the Skeptic - Volume 26 Number 1 - Australian Skeptics Inc...48 - A Message in a Bottle — John...

the SkepticVol 26, No 1

Autumn 2006ISSN 0726-9897

EditorBarry Williams

Contributing EditorsTim MendhamSteve Roberts

Technology ConsultantsRichard Saunders/ Eran Segev

Chief InvestigatorIan Bryce

All correspondence to:Australian Skeptics Inc

PO Box 268Roseville NSW 2069

Australia(ABN 90 613 095 379 )

Contact DetailsTel: (02) 9417 2071Fax: (02) 9417 7930

e-mail: [email protected]

Web PagesAustralian Skeptics

www.skeptics.com.auNo Answers in Genesis

http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/default.htm

the Skeptic is a journal of fact and opinion,published four times per year by AustralianSkeptics Inc. Views and opinions expressedin articles and letters in the Skeptic arethose of the authors, and are not necessarilythose of Australian Skeptics Inc. Articles maybe reprinted with permission and with dueacknowledgement to the Skeptic.

Editorial consultants:Dr Stephen Basser (medicine)Dr Trevor Case (psychology)Dr Richard Gordon (medicine)Dr Pete Griffith (biochemistry/microbiology)Dr William Grey (philosophy)Prof Colin Groves (anthropology)Mr Martin Hadley (law)Dr Colin Keay (astronomy)Dr Mark Newbrook (linguistics)Dr Andrew Parle (physics)Prof Ian Plimer (geology)Dr Stephen Moston (psychology)Dr Alex Ritchie (palaeontology)Dr Steve Roberts (chemistry)Mr Roland Seidel (mathematics)Branch correspondents:ACT: Dr Pete GriffithGold Coast: Mr John StearHunter: Dr Colin KeayQld: Mr Bob BruceSA: Mr Allan LangTas: Mr Fred ThornettVic: Mr Ken GreatorexWA: Dr Geoff Dean

Skeptics around Australia

ContentsRegulars ♦ 3 – Editorial: — Barry Williams

♦ 4 – Around the Traps — Bunyip♦ 68 – Letters♦ 70 - Notices

Features♦ 6 - The Hand Behind The Hand that Signed — Helen Dale♦ 13 - News: New Skeptics Prize Announced♦ 14 - Intelligent Design on Trial — Martin Hadley♦ 17 - Notice: Volunteers Needed♦ 18 - Fluoride: Is it Really That Hard to Swallow? — Don Wilson♦ 22 - Water Fluoridation: A Necessary Measure — Graham Keith♦ 25 - AiG Technical Journal: Stop Laughing — Brian Baxter♦ 28 - Merchandising God: The Pope Tart — Karen Stollznow♦ 35 - Greenhouse Debate and Skepticism — Paul Jones♦ 38 - Proud to be Ashamed to be An Australian — Jef Clark♦ 44 - Some Skepticism about Rights and their Effects — James Allan♦ 48 - A Message in a Bottle — John Happs♦ 52 - Hyphen Panic — Mike Robinson♦ 54 - Money Down the Toilet — Stuart Adams♦ 62 - Exorcisms, Fictional and Fatal — Benjamin Radford♦ 63 - Review: The Root of All Evil? — Peter Bowditch♦ 64 - Forum: Is Depression Curable? — Nigel Sinnott♦ 65 - Forum: Miracles, Prayers in the Holy Land — Eran Segev♦ 66 - Supernatural Selection — Alex Ritchie

Cover art by Charles Rose of Cogency

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the Skeptic, Autumn 2006 -

Editorial

25 Not Out A significant milestone has justbeen passed for the Skeptic — 25years in print and still goingstrong. Beginning as a four pagetabloid sized newsletter, the maga-zine has evolved through severalmanifestations into the excellentjournal we have today. These snap-shots of various covers will under-line just how much we havechanged in appearance, but thechanges in content have been evenmore significant.

Among the reasons why we havebeen so successful has been ourwillingness to explore issues thatfall outside a strict interpretationof what many consider to be "Skep-tics business". Our readership isan intelligent one, with a wide anddiverse range of concerns, so ourintention has been to cover thebroadest possible selections of top-ics that we judge will be of interestto at least some of them. Too closea focus on too narrow a field isbound to lead to repetition and,ultimately boredom.

The feedback we get from you,the reader, suggests that we havebeen selecting fairly wisely. Noteveryone is interested in everysubject, but that is only to be ex-pected. The fact that your compli-ments greatly outnumber com-plaints (apart from being good forthe editorial ego) and the fact thatour resubscription rate is veryhigh, testifies that we have beengetting the balance about right.

Another factor is that we haveconsciously avoided allowing theSkeptic to become narrowly parti-san in political, religious or philo-sophical terms. In the Skeptic youwill read articles that might wellindicate the personal biases or con-victions of the authors, but as long

as they steer clear of fundamental-ism or fanaticism, then we arehappy to publish them. Publicationdoes not equate with endorsementof the ideas expressed, only thatwe consider them worthy of consid-eration.

Contributors do not have to ad-here to the "Skeptic party line"because there is no party line.Skepticism and dogmatism can notcohabit harmoniously; Skeptics aregenerally more likely to be prag-matists. Skeptics come in all man-ner of guises, and it would be sur-prising indeed if all of them hewedto any particular ideological orphilosophical line, and we are notprepared to alienate up to half ourpotential audience by being pig-headed followers of fashion. (Wehave even heard that there aresome Skeptics who don't likecricket, which simply shows howmuch of a broad church (sorry)laboratory we have.)

Above all, we believe that bymaintaining a sense of humourand by not taking ourselves tooseriously, we stand a far betterchance of winning both convertsand arguments, than by appearingas a bunch of whining jeremiahs ornaysayers.

Enough of the self-congratula-tory rhetoric. We’ve had fun pro-ducing the Skeptic for a quarter ofa century and by your continuedsupport you seem to agree with us.You will find many fine articles inthe issue to stimulate you andsome that might surprise or eveninfuriate you. We wouldn’t have itany other way.

Barry Williams

- the Skeptic, Autumn 2006

Around theTraps

News and Views

Get well soon

We have heard that the amazing Skep-tic, James Randi, had heart bypasssurgery in early February. Accordingto reports from his friends in Florida,Randi is definitely on the road to re-covery, cracking jokes with his doctors,and though he still has a long recov-ery ahead of him, he’s started on thatroad.

James Randi is one of the mostprominent figures in the Skepticalworld and has visited Australia sev-eral times, appearing at a couple of ourconventions. Because of his uncompro-mising opposition to fraud and char-latanry, he has attracted the ire of anumber ill-wishers, but we have nohesitation in awarding him the ulti-mate Australian accolade — he is aGood Bloke.

Get well soon, old mate, thethoughts of all Skeptics are with you.

Money for (scam) jam

We were astonished recently to hearthat the Queensland Police, having de-cided to follow up with some 25 peoplewho had fallen fora Nigerian Letterscam, found that among them theyhad sent around $7 million to Nigeriain pursuit of the ephemeral millions.

There can scarcely have been anyscam that has received more publicityover the years, so what on Earthwould predispose anyone to believethat a stranger, of whom they hadnever heard, from a distant country,would decide to give them millions ofdollars for no particular reason at all?

More surprising, among those stungwere “lawyers, professors and finan-cial planners” — not necessarily thefirst professions that spring to mindas hotbeds of gullibility or stupidity.Could a lawyer not know that what hewas paying for was illegal under anysystem? Could anyone a passing ac-quaintanceship with finance not knowthat getting something for nothing isa very rare occurrence indeed? Whatsubjects does that professor profess?

Sadly, it would appear that nakedgreed degrades the critical faculties ata rate hitherto undreamed of.

Change or bloody revolution?

Once upon a time, a group of mer-chants in a wide brown land set up abody which they called the CreationScience Foundation, whose purposewas to peddle fantasies to children andadults alike. Sadly, as their creationcontained no science whatsoever, thefoundation eventually foundered onthe Rocks of Reason.

The intrepid band then changedtheir name to Answers in Genesis,which had the virtue of not misusingthe word “science’, at least not in thename. Now while useful answersmight be found in Genesis by some-one competing in Mastermind, with aspecial subject, the Book of Genesis, itis neither an historical nor a scientifictreatise. Indeed the venerable volumeis singularly deficient in wisdom oneither subject. Undaunted, the mer-chants continued to peddle their fan-tasies as though they were really trulytrue. Moreover, they even went intothe export market, peddling fantasiesfar and wide, indicating that PhineasT Barnum was on to something withhis observations on the birth frequencyof suckers.

Still, evolutionary pressure will notbe denied, and we recently learnedthat yet another mutation has oc-curred and henceforth the body will beknown as Creation Ministries Inter-national. These examples ofnomenclatural fickleness, confusingenough to the casual observer, mustpresent a real puzzle to the faithfulfollowers of the fantasy mongers, giventhat intellectual acuity is not a prizedattribute among them.

However, reading between the lines,it seems the most recent change mightnot necessarily have been the resultof entirely amicable discussions. Itwould appear that the US colony, like


its historical predecessor in the 18th

Century, rebelled at control from thecentre of the empire and declared itsindependence. It appears that the AiGweb site was developed and hosted inthe USA, while (as the local HQ re-lease claimed without even the sugges-tion of a blush) the “intellectual con-tent” derived from “scientists’ and“thinkers” from the“parent corporation”.We have not yetheard from the rebelHQ.

Pitt the Younger orThomas Jeffersoncouldn’t write satirelike that.

Musical treat

Those who attendedthe National Conven-tion in Canberra in1998 could hardlyforget the amazingmusical performance during the OldParliament House dinner. Performedby Richard Milner from the AmericanMuseum of Natural History, in NewYork, it was entitled, Charles Darwin,Alive and in Concert and featuredmany clever G&S-like songs of Rich-ard’s devising.

Richard had a CD made of his per-formance and a revised version, withsome new songs, is about to published.We have asked for details and costingand hope to have it available for saleon our on-line shop within a couple ofmonths. We’ll keep you posted.

Intelligent Dinner

For several years the NSW Skepticshave been conducting Dinner Meet-ings at the Chatswood Club, wherelike-minded people can get together,enjoy each other’s company and listento interesting speakers. At the mostrecent dinner, more than 180 turnedup to hear our president, MartinHadley, a barrister, ABC Religion Unitbroadcaster, John Cleary and palae-

ontologist, Dr Alex Ritchie, discuss thelegal, theological and scientific impli-cations of the recent Dover, PA courtcase on the Intelligent Design move-ment. The consensus was that what-ever spin is applied to ID, it remains areligious belief with no scientific sup-port. Martin’s explanation of the Do-ver case is later in this issue

The occasion, incidentally, was oneat which all four individuals who havepresided over NSW Skeptics in its 25years, were present. The photo of thiscurious conjunction, above, given theexpressions on the faces of Messrs (Lto R) Gordon, Hadley, Saunders andWilliams, possibly has something tosay about the burdens of incumbencycompared with the relief that comesfrom retirement.

Future functions

Future dinners will be held on May 27,July 22 and September 9. No speak-ers have yet been confirmed but wewill advise Sydney subscribers whenwe know; they should also keep an eyeon Up-coming Events on our site. Ourintention to hold the next dinner onMay 13 has been changed because itwould have clashed with a magicNight at the nearby Zenith Theatre.As Skeptics love magic shows we don’tmind giving this one a plug, More de-tails from Sean Taylor’s Magic Shopweb site www.taylorsmagicshop.com.

Feeling the pinch?

Apropos the ID movement, news com-ing from the USA should give someheart to those of us who believe thatscience is a better method of explain-ing the natural world than religiousdogma, no matter how much the lat-ter is clothed in scientific sounding

terms. As a wise oldsage once said, “Youcan dress a pig in apinafore, but it’s still apig underneath”.

It seems that JudgeJones not only demol-ished the arguments ofthe members of theschool board, and theirsupporters, whosought to underminescience teaching, healso awarded costaagainst them. Thissomewhat unusual inUS courts, certainlymore so than in Aus-

tralia. It’s ramifications, however,have been quite profound. A numberof other US states and districts thathad been contemplating introducingregulations similar to those in Dover,have subsequently withdrawn them.While rational argument usually hasno effect on closed minds, it seems thatthe hip pocket nerve is much more sen-sitive.

Departed

We note, without comment the deathin the USA of Henry Morris, founderand leader of the fundamentalist sectthat perpetrated the anti-science fic-tion that became known as creation‘science’.

Presidents on parade

Bunyip


Three stories1. It’s high summer; I’m 14, walkinghome from school. Sweat is pouringdown my face and I almost miss it.There’s a furniture truck parked inthe street outside my house. My firstthought: oh shit, he’s done it again.When the family lived up north, dad’sstandard operating procedure was putthe stuff on tic, then move before thedebt collectors arrive. My siblingswent to a jumble of schools as daddodged the tallyman around FarNorth Queensland. One brother hadeleven schools in two years.

This got harder once we shifted toLogan City, a sprawling outer-subur-ban development outside Brisbane.We’d see the furniture truck then —the collectors were starting to wise up,maybe by keeping better records. We’dbe minus a telly, washing machine,stereo and bedroom furniture for amonth or two; then dad would startthe process over again. After one par-ticularly keen lot turned up in a whitevan with the words COLLECTIONAGENCY painted on the sides, kids atschool started saying my old man wasa ‘bum’ and a ‘gaolbird’.2. It’s the end of year two, and I’vefailed to learn anything. Every time Iwrite my name, it’s spelt differently. Ispend my time at the back of the classmanufacturing spitballs. I’m the ar-chetypal holy terror, the kid who givesteachers blood pressure problems andmakes them leave the profession. I’man expert at both the funny (chewinggum on seats) and the macabre (mas-sive stick insects hidden in the teach-

er’s desk drawers). On my reportcard, one young woman — first yearout of teacher’s training college, equalparts terrified and fascinated by herproletarian charges — writes, ‘thischild will never amount to anything’.

Some time later, I learn I’m dys-lexic, and mum waits tables andcleans rich peoples’ houses to pay forone-on-one phonics tuition and occu-pational therapy. To this day, I’venever really figured out how itworked, but it unlocked whatever waslocked between my ears. I can stillremember the eerie sensation of goingfrom the bottom to the top of the classinside six months. Flowers forAlgernon scared the bejesus out of me;I was worried the process might bereversible.3. I’m in my second year of law school,and Suri Ratnapala, the eccentricgenius who teaches us ConstitutionalLaw A sets Polyukhovich v Common-wealth1 as our case study. Are youtrying to set me up? I ask him afterclass. No, he says mildly, I’m trying toteach you that in this profession,thinking is actually a good thing.I read the case, and find Brennan Jsaying things that get other peopleaccused of anti-Semitism:

The Act select[s] a specific group ofpersons from a long time past out ofall those who have committed, or aresuspected of having committed, warcrimes in other armed conflicts.2

Helen Dale (nee Darville) graduated LLB withFirst Class Honours in December 2005. She iscurrently Associate to a Queensland SupremeCourt Justice.Photograph courtesy Office of Media and Communi-cations, The University of Queensland.

1. (1991) 172 CLR 501.2. At 554.

The Hand BehindThe Hand that Signed

Feature

For the first time, the centralfigure in a literary cause

célèbre tells her sideof the story.


If the rule of law is based on generallaws, impartial in their use of coercivepower and supreme over all,3 then thedanger posed by legislation that tar-gets an unpopular minority is readilyapparent.4

I pour years of careful thought intothat essay: the rumination that comesat night after copping a daily criticalbarrage. What if I’m completelywrong? What if people are right toring their media mates up and makesure I’m not published again? What ifwe should prosecute these sleazy fucks,who hopped out to Australia after thewar and just starting working on theSnowy, because that was deemed aGood Thing?

Brennan J’s magisterial judgmentknocks me sideways. I’ve read onlyhistory and literature on this issue,never the law. I see a High Courtsplit 4-3, with the sort of judicialblood-letting reserved only for themost famously disagreeable cases.Think Wik. Think Bank Nationalisa-tion. I humbly learn ProfessorRatnapala’s lesson. Thinking in thisprofession is actually a good thing.

WritingLaw is much more fun than writing,but it took me six years to learn that.

I’ve included the three storiesabove to make a small but importantpoint: I haven’t lost the knack. Writ-ing remains as easy as it was when Iwas twenty and producing The Handthat Signed the Paper. These snippets,although ‘true’, also employ the inevi-table compression and scene shiftingthat characterises fiction. The yeartwo teacher made the ‘never amount’comment to mum’s face, rather thanon paper. Professor Ratnapala gave usa choice of cases — half a dozen or so.Polyukhovich was only one. Memo tomy critics: moving the furniture is aconsequence of crafting and making.Even non-fiction writers do it.

I became one of those strange lawstudents who took great pleasure in

Property, Equity and Trusts, the Lawof Companies and of Copyright. I’mheading towards a career in Commer-cial law, to debt and equity markets,capital raising and tax minimisation.It fascinates me and I’m good at it.I’m annoyed I spent all those yearstrying to join in literary Australia’sclosed conversational circle when Icould have played the stock market ordeveloped a property portfolio.

HistoryIn 1995, I won the Miles FranklinLiterary Award for my first novel, TheHand that Signed the Paper. I was 23.I wrote the book when I was 20 and21, winning The Australian/VogelLiterary Award for it at 22. This prize,for unknowns under the age of 35,carried with it a substantial lick ofprize money and guaranteed publica-tion. I couldn’t believe my luck. It alsowent on to win the Australian Litera-ture Society Gold Medal.

Despite having a good English de-gree, my speciality was languages andgrammar, not the sort of stuff des-tined to make me savvy about pub-lishing and marketing. I knew noth-ing about how Australian literatureworked. Marcus Westbury, an unusu-ally perceptive critic, commented thatI came from so far outside the estab-lishment I didn’t know we had one.

I’d already decided I was going towrite under a pseudonym. This hadbeen formalised with the university,which issued my degree parchmentsand university medal in both names.It’s always a source of amusement tome that the Courier-Mail had re-ceived a press release from the uni-versity, listing all the university med-allists for 1994, early in 1995. Myaward was under both names, and abrief profile included my Australian/Vogel win. Come August 1995, theCourier-Mail made much of the ‘in-vestigative journalism’ involved inblowing my cover.

I hadn’t intended the pseudonym tohold for very long. It was designed tolast until my main source for thenovel died. At the time, he had termi-nal bone marrow cancer and sixmonths to live. I promised him thathe wouldn’t be prosecuted under theWar Crimes Act on my account.

Shortly after I won the Australian/Vogel Award, his cancer went intoremission and faced me with a realquandary. I decided to keep the pseu-donym, although came perilouslyclose to letting my publisher in on thesecret. I only stopped from doing soafter receiving an absolute stinker ofan editorial report. It accused me ofracism and called my novel propa-ganda and a pornography of violence.They would not divulge the editor’sname to me, only sending a photocopyof her report and refusing to answerquestions when I rang. In a fit of im-maturity, I figured that two could playthat game. I tore up my half writtenletter and binned it. If a custard piehits me in the face, I figured, it’ll getyou lot as well.

Even so, I couldn’t work out how abook that had unanimously won amajor literary award was suddenly apiece of junk. Sure, there were prize-winning books around that weren’tmy cup of tea, but that didn’t makeme hate them (or their authors). I’dsimply put that book aside and readanother. This principle held true forcomputer games, RPGs and varioussports. An editorial report riddledwith invective was my first inkling ofthe ridiculous pretension and self-importance with which many Austral-ian intellectuals view their role.

Australian literature is burdenedwith a level of ideological conformitythat would do East Germany proud. Istarted out in life as a leftie, albeit anidiosyncratic one — Trotsky to theirStalin, for want of a better analogy. Ifound myself appalled — and still am— at the anti-Americanism, the pro-Jews as victims but anti-Jews as vic-tors, the belief that only someonefrom a given gender or ethnic groupcan write about that gender or ethnicgroup, and much other ideologicalpiffle. I remember being told withgreat solemnity at a writers’ festivalthat white people who wanted towrite about Aborigines needed to askAboriginal permission in order to doso. I nearly had chronic conniptionstrying to stifle my guffaws. Watchingkindly and well-meaning people at-tempt to apply affirmative action toliterature frightened me, especiallywhen they were dishing out Australia

3. S Ratnapala Australian ConstitutionalLaw: Foundations and Theory (2002), 8-9.

4. H Roberts, ‘Retrospective CriminalLaws and the Separation of JudicialPower’ (1997) 8 (3) Public Law Review170-185, 180.


Council grants. It struck me as incon-ceivable that critics and academicswere trying to control authors’ output.It was an insidious form of censorshipand needed to go for six at the MCG.

