Note: This post also appears on Insight, the official blog of the Skeptic Society.

A few months ago I wrote about the psychology of vaccine denial. In the post I discussed two publications, one of which (Nyhan, et al.) found:

Corrective information reduced misperceptions about the vaccine/autism link but nonetheless decreased intent to vaccinate among parents who had the least favorable attitudes toward vaccines. Moreover, images of children who have MMR and a narrative about a child who had measles actually increased beliefs in serious vaccine side effects.

None of the interventions increased parents’ intent to vaccinate.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, a friend sent me a link to this piece describing research which seems to contradict that finding. The authors (Horne, et al.) concluded that

…highlighting factual information about the dangers of communicable diseases can positively impact people’s attitudes to vaccination.

These two conclusions seem to contract each other. Which should we believe?

Many times this question comes down to the quality of the research. In this case, I believe these are both fairly well-designed studies. One, however, is more precise than the other in several ways. I believe that precision highlights the complexity of the issue as well as giving us a better idea of the direction that vaccine promotion should take.

Let’s look at the differences in sampling and method between the two studies.

The Horne study sampled 315 men and women. In the Nyhan study, the final sample was 1759 parents with children under the age of 18. In most research, 315 subjects is more than sufficient and more is not always better. The danger in larger samples is to find effects that are statistically significant, but not practically significant. However, when comparing conflicting findings, it is best to bet on the side of the larger sample.

Then there’s the question of limiting the study to parents. Although Horne compared parents to non-parents and found no significant differences in attitudes or effects, noise is noise. These two groups of people vary, and the attitudes of non-parents are not particularly relevant. Limiting the study to parents would give me more confidence in the robustness of the findings and their application in real-world activism.

Still, if both are reasonably well-designed studies by competent researchers, the end results should not contradict each other. So there must be more going on. And there is.

For one thing, this is a great example of how complex social sciences are. We should never make policy decisions based on a single study and this demonstrates why. Replication, especially with variants of measures and materials, is essential to learning the best methods of persuasion.

For another, these studies differ in more than just sampling techniques. The Horne study is much simpler and, in fact, oversimplifies. Nyhan, et al. included three outcome measures, each addressing a specific attitude:

1. The belief that vaccines cause autism.
2. Perceived risk of side effects from vaccines.
3. Intent to vaccinate one’s child/children.

By contrast, the Horne study involved a single measure which combined answers to five specific questions (such as “I intend to vaccinate my child.” and “Doctors would not recommend vaccines if they were unsafe.” to come up with a more vague “vaccine attitudes” scale. Even if the answers to these questions are highly correlated, how interventions affect those answers may be very different. They certainly were in the Nyhan study. And if “effective” is defined as increasing intent to vaccinate, then the Horne study does not answer the question it purports to answer. Personally, I am more interested in intent to vaccinate than I am in any other aspect of “vaccine attitudes”, so the Nyhan study’s findings are much more meaningful to me.

In general, it is best to measure outcomes of interest as specifically as possible, but of course the more outcomes a researcher studies, the larger the sample must be.

Finally, and perhaps the most important difference between these two studies, is the timing of the experimental portion. When measuring the effect of treatments or interventions on attitudes, an experiment should be spaced over time. A researcher will measure the attitude, then wait before applying a treatment and measuring the attitude again. When polled about attitudes, those attitudes are brought to mind. This affects our receptiveness to relevant information in complex ways, ways that vary based on a number of other factors such as the strengths of our attitudes and the way the questions are worded. However, allowing subjects to forget about the initial survey provides a more accurate picture of how people confronted with information in the real world may respond to it.

The Horne experiment was conducted a day after the initial screening while the Nyhan experiment occurred about two weeks after initial screening.

My conclusion? I think the issue is complex, but while Horne’s findings appear easier to understand, Nyhan’s findings are more specific, answer more interesting questions, and can be more easily viewed within the framework of well-established knowledge about human decision-making (e.g., cognitive dissonance).

That, and we need more research if we are to develop effective ways of increasing vaccination rates.

Horne Z, Powell D, Hummel JE, & Holyoak KJ (2015). Countering antivaccination attitudes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112 (33), 10321-4 PMID: 26240325

Nyhan B, Reifler J, Richey S, & Freed GL (2014). Effective messages in vaccine promotion: a randomized trial. Pediatrics, 133 (4) PMID: 24590751

Sometimes I wish that I didn’t have a nagging conscience so that I could make millions selling crap at a 6000% profit just by claiming that it does something it doesn’t. Unfortunately, I’d be embarrassed by the first skeptic to challenge me. Oh, and then there’s that pesky fact that I’d be scamming people and promoting pseudoscience.

Anyway, there seems to be no end to the things you can convince people that some token item embedded in $.08 worth of rubber can do.

Last week I stumbled over Sharkbanz.

Screenshot of the Sharkbanz website. The band can be worn on the wrist or ankle.

Sharkbanz are rubber jewelry similar to a Fitbit Flex. Instead of a motion sensor, however, Sharkbanz contain magnets. The company’s founders claim that these magnets repel sharks.

Yes, you read that right. Magnets in a rubber bracelet repel sharks.

How does it work? Well, let’s look at what they claim.

Screenshot of the Sharkbanz website, explaining the technology.

Summary:

• Uses magnets
• No batteries, no electricity, no moving parts
• Rated for 200 meters. What happens when you dive below that? Does the magnet implode or the rubber erode?
• For ages 5 and up. So if you’re 4, you’re some Shark’s dinner I guess, because for some reason it is just not safe for those under 5. By the way, choking hazard warnings are usually for children under 3, so this arbitrary value makes little sense.

The idea is that sharks are annoyed or frightened by the electromagnetic field emitted by the magnet because of their keen electroreception capabilities.

Okay, so I’m not a shark expert, nor am I a physicist or an engineer. For this reason, I’m going to tread a little lightly on the examination of whether the idea is plausible and focus on whether they have demonstrated that the things work. But I will admit to a bit of skepticism given the knowledge I do have. Some of my thoughts:

• I don’t know that the differences between magnetic fields, electrical impulses, and electromagnetic fields matter, but the owners of Sharkbanz imply that any electromagnetic energy is disturbing to sharks. If that were true, then light would bother them. Clearly, just as the human eye only senses electromagnetic energy within a range of wavelengths, sharks’ electroreceptors are limited in range. Yet the website says very little about what research and testing they have done to determine whether sharks even sense their magnets. The most that I can find is a link to a list of tested species on the website of a group called SharkDefense. There is zero detail provided in this list and no citations to peer-reviewed literature about these tests. The site does cite some literature in a section which explains the theory (which, again, I am unqualified to adequately challenge, but it looks mostly correct), but provides no reason to believe that the idea because sharks have electroreception, they will be repelled by this specific small magnet wrapped in a rubber bracelet. In fact, take a look at the size of the magnet the claim to have tested (again, no citation for this): Click here
• Sharkbanz presents no reason that a man-eating shark would have for avoiding the electromagnetic field emitted by their magnets. Just because sharks have electroreceptors doesn’t mean that some random magnet is going to affect their behavior. Perhaps if they made an effort to produce some magnet that emitted a field that mimicked the energy put out by a predator it might make sense, but do bull sharks even have predators? I don’t know, but I’m skeptical.
• Then there’s the fact that the magnet is encased in rubber.

So if you’re an expert on sharks or the physics that apply here, please feel free to comment with your 2 cents, but I’m going to focus on their “scientific testing”.

Sharkbanz are a fun, easy way to add peace of mind to the everyday ocean swim, surf, or snorkel, but make no mistake: the science is real.

Bull*cough*.

This technology has been tested extensively on over ten of the most common predatory shark species…

On the website, there are several references to videos that supposedly show this “extensive testing”. However, most of the videos I’ve found when I click those links are media interviews in which the owners say very little. There are certainly no published articles from peer-reviewed journals, not even some about electroreceptors in sharks that don’t really support their claims. They don’t even try to fake it. What I did find are a few unconvincing videos which show a couple of guys dropping a buoy into the water and watching a fish or two swim away from it.

