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When predictions fail: UFO cults, QAnon and cognitive dissonance

Chris French
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When predictions fail: UFO cults, QAnon and cognitive dissonance

Over recent months, as the world has watched in grim fascination the events leading up to and following the US presidential election, the pronouncements from supporters of the unfounded far-right QAnon conspiracy have been of particular interest to many of us. Quite a few psychologists and other social scientists have, I suspect, also been reflecting upon a classic study of a UFO cult from the 1950s. What’s the connection, I hear you ask? I’ll tell you soon. First, in case you have been living under a rock without any access to news media for the last couple of years, I had better briefly summarise the beliefs of QAnon supporters. If you are already up to speed on the basics of QAnon, just skip the next paragraph.

The conspiracy is called “QAnon” because many of the wild speculations of its followers are based upon their interpretations of the vague and ambiguous messages appearing on the internet from an anonymous source referred to as “Q Clearance Patriot” – or simply as “Q” for those on first-name terms. Q, who first posted in October 2017 (but has been noticeably quiet of late), is said to be someone working at the heart of the US government. Essentially, up until very recently, QAnon supporters were all convinced that then-President Donald Trump was engaged in a covert operation to expose a hidden Satanic cabal of powerful individuals who were engaged in evil acts of paedophilia, child-trafficking, cannibalism and so on. This group, including the likes of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and George Soros, were said to be plotting a coup d’état against Trump, but Trump, whom they viewed as almost God-like, was said to be always one step ahead of them. Indeed, they confidently predicted that the “Storm” was coming. This was to be a day of reckoning when literally thousands of left-wing Satanists would be arrested and get their just desserts for their diabolical actions.

So what has all this to do with UFO cults? The connection, to my mind, is the concept of cognitive dissonance and its relevance to failed predictions. Cognitive dissonance is the idea, first put forward by social psychologist Leon Festinger back in the 1950s, that when we hold two dissonant cognitions – in other words, beliefs, attitudes, or actions – that contradict each other, this is psychologically uncomfortable and we will be motivated to resolve this dissonance. A classic example is someone who enjoys smoking but knows that experts claim that it causes serious medical problems. There are two ways that the dissonance can be resolved. One is the route that I took. You can just give up smoking. But that is easier said than done. If it proves too difficult, you might opt for the other route: come up with reasons why the advice can be ignored, for the time being at least, e.g., “I’ll give up after I’ve got X out the way” (where X = forthcoming stressful event) or the classic, “Well, I might get run over by a bus tomorrow”, and so on.

Paradoxically, Festinger’s theory predicts that, in certain circumstances, disconfirming evidence can actually increase belief in a claim. The conditions required are described on Wikipedia as follows:

  • A belief must be held with deep conviction and it must have some relevance to action, that is, to what the believer does or how he or she behaves.
  • The person holding the belief must have committed themselves to it; that is, for the sake of their belief, they must have taken some important action that is difficult to undo. In general, the more important such actions are, and the more difficult they are to undo, the greater is the individual’s commitment to the belief.
  • The belief must be sufficiently specific and sufficiently concerned with the real world that events may unequivocally refute the belief.
  • Such undeniable disconfirmatory evidence must occur and must be recognised by the individual holding the belief.
  • The individual believer must have social support. It is unlikely that one isolated believer could withstand the kind of disconfirming evidence that has been specified. If, however, the believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can support one another, the belief may be maintained and the believers may attempt to proselytise or persuade non-members that the belief is correct.
Two UFOs alongside a full moon in a dark woodland

This is where the UFO cult comes in (and thank you for your patience). As Festinger describes in his book When Prophecy Fails, co-authored with Henry W. Riecken and Stanley Schachter, the theory was put to the test by way of a rather unusual investigation. In 1954, a Chicago-based housewife named Dorothy Martin (name and location changed in the book) had built up a small following who accepted that she was receiving messages from superior beings on the planet “Clarion” via automatic writing. Festinger became aware of this when the local paper ran a story on its back page with the headline, “PROPHECY FROM PLANET CLARION CALL TO CITY: FLEE THAT FLOOD. IT’LL SWAMP US ON DEC. 21. OUTER SPACE TELLS SUBURBANITE.” Apparently, the true believers were to be saved from this looming disaster by flying saucers. Acting upon this information, some of the followers had given up work and given away all of their possessions on the assumption they would not need them after the designated date.

On the assumption that the flood would not actually happen, Festinger and his colleagues, along with some hired helpers, infiltrated the group in order to observe how the cult members would deal with the ensuing cognitive dissonance when, as they expected, the flood failed to materialise. They were present at the home of Mrs Martin, along with eleven true believers, as the designated hour approached. They had been told that an alien would show up at midnight and escort them to a waiting spaceship. A further eleven cult members were unable to join those at Mrs Martin’s home but had been informed by her that they need not worry as the flying saucers would pick them up from wherever they happened to be.

As midnight came and went, Mrs Martin reported that she had received a message that there would be a slight delay. Nerves frayed over the following hours, with ET still failing to put in an appearance. At 4 am, Mrs Martin began to cry. But then – hallelujah! – at 4:45 am, she received another message telling her that the disaster had been averted directly as a result of the faith that the group had shown!

In light of the clear evidence that the original prediction had failed, the followers could resolve the cognitive dissonance in one of two ways. They could either abandon their belief in Mrs Martin’s claims altogether or they could accept the rationalisation presented by Mrs Martin and thus end up believing even more strongly in her claims. After all, the strength of their faith had already prevented a flood, hadn’t it?

Festinger had predicted that individual believers would need to have social support in order to maintain and even strengthen belief in the light of clear disconfirming evidence. Those who were together at Mrs Martin’s residence did indeed demonstrate such increased belief. Whereas, prior to the disconfirmation, members had been reluctant to talk about their beliefs to the media, they now were only too willing to spread the good news. As for those who were not part of that group on the fateful night, they resolved their cognitive dissonance by quietly and painfully accepting that they had been mistaken to believe in Mrs Martin at all and leaving the cult.

