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Ear candling: why putting burning sticks into your ear is actually quite a bad idea

Michaila Passananti
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Ear candling: why putting burning sticks into your ear is actually quite a bad idea

Ear Candling is an alternative medicine meant to remove ear wax, however, it is also believed by some to cure sinus pain, cure ear infections, help relieve tinnitus, and strengthen the brain. Although ear candling is a popular alternative medicine, it has no basis in actual science and has been largely discredited.

Ear Candling starts with a hollow tube around 10 inches long made out of cotton or linen. The candle is then dipped into beeswax, allowing it to harden. Users lie on their side on a towel, and place the candle directly into their ear canal, lighting the opposite end of the candle to let it burn for fifteen to twenty minutes. They then turn over, and repeat with the other ear.

According to proponents, what’s supposed to happen is that as the candle burns, it creates a suction that pulls wax and debris out of your ear. This theory is called the “chimney effect.” Other proponents suggest that the heat from the candle melts and softens the wax, which will fall out over the next couple of days. Ear candling can be performed by beauticians, alternative therapists, or by anyone using an at-home kit.

However, ear candling is not backed by science. In fact, it is completely discredited. In one study, scientists tested the theory that suction is created, which gets rid of your ear wax, by creating an artificial ear canal and measuring the pressure within it during candling. The experiment showed that no suction effect was created during candling, disproving the chimney effect. However, they did find that a powder was deposited on the artificial tympanic membrane as ear candling was carried out.

When the powder was analysed by the scientists using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, it was found to constitute multiple alkanes that are found in candle wax, meaning that ear candling actually left debris in the ear canal.

Another experiment conducted by Health Canada was to examine the theory that the wax in the ear will fall out over the next couple of days after a candling has been performed. Health Canada tested this theory by measuring the air temperature 10 mm from the base of the candle while it was burning. The highest temperature reached was 22º Celsius, well below core body temperature, meaning that it would be impossible for melting to occur within the ear canal.

As well as being completely ineffective, ear candling can be dangerous. The FDA has warned against the practice of Ear Candling since 2010. Negative side effects include a high risk of burning the face, neck, hair, eardrum, middle ear, or ear canal from hot wax or ash, puncturing the eardrum, blocking the eardrum with candle wax, contracting secondary infections, experiencing temporary hearing loss and bleeding.

Despite popular belief, earwax itself is actually good for you. A certain amount can be helpful and protect your eardrums from dust, dirt and debris, as well as prevent the ear from becoming dry and itchy. Without earwax, your ear canal will become dry, waterlogged, and more prone to infection.

However, if your earwax has become a problem, there are safer ways to remove the wax. The first option should always be going to your doctor and getting a medical professional to remove the earwax safely. Earwax removal can be a delicate process. However, if a medical professional is not an option, the best way to get rid of earwax is over-the-counter ear drops.

Another way to remove ear wax is to put a few drops of water or hydrogen peroxide down your ear. Never stick objects in your ear to get rid of wax buildup. This can push the wax deeper into your ear, which makes the problem worse. Although ear candling is a popular alternative medicine, it has no scientific basis and has been proven to not work.

No evidence has ever suggested that ear candling is an effective treatment for any condition, from sinus pain to removing ear wax. It is harmful and if performed wrong, can cause severe damage to the ear – in short, it does far more harm than good.

What, if anything, can cannabis treat, and what does the latest research say?

Alice Howarth
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What, if anything, can cannabis treat, and what does the latest research say?

You might recall a story that got a lot of coverage in the media a while ago, about the use of cannabis to treat epilepsy and other conditions. It all started with the case of a young boy with severe epilepsy who was using cannabis oil to manage his seizures, with apparently great effect. Until, that is, his mother was unable to bring his treatment into the UK and his medication was seized at the airport.

In the UK, cannabis is a Class B drug – you aren’t allowed to possess or supply it and doing so can result in jail-time. This is a regulation under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, however cannabis is also regulated by The Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001 which control the therapeutic use of drugs. Under this legislation, cannabis is regulated as a Schedule 1 drug which means it is not available for medical purposes and possession and supply are prohibited unless the Home Office approves.

Cannabis: the sum of its parts

Cannabis refers to a group of plants which produce compounds called cannabinoids. Cannabis plants contain 113 different cannabinoids – so what exactly are we talking about when we talk about cannabis oil?

The two important cannabinoids to consider are tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD). THC is the main part of cannabis that gives its psychoactive effects. It’s the compound that will make you feel ‘high’ if you smoke marijuana although this response is mediated by other cannabinoids too. It also stimulates release of the hunger hormone, ghrelin, which explains why people have an increased appetite when they take cannabis. It does this by binding to a specific receptor on the surface of cells in the brain.

CBD is non-psychotropic and it acts in a very different way to THC. But it might also enhance THC activity by increasing the number of receptors available for THC to bind to. It might also increase the levels of natural endocannabinoids in the body.

In the UK, CBD is legal which means cannabis oils containing only CBD are legally available whereas THC is not legal.

Can cannabis treat disease?

In the UK, there are some cannabinoid based treatments licensed for prescription. Nabilone is used to treat nausea and vomiting in people undergoing chemotherapy. There are other conditions it has been indicated for including IBS, fibromyalgia, chronic pain and Parkinson’s disease however in the UK it is only permitted to help treat the side effects of chemotherapy.

Another cannabinoid based treatment available in the UK is Sativex which is used to treat the symptoms of multiple sclerosis including neuropathic pain and spasticity. Sativex is a cannabis extract which contains both THC and CBD.

Cannabis for epilepsy

When it comes to epilepsy – there is considerable evidence that THC can control convulsions through regulation of neuronal excitability and inflammation. But because it can make you high – it’s not an ideal avenue for therapeutic exploration.

Research into CBD for treating epilepsy is relatively new but initially promising at least for certain types of epilepsy and a new drug which can treat Lennox-Gastaut syndrome and Dravet syndrome, two severe forms of epilepsy, was approved by the FDA in 2018. But this might not be sufficient in all cases – some patients may require different mixtures of THC and CBD to see an effect.

In January this year, the NHS approved Epidyolex for children and adults with epilepsy after clinical trials showed that seizures were reduced in frequency by 30%.

Cannabis for cancer

Cannabis can be useful in managing cancer-associated side effects in patients. It can act as both a pain reliever and a way to reduce nausea and enhance appetite. But there is early research that it might also kill cancer cells and stop them growing. In these cases researchers have looked at highly purified THC and CBD. Some trials have shown that combining chemotherapy with cannabis might have some promise.

However, we have insufficient evidence to support its use as a cancer treatment either due to small study sizes or the research predominantly taking place in cells in the lab which is just not a good representation of what would happen in humans. We don’t know which types of cannabinoids are most useful, what doses are needed, what types of cancer respond, how to take them effectively and whether they should or shouldn’t be combined with other treatments.

There is an ongoing trial looking into the use of cannabis treatments for a form of difficult to treat brain cancer called glioblastoma in instances when the cancer has come back following initial treatment. This trial combines Sativex with chemotherapy and is ongoing.

