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The menopause can be painful, uncomfortable, and debilitating – so why is it under-researched?

Clio Bellenis
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The menopause can be painful, uncomfortable, and debilitating – so why is it under-researched?

The menopause, or the time of cessation of menstrual periods, is a near-universal experience for women. Women can have very different reactions to it, from feeling devastated that they have lost their womanhood, being no longer fertile or desirable, to relief that sex can now be enjoyed without the risk of pregnancy. Socially, it has ranged from the onset of invisibility for women, to a time of active denigration (Phrases like ‘dried up old prune’ come to mind). The archetype of the wise old crone is not common in western society. Recently however the menopause has been more visible, even celebrated by, for example, Bridget Christie in her TV series ‘The Change.’

The menopause is caused by the ovaries ceasing to function, meaning they stop secreting oestrogen, progesterone and testosterone. This commonly happens at around the age of 50, with a gradual decline for about 5 years before that, but it can happen at any time after puberty.  Under the age of 40 it is known as premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) and affects one in every hundred women under 40, and one in every thousand women under 30. Women with POI can wait years for a diagnosis, and have difficulty being heard despite clear advice to professionals.

Oestrogen is a hormone with receptors in every cell, so it is unsurprising that its steady decline has many effects. There are the immediate peri-menopausal symptoms, and there are long-term effects of having low hormone levels. Symptoms are many and various, ranging from the mild to the life-changing, even becoming part of the reason why women might seek a divorce or have to leave their jobs. For example, vaginal dryness can be so bad that sitting down is painful, intercourse is impossible and urinary tract infections are frequent, yet many women are still embarrassed to talk about this very common symptom. Vaginal oestrogen is now available without a prescription and is particularly valuable for women who choose not use systemic HRT.

The long term effects of low hormones include: metabolic disorders, fatty liver disease, osteoporosis; osteoarthritis, dementia and many others. Unfortunately, there is little evidence for the effectiveness of long-term HRT, as it is so under-researched, but there are indications that it may be widely protective.

Despite its sometimes devastating symptoms, the inevitability of menopause, has led to it being thought of as natural, and therefore something which should not be treated as a disease state. This view is in stark contrast to attitudes to erectile dysfunction, which becomes increasingly common and pervasive with age, often with no organic cause, and therefore could also be seen as equally natural, yet there is a multi-million dollar industry aiming to help men who suffer from it.

Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is now recommended as first line for some symptoms such as hot flushes, but some GPS are still wary and offer other medications first, believing HRT to have more risks than benefits. Women are often prescribed other medications targeted at specific symptoms such SSRIs for anxiety, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) for muscle and joint pain, and bisphosphonate for osteoporosis. Unfortunately, many of these drugs have more side effects than the replacement oestrogen – for example, bisphosphonates increase bone density, but result in bones which are more brittle and  less elastic. A new drug for hot flushes has recently been very positively received, but like all drugs has side effects. Fortunately this is becoming less common since the menopause has been more in the public eye.

We can therefore say the menopause is already treated as a disease by the fact that women can end up on wide variety of drugs treating individual symptoms. These treatments may be life-long and do not address the underlying hormone deficiency causing those symptoms. They each carry their own risk of side-effects, which don’t then enter into the risk/benefit calculation for HRT.

Why did HRT suddenly become a dirty word?

Until 2000, HRT was widely prescribed, and women were told that it was likely to be a lifelong therapy. A long-term study, the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), looked at the benefits and risks of HRT. In 2000 it was stopped, early, because the participants showed an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, blood clots, breast cancer, and dementia. Breast cancer was specifically highlighted, despite the data showing there was no increase in women prescribed oestrogen in the absence of synthetic progestogens. Many women found their HRT stopped abruptly with numerous consequential health problems.

This study is now over thirty years old, the types of hormones and doses used are no longer the standard treatment, and a re-analysis of the results has shown that they were misinterpreted and misapplied. Unfortunately the study is still quoted as a reason to only prescribe HRT short term and for severe symptoms only.

Given the limited number of good studies which use the standard hormones, teasing out risks and benefits is extremely difficult, because of the almost impossibility of disentangling the type of hormone prescribed. The majority, like the WHI study, used outdated oestrogen treatments, in contrast to the modern body-identical oestrogen (which has exactly the same chemical structure as oestrogen produced in the body).

The transdermal route for oestrogen also bypasses the liver, so is less likely to cause other problems such as blood clots associated with oral dosing. We now also know that women prescribed body-identical progesterone have no increased risk of breast cancer.

Continuing misleading information

A widely reported recent study has linked use of HRT to an increased risk of dementia but, as usual, the situation is complicated, and a causal link remains unlikely.

Another example is recent prescribing advice which suggested an increased risk for deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism and — most concerning to many women — an increase in the risk for breast cancer, in the range of 30-60% (up to 100%, a doubling of the risk). Looking in a little more detail at this, we find that the subjects in the study were given outdated hormone types and dosing regimen, even though it is a modern study.  The data therefore does not correlate to current standard practice.

In essence this study says that it confirms the scare of 2000, when the WHI was cut short because of adverse findings. As it used the same drugs as in these findings, this is hardly surprising. The advice they give to well-meaning doctors trying to stay up to date, in what isn’t their specialism, is both wrong and massively disadvantageous to women.

Testosterone

Although testosterone is known as the male hormone, women produce more testosterone than they do oestrogen or progesterone. As with these other hormones, testosterone declines with age. Symptoms of low testosterone are well known. They include reduction in muscle mass, an increase in body fat, loss of body hair, depressed mood, low sex drive, osteoporosis, difficulty with concentration and memory (brain fog), and erectile dysfunction in men.

If a man were to have his testes removed, he would not leave hospital without being prescribed replacement testosterone. For women in the UK, however, it is only recommended for low sex drive. It is being increasingly prescribed by menopause clinics for women who can afford it, but otherwise it is under prescribed on the NHS. Young women with POI, or those who have had a surgical menopause, even if they are fortunate enough to be offered HRT, are not routinely given testosterone – and too often GPs will offer them other treatments for their symptoms, which have worse side effects, and which treat the consequence, not the cause of their problems.

In addition, there is no testosterone formulation in the UK which is licenced, or designed, for lower doses for women. GPs can prescribe a smaller dose of a formulation licenced for men, while private clinics can supply a cream imported from Australia which is licensed for provision at a female dose.

Testosterone is also specifically forbidden for female athletes competing at national or international level, not matter the severity or cause of her symptoms.  It is a point made in the guidelines under which a man can get a therapeutic use exemption

Why the reluctance to supply for women?

One can only speculate on why there is such a reluctance to prescribe long term hormones for most women; why even a small increased risk is taken as a reason to withdraw treatment without reference to the severity of the symptoms it is being used for, or a long-term risk- benefit analysis.

This is at odds with the prescribing guidance for specific groups such as trans women and those with POI. Long term therapy is recommended in these groups, with only a recommendation to discuss possible risk factors. This seems an entirely reasonable approach.