When it comes to failed predictions, QAnon’s record is pretty impressive. Their Wikipedia entry lists no less than 17 failed predictions – and six of those are marked as “multiple predictions”. These include predicting that the Trump military parade “would never be forgotten” (it was cancelled), that John McCain would resign from the US Senate, that Mark Zuckerberg would leave Facebook, that Jack Dorsey would be forced to resign from his role as CEO of Twitter, and that Pope Francis would be arrested on felony charges. Some of the events were predicted to take place on or around a specific date. A “smoking gun” video of the hated Hillary would be made public in March 2018.There was to be a car bomb in London around 16 February 2018 following mass suicides of Trump’s enemies on 10 February 2018.

Maybe those particular failed predictions could be explained away as understandable misinterpretations of Q’s vague messages. But as the date of the election drew nearer many QAnon supporters became increasingly confident that the “Storm” was imminent (this was despite a previous failed prediction that it would occur on 3 November 2017). There were many other predictions made around this time. Trump would win the election in every state. He didn’t. Okay, but trust the Plan, he will win overall. He didn’t. Don’t worry, this is all part of the Plan. He wanted to lose so that he can prove in court that the Democrats won through fraudulent means. The courts, with one single exception, rejected Trump’s legal challenges against the election results. With each failed prediction, greater faith in the conspiracy was required to accept the increasingly outlandish explanations offered for that failure.

On 6 January 2021, Trump addressed his followers and encouraged an insurrection, resulting in the storming of the Capitol building. To many true believers, it really must have looked like the “Storm” was becoming a reality. But after a few hours, the building was cleared, martial law had not been declared, and President Trump had distanced himself from the actions of his supporters. Reactions varied amongst QAnon supporters. By now, some of them were beginning to question the whole conspiracy. Many others though still believed that this was all part of Trump’s cunning Plan.

Time was running out. Trump would cease to be President on 20 January 2021, the day of Joe Biden’s inauguration. Clearly then, that must be the real day of the “Storm”. Of course, as we all now know, the event passed off peacefully. Joe Biden is now the President of the USA. The “Storm” did not break.

A QAnon poster on a fence with the letters "WWG1WGA" which stands for where we go one, we go all. [CC 2.0]

So, where now for QAnon supporters? These days, only the most foolish would make confident predictions about future events but, for what it is worth, this is what I think is most likely to happen: Those supporters for whom QAnon became central to their very identity will most likely double down and become even more committed to the cause. This would include those who have attended Trump rallies in the past, carrying QAnon flags and banners, and of course many of those who were directly involved in the invasion of the Capitol building on 6 January, as well as those whose support for QAnon has resulted in broken relationships with friends and family. By now, faith in the conspiracy can only be maintained by accepting the most twisted logic. In the words of a recent Washington Post article:

QAnon promoters have in the past day held up an incoherent set of new theories to explain away Trump’s anticlimactic exit from Washington: that the military is in control of the country, not Biden; that Biden and Trump have switched faces; that Biden’s inauguration was illegitimate, and that the real one (for Trump) would take place in March; or that Biden has been in on the QAnon plan all along.

Others, those who were less committed to begin with, will realise that the QAnon conspiracy theory was an illusion and will turn away from it altogether. If we’re lucky, they may abandon belief in unfounded conspiracy theories altogether. If we’re not, they may simply latch on to a different unfounded conspiracy that aligns nicely with their far-right attitudes.

Health food stores, a danger to public health?

Edzard Ernst
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Health food stores, a danger to public health?

Let me tell you about a small study which we published all of 18 years ago. It was conducted in Canada, and I merely assisted in designing the protocol, interpreting the findings and writing up the paper.

For this investigation, we trained 8 helpers to pretend to be customers of health food stores. They would enter individually into assigned stores; the helpers had been instructed to browse in the store until approached by an employee. At this moment, they would explain that their mother has breast cancer and disclose information on their mother’s condition, use of chemotherapy (Tamoxifen) and physician visits, only if asked. The helpers would then inquire what the employees recommend for their mother’s condition. They followed a structured, memorised, pre-tested questionnaire that asked about product usage, dosage, cost, employee education and product safety or potential for drug interactions.

The helpers recorded which products were recommended by the health food store employees, along with the recommended dose and price per product as well as price per month. Additionally, they inquired about where the employee had obtained information on the recommended products. They also noted whether the employees referred them on to practitioners of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) or recommended consulting a physician. Full notes on the encounters were written immediately after leaving the store.

The findings were impressive, I thought: of the 34 stores that met our inclusion criteria, 27 recommended SCAMs, and a total of 33 different products were recommended. Here are some further findings:

  • Essiac was recommended most frequently.
  • The mean cost of the recommended products per month was $58.09 (CAD) (minimum $5.28, median $32.99, maximum $600).
  • Twenty-three employees (68%) did not ask whether the patient took prescription medications.
  • Fifteen (44%) employees recommended visiting a healthcare professional; these included: naturopaths (9), physicians (5) and nutritionists (1).

Health food store employees relied on a variety of sources of information:

  • 12 (35%) of them said they had received their information from books,
  • 5 (15%) from a supplier of the product,
  • 3 (9%) had formal education in SCAM,
  • 2 (6%) had been through in-store training,
  • 12 (35%) did not disclose their sources of information.

Since our paper has been published, several other investigations have addressed similar issues. Here are a few quotes:

And why do I mention all this today? The answer is that firstly, it is obviously important to warn consumers of the often-dangerous advice they might receive in health food stores. Secondly, I feel it would be worthwhile to do further research in this area, check whether the situation has now changed, and repeat a similar study today. Ideally, a new investigation should be conducted in several different locations, perhaps even compare several countries. My impression is that things have gone from bad to worse in health food stores – possibly related to the pandemic?

If you have the possibility to plan and conduct such an experiment, please let me know, perhaps I can be of assistance.

Nesta Helen Webster: the far-right author who popularised the antisemitic Illuminati conspiracy

Mark Horne
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Nesta Helen Webster: the far-right author who popularised the antisemitic Illuminati conspiracy

Watching the rioters at the Capitol in Washington DC in early January, viewers may have seen rioters wearing jackets and insignia that expressed coded antisemitic messages, such as 6MWE – which horrifically stands for 6 Million Wasn’t Enough, in reference to the Holocaust – or rather less coded messages, such as the now-infamous “Camp Auschwitz” hoodie.

