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The conspiracy-adjacent politicians finding allies in Sovereign Citizens

Michael Marshall
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The conspiracy-adjacent politicians finding allies in Sovereign Citizens

Early into the Covid-19 pandemic, the World Economic Forum leader and unlikely villain of the conspiracist movement, Klaus Schwab, proposed that the world use the crisis as a chance to reassess the form of capitalism pursued by economies across the globe, and consider if better systems were available. While we can debate the merits of his proposal, and even discuss what motivations he had, it’s fair to say that his suggested “Great Reset” bore little resemblance to the version that would be passed around conspiracy circles as evidence of a shadowy New World Order.

In those spaces, which exploded online in the enforced pause of the Covid lockdowns, The Great Reset was something sinister that needed to be opposed by a concerted coalition of free-thinking people – dubbed by some the ‘Great Resist’.

While the reset never actually happened, and the world went back to essentially the same broken capitalist system it had been driving towards before the intervention of the novel coronavirus, the bonds formed at events and protests by followers of the Great Resist persisted, and soon they needed a new bête noir to rise up against. This search for suitable villains would see the rag-tag movement fight back against traffic-calming measures and LGBTQ rights but, while they may have been the most visible (and sadly, in some circles, palatable) causes, the hunt for bogey men also alighted on even less mainstream fears.

This perhaps explains how a community centre in Alfreton, Derbyshire, became the site of an unlikely coalition of figures from the conspiracist fringe in November 2024. Apparently convened at the request of the community centre’s board of directors, the Great Resist conference boasted a theme song from “I’m Too Sexy” duo Right Said Fred, and was organised by former UKIP candidate Liz Phillips, who clearly drew from her political address book for many of the speakers. Top billing almost certainly went to the politically promiscuous Tory/Reclaim/Independent MP Andrew Bridgen, whose speech flitted across edited and editorialised highlights of his backbench career.

Joining Bridgen from the benches of Tory party evictees and refugees were two former MEPs, Ben Habib and Godfrey Bloom, the latter of whom spent the duration of his speech talking up the importance of buying gold, never quite making clear that the gold dealers he cited as being reasonable and reliable pay him an affiliate fee for the privilege. One might ask what it is about opaque precious metals promotion that prominent UKIP figures find so appealing – after all, Nigel Farage spent much of the last ten years pimping bullion while fronting the “Fortune and Freedom” investment business, and recently was forced to reveal that he made £189k last year from similar gold-promotion schemes.

Common Law

However, the presence of so many figures from the corridor next to the corridors of power did little to dissuade the rest of the line-up from veering deep into the weeds of conspiracy claims, perhaps chief among which was Gary Fraughen – pronounced “frown” – who talked about Common Law.

Gary was introduced by organiser Liz Phillips as a prolific writer on common law, whom she has interviewed many times on her YouTube channel. It was genuinely fascinating to see someone who has spent so long engaged with (admittedly reactionary right-wing) politics as Liz has, praising the importance of what are clearly pseudo-legal Sovereign Citizen ideas:

This is something that people are coming back to, and we’ve all got to do this, the legal system and the law system is something we need to know much more about

After the briefest of introductions, Gary was soon into the good stuff, asking the audience: “Anybody here married? Because you’ve been through a horse breeding ceremony”. At first blush, this may have seemed like a judgement of the largely-rural audience, but Gary had brought the receipts, explaining, “What do you need to control a horse? You need a groom.”

Clearly, the suggestion here was that a ‘groom’ as in ‘bride and groom’ is the same as a ‘groom’ who tends to a horse, therefore marriages are an animal husbandry ritual about tending to livestock. Which sounds possible (if not plausible or reasonable), if you spend no time at all investigating the origin and meaning of words. A groom was simply the 12th-century name for a youth or young man; when he was a young man who worked in the stables, he was the horse groom; when he’s a young man about to get married to a bride, he’s the bridegroom.

Gary continued: “And the mare is looked after by the groom and controlled with headgear – it’s called bridalry, where you get bridal wear.” Again, the connections here are purely superficial. ‘Bridle’ for horses is comes from the old English word, bridle, meaning “a restraint”, which was related to the word ‘bregdan’, meaning to move quickly. So, to bredgan your horse, you’d pull the bridle. Whereas when it comes to your nuptials, ‘bridalry’ isn’t the name for a bride’s headgear, it’s a general term for clothing worn by a bride. But the bride will indeed be wearing bridal gear, from the old English word ‘bryd’, which is a betrothed or newly married woman. There is suggestion from some scholars that bridal as an extension term came from the old English ‘brydealo’, meaning ‘marriage feast’ – or, literally, ‘bride ale’. Nothing horse-related at all.

Gary carries on:“If the horse becomes uncontrollable, she’s a nightmare.” This even less relevant than any of the bride chat. A nightmare is just a bad dream at night, and it stemmed from people seeing demons on their chest when they were half awake in the middle of the night. People have back-filled that to suggest that the demons ride in on a dark horse – a night mare. But it’s actually that a ‘mare’ or ‘mara’ is the old English folkloric name for a type of demon, which came from the Proto-Germanic ‘maron’, meaning Goblin.

That ‘mare’ happens to be a homonym for the word for a female horse – a mare – but the latter came via the Old Englise ‘meare’, from the Proto-Germanic ‘marhijo’, which all meant female horse, as do derivations in Old Saxon, Old Norse, Old Frisian, Dutch, Old High German and German.

Two ponies or small horses, both brown with white lower legs and wearing bridles, play together on a dirt surface with a wooden fence behind them
Two equine friends playing in their paddock, with bridles on their heads. By Alexas_Fotos, via Pixabay

Next, Gary makes the link to pregnancy: “If the three trimesters don’t happen and there’s nothing in the carriage, it’s a miscarriage”. Here, he’s clearly reaching, because the word ‘miscarriage’ is just the noun form of the very to ‘miscarry’, and it’s pretty obvious why ‘mis-carry’ would be the term used for when a pregnancy doesn’t carry all the way to term. Equally, it’s just as obvious why a cart pulled by a horse can be called a ‘carriage’, because it carries you.

Further, Fraughen: “At weddings it’s all horseshoes – nothing to do with luck, it’s to do with animal Husbandry”. Despite Gary’s protestations, horseshoes are a sign of luck – they’re made of iron, which was said to ward off evil spirits, and they’re held in place by seven nails, with seven being seen as a lucky number (in English culture at least). But we still need to deal with the elephant in the room: ‘husband’. As in animal husbandry! And a married man is a husband! Is Gary the Sovereign Citizen finally backing a winner here?

Well, no. The word ‘husband’ comes from the Old English ‘husbonda’, meaning ‘the male head of a household, master of a house, householder’. In return, that likely comes from the Old Norse ‘husbondi’, roughly translated as ‘master of the house’, because ‘hus’ means ‘house’ and ‘bondi’ is the past tense of the verb ‘bua’ meaning ‘to dwell’. So, literally ‘house-dweller’, but it would usually be used to mean the person who was in charge of that house… and if they’re in charge of the house, they would also get the say over what to do with the animals, hence animal ‘hus-bond-ry’. How does this link to marriage? Well, the man marrying your young daughter would be in charge of her too, he’d be her ‘hus-bond’. Thank you very much, centuries of patriarchy.

