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The Wikipedia conspiracy that wasn’t; or, why Wikipedia says Roswell was a balloon

Robert Jones
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The Wikipedia conspiracy that wasn’t; or, why Wikipedia says Roswell was a balloon

UFO enthusiasts on Twitter and Reddit are concerned that a vast conspiracy manipulates Wikipedia articles to make UFO enthusiasts look ridiculous. Across three episodes of The Good Trouble Show, host Matt Ford and independent researcher Rob Heatherly laid out the alleged cabal and supposed evidence.

According to Heatherly, at or near the top are intelligence agencies. One step below is the nonprofit Center for Skeptical Inquiry and its fellows like science writer Mick West and Bill Nye (the science guy). It is unclear why, but the conspiracy imagines the CSI as CIA-funded. Finally, the CSI is accused of running Wikipedia via retired portrait photographer Susan Gerbic; she runs a private Facebook group.

This sounds a bit odd, especially to me, because as I listened to and read about these Wikipedia edits, I realized that I was behind a portion of them. I am not a CIA operative, a CSI employee, Mick West, or a member of Gerbic’s Facebook group. To hopefully give some insight into how Wikipedia works, I’ll use the “Roswell incident” article as a test case. By the end, you’ll have an explanation of how the free encyclopaedia came to say that Roswell was not an alien spaceship, without any assistance from the CIA.

Who writes a Wikipedia article?

Wikipedia bills itself as “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.” This invites a steady flow of new contributors, but also a broad range of problematic editors. Wikipedia can handle the nonsense and spam edits because experienced editors use tools that streamline finding and reverting disruption to articles. Editors can add any page to a watchlist and get notified each time the page changes. They can revert the most recent change with the undo button. Many editors have an additional rollback feature to undo consecutive changes. The optional maintenance tool Twinkle combines rollback with standardized warning/welcome messages.

A Wikipedia user with many edits is likely using these tools. Every change to any Wikipedia page, including every revert, is logged as a separate edit. Wikipedia officially has no hierarchical structure, but in his book Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia, Dariusz Jemielniak explains how editors build a reputation on the site, with their edit count often working as a quick way to evaluate another’s status in the project. Outside of Wikipedia, edits and edit counts are misinterpreted. They do not correlate to authorship. Very many edits are maintenance or other small changes. This edit/authorship confusion at least partly explains how the Mick West conspiracy gets so bizarre.

Who is Mick West?

Proponents of this Wikipedia/CIA conspiracy have an unusual method for uncovering the people behind Wikipedia accounts. As researcher Rob Heatherly has explained, many individual Wikipedia edits are fed into ChatGPT. Then tweets from science writer and podcaster Mick West are fed into ChatGPT. Finally, ChatGPT determines which editor is the most Mick West. There is a lot to question in this methodology. Why did the process start with the assumption that at least one editor was secretly Mick West? Why was ChatGPT fed his tweets and not his Wikipedia edits? He has an account on Wikipedia under his real name.

This flawed methodology is complicated by confusion over authorship. Across three multi-hour conversations, Heatherly and Matt Ford analyse the edits of a particular editor they have keyed in on as Mick West’s primary secret account. While Ford and Heatherly discuss content added or removed by this account’s edits, they ignore the summaries at the top of the page with information like “Tag:Undo”, “Tag:Rollback”, and “Tag:Twinkle”. These tags indicate that the editor is using one of those three automated tools to revert changes to existing content, not writing new material.

While Heatherly credits this editor with building Mick West’s page and labelling West as a “science writer”, that label is present in the very first version of the page created by an entirely different editor. Heatherly and Ford make note of how many times this supposed Mick West account has edited the page, but the editor has only added two sentences about an aspect of West’s career unrelated to science, skepticism, or ufology. While AI-based identification of authorship was dubious, it’s based on a misunderstanding of who the authors of Wikipedia articles are in the first place.

The confusion extends to the process aspects of the site, like talk pages. Every article and editor has an associated talk page. Any article on the site will have a link to its talk page, where editors can discuss writing the article. Wikipedia also has broader scope talk pages, like the sitewide noticeboards. These noticeboards are places to bring attention to problematic content. There are boards for many different issues like articles that don’t summarise cited sources (WP:ORN), articles that misrepresent the major views on a topic (WP:NPOVN), and articles that make extraordinary claims referring to dubious sources (WP:FTN). This last noticeboard features heavily in the CIA/Wikipedia cabal conspiracy.

The fringe theories noticeboard is misrepresented by Heatherly and Ford as either hidden or somehow part of an external organization. They cite an innocuous message that Susan Gerbic posted to this noticeboard (“Ohhh are you trying to coax me into another Wikipedia page on UFO’s…”) as evidence of a plot against a pro-UFO journalist. This discussion, preserved in the archives, is actually about an editor recently banned from another language Wikipedia coming to the English-language article for “Westall UFO”, and writing that teenagers and high school teachers saw an alien spaceship, for which the new editor was citing links of video search results. It’s not unusual to post problematic articles to a noticeboard.

It’s also not unusual for the editors making articles problematic to either be blocked from editing those articles or blocked from editing Wikipedia entirely. A March 2023 Cambridge study found that users leaving the platform after failing to distort an article had a uniquely positive effect on the quality of information on Wikipedia compared to other online platforms.

Among a lengthy Reddit thread accusing a secret cabal of manipulating Wikipedia’s coverage of Roswell, a conspiracy theorist posted an interesting series of links to older versions of the page from “before the anti-UFO Taliban rode all over it.” These older versions were the product of compromises between skeptical and pro-extraterrestrial editors. In 2014, Wikipedia editor jps made a noticeboard post after being reverted by UFO proponents at the Roswell article sarcastically asking, “Did you know that if we simply state that what crashed in Roswell, NM was a top-secret balloon, that this is not a ‘neutral’ POV?”

This discussion began moving the article away from a “both sides” presentation to a clearer presentation of the facts, which includes the 1947 retrieval of debris from a top-secret spy balloon. The article would say outright that reports of alien corpses near Roswell did not exist before the 1980 conspiracy book.

Photograph of the Roswell UFO Museum in New Mexico showing the front exterior. A truck and a car are parked outside and four different signs say UFO Museum Research Centre. Two green alien figures stand in front of its windows.
The UFO Museum in Roswell. Photo by J Dykstra, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

How can a 1947 crash begin with a 1980 book?

In 1947, newspapers and radio programs reported the military retrieval of debris near Roswell consisting of “tinfoil, paper, tape, and sticks“. There was no mention of bodies or an intact craft. After about 24 hours, a press conference identified the debris as a weather balloon, and the press rapidly lost interest. Roswell was largely forgotten for decades.

Later, a retired officer came forward to call the weather balloon explanation a cover story, leading to Bill Moore co-writing The Roswell Incident. The book, published in 1980, combined the somewhat mundane 1947 debris retrieval with other unrelated UFO stories and began creating a hyper-narrative that could reach out and touch any aspect of the developing UFO myths.

Notably, Moore explained the strange absence of any Roswell news over 30 years by claiming that Silas Newton’s crashed saucer tale, which took place several hundred miles away and a year later, was also the Roswell incident. Newton had spent years selling oil-detecting machines that he claimed were based on alien technology reverse-engineered from a crashed UFO full of alien corpses, until he was convicted of fraud in 1953 because the devices did not work. Moore included the crashed spaceship full of dead aliens and left out the fraud conviction.

The book sold reasonably well, but not nearly as well as Moore’s previous work on the Bermuda Triangle. According to historian Robert Goldberg, it did attract several very significant readers. Several men came to Moore, presenting themselves as Air Force Intelligence Officers with inside knowledge of a UFO coverup. They offered Moore hard evidence of recovered alien technology if he would keep tabs on members of the UFO community and spread certain mistruths.