While the participation of openly far-right groups such as the Proud Boys is well-known, many of those attending will have been adherents primarily of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which gathers together and overlaps with a number of other conspiracy theories, including one of the oldest and best-known: the Illuminati.

QAnon posits that Trump is working to bring down evil-doers of the worst imaginable kind – child abusers and murderers – whose crimes were either perpetrated or protected by the deep state, including the supposed Illuminati, which secretly controls the world.

Despite the popular conception of the Illuminati as some shadowy all-powerful organisation that for some inexplicable reason uses rappers to send coded messages to the world via lyrics and hand-signals during music videos and live performances, the actual Illuminati was an 18th Century Bavarian secret society, designed in the mould of the Freemasons. It was founded in 1776 by philosopher Adam Weishaupt, and by 1784, at the height of its membership, it had between 650 and 2,500 members.

It was outlawed by edict shortly thereafter, but Augustin Barruel and John Robison wrote in 1797 and 1798 respectively that the Illuminati were responsible for the French Revolution as part of a wider international conspiracy. Paranoia that the Illuminati had secretly continued spread to the USA through the sermons of Jedediah Morse, and contributed to concerns about Freemasonry in general, influencing congressional elections into the 1830s. Worries about the anti-absolutist principles of the actual Illuminati were taken seriously by European monarchies of the 19th Century, with half a wary eye to the idea that the secret society had somehow survived.

Nesta Helen Webster - a black and white photograph of her looking slightly off centre.

The Illuminati conspiracy theory seems to have acquired its specific antisemitic flavour in the early 20th Century, with the intervention of far-right author Nesta Helen Webster, who was involved with organisations such as the British Union of Fascists in the pre-war period. Webster was born Nesta Helen Bevan in 1876, and began a career publishing novels, before turning her hand to histories of the French Revolution, seeing secret conspiracies in every corner. She believed the widely-circulated antisemitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or at least subscribed to the idea that it represented a deeper truth, even if the document itself was a hoax, leading her to believe that wealthy Jews were behind many wars and revolutions throughout history.

Like many antisemitic conspiracists, Webster claimed in her 1924 book Secret Societies and Subversive Movements that she was not accusing all Jews of all possible crimes, and in any case that she merely used Jewish people’s own words against them. As the book continues, she weaves a narrative during which she is “just asking questions” (full of innuendo) and repeating uncritically various medieval stereotypes of Jews. Webster launches into full-throated antisemitism of her own by Chapter 14 on “Pan-Germanism”:

“Without in any way absolving Germany from the crime of the war, it is necessary to take this secondary factor into consideration if peace between the nations is to be established. For as long as the lust of war lingers in the hearts of the Germans and the lust of gain at the price of human suffering lingers in the hearts of the Jews, both races will remain necessary to each other and the hideous nightmare of war will continue to brood over the world.” (emphasis mine)

This is not an isolated passage – the next chapter is called “The Real Jewish Peril” and begins:

“In considering the immense problem of the Jewish Power, perhaps the most important problem with which the modern world is confronted, it is necessary to divest oneself of all prejudices and to enquire in a spirit of scientific detachment whether any definite proof exists that a concerted attempt is being made by Jewry to achieve world-domination and to obliterate the Christian faith.”

On shaky ground at the best of times, one of Webster’s conclusions is based on some truly startling leaps of logic. She says that no historical or extant subversive movements were actively antisemitic, so all such movements must be controlled by Jews, presumably because in Webster’s worldview, if you’re not actively hating or persecuting Jews then you must be Jewish. The single worldwide conspiracy (Illuminism / the Illuminati) that she claims is in control of all the other revolutionary subversions must therefore also be controlled by Jews.

To give an idea of how this was received in the 1920s, Secret Societies was reprinted twice, and other aspects of Webster’s work – including her writing relating to Jews and the French Revolution – was praised by no less than Winston Churchill. Little wonder, then, that despite being on the wrong side of history regarding fascism, polite British society nonetheless saw fit to offer her a warm obituary in The Times upon her death in 1960. It is depressingly easy to see how her ideas, which the events of the 1930s and 1940s should have so thoroughly repudiated, slithered their way on into the consciousness of the decades beyond.

David Icke holding a microphone and speaking. Photo by Tyler Merbler [CC-by-2.0]

Her malign influence is still very much felt today, with historian Dr Steven Woodbridge drawing a direct line from her “academic” works to NWO conspiracists, far-right militias, and of course David Icke. It is worth noting that Icke says he is not antisemitic, but genuinely is referring to lizards in his Illuminati conspiracy theories – although he does use the term Zionist, and references the antisemitic hoax The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

As for how we get from Webster to the present day popular conception of the celebrity-embracing, world-controlling Illuminati, it’s a wild tale, told in a BBC article which explores the 1960s resurgence of the myth, in an account featuring a Playboy writer, a stage play with Jim Broadbent and Bill Nighy, and even a card game. I think the article misses the point about the darker origins of the conspiracy theory, but it is worth reading nonetheless.

To summarise the article: the Illuminati as a modern conception was a joke, a hoax, with journalists sending in fake letters alleging all sorts of nonsensical conspiracy theories with the Illuminati at the core, all stemming from the principles of Discordianism – a parody religion that suggests social change can be created from causing chaos, through activities like hoaxes.

It is therefore a fitting parallel that QAnon – a fiction perpetrated from message boards that revel in such hoaxes – arose in a way that partly parallels the rebirth of the Illuminati as a modern conspiracy theory fifty years earlier.

And it is no surprise at all that both conspiracy theories espouse vile and violent myths about Jews.

Putting Some Skeptical Mantras to Bed

Jonathan Jarry
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Putting Some Skeptical Mantras to Bed

I was introduced to skepticism a decade ago and with it came a rich trove of sayings and comebacks that sounded quite smart at the time. With experience, I began to revisit these quips and question whether they were really true or useful after all. I want to explain why I’m choosing to clear my vocabulary of these skeptical witticisms.

“The plural of anecdote is not data”… no more

There is of course truth behind this saying when viewed under the right light. So many testimonials for this herbal product or that energy therapy are compiled and served to us as evidence of their effectiveness. The more aunts and uncles and neighbours and coworkers report feeling a little bit better after ingesting sugar pills, the more our brain is willing to accept this as proof of efficacy. What skeptics like to remind the purveyors of these anecdotes is that whispers, rumours and subjective reports are not enough. The bar to be cleared is higher.