In this video, the only one that claims to show testing, the voiceover claims that they tied a bracelet to a buoy “in order to be scientific” as well as safe before throwing it into the water with reef sharks. Then, he put two shark bands on his ankles and got into the water which, he claims, induced “obvious repellent reactions when the sharks approached the bands on my feet”. Finally, they “decided to get more of the controlled type of testing” by tying the bracelets around lead weights, which he claims produced “really astonishing repellent behavior”.

Well, I’m sorry guys, but scientists everywhere are laughing at you. They are giving you the virtual equivalent of “there, there” pats on the head and “aren’t you cute? Do you want to be a scientist when you grow up?” Except that given the voice on this video belongs to Dr. Patrick Rice, Senior Marine Biologist at SharkDefense, you’ll have a hard time convincing me that you don’t know quite well that you’re not scientifically testing anything. This is a marketing video and nothing more.

A very short, far-from-exhaustive list of plausible alternative explanations for what the video shows:

• fish in the shots are not darting away from the bracelet, but rather toward food that was just dropped in the water
• cherry-picking shots in which fish are swimming away
• fish examined the item (or the person) and immediately recognized that it wasn’t food (or preferred food)
• fish avoid things hanging from buoys or anything that looks like the item (rather than being repelled by the magnet)

Can you guess what a good, scientific test of this product might entail? A double-blind, placebo controlled study. In other words, you’d want to simulate the movement of a human being as much as possible. You’d want to stop chumming the water after you’ve introduced the treatment (the bracelet). Most of all, you would need to compare the fishes’ behavior toward a Sharkbanz bracelet to their behavior toward a placebo–a bracelet without the magnet. Also, you would need the people recording and judging the behavior to be blind to the condition (they cannot know whether the fish are reacting to an “active” bracelet or a placebo). Without that comparison all of these tests are worthless.

In sum, these guys are charging $60 for heavy rubber bracelet that people will buy because it claims to protect from shark attacks–an extremely rare event with a high fear factor.

In the U.S., it takes a lot of time and money to get a group like this to stop making ridiculous claims, but I have to wonder how this company is allowed to market and sell in Australia, given what happened with Power Balance.

I don’t know if this could really be called “new”, but it’s a form of anti-intellectualism that usually goes unnoticed. I find it particularly frustrating because I so often see it often among people who claim to respect knowledge, education, and expertise. It is an ironic lack of respect for that same knowledge, education, and expertise.

The Psychology of Vaccine Denial

I’m sure you’re wondering what I’m talking about here, so I will get to the point. Rebecca Watson wrote a short piece, published in Skeptical Inquirer Online, that seems to question the potential effectiveness of a bill currently in the works in California which would eliminate non-medical exemptions for vaccination requirements to attend public school. I say “seems to” because it’s actually unclear.

My main criticism of the piece itself is not that much of what she says is blatantly wrong, but that the piece doesn’t go anywhere and the research cited doesn’t support the weak, barely identifiable thesis at all. It is disjointed and doesn’t flow well. The transition from the topic of education to that of the bill is a huge leap. Her conclusion makes little sense given the rest of the piece. It’s only a few paragraphs (very short for SI), but in those few paragraphs she manages to treat some important research shallowly and selectively, missing the valuable knowledge that a nuanced look at the findings would provide. I won’t make that mistake here.

She cites two articles, the first mention is this:

Researchers Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler have spent the past few years conducting studies that seem specifically designed to depress science communicators. Last year, they published a paper in which they showed that correcting myths about the MMR vaccination actually decreased a parent’s intention to vaccinate.

What’s missing is that this was only true among those “with the least favorable vaccine attitudes”.

Even showing participants images of sick children was counterproductive, increasing their belief that vaccines are connected with autism.

Yes, but the “even” part is very misleading. Emotional pleas such as describing disease risks and showing images of or telling stories about children with diseases all increased this belief, but education refuting a link successfully reduced that same belief. 

From the article:

“Autism correction” is most effective in reducing agreement with the autism misperception. Strong agreement declines from a predicted probability of 8.9% to 5.1% (and likewise for other response options). By contrast, the predicted probability of strong agreement increases to 12.6% for “Disease images.” Similarly, the predicted probability of believing serious side effects from MMR are very likely increased from 7.7% among control subjects to 13.8% in the “Disease narrative” condition.

This combination of results tells us a lot about what is happening when people are confronted with different strategies, yet nothing Watson wrote went beyond the few bits she selected from the abstract.

For the second citation, Watson writes:

Last month, they conducted a similar test using the common belief that the flu vaccine causes the flu. The results were the same: correcting the misconception only decreased the subjects’ self-reported intention to get vaccinated.

But this is what the article’s abstract actually says:

Corrective information adapted from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website significantly reduced belief in the myth that the flu vaccine can give you the flu as well as concerns about its safety. However, the correction also significantly reduced intent to vaccinate among respondents with high levels of concern about vaccine side effects – a response that was not observed among those with low levels of concern.

After reading the article, I can tell you that the education measures worked across the board–in every concern level, educating people about the vaccine significantly reduced belief in the myth. However, those with the most concern about side effects dug in when it came to intent to vaccinate–not everybody, those with the most concern. (BTW, they didn’t conduct the test “last month”.)

These are finer points, but they are far from trivial. The details are what tell us what’s going on. I would not expect someone without an education in psychology to recognize the implications, although Abbie Smith, who reviewed the first study in a blog post last year, managed quite a bit of insight (which she wrote about with care, describing the findings in detail and not speculating beyond the what happened in the study).

And this is where the anti-intellectualism is most apparent in Rebecca’s piece:

At this point, we can only guess as to the reason why this happens.

No, Rebecca, at this point, you can only guess. So, if you don’t know why it happens, then nobody does?

To anyone who has studied decision making, reason, attention, or just about any area of social psychology for a few years, this statement is absurd. The pattern of results found in these two studies is exactly what I would have predicted. We have decades of research telling us why this happens.

Some brief explanations are provided right there in the articles’ discussion sections. The authors mention loss framing, danger priming, and other effects.

For a much more in-depth look, I will ask you to read Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. The nutshell is that people do all sorts of mental gymnastics to reduce something we call cognitive dissonance–a tension between contradictory attitudes or an attitude and a behavior–in ways that allow us to avoid changing the behavior or strongly-held attitude.

In this case, when those holding strong anti-vaccine attitudes accept that their expressed reasons (e.g., autism) for those attitudes are invalid, they simply find another reason to maintain the attitude (e.g., side effects).

People are invested in the choice not to vaccinate, not the reason for the choice.

This would be especially true for those who have acted on that choice. The alternative is to accept that they have put their children at risk for no reason.

So, although Watson is not incorrect in reporting that some approaches backfired, she failed to see or report the nuances in these findings that tell us why and what we might do about it. And there’s more that I would not expect a layperson to recognize.

These studies only measured attitudes immediately following education–education that worked in dispelling myths about those vaccines. What I would like to see is follow up research examining attitudes months or years afterward. What happens, for example, when people are educated, then given time to change their attitudes without threat to their egos and identities? I predict that a large portion of them will change their minds. Much of the resistance is probably rooted in ego threat. Giving people time and space may allow them to save face while changing the attitude to reduce the cognitive dissonance associated with the conflicting ideas.

Furthermore, in these laboratory studies, parents are asked to report their attitudes prior to the exposure to materials. This is a form of declaration, committing people to a viewpoint that they then feel compelled to defend. That’s not what happens in real world situations.

So her next paragraph…

Do people hold their anti-vaccination beliefs so deeply that correcting a misconception only encourages them to spend time digging around for another reason to hate vaccines? If so, then the answer may be to address the underlying reasons for the belief instead of the scientific facts.

How are these two sentences connected? That people find other reasons to maintain a behavior or attitude is not evidence that there is some hidden reason. And expressed reasons are precisely what what are addressed in the studies she cited. She’s come full-circle with nothing at all to show for it.

Cognitive dissonance and the unconscious strategies people use to reduce it are human nature. We cannot “address” human nature so easily. We can educate people about human nature and how it does not always lead us to the best decisions to meet our goals (and by “we”, I mean people who have studied human nature, such as social scientists with years of training and knowledge), but of course that’s a much broader goal. Increasing vaccination rates is a public safety issue that must be addressed with more urgency and specificity.

Finally, all of this came down to this one guess of hers:

For instance, perhaps the belief is rooted in a fear of government control over individual choices.