It has been suggested that there is little interest in drug companies pursuing HRT, as it is cheap, and will yield little return. It has also been suggested that there is a not-very-benign paternalism at work, essentially “I can’t let you choose to take even the smallest potential risk, no matter how much you are suffering.” Alternatively, there may be a sense that the suffering of older women is something just to be borne, preferably uncomplainingly.

The idea that older women are capable of choosing which risk they want to take, of making a personal risk/benefit analysis, is absent with HRT in a way which it isn’t with any other drugs. It is hard not to reach the somewhat paranoid conclusion that older women either don’t matter, or are considered incapable of informed consent.

Hemlock is not a big threat to school children – crumbling pavements and busy roads are

Sarah Hearne
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Hemlock is not a big threat to school children – crumbling pavements and busy roads are

Hemlock: Anger after poisonous plant found near Bucklesham school reads the BBC headline. “Children’s lives are at stake” warns a parish councillor, while the head teacher says that children are walking in the road rather than dare approach this plant. 

Hemlock, Conium maculatum, is an incredibly common plant that grows across much of the UK. It favours damp, high-nitrogen grounds, so is common in verges and near footpaths. It is part of the carrot family and has white umbrella-like flowers at the top of long stems. Its leaves look like parsley. It is toxic when eaten, and there are some reports that prolonged touching can enable toxins to penetrate the skin. It was famously used to execute the ancient Athenian philosopher Socrates, following his conviction for impropriety and corrupting the youth.

My social media was full of people – quite rightly – condemning the terrible risk assessment that has resulted in people thinking that walking on the road is safer than walking past this plant. Children are not being harmed by hemlock. A German review of reports to poison centres regarding accidental ingestion of outdoor plants by children found that there had been a total of 19 cases reported between 1997 and 2013, of which 7 had mild symptoms, 1 moderate symptoms and the rest no symptoms at all. A quick literature review of the last decade revealed one case that led to hospitalisation – a 6 year old girl in Turkey ate some thinking it was parsley – but she had a full recovery and was released from hospital after three days. As long as your children don’t have a habit of eating random plants growing on the side of the road, they will not be harmed by having to walk past hemlock on their daily commute.

Walking in the road to avoid the plant, however, is much more fraught with danger. While I was unable to find recent data specifically regarding the school run, a Department for Transport factsheet from 2015 showed that an average of 1 child per week was killed and 37 seriously injured using roads with the majority occurring at times coinciding with travelling to and from school. 58% occurred in the hours just after school (3pm – 6.59pm) and a further 13% occurred between 8am and 8.59am. 

More recent data is more circumspect. Using the Department for Transport’s dashboard and selecting accidents involving pedestrians aged 15 or under in areas with 20mph or 30mph speed limits, we can find 17,588 casualties between 2018 and 2021, including 63 fatalities. While these numbers are still far too high, the good news is that the 2015 factsheet showed that casualties had decreased significantly over the years, dropping 92% between 1979 and 2013, and the latest figures show this trend is continuing. 

However, regardless of this decline, it is clear that children are far more at risk from cars than they are from hemlock, or indeed from any of the other plants that the BBC has chosen to scaremonger over as a result of this non-story. 

But is this really a case of people being more scared of plants than cars? 

Digging slightly deeper – by which I mean looking for local news reporting rather than relying on the BBC’s narrative – it seems that hemlock isn’t really the issue here. It’s being used to attract attention for a problem that many pedestrians will recognise – that of poorly maintained footpaths. The Ipswich Star reports that 

The public footpath leading towards the primary school has become so overgrown with hemlock, as well as brambles and stinging nettles, that pedestrians were having to being forced to walk in the road. (sic) 

Pedestrians were being forced onto the road by the volume of vegetation, not its composition, but no-one in positions of authority seemed to care. Cutting back the vegetation meant closing the road to traffic, and that wasn’t something the council seemed prepared to do. They needed to be forced into action, and hemlock seems to have been the solution. 

While hemlock does have its own dangers, I suspect that some people were getting confused – or hoping to exploit the potential confusion – with giant hogweed. This invasive plant has phototoxic sap, meaning it causes burns when exposed to sunlight. This phototoxicity can last for days, even months or years in some cases. It looks similar to hemlock, and in England and Wales councils have legal powers over landowners where it obstructs a public footpath.

In England and Wales, councils or unitary authorities are responsible for ensuring that public footpaths are accessible to people on foot and those using mobility scooters and powered wheelchairs. This means they should be free of obstructions and the surfaces should be sound. Yet anyone who has spent time walking along the UK’s pavements and footpaths in recent years knows that many do not meet this criteria. Surfaces are often cracked and uneven, and spring and summer growth can lead you to fighting through a jungle in places.

While the government has been promoting active travel, it has done very little to ensure that pedestrian and cycling infrastructure is safe to use by everyone. People are being encouraged to ride bikes on pothole-riddled roads, and walk on uneven pavements and footpaths which can end with no warning, be blocked by vehicles parking on them, or disappear into the undergrowth, leaving people with no choice but to walk on roads, and put their lives at risk.

In other words, this isn’t really a story about hemlock. It isn’t even a story about people being unnecessarily scared about hemlock. The real story is poorly maintained pedestrian access and council neglect. But where’s the clickbait in that?

Ten times the unexpected appearance of pseudoscience ruined entertainment

Brian Eggo
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Ten times the unexpected appearance of pseudoscience ruined entertainment

The perception of Skeptics as cold, hard logic machines couldn’t really be further from the truth. Especially when it comes to popular culture. When the harsh realities of the world surround you, who doesn’t enjoy a bit of escapism?

Magic – Absolutely!

Dragons – Bring ‘em on!

Superpowers – The more the better!

Paranormal activity – Go on then!

Deities – If you must.

Suspension of disbelief is not a problem. So, set the stage, frame your universe, and stick with it. It’s not that hard. Want to explain a plot point using science of some sorts? Sure, try asking someone with a little bit of knowledge, and don’t stretch things too far. This simple formula seems hard to get wrong, but some still manage.

So, let’s take a look at some of those times when TV and film was spoiled for the skeptical audience. Please be warned though, these spoils also contain spoilers. If you haven’t already sat through them, then we may be helping you dodge a bullet anyway. You’re welcome!

1: Red Lights

In a different universe this could have been a favourite with skeptics; We have an impressive cast including Sigourney Weaver, Cillian Murphy, and Robert De Niro before he blotted his copybook with antivaxxer sentiments, and the plot circles around successful attempts at debunking alleged paranormal phenomena.

The climax of the movie hints at satisfaction too, as De Niro’s character is exposed as a fraud, but that was clearly not enough of a payoff. Instead, we find out that Murphy’s character has real powers, and his lifelong crusade to seek out and test people with such alleged abilities was really a subconscious attempt to find more people like him. Shouldn’t have been given the green light.

2: Interstellar

Another example of a film which should have been a tasty treat for skeptics, but was contaminated by just enough nonsense to leave a bad taste in the mouth. We’ve got a picture of an earth in crisis (which we can certainly empathise with), space and time travel, exoplanets, wormholes, and a more than reasonable attempt to tip the hat towards actual scientific concepts. There’s also strong themes of love, compassion, and sacrifice for the greater good – all fine and dandy so far.