In the mid-1980s several UFO researchers received photographs of photocopies of purported top-secret documents. Karl Pflock found that the common thread among the individuals who received these anonymous deliveries was Moore. The documents lacked any kind of provenance, but told an excellent story of a select group of elite scientists, called the Majestic 12, who were allowed to study alien technology in secret.

At a 1989 conference for the Mutual UFO Network, Moore gave a speech to a shocked audience where he confessed to intentionally spreading disinformation, and claimed some responsibility for triggering the paranoid breakdown of UFO investigator Paul Bennewitz. The UFO community disowned Moore, but not the array of bizarre narratives that he had popularised.

Why would the government claim they had a crashed spaceship?

A line of thinking that I have heard before and seen in the Reddit and Twitter discussions is that if no alien craft crashed in Roswell, why would the government announce that they had recovered one? The short answer is that they did not. The initial press release did announce the recovery of a “flying disc”, but this came just weeks after the first flying saucer reports and amidst hundreds of saucer reports from around the country.

In the summer of 1947, flying saucers were an unknown quantity not yet associated with alien life. A close reading of the flying saucer reports found that sincere reports rarely gave alien or futuristic details. In an analysis of this first wave of saucer sightings from the Summer of 1947, Martin Kottmeyer found the reports to include elements from conventional aircraft like glass domes, cockpits, fins, legs, jet pipes, vapor trails, and propellers. Kottmeyer commented,

“Notable by its absence is any indication of extraterrestrial technology: no lasers, heat rays, paralysis rays or gases, mind control rays, power rings, levitation of people or objects, denaturalization, matter interpenetration, space-suited entities, robots, remote eyes, or even simple observation ports.” 

On the front page of the July 8, 1947 issue of the Roswell Daily Record, the famous one with the headline “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region”, there is a smaller story that offers valuable context. Further down the page, under “Roswellians Have Differing Opinions on Flying Saucers”, the Daily Record reports that when surveyed about flying disks, “No one interviewed thought they came from sources outside the United States.”

But can’t Wikipedia give both sides of the Roswell debate?

In a way, it does. Wikipedia’s policy is to present a summary of reliable sources. When those reliable sources conflict, Wikipedia’s “Neutral Point of View” policy calls for articles to explain the conflict. Because of its age and significance, there are more reliable sources for Roswell than most UFO articles, including major newspapers, peer-reviewed journals, and university press books. They all say the 1947 debris came from a United States military balloon.

UFO enthusiasts may ask specifically about pro-UFO sources. Roswell is somewhat unique in that there are relatively reliable sources from pro-UFO authors. Karl Pflock conducted a decade-long investigation of every strange Roswell tale circulating in the UFO community and found no evidence at all of alien bodies or flying saucers. The University of Kansas published the work of PhD folklorist and alien abduction expert Thomas Bullard who has been a board member of the Center for UFO Studies. Bullard said it was a top-secret balloon. Beyond these sources is an array of contradictory narratives with varying degrees of connection to reality.

One pro-UFO article suggested on Reddit is a 2013 blog post by prominent Roswell author Kevin Randle. Randle’s criticism of the balloon explanation is almost entirely based on the amount of documentation proving the military launched a Mogul balloon on a specific day. However, the Roswell debris was identified as a Mogul balloon without documentation.

If the debris was not from one Mogul balloon, it could well be from a different balloon. Randle also makes the strange claim that “Mogul wasn’t all that secret… with pictures of it published in the newspapers on July 10, 1947,” while providing pictures of a weather balloon demonstration conducted for the press. Reliable sources agree that the July 10 demonstration was cover for Project Mogul. Finally, the documentation criticism is of a much higher standard than Randle has applied to evidence of an alien crash.

In their 1994 book The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell, Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt rely, in part, on the testimony of supposed eyewitness Frank Kaufman. In what should be a red flag, he claims to have been present for nearly every moment in the Roswell story. In the first chapter, the book straightforwardly provides a bizarre situation as an event from Kaufman’s life. Allegedly, he alone tracked a UFO on radar, reporting directly to a high-ranking general. Kaufman was not allowed to take his eyes off the screen for even a moment.

This already weird plan poses the logistical problem of what Kaufman should do when he must step away from the radar, since he has no other person to cover for him. The solution, which the book presents straight-faced as a pivotal moment in humanity’s history, is that Kaufman positions a series of mirrors pointing from the screen, around corners, and through the open door of the latrine. As you may suspect, there is no documentation that Frank Kaufman watched a UFO radar through his own personal funhouse while defecating.

Why volunteer at anything?

One of the pieces of evidence offered for the CIA/Wikipedia conspiracy is the supposed lack of a motive for people to build an encyclopaedia for no pay. I have written Wikipedia articles entirely as a volunteer.

Nobody has paid me to write this response piece. The answer to “why” is present in Rob Heatherly’s explanations for why he researches fringe theories. It is meaningful to the people who do the work.

Sources

Who writes a Wikipedia article?

  • Jemielniak, D. (2014). Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia. Stanford University Press.

Who is Mick West?

How can a 1947 crash begin with Bill Moore’s 1980 book?

  • Goldberg, R. (2001). “Chapter 6: The Roswell Incident”. Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America. Yale University Press.                                                
  • Moore, W. and Berlitz, C. (1980). The Roswell Incident. Grosset and Dunlap.
  • Jacobson, M. (2018). Pale Horse Rider: William Cooper, the Rise of Conspiracy, and the Fall of Trust in America.  ‎ Blue Rider Press.

Why would the government claim they had a crashed spaceship?

  • Kottmeyer, M. (2017). “Why Have UFOs Changed Speed Over the Years?”. Why Statues Weep: The Best of the “Skeptic”. Routledge.
  • Bartholomew, R. (Summer, 2000). “From Airships to Flying Saucers: Oregon’s Place in the Evolution of UFO Lore”. Oregon Historical Quarterly. Vol. 101, no. 2, pp. 192-213.

But can’t Wikipedia give both sides of the Roswell debate?

  • Bullard, T. (2016). The Myth and Mystery of UFOs. University Press of Kansas.
  • Pflock, K. (2001). Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe. Prometheus Books.
  • Randle, K. and Schitt, D. (1994). The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell.

The strange and deeply unlikely tale of Gef the talking mongoose

Sean Slater
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The strange and deeply unlikely tale of Gef the talking mongoose

Mrs S was recently looking through the various media platforms we seem to be paying for, trying to find a Saturday night movie we could both enjoy. Getting past the regular sequels, remakes, and reboots, she came across a film on Amazon Prime that she reckoned would appeal very much to my skeptical sensibilities. The movie had the whimsical title of Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose.

Official trailer for Nandor Fodor the Talking Mongoose on YouTube, thumbnail featuring Simon Pegg.

The film starred the ever-funny Simon Pegg as the titular Nandor Fodor, a real 1930’s parapsychologist, and the ever-brilliant Minnie Driver as his fictional assistant; alongside Christopher Lloyd, Paul Kaye, and the voice of Neil Gaiman as the elusive Gef the Talking Mongoose. The plot revolves around Pegg and Driver investigating the conversational creature that has taken up residence with the Irving family in their remote Isle of Man farmhouse.

This is not a movie critic site, so if you want to get a critique of the film itself, it gets a middling 46% on Rotten Tomatoes; but we quite enjoyed its portrayal of character-driven, whimsical nostalgia.

Though Fodor denies being a skeptic, the character, as portrayed, does demonstrate a healthy scepticism. Indeed, he relates the story of Harry Houdini’s war against spiritualism as something to aspire to. However, the word “skeptic” is levelled at Fodor as a specific accusation from fellow paranormal investigator Harry Price (Christopher Lloyd) when he is less than enthusiastic about visiting the island.