Cannabis research

If cannabis is so promising, why don’t we do more research on it to bring it to clinical trial? Cannabis is a Schedule 1 regulated drug, it can only be used in research with Home Office approval. Schedule 1 drugs are so classified because they are not deemed to have medical usefulness. But researchers like Professor David Nutt are concerned that the medical usefulness of cannabis cannot be proven if research is prohibited.

Importantly, media interest in cannabis use as a medical treatment encouraged a UK government review on the therapeutic value of medications based on cannabis, which was undertaken by the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs. In November 2020, it recommended to the Home Secretary that a further period of study was required to assess the impacts of reclassifying cannabis-based medicinal products. In December 2022, the Home Office commissioned the ACMD to further explore how to reduce the barriers to research on Schedule 1 controlled drugs, which might open up research in the near future.

Alternative medicine

In the meantime, it is important to remember that while cannabis holds some promise as a potential therapy for many conditions, it is crucial to always follow professional medical advice when considering medical treatments.

The research supporting cannabis use is limited and there are many questions about safety and efficacy that remain unanswered. For many conditions that cannabis might be useful for, we already have good medical treatments that can be used before considering an as-yet, unproven treatment. Cannabis oils are poorly regulated and might have wildly variable levels of cannabinoids and may even contain ingredients that are harmful.

It is never advisable to buy medical treatments online or take medical advice from someone other than a qualified medical professional.

Ditch the coffee enemas – there’s no health benefit to a caffeinated colon

Christian Chaffee
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Ditch the coffee enemas – there’s no health benefit to a caffeinated colon

Coffee enemas are a widely known alternative medicine procedure that proponents claim can cure many diseases and improve someone’s health. Yet coffee enemas have no scientific evidence to support those purported claims, and they can actually be quite dangerous.

Coffee enemas are a type of colon cleanse first conceived of in the early 20th century by German doctors looking for a cancer treatment. The treatment became popularized to a wider audience around the same time by German-American physician Max Gerson, who advocated for the procedure’s use in his diet plan known as “Gerson Therapy”. A coffee enema is performed through the injection of a mixture of caffeinated coffee and water into the colon through the rectum.

Proponents of coffee enemas claim a wide range of benefits. Max Gerson claimed that it could detoxify the body and cure cancer as the coffee would stimulate the liver. This claim is still believed by alternative medicine doctors to this day – like Linda Isaacs, who claims that people are exposed to toxic chemicals and pollutants through the food they eat, air they breathe, and water they drink. She says that coffee enemas “help stimulate the liver to rid the body of these waste materials and pollutants”.

Other proponents claim that the compound “cafestol” in coffee beans stimulates the enzyme “glutathione s-transferase”, which aids in digestion through opening up the bile duct in the liver. Generally, colon cleansing is purported to increase energy, increase a person’s concentration, assist in weight loss, and boost the immune system. According to Dr. Ketan Kulkarni of Lancaster General Hospital in Pennsylvania, the

rationale behind colon cleansing is the theory that toxins and undigested material build up in one’s colon over a prolonged period of time and eventually are absorbed by the body, resulting in a variety of symptoms such as fatigue, headaches, depression and weight gain.

This rationale follows an ancient medical theory known as “autointoxication”, whose origins can be traced back to ancient Egypt.

Despite these reported benefits, there exists no scientific evidence that coffee enemas (or colon cleansing in general) benefiting the body in any way besides purging the colon of waste – which the digestive system is very much capable of doing on its own. The theory of autointoxication has long since been disproven by the medical community, and research has shown that coffee enemas do not affect the levels of glutathione s-transferase in the body. Gerson’s claims remain unfounded, and he is discredited by the medical community today.

Besides the complete lack of scientific evidence that supports the purported benefits of coffee enemas, there remain many risks, and a real danger, to performing coffee enemas. For one, the ingestion of such a large amount of coffee can cause shakiness, heart palpitations, and dehydration, which can cause nausea and vomiting.

A person with dark skin tips and spills coffee from a cup. The image freezes the liquid in time, with coffee tumbling down through the air over a dark grey background towards the floor. Image by poedynchuk from Pixabay
Coffee enemas. Just a waste of coffee.

Coffee enemas can also cause rectal burns and rectal inflammation, which can lead to bowel perforation, kidney failure, and even caused a case of proctocolitis in a perfectly healthy woman. As coffee enemas are most often performed by people at home, they can cause infections from improperly sterilized equipment.

A reported medical case confirms that a person developed sepsis from doing a coffee enema, and died. Coffee enemas also remove a body’s potassium, which is an essential macronutrient, and can cause electrolyte imbalances in the body. A reported two individuals developed “severe electrolyte abnormalities” following the performing of an enema, and died because of it. Lastly, enema use disrupts the microbiota balance in the body as the procedure harms both “good bacteria” and “bad bacteria”, which can cause dysbiosis, weakening the immune system.

Coffee enemas have various purported health benefits, supporters even claiming that it can cure cancer and rid the body of “toxic chemicals”. Yet none of these claims reflect actual medical knowledge, and such claims often justify themselves with outdated and/or entirely unfounded medical beliefs. In reality, the procedure is quite risky, and can be very dangerous, with a range of ailments and syndromes that, in many cases, can seriously affect people’s health (and even kill), making coffee enemas an alternative medicine procedure no one should try out.

Gillian Anderson misses the “G Spot” with her range of wellness drinks and health claims

Michael Marshall
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Gillian Anderson misses the “G Spot” with her range of wellness drinks and health claims

There must be few people, internationally, more universally loved than Gillian Anderson. She shot to fame in the 90s as the iconic skeptic Dana Scully, played a delightfully-tongue-in-cheek version of herself in A Cock and Bull Story, returned to the small screen in the acclaimed The Fall, and then found a new legion of younger fans as sex therapist Jean Milburn in Sex Education.

Along the way, she has been a consistent advocate for women’s rights, LGTBQ rights, and children’s rights, plus she’s an outspoken environmental activist. On top of that, she comes across as down to earth and always willing to poke fun at herself. I think we can all agree, she’s a delight.

Which is why it is so utterly disappointing to see her become the face – and, indeed, the founder – of a new range of wellness products whose marketing is replete with misleading health claims.

The G-Spot range of soft drinks, founded by Anderson during the pandemic, are marketed via the kind of knowing, playful, sexually-tinged wink that has been synonymous with the former X Files actor over at least the last two decades. Their tagline is “Where you do you”. They are called “G-Spot”. The range of drinks has names like “Arouse”. The whole company was launched with a tongue-in-cheek advert where Gillian wears a sparkly jacket and a pair of bunny ears, in a bedroom where the bed is adorned with rose petals and pink fluffy handcuffs, making jokes about how she doesn’t want to read the sexualised script. Instead, she says the product is:

Wellness with a wink. Kind of fun, cheeky, it’s good for you, but it tastes good

She explains that she drinks too many soft drinks and not enough water. So she decided to make her own soft drink, and started talking to people about functional drinks and nootropics, which she says are known for their healing properties and for boosting cognitive function and performance. “Before I knew it, one thing led to another, and I found my G-Spot” she says, while being handed a can of her “Lift” product.