Perhaps it would require a theoretical physicist to explain how the third act of the film collapses into its own hole though, as we see the protagonist finding himself in a five dimensional tesseract and being able to communicate with a younger version of his daughter using morse code (yes, really). Even though that’s hard enough to swallow, the concept of the power of love (not the Huey Lewis / Jennifer Rush / Frankie Goes To Hollywood songs) is overplayed to the point of nausea and incredulity. To quote the movie: “Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends time and space”. Perhaps Christopher Nolan was a bit too ‘into Stella‘ at the time of co-writing the movie.

3: Signs

Back in the days before Mel Gibson had revealed the depths of his religious extremism by venturing into torture porn territory with The Passion of the Christ (and other even less pleasant shenanigans), he teamed up with the poster child of diminishing returns M. Night Shyamalan for the movie Signs. By the time of its release, we already had nearly a decade’s worth of the X-Files to fulfil all our alien visitation desires, so the strong box office showing was much more of a surprise than the premise of the movie.

Jump scares aplenty, crop circles, and literal tin foil hats were entertaining enough, but the movie fell foul in two major ways: firstly, having aliens with the capability of intergalactic space travel visit a planet whose surface is over 70% water when they themselves are harmed by water doesn’t seem entirely plausible. You’d imagine with such advanced technology they might have at least got around to inventing raincoats.

Much more importantly though, divine intervention is given much of the credit for foiling the aliens, with Gibson’s lapsed catholic character returning to church at the end of the movie. Should have been called ‘Warning Signs’.

4: 2012

Disaster movies should be easy. The audience aren’t expected to engage their brains, and the writers barely need to. Think of some form of threat, exaggerate it, pick a random A-lister (or at least a B+lister), then blow the rest of your budget on CGI and marketing. Simple. In this round of apocalypse roulette we have solar flares, and John Cusack – what could possibly go wrong?

Well, firstly, in what might be a gold medal winning round of “this meeting could have been an email”, scientist A travels half way around the world to have a conversation with scientist B. Since they were using words rather than interpretive dance or sign language there was no need for physical proximity, and much of the scary stuff would have really been in the form of data.

More importantly though, it was the nature of the scary revelations that really did the damage, with Scientist B telling us “It looks like the neutrinos coming from the sun have mutated into a new kind of nuclear particle.” A premise so bizarre that it prompted an entire routine from Dara Ó Briain. Truly a disaster movie.

5: Miami Vice S4E07: Missing Hours

Ok, so no-one ever treated Miami Vice as a gritty, realistic portrayal of south Floridian law enforcement in the first place, but as the programme began to dip in the ratings and run short of ideas, at least a shark jump would have been more plausible compared to what we got in this episode, particularly considering the proximity of Crocket and Tubbs’ stomping ground to the ocean.

Instead, we get a credulous plotline about alien abduction, a pre-SNL appearance from Chris Rock, and a truly baffling cameo from James Brown. You won’t feel good. I know that you won’t.

6: Lucy

Ok, so many might have written this movie off pretty early-on due to the shaky principle the entire plot sits upon about humans only using ten percent of the potential of the brain. It’s clumsy and it’s wrong, but that doesn’t really matter. All it needed was a quick rewording for Morgan Freeman’s character (whose name isn’t important, as he was portraying movie cliché Morgan Freeman): how about something like “The right stimulus could push our already powerful brains into overdrive, and the limits are almost endless”? There, fixed it!

From that point onwards Scarlett Johansson getting increasingly intelligent, intertwined with some cool fighty-shooty stuff, would have been reasonably fine in the universe the movie was set in. What we see instead is ascending levels of ridiculous as our protagonist repeatedly breaks the laws of physics (intertwined with some cool fighty-shooty stuff). Just make it a superhero movie – that would have been fine!

All we can say with confidence is that Luc Besson was clearly using less than ten percent of his brain when writing it.

7: Manifest (tv series)

When I was a teenager I got talking to some Mormon missionaries. They were a few years older than me, and American, hence cool. We talked about music, skateboarding, and not religion (which is my favourite aspect of religion). They came to my house a few times over the course of a few weeks. As things progressed they slowly introduced some of their real message, and on what turned out to be their final visit, they said that they wanted to save me and have me baptised. That was awkward. I asked them not to come round after that.

This is exactly what Manifest does, with the excellent sci-fi concept of a plane landing after a routine flight only to find they’ve been missing for over five years. With a few hints along the way, it took multiple seasons to finally confirm that the who in the whodunnit was God. I presume my Mormon ‘friends’ enjoyed it though.

8: The New Scooby-Doo Movies

Generally hailed as a great piece of skeptical television, the initial series Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! featured a strange collection of free-range teenagers and their talking dog encountering and solving mysteries which appear paranormal at first, but always resulted in the unmasking of a very real human. Inspiring enough to get a shout out in Tim Minchin’s ode to rational thinking Storm, but sadly those good times were never going to last. The 1972 revamp of the franchise saw a different format, with longer episodes, and real ghosts. Zoinks!

This terrible disappointment was however put into perspective with the introduction of Scrappy Doo in 1979. Perspective helps.

9: Phenomenon

1994’s Pulp Fiction is generally regarded as a classic, with a plethora of awards to its name. This was not all good for the world of cinema though as it’s widely credited with reviving the somewhat ailing career of controversial actor John Travolta. It would be another six years before he fully shot himself in the thetan with Scientology shambles Battlefield Earth, which doesn’t make this list because you need to achieve a reasonable level of quality in the first place in order to be ruined.

Eighteen years before Lucy, Phenomenon was ahead of the game in terms of its ‘superbrain’ plot, but was sadly lacking in cool fighty-shooty stuff. It did however explore some interesting themes about small town mentality and friendship. It’s not long before Travolta’s superbrain starts breaking the laws of physics, but with the door open to the cause of his ‘condition’, including alien or divine intervention, the audience are kept onboard right up until the reveal.

The reveal is both dissatisfying, and somewhat tasteless, as the real cause is a brain tumour. He dies, although thankfully that happens before the terrible Eric Clapton soundtrack kicks in. Merciful.

10. M*A*S*H S6E25: Major Topper

Watch the full episode on Daily Motion.

It’s hard to call any fault with such a long running, consistently excellent show. M*A*S*H managed to squeeze great comedy out of the medical horrors of war for over a decade, and on the occasions when it got serious, the impact was huge. With a very strong content warning, you can watch Hawkeye’s breakdown scene for an example just how dark and brilliant it could get.

With a reasonable attempt at realism of the difficulties of running a mobile army surgical hospital during the Korean war for the vast majority of the show’s long run, they fell out of line seriously on one occasion as they mistakenly endorsed the placebo effect as a real treatment. With a bad batch of morphine proving to be unusable, the team conjure up the idea of giving out sugar pills to their badly injured patients to get them through the night, and the results are quite literally unbelievable.

For a deeper breakdown on the episode and the legend of the wartime placebo check out this article from friend of The Skeptic, Jonathan Jarry, and Mike Hall’s excellent talk on the Placebo Myth from QED 2022. It’s a little sad though that the only sour taste left by such a great show was caused by sugar pills.