As is the way in movie portrayals of real-life events, shortcuts are used, characters invented or ignored, and liberties taken with reality, but the movie is pretty good at sticking to known facts. So, what are the known facts? Nandor Fodor (1885-1964) was born to a Hungarian family in what is now Ukraine. He had an eventful life: working in New York as a journalist, moving to London, writing books, and chairing several groups investigating mediumship and other paranormal events. Despite his passion for such phenomena, he retained a largely objective, scientific outlook. He had been an associate with Freud in Europe so had an interest in psychoanalysis, believing it had a part to play when investigating psychical phenomena.

The parapsychologist Nandor Fodor, from An Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science, 1934. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nandor_Fodor_parapsychologist.png
The parapsychologist Nandor Fodor, from An Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science, 1934

After meeting the British newspaper magnate (and Nazi sympathiser), Lord Rothermere, Fodor was persuaded to move to London to write for one of his titles. It was here that he wrote his Magnum Opus: The Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science, thus cementing his reputation as the go-to authority on psychical matters.

There is a good, detailed bio available via Nature if you wish to know more, suffice to say that Fodor’s attitude to what we might call paranormal or supernatural phenomena varied throughout his life and whilst he tried to bring a scientific rigour to his investigations, he nonetheless could display a naivety and credulity in some of his conclusions.

Fodor did indeed visit the Isle of Man on the urgings of Harry Price to investigate Gef, but the story goes back to 1931 when the Irving family (parents James and Margaret, and their 13-year-old daughter, Voirrey) reported that Gef was living with them in their remote farmstead. It was soon picked up by the island’s papers as a slightly humorous local-interest story. The family claimed that Gef was an Indian Mongoose that was born on the sub-continent in 1852, but how it had made its way to the remote Isle of Man farmhouse was never made clear. The portrait of Gef on the Isleofman.com site gives a good description:

He soon had a fine command of English, not to mention a smattering of other languages and a repertoire of songs. A capricious character, he could be highly disruptive and rude at some times; playful and affectionate at others. Gef would catch rabbits to ‘earn his keep’ and make forays to neighbouring farms to spy on their affairs. He also enjoyed riding on the buses around the Island and would return with the latest gossip from fellow travellers. His hiding place was above a boxed-in partition in Voirrey’s bedroom and it was to the young girl that he remained closest.

When reporters from the London papers made their way to the island in search of a public-interest story, the case of the Dalby Spook (as it was known) became a tabloid sensation. However, though Gef made several tantalising appearances, he always remained elusively out of reach.

A sketch of Gef the talking mongoose by George Scott, from The Haunting of Cashen's Gap: A Modern "Miracle" Investigated, 1936. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gef_the_talking_mongoose.png
A sketch of Gef the talking mongoose by George Scott, from The Haunting of Cashen’s Gap: A Modern “Miracle” Investigated, 1936.

Mr Irving insisted he too could speak with Gef, and it was at his urging that Harry Price visited the island along with his friend, the editor of The Listener magazine, Richard Lambert. Disappointingly, Gef stayed away from his illustrious visitors. Irving later sent Price some fur and casts of paw prints he claimed were from the elusive mongoose, but experts from the Natural History Museum said the fur was likely from a dog (the family owned a sheepdog) and the prints, though unidentifiable were also likely to be from a dog-like creature.

Nonetheless, Price and Lambert wrote up their account in their book The Haunting of Cashen’s Gap (the farm was in that area of the island), which did some fence sitting as to whether there really was an erudite mongoose living in an IoM farmhouse, or there was a hoax being perpetrated by an imaginative, and likely lonely, teenage prankster with a talent for ventriloquism. But even Price, who was a firm believer in the supernatural world, was unconvinced that there was any real evidence of that in this case.

Price in the book reported that the farmhouse had several hollow wood-panelled walls that “[made] the whole house one great speaking-tube, with walls like sound boards. By speaking into one of the many apertures in the panels, it should be possible to convey the voice to various parts of the house.”

Fodor stayed with the Irvings for a week or so, but the creature remained out of sight and hearing, avoiding any further investigation. Like Price, Fodor remained unconvinced, and he put the phenomena down to a complex Freudian psychoanalysis, claiming Gef was a manifestation of a split personality he believed Mr Irving suffered from.  

Whether Gef really was a supernatural creature or was a creation of a family – or at least one of them – looking for publicity, fame, money or just LOLs, we likely will never know for 100% certain. The Irvings left the farm after the war and it was demolished a few years later. The subsequent owner claimed he had shot Gef as vermin (possibly in an effort to deter trespassers and unwanted visitors). Voirrey herself was insistent right up to her death in 2005 that he was not something she had created, however her friends remained firmly unconvinced as one friend, Kathleen Green, recalled many years later in a recorded interview.

Go check out Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose. We did enjoy it and it was nice to see skepticism portrayed in a relatively good light.  

Blue Pill or Red Pill: the effects of “The Pill Cabinet” and the formation of incel worldviews

Eunice Lim
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Blue Pill or Red Pill: the effects of “The Pill Cabinet” and the formation of incel worldviews

[Content note: mention of suicide]

“You take the blue pill… the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill… you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

“I’ll take the red,” the incel said.

Short for “involuntary celibate”, the term “incel” was coined to refer to an individual who bases a portion of their self-identity around their inability to find a romantic or sexual partner, despite their desire to. Initially, this might have been associated with a multitude of reasons, such as social awkwardness, or being a late bloomer. Today, however, the term most often comes accompanied with an abundance of misogyny.

By taking the red pill, the incel believes they’ve woken up to a world where feminism has taken over, and the balance of power is tipped not in favour of men, but of women. Their belief that men do not hold systemic power and privilege, but are actually subject to the whims of women and feminists’ power and desires, is the start of a rabbit hole that leads down to a cesspool of contemporary male supremacist movements.

As they go deeper, the incel gets increasingly dispirited by their perceived reality of a world that is increasingly acquiescent to the demands of what they believe to be a growing modern misandrist agenda disguised as feminism. By contrast, they believe that the acceptance of feminism by a relatively large portion of society in any capacity indicates the mainstream refusal to wake up; that everyone else is choosing the comfort of the blue pill, and societally-determined morality.

To make matters worse, the internet has a nasty “habit” of making the most controversial, inaccurate, and polarising content the most viral. It’s not very discerning. Plastered everywhere, even if for a short period of time — the internet moves on very quickly — the viral content garners attention beyond its intended audience. Unfortunately for us, a good portion of content that goes viral also tends to act as reinforcement for an incel’s false reality.

The world really does hate men. They joke about being anti-men. Everything men do is wrong, oh- unless he’s attractive. And further down the rabbit hole the incel goes.

Near the bottom of the rabbit hole is the black pill. Coined by the antifeminist communities themselves and seen as a last resort after realising that their attempts at making themselves more attractive to women are futile, the black pill represents a resignation towards a women-serving feminist world and the permanence of their incel status as a result of such.

Proposed solutions to this permanent state of being span a short range: death and violence. Suicide is openly discussed, with individuals essentially egged on by others in the same community. And while these are obviously tragic outcomes and very damaging to the incel as an individual, it holds no potential threat to others. The same can’t be said for other “solutions” proposed by members of the community: in my journey down the rabbit hole of the ins and outs of inceldom, the most extreme idea I came across on incel community sites is something referred to as “Going ER”.

An homage to Elliot Rodger, the man responsible for killing six and injuring fourteen before killing himself, “Going ER” suggests eliminating women and men who get what incels can’t (women) through murder. Extremist parts of the incel community deem him a hero, a martyr, and a role model. It is scary to think that Rodger could be lauded by men who have constructed their own worldview to justify their hatred for women. To think that there is a possibility they might follow in his footsteps, to be a martyr themselves, and to think that there might be people around you who actually agree to certain ideas behind inceldom, completely unbeknownst to you. All because they took the red pill.

Inceldom’s red pill definitely shows the individual a truth, but one that relies so heavily on the cherry-picking and warping of feminism is definitely not the truth the individual was so hoping for.