Um, seriously? This came out of nowhere as if she just didn’t have an ending to her story, or perhaps couldn’t come up with a good segue to get to the one thing that she meant to talk about: the California bill that may eliminate personal belief exemptions for unvaccinated kids to attend public schools. Rebecca’s logic is that if fear of vaccine harm is actually rooted in fear of government control, then the bill might make matters worse.

This is a huge leap. For one thing, she cites no research showing that fear of government control has anything to do with the average vaccine denier’s choices. Even if it did, the very research she cited shows that removing all government involvement in vaccination would not change intent to vaccinate (those with the most concern would simply find another thing to worry about). But more importantly, she begs the question:

But will the law (which already exists in West Virginia and Mississippi) only encourage the anti-government anti-vaccine activists to band together and renew their efforts to fight for their freedom to harm innocent kids?

Well, now, why not take a few minutes and do a little research to find out how laws affect vaccine rates?

According to Pew,  “states with the strictest immunization laws tend to have the highest immunization rates” (they have a nice graph sorted by vaccination rates and Mississippi is at the top).

Not surprising. People tend to follow the law, and if they want to send their kids to public schools, they must vaccinate. But does this change attitudes? I think a lot of people would say that they don’t care, as long as it changes the behavior, but I think we can all agree that changing the attitude would be best.

And stricter immunization laws will change attitudes and beliefs about vaccines. How do I know this? Simple: cognitive dissonance.

One early finding in studies of cognitive dissonance theory is that it is often easier for people to change an attitude than it is to change a behavior. We have seen numerous examples of this, not only on laboratory studies, but in real-world behaviors such as smoking and exercise habits. Once invested in a behavior, the attitude follows as a matter of reducing the tension because we are invested in the behavior, not the reason for the behavior.

In this case, the biggest thing currently in the way of attitude change is the personal belief exception. Remove that, and behaviors must change. Once behaviors change, attitudes will follow, especially with education, which will pave the way for attitude change by giving parents a way to engage in the behavior (of sending their child to public school) without dissonance. This is especially true when the parent has not declared their attitude prior to education, as they do in a laboratory study.

What the research cited suggests, when included in the context of decades of psychological research about the relationships among attitudes, behaviors, and values, is that a combination of stricter laws and education correcting myths about vaccines is not only highly likely to increase vaccination rates, it will also decrease perceptions of risk of harm from vaccines.  Giving people facts does indeed work. It works to educate people about facts. If you want them to change their attitudes, however, you need to dig a little bit deeper.

To head off what will surely be a the first thing Watson’s supporters will point out: what’s the difference we came to the same conclusion? Her argument is “I think we should try X because nothing else seems to work” and mine is that X is what the science suggests. Only one of these is a valid argument. The ends do not justify the means.

The New Anti-Intellectualism

The implication that just anyone can write about this stuff with authority is the kind of anti-intellectualism I’m referring to in the title.

And before you assume that I am saying that skeptics have nothing to say, think again. Pseudoscience and fraud, the core of skepticism, are not science. Skepticism is a field in and of itself, very distinct from science. It includes scientific thinking and it benefits, as every field does, from the products of science, but it is not science.

This piece is poorly researched, weak, and reads like a book report that someone started, put away, then suddenly realized it was due and wrote the rest while the other kids were watching a film in class. A big part of that is the fact that Watson simply does not know the field, something she has demonstrated repeatedly. Yet, knowing her track record in this area, CFI decided to commission and publish this. The poor quality of the piece is a side effect of overconfidence coupled with a lack of expertise, but it further points to a huge drop in standards by SI Online. Not that SI hasn’t published some misses in the past, but this sad little piece is just one of many lesser-quality articles recently appearing there, including one in which the author describes party/county fair psychics as harmless fun.

So, am I saying journalists and other non-scientists (e.g., skeptics) should never write about science? No, I am not.

It is fine for non-experts to write on topics when they do so with great care. I cannot stress this enough.

A non-expert can do a great job when they do a proper amount of research by talking with experts (rather than spending a few minutes Googling and picking sentences out of abstracts that one believes supports one’s already-formed opinion), when they discuss experiments and studies accurately without omitting important details, when they properly credit the sources of ideas and opinions, when they follow what they find rather than start with a conclusion and attempt to support it, and when they refrain from stating their personal opinions as authoritative. Watson rarely appears to do any of those things when she writes about science. She simply writes and speaks with an air of confidence and that seems to be enough to make some people think that she is clever and knowledgeable.

Good science journalism allows the researchers’ voices to be heard, not the author’s. Think about that.

I have written before about the dangers and hypocrisy of speaking and writing on topics which require expertise one does not have (here, here, and here, for example–two of which are also about Rebecca Watson). It’s actually a topic that has received a lot of coverage, from Massimo Pigliucci’s talk at TAM8 to articles by Daniel Loxton (yes, I’ve linked to them both before and for good reason). I expect to see this kind of thing all over the blogosphere, but to see it on the Skeptical Inquirer’s site is disheartening, especially on the heels of other pieces that fall far below their old standards.

As I stated in this post more than three years ago, we (skeptics in general) criticize Jenny McCarthy and Bill Maher because they don’t have the expertise to make the statements they make. We criticize “the Food Babe” and many, many others for the same reasons. We tell people not to take medical advice from a Playboy Bunny and a talk show host, yet we (skeptics again) give a microphone to a blogger to talk about the psychology of vaccine denial simply because she calls herself “Skepchick”? How is this justified?

Now, I am perfectly aware that many people don’t believe that psychology is a science or that expertise in the field is actually a thing. I deal with that kind of anti-intellectualism every day. But I am still stunned when I see such blatant disregard for it among people and organizations who wave the flag of “listen to the experts” when it suits their purposes. CFI, you should be ashamed.

In 1987 I worked as a receptionist in the real estate lending office of a savings and loan. A savings and loan, for those too young to remember, is a bit like a bank which invests most of it’s money in mortgages (think Bailey Building and Loan). Shortly after I was hired the whole savings and loan industry collapsed, mostly due to questionable commercial lending practices and other bad investments. My office was one of the last to close, so for months we had plenty of time for office chatter.

In our office of about 20 people, and me, about half visited a psychic on a regular basis. They saw the same woman. I often heard my co-workers going on and on about what Sally (I don’t remember her name) told them and when they would go to see her next. I tried a few times to talk to them about psychics. I told them about all of my failed experiments with Zenar cards as a kid. I told them about my experience in high school, when a man came to my psychology class, did a few tricks, then told us he wasn’t psychic, but a magician. I told them about the challenge the Bay Area Skeptics and James Randi (and probably others) offered to anyone who could demonstrate psychic ability.

The looks I got gave me chills. These people were not simply unconvinced. They hated me for what I was saying.

And what they said in response was hurtful. I was just a kid (I was almost, but not quite, 21) with no experience in the world. What did I know? I’d learn.

Fast forward a few years to around 1992. At that time I was working at a software company and was fairly well-respected in my position as an administrator. I called most of my coworkers friends and the company had low turnover, so we had known each other for some time. But I had no idea I was among so many believers.

A picture of me (blown out by the flash), at the Monte Carlo party, before I saw the psychic.

The company threw a daytime party that year in an empty space next door. The theme was “Monte Carlo” and we all got dressed up, imbibed, ate, and played blackjack for a few hours. And visited the psychic.

I never understood why the person who planned the party included a psychic. I didn’t realize that psychics were part of the Monte Carlo culture. But there she was. A psychic. At our Monte Carlo office party. And several friends could not stop talking about it.

“Don’t you want to hear what she has to say?” several people asked.

I said “no” every time. I told them about all of my failed experiments with Zenar cards as a kid. I talked about my experience in high school. I told them about the challenge. I talked about the lack of evidence for psychic abilities.

Nobody got angry or hurtful this time. Instead, they wanted to prove to me that it was real. They begged me to take a turn. So I did.

I sat down at her table and vowed to myself that I would not scoff or laugh. I would just answer her questions truthfully and try not to give her any clues. I have a pretty good poker face.

Sylvia (I don’t remember her name, either) really only asked me one question of interest and it was her downfall.

She asked, “Is your mother more like Betty Crocker or Susan B. Anthony?”

That was easy. “Betty Crocker,” I said.

