Today, I went with Steve Thoms and Scott Gavura of Skeptic North to the 2009 Whole Life Expo at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Aside from the rare booth featuring delicious aged Miso or fresh Canadian cheeses, the place was packed wall-to-wall with every type of woo imaginable. You could get a chiropractic reading, a photograph of your aura, ear candling and a Reiki massage all within a few meters of each other. I took some photographs to document the event:
Entries Tagged as 'Critical Thinking'
Whole Life Expo 2009
November 30th, 2009 by Mitchell Gerskup · No Comments · Critical Thinking, Photos
On WiFi, Journalism and PR
July 29th, 2009 by Mitchell Gerskup · No Comments · Critical Thinking, Thoughts
Continuing with my tradition of being impressed with the quality of journalism at Ars Technica, this article takes a skeptical look at WiFi allergies (or electrosensitivity) in light of a recent spate of reports on the subject.
However; perhaps a bit more interesting than a run-of-the-mill psychosomatic disorder, is the origin of the sudden interest in the topic. This sentence, found at the bottom of The Sun’s article*, might explain why:
Steve’s new Afterlife album, Electrosensitive, is out now on Defected Records.
*This is one of the articles quoted in the Ars article.
Hope for Journalism?
July 16th, 2009 by Mitchell Gerskup · No Comments · Critical Thinking, Thoughts
It seems like every day, we come across articles announcing a new technology or method that will revolutionize the way things work. The claims are bold (and usually vague), make a small splash in the headlines, and are never heard from again. Very rarely is there ever any critical thought or in-depth analysis into whether or not the technology/method does what it claims to do (or whether the supposed claims match the actual claims, for that matter). That’s why this article from ars technica is so fascinating. The first two paragraphs read like any other article of the aforementioned type:
In a recent article for the IEEE’s Spectrum magazine, Dr. Lawrence Roberts explains how the large routers that power the core of today’s Internet are doing it all wrong. They spend too much time processing each packet individually, then storing packets in a queue for during peak loads. This buffering makes VoIP calls and video streams stutter, and these routers use lots of hot-running and expensive memory, and they’re stuffed with specially-created chips.
Roberts’ company Anagran has a different approach: only do the expensive work for the first packet in a flow, then treat subsequent packets in the same flow just like that first packet, doing away with queues and specially-designed chips in lieu of simple processors and cheap DRAM. (In the late 1960s, Roberts led the team that created the ARPANET, which would morph into the Internet that we know today in the following two decades.) As an added benefit, slowing down flows that go too fast can now be done with precision, rather than bluntly as in today’s routers.
But the article doesn’t stop there.
Upon reading Roberts’ article, the claims look rather extraordinary. Could it be that Cisco, Juniper and the other router vendors have been barking up the wrong tree for decades? In a word, no.
Unlike most popular news nowadays, a bulk of the ars article focuses on the actual body of Roberts’ article and the claims made therein; not just the abstract. Granted, they are a tech blog, and a certain level of elevated understanding is expected in their articles. If anything, this only goes to show what’s missing from modern journalism, and how much conventional news sources would benefit from better science and technology journalism.
Conventional journalism might be on its way out, but there’s still hope.
Tags:journalism·science·technology
More Chemtrails?
June 22nd, 2009 by Mitchell Gerskup · No Comments · Critical Thinking, Photos
Remember chemtrails? Well, look at what I recently spotted coming out of the CN Tower:
This is clearly a government conspiracy to take over our minds. We’re doomed!
Tags:chemtrails·CN Tower·Toronto
Chiropractic: It’s Kind of Like Medicine… Right?
June 18th, 2009 by Mitchell Gerskup · No Comments · Critical Thinking, Thoughts
I was asked to write a post about Chiropractic. I am (obviously) not a medical professional, and so I won’t deconstruct any of the studies pointing to specific things that chiropractic can and cannot do. Instead, I’ll attempt to look at broader trends within chiropractic. Wikipedia has been used (and linked to), but for definitional purposes only.