So I threw myself into ‘HelenDemidenko’ with gusto. I’d grown upwith plenty of people from that sort ofbackground and had a knack for lan-guages, which made me a naturalmimic. Unfortunately, the nasty edito-rial report — coming as it did so earlyin the publication process — had aknock-on effect in other respects.When my old high school attempted totake some credit for my achievements,I rebuffed them with rudeness andcontempt. This was despite the factthat I’d had some good teachers there,including one who strongly encour-aged me to attend university, some-thing I may not have done otherwise.I viewed the school through the jaun-diced prism provided by some of itsstudents. My response was very un-fair to the teaching staff, something Ionly realised later.

My journey through the upperreaches of the chattering classes as‘Helen Demidenko’ was surreal. I’llnever forget being propositioned byboth halves of an ‘open marriage’ atone function, or being invited to jointhe ‘Anti-Football League’ at another.Instead of being honest and pointingout that no, I actually like sport, Imade a lame duck excuse about hav-ing insufficient money on me to join.The conversation forgotten, I frontedup to a panel next morning wearing a1991 Wallabies jersey. The two sporthaters were sitting in the front rowand I copped an A-grade glare.

Members of the chattering classestook potshots for the moral ambiguityof my writing. Part of me wanted toshout at the top of my lungs if they’dever read Céline. I watched stunnedas Peter Craven wrote a positive re-view of my novel in The Age andshort-listed it for one of the VictorianPremier’s Awards, only to dump on itwhen the Melbourne literary estab-lishment decided I was persona nongrata. People who were supposed toknow about literature went all out toconflate my views with those of mycharacters (does that make BretEaston Ellis a serial killer in his spare

time?) and prove that I must have hadsome sort of sneaking association withthe League of Rights (who are they?).This made me determined to humili-ate a group I considered spineless,and my invented persona became evermore over the top. It was only a mat-ter of time before my cover — such asit was — was blown.

NarrativeLet me begin with a girl, an ordinaryAustralian girl.

Fiona Kovalenko has an enfeebled,elderly uncle. She also has a less en-feebled (but still elderly) father. Thisbesides the usual number of siblings,aunts and cousins. Fiona Kovelenko isat university, but unlike many of herpeers is not particularly articulate.She is clever, but her cleverness doesnot extend into the realm of wisdomor reason. This is not because she isintrinsically incapable of these thingsbut because she is only nineteen yearsold. Within her, this ordinary Austral-ian girl carries a story incomprehensi-bly horrible yet eminently describ-able.

Fiona has known since childhoodthat three members of her family, aloving, close-knit immigrant Ukrain-ian family, were to greater or lesserdegrees Nazi collaborators. She is una-ware of the full import of the phrase‘Nazi collaborator,’ is versed in neitherthe specific history of this collabora-tion nor in the history of collaborationper se. Instead, Fiona chooses to get by,largely unknowing. Missing the oddlecture. Not studying too hard. Livingin one of Brisbane’s riotously tropicalsuburbs near the university. Shesmokes rollies and drinks hot choco-late. She listens to nightly currentaffairs bulletins and tut-tuts over thestate of federal politics with her flat-mate. It is only when one of her familymembers becomes a feature on thosecurrent affairs bulletins that she faces— is forced to face — the narrative ofcollaboration within her family. Heruncle is charged with war crimes, andthat is news.

Australia — like many other west-ern countries during the mid-eightiesto early nineties — introduced legisla-tion designed to allow the trial ofpostwar immigrants who were ac-

cused of collaboration with Nazi occu-piers in eastern Europe and theformer Soviet Union. The debate thatattended the legislation’s passagethrough federal parliament was one ofthe most acrimonious in recent Aus-tralian political history.5 Signifi-cantly, the intended targets were sel-dom German. Those who fell withinthe ambit of this legislation were im-migrants from Eastern Europe(Ukraine, Lithuania and Latvia, forexample), nations and peoples withgrievous histories of oppression andgenocide of their own. It is within theframework of this legislation that thefictional narrative of The Hand thatSigned the Paper unfolds.

Fiona Kovalenko strives to ownwhat she sees as her past, terrible asit is. Her older sister, organized andpragmatic, engages a lawyer andplans familial court appearances. ForFiona’s sister, Natalya, there is nodoubt that loyalty resides with herfamily, protecting it from those whoseek to do it harm. The past, for bigsister, has no business haunting thepresent.

Fiona is neither as pragmatic asher sister nor as sure that her uncleshould be protected. She has no ideahow to begin the process of historicalownership so she simply asks ques-tions. In their turn, father, uncle andaunt are badgered for narratives in alarge yet intimate exercise in oralhistory. Sometimes Fiona interrogatesthe terms of these familial narratives,inserting her limited, young, latetwentieth century ways of seeing.Sometimes she simply transcribestheir narratives word for word intoone of her big spiral notebooks. Sheneither judges her family nor sees heruncle as inherently evil. Implicated byher bloodtie to the accused, she sim-ply sets the story down as it comes toher. In fragments. Compassion cheek

5. For a discussion of the debate in Aus-tralia see Mark Aarons Sanctuary: NaziFugitives in Australia (1989). For a morewide-ranging discussion, covering indetail the Canadian, US and Britishexperience with such legislation, seeDavid Cesarani Justice Delayed: HowBritain became a Refuge for Nazi WarCriminals (1992).

The Hand Behind


by jowl with murderous indifference.Hope commingled with despair.

For Fiona, the received narrative ofNazism — as distinct from familialnarratives of Nazi collaboration — isconstructed wholly by the media oftelevision and cinema. Apart from herfamily’s collection of fading black andwhite photographs, Nazism and itscruelties could just as easily be anepisode of Australia’s Most Wanted:history based entirely on televisualre-enactment. She writes. She strug-gles to comprehend, but the only illu-mination available for her to cast onher narratives is television’s ‘cold,cathode light’.6 Her understanding ofclarity is simply to make her narra-tive as cinematic as possible. If she isinfluenced at all beyond televisualreconstruction and appropriation, it isby trial reports that show how such-and-such a serial killer seemed theembodiment of normality to his neigh-bours.

The brutal, unseeing antisemitismthat drove her uncle Vitaly to collabo-rate is scored across the narrativeFiona transcribes and inscribes. Thisnarrative blames Jews within theCommunist Party (and Jews per se)for the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-34.Vitaly describes an existence shat-tered by Communist and Nazi bar-barities into the bleakest of Hobbe-sian fragments: truly ‘solitary, poore,nasty, brutish, and short’. Fiona’saunt Kateryna, as bigoted in her ownway as Vitaly, remembers Babi-Yarbecause she slept with handsomeHauptsturmführer Hasse, a man be-hind the butchery, in a nearby hotel.Vitaly liked Treblinka. During histime as a guard there he was warmand well fed. He ‘never falls psycho-logically outside the atmosphere of hisage’7. Fiona’s retelling means thatshe revisits — vicariously — a worldwhere people are hermetically sealedinside the cruellest of closed systems.Since I’m uninterested in turningpeople into bug-eyed monsters, I tookgreat care to make my one-time con-centration camp guards recognisably

human, even sympathetic. Their anti-Semitic motivations and values hadsubstance. That said, I didn’t shyaway from what they did. It’s justthat to me, Osama is much more in-teresting if we know what makes himtick.

The language of Fiona’s familialstorytellers is hateful and vicious.Fiona is an ordinary Australian girl,and for many years the language ofher Australia has been neither hatefulnor vicious. Fiona believes people canbecome Australian. If they ‘do theright thing’ (a slogan prominentlydisplayed on municipal rubbish bins)in the new land, they will be re-warded with Australianness and all itentails. Fiona believes that becomingAustralian means entry to an orderedpolity, the rule of law and a publicdiscourse set free from modalities thatreify viciousness and hate. She canrespond to the brutalities of historyonly in terms of lawyers, parliamen-tary debates and letters to the editor.This is her Australian world. Fionacomes to accept the ideal of a migra-tory rite of passage that reifies historybut in so doing detaches it from itsterrible consequences. For Fiona,immigrants shed the evils of the oldcountry like a snake sloughing offdead skin, remaking themselves inthe new country. They cross an invis-ible line drawn at an arbitrary pointsomewhere in the Indian Ocean, ceas-ing to be emigrants, becoming immi-grants instead. ‘I’ve worked so hardto be Australian,’ Vitaly tells her. ‘I’mall Australian now’.

MediaJournalists have a remarkable talentfor behaving like kiddy-fiddlers. Atleast, that was the view I formed afterthey repeatedly staked out my par-ents’ house and followed my primaryschool aged niece and nephew toschool. There were so many of them— OB vans, TV cameras and soundbooms in tow — I had to sneak intomum and dad’s backyard via severalneighbours’ fences, wearing dog bitesand bee stings in the process. Mumwas petrified — they’d been prowlingup and down the verandah trying tophotograph her through her bedroomwindow — and dad wanted to get his

gun. Dad’s habit of getting involved inpetty crime was another source ofworry. On one occasion a Channel 7reporter doing the rounds realizedwho dad was and tried to assemble aTV crew outside the Magistrates’Court after he was convicted. Quickthinking on the part of the duty solici-tor stopped an already nasty storybecoming much worse.

The phrase ‘chequebook journalism’hadn’t held any real meaning untilone media outlet offered me $160,000for an interview — after a rival of-fered $100,000. At the time I knockedit back, a decision I now regret. Myhead was full of high ideals, including‘maintaining my integrity as a writer’.In reality, there’s not a great deal ofdifference between accepting a wad ofcash from a media outlet in return fortelling them what they want to hearand hanging off the taxpayers’ teat inreturn for telling the governmentwhat it wants to hear. I still maintainthe press hammered me as hard asthey would have done had I taken themoney.

I learnt that nearly every journal-ist fancies himself as a writer, com-plete with novel stashed away in theattic/garage/trunk. Similarly, theircollective certainty that Australia ispopulated by a mob of racist dillsknows no bounds. Every time somemedia commentator tees off at ‘re-gional Australia’ or ‘the outer sub-urbs’, carrying on about ignorance,racism and lack of sophistication, Itake it pretty personally. Not so longago that was me. It’s still my siblings,all of whom are tradespeople. Manyjournalists also believe they can influ-ence the outcome of everything fromliterary awards to elections, hence theconcerted campaign to have mestripped of the Miles Franklin Award.This culminated in accusations ofplagiarism, another thing that wasn’tworked out of my system until lawschool — when I earned a high dis-tinction in Copyright law. Fortu-nately, Dame Leonie Kramer — one ofthe judges — was made of sternerstuff, and told them to piss off (in thenicest possible way, of course).

Only the sports journalists wereappropriately humble, acknowledgingthe gap between their efforts and

6. See William Schaffer ‘The Book thatEvaded the Question’ (1996).

7. A phrase coined by the literary criticGeorg Lukács.


those of Australia’s sportsmen andwomen. I think Gideon Haigh is thebest writer in Australia: a fine crafts-man, aware of his limitations, devotedto his sport. One of the few highlightsof my literary sojourn was meetinghim and receiving a signed copy ofMystery Spinner as a gift.

A sure sign that many of Austral-ia’s critics and journalists don’t have alife was the appearance — in rapidsuccession — of four books about thecause célèbre. All were longer than mynovel. Robert Manne’s The Culture ofForgetting came in at nearly twice thelength, riddled with errors and lacedwith bile. He sent a letter begging aninterview shortly before publication.My solicitor read it and shook hishead sagely. ‘Don’t touch this one,Helen. He’s already made up hismind’.

Reluctantly, I cooperated withAndrew Reimer in his effort, TheDemidenko Debate. My publisher wasbehind the book and Professor Reimerhad consistently argued that my novelwas good, despite the controversy. Wemet in my solicitor’s office in the cityand I tried to answer his questions. Atthis point, I really noticed that I justdidn’t fit into ‘literary culture’. Hewas passionate about literature in away I couldn’t fathom, speaking aboutit as though it had the capacity tochange the world. It’s a novel, I keptthinking: what people read on thetrain. We were talking at cross-pur-poses. Whatever I said obviouslywasn’t too inspiring — he didn’t use asingle quote in his book. Although hewas kindly and well meaning, I spentmost of the interview trying to ignorethe really impressive accumulation ofplaque on his teeth and his constantfiddling with a cigarette packet in hispocket. As soon as we stepped outside,he lit up.

WorkMark Davis’ study Gangland: CulturalElites and the New Generationalismtold me — in very precise terms —why I wasn’t able to work as a writerin Australia. Before Davis’ book cameout, I already had a fair idea of whatwas going on. Davis’ research simplyconfirmed what I suspected. The ‘wallout’ ranged from attacks in the press

that a wealthy person would be able tofight off with a defamation suit (onecommentator compared me with Mar-tin Bryant) to senior media and criti-cal figures ringing their mates andencouraging them not to publish any-thing I wrote. I couldn’t afford litiga-tion, and came into the system bereftof contacts, so had no means of fight-ing back. Writers — especially newones — are very poorly paid. I madethe princely sum of $1.39 a copy out ofbook sales, so even the tag ‘bestseller’didn’t mean a great deal.

As a stopgap, I went teaching andthrew myself into sport — martialarts, running and cricket. Sport keptme sane in my first year out, espe-cially when my father managed to killhimself off in embarrassing circum-stances. True to form, he’d been dab-bling in the criminal underworld, andmanaged to die ‘on the job’ in a localbrothel whilst redeeming a favour.According to the copper who deliveredthe news, the prostitute in questionswore off the ‘game’ for all time. I sup-pose you would.

Mum had always known that hewas pretty much a bum, but thatdidn’t make dealing with the policeand the possibility of media exposureany easier. We made sure there wasno media presence, which meant nofuneral notice in the paper. Sympa-thetic doctors and coppers ensured theexact location didn’t turn up on dad’sdeath certificate. The Courier-Mailsomehow heard about the death, pub-lishing a brief — and false — obituary.For the first time ever, we gavethanks. Mum also insisted on thecheapest possible funeral, whichmeant no service and a chipboard box.She was furious, bitter and humili-ated, although people not in the knowmistook it for grief. My enduringmemory of the whole fiasco is sittingat Logan Funerals staring at dad’scoffin while an extremely uncomfort-able funeral director fiddled with hisshirt collar and tried to avoid eye con-tact with everyone in the room. Hedidn’t know the story — only the po-lice, doctor, mum and the sibs did —although I suspect he guessed.

Unfortunately, I found some peoplein the teaching profession had also‘formed a view’. One woman festooned

the walls of her office with anti-mecartoons; she would make a point ofostentatiously reading Robert Manne’sbook whenever I walked past. Soonenough, I realised that Englishstaffrooms were the problem, as wasstaying too long in one place. Fromthen on, I did nothing but month-longsupply jobs and made a point of ask-ing for a majority physical educationtimetable wherever I could. This en-sured I wound up in HPE or Sciencestaffrooms, where no-one gave a stuff.Literature was in its proper place —what people read on the train.

When someone formed a view to theextent of spitting on me in a school carpark, I prepared to emigrate. I’m adual national (dad was born in Lon-don), which meant a British passportand the right to permanent residency.

Living in the UK for just over twoyears was immensely liberating. Iearned my Shodan (black belt) inShotokan Karate with Sensei Enoeda,proved an effective teacher in some ofLondon’s toughest schools and madesome life-long friends. Added to themix were an outrageously alcoholiclandlady, a truly barmy Scientologistflat-mate, a funky Nigerian boyfriendand the opportunity to cover the DavidIrving libel trial. Life was good, and Ihad no desire to come home until Ilearnt mum’s health was failing.

Mum had developed a heart condi-tion and was taking all sorts of medi-cation, sometimes at the wrong times.I took slightly longer supply jobs —three months each, for stability — anddid my best to look after her. Much tomy later regret, I again started writ-ing for the Courier-Mail, and foundthe peace and quiet I’d managed toachieve in the UK incompatible withwriting.

LawThe one positive thing to occur duringthe brouhaha was meeting AndrewGreenwood, then a partner at MinterEllison Lawyers. During 2005, he waselevated to the judiciary, and is nowJustice Greenwood of the FederalCourt. His new position did not sur-prise me in the slightest — he’s anadornment to the profession.

Andrew advised me with greatacumen and care, and was the first

The Hand Behind


outsider wholly on my side. Previ-ously, I’d assumed my publisher or‘friends’ I made through literaturewould fill this role, only to be disap-pointed (one wrote a ‘tell all’ book thatwould make Who Weekly proud).Andrew became my model, and if mydecision to return to university aged30 to study law is attributable to any-thing, it’s his example.

In August 2001, I wrote my lastcopy for the Courier-Mail. On October1, 2001, I wrote my final piece for theSydney Morning Herald. This latterwas in response to 9/11 and the anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism ofmany Australian intellectuals. I tooktime to put a few of the more outra-geous lies told about me out to pas-ture, and signed off on literature. Isold my Australian Literary SocietyGold Medal (another of the prizes I’dwon) to pay for law textbooks andworked at supply teaching two days aweek to pay my way through lawschool.

Needless to say, the Courier-Mailwasn’t best pleased, and spent a goodwhack of my first year making lifedifficult. This involved using Queens-land’s Freedom of Information legisla-tion in a desperate bid to obtain anyand every document the University ofQueensland held that happened tomention me by name. The main insti-gator was a single journalist, DeborahCassrels. At that time married toChris Mitchell, the editor, she had aseries of odd vendettas against people;I was only one. Interestingly enough,Robert Manne was another. OnceMitchell left Queensland to edit TheAustralian, the frivolous FOI applica-tions stopped.

Like living in the UK, studying atthe University of Queensland’s T.C.Beirne School of Law was immenselyliberating. Apart from the fact that Iwas good at it, law suited the combat-ive side of my personality. I liked theidea of taking sides in a case, whichled to me representing the law schoolin mooting competitions (mock trials).That said, while I was busily collect-ing scholarships and prizes, enjoyinghaving my mind stretched in all sortsof interesting ways, I’d not noticedthat mum was gradually gettingfrailer. I simply took on a greater care

burden and assumed she’d ‘turn thecorner’. For that reason, her death atthe end of my second year caught mecompletely unawares.

My mother was an outstandinglygood person. She’d done her level bestto provide for the four of us kids whiledad dragged the family from pillar topost, got sacked from various jobs andlanded in front of the beak. Mum leftschool at thirteen and had no educa-tion to speak of, but she made sure werespected hard work and valued edu-cation. A tireless community worker,Logan’s Chinese community in par-ticular felt they’d lost a special friend.We resolved that — regardless of theconsequences — mum would get apublic notice and a good send-off. Thelocal Buddhist Temple organised herfuneral, which was almost festive.People spilled out of the chapel ontothe street outside, while my sisterdelivered the eulogy.

The Courier-Mail’s TessLivingstone was considerably lessvindictive in her harassment thanDeborah Cassrels, and although irri-tating, her attempts (last year) todredge up dirt were amusing ratherthan destructive. She learnt throughan ‘anonymous tip-off ’ (someone elsewith no life?) that I was lecturing atthe University of Queensland, andwas to start in the profession as aJudge’s Associate at the SupremeCourt. She at least had the courtesy toemail me, and although the two arti-cles she wrote were full of the usualfaux-controversial beat-up, by com-parison with what had gone before,they were anodyne.

What really irritated me was thepaper’s attempt to obtain an up-to-date photograph (all it had was my by-line pic, now several years old). ChrisGriffith and a photographer bailed meup outside my class, after finding thelocation by pretending to be UQ stu-dents who’d lost their timetables. Anaïve young scholar using the univer-sity’s wireless network was their tar-get. Fortunately, I’d gotten pretty goodat ‘lawyer’s bull’ and talked them outof trying to take pictures outside alecture theatre where students werenow congregating (luckily, my stu-dents saw the funny side).

The two of them sat outside for the

rest of the class (memo to ChrisGriffith: you should now know theprincipal exceptions to indefeasibilityin the Torrens system) and afterwardsI took great pleasure in losing them inthe mass of complexity that is the UQcampus. I can still see Chris Griffith’sshiny, bald head reflecting light as heran after me along the corridor infront of the Prentice building.

SkepticsWhy Skeptics, and why this tell-allpiece in a magazine better known fordebunking pseudoscience, puncturingreligious pomposity and investigatingparanormal claims?

There are two principal reasons.First, I believe the media is character-ised by sensationalism and falsehood,sometimes on a level that parallelsAnswers in Genesis or the folks whobelieve in crystals’ healing power. Itprattles much about ‘accountability’,but when Queensland Premier PeterBeattie makes mild suggestions thatmechanisms for administrative review— the Ombudsman and FOI, for ex-ample — be extended to the press, heis castigated.