Wellness with a wink is very much the brand, here. Customers are encouraged to tweet about the product using the hashtag “tastesfxckinggood”. Their social media includes posts like “A drink to boost, elevate and lift you higher than your favourite bra” and “GIRL MATH …​​​​​​​​​Naughty & Nice + Sweet & Spice = AROUSE” and “Don’t send me noods…send me a G Spot ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​#soothe”.

Screenshot of a facebook post by G Spot on 25 October at 7 pm. Four image panels have text overlaid in various crafty-looking styles such as tape or torn graph paper. The top left is of wet red cherries, saying "lift - meet the ingredients...". The top right is of yellow fungal growths with text "cordyceps - A highly effective energy bosting mushroom." The lower left is of white flowers with text "bacopa - An ancient herb that helps with memory, concentration, focus, and stress relief." The lower right is of a cream-coloured powder and says "maca - A plant used for centuries to elevate mood, reduce anxiety, increase energy."
A screenshot of a facebook post by G Spot. Text says "Don't send me noods...send me a G Spot #soothe #tastesfxckinggood" and accompanies a photo of a grinning black woman with her eyes closed, wearing a bright green, fluffy collar-and-cuffs leather jacket, holding a green can of G Spot soothe and eating a beef ramen noodle cup. She has red painted nails and is sitting at a wooden table.

This wellness with a wink approach is almost certainly attaching itself to Anderson’s success in the hit show Sex Education, where she plays sex therapist Jean Milburn. In fact, of the four products on sale as part of the range, the most recent is their “Arouse” product, which explicitly has the Netflix Sex Education logo on every can and in every advert. This is brand synergy.

You might think it’s disappointing that Gillian would take the money to put her name to a product like this, but it’s worse than that. She’s the founder of the company. This is her company. G Spot is as much Gillian Anderson as Goop is Gwyneth Paltrow.

What makes this all the more dispiriting is that the concept of “functional nootropics” drinks is based on incredibly shaky ground, at best. Drinks can obviously be functional, but for most commercially-available, non-caffeinated drinks, that function is hydration, thirst-quenching, and sustenance. Some drinks can boost energy, via ingredients like caffeine, or sugar – but these are ingredients G Spot makes a virtue of being free from.

What do G Spot drinks contain, and what do those ingredients do? The answer to that question very much depends on when you asked that question. In early 2023, if you had visited their website, you’d have seen a wide range of misleading claims. For example, their “Protect” product featured the following the ingredient list:

GINGER – Is a powerful antioxidant. It has anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory properties which help support a healthy immune system. Making it a go-to-herb for fighting the common cold.

TURMERIC – Has been used in Ayurvedic medicine for over 4000 years for its immune supporting properties. Curcumin is its active compound and is anti-inflammatory and an effective antioxidant.

CHAGA – Is packed full of powerful antioxidants which help to protect and support the immune system and fight inflammation and infection.

Unfortunately, there’s no good evidence that these ingredients actually have any of these claimed properties. What’s more, even if you could prove that ginger, turmeric and chaga actually had such beneficial applications, there’s then no evidence that those ingredients exist in sufficient quantity in the G Spot product to mean that drinking a can of “Protect” can actually help fight infection and ill-health, which is what is clearly being suggested by the company. Even the product name, “Protect”, misleadingly suggests it offers health benefits.

The same is true for their other products. For the Lift product, its ingredients list claims:

BACOPA is used for its effect on brain function, that it contains powerful antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties it helps to support the Immune system, and that it helps with memory, concentration, focus, and stress relief.

THEANINE can directly impact our brain function by improving sleep, maintaining mood and reducing the impact of stress, in turn increasing energy.

LION’S MANE Supports the immune system, Digestive system and Central nervous system” and “helps protect our cognitive function by improving concentration, mood and memory.

CORDYCEPS – Increases the production of ATP therefore increasing our energy levels throughout the day.

Again, even if those things were true, that doesn’t mean that drinking the Lift product will increase ATP production or energy levels throughout the day. If the company want to say that it does, they have to prove that the product itself can do that.

As for their Soothe product, they claim:

MAGNESIUM has a direct impact on the regulation of our Central Nervous System, helping to ease stress and support mood.

REISHI has been used for centuries for its stress reducing and calming abilities, as well as alleviating symptoms of anxiety. It has been named ‘The mushroom of eternal youth’ for its ability to regulate the Central Nervous System.

ASHWAGANDHA calms the Central nervous system, promotes sleep and is a modern day stress buster!

MACA contains antioxidants and nutrients that have been used for many symptoms including fatigue, hormone regulation, libido, and cognition. Maca can improve energy and reduce symptoms of stress, by calming the Central Nervous system.

Interestingly, the page for Soothe also includes a heath disclaimer:

This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease

Which would be good to see, if it wasn’t immediately undermined by the very next sentence:

Although for many people the effects of the drinks can be felt right away, the full medicinal properties of G Spot’s ingredients are most effective when consumed daily over time.

It seems remarkably disingenuous to argue that this product has explicitly “medicinal” benefits that kick in right away, and get stronger with daily consumption… but aren’t intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent anything.

As is ever the case, the website includes an FAQ where the unsubstantiated health claims continue.

Does G Spot contain caffeine?
No, G Spot does not contain any caffeine – the increased energy felt from Lift comes from the Cordyceps mushroom’s ability to increase ATP production in our cells, therefore increasing energy and alertness on a cellular level, pretty much right away.

Until they can prove that their product actually does increase energy, they don’t get to tell us where that extra energy comes from, nor can they tell us we’ll feel “alertness on a cellular level”.

Meanwhile, descriptions here of the Lift product repeat the claim that it can give a boost to energy and focus, and the Protect product claims again to offer “complete medicinal immune system supporting properties”.

These products are clearly making a range of health claims that are not supported by evidence, and the celebrity endorsement of Gillian Anderson is likely to persuade consumers that these health claims are true, and that these products are worth buying.

Still, that was the content of the marketing copy earlier in the year… but it is not what a reader will find if they head to the G Spot website now. The reason for the change? In June, I made a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority, who agreed with me that there were issues with the company’s wording. They took this up with G-Spot, who dutifully changed their marketing copy to avoid being named in a ruling by the ASA.

Unfortunately, the updated copy isn’t substantially better, and still – in my opinion – contains a range of unevidenced health claims. For the Soothe product, while the explicit claims for the ingredients have been removed, the page now claims that magnesium is “often associated with sleep and mood”, that Reishi is “traditionally associated with mood and stress reduction”, and that Theanine is “mainly associated with anxiety and stress relief” and “increases GABA, serotonin and dopamine levels”.

The implication to the consumer here is clearly that this product has those direct health benefits, even though there is no evidence to suggest that’s the case. It also very much seems that vague terms like “associated with” are being used to continue making health claims about the product, in the hope that they can sidestep the need to provide evidence.

Furthermore, the issue is not whether each of these ingredients can be shown to have any of these effects – the issue is still whether them exist in sufficient measure to give the Soothe product these effects. The implication to the consumer, clearly, is that they do – but there is still absolutely no evidence that this is the case.