Chiropractic is a minefield for any skeptically-minded person. On the one hand, the entire institution was founded on theories of health and disease which have been thoroughly discredited, and are obviously wrong. On the other hand, unlike faith healing or homeopathy, chiropractic involves an actual physical mechanism, which can plausibly affect the body. Regardless, the people who continue to practice chiropractic based on false beliefs and discredited theories of sickness and disease (i.e. “straights“) are dangerous, due to their lack of understanding of what they’re doing, and the inherently dangerous nature of manipulating peoples’ spinal cords.
Fortunately, amongst chiropractors, this group is slowly shrinking. The growing trend in the field of chiropractic seems to be one where genuine medical diagnoses are mixed in with vestiges of the old vitalistic belief system. These “mixers“, though not as dangerous as their “straight” counterparts, are still a few subluxations short of being medical professionals.
As with anything that can affect/be done to/be inserted into the human body, if you look hard enough, you will find claims that chiropractic can cure any disease — from headaches to cancer. However, this would be disingenuous to chiropractors, as the ones making these claims are part of a small (radical) fringe group. At the other end of the spectrum, there’s very little controversy over the studies and claims that show that chiropractic manipulation can ease lower back pain, or help treat other chronic pain-related conditions. In this way, chiropractic is somewhere between physical therapy and massage therapy in its efficacy.
So where does that leave us with chiropractic? Realistically, it’s disingenuous to talk about chiropractic as a unified organization (or profession) in the same way we might talk about neurosurgeons. There’s no unifying philosophy, standards of practice, or professional ethics that are upheld by all chiropractors.
Some who argue in defense of chiropractic might point to the developmental history of the medical profession. Medicine as it was practiced a century ago doesn’t resemble modern medicine at all. If medicine had not been given the benefit of the doubt, it never would have reached its present state, so shouldn’t we extend that benefit to chiropractic as well?
The medical sciences took thousands of years of trial and error and development to reach their present state. There was a time when the practice of medicine was based on flawed knowledge and, as a result, caused more harm than good. That being said, medicine has already evolved past this point. Thanks to things like the germ theory of disease, medicine is no longer a guessing game. That being the case, it’s hard for me to see why anybody would think it appealing to ignore this progress and practice medicine based on outmoded and flawed ways of thinking. We already have a system that works; so I don’t see the need to go back and re-iterate past mistakes.
I also think that it’s incredibly telling that the more chiropractic progresses and enters the mainstream, the more it begins to resemble modern physical therapy techniques. The fact that chiropractic seems to be honing in on real medicine as it matures seems to indicate not that it is a new way of treating disease; but merely that it is slowly converging on what medical science already knows.
Tags:chripractic·medicine
Pringles: A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Wrapped in a Cardboard Tube
June 17th, 2009 by Mitchell Gerskup · 2 Comments · Critical Thinking, News
I had always heard, and thus assumed, that Pringles were not classified as potato chips because they were prohibited from doing so due to their mostly non-potato make-up. It’s well known that Pringles are not manufactured like ordinary chips. As opposed to being made from whole potatoes, they are formed from a type of potato dough containing less than 50% potato content and then baked.
However, it turns out that the truth is somewhat different from popular belief (imagine that!). According to this article by the BBC, the fight to have Pringles classified as a “cake or biscuit” was led by Procter & Gamble (the parent company of Pringles). The reason? Potato crisps (chips) are subject to a 17.5% value added tax (VAT) in the UK, whereas cakes and biscuits are not. By having the snack food de-classified as a crisp/chip, they were exempt from paying the tax. This just goes to show that often times the truth is much more straightforward than people make it out to be and reinforces the notion that if you want to find the underlying cause of an issue, you should “follow the money”.
Also of interest, according to a more recent article, the decision has been reversed on the grounds that the 42% of Pringles batter made from potatoes “is more than enough potato content for it to be a reasonable view that [Pringles are] made from potato”.
So what should we conclude from all this? No matter what you thought you knew about Pringles, you were probably wrong.
