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 Childrenhas 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.
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.
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 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 Biologistfeatures 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 Geographictells 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.
“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
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
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
A few weeks ago, Panorama did an episode on the apparent dangers of ultra-processed foods. In it, they discuss the purported dangers of artificial sweeteners, with a particular focus on aspartame.
The program talks to Dr Mathilde Touvier, Director of a Nutritional Epidemiology Research Team, and principle investigator on a long cohort study which aims to identify the role of nutritional factors in cancer and CVD morbidity/mortality, aging and quality of life, and to create a comprehensive database covering food and nutrient consumption and eating habits, physical activity and the nutritional status of the population, as well as the surveillance of the evolution of food consumption and dietary behaviours.
Discussing the research, Panorama explained:
Dr Touvier’s findings don’t prove aspartame causes cancer, but they do suggest the more aspartame you consume, the more likely you are to develop cancer as well as other diseases… a working group from [the World Health Organisation’s] International Association of Research on Cancer is meeting to examine aspartame’s possible links to cancer later this month
Aspartame has been around for a while – it was discovered, apparently by accident, in 1965 by James Schlatter, who was looking for a compound to use as part of an experiment to test anti-ulcer medication candidates, but when some of the reagent spilled onto his hand and he (for some reason) licked it off, he noticed how sweet it was. Aspartame is said to be about 200 times sweeter than regular sugar, which means you can use a great deal less of it as a sweetener.
It was subsequently tested for safety and approved as a sweetener in the US by the USFDA. As David Hattan, the then-Acting Director of the Division of Health Effects Evaluation in the United States Food & Drug Administration (USFDA) Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, told Snopes in 2003:
There were well over 100 separate toxicological and clinical studies conducted to establish the safety of aspartame before it was approved for regulatory acceptance. Since its approval in 1981 by the USFDA, there have been many additional studies performed to follow up on some of the more creditable reports of aspartame- mediated adverse effects… the USFDA continues to consider [aspartame] to be among the most thoroughly tested of food additives and that this information continues to confirm the safety of aspartame.
At the time, Hattan was asked about links between aspartame and multiple sclerosis, but science changes as we collect more data, and the IARC have now assessed aspartame for its risk in causing cancer.
The IARC report won’t be available for a couple of weeks, and we can’t evaluate the scientific basis for their conclusion until we can see it, but we do have its conclusion, which has been widely publicised in the media. The Guardian wrote: “Aspartame sweetener to be declared possible cancer risk by WHO, say reports”. Vox headlined their article: “The WHO is about to declare aspartame can cause cancer. Here’s why you should listen.” Meanwhile, The Independent’s headline read: “What is aspartame? The key ingredient in Diet Coke set to be declared ‘possible cancer risk’ by WHO”
Terminology is key, here: particularly as we discuss whether things ‘possibly’, ‘probably’ or ‘definitely’ cause cancer. Those words have very specific meanings in this context.
The IARC has four categories when it assesses something for its cancer causing risk, with category 3 the lowest category. It means that the IARC are unable to determine whether something causes cancer in humans. It’s labelled as “not classifiable as to its carcinogenicity in humans”.
The three other categories say something about carcinogenicity. Category 1 is the category where we know there is definitely a causal relationship between the substance and cancer development in humans. Things in category one are labelled “carcinogenic to humans”. Substances in this category include smoking tobacco, solar radiation, consumption of alcoholic beverages and ionizing radiation.
Category 2A are things labelled “probably carcinogenic to humans” – meaning that there is limited evidence for cancer in humans, but sufficient evidence for cancer in experimental animals. Things in this category include eating red meat, the insecticide DDT, night shift work and emissions from high-temperature frying.
Category 2B are things labelled as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” – so, there is limited evidence of cancer in humans and some evidence in animals, but not sufficient to make any conclusions. Aspartame will sit in this category. We are less sure than we are with red meat or processed meat. Other things in category 2B include engine exhausts, aloe vera, pickled vegetables, and working as a hairdresser or firefighter.
So we have four IARC categories. One is for anything that has insufficient evidence to make any decision. Of the other three, aspartame is in the lowest level of certainty. It’s possible it causes cancer in humans. But it’s not probable, and it’s not definitely not certain. And, remember, the USFDA considers this substance to be one of the most thoroughly tested of all food additives – there have been thousands of studies on aspartame, and yet there is still insufficient evidence to suggest a causal link to cancer.
