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Going cashless may be the future, but we can’t afford to leave vulnerable people behind

Alif Yahya
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Going cashless may be the future, but we can’t afford to leave vulnerable people behind

Two Mondays ago, I went to McDonald’s to grab a mcGriddle before I head to my university class. I was greeted by their cashier who seemed to be resting one arm on the counter as she pointed me to one of the ordering kiosks, expecting me to make my order there instead. She seemed uninterested in taking orders from anyone, her job was to simply direct customers to make their orders from the kiosk.

Then, an elderly lady, about 70 years old, walked in, and told the cashier that she wanted a Fillet O’Fish burger. Unsurprisingly, she was told to make her order on the kiosk too. As she made her way to the kiosk, I noticed how distressed she looked. She was touching the screen aimlessly, making orders that I could tell she did not intent to make. As I peered at her screen, her order was: 3 cups of Iced Milo (Upsized), 4 Sausage McMuffins and even a cheeky little New York cheesecake, which came to a whopping $42.

What saddened me was she told me that she only had $10.00, and that money came from selling tissues from the roadside for 3 days. Even so, she still felt compelled to pay for that unintended amount, probably because she presumed that she had already made that order. Worse, she thought the kiosk was a vending machine, taking out her $10.00 before spending a minute anxiously looking for a cash-slot. She did not know that paying at the kiosk would require cashless methods such as a credit or debit card.

As I helped her make her order, I could not help but feel miserable for people in her situation, how this technological shift to cashless modes of payment could leave them confused and lost in an increasingly advanced society like Singapore, which has been heading for a cashless society in recent years. In 2018, the Monetary Authority of Singapore announced that Singapore will be aiming to eliminate the use of cash and cheques by 2025. This has, unsurprisingly, raised a few eyebrows (A Cashless Future?, 2020)

Ever since then, Singapore’s nationwide e-payments service, PayNow, has had a total of 4.6 million registrations, encapsulating nearly 80% of Singapore’s entire population. Similarly, QR payments have also seen an increase in popularity with 200,000 merchants choosing to adopt them as their preferred transaction method. This rise is mainly attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, where the push for cashless forms of payments were emphasized heavily by the government as the most hygienic option (Ang, 2021) .

Cashless payments have been with us for a while now – 25 years to be exact (LightNet, 2018). If we were to look into their purpose, we would understand that they were brought in to enhance convenience in an increasingly technocratic society.

There are several benefits for many Singaporeans, should Singapore go entirely cashless. The first benefit is convenience: it would be easier to make payments electronically. It reduces the hassle of us having to pull out our wallets, count our money, and hand over cash wondering if it is enough. Equally, transaction speed will be improved for businesses. Secondly, going cashless is safer. It reduces the probability of cash-related crimes such as robbery and stealing. Lastly, as mentioned, the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed governments to move to cashless payments to minimise physical contact and possible virus transmission.

Nur Zhafirin Bin Azhar, a banking analyst from DBS Bank, describes how a cashless society promotes efficiency and convenience:

Last time we may have encountered the issue of not having enough money in our wallets and scrambling to find an ATM but with a cashless system, this issue is solved. For the merchants themselves, they would not have to store physical cash in their stores which improves security and also easier on merchants for bookkeeping and accounting. It is a good step forward.

He also mentioned it is important for us to consider other layers of society, should Singapore moves to a cashless society:

There will be people who will struggle in a fully cashless society. The first group of people that comes to mind would be the elderly who are not tech savvy. However, I believe that the government will take extra steps to ensure that the transition to a cashless society would be smooth and efficient for everyone.

It’s clear that a Cashless Society is useful, but not for everyone. All the marketing in the world would not be able to convince every single person to adopt cashless payments. A sudden change to eliminate cash on hand will take a long time in getting used to, because we are so used to seeing cash every single day.

A cashless society would also primarily benefit privileged and tech-savvy citizens. To eliminate traditional forms of payment in Singapore would leave other layers of society in the lurch – particularly the poor and the elderly.

To understand the impact a cashless society would have to the poor, we need to understand the income inequality situation in Singapore. As of 2020, Singapore’s Gini Coefficient is at 0.398, an encouraging sign considering that a number above 0.4 indicates a widened income gap (Ho, 2020). As positive as it seems, the bigger concern here is that Singapore’s income disparity is at its highest since 2009. Singapore also has the second highest income gap in Asia (Poverty In Singapore, n.d.).

This suggests that as Singapore continues to advance further into the future, the rich will get richer and the poor will only get poorer. The adoption of new technology will result in a larger income gap, as the privileged continue to upskill themselves and adapt to new technological changes. Conversely, the poor could become less productive, as they lack the resources and opportunities to keep up with new advancements. This would be reflected in the wage disparity between these two groups (Lim, 2013).

Person holding a debit card

In the context of a cashless society, the poor will eventually be unable to adapt to cashless modes of payments, given the significant barriers to entry. Let us take digital currencies for example. If there comes a day when cryptocurrency becomes a central mode of payment for societies, a user would need a high functioning mobile device to access their digital wallets to make payments. This would be such a struggle for the poor in Singapore, who typically make less than $805 each month to get by (Poverty In Singapore, n.d.). They may not even be able to afford a basic smartphone for cashless payments, should Singapore go cashless one day.

Another group of people that could feel out of place in a cashless society would be the elderly, who can struggle to adopt new technology, and may struggle to adapt to up-to-date devices used in a cashless society. As our bodies age, people can face visual and hearing impairments. Studies show that 23% of our elderly faced physical disabilities that has caused to struggle with simple tasks such as reading (Smith, 2014). It’s reasonable to believe that, without significant efforts to improve accessibility, our elderly would face difficulties in using smart devices.

We have to understand the use and advancement of digital technology is way ahead of their time. Smart phones let alone touchscreen phones do not exist until early 2000s and it was a huge hit then among the younger generation (“The History of Mobile Apps,” 2019) before becoming more functional by introducing online payment applications.

The ethics of going cashless

Understanding whether Singapore should go fully digital and cashless one day is actually a question of societal ethics. Taking various ethical theories into question, going cashless should be considered based on utilitarianism, since it would benefit the majority in Singaporeans.

However, in the context of a governing society, duty-based ethics, or deontology, is perhaps a more fitting ethical model, considering the government holds a duty to every single Singaporean. It is eventually the duty of the government to do things the right way, and not just what is favourable to the majority of people in society (Hussain, 2014).  

At the end of the day, is important to ensure that a cashless society does not leave anyone in the lurch. If a cashless society benefits and improves the quality of life of everyone, including the elderly and the poor, there would be no harm pushing for it one day. However, until then, Singaporeans might not need a cashless society when we are still comfortable with traditional modes of cash payments.

Technological advances are inevitable, it is part of human evolution to recreate and devise products that could improve their lives. There will be those who will say that it is the sole responsibility of the poor and the elderly to learn and keep up with evolving times and it is not the obligation of others to help them transit to a cashless society. However, for a society to progress, everyone should help one another to move forward together. It may not be an obligation, but it is a sign that even a cashless society could still be a united society filled with kindness and togetherness.

By the time the young people of today have gown old, technology will be far more advanced than we can imagine. ePayments would be different too, perhaps integrating the use of cryptocurrencies and cloud platforms as the main form of payment in Singapore. Some of us may be able to adapt to these advancements, but many of us will not. The frustration we could be facing then, will be the same frustration that our elderly face today.

Some of us may be poor one day, too. We could feel lost, seeing how everyone around us have the latest gadgets to use in a cashless society. We may not be able to afford anything in a cashless society, as we may have zero dollars in our digital wallets. It could be us one day. Only then would we realise that as useful as a cashless society may be eventually, it won’t be useful until it is accessible to all of us.