Once again, a big thanks to my friends in the skeptical community who helped me crowdsource input for this article. If your suggestion didn’t make it into the list then either you got it wrong, or I was too lazy to watch the film/show in question (or even read the plot synopsis on IMDB) – you can decide which.

If you want to fight me about my selection, you should probably get a hobby, but you’re welcome to seek me out on twitter anyway!

What effect can superstitions have on your mental health?

Manisha Devdas Sawlani
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What effect can superstitions have on your mental health?

Have you ever wondered how superstitions affect your mental health? Superstitions are incredibly enthralling – people believe in them even when we know they cannot be real. We believe in them anyway, because of the common saying: it’s better to be safe than sorry. More often than not, we notice how superstitions alter our behaviour and mindset, but we may not consciously realise the effects they have on our mental health, especially during auspicious seasons when our anxieties come out to play. Superstitions can affect mental health both positively and negatively, but changes we make to our behaviour are more likely driven by what we fear would happen otherwise. This phenomenon is also known as phobic superstition, where a superstition can result in anxiety and worry, resulting in changed behaviour to avoid negative outcomes.

As a mental health advocate and a student majoring in Psychology, I find myself drawn to understanding the implications of our thoughts and how they influence our mental health. Superstitions are subjective, abstract and interpreted differently by every individual, so it is difficult to label them as purely “good” or “bad”. However, the effect of superstitious beliefs on mental health are rooted in concrete concepts that can help us determine if they are doing more harm than good or vice versa.

The Hungry Ghost Festival is deeply embedded in traditional Chinese culture and takes place in the 7th month of the lunar calendar, usually in mid-August. During the period of the festival, people believe the gates of hell are opened, freeing the souls in the underworld to look for food in the realm of the living. The Chinese will make offerings and sacrifices to ensure those who are still alive will live peacefully, while feeding and appeasing those who have passed on. These ritualistic practices and beliefs are part of superstitions the Chinese have passed down from generation to generation.

There are certain superstitions specific to the Hungry Ghost Festival that the Chinese are encouraged to practise. Some examples of these superstitions include not borrowing an umbrella, not tapping on someone’s shoulder and not to schedule celebratory events like weddings during the 7th lunar month. The reason behind avoiding these actions is to ensure people do not anger the spirits and ghosts who have been freed and are existing amongst the living. These superstitious beliefs are tied to the presence of ghosts and spirits, beings that humans are unable to touch and see according to scientific reasoning. So why do some people still believe so strongly in something they cannot even see?

Dating back to primitive times, our ancestors came up with superstitions as a means to “feel more in control” of their lives since they “lacked concrete ways to influence their survival outcomes”. Since then, these beliefs have trickled down all the way to generations today, who still believe in them in spite of how much our society and cultures have evolved. We have more control and autonomy over our lives today, compared to our ancestors, and we live in an age of science and technology. Science is the basis on which any phenomenon and concept is reasoned and proven. Ghosts have yet to be a proven phenomenon, as most of us know, yet we still find ourselves subscribing to superstitions.

Possible encounters with ghosts result in people experiencing a great deal of anxiety, driving them to religious and cultural practices to keep ghosts at bay. While there is no scientific evidence to prove the existence of ghosts, science offers explanations as to why some people believe that they have encountered ghosts and spirits. Our brains merely perceive what we receive through our senses, and ghost encounters occur most often at night, when our senses are most heightened as we are unaware of what lurks in the night… plus, there are fewer people are around once the sun has set. Anxiety and fear are two of the main causes that lead people to believe that they have truly encountered a ghost, and since our brain can only perceive the information we feed it, it only reinforces the belief that ghosts exist around us. The brain can sometimes picture things that are not really there, and this is a form of inattentional blindness.

Someone’s religious background also influences whether or not they might believe in ghosts. Our perception is shaped by our expectations, needs and beliefs, especially when the information picked up by our senses is ambiguous, leaving our brain to fill in the gaps in what we perceive. While religious practices such as those practised during the Hungry Ghost Festival can help to keep people safe and relieve them of their anxieties about being haunted by ghosts, it can also do the opposite. Believing that certain rituals must be adhered to in order to keep ghosts at bay could make people feel on edge, and make them carry out the rituals more compulsively. Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is commonly associated with a belief in superstitions, and is a form of mental health disorder that requires treatment. Over time, people with deeply ingrained superstitious beliefs could exhibit symptoms of OCD and eventually be diagnosed with the disorder.

How our mental health is affected by our superstitious beliefs is often overlooked, and most people probably do not realise the toll superstitions can take on their overall well-being. Having more control and autonomy leads to superstitious beliefs to appease people with a sense of security. Anxiety, tension, worrying and obsessive thoughts are all signs of concern and could be attributed to or lead to more repetitive ritualised behaviour that could grow out of control if left unchecked and untreated.

Encounters with ghosts and spirits can also be explained by the brain’s reaction to traumatic events including the loss of loved ones. The brain could be coping with the trauma and loss by perceiving ghosts and the presence of someone we lost.

Superstitions mainly arise from cultural traditions or individual experiences. People who grow up in cultural and religious households are more likely to believe in superstitions and partake in ritualistic practices. For the most part, superstitions are relatively harmless. However, when they interfere with one’s day-to-day functioning and result in one intentionally taking drastic measures to alter their behaviour, it could indicate an underlying mental health condition.

Superstitions are unhealthy and problematic in cases where they greatly impair one’s state of mental health which affects their overall day-to-day functioning. Prolonged distress that goes untreated can be extremely damaging, and superstitions propagate this distress through compulsive and repetitive practices to keep the bad and “evil” away. This, however, should not be taken to mean that all superstitions are bad for our mental health, as most superstitions that have long existed in tradition and culture are healthy, harmless and do not affect our day-to-day lives.

I interviewed Ms Gan, 24, about her experiences with superstitions and the practices she has implemented in her life as a result. She shared with me that she is someone who is quite superstitious in many different aspects of her life, and subscribes to the auspicious and superstitious practices surrounding the Hungry Ghost Festival.

She expressed feeling anxiety during the Hungry Ghost Festival period, as she fears being on the receiving end of a haunting if she comes across an angry ghost. She makes sure to participate in all the ritualistic activities to safeguard both her physical and mental well-being.

She did say that taking part in the rituals for the Hungry Ghost Festival does give her a peace of mind, too, since she is aware of the ghosts and can take precautions to keep them at bay. She makes sure to be respectful not only of those who have passed but also of the offerings made by others that eventually litter the environment, by not stepping on them and walking around them. This ensures she will not be disturbing the ghosts who have joined the living to feast on the offerings. It was very insightful getting to hear both sides of the story from Ms Gan’s own experiences with superstitions. 

This brings me to the other side of the coin: how superstitions can also help to relieve anxieties, and allow people to have a greater feeling of control over the outcome of their actions (even if it is a false sense of control). People often wear a lucky piece of clothing or jewellery at important events, to bring good luck; when the good luck comes true, we believe that it was because of the lucky item, reinforcing the confirmation bias we have that the item worked. This encourages us to be consistent with this behaviour to invite more good luck.