Equally, the IARC doesn’t say anything at all about dosage – it assesses substances on a binary level. Something either does or does not cause cancer (and the scale of possible/probable where evidence is insufficient). It doesn’t say anything about how much exposure you need to be at risk. That’s where other agencies come in.
The ‘compound’ aspartame is made up of two amino acids, aspartic acid and phenylalanine, that you might expect to encounter in your normal diet. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, and these two amino acids can be found in meats, grains and dairy products. When it comes to the diet, an overabundance of anything can have negative effects, but we know that many foods are perfectly safe in moderation. I see no reason to consider that this would be different for aspartame.
There are plenty of reasons we might see a correlation between high aspartame intake and poor health. We know that our diet can be influenced by a whole range of lifestyle factors, including wealth, which also influence our health. I’ll be interested to see which evidence was used in the IARC’s categorisation of aspartame, and to see if the JECFA reduce the acceptable daily intake when they report this morning, but in the meantime – I’ll be continuing to drink diet coke without concern.
I was taken aback when my mother told me what we paid for my grandfather’s funeral. “I believe the final amount was around $15,000 or more”. $15,000 was no small amount for a single mother with a household of four children and one elderly parent. Yet for my mother, this amount spent was worth it if it meant that my grandfather was peacefully sent off into the afterlife.
When it comes to death, people continue to place an importance on the methods in which they send off their loved ones. Funerals in general are a costly process. On average in Singapore, for a simple cremation or burial, you can expect to pay at least $1,000. But for most, arranging a proper funeral inclusive of sending off rites begins at a minimum of $3,000. One should wonder why we spend so much on a corpse who can no longer appreciate such material rewards.
But before we can delve into the intricacies of Chinese death rituals, it is important to understand the reasoning behind these actions. That is, the belief in the human soul. There is plenty of evidence against the existence of ghosts and spirits, but still, a large part of death-related superstition still runs on the assumption of the existence of the soul and afterlife.
In Taoist beliefs, it is required of living family members to give offerings to the deceased in the form of food, incense, and prayer materials such as joss sticks. The frequency of these offerings, however, can differ for each family.
The Chinese also celebrate a yearly event known as Qing Ming, where families would make trips down to columbariums or graveyards to clean the tablets or graves of their loved ones and ancestors. It is then no wonder that with such a strong belief that the soul is sentient, aware and involved with the living that the Chinese place such importance on keeping the spirits of their ancestors satisfied.
It is not uncommon for people to have prepared for their deaths. In Singapore, one can reserve niches in columbariums or slots in ancestral halls and temples way ahead of their deaths. Oftentimes these are spouses who wish to have their tablets or ashes placed together or next to their loved ones. While the niches would simply remain as a reserved empty slot, tablets that have been reserved are covered with a red cloth and only removed when their owner “moves in”.
Should couples be occupying the same tablet, the name of the living individual will be covered with red tape. It is not uncommon for the living spouse to be recommended this option upon the death of their significant other. My grandmother was more than willing to have her name pre-carved on the stone and covered with that very red tape, as morbid as it might seem.
“For her, death is something natural that would happen sooner or later, and she would want to rest next to someone she loves the most”, my mother explained.
In Singapore, such reservations are often due to a lack of space. Public niches typically cost at least $500 for a random location, with an additional $250 if one wishes to pick a comfortable location for their ashes to rest. For the more religious, private columbariums catered for specific religions offer niches that start at $2,000, and rise to a whopping $10,000. That’s definitely something to consider when planning for post-retirement.
But death is often an uninvited guest, and visits most unexpectedly. In organising the funeral of a late loved one, there are many factors that family members must take note of. The majority of Chinese in Singapore are either Taoist or Buddhist, which would then determine the type of rites and religious figures they are to hire. Various types of rites have different costs, depending on the nature of one’s death. This is especially so for unnatural deaths.
In Singapore, funerals are often held below apartment blocks in the void decks, or at funeral parlors. Chinese funerals mostly follow the same structure; before the coffin there will be the picture of the deceased placed on a table in front of an altar with lit joss sticks and food offerings. Historically, the family would take part in rituals of cleaning and dressing the body before its placement into the coffin, but today this task is mostly performed by undertaking firms.