The same is true of the updated Protect product. The explicit claims for ginger, peppercorn, turmeric, and chaga have been removed, but they’re replaced with the same implicit language of “used in many cultures for” and “revered for” and “used traditionally … as”. Despite this less committed language, the average consumer will still take away from this information the message that ginger works as an antibiotic, turmeric is an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory, and that chaga is an “immunity booster”. They will also take from this messaging that the Protect product, by extension, has all of those same health benefits – even though there is no evidence for that.

And then there’s the Lift product. Again, the explicit claims for the ingredients have been removed (in fact, the key ingredients list itself has even been changed), but the wording is replaced with the same implicit language of “revered for its association with” and “often used… with the aim of” and “traditionally used for”. And again, despite this less committed language, most will take away the messages that bacopa aids memory and concentration and reduces anxiety, ribose reduces fatigue, maca lifts mood and reduces anxiety, and that cordyceps increases energy and performance. Plus, that the Protect product, by extension, has all of those same health benefits – but there is no evidence that this is the case.

As for the FAQs, G Spot never actually removed the sections I complained about in June, so it still tells customers to drink Life when they need energy, and Protect when they want to experience complete medicinal immune system-supporting properties – properties it has not been shown to have. And it still tells you that the Cordyceps in the drinks will increase your energy and alertness on a cellular level. Which, if it can, G Spot need to demonstrate, not just state.

On top of those three products, since my June complaint, G Spot also launched their fourth product, “Arouse”, complete with its own range of problematic advertising claims. The ingredients list for the Arouse product now claims that:

Butterfly Pea is can increase blood flow and sexual desire.

L-arginine increases “flow” to sexual organs and can improve libido.

L-Citrulline improves blood flow.

Vitamin B6 regulates hormonal activity, reduces tiredness and reduces fatigue.

These are all clearly health claims, and it is not clear that there is any evidence for these claims for any of these ingredients. And, again, even if there were evidence for individual ingredients, it is not clear that the resulting effect is that the Arouse product can have any of these health benefits – which is the clear implication of this messaging.

This product is being marketed as a way of improving libido, sexual desire, as is clear from their social media posts – including a Facebook post that reads:

Date night levelled up. Arouse is filled to the brim of functional ingredients to help you get in the mood, by boosting libido and reducing stress. #arouse #powerofpleasure

Screenshot of a G Spot facebook post from 18 September. Text reads "Arouse is LIVE. Preorder on our website NOW (other stockists coming soon - eyes-looking-left emoji). Date night levelled up. Arouse is filled to the brim of functional ingredients to help you get in the mood, by boosting libido and reducing stress. #arouse #powerofpleasure"

All of which means I’ve sent a new complaint to the ASA, pointing out that plenty of the problematic text hasn’t actually been touched, and that the changes they’ve made don’t actually address the main concerns. I’ll be awaiting to hear what the ASA does next, and whether Gillian Anderson and the G-Spot team decide to change things, or whether their advertising continues to offer misleading information to customers.

So if you’re reading this, Gillian Anderson, please put more consideration into how you market your products. It’s absolutely fine to invent a new caffeine-free soft drink, and it’s fine (fun, even!) to market it with a wink. But when it comes to making direct claims about the health and wellbeing benefits of your new product range, you need to provide some evidence, lest you end up misleading the very consumers you’re seeking to empower.

Perhaps you should take a lead from your most famous role, and be a little more skeptical.

Israel and Gaza show us that humanity and compassion are among the casualties of war

Hadar Rubin
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Israel and Gaza show us that humanity and compassion are among the casualties of war

I’m about as left-wing as they get. I object to the Israeli occupation, to the settlements. I consistently vote for Arab parties in elections. I have decided, quite a while ago, that I need to leave the country in which I was born due to moral reasons.

I was born in Jerusalem on the last day of 1987, during the first Intifada. Of course, I don’t remember that, but some of my earliest memories are from the Gulf War. I remember sitting inside a special protective bubble designed to protect young children from chemical weapon attacks, with a specific children’s book, a bottle of ice-cold water, and bittersweet chocolate. I remember the windows of my bedroom taped and sealed against those chemical attacks. I remember throwing up in a bucket inside the room when we couldn’t get out – I don’t remember why I had to throw up, but I remember having eaten an avocado. I remember thinking how lucky we are because the toilet is so close to the sealed room every family had to set up. I remember people going everywhere with gas masks kits. I was way too young when I learned what Atropine is.

In the summer on 1995 we left Jerusalem to live in the northern part of Israel, about 8 km south of the Lebanon border. My parents wanted to leave the big city, and fell in love with the area. It is, indeed, beautiful. Moving so far away (three and a half hours in a car is a long time for a young child) from everything and everyone one knows is never easy, and we hardly got settled in before Operation Grapes of Wrath began. We spent days in and around the tiny shelter, until my parents decided to send me and my younger brother to our grandparents in Jerusalem, which was safe. I went back to my old school for a while.

Back up north, the English classroom was inside the shelter, so if we happened to be in class when missile sirens went off we felt lucky – we didn’t have to run there. I can’t remember how many times we had to sit there and wait for the buses to take us home in the middle of the day, because Hezbollah were firing rockets. They always played a movie for us while we waited – usually, The NeverEnding Story. I hate that movie, but that’s mostly because I love the book dearly, and by comparison the movie is terrible. I had strong opinions about it even as a 10-year-old: it pissed me off so much that I never actually watched it all the way through, and instead tried to read a book in the dark.

Not very long before my Bat-Mitzvah celebration (celebrated secularly), the IDF left the south of Lebanon. The party was to take place on my parents’ porch – a north-facing porch. Some of the food for the party was prepared by my mother, and some by the owner and staff of a beloved Lebanese restaurant run by Arab-Israelis. We didn’t know if anyone would show up, or what might happen. The restaurant was located south enough to be out of range of the usual rockets that were fired from Lebanon, and we were invited to move everything there, in a moment’s notice, if need be. The need didn’t arise, and our guests did show up.

Later that year, children of soldiers and officers from the SLA (South Lebanon Army, which collapsed upon the Israeli withdrawal) joined our classrooms. Some of them had family members, usually fathers, who stayed and were in mortal danger. Some stayed in Israel; some later left to Europe or the USA.

I hate that this was normal to me. I hate the fact that my experience isn’t unique – I share it with thousands of other children.

One of those children was Gilad Shalit, who was my classmate. We both grew up in Mitzpe Hila, and shared a home-room class. My dad was a teacher at our school, and on the morning of June 25th 2006, he received a phone call from one of his former students who served in an Operations Room. That’s how I learned that something happened to my classmate before it was reported in the news; to begin with, we thought he had been killed, but we later found out that he had been captured.

Every 18-year-old is basically stupid. I don’t know if adult me would have done the same things I did then. I don’t know if I would have stood by traffic lights, giving away yellow ribbons (a sign that one is waiting for a missing loved one away on military duty). I don’t know if I would have tried to get out of mandatory military service for moral reasons (I did, and was denied). Those things did happen, though.

