From sauna to supernatural

After finishing in the gym tonight, I popped into the sauna. The gym supplies all the daily national and local newspapers, and someone had left a copy of the Western Daily Press in the sauna. It was a bit crinkly, but I thought I'd have a flick through as it was there.

There was a bizarre article about a local businessman who stood to win £1,000,000 from a £100 bet. The bet was that life after death would be proven by the end of this year. Unfortunately, the story didn't appear in the online version of the newspaper, but I made a note of his website, Now That's Weird, and looked it up later and did a few other searches on the guy in question, Ross Hemsworth (a "well known paranormal radio and TV presenter, scientific investigator of anomalous phenomena and an intriguing and entertaining speaker at events worldwide" according to his website). There was a story about the bet here (No, Paranormal Review isn't one of my regular reads). His website promotes Glastonbury Radio. Glastonbury is just down the road from me (and definitely is weird), so perhaps I ought to have a listen!

It looks like his bet is related to this piece of research at the University of Southampton. The title of the article mentions 'life after death', although the article itself actually talks about near-death and out-of-body experiences. I'm going to keep an eye on this, but I have a feeling that we are not going to hear much more.

When I did a search for Ross Hemsworth on Google, it came up with a entry from the great man himself, James Randi. I've included the text here.

Reader Barry Moyle informs me:

You may be aware of the website www.phantomorfraud.com. I sent an e-mail to these people questioning their statement: "Dowsing works, that has been proven time & again." "Dowsing" is listed as a topic on left hand side of their home page. I also suggested they should apply for your million dollar prize & forwarded a copy of your "The matter of Dowsing" from Swift, vol.2 no 3/4. January 1999.

I received a somewhat rude reply, addressed to "Mr. Eyes Closed", from a Mr. Ross Hemsworth. Amongst other things, he said "it's not our job to convince other skeptics, or indeed to chase money from other skeptics who require convincing" and "being a dowser myself, I KNOW it works"!

However, what interested me is his saying "I am in daily contact with James Randi, and he is very aware of the research we are doing." I know you are a busy man Mr. Randi but I would be very pleased to have your comment on that. He also asks that I do not waste his time by further contacting him because I do not have an open mind. I shall oblige him.

Barry, you must recognize that the million-dollar challenge is probably the single most-feared element in the belief system these people have constructed. They can't respond to it, because they know they can't perform as they fantasize they can. This delusion is so cherished, so important to them, that they will invent, distort, and lie in order to avoid facing the truth. Indeed, truth is their greatest enemy, and it is brought up to them by the JREF challenge, every day.

Ross Hemsworth has written me only once — on an entirely different matter — but I am certainly not "in daily contact" with him. He makes such claims because he is alarmed, but understandably so, because he sees the great threat that is offered to his self-delusion, if he is in any way called upon to face reality.

This dates back a bit, I wonder if the JREF has had any recent communication with Mr Hemsworth

Spot the logical fallacy

This week I've spotted a couple of daft articles and letters that demonstrate the general lack of critical thinking around today.

The first one was in the National Trust magazine. There were a couple of letters in response to a recent NT article on gardening by the phases of the moon. On the face of it, it sounds a bit weird, but should be testable.

I found a couple of interesting resources on moon-planting. One is a calendar that advises which things to plant according to the phase of the moon and other astrological signs.

Here's the letter

I was interested in the article on planting by the moon. This is something I've been doing for years - and have been teased because of it! But I swear by the method Ed Ikin described, and to prove it, this year I planted some runner beans before the end of April - although the new moon was to be later in May. Result: only two beans germinated. I planted a second batch on 5 May and within less than a fortnight had 90 per cent germination. The best method is to cut the inside of a kitchen roll into three, fill with soil and pop a bean into each. The whole lot can then be planted with little disturbance to the roots.

Apart from the obvious point that the second batch were planted at a later date (probably warmer condition, though it's hard to tell in this country), it's so typical that someone will try a particular technique, find it works and then prescribe the success to that technique without considering the other factors at play.

The other item was in my local paper, The Weston Mercury. It concerned the sad story of a couple who have both recently contracted cancer. She was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins lymphoma in November 2007 and he was diagnosed with leukaemia in February 2008. It's an awful thing to happen to anyone - my dad died of cancer, but the reason for the story being in the paper was that they claim that their illnesses result from being caught up in the Asian tsunami in 2004.

They say they can

trace their ill health back to the day when they were forced to shelter on an iron roof after the wave struck.