Speaking of patriarchy, Gary went on to explain how gendered titles work:

It’s like the word Mister. Years ago we had master, the young master was the young male in the house. Mister (Mr) comes from the word Mariner, admiralty maritime law, from the first and the last letter of the lowest form of individual working on a vessel. So you had Mister, you had Mrs but it really reads, Mister’s (Mr’s) – he owns her, she’s his property. And with a young female, she’s not owned by an another male yet, so we miss her out.

Unsurprisingly, ‘Mister’, as ‘Mr’, is not derived from the first and last letters of the word ‘mariner’ as the lowest rank of individual working on a vessel. ‘Mister’ is a derivation of the word ‘master’, which started as a word meaning a man who has control or authority over a place, from the Latin ‘magister’, which is where we also get ‘magistrate’, and via French where we get ‘maître d’. Ironically enough, ‘master’ is actually the highest rank on board a shipping vessel, because it’s a synonym for captain… which would have helped Gary out to know, because ‘mariner’ isn’t actually the lowest rank on the ship, it’s not a rank at all, it’s just the name for someone who works on a shipping vessel – mariner, from the Latin ‘marinus’ meaning ‘of the sea’.

As for ‘Mrs’, is that actually a silent possessive apostrophe, and is the word actually short for ‘master’s’ (or, I suppose, ‘mariner’s’)? Well, no. ‘Mrs’ isn’t to be read as ‘Mr’s’, but as an abbreviation for a longer word – just as we abbreviate doctor to ‘dr’, the word ‘mrs’ is an abbreviation of ‘mistress’. And when it comes to ‘Miss’, contrary to what Gary believes the term doesn’t mean ‘we miss her out’ because she’s not yet owned. That would make no sense – in that society the young girl would have been owned by her father prior to her husband, as there wasn’t a time young women were self-owned. The title ‘miss’ is also just a contraction of ‘mistress’ – essentially, like a mistress, but small – while the verb to miss something out comes from the Old English ‘missan’ – meaning to fail to hit what you were aiming at, or to escape someone else’s notice.

We are just three minutes into Gary’s talk by this point. I won’t carry on in that level of detail, but as an exercise it is worth doing, because it illustrates the magical thinking behind Common Law and Sovereign Citizen claims, and how they immediately fall apart with even a moment of scrutiny. These kind of ideas require a failure to look into what words actually mean, instead relying on the acceptance of superficial similarities as being indicative of deeper connections. But words don’t work that way – there is no real link between the ‘mare’ that means horse and the ‘mare’ that means demon, but there’s no such thing as a homonym to the common law believer, and any similarity must be indicative of a greater hidden meaning that can and must be decoded.

Gary’s search for meaning wasn’t restricted to marriage rituals – he turned his same brand of pattern-spotting to the aqueous nature of the banking system:

with Capital ships, all vessels were things that delivered the product. Yesterday it wasn’t there, today it has appeared, so it has manifested… so a ship’s manifest has delivered a product. That’s why women go to the  dock, where a ship is kept. And the baby is birthed – not born – because it’s a ship thing. All banking is based on shipping words – a legal tender is a small boat that feeds another vessel. The bank really means the River Bank, because the currency – current – delivers and withdraws flotsam and jetsam to the river bank. And then the income stream diversifies into other areas of water. Everything’s about water with banking.

Again, it would be easy to run through each of these terms and point out that it’s just a coincidence that ‘birth’ a baby and ‘berth’ of a ship are homophones, and that a bank is not related to a river bank, and also that sometimes words are derived from something in a metaphorical rather than literal way.

Legal hot water

It may all feel like silly semantics around definitions, and ultimately therefore harmlessness, but the pernicious aspect of the Sovereign Citizen mode of thinking is that it opens up the door to unreason, and can lead people into real trouble. One woman during his Q&A asked him:

Can you explain all caps name meaning you’re a corporation… so for instance when I got a speeding ticket, it’s like capital letters so, I’ve incorporated myself with a company’s house as a limited company, so when they write to me I send them that information, and I send an invoice as well because they are harassing me.

For his part, Gary seemed happy enough to go along with this, pointing out that it really does work, and that this lady’s weird attempt to dodge a speeding fine is proof of that. He’s wrong. What that audience member claimed to be doing is illegal, and could land her with a criminal charge of driving without valid insurance or a license. All she might be illustrating is that there’s a backlog in enforcement, but that’s not the same thing as one weird trick, and eventually she might find herself in serious hot water.

This is how common law beliefs and sovereign citizen ideas harm – not directly, but indirectly. They lead people into legal trouble, and when they’re in that legal trouble, they offer them magic bullet solutions that unfailingly turn out to be blanks. At the same time, they reinforce people’s journey off the path of reason and into the weeds, undermining their grasp on reality.

Most shocking of all is watching an audience get coached in this kind of idea just several feet from people who were actively involved in how parliament and lawmaking actually works, who absolutely ought to know this is complete nonsense, but were apparently either too fond of the adoration of the crowd, or too ignorant of the careers they spent their lives in, to point out that this isn’t how any of it works.

DNA analysis almost certainly hasn’t just solved the mystery of Jack the Ripper

Mike Hall
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DNA analysis almost certainly hasn’t just solved the mystery of Jack the Ripper

Serial killers hold a peculiar place in popular culture. Figures like Jack the Ripper were sensationalised even in their own time, with newspapers fuelling panic and speculation about Jolly Jack and when he will strike next.

Despite more than a century passing since the brutal Whitechapel Murders, public and popular fascination with the crimes persists. Many serial murderers have books, documentaries, and podcasts dedicated to them, but Jack the Ripper has had an unprecedented influence on British and American culture.

Alan Moore’s From Hell presents the Whitechapel Murders as part of a conspiracy, with the killings forming an occult ritual. Hammer’s Room to Let depicts Jack as Dr Fell, a softly spoken medical doctor in hiding long after the events in Whitechapel. Star Trek says Jack the Ripper was Redjac, an alien creature who possesses Scotty, in a script written by the author of Psycho, Robert Bloch. Another Hammer production, Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde, portrays Hyde as responsible for the Whitechapel Murders, while Jekyll struggles with the horrifying actions of his alter-ego.

However, this enduring focus on serial killers comes at a cost. The victims of such crimes are frequently overshadowed, their names forgotten, while the killers become cultural icons. Despite his historical significance, Jack the Ripper was ultimately a brutal murderer. Yet the way we remember him today reflects a wider cultural obsession with serial killers that is both compelling and problematic.

There is also a significant amount of pseudoscience surrounding the Whitechapel Murders. There are hoaxed diaries, fake letters, and conspiracy theories involving the Freemasons or the British Royal family. Some deny Jack the Ripper existed at all, and argue that the murders attributed to him were totally unrelated. Many of these conspiracies and hoaxes persist because, after 140 years, we still have no idea who Jack the Ripper was.

But could that be about to change? In recent weeks, multiple news outlets have reported on a DNA analysis claiming to identify the killer as Aaron Kosminski, a Polish barber who lived in Whitechapel at the time.

As the story goes, a blood-soaked shawl was found alongside the body of the fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes, and was taken home by Acting Sergeant Amos Simpson. Simpson had taken the shawl as a gift for his wife, a seamstress, who quite understandably had no interest in making use of a bloody shawl taken from a murder victim. Rather than disposing of it, she placed it in storage and it was passed down through the family before finally being sold at auction by David Melville-Hayes, a descendant of Simpson, in 2007.