And then another war started. My parents were very glad that my boyfriend at the time lived in the central part of Israel, near Tel Aviv. One less worry for them if I was there. I did go back, though, one weekend, and attended the funeral of my friend’s mother –my English teacher from primary school, the same school where I was forced to watch The NeverEnding Story. She died after a stroke at a very young age; I don’t wish a funeral under missile fire upon anyone.

Many people left their homes to stay with family or friends somewhere further from the fighting. A lot of them left their pets behind. My parents spent quite some time feeding and caring for other people’s pets. They were exhausted, and decided to take a few days away – in Turkey, which then still had relatively positive feelings towards Israel. They just had to take a break. It was a horrible “vacation”.

When we got back to Israel, I went back to my boyfriend’s; by the end of the war, I had a job in Tel Aviv. I never again lived in Mitzpe Hila – I would go there on weekends during my military service. My military service was boring and redundant. I didn’t want to be there, I didn’t want any of this military service. But I decided that I had to do it, and hated pretty much every second of it. As soon as I was discharged, I left Mitzpe Hila for good. I always wanted to leave – everybody wants to live in Tel Aviv – but I didn’t leave on my own terms; the 2006 war chased me away.

I hate that, despite all of this, I thought that I still turned out “fine”. I never had a fear of loud, sudden sounds; I didn’t freeze every time I heard a car or a motorcycle accelerate with a Doppler-effect screech. When missiles were fired at Tel Aviv for the first time in a forever, I was almost cavalier – definitely the calmest person around. When I was no longer a resident of Tel Aviv itself (but still in its metropolitan area) and before I had dogs, when sirens went off I didn’t even bother going down to the shelter. I stayed in the (second-floor) apartment with the cats. Now that I have dogs I go down immediately – for their sake and safety. But this is not “turning out fine”. That’s just a different brand of crazy, of damaged.

And this time, I’m afraid. I truly am. If that is because I’m now married and have dependents or not, if it’s just growing as a person and realising new things about myself or not, I don’t know. I’m in a relatively safe place, though we have had to go down to the shelter a few times. My loved ones are relatively safe as well. My nuclear family doesn’t live in Israel anymore; my parents left a few years ago, and my brother left recently. I have decided, long ago, that I must leave too – and a large part of the decision was on moral grounds. At some point, one must realise that staying is endorsing, and there’s all manner of things that happen here that I cannot endorse. But so far, unfortunately, I’m still here. And I’m hurting.

This thing I always knew – that this is not normal – is now impossible to ignore. I hate that I didn’t leave sooner, and that I haven’t left yet. I hate the boom sounds I hear from afar even while writing this. I hate that my parents are worried about me. I hate that when my brother was visiting just before he left and we had to go down to the shelter we joked about how this “brings back childhood memories” and “oh, it’s been a while since we spent time in the shelter together”.

I hate that I can tell the difference between hits and interceptions. I hate that now, for what is maybe the first time in my life, my heart misses a beat when I hear a sudden noise or a louder-than-usual car exhaust. I used to love thunderstorms.

I hate that I have so many tips to give to others, and I hate the realisation that some of them are based on things that I remember as a child – and didn’t even know that I know. I hate that the fifth day is easier than the third, that the sixth is easier than the fourth. The same can go for weeks – the second was easier than the first, the third is easier than the second. I hate the speed in which I get used to this kind of a situation. But this isn’t “easy”. It’s just easier. And condemnable.

But most of all, I hate that I feel like I’ve lost something that was always dear to me, an integral part of me: my humanity. The Hammas took away my ability to feel empathy towards “the other side”, my empathy to the people they claim to represent. I hate that, for the first time, my initial reaction was to feel no sympathy for the hurt and pain in Gaza. I hate that it even crossed my mind, for longer than I’m comfortable admitting, that maybe the solution really was to flatten Gaza to all hell. I hate that, for the first time in my life, I felt animosity towards regular Joes and Janes in Gaza – not just towards the Hammas. I hate that, for the first time in my life, it made me feel like Hammas really does speak for, and acts on behalf of, all Palestinians.

I hate it, because I know there’s no way that’s 100% true – look at me, I exist! People like me are always somewhere. But knowing aside, right now I’m feeling. And I hate my own emotions.

And this is a part, or maybe all, of the frustration. The difference between “knowing” or “thinking”, and “feeling” or “believing” is known and understood by most of us. By now, a few weeks have passed since the first draft of this article; nothing is “better”, but the human capacity for adaptation is, indeed, incredible. So far, the circumstances of my life had never managed to wear down my compassion, my humanistic opinions, or my basic humanity. October 7th changed that in a very extreme way. I am happy – truly happy – that the pendulum has swung back again, and my feelings are back to a place I am more consciously content with – but things will never be the same.

No, I do not now support the Israeli government’s actions (or motivations. Or existence in its current form). I still – and will continue to – denounce the Israeli occupation, the building of settlements, and the directing of funds toward right-wing, religious goals; the erosion of democracy, the corruption. None of these have changed, and a day of reckoning will (have to) come. This time, hopefully, not just from “the left” but from anyone and everyone who calls themselves “human”.

This isn’t a political text, though. If it was, it would have contained current facts, statistics, things that might change people’s minds, or my own personal opinion regarding what is happening and what should be done. This isn’t the point. The point is that all aspects of the current situation are horrible, and that many of the aspects of “normal” life here are awful even when it’s under the surface, or when consequences take decades to manifest.

The point is that physical and mental health and well-being aren’t the only casualties of war; concepts are, too. The point is that cruelty can lead to ugliness in every direction, and that it’s important to not forget basic humanity, even in the face of atrocities.

The radicalisation of “Joan”: a true-life account of one colleague’s slide into conspiracism

Anonymous
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The radicalisation of “Joan”: a true-life account of one colleague’s slide into conspiracism

I knew it was time to leave, when I heard her say “Hitler was just misunderstood, that’s all. He was actually a hero if you think about it. The only reason the war happened was because the Jews started it, when Hitler politely asked them to leave the country. He was actually a really nice man, and children loved him.”

I was nonplussed. My head span. My colleague was sat opposite me defending Hitler. Hitler! I didn’t know what to say. I never knew what to say. Over the years I’d come to expect some radical and far-reaching statements, but I never thought she would be discussing Adolf Hitler like he was a rough diamond, like one of Monty Python’s Piranha Brothers: “He nailed my head to the floor, but we has a lovely chap really”.

It didn’t start like this though. Let’s go back to the beginning.

I joined the company because the work looked interesting; challenging but achievable, and I enjoy a challenge. It was well within in my field of sciences and contained a good amount of interesting problem solving. There was no weekend work, which was different to some customer service roles I had been in previously. The wage was great, plus I had use of a company vehicle. It seemed like a really good package.

There was only one downside.

I had to work with Joan. In a career spanning 25 years, I had never worked with anyone like Joan before. To be clear, Joan is not her real name.