Sylvia then went on for about 20 minutes while I sat, amused and expressionless, listening. My friends/coworkers listened, too. Sylvia lectured me about my inability to break out of the character that my mother had modeled for me–the meek and timid woman who never felt strong enough to stand up for herself or speak up for others. She told me to find my own voice, that I needed to be more assertive. And so on…

I thanked her, then got up and headed back to the office to get some work done.

I thought that this reading would convince my friends that psychics were frauds. You see, I had built a reputation at that company. I was certainly not timid. I was not quiet. I was not meek. I was in fact… kind of a bitch. But I got the job done precisely because I was assertive. My personality has not changed much.

And my mother? Well, the mistake Sylvia made was asking such a simplistic question. I answered “Betty Crocker” because my mother took cake decorating classes (and made the most amazing doll cakes for me every year; she made my wedding cake, too) and is a very talented seamstress. Yes, she cooked and baked and sewed and got involved with the Navy Wives Club and volunteered as a nurse at my elementary school. She was also nothing like Susan B. Anthony. She didn’t burn her bra or march for women’s liberation. BUT, she was tough. Still is. She took cake decorating, but she also took auto repair classes and she taught me how to install car radios. My mother is not meek, not timid, and certainly has no trouble asserting herself. Nor do I.

And I thought it was blatantly obvious that the psychic had totally blown it.

But my friends still gathered around me, giggling excitedly about how great Sylvia was. When I said, “But she got everything wrong,” they dismissed it. They said, “She’s just telling you that you’re on the right track!”

When I objected with, “But my mother is nothing like that,” they said, “Well nobody gets everything 100% perfect.”

They talked about all of the vague things that she’d said in their readings and what they thought all of those things meant. They were drenched in the excitement of belief.

I shook my head and trudged back to my office alone. If that demonstration didn’t convince them, I didn’t know what would. I was sad about that for a long time.

It would be years before I went back to school to study psychology, teach, and look for better ways to promote skepticism.

People who believe in psychics don’t care whether they saw the psychic at their place of business, at a party, or at a county fair. They don’t think that matters because a psychic is a psychic. They don’t think that “party psychics” are just there to give bogus readings for fun. What fun would that be, anyway, if you don’t believe they are real?

“Party psychics” may not bilk a mark out of thousands of dollars, but they take money in exchange for pretending to know things they cannot know. They are no less fraudulent in their actions and just as guilty of promoting harmful superstition. This is not harmless.

This is an updated version of a post that originally appeared on the Woo Fighters website in 2010.

In what is now considered “the golden days” of skepticism, I experienced first-hand the power of grass roots activism. I will never know if or how my view of the world would differ if I had never taken that psychology class in my junior year of high school, but I am very, very glad that I did.

I was very clearly excited to be talking about skepticism in education in 2011 at TAM9. I brought three students that year and one of my former students (Dylan Keenberg) spoke as part of the Sunday Paper session.
– photo by Dean Baird

When people ask “When did you become a skeptic?”, I have to answer that I have always been one. I never blindly accepted claims and I always looked for evidence. I held my beliefs tentatively. Where I went wrong was in the assumption that the “default” conclusion should be to consider a claim true unless the evidence refutes it. I thought that a lack of evidence meant that I could not draw a conclusion. I was naive and ignorant.

From a very young age, I was fascinated with psychic phenomena. I thought that ghosts were silly; Houdini made that clear. I had seen The Amazing Randi on The Tonight Show, so I knew that Uri Geller was a fraud and I never really bought into the typical magic tricks, anyway. But I was obsessed with ESP (extrasensory perception) and numerology. I had many obsessions, but these were different because I was never satisfied. I read about “cosmic twins” and the predictions of Nostradamus. I studied palm lines. I tried to move things with my mind. I made a set of Zener cards and did my best to test myself and my friends. Nothing ever panned out. Yet it did not occur to me to seek alternative explanations.

A more appropriate question than “When did you become a skeptic?”, I think, is “When did you stop believing?” And my answer to that is in October of 1982.

My high school in the greater Sacramento area did not offer Latin, but it did have an introductory psychology course and Mr. Tamblyn (now Dr., I see) managed to cover more than I see in most college-level courses. We recreated Asch’s conformity trials with students from other classes. We learned about the Stroop Effect. But what he and a grass roots skeptic taught us about critical thinking was the most valuable of gifts.

In early October, we had a guest speaker. She was a psychic. She gave several cold readings, including one of me. She said that she saw me sitting at a piano. Now, I didn’t play piano at the time, but I had wanted to learn since I got my first organ (they were very popular in the 60s and 70s) at the age of four. My parents hinted that we might finally have space for piano (they gave me an electronic keyboard that year). I was convinced that she was tapping into some unseen energy. She read several other people and we were all suitably amazed.

About a week later, another psychic visited us. He surveyed the class, asking how many of us believed in psychic phenomena, and about 3/4th of the students raised their hands.

He did several cold readings, some amazing mind-reading card tricks, and a few other feats. He entertained us us for about an hour. Then he polled the class again. Only a few did not raise their hands this time.

At this point he stopped cold and said, “I am not psychic. I am a magician. Everything I have done today has been a trick.”

He showed us how he did a few of the tricks. He explained the method of cold readings. We discussed the way the psychic the week prior may have accomplished what she did. At one point, I looked down at the books sitting on my desk and noticed that I had doodled all over one the paper covers – a piano keyboard. I also carried a key ring with a note-shaped fob. I don’t know if either was visible when she was there, but it was not inconceivable. Together, we produced an explanation just about everything that we’d been amazed by the week before.

What he had to say next had a much greater impact, though. In fact, it was the end for me. It was the information I needed to finally let go of the nagging question about whether supernatural abilities were real.

He told us that he and a few others had founded a group called Bay Area Skeptics.

He told us about the challenge.

Bay Area Skeptics had been founded in June and operated, at that time, as a local chapter of The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), now known as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI). Bay Area Skeptics offered a $1,000 reward to anyone who could demonstrate supernatural powers. Although this group and challenge was new, James Randi had been offering a reward (which by that time was $10,000) since 1964. The fact that nobody had claimed this money after nearly two decades told me everything I needed to know. The money was there. All they had to do was show their powers.

This seemed utterly ridiculous to me and still does to this day. I concluded that the odds that psychic abilities existed were very, very low.

So I let go.

Some students were pretty angry about the ruse and the final poll revealed that a few (I think there were 2 or 3 out of about 45) remained believers, but many of us were amazed. Amazed at our own willingness to see what we wanted to see. Amazed at how skilled both the psychic and the skeptic were. Amazed at how little we knew about the evidence (or lack thereof).

It was not until well into college that I fully understood that the appropriate “default” conclusion was the null, but what happened on that fall day in 1982 was a foundation for that concept. It also taught me that what we do not see can be just as important as what we see.

Although I remained an ardent skeptic, over the years my participation in skepticism as a movement varied. At times I diligently maintained memberships in various organizations. I tried Mensa for a while, but was very disappointed to discover that their special interest groups for nonsense like astrology outnumbered the groups with a rational focus by about 5 to 1. Most other groups were either religious or game-focused. At times I paid little attention to issues of skeptical activism. Eventually, I kind of forgot about that day in psychology class.

Then while studying psychology as an undergrad and grad student many years later I had a mentor/professor whose office was filled with old Skeptical Inquirer magazines. Dr. Donald Butler’s courses in research methods and statistics were built around skeptical concepts. He reminded me that skepticism is the best lens through which to view the world.

In April of 2000, I attended the annual convention of the Western Psychological Association in Portland, Oregon. It was my first academic conference after returning to school in 1997. I found that it was not all that different from other types of conventions and conferences, but the talks were so much more interesting. I was thrilled to see Michael Shermer and Ray Hyman on the schedule and attended both of their talks. Shermer described the findings of his survey on religion (something I found particularly interesting since I had responded to that survey myself) and discussed his book How We Believe. Hyman’s talk was titled Science and Pseudoscience. As Dr. Hyman wowed the crowd with rope tricks and mind reading, all of the memories of that day in high school came flooding back, but I could not recall the skeptic’s name. Dr. Shermer and Dr. Hyman speculated that it was Bob Steiner, and James Randi offered the same guess later in an email. However, the internet eventually provided enough clues and I now know that it was Terence Sandbek, a clinical psychologist and professor at American River College.