There is a very simple explanation for this behaviour, that is our mindset reinforces our beliefs and superstitions, in this case making one believe that there was good luck because of a lucky item. This can lead us to see the world more positively, and perhaps make us more open to seeing and taking advantage of opportunities that come our way, or make us respond more positively to people, in turn making them see us more favourably.

Superstitions like these help to encourage people to do better and feel more in control, and explain why superstitions are more likely to arise in situations that elicit insecurity, danger, fear and anxiety. Though there is a possible inverse effect: for example, if someone were to misplace the item they believe to be lucky, they could feel stress or anxiety, which will infringe on their mental health and cause their mental well-being to deteriorate.

Superstitions can affect our mental health both negatively and positively. For the most part, superstitions can be relatively harmless, and something people follow ‘just in case’, as a precaution to ensure the best outcomes for themselves and their loved ones. In that case, superstitions are used as motivation to keep up positive behaviour to ensure a better state of mind.

It is only when superstitions become compulsive and overly repetitive that they become a real cause for concern, and signal the need for one to see a mental health professional for help.

Some of us may be contemplating whether we need to unlearn our superstitious beliefs and deprogram their effects on our mental health. Ultimately, even with all this information in your pocket, it is still up to you to decide for yourself how superstitious you want to be. Just bear in mind that the thoughts you feed your mind ultimately shape your mindset, which can set the tone and direction of your life.

The Sound of Freedom: thinking of the children shouldn’t stop us from thinking rationally

Gabriel Andrade
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The Sound of Freedom: thinking of the children shouldn’t stop us from thinking rationally

In the 16th Century, the essayist Michel de Montaigne wrote: “I have lost two or three children in their infancy, not without regret, but without great sorrow.” In his seminal study Centuries of Childhood, historian Philippe Aries made the case that this emotional detachment towards children was common until the 18th Century. As per this theory, children were merely miniature adults with no special protection. Today, things are very different.

While Aries’ work has been criticised on many fronts, he was certainly onto something in claiming that we have become a child-centric civilisation. This is something to be proud of. But have we gone too far? There is reason to believe that we have indeed become overly infantilised. Young adults are increasingly treated as children, and as a result, come to develop a perverse sense of entitlement. That is the thesis put forth by Jonathan Haidt in The Coddling of the American Mind.

But more worryingly, the concern with children is fertile ground for political manipulation. Demagogues exploit fear, and given the centrality of children in our civilisation, it is not hard for populists to figure out that instilling fear about the plight of children can give them political leverage.

The recent release of The Sound of Freedom is a case in point. This is a seemingly conventional film about the deeds of a character based on Tim Ballard, a man who claims to be an anti-trafficking activist. Child trafficking has long been and continues to be a worldwide problem, so any media product that focuses on this issue is welcome. But when the approach to this problem becomes a moral panic with very implausible claims and inflated numbers, the noble purpose is lost.

In previous epochs, children were violently abducted from their parents for slavery or ransom purposes— that is the origin of the word ‘kidnapping’. But just because real cases of kidnapping did sometimes happen, should we then automatically accept as true the story of a pied piper who magically hypnotised children with his music and drove them away as zombies?

We easily dismiss the pied piper of Hamelin as medieval folklore. Yet, contemporary moral crusaders make similarly outrageous claims. Ballard himself has claimed that children are sold online by furnishing retailer Wayfair­— in one version of this debunked conspiracy, trafficked children are placed inside expensive cabinets. Jim Caviezel­— the actor playing Ballard in The Sound of Freedom— has claimed that traffickers drain children’s blood to obtain adrenochrome, a chemical allegedly used by Hollywood elites to stay young. Both men have spoken at QAnon events.

They have become the useful idiots of people playing dirty politics. The QAnon movement claims that there is a plot against Donald Trump, led by a secret cabal of blood-drinking paedophiles. These claims have originated with Q, an anonymous person who posts cryptic messages in conspiratorial forums. Nobody knows the identity of Q, or what their ultimate purpose is (though there are highly plausible explanations). But QAnon conspiracy theories have played in favour of politicians who have realised that they can obtain votes, not by engaging in reasoned debate, but by using scare tactics. It is unlikely that a shrewd politician such as Donald Trump believes the QAnon nonsense, but he has refused to disavow QAnon conspiracy theories presumably because he knows that pandering to the QAnon movement is politically useful.

It would be unfair to solely blame right-wing conspiracy theorists for the manipulative use of concern for children. Although not to the same degree, left-wing activists occasionally engage in similar tactics. For example, climate change is a serious problem and requires urgent action. But instead of advancing reasoned arguments, eco-activists have become too eager to arouse emotions by presenting Greta Thunberg as the face of the movement. This tactic has become so widespread, that the idiom “poster child” has been enshrined in common parlance.

Nobody wishes to return to the pre-modern world where children died, and few people seemed to care. But we should also aim not to be controlled by fear. Primeval humans were in constant fear of the forces of nature, but science and skepticism allowed them to come out of the cave. However, we are now being controlled by a new type of fear. As Stanley Cohen explained in his seminal book Folk Devils and Moral Panics,

societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic. A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media.

Paedophiles and human traffickers exist. But they do not operate under the auspices of a “deep state”, lurking in every school and child-care centre of the world. As with any other problem, child trafficking must be tackled with a sense of proportion and empirically grounded information. Save the Children has a strong reputation as a reliable institution addressing the problem of child abuse. They report that “an estimated 1.2 million children are affected by trafficking at any given time”; this is a regrettably high number, but placed against the backdrop of world population of 8 billion, it does not warrant the kind of panicked reaction that has now become all too frequent. Likewise, Save the Children categorises as myth the claim that “all human trafficking involves sex or prostitution.” Being obsessed with child trafficking associated with paedophilia, we run the risk of dismissing trafficking associated with child non-sexual labour and the use of child soldiers.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously quipped that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Paedophilia and child trafficking must be taken seriously, but if we truly seek to address this problem, we must leave aside irrational fears, consider claims with a healthy dose of skepticism, and separate the plausible from the outrageous.

Monsters of our minds: Why cryptids live only in our imagination

Georgy Kurakin
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Monsters of our minds: Why cryptids live only in our imagination

Our wildlife comprises more than two million known animal species and more than 100 “unknown” ones, which are suspected of existing by mystery enthusiasts and a lot of people across the world. Some of them enjoy such strength of belief as to make even Santa Claus envious (if he were real, of course). They are cryptids — creatures, not recognised by science, but widely believed to exist. A pseudoscience aimed at their search is called cryptozoology.

For the most part, this “science” is based on anecdotal eyewitness accounts rather than controlled observation and experiments. They are typically a weak argument, but there is one more thing that takes cryptozoology beyond science, but makes it difficult to disprove it directly. This thing is unfalsifiability. No hypothesis about the existence of a cryptid has any pre-defined boundaries beyond which it would be considered refuted. For example, the hypothesis about the existence of the Higgs boson has been falsifiable ever since it was predicted by Peter Higgs: if it was not identified in controlled conditions of a collider experiment, it would become clear that this prediction is erroneous. But it is almost impossible to directly refute a statement about the existence of a creature, unknown to “official” science — we would need to travel all around the Earth, including to all mountains and lakes, to be sure that Nessie or Bigfoot do not really exist.