“I found out something really interesting last night…”, Joan told me as we took our coffees into our little office together. It was 2016. I’d only been working with her for a few weeks since joining the organisation, but already she engaged me excitedly every morning, like a puppy wanting to show its new toy. “Have you heard of the food pyramid?”, she asked me. I told her I had. I used to run a small organisation that obtained funding to spread the message of healthy eating, and environmental science amongst other things. “It’s a lie!”, she told me triumphantly. “Ancel Keys made up the food pyramid to poison Americans. They killed him for it”. Who were ‘they’ I wondered? I would get to know who ‘they’ were over the coming years.

That night as I was searching around on Netflix for something to distract me, I remembered the conversation. Recalling my previous workshops about healthy eating, I wondered if I had been mistaken in my research, and so did some Googling about the food pyramid. It was devised in Sweden in 1974. I made a mental note to pick up the conversation the next morning back at the coffee machine.

“No – ANCEL KEYS”, she repeatedly slowly and clearly. She stopped abruptly as she saw me tip half a teaspoon of sugar into my mug. “What are you doing? That’s poison!”, she shouted. “It’s designed to kill you, don’t you remember?”. She took the mug and tipped the contents down the sink. I found this a little unnerving. My whole career had been built on researching things and passing on the information in an engaging way. I’d won awards for it. I wasn’t used to someone dismissing me so efficiently.

Joan was a grumbler, at first. Bloody government, bloody this, bloody that. It seemed the whole world was against her. At first, she was very, very Left. Conservatives were scum. Then it was Labour who were evil. Then it was anyone who wasn’t “awake”. I told her I was “woke”, was that enough? It wasn’t.

When Brexit reared its head, she was overjoyed. The thought of all of that money being wasted by unelected European morons was abhorrent, and by leaving we would be much, much better off. The phrase “sunlit uplands” was bandied about. Months later, when it emerged that the campaigns had used exaggeration and manipulation to get the result, Joan was crushed. Looking back, I think this was a big influence on what happened next, and how her behaviour changed.

Such was life working opposite Joan. To be fair, once I had prioritised my workload for the day, she let me get on with it. We had disagreements sometimes about how to do things, and she liked to lose her temper, shout, and throw things, but for the most part, we got on.

Suddenly, and without warning, Covid struck, and Boris appeared on our screens saying we must stay at home. However, given the industry we work in, we were summoned to work the next morning, so people could still have available utilities. Joan immediately went into overdrive, sanitising doorhandles, ordering masks, and generally panicking. I picked up a ringing telephone once, and she ran over, shouting at me for not having sanitised it first. “But it’s my phone”, I countered, “nobody uses it but me”. The phone flew across the room. Our works vehicles were cleaned and disinfected, repeatedly. Masks were bought and used. Work began to be quite stressful, for everyone.

But then Joan discovered something. She gleefully stumbled across a video that claimed to show deserted hospitals, despite the pandemic putting a strain on the NHS.

Joan stopped using a mask. She said they were designed to make you sick, actually. Sometimes she would call into shops even when she didn’t need anything, just to walk around and smile at people. When challenged, she claimed she was exempt from wearing “face nappies”.

One morning, at the coffee machine, Joan was waiting with another one of her triumphant smiles. “It’s a hoax, the whole thing. There’s no sickness, and the people on TV are paid actors playing sick people. It’s obvious when you think about it.”

We were given boxes of covid tests to keep on our desks, and use periodically. “I’m not sticking that up my nose”, she sniffed, “I read online that they’ve put shards of glass and dangerous chemicals on the swabs to make us compliant and sick. Plus, the tests are fake, you can tell which ones are going to test positive by running them under the tap. Just like passports” she finished, cryptically. I simple had to bite on this one. “You run your passport under the tap?” I enquired. “No silly, the letters on your passport determine what rate of citizen you are, and whether or not you will be stopped at the border. Billionaires don’t have ANY letters”.

All of this was beginning to take its toll on my mental health. Each morning I would have to employ a huge amount of mental gymnastics to entertain (but not encourage) and listen to (but not agree or disagree with) Joan’s monologues. Why? To be honest, it just seemed easier than challenging her. She told me that she spent every evening on her laptop, headphones on (so her husband didn’t talk to her), searching for the truth. It was clear that each link she followed, led to another, even more outrageous claim. The world she thought she knew seemed to be crumbling. Dorothy had spotted the man behind the curtain. In fact, she hadn’t, she had read online that there WAS a man behind the curtain, and that other people had CERTAINLY spotted him for sure, and that the curtain would be pulled back any day now.

Any day now.

When Covid vaccines became available, Joan’s warnings were dire. The vaccine had been developed by evil scientists who had been tasked with reducing the planet’s population to “around 500,00 people, to be used as slaves”. As the rest of the staff became vaccinated, she called them “morons” and “fucking idiots”. She would ring suppliers and ask about their vaccine status, saying she had to ensure the future of the company. She openly discussed the possibility of the business closing, because the rest of the staff were going to die. She said this made her very unhappy, as she would have to find another job; a real pain as she could currently walk to work. The subject of death because a daily topic; who would die next? Who among us was vaccinated? When a colleague’s mum passed away from a long illness, Joan didn’t offer a crumb of comfort. She simply said, “Yeah… was she vaccinated?”.

The rest of the business seemed to run as normal. Staff wore their masks, had their vaccines, kept things clean, and life continued.

Meanwhile Joan was determined to buck the system, and prove the hoax. When a contractor sent a WhatsApp picture of his positive lateral flow test and apologised for not visiting our site, Joan was on the case. “It’s fine, it’s just a hoax, it’s not true” she told him. As he attended our site, coughing profusely, I quietly excused myself and busied myself with a job in another building.

Then came the podcasts. Hour after hour of urgent voices coming from her tiny phone speaker. I would catch snippets as I zoned in and out. “…stealing our children with brainwashing propaganda…”, “…no, there is NO clear evidence that tobacco is harmful…”, “…if you divide the number by 666, you get to the letter D, for Devil…”.

Joan began reading The Light Paper, a specialist newspaper, for Truthers and the “awake”. It was hand-delivered by fellow free-thinkers, and the articles were something to behold. “WAR ON FREE THOUGHT,” shouted the headline, “LOCKDOWNS ARE 1984 WITH BELLS ON”. The latest Star Wars movie got a pasting for having a female lead in it (“woke emasculation gone mad”). The fluoride in our water was designed to kill you. Vaccines turned you gay. As I leafed through it, it was the adverts that intrigued me:

“DIGITAL CURRENCY IS THEFT – BUY GOLD BULLION”

“STAR FOOD – ENLIGHTEN YOUR BODY’S POTENTIAL BY EATING MONATOMIC GOLD, RHODIUM, AND IRIDIUM”

The business making ABDUCTION-PROOF RADIO FREQUENCY PROTECTIVE ALL-IN-ONE BODY SUITS was based in Glastonbury, which I suppose makes some sense.

Things took a turn for the worse when, inevitably, she found QAnon. For those of you who are unaware “Q” is an alleged whistleblower, seated deep inside the real government, not the let’s-play-at-puppet-politics TV politicians, but the REAL, actual group who are at the heart of what’s going on. From this vantage point “Q” shares information about the hidden rings, plans, and manipulations devised by a Machiavellian few; always hidden, always plotting.