The list of people who have taught me to appreciate skeptical thought and who have fine-tuned my philosophy is not a short one, but I do not know if I would have come to appreciate these people if it were not for the work of a skeptic and a high school teacher back in 1982. So, thank you Dr. Sandbek, for showing me that what appears to be an extraordinary feat is usually simply a practiced one and to Dr. Tamblyn, for showing me how easily we accept extraordinary claims without evidence. Oh, and for teaching me to drive! (Yes, he taught driver’s ed, too.)

I can think of no pursuit as rewarding and valuable as the study, promotion, and teaching of critical thinking, science, and skepticism.

Let me cut to the chase: No.

Full disclosure: I own a Fitbit Flex™. I haven’t worn it in months, but I do like the thing. It’s a long, boring, irrelevant story why I’m not wearing it, so I won’t get into that. Just know that I am sincere when I say that I like my Fitbit.

I don’t think my Fitbit is telling me exactly how far I’ve walked or how many calories I’ve burned. I do think that it gives me a ballpark figure that can be used to compare one day to other days. I don’t think that it’s telling me exactly when I am sleeping, either, but the information about how restless I am some nights compared to others is interesting and even sometimes useful.

I also like that it buzzes on my wrist to wake me up in the morning.

Recording some basic information about my daily activity, giving me a reason to record what I eat, waking me up in the morning, and reminding me to get off my ass. These are not big goals and perhaps I don’t need a $100 gadget to accomplish them, but is the device bullshit?

Mother Jones sure seems to think so. Last week the site posted a piece titled “Science Says Your Fitbit is a Joke“. When I searched for more reports on the topic I found a Jezebel piece titled “Your Fitbit is Bullshit, Says Science“, and one on RYOT titled “Science Says Your Fit Bit’s Full of It“.

Since I don’t particularly trust any of these sites as a source of accurately-interpreted science news, especially those which appear to be trying a little too hard to find clever, edgy headlines, I was skeptical.

The Jezebel piece is easily dismissed as simply lazy blogging. The author links to Mother Jones, paraphrasing one of the main points of the piece (bold mine):

Mother Jones points to a new study showing that your iPhone or device of choice does just a good a job[sic], if not a better one, at doing things like tracking calories and measuring activity.

Except that’s not what the Mother Jones piece said. It reads:

But, according to a new study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the apps on your smartphone do the job just as well, or even better—at least in terms of measuring your steps and your calories.

So Jezebel incorrectly paraphrased Mother Jones. And they aren’t the only ones. RYOT wrote this:

A new study came out showing that iPhone apps and other (much cheaper) devices do a better job than the bands at tracking your activity, steps, and even calories.

Even assuming Mother Jones is correct, these paraphrases are not. Walking is, of course, an activity, but it’s only one type of activity. Mother Jones was correct in noting that smartphones can do the work of pedometers, but Jezebel and RYOT are overstepping (pun intended). Wearables such as the Fitbit Flex™ and Jawbone Up™ can track your activity while you are swimming, bowling, or doing jumping jacks. Can your smart phone do that? Well, I suppose if you’re holding it in your hand, it can, but who does that? Also, if you don’t sleep with your smart phone strapped to your body, it cannot track your activity during sleep.

But is Mother Jones right? Might smartphones do a better job? Well, let’s find out.

Although Jezebel linked to the original source, a press release by University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, it does not appear that the author read the press release, nor did the author of the RYOT piece, who linked only to the press release (failing to even give Mother Jones credit for the thoughts expressed). There is no reference to smart phones doing a better job at anything, much less a list of activities. The only study which is discussed is the one described in the Mother Jones piece, which examined the accuracy of several devices at counting steps and found all to be similar.

But let’s get to the bottom line. Is it a fair assessment that science says these devices are bullshit? A Joke? Full of it?

First, the study discussed involved counting steps. That’s it. There is absolutely no comparison of different devices in regard to tracking calories and no examination of other activity or reports such as distance walked. The study was fairly well-designed–something that does not come across in the reporting. Although there were only 14 participants, each wore every device at the same time and each walked both 500- and 1500-step trials twice.

Here are the results from the 500-step trials:

The results of the 1500-step trials are nearly identical. Now, it appears that the Fitbit One™ and the Fitbit Zip™ are spot-on, and the fact that the error bars are practically non-existent is pretty impressive. Unfortunately, the authors failed to do any sort of statistical analysis at all. Instead, they stated these results:

We found that many smartphone applications and wearable devices were accurate for tracking step counts. Data from smartphones were only slightly different than observed step counts, but could be higher or lower.Wearable devices differed more and 1 device reported step counts more than 20% lower than observed.

Given the error bars for the rest of the devices, including the Fitbit Flex™, I’d believe that most did not differ from one another significantly, with the possible exception of the Nike Fuelband™, which apparently sucks. However, there are two very clear winners, with the Digi-Walker™ close behind. A simple statistical analysis would have confirmed this.

Regardless, it is very clear that smartphones do not outperform most of the wearables. What is really in question is whether people use the devices and use them to their advantage. This may be questionable, but it has hardly been decided by science and it has certainly not been decided in favor of tossing one’s Fitbit™. The JAMA article concludes:

Increased physical activity facilitated by these devices could lead to clinical benefits not realized by low adoption of pedometers. Our findings may help reinforce individuals’ trust in using smartphone applications and wearable devices to track health behaviors, which could have important implications for strategies to improve population health.

So there’s hope that devices, whether they are wearables or just smart phones, will translate to improved health for at least some users.

To be fair to Mother Jones, their piece is much more fleshed out than the other two, covering more than this one study. In my opinion, the Jezebel and RYOT pieces simply plagiarized Mother Jones. However, I saw nothing in the rest of the piece to warrant such harsh criticism of wearables.

Now after writing most of this I came across this wonderful piece on Mashable that was posted yesterday. I could have simply linked to it, saying “read this” because it’s pretty much what I have said, right down to a comparison to the game of “telephone” that I just edited out of this post.

In the end, I have to agree with its author, Chris Taylor, who opens with:

There are poorly designed scientific studies, and then there’s poor reporting on scientific studies by journalists who should know better.

I usually cringe when I read a comment by a skeptic arguing that “correlation does not prove causation”. Of course, it’s true that correlation does not prove causation. It’s even true that correlation does not always imply causation. There are many great examples of spurious correlations which demonstrate clearly just how silly it is to extrapolate cause from correlation. And the problem is not trivial. Headlines in popular press articles alone can be very damaging as most people simply accept them as true.

BUT…

I cringe because I am afraid that this oversimplification leads people to think that correlation plays no role in causal inference (inferring that X causes Y). It does. In fact, it plays a very important role that skeptics should be just as aware of as the sound bite “correlation does not imply causation”. And that is that causation cannot be logically inferred in the absence of a correlation.

What’s more, that sound bite does nothing to educate people about how and when we should infer cause. So let’s take a look at both problems.

Causation From Correlation

A classic example used to illustrate the problem is the very real relationship between ice cream sales and violent crime. As you can see, when sales of ice cream go up, violent crime increases.

So, should we stop selling ice cream? Of course not.

There are basically two problems with drawing causal conclusions from a correlation:

1. There may very well be a causal relationship, but the causal arrow is unclear. For example, it could be that eating ice cream makes people violent (“sugar high” is a myth, but perhaps it’s milk allergies?). Or, it could be that people get hungry after they’ve just held up a liquor store.
2. There is another variable involved. Most people eventually realize that the correlation of ice cream sales and violent crime is spurious. In other words, it is the result of a common cause–temperature. People are much more likely to eat ice cream in the summer, when it’s warm outside, and they are much more likely to commit violent crimes for various reasons.

Causes

So if correlation doesn’t prove causation, what does?

Well, nothing does. We can’t “prove” and that’s not really what science tries to do. But that’s a point for a different day.

So when can we reasonably infer that X causes Y? It is difficult to reach the bar of causal inference, but the requirements for doing so are actually pretty simple.

First, let’s define “cause” and “effect”*:

Cause
“…that which makes any other thing, either simple idea, substance or mode, begin to be…”

Effect
“…that, which had its beginning from some other thing…”

Confused? Well, let’s simplify it a bit:

A cause is a condition under which an effect occurs.