References

  • A Cashless Future? Exploring the Benefits and Disadvantages of a Cashless Society for Singaporeans. (2020, June 7). https://blog.seedly.sg/cashless-society-singapore/
  • Ang, P. (2021, February 27). Budget debate: E-payments on the rise but Singapore does not aim to be a cashless society, says Ong Ye Kung [Text]. The Straits Times. https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/e-payments-on-the-rise-but-singapore-does-not-aim-to-be-a-cashless-society-ong-ye-kung
  • Ho, G. (2020, 27). Singapore sees rising incomes, falling inequality [Text]. The Straits Times. https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/singapore-sees-rising-incomes-falling-inequality
  • Hussain, A. (2014, March 29). Govt ‘will do what’s right, not what’s popular.’ TODAYonline. https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/govt-will-do-whats-right-not-whats-popular
  • LightNet. (2018, December 17). History of Cashless Payments. Medium. https://medium.com/@FOTONBANK/history-of-cashless-payments-ae59d84ca736
  • Lim, L. (2013, September 30). Being poor is more than having too little money. AsiaOne. https://www.asiaone.com/singapore/being-poor-more-having-too-little-money
  • Poverty In Singapore. (n.d.). The Borgen Project. Retrieved April 5, 2021, from https://borgenproject.org/tag/poverty-in-singapore/
  • Smith, A. (2014, March 4). Older Adults and Technology Use. Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2014/04/03/older-adults-and-technology-use/
  • The History of Mobile Apps. (2019, April 3). Inventionland. https://inventionland.com/inventing/the-history-of-mobile-apps/
  • Toh, E. M. (2017, July 28). The Big Read: Feeling lost in a digital world, some elderly shun technology. TODAYonline. https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/big-read-feeling-lost-digital-world-some-elderly-shun-technology

The UK’s plan to please India by promoting Ayurvedic medicine puts politics ahead of science

Edzard Ernst
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The UK’s plan to please India by promoting Ayurvedic medicine puts politics ahead of science

It has been widely reported that, in order not to jeopardise our trade deal with India, Boris Johnson failed to close the border quick enough for preventing the delta variant entering Britain. The consequences were devastating. Now our government is about to please Modi again. The “2030 Roadmap for India-UK future relations” is a policy document of the UK government. In it, we find that the UK government intends to:

Explore cooperation on research into Ayurveda and promote yoga in the UK. Increase opportunities for generic medicine supply from India to the UK by seeking access for Indian pharma products to the NHS and recognition of Indian generic and Ayurvedic medicines that meet UK regulatory standards.

This begs the question, are these plans good or bad for UK public health?

Ayurveda is a system of healthcare developed in India around the mid-first millennium BCE. Ayurvedic medicine involves a range of techniques, including meditation, physical exercises, nutrition, relaxation, massage, and medication. Ayurvedic medicine thrives for balance and claims that the suppression of natural urges leads to illness. Emphasis is placed on moderation. Ayurvedic medicines are extremely varied. They usually are mixtures of multiple ingredients and can consist of plants, animal products, and minerals.

Relatively few studies of Ayurvedic remedies exist and most are methodologically weak. A Cochrane review, for instance, concluded that

although there were significant glucose-lowering effects with the use of some herbal mixtures, due to methodological deficiencies and small sample sizes we are unable to draw any definite conclusions regarding their efficacy. Though no significant adverse events were reported, there is insufficient evidence at present to recommend the use of these interventions in routine clinical practice and further studies are needed.

The efficacy of Ayurvedic remedies obviously depends on the exact nature of the ingredients. Generalizations are therefore problematic. Promising findings exist for a relatively small number of ingredients, including Boswellia, Frankincense, Andrographis paniculata. Caution is, however, indicated: Ayurvedic remedies often contain toxic substances, such as heavy metals which are deliberately added in the ancient belief that they can have positive health effects. The truth, however, is that they can cause serious adverse effects.

Man doing yoga

Yoga has been defined in several different ways in the various Indian philosophical and religious traditions. From the perspective of alternative medicine, it is a practice of gentle stretching exercises, breathing control, meditation, and lifestyles. The aim is to strengthen ‘prana’, the vital force as understood in traditional Indian medicine. Thus, it is claimed to be helpful for most conditions affecting mankind. Most people who practice yoga in the West practise ‘Hatha yoga’, which includes postural exercises (asanas), breath control (pranayama), and meditation (dhyana). It is claimed that these techniques bring an individual to a state of perfect health, stillness, and heightened awareness. Other alleged benefits of regular yoga practice include suppleness, muscular strength, feelings of well-being, reduction of sympathetic drive, pain control, and longevity. Yogic breathing exercises are said to reduce muscular spasms, expand available lung capacity and thus alleviate the symptoms of asthma and other respiratory conditions.

There have been numerous clinical trials of various yoga techniques. They tend to suffer from poor study design and incomplete reporting. Their results are therefore not always reliable. Several systematic reviews have summarised the findings of these studies. An overview included 21 systematic reviews relating to a wide range of conditions. Nine systematic reviews arrived at positive conclusions, but many were associated with a high risk of bias. Unanimously positive evidence emerged only for depression and cardiovascular risk reduction (Ernst E, Lee MS: Focus on Alternative and Complementary Therapies Volume 15(4) December 2010 274–27).

Yoga is generally considered to be safe. However, the only large-scale survey specifically addressing the question of adverse effects found that:

approximately 30% of yoga class attendees had experienced some type of adverse event. Although the majority had mild symptoms, the survey results indicated that attendees with chronic diseases were more likely to experience adverse events associated with their disease. Therefore, special attention is necessary when yoga is introduced to patients with stress-related, chronic diseases. 

So, should we be pleased about the UK government’s plan to promote Ayurveda and yoga? In view of the mixed and inconclusive evidence, I feel that a cautious approach would be needed. Research into these subjects could be a good idea, particularly if it were aimed at finding out what the exact risks are. Whole-sale integration does not, however, seem prudent at this stage.

In other words, it would be wise to first find out what generates more good than harm for which conditions and subsequently consider adopting those elements that fulfil this vital criterium. Yet, I doubt that things will pan out like this. More likely, political interests will again outweigh scientific caution. I just hope that the consequences are not as bad as the failure to close our borders in time.

Inside the White Rose: The Covid conspiracy graffiti group operating on your doorstep

Michael Marshall
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Inside the White Rose: The Covid conspiracy graffiti group operating on your doorstep

Back in April, during the height of the second lockdown, anyone taking their government-permitted recreational stroll along the river in Liverpool might have been surprised to see every other lamppost adorned with cheaply-produced stickers calling into question the legitimacy of the pandemic.

  • Sticker on a lamppost: line drawing of a smiling man “In a real pandemic…people wouldn’t be arguing over whether it’s real or not” – white text with a black outline on a white background.
  • Sticker on a lamppost: “I hope you’re enjoying week 271 of three weeks to flatten the curve” - black text on a white background
  • Two stickers on a post: Top: “According to the government the vaccine doesn’t prevent transmission of the virus but vaccine passports will. Ever get the feeling you’re being played?” - black text on a white background. Bottom: line drawing of a woman holding a smashed TV and a hammer “And just like that…Lttle Susie cured the worst virus of all time”

It might have been easy to write off the stickers – with their claims that the global pandemic is merely a confection by the UK government in order to curb civil liberties – as merely another case of the “cosmic scouser” phenomenon, except these stickers had been popping up in cities around the UK, and indeed across the globe.

The stickers, it transpired, were part of a concerted Covid denialist movement intent on getting the world to “wake up” and recognise the reality: that COVID-19 is a hoax, that masks are unnecessary and potentially dangerous, and that vaccines are a cynical attempt to control the population.

By plastering their messages in public places, the White Rose aimed to capitalise on the frustrations felt by many during the lockdown, in an attempt to recruit them to a conspiracist cause. Each sticker included a link, and sometimes even a QR code, taking the viewer to the White Rose channel on the secure messaging app Telegram, where more ‘information’ about Covid could be found.

The White Rose are not the first organisation to come up with the idea of using covert graffiti as method of distributing protest material, and in fact the current group take their name from a non-violent resistance group which operated in Nazi Germany. The organisation, which was led by a group of students from the University of Munich, including Sophie Scholl, Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell, conducted an anonymous leaflet campaign calling for active opposition to the Nazis, until the leaders of the group were discovered and executed in 1943.

The implication is clear and deliberate: to the members of the modern day White Rose telegram group, they are standing up to the fascist tyranny of pandemic control measures, and those who call for social distancing and mask wearing are the modern day Nazis.

While it’s not unusual to see examples of online conspiracy theory activism – from flooding social media accounts with messages to co-opting existing campaigns and subverting their meaning in favour of conspiracist interpretations – it’s rarer to see these decentralised tactics at play in the real world, and for that reason the White Rose are worthy of more attention and investigation than most online movements.

Which is why, a couple of months ago, I decided to join the White Rose channel on Telegram, to understand what is driving the growth of the movement and the proliferation of their conspiracy propaganda in the real world. In future posts, I intend to highlight the process of radicalisation I witnessed within those channels, but for now it’s best we focus on the entry point into the White Rose world: those stickers on lampposts.