But the problem with the expression, often used as a mic drop moment, is that anecdotes are data. They are not rigorous data, nor are they definitive or overwhelmingly convincing, but they are data points. If a medical doctor begins prescribing a new medication, and patient after patient returns complaining of a bizarre skin rash, it would be foolish for the doctor to kick them out of the office by citing that “the plural of anecdote is not data.” There may very well be something there that requires an investigation.

It would be more accurate to say that anecdotes are not a reliable form of evidence because they don’t control for so many variables that can obscure what is really going on. That’s why we do scientific experiments like clinical trials: to remove as many of these variables as we can and to figure out the best answer to the question we are asking. This longer explanation requires me to hold on to the mic instead of dropping it to the floor and walking away, but I think it’s more conducive to a constructive conversation.

“Facts don’t care about your feelings”… no more

I remember hearing strong echoes of this in the early years of my journey into skepticism: facts don’t care about your feelings, a slogan promoted by right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro. This adolescent form of skepticism seems to delight in drawing a line in the sand between people into “woo-woo” who trust their “fee-fees” and the rational freethinkers who put their emotions aside, in admirable Vulcan fashion, and simply follow the cold, hard evidence. In a debate with someone whose beliefs we think arise from emotions, it became fashionable to put them down with this skeptical mantra. A variant that I probably used in the past is that science is true whether or not you believe in it.

Again, it is true that facts are impervious to feelings of anxiety, and it is also true that the spheroidal shape of the Earth remains unaltered by the beliefs of Flat Earthers. But this self-serving slogan is not very useful if our goal is to convince people that they hold inaccurate beliefs. Because if we are going to use pithy rejoinders, let me offer one I prefer: when was the last time you changed your mind after being called an idiot? If someone’s ideology is wrapped up in dense emotional layers, simply stating that facts don’t care about feelings is unlikely to move them in your direction. As the editor of this magazine has written before, feelings don’t care about facts. By addressing people’s values, social investments and anxieties, we stand a better chance of opening them up to the realisation they might be wrong than if we simply dismiss their emotional reality as evidence of weakness in the face of the almighty facts.

“Question everything”… no more

One of the core principles of modern skepticism is to question everything. We can use the lens of skepticism to question alternative medicine, to criticise bad scientific studies, even to denounce fallacious statements made by politicians. This phrase, “question everything” (sometimes “doubt everything”), is certainly appealing and I’ve used it in the past… but I am realising more and more that it cannot stand alone.

A type-writer and paper - the words on the paper read "Fake News!"

Questioning everything without having in place a system of media literacy and information vetting to draw from is a recipe for conspiracy thinking. The COVID-19 pandemic serves as a clear example of where the mindless questioning of everything can lead people. Questioning the cycle threshold values obtained by molecular tests for the coronavirus led many to believe these tests were useless and simply churning out false positive results. Then, of course, we can visit hospital parking lots and question the narrative that intensive care units are nearing capacity. We can question the speed at which vaccines were developed, the safety of wearing a mask, even the true purpose of these lockdown measures and what the government may really be planning with all of this. Asking a million questions without subscribing to a framework for evaluating evidence—what good skepticism helps provide—can easily lead people down the conspiracy rabbit hole, which is why I don’t think simply inviting people to question and doubt everything is particularly useful… or harmless.

“What a great example of the Dunning-Kruger effect”… maybe no more

As a skeptic, I love a good moment where a phenomenon baffles people and I can come in and slap a scientific name on it. That weird brain fart over here? Yeah, that’s been studied and this is its name! Skepticism done! But these skeptical incantations can easily escape scrutiny and simply be taken as fact even when the evidence behind them is not as robust as it could be. The Dunning-Kruger effect, for example, was first described in a 1999 paper as an interesting discrepancy. When data was graphed a certain way, researchers could see that people who did very poorly on a test tended to think they did much better, and people who did really well slightly underestimated their true score.

This observation was replicated by other scientists and it soon took on a life of its own, getting twisted by journalists and skeptics in a pop-cultural game of telephone. Soon, the Dunning-Kruger effect became the reason why dumb people didn’t know they were dumb, and also why ignorant folks were so arrogant and doubled down all the time. Of course, that’s not what the effect was ever about… but even in its original form, there are reasons to be skeptical of the very existence of this alleged bias in our thinking.

I recently spent many weeks looking into this effect, collaborating with academics who understand statistics far better than I do, and becoming more and more convinced that the Dunning-Kruger effect, as originally described, might simply have been a statistical artefact. This is still controversial, both in the academic literature and in the feedback I received for my article, but in and of itself it should open our eyes. Even in skeptical circles, we easily adopt these science-based mantras but we don’t always check back to see if these ideas still hold up after they were initially published. Another example is the backfire effect, the claim that pushing back against misinformation backfires and reinforces belief in the falsehood, which I still see being quoted even though it seems to have been more or less debunked.

Being an evidence-based skeptic is hard because it asks of us to not only examine the claims made by fringe communities but also to examine our own. The skeptical movement is unfortunately not immune to the promotion of unquestioned comebacks and slogans. Since we like to use them to convince other people to be more skeptically minded, I think it behooves us to examine these witticisms once in a while and make sure they really are as true and valuable as we’d like them to be.

A doomscrollers guide to climate hyperbole: countering the doomism of Deep Adaptation

Ted Lefroy
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A doomscrollers guide to climate hyperbole: countering the doomism of Deep Adaptation

In his recent book The New Climate War, Michael Mann, who led the research team that gave us the global temperature hockey stick, identifies three types of opposition in the battle for climate action: deniers, doomsayers and inactivists. Climate doomism he suggests is as dangerous as denial and equally unscientific.

The unrelentingly pessimistic academic paper Deep Adaptation provides a good example of how similar methods are employed by doomsayers and denialists to tilt reality in their favour. Downloaded over one hundred thousand times, Deep Adaptation has gone on to spawn a global movement. The claim in Deep Adaptation is that humanity faces ‘inevitable near-term societal collapse’ due to ‘…uncontrollable levels of climate change bringing starvation, destruction, migration, disease, and war’. This conclusion rests on four abuses of source material: misusing terminology, treating speculation as fact, cherry picking, and taking data out of context.