The buyer, a businessman named Russell Edwards, became interested in ‘Ripperology’ in 2001 after watching the movie adaptation of From Hell. Edwards employed Dr Jari Louhelainen, a molecular biologist based at Liverpool John Moores University, who in 2011 used modern forensic techniques to demonstrate that DNA from both Eddowes and Kosminski was present on the shawl, and therefore Kosminski must have been the killer.

Edwards first announced these findings over a decade ago, in a 2014 article for the Mail on Sunday, just days before the publication of his book on the topic. Louhelainen’s examination of the shawl was published five years later, in the Journal of Forensic Sciences – so this story is very much old news. The resurgence in press interest appears to have been driven by the publication of a new edition of Edwards’ book, which hit the shelves last October.

Regardless of the reasons for the renewed interest, there remain several problems with the shawl and its analysis.

First, no contemporary documentation indicates there was a shawl discovered with Eddowes. The list of items discovered with her is exhaustive, and includes a black straw bonnet, black cloth jacket with imitation fur, dark green skirt with a brown button on the waistband, a white man’s vest, a brown bodice, grey petticoat, a pair of men’s boots, large pocket handkerchief, brown knee stockings, two clay pipes, one tin box of tea, one tin box of sugar, one empty matchbox, six pieces soap, one comb, one table knife, one metal teaspoon, several buttons, one red mitten, and a thimble. Despite cataloging such inconsequential items as an empty matchbook and a thimble, the eight foot shawl is not mentioned.

A low-light/monochrome photo of a kitchen knife on a surface, with suspect drips near its point
A kitchen knife and some suspect droplets. By Ryk Neethling, via Flickr, CC BY 2.0

So if no shawl is recorded as being found with Eddowes, how did Simpson have one? One theory suggests that Simpson took the shawl from the crime scene before Eddowes’ belongings were catalogued – an act that would constitute a serious dereliction of duty, even then. While it was common practice at the time to burn a murder victim’s clothing after examination, tampering with evidence before it was recorded would have been highly improper, especially in such a high-profile case.

This leads to a second problem: the silken shawl was very large and would have been extremely valuable. However, Eddowes lived in extreme poverty and had recently pawned a pair of shoes just to get enough money to eat. It seems unlikely that she would have owned such a garment.

Edwards speculates that the shawl in fact belonged to the killer, who deliberately left it at the crime scene to be found. He further argues that the pattern of Michaelmas Daisies on the shawl was a deliberate clue for police.

Michaelmas, or the Feast of St Michael, is a largely forgotten Christian tradition today, but was still celebrated in the Victorian era. Two dates exist for the feast. In the Western tradition it is held on 29 September; Eastern Orthodox has it on 8 November. Edwards argues that this is no coincidence, since 29 September was the date on which both Eddowes and Elizabeth Stride were killed, and 8 November was the date of the final murder, that of Mary Jane Kelly.

Edwards further speculates that Kosminski procured the shawl specifically to leave at the scene, as a hint toward the date of his next murder. While it’s not beyond the realms of possibility for a serial killer to do that, there is no contemporary evidence to suggest that Jack the Ripper operated with this level of symbolic planning, and the argument smacks of a Texas sharpshooter fallacy. The apparent specificity is only apparent in retrospect, and is more likely to have been fitted to match the story than the other way around. And that’s leaving aside the fact that Stride and Eddowes were in fact attacked in the early hours of 30 September (not the 29th), and Kelly lost her life on 9 November (not the 8th).

On top of that, Aaron Kosminski was Jewish and Michaelmas is a Christian tradition. Is it reasonable to suppose that he would have known not only the Western date for the feast, but also the date of its Eastern Orthodox variant?

The next problem with the provenance of the shawl is that Amos Simpson did not attend the crime scene. Simpson is recorded as joining the Metropolitan Police Y Division in 1868, transferring to N Division in 1886, where he remained until his resignation in 1893.

The Whitechapel Murders were investigated by H Division, and there is no record of Simpson ever serving there. Moreover, Eddowes’ murder was in the jurisdiction of the City of London Police, so why would a Met officer have attended the crime scene? According to the oral family tradition accompanying the shawl, Simpson was supposedly on ‘special duties’ that night and was in fact the first officer to discover Eddowes’ body. However, the official record lists Constable Edward Watkins as the officer who found Eddowes, and a list of those present at the scene does not include Simpson. It is also Watkins who appeared at the inquest; Simpson does not attend.

The area where Eddowes was found, Mitre Square, is over a mile from N Division’s area. We might speculate that Simpson strayed from his beat that night and happened upon Eddowes, taking the shawl and leaving before Watkins arrived.

Monochrome photo of Mitre Square in London's EC3, Whitechapel. A cobbled road curves left with dark brick buildings in the background and a small park to the right. The road ahead is blocked by bollards. A road sign for Mitre Square hangs on a short wall next to a bench on the right.
Mitre Square, Whitechapel, London. By Stop Time on Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Again, the historical record challenges this theory. At 1:30am, PC Watkins had patrolled Mitre Square and saw nothing unusual. At 1:35am, witnesses saw Eddowes talking to a man near Church Passage. At 1:40am, PC James Harvey walked through Church Passage to the edge of Mitre Square but noticed nothing out of the ordinary. At 1:45am, Watkins returned to the square and discovered Eddowes’ body.

So Eddowes was seen alive at 1:35am, and found dead at 1:45am. And in between times, PC Harvey had walked through the area she was later found and saw nothing. Even leaving some slack for some variation in these timings (it’s not like everyone had iPhones synchronised with internet time), this means there would have been around five to ten minutes for Kosminski to murder and mutilate Eddowes and flee the scene, and for Simpson – having somehow strayed miles from his beat – to stumble upon the body, decide his wife might appreciate a bloody shawl from a murder victim, take it as a keepsake, and vanish before Watkins arrives.

The story stretches the limits of credulity, but let us assume for a moment that all this happened. Let’s assume that the killer wanted to leave an oblique clue to taunt the police, and acquired an expensive shawl featuring Michaelmas Daisies to leave beside a victim’s body. Let’s also assume that it was found by Amos Simpson, who instead of throwing it away, burning it, giving it away, or even giving it a wash – puts it in a cupboard. And let’s assume that all of this managed to avoid police records, but was passed down in the oral tradition of Amos Simpson’s family.

How does that lead us to Aaron Kosminski?

In his 2019 paper, Jari Louhelainen described how he extracted mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from the blood stains on the shawl, and matched those to the mtDNA of a descendent of Eddowes – confirmation, it appears, that the shawl was at the crime scene.

However, even this is an overstatement. Mitochondrial DNA is not typically able to identify individuals with such specificity. The mtDNA may have matched Eddowes, but will also have matched thousands of other people from London at the time. The match doesn’t rule out that this was Eddowes’ blood, but does not confirm it either.

Louhelainen also used mtDNA to link a semen stain found on the shawl to relatives of Kosminski, but this link suffers from the same problem. The mtDNA may match Kosminski, but would also have matched thousands of Londoners of the time.

Moreover, while there does seem to have been some sexual element to the Whitechapel Murders – given the victims were exclusively women and often had organs, including sex organs, removed – there is no clear evidence that Jack the Ripper assaulted his victims in a manner that would have left semen at the crime scene. This is simply not a known feature of the Whitechapel Murders.

Black splatter patterns on a white background, resembling ink or blood
Cleaned up blood is hard to detect without a UV light, and/or luminol. Image via Wallpaper Flare.