Periodically in the Telegram channel, sometimes multiple times per hour, an admin posts White Rose stickers found in the wild in locations across the globe, with each post an opportunity to share the latest zip file of sticker artwork, along with advice on how to get started (in case you’re wondering, the conspiracy theorist label printer of choice is the Brother QL-810W – the subsequent increased sales in that particular printer raises the distinct possibility that the group behind the pandemic and profiting from it might well be big Brother). When I first came across the sticker archive, there were 230 different stickers available, my favourites of which can be collected into several categories or themes.

‘There is no virus’

This category stickers, broadly speaking, posit that Sars-CoV-2 is a fictional virus, that the resulting COVID-19 disease is a fictional condition, and that the pandemic simply isn’t real. For instance, there’s the claim that it’s all just an act of psychological warfare by “your own government”:

"There is no pandemic: Your own government is waging psychological warfare on you" - black text on a white background

Which, of course, to be true would have to apply to all governments, as the pandemic has been accepted as real by every government on earth.

There is the claim that the pandemic can’t be real, because if it were real there wouldn’t be groups like the White Rose doubting the existence of a pandemic:

  • "If it weren't for the fabricated statistics, mandatory face masks and 24/7 media fear mongering, you'd have no idea there's a deadly "pandemic" going on" - black text on a white background
  • Line drawing of a man in a suit smiling: "Imagine, if you will, a pandemic so deadly... It stops existing when you switch off your TV" - white text with a black outline on a white background
  • "A genuinely deadly pandemic wouldn't require a 24/7 government and corporate media fear mongering campaign to make you believe it's real" - black text on a white background

“I must be right, because if I wasn’t right, I’d have to be an idiot to be doing this” is not quite the gotcha I think the White Rose and their members would like to think it is.

There’s the plenty of messaging that misunderstands the nature of asymptomatic transmission:

"Imagine doing all this for a virus so deadly you have to be tested to even know if you have it" - black text on a white background

A popular belief from the Covid conspiracy movement has been that there is no example in history of a virus capable of asymptomatic transmission – despite plenty of examples, including HIV, HPV and (infamously, for Mary Mallon) Typhoid. However, when you dispute this readily-accepted point in epidemiology, you have little place to go, which is why the White Rose repeatedly spreads the message that if you don’t currently have symptoms, you must be healthy and free from any disease:

  • Line drawing of a doctor: "Repeat after me: you cannot infect people with a disease you do not have"
  • "The idea that healthy people are endangering others simply by breathing is the biggest scam in the history of the world" - black text on a white background

Naturally, given the tone of the White Rose content, the conversation quickly moves to vaccines, including claims like:

"Imagine a vaccine so safe you have to be blackmailed into taking it, for a virus so deadly you have to be tested to even know you have it" - black text on a white background

This was a particularly interesting example to see in the sticker pack, given that nobody in the UK has been offered any incentives to take the vaccine (unlike in parts of the US). What’s more, at that time these stickers were being seen in the wild, many people couldn’t possibly get the vaccine, given the rollout by ages in the UK meant they were ineligible.

As you scroll through the White Rose stickers, it’s hard not to get the impression that the vast majority of their pandemic information comes from fictional depictions of plagues, leading to this kind of message:

"A massive thank you to the unsung heroes who clear the piles of dead bodies from the streets each night" - black text on a white background

Obviously, COVID-19 is not a disease which causes people to collapse and die en masse in the middle of the street, and the reason the streets aren’t lined with dead bodies is, in part, due to the very social distancing measures and lockdown the White Rose group was set up in response to. In effect, the argument is often “if my house really was on fire, how come so many parts of it are wet?”, failing to make a causal connection to the presence of a fire engine.

And finally in this “the pandemic isn’t real” section we get our first hint as to what the real agenda is:

Left: "2020: Anyone claiming there's a plan to implement vaccine passports is a conspiracy theorist and their dangerous misinformation must be stopped!" Right: "2021: Anyone opposed to vaccine passports is a conspiracy theorist and their dangerous misinformation must be stopped!" black text on a white background

Vaccine passports remain controversial and widely opposed even in 2021, but it’s worth bearing in mind that the between January 2020 and January 2021 a lot changed in the world – a pandemic happened, for example.

Black and white line drawing of a man wearing a suit, he's holding his hand to his mouth as if shouting. "Vaccine passports were not created to end the pandemic. The pandemic was created so that vaccine passports could be introduced" - white text with black outline on white background

This was a particularly interesting argument to be making in April 2020, before most people had been vaccinated; today, as over 90% of UK adults have had at least one vaccine dose, vaccine passports have still not been introduced, and their introduction looks unlikely. If The Powers That Be really did invent a global pandemic purely to facilitate the introduction of vaccine passports, they’ve clearly done an awful job getting over the final hurdle.

‘The virus is real, but masks are bad’

The requirement to wear facemasks to prevent the spread of Covid has been a constant source of paranoia for conspiracy theorists throughout the pandemic, with ‘lockdown sceptics’ jumping on even the flimsiest evidence to claim their objection to wearing a mask is based on anything resembling science. It’s no surprise, then, that the White Rose fundamentally misunderstand the value of face coverings in slowing the spread of the virus, missing the point that masks primarily work by preventing you from spreading the disease to someone else. This plays out in their sticker pack in a number of ways:

"If face masks work, why do small businesses need to be closed? If they don't work, why are we being forced to wear them?" - black text on a white background

Obviously, the point that’s being missed here is that masks don’t have to be 100% effective in order to be useful, but are helpful in conjunction with a range of other measures (such as social distancing and limits on group sizes).

If doubting the efficacy of masks isn’t enough, some parts of the conspiracist world invent dangers in mask usage, including the incorrect belief that mask wearing reduces oxygen intake to harmfully low levels, and the falsehood that masks capture a dangerous mix of bacteria which the wearer then inhales:

Black and white line drawing of a man with a quiff wearing a face mask. "Repeat after me: Breathing bacteria keeps me safe" - white text with a black outline on a white background

At least this sticker acknowledges the possibility of being made ill due to a pathogen that’s been inhaled – perhaps we can consider that progress.

Interestingly, a surprising amount of the White Rose’s opposition to masks isrelatively transparent: as many of their stickers show, they primarily dislike masks because of the way people look in them.

  • Line drawing of a young girl adjusting her father's tie: "Daddy, what were you doing when the government took all my freedoms away?" "Sorry Honey, I wore a muzzle, hid behind my sofa and called anybody who spoke out against it a conspiracy theorist"
  • (Image of someone in full haz-mat suit in the supermarket) "This is the person calling you a conspiracy theorist"
  • Line drawing of a man in a suit with his hand to his mouth as if shouting:"Ditch the muzzle"
  • Line drawing of a man in a suit pointing and laughing: "You look ridiculous"

Likening masks to muzzles is of course ridiculous: muzzles would do nothing to stop you exhaling an airborne pathogen, and cloth masks would do little to deter anyone sufficiently determined to bite you. Still, the sense of superiority is palpable, and occasionally spills into very “kids today” criticisms:

"Men in 1941 facing almost certain death" - image of a man in a helmet looking confident, short sleeves, with grenades strapped around his neck "Men in 2021 facing a 99% recovery rate" - image of a man in a mask, crying

I’d like to think that if you offered men in 1941 a piece of equipment that would reduce their chances of dying by a reasonable amount, the majority would feel sufficiently comfortable in their masculinity to wear it. Perhaps therein is the real generational difference.

‘The virus is real, but vaccines are bad’

The black and white, all-or-nothing, binary reasoning behind the White Rose’s approach to facemask efficacy is equally present in their approach to the vaccine. For example:

  • "If unvaccinated people pose a threat to vaccinated people, does that mean the vaccine doesn't work?" - black text on a white background
  • "If the vaccine works, why are unvaccinated people a concern? If the vaccine doesn't work, why are we being coerced into taking it?" - black text on a white background
Line drawing of a young boy "If you're afraid of me because I'm unvaccinated, does that mean your vaccines don't work?" - white text with a black outline on a white background

What these stickers clearly miss is that a vaccine could reduce your chance of contracting Covid from 100% down to just 5%, but that still leaves you with a 1 in 20 chance of contracting (and, subsequently, spreading) the virus. Analogously, some people die in car crashes even though they were wearing seatbelts – this doesn’t render seatbelts ineffective, as your chances of avoiding serious injury in a car crash are VASTLY improved if you’re securely fastened in. To the Covid Conspiracist, if it’s not 100% effective, it’s worthless.