Misusing terminology

The term ‘non-linear’ is used throughout Deep Adaptation to imply unstoppable, runaway climate change.  Non-linear simply means a change in the output of a system that is disproportional to change in the inputs. It implies nothing about the direction or speed of change or the feasibility of human intervention.  When Gavin Schmidt, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was asked to comment he replied ‘This is nonsense. Non-linearity (which is ubiquitous) is not synonymous with ‘runaway’ climate change’.

Treating speculation as fact

At one point Deep Adaptation claims that we ‘have tipped into self-reinforcing and irreversible change’ citing a paper in the journal Nature. What those authors actually said was ‘If damaging tipping cascades can occur and a global tipping point cannot be ruled out, then this is an existential threat to civilization’. The qualifier ‘if’ is important. Tipping cascades, while possible, remain hypothetical – which is why Nature published this as a comment not a research report.

On global tipping points, others have argued ‘The global human enterprise is driving large-scale changes in most components of the Earth system, but in a haphazard fashion, with responses often being weakly connected or transmitted slowly at a cross-continental scale’ making it ‘…implausible that the planet, or indeed most of its component systems, are primed to tip irreversibly to a radically different state that is inhospitable’.  

Cherry picking

Deep Adaptation claims there is scientific evidence for inevitable near-term societal collapse. This claim rests heavily on two phenomena: Arctic ice melt and methane release. Both rely on a few selected sources. In the case of the loss of Arctic ice, the source is the work of one scientist whose outlying predictions have not eventuated; in the case of methane release, the paper relies on the clathrate gun hypothesis first proposed in 2003 and since challenged in multiple reviews.  

Taking data out of context

A wheat field against a blue sky

On food supply, Deep Adaptation notes IPCC estimates that climate change has reduced growth in crop yields by 1–2% per decade over the past century. What it doesn’t point out is that there have been yield increases in the major crops of 3 to 8% per decade over the same period. In the UK ~3% for oats and barley, ~4% for wheat and potatoes and ~8% for sugar beet; in the USA, ~5% for corn. Climate change is having an impact on agriculture, but the major challenge right now is not the amount produced but equity of access. The major future challenge is declining investment in adaptation.

There is also the claim that ‘About half of all plant and animal species in the world’s most biodiverse places are at risk of extinction due to climate change’. The source is a modelling study of a limited selection of plants and animals in the World Wildlife Foundation’s 35 biodiversity hotpots, which represent 3% of the Earth’s surface. The study predicted that if there was a 4.5 °C rise in global mean temperature by 2100 (the IPCC’s worst case scenario) and none of these species were able to disperse to more favourable locations, 50% ‘could potentially become locally extinct’. 

To highlight this abuse of source material is not to down play the seriousness of climate change. Climate change is serious and demands we bend the emissions curve and invest in adaptation through renewable energy, carbon sequestration, food production, healthcare, and all the other millennium development goals. The conclusion that collapse is inevitable has its roots not in science but a long intellectual fascination with social decline.

Collapsology

Historian Joseph Tainter’s systematic study of societal collapse examined explanations offered for the fall of 17 societies from Rome to Mesoamerica. After assessing evidence for causes including environmental catastrophe, resource depletion, invasion, class conflict and disease, the common principle that emerged was decreasing marginal returns on investment in social and economic complexity. Tainter also noted that the process of collapse in those societies was usually slow, often rational, and occasionally resulted in improved circumstances. The collapse predicted in Deep Adaptation is ‘sudden, unavoidable starvation, and in our life time’.

When the Deep Adaptation movement banned debate on the inevitability of near-term human extinction, it became a doomsday cult and lost all scientific credibility. To claim that there is scientific evidence for inevitable near-term societal collapse is an abuse of science. Ever since the caravan of Western history pulled out of the Eastern Mediterranean over 2000 years ago it has been trailed by camp followers warning it would all end in tears. And while collapse has been the fate of many societies, science cannot tell us where and when that will happen. Every society that has ever existed has either transformed or collapsed. Which of those occurs, where that happens and how long it takes depends on people and what they chose to do. Contrary to the certainty in Deep Adaptation, the paths to the future are made, not found.

References

  1. Mann, Michael (2021) The New Climate War: The fight to take back our planet. Public Affairs (accessed 14 January 2021)
  2. Mann, Michael E, Bradley, Raymond S. Hughes, Malcolm K. (1999) Northern hemisphere temperatures during the past millennium: Inferences, uncertainties, and limitations Geophysical Research Letters, 26 (6): 759–762, doi:10.1029/1999GL900070.
  3. Bendell, J (2020a) Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy. Occasional Paper 2, Institute for Leadership and Sustainability, University of Cumbria (accessed 2 December 2020)
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How the Society of Homeopaths had their accredited status suspended

Michael Marshall
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How the Society of Homeopaths had their accredited status suspended

Earlier this month, the Professional Standards Authority (PSA) announced it had suspended the accreditation of the Society of Homeopaths (SoH), finding that the SoH “did not appear to have prioritised public protection over professional interests in its handling of complaints or governance processes.”

According to the PSA, the SoH’s failings in this regard “led to risks to the public from homeopathy being offered as an alternative for serious conditions such as depression, arthritis and autoimmune conditions that require medical supervision.” As such, their accreditation has been suspended for at least 12 months.

The decision from the PSA comes after years of controversy over the SoH’s position as an accredited register, and to understand it fully it’s important to understand that history. The PSA are the government watchdog responsible for regulating healthcare regulators and registers, including statutory regulators such as the General Medical Council, the General Dental Council and the General Chiropractic Council. This means that if a medical doctor, dentist, or even chiropractor does something wrong – like acting unprofessionally towards a patient, or misleading them about their care – they could be subject to a complaint to their relevant regulator; if that regulator doesn’t take that complaint seriously, they themselves are subject to a complaint to the PSA. If they’re found wanting, the PSA has the power to issue sanctions upon that regulator.