Using the prestigious A N SmithMemorial Lecture in Journalism atMelbourne University to articulate hisproposals, Premier Beattie outlinedwhat most thinking people alreadyknow — journalists are held in singu-larly low regard among the wider com-munity. In a market defined by lack ofcompetition, he argued that it was‘time for the media to embrace an ac-countability regime similar to thatimposed on government, on parlia-ment, and on other public institutions’.He stated that:

[M]embers of the public should beable to ask of newspapers and elec-tronic media the same questionsthey can demand of their repre-sentatives: Why was this decisiontaken? Who was involved? What didit cost? What alternatives were con-sidered?8

Few trouble to enquire whetherfreedom of speech and freedom of the

8. www.thepremier.qld.gov.au/news/media_matters/index.shtm Visited 12February, 2006.


press are cognate (they aren’t — imag-ine a Venn diagram with only a smalloverlap), or whether it is reasonable todemand a free press also be an ac-countable press.9 Media calumniesdeny some people a fair trial and sad-dle others with false accusations. Ju-ries are contaminated, businessesdestroyed, lives ruined. There is agrim toll of those who have suicidedafter press exposés. Who remembersthe Filipino TV repairman, or Godforbid, the Paxtons? Persons who mis-lead and deceive in trade or commerceare caught by section 52 of the TradePractices Act. Why is the media im-mune from the section’s operation?Are they some form of protected spe-cies? Sed quis custodiet ipsos cus-todes?10 Sure, it’s easy to argue thatBeattie — a celebrated ‘media tart’ —is engaging in special pleading. It’sremarkably difficult to get informationout of Government owned Corpora-tions in Queensland, partly becausethey have been sheltered from some ofthe review mechanisms available un-der administrative law. That said, hiscentral point remains valid. It is truethat ‘some journalists are public fig-ures’ while ‘all journalists enjoy ex-traordinary access to information’.Other public figures carry the risk ofexposure. Why not the ladies and gen-tlemen of the press?

The catalogue of errors produced bymedia and critics alike in my casealmost beggars belief. Despite thepublic availability of such things as aregistry of births, deaths and mar-riages, the press could not get my dateor country of birth correct or the loca-tion of my parents’ marriage (Moss-man, Far North Queensland if youmust know). For some reason theyseemed to like Scunthorpe, Yorkshire;I have no relatives anywhere in York-shire. To these were added falsehoodsabout my family’s financial positionand professional status. Many mediaoutlets awarded my father an engi-neering degree. He actually left school

at 15. Andrew Greenwood once sug-gested that for many among the chat-tering classes, the idea that ‘whitetrash’ could do what I had done wasinconceivable. It therefore becameimperative that my parents beawarded degrees they did not hold andriches they did not own. Worst of allwere lies about my family’s politicalorientation. It seemed that because Ihad written about fascists and racistswith some degree of humanity, I musttherefore be their political kin. Thefact that there were public records ofmy involvement in student politics asa Democrat — not to mention the dis-tinguished participation by other fam-ily members in the union movementand Labor Party — did not seem tomatter.

Of course, there is defamation. As Idiscovered, it is a rich man’s tort. Theinexpensive processes of administra-tive law are denied to ordinary citi-zens traduced by our moral guardians.Only the very rich can defend them-selves, and journalists like easy tar-gets. This means the wealthy get offscot-free, while the press inflicts itssilly moral vanities on the rest of us.

Then there is the refusal to be pre-cise in written expression, sadly some-times ideologically motivated. A per-sonal bête noir is the media’s failure touse the word ‘terrorist’ to describesuicide bombers in Iraq and Israel.The lawyer in me contends it is betterto describe the substantive content ofall such actions as terrorism. Thismeans that the people who blew uptrainloads of German soldiers, rapedmany French women as collaborateurspost 1945 and had a happy knack ofplanting bombs in cinemas were alsoterrorists. This linguistic clarity wouldthen force us to confront a painfulquestion: can terrorism ever be justi-fied?

The media needs Skeptics. It needspeople to seek the evidence, challengethe claims and oppose uncritical sen-sationalism. I accept the questions Iask may have answers that ultimatelyfavour the Fourth Estate. That said,we are entitled to reasoned responsesand enlightened debate.

Second, I wrote this piece as a formof thanks to the people on theQSkeptics email group who formed

their impression of me based on who Iam, rather than what other people —media and critics — say I am. In myexperience, this is extraordinarilydifficult. Most people — even the veryfair-minded — allow perceptions gen-erated by the press to feed and informtheir view of a public figure. TheQSkeptics discussion group is the firstlarge body I have encountered that, toa man and woman, did not do this.When Barry Williams first invited meto contribute to the Skeptic, I wasunsure what I could write, especiallyas a lawyer among so many distin-guished scientists and researchers. Inthe end, I opted to tell the story I re-fused to tell when offered all that cashsome years ago.

Prime Minister John Howard hasmade much in recent times of ourcollective failure to respect others —in debate and elsewhere. My experi-ence before my encounter withQSkeptics taught me that true respectis very difficult to achieve. Despite mypersonal views on the matter, I’vecaught myself failing to respect oth-ers, including a local Rockhamptonjournalist who took the time to inves-tigate a story about me properly forthe local paper. I assumed — auto-matically, because of my experiencewith and views of journalists — hewould balls it up. He didn’t, and I hada humbling reminder of the impor-tance of that cricketing principle re-garding the ‘benefit of the doubt’.QSkeptics has taught me that respectmust be worked at, but is nonethelessa goal both useful and worthy. It ismuch nicer to live in a country wherepeople don’t get written off as ‘mad’ fortheir views and values — or what arereported to be their views and values.

I have learnt equal amounts fromboth observing and participating inQSkeptics discussions, which are al-ways conducted with the utmost re-spect. They have allowed me to redis-cover something of the sense ofwonder and adventure that once madeboth writing and learning so enjoy-able. Truly, they have set me free.

9. As suggested by Kantian philosopherOnora O’Neill in A Question of Trust: theBBC Reith Lectures 2002 (Cambridge,10. Juvenal, Satura VI; ‘who guards the

guardians?’.

The Hand Behind


New SkepticsPrize

Announcement

After a ten year association with theAustralian Museum Eureka Prizes,Australian Skeptics has, with regret,decided to withdraw its sponsorshipand to institute its own Skepticsprize.

There are several reasons for thisdecision:

initially AS was one of six sponsors,but at the 2005 Eurekas we wereone of 23, with a consequent reduc-tion in the impact of our message;

as a sponsor, we have always paidan extra contribution to cover theMuseum’s administrative costs —over the years this has increased,while the prize money has remainedstatic. When we were informed thatfor 2006, the administration contri-bution would exceed the Eurekaprize money by a considerable sum,we decided that, as an organisationwith limited resources, we could nolonger be a sponsor.

We still regard the Eureka Prizesas a very important vehicle for thepromotion Australian science andwish them all the best for the future.

Australian Skeptics Prize for CriticalThinking

The Australian Skeptics Prize forCritical Thinking will have similarcriteria to those used for the Skep-tics Eureka Prize. It will be awardedfor work that investigates conven-tional wisdoms and beliefs that owelittle or nothing to the rigours ofscientific method, that promotesrational thinking in the community,or reflects the importance that Aus-tralian Skeptics place on criticalthinking in the education of youngpeople.

Entries are invited for work in thephysical or life sciences, humanitiesand media, that encourage the rigor-ous and critical investigation of is-sues, ideas or beliefs that have norational basis — in effect, skepticalanalysis of pseudoscientific claims..

Work submitted for this prize mayinclude the contribution of teachersat all levels of education, who havedevised or instituted innovative pro-grams that encourage critical think-ing above and beyond normal cur-riculum requirements. Worksubmitted must have been under-taken/published/broadcast in Aus-tralia by an Australian citizen orpermanent resident within the fiveyears prior to the closing date forentries.

Closing date for entries will betwo calendar months before the Con-vention.

Members of state committees andmembers of their immediate familieswill not be eligible for consideration.

Judging will be carried out by apanel nominated by AustralianSkeptics..

Judging CriteriaEntries will be assessed against thecriteria of:

• originality;

• the extent of “critical thinking”involved — ie the extent to whichthe work submitted challenges/examines conventional wisdom, orbeliefs that have no rational or sci-entific basis, or promotes such atti-tudes among the public, especiallyyoung people;

• scientific excellence and reasonedexposition.

PresentationThe Australian Skeptics Prize forCritical Thinking will be $10,000.

The winner of the 2006 AustralianSkeptics Prize will be announcedand the cheque presented at a din-ner held in conjunction with the Aus-tralian Skeptics Annual Conventionin Melbourne on 18-19 November..

AppealAs this will be a new venture forAustralian Skeptics, we have not yetset all the details in stone and wewelcome input, including refine-ments of the criteria, from our mem-bers,

Of particular importance aremethods of publicising the availabil-ity of the Australian Skeptics Prizefor Critical Thinking. Many of oursubscribers belong to relevant pro-fessional associations, societies orinstitutes (eg, science or historyteachers assns, Institutes of physics,biology, geology, engineering, medi-cal, pharmaceutical, psychologicalassns and the like). Most of thesebodies will have web sites or journalsand might well be amenable to ad-vertising the Skeptics prize to theirmembers. We rely on our subscribersto make us aware of such bodies, assoon as possible.

Details of the prize and entryforms will be on our web site,www.skeptics.com.au in the nearfuture.


If only I had a dollar for every time Ihave said to a client “In Court, it’s notlike it is on the telly…” Well,Rumpole is fairly accurate but Aus-tralian trials are certainly not likethe televisual projections of USCourts with vitamin-crazed attorneysswaggering up to within inches oftrembling witnesses or boggling ju-rors. Examples of the real thing suchas the OJ trial are not much moreencouraging, and the reputation ofUS justice suffers as a result. Thenthere are the disconcerting (and usu-ally inaccurate) stories of whackojudgments like the person who triedto dry their wet dog by putting it inthe microwave and then won againstthe manufacturer for not warningagainst this. But just before Christ-mas we got an example of a judgmentfrom a US District Court (ie a Courthalf way up the ladder) which is oneof the finest I have ever seen.

The caseJudge John E Jones III has re-strained a school Board in DoverPennsylvania, from spruiking Intelli-gent Design as a scientific theory. TheJudge found that ID invoked andpermitted supernatural causation,despite its official stance of not iden-tifying the actual designer. Secondly:

the argument of irreducible complexity,central to ID, employs the same flawedand illogical contrived dualism thatdoomed creation science in the 1980s.

In other words ID repeats the errorof saying that the only choice is be-tween God as creator; or evolution.The Court confirmed that ID’s at-tacks on evolution have been refuted;it has failed to gain acceptance byother scientists; it has not producedpeer-reviewed publications and it hasnot been tested or researched.

We can expect ID supporters todownplay this as one decision con-cerning one school but it was a sixweek trial where the ID supportersmade a stand and called their topexperts. One was Professor Behe, astar of the notorious and misleadinglyentitled DVD Unlocking The MysteryOf Life, produced by The DiscoveryInstitute. (Isn’t that a priceless namefor a body dedicated to reaction andsuperstition?). This is the DVD whichis being urged on Australian schools,aided by some careless comments ofthe relevant Federal Minister,Brendan Nelson

Judge Jones has done mankind ahuge favour. If you have not satthrough the turgid fulsomeness of theDVD, you needn’t bother — the DoverDefendants ran with every one of theDVD’s arguments and Judge Jonesrejected them. You often find thatboth sides provide worthy expertsand the Judge will prefer one opinionwithout criticising either. Here how-ever, there were substantialbackdowns in cross-examination bythe ID experts. The judgment also

Intelligent Designon Trial:

Verdict — Dud Science

Martin Hadley, President of AustralianSkeptics and barrister, freely admits that thisshirt provides no evidence of IntelligentDesign.

Landmark decision in courttorpedoes ID fantasy

Report


dismisses the ID textbook Of Pandasand People as riddled with error andout of date. Let us hope that Austral-ians will be spared that rubbish.

The judgment gives the ID lumi-naries such a thrashing that one won-ders whether their professional repu-tations will ever be the same.

Even that pales in comparison tothe withering condemnation of cer-tain aggressively Christian Boardmembers who demonstrated theirrespect for Jesus’ teaching by lying tothe Court. We see how the Board’smore devout members inveigled theircolleagues into an intellectually dis-honest ‘ID Policy’ that ended up beingunmasked for the religious propa-ganda that it was. That exercise indeception ended up costing the schoola fortune in legal costs.

Incidentally, one popular avenue ofdenial commonly used by creationistshas been blocked. Far from being oneof the ‘flaming liberals’, so beloved aswhipping-boys by the religious rightin the US, Judge Jones is acknowl-edged as a conservative jurist andwas appointed by the present admin-istration.

What is ID?You may find the judgment echoingyour own thoughts when you readthe history of ID and find it is justanother version of creationism, aka‘creation science’. In a nutshell —creation scientists received such ashellacking in Court judgments andscientific literature for their logicaland factual errors about topics likehow the flood produced the fossils,and their distorted version of thesecond law of thermodynamics, etc,etc (etc!), that something new wasneeded. What to do? Just as ‘Amway’became ‘a marketing proposal’, thecreationist tacticians decided thatreferences to a creator or creationwere better left out, and ‘IntelligentDesign’ was born.

IDers played at being more scien-tific than creationists because theynever said the designer was Yahweh6000 years ago. Call it a ‘theory’ ofintelligent design and it sounds evenmore scientific. Then there was whatappeared to be a worthy scientific

concept of “irreducible complexity”.Creationism was back in the ring foranother swing.

Irreducible complexityThe logic of irreducible complexity orthe “purposeful arrangement ofparts” is attractively simple and goeslike this:

• You take a selected example of aspecific part of some living thing,IDers’ favourite being the propulsionsystem of a bacterium that lives inwater — it spins a hair-like projec-tion as a kind of propeller.

• You identify the components of thepropulsion system. (Computer ani-mation comes in very handy for thisand makes it all look much moremechanical than the slimy reality.)

• You then argue that if you removeany of the bits, the whole thing isuseless. Their favourite illustrationis a mousetrap. (By this definition,my Lada was not irreducibly com-plex, because it made progress eventhough numerous parts had failed,rattled loose or had never been in-stalled during manufacture.)

• Next point is that none of thesecomponents are of any use by them-selves.

• Selection pressure would not haveproduced them.

• You only get a result if all the partsturn up simultaneously to create theworking system.

• Evolutionary theory cannot explainthe sudden appearance of an irreduc-ibly complex working system!

• There must have been a designer.

• But who is was the designer? In-stead of mentioning Yahweh, youthen make the ever-so-’umble obser-vation that science cannot answerthis question.

ID got legs because the first fourpoints sound like reasonable scientificpropositions and like any scientificidea, evolution must be open to scru-tiny.

No skeptic could complain about

an assertion that a life form appearedto defy the principles of evolutionarybiology. A scientific advancementoften begins with the discovery ofsomething that does not quite fitwithin the existing laws, even thoughthey may have done a great job ex-plaining what has been considered sofar. Newtonian physics was fine up toa point, but then…. The problem forID was that as science, it never gotbeyond being a question: ‘how do youexplain this irreducibly complex sys-tem?’ It was devoid of a scientificanswer.

In this respect, it was no improve-ment on creationism and creationscience. By tracing the origin of ID,the Judge showed that as positiveproof of something, it goes no furtherthan Thomas Aquinas nearly 800years ago who reasoned: wherevercomplex design exists, there musthave been a designer; nature appearscomplex and must therefore have hada designer.

The only difference is that ID offi-cially refrains from saying that thedesigner is God. ‘Man was created yesI know; because the Bible tells me so’is not a scientific statement. Nor is ‘Idon’t belieeeeeeeeve it! It looks de-signed so it must BE designed’. To theextent that each version of creation-ism contains any semblance of scien-tific thinking, it consists only of at-tacks on evolution.

Poor logicLogically, ID could never be persua-sive, even with the most compellingexample of irreducible complexity,until the biologists had given up andconceded: ‘Yes, the principles of evolu-tionary biology cannot explain that.Not ever.’ A basic logical flaw, whichProfessor Behe says he wishes toaddress in future work, is that themutations that are part of the processof natural selection, could produce areducibly complex system — one thathad more bits than necessary.

This can happen when a new partsupplants the function of another.There would be slight selection pres-sure toward getting rid of the ‘reduc-ible’ components. You would expect tosee them disappear but it might take


a long time and their presence mean-while is not contrary to evolutionaryprinciples. (As far as we can tell, thehuman body is reducibly complex. Tohave an appendix or not to have anappendix? And since I am created inthe image of God I know what helooks like and I wonder what he useshis nipples for — body piercing?)

So if you found an indubitable in-stance of irreducible complexity, thatwould not prove that it must all havehappened at the same time. It couldhave evolved from a more complexcreature. As the Judge noted:

To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolu-tion is imperfect. However the fact thata scientific theory cannot yet render anexplanation on every point should notbe used as a pretext to thrust an un-tested alternative hypothesis groundedin religion into the science classroom,or to misrepresent well establishedscientific propositions.

Argument full of holesThe length of the trial allowed bothsides to explore these arguments ingreat detail and the brevity of thisarticle should not connote that ID gotshort shrift. The Judge found space totackle each of irreducible complexity’sprize examples — the bacterialflagellum, blood clotting and the im-mune system.

Even the embarrassing cross-ex-amination is included, eg, Behe hadclaimed in 1996 that science wouldnever find an evolutionary explana-tion for the immune system; but inthe trial he was confronted with fiftyeight (count ‘em — 58!) peer reviewedpublications and numerous textbooksto the contrary. Nevertheless for himthis was not “good enough”.

The experts called to support IDpainted themselves into a corner onwhat is or isn’t science. We all knowfrom school debating that the personwith nothing better to say will cavilabout definitions.

From p 68, bearing in mind thatthe IDers were the Defendants: First,defence expert Professor Fulleragreed that ID aspires to “change theground rules” of science and leaddefence expert, Professor Behe, ad-

mitted that his broadened definitionof science, which encompasses ID,would also embrace astrology. Moreo-ver defence expert Professor Minnichacknowledged that for ID to be con-sidered science, the ground rules ofscience have to be broadened to allowthe consideration of supernaturalforces.”

“Ground rules” is a concept we willhear about again. Australian propo-nents of ID will continue to say thatit is all about freedom and balance.These are worthy goals but you donot achieve them by infiltrating partof one subject into another. When I goto an Italian class, I want to learnItalian; not German. Seriouslythough, why would you contaminatean Italian class with German? Only ifyou wanted to impede the teaching ofItalian.

Unfortunately, this is what some ofthe ID academics are up to, for alltheir impressive titles and bigglasses. One of the “Governing Goals”of the Discovery Institute, whichmade the DVD, is “to defeat scientificmaterialism and its destructivemoral, cultural and political legacies”and “replace materialistic explana-tions with the theistic understandingthat nature and human beings arecreated by God.”

Incomparable evaluationThe trial has dealt with each attackon evolution, including each allegedinstance of irreducible complexityfeatured in the DVD. ID has been putthrough the incomparable evaluationof an adversarial trial where theJudge had the assistance of the bestexperts each side could find, withneither party being short of money.Each supposed example of irreduciblecomplexity has been explained by theexisting principles. None of the thingsraised by the Defendants in Courtdefied evolutionary biology.

Outright rubbish ...While the novelty of ‘irreducible com-plexity’ deserved a moment’s thought,there is some outright rubbish thatgoes with it, eg the assertion thatvast numbers of evolutionary biolo-gists are recanting and turning to ID.

Despite their considerable resources,the producers of the DVD could onlyassemble a small assortment of aca-demics who tell us things like theyfind ID ‘more satisfying’ than evolu-tion. A few of the lads have qualifica-tions in areas of dubious relevancesuch as philosophy and law. The workof the ID biologists has not receivedthe scientific recognition frequentlyclaimed.

Religious people often suggest thatthey have an inherent moral superi-ority to atheists. I am not so sure. Aperson who knows that they mustlive with the consequences of theiractions could act just as morally asone who thinks that accepting Christabsolves sin.

...and downright liesThe case is food for thought when wesee the shabby conduct of the morereligious Board members. Bonselltold the Court he had no interest inCreationism, while a trail of docu-ments, such as meeting minutes,recorded the opposite. Member Buck-ingham is immortalised as a buffoonthat Voltaire or Thackeray wouldhave been proud to have devised. Heremoved a mural depicting evolutionfrom a classroom and “gleefullywatched it burn.” He lied to concealthe fact that copies of the Pandasbook had been donated by creation-ists. He advocated the teaching ofcreationism and ID with gems like:

I challenge you to trace your roots tothe monkey you came from… 2,000years ago someone died on a cross.Can’t someone take a stand for him?

What next, equal time for theSpartacus theory of workplace rela-tions?

The resultID has now been legally classified asa tool for preachers not scientists.There is nothing wrong with being atalented preacher. As an aspiringadvocate, I see in such people a skillthat I lack; but let’s not forget thatacademics like Behe purport to bescientists not preachers.

Ironically what they fail to realiseis that behind things like the ID

ID on Trial


Policy and the DVD is a mindsetwhere science and religion are inconflict and indeed, that religionmust be protected from science. It is acontemptibly primitive world viewand it leads to other errors, such asthe “contrived dualism” whereby theonly two possible origins for life aresaid to be Godless evolution or Gen-esis creation. Next boo boo is to treatany query about evolution as positiveevidence for Genesis creation.

