As the real-world effects of climate change become more and more (and more and more) apparent, some people seem persistently determined to listen to the gotcha images that clutter up their social feeds, rather than reading the science-informed news.
That’s perhaps understandable, given the real news features so many climate-related disasters that you can put together a top ten of the financial damage caused, people displaced and numbers of deaths in a single year. Real climate news is depressing, so why not seek alternative facts?
As I’ve argued in The Skeptic previously, it is at least possible to convince our insistently incorrect colleagues and relatives to reconsider their positions. Fact checking can have an effect and polite persistence can pay off. With that in mind, I present my top ten infuriating climate change memes, why they’re misleading, and the simple fact check or explanation of their total and utter wrongness.
Misunderstanding how both the sea and photographs work
The implication: you can tell sea level hasn’t changed by glancing at two photographs taken from a hundred or so metres away of Fort Denison in Sydney Harbour, therefore sea levels are static.
The truth: two independent tidal gauges – a better measure than eyeballing two undated, unverified photographs – say sea level in Sydney has risen by 12cm in the last century. A rise of 12cm seems unlikely to be visible in photographs.
The astute reader will also note that the tide goes in and out, so no two single photographs can tell you the sea level rise.
This is fine.jpg
The implication: Earth’s climate has always changed, so why are we all worrying our pretty little heads? Relax, everything is fine, climate change is normal and not something that’s being caused by human activity.
The truth: NASA figures show that global temperatures over the last century – at a time of global industrialisation – have gone up ten times faster than the warming normally experienced when coming out of an ice age over the last million years.
Of course, the climate is changing and always has, but that change is currently a whole lot faster than is normal. Would adherents of this view pour petrol on a house fire, rather than call the fire brigade?
Polar bears, everywhere
The implication: polar bears aren’t threatened by loss of habitat due to climate change, in fact they’re increasing in numbers!
The truth: nobody knows how many polar bears there were when Al Gore was born in 1948, because nobody was counting polar bears in 1948. There has been some stabilisation and even recovery of polar bears in some regional subpopulations – though not others – but this is more likely due to the 1973 Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears, which drastically reduced polar bear hunting. Of course, counting polar bears tells us little about whether sea ice is melting. That’s what actual data is for, and the data is in: arctic sea ice is shrinking by 12.6% per decade.
Where does the 7,000 number even come from? Estimating the number of polar bears is tricky now and was even harder 75 years ago. Polar bear expert Stephen Amstrup calls it a “WAG” – a wild-ass guess; polar bear researcher Andrew Derocher says that the claim of 7,000 polar bears doesn’t have “any scientific credibility”; veteran ecologist Thor Larsen says that “Most data on numbers from the late 1960s and early 1970s were indeed anecdotal.”
Erik the Red photography, for elegant memories of your wedding or special occasion
The implication: Greenland used to be warmer than it is now. This means that climate change is not real.
The truth: Obviously the top image isn’t a startling colour photograph taken nearly 800 years before the invention of photography – and up to 20% of southern Greenland is much more verdant than the bottom image implies – but it is correct to say that Greenland was warmer when first settled by Europeans. Exactly why is unknown, but climate change is about the global picture, not climate fluctuations or localised effects.
It has been speculated that this meme is satire; while this may well have been the intention, you can find it in the wild in articles calling climate change a scam.
Checklist? Checkmate, climate scientists…
The implication: politicians are always coming up with nonsense, it’s just a ruse to raise taxes.
The truth: this one’s a biggie, so to take them in order…
1960s – peak oil. Smart people have worried that oil is running out since at least 1874, so this is a perennial concern that far precedes modern ideas about fear-mongering government scientists. Technology, politics and economics are likely to be the big drivers of oil extraction and continued use of hydrocarbon fuels, at least for now.
1970s – ice age. A few scientists did predict this. Then they realised they were wrong. Unlike the current consensus on climate change, this was never settled science.
1980s – acid rain. This actually demonstrates the opposite point. There was a problem, and as a result many governments introduced strict environmental controls, and the problem largely abated in those regions.
1990s – ozone layer. As with acid rain, including this suggests climate change deniers aren’t paying attention. Governments took collective action and the ozone layer is on course to be restored.
2000s – climate change. As with acid rain and the ozone layer, this adds a time element (within 10 years) that climate scientists are unlikely to have used with any certainty. This reference seems likely to stem from a politician, Al Gore, mischaracterising a research paper.
Glacier hints
The implication: there’s still ice so climate change isn’t real. With gratuitous Al Gore.
The truth: there are about 198,000 glaciers today; nobody knows how many there were in 1948; the volume of glaciers, not the number, is what’s important to measure with regards to the impact of climate change.
“Look out the window!”
The implication: the weather in my area or on a specific date doesn’t fit the narrative of global warming, therefore global warming isn’t true.
The truth: we all know this by now. Weather isn’t climate, man-made climate change is about the overall pattern, not any given day.
It can be more useful to speak about climate change rather than global warming, but then you get memes like this next one…
A rebranding exercise?
The implication: it wasn’t possible to prove global warming was real so those darned climate change “scientists” started calling it climate change instead.
The truth: global warming refers specifically to “the average global surface temperature increase from human emissions of greenhouse gases” and first appeared in 1975 in a paper which used the words “climatic change” in the title. There is no bait and switch here, both have been used for many decades.
There are reasons why usage switched to climate change rather than global warming, some of which do, as this meme also implies, relate to communications. As human geographer Mick Hume says: “The term ‘global warming’ confuses people because it triggers thoughts about warmth, and it sort of lends itself to misinterpretation when it also impacts the cold.”
But there are also plenty of people who feel the term climate change is too bland, too neutral and not urgent enough, hence the switch by some media outlets to climate emergency, crisis or breakdown.
“A very naughty boy”
The implication: Al Gore and other leading figures own beach-front property, so sea levels aren’t going to rise and he and other climate activists are having you on.
The truth: coastal sea level in the USA is expected to rise by around 30cm by 2050, which is unlikely to be specifically catastrophic for his ocean view property, and statistically speaking Al Gore is unlikely to live that long. He also, presumably, has both good insurance and other homes, which contrasts starkly with 11% of Bangladesh which may well be underwater in the same time period: sea level is not rising evenly around the world and will be very unequal in its impacts.
All the above considered, sometimes people act in ways which don’t seem to match their words, and Al Gore isn’t the climate change messiah. His real estate choices do not change the evidence on anthropogenic climate change.
Plymouth Rock, around, the dock tonight…
The implication: a key moment in history can’t be disputed: the sea level hasn’t risen in 400 years. Climate change is a lie.
The truth: obviously everything mentioned above about the Sydney Harbour meme already counts this out from any actual relevance to climate change, but you can add in a special level of incompetence on this one as Plymouth Rock has been moved and even broken numerous times since 1620.
Conclusion
Some people may be engaging in climate change denialism to “avoid a psychologically uncomfortable truth,” but the real-world effects of climate change are increasingly hard to ignore. Only time will tell if some of our friends, family and colleagues are still huddled around screens chuckling at misleading ‘Gotchas’ while the world outside burns.
A couple of weeks ago, on the 12th August, the World Health Organisation published a series of tweets discussing traditional medicine, and its importance. The thread was part of their communication strategy for, as they describe it, their first ever high-level global summit on traditional medicine to explore evidence base and opportunities to accelerate health for all, which took place in India on the 17th and 18th August. The aim of the summit was to:
explore the role of traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine in addressing pressing health challenges and driving progress in global health and sustainable development.