An effect is the difference between what happened (or is) and what would have happened (or been) if the cause was not present.

I should note here that an “effect” is always a comparison of at least two things. Everything is relative; that’s often a difficult concept to wrap one’s brain around when we are talking about specific examples, but it’s important.

So, let me repeat: a cause is a condition under which an effect occurs.

Causal conditions can be:

• necessary
• sufficient
• necessary AND sufficient
• neither necessary nor sufficient

A condition is necessary if the effect cannot occur without the condition. For example:

To receive credit for a course, you must be enrolled in the course.

In this case, the condition is necessary, but not sufficient. You don’t get credit if you are not enrolled, but enrollment does not guarantee credit (you usually need a passing grade, too).

A condition is sufficient if the effect always occurs when the condition is met. For example:

Decapitation results in death (in humans, at least).

In this case, the condition is sufficient, but not necessary. Nobody can survive without their head, but death can occur in many ways.

For a condition to be both necessary and sufficient, the effect must always occur when the condition is met and it must never occur unless the condition is met. For example:

To win the lottery, you must present a ticket with the correct numbers to the appropriate authorities.

Or this:

To be a parent, you must have a child.

The last one is the tricky one. A cause can be neither necessary nor sufficient, but if it is neither, it must meet another requirement: it must be a non-redundant part of a sufficient condition. This would make it an:

Insufficient
Non-redundant
Unnecessary part of a
Sufficient condition

Or an INUS condition.

The truth is that most causes in the world are INUS conditions. In the social sciences, we deal mostly with INUS conditions.

The big question is how do we identify them?

Well, let’s look at the question of what might cause a forest fire. Some possible causes:

• A lit match tossed from a car
• A lightening strike
• A smoldering campfire

None of these are necessary conditions for a forest fire to start. Science assumes that all effects have causes, so we assume that something occurs to start a fire, but it does not need to be something described here. But all are INUS conditions.

Taking just one as an example, a lit match from a car is not necessary for a forest fire to start since fires can start a number of ways, nor is it sufficient. If tossing a lit match out a car window always ended with forest fires, we’d have a lot more forest fires. There are other conditions which must be met: the match must remain hot long enough to start combustion, there must be oxygen to feed it, and the weather and leaves must be dry enough to keep from smothering it. If those things are met, then the condition as a whole is sufficient. But it must also be non-redundant. If something else in the mix does the job of the match, then the match cannot be considered a cause. Well, oxygen alone cannot start a fire, nor can dry weather, therefore the lit match is a non-redundant part of a sufficient condition.

Another good example of an INUS condition is the presence of a condom to prevent pregnancy. The condom is not necessary to prevent pregnancy; there are many ways. The presence of the condom does not guarantee prevention (effectiveness is ~98% and efficacy even lower). Efficacy is lower than effectiveness, primarily due to compliance. In other words, you have to use the condom right to prevent pregnancy, and even then there are ways the condom can fail. However, when everything is perfect, it prevents pregnancy. Condoms are an unnecessary, insufficient, but non-redundant part of a sufficient condition in the prevention of pregnancy.

So how can we identify an INUS condition?

Causal Inference

In essence, to logically infer that X caused Y, we need to meet three requirements:

1. We must know that X preceded Y. It is not possible for a cause to follow or even coincide with an effect. It must come before it, even if it is fractions of a second.
2. X must covary with Y. In other words, Y must be more likely to occur when X occurs than when X does not occur.
3. The relationship between X and Y is free from confounding. What this means is that no other variable also covaries with X when #1 and #2 are met.

*Definitions adapted from Shadish, Cook, & Campbell’s book “Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference”

Let me explain each by using some examples:

EXAMPLE 1: A lit match (A) causes a forest fire (B) – YES!

1. A precedes B. – MEETS

• Lit match occurs before forest fire.

2. A covaries with B. – MEETS

• A forest fire is more likely to occur when there is a lit match than when there is no match.

3. The relationship between A and B is free from confounding.  – MEETS

• The lit match does not correlate with other factors, such as oxygen being present or leaves being dry.
• Oxygen is present whether the match is there or not.
• The leaves are dry whether the match is there or not.

Let’s look at one of the headlines I saw a few years ago on the New York Times website, claiming that good grades in high school mean better health in adulthood. Without going into detail about the study, let’s look at the criteria:

EXAMPLE 2: High grades in high school (A) cause better health in adulthood (B) – NO.

1. A precedes B. – MEETS

• High school grades occur before health in adulthood is measured.

2. A covaries with B. – MEETS

• Grades were positively correlated with adult health measures.

3. The relationship between A and B is free from confounding. – FAILS

• On average, persons with higher high school grades have more access to resources than those with lower grades.
• On average, persons with higher high school grades are more intelligent than those with lower grades.
• On average, persons with higher high school grades are more motivated than those with lower grades.

(and probably a lot more)

All of these things are more plausible explanations for the correlation than “grades are good for your health”.

But notice that correlation is a requirement to infer cause, always. What I see all too often are detailed, lengthy explanations for things that are not correlated. An excellent example is “Lunar Fever”. I’ve seen lots of explanations for why emergency rooms and police stations are busier during a full moon, from very good (e.g., the light from the moon makes it more likely that people will be out and about) to looney (the human body is full of water, which is affected the way the tides are affected). The first explanation might be the most parsimonious one, but it’s still useless because THERE IS NO CORRELATION. Studies are pretty clear that E.R.s and police stations are not busier during a full moon than other times of the month.

EXAMPLE 3: The full moon (A) causes people to act nutty (B) – NO.

1. A precedes B. – MEETS

• Behavior is measured after the full moon appears. 

2. A covaries with B. – FAILS

• There is no correlation between behavior and moon phases.

3. The relationship between A and B is free from confounding.  – PROBABLY MEETS

• There might be variables which are correlated with the full moon that have nothing to do with the moon phase, but it’s not really a relevant question if #2 isn’t met.

So how do we meet these requirements?

Ÿ#1: To establish temporal precedence, we conduct experiments.

#3: We eliminate confounding variables by isolating the hypothesized cause – the only difference between one condition and another is the causal variable. To do this we need:

• a Counterfactual (equivalent comparison/placebo)
• Random assignment (explained below)
• Controls to avoid other confounds such as expectation (blind, double-blind, randomized order)

ŸIf, after measuring the hypothesized effect, the outcome establishes covariation (#2), the only explanation for that covariation is cause.

By the way, we eliminate hypothesized causes in the same manner, by setting up conditions in which the only explanation for the outcome is that A does not cause B.

EXAMPLE 4: Test the hypothesis that acupuncture (A) reduces pain (B). 

1. We conduct an experiment comparing acupuncture to doing nothing. In doing this, we’ve established temporal precedence because the treatment precedes the measure of pain.
2. We find that when we compare the pain of controls to those who have received acupuncture, the former has more pain than the latter, establishing a correlation.
3. However, are there confounding variables? Yes, there are. The reduction in pain could be caused by anything that covaries with acupuncture, including the fear of being stuck with needles and the expectation that the treatment will work.

What we have in this case is an improper counterfactual. Participants were not blind to the treatment or its expected effects. Also, the body probably releases endorphins in response to being stuck with needles, so while they might claim that acupuncture reduces pain, the explanation isn’t where or how the needles were placed.

When we change the counterfactual by comparing acupuncture to sham acupuncture, the correlation disappears. Those who receive the sham treatment are in no more pain than those who received the “real” treatment.

When no randomly-assigned, double-blind, placebo-controlled experiments are possible…

One “control” that is absolutely necessary in any experiment to eliminate confounding variables is random assignment to treatment groups. In other words, the people who receive, say, the sham treatment in the acupuncture example are assigned to that treatment by a random process (like rolling a die). We do this because if we used any criterion other than randomness to assign, that criterion could explain any differences (or lack thereof) in outcomes. For example, if I put all of the people with headache pain in one condition and all of the people with back pain in the other, the outcome could be explained by the fact that these people have different medical conditions.

This is a problem for a lot of research, especially in education and health. For example, we cannot ethically assign people to smoke, randomly or otherwise, so how can we eliminate confounding variables? People who choose to smoke are different from people who do not in many, many ways, and any of those ways can explain higher rates of cancer. But I don’t know anyone who would deny that smoking causes cancer.