The US does not have a monopolyon people who want to treat the Bibleas a science textbook. Many of thesepeople are ignorant about science anddon’t want to know. They are not veryscholarly about their Bible either.Where does it preclude a process ofnatural selection leading to new spe-cies? I have not received an answer tothat question even from the mostunrepentant fundamentalist I havebeen able to find - (yes, Peter I meanyou). In a classic example of the con-trived dualism noted by the Judge,Peter proudly told me that he wouldnot abandon his Bible and when itcame to evolution, there was a simplechoice: God or Man.

No intellectually honest Christianhas anything to fear from scientificwork on evolutionary biology. Most ofthem realise that. Let us persuadethe remainder while keeping an eyeout for the fundamentalist minoritywhose true agenda is to impede theteaching of evolution. Their zealotryis born of ignorance. People like Peterhave probably not read even the firstparagraph of On The Origin of Spe-cies. They might settle down if theyat least read the last paragraph ofthat book.

There is grandeur in this view of life,with its several powers, having beenoriginally breathed by the Creatorinto a few forms or into one; and that,whilst this planet has gone cycling onaccording to the fixed law of gravity,from so simple a beginning endlessforms most beautiful and most won-derful have been, and are beingevolved.

Volunteers Needed

Relevant web sites:www.thecochranelibrary.com

This is where the output of our work goes. The Cochrane Library is free to all Aussies .www.mrw.interscience.wiley.com/cochrane/clabout/articles/ARI/frame.html

This is one of the links to othe Group (one of the 50 ‘entities’ that make up the Collabo-ration round the globe)

Prof Chris Del Mar, Dean of the Fac-ulty of Health Sciences and Medicine,Bond University, and Lilian Derrick ofthe Gold Coast Skeptics, have beenexploring methods of finding peoplewho will make good hand-searchersand supporters for the Cochrane Col-laboration. What better way than byenlisting the skillful aid of the sub-scribers to the Skeptic?

The following information comesfrom the Cochrane web site. If youcan help, please log on and see whatis required.

The Cochrane Collaboration is aninternational organisation that aimsto help people make well-informeddecisions about health care by prepar-ing, maintaining and promoting theaccessibility of systematic reviews ofthe effects of healthcare interven-tions. It is a not–for–profit organisa-tion, established as a company, lim-ited by guarantee, and registered as acharity in the UK.

It is estimated that somewherebetween 20,000 and 30,000 healthrelated journals are published world-wide, which makes the job of keepingup to date with recent discoveries andbest practices a great challenge. Gooddecisions about health care rely ongood reviews of the results of re-search. One option for health careworkers in managing this deluge ofinformation is to read systematic re-views. However, some reviews may bepoorly written or biased in their con-clusions. This can lead to delays inimplementing health care practicesthat have been shown to be highlyeffective and the persistence of prac-tices shown to be ineffective or possi-bly harmful.

The current trend in many parts ofthe world is for clinical practice to beevidence-based. Cochrane reviews,

which use objective, reproduciblemethods to identify eligible studiesand to analyse data, are widely ac-cepted as the gold standard in sys-temic reviewing. Prior to conducting asystematic review, all relevant re-search reports must be located, and inthe case of the Cochrane Collabora-tion, this generally means reports ofcontrolled clinical trials (CCTs), inparticular randomised controlled tri-als (RCTs). The RCT is regarded bymany as being the most effectivemechanism for critically evaluatingthe effects of health care practices.Cochrane reviewers rely on severalmeans of searching for relevant re-ports, including both electronic andmanual methods. For complete identi-fication of published reports, thereappears to be no alternative to a page-by-page search of the healthcare lit-erature. This manual searching isknown as ‘handsearching’.

The Cochrane Library is the pri-mary vehicle for disseminating thework of the Cochrane Collaboration.It is a regularly updated collection ofevidence-based practice databasesthat includes The Cochrane CentralRegister of Controlled Trials(CCRCT). CCRCT is a bibliographicdatabase of controlled trials identifiedby contributors to the Cochrane Col-laboration and others, as part of aninternational effort to systematicallysearch the world’s health care jour-nals and other sources of information,and create an unbiased source of datafor systematic reviews.Handsearchers make a vital contribu-tion to CCRCT (also known as CEN-TRAL), by ensuring that reports ofCCTs and RCTs are identified fromjournals and conference/symposiumproceedings that cannot be searchedusing electronic databases.

Notice


FluorideMost water supplies contain the fluo-ride ion. For decay prevention, theoptimal concentration is between 0.6and 1.1 parts per million (ppm —equivalent to mg per litre), depend-ing on the climate and therefore theexpected ingestion of fluids. Mostsurface water supplies (eg rivers) inAustralia contain less than optimallevels, so more fluoride needs to beadded to reticulated supplies toachieve the correct level. Somegroundwater (eg bores) suppliesthroughout the world can be too highin fluoride and this means the wateris unsuitable until the fluoride isremoved.

The single most important ad-verse effect of water fluoridation isdental fluorosis. This is caused by aninterference in the formation of thehard outer layer of the tooth, theenamel, which occurs if the amountof fluoride ingested during toothformation is too high. It can varyfrom very mild white patches of noconcern to severe pitting and stain-ing. Such extreme cases of pittingare very rare in Australia.

The controversyThe water fluoridation ‘controversy’seems to be gaining the same statusas the abortion or voluntary eutha-nasia debates. Why is this? Is it openversus closed minds? Do peoplemake up their minds early andrefuse to undertake any more rigor-

ous reading on the subject, let alonereading that is contrary to the opin-ion they have already formed?

Is it the emphasis some peopleplace on the emotional vs the ra-tional side? Are some people unableto allow more rational assessmentsto overcome the strong emotionalarguments regarding, say,populations getting ‘mass medica-tion’?

Or is it worse than that? Is bad,unbalanced, misleading informationbeing put forward?

Some dentists dismiss opponentsas cranks and idiots. Some membersof the public swallow illogical andsometimes mischievous argumentsagainst fluoridation as easily as theywould swallow water.

So, are the health professionalsmisleading us by ignoring dangers?Are the anti-fluoridationists mis-leading us by overstating the risks?

The researchMany reports based on literaturereviews support the optimal-dosefluoridation of water supplies.Health authorities — those peoplewhose job it is to analyse issues suchas this and make recommendationsto the decision makers – are satisfiedthat it is a safe, economical, effectiveand equitable public health initia-tive.

Some researchers point to theneed for further research funding tocontinue to monitor populations for

Fluoride:Is it Really That Hard to Swallow?

Don Wilson is a private dental practitionerin Adelaide. He is the former Chairman ofthe Australian Dental Association’s OralHealth Education Committee and continuesto have a personal interest in the subject ofwater fluoridation.

Feature

Shining the light of scienceinto dark cavities


any signs of adverse consequences.Most agree with this position al-though the cynics say that this is aplea for more funding from research-ers in the field, and that becausefluoride exposure has been with usfor decades and no new adversehealth effects have been noticed.More research should not receiveany priority over more serious andreadily identified health concerns toa community.

However, there remains a dissent-ing view. This dissent is voiced inAustralia by Dr Mark Diesendorf.He has been prominent in publicdebates and submissions and hasbeen critical of research and the con-clusions of that research. He is aSenior Lecturer at the Institute ofEnvironmental Studies at the Uni-versity of New South Wales [i].

It is not known whether a closecritique has ever been made of DrDiesendorf ’s opinions. This papersets out to examine some of them inan attempt to do an Ockham’s Razoron the subject — to strip away allthe irrelevant layers and get to thecore elements that should be of con-cern to local communities who areconsidering continuing or removingfluoride from their water supply.

Dr DiesendorfOne can look to the Internet and findDiesendorf articles that go back tothe 1980’s[ii]. One in particular[iii]

caused more than a ripple in re-search circles because it essentiallypostulated that the decline in childdental decay rates was the same influoridated and non-fluoridated cit-ies in Australia so it could not beattributed to water fluoridation.

This opinion — that there was noevidence for continuing water fluori-dation — clouded the issue, espe-cially when it was presented by wayof submission to the National Healthand Medical Research Council(NHMRC) in 1989. However, in1991, the NHMRC concluded thatDiesendorf ’s analysis was “simplisticand uninformative” and that there“is a failure to conduct any formalhypothesis tests in support of theassertions”. The crux of the criticism

of Diesendorf ’s work was related tothe statistical analysis — he hadused descriptive time series analysisrather than a formal statisticalevaluation. Interestingly, in the 1986Ecologist[ii] article, he had referred tohimself as “a principal research sci-entist in the CSIRO Division ofMathematics and Statistics”.

This also prompted ProfessorJohn Spencer, then head of the Aus-tralian Institute of Health and Wel-fare’s Dental Statistics and ResearchUnit (now ARCPOH) based at Ad-elaide University to undertake afurther study (1996)[iv] to re-examinethe role of water fluoridation in de-cay prevention. The study comparedthe decay rates in Brisbane (no wa-ter fluoridation) with those inTownsville (fluoridated since 1964)and Adelaide (fluoridated since1971). It demonstrated a clear ben-efit for Adelaide and Townsville,especially in children, and offeredevidence that the benefit is greaterin lower socioeconomic groups.

Australasian ScienceIn September 2003, Dr Diesendorfwrote an article for AustralasianScience magazine which was entitled“A kick in the teeth for scientificdebate” and which was announcedby the magazine as follows: “MarkDiesendorf says that authorities arerefusing to acknowledge evidence ofthe harm caused by water fluorida-tion — and its lack of efficacy”.

This article was effectively a listof the major objections that DrDiesendorf continues to hold aboutwater fluoridation. But it containedmany misleading statements, half-truths, omissions of key informationand, again, a poor statistical analy-sis. The next sections examine someof those claims as laid out in his arti-cle.

FluorosisDr Diesendorf pointed out that onerigorous study, the University ofYork Review (2000) “estimates thatup to 48% of children in fluoridatedareas have some form of dentalfluorosis”. He failed to include theremainder of the quoted sentence

which stated “…and 12.5% (95% CI7.0, 21.5) for fluorosis of aestheticconcern”. This is quite significantbecause in Australia dentists reportvery little restorative activity thesedays for the correction of fluorosis.As well, the full context balances therisk of an occasional white patchagainst the lack of decay in thesemouths. Some young patients evenreport a liking for the whiteness oftheir teeth.

He then discussed skeletal fluoro-sis, a bone condition also caused byhigh fluoride ingestion (eg from over4 ppm fluoride in water supplies). Helooked to India and China where heclaimed cases of skeletal fluorosisare seen at water levels of only 1ppm. He then stated “…naturallyoccurring fluoride is regarded as achronic poison in India and China,where the main issue is how to re-move it from drinking water as effec-tively and cheaply as possible.” Nomore explanation is given. This is aquite unforgivable half-truth whichmisleads the reader because heleaves out crucial information whichputs the India/China experience intocontext.

China has some groundwatersupplies that are over 8 ppm. Aswell, there is an enormous industrialfluoride pollutant problem (from coalcombustion) which enters water sup-plies and the food chain and is eveninhaled. Water fluoridation underthese conditions is absolutely con-traindicated and fluoride must beremoved from any high level watersupplies to make it usable.

In India, if surface collection ofwater fails (monsoons), groundwatersupplies are often used to fill damsand supplement supplies. Oftenthese subsurface water supplies arevery high in fluoride and need to bediluted with water from other re-gions or the fluoride must be re-moved before the water is usable.These are appropriate actions forconditions in those countries and arenot experiences that we have in Aus-tralia. Furthermore, there are noreported cases of skeletal fluorosis inAustralia caused by ingestion offluoridated water.


Safety marginsDr Diesendorf makes the point thatwith regard to the toxicology of anyproduct, the safety margin should beat least 100 times the exposure level.The reason is related to safety — tomake it extremely hard to reach anunsafe level. He states that withfluoride, the USA’s unsafe level forfluoride in drinking water is set at 4ppm, or only 4 times the averagewater fluoridation level of 1 ppm soit is possible for people to reach anunsafe ingestion over a period. How-ever, on that basis, the ambient levelof water supplies (eg, in RiverMurray water it is about 0.3 ppm)would need to be reduced to .04 ppmto comply with the 100 times safetymargin. Neither Dr Diesendorf norany other person has ever called forthe reduction of all water supplies toless than 0.04 ppm fluoride, so it canbe reasonably held that a safetymargin of 100 times is an inappro-priate standard for fluoride.

ArthritisDr Diesendorf notes similarities be-tween the early stages of skeletalfluorosis and the symptoms of arthri-tis. He then postulates that the in-creases in the rate of arthritis in thecommunity of 14.7% from 1995-2000could be signs of the early stages ofskeletal fluorosis in the population.This is blatant speculation on hispart in the context of an article thatone would expect to be presentinggood evidence. He makes no pointabout other reasons for such an in-crease. There is no mention of thetotal lack of support for this ideafrom reputable health authoritiessuch as Arthritis Foundations hereand overseas.

OsteoporosisDr Diesendorf then speculates on alink between fluoride dose and theprevalence of osteoporosis and hipfractures. He states that some oste-oporosis treatments consisted of highdose fluoride and this led to a highprevalence of hip fractures. In fact,some studies showed the opposite (areduction) but the technique is nownot commonly done.[v] His views

contrast with those of reputablehealth authorities and yet he doesnot put his comments into context.

Other diseases and conditions

Such as Alzheimer’s disease, asthma, memorydisturbances, migraine, mental disorders, earlyonset of puberty.

Dr Diesendorf outlines some researchinto complex biological processeswhich postulate a connection betweenfluoride exposure and these condi-tions. Once again, this sort of re-search should not form part of aseemingly educated and informedopinion on a subject until it receiveswide support — until it is acceptedand is added to the wider body ofevidence. There is no such support forthese claims, so caution about thespeculatory nature of the commentsshould be made in an article like this.

Proponents dodge debateDr Diesendorf claims that propo-nents of fluoridation regularly refuseto debate the “anti-” lobby and, espe-cially, the prominent US opponent offluoridation, Professor Paul Connett,who visits our shores on occasions.

It is likely the reluctance of healthauthorities and professional groupsto engage such people as Diesendorfand Connett are due to these men’spolemical style. In debate, if oneparty uses half-truths, emotion,omission of key facts and speculativeor misleading statements, then itbecomes quite onerous to present theother viewpoint. A deliberative scien-tific view about safety fails miser-ably in public debate when your op-ponent has just told the audiencethat fluoride may cause cancer inchildren.

Most people with a fair-mindedattitude towards public health preferto put their opinions in carefullyconstructed written submissions.Interestingly, however, despite theirskills in debating the matter in pub-lic meetings and in the media, bothConnett and Diesendorf have beenspectacularly unsuccessful in theirattempts to influence an informedaudience – the health authorities

throughout Australia and the rest ofthe world.

Alleged benefits.It is here that one is reminded of DrDiesendorf ’s previous employment asa scientist in the CSIRO’s Division ofMathematics and Statistics in the1980’s.

The accepted measure of dentaldisease is called the DMFS or dmfswhich is a score of the number de-cayed surfaces (S) on the teeth. Soone tooth may have decay (D), it mayalready have a filling (F) or it may bemissing (M). The capitalisation indi-cates permanent (adult) teeth and thelower case is primary or child teeth.

Dr Diesendorf points out that theSpencer study in 1996 found a reduc-tion of only 0.12 to 0.3 DMFS perchild. He then decides that as thereare 128 surfaces on the adult teeth(front, back, sides and top of a toothare all separate surfaces), then thereductions noted by Spencer repre-sent only about one quarter of 1% oftooth surfaces, a very small benefitfor each child. This conclusion hasbeen adopted by many authors ofanti-fluoride letters to editors in fluo-ride ‘hotspots’ in the country.

But it is a very incompetent, negli-gent and misleading analysis of thestatistic. How Dr Diesendorf fails tounderstand that this is a statisticalaverage over a large population beg-gars belief. It is not measured inquarters of tooth surfaces but repre-sents actual cavities, fillings andmissing teeth over that population.His analysis is as misleading as say-ing that if the birth rate increasedfrom 2.2 to 2.3, it is not significantbecause each woman is only having0.1 of a baby more.

What he would have read (andconsequently failed to mention) in the1996 article is Professor Spencer’sclear and unambiguous statement:“…a difference of 0.12 DMF surfaces(DMFS) per child would translate to300,000 permanent tooth surfaces forthe approximately 2.5 million chil-dren in Australia aged 5-15 years.”This information is of extreme im-portance to health authorities regard-ing workforce requirements and

Fluoride


health funding because a large per-centage of this work will be in thelower socioeconomic groups whichrely more on State assistance.

Vested InterestsDr Diesendorf claims “that powerfulcorporate interests are behind thedental and medical associations thatpromote fluoridation with religiousfervour…” and he goes on to implynot a conspiracy, but a “conjunctionof professional, corporate and politi-cal interests” in that the sugar indus-try benefits from the idea of “a magicbullet to stop tooth decay” , the phos-phate fertiliser industry benefits byhaving a market for its fluorideproducts that otherwise would haveto be disposed of and the aluminiumindustry “which had an image prob-lem with the atmospheric pollution itproduced and funded some of theearly research in naturally fluori-dated regions in the USA that ap-peared to show that fluoride wasgood for the teeth.”

This nonsense is quite offensiveto people who devote their careers tohealth service. At least he stoppedshort of implying a conspiracy.

He then proposes the notion thatfluoridation is supported by healthauthorities because it is “a cheaperway of addressing tooth decay thanrunning effective dental services forschoolchildren and older people, andpolitically safer than tackling thepromotion of sugary foods that arethe main cause of tooth decay.”

Although he is unwittingly cor-rect with the first statement (the lowcost of this preventive initiative is anessential reason for fluoridating), hedeparts from (and insults) healthprofessionals who are quite alert tothe dietary problems with decay andconsider primary care, or prevention,to be the only way ahead for ourpopulations who are living longerand expecting more services.Whether it be diabetes, heart diseaseor dental decay, to prevent is farpreferable than to treat. This is abasic goal in health and if DrDiesendorf rejects this then he is outof step with what communities need.The treatment model has no

sustainability when there are pre-ventive options available.

In fact there was one instancerecently in a country NSW townshipwhere there was a local debate as towhether or not they would allowfluoridation to proceed. It seems thatabout 15 years before, the commu-nity had rejected fluoridation onadvice and representations from DrDiesendorf. But now they were fac-ing the same issue and had beenprovided with clear DMFS scoreswhich showed their children had asignificantly higher decay experiencethat that of a neighbouring commu-nity which had water fluoridation.

One parent stood up and chal-lenged Dr Diesendorf — she saidthat in the late 1980’s he had toldthem not to fluoridate and “every-thing would be OK”. Now what doeshe have to say? The community re-commenced fluoridation a short timelater.

Dr Diesendorf recently partici-pated in a debate on Radio Nation-al’s Science Show regarding “Ournuclear future” in which he arguedamongst other things, the economicsagainst the nuclear power option.The speaker following pointed to thesubject being perceived as “a fightbetween good and evil” and that “thepublic is confused by the pro andanti viewpoints.” Then, alluding tosome of Diesendorf ’s comments, hepointed out that “these so-called factson economics, safety, waste, prolifera-tion are in fact half-truths.” All fa-miliar sentiments.

Ockham to the rescueSo this brings us to the central coreof the argument, the basic issuesthat a community needs to considerwhen looking at fluoridation. Re-membering that large parts of Aus-tralia have been fluoridated for over25 years now, communities shouldapproach their own decision by look-ing at the following:

1. The mass medication argument.This is an issue that the communityneeds to agree with almost in aphilosophical sense. The emotionalargument says that mass medica-tion is naturally bad or unaccept-

able and there’s an end to the dis-cussion. The term “mass medica-tion” is a carefully constructedeuphemism – it sounds bad. Therational approach is to ask what arethe risks and benefits. Fluoridationdoes reach anyone who drinks tapwater and/or consumes productscontaining fluoridated water. Thereare precedents of which the commu-nity has little knowledge (folates inmargarine, iodine in salt). So itcomes down to this. Is a communitywilling to accept that the addition offluoride to their water supply willtarget everyone whether their decayrisk profile is high or not? Am I, as aconsumer, willing to drink fluori-dated water even though, as a den-tist, I am likely to be able to controlmy decay risk in other ways? Can Idrink it knowing that the benefit isfor others in the community whoneed it more than me? Answer: ab-solutely.

2. What decay rates are being expe-rienced by the particular commu-nity compared with others in theirregion, state or country? If a com-munity has an equivalent decayrate to a fluoridated region, thenthere may be no argument to fluori-date. But it is usually higher in non-fluoridated areas.

3. Communities need to accept thattheir own state health authoritiescan provide them with an up-to-daterisk-benefit analysis of the wholeissue so they don’t feel the need todo it themselves by way of invitingsubmissions and representationswhich invariably do not provideclarity but rather confusion. Suchan analysis should include

a. risks of fluoridating eg,fluorosis,

b. benefits of fluoridating eg,decay reduction

c. risks of not fluoridating eg,costs, risks and harm of treatment

d. benefits of not fluoridatingeg, no cost to the local Council, po-litical benefit.