In response to this criticism, Louhelainen argues that Victorian forensic techniques were rudimentary, and investigators lacked modern tools like UV lights to detect semen. While this is a valid criticism of historical forensic methods, it also creates a circular argument. If the goal is to prove that Kosminski’s semen on the shawl links him to the Whitechapel Murders, this assumption relies on the very evidence we are attempting to validate. Without evidence that the semen is linked to the crime, the claim that it implicates Kosminski or confirms his identity as the Ripper is speculative at best.

This brings us to another issue: Aaron Kosminski was the only Ripper suspect that Edwards and Louhelainen chose to test, as Edwards already believed him to be the killer. Given the wide range of suspects that have been considered over the years, testing other plausible candidates alongside Kosminski might have strengthened Edwards’ claim… or undermined it. If more than one suspect matches the mtDNA on the shawl, what then?

In fact, even the notion of Aaron Kosminski being a genuine suspect is somewhat questionable. Much of the emphasis on him comes from an 1894 memorandum written by Melville Macnaghten, then the Assistant Chief Constable of the Metropolitan Police. In this memo, written years after the final murder, Macnaghten names three possible suspects: Montague Druitt, Michael Ostrog, and a man he refers to as ‘Kosminski’ (no first name given). Macnaghten describes ‘Kosminski’ as a Polish Jew living in Whitechapel, who was committed to an asylum in 1889

Many years later, Sir Robert Anderson, in his memoirs, also refers to a Polish suspect but did not name him as Kosminski. It was Chief Inspector Donald Swanson who, in handwritten notes in his personal copy of Anderson’s book, wrote ‘Kosminski was the suspect’ next to this passage, further noting that ‘Kosminski’ had been sent to the Colney Hatch Asylum and died shortly afterward.

It wasn’t until 1987 that the pseudonymous ‘Kosminski’ was linked to the barber Aaron Kosminski, on the basis of Aaron being the only recorded individual named Kosminski at Colney Hatch. However, there are differences between the suspect ‘Kosminski’ and Aaron Kosminski. The suspect is described as being sent to Colney Hatch in March 1889 and dying shortly afterward. In contrast, Aaron Kosminski was not sent to Colney Hatch until February 1891 and died over two decades later, at Leavesden Hospital, in 1919. Indeed, when Swanson wrote that ‘Kosminski’ had died shortly after going to Colney Hatch, Aaron Kosminski was still alive.

Records from his hospitalisation also show that Aaron Kosminski did not appear to speak English and communicated only in Yiddish during his time there. If he truly couldn’t speak English or had only rudimentary knowledge of it, this would contradict the description of Jack the Ripper, who was reportedly seen conversing with both Stride and Eddowes.

Turning back to the shawl itself – between 1991 and 2001, it was on loan to the Metropolitan Police ‘Black Museum,’ though it appears not to have been put on display, perhaps due to its dubious provenance. After reclaiming the shawl in 2001, Melville-Hayes exhibited it at Jack the Ripper conventions and had it DNA tested as part of a Channel 5 documentary in 2006 (Channel 5’s findings were inconclusive.) The shawl does not appear to have been kept in anything approaching reasonable forensic conditions, and has had ample opportunity to be contaminated, including by those connected to the case.

Following the publication of Louhelainen’s 2019 paper, the Journal of Forensic Sciences received critical letters from two commentators, both of whom questioned the validity of his conclusions. Louhelainen responded with rebuttals, but the debate was significant enough for the journal’s editor to request the raw data supporting the study. Unfortunately, Louhelainen was unable to provide it, citing ‘instrument failure.’ As a result, the Journal of Forensic Sciences has issued an ‘Expression of Concern,’ a formal notice warning readers that the article’s findings might be unreliable. This notice remains attached to the paper at the time of writing.

Russell Edwards has declared the findings to be the final word on the Whitechapel Murders. He has even gone as far as to call for the courts to officially recognise Kosminski as the killer and formally close the case. He has also stated that anyone unmoved by his arguments are simply ‘unbelievers’ motivated to ‘perpetuate the mystery.’

I have no particular enthusiasm for the Jack the Ripper case. I wouldn’t describe myself as a ‘Ripperologist,’ nor do I claim deep knowledge of the subject. In fact, I find the public fascination with serial killers somewhat vulgar. ‘Perpetuating mystery’ is not my motivation, nor is it for any skeptic. My interest lies in understanding what is true, based on the available evidence, and in following where that evidence leads – while remaining cautious not to fall prey to motivated reasoning or wishful thinking about what we would like to be true.

It is entirely possible that Aaron Kosminski is the true identity of Jack the Ripper. However, the evidence and arguments presented in support of this contain too many gaps and flaws to be convincing.

Joe Nickell, legendary skeptical investigator, dies at the age of 80

Blake Smith
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Joe Nickell, legendary skeptical investigator, dies at the age of 80

Joe Nickell is dead. He passed away Tuesday March 4th, 2025, aged 80. During his life, Joe had more adventures and investigated more mysteries than most avid readers will encounter in a stack of their favourite books. How do you summarise a life like Joe’s? Well, in one sense, we don’t have to rely on obituary as biography because his frequent articles and books have done that work, and in his own hand. If you’ve never heard of Joe nor his contributions to the literature of scientific investigation of the paranormal and supernatural, then you find here but a signpost to further reading.

But solving mysteries was just one chapter in the anthology of Joe’s life. No, that’s not an ill-chosen word. Most people see their lives as a biography in progress, a single narrative with the hero version of ourselves as the main character. Joe, on the other hand, took on the challenge of reinventing himself so many times that he came to refer to these episodes as his “personas.”

A side-on photo of Joe Nickell. He has white combed-over hair, thin-rimmed glasses, and a full, white beard. He wears a tweet jacket and black t shirt. He is 73 years old in the photo.
Joe Nickell CSICon 2018 (Sgerbic, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

There is Joe, the 1960s civil rights activist who marched with Dr King and canvassed the hostile segregationist South to help register black voters. Then there’s Joe, the young entrepreneur son of a Kentucky postmaster who learned the trade of sign-painting and used those skills his whole life to find work and create art between various jobs and yet more personas. There was Joe, the private investigator who went undercover to break up crime rings and solve cases that would make great true-crime fodder. Don’t forget about Joe, the noted poet who once participated in a slam with notable members of the Beat Generation. Joe Nickell was present when the hippies tried to levitate the Pentagon. And we mustn’t forget Joe, the documents expert who used his forgery detection skills to find a Nazi hiding from justice. And can you hear that boardwalk patter? That’s Joe, the street magician and conjuror plying his trade to lure you into a museum of magic using the verbal tricks of the trade he learned from his friends in the travelling carnival circuit. Oh – and over there in tweed? Why that’s Dr Joe Nickell, should you find him in the guise of English professor. And of course Joe Nickell could tell you about more of his exploits over an expertly made mint julep, since he was also a Kentucky Colonel who literally wrote the book on that cocktail. 

All of that is before we get to his work on miracles, ghosts, monsters, and flying saucers. Joe probably did more than anyone to let us in on the “secret” that the Shroud of Turin is a 13th century fraud and could never have been the burial cloth of Jesus. With nothing more powerful than a pen, Joe defeated countless beasts and creatures and found time after time that sincere witnesses may have very well seen real things – but the right circumstances can turn the mundane and the natural into the liminal and mysterious. 

Joe slept in haunted houses. He camped in monster territory. He faced cursed objects and holy relics with the most powerful spell known to secular inquiry, the two word invocation that all purveyors of the implausible dread: “Prove it.“

Joe didn’t believe in any gods or afterlife, but didn’t call himself an “atheist.” He preferred to say he was a secular humanist which, if the inquirer didn’t understand, he would define as “an atheist with a heart.” And that’s how I knew him to be.