We’ll get to the summit and their main statements in a moment, but as most people found this on Twitter, let’s start there. Their 11-tweet thread started with:
#TraditionalMedicine has been at the frontiers of medicine & science laying the foundation for conventional medical texts. #DYK: Nearly 40% of pharmaceutical products have a natural product base, incl.: 💊 aspirin 💊 artemisinin 💊 contraceptive pills 💊 childhood cancer treatments
They included some graphics pointing out that Aspirin came from White Willow Bark, the Contraceptive Pill came from Wild Yam Roots, Childhood Cancer Medicine was derived from Rosy Periwinkle and the Antimalaria Pill was derived from Sweet Wormwood. All of which is true enough. They also included a graphic that read:
40% of approved pharmaceutical products in use today derive from natural substance
This may well be true – I checked, and couldn’t find any reference online for that figure – but it’s also not all that remarkable. What else could they be derived from? It’s almost a surprise that it’s as low as 40% – often, chemicals that occur in nature are studied, and if they are found to be useful, synthesised. So they’re still derived from nature.
The final graphic was more problematic:
Traditional Medicine is an important and yet often underestimated health resource
Here, I’m not sure I agree… depending on what is meant by ‘traditional medicine’. Similarly, is it true that traditional medicine has been at the frontiers of medicine and laid the foundations for today? That very much depends on what you count as traditional medicine. People chewing willow bark laid the foundations for aspirin use today, but people doing bloodletting rituals to drain the humours have offered us effectively nothing of long-lasting value.
The categorisation is key here, and is perhaps also key as to why so many people took issue with the WHO’s thread. Because people didn’t take issue with the posts explaining how Tu Youyou, in 1969, developed an antimalarial drug from a plant that had been used for some time in areas of China where malaria was prevalent, nor the one about Dr Luis Miramontes stabilising a protein from the Mexican Yam in order to create the contraceptive pill.
For millions of people around the world #TraditionalMedicine is their first stop for health and well-being. Which of these have you used?
– Acupuncture – Ayurveda – Herbal medicine – Homeopathy – Naturopathy – Osteopathy – Traditional Chinese medicine – Unani medicine.
The first half of this message is true – millions of people do turn to traditional medicine first when it comes to health, even though they shouldn’t. Technically, the WHO isn’t actually saying they should, just that they do – but it’s saying so in language that’s unclear enough as to sound like an endorsement. And then they list out examples of traditional medicine… half of which are not remotely traditional. Homeopathy is from the 18th century, osteopathy the 19th century, and Traditional Chinese Medicine essentially the 1950s.
TCM is of particular concern there, because in the tweet about Tu Youyou inventing an antimalarial, the WHO claimed she turned to TCM for the answer. TCM which, by that point, had been established for less than two decades.
So, does the WHO think homeopathy is ‘traditional’? Either it does, which is worrying, or it’s happy to blur the lines as part of its promotion of a summit in India – which is even more worrying, given how much harm is done by homeopathic medicines in India. It’s easy to see why this tweet went viral, getting five million views, compared to the few hundred thousand for each of the other tweets. It even attracted a community note, clarifying:
Homeopathy, osteopathy & naturopathy are not traditional medicine, but should be described as pseudoscience as they were are invented in countries/times where/when modern science was already developed. Also, the contemporary used form of acupuncture has modern roots.
What is going on at the WHO, you might wonder? The rest of the thread, from that point, starts to make things clearer, albeit giving it one last shot of muddy language before they get to that point:
#TraditionalMedicine is rooted in Indigenous knowledges & natural resources of communities. It has been an integral resource for health in households for centuries.
WHO works to strengthen the evidence base of traditional medicine, enhancing its safety & efficacy
WHO’s #TraditionalMedicine programme aims to build solid evidence base for policies and standards on traditional medicine practices and products, helping countries integrate it into their health systems & regulate its quality. Here’s how: https://bit.ly/3DMniD1
It’s reasonably true to say that traditional medicine is rooted in indigenous knowledge, in the sense that people who have lived closest to the plants that contain beneficial medical proteins and chemical compounds are better able to recognise them than an outsider coming along with their size 11 boots and Pith helmets. But that indigenous knowledge on its own isn’t enough to confirm those remedies are effective or safe – there are plenty of natural remedies that aren’t good for us, or that don’t work well, or that don’t interact well with other remedies. It’s important that we respect other cultures, but part of that respect also means applying the kind of scrutiny and rigour we’d expect our treatments to go through – otherwise, you end up in a situation where herbal remedies can be sold in Boots with “traditional medicine without therapeutic indication” written on the side.
But, once we get past the slightly troubling nod towards ‘other ways of knowing’, we have the WHO explaining that they’re looking to enhance the safety and efficacy of traditional medicine, strengthen the evidence base, and regulate its quality. Those are good things, if they’re carried out correctly – if ‘strengthening the evidence base’ means leaving behind the remedies for which there is no good evidence of efficacy, and if ‘regulating its quality’ means protecting the public from things that can only be harmful.
If, in doing so, they find good, reliable, replicable and robust evidence for some treatments that have hitherto been considered traditional or complementary, that can only be a good thing for real medicine… if it works. But it has to be proven to work. Once it’s proven to work, it shouldn’t matter if it’s conventional, traditional, synthetic, or beamed down by aliens.
If you’re using #TraditionalMedicine, here are 5 safety checks:
➡️ Talk to your health practitioner before taking any product ➡️ Check the source of information & the research ➡️ Check if the source lists both advantages & disadvantages ➡️ Beware of exaggerated promises ➡️ Do not delay seeing your health practitioner
Before you take traditional medicine, check to make sure it is safe and effective.
That one didn’t draw public ire, because it’s exactly what we would say about alternative medicine. Seeking the advice of a health practitioner before embarking on an alternative medical treatment is important – as long as, of course, the health practitioner is qualified, and is not just the traditional healer who is trying to sell the remedy in question.
It’s also crucial to be sure the remedy is safe and effective before taking it – which, for the vast majority of the alternative medicine field, will mean not taking it – but that check does rely on being able to access good quality information or expertise on how safe and effective something is. That might well be doable in countries with a good healthcare system, but much harder if you’re somewhere where you might not have easy access to a doctor – like remote parts of China, rural India, or (for those who haven’t the money to pay) the United States.
The WHO do have access to doctors, though, and their thread includes an interview with Dr Susan Wieland from the Cochrane Collaboration, who is there to “explain how to safely use #TraditionalMedicine”. In her video she explains that natural doesn’t mean safe, because some herbs are unsafe, especially if you have certain medications or conditions. And that some things are safe at lower doses but not a higher dose.
She tells us you can’t always trust the label or trust what’s in the remedy, and you should try to make sure you can trust the producer, but if you have something serious, like cancer, make sure you use effective treatments. You can even do that alongside yoga and nutrition if you like, but that can’t be instead of seeing a doctor who has expertise. If you’re going to do traditional practices, integrate them with modern medicine, to have safe and effective treatments for your condition. All of this is very sound advice, delivered in a way as to make it approachable to people who might switch off if they hear it coming from someone who has just told them all traditional medicine is dangerous quackery.
This Twitter engagement was primarily an exercise in promoting the WHO’s web pages around the summit, and the topic more broadly. One of the first links in the thread goes to the statement from the 10th of August titled “Traditional medicine has a long history of contributing to conventional medicine and continues to hold promise”. This title itself is not a good start: the history may be there, in the specific and fairly limited ways you can cherry pick some good case studies from, but it is debatable to what degree it continues to hold much promise.
It continues in an even worse vein, with the opening paragraph claiming that
for centuries across countries, people have turned to traditional healers, home remedies and ancient medicinal knowledge to address their health and well-being needs”
Yes, people have turned to those healers, but often that was in the absence of something that could actually help, and involved getting something that did not help. And the very next sentence:
According to the WHO Global Report on Traditional and Complementary Medicine (2019), various systems of traditional medicine being used around the world include acupuncture, herbal medicines, indigenous traditional medicine, homeopathy, traditional Chinese medicine, naturopathy, chiropractic, osteopathy, ayurvedic and Unani medicine.