The majority of incels are men, and as much as those incels would tend to argue otherwise, men have been and still are the dominant group in our gendered society. They have shaped history, socio-cultural norms, morals; everything we know today has passed through the lens of a man. Notwithstanding the other factors that might affect the degrees of dominance a person might enjoy – such as racial, class or sexual identity – society for the most part remains structured around and for the experience of men. Women and non-binary people, as the Other, fall below men in that structured social order.

Feminism disrupts this engrained social order, but its aim to empower women to the same degree as men is inaccurately interpreted by incel groups as a desire to see women disempowering men. Alas, we are all mortal beings bound by subjectivity. The lens through which an individual views the world is shaped by the individual’s experiences, opinions, interpretations of reality around them, and their emotions.

Feminism, in terms of value-adding to women’s lives, means close to nothing for most men. Yet women have been acting in accordance with men’s reality for most of the history of society, due to androcentric norms and expectations. Ingrained in them and often acted upon unconsciously, women’s history of living in a double consciousness makes it even harder for men to comprehend the need for feminism.

In justifying the value of feminism and the need for it in a society where women and men alike have been behaving in ways tailored to a man’s worldview, communication is key, according to Professor Isaac Wilhelm, professor of philosophy at the National University of Singapore, who told me that “blaming and shaming contributes to polarisation in an unproductive way”.

Prof. Wilhelm asserts that this does not mean that feminism should be about men, or that the movement should be entirely dependent on women pandering to androcentrism to be understood or accepted. Rather, it means that the desire to be understood cannot be unilateral. Incels, as damaging as their mindsets may be, are still a product of our society. Prof. Wilhelm proposes that some individuals get preyed on by other men selling the masculinity ideal because they are lonely and vulnerable in a society that highly values interpersonal relationships, especially romantic ones. It makes them susceptible to lies and antifeminist propaganda in hopes of finding commonality with others who share their experiences. The main issue is the insularity of these communities, where they act as echo chambers for inceldom and perpetuate a self-fulfilling prophecy of the undesired singleness, which in turn breeds increasing bitterness towards women.

In my opinion, insularity emerges from a centring of the self: in centring ourselves, we make ourselves, the individual, the “dominant group”. As such, no one is more legitimate by comparison. We judge and arbitrarily assign legitimacy to others’ experiences based on our own, and fail to realise that in doing so, we become naïve to outside perspectives. With every person doing the same thing, it is no wonder that we encounter such friction in attempting to smooth over divides in society, much less one as subversive as feminism.

As such, the decentring of the self seems to be a step towards reconciling the realities of feminism with the realities of those unaffected by the lack of this movement in society. Recognising that emotion and logic are not separate entities, but rather that logic resides within emotion and is contingent on our personal experiences.

Ultimately, feminists and incels share the same pill cabinet. The pills’ effects, however, depend on the worldview one is trying to treat.

References

Could ASMR be a possible explanation for some new age and spiritual experiences?

Mark Horne
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Could ASMR be a possible explanation for some new age and spiritual experiences?

Anyone who uses YouTube will likely have come across clips of hyperattentive whisperers who seem to be attempting to beguile the viewer. Most of us probably know that these are ASMR (“autonomous sensory meridian response”) videos, even if we don’t get the head-tingles that the videos are intended to elicit. 

Around 20% of us – myself included – do get a physical reaction from these videos. ASMR videos first appeared around 2009, and for me they merely confirmed something I’d experienced all my life, but didn’t know how to explain, let alone name. My first recollection of ASMR was at the opticians as a young adolescent, as the optician leaned in, staring into my eyes and shining tiny bright lights to check my ocular health. A description of how it feels seems to vary from person to person, and indeed can feel slightly different from time to time, but generally it involves a warm, enjoyable, tingling sensation which runs from the top of your head down your face, neck and shoulders. 

It is both akin to – and yet also entirely unlike – the more commonly experienced sensation of a shiver going down your back, which people often describe as feeling like someone walked over your grave. By contrast, ASMR can be very pleasurable, to the point that some people will spend a lot of time and money on their favourite YouTube “ASMRtists” (the commonly-used term for people who make ASMR videos), much to the horror of The Spectator.

Pre-YouTube, it was much harder to intentionally experience ASMR. For me, some people’s voices seem to trigger the sensation, as does a certain kind of personal attention (no, not that kind of personal attention!). Sometimes visits to certain physical locations would have the same effect, and in particular cathedrals and other monuments built to convey majesty and awe in their adherents. I also found that school prayer occasionally did the same, especially when in church for Christmas. 

As I entered my rebellious teens and experimented with more esoteric spirituality, I discovered that meditation and reiki also gave me ASMR tingles. I wondered often as a young man whether this meant that the reiki, the prayer, or the magical or spiritual activity du jour was actually working, as I could certainly feel a very real physical reaction, plus a sense of personal calmness and peace in the aftermath of the ASMR tingles. 

It turns out I’m not the only one. While there are scant few comments online from those for whom locations trigger ASMR, plenty of people report getting ASMR in church and religious services. The possibility that physical sensations felt by those at worship might be ASMR being mistaken for the ‘Holy Spirit’ has been raised by Christians, with one commenter mentioning that experiencing the ‘Holy Spirit’ felt like “getting the chills or the willies and for me, it travels from my head down.” This is how many who experience ASMR would describe the sensation. This does not, of course, prove that what these worshippers are experiencing is anything other than what they believe it to be, but the similarity is remarkable. Is it possible that at least some of the physical sensations described by believers as ‘feeling God’s presence’ might in fact be explained by ASMR? 

Practitioners of new-age spiritual activities that induce the feeling seem to have no such qualms about ASMR. The name itself, autonomous sensory meridian response, was chosen in an attempt to find an objective term to describe it, and it is something of a gift to those who believe that meridians are energy – or chi – channels through the body. 

I’m not the first to suggest that ASMR may function as a physical ‘proof’ of otherwise suspect practices like therapeutic touch and reiki. As Pain Science’s Paul Ingraham notes, ASMR sensations are “inevitably interpreted as ‘feeling the energy’ by eager customers” of such energy medicine practitioners: 

To me, a Reiki session looks like an ASMR-generating ritual with a New Age paint job — satisfaction guaranteed not by spooky healing powers, but by primate neurology. The ASMR is not only inherently pleasing, but artfully reinforces the vitalistic story the practitioner is telling.

The link between reiki and ASMR is so clear and strong that numerous ASMR channels are devoted to the combination, which some of our readers may have encountered on TikTok, where one reiki-ASMR video creator says they have been messaged by an alopecia sufferer who started hair regrowth after they had “begun watching my videos for stress relief.” 

There is indeed some research that suggests ASMR can be useful for easing feelings of anxiety, as well as reducing stress, improving sleep quality, and potentially even providing temporary pain relief and a lifted mood. If ASMR turns out to have some positive real-world effects for those who experience it – and it is still early days for this research – that seems harmless enough. 

But if the modest, temporary, subjective improvement that ASMR can possibly induce is experienced as part of reiki – or another form or new-age healing practice – and it then leads to or validates belief in such alternative practices, which can be both expensive and delay actual medical treatment, then that’s a more serious concern. 

Research will undoubtedly continue into something as widely experienced and poorly understood as ASMR, though a large volume of what’s published at the moment is looking at the online ASMR community, which is a straightforward and accessible study subject. Trying to tease out whether the feeling noted by some people in prayer is distinguishable from ASMR felt by someone in a church who is performing a placebo prayer seems a lot more challenging, and quite difficult to recruit to without seriously offending half of the participants.  

“It’s in our DNA”: the clichés that confuse the public about genetics and essentialism

Carlos Orsi
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“It’s in our DNA”: the clichés that confuse the public about genetics and essentialism

Linguistic prejudice is an ugly thing, but I have to confess that every time I hear someone (whether it’s a person or a legal entity) use the cliché “<such and such a quality> is in our DNA“, I go into the overdraft on my benefit-of-the-doubt account. I’ll explain. 