Joe Nickell talking about being a paranormal investigator, at QED Con 2012. He is dressed in black and is holding up his hand to make a point. He has grey moustache, aviator-style spectacles, and combed-over hair.
Joe Nickell speaking at QEDcon at the Mercure Manchester Piccadilly Hotel on the 11th of March 2012 (Your Funny Uncle, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

I believe I met Joe for the first time in 2009 when he was at DragonCon. He was used to meeting lots of people, being in crowds, talking to large audiences, getting on TV shows, consulting with movie people – but when we met and I told him I was also interested in solving mysteries he only ever treated me as an equal and welcomed me to the calling. 

Joe’s stance was akin to what Dr. Karen Stollznow and I have taken to calling “a presumption of sincerity.” When someone is willing to share their weird or mysterious encounter, we take them seriously and try to understand and listen – and until we run into something that suggests insincerity or lies, we continue to focus on the claims, not the character of the claimant. I think Joe also took this tack when he met potential fellow investigators. He would treat you as a serious colleague until you demonstrated otherwise. 

I don’t know how many investigators Joe took under his wing or collaborated with as trusted colleagues, but it was a lot. I know he worked with Hayley Stevens, Robert Bartholemew, Steven Novella, Jim McGaha, Robert Sheaffer, Massimo Polidoro, and I’m sure many, many others. I know he spoke about collaborating with James Randi and other founding members of CSICOP. He venerated his own mentor and fellow Kentuckian Robert A. Baker, and the magician and author Melbourne Christopher – yet he still took time to help younger investigators just getting started with their own inquiries into paranormal mysteries. 

Joe was as complicated as his many personas suggest. While he could be a tremendous friend, he also could be a bit prickly and his opinion of your merit might fade quickly if you disagreed with him without a strong and cogent argument. And as he got older, he worried too much about people scooping his latest cases. That was unfortunate, because the reality is that there might not be a bustling stable of future scientific researchers into such mysteries. I would be more optimistic about the future if there were a bigger skilled and competent coterie of investigators trying to out-sleuth each other in their relentless drive to track down real explanations for mysteries, but this is a peculiar and rare avocation (Joe’s word).

Why didn’t Joe ever use the Internet? He wasn’t unfamiliar with computers and would use them in his research – yet he wrote his cases up in longhand and had a typist prepare them. He would correspond via letters, and he would use a phone – but he wouldn’t own a mobile or smart-phone and he saw such devices as more distraction than useful extension of his capabilities. I recall one time a notable colleague shared a story about pestering Joe to use a computer to speed up their collaborative process, and Joe pushed back by saying he’d written more than 25 published books without a computer, “and how many have YOU written?” That person has gone on to have their own books published, but it was the kind of retort Joe would use; one that both shuts down the argument while also making a strong suggestion of its own. 

Joe Nickell in his office in Amherst, NY, in 2013. He sits at a desk, dressed in a black shirt and tan jacket. His desk is a mass of papers, books and notes. Behind him is a row of seven black filing cabinets and an old TV.
Joe Nickell in office, Amherst, NY 2013 (Sgerbic, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Even in the last few weeks of his life Joe was in a race to try and finish as much as he could of his remaining projects. He was an utter realist about the brevity of life and wanted to squeeze out everything he could from it. 

Joe went undercover to spot trickery at Spiritualist camps. He snuck “tears” and “blood” from holy relics to have them analysed. He was adept at subterfuge and prestidigitation. Yet what he really wanted was for people to be able to enjoy mysteries but not be duped by the dubious. He kept Occam’s Razor at the ready for any epistemological street fight. He was inspired by Sherlock Holmes, but saw the life of Arthur Conan Doyle as an object lesson that being clever could still end with your being duped by the biggest trickster of all – the true Moriarty of mystery – one’s own fallible mind and faulty perception. 

I was lucky to have known Joe. He went from being a TV face to a notable colleague to a trusted friend. In the decade and a half that we knew each other he was never anything but supportive and helpful, and he was generous and wise with the advice he dispensed. Typically when Joe called it would take an hour to have our conversation. Rare was the call that lasted less than 30 minutes. But last week Joe sounded very tired and told me he needed to rest. Over the weekend I worried, and was relieved when I reached him on Monday. 

“Get some rest, Joe. Get well. You’ve still got a lot of work to do,” I told him.

He sounded winded and said he was going to watch MSNBC and try to get his energy back. A neighbour came to the door while we were talking and I could overhear them tell Joe they were thinking about him and worried that he might fall in the ice trying to get his newspaper. When Joe came back to the phone he told me how much he appreciated good neighbours. I told him that I wished I lived closer so I could check in on him myself. Could I send something his way? Did he need any groceries or anything?

The very suggestion that Joe might be getting frail kicked him back into one of his very best personas: the old investigator with one more case to solve… When he stopped speaking of his immediate health and turned back to his latest investigation – a mystery he dared not share with me because it hadn’t been published yet – there was my old friend again. The man who re-created the Nazca lines, who made the Shroud of Bing Crosby on TV, the man who didn’t believe in miracles, but believed in his fellow man… there was my Joe again. 

“Joe, I just want you to know that I appreciate you as a friend, as a mentor, and as an incredible mind. The world needs voices like yours and I’m honoured to have helped in some small way to share your work,” I said. I had no premonition that he was dying – just a lot of worry given his age and health. 

He thanked me. I thanked him. We said our goodbyes. Now he’s taken on his final persona in our relationship – Joe Nickell, the friendly skeptical ghost who will haunt me with his wisdom and his adventures for the rest of my own life.

The Skeptic Podcast: Episode #002

The Skeptic Podcast
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The Skeptic Podcast: Episode #002

From the pages of The Skeptic magazine, this is The Skeptic podcast, bringing you the best of the magazine’s expert analysis of pseudoscience, conspiracy theory and claims of the paranormal since its relaunch as online news source in September 2020. 

On this episode:

Subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts, or to support the show, take out a small voluntary donation at patreon.com/theskeptic.

Netflix’s Apple Cider Vinegar shows the shameless reality of Belle Gibson’s fraud

Abigail Kennedy
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Netflix’s Apple Cider Vinegar shows the shameless reality of Belle Gibson’s fraud

Netflix recently released a biopic miniseries exploring the rise and fall of Australian wellness influencer Belle Gibson. Titled Apple Cider Vinegar (2025), the miniseries investigates Gibson’s elaborate web of deception and dramatises her infamous story. Its release raised an eyebrow for me, given Netflix’s history of promoting alternative medicine and pseudoscience on its platform, with titles like The Goop Lab (2020), Seaspiracy (2021), and What the Health (2017), among many others, accused of spreading various misleading or false claims.

The new miniseries, along with the 2023 Belle Gibson documentary The Search for Instagram’s Worst Con Artist, made me wonder: is Netflix pivoting its content strategy and trying to distance itself from association with misleading health claims?

Belle Gibson rose to fame through her wildly popular Instagram platform, which led to the release of her app and book, The Whole Pantry. The book contained recipes and health and lifestyle advice, all backed by her supposed terminal brain cancer diagnosis and claims of treating herself with natural remedies. She also claimed to have donated proceeds from the sale of her app and book to charities and people in need.