Acupuncture, in a form quite unlike today, may well be ancient – but there’s also no evidence that it works (not even the former, weak evidence that it’s as good as an aspirin for lower back pain), and there’s no mechanism by which it could work, because meridian lines aren’t real and Chi doesn’t exist. Homeopathy is 250 years old, osteopathy 140 years old, naturopathy and chiropractic around 125 years old, and Traditional Chinese Medicine – including the modern form of acupuncture – is 70 years old. Of the various systems of traditional medicine identified by the WHO, half of them essentially aren’t any older than conventional medicine. Once you take out herbal medicine, and it’s contributions to some of the foundations of conventional pharmaceuticals, you’re left with not a lot else, beyond a lot of things that we know right now are causing harm to people’s health through tainted products and unidentified contraindications.
Under the heading “Tapping nature and indigenous knowledge to advance modern medicine”, the WHO repeat the story of Tu Youyou and her Nobel Prize winning discovery of the antimalarial, this time with a little more context:
After testing – unsuccessfully — over 240 000 compounds for use in antimalarials, Chinese scientist Tu Youyou, head of the Project 523 to discover a cure for chloroquine-resistant malaria, turned to traditional Chinese medical literature for clues. There, she and her team found a reference to sweet wormwood to treat intermittent fevers.
This reads a little oddly, as it makes it sound like Tu tried over 240,000 different compounds, before turning to TCM – in actuality, scientists around the world experimented with those different chemicals, but Tu had the idea of gathering prescriptions from TCM practitioners, and testing their recommendations. She collated 2000 recipes, to form 380 extracts, which her team tested scientifically. One of those extracts included artemisinin, which the team extracted, synthesised, and put in a pill, and found that it worked.
It isn’t clear what happened to the other 1,999 recipes the TCM practitioners gave Tu, but this sounds rather like a cherry-picked anecdote being used to support TCM, when it could just as readily be used to highlight that indigenous people had figured out that a plant could have some medicinal benefit – not a controversial idea – but that knowledge needed to be rigorously tested before we could rely on it. The front line defence against malaria today isn’t a low-temperature tea of sweet wormwood, or an appointment with a TCM practitioner, just as we aren’t told to chew willow back when we have a headache.
That isn’t, however, to say that the contributions of older stores of information were worthless – medicine only came to willow bark and sweet wormwood because of those older anecdotes, after all. And as the WHO point out, yoga can be good for types of chronic pain and back pain – not because there’s an energetic flow through our chakras, but because a degree light stretching is good for our body. We can keep up the older practice, if it turns out that it reliably works, but we shouldn’t venerate the proposed mechanisms if they’re wrong – any more than we should bend the knee to the idea of miasmas or that illness is derived from bad smells, now that we know pathogens and infections can cause both unpleasant odours and infections.
A flawed initiative?
The statements from the WHO are, at best, ham-fisted, and it’s concerning that they seem to have little understanding of what is and isn’t a traditional medicine, and what role historic knowledge has to play. It is absolutely reasonable and valid to celebrate the things that our ancestors – or, indeed, anyone’s ancestors – figured out, even if they weren’t sure, or weren’t correct, as to why those things worked. We stand on the shoulders of giants; we are no smarter than those who came before us, we just started further along the line of knowledge and discovery, because of the strides and advances of our predecessors. We can and should respect that, without unquestioningly accepting everything that people used to believe, or imbuing “ancient” or “indigenous” knowledge with a special significance that puts it above fair and reasonable scrutiny.
There’s also perhaps a kernel, here, of something that might not actually be a bad initiative from the WHO, if it’s done robustly and rigorously: if what they are looking to do is to genuinely examine, test, and then (importantly) officially reject any traditional medicines that fail to meet the standard of safe and effective, that could actually be a powerful thing. Packaging that exercise up in a way that’s designed to be welcoming to people who do – for whatever reason – use those treatments is potentially a smart framing; there’s nothing to be gained from alienating the very audience who might need to hear what you have to say.
However, there are still serious reservations. Their definition of “traditional” is so broad and so far wide of the mark, and raises questions as to is driving this initiative, and how effective they already believe alt-med to be. Inquiry can only ever be as good and as robust as the inquirer.
It’s encouraging that the WHO make it clear – both in their thread and in the FAQs on their site – that ‘traditional medicine’ is not automatically safe, that it can be very dangerous, and that you should not trust it without good cause. They argue that users need to be better informed about ‘traditional’ medicine (though I’d argue the WHO could stand to be better informed as to which systems are actually traditional), and that people need to be more aware of the risk of contamination, allergies, drug interactions, and inexperienced or unqualified practitioners.
Finally, given some of the confusion from the WHO, and some of the language around the cherry-picked examples of traditional medicine success stories, it is hard not to worry that their stated goal of clarifying the evidence basis for various types of alternative medicine might itself be flawed. The world of alternative medicine research is filled with studies that have poor or no blinding, small sample sizes, biased analysis and over-stated conclusions – and that’s not even considering the studies that are outright fraudulent. If the WHO are so willing to accept at face value claims as to the historical contributions of traditional medicine to conventional healthcare, it’s hard to see that they’d be able to apply sufficient skepticism and criticism when faced with positive results from a poorly conducted study.
If we really want to honour ancestral wisdom and the knowledge of the ages, we do that by subjecting it to the kind of rigour we’d apply in any other field: by not patronisingly lowering the bar, we can pay true respect.
Ascension Island is back in the news as the government has once again raised the spectre of using it to hold asylum seekers while their applications are being processed. This plan is, frankly, preposterous. And I want to explain why as someone who has actually visited the island.
It is incredibly remote
Ascension island is in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. It’s about 1,600km from the coast of West Africa and about 2,300km from the east coast of South America. The nearest land is the island of St Helena, about 1,300km to the south. You may have heard of St Helena – it was where Napoleon was ultimately sent in exile after he escaped from Elba. St Helena is even more remote – 1,950km west of the coast of Africa, and 4,000km (2,500mi) east of South America, but it is much more hospitable. Darwin made this comparison,
[Ascension] is entirely destitute of trees, in which, and in every other respect, it is very far inferior to St. Helena. Mr Dring tells me, that the witty people of the latter place say ‘‘we know we live on a rock, but the poor people of Ascension live on a cinder’’ the distinction in truth is very just.
Ascension is a tiny pinprick in the ocean. It’s about as far away from anywhere as you can get. This means that getting people, supplies and even food to the island is extremely costly.
It is incredibly tiny
Ascension is a roughly triangular-shaped island about 15km across. It is dominated by the extinct volcano, Green Mountain and various other cones from past volcanic activity.
Ascension ‘soil’
The terrain is volcanic – red and dusty – and would make an excellent stand-in for Mars. The island is largely barren. There was a small native flora prior to its discovery by humans but a significant proportion have gone extinct following the introduction of non-native plants and animals.
The volcanic landscape is geologically very young, with some evidence that there were eruptions as recent as 500 years ago. Combined with the lack of rainfall, this means that much of the island is covered in lava largely unchanged from when it first erupted from the bowels of the earth, leaving the ground covered in a sharp, loose clinker which is hard to walk on and even harder to grow in.
An unsealed road between Georgetown and Comfortless Cove
Unsurprisingly, given its proximity to the equator, it gets very hot. Daytime temperatures are in the mid-high 20s Celsius and there is little cloud cover. The rocks also radiate heat in a way that has to be felt to be believed, it’s like standing in an oven.
The dew pond on Ascension Island, still working over 100 years after it was built.
The only place where plants grow in profusion is Green Mountain. It is green due to human efforts, first begun in the early 19th century when a British navel garrison was established on the island. In 1843 Joseph Hooker visited the island and encouraged its cultivation, advising the Admiralty to appoint a gardener and import plants in order to support the island’s inhabitants and encourage rainfall to increase access to much-needed fresh water. A dew pond was constructed on the mountain in 1875 to convert the frequent mists into water and provide an emergency supply to inhabitants. Today, water is provided primarily by desalination plants.
When I visited, the only fresh food available was locally-caught tuna. Everything else was shipped in. It was a strange thing to be sat on what was technically a tropical island, eating fruit salad from a can.