This is not a problem for science — it is for a long time established that unfalsifiable hypotheses should not be taken seriously. That said, the Multiverse hypothesis is also unfalsifiable — yet we are happy to discuss it. Maybe we have additional arguments in the case of cryptids, which, although don’t disprove their existence directly, indicate that they are nothing more than a myth? I think so.

Any myths, including urban myths, take on a life of their own, and sometimes, they contain traces of psychological, social and cultural processes which are characteristic of a cultural entity, not for a real being. These traces are most easy to find in the most popular cryptid myths, since we have more data for analysis in this case.

Shortly before the festival “Scientists Against Myths” in Moscow, Russia, where I was going to speak about cryptozoological myths, the organisers and I started a poll in the organisers’ group in the Russian social network “Vkontakte”. It was aimed to estimate the in-media popularity of different cryptids, and the only question was “Which cryptids have you heard about?” Of the eight listed cryptids (including one confabulated by us for a joke), only three were clear leaders, with popularity rates of 90% or more. They were the Loch Ness Monster (Nessie), the hominid “snowman” (Yeti, Bigfoot or Sasquatch), and the Chupacabra. As our audience includes primarily urban people using the Internet and acquainted with world cultural events, we concluded that our sample was quite representative. In different cultures across the Earth a lot of people are expected to believe in aquatic monsters (Nessie, Issie etc.), relict hominids, and chupacabras. And these myths have some interesting traits.

The graph shows the percentage of people who had heard of the following cryptids: "chupacabra, sokoback, mothman, Loch Ness monster, British big cats, Jersey devil, Hominid (yeti, bigfoot, sasquatch), mongolian death worm, 'my own variant' in the comments". Over 80% had heard of chupacabra, the Loch Ness monster and hominid (yeti, bigfoot, sasquatch). Between 30 and 40% had heard of mothman. Between 20 and 30% had heard of the Jersey devil and Mongolian death worm. Less than 10% (but more than 0%) had heard of British big cats and the cryptic made up by the authors "sokobach". Around 5% answered with their own variant.
Cryptid popularity rank according to our poll. We were surprised that an “unexisting” cryptid – sokobach — has gained about 2.5% with a sample size of more than 5000 persons.

The first group of the most popular monsters — aquatic monsters, led by the world-famous Nessie — now have one phenotype across all cultures and counties. If you compare the statues of a Loch Ness Monster Nessie and a Japanese lake monster Kussie, you will not find many differences — both monsters are depicted like nice plesiosaurs. This cross-cultural similarity could lead to a hypothesis that the Earth is inhabited by surviving plesiosaurs — if we knew the phenotype of these monsters was always the same. But it was not the case.

The Nessie statue in Scotland which looks like a plesiosaur
The Nessie statue in Scotland. (By StaraBlazkova – Derivative from File:Lochneska poboba museumofnessie.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0)
The Kussie monster statue which also looks like a plesiosaur but is coloured blue instead of green.
The replica of the Kussie monster from Lake Kussharo in Japan is very similar to Nessie despite the geographical distance and cultural differences. They both look like surviving plesiosaurs. (By 663highland – Own work, CC BY 2.5)

In 2019, paleontologist Darren Naish and ecological statistician Charles Paxton undertook data science research involving historical records of witness sightings of aquatic monsters. They found that at the beginning of 19th century, these monsters were described primarily like snake-like, without a massive body or long neck. They acquired these “saurian” features in the mid-19th century, when plesiosaurs and other prehistoric sea reptiles were made known to the wider public. The Biologist features this study indicating how sea cryptids “evolved’ over a century, under the influence of a cultural event (plesiosaurs in the museums). It could not have been biological evolution, on this timescale. Thus, this is cultural evolution, indicating that aquatic cryptids are just a cultural entity, a myth, which can readily transform in our minds.

Chupacabras can rival lake cryptids in this regard — they evolved over just a decade. National Geographic tells the story of their evolution, from an alien-like creature to a canine-like animal, since 1995. The first surge of accounts about chupacabras coincided with the release of film Species in Puerto Rico, and the first chupacabras were similar to Sil, the main antagonist of the film. Once the film left the cinemas, chupacabras became more familiar and similar to diseased coyotes. This morphological switch indicates that the chupacabra is one more monster of our minds, and it lives only there.

This criterion which I call “cultural evolution” seems promising to disprove different myths about cryptids and even beyond — for example, myths about aliens and many other urban legends. And I hope the readers of The Skeptic will take it on board and find it useful in the fight against pseudoscience.

But data science methods offer one more interesting criterion — association with a known animal possibly mistaken for a cryptid. Floe Foxon, a data analyst from Pinney Associates, searches for such associations. One of his first preprints on this topic shows the statistical association between the number of Bigfoot sightings, and two population densities — the people population density and the American black bear population density. It could be one more evidence that at least some cases of Bigfoot encounters are just sightings of an American black bear ambulation on its rear legs.

It is worth saying that this association is relatively weak, and even if it were strong, we should interpret any correlation with some extent of caution. “I can find studies where the number of films with Nicholas Cage for a year correlated with the number of people who sank in swimming pools. It is real correlation without any manipulation, but this indicates nothing in the terms whether the films with Nicholas Cage cause fatal swimming pool accidents or not”, our opponent at the festival Alexander Panchin, Russian bioinformatician and science communicator, warns.

However, these were only the first attempts to use data science to prove cryptozoologists wrong, and I am sure these attempts will go on. The recent article of Floe Foxon in The Skeptic indicates that cryptid hunting is becoming science-based — but for now, we are searching for monsters in our imagination, not in the lakes or mountains.

‘Fan Tai Sui’: The Chinese superstitious belief that your birth date has offended the gods

Foo Xin Ru Stefanie
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‘Fan Tai Sui’: The Chinese superstitious belief that your birth date has offended the gods

“It was the worst year of my life, you know. I never been so sick before…I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t stop coughing.”

In 2019, Ms Yue’s health was disastrous. Dengue fever, sinusitis, an on-and-off cough – illness plagued her throughout the year. Her colleague, seeing this, made an offhand comment that it might have been due to her Chinese zodiac sign clashing with Tai Sui. This comment led Ms Yue, 30, who came from a secular household, to take on an ancient Chinese belief: that her birthdate had led her to be cursed by the Gods.

According to Thian Hock Keng, one of the oldest Chinese temples in Singapore, Tai Sui refers to an intangible star that moves in the opposite direction of the planet Jupiter, which was deified in Taoist beliefs. Every year, different zodiac signs assigned by one’s birth date will come into conflict with the Tai Sui God of the year (‘Fan Tai Sui’), causing them to suffer from misfortune, hence needing to pray for peace and protection. If not, they could find themselves facing bad luck in terms of their career, relationships, health, and wealth, with the possibility of even encountering disaster. At the end of the Lunar New Year, it is also important to show gratitude to the Gods, to thank them for their blessing.

Historically, the Tai Sui star chart, which was conceived of during the Warring States period, was made as a method of time keeping, matching the 5 celestial elements to the 12 Chinese zodiac animals to make a 60-year cycle. Each yearly unit was later deified as a Tai Sui God associated with a military leader, to be used as a fortune telling device. This makes Tai Sui a social concept developed by past generations. However, belief in this practice is retained to this day, with hour-long queues around temples in Singapore by locals seeking to change their fate.