Before a funeral is opened for visiting by the deceased’s friends, acquaintances and extended relatives, the family must conduct several rituals, to ensure that the soul and body of the deceased is ready for the visiting. Once the body has been prepared by the undertaker, it will be brought and placed into the coffin. During this process, none of the family members are allowed to look at the body. It is believed that this process helps the spirit to move on as they will not feel guilty or unwilling to part with their family members. Then, the eldest son will kneel before the altar table and bow three times in prayer, this process will then be mirrored by the rest of the immediate family in the order of their age.
Usually Chinese funerals last for at least two days, or as much as a week, in which visitation will be open to the deceased’s acquaintances and relatives. During this period of time, hired monks or priests will conduct prayer rituals which mainly consist of the reading of scriptures. Guests may choose to partake in these rituals along with the family members if their religion allows. The chanted scriptures would usually call for repentance of the deceased’s sins, in hopes that they will have a smoother journey through hell. The ritual would function similarly to the pre-funeral ritual, where family members line up with joss sticks in hand and bow in accordance to the monk’s or priest’s instructions. For Taoists, incense paper and offerings will be burnt as well, each of them available in a package, at no small cost. The prayers can last from thirty minutes to over an hour, and the process of kneeling, standing and walking in circles repeatedly would be very draining for the less fit.
On the final day of the funeral, there will be a funeral procession held as the coffin is transferred into the undertaker’s van which will bring it to the cremation centre. The coffin is closed, and no one is allowed to look at the coffin except the undertakers, as it is believed that if one were to look into a closing coffin their soul will be trapped within it. Following which the lead priest or monk will officiate the sending-off ceremony as the bereaved family follows suit behind the van in a procession to officially send off the deceased. This process may or may not be accompanied by Taoist musicians or Buddhist flutes played by monks. Afterwards the family will arrange for transport to take them to the crematorium, where they will say their final farewells.
It is interesting to note that while the majority of death related superstitions apply mostly to the deceased’s immediate family, guests who are visiting are also subject to certain rules that they are obliged to follow to prevent misfortune from befalling upon themselves. To begin with, as a funeral guest you should only dress in dull and dark colours to reflect the act of mourning. Dressing in bright colours is indicative of celebration, and would be an insult to the bereaved family should guests show up wearing something red. You are also obliged to offer condolence money, similar to how you would offer congratulatory money at a wedding. These amounts would go to the costs of the funeral.
Guests leaving the funeral would be required to have a red string tied around their finger, which should fall off or be removed before stepping into their own homes. Buddhist funerals may also have a small sink or pool where guests can wash their arms and face to rid themselves of the negative energy surrounding the funeral. It is believed that doing this would prevent evil spirits drawn by the negative energies of the funeral from following one home.
Much of these superstitions stem from Chinese geomancy and beliefs in yin and yang energy, although it is much more likely that these superstitions are practiced as a form of self-comforting. Almost no one ever feels pleasant after attending a funeral.
Chinese superstitions around death do not just stop once the body has been cremated. For a period lasting approximately a year, or sometimes even two, the family has to follow certain customs strictly in order to avoid incurring misfortune on themselves or angering the spirits.
On the seventh day, it is believed that the spirit of the deceased will return to their familial home, and the family is obligated to cook a full course meal for the spirit as a form of respect. Joss sticks must be left at the door of the house to signal to the spirit where their home is located. It is also believed that if one were to spread flour over the floor, they would see footprints the next day, as proof that the spirit had returned. Aside from that, there would be no physical evidence of a spirit having actually visited. Some claim to have dreamt of their deceased loved ones, yet it is much more likely to chalk it up to a trick of the human mind.
I asked my mother about this practice, and she told me she would rather be ignorant as to whether or not the spirit of my grandfather had indeed returned home.
Subsequently, for the next forty-nine to one hundred days the family is not allowed to wear brightly coloured clothes, to signify that they are still in mourning (Singapore Funeral Group, n.d.). For the next year, they are not allowed to participate in Lunar New Year celebrations and must refrain from visitations during that period as a form of respect to the deceased.