Starring: Sheer Stupidity
March 22nd, 2009 by Mitchell Gerskup · No Comments · Critical Thinking
Crosspost from Lintbox.com
Still need proof that The Star wouldn’t know decent journalism if confronted by it at an intervention? For an article about the vernal equinox, Star reporter Nick Aveling decided to ask to professionals to explain the vernal equinox. The problem? One of the two ‘professional opinions’ was that of Michael Barwick, an astrologer who is a member of such prestigious organizations as ‘Astrology Toronto’, the ‘Canadian Association for Astrological Educators’, and the ‘National Council for Geocosmic Research’. The idea that an astrologer could lend any type of useful professional opinion to a discussion of astronomy is laughable at best.
Whereas Astronomer Randy Attwood served the article well, answering the questions which the article set out to have answered, Mr. Barwick managed to make a surprisingly large ass out of himself for what is (all things considered) a relatively short interview. However, don’t take my word for it, look at the two answers to the relatively simple question: Does the fact that the equinox occurred at 7:44 a.m. have any significance?
Attwood: It’s the exact time when the sun is directly over the equator, but it’s not like you can go outside at that time and notice anything. It’s like one of those really useless sports statistics, like the number of goalies who have red hair.
A simple answer that directly answers the question in a way that even most of The Star’s readers would be able to understand.
Barwick: For sure. People could do an ingress chart, which is basically a horoscope set up for 0 degree Aries. From the basis of that, you can use it to make predictions on a variety of things including elections. But that’s not the kind of work I do.
Ignoring the fact that this answer seems to require in-depth knowledge of astrology to begin to understand (ingress charts? 0 degree Aries?), it also fails to provide anything that could even be accidentally misconstrued as an answer. As for predicting elections, we already have Halloween masks for that.
Just because the words Astronomy and Astrology are spelled similarly, it does not mean that the professions are equally valid.
As much as I respect the media’s distinction to reporting ‘both sides of a story’, reporters need to learn that the other side to science is not pseudo-science. There is plenty of controversy and debate within the scientific community to make going elsewhere for debate a non-issue. Even ignoring that, the different sides of a story are not always necessarily equally valid. Sacrificing accuracy and intellectual honesty for the perception of non-biased reporting isn’t a sacrifice that any self-respecting journalist should be willing to make.
You can read more about it on the Bad Astronomy Blog, here.
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Teenagers Are Crazy!!1
March 11th, 2009 by Mitchell Gerskup · No Comments · Critical Thinking, Rants
Recently, Macleans featured an article by “psychologist and teen expert” Michael Bradley on why teenagers are crazy, and how parents should use a “short leash” in dealing with their teenage kids. The article was later posted on their blog, under the title Why teens are “crazy” and the need for a short leash.
The article is good for a few laughs. I thought about posting a response to some of the points that this “expert” makes, but they pretty much refute themselves. Essentially, this guy is using the male equivalent of his mommy instinct to trump science, reason, and conventional wisdom — all at the same time. Here are some of the better quotes taken from the article:
Q: What if you find your kid watching porn?
A: Pull up a chair and say, “Let’s watch together.” Most kids would rather die than watch porn with their mother, which gives you an opportunity to say, “If there’s nothing wrong with porn, there should be no problem with us watching it together.” Then actually watch it. A lot of porn today has a very bizarre element, a lot of violence toward women and even animals, it’s not the soft-core stuff that was around when we grew up. It provides a great opening to talk to kids about their values, what they think about what they’re seeing. You can even have them do a little research on what porn actors’ lives are like, whether they’re actually enjoying what they’re doing, whether in real life, girls and women want to be treated that way.
Because if there’s nothing wrong with it, then obviously children wouldn’t mind doing it with their parents, right? It’s not like the porn he used to watch in the good old days.
Q: But most kids seem to drink. How much is too much?
A: This is where I lose most of the audience: any at all. The problem is one of tactics. If you tell your kid, “A couple of beers is okay,” then why not four? Why not 16? Once you cross that threshold of acceptability you’ve got a big problem. The message has to be zero tolerance. You keep saying to your kid, “I just don’t think it’s okay, I can’t approve it.” We’ve lost more kids to the effects of alcohol than all of the other drugs combined.