It has a tiny population
About 800 people live on Ascension island. All of them are either employees or family of employees of the various organisations which operate on the island – there is no right of abode. The majority are St Helenians (Saints) while the rest are mostly British and American.
As a result there is limited infrastructure. When I visited there was one small ‘supermarket’ that was smaller than most newsagents in the UK and a handful of other shops. There is a small hospital that is only equipped to deal with minor incidents. There is no pharmacy, and if you need prescription medicines you are advised to bring them with you.
It is a military base
RAF Ascension Island is jointly operated by theRAF and the United States Space Force. In the 60s, Ascension was an integral part of the Space Race due to its tracking station whose antennas are the first to see spacecraft after they launch from Cape Canaveral. In the era of the space shuttle, the airfield provided an emergency landing site, a role it fortunately never got to play. While its role has reduced following the shuttles decomissioning, it is still used by both militaries, hosting an Anglo-American signals intelligence facility and one of four ground antennas that help operate the GPS system.
US tracking station at Comfortless Cove
As a result of this militarisation, only military and diplomatic flights are allowed to land on Ascension. The only exception is a civilian charter flight between St Helena and the island. All flights were cancelled in 2017 due to the poor state of the runway and only resumed this year.
It is also home to various communications stations. Encompass manages the BBC’s Atlantic Relay Station on the island, providing radio service to most of Africa and South America.
It is an Overseas Territory
Ascension is part of the United Kingdom Overseas Territory of St Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha. As an Overseas Territory it has its own Constitution, laws and is internally self-governing. The UK is responsible for defence, international relations and internal security.
What this all means
Firstly, and most importantly, it’s not clear to me that the British government has the power to unilaterally decide that Ascension should hold asylum seekers and undocumented migrants. The island is self-governing, and while it is reliant on the UK, that doesn’t automatically mean the government gets to dump people on its doorstep. When this story started circulating 18 months ago, freelance journalist Andrew Connelly did what none of the mainstream media managed and actually contacted the Ascension government. They said,
There are no ongoing discussions to receive UK asylum seekers.
It’s also not clear that the US government is going to welcome the UK holding asylum seekers near one of their military bases, especially one so hard to reach with additional staff if anything were to happen.
Even if these issues are resolved, it takes over 9 hours to fly to Ascension from the UK. The only flights to the island are military flights from Brize Norton in Oxfordshire that form the Airbridge between the UK and the Falkland Islands. There are limited civilian seats, mostly used by Falklanders or their families, and they cost a lot of money.
The capital, Georgetown, in January 2009
Everything must be flown or shipped in (usually from the UK or South Africa). Every single mug and spoon and bag of sugar. Every single nail and hammer and piece of plasterboard. Every single bed and toilet and door and window. Every single alarm and security light. That all costs money.
There’s no indigenous population. Everyone on the island already has a job. That means that to staff the detention facility you’d have to find people willing to work on one of the most remote islands on earth as, essentially, prison guards. And then you have to house them. And feed them. And provide medical care. And give them regular leave to go home to see their families. And ensure adequate cover while their gone. And that costs money.
Jacob Rees Mogg estimated it would cost at least £1 million per person to keep them on Ascension.
So given the astronomical costs and all the arguments against it, why does Ascension keep coming up as an option?
Why Ascension Island?
The government is trying to replicate a strategy created in Australia, which has a long-standing policy of refusing any asylum seeker arriving by boat to settle in the country. Boats are turned around and, if that’s not possible, their occupants are sent to their overseas detention centre for processing. While the numbers of boat arrivals has reduced, the reasons are unclear, and the numbers attempting to reach Australia by boat are significantly smaller than those attempting to reach the UK.
Australia has overseas processing centres on Christmas Island, Papua New Guinea and Nauru. These facilities are rife with accusations of human rights abuses. One detention centre on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, was accused of systematically violating the UN’s convention against torture and was closed by the Papua New Guinea government in 2016 after they ruled it to be illegal. The Australian government was forced to pay $70 million in compensation to 1,905 refugees and asylum seekers for illegally detaining them in dangerous and damaging conditions. The centre on Nauru has been recently emptied, but not closed. This has come after years of accusations of inhumane treatment, most notably from Dr Peter Young, the chief psychiatrist responsible for the care of asylum seekers at the detention centres who said their treatment was akin to torture.
While the UK has many islands off its shores, few are remote enough to evade scrutiny from people concerned that these human rights abuses may be replicated. It must therefore look to its overseas territories. Most have populations who will likely object to being used as a dumping ground for the UK. Ascension is the closest island with a non-native population. It seems likely this is why it has been selected.
So what now?
I would be very surprised if Ascension ever becomes home to asylum seekers, though it’s not impossible. This government has been full of surprises over the years.
One thing that Australia has shown is that overseas detention is wildly expensive. The Refugee Council of Australia estimated it cost around $1 billion per year to hold people overseas while processing their applications. The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre published a report in 2019 that found each person cost over $573,000 each year to be processed in an offshore detention facility, compared to an average of $346,000 each year in an onshore detention facility, a saving of over $200,000 but still an incredible amount. In comparison, each person allowed to live in Australian communities on bridging visas cost $10,221 each year.
I don’t have the space to get into the details of how messed up our asylum system is. Suffice it to say, the British government has made it practically impossible to claim asylum in the UK. International law requires you to be on the soil of the country in which you wish to claim asylum – an embassy isn’t enough – so coming by boat is the only route for many desperate people. People come because they have family here and they speak the language. No amount of deterrents are going to change that fact.
More and more people will be displaced due to the effects of climate change and the social upheavals it inevitably causes. We need to have a serious conversation as a country and as a planet about how we are going to deal with this mass movement of people. But shutting our borders, ignoring our legal obligations and shipping people to tiny volcanic islands in the middle of the ocean at vast expense is not a solution.
It is quite uncontroversial that the majority of eyewitness reports of the Loch Ness Monster are misidentifications of mundane or prosaic phenomena, for example, floating logs, boat wakes, swimming deer, otters, leaping fish and diving birds (Nickell, 2007). Some are also of common meteorological phenomena such as mirages – in which refracted rays of light produce a displaced image of a distant object (Dick Raynor has captured a mirage effect on camera) – and wind-slicks (Shine, 2017). The biologist Roy Mackal estimated 90% of Loch Ness Monster reports are mistakes, errors, or misinterpretations by observers, leaving 10% unexplained (Mackal, 1976, p. 200).
There are currently 1,148 recorded observations on the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register. In other words, 1,033 reports of the Loch Ness Monster can be readily dismissed. Mackal, however, almost certainly overcounted the number of unexplained reports. A more rigorous analysis of the same reports Mackal investigated reduces this number to ~3% (Akins, 1977, p. 43). In other words, only a few dozen eyewitness accounts of the Loch Ness Monster are difficult or impossible to explain by mundanities. These unexplained reports tend to include sightings made at close distance, as well as reports corroborated by independent eyewitnesses on opposite sides of the loch.
The residue reports that are seemingly not explainable by ordinary phenomena have led some to believe the Loch Ness Monster is an unknown animal species (a list of unidentified animal hypotheses has been compiled by Charles Paxton and Adrian Shine). In 1960, the zoologist Maurice Burton concluded a small minority of Loch Ness Monster reports require an extraordinary explanation, and later went on to argue the putative monster is an elusive ‘long-necked otter’ (Burton, 1961, pp. 165-170).
There are problems facing unidentified animal hypotheses, whether they be long-necked otters, giant sea-turtles (Bauer, 2020) or an unknown species of pinniped (Costello, 1975). Aside from the sheer lack of physical evidence for the Loch Ness Monster, there are ecological arguments against the existence of large unidentified creatures in the loch. Even Mackal realised the difficulty of explaining how a food source could viably sustain a population of large aquatic animals. His suggestion that the migratory habits of salmon might explain the food source was shown to have been based on a flawed calculation (Anon, 1975). As noted by palaeoanthropologist Darren Naish:
Indeed, the organic productivity of Loch Ness is so low that even the most optimistic calculations show that a population of large aquatic animals could not survive here, and certainly not for generations.