As we are in the season of celebrating the work of Charles Darwin (February 12th was Darwin Day!), it seems appropriate to take a brief look at the misappropriation of deoxyribonucleic acid – the molecule represented in the acronym DNA – to depict essentialism, and what’s wrong with that, beyond the tired (and tiring) cliché.

“Essentialism” is the idea that things have a core of characteristics that determines what they are at a fundamental level – their so-called essence. To these fundamental characteristics are added others, called accidents, which define how they are what they are, and how they express their essence. A chair, for example, has the essential characteristics of being a piece of furniture formed by a seat and back (without a back it becomes stool), and then, as accidents, whether it has legs or wheels, whether or not it has arms, whether it is made of wood, plastic or metal, whether or not it has cushions, etc.

There is a strong connection between the concept of essence and the idea of ​​definition. The list of essential characteristics of something very easily gets taken for the definition of that thing: in essence, “chair” is a piece of furniture consisting of a seat and back, and “a piece of furniture consisting of a seat and back” is a reasonable definition of chair, found in dictionaries. You can say (and many people do) that the essence of something is what defines it.

Intuition

Thinking in terms of essences, accidents and definitions is very useful and enlightening in different contexts, helping to put certain ideas in order. But it also has the potential to generate confusions of epic proportions. Distinguishing situations in which essentialist thinking helps or hinders is a fun pastime, as well as being something that professional philosophers sometimes worry about.

But, at least in Western culture, even those who have never looked at the issue from a philosophical perspective, or have never even heard the word “essentialism” in their lives, probably have essentialist intuitions, beliefs and opinions about many things. It is something that is ingrained in language and in the collective mentality, appearing behind concepts such as soul and spirit (nuclei that concentrate the essence of an identity, whether individual, collective or even a situation: “the soul of the party”), and authenticity or sincerity (which are manifestations of fidelity to the essence: “an authentic hack”).

Distinctions between reality and appearance are often treated as if they were distinctions between essence and accidents; when we talk about someone who “behaves badly, but deep down is a good person”, we are presupposing a certain hidden essence to counterbalance the palpable characteristic. In fiction, narratives of overcoming and redemption are commonly constructed as stories in which an essence struggles to assert itself, to express itself in a heroic or, at least, constructive way.

The modern world, perhaps even more than at any other time, lives immersed in a kind of cult of the revealed essence of things: we experience an “ethic of authenticity”, where presenting oneself as sincere (or, in some cases, “sincere”) may be more valuable (or believable) than declaring yourself a good or well-intentioned person. Populist politicians work the magic of transforming their supposed defects, prejudices, ignorance and limitations into positive qualities and advantages, by exposing them “sincerely” – even more so if these defects and prejudices are shared by their base, who end up assimilating these defects into the idea they have of the group’s collective “essence”.

The DNA of the business

Co-opted by the marketing universe – which is already very well aware that language choices that sound “scientific” tend to convey an image of precision and sophistication – the contemporary passion for the ethics of authenticity gives birth to the cliché of “business DNA” in a variety of ways: “DNA of the firm”, “DNA of the team”, “It’s in our DNA”, “We have the DNA of innovation” and other permutations, ad nauseam. 

In all variations, the acronym “DNA” is used to mean that a certain desirable quality, attitude or characteristic is part of the essence of the company, business, or organisation. It’s an authentic facet, something that makes up the very definition of what you want to sell.

The problem is that, by treating “DNA” as a synonym for “essence”, these slogans end up imprinting (or reinforcing) in common sense a connection between genetics and essentialism which, in addition to being wrong, distorts the public understanding of science. One area in which essentialist thinking collapses (or leads to collapse, if it is persisted in) is precisely that of genetics and evolutionary biology.

Creationists, of course, have long used an essentialist version of the concept of “species” to attack, in logical-semantic terms, the theory of evolution. If each species represents an essence created separately by God, how could some evolve into others? Hence the radical-essentialist reading of Genesis 1:24 – “God said: ‘Let the earth produce living creatures according to their kinds, domestic animals, creeping animals and wild animals, according to their kinds’”.

Even many people who have already overcome the mythological stage of intellectual development still have this intuitive equivalence between “species” and “essence” deep in their heads, just replacing the celestial design with some kind of “wisdom of nature”, and the magic word of Divinity by… DNA. This pervasive image of DNA as a kind of biochemical “soul” is what inspires much of the emotional resistance to genetic modification: who are we to interfere with the essential spirit of the species? But it’s an image that doesn’t make any sense.

Darwinian evolution ties all living beings on the planet into a vast network of common ancestry. We have genes that we share with viruses, bacteria, fish and plants. More than ninety percent of what is “in the DNA” of a human being is also in that of a chimpanzee.

Every time I read or hear that such and such a beautiful and wonderful characteristic “is in our company’s DNA” I remember the gene for producing vitamin C – which is in the DNA of Homo sapiens, but deactivated (this is why we need vitamin C in our diet and are vulnerable to scurvy). DNA is not essence, it is flow: it is a river whose source is somewhere in the cloudy mountain range of the origin of life, and which soon opens into an immense delta. What is essential, if anything, is something we share with the rest of the biosphere.

The cliché of what is “in the DNA” is therefore not only a worn-out cliché, but also an inept metaphor that miseducates by reinforcing the spurious link between genetics and essentialism. 

Critical thinking is essential, especially around emotionally-charged subjects like Gaza

Sophia Schultz
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Critical thinking is essential, especially around emotionally-charged subjects like Gaza

“You should attack every Jew possible in all the world and kill them,” said Islamist ruler Fathi Hamad. “I would encourage the other side to not so lightly throw around the idea of innocent Palestinian civilians as frequently said. I don’t think we would so lightly throw around the term innocent Nazi civilians during World War II. There’s not this far stretch to say there are very few innocent Palestinian civilians,” said US Representative Brian Jefferey Mast. People who do not question the information they encounter or are victims of misinformation genuinely believe this.

These quotes underscore the significance of addressing misinformation and stereotypes in our quest for understanding and resolution. The journey toward becoming a better critical thinker is about personal growth and promoting a more informed and empathetic society.

Such unchecked assumptions and stereotypes, like the harmful beliefs that we should kill all Jewish people or that all Palestinians are not innocent, thrive in environments where misinformation is rampant and critical thinking is scarce. These stereotypes not only oversimplify complex situations but also fuel animosity and misunderstanding. This danger becomes especially clear when we consider how we consume and interpret news about highly charged topics, such as conflicts in the Middle East.

When I woke up one morning, I scrolled through social media as I usually do, and came across a ton of stories on an apparent bombing of Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City. My first reaction was to be sad, but then I started asking myself questions about the situation. I wanted to know what had happened and who did this. Some sources blamed the Israeli government and their airstrike, and others blamed it on a rocket malfunction from the Hamas terrorist group. More and more questions came to me, and I kept searching for answers, but no source seemed reasonable.

Reaching an evidence-based conclusion was difficult, considering the explosion of misinformation on social media and news outlets. It seems to be inevitable to fall victim to it. I realised the importance of discovering the truth, especially for sensitive matters, where your opinion or thoughts can have an incredibly impactful effect on others.

I remember feeling afraid the first time I ever visited my great aunt in Palestine, who works and lives as a humanitarian there. After all the American news I was exposed to, I genuinely thought it would be an extremely dangerous place to go. However, after meeting the people and gaining a better understanding of what has been going on in Palestine, I was shocked at how little I had known and, looking back, how my view was clouded by misinformation. Today, I can acknowledge that as a consequence of my personal experience and family ties in Palestine, I have a bias on the conflict going on today, but just because I have a bias does not mean I should only follow pieces of information that satisfy my sentiment. There are always two sides to a story, whether we like it or not, and it is essential to acknowledge that and act accordingly.