This dedication to the late family members of the Chinese is admirable, yet for the living, it may become taxing to continuously maintain the upkeep of the dead. To start off, food offerings made to the dead are strictly not to be eaten. That means that a good amount of food is thrown away simply because of superstitious beliefs. Much money and effort is spent cooking a meal only to offer it to a tablet, stone niche or simply even a picture that cannot consume and appreciate its flavour.
Incense that is burnt at the funeral and during festivals such as the Hungry Ghost Festival can also be considered frivolous spending. Religious meaning aside, incense burning can be simply put as buying paper to burn it. The action in itself feels rather ludicrous and meaningless without context. Furthermore, an individual’s lifestyle is heavily affected by another’s death as they prevent themselves from celebrations and wearing certain clothing due to superstition. One’s wardrobe is severely limited during the period of mourning.
This then begs the question of who these superstitions are really for. The rites and post-funeral rituals carried out by family members with the idea of allowing their deceased loved one to have a more comfortable afterlife can be seen as a form of dealing with death. Imagining the existence of a spirit that lives on after death is comforting for some in overcoming their grief. Carrying out repeated rituals has been proven to be psychologically comforting to those who have experienced sudden changes in their lives as it creates a safe bubble for family members for them to come to terms with their loss. If we were to put ourselves in the shoes of the bereaved, as I had been once upon a time, spending this great amount of money and resources on a dead person may not be so frivolous after all. Religion, after all, can be a source of comfort for the vulnerable. If one believes in having a grand send-off to honour and say goodbye to their loved one, while at the same time bringing themselves a sense of closure, then what they choose to do with their energy and money is not for to us to judge.
In conclusion, we should take superstitions with a pinch of salt. Death, as elusive a topic as it already is, causes people to think and act irrationally when it takes their loved ones. While the religious beliefs and practices of funerals and post death rituals take a physical and financial toll on the individual, they no doubt bring a piece of mind to the grieving.
In essence, if you can afford it and it makes you feel better, why not have that grand farewell for someone you love. To some, funerals and funerary rites may seem like getting rid of a body with extra steps, but to the bereaved family, it may be like a twenty-one gun salute to a beloved family member.
Imagine that you are a willing participant in a study. In this study, you are shown the photo of a man. You are given his name and credentials in the field of meteorology, and the credentials are impressive. You are asked to rate this man’s expertise from low to high on the subject of climate change. Without knowing his specific credentials, how do you imagine you might answer the question?
In the next stage of the study you are then given his scientific opinion on climate change, and find that he is dismissive of the idea that humans are causing the rise in global temperatures. You are then asked to rate his expertise again. Would your rating change?
Now imagine that you are placed in the other group that is being tested. You are shown the same photo and given the same list of credentials, and of course you give the same rating for the man’s expertise. The next step is different, you are given his scientific opinion but this time the opinion supports the idea that humans have caused the rise in global temperatures. This time around, would your rating of his expertise change?
When this study was conducted by Dan Kahan, who was exploring the Political Motivated Reasoning Paradigm (PMRP), whether people’s opinion of this man’s expertise changed or not depended on their political ideology. Liberals were more likely to lower their rating of his scientific credibility when he dismissed global warming, and conservatives lowered their rating when he expressed support for the idea. This study shows that more important than someone’s expertise is whether their perspectives align with our own.
The study illustrates that we tend to look for the data that supports our beliefs, and dismiss the rest. This is known as Confirmation Bias, which is well known among those who value a skeptical mindset. It is very easy to find Confirmation Bias in the arguments of others, but very difficult to recognise it in our own views.
Return to the study and your opinion of the expert. If your opinion of his expertise did not change once you learned that his opinion contradicted your own, you resisted the completely natural impulse to dismiss information that contradicts your belief. On the other hand, if your opinion of his expertise changed, you are a victim of your own Confirmation Bias. At this moment, you might want to consider whether you are proud of yourself for your impartiality, or whether you justified your shift in opinion with a comment that starts with something like, “Yeah, but he was wrong because the science shows…”
Debates of changing temperatures fall into a category of topics that we cannot explain by personal experience. We can’t look out the window and point at climate change. We might be able to point to an effect of climate change, but that is a faulty premise for an argument. All your opponent needs to do is point to a regional weather pattern that counters your experience and your argument flounders. Convincing a person from Iowa that the drought in India is caused by climate change as they watch their town disappear under the Mississippi River is a tough message to sell because it does not fit with their experience.