If the Loch Ness Monster as an unidentified animal is extremely improbable, does this mean the residue reports will always be left unexplained? Some argue the Loch Ness Monster is a paranormal entity (Redfern, 2016), but these supernatural hypotheses are even less credible than so-called ‘flesh and blood’ cryptozoological explanations. In an overlooked article in Journal of Meteorology, Terance Meaden once tried to solve the issue by proposing a rare meteorological phenomenon (Meaden, 1976). In his book A Monstrous Commotion: The Mysteries of Loch Ness, Emeritus Professor of Medicine at Bristol University, Gareth Williams, mentions Meaden’s hypothesis:
Wind can incite water to behave in a monstrous fashion. The mini tornadoes known as dust devils have an aquatic counterpart, which can spring up, move across a stretch of water then collapse. ‘Water devils’ can appear solid, especially when seaweed or floating debris are dragged up into the rotating column of water, and might explain reports of ‘sea serpents’ seen like rising like pillars out of the ocean. The editor of the Journal of Meteorology, writing to Peter Scott in 1978 believed that water devils could account for some monster sightings.
Small whirlwinds (so-called ‘water devils’) have been observed over the surface of Loch Ness (and other lochs) but they are seen very rarely, which explains why inexperienced observers mistook them at a distance for the Loch Ness Monster. There are perhaps other meteorological explanations for Loch Ness Monster sightings which plausibly explain a few residue reports. Reflections of tropospheric clouds have long been suggested; however, they are a poor explanation since they appear flat on the surface of the loch (most Loch Ness Monster reports instead describe a monster hump or multiple undulating humps above the water surface). This rules out ordinary cloud reflections.
As a teenager, I once travelled on holiday to Loch Ness and observed an unusual meteorological phenomenon during summer of 2007. This was of noctilucent clouds over the loch. NLCs are luminous clouds in the mesosphere which can only be observed in the summer, during twilight. What amazed me the most was the luminous reflection of these clouds which I had perceived slightly above surface of the water. This is explained by the fact the brightness of objects affects perception of depth cues (brighter objects are perceived to be closer than darker objects). Could reflections of NLCs explain some unexplained Loch Ness Monster reports?
I began two years ago to analyse residue reports of the Loch Ness Monster which might have been reflections of NLCs. I managed to find two or three reports (Smith, 2023). My study passed peer-review and was recently published in Coolabah’s special issue on “On gases, clouds, fogs and mists”.
References
Anon. “What do Monsters eat?,” New Scientist 68, no. 980 (1975): 739
Bauer, “Loch Ness Monsters as Cryptid (Presently Unknown) Sea Turtles”, Journal of Scientific Exploration 34, no. 1(2020): 93-104
Akins, W. The Loch Ness Monster (New York: Signet, 1977).
Burton, M. “The Loch Ness Monster: A Reappraisal,” New Scientist 8, no. 201 (1960): 773-775
Burton, M. The Elusive Monster (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1961)
Costello, P. In Search of Lake Monsters (St. Albans: Panther Books, 1975)
Mackal, R. P. The Monsters of Loch Ness (London: Futura Publications, 1976)
Meaden, T. “A Meteorological Explanation for Some of the Mysterious Sightings on Loch Ness and Other Lakes and Rivers,” Journal of Meteorology 1, no. 4 (1976): 119-124
Naish, D. “How do we Know that the Loch Ness Monster Doesn’t Exist?,” BBC Science Focus, November 25, 2020.
Nickell, J. “Lake Monster Lookalikes,” Skeptical Briefs 17, no 2 (2007): 6-7.
Paxton, C. G. M., and Shine, A. “A Checklist of Historical Hypotheses for the Loch Ness Monster,” Journal of Cryptozoology 4 (2016): 21-38
Redfern, N. Nessie: Exploring the Supernatural Origins of the Loch Ness Monster, Woodbury (MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2016)
Shine, A. “Adrian Shine on Making Sense of the Loch Ness Legend,” The Scotsman, February 3, 2017
Smith, O. D. “Nessie and Noctilucent Clouds: A Meteorological Explanation for Some Loch Ness Monster Sightings,” Coolabah 34 (2023): 25-45
Williams, G. A. Monstrous Commotion: The Mysteries of Loch Ness (London: Orion Books, 2015)
One of the more insidious methods that alternative medicine practitioners use is to take a condition that exists, redefine it, and then claim that their treatments can cure the new definition of the term. The new definition will often be a pale mockery of the former – for example, Lyme Disease, which is a very serious condition with specific symptoms, we “chronic Lyme disease,” which has a variety of non-specific symptoms and is not acknowledged as a disease by official health agencies. Because Lyme disease is quite serious and people in various areas of the US are taught to be wary of it, chronic Lyme disease seems more real, and alternative medicine practitioners can step in to exploit this fear.
I reflected on this a few weeks ago as I was perusing the shelves at a Reiki clinic that was hosting a dear friend’s art show. Being fully aware of what Reiki is and what it claims it can do was nowhere near enough to prevent me from supporting my friend’s show. The clinic is so close to my house that only one of my city’s murderous snow storms would have kept me from walking to it.
If you’ve ever been to a wellness store, then you are already familiar with the content of this one. While different in decorations, the contents inside are similar. In fact, this kind of world was the last thing my credulous past-self clung to. I dabbled in alternative medicine a little bit—I would say that I liked it because it was unusual and different, rather than really believing in it.
Some people that know me seemed to be nervous that there would be some kind of scene or drama because of my skepticism at a place like this, but I had no intention of causing any problems. Our motto here is “reason with compassion,” and while that can be interpreted condescendingly, that’s not what anyone means. We aren’t pitying the customers of this shop, or others like it, we are trying to understand them. That understanding is of tantamount importance if we are to fight alternative medicine and conspiratorial thinking.
The people who frequent these places aren’t stupid people, they’re just people who think—for one reason or another, that this kind of thing helps. They are trying it because they either do not know the difference (which is where we come in), or because desperation has forced them to not care about the difference. In the U.S., the desperation is more rampant. If you have health insurance, and you have a G.P., it can still be a few weeks before you can see someone. Whereas some alt-med clinics offer walk-in appointments.
In the U.S. even if you have insurance, it can still be costly, because of the way the system “works” here. As George Constanza argued in an early episode of Seinfeld (“The Heart Attack” 1991) upon hearing that his tonsils grew back, he had nothing to lose by wearing a pyramid on his head and drinking a tea consisting of “cramp bark, cleavers, and couch grass” causing his face to turn purple requiring a trip to a medical hospital.
Equally, some people just want someone to listen to them about a non-specific ailment they are having. You go to the Reiki clinic and pay for the hour; they’re going to talk to you about you for an hour. It’s much different than the often overworked and understaffed medical clinics that need to rush though a long list of patients. It would be foolish of us to not appreciate the draw of someone who claims to be able to help, and then just listens to an ailing person talk. This is an intervention that may explain patients who self-report improvement even though nothing has happened to them.
The shelves at this Reiki clinic were lined with various tchotchkes and baubles that are present at any of these clinics: bound leaves of sage for burning (which enough people mistook for cannabis), books by people describing themselves as “healers,” lots of crystals, balms, and even a plentiful display of the homeopathic remedies from Boiron. I spent almost as much time looking through the shelves as I did my friend’s paintings, and I learned a few things. The first was that rose-quartz is the best possible crystal as it had the most claims attached to it. The second is that the cut of the crystal matters as much as the material. It is not just the type of rock but also its final form that matters.
I also learned of something called “Magnesium Deficiency” from a brown paper pamphlet advertising a place called “Nickel City Alchemy” – and “alchemy” is one of those words that trigger my skeptic alarm, so I began writing down some of the claims (as a side note, I’ve never heard of my city described as the “City of no Illusions”).