The Professional Standards Authority - Accredited Register logo
The logo used to proclaim Accredited Register status

In 2012, the PSA announced a new Accredited Voluntary Register scheme for organisations where regulation wasn’t mandatory or statutory, but who might feel they benefit from the oversight of a government watchdog. Inevitably, this voluntary accreditation comes with a bit of kudos – registrants get to use the logo of the PSA’s scheme on all their marketing materials, and get to tell prospective patients they’re part of an official accredited register. To stay on the scheme, and to keep the kudos, registers have to undergo annual reviews, in which they prove they’re keeping their registrants in line, preventing anything undesirable, and handling complaints in a timely and responsible manner. In theory, that’s all great, and most of the registers who were granted Accredited Register status have been reasonable and uncontroversial.

However, in 2014, the Society of Homeopaths applied for and were granted Accredited Register status. Since then, all of their registrants have been free to use the logo of the Professional Standard Authority on all of their marketing materials and websites… including on websites that were, unsurprisingly, filled with wildly misleading claims – like that autism can be cured with homeopathy, that vaccines can’t be trusted, or that homeopathy can treat depression and anxiety.

Since 2014, people have been making complaints to the Society of Homeopaths to point out misleading claims spread by accredited homeopaths… with limited success. Despite being shown on occasions too numerous to count all of the ways in which homeopaths were misleading and even endangering the public, the Society of Homeopaths arguably took no meaningful action.

As a result, in 2019 the Good Thinking Society (of which I am Project Director) brought a legal challenge to the Society’s accreditation, specifically after we demonstrated SoH registrants were promoting anti-vaccine misinformation and claiming that they could cure autism via CEASE therapy. That legal case was withdrawn in early 2020, after the PSA imposed strict conditions upon the SoH, mandating that they ensure their members do not claim to be able to cure autism, or spread vaccine misinformation.

Sadly, those conditions appeared to have little impact on what homeopaths felt comfortable claiming. In April 2020, in the early weeks of the pandemic, I published an exposé in association with The Times showing registrants of the Society of Homeopaths selling homeopathic remedies aimed at treating COVID-19. Just a few months later, in July, we reported in The Telegraph that the Society had appointed a new ‘Professional Standards and Safeguarding Lead’: Sue Pilkington, a homeopath who had repeatedly shared anti-vaccine misinformation. This appointment was made despite conditions imposed upon the SoH just five months earlier, explicitly concerning their failure to tackle anti-vaccine propaganda among their membership.

The appointment prompted an emergency review by the PSA, leading to Ms Pilkington’s immediate dismissal. That review also resulted in conditions being placed upon the SoH’s accreditation, including that they adequately vet new appointees and that they prioritise public safety – and it’s really their failure to meet those most recent conditions that has led to their suspension.

The PSA’s decision is available in full on their website, and in it they outline the reasons for the PSA’s suspension. On the subject of vetting new appointees, the SoH said they had carried out checks to assure itself of previous applicants’ compliance with its Code of Ethics and position statements. But the PSA found that it those checks mostly focused on the appointee’s social media, and failed to clarify how the SoH intended to ensure compliance by staff and Board members on an ongoing basis. In fact, the PSA raised a particular weakness there: because the SoH appoints practicing homeopaths to key roles, the PSA was unconvinced homeopaths could judge what is and isn’t appropriate for a homeopath to say – a point that was underscored by the appointment of Ms Pilkington.

The PSA’s review also looked at the SoH’s handling of complaints regarding their registrants, finding that the SoH did not recognise the risk to patients and the public from misinformation on their registrants’ websites. While some steps had been taken to contact registrants over their claims, and references to the bogus CEASE therapy had been removed, the SoH’s response indicated that they found no issues with homeopaths claiming that homeopathy could treat autism – even when those references were being made by the homeopaths who had previously claimed to be able to cure autism via CEASE therapy. In a particularly damning line, the PSA found that they were not confident that complaints would be handled in a way that prioritised protecting the public over protecting the professional interests of the homeopaths.

The SoH had been charged with actively monitoring their registrants’ websites to find and correct any misleading claims. In the evidence they submitted of their monitoring effectiveness, the PSA found examples where homeopaths continued to promote homeopathy to treat depression, autism, hyperthyroidism, and arthritis, even after the SoH’s intervention. The SoH had checked these websites, and had determined these claims were compliant, even though they breached Advertising Standards Authority guidance – guidance the SoH’s own Code of Ethics makes clear must be followed. Either the SoH were incapable of recognising claims that were in breach of advertising rules, or they were incapable of getting their registrants to correct them.

The SoH’s suspension by the PSA will be reviewed again in 12 months’ time. If they want to regain their accredited status – something it seems like their registrants value – they must demonstrate that they have tried “as far as is reasonably possible” to ensure homeopaths comply with the SoH Code of Ethics, including the ASA’s rules on advertising and websites, taking action against anything that is non-compliant. They will also need to demonstrate that they are capable of separating the protection of the public from their work supporting the homeopathy profession, and they have to prove that whenever there is tension, they prioritise protecting the public. Given the issues with the SoH in the past, each of those looks like a mountain to climb.

As of 11 January 2021, the SoH and its registrants are not permitted to use the Authority’s Accredited Registers quality mark on any of their materials or websites – though, a quick check earlier this week shows more than 50 registrants continue to do so.

Society of Homeopaths logo

The suspension of the SoH may go on to have wider effects: the PSA is currently reviewing the voluntary scheme entirely, to ensure it is fit for purpose. The SoH are not the only concerning register to be part of the voluntary scheme – the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council, for example, seem to equally struggle with registrants who make misleading health claims to the public.

Hopefully, the SoH’s suspension, along with their consistent failure to properly grasp their role as register, will go on to set a precedent, as the PSA scrutinises other accredited registers whose members promote therapies that are not supported by evidence.

The public understandably interpret PSA accreditation as a sign of credibility; where that credibility is being lent to practices that do not work and in some cases are actively harmful, it erodes public confidence in the PSA as a whole, and potentially puts the health and wellbeing of vulnerable members of the public at risk. Suspending the Society of Homeopaths is a solid first step towards repairing that erosion.

Is community testing the answer to managing the COVID-19 pandemic effectively?

Alice Howarth
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Have you had a COVID test yet? Was it a lateral flow test or a PCR test?