Sometimes, the arguments deliberately misrepresent the relative risks involved in vaccination:

Meme showing a man sweating over which button to choose. Button 1 is labeled: "We need to destroy the lives of 99.9% of the population to protect the 0.1% that are vulnerable" Button 2 is labeled: "If 0.1% of vaccine recipients die from the vaccine, that's a tiny, irrelevant percentage"

Both sides of the argument presented are grossly misrepresented. On the one hand, it simply isn’t true that 99.9% of people have had their lives “destroyed” by lockdown – while some have clearly borne the brunt of the restrictions harder than others, the vast majority of people will emerge from Covid restrictions in a reasonably good place… and, crucially, alive. Meanwhile, it simply is not the case that 1 in 1000 people “die from the vaccine”. According to the CDC:

“More than 334 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through July 12, 2021. During this time, VAERS received 6,079 reports of death (0.0018%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine. FDA requires healthcare providers to report any death after COVID-19 vaccination to VAERS, even if it’s unclear whether the vaccine was the cause. Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem. A review of available clinical information, including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records, has not established a causal link to COVID-19 vaccines. However, recent reports indicate a plausible causal relationship between the J&J/Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine and TTS, a rare and serious adverse event—blood clots with low platelets—which has caused deaths.”

Protecting the vulnerable 0.1% at a cost of a fraction of 0.0018% is a far more reasonable proposition than a meme printed on a sticker on a lamppost would have you believe.

The efficacy of the vaccine is not the only thing the White Rose fundamentally misunderstand – the mRNA technology involved in many of the vaccines are also subject to misinformed rumour-mongering:

"This sticker is removable. Gene altering mRNA vaccines aren't." - black text on a white background

Needless to say, COVID-19 vaccine will not alter your genes, that is not how the vaccines work. And I’d also add, as someone who has removed dozens of White Rose stickers from various places around Liverpool, the claim that the sticker is removable is almost as dubious as their understanding of vaccine technology.

‘But, Bill Gates’

The pandemic has seen a huge amount of misinformation linking Bill Gates to the virus, the vaccine, and the former CEO of Microsoft has a desire to either track people or kill them. Gates’ supposed belief in the need to depopulate the planet is a regular theme in White Rose stickers:

  • Line drawing of Bill Gates: "The world today has 6.8 billion people... Now, if we do a really great job on vaccines... we could lower that by perhaps 10-15%"
  • Line drawing of Bill Gates: "Do you honestly believe that the same man who thinks the world is massively overpopulated now wants to save your life with a rushed, experimental and insufficiently tested vaccine?"
  • Line drawing of Bill Gates holding a needle: "Your body, my choice!"

These stickers miss crucial context, selectively quoting Gates in order to distort his point, when Gates actually said:

First, we’ve got population. The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about nine billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent.

Clearly, Gates was not talking about reducing the current global population by 15% – he was referring to efforts to prevent the overpopulation by slowing population growth. Giving people (and women in particular) better access to reproductive health means fewer unplanned pregnancies, and better health services and vaccines mean a higher percentage of children survive into adulthood, meaning families need to have fewer babies in order for their family to continue. This is obviously very different from the idea of killing 15% of the people on the planet, and deliberately editing Gates’ quote in order to imply a mass slaughter is obviously disingenuous and deceptive by the White Rose.

‘The bigger picture’

While much of the White Rose content is explicitly Covid-related, it’s clearly not the only concern members of the conspiracy theorist group have. Many of the stickers urge people to stand up to other conspiracy theories, including the Great Reset and the New World Order:

  • "Resist the new normal" - black text on a white background
  • "Resist the great reset" - black text on a white background
  • "Resist the new world order" - black text on a white background

It’s fair to say members of the White Rose see the lockdown measures as the first stepping stone on the path to totalitarianism:

"The incremental steps to total enslavement: No mask, no entry ➡ No vaxx, no entry ➡ No chip, no entry." - black text on a white background.

Although not all of their conspiracy theories can be boiled down to a few words, and explaining them on a sticker proves challenging at times:

  • "Every person who has submitted to the experimental injection has placed another brick in the wall of the open air bio-security prison we are building around ourselves and our children" - black text on a white background
  • Line drawing of two men in suits talking to each other, one with hand on chin as if in thought: "Can you believe these mask wearers still haven't figured out that none of this is about protecting them from a virus and the plan all along was to reduce them to a state of perpetual fear, so that they'll keep surrendering their freedoms to power hungry politicians in exchange for the illusion of protection, which is really just the roll out of dystopian, AI controlled, total surveillance smart grid known as the New World Order?" - black text on a white background

Elsewhere, White Rose members warn against the perils of 5G, chemtrails and TV:

  • "5G; Internet of things; big pharma; enslavement; danger to human health; big brother surveillance; constant data collection; a formidable weapon; !population control!" - black text on a white background
  • "Look up! Geoengineering is real, spraying aluminium and barium, no natural weather" - black text on a white background, image shows an outline of a skull and cross bones over the top of two planes flying in a cross formation with trails off each plan overlapping to form the X.
  • "Master plan: - Event 201 - The great reset - Climate change - Geoengineering - Vaccine passports - 5G kill grid - 2030 Agenda - Total control"
  • TV with spiral on the screen "Media hypnosis: watching tv places you into an alpha brain wave state in 90 seconds. A hypnotist uses the same brain wave patter to implant suggestions" - black text on a white background

What point do YOU think you’re making?

Scrolling through the entire archive of White Rose stickers, it’s hard not to be struck by a complete lack of self-awareness. For example:

Line drawing of a TV screen with a viral particle on the screen. Three rows of six men (total 18), all identical and wearing masks are watching the screen. "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it" - black text on a white background

This, from a movement trying to persuade people there’s a massive global conspiracy by putting stickers on every lamppost they see.

"Live in fear (it makes you easier to control)" - black text on a white background

Again, from the movement trying to persuade you that the government, big business and Bill Gates want to put a microchip in you and/or kill you.

Line drawing of a man in a suit smiling "Thinking for yourself is too much hard work... blindly trust the media and government instead!" - white text with a black outline on a white background

And this is from the movement trying to persuade people based on stickers they didn’t write containing facts they haven’t checked.

In part two of my look at the White Rose, we’ll go into the Telegram channel itself, and see exactly where following the stickers on the street can end up. Until then, there’s no better way to conclude a look at the White Rose sticker archive than by paying heed to the wise words of the White Rose themselves:

"Years from now, people will look back at this time and many will hang their heads in shame, as they remember the evil they went along with, and the heroes they ridiculed" - black text on a white background

It’s hard for a skeptic to put it any better than that.

This is part one of a three part investigation – the second part looks at the Covid conspiracies spreading on the White Rose Telegram group.

The JAMA ‘child mask’ research is fatally flawed – masks don’t cause “dangerous CO2 levels”

Danny Bradley
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The JAMA ‘child mask’ research is fatally flawed – masks don’t cause “dangerous CO2 levels”

Earlier this month, certain contrarian pundits wasted no time in amplifying a new study which purported to demonstrate that the use of face masks contributed to high levels of carbon dioxide in inhaled air among children. The study was published on the 30th of June in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and LockdownSceptics, a website founded by Toby Young, waited all of 24 hours before publishing a piece by Will Jones, with the headline ‘Face Masks Cause Children to Inhale Dangerous Levels of Carbon Dioxide at SIX TIMES the Safe Limit’.

Despite the capital letters, and the editorial’s notorious record of misquoting research, I thought it would be worthwhile taking a closer look at the study. It certainly sounds worrying and, if the findings are credible, it would fly in the face of the truly vast preponderance of evidence that masks are a safe and useful public health tool during a pandemic.

The Trial

The study’s cohort consisted of 45 healthy children. The trial measured ‘carbon dioxide content in inhaled air with and without 2 types of nose and mouth coverings in a well-controlled, counterbalanced, short-term experimental study’. The trial’s measurement team used a G100 CO2 incubator analyser to measure carbon dioxide levels inside the face mask via a measurement tube fixed to the face of the child.

The paper’s method notes state that:

A 3-minute continuous measurement was taken for baseline carbon dioxide levels without a face mask. A 9-minute measurement for each type of mask was allowed: 3 minutes for measuring the carbon dioxide content in joint inhaled and exhaled air, 3 minutes for measuring the carbon dioxide content during inhalation, and 3 minutes for measuring the carbon dioxide content during exhalation.

The study found that the carbon dioxide content inside the face masks reached levels ‘higher than what is currently deemed acceptable by the German Federal Environmental Office by a factor of 6’. The research letter states that ‘this was a value reached after 3 minutes of measurement’, and that ‘the value of the child with the lowest carbon dioxide level was 3-fold greater than the limit of 0.2% by volume’. In it’s discussion notes, the letter reports that ‘most of the complaints reported by children can be understood as consequences of elevated carbon dioxide levels in inhaled air’.