At the heart of the plot is a group of evil, scheming paedophiles known as the “cabal”. Q postulates that they have been responsible for anything and everything that has challenged humanity, including HIV, weather manipulation, floods, market forces, pandemics, common illnesses, any and all wars, vaccines, and the corruption of children through Steven Spielberg movies. This information was devoured by a tidal wave of followers, who finally had someone to blame for any and all of their troubles.

The floodgates had been opened. Now, each morning over coffee, Joan would tell me more and more about what she had learned the night before. Chemtrails, cabals, Satan-worshipping Liberal Elites, Tom Hanks’s child-trafficking to Barack Obama’s secret underground chambers, a flat earth, and the fact that the Queen had never actually existed. Neither had the Titanic, apparently.

I was being told daily, and repeatedly, that the world I knew was a hoax. Voting? That’s a hoax. War in Ukraine? Also a hoax. Climate change? Definitely a hoax put about by the Liberal Elite to scare and control you. I imagine this is what propaganda feels like; “Your team have been captured, your country on its knees, give up now, resistance is futile”.

Office documents began to be written in purple ink. That’s nice I thought, she’s found some artistic flair, and added a touch of colour. I was wrong. “They can’t hold it against me in court”, she explained, “purple ink means anything I sign isn’t legally binding. They’ll never get me.”

The trouble was it made working very difficult. Just when you’d gotten settled to process some claim forms or book some hotels for someone, she would want to speak at length about the latest tidbit she had uncovered the night before. “Wow, that’s crazy” I would say, up to 20 times each conversation.

Plato said our silence gives consent. Was this my fault? Should I be stopping her? Or at least asking her to question the reliability of where all of this information was coming from?

I asked if she had discussed any of this with her husband. “Oh no, he’s a sheep”, she would say, “he isn’t a Truther like me.” Her husband worked for a meteorological service as a consulting scientist. “He believes all this nonsense about the changing weather; I’ve given up trying to convince him”. She left him in the months that followed.

When Donald Trump’s presidential term finished, Joan was furious over the election result. Trump appeared on TV, claiming the election had been rigged, and that he was doing to “drain the swamp” of dangerous, cheating liberals. The next day Joan was already out in front of the topic. “It was the Vatican!” she told me, over coffee. “Basically, the Vatican has a network of satellites that they used to beam signals to the Dominion voting machines, causing them to display false results, and electing Biden. Q posted about it last night, it’s common knowledge now, amongst Truthers”.

The Capital Riots elicited a similar explanation. The rioters were true Q-anon followers; the Proud Boys (the all-male, neo-fascists), and other violent, gun-toting, flag-waving ‘Murican’s and Trump loyalists who were taking a stand against brainwashed Liberals. That was until it became clear that some deaths had occurred during the riot – at which point the protestors became actors, paid by the Liberals, pretending to be rioters in an effort to discredit the gentle folk who just wanted election answers.

Soon, Joan discovered she was a millionaire. “We all are, actually”, she explained, “we have trusts in our name that are assigned to us at birth. Somewhere there is a vault with my name on it, full of gold bullion. I just need to access mine, but the government will try and stop me, you watch.”

I left the company shortly afterwards. My mental health was in pieces. I was broken, exhausted. During the week I left, Joan (now divorced) had moved into a little cottage, on her own. She had recently read that taxes and bills were also government hoaxes, and was busy dodging fines, court summonses, and building a large, reinforced fence around her house. “It stops the bailiffs banging on the door, which is Treason. They just hit the railings now”.

As I reflect on my time with her, I realise that she had no-one else to talk to, about anything. I was her confidant, her co-conspirator. Even now, as I write this, I feel guilty for not helping her more, helping her to question what she was reading. But it did make her happy, joyful even that she had discovered all of this, on her own, and that there were other, like-minded souls out there, who knew and understood. A bit like sighting land while drifting around in a lifeboat.

I work elsewhere now. I wish only happiness for Joan. I hope she’ll be ok.

How do we know what we know? The question that untangles Magisteria’s science and religion

Ted Lefroy
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How do we know what we know? The question that untangles Magisteria’s science and religion
Book cover of MAGISTERIA 'The Entangled Histories of Science and Religion' by Nicholas Spencer, which has a dark blue background and yellow line drawings of natural forms, patterns and stars decorating it.

‘Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science and Religion’ is a thoroughly engaging and detailed account of the backstories to the big debates between science and religion over the past five hundred years. Through new material and detailed social context, it vividly brings to life the trial of Galileo, the debate between Wilberforce and Huxley on Darwin’s theory of natural selection, and the Scopes monkey trial. The big drawback is that it presents a view of science from the outside looking in, and while it identifies the issue at the centre of these debates – who has authority to say how the world is? – it plays down the different rules of evidence and standards of proof within science and religion and the fact that revelation has trumped empiricism for most of this relationship.

The author Nicholas Spencer is a senior fellow at the think tank Theos, part of The British and Foreign Bible Society and he is most at home exploring the foundational role that religious orders from Baghdad to Rome, Paris and Oxford played in the birth of science by fostering learning and inquiry into the nature of the universe. The book’s purpose, made clear in the introduction and dedication, is to support the complexity theory of the relationship between science and religion, championed by historian John Brooke, and portray the conflict theory widely accepted outside academia as myth.

At the heart of the question of authority is the different epistemologies of science and religion, the different ways they believe we can know about the world. Science holds that we can only know about the world through observation and experience, phenomena that impinge upon our five senses. If we can’t see, hear, feel, smell or taste some thing or phenomenon, directly or through telescopes, microscopes, Large Hadron Colliders and all the other instruments that extend the reach of our senses, then science can say no more than evidence of its existence is beyond its reach.

Religion on the other hand, and this history deals primarily with the three Abrahamic religions, accepts that we can also know about the world through means other than our five senses, through revelation, inspiration, dreams and visions from beyond the human realm.

In recognition of these different epistemologies, palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould proposed a resolution by describing science and religion as ‘non-overlapping magisteria.’ The term magisteria was borrowed from the encyclical Humani generis in which Pope Pius XII argued that evolution, existentialism, historicism and other “…false opinions…” originated from the “…reprehensible desire of novelty…” and threatened to undermine the foundations of Catholic Doctrine by neglecting the magisterium, the authority of the Pope and bishops.

Gould’s well-intentioned intervention was bound to fail, however, as science and religion will continue to overlap wherever there are competing explanations for the same phenomenon, such as the movement of the planets that saw Galileo forced to kneel before the inquisition as a heretic and recant.

That religion played a role in the birth of science by fostering education and research has been long argued by historians of science. But as science gained increasing independence and respectability, its explanations for natural phenomena began to encroach into the domain of religion.

To view the relationship from the point of view of science, consider the two domains as concentric circles. Science is the smaller inner circle, originating as a dot around the time of Aristotle and gradually expanding as more phenomena that previously relied on supernatural explanations are demonstrated to have natural origins. Encompassing science is the much larger circle of religious belief and the supernatural, and beyond that, the uncontained territory of the unknowable.