Teens are so crazy, they can’t understand the difference between 2 and 16. After all, they’re practically the same numbers, right? It’s not like zero tolerance has ever failed before, either. I hear that abstinence-only education is doing wonders for STD rates in the US.
Q: And then how do you respond when the kid inevitably comes home drunk?
A: You first say, “We’ll talk tomorrow, because you’re drunk tonight.” And by the way, if your kid is staggering or can’t talk, take him to the hospital. It’s an overdose. If he overdosed on heroin would you roll him in the corner to sleep, and hope he woke up? Of course not. The next morning, take him out to the coffee shop and ask, “What did you learn?” He might say, “Dad, it was insane, we were in the park, it was freezing, a kid was puking, Johnny jumped on Susie and tried to rape her and she’s screaming, we had to pull him off.” Well, why would you punish your kid then? Just say, “I think you learned something. How can we keep this from happening the next time?” When the kid says, “Oh, I won’t drink again,” you say, “Well what happens if you do? Are you telling me you’re not ready for the level of freedom to be out in the park on Friday nights?” Put the consequence in place for the next time. But your goal is teaching. If the kid saw that alcohol makes kids crazy—and by the way, it’s associated with STDs and unintentional pregnancies—then he’s less likely to see booze as romantic. If you go crazy, yell, scream, hit the kid and ground him, he’s just going to climb out the window and get back to the booze as soon as he can.
That’s almost a word-for-word description of every party I’ve ever been to involving alcohol. How does the man do it?
Q: Do kids today drink differently than their parents did?
A: Yes, more binge drinking: as much as they can, as fast as they can. A lot of kids hate the taste of alcohol, so they make vodka jello cubes and find ways to ingest lethal amounts without the bad taste. The second thing is that they drink at younger and younger ages.
Ah, the good old days. When men were men, women belonged in the kitchen, and nobody ever drank excessively. I hear that prohibition had something to do with that. Also, Jello cubes?
I don’t know what’s worse: that a nationally distributed magazine decided to write a multi-page article featuring this man’s opinion, or that millions of Canadians will read this article and believe it. This is a sad day for Canadians.
Argument From Authority
December 19th, 2008 by Mitchell Gerskup · No Comments · Critical Thinking, Thoughts
Growing up, I never really trusted the argument from authority. As far back as I remember, “because I said so” never held much sway with me, regardless of who said it. I always preferred (though didn’t always get) a legitimate reason for why something should be done.
The other day, I was back in my high school, when I noticed this picture (and many others like it) hanging on the library wall:
For me, the motivation to read has always stemmed from my enjoyment of reading. I read what I enjoy and I enjoy what I read, and that motivates me to keep reading. I wonder if these celebrity endorsements actually motivate people to read, and if so, whether that motivation has a lasting effect.
Who Questions the Questioners?
December 17th, 2008 by Mitchell Gerskup · No Comments · Critical Thinking
Conspiracy theorists are perhaps best known for their infuriating tactic of trying to punch holes into well-established theories, without ever presenting any logically consistent alternative theory of their own. Hiding behind the veil of “just asking questions”, they can (and do) get away with proposing ridiculous alternatives to historical events, based on anomalies (often non-existent) in trivial pieces of information.
That is why I found this post over at counterknowledge.com to be particularly brilliant. It turns the table on 9/11 conspiracy theorists, and asks them to defend their alternate theory of events by asking them to answer 15 factual questions.
Undoubtedly, any true conspiracy theorist would answer all 15 by telling you how everybody involved (the Saudi government, Al Qaeda, the CIA, Afghanistan, etc.) were all under the control of the Bush administration or the military industrial complex. However, what these questions make evident, is how ridiculously large any conspiratorial body would have to be in order for the conspiracy theory to remain logically consistent. By the time they are done answering these questions, any conspiracy theorist who still maintains their beliefs would have to believe that (more or less) every world government and all of the major middle-eastern terrorist organizations are under the control of the United States government.
Whereas I don’t expect these questions to change the mind of most conspiracy theorists, they’re still fun to read through — and useful ammunition for the next time somebody poses some “questions” about 9/11.