Continued p 24 ...


Water Fluoridation:A Necessary Public Health Measure

The public water supplies to morethan 70 percent of Australians havetheir fluoride content adjusted toabout one part per million by weight(ppm). The actual figure varies alittle according to the prevailingclimate, since more water is con-sumed in hot climates than in cold.Fluoridation markedly reduces toothdecay and is supported by reputablebodies including the World healthOrganisation, the Australian DentalAssociation, the National Health andMedical Research Council and theRoyal Australian College of GeneralPractitioners.

The decay reduction is not uniformacross a community, but the averageimprovement is around 50 percent.Some children will have perfect teethwithout fluoride adjustment, andothers will be “dental wipe-outs” withit, but there will be many more of theformer category and fewer of thelatter with fluoridation. It costs onlya few cents per person per year, andis arguably the most cost-effectivepublic health measure.

Fluoride is added as a trace sub-stance. It has no taste and does notimpart any deleterious properties tothe water. It acts on teeth in twoways, the main one being systemic;that is children aged 15 whose drink-ing water has always been fluori-dated will have stronger and moredecay-resistant teeth for life thanthose from non-fluoride areas. Theother way is the temporary topical

effect whereby the surfaces of teethare improved by contact with fluori-dated liquids such as drinking wateror toothpaste.

But what about those Australianswho do not receive these benefits?These include the residents of somelarge cities including Brisbane andGeelong and many smaller centreswhere the Anti-fluoride Movement(AfM) reigns. This is a worldwidegroup dedicated to the non-introduc-tion and removal of fluoridation. Ithas a list of hundreds of objections sothat when some are dealt with, newones appear, and they are couched intechnical terms to impress “instantexperts” which can include politi-cians, municipal councillors andjournalists. None of their objectionshas withstood scientific examination.

Tasmanian Royal CommissionTasmania, being a leader in fluorida-tion in Australia since 1953, andunder pressure from AfM, set up aRoyal Commission under Mr JusticeCrisp in 1966 to report on the sub-ject. His terms of reference includedthe determination of whether Tas-mania could expect to gain materialdental health benefits from fluorida-tion, and whether any detriment tohealth could result from the process.And if his report should favour theaddition of fluoride to water, he wasrequired to recommend further onwho should make decisions concern-ing it; and whether there were satis-

Graham Keith is an engineer. For the past40 years he has lived at Warrnamboolwhere he has worked for the City Council,Water Authority, Institute of AdvancedEducation and in private practice.

Feature

More light on a perennialargument


factory substitutes to adding fluorideto the water supply.

The Royal Commission advertisedfor persons wanting to make submis-sions and specifically invited expertsin chemistry, dentistry, medicine andpublic health from all parts of Aus-tralia to go to Hobart to give evi-dence. Submissions by correspond-ence were also invited from knownadvocates and opponents of fluorida-tion in other countries. The Commis-sion sat on 66 days, and its tremen-dously detailed Report waspresented in July 1968. Some of itsrecommendations include:

• Fluorides are abundant innature — it is doubtful whether air,water, vegetation or food materialsfree of fluoride can be found. It isvital to skeletal and dental health.Tasmanian drinking waters arerelatively low in fluoride content.

• There is no difference betweenfluoride which occurs naturally andthat which is added. (Note: When amolecule containing a fluoride ion isdissolved in water, it dissociatesfrom the other element(s) of thecompound. As there are many, oftenhundreds, of other parts per millionof minerals in solution, includingcalcium, sodium and silicon, it is notpossible for the human body, nor foran analytical chemist, to tell whichwas the fluoride’s vehicle of entry.)

• The fluoride ion when incorpo-rated into the teeth improves theirstrength, shape and structure; andit makes them more resistant toacid attack.

• With water fluoridated at 1ppm there will be a small incidenceof dental fluorosis (mottling) in upto 10 percent of children, but it is soslight as to be noticed only by adentist. The affected teeth will bevital and decay resistant, and over-all there will be a greater decreasein mottling from causes not con-nected with fluoride.

• It is not possible to consumetoxic amounts of fluoride from awater supply with a concentrationof 1 ppm.

• Water fluoridated at 1 ppm isnot corrosive. It presents no prob-lems in cooking, food processing,agriculture or animal husbandry.

• Fluoridation is designed tobenefit children, and this is a mostimportant fact when considering theblocking of its introduction on theground that it interferes with per-sonal freedom.

• The fluoridation of water sup-plies is the most efficacious methodof distribution. Tablets are not satis-factory, as the regimen is beyondmost parents and there are otherdifficulties; and including it withmilk is even less satisfactory.

• Whether or not to fluoridatecommunal water supplies requires adecision on a major matter of publichealth, and the decision should bemade by parliament. It is not a mat-ter of water supply for water pur-poses, and to regard it as such is toconfuse the principle with the vehi-cle of administration. The decisionrequired transcends the capacity oflocal government. It is not a suit-able subject to be decided by popu-lar referendum and in any case toentrust the decision of such a seri-ous matter of public health to areferendum would be an abrogationof parliamentary responsibility.

Justice Crisp reported that someof the witnesses opposing fluorida-tion were reasonable, including SirArthur Amies, then Dean of Den-tistry at Melbourne University, buthis objections were chemical, whichwas outside his area of expertise,and they were effectively counteredby Professor T. O’Donnell from theDepartment of Inorganic Chemistryat Melbourne University.

Quackery and scare campaignsOn the other hand, in presenting hisReport, Justice Crisp said somestatements by anti-fluoride peoplewere “on the quasi-criminal side ofmedical quackery”. He had been toldthat fluoride caused an increase injuvenile delinquency, the failure ofelementary school children to pass

examinations, and it was undermin-ing Christian standards by the forcesof darkness.

He said that very often these andlike statements were made by peoplewith impressive medical, scientificand academic attainments. He addedthat the list of ailments for whichfluoride had been blamed was soextensive as to beggar description.“From dandruff to tinea, acne toabortion, blindness to bed wetting,sterility to stammering — mostknown ills to which the flesh is heirhave been laid at its door”.

And so Tasmania continued withfluoridation, but it was not all plainsailing. In 1976, an American, DeanBurk PhD, formerly with the Na-tional Cancer Institute, claimed thathis research comparing communitieswith and without fluoride showedthat thousands of people were dyingeach year in the USA from cancercaused by fluoridation. This newsspread like wildfire, and manyplants in the USA were shut down.In Holland, a proposal to extendfluoridation throughout the countrywas abandoned, and existing plantswere closed.

Several reputable organisations,including the Department of RegiusProfessor of Oxford University, stud-ied Dr Burk’s methods and statisticsand concluded, “None of the evidenceprovided any reason to suppose thatfluoridation is associated with anincrease in cancer mortality, let alonecauses it”. Dr Burk had not allowedsufficiently for the differences in ageand race of the two communities.

Victorian Committee of InquiryIn 1979 the Government of Victoriaappointed a Committee of Inquiry tostudy and report on any new infor-mation on fluoridation and to advisewhether there should be any changein the Health (Fluoridation) Act1973. Its Report in May 1980 sup-ported the findings of the TasmanianReport, and in particular repeatedword for word Justice Crisp’s recom-mendation on how fluoridationshould be implemented. It studiedthe question of Dr Dean Burk andconfirmed that his conclusions were


not valid. On the question of theHealth (Fluoridation) Act 1973, themain provision of which is to givethe Victorian Government (actingthrough the Health Commission)power to require the fluoridation ofwater supplies, it found no require-ment for change.

Melbourne has been fluoridatedfor 29 years and it has been an out-standing success, but many regionalcentres in Victoria, includingGeelong, Ballarat and Warrnambool,do not have fluoride. In my hometown, Warrnambool, population30,000, dental health is appalling.Private dentists are overloaded andthe wait for free treatment is meas-ured in years. There is a strong needfor fluoridation, but the Health Min-ister for Victoria, John Thwaites,says “I am in favour of it, but thecommunity must express a wish tohave it”. That means a poll, whichwould be unlikely to win on a simplemajority, since there is an AfM ele-ment which keeps writing to theWarrnambool Standard repeating DrBurk’s discredited findings aboutcancer together with many old andnew anti-fluoride lies. Fluoride isdubbed “rat poison”, andnaturopaths from Geelong writeabout “the side effects suffered byour patients who have drunk waterfrom the fluoridated Melbourne sys-tem.” New York based Professor PaulConnett, sponsored by AfM, held aforum in Warrnambool in October2004 to highlight the “risks associ-ated with fluoridated water sup-plies”. He was said to be touringAustralia at the invitation of scien-tists, doctors and dentists (all un-named) and “Water Quality Aus-tralia” (who are they?). He does notdeal directly with health authoritiesbecause of an alleged conspiracybetween them and the medical pro-fessions to “hush up” problems withfluoridation.

The constant cry of the AfM is“Fluoridation has never been provedsafe!”, but this is a trick as it is im-possible to prove a null hypothesis.

Overdue recognitionMost of this nonsense was circulat-ing before Melbourne was fluori-dated, and if there had been a pollthen, probably it would have beenlost. And a poll’s result would nothave been fair, as those affectedmost by its outcome, children under15, would not be voting.

In 2002, Mr Thwaites attended a“Fluoride Heroes” ceremony spon-sored by the Victorian Department ofHuman Services, the University ofMelbourne and Dental Health Serv-ices Victoria to mark 25 years offluoridation in Melbourne. It hon-oured the five dentists who lobbied,encouraged and promoted the ben-efits of water fluoridation and wereinstrumental in its implementation,which was done without a poll. MrThwaites, Labor Health Minister,presented Dentistry AchievementAwards to the two surviving “He-roes”, and Sir Rupert Hamer (sincedeceased) who was Liberal Premierof Victoria at the time of fluorida-tion, spoke of the courage requiredby his Government in making thedecision. Other speakers recognisedthe vindication experienced by thosewho were politicians at the time,having improved the lives of mostVictorians. At the ceremony, the re-cent action of Coliban Water in im-plementing fluoridation at Bendigoand Kyneton was warmly applauded,but the record makes no mention ofColiban’s Castlemaine (population7,000) which had been excluded bythe selection process.

From my personal experience,dental problems interfered with mystudies and caused me a lot of painin Year 11 at Geelong. It was a longtime ago, but I remember it vividly— I lost 3 molars that year. Thou-sands of children throughout Aus-tralia are now suffering similar prob-lems unnecessarily. Fluoridationshould be implemented whereverpossible without further delay, andthe decision is the responsibility ofGovernments, not their water agen-cies or municipal councillors.

AccountabilityIt is extremely important that peoplewho claim some authority on a sub-ject provide good information and areasonable context. There is a cer-tain blind faith exercised by the com-munity towards scientists and aca-demics and their attitudes. Theyshould not abuse that trust. As well,their reputations depend on the reli-ability of their conclusions, many ofwhich influence the direction ofhealth policy.

Dr Diesendorf ‘seems to be failingon this level – his method seems notso much a scientific analysis but acherry-picking of ideas and specula-tion that support his conclusions —which in any case are sometimesbased on inaccurate statisticalanalysis. It works well in public de-bate, but it falls well short of im-pressing informed audiences, such asthe CSIRO, health departments andprofessional associations.

Can those who peddle poor argu-ments be held accountable for theiractions? Let the reader decidewhether people like Dr MarkDiesendorf can be relied upon, orwhether his views should be treatedwith extreme caution or stronglyquestioned when important publichealth initiatives like water fluorida-tion are being considered.

Notesi. www.ies.unsw.edu.au/about/staff/

mark.htm

ii. www.slweb.org/ecologist-1986.htmliii. Diesendorf, M. (1986): The mystery of

declining tooth decay. Nature 322, 125-129

iv. Spencer AJ., Slade GD., and DaviesM. Water Fluoridation In Australia. Com-munity Dental Health (1996) 13 Supple-ment 2, 27-37

v. www.rheumatology.org/publications/primarycare/number2/hrh0010298.asp

... Fluoride from p 21

Fluoridation


In addition to its flagship Creationmagazine, Answers in Genesis (AiG)produces another publication, theTechnical Journal (TJ). This wasintroduced late in 1984 as ‘a specialtechnical edition of Ex Nihilo’, anearlier version of Creation. Readerswould be excited by the new publica-tion’s ‘glossy four-colour cover’ andwere assured that ‘[e]ven though it isa technical journal, many layman[sic] would also be able to glean muchfrom its pages’. (Creation SciencePrayer News, Jan. 1985, 3)

Although TJ (or, to give it the fulltitle it used for several years, ExNihilo Technical Journal) was pro-moted as being a ‘scientific’ journal ofsome kind — ‘a must for the techni-cal-minded’ – it was clear from thefirst that it would cover a very widerange of issues. A recent TJ describesitself as:An international journal devoted tothe presentation and discussion oftechnical aspects of the sciences suchas geology, biology, astronomy etc., andalso geography, archaeology, biblicalhistory, philosophy etc., as they relateto the study of biblical creation andNoah’s Flood. (TJ, Vol. 19(3), 2005,inside front cover)

So does this mean you can send TJan article disputing the reality of theGenesis creation story/stories or gen-tly suggesting that the Noahic globalflood tale is a crock? Surely you jest.Kindly refer to TJ’s ‘Instructions toAuthors’:TJ is dedicated to upholding the au-thority of the 66 books of the Bible,especially in the area of origins. All

members of the Editorial Team adhereto the … AiG Statement of Faith andmost papers will be designed to sup-port this. (ibid., 128)

The ‘Statement of Faith’ includesthe not-unexpected assertions thatthe Bible is the written Word of God,divinely inspired and inerrantthroughout, and that ‘Scriptureteaches a recent origin for man andthe whole creation’. Naturally, theGenesis Flood was ‘an actual historicevent, worldwide … in its extent andeffect’. (ibid., 2)

Brief HistoryTJ got off to a slow start, with onlyfour issues produced up to 1990. Aclear majority of articles dealt withaspects of the physical sciences — so-called ‘Flood geology’, the alleged de-cline in the speed of light (rememberBarry Setterfield?), criticism of datingtechniques etc.

However, with the successful estab-lishment of AiG in the United States,TJ began to appear first twice andthen three times a year. My impres-sion is that there are now more his-torical/theological–type articles thanthere used to be, but TJ still presentsa superficially ‘scientific’ appearanceand is promoted by AiG as a fully-fledged science journal. The organisa-tion seems to have been genuinelysurprised when they tried in 2000 toplace an advertisement for TJ in thejournal of the Geological Society ofAustralia and were unceremoniouslyknocked back:Our ad did not hide the fact that the[Creation Ex Nihilo] Technical Jour-

AiG’s Technical Journal:Stop Laughing, this is Serious

Brian Baxter is a Melbourne based writer andinveterate observer of the wilder shores ofquasi-religious thought.

Cobblers abandoning theirlasts results in a load of

old cobblers

Article


nal dealt with creation and evolution.We explained that the scientific scope[of our journal] was broad, includingastronomy, geology, biology,geomorphology and a number ofother fancy geological fields … [W]ewere excited to think that more Aus-tralian geologists would soon havethe opportunity to examine interpre-tations of geology from a biblicalperspective. (AiG Prayer News, May2000, 3)

In recent years, AiG has begun toclaim that TJ is no less than ‘theworld’s premier refereed creation pub-lication’. (Creation, Jun. 2001, 35)Prospective contributors are assuredthat the organisation will provide‘refereeing through our contacts’ (TJ14[2], c. mid-2000, inside back cover),and the magazine was proudly de-scribed in 2005 as ‘AiG’s peer re-viewed science journal’. (AnswersPrayer News, Apr. 2005, 15) At first Ithought this unconscionable, but laterrealised that AiG is using terms like‘refereed’ and ‘peer reviewed’ in ahighly specialised sense, the ‘referees’and ‘peers’ presumably all being crea-tionists!

Outside their fields?

[A]ll scientists are laypeople … out-side of their field. (Creation, Jun.2001, 35)

It is often alleged that AiG authorsstray beyond the boundaries of theirexpertise, and with this charge inmind I examined all three issues of TJpublished during 2005. In general,well over half of each journal is com-prised of various ‘overviews’, ‘view-points’, ‘papers’ etc. by authors whosequalifications and brief biographiesare appended to their articles. (Bysome strange quirk of fate, all of theseauthors are male.)

When I began this exercise I wastrying to identify authors who wereclearly writing outside their fields.However, after a preliminary run-through, I decided it would be mucheasier to identify authors who clearlywrote within their fields. I’ll confinemyself here to the 20 or so articlesprincipally concerned with the naturalsciences.

TJ Volume 19(1)Peter Line, author of two articles onthe ‘fossil evidence for alleged apemen’,has an undergraduate major in bio-physics and a Master’s degree andPhD, both in neuroscience, all fromunnamed universities. (42) This topiclooks like paleoanthropology to me.Are neuroscientists supposed to knowa lot about paleoanthropology?

Carl Wieland, the founder of Crea-tion magazine, has MB BS degreesfrom Adelaide University. He’s writinghere about ‘mitochondrial Eve’, butwhy? He’s certainly not a geneticistand he hasn’t even practised medicinefor the last 20 years. (59)

‘Can recombination produce newgenetic information?’ asks authorChase W. Nelson. Nelson is ‘a highschool junior with a particular interestin biology as it relates to evolutionarytheory. He often gives talks at his [un-named] school’s Fellowship of ChristianAthletes on topics ranging from Genesisto Christian love.’ (64) I’m all for en-couraging the young but is this reallythe best that the ‘world’s premier ref-ereed creation publication’ can do?

Lawson L. Schroeder tells us allabout ‘a possible post-Flood humanmigration route’. Is Schroeder an an-thropologist, an archaeologist or atleast a geographer? No, he’s a dentist.(72)

John Hartnett might be the goods.The Physics Department at the Uni-versity of Western Australia (UWA)awarded him a BSc (Hons.) in 1973and a PhD with distinction in 2001.He’s published more than 45 papers inrefereed scientific journals and hiscurrent research interests includeultra-low-noise radar and ultra-highstability microwave clocks. Hang on,what’s this at the end of his bio? —‘This work or the ideas expressed arethose of the author and do not repre-sent those of UWA or any UWA re-search’. (81) What’s your topic here,John? ‘A creationist cosmology in agalactocentric universe’, eh? ‘The ob-servations that place the earth near thecentre of the universe are consistentwith God’s focus on mankind.’ (73)Well, John, if you say so — but I’drather hear it from an astrophysicist.

David A. DeWitt is an associateprofessor of biology and the director of

the Centre for Creation Studies atLiberty University in Lynchburg, Vir-ginia. (96) (How’s Jerry Falwell thesedays, David? — you know, the founderof Liberty University and co-founder ofthe defunct Moral Majority.) DeWittreceived a PhD in neurosciences fromCase Western Reserve University,Ohio, but here he’s consideringwhether ‘a jaw muscle protein mutation[led] to increased cranial capacity inman’, which I hope doesn’t overtax hisknowledge of genetics. And I note thathis references include a couple fromthat well-known science journal TJ.

Bill Worraker, BSc (Hons.) in phys-ics and PhD in engineering mathemat-ics (University of Bristol, UK) special-ises in fluid flow phenomena. Heargues in his paper that: [e]videncefrom [our] galaxy centre suggests thatthe contents of the region may be muchyounger than uniformitarian [ie,mainstream] scientists believe’. (97)We’re getting closer here, as Bill isalso an astronomer – an amateur, it’strue, but I guess it’s better than noth-ing. (106)

Jerry Bergman holds various de-grees in fields such as biology, chemis-try and psychology, his highest qualifi-cation being a PhD in measurementand evaluation, minor in psychology,from Wayne State University, Detroit,Michigan (1976). His (to date unchal-lenged) entry in Wikipedia notes thathe was once denied tenure at an insti-tution ‘because of problems with thestandard of his scholarship’. The entrycontinues:In 1992 [Bergman] received a PhD inhuman biology from Columbia Pa-cific University, San Rafael, Califor-nia. This degree is legal, but theuniversity faced accusations that itwas a diploma mill and had its ac-creditation removed in 1997.

Bergman’s TJ article is entitled:Are “defective” knee joints evidence forDarwinism?’ (107) He is not a kneespecialist, nor does he have thepaleoanthropological background tomake authoritative pronouncementsabout the evolution of the knee, but heseems to have some relevant trainingin biology and biomedical science.However, he draws on several crea-tionist sources and I am extremely

AiG TJ


doubtful whether this piece would beaccepted by any other ‘scientific jour-nal’.

TJ Volume 19(2)Alex Williams has two articles hereabout the ‘inheritance of biologicalinformation’. Williams holds a BSc inbotany from the University of NewEngland and an MSc (Hons.) inradioecology from Macquarie Univer-sity. He also has various theologicalqualifications. Given his interest inbotany, Williams must have receivedsome training in genetics, but look atthe scope of his project: a ‘new under-standing’ of inheritance ‘needs to bebased on biblical creation’ etc.; ‘… Dar-winists [cannot] come to grips with thereality of biological information be-cause they reject the idea of purpose’!(29) Sorry, Alex, but even your risingto the giddy heights of honorary bota-nist at the Western Australian Her-barium doesn’t quite cut it.

