by Michael Shermer
The environmental disaster film "The Day After Tomorrow" opens this Friday. I have not seen it, but my friend Keay Davidson, the science writer and journalist, asked me:
Are filmmakers in general justified in manipulating the laws of science any way they like for purposes of entertainment, even if the film is related to a topic of urgent public and political concern?
Here is my answer:
We live in the age of science, and the age of mass communication. Wed these two and you've got a deadly cocktail when the latter distorts the former, which happens all too frequently. Television producers and film makers especially have an obligation to try to get the science right. We cannot expect them to be perfect. Gene Roddenberry, for example, hired scientists to consult his Star Trek scripts; nevertheless, so many errors crept in that there is now a minor literary genre of “Star Trek Science Bloopers.” But at least Gene tried. Most producers don't even bother trying, and here is where mass media has contributed to the deadly cocktail of distorting one of the most powerful institutes we have—science. To expect people in a free society and liberal democracy to make rational decisions about science and technology issues that could change their lives, not to mention the course of history, and simultaneously feed them distorted views of what science is, how it operates, and especially its conclusions, is a recipe for disaster. Film makers and television producers have a moral obligation to at least try to get the science right. —Michael Shermer
In last week’s eSkeptic (May 18th, 2004), we reprinted an article from the (London) Sunday Times on British Royal Astronomical Society astronomer Dr. Percy Seymour, about his book presenting a new theory to explain astrology. Richard Dawkins was referenced as if he endorsed the claims of Seymour:
Richard Dawkins, professor for the public understanding of science at Oxford University, who once suggested that astrologers be prosecuted under the trades descriptions act, said that although he had not read the book Seymour’s ideas sounded interesting.
It will not surprise skeptics that the truth is something different. Here is Dawkins’ response to the Sunday Times piece:
What I actually said on the telephone was something like this: ‘Well, that’s all very interesting, no doubt, but what the hell does it have to do with astrology’ This was reported as support from an unexpected quarter: I was said to find it “interesting”! I am furious. Please publicize the truth of what happened.
Astrology expert and long-time Skeptic and eSkeptic reader Ivan W. Kelly (University of Saskatchewan, CANADA, kelly52@shaw.ca) in response to Percy Seymour’s new theory of astrology, sent us the following analysis.
by Ivan W. Kelly
I read the article by Ian Sample ‘Written in the Stars’ (The Guardian, UK) and there are several points to be made.
from eSkeptic reader Dick Jackson
This year’s Sunday Times Rich List included an analysis of the star signs of Britain’s 1,000 richest people—finding significant differences with 110 born under Gemini but only 73 under Pisces.
(Source: The Sunday Times Rich List 2004)
This strikes me as a standard ‘numeracy’ issue. Someone may say that their analysis finds “significant differences” since there is a range of 73 to 110 in the star sign totals, but is there anything out of the ordinary here? First, let‚s note that the numbers add up to 1,067, being “Star signs of Britain‚s richest 1,000 (where known)” (from original source at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2108-1067034,00.html, and note that there are actually 1,100 people on the list in total)
If the birthdays of rich people were in fact spread across the calendar completely at random, what range of star signs would we see? This kind of simulation is easily done in any programming language, but here are the minimum and maximum star sign totals for a typical set of ten experiments:
Clearly, the range 73 to 110 as seen in the Rich List is in no way remarkable, being typical of the distributions seen when birthdays are picked entirely at random. These were found by a one-line program in the IDL language (see http://www.rsinc.com/idl) as follows:
IDL> for i=1,10 do print, min(histogram(randomu(seed,1067)*12),max=max), max
Dick Jackson
dick@d-jackson.com
D-Jackson Software Consulting
http://www.d-jackson.com
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
by Michael Shermer
Here’s an interesting thread sent to me by a reader, regarding the “mysterious” murders of microbiologists. Of course, we’re not given any baseline data on how many physicists died in the same time frame, or how many accountants, or any other small cohort, so this is rather meaningless, but interesting nonetheless, as an exercise in pattern-seeking. Of course, I could be wrong…
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