I was keen to show how anybody can improve their critical thinking skills, regardless of their prior biases and personal feelings, so I spoke to Matthew John Hammerton, a philosopher with an interest in critical thinking. He highlighted three key aspects: first, the critical role of accurate reasoning, enabling me to differentiate valid arguments from fallacies amid complex narratives; second, the need to cultivate intellectual virtues like humility, skepticism, and curiosity, to help me approach this profoundly divisive issue with an open mind; and finally, the awareness of strategies to address cognitive biases, ensuring that I can navigate the complexities of this conflict with a discerning perspective. These principles have been invaluable as I strive to understand this enduring and multifaceted issue better.

After reading what felt like thousands of news reports, I wondered whether the specific arguments I was reading were valid. Eventually, I became aware that the arguments I was reading could be classified into what Hammerton describes as “deductive reasoning” and “inductive reasoning.”

In simple terms, deductive reasoning boils down to two essential things: valid inferences and invalid inferences. A valid inference is when the argument is like a lock with a perfectly-fitting key: if the argument is valid, the premises (the information you start with) guarantee that the conclusion (the final point you are making) is accurate. It is like a foolproof plan – if the premises are true, the conclusion must be proper, too.

On the other hand, an invalid inference means that the guarantee is not there. Even if the premises strongly suggest the conclusion or make it likely, they do not guarantee it. In essence, it is an all-or-nothing game when dealing with deductive reasoning – an argument either 100% guarantees the conclusion, or it does not.

Deductive reasoning can uncover inconsistencies and contradictions within news stories. If an argument or claim does not follow logically from its premises, it may indicate a potential problem with the information presented.

Using deductive reasoning to analyse the bombing at Hospital Al-Ahli, we can start with the premise that any act of violence that results in the loss of innocent lives is a tragedy. Then, we have the fact that the bombing at Hospital Al-Ahli caused the loss of innocent lives. Therefore, the bombing at Hospital Al-Ahli is unquestionably a tragedy.

On the other hand, inductive reasoning operates differently, as it involves drawing likely, but not necessarily guaranteed, conclusions based on available evidence, which introduces an element of uncertainty in the context of this complex conflict. An inductive inference may not offer a 100% guarantee, but its conclusion is very likely. Even if an inference seems incredibly likely based on recorded data, there remains a slight chance, however minuscule, that the conclusion may not hold.

So, when applying inductive reasoning to the complexity of conflicts like the Israel-Palestine issue, it is vital to understand that the strength of arguments varies. Some may provide robust reasons that strongly support a particular viewpoint, while others, despite being quite convincing, retain a hint of uncertainty. Embracing this understanding can lead to more nuanced and informed discussions as we assess the strength of evidence and the probability of various conclusions.

We can see the intricacies of inductive reasoning in the following example: Pro-Israel news outlets argue that the hospital blast resulted from a malfunctioning Hamas rocket. The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) conducted a thorough analysis, examining more than a dozen videos from the moments before, during, and after the hospital explosion, in addition to satellite imagery and photos. The CBS’s analysis concluded that the rocket, which broke up in the air, was fired from within Palestinian territory. The balance of evidence, according to CBS’s analysis, points toward a malfunctioning of a Palestinian militant’s rocket as the probable cause.

In contrast, the pro-Palestine perspective asserts that the hospital’s destruction was the result of an Israeli airstrike. Al Jazeera’s investigation supported this viewpoint by identifying the exact moment of the attack through video analysis. The aftermath paints a picture of a tragic event, labelling it a massacre, with the hospital engulfed in flames and numerous lives lost. This perspective emphasises the humanitarian crisis faced by Palestinians in Gaza amid continued bombardment and restrictions on aid.

Inductive reasoning, as highlighted by these two differing viewpoints, allows the formation of either conclusion, based on the aspects of the available evidence. However, inductive reasoning cannot conclude with 100% certainty what happened in this case. These examples demonstrate the importance of being logical and critical, as well as considering the weight of evidence before jumping to definitive conclusions in situations of complex conflict.

The conscious effort to try to discern between valid and invalid arguments and to avoid logical fallacies is a cornerstone of being a skilled critical thinker. In the context of the examples provided, we can identify patterns of reasoning that constitute solid and valid arguments. Conversely, we can recognise patterns of reasoning that exemplify flawed reasoning, commonly called fallacies.

Another of the fundamental aspects of critical thinking lies in how we formally reason. Do we employ solid and valid inferences in our arguments, or do we succumb to common fallacies? This element of critical thinking, where we actively assess the soundness of our reasoning, enables us to engage in more robust and well-founded discussions, particularly when navigating contentious issues such as the complex Israel-Palestine conflict.

In trying to be consciously aware of the role of inductive and deductive reasoning amid the intricate web of news and information, I began to see a shift in how I approached the information I encountered, and began to appreciate the value of intellectual humility. I realised there were limitations to what I knew, and that the world was far more complex than I had initially assumed, leading me to try to be more open-minded and willing to entertain diverse viewpoints and ideas.

I initially believed the Israeli government was responsible for the bombing of the Al-Ahli Hospital, but I reflected on the limitations of my knowledge. After extensive research from both points of view, I find myself in a position of uncertainty regarding what really happened to Al-Ahli Hospital. Rather than hastily adopting a definitive stance, I embrace the humility, and acknowledge that there is much I still do not know and may never know. I prioritise the pursuit of truth over unwarranted certainty, recognising that the situation’s complexities demand an ongoing commitment to understanding.

Slowly but steadily, I have come to embrace the power of positive skepticism, of asking questions and not accepting things at face value. I understood that doubting claims was essential, not out of contrariness, but in a genuine pursuit of truth. I became eager to explore, to dig deeper into issues, and to look for underlying truths. It was not sufficient to accept things as they appeared; I yearned to uncover the bigger picture.

When encountering divergent news stories, I actively engage with my Israeli and Palestinian contacts, seeking their perspectives to complement my understanding. Through these conversations, I gain nuanced insights and additional details, recognising that the more information I gather, the better equipped I am to form my evidence-based conclusions, with minimal interference from my own biases. While these perspectives may not offer a complete picture, they contribute valuable facets to my evolving comprehension of the complex Israel-Palestine conflict.

Diligence became an essential companion on this journey. I recognised the value of putting in effort, being attentive to detail, and avoiding shortcuts. I realised that taking the time to think critically paid off in the long run.

Through this journey, I evolved from readily accepting information from various sources, to someone who continually sought to improve and refine their understanding. These intellectual virtues were not innate, but had to be cultivated and nurtured over time. Amidst this transformation in my approach to information and critical thinking, one more facet often hovers in the background – cognitive biases. Some might relate these biases to virtues and vices, but they are distinct. Intellectual virtues are cultivated dispositions consciously developed over time. I control them, and they guide my thinking and decision-making. Cognitive biases, on the other hand, tend to be hidden in the depths of our subconscious. They operate instinctively, influencing how I perceive and process information without realising it. These biases can lead me to interpret facts, data, and arguments in a skewed way, all without my conscious awareness.

As I continue navigating the vast sea of information, I understand that identifying and mitigating these cognitive biases is challenging. It requires self-awareness and a commitment to critically examining my thought processes, something I am continuously working on. I overcame my cognitive biases by refraining from hastily assigning blame to one side or another based on a single source. Instead, I tried for a more comprehensive approach – exploring actions from both perspectives, reading diverse articles, talking to experts, and then formulating a tentative conclusion. To mitigate cognitive bias, I prioritise gaining a reasonable, objective understanding of a situation before being exposed to emotionally charged content, preventing undue influence on my judgement.

Becoming a more critical thinker is demanding and challenging, as you must constantly question all information you encounter, scrutinising it with diligence. This journey, which I am still on, was mentally draining, because I had to go against my personal beliefs and understandings of situations I was sure were true. The only way to thoroughly understand the truth is by trying to evaluate how strong or weak specific arguments are, valuing curiosity and skepticism, and – importantly – being aware of our own biases.