That one winter which was incredibly harsh in your neighbourhood also saw record high temperatures somewhere else. That one summer that had the highest number of hurricanes on record was followed by 4 years of normal hurricane seasons. When we discuss climate, we must remove our personal experience and look at the data across the entire globe, and spanning many decades. Our personal experience does not prove that humans cause a rise in global temperature, the data does.
The separation by distance or time can diminish the sense of urgency that an issue weighs on us. We may understand the problem intellectually, but we don’t feel pressured to act. The further we are removed from an issue, the harder it is to respond to the issue. To express it more simply, emotional response is proportional to proximity.
Most people are moved by feelings, not facts. Motivation is an emotional driver. It is difficult to feel an emotional response to an abstract issue like climate change. Other issues that fall in this category are famine or war on the other side of the world (separated by distance), and the loss of fossil fuels in the future (separated by time), and recycling (we assume the soda bottle that we put in the bin is being repurposed, while in reality it often ends up in landfills in some other country). This is why those trying to earn your donations will show images or tell stories of a victim. They attempt to personalise the suffering and bring it closer to you, so you will have an emotional response.
If you are old enough and lived in the US, you may remember the Save The Children commercials with Sally Struthers who informed you that for $1.38 per day, you could have a profound impact on a particular impoverished child. This commercial, and others like it, attempted to humanise the problem by giving it a face. Not only is the problem given a face, but you are given the opportunity to help a particular, specific child with an inconsequentially small amount of money (when it is broken down into daily amounts). Other programs allow you to send a goat to a village, or purchase a decorated gourd made by an indigenous artisan.
This emotional disconnect to certain problems are, in a way, the opposite issue of Confirmation Bias – which itself is nothing more than an emotional reaction that should be suppressed. Confirmation Bias is an emotional response to an intellectual challenge. When Confirmation Bias influences our mindset, evidence loses relevance. When Confirmation Bias is in play, the most important thing is how the information fits our existing worldview, not how accurate it is. We irrationally defend perspectives that align with our worldview and dismiss perspectives that contradict.
Remember the original study of the scientist whose expertise diminished when he contradicted participant’s views? The facts did not change, the emotions changed.
When someone presents information to you, how quickly do you assimilate or dismiss it? As soon as you determine whether it aligns with your existing beliefs or after you have been presented with the facts? Are you willing to dispassionately hear information that contradicts something that you take as fact or is your mind made up? How deep does your Confirmation Bias go?
On the 28th of October 1943, at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic, a strange, top-secret experiment took place in the US Navy docks in Philadelphia. What was about to be tested would turn the tide of a war that had cost 45 Allied ships in January of that year alone. Called Project Rainbow, Dr Franklin Reno intended to use the physics of Einstein’s Unified Field Theory to surround a ship with a special force-field that would render the ship invisible to radar. The subject of the experiment was to be the USS Eldridge, a Cannon-class destroyer of 1,600 tons, with a crew of 216 officers and men. The ship had only been launched in July of that year and had yet to see active service.
Along with navy personnel on other ships and stevedores on the dockside, various top brass looked on expectantly while the boffins fired up their strange machinery. But, when the test began, the ship suddenly began to glow bright green before completely disappearing in front of the disbelieving eyes of hundreds of incredulous witnesses.
Subsequent reports stated that within moments of its vanishing, the ship materialised briefly in the Norfolk Navy Yard, 100’s of miles from Philadelphia. At the same time, two sailors from the ship appeared mysteriously in a harbourside bar where they were well known, before once again vanishing in the middle of a bar-room brawl. And when the ship finally re-appeared four hours later in the harbour at Philadelphia, some sailors were horrifically fused within the metal structure. Many crewmen had been driven insane by the phenomena. Some vanished completely and were never seen again. Others seemed to be fading in and out of sight, as though caught between two dimensions.
Wrist watches on the crew and the ship’s clocks were all 10 minutes out of sync with the actual time, seeming to indicate they had somehow travelled through a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff.
