The Skeptics Society & Skeptic magazine

Functional Medicine:
Pseudoscientific Silliness

by Harriet Hall, M.D.

Language keeps changing. We used to call questionable remedies “folk medicine,” “fringe medicine,” or “quackery.” In the 1970s, the term “alternative medicine” was coined, an umbrella term for all treatments that were not supported by good enough evidence to have earned them a place in mainstream medicine. Then came “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), and later, “integrative medicine.” Now there’s a new kid on the block, “functional medicine” (FM) which is really just the latest flavor of integrative medicine. These are all marketing terms, Trojan horses designed to sneak non-science-based medicine into conventional medical practice. The oft-quoted quip is appropriate here: Do you know what you call alternative medicine with evidence? Medicine.

How is Functional Medicine Different from Conventional Medicine?

Functional medicine was invented by a single individual: Jeffrey Bland. He’s not a medical doctor. He’s a Ph.D. who sells dietary supplements. His supplement companies have been fined repeatedly by the FTC and FDA and have been ordered to stop making medical claims for their products. A number of health care providers have “jumped on the Bland wagon” and claim to be practicing functional medicine.

“Condimentary Medicine,” a term coined by Dr. Richard Rawlins, describes treatments that add spice and flavor but that have no actual effect on the outcome of the treatment. That applies in spades to Functional Medicine (FM).
—Real Secrets of Alternative Medicine

It’s hard to pin down a definition of FM; each FM provider describes it differently. Dr. Mark Hyman says conventional medicine is dysfunctional, and FM is the opposite. He thinks conventional medicine is as obsolete as phrenology and bloodletting; he also rejects the germ theory of disease. He says diseases don’t exist; they are merely “the downstream symptoms of a mechanism.” The official organization, the Institute for Functional Medicine, says this:

Functional Medicine addresses the underlying causes of disease, using a systems-oriented approach and engaging both patient and practitioner in a therapeutic partnership. It is an evolution in the practice of medicine that better addresses the healthcare needs of the 21st century. By shifting the traditional disease-centered focus of medical practice to a more patient-centered approach, Functional Medicine addresses the whole person, not just an isolated set of symptoms. Functional Medicine practitioners spend time with their patients, listening to their histories and looking at the interactions among genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors that can influence long-term health and complex, chronic disease. In this way, Functional Medicine supports the unique expression of health and vitality for each individual. […]

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Life’s Score

by Michael Shermer

Among cycling aficionados of my generation, Peter Yates’ and Steve Tesich’s 1979 film Breaking Away was a welcome vehicle to convey the elegance and complex strategy of our sport to an American audience largely oblivious to its beauty and nuances. Of course, like most sports films, it was a metaphor for something deeper, in this case a coming of age story of a young man struggling to break away from the provincialism of family and friends, along with a morality tale about how everyone lies a little and some people cheat a lot.

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In Knowing the Score, King’s College philosopher David Papineau uses specific sports as metaphors for and lessons about many of the most important and contentious issues in philosophy and life. In his chapters on cycling, for example, he confesses his ignorance while watching the 2012 Olympic road race as to why four women cyclists from different countries would work together after their break away from the peloton. Papineau finds an answer in game theory, the analysis of competition and cooperation between rational actors in a conflict situation. The prisoner’s dilemma model is the most famous example: you and another prisoner are arrested for a crime with the following options: (1) If both of you remain silent then you each receive one year in jail; (2) If you confess but the other person does not, then you go free and he gets three years; (3) If the other prisoner confesses and you don’t, then you receive the three-year penalty while he goes free; (4) If you both confess then you each get two years. What should you do? Research shows that when the game is played just once, or over a fixed number of rounds without the players being allowed to communicate, defection (confessing) is the common strategy. But when the game is played over an unknown number of rounds the most common strategy is “tit-for-tat,” where you begin by cooperating and then do whatever the other player does. Even more cooperation can be induced in a “Many Person Dilemma” in which one player interacts with several other players, and in which players are allowed to accumulate experience with the other players in order to establish trust. Here cooperation trumps competition, selflessness overcomes selfishness. […]

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ET v. Earth Pathogens:
The Andromeda Strain or War of the Worlds—Will ETs Kill Us or Vice Versa?

by Tim Callahan

In H. G. Wells’ 1898 novel The War of the Worlds the seemingly invincible invading Martians are wiped out by Earth’s microbes, against which they have no immunity. In Michael Crichton’s 1969 novel The Andromeda Strain the opposite happens: the people of a small town in Arizona are annihilated by a microorganism accidentally brought to Earth in a crashed satellite. Both novels share the thesis in common that microbes from any given planet will be brutally inimical to the denizens of another planet, who have no immunity to these alien pathogens. In Gordon R. Dickson’s 1987 novel Way of the Pilgrim, the Aalaag alien conquerors of our planet are immune to Earth’s microbes because their biochemistry is so different from that of the native pathogens. Who is right, H. G. Wells, Michael Crichton, or Gordon R. Dickson?