The Main Problem

Perhaps it is best to begin with the study’s biggest, most glaring flaw: the research team measured CO2 levels in the air inside a face mask, they found that it was high, and then they assumed that the total amount of air the child was breathing contained this level of CO2 exposure. However, air inside a face mask (the ‘dead space’) constitutes only a fraction of the total amount of air (the ‘tidal volume’) that moves in or out of the lungs with each respiratory cycle. The total amount of air a masked person inhales is made up partly from air inside the mask, but also from air outside the mask (where CO2 levels are often far lower). The air a swimmer breathes, for example, comes partly from the air already inside the snorkel, but mostly from the air outside the snorkel. 

White face mask on a blue background

The only way that air inside a mask could constitute 100% of the tidal volume we inhale, and therefore be reflective of actual exposure, is if the mask formed an impermeable seal around a person’s mouth and nose. This would be far from ideal, as not being able to inhale air from outside the mask would cause us to die pretty quickly.

Associate Professor of Exposure Assessment Science at Harvard, Joseph G. Allen compares this to ‘measuring benzene concentrations in a bowl right around the gas tank of your car during refuelling, and then saying that’s the concentration you are breathing’. Perhaps this basic error might have been spotted if one of the study’s authors were an expert in the field of exposure assessment science. None were.

Any study examining inhaled air for dangerous levels of anything (with or without a mask) would need to measure the tidal volume of inhaled air to determine the true level of exposure. This study did not. Therefore, it is impossible to know what the actual level of exposure of CO2 is in any of the masked children in this study. This oversight undermines our ability to glean anything meaningful from the results of this trial.

In order to determine actual exposure, and then compare that to levels deemed acceptable by public health authorities, a trial would need to account for the fraction of air outside of the mask too. In fact, studies have demonstrated that gas exchange is not significantly affected by the use of a mask, that face masks are unlikely to cause overexposure to carbon dioxide or impair lung function during physical activity, and that the benefits clearly outweigh the risk when it comes to face mask use as a safety measure against infection from SARS-CoV-2.

Now, some readers who might be feeling sympathetic to concerns brought about by this study might be thinking ‘ah – but if you’re saying that air outside a mask constitutes a significant chunk of the air that is being inhaled by a masked person, you’re admitting that air from the outside world, which could contain covid, can enter the lungs despite wearing a mask. You’re admitting that masks don’t work!’

The reason why this point does not hold water is because masks filter air, rather than preventing it from entering our lungs altogether. If they prevented all outside air from entering our noses and mouths we would not be able to breathe. Masks are not perfect and, yes, this does mean that the occasional aerosol or water droplet could conceivably sneak past the barrier of our mask, especially if others around us are infected and not masked, but overall risk of infection has still been lowered significantly. Widespread mask use is recommended by public health authorities precisely because masks are less about filtering Covid out of the air we inhale, and more about catching the infected droplets in the air we exhale. The more people wear masks, the lower the overall risk level is for all of us. Primarily, wearing a mask protects others around you by stopping air droplets from reaching other people.

The fact that masks are not a perfect safeguard against becoming infected is uncontroversial in the global medical consensus, which is why it is recommended that mask mandates are implemented in conjunction with other safety measures such as social distancing and ventilation.

The Other Problems

At the beginning of the trial’s research letter, it is stated that:

A large-scale survey in Germany of adverse effects in parents and children using data of 25 930 children has shown that 68% of the participating children had problems when wearing nose and mouth coverings.

The authors appear to rely quite heavily on this supplementary research here, and it’s ominous implications. It certainly sounds very damning. That is, until you read the survey and notice this bright red warning right at the top of the page:

EDITORIAL NOTE: This study is based on a survey regarding the adverse effects of mask wearing in children. Due to multiple limitations, this study cannot demonstrate a causal relationship between mask wearing and the reported adverse effects in children. Most of the respondents were parents, and the survey was distributed preferentially in social media forums that, according to the authors, “criticize the government’s corona protection measures in principle”. The limitations of the study include sampling bias, reporting bias, and confounding bias as well as lack of a control group. The use of masks, together with other precautionary measures, significantly reduces the spread of COVID-19 and is considered safe for children over the age of two years old.

As is clear from this editorial note, the survey suffered from a long list of limitations, including sample bias, reporting bias, and lack of a control group. The journal itself makes clear the study cannot demonstrate a causal relationship between masks and adverse effects in children. Quite how the authors of the JAMA study, let alone it’s peer-reviewers, could have failed to mention this survey’s numerous limitations before referencing it uncritically, seems inexplicable.

The JAMA mask study’s measurement team also used inappropriate equipment for the experiment. They used a G100 CO2 incubator analyser which, as its name suggests, is used primarily for assessing the CO2 levels in an incubator, rather than in the air in front of a child’s face. As Eve Bloomgarden (MD) writes on JAMA’s comment section, 

There is no data supporting the use of G100 as a valid and accurate instrument for the type of measurement used in this study. 

Conditions in the space between a human face and a face mask are much less consistent than conditions in an incubator (CO2  can vary dramatically during a breathing cycle, for example). Therefore results are likely to be less reliable, and measurements less reflective. This is not accounted for or mentioned in the study.

A young child wearing a face mask and sanitising their hands

There also appear to be missing data in the study’s published results. The trial protocol states that the team intended to measure ‘blood oxygenation, heart rate and breathing frequency to figure out which physiological consequences the wearing of NMC will have’. Yet none of these measurements were included in the published results. Blood gas measurements such as pO2 or pCO2 (the content, or partial pressure, of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood) were absent from the reported findings. Measuring basic health metrics like these would be essential in ascertaining the clinical significance of the trial’s results.

The more we read into the study’s methods, the more bizarre and preposterous they seem. The study’s lead author, Harald Walach (PhD), notes that in order to make sure that inhalations and exhalations were measured separately, a doctor ‘carefully observed the breaths’. No further information is given beyond this. To be clear – a fundamental aspect of this study, the results of which are being used to argue that we should abandon nationwide mask mandates in schools altogether, rests entirely on ‘a doctor watched carefully’. Typically, capnography (the monitoring of the concentration of carbon dioxide) involves the use of sophisticated medical apparatus, rather than simply a person watching another person breathing. It isn’t entirely clear who exactly was doing the watching, or if they recorded the distinct categories well or reliably.

Given all of it’s deep methodological flaws, it’s surprising to see this paper being taken seriously – and that surprise is only deepened when we look at the publication record of the lead author, Harald Walach.

Lead Author’s Background

Harald Walach is Professor for Research Methodology in Complementary Medicine at Viadrina European University Frankfurt. He has a long record of researching and writing favourably about alternative medicines. In 2012 he was widely criticised for work on a master’s thesis which appeared to support the existence of telepathy. He has written for blogs extolling the virtues of homeopathy. More recently, he authored a peer-reviewed research paper that falsely claimed two people died from COVID-19 vaccinations for every three cases the vaccines prevented. The article was published by the journal Vaccines on the 2nd of July, and then retracted one day later. 

Walach is also a ‘member’ of the very same charity that funded the JAMA study; an initiative called ‘Doctors and Scientists for Health, Freedom and Democracy’. In it’s own words, the organisation ‘came together during the corona crisis in our criticism of the excessive restrictions’. The group has been a vocal proponent of anti-mask, anti-vax and anti-lockdown arguments ever since the beginning of the pandemic. However, in the research letter of the JAMA study, no conflict of interest was disclosed.

JAMA may well have retracted this study by the time you read this article and, in such an event, I suspect we’ll hear no mea culpa from any of the pundits who rushed to raise the alarm based on it’s spurious findings*. Because by the time we unravel the misinformation from one alarmist news story, they will have already moved on to two more. As a result of their premature coverage, much of the damage will have already been done. When one side doesn’t value taking the time to check the research properly, it’s impossible to keep up. 

The fact that none of the glaring red flags that surround this study prevented certain pundits from using it to decry mask mandates in schools, despite their unambiguous efficacy, leads us to two possible conclusions; either these pundits did not read the paper they are using to bolster their arguments, or they did and are ignoring deliberately it’s questionable quality of research. We should consign their rallying cries to the warehouse of fear mongering and false alarms. The uncompromising pursuit of truth is not part of their remit.

* Update: As of July 16th 2021, Toby Young appears to have quietly deleted his tweet promoting Jones’ coverage of the misleading study, but not before it garnered over 1000 retweets. A screenshot of the tweet is reproduced below. As predicted, neither Young nor Jones have acknowledged that the study was fatally flawed, and the article on LockdownSceptics still stands, uncorrected.