I learned from the pamphlet that magnesium deficiency is widespread, and the possible symptoms are:
sleep problems, migraine, anxiety and irritability, depression, fatigue, memory and cognitive problems, muscle spasms and cramps, restless leg syndrome (this is associated with an iron deficiency and can possibly be alleviated with a different technique), difficulty processing calcium and vitamin D, irregular heart rhythms, difficult PMS symptoms, hot flashes and night sweats, and finally eczema.
Each of these symptoms are nonspecific enough that they can apply to anyone, with the exception of two entries: muscle spasms and irregular hearth rhythm. These two symptoms are indicative of an actual deficiency. Before I continue with the pamphlet I want to explain that magnesium deficiency can be a real condition called “hypomagnesemia” that results in muscle spasms and irregular heartbeats. The causes of hypomagnesemia are chronic alcoholism, chronic diarrhoea, small bowel bypass (a low or non-functioning small intestine), steatorrhea (fatty faecal excretion), related to a pregnancy in the third trimester, and renal complications. Each one of these causes would be indicative of a more serious condition with the magnesium deficiency being the least of the concerns.
According to the pamphlet though the causes are,
a diet that includes sugar, saturated fat, phosphates, and refined foods rather than dark leafy greens, fish, nuts, grains, and other magnesium-rich foods, leaves the body deficient in magnesium.
This seemed straightforward enough: I could just change my diet to fix the deficiency… but no, apparently that would not work, because,
Even magnesium rich foods have been depleted over the past decades due to industrialized farming and food processing practices.
This means that even if I switch all of my meals to a kale-almond-salmon salad, I’d still need to buy the magnesium infused salts and butters because “big food” has somehow processed the magnesium right out of the food. Which is impressive in its focus since magnesium is an essential part of chlorophyll.
Eating processed foods isn’t causing this condition. However, if you are already the sort of person that is into eating organic and non-GMO food and is generally into “living naturally” you likely have worries concerning factory farming and eating things that are difficult to pronounce…this pamphlet is pushing your buttons. You’re alive so you probably have had one of the many symptoms listed as a cause. The pamphlet is confusing a real condition with their mockery of it in order to make the sale.
Everything on the little brochure had the illusion of specificity. Yet, if we take a careful look at their claims, they aren’t really saying anything at all. Their claims are merely alt-med buzzwords designed to check an emotional box for someone who is already inside an alternative medicine facility. It’s like a physical manifestation of confirmation bias and sunken cost. I could point at any of the random people walking by my home to find someone suffering from at least one of those conditions. I myself apparently have those symptoms, with my depression, anxiety, and occasional fatigue.
I became curious as to where this idea came from. Hearing that my body is low on magnesium would be as strange as hearing that my body was low on gold. Searching through the company’s blog I found a few advertisements for places to buy their products, a recipe for biscuits, and a few entries discussing health. It was in these entries that I found the name Carolyn Dean. Carolyn Dean was a medical doctor (she currently lacks a license to practice medicine), and is presently a conspiracy theorist and naturopath who wrote a book in 2003 titled “The Magnesium Miracle” which touts magnesium as a miracle cure for just about everything. The book was updated in 2017, which is the version that someone in the company used as a reference.
What is happening here is a bait-and-switch: you’ve got someone concerned that they are always anxious, a little depressed, a little tired; whose regular medical professional tells them something blasé like “get more sleep;” and then you tell them you know exactly what’s wrong, it’s not you, it’s a lack of magnesium in your diet. Here is an eighteen-dollar balm that can transdermally pass magnesium into the skin to help you sleep.
The patient may feel better, because someone not only addressed their concern, but also explained that it wasn’t their fault, it was an external cause all along. If the person looks up “Mg Deficiency” they’ll find a real condition with much more serious symptoms that they can say they avoided thanks to the balm.
The danger here is that they’re now roped into this world, which is the reason that Magnesium Deficiency is used. Sure, the patient was ignorant of the real condition; but it should never have gotten to the point where a rough paper pamphlet sold them the cure to begin with.
The world of skincare is not a place for the faint-hearted. It is such a dizzying mix of advice and recommendations, advertising and ‘science’ that any wander through this world leaves you feeling like you are not doing enough for your health or appearance. The only way to make yourself feel better, it would seem, is to spend sometimes hundreds of pounds on products you will use religiously for a few weeks before you end up exhausted by all the time you’re spending slathering on potions, oils and creams.
There are a range of reasons we feel we have to invest time, money and energy into our skin. One of the main reasons seems to be to maintain a youthful appearance for longer. Anti-aging is a huge part of skincare marketing and people (women especially) are targeted from an early age to start protecting their skin from the effects of aging.
The science of aging
There are two types of aging – intrinsic and extrinsic.
Intrinsic aging is the type that is genetically accounted for. It happens naturally pretty much no matter what you do. This is the kind of aging that leads to changes in skin elasticity. This type of aging is also called chronological aging and is the one you cannot really do much to change. The characteristics of intrinsic aging include smooth, unblemished skin with a loss of elasticity, fine wrinkles and paling of the skin. The skin gets thinner and the small blood vessels in the skin reduce in quantity.
In addition to the natural course of aging, we also have extrinsic aging. This is the one our behaviour has a say in. By far, the two biggest factors which cause extrinsic aging are smoking and exposure to UV light.
Smoking reduces the elasticity of skin and reduces collagen levels in the skin. This means the skin gets hardened, slack and rough. We have evidence from multiple studies over a number of years showing that smokers have increased wrinkling compared to non-smokers. The evidence is consistent and overwhelming – smoking tobacco increases skin aging.
Photoaging
Exposure to UV light from the sun is thought to account for up to 90% of visible skin aging. UV light causes an increased level of specific proteins in the skin called enzymes. The enzymes that are increased in skin exposed to sunlight are responsible for degrading important connective tissue. After repeated exposure the skin starts to sag and to form wrinkles. Sunlight exposure increases the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and free radicals in the skin. ROS and free radicals damage the DNA which increases your risk of skin cancer, but they also increase the levels of those degrading enzymes even more. In addition to all of that, UV radiation interferes with the immune system and may even prevent cell death in sun-exposed skin which can also contribute to an increased risk of skin cancer. The characteristics of photoaged skin include nodular, leathery, blotchy skin with coarse wrinkles and furrows. The skin has irregular pigmentation and obvious marking on the skin and the elasticity is severely damaged. Blood vessels become dilated and there is pronounced inflammation.
What works?
It should be clear, now, that the two most useful ways to prevent visible skin aging are to minimise intake of cigarette smoke and to minimise skin exposure to damaging UV rays.
Sunscreen
To protect your skin from UV damage, apply a daily sunscreen with a high factor SPF and high-quality UVA protection (4 stars or above). SPF protects your skin from burning and from the damage associated with that but it does not protect against UVA radiation. UVA damage is invisible, although it does cause darkening of pigmentation, and is very deeply penetrating. You need a sunscreen that protects against both UVA and UVB damage.
Topical Retinoids
While most skincare products have very little evidence supporting their use in preventing or reversing the signs of aging, there is one active ingredient that does seem to help.
Retinoids are a family of chemicals which include retinol (vitamin A) and similar compounds. The potential of retinoids in treating aging was discovered in the 1980s when scientists treating photoaged mice noticed repair of the skin and reduction in wrinkling. We now know that retinoids encourage cell growth and can reverse some of the effects seen in photoaged skin and you can buy skincare products which have retinoids in them. There are two downsides to using retinoids on your skin – firstly, retinoids can cause some sensitivity making the skin red and sore which means some people cannot use them at all and most people need to build up their usage from a low dose (0.1%) used infrequently (1-2 times per week). Retinoids can also make your skin more sensitive to UV damage. This means if you are using retinoid skin products you need to be extra careful about staying out of the sun.