Jerry Bergman appears again, thistime asking, ‘Can evolution producenew organs or structures?’ (76) Headvances an argument based aroundthe concept of ‘irreducible complexity’which neither he nor anyone else cansustain. In terms of qualifications, heis a biologist, but is his training exten-sive enough to bear the weight of hissweeping anti-Darwinian conclusions?

Charles Soper is a renal physician(and ex-missionary). (95) He seemsperfectly entitled to write about ‘theparadoxical urinary concentratingmechanism’, but is certainly not enti-tled to present this mechanism as ‘anexcellent example of “irreducible com-plexity”’. However, at least Soperseems to be writing in his field.

Pierre Jerlstrom, a PhD in molecu-lar microbiology from Griffith Univer-sity (and also co-ordinator of the TJeditorial team) and Henry de Roos, anagricultural scientist-cum-biochemist,join forces in an article demonstratingthat an alleged plesiosaur carcasswashed up on the Nova Scotia coastwas actually the remains of a baskingshark. (109) While in my opinion bothauthors are writing outside theirfields, it probably doesn’t matter toomuch as the article seems to havelittle or no relevance to creationism.

At last, a palpable hit! John K.

Reed has a PhD in geology and actu-ally writes an article about geology.(119) Unfortunately, Reed is also thegeology editor for America’s CreationResearch Society Quarterly and hispaper trumpets the virtues ofrescaling the geologic column from itspresent 4.5 billion years to — oh, Idon’t know — call it 6,000 years, giveor take. You see, the Mesozoic andCenozoic Eras could become the Reces-sive Deluge and Postdiluvian Erasrespectively. Looks much better,doesn’t it?

TJ Volume 19(3)A number of authors reappear in thisvolume, still straying beyond theirfields of expertise eg, Alex Williamsand John Hartnett. Hartnett’s conclu-sion to his ‘Cosmological expansion ina creationist cosmology’ is worthy ofnote:…[I]t would seem we have a universethat places our galaxy at the centre ofan enormous spherically symmetricdistribution with all others speedingaway from us. This actually is due toGod having stretched out space like acurtain with the galaxies tied to it.(101)

Carl Wieland MB BS treats us to alecture about ice-cores and the age ofthe earth, but at least this time hecalls in a couple of atmospheric scien-tists, Michael Oard and LarryVardiman, to help him. (51) Oard hap-pens to serve on the board of Ameri-ca’s Creation Research Society, whileVardiman works at the Institute forCreation Research Graduate School inCalifornia. Wieland has a second arti-cle answering objections to creationist‘dinosaur soft tissue’ experiments, ablyassisted by David Menton, a biologyPhD and speaker with AiG, USA. (54)One would like to think that formerfamily doctor Wieland was not theprimary author of these short papers,but then, one would like to think a lotof things.

Jonathan Sarfati writes on ‘plantdeath in the Bible’. (60) You’ll be happyto learn that ‘plants do not die in thebiblical sense’, and that the appropri-ate qualification for telling us this isevidently a PhD in physical chemistry.Botanists need not apply.

Michael Oard (retired meteorolo-

gist), John Hergenrather (bachelor’sdegree in geography) and PeterKlevberg (Bachelor of EngineeringScience) combine their talents in‘Flood-transported quartzites – east ofthe Rocky Mountains’. (76) Where’sthe geologist?

Justin K. Taylor writes about ‘thespeed of matter ’ in relation to the prob-lem (for creationists) of distant star-light. (91) Is Justin an astrophysicist?Actually, he’s a student of mathemat-ics and physics at a US university. Buthe is ‘an amateur astronomer andplans to study astrophysics in gradu-ate school’. Good luck, Justin.

Finally, veteran creationist RoyalTruman, with a PhD in organic chemis-try from Michigan State University,presents an article called ‘Theubiquitin protein: chance or design?’:‘Probabalistic calculations suggestevolutionary processes did not producethe known functional sequences ofubiquitin’. You didn’t convince me,Royal, but you do get a great big el-ephant stamp for sticking to your field.

ConclusionWith the best will in the world, I canidentify only a handful of authors whoare clearly qualified to write the arti-cles presented in the 2005 issues ofTJ. The publication is certainly not a‘refereed scientific journal’ in anymeaningful sense of the term, and tomake such a claim seems misleadingand contemptible.

AiG, of course, sees things ratherdifferently. Jonathan Sarfati has an-nounced that ‘… the [AiG] ministry’saxioms are the propositions of theBible, not the theories of fallible scien-tists.’ (TJ 12[2], c. mid-1998, 150). AndAnswers Prayer News of Jan 2006 (16)warns us of our fate should we hu-manists, skeptics and sundry malefac-tors continue to spread our ‘evolution-ary propaganda’, especially amongschool-children:Jesus said: ‘But if anyone causes oneof these little ones who believe in meto sin, it would be better for him tohave a large millstone hung aroundhis neck and to be drowned in thedepths of the sea’. (Matthew 18:6)


The following scene appeared in afirst series episode of The BlackAdder1, when dogsbody Baldrick’splans really were “cunning”.Baldrick: Moving on to relics, we’vegot shrouds, from Turin; wine from thewedding at Cana; splinters from thecross (his finger gets a sliver from oneof the splinters); and, of course, there’sstuff made by Jesus in his days in thecarpentry shop: pipe racks, coffee ta-bles, coat stands, bookends, crucifixes,a nice cheeseboard, fruit bowls, water-proof sandals... (picks up a piece ofwood that’s partly carved) Oh, I haven’tfinished that one yet.

Percy: But this is disgraceful, MyLord! All of these are obviously fake!

Edmund: Hah, yes!

Percy: But, but how will people be ableto tell the difference between these andthe real relics?

Edmund: Well, they won’t! That’s thepoint!

Percy: Well, you won’t be able to fooleveryone! Look (he takes a red clothfrom his sleeve): I have here a true relic.

Edmund: What is it?

Percy: (unwraps the cloth) It is a bonefrom the finger of Our Lord. It cost me31 pieces of silver.

Edmund: Good lord. Is it real?

Percy: It is, My Lord. Baldrick, youstand amazed.

Baldrick: I am — I thought they onlycame in boxes of ten.

RelicsFrom holy handkerchiefs to sacredsocks, relics are artefacts attributedto deceased religious figures. Thelabel covers a broad range of memo-rial articles, usually classified intothree groups.First Class Relics include physicalremains, such as the bones or hair ofa saint.

Second Class Relics are the posses-sions of an iconic figure, the objectsintimately associated with them. Forexample, the ‘Veil of Veronica’ is asacrosanct scarf, supposedly used towipe the sweat from Jesus’ brow ashe carried the cross, imprinting hisimage on the cloth.

Third Class Relics are Do-It-Yourselfrelics, items that are sanctified whenthey have touched a deceased saint;or items that have a homeopathicholiness, having been brought to theshrine of a saint.

Many churches still venerate rel-ics as commemorative objects, and,like talismans, they are often cred-ited with miraculous powers, such asthe ability to heal or to bring goodluck.

Thousands of alleged relics are inexistence. A veritable Frankenchristcould be resurrected from all of theJesus relics alone; bones, hair, teeth,tears, blood, umbilical cords, clothesand shrouds. The Vatican is reluc-tant to validate relics and who canblame them, when there are oftenmultiple claimants? There are at

Merchandising God:The Pope Tart

Karen Stollznow, when not appearing oncheese sandwiches, brings enlightenment tothe natives of California.

[email protected]

God, mammon and theInternet

Investigation


least three Holy Prepuces inexistence… yes, the foreskin ofJesus. Although, this matterwas settled when C17th philoso-pher Leo Allatius convincinglyargued that the true Holy fore-skin ascended into Heaven withJesus, and formed the rings ofSaturn2.

Reputedly, there are thou-sands of fake nails from theTrue Cross. There are so manyalleged pieces of the crucifixioncross that C16th HumanistErasmus is credited with twounpious punch lines;

1. Jesus must have been crucified ona whole forest, or,

2. there are enough pieces of the crossto build a ship.

As Baldrick’s con job suggests, thesale of fake relics was big businessduring the medieval era. ThomasSerafin, of the International Crusadefor Holy Relics, cites this little yarn:

During the Middle Ages, a travellingmonk, hoping to purchase a saint’srelic for his monastery, found littlesuccess and returned home disap-pointed. Luckily, he soon encoun-tered a merchant who offered to sellhim the skull of John the Baptist.The monk was dumbfounded.Hadn’t he just seen the skull of StJohn in a church during a recentvisit to France? “That was the skullof St John when he was a child,”explained the merchant. “This ishis skull when he was an adult.”3

This reads like skepticism,but Serafin still believes in theexistence of “legitimate relics”and is a self-professed “Knight ofthe Last Crusade for Holy Rel-ics”. Their quest: attempting torevive the Cult and veneration ofHoly Relics (through exhibits,retreats and conferences) andrescuing and protecting HolyRelics from profanation andneglect. They seek to: continue tohelp locate and rescue genuinerelics that have fallen into pawnshops and occult stores andbring to the attention of the localOrdinary (Bishop) any Catholics

selling relics in stores, mail order, orthe Internet.

Many churches still house thesesupposedly ‘legitimate’ relics, and inthese surroundings, they hold cred-ibility for the believer. Thesechurches are unwilling to authenti-cate their relics using dating meth-ods; not because this would discredittheir claims, but this would damagethese fragile goods! While the Vati-can still tacitly approves of the dis-play of relics, they oppose the sale ofsacred items; so much so, that theyhave a name for the act: simony. Butthis rule only extends to First andSecond Class relics. So, with theserestrictions in mind, how do we mer-chandise God today?

Religious apparitions seem toform a Fourth Class Relic category,replacing the Holy Grail as a mod-ern-day beacon for the faithful. Inpopular usage, apparition refers to abroad range of miraculous phenom-

ena, including: physical‘materialisations’, ie, reportedvisions of Jesus or the VirginMary (but never God!). An ap-parition can also be the mani-festation of an iconic figurethrough a statue or image, eg, aweeping statue of the Madonna,oil seeping from the image of asaint or ‘bleeding’ stigmata. Anapparition can also be an illu-sion, an object perceived to bearthe likeness of a religious fig-ure. For example, the ‘Nun

Bun’, a cinnamon bun that ‘resem-bles’ Mother Theresa (for an excel-lent metamorphosing image, visit:www.indiana.edu/~jkkteach /P335/nunbun.html). Ironically, on Christ-mas day 2005, the Nun Bun wasstolen from the Nashville, Tennesseecoffee shop where it was displayed.The bun and thief are still at large.

PareidoliaTo the skeptic, this latter category isknown as pareidolia. This term re-fers to the phenomenon whereby avague, random stimulus is perceivedto resemble a specific, recognisableform, usually an animate or iconicfigure. Whether we see a face in theclouds or a shape in the tea leaves,our instinctive ability to respond topareidolia is the whole basis of theRorschach ink blot test (although itdoesn’t necessarily reveal our deep-est psyche. This psychological analy-sis is an interpretation of an inter-

pretation).Infamous examples such as

the ‘Face on Mars’, the ‘PeteTownshend potato’ and the ‘BobHope potato chip’ confirm thatthis phenomenon is by no meansrestricted to religious themes.Perceiving pareidolia is intuitiveprofiling, our propensity tosearch for the familiar in theunfamiliar. Carl Sagan links thefacility to a survival mechanism4.We recognise similarities andoften superimpose a mental im-age onto a visual image. We dis-cover patterns in nature andmatch facial features with famil-iar faces. Think about the timesyou’ve temporarily mistaken a

You have nothing to lose but your suds

Virgin of the underpass


stranger as your boss in a crowdedplace, when you’ve taken a sickie!

To illustrate the random nature ofpareidolia, our good mate Phil Plait(the Bad Astronomer) writes abouthis experience of having a showerwith Vladimir Lenin. On an other-wise normal day, Phil was washingaway his sins. Upon stepping out ofthe shower, his eyes were drawn tothe shower curtain. What he sawsent a shiver down his spine; “Therewas a face in the shower curtain,looking directly at me”. Unbe-knownst to Phil, he’d had a voyeurduring his shower, none other thanthe revolutionary Lenin. It was acommunistic miracle! Did the Bol-shevik leader bring a message ofsocialism to this consumerist soci-ety? Was he bringing the Iron Cur-tain to the shower curtain? Philquickly admits that this was no par-anormal event but a pattern formedby water droplets on the shower cur-tain. He vows not to set up a bathtubLenin shrine but marvels over theuncanny likeness, “and let me tellyou, my Lenin face is the best exam-ple of this phenomenon I have everseen. Usually, the resemblance peoplesee is vague at best”. For more of thistale, visit: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/lenin.html.

While pareidolia is an intrinsicphenomenon, something we’re ‘hard-wired’ for, the observer’s reactionscan differ greatly. Bob Carroll statesthat, “most people recognize illusionsfor what they are, but some becomefixated on the reality of their percep-tion and turn an illusion into a delu-sion”5. While some were amused atthe resemblance the sweet pastrybore to Mother Theresa, others madepilgrimages to the ‘Virgin Mary’ who‘appeared’ on the wall of theKennedy Expressway, Chicago, in2005. In their thousands, followerskept vigil and paid homage withprayers, candles and flowers, weep-ing before the image and disruptingtraffic. Until council staff paintedover the salt stain. Pareidolia istruly in the eye of the beholder.While many interpreted the hoodedshape as the customary pose of the

Madonna, others likened the stain toa certain part of the female anatomy!

We had our own Antipodean visi-tation in 2003, a Marian apparitionat Coogee Beach headland. The“Coogee Madonna” was an opticalillusion, sunlight reflecting off acrook of a fence post, the shadowperceived by some as the veiled im-age of the Virgin Mary. The cliffturned into a shrine, the faithfulwaiting in the afternoon sun, watch-ing for the image, the surfers watch-ing them. Some years on, a group islobbying to have a church built atthe beach side, but the CatholicChurch in Sydney is less convinced.The unusual outpouring of emotionfrom Sydneysiders has since beenlinked to grief of the Sari Club bomb-ing in late 2002, and social anxietyresultant of the ongoing Iraqi war.

Saviour as savouryTrue to the Bible, Jesus returned toEarth, just not in the form that eve-ryone expected. Jesus ‘appeared’ on aflour tortilla in New Mexico in 1977(near Roswell, if anyone wants todabble in confirmation bias). Al-though the ‘apparition’ looked like a

simplistic, rubber stamped image,the owner enshrined it and even tothis day, thousands of the faithfullycredulous make the pilgrimage toview this ‘miracle’. This visitationpopularised religious pareidolia. Inquick succession, Jesus made ap-pearances on foodstuffs throughoutthe US. But for a while, the occur-rences lessened, or at the least themedia fascination ebbed. However,with the emergence of eBay.com,religious pareidolia has made a fer-vent resurgence. In the beginning,God created a sandwich.

In 1994, Diana Duyser of Holly-wood, Florida, made a fried cheesesandwich, but this wasn’t any oldsandwich:

When I took a bite out of it, I saw aface looking up at me, It was VirginMary starring (sic) back at me, I wasin total shock, I would like to pointout there is no mold or disingration(sic).

Duyser resisted eating any more,and preserved the sandwich in aclear plastic box with cotton balls,keeping it on her night stand. Sheclaimed that the divine sandwichhad brought her “many blessings”over the years, including a casinowindfall of $70 000. Despite the di-vine powers of the sandwich, Duysergenerously decided to “share thiswith the world” or the highest bid-der. And so, a decade later, she listedthe sandwich on eBay:www.goldenpalaceevents.com/ebay_archives/grilledmary01.html.The bidding quickly rose to $28 000before eBay disqualified the auction.They reinstated the auction when itbecame apparent that they wouldreceive their listing fee and commis-sion, “There’s nothing to indicate thatthe seller isn’t willing to give up thischeese sandwich to the highest bid-der”, said a spokesperson for eBay.The item generated phenomenalworldwide publicity, receiving about2 million viewing ‘hits’ before it wassold for a whopping $28 000 to pub-licity hunters, online casinoGoldenpalace.com.

Goldenpalace.com is famous forcollecting notorious online auctions.

The Nun Bun

Crucified Cheetos

Merchandising God


With a penchant for paranormalpareidolia, they also purchased theWeeping Jesus Rock for $2550, theHoly Pretzel for $10 600, the Pope’sHat Dorito Chip for $1209, the HolyPierogi: Fried Image of Christ for$1775 and the Jesus Shower Plasterfor $1999.99. Milking the Cheesesandwich for all it’s worth, Duyseralso listed the “Official Holy Panthat made the Grilled Cheese Sand-wich”. To add to their collection,Goldenpalace.com snapped this upfor a cool $5999.99. Surely thekitchen sink will follow. (For otherbizarre purchases, visit: http://www.goldenpalaceevents.com/auc-tions/)

Is this a good example ofpareidolia? While we don’t have anygenuine images of the Virgin Mary,we have many depictions of her.From a cultural perspective, theseportrayals form our modern ideal ofpurity. However, the image on thesandwich isn’t of a demure womanwith her gaze cast downwards; thecaricature-like image shows a flirty,outward stare that has been com-pared to Marlene Dietrich, CaroleLombard or a Kewpie doll. The im-age on the sandwich doesn’t resem-ble our ‘idea’ of how Mary looked, butpareidolia is often suggestive.Duyser either believes that this ‘is’the Madonna, or she wants us to seeit her way. Mother Mary or MotherNature, whoever made this yeastyvisit, it’s a curious phenomenon thatdeserves investigation. Religiousicon or movie star, is the image realor a hoax?

Typically, pareidolia is imperfect.The ‘Face on Mars’ doesn’t resembleall of the natural features of a realface, it was a vague protrusion, withan indistinct ‘mouth’, ‘nose’ and‘eyes’. Our Lady of Watsonville, an‘image’ of the Madonna inWatsonville, California, is an ovaldiscolouration on a tree, a ‘stooped’shape that could be a penguin asmuch as Mary. However, the CheesyVirgin is an uncharacteristicallydistinct and sharp image. I had thegood luck to examine the sandwichwith CSICOP Investigator JoeNickell at last year’s TAM 3 in Las

Vegas. The supposedly ten-year-oldtoast was framed, behind thick glassand came complete with its own se-curity guard, the ‘relic’ on loan fromGoldenpalace.com. Joe is reluctant toaccuse Duyser of any trickery, butI’m not. But does opportunist equalcon artist? Any further commentarywould necessitate a few scientifictests; until then it remains a curdledpiece of pop culture.

D-I-Y Relics for fun and profitThe Virgin Mary Cheese Sandwichbecame a great gimmick. Ebayersbegan capitalising on the notoriety ofthe Holy Sandwich, using the nameto generate search results for theirmore secular listings.

L@@K! Bicycle and Virgin Marytoast!

Virgin Mary CD of Elvis classics!

Virgin Cheese Sandwich leathercoat — preloved

Imitation is the sincerest form ofgreed. The fiduciary success of thesandwich had spawned a new indus-try of ‘simony’ that was becomingknown as E-Simony, the ‘trafficking’of ‘relics’ through internet auctionhouses. Within days of the sale of theHoly Toast, a friend called. Had Iheard about the Holy Cheeto? Asearch online revealed this lamepiece of pareidolia. A fellow was auc-tioning a “Cheeto” chip that suppos-edly resembled “Jesus’ legs on thecross”. In fact, the chip resemblednothing more than it was; twoCheeto chips melded together. Theowner had just undergone heartsurgery and, with his diet choices,was well on the way to his next op-eration.

When I walked in the convient (sic)store, there was a line because every-one was trying to hit the jackpot forthe lottery…I went to wait in lineand was standing near the bag ofchips. I was looking at the chips andone bag of Cheetos caught my eye. Idecided to buy the bag of Cheetossince it stood out from the rest…Ilooked in the bag of Cheetos andfound this piece of Cheeto that wasshaped like legs… Since this was

found the night before Easter, I be-lieve that this is the legs of Jesus. Ibelieve that the legs represent himwalking and carrying the crosswhen he was crucified and that it isa sign that he will be back. I amrecovering from surgery and I be-lieve that he was watching over mewhen I was taking a walk round theblock and to make sure that I gothome safely.

In the small print, the owner ad-mits that the ‘legs’ are “noveltyonly”, but, “I only asked (sic) thatyou bid seriously on this auction”.Strangely, people were bidding onthis ridiculous ‘relic’. Was this kitschvalue or real belief? And what werepeople thinking about the recentspate of pareidolia? What does ittake to make skeptics of the credu-lous?