Sitting at the frontier between science and religion is a double wall, a waiting room containing the untested hypotheses, assumptions, conjecture and speculation that are part of scientific practice. This intermediate zone is where the contest of ideas is most active. Until empirically tested, concepts in this territory lack authority but are vital to the scientific process. Such as Einstein’s 1915 prediction of the existence of gravitational waves, not empirically confirmed until 2015, or the existence of Higgs boson, predicted in 1964 but not experimentally confirmed until 2012.

By describing their territories as ‘…indistinct, sprawling, untidy and endlessly and fascinatingly entangled…’ Spencer over complicates the relationship. Seen from within the domain of science, the boundary between the two is a lively frontier of imagination, uncertainty and the novelty so disdained by Pius XII, their relationship more like that of parent and child than benevolent midwife; originally nurturing, then intolerant, finally accommodating.

In the case of the Catholic Church, that accommodation only formally occurred in the last century, the treatment of two its own illustrating this shift. Dominican friar Giordano Bruno was executed for supporting heliocentrism in 1600. Three hundred and thirty three years later, Belgian priest and cosmologist Georges Lemaître was photographed with Albert Einstein and feted on a lecture tour of America after Edwin Hubble confirmed his Big Bang theory.

Labelling the history of science and religion complex glosses over the fact that, for most of its existence science was overruled whenever it challenged received wisdom. The confusion and untidiness Spencer portrays is due to a misrepresentation of the scientific process and the reluctance of religious organisations to formally accept empirical evidence where it is in conflict with their authority. In the case of heliocentrism, formal acceptance took three hundred and fifty nine years. For evolution by natural selection, unconditional acceptance took one hundred and fifty five years. In the case of the Big Bang, acceptance took just eighty three years and in doing so pushed back the role of a creator by some fourteen billion years.

While this book provides a highly readable account of the origins of Western science, of more interest to science and greater value to society would be an exploration of the relationship between science and animism. Of the one hundred billion people estimated to have ever lived since the appearance of modern humans, more than half existed over two thousand years ago. The vast majority of those lived for thousands of generations without undermining the basis of their existence to the extent we are today, informed by a worldview that grants personhood to the animate and inanimate alike.

The Arecibo Reply: How We Know Aliens Aren’t Calling Us Through Crop Circles

Nick Garratt
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The Arecibo Reply: How We Know Aliens Aren’t Calling Us Through Crop Circles

In 1974, a team of scientists led by Frank Drake and Carl Sagan composed a message to be transmitted to the edge of our galaxy. Specifically, to the globular cluster Messier 13 – a group of stars roughly 25,000 light years from Earth. This was humanity’s first attempt to phone ET.

The graphic described in the text with colourful shapes Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arecibo_message.svg Arne Nordmann norro, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The original Arecibo message
(Source: Arne Nordmann norro, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

The message was written in binary code, which, when displayed as a graphic in a 23×73 rectangle (chosen for being prime numbers), provide several pieces of information about human beings and our planet. These include the atomic numbers for the elements that combine to make up DNA (hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus), a stick figure of a human being, a representation of our solar system and our position in it, and a representation of the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico that was used to transmit the message.

This latter inclusion was a testament to the technological prowess of humanity – to be able to send a call out into space, further than any transmission had been sent before, supposedly with the intention of reaching out to intelligent alien life.

Then, in 2001, in the sleepy Hampshire countryside, we got our reply. Not via the Chilbolton Radio Telescope, but in a field a short distance away. The reply came in the form of a crop circle (technically, a crop rectangle) seeming to be a copy of the Arecibo Message but with some key differences. The atomic code for carbon had been replaced with silicon, the stick figure had changed shape to indicate a large head and smaller body, and the image of Arecibo had been replaced with a complex image seeming to indicate some kind of space telescope with solar panels – or potentially a mimic of other complex crop circles that have been drawn in the past.

Could this be ET calling us back? No. No it couldn’t. And there are some key reasons for this. Firstly, and probably most importantly, the initial Arecibo message hasn’t reached anywhere yet. While the radio burst signal can theoretically travel all the way to the M13 cluster (seen in the constellation of Hercules in the Northern Hemisphere) it is currently thought to be only 1/1000th of the way there. It will be another 250 centuries until the message gets there – and by that time those stars will have moved in space. There will be nobody in to take our call, and likely no voicemail for us to leave our message after the beep.

But you might be thinking, what if maybe some other, much closer alien race picked up the signal? Well, that’s not likely either. The width of the beam carrying this message was less than 1/15th the diameter of the Moon. While this might sound wide to you or me, cosmically speaking, it’s a pinpoint. The message was transmitted using radio bursts and lasts only three minutes. Add to this that there is nothing in the radio bursts that makes it clear that the signal bursts need to be formatted into a visual, and within a specific layout of 23 columns containing 73 rows of data. The chances of a race being in the right place at the right time to pick up this transmission and then knowing to convert this information into a visual graphic are, quite frankly, astronomical.

The crop 'rectangle' described in the main text Source: earliest I can find is psychedelicadventure.blogspot.com http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4A9r9yKkkNs/SNQsQKzAjOI/AAAAAAAABCk/abpDxZ1RELI/s320/Chilbolton-Arecibo.gif
The Arecibo reply (used here under Fair Dealing)

Now let’s look at the image of the “reply” itself.

For ET to have picked up the original message, they must have the ability to receive radio signals. So it would stand to reason that they can also send radio signals, right? If that were the case, then why not radio us a response? This would be much more efficient for speed and clarity of their message, rather than travelling to Earth, waiting in hiding for the right time of year for the crops to grow, and then bending them. Even without speech, sending back the same radio bursts we used to send our message would be much more convincing than carrying out a Neil Buchanan-esque “big art” in a field next to a radio telescope, itself the home of SETI’s (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) Hampshire chapter.

Then we have the picture, made to resemble what some refer to as a “Grey” alien – a large head with big eyes and a pointed chin atop a smaller body. This is the stereotypical alien, as seen everywhere in popular culture from psychedelic posters and various smoking paraphernalia to Hollywood movies such as Mars Attacks! and Paul. This image goes back to some of the earliest alien encounter stories and seems to have come from a sketch produced by Barney Hill when undergoing hypnosis to “recover lost memories” of his “alien abduction” from the 1960’s.

Then there is the DNA information. The reply makes a change from carbon to silicon. While long-held in science fiction tales as an alternative to carbon-based life forms, the reality is that silicon would not be well-suited to support life, especially on a water and oxygen-rich planet such as ours. And, while an extra strand was added to the helix pictograph in the “reply”, no additional information or new core elements have been added to the data sent.

Nobody has ever come forward to claim ownership for producing the image in the wheat and, honestly, that is probably the biggest piece of evidence in favour of this being a “genuine” ET message – it truly is a work of art and would take some dedication to pull off. If I had done it, I would absolutely be showing it to everyone that would look.

That said, while we can’t say for certain who produced this reply to the Arecibo message, we can be certain that the call came from inside our terrestrial house.

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