To some degree, each of these authors probably had a piece of the truth in their fictional works. Assuming ETs coming to Earth are carbon-based life forms that evolved in a watery medium, it seems likely that natural prebiotic chemical reactions would produce the same basic biochemical building blocks on their home planet that gave rise to life here on Earth. This assumption is based on well known research such as the 1952 Stanley Miller and Harold Urey experiment, which produced as many as 20 different amino acids from electrical discharges into a reducing atmosphere of methane, ammonia and water vapor; the 1961 experiment by Joan Oro, which produced adenine, among other compounds, from hydrogen cyanide, and amino acids from hydrogen cyanide and ammonia;¹ and the 2008 volcanic discharge experiment.² Beginning with the same building blocks, such as amino acids and cyclic compounds such as adenine, carbon-based life developing in water on other planets, would, given the natural chemical processes observed in these experiments, likely have generated a basic biochemistry similar to ours. That is, bodies made up of, among other things, proteins and nucleic acids. Hence, they would likely be potential food sources for Earth’s microbial pathogens.

However, there are certain factors we need to consider before making the sweeping generalization that either visiting or invading extraterrestrials would be sitting duck hosts for our microbes. Three of these are: possible differences in biochemistry between terrestrial and extraterrestrial life forms with respect to the “handedness” of their molecules, the possibly arbitrary nature of our genetic code, and the transmission of certain diseases by insect and arachnid vectors. […]

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Provocateur

by George Michael

In February of 2017 many people had written Milo Yiannopoulos off after it transpired that he had given an interview on a 2015 Joe Rogan podcast, which was construed by some listeners as a defense of pederasty. On the show, he seemingly spoke fondly of his experience as 13-year old minor when he had had sex with a priest. Once the interview gained notoriety, CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) quickly rescinded its invitation to Yiannopoulos to serve as the organization’s keynote speaker at its 2017 annual convention. To make matters worse, soon thereafter, Simon & Shuster cancelled the publication of his book for which it had given a $250,000 advance just a month before. And what seemed to have been a maneuver to spare a revolt at Breitbart News, Milo gracefully resigned from his position as tech editor with his employer. In his own words, Milo almost gave up on his mission, but decided not to back down after the support he received from his many fans. Instead, all his critics managed to accomplish was to “piss me off.” Marshaling together a number of investors, he managed to self-publish his book—Dangerous—which rocketed to number one on Amazon’s bestsellers list even before its release, and at the time of this writing it is near the top of both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal bestseller lists.

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Inasmuch as Milo Yiannopoulos is a genuine gay celebrity, his memoir has been highly anticipated. To be sure, a number of celebrities who just happened to be gay preceded him. For example, in 1976, Elton John divulged in an interview that he was bi-sexual and his career suffered for a while as a consequence. In 1981, Billie Jean King became the first major female athlete to come out of the closet. Perhaps more than any other figure, Ellen DeGeneres has normalized gays in America. With a wholesome demeanor, she came off as the girl next door despite being a lesbian, and even received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2016. But for her and other public figures, their gayness was incidental to their celebrity. By contrast, Milo’s celebrity homosexuality is an integral part of his shtick. For example, he regales college audiences with his aspirations to one day be surrounded “by Nigerian bodyguards” and he recounts how he spent time during his youth in London losing his virginity in interracial five-somes with drag queens. Ironically, his main constituency—college-aged, straight white men—find these disclosures hilarious and entertaining.

As a First Amendment fundamentalist, Milo sees as his mission to push the boundaries of acceptable discourse.

As a First Amendment fundamentalist, Milo sees as his mission to push the boundaries of acceptable discourse. His outrageousness notwithstanding, Milo advances a compelling critique of the progressive movement, which has become dangerously ossified over the past few decades, losing sight of its commitment to economic security to a preoccupation with extremely divisive identity politics. As such, Milo deserves a fair hearing for no other reason that his growing popularity is indicative of a rising tide of populism that in large measure propelled Donald J. Trump into the White House. […]

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Scientific Naturalism
A Manifesto for Enlightenment Humanism

by Michael Shermer

In June of 1510, 64 women and men were burned at the stake in Val Camonica, Italy, for causing drought and fires and for harming people, animals, and land.

In July of 1518, 60 women and men were burned at the stake in Breto, Italy, for triggering thunder and lightning and for causing sickness and death of nearly 200 people.