Snap, Crackle, PopeMy idea was a pre-emptive strikeagainst pareidolia. In the religiousworld, the most recent and notableevent was the death of Pope JohnPaul II. This is the kind of signifi-cant event that believers link to ap-paritions, so this was a believabletheme. The death of Mother Theresatriggered a plethora of ‘miracles’, thepath to beatification. But where wasI going to find a genuine piece ofpareidolia, on demand? I would haveto fake it. While we might think thatapparitions are often contrived, like‘weeping’ images or ‘bleeding’ stat-ues, Joe Nickell states that “deliber-ate simulacra hoaxing seems rare”6.While Joe once expertly imitated theShroud of Turin in an experiment,(the Shroud of Bing…Crosby), I amno forgery artist.

I decided that my medium wouldbe a Kellog’s Pop Tart, ordained to bethe ‘Pope Tart’. So, I had the wittyname but no ‘apparition’. How wouldI make the ‘relic’? I made some hope-less attempts at fashioning a believ-able image. Like a malevolentMartha Stewart, I tried to ‘sketch’ animage onto the tart. I only succeededin cracking the brittle surface. In-geniously, I dampened the next tart,to press the image onto the surface,


but it became too soggy. Then itdawned upon me…I didn’t have to doa thing. Autosuggestion is part of the‘miracle’ of pareidolia, and peoplewould convince themselves! Confir-mation bias would do the rest. I tooka few digital images of an untouchedpop tart (the last one in the packafter my fumbling experiments). Idecided to use a blurry image, to addan element of uncertainty. Hilari-ously, the photo had an ‘orb’ in theright-hand corner. I positioned thisnext to a photograph of John Paul tosubtly coax people to perceive simi-larities. The natural markings of thetart, when studied closely, appearedto reveal an indistinct face-likeshape. Although, it looked more likeEdvard Munch’s The Scream thanthe Pope!

And so, I listed the following auc-tion to the ‘Relics’ category of eBay:

The Pope Tart

Papal Pop-Tart

Genuine modern-relic!

Bears likeness of His HolinessPope John Paul II!!

We have all heard of the recent spateof religious icons, the Virgin MaryGrilled Cheese Sandwich, the Ma-donna and Child Pretzel and themore recent Holy Cheeto. To be hon-est, I was skeptical about it all. I hadpinned the owners as either out tomake a fast buck or just delusional!Then I remembered the words ofChrist: “Why do you doubt, O ye oflittle faith?” (Mt 14:30). I suddenlyunderstood the true purpose of thisphenomenon! This is God’s way ofreaching the modern person! In to-day’s jaded world, where people areturning their backs on the Lord, Hehas found a solution! God is trying toreach people through the simple, themundane, the ordinary. If peoplewon’t come to Him, He will appear tothem…and in a form they can trulystomach!

This week has seen the passing of ourHoly Father, Pope John Paul II. Thefaithful still keep vigil over his body,pilgrims praying at his tomb. TheLord said, “I am with you alwayseven to the end of the world” (Mt

28:20). He has returned our Pope tous, miraculously, in the fashion ofJesus. He has been resurrected, in amost humble form. For breakfast thismorning, I had two Kellog’s PopTarts, French Toast flavored. I hadset the toaster to low. When I pulledthe Pop Tarts from the toaster, I wasastonished to see that one Pop Tartbore the image of His Holiness! Notonly is the picture of the Lord’s repre-sentative on Earth but it is an imageof the Pope looking youthful andmore refreshed. The other Tart wassecular. I wept when I saw this im-age. The morning sun shone throughmy kitchen window, illuminatingthis holy image. It was an ethereal,religious moment for me and is proofthat there is an afterlife. Throughtransubstantiation, we receive Christ,and now, through this breakfastbread, we receive His Holiness. Andnow I want to share my blessedbreakfast with the world!

Because I have been blessed to haveowned and toasted the papal tart, Inow feel that I can pass it on. I amnot out to make money, merely toshare this wondrous object. So, I amstarting the bidding at the low, lowprice of $1!

To His Holiness, Requiescat In Pace.To you, peace be with you and happyshopping!

I emailed the seller of the HolyCheeto, complimenting his ‘relic’ andgiving a plug to my own auction.

What a remarkable item! I hope itgoes to a deserving home. I too, havebeen blessed with a visitation fromour Lord. See: cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6171209997

The seller responded with thefollowing sage advice.

What a great auction. I think youshould write a press release for it.That’s what I did with my auction.Best of luck to you.

Of course, there was no religiousawe here; it was for money, not love.In the end, the Holy Cheeto wassold, for $102.59, and that much toomuch. But how would people react tothe even more obviously contrivedPope Tart?

Within hours of listing this “mod-ern relic”, the emails started floodingin. The responses ranged fromamused viewers who knew the itemto be a prank, to offended believerswho saw me as ‘cashing in on God’,to frustrated viewers who couldn’t‘see’ the likeness and were obliviousto the humour. In what I call “MagicEye” syndrome, guided by the auto-suggestion, some appeared to ‘see’ animage in the pastry, because theythought everyone else could!

eBay allows for question and an-swer interaction between the sellerand potential bidders. I received aflurry of questions from amused ob-servers. Here are some of the ex-changes:Q: What flavor is the Pope Tart? I’mhungry!

A: It is French Toast flavored. How-ever, if you are hungry, I would coun-sel you purchase something lessexpensive and less Holy to masticate.

Q: Why must we not eat the Pope tart?

A: Well, it is a Holy Relic. Would youeat one of Jesus’ finger bones or asplinter of the Holy Cross? Somewould call this sacrilege. However,purchase it and you can bloody welldo what you like with it! Toast it,nibble it, invert it, sacrifice it, des-ecrate it... at your will.

The miraculous tart

Merchandising God


Q: Greetings! I think that if you lookvery closely, you will see that thisactually looks like Pope John Paul theFIRST the predecessor of JP II. Thelarge Roman like nose, and outline ofeyeglasses. Would you not agree thatthis is a sign from above for the cardi-nal electors?

A: I strongly disagree with your as-sessment. How can you not see theclear resemblance to PJP II? Thestrong jawline, the thin lips, the highcheek bones, the dimple and wellplaced ears! There aren’t anyspectacles...that is part of his liturgi-cal vestments! I believe the Pope’sreturn is a strong ecumenical messagefor religious unity and world peace.Perhaps the French Toast flavor is asign we are in for a FrancophonePope.

Q: I was a fallen Catholic but seeingthis I have refound my way. As soonas I saw this food I prayed and theLORD told me to give exactly $3.27.It’s good to know I’m not the only lostsoul crying out from the dark of adamned world.

A: Peace, Brother. Your story touchedme deeply, as I was once a lapsedCatholic. Recent events have broughtus all back to His fold. Now, I trulyfeel a divine presence watching overme, even at breakfast. Thanks forbidding!

Q: THANK YOU!!! I have had acrappy several months and this drollitem has, and still continues, to givethis tired old Jew boy a hearty guf-faw. Bye the bye — hope it is the ABof Paris — Jew ya know!!!!!

A: Guffaw is a splendid word thatdeserves a revival. I aim to please...and I have scalped Oasis tickets topay off. ;)

Although, not all observers werein on the joke.Q: I think your disguting (sic) to beselling something such as this. Per-sonally, I think you’re on something.

A: Sadly, not on anything. Wish I wasthough... Why does this auction at-tract all of the fundamentalists?!?

Q: you quoted - “I am not out to makemoney, merely to share this wondrous

object.” If this were so (true) then whymerely share this type of idolatry atebay?...of all places really...ebay! thisis so sad and I hope one day you fullyunderstand that by making money offof what you say is from God... iswrong... remember when Jesusknocked the money off a table claim-ing to be from God and his house(Church)... maybe next week you’llhave sugar pope cereal... the way forkids to stomach more sugar coatedlies.

A: Bloody Protestants! Anyway, lookat the trouble Jesus landed himselfin, when he behaved in that wilfulmanner! ‘Sugar pope cereal’? Youhave a devious, sacrilegious mind! Asfor idolatry, G.K. Chesterton said;“Idolatry is committed, not merely bysetting up false gods, but also by set-ting up false devils.”

Q: His Holiness chose to visit in hisimage and your (sic) selling out thismiracle.

A: You’d think he’d do a better job too.It doesn’t even look like him.

The following appeared on a blog;an amazing unity of gullibility andfad dieting:The seller, obviously a scam artist,quotes the bible in order to convincethe naïve ebay browser he believesthis is god’s way of reaching out to afaithless world. Right. As if some-thing so full of carbs could ever beholy.

Why, even Father Allen could seethe joke!

I was relieved after I saw the auc-tion. I read the title and thought it’dbe a Catholic personals ad!

Over the course of the auction, Iposted a new update every day.

NOT INTENDED FOR CONSUMPTION

Important Update! Many have sentqueries asking if the Immaculate Tartforetells the 265th Pope. The Arch-bishop of Florence states: “The newpope has already been chosen by theLord, we must only pray to know whoit is.”

If you want my tip, given the French

Toast flavor of the relic, I would ven-ture that the Pope elect may be aFrancophone.

More Pontiff Presaging... I postulatedyesterday that the Immaculate Tartmay portend the pontiff-to-be. TheHoly Tart of Berkeley is French Toastflavored and thusly, I deduced thatthe new Pope may be a Francophone.It now appears that Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustinger, former Archbishopof Paris, is the prelate tipped to takethe title, according to spokespeopleand bookies. Tres bien! The smoke isstill black… Stay tuned.

Okay. So I was wrong. It shouldhave been the Holy Strudel. I’venever claimed to be psychic (at least,not in this article!).

Ted Gwin, my accomplice through-out this prank, submitted the follow-ing (under the monicker Right Rev-erend Teddy, of Cash of GodMinistries):

SERMON ON THE TART

1 And seeing the multitudeshe appeared to them upon a TARTand when he was toasted his bidderscame unto him.

2 Blessed are the TART bidders be-cause theirs’ is the kingdom of E-bay.

3 Blessed are those who are outbid forthey may re-bid for the TART.

4 Blessed are they which do hungerand thirst after the TART: for theyshall be satiated.

5 Blessed is the winner: for they shallobtain the holy TART.

6 Blessed are the postal workers: forthey shall deliver the TART.

7 Blessed are they whom are perse-cuted for the TART’s sake: for theirs’is the kingdom of E-bay.

8 But I say unto you, that ye resist notgeneric TARTS: but whosoever shallsmite thee on thy right toaster slot,turn to him the other.

9 Take heed that ye do not your almsbefore breakfast, to be seen chowingforth : otherwise ye have no reward ofyour TART which is in thy bathroom.

10 Toast not, that ye be not toasted.


By this time, the auction had onlydays before it would end.

Armageddon!We near the auction endtimes...

Bid today!I enjoyed blending religion and com-mercialism. Then, in a surprisingand hilarious turn, I received thefollowing email.

The Library of Congress would liketo archive this auction record as partof the Library’s research collectionsdocumenting the Pope and informa-tion about him on the Web.

Displaying no critical thinking,the Library of Congress legitimisedmy prank! Of course, I said ‘yes’,completed the online consent formand promptly posted a final note tothe auction web site.

Congress Approves Tart

I have been formally approached bythe United States Library of Con-gress whom wish to archive informa-tion about my tart for their researchcollection, to document the life ofPope John Paul II. This Library“preserves the Nation’s cultural arti-facts and provides enduring access tothem.” I am proud to relay that Ihave agreed to this honor. The tartshall live on, contributing to the edu-cation and scholarship of this nation!

Get your piece of tart history today!Bid now!

The resultIn a country that adores its pop cul-ture, The Pope Tart became instantfolklore. The ‘relic’ quickly becamethe gossip of message boards, blogsand mailing lists. I was called a‘scam artist”, “a liar”, “evil”, “in-sane”, “crazy”, “loony”, “funny”, “agenius” and “sacrilegious”. The Tarteven became immortalised in thepoem, The Ballad of the CafeCheezus by Angus O’Mann, ‘FastFood Poet’.

They traveled there from many lands,some distant and some odd,

To see the Holy Mackerel and the GloryBe to Cod.

To see the famous Pope Tart and thePassionfruit of Christ.

The armored car came once a day, thenstarted coming twice.7

I did two interviews about the‘relic’, and had to decline two others,due to work commitments. One inter-view was with qtelevision, an online‘queer’ TV station. After overcomingtheir initial surprise that I was fe-male, rather than male (an intrigu-ing assumption that most peoplemade), the interviewer asked me,“are you a Catholic?” I broke the icewith the unexpected reply, “No, I’man atheist”. I went on to explain theconcept of pareidolia, urging theviewers to think about the naturalcauses of these phenomena.

In the end, the Pope Tart sold for$46. Measly, in comparison to the sixfigured sum of the Virgin Sandwich,but extravagant in comparison to a$4 pack of Pop Tarts. Not bad, con-sidering it was an absolutely uncon-vincing piece of pareidolia and a bla-tant hoax! Furthermore, I didn’tengage in fervent promotion of thePope Tart, unlike the press releasesof the Holy Cheeto or the worldwidepublicity of the Virgin Sandwich. Isimply emailed the listing to myusual address book and, in the conta-gious nature of the Internet, theword spread. Before eBay removedthe listing, a routine act after 90days of the auction closing, the website had received just over 20 000hits. Amusingly, Internet folklorebelieves the Pope Tart was purchasedby GoldenPalace.com.

In the end, the joke was on me.The winning bid, like the auction,was a hoax. This suited my ethicalpurposes well. And so, I contactedRussell Rush, radio DJ for KXXM,San Antonio. Russell was the secondhighest bidder for the Tart. I offeredto donate the Tart to the radio sta-tion, as a ‘testimony to human gulli-bility’. He accepted.

Did the Pope Tart succeed in mak-ing people more skeptical? Not really.The prank suggested that people canbe skeptical of how convincingpareidolia can be, but not skeptical ofpareidolia itself. In fact, the divine

pastry initiated more of its kind, the‘Jesus Ascension Chip’, ‘Jesus’ face ona rock’ and the ‘Face of God photo-copy’. The quality was of the follow-ing convincing nature.

Jesus Rock for sale. Do I have goodstory about it? Not really. I found itin my driveway. Picked it up, andnoticed that it looked like Jesus (thedark color). Also, if you turn it up-side down, it looks like Elvis with abig nose (the light color). All I cantell you is that when I hold the rock,it makes me sneeze. Kind of weird, Iknow.

The Virgin Mary Cheese Sand-wich, as sponsored by Golden Palace,re-popularised pareidolia; a common,psychological phenomenon. It’s natu-ral for us to search for, and recognisepareidolia. It’s also natural to exhibitan example to others, seeking toconfirm our perception; also explain-ing why people claim to see some-thing, even when they don’t. What isunnatural is when we see beyond thelikeness, and assign significance toit. So, the next time you see Jesus inyour meat pie, masticate it, don’tvenerate it!

Notes1 The Black Adder, Episode Three, The

Archbishop. With thanks to Sup’sBlackadder page for the transcription:www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/8889/bladder.htm

2According to the essay De PraeputioDomini Nostri Jesu Christi Diatribaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Allatius

3 Thomas Serafin — www.ichrusa.com/

4 Sagan, Carl. The Demon-HauntedWorld - Science as a Candle in the Dark.New York: Random House, 1995, p.45.5 Bob Carroll, The Skeptic’s Dictionary.

skepdic.com/pareidol.html

6 Joe Nickell, Rorschach Icons,www.csicop.org/si/2004-11/i-files.html

7 From the upcoming book For Whom theTaco Bell Tolls by Angus O’Mann.

angusomann.blogspot.com/With thanks to Phil Plait for the

Lenin Shower Curtain photograph.

Merchandising God


Following on from Tom Biegler’s letter“Anti-skeptic media” in the Skeptic(25:3) and Mark Lawson’s forum arti-cle “Red Light to Greenhouse” (25:2), Iwould like to discuss some of the is-sues Tom raises about the media “de-bate” on the Greenhouse Effect andGlobal Warming. Although this is nota paranormal or pseudo-scientifictopic, I do think that it fits into therole of the Australian Skeptics to “...seek the evidence” and which “... op-poses the generally uncritical sensa-tionalism presented by the popularmedia”.

The greenhouse debate has beenhijacked, in the media at least, by“environmental alarmists” arguingwith “greenhouse critics”. A Skepticshould take both these positions witha grain of salt. If we are “greenhouseskeptics”, which specific part of thegreenhouse effect and climate changescience are we skeptical of? Before weconsider the debate, then, let’s look atthe science.

I am a physicist by training, withmy research mostly in astrophysics,but about 15 years ago I had a post-doctoral position at Macquarie Univer-sity working on Climate Change, spe-cifically looking a climate records(Jones 1991, 1992, Henderson-Sellersand Jones 1992). As Trillian says inthe Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy“after all with a degree in math andanother in astrophysics what else wasthere to do? It was either that or backto the dole queue on Monday.” Actually,the climate work was an interestingdigression, and I have used examplesfrom it in teaching university physics

students. I have kept an interest inthe climate scientific literature sincethen. I hope that I can explain some ofthe scientific background is such away, that as, Tom Biegler says, thelayman can reasonably expect to fol-low. After the science, I will commenton the public debate.

The Greenhouse EffectThe Greenhouse Effect is a physicaleffect that explains how the atmos-phere of a planet, such as the Earth,affects the surface temperature. It iscalled the Greenhouse Effect by anal-ogy with a greenhouse where the glasslets visible light in and blocks heatgoing out (but it is not a very goodanalogy as a greenhouse works bypreventing the warm air escaping byconvection as well as blocking theoutgoing radiation (Henderson-Sellersand Blong 1989).

Basically sunlight with a spectrumpeaking in the visible part of the spec-trum (around 0.5 micron wavelength)heats up the Earth. The warm Earthradiates away heat energy, so that theincoming and outgoing energy bal-ances in a stable equilibrium. Theoutgoing radiation, however, peaks inthe mid-infrared part of the spectrumat around 10 micron wavelength. Theatmosphere is transparent at visiblewavelengths (except for the complicat-ing effect of clouds, which I will cometo a bit later) while it is not verytransparent at mid-infrared wave-lengths. As it turns out, some of thegases in the atmosphere, such as wa-ter vapour (H2O), carbon dioxide

Greenhouse Debateand Skepticism Pt I

Paul Jones is an astrophysicist and long termSkeptic, who complains that the lack offrequent flyer seats on intergalactic UFOsmakes his job much harder.

Article

Some facts to illuminate anemotional debate


(CO2), ozone (O3) and methane (CH4),have absorption lines pretty muchfilling this wavelength range. This is abig problem for us astronomers, as weneed to put telescopes into space toobserve this wavelength range or onhigh mountains to get above the at-mosphere. On the mountain sites weare restricted to narrow wavelength“windows” between the absorptionlines. The effect of the blocking of theoutgoing mid-infrared radiation on theEarth is to make the surface tempera-ture higher than it would be if therewere none of these absorption lines.

The details of the Earth’s surfacetemperature are complicated by someof the incoming visible light beingreflected away by the surface and byclouds, and the outgoing mid-infraredradiation being similarly scattered.Also, the surface temperature obvi-ously differs from pole to equator.However, the basic idea still holds. Ifwe ignored the effect of the “green-house gases” in the Earth’s atmos-phere, the average surface tempera-ture would be -18°C, whereas it isactually +15°C (Henderson-Sellersand Blong 1989). When people ask mewhat I think of the greenhouse effect,I say that it is a very good thing as itmakes the Earth inhabitable!

The Enhanced Greenhouse EffectThe basic physics of the greenhouseeffect has been known for over 100years, back to John Tyndall in 1861and Svante Arrhenius in 1896. It hasalso been discussed for a long time thepossibility of human changes to theiratmospheric levels having an effect,since the greenhouse gases are sur-prisingly only minor components ofthe atmosphere (the major compo-nents oxygen and nitrogen do not con-tribute). The level of carbon dioxide isaround 300 parts per million (0.03 %)and the burning of fossil fuels pro-duces carbon dioxide on a vast scale.Arrhenius (in 1896) calculated a dou-bling of carbon dioxide would increasesurface temperature by 5°C, which issurprisingly close to the range of cur-rent, far more sophisticated models.However, the calculations of Arrheniuswere very crude and were dismissedfor several decades as faulty (Weart2006) until the theory was revived in

the 1950s. As an example of this in theliterature, I note an article (Plass1959) from Scientific American nearly50 years ago, which discussed themeasured rise in carbon dioxide andclimate change. The article predicted“We shall be able to test the carbondioxide theory against other theories ofclimate change quite conclusively dur-ing the next half century”.

During the 1960s and 1970s, in theera of spacecraft exploration of theplanets, the atmospheres of Mars andVenus were studied in detail, and itwas recognised that the very highsurface temperature of Venus (740 K)was due to the large greenhouse effectof the dense carbon dioxide atmos-phere plus water vapour (Weart 2006).