Pulau Tekong: An island of ghosts, and the military men who train there

Ishan Singh
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Pulau Tekong: An island of ghosts, and the military men who train there

Coming of age – a phrase that’s sure to elicit memories. For some, the freedom of university, for others the thrill of owning their first car. Although, if you were ever teenage, male, and Singaporean, you might instead be reminded of that time you were ferried off for mandatory military training on a haunted island.

Three-thousand recruits share the same fate each enlistment. For anywhere between two to five months, they’re sent to live in Pulau Tekong – a home reserved for pangolins, the occasional runaway elephant, ghosts, and military men. The latter, a category which the recruits are soon to join. Probably. If the stories are to be believed, some of the recruits may become ghosts, instead.

The haunting of the island is widely accepted as almost common knowledge at this point. In fact, as I sought advice online about dealing with the ghosts on Pulau Tekong, I could only find one respondent who claimed the ghosts didn’t exist. Their comment, on an internet forum discussing experiences on the island, was soon downvoted to oblivion.

*

“Don’t disturb the ghosts and they won’t disturb you,” seemed to be the most common response to tales of the hauntings. I figured it was a common saying passed around platoons to comfort the worrywarts. Did people find it comforting, though? I’d imagine, for an overthinker, this statement raises more questions than it answers.

“So, the ghosts are real, then? Do loud noises disturb them? How about flashlights? What if it’s dark and I need the washroom?”.

While I had questions, I found them met with a marked sense of indifference – it was as if the soldiers hadn’t had the slightest interest in thinking about any of this until now. Perhaps fear had cleansed them of any curiosity. In the 1950s, K. C. Montgomery observed that rats were less likely to explore a maze if they were electrically shocked. Maybe, for the soldiers, ghost stories were the equivalent of an electric shock – a long-running plot, devised by the army generals of old to keep them in line and out of trouble on Tekong.

Or, if that Scooby-Doo-esque theory sounds too far-fetched, maybe all the training simply drained the soldiers of worry.

*

“To be honest, ghost stories always sound scarier when you aren’t at the actual location,” I’m told by Adam (not his real name), a soldier who served time at Tekong back in 2005. “When I was there, I hardly had time to let my mind wander. Waking up at five-thirty in the morning, sleeping at nine-thirty at night – I was too busy adjusting to the regimental routine to think about scary stories.”

A ghostly woman in a dark room

Despite a few perceived encounters – the sound of a screaming girl, mysterious whistling in the washroom – his curiosity remained unstirred. “I once woke up in the middle of the night and saw a figure in the corridor,” he recounts. “There were two windows separated by the door in between. I watched the figure walk past the first window and waited for it to emerge on the other side. I must’ve looked for at least twenty seconds. Nothing.”

Although this is one of the tamer encounters I came across, Adam’s reaction to it surprised me. He didn’t pass the experience off as his mind playing tricks on him – not even a thought given to possible explanations. “I didn’t think too much of it,” he says. “The general rule was ‘if you see something, pretend you didn’t and just ignore it.’”

I wondered if others too were aware of this so-called ‘general rule’. Apparently, it’s a common saying among the military men. “Act blur, live longer” is the concise version which tends to go around.

As we closed out our conversation, Adam recalled another incident which had taken place while he was on the island. “One night during the Hungry Ghost Festival, someone on the second floor claimed they had seen a ghost. In the morning, we found incense sticks being lit outside the bunk by our warrant officers [senior mentors]. They were older uncles so they did know a little about such things.”

Apparently, it’s not only the recruits – their superiors stay wary of the ghosts too. If fabled accounts are to be believed, there have been instances where ghosts have posed legitimate concerns, to an extent that priests had to be called in to solve the paranormal unrest.

*

Though I brushed past it the first time, I felt compelled to read up on the Hungry Ghost Festival when I heard it brought up again. In Buddhist and Taoist culture, it’s believed that for a month each year, the gates to hell open up. During this time, ghosts freely roam around Earth in search of food and entertainment.

“First day of the Hungry Ghost Festival – I was in platoon 3, F company,” says Redditor /u/thejmcla, a 2009 recruit. “That night, everyone slept soundly except for three of us. There was one person who kept hearing noises coming from inside his closet. Another who heard constant footsteps around the common table. For me, it was Chinese opera singing. First, it sounded like it was around the doorstep. Then suddenly, right next to my ear. I shuddered so bad that night but I kept my mouth shut the entire time.”

The incident continued over two nights before the recruit borrowed a Fu (a Chinese Talisman) from his friend. Though not an overly common sight, bibles, amulets, and other religious items do accompany the occasional recruit on their trip to Tekong. “I didn’t think it’d work but it did. Whatever you say about ghosts, I believe this one was real. Don’t play around in Tekong.”

Learning about the prevalence of ghosts in Chinese culture sheds a little more light on why their residence on the island seems to go unquestioned. Especially with the abundance of first-hand accounts floating around the internet, it feels safer to accept that the island is haunted than to scurry off on a quest for evidence – lest that offend the ghosts.

*

Singapore being a land of diversity, it doesn’t come as a surprise that Tekong plays host to creatures from Indonesian and Malay folklore as well. The Pontianak, for example, is one such visitor – a beautiful woman, draped in a blood-smeared white dress, who takes on a monstrous form as she preys on her victims. It’s said that she only appears on full-moon nights and that her arrival is announced by a floral fragrance. It’s also said that if a person has their eyes open when a Pontianak is nearby, she sucks their soul out of their head. That advice of ‘pretend you didn’t see anything’ grows more and more useful by the minute.

Magnolia

“I was on guard near a vehicle depot with a Malay friend of mine,” recounts /u/Exsper. “It was around two or three in the morning and we were doing sentry duty by the gates. We were about to fall asleep standing when, all of a sudden, a refreshing flowery scent filled the air. I had no idea what it meant but my friend became very nervous and quickly pulled me back to the brightly lit guard post. I got a bit scared when I noticed that the street lights had started flashing.”

It’s interesting to note that had the Malay friend not been around, this incident would never have made it onto an online thread of supernatural encounters – either because the recruit wouldn’t have drawn the connection, or because he wouldn’t have headed back to the guard post, which would have allowed the vengeful spirit to have its way with him.

“We were taking the bus back one night when the strong smell of female perfume took over,” /u/HoneyGreenTeh recalls a similar occurrence. “I thought it was only me but then the rest of the section smelled it too.” Nothing came of the incident, but again, it serves to illustrate the role which culture can play in framing certain occurrences as paranormal.

*

Before the island was taken over for military purposes, the villagers who resided in Tekong had cultural practices of their own. “I think all recruits know about the shrine at the ferry terminal,” comments /u/throwaway-goondoo in a year-old thread. “My supervisor would go there to pray every morning. When I asked why, he told me that the place once used to be a fruit farming village, and that was the shrine of the locals.”

The supervisor warned him that ‘bad things’ would happen if they stopped providing offerings. Apparently, the warning wasn’t heeded and once the supervisor retired, a soldier wound up paralyzed in his sleep.

In a more recent account, /u/meowletter tells me how the shrines on Tekong could be connected to the numerous sightings of ghost grandparents and their kids. “Grandparent and grandkid sightings are very common at Ladang [one of the training school’s on Tekong]. It’s only natural, to be honest. The place used to be a kampung [village].”

He goes on to mention an altar on a nearby island where people would make offerings, alluding that the ghosts began appearing when the shrine stopped being honoured. “Two of my mates doing sentry saw a grandma and a kid near the gate. They immediately signalled for assistance because they both felt sick.”

A man and child walking hand in hand in a forest

This was the first encounter I read about which involved multiple witnesses at the same sighting. Another commenter, /u/wocelot1003, followed up with a similar story. “During a navigation exercise, my section felt chills. We were pretty close to the checkpoint so we fanned out to search. Suddenly, I felt my hair standing up. I thought I was getting a heat stroke from lugging around the signal set. But then, I heard the rest of my section calling out for me. I thought they’d found the checkpoint, but once we all met up, two of the section members said that they had seen a grandfather and grandchild beside me and started calling out.”

From an outside perspective, this reads like a life-altering experience – an insight into another realm, parallel to the reality we’re familiar with. Nevertheless, the military men have no time to spare pondering the mysteries of the universe. They can’t afford to lose sleep when the next day might see them marching the length of a marathon. “Everyone moved on. I think life then was too busy to think about these things.”

*

Though humans are curious beings by nature, in fulfilling curiosities, we first consider the trade-offs. As seems to be the consensus here, the additional knowledge isn’t always worth the effort. Sometimes, you pick a side and get on with life.