Maybe you’re not sure which type of test you had – and for a lot of people, especially those who don’t work in science, perhaps it doesn’t seem important to know. However, the differences between types of tests being used has led to some confusion as to their usefulness and accuracy

Ever since the community testing pilot scheme was first launched back in November of 2020 here in Liverpool, I’ve been fielding questions from people about different sorts of COVID test. I thought it was might be useful to answer some of those questions here, as understanding how the tests work, and how they differ, is key to understanding the potential success of community testing.

PCR test

The PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 is generally considered the “gold standard” when it comes to testing for COVID, which is why it is important to use it for symptomatic testing. If you had a test because you had symptoms, it would have been a PCR test.

PCR stands for Polymerase Chain Reaction. The test relies on the use of an enzyme called polymerase which usually exists in normal cells, doing useful things like helping to replicate DNA when we want to make a new cell.

In COVID testing, we use PCR to replicate genetic material belonging to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Once you’ve taken your swab from the back of your throat and up your nose, the sample gets mixed up with some enzyme and a load of other ingredients designed to help the enzyme do its job, and we ask the enzyme to amplify the genetic material of SARS-CoV-2. Importantly we ask it to only amplify the genetic material of SARS-CoV-2.

Imagine the genetic material of SARS-CoV-2 is one half of a zip – the metal teeth down one side. The polymerase enzyme is like the slider, which you pull up to fasten each tooth to its pair. In the case of the PCR test, the enzyme fastens to one end of that genetic material, but rather than finding an existing part to pair it to, the enzyme creates a copy of the half we already have as it moves its way along, creating an entire sealed zip.

So now, we have our original piece of SARS-CoV-2 genetic material, and we have a copy of it, and the original and the copy are connected together. We use some heat to separate the two and then the enzyme can start all over again, making two new copies of the two halves. This process will keep going and going until we have enough copies of the genetic material to be detectable. This threshold of detection is especially useful because we can work out how quickly we reach the threshold – if we reach it really quickly, then we can assume there were already lots of copies of the SARS-CoV-2 genetic material for the enzyme to duplicate, which means the sample had a high viral load. If we reach the threshold really slowly, then there must not have been many copies of the SARS-CoV-2 material initially available, and so the sample had a low viral load.

A COVID Home Test Kit from the UK Government and the NHS. The kit contains a sterile swab, a plastic sample bag, a labelled tube with a lid to put the swab inside and an instruction booklet. [CC-by-SA-4.0] image by Wikimedia user Fae.

That’s roughly how it works – but the important thing to understand is this: PCR is really specific (ie it only detects what we ask it to – in this case SARS-CoV-2); PCR is really sensitive (it can detect even very low levels of the virus because of this crucial amplification step); and PCR is pretty reliable (it doesn’t miss many cases of COVID).

PCR is also quite resource heavy – it takes time and expertise to run the test, and it requires special machinery and lab space as well as ingredients to help the enzyme do its job.

Enter the lateral flow test.

Lateral flow test

The lateral flow test is cheap, easy to implement and can be done pretty much anywhere. Test centres have popped up all over Liverpool, and in fact in local authorities across the country, in order to test as many people as possible as quickly as possible. While PCR testing gives you a result in 48 hours, lateral flow testing can give a result in less than an hour.

Lateral flow tests actually work very similarly to pregnancy tests. The idea is this: the SARS-CoV-2 virus is made of proteins, and we can use antibodies to detect proteins.

The lateral flow test contains a small cassette, which holds a piece of filter paper. The filter paper has a “conjugation zone” at the bottom where you apply the sample taken by swabbing the throat and nose.

The conjugation zone is loaded with antibodies which recognise proteins from SARS-CoV-2, and these antibodies are fused to a gold nanoparticle. Once the sample is loaded, the SARS-CoV-2 proteins bind to the antibody and start moving up the filter paper by lateral flow. First, they reach a test zone, where there are more antibodies which also recognise SARS-CoV-2 proteins. If the sample contains the virus, the proteins which are conjugated to the gold-antibody get trapped on the test zone, and because the gold is really concentrated, the zone turns pink (because gold nanoparticles are pink). Then, the sample continues to travel up the strip until it reaches a control zone. The control zone is loaded with an antibody which recognises the gold-antibody. Any of the gold-antibody which is not connected to SARS-CoV-2 protein gets trapped here and turns the control zone pink. This means the test worked as it was supposed to.

We therefore have three possible outcomes:

  1. The test zone is pink and the control zone is pink = the test worked and the sample was positive for COVID
  2. The test zone is blank and the control zone is pink = the test worked and the sample was negative for COVID
  3. The test zone is either pink or blank and the control zone is blank = the test did not work and should be repeated

Research shows that the lateral flow test is really specific (it only detects what we ask it to and does not lead to false positives) but the lateral flow test is not very sensitive. It struggles to detect low levels of virus. This means it is important to wait at least five days from exposure to COVID to take a lateral flow test, because in the first five days the viral load is quite low.

The lateral flow test is also a little unreliable.

Preliminary research from the University of Liverpool during the pilot scheme showed that the lateral flow test only detected 48.83% of the cases that PCR testing was able to detect (and the PCR test cannot detect 100% of cases).

But is this a problem?

The pros and cons of lateral flow testing

Lateral flow testing is only used for asymptomatic testing in the community. Before we introduced this community testing, you could only get tested for COVID if you had symptoms. Which means even if lateral flow testing detects less than 50% of all asymptomatic cases, it is still detecting more cases than we previously knew about. If all of those people it detects go on to self-isolate, then we are making a big dent on reducing transmission.

However, people who are tested using lateral flow testing and receive a negative result could still have COVID. The test misses over 50% of positive cases, giving them a false negative result. It is absolutely crucial that people who have had a negative lateral flow test result continue to social distance, continue to avoid mixing with other households indoors and continue to wear masks in public spaces and wash their hands frequently.

Lateral flow testing, although not as sensitive or reliable as PCR testing, is a reasonable testing strategy for reducing asymptomatic transmission if – and only if – people are aware of the limitations.

What lateral flow testing cannot be used for is to allow people to reduce their social distancing practices and return to “normal”. It cannot be used to permit stadiums and theatres to return to full capacity as long as all people are tested before entry. It cannot be used to allow you to visit your nana in a care home and breathe all over her or lick her face.

Lateral flow testing is a tool along the way to combatting the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is not, and was never designed to be, The Answer. 