Prevention is better than cure
Ultimately, the best thing you can do for your skin to prevent visible aging is to protect it from harmful damage caused by smoking or sun damage. Of course, if you enjoy the relaxation of using different products on your skin, then go right ahead. But the best way to protect your skin is to use a decent sunscreen and to refrain from smoking.
You will also be doing wonders for your risk of lung and skin cancer!
For the past year, I’ve written several articles on the Better Way Antivaxxer conference in Bath highlighting both what was included (American Covid skeptics getting co-opted into full-scale antivaxxerism) and what was notably absent (anti-trans activism). In particular, I pointed out that anti-vaxxer rhetoric and ant-trans rhetoric has significant overlaps, in particular their shared fear of (((transhumanists))) as the arch villains of our global story. Given the significant rhetorical overlaps, I found it odd that trans issues were not mentioned a single time during the inaugural Better Way conference, and wondered whether that odd absence was deliberate or a fluke. So, when I learned the conference was returning to Bath with a whole morning session entitled “From AI & Transhumanism to Being Human”, I had to see if the silence on transgender medicine would hold. It did not, in one of the darkest ways imaginable.
Like much of the conference, the transhumanism morning was largely a mix of boilerplate fear mongering and technical difficulties, with the added joy of endless cringe jokes about AI coming to silence the truth-sayers. As usual, speakers lamented the supposedly beneficial technologies that sinister globalists are developing to undermine the sanctity of life. Old standards like gene splicing and vaccines filled with microchips got heavy play, while the speakers struggled to substantially integrate fear of AI into their conspiracy theories. One continuing oddity is the way that these speakers fixate on Klaus Schwab like he’s the devil incarnate, but can’t bring themselves to condemn Elon Musk for Neuralink, the most well-known version of the sort of mind/machine technology they’ve been freaking out about for years.
It was the first proper speaker, Vera Sharav, that hit me the hardest. Sharav is a medical conspiracism activist and holocaust survivor who founded the Alliance for Human Research Protection, an antivaxxer activist group that promotes Sharav’s movie “Never Again is Now Global”, alongside speeches from RFK Jr. Sharav has faced criticism from organisations like the Jewish Forum for Democracy and against Antisemitism for comparing the Covid vaccine to Zyclon B, the chemical used in Nazi gas chambers.
Sharav’s speech wasn’t primarily about Covid, nor did it spend much time on vaccines. It was a speech I’d heard many times before, because it was the textbook right-wing anti-trans conspiracism that Jennifer Bilek, James Lindsay, Matt Walsh, and others have mainstreamed into anti-trans politics. According to these conspiracy mongers, gender affirming care is a (((globalist))) plot to use our children as test subjects for radical transhumanist technologies that will allow these depraved elites to escape death, while the rest of us die from the effects of their evil testing.
Sharav opened the speech by claiming that “transhumanism and technocracy” are fundamentally about population reduction experiments, “eugenics on steroids”, that aim to replace genuine humans with superior cyborg models. According to Sharav, “a transhuman creature will have no gender, no imagination, no empathy, no soul, and no god”. While the last two seem true of any entity in this world, it’s unclear why a transhuman being should lack imagination or empathy, two very useful skills for almost any set of goals. As for lacking gender, it seems that transhumanism makes this more of a personal choice, something that “gender critical” activists should theoretically support, so it is odd to hear the abolition of gender lamented in this way.
Unfortunately, the throwaway line about a genderless transhuman presaged the core of Sharav’s talk:
The transhumanist mindset has given rise to the desecration of children’s body’s and minds. Children are the prey of a morally depraved two-pronged assault, yet few are raising their voices. Child trafficking for the amusement of pedophiles and a diabolical medical crime, namely the mass transgender sexual transition experiment on children. Children are being subjected to experimental, cross sex hormone therapy and transgender surgical mutilation of their sexual organs, thereby preventing human birth. Children and adolescents are being mislead to believe that choosing one’s gender is a form of freedom.
In this one paragraph you have harmful misinformation about gender affirming care mixed with two distinct but related kinds of antisemitic blood libel conspiracism: Qanon pedophilia theories, and the Jennifer Bilek/Keith Woods style claims of Jews testing on gentiles to achieve immortality. Sharav literally says “transhumanists seek to extend the lifespan of the master caste infinitely and indefinitely”. As someone who grew up hearing stories of the holocaust, it would give me significant pause if I started spouting off about the “master caste”.
Sharav’s rhetoric cribs directly from the recent queer theory moral panic pushed by right-wing American activists in their ongoing attempts to undermine our public school system, which they rightly see as an existential threat to their regressive worldview. Sharav claims, with zero evidence, that:
Transgender promoters have penetrated the educational institutions across the country. They lobbied for legislation and LGBTQ education in schools, normalizing what is clearly not normal. Children as young as three are being indoctrinated in preschool to regard transgender as normal or desirable. It’s fun! Women’s private spaces, including women’s sports and college housing opened their doors to any man who chooses to identify as a women. Even women’s toilets are no longer off limits.
It is crucial to understand that Sharav and other religious activists at this conference are advocating for the maintaining of traditional gender roles, not just caution with regard to gender affirming care for minors. Laura Aboli, an entrepreneur and activist, wrapped up the transhumanism talks by referring to transgender activism as an “evil psy-op” aimed at undermining our perception of objective reality. She claimed that the movement was using orwellian techniques to indoctrinate adults into claiming that “2+2=5” and children into believing that “gender is a choice”.
Nor was this anti-trans sentiment confined to the transhumanism section. In a recent episode of Skeptics with a K, Michael Marshall discussed several more examples throughout the conference, where leaders and speakers attacked LGBTQ+ activism and treated gender affirming care as the sort of evil a normal person would violently resist. Equally disturbing was the persistent fear mongering about dysgenics, the theory that modern society is causing humans to devolve or degrade in various ways. It went beyond fear of us offloading mental tasks to AI and ventured into fear of corrupted biology that was pure “blood and soil”. Tess Lawrie, the lead organiser for the conference, asked the transhumanism panel if we need to store human sperm and eggs in a human seed vault to hedge against the rise of post-human entities. The paranoia was so dark and absurd, it harkens back to the discussion of “precious bodily fluids” in Dr. Strangelove.
It was not entirely surprising to hear this rhetoric take its rightful place amidst all the other (((globalist))) conspiracism on display at Better Way, especially since a speaker on the first day of the conference praised James “OK groomer” Lindsay as a reliable source. It was clear that his work had found fertile ground in this community.
What struck me as more viscerally horrifying was hearing a holocaust survivor promoting the antisemitic conspiracism of a literal nazi. Even that shouldn’t have been surprising, since I gave a Skepticamp talk at last year’s QED (2023 tickets available now) about how some Jewish politicians will promote antisemitic conspiracism when it serves their ends. Still, it should be upsetting to hear blood libel coming out of the mouth of a holocaust survivor, no matter how jaded one gets from engaging with this material. Here is a person who survived scapegoating and extermination, promoting conspiracism developed by nazis and white Christian nationalists, for the express purpose of scapegoating and eradicating trans people. The only thing that could made it worse was knowing that much of the audience would readily accept the existence of trans individuals as further proof we’re living in fallen times.
The reason this matters is that social psychologists are actively debating the degree to which conspiracism puts people at risk of spiraling into further conspiracism. If the Better Way conference had gone a second year with zero mention of trans issues, that would give us some reason for hope that conspiracism doesn’t tend to beget conspiracism. Instead, what we have is the exact opposite, a community that appears to go from 0 to 100 in its promotion of anti-trans conspiracism.
I believe the most plausible explanation for that rapid onboarding of a new conspiracy are the significant overlaps between anti-trans conspiracy theories and anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories. This is stark evidence that conspiracism communities are susceptible to similar sounding conspiracy theories, and further proof of the inevitable slide towards antisemitism, even when the speaker truly believes in the promise of “Never Again”.