I asked a recruit if Pulau Tekong was haunted and he replied, “If you believe it’s haunted, then it is.”

That seems to be the honest and absolute truth. It doesn’t matter whether ghosts actually reside on the island – as long as people believe that they do, Tekong will remain haunted. Even if the sightings are hallucinations, the screams are from kittens, and the flowery scent is just a result of… flowers – as long as people attribute these anecdotes to the supernatural, Tekong will remain haunted.

Maybe it’s a misguided conclusion, borne of ignorance, but maybe it’s also for the best. What would the military men stand to gain if they knew, for certain, that ghosts didn’t exist? Freedom from their worries? Peace of mind? They learn to find that anyways; some through prayers, some through talismans, and others through a busy schedule.

While the sergeants teach recruits about discipline and orderliness, the ghosts teach them about fortitude – about dealing with unknown adversity. These are teenagers who set foot on the island fearing the worst, and over the time spent there, develop a changed perspective. It’s one which makes them wary of their own ability to adapt and survive; one which prepares them for a world riddled with uncertainty.

When they finally leave Tekong, the recruits take away far more than just the basic military training which they signed up for. They take away a sense of personal growth – the kind which could perhaps only be found on a haunted island. A coming of age.

Personal recounts and anecdotes were sourced from the following forum threads:

When it comes to conspiracy theories, even the small stuff matters

Dave Hahn
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When it comes to conspiracy theories, even the small stuff matters

Let’s say I have a friend that we’ll call “Chrissy.” Chrissy is a perfectly pleasant and fun person to hang around with at a party. One night, apropos of a lull in the conversation, Chrissy explains her belief that Shakespeare wasn’t “Shakespeare.” She clarifies that it is not that the most influential writer in the English language borrowed ideas, plots, and characters from other works for his plays. She believes that the actual author of Richard III was Edward de Vere (or Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, or even Queen Elizabeth I). Upon hearing her belief, you probably would not be too concerned. Shakespeare denialism is a minor conspiracy theory that has no impact on the larger world. If it were true (it’s not), it would only affect literature majors. Perhaps the local Shakespeare company would put an “*” next to the name on the playbill.

Her date, “Thomas,” taking advantage of another lull, explains that he thinks it is weird that the best musicians in recent history all die at the age of 27. This belief might get a raised eyebrow, while some music aficionado wants to hear this list for no reason other than to rate Thomas’s idea of “best musicians.” Chrissy isn’t storming a capitol building because of her belief, and Thomas isn’t stamping anti-mask stickers across London while voting for Brexit because of his belief.

These conspiracy theories aren’t considered problems because they are small. They are trivial minutiae that are not one of those conspiracy theories. American writer Mark Twain, Sigmund Freud, Walt Whitman, and a surprising number of U.S. Supreme Court Justices (n > 0 is that surprising number) share Chrissy’s belief. She is fine; she’s not listening to Alex Jones, buying from Goop, or reading from David Icke; so we don’t care about these beliefs.

We should care, though. We should care because that nameless person that voted for Brexit, listens to Alex Jones, and attends David Icke’s speaking engagements did not start there. They started somewhere small. In an earlier article, I wrote that QAnon was recruiting people via wellness and alt-med sites in social media. The same phenomenon is here, only, more general. The difference is that Shakespeare denialism is obviously a conspiracy theory, but it also has the appearance of a serious debate within academic circles. Homer used to be considered a blind poet that composed the Iliad, the Odyssey, and some missing works. Now, there’s a debate over whether “Homer” was an oratory style or a group of individuals. The “27 Club” is the result of Thomas cherry-picking the deaths of musicians. It only appears strange that Amy Whinehouse, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin all died at the same age when you don’t include the great musicians who didn’t die at 27. We could just as easily talk about the “35 Club”, which would include Stevie Ray Vaughn and Mozart.

No matter how small, these theories are critical because the best predictor of a belief in conspiracy theories is not political affiliation, religion, or education level (though those are important); instead, it is whether the person already believes in another conspiracy theory. Of course, this claim is question-begging: yes, a person that believes in a conspiracy theory will believe in a conspiracy theory. Chrissy doesn’t follow Q; she thinks that Edward de Vere wrote the line, “While you here do snoring lie, Open-eyed conspiracy His time doth take; (The Tempest Act II scene I)” – despite the notable handicap of de Vere having died six years earlier. This belief isn’t the same as thinking that MI5 orchestrated the 1971 Baker Street bank robbery or that MI6 killed Princess Diana. The beliefs are not the same, but the one conspiracy theory can lead to the other. If “they” are willing to lie about the true identity of William Shakespeare, then what else are they keeping from us?

In my previous article, I claimed that the actual conspiracy theory isn’t the attraction – the attraction is piercing the veil of secrecy that “they” use to hide everything. Shakespeare denialism is ostensibly about finding clues in Shakespeare’s works, but it’s really about piercing the conspiratorial shroud that is thrown over the truth. Conspiracy theories, in general, are about agreeing to a conclusion and then finding all the clues that “they” missed.

William Shakespeare

Thomas’s belief that the best musicians are killed at the age of 27 requires a hidden hand killing those people. If Thomas thinks that this force is supernatural, his research will push him in a direction that gets more general. If he thinks that it is the Illuminati, it will veer in that direction before likely joining back up in Satanic-Illuminati-Alien cabal. Thomas will assent to a new conspiracy theory that is only slightly more extreme than what he already believes. His exposure to these new theories we can credit to the algorithm recommendations of sites like YouTube. Thomas, the music fan who noticed a coincidence, is now buying red yarn to show that Annelise Dodds secretly takes orders from Joe Biden and the Council of Foreign Relations.

The radicalisation of conspiracy believers is a growing problem. Identifying conspiracy beliefs early may well be the solution. Radicalisation begins with a more minor beliefs. Even these tiny beliefs harm the individual. Chrissy, starting with Shakespeare Denialism, begins to wonder what other facts are being hidden from her. After a semester at Google University, she now believes the world is hollow, filled with Nazis, and the entrance is in Staffordshire. It is a slow process, but each click on the subsequent video or scroll to the next post pulls her further down a conspiratorial rabbit hole that is hard to escape.

The process by which this occurs is called cascade logic. Chrissy has to make one mental leap for her pet theory; that “Shakespeare” kept writing for at least seven years after de Vere died. Conspiracy theories pull people in by appealing emotionally to the individual. The further down they are, the more they will bind their identity to the conspiracy theory itself. When they take up arms (literally or figuratively) to defend their beliefs, they defend their sense of identity. Rational argumentation is divorced from their consent which is why objective evidence does not work. We ought not to regard the radicalised with vilification or scorn; we should save those feelings for the con artists and grifters that exploit them. We should also not regard people like Chrissy and Thomas as idiots.

They are acting skeptical, they’ve noticed patterns, and this type of thinking should be encouraged. Aristotle claimed that wisdom is knowing the why of a thing rather than the what. The what is all they have now, and we should point their skepticism in the right direction toward the why. Instead of making fun of Thomas for his cherry-picking of musician deaths, perhaps a more directed conversation about the other thing those people all have in common: thrust into the limelight at a young age, with few boundaries, and easy access to drugs. The dialogue should be about youth, drugs, fame, and how dangerous a combination that seems to be. Rather than rolling our eyes at Chrissy when she asks how the son of an illiterate glove maker understands the legal system of various Italian city-states enough to set half of his plays there, we should instead ask her if he does have the legal systems of those settings correct. We should ask her how many television series and movies portray the legal system correctly, or do they settle on correct enough? How medically accurate is House M.D.? or any medical show? When writing for a mass audience, does our modern culture just give us enough of a veneer to set up the plot?

The smallest of conspiracy theories can lead to full-blown conspiracism if we’re not careful. Unless the person is aware that the silly thing they believe in is a conspiracy theory, thus unsupported and likely not true, they can be on a road to which there is little hope for return.

iNaturalist’s flaws leave people with a false impression of the world around them

Sarah Hearne
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iNaturalist’s flaws leave people with a false impression of the world around them

While walking across the Scottish moors recently, a friend of mine did what many of us now do. He took out his phone to take a photo of the heather that surrounded him, and asked iNaturalist to identify it for him. Imagine his surprise when instead of being surrounded by Scottish heather, Calluna vulgaris, he found he was apparently standing in the middle of miles of tree heath, Erica arborea, native to the Mediterranean and East Africa. Had my friend stumbled across an invasive species that had taken hold of the highlands with no-one noticing?