Well-designed patient outreach can help tackle misinformation where it does the most harm

Galina Limorenko
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Well-designed patient outreach can help tackle misinformation where it does the most harm

We live in the age of ‘crap perpetuation’. It is all-immersive in our virtual habitats. It is as insidiously precise in targeting specific audiences as it is varied in its context; a simple recipe for communication success. Then, we also face the lack of easily accessible, credible information resources to counter the misinformation. Blanket fact-spewing and impersonal science communications fail to compete with the misinformation spread, or to have any impact on re-educating the ones who were convinced by “the dark side”.

When it comes to health, online misinformation seeping and spilling over into real life can have detrimental consequences. Case-in-point: the SARS-CoV-2 infodemic. But this issue has long been present in the health science fields, best illustrated by the dangers of peddling bogus alternative treatments instead of approved medical interventions. And the professional, as well as skeptics’, communities have had very limited success in counteracting many claims, as well as almost no success in preventing their rise in the first place. People tend to believe easily-digestible and targeted misinformation and disinformation claims, are less likely to be dissuaded once certain beliefs are adopted, and are less likely to reach out to the sources of credible information due to mistrust, as well as due to their expectation of being ignored, or even ridiculed.

Patient outreach

To address some of these issues, my academic laboratory at EPFL in Switzerland, which investigates the molecular processes of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, also takes part in patient outreach activities. As scientists, we recognise that our duties to society stretch beyond the results of the scientific research. Therefore, we approach the organisation of outreach activities with the same rigor and care as we approach the planning of experiments. Science communication must be done well, or not done at all. Thankfully, participation in such efforts is being increasingly acknowledged as part of the scientific output by the scientific community, academic institutions, as well as by industry employers.

Patient involvement and organised interactions with the academic research community are relatively new concepts for the biomedical research field. They offer us several benefits, such as participation and personalised communications with a specific and defined audience. Patient outreach allows us to disseminate the relevant information at the level of the audience’s knowledge and understanding. It allows us to teach critical thinking skills, scientific method basics, and critical evaluation of the claims. Patient outreach helps to dispel the views of academia as the impenetrable “ivory tower” and recognise the fallibility of science, as of any human endeavour. Together, these efforts contribute to increasing the public’s trust in professional authorities by creating a welcoming environment for high-quality, two-way dialogue between academics and patients.

A scientist working in a laboratory. She is wearing a white labcoat and holding a pipette.

Patient interactions have benefits for the researchers too, and especially trainees. First and foremost, it humanises the basic research. As research scientists, we do not routinely interact with the patients of disorders we study. For a molecular biologist, Parkinson’s is an abstract concept, derived from the peculiar shapes and forms of the pathogenic protein implicated in this condition. Patient interactions remind us that there are human beings at the other end of the pipette, who will benefit only from our best efforts to do excellent science.

Furthermore, patients are the only ones who have continuous access to their condition. As shown throughout history, the inconspicuous details, revealed by scrupulous observation, often lead to major breakthroughs and new avenues of exploration. As we are still learning, Parkinson’s is a multifaceted condition. It is known that non-motor symptoms – such as loss of smell, acting out dreams during sleep, and depression – are prevalent years, and even decades, before the motor symptom onset. Now we also know that body odour changes during early stages of Parkinson’s. And we know it precisely because of listening carefully to the observations and experiences of patients, and their carers. None of these could have been found in the laboratory, but now we can investigate their underlying mechanisms to develop solutions.

How to do it?

Patient outreach activities can take multiple forms. From our experience, high quality events and effective communication efforts include live and virtual seminars and Q-and-A sessions tailored to specific groups of patients, laboratory Open Day visits and interactions with the staff, as well as having dedicated lines of communication with the research staff for specific questions (such as phone, mail, email, online form, chat).

On the other hand, we found other efforts to be less effective and time-consuming, mostly where they involved one-way and out-of-context communications. These include tweeting of factoids, posting links to scientific papers, or even general interest articles without a defined purpose and follow-up engagement. Creation or sharing of non-specific resource databases or webpages, as well as explanations in a highly technical and jargon-laden language, can be especially fruitless and disengaging.

Tips for patient outreach

There are several things to keep in mind when you decide to participate in patient outreach. First, it is important to determine the amount of time and effort your lab is prepared to devote. Quality in this case is more important than quantity – several well-prepared activities per year are perfectly effective.

Second, choosing the type of activities must be based on realistic evaluation of the staff abilities, willingness to participate, and expertise. For example, not everyone is capable of writing and performing a song about the brain synapse loss in Alzheimer’s disease, however many are likely to ace teaching how to load and run the gel for Western blotting, and enjoy doing it too! Often, there is no need to push yourself out of the comfort zone. Stay right in it – exactly where you are the expert, and invite others in.

Third, know your audience and tailor your communication approaches accordingly. For example, if you are reaching out to an older population, bulletin board notices, contacting patient advocacy and support groups, as well as physicians and disease specialists in the hospital take precedence over advertising online.

A group of people sat around a table with laptops and notebooks

In addition, ask what specific topics your audience is interested in learning about. Do not impose the information you think and decide they are interested in, or need to hear. Face tough and provoking questions head on, address it to the best of your expertise, and clearly define the limitations of our collective knowledge of some topics. This is crucial to dispel the promises of magical alternative treatments.

Finally, always show humility and respect for your audience. Although they are not experts in your field, you are likely not an expert in theirs. Most of us will become patients at some point in our lives, and all of us know someone who is a patient. It does not invalidate anyone of being a human before anything else.

In summary

Many – and perhaps, even, most – efforts of scientific and skeptics’ communities to tackle and prevent spread of misinformation suffer from ineffective impersonal approaches; patient outreach is a targeted science communication effort. This direct, two-way communication strategy allows scientists to reach the specific patient communities and their carers and families, provide relevant and actionable knowledge at the level of their understanding, and focus time-limited efforts for the best return. This holds promise to pre-emptively prime communities to detect and be suspicious of unsubstantiated claims regarding alternative treatments, and provides direct communication opportunities in case of a need for clarification.

Whether you are a scientist, concerned citizen or veteran skeptic, it is important to remember that you should not attempt to change the whole world in a single attempt. Do what you can, where you are, with what you have. If enough of us do this, changing the world for the better is just a logical and inevitable outcome.

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

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