Ms Yue, discovering that the rooster will clash with Tai Sui again in 2020, decided to go to a temple to change her misfortune. However, tragedy struck, as due to being unfamiliar with the process, she actually gave her offerings and prayer to the wrong God. Clearly, she thought she must have offended the Gods immensely, because the world soon ended up being plagued by COVID-19. Plus, the bonus she was promised at work wasn’t given, with her boss blaming the pandemic despite the money being for last year’s performance. Moreover, while lightning never strikes twice, dengue fever certainly did, as she found herself hospitalised with a second bout of the disease.

By 2021, she was resolved to improve her fortune, being sincerely committed to prayer… and she found that the tides had turned. Even though her birthdate did not clash with Tai Sui that year, she decided to pray to the main deity for blessings anyway, in order to further improve her luck for the year. But, correctly this time. Lo and behold, she avoided contracting COVID-19, despite being in close contact with an airport cluster in May, and having a close encounter after a dinner with her friends who all tested positive afterwards in June. She even survived her housemates all falling prey to the disease in September. However, even Tai Sui’s blessings for her health was no match for the ever-evolving virus, and she ended up contracting the disease in October.

Now, it should be obvious that her mistaken prayer was not the cause of a worldwide pandemic. Rather than Tai Sui causing her multiple illnesses, this could have been the cause of a weak immune system that made her more vulnerable to infections. Being stuck in a toxic workplace for several years could have led to stress that implicated her health. On top of that, despite offending the Gods twice, she was scouted by a company who offered her better benefits. These events can be boiled down to confirmation bias, as there are not only better scientific explanations for her misfortunes, but also plenty of good events that happened in a year supposedly cursed by misfortune.

There’s a flipside, too. According to Tai Sui, she was supposed to be luckier in 2022, as there was no clash with the heavens – yet her health still took a turn for the worst. In March, she got infected with COVID-19 and coughed so violently she tore a muscle. Her new working environment also turned toxic, leading her to leave the place for another company. These things happened in spite of her praying fervently to the Gods to bless her with better fortune. Yet, in brighter news, when her household had yet another COVID-19 outbreak in October, she found herself unscathed.

Since praying to Tai Sui so far, from her experience, has been so unreliable, why did she still believe in it? Well, in her opinion, it allowed her to cover all her bases, ensuring that when she does encounter bad luck, she knows it was not preventable. Putting in this effort also allows her to feel reassured that the cause of these incidents was not due to her forgetting to pay respects.

“It’s also better for me to blame all the difficult things that happen on Fan Tai Sui, it makes me feel that it’s not my fault for bad things happening so I can move on,” Ms Yue told me, almost jokingly, “I also always feel more hopeful and motivated for the next year I don’t Fan Tai Sui, I have an expectation for my luck to be better.”.

While Ms Yue’s experience with Tai Sui reflected a rollercoaster of major events, her sister, 27, who works as a teacher, cemented her beliefs in this ritual due to various small incidents that impacted her daily life. She, too, had a difficult 2019, when she started working in a toxic workplace. Her boss was being particularly nit-picky, constantly finding fault with her or delegating extra tasks. She faced several cases of bad luck, including glitching projectors that affected her class plans, as well as an increased occurrence of inconveniences in her daily life. She put all this down to her zodiac having offended Tai Sui that year. When prompted for examples of these incidents, she shared with me an occurrence that she remembered clearly.

“I was walking down a sidewalk when suddenly one of my air pods had fallen out on its own onto the road. This had never happened to me before, and when it bounced to the middle of the road, a car suddenly drove past and crushed it. That road is so unpopular you know, cars really usually don’t pass by it.”

Therefore, in 2020, she followed her sister to the temple to pray to Tai Sui, feeling more reassured and safer having done so. This allowed her to meet more helpful people in her life which improved her career greatly, as she managed to form a good relationship with several senior colleagues who were known to be difficult to have a good relationship with in her workplace. When asked whether she would have been able to get along with those colleagues without the aid of Tai Sui, as she was able to adapt to their preferred working styles, she firmly stated that: “Tai Sui introduced these people into my life. I wouldn’t have been able to get these opportunities.”

In Ms Yue’s opinion: “We pray to Tai Sui because we don’t want to hit rock bottom.” Both sisters displayed the opinion that if they did not pray to Tai Sui, especially if their zodiac signs clashed with the main God of the year, they would definitely encounter bad luck. This promotes a negative mindset which could lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy, as you reinforce your own beliefs and limit your potential. However, for both sisters, they also held the opinion that they would be more ambitious in pursuing success if they knew that Tai Sui had blessed them, showing how this ritual could also be something of a motivating force for its believers.

For Ms Yue, despite clashing with Tai Sui again this year, her devotion seems to have paid off, as she is currently flourishing in her career. She had been promised a bonus and an award for her contributions to her workplace so far, and the company had planned a holiday to reward the employees. She also has an upcoming trip to Korea which she is extremely excited about. She told me her year so far has been smooth sailing, which she attributes to the influence of Tai Sui.

So, how is one meant to avoid misfortune when they find themselves clashing with Tai Sui?

Generally, this involves a ritual where one writes their name and lunar birth date on a piece of prayer paper, which must be burnt, so that the deity will know who specifically to bless. This idea provides an interesting contrast to the Western view of God as omniscient, and calls into question the knowledge of our existence to these Taoist deities. Afterall, if they do indeed exist and have divine ability, why are they unable to automatically distinguish between the prayers of their believers?

Additionally, if they need the prayer papers to be alerted to one’s presence for blessings, surely they shouldn’t be able to know who to curse each year?

The idea that burning a piece of paper will attract good fortune into your life and fix your problems while optimistic, is unrealistic. The only thing being induced by the constant burning of incense and offerings is greenhouse gases, which only serve to decrease our quality of life.

A typical prayer paper
A typical Prayer Paper

For Thian Hock Keng, one also needs to prepare a good luck red packet containing money to gift to the main Tai Sui God, the amount being a tenth of your age. This monetary amount differs depending on which temple you go to, being S$4.00 for Sheng Hong Temple, which according to Ms Yue is “the most legitimate temple to pray for Tai Sui”. When asked whether giving money to the Gods, or rather donating to the temples, was a significant part of the ritual and makes it seem more legitimate, Ms Yue paused, pondering over the question.

“Yes, I think so, after all, it feels like I am being more sincere and giving something for the blessings. The amount I pay does affect my subconscious belief.”

Her sister chimed: “When I pay the money and go through all the specific steps of praying, I do feel like the process has an impact on my life, making me feel luckier.”

For the Sembawang God of Wealth temple, the instructed monetary amount to give was much higher at S$15 per person, perhaps due to the Gods at this temple having more expensive taste. This price included a prayer package to take home that included several charms and trinkets that presumably would protect you from misfortune.

A prayer package, including charms and trinkets to protect you from misfortune
A prayer package, including charms and trinkets to protect you from misfortune

“It felt so commercialised,” my mother lamented, a victim of the S$60 price tag needed to pray for all four members of my family.