However, an investigation into Gibson’s fundraising activities revealed that not only had the promised funds never been paid, but her cancer diagnosis was also a complete lie. Legal action resulted in Gibson being fined $410,000 by the Australian Federal Court in 2017 for breaching Australian consumer law – a fine she has still not paid.

The release and promotion of Apple Cider Vinegar may be an attempt to counterbalance Netflix’s history of platforming questionable health content, especially in an era where fake news and misinformation are major global concerns. This comes at a time when Meta, one of the largest digital platforms and the company that owns Instagram – where Belle Gibson built her influence – is retracting its fact-checking initiatives. It is evident that we cannot rely on industry self-regulation to combat misinformation. Perhaps I’m giving Netflix too much credit, particularly since they have made no attempt to add disclaimers or context to any of the aforementioned titles. Still, Apple Cider Vinegar feels like a step in a different direction – maybe, generously speaking, even a breath of fresh air.

A red sign with white text hangs askew on yellow metalwork, reading "DANGER DUE TO" then "MISINFORMATION" written on by hand in blank space below
Could we see some higher standards from Netflix, or warnings on existing shows? Photo by 3dpete, Flickr CC BY-ND 2.0

In Apple Cider Vinegar and The Search for Instagram’s Worst Con Artist, Belle Gibson is unequivocally portrayed as the antagonist, with the program primarily focusing on the stories of people who were deceived by her claims of curing multiple forms of cancer through diet and exercise while rejecting traditional cancer treatments, including chemotherapy. The show does not shy away from highlighting the damage her false claims caused, as well as how her biggest supporters helped her build an influencer empire that led to a book deal and a wellness app.

A major strength of the miniseries is its honesty about the harm caused by promoting alternative medical practices, particularly regarding cancer treatment. From the outset, Apple Cider Vinegar makes it clear that Belle Gibson was a fraud – there is no ambiguity, no element of suspense regarding her deception.

Right from the beginning, the people in Gibson’s life, including her fans and employees, attempt to expose her. Meanwhile, we see her at events promoting her book, claiming that her ‘authenticity’ is what draws people to her platform and brand. The show does an excellent job of portraying her as an almost cartoonish villain, with little to no attempt to humanise her. While this may make her a less complex character, it ensures that the producers avoid the trap of adding unnecessary drama by providing a sympathetic backstory. She is the villain, and the show makes this clear by depicting journalists breaking the story in 2015, revealing how her lies have cost lives by discouraging people from seeking necessary medical treatments.

One particularly striking moment occurs when her brand manager meets with the journalists investigating her. The brand manager remarks, “She’s probably killing people with her lies,” to which the journalist replies, “She is killing people.” This powerful exchange is even featured in the trailer that plays when you hover over the title.

When considering Netflix’s popular health documentaries, such as The Goop Lab and What the Health – though misleading content extends beyond health documentaries – it’s clear that the platform has not shied away from promoting untested and sometimes dangerous health claims. Gwyneth Paltrow, through her Netflix-promoted brand Goop, has suggested practices such as inserting a jade egg into one’s vagina, undergoing an “energy exorcism” to release stress and trauma, and engaging in “cold therapy” – all of which lack scientific backing or medical recommendation.

A peachy-brown solid background with 'the goop lab' in black text - the title card for the Netflix show of that name
The Goop Lab’s title card, from Netflix, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

While controversial titles such as The Goop Lab remain available on the platform, Netflix has removed content in the past. In 2019, for instance, Netflix took down the documentary Root Cause, which alleged that root canals cause cancer, heart disease, and other serious chronic illnesses. This inconsistency raises questions about Netflix’s commitment to content regulation.

The Goop Lab remains available on Netflix in the UK without any content warnings or disclaimers. The same goes for What the Health, which argues that meat, fish, poultry, and dairy contribute to obesity, cancer, type-2 diabetes, and toxin exposure. The filmmaker even compares consuming processed meats in childhood to smoking cigarettes. Despite widespread criticism from nutritionists and medical professionals, the documentary is still available, without any disclaimer addressing its controversies and inaccuracies.

There doesn’t seem to be much consistency in Netflix’s approach, suggesting that different departments or decision-makers have varying attitudes toward fact-checking, misinformation, and journalistic integrity. It appears that Apple Cider Vinegar comes from one side of the company, while The Goop Lab comes from another.

In recent years, there have been calls for streaming platforms to be regulated as strictly as linear TV channels, which must abide by Ofcom rules in the UK. Most Video on Demand services, however, are not currently subject to the regulator’s Broadcasting Code. This makes it difficult to enforce fact-checking requirements or hold platforms accountable for spreading misinformation.

With high-profile productions featuring well-known actors, content like Apple Cider Vinegar has the potential to shape public opinion. While most viewers are unlikely to support alternative cancer treatments, a firm stance against scammers like Gibson could contribute to shifting attitudes. If this type of content becomes part of a broader trend, it could help counteract the growing scepticism and distrust toward medical science.

While Netflix’s history with wellness-related content remains questionable, Apple Cider Vinegar suggests a shift – whether intentional or not – toward a more critical lens on misinformation. Only time will tell if this marks a true pivot or just an anomaly in their content strategy. However, it is reassuring to see that there are people at Netflix who value media literacy and believe that exposing dangerous scammers is important. Even without strict broadcasting regulations, efforts like Apple Cider Vinegar show that there are at least some within Netflix who are pushing for greater accountability in content creation.

Paging Dr Superstitious: Why Singaporean medics believe steamed buns are bad luck

Bruce Phang
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Paging Dr Superstitious: Why Singaporean medics believe steamed buns are bad luck

A steamed bun is a delicacy that most Asians are familiar with, and a source of comfort food for many. However, to many Asian nurses and healthcare staff, consuming a steamed bun during a hospital shift is considered a big taboo. You may wonder why this small delicacy causes anxiety and turmoil amongst hospital staff. This taboo arises from the supposed correlation between the consumption of the steamed bun and the number of serious incidents during a hospital shift. In some hospitals, it is believed that the consumption of a steamed bun highly increases the chance of a patient’s death.

The high-stakes environment of a hospital fosters anxiety and unease, both for those receiving care and for the healthcare professionals providing it. It is common knowledge that humans have relied on superstitions to cope with fear, uncertainty, and a lack of control over outcomes, especially in fields like medicine, where success is often accompanied by high stress and unpredictable factors. Hospitals embody this blend of hope and anxiety, where outcomes are life altering and tensions are high. In this environment, superstitions can take on lives of their own, providing patients and professionals with symbolic means to cope.

These superstitions may take various forms. Some are as simple as doctors wearing a specific pair of scrubs for good luck, or nurses avoiding certain phrases like “quiet night” to avoid “jinxing” a seemingly peaceful shift. Others may involve more intricate rituals, such as placing open scissors on the emergency phone to “cut” the occurrence of calls. With some patients even believing in lucky room numbers or bringing personal items that they consider “protective” during their hospital stays.

These practices, though not founded on scientific evidence, are deeply embedded in the hospital culture and may well provide psychological benefits for those involved. Some might argue that these superstitions serve as coping mechanisms, while others view them as humorous yet oddly comforting rituals in the chaotic environment of a hospital.

To give further insights on these superstitions, I interviewed Melvin, a junior doctor in one of Singapore’s public hospital. As someone who has just begun his journey in the challenging and often unpredictable world of medicine, Melvin’s life is a mix of intense professional dedication and quirky age-old traditions. Despite his medical training, like many healthcare professionals, Melvin, has embraced certain superstitions tied to the hospital’s culture.