It’s important to note that for many aspects of the Israel-Palestine conflict, we may never be able to make firm and objective conclusions due to the lack of information, and that is something we must accept. However, we can use what information we do have, to draw reasonable conclusions, which may be the closest to the truth. To this day, I do not know who bombed the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza, because there is a lack of evidence on which to make a thorough conclusion. However, I know that I will continue searching for an answer, and we should continue to do so for all that matters, striving for a deeper understanding of our complex world.

If there is one takeaway from my experience, it is the importance of questioning everything, including our deepest convictions. Ultimately, our commitment to uncovering truth, no matter how challenging, defines our ability to navigate the complexities of our world.

How cholesterol denialism went from reasonable skepticism to pseudoscience

Christopher Labos
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How cholesterol denialism went from reasonable skepticism to pseudoscience

You wouldn’t normally think there was much overlap between cholesterol denialism and anti-vaccination rhetoric. But there is. People who doubt the benefits of cholesterol-lowering medications, like statins, infamously tend to believe the Covid-19 vaccines killed thousands of people and will hijack BBC interviews in order to make that point. Both positions are unsupported by the science. But the interesting thing is, when it comes to cholesterol, that wasn’t always the case.

Cholesterol holds a special place in the popular imagination that sets it apart from the many other cardiac risk factors we talk about. Nobody thinks diabetes is good for you, and nobody dismisses the dangers of high blood pressure. Nobody today is under the delusion that smoking is harmless, or that our increasingly sedentary lifestyle is serving us well. But cholesterol remains a source of doubt for many in the media, the general public and, sadly, amongst physicians too.

While it is easy to pour scorn on this position, not that long ago it was actually somewhat justifiable. In September 1989, The Atlantic’s cover proclaimed: “The Cholesterol Myth: lowering your cholesterol is next to impossible with diet, and often dangerous with drugs – and it won’t make you live longer.” And they weren’t actually wrong.

It is possible to write a definitive history of cholesterol research because it only spans roughly the past 100 years. For those interested, Daniel Steinberg wrote a comprehensive 5-part series on the history of the cholesterol controversy for the Journal of Lipid Research, which was then adapted into a book: “The Cholesterol Wars: the Skeptics vs. the Preponderance of Evidence.” As unsettling as that title may be for the readership of this august publication, the point Steinberg makes in the series is that the initial skepticism was not only appropriate but also fundamental to the scientific process. But eventually the weight of the evidence became impossible to ignore, and what was once valid caution crossed over into denialism and pseudoscience.

Book by Daniel Steinberg, "The Cholesterol Wars, The Skeptics vs. the Preponderance of Evidence" - 2007 edition.
“The Cholesterol Wars” by Daniel Steinberg – 2007 edition. Via Amazon

Since I was told a 10,000 word article would not be appreciated by the readership, the history of the cholesterol controversy can be summarised in a few broad strokes. If there is a beginning to this story, that beginning was in 1913 when Nikolai Anitschkow fed rabbits purified cholesterol and demonstrated that they developed atherosclerosis in their arteries. In theory, this should have been definitive evidence, but Anitschkow faced a number of criticisms. The main problem was that his findings could not be replicated in other laboratory animals, like rats and dogs. We now understand that this happens because different animals handle cholesterol differently, but at the time it was felt that this must be some quirk specific to rabbits and was therefore irrelevant to human health. Had you been alive at the time, you might have said the same. What’s true in animals is not necessarily true in humans.

Fast forward to the 1940s and 1950s and researchers were trying to determine what could be done about the skyrocketing rates of heart disease in the early 20th century. This was the time of the Seven Countries Study by Ancel Keys, which has become a lightning rod for arguments in recent years, largely because of books like “The Big Fat Surprise” and others. Others have pointed out issues with the many criticisms levelled at Keys’ work. Broadly, we can make two points. First, the Seven Countries study was not the only study published on the subject. The Framingham Heart Study also drew associations between cholesterol and heart disease, so focusing solely on Keys essentially ignores all the other large contemporary studies of the time. Secondly, these large studies were about identifying risk factors for heart disease.

An important caveat, though, is that these weren’t diet studies or randomised trials. If you want to see whether lowering cholesterol reduces heart disease, you have to design a trial that lowered cholesterol and measured hard clinical endpoints. Had you been alive at the time, you might have said the same.

In the 1960’s researchers did exactly that. In the absence of any effective medications, they tested a series of dietary interventions in studies like the Oslo Diet-Heart study and the Finnish Mental Hospital Study, which did show a reduction in coronary heart disease. But three large trials in Britain tested corn oil, a low-fat diet, and soya-bean oil as potential therapies. While they lowered cholesterol, they didn’t affect the risk of heart disease. This prompted many like Sir John McMichael to argue against cholesterol as a cardiac risk factor and to doubt the validity of the lipid hypothesis. Had you been alive at the time, you might have said the same. If lowering cholesterol didn’t reduce cardiovascular events, then cholesterol wasn’t the thing to focus on.

In retrospect, the dietary studies were not failures per se. Many did lower cholesterol, and some did reduce cardiovascular events. But the benefits were small enough to be inconsistent and the skepticism of many was not unjustified. The hope was going to be that the new cholesterol medications would do a better job. The 1970s and 1980s saw the publication of studies on clofibrate and cholestyramine. The biggest of these, the Coronary Primary Prevention Trial, was in some ways definitive. There was a significant reduction in cholesterol which translated into a significant reduction in cardiovascular events.

The story could have ended there. But there were caveats. Cholestyramine as a medication was poorly tolerated because of its many side effects. Also, there was a reduction in cardiovascular events, but no significant drop in mortality. Some argued that there was no point treating people for a problem if they didn’t live longer.  Reducing mortality is what really matters. Had you been alive at the time, you might have said the same.

And so we come to the inflection point and the Atlantic cover of 1989. “Lowering your cholesterol is next to impossible with diet, and often dangerous with drugs – and it won’t make you live longer.” It was technically correct. But for the first time you had a divergence in the debate. You could argue that the current medications were not effective at changing outcomes, and in retrospect they weren’t. They were terrible by modern standards. But if you look back objectively at the history of the research, it was pretty clear that cholesterol was involved in the process of atherosclerosis. Every time you lowered it significantly, people had fewer heart attacks. We just lacked the tools to make a major dent in people’s serum lipid profile.

In the 1990s, everything changed. Statins entered the market and the 4S study with simvastatin showed that the medication lowered cholesterol, reduced heart attacks, and also reduced cardiovascular and all-cause mortality. Twenty-six randomised studies later, it became clear that statins did what they promised. They reduced cholesterol and prevented cardiovascular disease. But the deniers still had one last redoubt. Maybe it wasn’t about cholesterol. After all, previous cholesterol trials had been disappointing. Maybe there was something special about statins and they prevented heart disease via a mechanism independent of cholesterol. Had you been alive at the time, you might have said the same. I was, and I did.

Five varieties of simvastatin tablets laid out on a grey-brown paper towel. Each box is branded differently. Three are 10mg per tablet, one is 20mg and one 40mg.
UK simvastatin varieties. Whispyhistory, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

As long as statins were the only useful cholesterol medications available, you could maybe convince yourself the benefits were unique to that drug class. But they aren’t the only medication out there anymore. The development of ezetimibe (which blocks cholesterol absorption in the intestine) and PCSK9 inhibitors (which act on the cholesterol receptor in cells) have made that argument unsustainable.

The amazing thing about cholesterol medication is that their benefit is very linear. If you plot out all the studies of cholesterol medications (both statin and non-statin treatments), they fall along a very straight line. The point is a medication’s cardiovascular benefit is proportional to how much it lowers cholesterol. Dietary interventions have a small impact whereas the newer injectable cholesterol medications called PCSK9s have a huge cardiovascular risk reduction. In the end, there’s nothing special about statins. It’s the degree of cholesterol lowering that matters.