In June of 1582, the wife of an English sawyer named Alice Glosscock from the town of Chelmsford was stripped naked and her body searched for “the marks of a witch,” which were found, leading to her conviction and execution.

In May of 1653, a Connecticut colonialist named Elizabeth Godman asked her neighbor Goodwife Thorp if she had any chickens to sell, but none were available. The next day Thorp’s chickens dropped dead, leading to Godman’s arrest and trial.

In May of 1692, seven teenage girls writhed on the floor of a Salem, Massachusetts courtroom during the trial of a suspected witch named Martha Carrier, crying out “There is a black man whispering in her ear!” Carrier was one of 20 people executed in what became the most famous witch trial in history.

What were these people thinking?

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Dr. Michael Shermer is the Publisher of Skeptic magazine, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University. He is the author of The Moral Arc, The Believing Brain, Why People Believe Weird Things, Why Darwin Matters, and The Science of Good and Evil. His next book is Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia. His two TED talks, viewed nearly 8 million times, were voted in the top 100 of the more than 2000 TED talks.

I am Not Living in a Computer Simulation, and Neither Are You

by Peter Kassan

The notion that we’re all just computer simulations living in a simulated universe—once the stuff of late-night college dormitory bull sessions—has now resurfaced, having been espoused by (among other eminences) a world-famous astrophysicist and an Internet entrepreneur billionaire.

This article appeared in Skeptic magazine 21.4 (2016).
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The notion is the latest manifestation of what was perhaps first contemplated (and then, at least to his own satisfaction, disproved) by Descartes, whose cogito, ergo sum—I think, therefore I am—was the first step in an attempt to figure out what can be reliably known, although he considered not a computer program creating the illusion of his body and his world, but an evil demon. The idea is a close cousin of the philosophers’ thought experiment (or parlor trick) known as “brain-in-a-vat,” which is said to have inspired the Matrix movies. Notice, though, that brain-in-a-vat requires a real brain in a real vat and the Matrix movies had real brains in real people plugged into their simulated world. The proposition that we’re all just computer simulations in a simulated universe eliminates the vat, the brain, the people, and the world. It can also be seen as the nerd’s version of the notion that we’re all simply dreams in the mind of God—perhaps the central creed of a Church of Computer Science.

The computer simulation argument proceeds along these lines:

• The universe contains a vast number of stars.
• Some of these stars have planets.
• Some of these planets must be like Earth.
• Since intelligent life arose and eventually invented computers on Earth, intelligent life must have arisen and invented computers on some of these planets.
• It is (or inevitably will be) possible to simulate intelligent life inhabiting a simulated reality on a computer.
• Since it’s possible, it must have been done.
• There must be a vast number of such simulations on a vast number of computers on a vast number of planets.
• Since there’s only one real universe but there’s a vast number of simulations, the probability that you’re living in a simulation approaches one, while the probability that you’re living in the real universe approaches zero.

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An Outbreak of Mass Hallucinations and Shoddy Journalism: Why We Need Skepticism More Than Ever

by Robert E. Bartholomew

When a mysterious epidemic of hallucinations was reported to have broken out in Oregon in October of 2016, media outlets around the world portrayed the story as a baffling medical mystery. There’s only one problem: it never happened. The case of the hallucinating Oregonians serves as a stark reminder of the threat posed by an uncritical media, and the need for skepticism and critical thinking.

“Things are seldom what they seem, skim milk masquerades as cream.” —W. S. Gilbert

This article appeared in Skeptic magazine 22.1 (2017)
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During the early morning hours of Wednesday October 12th, 2016, an extraordinary story began unfolding in the community of North Bend, a small picturesque suburb of Coos Bay nestled along the Pacific Ocean in southwest Oregon. At about 3 am, police responded to a 9-1-1 call of vandalism. The complainant was a 57-year-old woman who was a live-in caregiver for an elderly resident. The caller claimed that several people were trying to remove the roof of her car. When police arrived, they could find no evidence of any crime and soon left. Two and a half hours later, the same woman again called to report that the vandals were back and trying to remove her car roof. Once again police rushed to the scene but could find nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, the responding deputies, Doug Miller and David Blalack, could find no evidence that any crime had been committed. Given the unusual nature of her claims, police grew suspicious that the woman may have hallucinated the episodes. She was taken to the nearby Coos Bay Area Hospital where she was examined by medical personnel, “appeared fine, and returned home.”¹ […]

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The Three Shades of Atheism
How Atheists Differ in Their Views on God

by Brittany Page & Douglas J. Navarick

When we think of prominent atheists, we may conjure up an image of one of the “Four Horsemen” of the New Atheism—Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett—authors famous for their steadfast rejection of any form of deity and their willingness to confront the world’s religions. Ironically, however, when we see them in debates and interviews, the confidence with which they make their case and discount the opposition may at times seem indistinguishable from the offputting dogmatism of the hyper-religious. How typical of atheists are the Four Horsemen?