They

asked doctors if there could be a link - they told her it was possible but nothing could be proved

The wife says

I'm convinced it has something to do with it. Before the tsunami I was fit and healthy, but afterwards I was having five or six weeks off work at a time...It was like I had my immune system lowered. I would get ill all the time

 

The husband says

I'm a bit more scientific about it, but the tsunami is the only common factor. Everything has gone downhill since that date and we have not been able to pull ourselves out of it

It's a weird kind of non-story. They don't appear to be trying to gain anything from the story, just stating what they think is to blame for their illnesses.

Maybe cancer can be triggered by stress, maybe not. I'm not doctor (well, not that sort of doctor). The point in both these cases is that people seem to be happier if they can find some pattern or reason for what happens to them or around them. I'm there are more than one logical fallacy in each of these cases, but they definitely seem to come under post hoc ergo propter hoc, i.e. assuming that a temporal relationship between two event implies a causal relationship.

More business for Claims Direct?

Now here's an interesting development...

The church of scientology is being taken to court in France for 'organized fraud'. There are some more details in here on the BBC and here in the Washington Post. This particular case is related to a woman being persuaded to hand over money in return for items such as courses and books that would, I guess, improve her mental and spiritual condition. She then claimed that these were fraudulent. I'm not really up on scientology, but are their claims for the wellbeing of their 'clients' significantly different to that of any other religion?

Would it be possible to sue the church of scientology if their claims were accepted to be true? Would it be equally possible to sue some other religions based on their claims?

Leave them kids alone

As the parent of a child who attends a local village school (and a second one starting this week) that has the misfortune to be Church of England Voluntary Controlled, I was concerned to see this report from the National Secular Society. We don't send our children to a VC school out of choice - the church controls almost all village schools in the area. In fact, a quick check on the net shows that there are 7 primary/first schools in the area and they are all controlled by the Church of England. To compound the problem, the middle school and secondary school that take children from the area are also C of E.

The history of the VC and VA (Voluntary Aided) status seems to be a hangover from the donation of land or buildings by the church in the distant past. The annoying thing is that the church still gets a say in the running of the school and the appointment of teachers even though they don't contribute anything towards the upkeep of the school or the teachers' salaries. The money comes from our taxes

The report from the NSS shows that the government are trying to make the situation worse. It's bad enough that the schools are obliged to employ a teacher who can teach RE. Now a proposed change in the law makes it possible for a VC school to restrict the post of head teacher to someone who has the 'right' religious views. Previously, it was not permitted for a school to restrict the head post to so-called 'reserved teacher'. The actual definition in the Act (School Standards and Framework Act 1998) is

(5) If the school is a voluntary aided school—

(a) preference may be given, in connection with the appointment, remuneration or promotion of teachers at the school, to persons—

(i) whose religious opinions are in accordance with the tenets of the religion or religious denomination specified in relation to the school under section 69(4), or

(ii) who attend religious worship in accordance with those tenets, or

(iii) who give, or are willing to give, religious education at the school in accordance with those tenets; and

(b) regard may be had, in connection with the termination of the employment of any teacher at the school, to any conduct on his part which is incompatible with the precepts, or with the upholding of the tenets, of the religion or religious denomination so specified.

The proposed law change means that it is possible for a school to reserve the head teacher role for someone who meets the criteria above. So, now the head teacher has to live a 'Christian' life in and out of school and if the governors of the school decide so, no non-Christian would be allowed to take the role of head. By the way, the local vicar always gets a seat on the board of governors.

To be fair in our case, the amount of religion that the children are 'taught' is minimal and so far we have managed to counter it in our son by letting him know that people believe lots of different things and that you shouldn't believe something just because someone important tells you that it is true. He knows that we don't believe in god, but we aren't telling him what to think, just that he is allowed to work it out for himself.

There has been a lot of discussion in the media over the last few weeks about faith schools (like here and here). A big problem I have with the supporters of faith schools is when they talk about the ethos of the school as if there are certain aspects of behaviour, ethics  or morality that could be taught in a religious context. I've found through a recent diocesan inspection of our local school that you pick out all the good bits, like politeness, good manners and hard work and call them Christian values. Parents who send their children to religious schools do so because they appear to get better results. Of course, allowing a school to select its pupils on any grounds gives it the opportunity to weed out less able pupils and less interested (and possibly less wealthy) parents. The sooner we removed all religion from schools (apart from some healthy Comparative Religion classes), the better. If anyone can provide some evidence that faith schools are better because of their faith, then I'd like to see it.