I believe we should be seriously concerned, because individuals who fell into these conspiracism communities during Covid seem at high risk of migrating from the waning discussions of Covid to the ever-present culture wars around trans rights and whatever marginalised community becomes the next target of right wing moral panics. Given how it is still culturally acceptable in many social spheres to be only skeptical of gender affirming care for minors, especially compared to vaccine skepticism, I expect that many fledgling conspiracists will gravitate towards those friendlier waters.
If a literal holocaust survivor can succumb to promoting nazi holocaust propaganda repackaged for trans people, we need to take seriously the virulence of these ideas and the likelihood of continued spread and cross-pollination. The enthusiastic onboarding of anti-trans, antisemitic conspiracism at Better Way should make us very worried about what is to come.
Over the past week, both the print and digital editions of the third book that I’ve co-authored with Natalia Pasternak have been released. This marks five years since our lives intersected, and this time, following “Science in Daily Life” and “Against Reality,” the title is “What Nonsense!” In this book, which is currently only available in Portuguese, we delve into a variety of systems, doctrines, and beliefs that share a common feature: they make false assertions about how the Universe – or at least the part inhabited by Homo Sapiens – operates.
Some are examples of classical pseudoscience. Others are of mystical or artistic origin. Some oscillate between the two, positioning themselves as mysticism or art when they face scientific criticism, yet claiming scientific credibility when selling their ideas to the public. Regardless, they all present depictions of physical and biological reality that contradict the world’s facts, as validated by the most reliable science available. These misleading depictions, if taken seriously, can lead to serious damage to our finances, our emotions, and our health. They offer maps that have the traveller wandering in circles, or worse: leading them in the opposite direction to their intended path.
Examples of the fallacies we expose and dismantle in the book include the purported enhancement effect of homeopathy’s infinitesimal dilutions, the psychodynamic unconscious theory of psychoanalysis, the vital energy concept of reiki, archaeological remnants attributed to astronaut gods, and the astrological influence on human personality. It isn’t particularly useful to replicate, in this context, the facts and arguments that confirm these ideas as fallacies – if that were feasible, we wouldn’t have needed to write almost 400 pages. However, it might be worthwhile to discuss the choices involved in this project a little more.
Of course, we are aware that this is a “controversial” book, in at least four respects.
Firstly, in the most obvious sense: much of the content contradicts common sense, and even some academic-intellectual consensus. To use another cliché, this is a book that takes the reader out of their comfort zone. We do not do this out of malice, obstinacy, or to shock the bourgeoisie, but because it’s necessary. Individuals who are navigating their interactions with the world using flawed maps and poorly calibrated compasses deserve a warning, even if these maps and compasses are typically safeguarded from the most cutting criticism by a blend of social convenience and intellectual laziness that occasionally passes for politeness.
Secondly, as a consequence of the first, we are highlighting, on a highly visible platform, significant cracks and ruptures in the theoretical and practical foundations of systems that provide income or social prestige (or both) for many people. Paraphrasing the epigraph of our second book, “Against Reality,” it’s challenging to convince someone of a truth when their livelihood crucially depends on ignoring that truth. Regarding this, the best thing to say is that we didn’t fabricate anything – all the factual claims made in “What Nonsense!” are grounded in high-quality scientific work and are properly cited. The opinions and conclusions offered follow logically from these facts. Furthermore, it’s only fair that the public has access to a critical evaluation of the therapies and systems discussed in the book, presenting an alternative to the barrage of outlandish promises and hollow self-praise that promoters, defenders, and sellers of these ideas flood the media and social networks with. “What Nonsense!” is a droplet of sobriety in a vast ocean of intoxicating marketing.
A third potential point of controversy is the so-called “aggressive tone” of the title: what does “nonsense” mean? Who do we hope to convince by referring to people’s treasured beliefs as “nonsense”? The title has a backstory related to Natalia’s personal experience, which we share in the book, and it lends a gentle and even slightly humorous edge to the choice – but of course, you have to read the book to learn the specifics.
Beyond the autobiographical backstory, the choice of “What Nonsense!” partly stems from one of our inspirations, the Spanish book series ¡Vaya Timo! It also comes from a desire to make a cultural impact and bring the wider issue of pseudoscience into public debate: a book titled “Pseudoscientific or Empirically Unwarranted Current Beliefs” probably wouldn’t garner as much attention.
The fourth way in which the book is likely to incite “controversy” is by serving as fodder for crude trolling attempts, on apps and social media, by the most audacious and disgruntled entrepreneurs and zealots. If history serves as any indication, this wave of negativity has a specific target here in Brazil – Natalia Pasternak.
She is, of course, the more notable, recognisable, popular (and photogenic) half of our author duo. We’ve had book signings where a reader has collected her autograph, glanced at me – the short-sighted, portly guy at the next table – and asked, “But who is this guy?”
Given the disparity in visibility, it’s somewhat understandable that most of the criticism (as well as the praise) is directed her way. But the imbalance is more than just quantitative. The vitriol aimed at Pasternak, ranging from infamous puns involving her name to grotesque lies about her life and career that, if they don’t constitute slander and defamation, come perilously close – you can practically see the hatred seeping from the corners of the tweets – is deplorable. As for me, when they remember to target me, it’s weak jokes and feeble attempts at disqualification.
Part of this can perhaps be explained by her high public profile, but it’s hard not to detect a whiff of misogyny as well. Of the four “controversies,” this is the least productive and the most irrelevant – except perhaps as a subject for sociological, psychopathological, and cultural analysis.
When it comes to questions of “who is it aimed at” and “who is the audience,” the initial answer is culture at large. We aim to challenge the prevailing epistemic complacency and bring certain issues that have been overlooked, or only discussed among enthusiasts and specialists, into a wider arena. The second answer relies on understanding the composition of the audience. In regard to any pseudoscience, we can categorise the population, albeit roughly, into the following groups: entrepreneurs, zealots, believers, uninformed, curious, skeptics, and indifferent individuals.
Entrepreneurs have a significant investment in pseudoscience – either as its creators or as individuals who have made it the centrepiece of their business models and lives. They can be charlatans (knowingly selling nonsense), or they can be genuinely convinced. Zealots are always sincere, functioning as the ardent fans and apostles of the entrepreneurs, with a considerable emotional investment in the doctrine. Believers are firm supporters of pseudoscience, but their emotional investment is noticeably less than that of zealots.
Uninformed individuals lack significant investment (financial or emotional) in the topic, but believe in pseudoscience simply because they’ve never encountered a compelling counter-argument, or because they constantly see the topic portrayed positively in the media. They might think, “If there was something wrong with it, someone would’ve warned me by now, right?”
Curious individuals have heard about the topic and would like to know more. Skeptics acknowledge that nonsense is nonsense, but are concerned about its impact on individuals and society. And the indifferent individuals either don’t care or aren’t even aware that the pseudoscience in question exists.
In this demographic stratification, our goal is to alert the indifferent, empower the skeptics, satisfy the curious, enlighten the uninformed, and provide believers with ample material for reflection. It’s unlikely that we’ll receive an honest and fair hearing among the zealots and entrepreneurs, but perhaps, just perhaps, we may plant a seed of doubt in some of them.
“What Nonsense!” doesn’t originate in a vacuum. In addition to the Spanish books in the ¡Vaya Timo! series, clear influences include collections of skeptical articles by Martin Gardner, primarily his pioneering work, “Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science,” from 1957. His most comprehensive collection, “The Night is Large,” which compiles texts written between the 1930s and 1990s, was published in 1997. Gardner passed away in 2010.
If we wish to trace the lineage further, we could reach what is sometimes regarded as the first popular science book of the modern era, Sir Thomas Browne’s “Pseudodoxia Epidemica,” published in 1646, subtitled “Inquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors.”
“The first, the father of all causes of common errors, is the common infirmity of human nature, evidence of whose deceptive condition is found in none other than the mistakes we make,” writes Browne. Science emerges precisely from the recognition that human fallibility is a universal condition – that no genius, leader, messiah, or priest is immune. Ultimately, we are all susceptible to nonsense.