You will hear people argue that statins are too expensive, that the benefits are too marginal in a general low risk population, or that they don’t want to endure the side effects. It’s worth pointing out that statins are now off-patent, and no pharmaceutical company is lobbying for their use. The benefits of statins are inherently higher in high-risk populations and lower in low-risk ones. All medications work this way. But even in patients without cardiovascular disease, there is a cardiovascular benefit. It just isn’t as marked as what you see in patients who have a history of heart attack or stroke.

As for the side-effects, they are over-represented in the media, and many of the subjective symptoms people suffer are due to the nocebo response. What’s more, anyone who doesn’t want to use statins to lower cholesterol is free to use any of the newer (albeit more expensive) cholesterol medications on the market now. Just don’t think you can get away with natural therapies like fish oil, cinnamon, garlic, turmeric, or red yeast. These have been tested head-to-head against rosuvastatin, and the statin came out on top.

You can argue that there are better ways to measure cholesterol beyond the simple characterization of good (HDL) cholesterol versus bad (LDL) cholesterol. You can argue that, in low-risk populations, the cost of therapy outweighs the benefit. You can argue that we should be doing more to encourage lifestyle change and healthy eating habits, especially among children. All of these are interesting arguments, but they are questions of policy, not science.

Steven Nissen from the Cleveland Clinic called statin denial an “Internet-driven cult with deadly consequences.” That’s because negative news stories about statins lead to medication discontinuation and, ultimately, more heart attacks.

Not that long ago, many people had good arguments against the “lipid hypothesis.” Had you been alive at the time, you might have said the same. But, at some point, you would have had to do the thing that is oh so hard to do. You would have had to change your mind. Not everyone can pull it off.

A lot of the anti-cholesterol talking points were valid arguments decades ago. It was once valid to argue that Betamax was better than VHS. Had you been alive at the time, you might have said the same. But if you bring that up now, you would no longer be relevant.

Cover image: "Does Coffee Cause Cancer? And 8 more MYTHS about the FOOD WE EAT" by Dr Christopher Labos

The “lipid hypothesis” is not really a hypothesis anymore, in the same way that the Theory of Evolution is not really a theory (in the common use of the word). It’s pretty clear to everyone that cholesterol is involved in the pathogenesis of heart disease. The only way you can deny it is by denying the evidence and recycling arguments from the past. And that’s how cholesterol denialism became a pseudoscience.

Does Coffee Cause Cancer, And 8 More Myths About The Food We Eat by Dr Christopher Labos is out now, published by ECW Press.

Europa: The Last Battle – the antisemitic documentary going viral among the far right

Thiago Vahia Malliagros
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Europa: The Last Battle – the antisemitic documentary going viral among the far right

I have repeatedly watched the “documentary” Europa: The Last Battle. I don’t recommend you do the same. It is, in its own words, a pro-Nazi – or, as they prefer to be called, a “pro-national socialist” – production. Running to 12 hours long, it touches on every topic, antisemitic trope and conspiracy theory possible, all of which have been debunked multiple times by dozens of authors. Why, then, have I decided to cover it?

Pieces of this “documentary” keep popping up on Twitter and TikTok, each time used as a piece of propaganda by the far-right. Therefore, it is essential to discuss it not all at once but as a “series” of one-shots, each more or less self-contained, just as it appears on social media. So, where do you start with something as big, horrible, and influential as this?

I want to start with the concept of race, as it is key for the key assertions and narratives within Europa. This “documentary” proposes that Judaism is a race, not just a religion, and a monolithic group to boot. Therefore, any person associated with a Jewish person or with Jewish ancestry should be immediately suspected of wrongdoing. This is clear in the way that Europa discusses the figure of Karl Marx – specifically, the fact that he had Jewish ancestry. According to a graphic that appears in the “documentary”, Marx didn’t just have parents who belonged to the religion; he was a “super Jew”: descended from dozens of top-tier Rabbi ancestries.

The supposed lineage of Karl Marx, as depicted in Europa: The Last Battle

In putting this forth, the “documentary” argues that Marx resulted from centuries of planning to create the perfect being to spread the message of communism. The implication is clear: that both communism and Zionism were a creation of the Jews to take over the world. The accusation that Communism is a Jewish ploy to control the world is as old as it is ridiculous – to the point that it is actively self-defeating. After all, if this were at all true, why would they have allowed the Soviet Union to fall?

In reality, Marx’s father was a convert to Christianity and, according to our information, raised his family in a non-religious environment. None of his upbringing, writings or speeches show an “inclination” for “Jewry” (in the words of Europa) – nor do those of Trotsky, who was viciously attacked because of his Jewish heritage even though he, according to his biographer and life, dissociated more and more from religion.

The movie’s entire logic is that even if a person has ever had one encounter or one parent or relation to a Jewish person, that must have corrupted them forever. For example, it argues that Stalin had Jewish wives, which is therefore proof that the Jews were controlling him. In reality, none of Stalin’s wives were Jewish; there is a rumour that Stalin supposedly had a third wife, but there is no documented evidence of her existence (and therefore no documented evidence of her race or religion), and even if she did exist, their marriage couldn’t have been for long, or it would have been far more well known.

Europa also looks at Moses Hess, taking his work out of context and even outright lying to claim that Hess foresaw a conflict between the Aryans and the Semites in his book “Rome and Jerusalem”. Hess’s book argues that the Germans and Jews are separate races, and as such, the Jews could never truly assimilate into the country, so the solution would be immigration to Palestine, the actual land of the Jews. This was in the 19th century, a period of intense nationalism and considerable debate within the Jewish community about whether the Jews could assimilate, and whether they should. Hess argues at the time that they couldn’t and shouldn’t. At no moment does he call for any violence against the any race, as Europa claims; his belief was in the incompatibility of assimilation, because he believed the Jews would always be considered strangers in Germany. This is just an example of one of the lies of the “documentary”.

The way in which the lies are presented in Europa also adds to their misleading quality. Constantly, throughout the film, text appears quickly on screen to cite what they claim is the supposed source, but the fleeting nature of the reference makes it hard for the viewer to verify. The film repeatedly quotes the maxim “Jewry is the Mother of Marxism”, which they cite as originating from Le Droit de Vivre on May 12, 1936. Le Droit de Vivre is a French newspaper – I checked it, but there was no May 12 edition of the paper in 1936 because Le Droit de Vivre is not a daily newspaper; it’s a weekly one. The paper does have editions on May 9 and May 16, but neither includes this supposed quote about Karl Marx – but even if they did, it would hardly be surprising, given that the journal in question was an explicitly antisemitic newspaper!

Elsewhere, Europa quotes Karl Marx himself:

“THE CLASSES AND THE RACES, TOO WEAK TO MASTER THE NEW CONDITIONS OF LIFE, MUST GIVE WAY… THEY MUST GIVE PERISH IN THE REVOLUTIONARY HOLOCAUST.”

Researching the origin of this quote, writer Otavio Pinto tracked it down to discover it is the combination of two quotes, which have been deliberately taken out of context and mistranslated. This butchering of history is the work by historian George G. Watson, who makes an appearance in Europa to tell viewers that Marx considered certain races to be Racial Trash.

The objective of each of these lies and associations is to introduce and cement for the viewer the notion that Jewish people, and the Jews as a race, are responsible for the evils of the world and that they have planned everything. For Europa, race is a firm, immutable fact, so much so that even those who claim otherwise are lying because they, too, must secretly really think about everything in terms of race.

The further objective is to argue that, if all this is true, then the oppressed Jews have an excellent reason to be oppressed and that the viewer is justified in feeling the antisemitic sentiments this “documentary” and its makers are trying so hard to entrench.

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