So what happens when we cannot do the kinds of “true” experiments that control for all possible confounds? Do we give up?

Of course not.

In these cases, we rely on evidence converging from different approaches to the question until the odds tell us that it is highly, highly unlikely that the correlation is spurious.

When it comes to smoking causing cancer, we first establish a correlation with temporal precedence. That’s easy. Smokers are much more likely to get cancer later in life than nonsmokers. But, since we cannot eliminate all confounding variables, we must conduct many different studies, eliminating hypothesized explanations. We know, for example, that smoking causes cancer in rats (that has its own ethical problems, but it’s been done). We can’t be sure that the effects are the same in humans, but when we reconcile that with other studies in humans that control for variables such as access to health care and amount of exercise, the probability that smoking does not cause cancer is reduced. The more studies and the more hypotheses eliminated, the more likely the remaining hypothesis (that smoking causes cancer) is the correct one.

I invite you to think about how we know that vaccines do not cause autism. While we cannot (ethically) randomly assign some kids to get vaccines while others do not, the answer becomes clear when approached from many different angles.

So I hope I haven’t tied your brain in knots with this over-simplified, yet lengthy explanation of causal inference. It’s a topic near and dear to my heart as a methodologist and one that I think skeptics should get a handle on if at all possible.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard that some of the people who stood in line for hours to be the first to get an iPhone 6 Plus pulled those phones out of their pockets a day or two later to find them bent. If you haven’t, I suggest you go to Twitter and search #bendgate. Or Google “bendghazi”.

When it became clear that this was no hoax (a video surfaced showing that the phone can indeed be bent using bare hands; you can watch it below), a Facebook friend made a joke about this not being a case of Uri Geller resuscitating his career.

Then, this morning, I found this post on a site called Telepolis, claiming an exclusive interview with Geller on the topic.

TELEPOLIS: Mr Geller, shortly after the release of the new iPhone6 you started bending them. What’s the reason?

Uri Geller: I had a secret deal with a competitor of Apple.

Which is cute, but is it satire?

TELEPOLIS: The skeptics dispute the use of your special powers. Some people managed to bend the iPhone6 by using their hands. There is a video on YouTube … There is a video on YouTube …

Uri Geller: My answer to the skeptics is this: I don’t need to use the power of my fingers to bend metal because I only use the power of my mind, and I am doing very well with that. As a matter of fact please go to my website urigeller.com and please see how I can also bend footballs! And by the way, while you are on my website, please also watch the documentary by the BBC called The Secret Life of Uri Geller there you can see how I also bent the CIA!

Oh, yes, clearly satire. And not really all that funny, although I laughed at the original joke.

But then this afternoon a friend sent me a link to a MarketWatch post claiming to have talked to Geller.

“There are two possible explanations,” Uri Geller, the psychic illusionist famous for bending spoons with his mind, told MarketWatch. “Either the phone is so seriously thin and flimsy that it is bendable with mere physical force, which I cannot believe given the extensive tests Apple would have done. Or — and this is far more plausible — somehow the energy and excitement of the 10 million people who purchased iPhones has awakened their mind powers and caused the phones to bend.”

He even urged Apple to hire him, saying that he could explain that the problem is not Apple’s fault. He also said:

I don’t own an iPhone 6 — I’m loyal to my BlackBerry BBRY, +0.10% and would never change — but if I did I have no doubt I could bend it with my mind.

Well, pardon me for being skeptical.

Oh, I’m not skeptical that he could bend it. I do think it’s a bit unreasonable to expect a phone to be both light AND indestructible, although iPhone users have become accustomed to reasonably durable devices. But with his mind? Notsomuch.

James Randi, Banacheck, and many others have done a great job of showing that bending spoons, keys, and other things can appear to be magic when it’s really nothing more than a magician’s trick. Still, I’d like to see Geller try under controlled conditions.

If you are not an educator, please help spread the word about this wonderful opportunity.

If you ARE an educator, would you like to bring more skepticism and critical thinking into your classroom? Would you like to be inspired, energized, and informed? The Amaz!ng Meeting 2014 is a great place to meet other educators, gather materials (including printed copies of the JREF’s education modules for classroom use), pick up tips, and be inspired.

The Amaz!ng Meeting is attended by people from all walks of life and all over the globe. Speakers include scientists, philosophers, journalists, educators, activists, and even entertainers. Simply put, The Amaz!ng Meeting is James Randi Educational Foundation’s yearly celebration of science, education, and critical thinking. Educators who attend TAM will be able to bring what they have learned into the classroom.

In addition to three days of superb talks and panel discussions, TAM 2014 offers a full day of workshops, including two which will focus on incorporating skeptical thinking lessons into classrooms. This year’s theme, “Skepticism and the Brain” promises to be especially valuable to educators. And the JREF would like to help you join in!

In an effort to expand our promotion of education and the development of future critical thinkers, the JREF established the TAM Teacher Scholarship Fund in 2013. As many readers know, I am an educational programs consultant for the JREF and will be responsible for this project. The fund will pay the registration fees for a limited number (to be determined by donations received by June 15, 2014) of educators to attend The Amaz!ng Meeting 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada, July 10-13.

The best news is that due to the generosity of the skeptical community, we are already on our way to awarding grants and we have a pledge from one donor, Brian Walker, to send at least TEN more teachers to TAM 2014!

Details regarding eligibility, how to apply, and what to expect can be found here.
If you would like to help send teachers to TAM 2014, you can do so here. Every little bit helps! Donations made after June 15, 2014 will be distributed to TAM 2015 grant recipients.

The following is a guest post by Wendy Hughes. Wendy is a resident of Southern California, a volunteer at CFI-LA and JREF, investigator with the Independent Investigations Group (IIG-West), and co-founder The Odds Must Be Crazy (featured on Skepicality). You can find Wendy on Twitter as @wendy91602.

For over two years I have seen my community appear to divide like an amoeba. The division is over issues that seemed at first to be misunderstandings and hyperbole. I propose that this division can be explained by theories advanced by psychologist Rudolf Dreikurs that I learned in a parenting class in the 1980s. I urge readers who are undecided about the validity of claims about this division to consider my proposal when evaluating them.

I confess to not being a blog reader. My version of activism is engaging with my grassroots skepticism group in testing claims of paranormal ability. I love the investigations. It’s a hands-on activity; I get to really do the work, not just read the accounts of others. The books, the canon, such as it is, are important. The books and magazines are how I learned that there is a name for what I like, and groups that enjoy the exercise of critical thinking; but they are substitutes for assessing paranormal claims and designing the demonstrations to test the claims.

A friend suggested that the reason why I don’t perceive any sexism among skeptics used this analogy. He thought that people who listened to Dr. Phil Plait’s DBAD (Don’t Be A Dick) speech at TAM 8 who thought of themselves as never having behaved dickishly toward believers thought the speech was inoffensive and inspirational; but those who knew that they had been rude or critical of people who accept what we call woo woo heard Dr. Plait’s speech very differently. My friend said if listeners saw themselves that way, the DBAD speech seemed like an attack or criticism, not a friendly reminder that the human brain has evolved to pay attention to the false positive – that the brain of modern humans makes this mistake because we are the descendants of those who mistook the wind in the bushes for a predator, and pattern seeking is our specialty.

I think my friend was suggesting that the reason the claims of misogyny seem exaggerated to me is because I have not had the experience of receiving hate mail or discrimination because of my gender. The reason I was minimizing the necessity for action on the part of the secularist organizations to focus on the needs of women, he thought, was because I could not relate to the experiences of others. That sounded profound, and tried to live with it for awhile – I examined my feelings and memory for an appraisal of empathy for my fellow skeptics. I asked around among my friends for their opinions, and realized there was not unanimity on this topic – especially among women. Some of the men I asked said they just kept their opinions to themselves, because it was safer that way; that for a white male, giving any kind of opinion was a sure way to attract criticism and be labeled as a misogynist or worse, and all without ever having done any harm to any woman, ever.