“This is a pollution of culture and faith. You should not need to buy so many charms to let the Gods feel your sincerity, all these mass-produced packets are just to make people spend more money.”

At 53, she reminisced on the previous time she prayed to Tai Sui, despite being non-religious, mostly out of curiosity over the process. She only went again this year due to the encouragement of my grandmother who was concerned over several members of my family being affected by Tai Sui.

“25 years ago, the process was so much simpler. There wasn’t a fixed price for praying or a need to give red packets to the Gods. You just needed to buy joss sticks and biscuits as offerings and pray to Tai Sui. For people who really believe in this, all that is needed is their sincerity. That is the original tradition.”

Despite praying to the same set of Gods, each temple displays different rituals, calling into question the accuracy of this tradition. Afterall, these inconsistencies show that there is no exact way to pray to the Gods, making it impossible for anyone to be certain about whether they have attained forgiveness or any blessings. A possible explanation for this confusion however could be due to the various Chinese clans passing down different traditions and beliefs to their descendants, leading to discrepancies towards the process.

Additionally, the red packets and donations given by the devotees go towards the preservation of the temples as cultural sites and funds their social activities. When I volunteered at a soup kitchen, I remember a Buddhist society donating mangoes for us to distribute to the needy, showing how the money also leads to charitable causes.

In 2020, a massive fire had broken out at the Sembawang God of Wealth temple and a massive amount of funds needed to be put into the reconstruction of the damaged site which could also explain the higher price for praying at this location. While it was stated to be “miraculous” that the five statues of deities in the temple remained unharmed despite the extensive damage, it makes one question the omnipotence of the Gods to allow for such an event to happen in the first place. Additionally, three of the seven stray dogs that were housed by the temple perished due to being unable to escape from the flames – if the Gods really did exist, in all their omnibenevolence, it’s odd that they decided to kill the dogs.

Ms Ming, 21, is a university student raised in a deeply religious family. Crystals, altars, and paintings used to respect Chinese deities or attract good fortune into her household surround us as she shares more about the experience that led her family to be so devout.

“My great-uncle accidently kicked some offerings on the side of the road, and his foot started hurting. After seeing doctors, he still couldn’t stop the hurting until he went to a temple to pray for forgiveness. His pain stopped the next day.”

She mostly follows the process out of respect for her grandmother, who brings her specially to a medium in Chinatown, who for S$18, provides a stack of prayer papers to not only address the main Tai Sui God of the year but to pray to the other Chinese deities for good fortune as well. However, should her grandmother not bring her to do so, she would not take part in this ritual. Despite being raised to believe in Tai Sui, she felt that the concept of yearly luck was too ambiguous due to the considerable time span for any event, good or bad to happen. This makes it difficult to pinpoint any particular event and attribute it to Tai Sui.

“Statistically, whether you ‘Fan Tai Sui’ or not, something bad is bound to happen to you sooner or later in a year,” She laughed, “There is nothing to prove that it exists.”

However, during the years her zodiac clashes with Tai Sui, she makes the effort to be more careful, especially in regard to making risky investments or towards her health. She shared that she would actively eat healthier and see the doctor sooner when she knows she is feeling unwell, making her more conscious about taking care of herself. This is a common viewpoint among the non-religious Singaporeans I know, who try not to actively offend the Gods. This could be due to our multi religious society that influences us to be tolerant of diverse cultures and beliefs. However, this could also showcase a subconscious wariness towards the possibility of the supernatural from the practices taught to us from young.

“While I am not superstitious, it really doesn’t hurt to be more cautious,” Ms Ming laughed, “It’s really better to be safe than sorry.”

When asked on whether she will pass this tradition onto her future children or continue these practices on her own, she shook her head somberly. According to her, the amount of paranoia towards offending the Gods, and the focus on success being determined on your birth date, causes too much stress. This mindset reflects my mother’s opinion on the religious practice, whose atheist beliefs greatly influenced my upbringing.

While repacking the prayer package to put back on display, my mother shook her head while saying: “Don’t keep waiting for the Gods to solve your problems, take action yourself. If you believe so much in Tai Sui and God to save you or keep waiting for your luck to be good, you will always be stuck in bad luck. It’ll just be an excuse. Nothing will change.”

The Ockham Awards 2023: recognising the best in skepticism, and the worst in pseudoscience

Michael Marshall
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The Ockham Awards 2023: recognising the best in skepticism, and the worst in pseudoscience

Since 2012, The Skeptic has had the pleasure of awarding the Ockham Awards – our annual awards celebrating the very best work from within the skeptical community. The awards were founded because we wanted to draw attention to those people who work hard to get a great message out. The Ockhams recognise the effort and time that have gone into the community’s favourite campaigns, activism, blogs, podcasts, and outstanding contributors to the skeptical cause.

Nominations for the 2023 Ockham Awards are now open! Simply complete the nomination form to submit your nominations.

The Ockham logo - a razor blade engraved with"Ockham" and "The Skeptic".

Last year’s Ockham winner was the BBC’s Disinformation Unit, now part of BBC Verify. Since before the pandemic, the Disinformation Unit has been a shining example of diligent, tenacious, and deeply skeptical reporting – getting to the bottom of viral health claims, misused statistics, misleading imagery, manipulated videos and dangerous conspiracy theories. In 2022, they documented how the anti-vaccine movement had become more extreme, and how Russian propaganda regarding the invasion of Ukraine spread through conspiracist channels.

Other past Ockham winners include Dr Elizabeth Bik, Dr Natália Pasternak, Professor Edzard Ernst, the European Skeptics Podcast, Say WHY To Drugs podcast, Britt Hermes, and more.

A photograph of the Rusty Razor award: a rusty classic style straight razor encased in plastic with "The Rusty Razor" etched at the bottom.

While we recognise the best in skepticism, our awards are also an opportunity to highlight the danger posed by promoters of pseudoscience with our Rusty Razor award. The Rusty Razor is designed to spotlight individuals or organisations who have been prominent promoters of unscientific ideas within the last year.

Last year’s Rusty Razor went to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which was set up in 2009 by climate change denier Nigel Lawson, and has published influential reports underplaying the threat of climate change. In 2021, GWPF rebranded as “Net Zero Watch”, around the same time that former trustee Steve Baker MP formed the Net Zero Scrutiny Group of MPs, which routinely cites research material from the GWPF as part of their call to water down or roll back policies that would tackle climate change by reducing carbon emissions.

Previous Rusty Razor winners have included Dr Mike Yeadon for his anti-vaccination scaremongering, Dr Didier Raoult for his promotion of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19, Andrew Wakefield for his ongoing promotion of anti-vaxx misinformation, and Gwyneth Paltrow for her pseudoscience-peddling wellness empire, Goop.

One of the most important elements of our awards are that the nominations come from you – the skeptical community. It is that time again, we ask you to tell us who you think deserves to receive the Skeptic of the Year award, and who deserves to receive the Rusty Razor.

Submit your nominations now!

Nominations are open now and will close on September 9th. Winners will be chosen by our editorial board, and they will be announced at QED in Manchester on September 23rd.

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