One of the first superstitions Melvin was introduced to during his hospital rotations was the steamed bun taboo. Among his peers, it is an unspoken rule that consuming steamed buns on a hospital call or duty is a bad omen.

Steamed buns, also written as “包”, uses the same word as “wrapping” in Chinese. One of the few interpretations would be that steamed buns symbolises death, inciting the act of wrapping and packing of dead bodies. He mentions that his peers steer clear from steamed buns to lower the occurrence of such “bun-related cases”. It’s little surprise – a study by the Academy of Medicine in Singapore found all manner of superstitious beliefs among Singaporean medics.

Melvin himself admits to steering clear of this fluffy treat during his shifts. “Why take a chance and tempt fate?” he says, explaining that the last thing any doctor wants is to associate their meal choice with the grim outcomes to their patients’ conditions.

Three empty hospital beds in a ward room in daylight, two made up with bedding and one showing blue under-bedding, ready to be made.
Empty hospital beds, via Pixabay

For Melvin and his colleagues, certain words are considered taboo during shifts. Amongst the many phrases they avoid, the most dangerous would include describing a shift as “quiet” or “free”. To say, “Seems like it would be a quiet night” is akin to summoning chaos and inciting more work to do.

He recalls a night in the Emergency Department when a nurse casually remarked that she was bored because there was not much to do, and it was “quiet”. Preceding her mention of the work “quiet”, the emergency phone rang, and they were notified of an incoming patient who had serious injuries. Melvin thought to himself that it was as if the word “quiet” was the password to a vault full of work and medical emergencies, and the nurse had just “unlocked the vault”.

To avoid jinxing their luck, healthcare workers rely on euphemisms or say nothing at all when the workload is manageable. Silence, in this case, is golden. Melvin finds it amusing, but also recognises the psychological comfort it offers. “In our line of work, where certain elements are out of our control, following these little rules gives us a sense of order”, he reflects.

Perhaps the eeriest superstition that Melvin has encountered involves the use of certain hospital lifts. Many staff members refuse to take the last lift in the corner, especially towards the end of a shift. Stories abound about the use of the last lift during the shift incites more work or challenging situations. While Melvin has not experienced anything firsthand, he avoids the lift out of precaution for his seniors. However, Melvin did mention that, in situations where the shifts become busy and chaotic, his team seemingly goes against this superstition as the utility of an additional lift outweighs the supposed additional work placed onto the team. “We have to strike a balance between following such superstitious practices and operational concerns during our shifts”, he mentions.

While these practices might seem at odds with the rationality of medicine, Melvin sees them as part of hospital culture. “They’re little rituals that connect us,” he says. In the high-pressure environment of a hospital, superstitions provide not just amusement, but a shared sense of identity among staff. For Melvin, they are reminders of the humanity that underpins his work, when science meets the inexplicable, and every shift that has a new story waiting to unfold.

Psychological coping mechanisms

Hospitals are inherently high-stress environments, where healthcare workers make decisions that can make the difference between life and death. For these professionals, superstitions often function as psychological coping mechanisms, offering a sense of control and reducing anxiety. By engaging in certain rituals or behaviours – such as surgeons wearing a “lucky” cap,  or nurses stacking open scissors on the emergency phone – medical staff may feel more mentally prepared and at ease before taking on high-stakes tasks. This sense of control, even if illusory, can improve focus and reduce stress, indirectly benefiting their performance and, by extension, patient care.

With superstitions often being shared within hospital teams, the collective practice of unique rituals builds a sense of camaraderie. While these practices may seem unscientific, they create a shared understanding among team members and strengthen their sense of unity. This shared connection not only fosters morale but also contributes to team resilience, an essential factor in ensuring effective collaboration and managing stress in demanding medical environments.

For patients who may feel anxious and vulnerable, superstitions can provide a source of comfort and empowerment. Believing in certain rituals, lucky numbers, or personal items allows patients to feel a sense of involvement and optimism, countering the helplessness that hospitalisation often entails. For instance, some healthcare professionals encourage patients to bring items they consider protective, such as family photos, small tokens, or jewellery, as a medium of solace and hope. While these superstitions lack empirical backing, they can bolster a patient’s mental resilience and create a more positive mindset, potentially fostering better adherence to treatment and improving their outlook.

Despite some potential practical benefits of these hospital superstitions, there are also reasons to be cautious. A primary is their lack of scientific validity. Hospitals are dedicated to evidence-based practices, where clinical decisions are informed by empirical data and rigorous testing. By nature, superstitions defy this logic. They rely on chance, coincidence, confirmation bias, or tradition, rather than reproducible scientific findings.

The notion that avoiding certain phrases or wearing particular items could influence patient outcomes is unsubstantiated and can even contradict the principles of modern medicine. Relying on these beliefs can potentially distract healthcare professionals from focusing solely on evidence-based practices that have been tested and proven effective.

Superstitions can also foster cognitive biases, leading healthcare professionals to erroneously link outcomes to unrelated actions. For instance, if a surgeon attributes a successful operation to a specific routine rather than their clinical skills or the patient’s health condition, this can lead to skewed perceptions of causation. Over time, reliance on these superstitions may reduce critical thinking, causing practitioners to overlook objective factors. This undermines the rigorous, systematic analysis needed in medicine and can lead to misplaced confidence in the power of rituals over proven medical protocols, which could inadvertently compromise patient care.

A lift floor selection panel from 2006, in a residential apartment block in Shanghai, showing floors -1 to 16. Floors 0, 4, 13 and 14 are missing.
A picture taken in an elevator in a residential apartment block in Shanghai. Floors 0, 4, 13 and 14 are missing due to the numbers being deemed inauspicious. Chrisobyrne, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

For patients, a sense of trust and confidence in their healthcare providers is essential. When patients observe medical professionals engaging in seemingly irrational behaviours or relying on “lucky” items, it may raise doubts about their objectivity and professionalism. The presence of superstitions in such a scientific environment could erode patients’ trust in the reliability and integrity of healthcare providers.

This lack of confidence may even contribute to heightened anxiety or decreased adherence to medical advice provided by healthcare professionals, as patients might start to question whether their care is influenced by unscientific beliefs. As a result, superstitions may, indirectly, impact both patient satisfaction and the reputation of the healthcare institutions.

The intersection of superstition and science presents a paradox: can beliefs that defy scientific reasoning actually enhance patient care by leveraging the psychological benefits they bring?

This question highlights a potential path forward. While superstitions themselves may lack empirical merit, acknowledging their psychological impacts could lead healthcare providers to find balanced approaches that respect both evidence-based practices and the value of individual beliefs.

Superstitions within hospitals represent a fascinating blend of human psychology and the pursuit of healing. Despite the objective of evidence-based treatments, superstitions continue to influence the daily routines of healthcare professionals and the experiences of patients. Superstitions might help provide a means of managing anxiety, fostering team spirit, and offering comfort to those in vulnerable situations, but these beliefs are not without drawbacks. They lack scientific validity, have the potential to create biases, and may even compromise the professional image of healthcare providers.

However, rather than dismissing superstitions outrightly, healthcare providers may benefit from acknowledging their roles as psychological tools, facilitating comfort in an environment often marked by high stress and uncertainty. The challenge lies in balancing respect for individual beliefs with a commitment to evidence-based practice.