But my friend was wrong about a few things. First: I married for the first time at age 18; my first husband was abusive. So I lived for six years fearing for my life, the person closest to me a ticking time bomb. For over a decade after that experience, I had what was probably PTSD – one day, I heard another couple fighting in the next apartment, and the woman was calling out for my help. I froze. I could not move to help her. It was as if their argument was threatening me, even though I was safely divorced from the person who’d actually engaged in domestic violence. So – I not only sympathize with women who’ve experienced violence, I am one of them.

Second: That I can’t identify with the claims of rape. I remember being slightly coerced, but not violently raped. However, it has happened to people I know and care about.

Yet, many men charged with, and convicted for rape have been exonerated. There is no question that a woman deserves the opportunity to bring her case if she thinks she has been a victim of criminal violation; but that in no way should take away the right of the accused to a fair trial.

I have experienced sexual harassment on the job, but it was such a long time ago, and the business environment was so different in those days, it almost seemed normal. Feeling as if my job security depended on what I wore to work, hearing the supervisor advise my co-worker to wear a T-shirt because it would influence customers to spend more money at our business, all seemed like business as usual; yet today, it is a punishable offense. When so-called women’s liberation was first starting up in the 1970s, it seemed to be directed to women with careers. I was a stay-at-home mom; it didn’t seem to include me. Now I realize that I should have felt included – that women’s liberation, gender equality, applies to all women.

Furthermore, I recently learned that another woman I know well, who was brutally raped and left for dead almost forty years ago, uses the date of that experience as a password for some of her electronic media. I tried imagine how it feels to not only live with that memory for the rest of her life, but to have to key in the date on a regular basis just to access some online account. She lives a fairly normal life, has a significant other in her life, drives, shops, helps with family responsibilities, the whole catastrophe. In fact, it’s easy to forget that she is a survivor because she functions so well – as does an adult woman I know who was a victim of statutory rape when she was a teenager. I think, unfortunately, we are all victims of some kind of aggressive behavior at one time or another; but there are degrees.

My first response, though, to the claims that the secularist organizations should focus on women’s issues, was economic. The skepticism community is small. There are lots of organizations supporting women’s issues (e.g., NOW, NARAL, Planned Parenthood; local, national and international). Additionally, I began noticing much more distraction when I was associating with my friends and activities in the skepticism community. It wasn’t as much fun anymore, and the gossip and opinions were interfering with my friendships.

Later, I began to remember the lessons I learned as a parent of teenagers. A school counselor recommended that my husband and I take a parenting class. The course was designed on the theories of Rudolf Dreikurs. I wondered if the strategies learned in the parenting class could be applied to restore the sense of belonging I had found so compelling when I discovered the community of skeptics.

When my kids were teenagers, I was at my wits’ end. My children were completely out of control, and the usual methods to rein them in: taking away privileges, grounding them, yelling and threatening, were not helping. In the parenting class, we were promised that we would learn how to get them to cooperate. People have a strong need to “belong,” to be a part of a group or community. This built-in drive can be leveraged for good or evil. Seen in this way, it’s understandable why young people are attracted to gangs or Greek letter clubs, gravitate toward organized sports, try to find others with common interests. What I learned in that parenting class helped me a lot at the time; I think it helped my children, too. Although I don’t use the skills consciously every day, I learned how to identify what emotion is being expressed and the best way to respond to that signal.

One early example was seeing my stepson sitting on the couch with a sorrowful expression on his face. Practicing, I said, “You look sad.” He relaxed visibly. Most of the time, when there is disharmony, people just need to be heard. Agreement is not always necessary; being heard is usually enough. Paraphrasing the claims of a colleague, a claimant for a paranormal challenge, or an adversary in a debate are examples of this strategy.

Some of the emotions that we learned to identify and deal with were identified by mistaken goals: attention, power, revenge, and displays of inadequacy.

Although the parenting class directed the participants to observe their children’s misbehavior, the strategy has as much to do with one’s own reactions. The advice was to observe my own feelings and sensations, think about what I usually did about them, and observe how my children responded in order to figure out what the goal of their misbehavior was. In other words, my own response was a clue to my child’s goal; it works pretty well with adults, too.

Annoyance/Attention:
For example, if I was feeling annoyed, my usual response was to scold or nag. The child’s usual response was to stop annoying, but only briefly. The child’s goal was attention.There are other explanations that may fit just as well; the parenting class was employing a particular discipline. At the time, when I tried to think of annoyance as the child tapping me on the shoulder, instead of defiant misbehavior, it was useful to keep in the back of my mind that by doing a chore, this child would feel like a contributing part of a family.

It bothers me that there is distraction from the work of skepticism. I want to do the investigations, commune with my friends and colleagues, work for consumer protection, testing of claims of the paranormal. Would it be better for the skepticism community to just let the claims and counterclaims play out in the criminal justice system? Do we really have to take sides when we don’t know the details that constitute evidence and the law that that has to be applied? By letting it bother me, distract me from my projects, I’m giving it attention that won’t help me or the community, let alone the claimants. That doesn’t mean I don’t care, but will my attention will really help solve their problem?

Anger/Power:
In parenting, sometimes anger is the key to the transaction. If I felt angry or threatened, my responses could be to punish, fight back or, possibly, just give in. The responses could include continued misbehavior, defiance, or slow and sloppy semi-obedience. What I had been engaging in with my teenagers was a power struggle. How many times has your response with a parent, employer, camp counselor or law enforcement officer been seeing-red anger? How many times has someone close to you responded to some action you’ve taken with anger that surprised you? If you have no recourse, no dialog, no opportunity to negotiate, identifying a power struggle is a step toward remedying the situation.

I don’t perceive a power struggle between me and my friends and colleagues. There are differences of opinion, but we’ll see eventually how things work out when more information is available. If I worry about it too much, finding it difficult to decide what to think, it’s because there is not enough information. As soon as there is enough information, the right decision will seem obvious.

Hurt/Revenge:
When someone is close to you, they learn your “buttons” to push, the issues that you hold dear. For some of us, these include aspects of the broader society: politics, women’s issues, race relations. I’ve seen holiday dinners with family turn into shouting matches when one relative needles another about a known special concern. The response was a ping-pong game of trying to get even. After the parenting classes, when I thought about those holidays, it seemed as if the adults in my family had been playing out a pattern of revenge for past conflicts.

If I as a skeptic am hurt, it’s because I think that others are refusing to cooperate. It bothers me to realize that some of my closest colleagues are ready to give up on the skepticism organizations and groups, and that I will be lonely without them. It’s a threat to my sense of belonging. We all come from different backgrounds, we have had different experiences; it would be strange if we all had the exact same values. I don’t really think the failure to cooperate is aimed at me. Someone, somewhere, has had a bad experience, and the reverberations are being felt by all of us. We all respond in a way that is appropriate for us personally. In this way, I understand that this conflict between skeptics is not the first of its kind, that it has a beginning and an end, and will not be the last. It will not destroy skepticism. We may not recognize it a year from now; but critical thinking will not go away because of it.

Hopelessness/Inadequacy:
Finally, when I felt like giving up, hopeless to ever solve a problem, the hopelessness is a clue to the child’s feelings of inadequacy. The family suffering with a child’s drug abuse or other troubling chronic behavior is familiar with the lack of response – the seeming inability to change.

If I feel hopeless, who is demonstrating inadequacy? Maybe it’s the whole community. People I counted on to be able to come up with rational responses in stressful situations are instead finger pointing, making up apps to block one another, and therefore refuse to communicate. They are yelling past one another, and trying to communicate huge important ideas in 140 characters or less.

Can this be helpful in the Skepticism community?
It wasn’t as if my family suddenly turned into a TV fantasy of civil behavior and polite discourse. It did, however, seem to help us. It occurred to me recently that if we tried to apply the lessons from that parenting class to the recent conflicts in the skepticism community, it may alleviate some of the stress.

We evolved to use more than just spoken language. We use and respond to nonverbal cues – see the expressions on one another’s faces, notice changes in posture, and hear the emphasis placed on words and phrases. We tend to seek patterns and see bifurcated monolithic sides to an argument instead of the unique and distinct thought processes individuals can share in a conversation. We can focus on our strengths and talents. Notice when someone, anyone, makes a wise choice. We must pay attention for the moments when any of us thinks a kind thought for someone else. And finally, encouragement is needed to work together toward our common goals of science and critical thinking and against our common opponents of superstition and pseudoscience.