted to go even further in the UK:
What Roe v Wade has done is provide a strong talking point for us in the UK let’s use this to our advantage and not shy away from discussing this issue. We don’t want abortion to become illegal as much as we want it to be unthinkable.
To achieve that goal, Isabel and her team explained what they need their supporters to do:
At March for Life UK we often talk about the importance of being publicly pro-life. This doesn’t necessarily mean standing in the town centre with a poster, although it most certainly can do… we should be happy to talk about the science of the child in the womb, whose heart is beating from week 3, a fact which can, and should, make abortion supporters squirm… we should readily speak up about post abortion trauma and the symptoms of grief that can follow this decision as well as how to find healing and peace no matter how many abortions someone may have had.
And the newsletter, which is signed off by “Ben, Sarah and Isabel”, includes the following:
I sometimes suggest this litmus test – ask yourself the question: ‘If it became illegal tomorrow to be pro-life would there be enough evidence to convict you?’ If the answer is ‘no’, don’t berate yourself but rather think how can you change that?
A few things are clear, here: firstly, Isabel is not a random Christian who happened to be silently praying on the street, she is one of the three leaders of a national campaign group who exists to protest against abortion. Secondly, the protest her group trains people to engage in explicitly includes anti-abortion posters and conversation designed to make people squirm. And thirdly, Isabel believes you should engage in that protest regardless of what the law says about it.
In 2013, I interviewed one of the other leaders of 40 Days For Life, Andrew Burton, after learning that the group hands out baby clothes, while shouting “mummy”, to women going into abortion clinics. Other clinics around the country have reported having baby socks left in hedges outside, with protesters holding up plastic foetuses, filming patients who enter, and calling the staff “murderers” and “baby killers”. It is easy to see why these protests, even back then, were causing people at abortion clinics to feel intimidated.
By 2021, according to an article in Elle, those UK protests had become more extreme and “Americanised” in their approach, with protesters emboldened by the extremists’ success in the US. And so MPs put forward plans for a Safe Access Zone around abortion clinics, meaning no anti-abortion protests would be allowed within 150 metres, enforced through Public Space Protection Orders. March for Life was incensed, and their March 2023 newsletter called these protest buffer zones a “national disgrace” that must be fought, arguing:
It is appalling that this proposal was ever put forward when there has never been any evidence demonstrating that intimidation or harassment has taken place outside any abortion centre in the country.
Given the actions of many anti-abortion protest groups, that March for Life believes there is no evidence of any intimidation is clearly more of a comment on their perception than their actions.
It is in this context that Isabel Vaughan-Spruce headed to the abortion clinic in Birmingham in December 2022, to engage in a protest while denying she was protesting. To my eyes, this looks an awful lot like someone hanging around outside a medical facility, knowing that doing so will provoke a reaction, to put these new laws to the test and find weaknesses in them.
The Alliance Defending Freedom UK
Videos of both of her arrests were uploaded to social media by the Alliance Defending Freedom UK, the UK-based offshoot of a well-financed American conservative group dedicated to ending abortion rights and LGBTQ rights. The video of her second arrest was branded with the ADF UK logo, and the group organised her case against the police , providing her with a legal team. Vaughan-Spruce’s stunt and subsequent PR victory would not have been possible without the funding and organisational support of the ADF UK.
March for Life cannot deny that their UK operation is entwined with the ADF – the host at their upcoming anti-abortion summit will be Lois McLatchie-Miller, Senior Legal Communications Officer for ADF UK. McLatchie-Miller posted an analysis of Vaughan-Spruce’s arrest to the website Conservative Home, where commenters wryly highlighted that, while her bio lists her as working for “ADF UK, a legal advocacy organization which promotes freedom of speech”, the UK outfit spells ‘organisation’ with an American Z.
Organising and supporting anti-abortion protest groups is not the extent of the ADF’s recent attempts to export their brand of American Christian lawfare into the UK. A Guardian article from April highlights how the ADF UK had more than doubled its spending on lobbying the UK government since 2020, and successfully partnered with senior Tory figures, including former Tory MP Fiona Bruce. In March, Bruce spoke alongside two members of the ADF at a conference on how to fight social hostility to religious beliefs. And if you’re wondering which religious beliefs need protecting, Bruce has voted against legalising abortion in the UK, and voted against same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland.
An ADF protest and values collage by Open Democracy featuring signs saying “Pray to end abortion” and “Every human person is #irreplaceable, let’s make abortion unthinkable”
The ADF also joined forces with Christian Concern to launch the Wilberforce Academy to train young Christian professionals in matters of faith. It’s hard to say how long this has been going on, because there is very little information online about the Wilberforce Academy beyond a very sparse website, a brief mention in the Guardian in 2011, and a form you can fill in to apply to be part of the 2024 intake (as long as you can tell them how you found out about them).
Christan Concern operates the Christian Legal Centre and seems to have picked up a few tips from the ADF’s playbook on finding and pursuing legal cases that push a Christian agenda, as the Guardian noted in 2011.
Close observers of the centre believe it is adopting the tactics of wealthy US evangelical groups, notably the powerful Alliance Defence Fund, which, through its Blackstone Legal Fellowship, trains an army of Christian lawyers to defend religious freedom “through strategy, training, funding and direct litigation”.