This article appeared in Skeptic magazine 22.2 (2017)
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Our research, based on a sample of hundreds of respondents to a survey distributed through social media, indicates that they probably represent a common form of atheism but not the majority view. Most atheists express some degree of tentativeness in their beliefs and would be prepared to consider contrary evidence and arguments. In other words, they are skeptical in their orientation rather than dogmatic. However, the prevalence of dogmatic atheism may come as a surprise to some observers, including Richard Dawkins,¹ who stated that he “would be surprised to meet many people” who would say “I know there is no God.” Many respondents in our survey said this.

Distinguishing Between Categories of Atheistic Belief

To categorize the various forms of atheism, it is necessary to distinguish among several closely related concepts.

Formal v. informal meanings of atheism. The term atheism literally means an absence of belief in a deity, as in a theism—without theism. This formal usage broadly encompasses both nonbelief and the explicit rejection of a deity. Nonbelief without any inclination to reject a deity is similar to, but distinguishable from, agnosticism, a term introduced by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1876 at a meeting of Britain’s Metaphysical Society, many of whose members were clergymen, and elaborated upon at a symposium published in 1884 by The Agnostic Annual. Huxley defined agnosticism as the absence of belief one way or the other and the absence of a claim to having any scientific knowledge on the issue:

Agnosticism is of the essence of science, whether ancient or modern. It simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no scientific grounds for professing to know or believe. […]

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Cogent Criticisms
A Point-by-Point Reply to Criticisms of the “Conceptual Penis” Hoax

by James Lindsay & Peter Boghossian

On May 19, 2017, we published a parody-style hoax paper titled “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct” in an academic journal called Cogent Social Sciences. Immediately upon publication we revealed the hoax on skeptic.com. A great deal of congratulation and criticism followed, with accompanying demands that we address our critics. What follows is a point-by-point reply to 10 popular criticisms.

1. Criticism: The journal is a vanity journal that publishes anything.

Whatever the journal’s problems, this is completely false, unless the journal is lying about its rejection rate. On its landing page, Cogent Social Sciences openly advertises a 61% rejection rate of papers submitted in 2016.

2. Criticism: The journal is otherwise of such low quality that nothing can be determined about gender studies.

In our write-up for eSkeptic, we dedicated significant space to impugning the journal for publishing our paper and did so before moving on to discuss problems that, in our perception, abide within gender studies. As we duly noted, we have every reason to suspect that Cogent Social Sciences harbors deep problems with its editorial and peer-review processes. Our critics’ ability to engage in a selective reading of our write-up surprised us, however, and it caused us to reflect on how to be more cautious with our explanations in future. (Nota bene: we will return to this point further down.) […]

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Some Thoughts on “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct” Hoax

by Alan Sokal

Academic hoaxes are nothing new. In 1768, the Baron d’Holbach published the Portable Theology, or Brief Dictionary of the Christian Religion—slyly attributing authorship to the Abbé Bernier—in which he stoutly defended the prevailing Christian dogmas with entries like

Doctrine: What every good Christian must believe or else be burned, be it in this world or the next. The dogmas of the Christian religion are immutable decrees of God, who cannot change His mind except when the Church does.¹

Probably not very many people were taken in by the hoax. But d’Holbach’s mordant satire was brilliant nonetheless, and it circulated clandestinely for decades.

In 1931, the physicist Hans Bethe and two colleagues published—while they were still postdoctoral fellows—a short article entitled “On the quantum theory of the temperature of absolute zero,” parodying speculative attempts to determine the fundamental constants of nature by numerology, in the journal Die Naturwissenschaften.² Senior physicists were not amused, and the authors were forced to apologize.³

In 1943, the young Australian writers James McAuley and Harold Stewart hoaxed the modernist literary journal Angry Penguins into publishing 16 poems allegedly found among the papers of a recently deceased—but, alas, fictitious—poet, Ern Malley:

We opened books at random, choosing a word or phrase haphazardly. We made lists of these and wove them into nonsensical sentences. We misquoted and made false allusions. We deliberately perpetrated bad verse, and selected awkward rhymes from a Ripman’s Rhyming Dictionary.⁴

The hoax was quickly outed in the Australian press, and the editor of Angry Penguins held up to ridicule. But some critics nowadays claim that “Crazy as it seems, the Malley poems do have merit.”⁵

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