Could there be merit in fostering these traditions, or would their continued presence ultimately erode the foundations of empirical science? This paradox invites us to consider the possibility that superstitions, though unscientific, might just be an essential part of the human experience, even within the most scientific environments.

NATO was created to ensure peace – disinformation seeks to undermine that

Tom Williamson
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NATO was created to ensure peace – disinformation seeks to undermine that

Summer 1945, the end of the Second World War. Europe lies in ruins, tens of millions are dead. The Axis powers are no more, with Nazi leader Adolph Hitler dead in a ditch, his body covered in petrol and set on fire, while Italian dictator Benito Mussolini hangs upside down from a lamp post. In the east, Joseph Stalin has the Soviet Union in his vice-like grip. In the words of Winston Churchill, an iron curtain is descending over Europe. Already, western leaders are discussing how to defend themselves should another world war break out.

Following a series of meetings in the late 1940s, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, or NATO, was born. The initial premise was simple: should one member of the alliance be attacked, the other members would come to their aid, as set out in Article 5. Although not set in stone, the de facto power NATO counteracted was the Soviet Union. They reacted in 1951 with the Warsaw Pact, a treaty that saw the Soviet Union formally ally with several Eastern Bloc countries, including the former East Germany.

The Cold War between the east and west lasted until 1991, when the Soviet Union, under the ailing presidency of Mikhail Gorbachev, collapsed. From it emerged 15 new countries, with Russia being the largest and most powerful. Rather than disbanding, NATO engaged with the former Eastern Bloc countries. The NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council was set up in 1998, while NATO expanded in 1999, welcoming Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. The expansion continued throughout the noughties with a raft of countries joining in 2004, including the Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia). This, combined with their membership of the EU, marked a remarkable transformation for the Baltics after they spent 50 years forcibly incorporated into the USSR.

But, has NATO been a force for good or, as its critics would claim, an instigator of war? After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, starting a war that is still grinding on over three years later, a new slogan emerged from the Stop The War Coalition, backed by prominent politicians such as the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn: “No to war, no to NATO expansion”.

The narrative here is that NATO is somehow responsible for Russia invading Ukraine. To unpick this, we need to first examine how NATO works. Unlike the former Soviet Union, NATO does not expand by conquest. Members have to apply. If they meet the application criteria and their membership is ratified by all existing members, they are allowed to join. As Russia is not a NATO member, it does not get a say in which countries can and can’t join. So, the membership of countries such as the Baltic states cannot be seen as provocational. The Baltic States wanted to join, as is their right as independent nations. They applied and were accepted, they were not coerced or conquered.

Russia may complain about “encroachment”, but the truth is it has shared borders with NATO countries for over 20 years. In fact, the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, the westernmost part of Russia, is surrounded by the Baltic sea to the north, Lithuania to the west and Poland to the south. The entirety of its land borders are with NATO countries. If NATO wanted to annex it, they would have done so a long time ago. NATO has never invaded Russian territory, and has no plans to do so. If Russia believes NATO is a military threat to it, the threat is 100% perceived and not at all real.

A small map of the globe in the top left has a box around Europe indicating the wider image, showing NATO member states in dark green, with non-members in grey.
NATO member states as of December 2024. Via Qbox673, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

A supposed reason for Russia invading Ukraine back in 2022 was to prevent Ukraine joining NATO. Although this was given post hoc, with the actual reasons given by Russia at the time being “denazification” of a country with a Jewish president and stopping a non-existent genocide in the Donbas, it was far from valid. Ukraine is its own country with its own agency, and whether it wants to join NATO or not is not Russia’s business. Russia does not get to dictate which international organisations its neighbours can or can’t join, even if they share a border.

A claim often repeated by Russian president Vladamir Putin is that Mikhael Gorbachev was promised that NATO would not “expand one inch eastwards” by US Secretary of State James Baker. This notion comes from the tumultuous days around 1989, when the world order was in a state of flux. For decades, the USSR adopted the Brezhnev Doctrine, a foreign policy whereby any country within the Soviet sphere of influence that appeared to abandon socialism could be invaded and subjugated. This happened to East Germany in 1953 and Hungary in 1956. The Czech Republic’s Prague Spring was crushed in 1963. With the rise to power of Gorbachev in 1985, the Brezhnev Doctrine was abandoned. One by one, the Eastern Bloc countries overthrew communist regimes in the revolutions of 1989, culminating with the execution of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu on 25 December 1989. 

East Germany’s socialist government collapsed and the Berlin Wall fell, ending 40 years of the German Democratic Republic. Discussions began in earnest as to how to resolve the German question. Although a unified Germany may seem obvious now, back then the idea was met with opposition, including from British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who genuinely feared that a unified Germany could once again start a world war. On 9 February 1990, James Baker met with Gorbachev in Moscow. The topic of NATO expansion came up, and Baker uttered his famous words. Nothing formal came from this promise, and no treaty establishing it was ever signed. In addition, Gorbachev was President of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union no longer exists. In fact, after it dissolved on 25 December 1991, Gorbachev was left out in the cold with no political power whatsoever. Any verbal promises made to him back in the early 90s have no meaning today.

Margaret Thatcher's caricature puppet from the British satirical TV show, Spitting Image
The Spitting Image satirical TV programme’s puppet of Margaret Thatcher. By mattbuck, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Another criticism levelled at NATO is that it is a dinosaur of the Cold War, it has gone way past its sell-by date. However, although the Soviet Union was seen as “the enemy” back in those days, no specific nation or power is referenced in the articles of NATO. The world is an uncertain place, and no one can say where the next threat will come from. Following the Cold War, NATO represented over 40 years of international military cooperation, there was no rush to disband it. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, NATO has been involved in several military operations that have gone beyond simply defending the alliance. These include maintaining a no-fly zone over Bosnia, blockading the former Yugoslavia, and patrolling the skies over Libya during the final days of the Gaddafi regime. All of these actions were part of complex geopolitical situations, nearly always involving a United Nations mandate.

Today, NATO is very much active. After Russia illegally annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea in 2014, it was clear that a country that bordered NATO states was prepared to invade its neighbours. Following a summit in Warsaw in 2016, the Enhanced Forward Presence, or EFP, was created. This operation has seen thousands of troops deployed throughout NATO’s eastern flank, in an effort to deter any aggression.

To this day, no NATO member has ever faced direct military action from a third party state. Article 5, which states that an attack on one is an attack on all, was only ever invoked once, and that was by the USA following the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001.

The knowledge that powerful allies will come to your aid if you are attacked is highly appealing today. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Finland and Sweden abandoned decades of neutrality and decided that NATO membership was right for them. After objections from Turkey were overcome, the two Scandinavian nations were admitted, increasing the length of NATO and Russia’s border by over 800 miles. Once again, NATO expanded through mutual agreement and not through conquest.

NATO’s primary function remains: it is first and foremost a defensive alliance. The main reason for joining is very simple. If you’re in NATO, you don’t get invaded. If you live in a Baltic state that shares a border with a country that subjugated you in the days of the Soviet Union, not getting invaded is very, very appealing indeed.

The Skeptic Podcast: Episode #001

The Skeptic Podcast
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0
The Skeptic Podcast: Episode #001

From the pages of The Skeptic magazine, this is The Skeptic podcast, bringing you the best of the magazine’s expert analysis of pseudoscience, conspiracy theory and claims of the paranormal since its relaunch as online news source in September 2020. 

On this episode:

Subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts, or to support the show, take out a small voluntary donation at patreon.com/theskeptic.

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