The US Government and the Navy, fearing a huge scandal in the middle of WW2, had little choice but to cover-up the whole thing. Many of the more vociferous witnesses died under mysterious circumstances or were transferred to more dangerous out-of-the-way assignments that would likely result in their deaths in combat. Other crewmembers were subject to brainwashing and memory-wiping procedures.
But, despite the Navy’s efforts in silencing witnesses, after the war the story started to leak out.
In 1979, infamous paranormal peddler Charles Berlitz (the writer whose books popularised the Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis and Rosewell ‘mysteries’) wrote the definitive book on the subject. Berlitz had included a chapter on the experiment in his 1977 book on the Bermuda Triangle – Without a Trace: New Information From the Triangle – which was largely based on Gaddis’s initial account. His later book, written with William L Moore and simply called The Philadelphia Experiment, expanded on the events and brought to light many of the more outlandish stories.
In 1984 Hollywood even made a relatively successful Sci-Fi film, and in 2014, a not so successful film. Throughout this time, the US government has continued to deny the experiment ever took place, despite the film, many accounts, books and continued interest in the story.
One story often overlooked is the 1978 fictional novelThin Air, by George Simpson and Neal Burger. The synopsis of the book bears some strange similarities to Berlitz’s account released the following year:
At the war’s end, the men of the USS Sturman were ordered to join hands on the ship’s deck, ignorant pawns in a top-secret Navy experiment.
An alarm sounded. A humming began. Moments later a common surge of desperate, disoriented terror was felt by every crewman as they watched the ship beneath them, and finally their own bodies, disappear into thin air.
Now, after more than 25 years, a man wakes up screaming from a nightmare having “something to do with the Navy…” Another, hopelessly insane, draws, in a childish scrawl, pictures of figures holding hands…
And Naval investigator Nicholas Hammond scratches at the iceberg tip of a complex network of cover-up and deceit, hiding a scientific breakthrough that could save the world…or destroy it.
As skeptics, it all seems extremely implausible. 1,600-ton ships do not just dematerialise, no matter what experiments 1940’s scientists were capable of. But what really took place?
The truth, as is often the case, is rather mundane.
In 1955, Ufologist writer Morris K Jessop, published The Case for the UFO. Jessop received a letter shortly after publication from one Carlos Allende, detailing some of the events in 1943, claiming to have been a witness. Jessop asked for evidence, but in subsequent correspondence – Allende now calling himself Carl M Allen – did not offer any real details, so Jessop dismissed it as hoax.
Two years later, Jessop received a parcel from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in Washington. Inside was his book, with handwritten annotations in three ink colours, all detailing some of the supposed events of the experiment, alongside strange suppositions about aliens and other dimensions. The notes were allegedly written by two interstellar travellers. Jessop recognised the handwriting as Allende/Allen’s.
Some less-skeptical officers from the ONR subsequently published the book – complete with notations – and Allende/Allen’s letters. It is still available as the Vero Edition of Jessop’s book.
For several years, Allende/Allen would write to many UFO writers telling his elaborate tales of time-travel, alien contact and UFO propulsion systems, as well as some features of events in Philadelphia he had witnessed as a US Marine.
From these unlikely beginnings, like so many paranormal claims swilling about the 1960’s and 70’s, the story got legs. The Vero edition likely formed the basis for Gaddis’s book, which, alongside the fictional Thin Air, gave rise to Berlitz’s book. Add in the movies, and claimed accounts of supposed witnesses on the internet, and you can see how it creates conjecture upon addition upon made-up nonsense.
There were many poorly researched unexplained strange tales books and articles which included UFOs, ancient aliens, the Bermuda Triangle, Nazca Lines and, of course, The Philadelphia Experiment, written in the 70’s and 80’s. Writers like Berlitz, Erich Von Daniken, Zecharia Sitchin, and Robert K. G. Temple outdid each other in finding mysteries to add to their books, resulting in stories like this becoming accepted as having some basis in fact, despite being utterly ridiculous.
The truth is, the Eldridge was nowhere near Philadelphia in Oct 1943: her contemporary logs show she was undergoing sea trials with her newly formed crew, most of whom saw the war out unscathed, and went on to live unremarkable lives. The Ship itself had a successful life escorting convoys in the Mediterranean, before being sold to the Greek Navy in 1951, and renamed the Leon. Eventually it was scrapped in 1999.