The CLC denies being funded by the ADF or ADF UK, and argues that “all of the centre’s work was done on a pro bono basis by committed Christian lawyers” and that what money it had came in “small donations from more than 30,000 people” who received its regular email updates. It is worth noting that at least some of those committed Christian lawyers passed through the ADF-funded Wilberforce Academy.
It is also worth noting that Isabel Vaughan-Spruce’s lawyer was Jeremiah Igunnubole, Legal Counsel for ADF UK, in a case that was “supported by the Christian Legal Centre”. So, in this case at least, the lawyer working towards the goals of the CLC was paid by the ADF UK, without it needing to be true that the ADF UK gave money to the CLC.
The conservative Christian agenda
It is not just through anti-abortion protest cases that the Christian Legal Centre’s agenda seems to align with that of the ADF – the CLC takes a keen interest in end-of-life and dying-with-dignity cases. Earlier this year, it was even reported that medics were leaving their jobs due to the “considerable moral distress” caused by right-wing Christian groups, including due to legal cases brought by the CLC.
The issues page of Christian Concern’s website shows their priorities – which is to push a Christian view on the beginning of life, end of life, marriage, gender, and sexuality. They stress the importance of education, by which they mean faith-based education, because “the children of our society become more vulnerable to the secularising and sexualising trends of culture”.
They claim that there are Sharia law councils across the UK, creating a parallel legal system. They oppose secularism, which they claim “privileges atheism in public life, and squeezes out other religions and beliefs, including Christianity”. And, of course, they campaign against gay and trans people, and what they term ‘gender ideology’. Their lawyers at the Christian Legal Centre are behind a string of cases in which they defend people who were sacked for discriminating against gay and trans people.
In 2014, they represented Richard Page, a magistrate who tried to deny a same sex couple the right to adopt a child, because of his religious beliefs. In 2018, they represented Svetlana Powell, a teacher who was sacked after telling a lesbian pupil in her class that homosexuality was against God’s will, and that she “will be going to hell if she does not repent her sins”, comparing homosexuality to murder.
They represented Kristie Higgs, a teacher in Gloucestershire who said that lesson plans about relationships and gay rights as part of the Equality Act were “brainwashing” kids. And in 2021, they sued the government on behalf of Nigel and Sally Rowe, who argued they were forced to pull their child out of school and homeschool him after he saw a six year old boy wearing a dress at school.
In 2023, they represented Glawdys Leger, a languages teacher who refused to teach about LGBTQ rights as part of the year seven syllable. According to evidence presented at her hearing, she told the school: “This was going too far now and that I am going to tell my pupils the truth”. That “truth”, according to Leger, was being LGBTQ+ is “a sin” and “not fine”. Instead, she used the lesson to tell pupils a story about a gay man, who had “given up being gay to become a Christian because it was not right” and that “People who are transgender are just confused about themselves”. The Telegraph reported that she had been sacked for refusing to teach “extreme LGBT ideology”. The Spectator raged about how she was hounded out of her profession for her views. Laurence Fox whined about her being sacked for sharing Christian beliefs in Church of England schools – which she wasn’t, but it was arguably the goal of these organisations to portray it that way.
The CLC also represented Joshua Sutcliffe, a teacher who, according to last month’s ruling in the case, lost his job after repeatedly used female pronouns to refer to a trans male pupil, first in the classroom, and then on national television when interviewed about the case – outing the kid in the process. Supporters of Sutcliffe’s views on trans people might not have bothered reading that he also told his class that homosexuality was a sin that can be cured by god, and that he played a video in class about men who are “not masculine enough”. He blamed the loss of his jobs on the “LGBT+ mafia” and the “Islamic mafia”.
Reasons for concern
There is evidently a well-financed, well-organised push from American ultra-conservative organisations to export their agenda to the UK on several fronts. What is most concerning is that they’re actually finding supporters here in places that ought to be unexpected.
The agenda of an organisation that seeks to discriminate against gay people is celebrated and championed at GB News by Darren Grimes and Andrew Doyle – conservative commentators who are both gay. But those attacks on gay rights are packaged as a free speech issue and the freedom to hold conservative beliefs, and so the GB News commentariat laps it up without examination.
Equally, ‘gender critical’ activists who would still call themselves feminists have cheered on legal cases about teachers being sacked for their views on trans people, despite the fact that those legal cases are pushed by groups that are currently lobbying the government to make abortion illegal, and to make it acceptable for people to intimidate women at abortion clinics.
This is strategic: couch your regressive agenda in language they can like and share, and they won’t care enough to notice that everything else you’re saying and doing is antithetical to the values and principles they purport to hold; hate the people they hate and they will help you, without ever noticing that you hate them too.
It’s hard to know how far this will go and how much of a threat it is. The UK is not America, and that American style of radical Christian ultra-conservatism isn’t part of our cultural fabric, regardless of what organisations like Christian Concern might say. But we also have to appreciate that when it comes to attacks on secularism, bodily autonomy, gay and trans rights, and women’s rights, it actually doesn’t take much to start rolling back hard-fought rights. And with the funding and organisational strength of groups like the ADF, and the strategic sophistication those groups can bring, it’s easy for them to find fault lines in society, and to mould their regressive views into the perfect shape to exploit any cracks.
If we care about freedom from religion as much as we care about freedom of religion, we should pay attention. And to the free-speech-absolutist crowd and the gender-critical crowd, next time you’re high-fiving a group for something you agree with, maybe check to see whether their other hand is holding a knife at your back.