Artificial intelligence-based apps like iNaturalist, eBird and FloraIncognita have rapidly grown in popularity. Now anyone with a smartphone can be an amateur naturalist, identifying species and recording their locations with a couple of taps of the screen. These apps have been praised for their ability to resolve the mass of “wildlife” we see every day into distinct and knowable species, helping us connect with our environment and grow our appreciation for and understanding of the biodiversity all around us.

But are these apps everything they’re made out to be? My friend’s experience highlights one major limitation – their ability to confidently identify something incorrectly. Were my friend less sceptical or more absent-minded he could easily have accepted the identification and gone on his way feeling concerned that the moors were covered, not in their traditional heather, but in an introduced and clearly invasive species.

It is a frustrating fact that not every species can easily be identified by unaided visual examination alone. This isn’t a problem just for the apps, of course, but it is one that these apps often obscure. A traditional field guide will present images of species along with standardised identification information, often describing key areas to examine in order to differentiate between similar-looking species. More specialist identification guides offer dichotomous keys, which present the user with a series of binary options about characteristics which will lead to the identification of the species.

In contrast, ID apps present you with a selection of suggestions with a range of certainties, and asks you to pick an answer with often little additional information to go on. If you’re working from a key or a field guide an uncertain identification is easily, if frustratingly, resolved with an “I give up!”. But when presented with an artificial intelligence telling you that it’s likely you’ve got a particular genus or species it’s very easy to just say “sure, why not” and accept the identification.

Many invertebrates can only be reliably identified to species through dissection and microscopic examination of genitalia. Likewise, mosses and lichens require microscopic examination, sometimes with chemical staining, for many species to be accurately identified. These requirements make it very hard for those without significant resources to study these groups and they end up languishing, unstudied. These barriers to identification sets up a “reverse bootstrapping process” whereby easy-to-describe groups get more attention and hard-to-describe groups get less attention. Again, these problems aren’t unique to the apps, but they do exacerbate them as people are focus on taxa where good identifications can be guaranteed while those without are ignored and the AI gets much less of a chance to improve its recognition abilities.

A fungi identification app was linked to several hundred poisonings in France last autumn due to misidentification of toxic mushrooms as edible.

The apps have ways of ensuring that misidentifications don’t make it into databases, and any researcher worth their salt would double-check any obviously odd records before including them in their analyses, but for people like my friend who use these apps for their own edification rather than to be a citizen scientist, it is very easy to be left with a complete misunderstanding of the wildlife around them. That misunderstanding is usually harmless, but there are instances where it may not be. I myself have had the poisonous hemlock water dropwort, Oenathe crocata, misidentified by an app as the edible herb parsley, Petroselinum crispum. Fortunately I did not accept this identification, but with the increasing popularity of foraging, others may. A fungi identification app was linked to several hundred poisonings in France last autumn due to misidentification of toxic mushrooms as edible. And a study published last year by Jenna Otter and colleagues that tested the ability of three different identification apps to accurately identify toxic plants found a wide range of accuracies and consistencies, leading the authors to caution against using the apps as a stand-alone tool.

It’s important to remember that species identification is not the only aim of these apps. Connecting people to their environment and each other is a key goal for many. A thought-provoking paper by Soledad Altrudi published last year examined how well iNaturalist achieved these aims. Through a series of interviews the author reveals a complex picture. While some users find the app has enhanced their understanding of their natural world, many others admit to increasingly relying on the app to identify their specimens rather than studying them themselves, and to focusing on getting photos that will garner them attention from other users, rather than on improving their understanding of their environment. Getting a photo and a name is the aim. The app, rather than acting as a portal to learning about the organism, is a barrier.

The paper also raises the question of whether we even need to know the scientific names of organisms to appreciate them. If you are attempting to collect data for one of the numerous recording schemes that occur in the UK and around the world then accurate scientific names are vital. But identification is the beginning of the process of understanding our planet’s biodiversity, not the end. And for most people, it is an entirely optional step in the process.

It doesn’t matter if the bird you watch build a nest and raise chicks to successfully fledge is called Cyanistes caeruleus, blue tit or Bob, it’s still a magical thing to follow. It doesn’t matter if you call it cleavers, goosegrass, sticky willies, Gallium aparine or ‘that sticky plant’, but you’ll probably know it’s great to stick on other people, preferably somewhere they can’t easily reach. Nature is far more than just a collection of names. It is behaviour and ecology and interactions and folklore and history and myth and legend, and we ignore that to our great loss.

Darling, you smell lovely: what role does body odour play in dating?

Ginny Smith
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Darling, you smell lovely: what role does body odour play in dating?

When it comes to what attracts one person to another, there are a lot of factors. What they look like, their beliefs and values and the things they are passionate about are all important. But there are also more subtle cues that can lead to attraction, and one that may be important is smell. We know that humans can detect a lot of information from one another’s musk. We can recognise our family members from their odour, and even determine facts about strangers such as age[i] or, amazingly, personality[ii].

In many animals, there is evidence that individuals choose partners on the basis of differences in their immune system[iii]. The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) is a set of genes involved in detecting pathogens and activating the immune system, and it is passed on from parents to their offspring. To have the healthiest offspring, it may be an advantage to have parents with different genes in their MHC[iv]. Doing so would also avoid inbreeding, as those with MHCs similar to your own are more likely to be relatives. And it seems some animals can detect differences in potential mates’ MHC via smell. Each individual is constantly releasing tiny fragments of protein, bound to their MHC, via bodily fluids. These are broken down by bacteria on the skin, to give each animal their characteristic smell. And this, the theory goes, guides mate selection.

But does it work in humans? There was a lot of excitement for the idea in the 1990s when Claus Wedekind, now Professor of Biology at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, carried out experiments on a group of college students[v]. He gave T-shirts to a group of male students, and asked them to wear them for two nights, while avoiding the use of deodorants or scented products. He then presented these T-shirts to a group of women, and asked them to rate how attractive each scent was. Analysing the results, the team found that the women consistently chose men with MHCs different from their own.

So does that mean we have no control over who we end up with, and pick them solely based on their stink? Of course not. In fact, there have been mixed results when other groups have tried to replicate these findings, with some finding no effect at all, so we can’t treat them as decisive, even in the lab[vi]. And even if it were the case that humans prefer the body odour of others with dissimilar immune systems, or perhaps dislike those with very similar genes, this doesn’t tell us whether we actually use this as a factor in choosing a partner.

To work out whether MHC differences really do affect mate choice in real-world environments, a number of studies have taken couples, sequenced their genomes and compared them to random pairs of individuals from the same population. Again, results are mixed[vii][viii], so it seems the jury is still out on whether sniffing someone’s genes can make you want to get into their jeans.

Overloaded: How Every Aspect of your Life is Influenced by your Brain Chemicals by Ginny Smith is out now in hardback and ebook.  

[i] Mitro, S., Gordon, A. R., Olsson, M. J., and Lundström, J. N. (2012). The smell of age: perception and discrimination of body odors of different ages. PLoS ONE 7:e38110. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0038110

[ii] A. Sorokowska, P. Sorokowski, A. Szmajke Does personality smell? Accuracy of personality assessments based on body odour European Journal of Personality, 26 (2012), pp. 496-503. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.848

[iii] Potts, W. K., Manning, C. J. and Wakeland, E. K. (1991). Mating patterns in seminatural populations of mice influenced by MHC genotype. Nature, 352: 619–621.

[iv] Kurtz J, Kalbe M, Aeschlimann PB, et al. Major histocompatibility complex diversity influences parasite resistance and innate immunity in sticklebacks. Proc Biol Sci. 2004;271(1535):197-204. doi:10.1098/rspb.2003.2567

[v] MHC-dependent mate preferences in humans. Claus Wedekind, Thomas Seebeck, Florence Bettens  and  Alexander J. Paepke. 22 June 1995 https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.1995.0087

[vi] Havlíček J, Winternitz J, Roberts SC. Major histocompatibility complex-associated odour preferences and human mate choice: near and far horizons. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2020 Jun 8;375(1800):20190260. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2019.0260. Epub 2020 Apr 20. PMID: 32306884; PMCID: PMC7209936.

[vii] Derti A, Cenik C, Kraft P, Roth FP (2010) Absence of Evidence for MHC–Dependent Mate Selection within HapMap Populations. PLoS Genet 6(4): e1000925. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1000925

[viii] Chaix R, Cao C, Donnelly P (2008) Is Mate Choice in Humans MHC-Dependent?. PLoS Genet 4(9): e1000184. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1000184

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Expert skeptical analysis of pseudoscience, conspiracy theory and claims of the paranormal.

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