Increasing Greenhouse GasesThere is now a very good record ofinstrumental measurements of thelevel of carbon dioxide going backaround 50 years, showing an increasefrom 315 to 380 parts per million(ppm) over 1958 to 2004, with otherless direct measurements showing thelevel before 1800 was around 280 ppm(IPCC 2001). This is in good agree-ment with what you would expectfrom the industrial emissions andother human activities such as netdeforestation (where the organic mat-ter stored in the plants is released).Some of the extra carbon dioxide hasdissolved in the sea water, rather thanstaying in the atmosphere. There arealso good measurements of increasesin some other greenhouse gases suchas methane.

So, is there evidence for an increasein global temperature due to this in-crease in greenhouse gases?

Global WarmingThe temperature measured by meteor-ologists obviously varies with timeand place, with the weather and thedaily and yearly seasonal cycles, butcan be averaged over time and place toprovide useful comparisons of climate.In Australia, we are fairly familiarwith climate changes due to the ElNino — Southern Oscillation (ENSO)cycle, where we talk about hot yearsand cool years, or more relevant tofarmers perhaps, dry years and wetyears for droughts and floods.

If we are looking for signs of globalclimate change, then it is necessary tocombine data from a lot of stationsspread over the world. For the statisti-cally-minded, this should be aweighted mean since some areas ofthe world, like Europe and NorthAmerica, have more meteorologicalstations than others and would other-wise bias the result. There are goodinstrumental records going back toaround 1860. For recent years, we caninclude satellite data. The result, ofmany studies, is that the average sur-face temperature has increased by0.6°C over the last 140 years (IPCC2001) with an uncertainty of 0.2°C(see later comments on why physicalscientists quote the uncertaintyrange). This is what we mean by glo-bal warming.

Note that the evidence for globalwarming is not based on the resultsfor one place and one year — the factthat we just had a hot summer inSydney could be just a local fluctua-tion, like the ENSO cycle.

Global Warming due to IncreasedGreenhouse Gases?

So, does it make sense that the ob-served global warming is due to theobserved increase in greenhousegases, given the well-established phys-ics of the greenhouse effect?

Not so fast. There are other effectson the climate in addition to thegreenhouse effect which could alsohave changed. The climate is a compli-cated system.

There has been a slow rise in confi-dence that increased greenhouse gasesreally are implicated in global warm-ing, as more evidence accumulates, forexample, as time goes on and the glo-bal temperature continues to rise, andas the understanding of the othereffects improves (IPCC 2001). One ofthe key dates in the public awarenesswas in 1988, when NASA scientistJames Hansen testified to the USCongress that greenhouse warmingwas occurring. This was arguablypremature and there was a range ofscientific views in the true spirit ofskepticism. However, now over a dec-ade later, the quantitative physicalmodels show a very good fit implicat-ing global warming due to greenhouse

Greenhouse Debate


gases (IPCC 2001) when both naturalcauses and human causes are in-cluded. There is, for example, detect-able short-term cooling associatedwith major volcanic eruptions whichput dust into the upper atmospherewhich reflects a bit of the incomingsunlight. The other effects, such asvariation in the Sun’s output (andhence incoming sunlight) can be quan-tified, and cannot explain the overallwarming. Most of the other effects,such as extra smoggy haze, give cool-ing not warming (IPCC 2001).

Future Global WarmingThe same sort of models that are usedcalculate the effect of historical green-house gas changes (and the othereffects) can be used to predict thefuture global climate, albeit withsome uncertainty. The biggest uncer-tainty is in how much the greenhousegases will change — if we want to talkabout climate in 2100, then it dependson the greenhouse emissions decadesfrom now, which it is very hard topredict. (Will the world’s economy bebased on coal or nuclear power? Howbig will the world’s economy be? Whatwill the world’s population be?) Forthis reason, different emission sce-narios are modelled, varying by abouta factor of 2 in greenhouse emissionsin 2040 to more than a factor of 5different in 2100 (IPCC 2001). Thisdoes lead to a wide range of projec-tions (prediction is probably thewrong word) for 2100 of 1.4 to 5.8°Cincrease. The different climate modelsthemselves differ somewhat in theirassumptions, and give different re-sults, which gives an estimate of ourscientific uncertainty. If we restrictthe comparison of models to the samegreenhouse gas concentration (saydouble pre-industrial levels) thendifferent models have a scatter ofaround 30 %.

Unfortunately, as we go from theglobal scale to predict regional effects(for the example, rainfall for NewSouth Wales), the “state of the art” isthat it is harder (but not impossible)to make very confident predictions. Isay this is unfortunate because suchregional predictions would be veryuseful in planning how to respond.

The public debateWhat I have presented above is thescientific consensus view, based on thescientific literature. Much of the phys-ics background (for example, thegreenhouse effect on Venus) is con-tained in textbooks, and the compila-tion of the recent literature is by theWorking Group I of the Intergovern-mental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC 2001). There is actually apretty clear scientific consensus, ex-pressed by the IPCC (as Tom Bieglersuggests may be the case). Oreskes(2004) searched the scientific litera-ture with keywords “global climatechange” and of 928 papers (1993 to2003) 75% explicitly endorsed theIPCC view or discussed impacts ormitigation proposals and 25% dis-cussed ancient climates (without re-cent, possible human induced,changes) but remarkably none disa-greed with the consensus position.

OK, it is obvious that there arepeople who disagree with the climateconsensus, but their contribution tothe peer-reviewed scientific literatureis much smaller than you would everguess from the public debate. So whatis going on?

Almost all the media coverage ofgreenhouse issues is, understandably,about the political and economic im-plications of any future global warm-ing. (What would be the economiceffect on Australia of global warming?Should Australia ratify the KyotoProtocol?) I have, so far, deliberatelyignored the politics and economics.People do have strong views on these,and I think the science has beenpushed aside in the media by a polari-sation. Environmental activists aremore likely to make exciting andalarmist soundbites (Save the Earth!The Icecaps are Melting!) than thescientists, so the activists have be-come the de-facto spokespeople forglobal warming in the media (even ifthey may exaggerate or misrepresentthe science in their enthusiasm toarouse the complacent masses). Sincethe debate is seen largely as a politi-cal one, there is seen to be a need foran opposing view for balance, so agreenhouse critic is also included. (Iwill discuss in part II why I use the

word critic rather than skeptic). I doworry, like Tom Biegler, that this setsup an emotionally-charged (artificial)battle that leads to unhelpful abuserather than a scientific debate.

I am not being too hard on the me-dia. They do have to be entertainingto get people to read/watch/listen, butthis does give the wrong impression ofhow scientific debates are conducted.I fear that Mark Lawson has falleninto this trap in his article (25:2) — Ithink his fantasy about being eatenby a giant crocodile is unhelpful (ex-cept as a rhetorical device to associateclimate scientists with crazy disastermovies) as is his emotive language(“sin”, “evil”, “Saintly”, “heretics”,“pure faith”). I will comment on hisscientific arguments in part II, andmake some general comments abouthow Skeptics should judge such scien-tific issues.

To be continued in the nextissue.

ReferencesHenderson-Sellers A. and Blong R., 1989,

The Greenhouse Effect: Living in aWarmer Australia, New South WalesUniversity Press

IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Cli-mate Change), 2001, Summary forPolicymakers, A Report of Working GroupI of the IPCCJones P.A., 1991, Historical Records of

Cloud Cover and Climate for Australia,Australian Meteorological Magazine, 39,181 - 189

Jones P.A., 1992, Cloud Cover Distribu-tions and Correlations, Journal of Ap-plied Meteorology, 31, 732 - 741

Jones P.A. and Henderson-Sellers A.,1992, Historical Records of Cloudinessand Sunshine in Australia, Journal ofClimate, 5, 260 - 267

Oreskes N, 2004, The Scientific Consen-sus on Climate Change, Science, 306,1686Plass G.N., 1959, Carbon Dioxide and

Climate, Scientific American, July 1959

Weart S., 2006, The Discovery of GlobalWarming, in Center for History of Phys-ics, American Institute of Physicswebsite, http://www.aip.org/history/cli-mate/co2.htm


The humbugonline postMy sometime co-author (Theo Clark,my firstborn) and I maintain a blogwhich is linked to our book Humbug!Those who know of the book willalready be aware that it is a serious,considered and scholarly tome oninformal fallacies in thinking. Ourblog on the other hand, is of an en-tirely different genre. I quote fromthe header of the blog:

Using a seamless combination of bothpassion and restraint, we expose erro-neous thinking with irony, whimsy,sarcasm, satire, caricature, and occa-sional breathtaking hypocrisy.

The blog address ishumbugonline.blogspot.com

I used the blog back in late De-cember of 2005 to post on a peculiarphraseology which was at that time(and still is) becoming increasinglycommon in newspaper opinion col-umns and in letters to the editor on“highly charged” political issues. Thephrase is “...ashamed to be (an) Aus-tralian”, and the particular issuewhich caused a spike in frequencywas the so-called Cronulla Riots. Theextract below is from the blog post,and it is quoted in full as it providesthe context for the present article.

“Ashamed to be Australian” - Deconstructed

(Posted Dec 22, 2005 at humbugonline.blogspot. com — archives for December 2005)

I have been intrigued recently by theuse of the phrase “ashamed to beAustralian”. It seems to be poppingup in newspaper columns, newspaperarticles and letters to the editor withincreasing frequency. I just googled

the phrase and achieved 827 hits.Scanning through the texts in whichthe phrase occurs indicates that thereis no political or social issue, and nocultural feature of Australian lifewhich does not make some Austral-ians ashamed to be Australian. Forevery Australian ashamed to be Aus-tralian on one side of an issue, thereseems to be another Australian whois ashamed to be Australian on theopposite side of the issue. I think thisover-used and essentially meaning-less phrase is ripe for deconstruction.

The first point to make is that it is alame statement. It is a lame state-ment because it is “unconvincinglyfeeble”, and “uninspiring and dull”(OED). The advocate who makessuch a claim is usually referring to asingle act of some Australians atsome time which he or she finds un-palatable. His or her response to thissingle reprehensible act is to con-demn all Australians for all time —to the point where he or she repudi-ates his or her nationality. Yeahright!

The second point to make is that it isa LAME statement. LAME is myacronym for “Look At Me Everybody”.I believe that this is the real intentbehind an “ashamed to be Austral-ian” claim. The advocate is notashamed at all. Far from it. Thestatement is disingenuous. It is acalculated attempt to position theadvocate on the moral high ground.The relevant emotion is not shame,but sanctimonious pride.

Over a period of a week or two afterthat post, I amused myself in idle

Proud to be Ashamedto be An Australian

Humbug

Jef Clark, an educators educator, is a manwho knows no shame and is not proud of it.His book, Humbug! is the most consistentseller on the Skeptics site.

There’s no shame in beingunashamed


moments by carrying out web searcheson some more “exact phrases”. Asnoted in the extract above, the phrase“ashamed to be Australian” gave 827hits. But when I searched on“ashamed to be an Australian I got awhopping 9230 hits. I later searchedon both “proud to be Australian” and“proud to be an Australian” to see howpride was going vis-a-vis shame.Proud Australians proved to be muchmore numerous than ashamed Aus-tralians. For every individual who hadposted on “ashamed... Australian”there were 2.9 who had posted on“proud... Australian”.

For the purposes of further analysisI decided to make a raft of unwar-ranted assumptions (naturally — I’man education academic). The mainassumptions were (and are) as follows.

(a) Whether or not a poster decided touse an indefinite article was deemedto be of no importance (so hits with orwithout an “an” were amalgamated).

(b) Negations before phrases (eg, notashamed to be an Australian) mightresult in false hits, but if so, it wasdeemed to be of little importance assuch instances would be few innumber, and false hits on one side ofthe “equation” would be balanced tosome extent by false hits on the otherside of the equation.

(c) Multiple posts and hits from oneperson here or there would be insig-nificant and/or partly balanced on theother side of the equation.

I actually followed up on hits for acouple of hours and found that myassumptions were warranted (fewfalse hits from negation, and fewmultiple hits). To provide some inter-esting comparisons, I carried out thesame exercise using “American” inplace of “Australian”. The exerciseproved to be engaging and amusing,and I summarise some of the salientdata below:

Initial findings: ashamed and proudAustralians and Americans

For every Australian poster who was“ashamed to be... Australian” therewere 2.9 who were proud.

For every American poster who was

“ashamed to be... American” therewere 13.9 who were proud

Relative frequency of “ashamed” (percapita)

Oz: US = 1: 3.1

Relative frequency of “proud” (percapita)

Oz: US = 1: 6.5Clearly, there were large differ-

ences between the US and Australiaon the proud/ashamed dimension. Ibelieve the differences are even moreextreme between both US/Australia(combined) and some nomadic peoplesliving above the Arctic Circle. (As aneducation academic, I am inclined tobelieve that this difference is almostcertainly cultural, but I must concedethat it could be in part a function ofdifferential access to the internet andcomputer hardware.)

I examined the content of some ofthe websites and blogs in which thephrase “ashamed to be (an) Austral-ian” appeared, in order to get somequalitative insights into the reason-ing behind such a statement. A repre-sentative sample follows.

A Litany of things we should beashamed about

1. Mandy at MindsayMandy adopts a complex, existentialposition on the Cronulla Riots. (Asnoted above, the “Cronulla Riots”were the original impetus for theplethora of public exhortations to beashamed of being Australian.)Mandy modestly posts a commentdirected “at the whole world”, andstates her position thus:

please, if you’re reading the papersand watching the news overseas,this is not Australia, not Sydney andSydney is not Australia.

She ends her heartfelt plea to theworld with a bold statement (literally— it is in very large print, and boldtype): “We are ashamed”. On reflec-tion, I can only conclude that Mandywas actually one of the rioters — shesays that she is ashamed, but shealso says that the riot was not Aus-tralia, not Sydney and Sydney is not

Australia. The only conclusion thatone can logically draw from thesepremises is that Mandy was actuallyone of the rioters.

2. Sarah at Green Left WeeklySarah reports on the results of anonline petition calling for a “royalcommission into the Australian gov-ernment’s treatment of refugees” (sic).She claims that the phrase “I feelashamed to be Australian” was themost frequently appearing commentin the petition, which was “signed” bymore than 7000 people. I think thegeneral idea is that a “royal commis-sion” would ameliorate the disturbingfeelings of shame in the people callingfor the commission. However Sarahand her fellow petitioners need to becareful here. The findings of the com-mission could be a wild-card. Thefindings could increase or decreaseshame — and no one could be surebeforehand. If the Commission foundthat Australians should be ashamed, Iimagine the people calling for a com-mission would feel vindicated, andtherefore proud. But if on the otherhand, the commission found that Aus-tralians should not be ashamed, thenthose who called for the Commissionmight be even more ashamed to beAustralian.

3. Refugee Hosts at spare rooms for refugeesThis site seems to be an offshoot ofthe one originally set up to allowpromulgation of offers to give sanctu-ary to fleeing refugees within Aus-tralia. I must admit when I firstheard of this social movement sev-eral years ago, and heard the ac-counts from the wannabe refugee-hiders about how they might go togaol for hiding refugees, I thought ofoffering my home as a sanctuary. Butnot a sanctuary for refugees. Rather,a sanctuary dedicated to hiding thehiders of the refugees in the eventthat they themselves had to go on thelam. I thought such an offer wouldrepresent virtue piled upon virtue —and at no cost, since the refugeehiders would be as unlikely to re-quire my services as refugees wouldbe to require the services of refugeehiders.

One poster on the site expresses


“disgust and dismay” at “what we aredoing to humanity”. This might beregarded as an incremental step onthe way to being personallyashamed, since the plural pronounindicates that the writer includeshim or herself among the reprehensi-ble (even though he or she is person-ally against the practice whichcauses “disgust and dismay”).

Another poster says that he/she is“ashamed of the government thatrepresents australia (sic) as for thepeople who help put it in”. This state-ment of shame provides for a usefuldifferentiation between the virtuousAustralians who voted the right wayat the last election and those whovoted the shameful way (ie, a differ-ent way from the poster). I think theimplication here is that a democracyis only shameful if the government iselected by the majority of voters.

4. Backyard MissionaryThe backyard missionary offers astream-of-consciousness blog thatdoesn’t seem to actually go any-where. He/she popped up in mysearch because the movie Bad Eggsmade him or her “ashamed to beAustralian”. I haven’t seen the filmand I have no idea what it is about orwho made it or why, but I certainlydon’t want to see it in case it alsomakes me ashamed to be an Austral-ian. I don’t think the backyard mis-sionary should seek a career as a filmcritic anytime soon. I can just see his/her listings. No star ratings, butevery Australian film in one of twocategories: makes me ashamed to beAustralian or makes me proud to beAustralian.

5. Graham Cornes, Sports WriterGraham wrote an article for the Ad-elaide Advertiser on January 6, enti-tled “Our night of shame demandsAFL action”. I have no interest insports, so I could not bring myself toread the whole article, but I did no-tice that contrary to the title of thearticle, Graham states in the thirdparagraph that “...we should neversay that we are ashamed to be Aus-tralian”. Agreed, but then he goes onto qualify this assertion as follows:“...but many of us came close as we

watched the professional Australianfootballers impose their superior size,strength and aggression on their Irishamateur opponents”. His account wasapparently about the shamefulnessof some kind of Australian footballingteam trying to win a match againstanother nation’s footballing teamthrough the use of superiorfootballing skills. I am inclined toagree that this oafish behaviour(playing football) is reprehensible.But on the other hand, if you can’tstand the heat Paddy, get out of thekitchen.

6. Antony LoewensteinAntony thinks that the day of theexecution in Singapore of an Austral-ian drug trafficker is “not a day tofeel proud of being Australian”. Idon’t think this statement was anintentional non-sequitur, so Antonymust think the two events are re-lated somehow. I would have thoughtthat Singapore would make a morelogical target for Antony’s censure.But I suppose he couldn’t have saidthat he was ashamed to be aSingaporean — since he isn’t (aSingaporean that is).

7. Dave Clark at GeocitiesDave’s post doesn’t pussyfoot around.His header, in 36-point type is “Fail-ings and crimes of Australian Gov-ernments”. The plural “governments”is quite deliberate, and it is refresh-ing to see a non-partisan treatmentof “ashamed to be Australian”. GoughWhitlam and Bob Hawke cop somestick as well the usual target — JohnHoward.

Dave’s article is a classic of thegenre. He berates business and cor-porations for doing “corporationythings”. (He doesn’t actually use theexpression “corporationy things”, butI can’t help using it as shorthand forthe usual anti-business rant — seethe Alec Baldwin “character”, inTeam America, World Police.) Davestates that Australia is not a democ-racy (I think this simply means thatthe party he voted for didn’t win). Inthe world according to Dave we havelurking and sinister secret police.John Howard and George Bush aresaid by Dave to be “the greatest

criminals in the history of human-ity”.

I think with this last statementDave has probably undermined hisargument somewhat. Particularlyamong those of his readers whomight have crossed paths with (say)Pol Pot or Idi Amin. Poor Dave ad-mits that for most of his life he hasbeen proud to be Australian, “...(butwhen) the Howard Government re-jected ratifying the Kyoto Protocol Ifelt, for the first time in my life,ashamed of my country”.

Tiffany the index caseWe’ll leave these minor players be-hind us now to focus somewhat moreclosely on what I am inclined to re-gard as “the index case” of the“ashamed to be Australian” brigade.Tiffany represents in one ramblingpost the reasoning processes behindthe position taken by “ashamed to beAustralian” proponents. Tiffanyposted at livejournal.com

Tiffany, like everyone else in thebrigade is ashamed to be Australian,but she is particularly ashamed thather father grew up in Sutherland, andthat her grandparents still live there.(Sutherland Shire is where the so-called Cronulla Riots took place, andthe “riot” was the reason for her post.)

Tiffany doesn’t explicitly condemngrandma and grandpa for not movingto a nicer suburb before daddy startedgrowing up, but that is clearly theimplication.

In Tiffany’s confused mind,Grandma and grandpa are essentiallyshort-sighted, complacent and inad-vertent evildoers. They should havebeen more prescient back in the oldendays. They should have realised thatone day in the far-distant future someyobbos from Sutherland Shire wouldbe involved in a beachside scuffle, andthat as a consequence, Tiffany wouldcome to experience a momentarysense of discomfiture. A sort of geo-graphic-intergenerational proxy-shame.

If only they had had the sense tomove to Woolarah or Mosman, thesilly old codgers.

Later in her post Tiffany states:

I was planning on taking my grand-

Proud to be Ashamed


parents out to lunch this weekend;thought we’d go to the RSL. No waythat’s going to happen now. Poppypractically lives at the RSL. I hopehe’s sensible enough to stay awayfrom Cronulla for a while.

If I were Poppy, I would make abeeline for the Cronulla RSL. Tiffanyhas made it clear that she wouldn’tbe caught dead there. So it’s the oneplace in the world that Poppy wouldbe safe from Tiffany’s relentlesspreening, posturing and patronising.

One of Tiffany’s commentersmakes the perfectly valid point that“you should be no more ashamedabout being Australian than youwould about being human”. The com-menter’s intent was clearly to arguethat Tiffany shouldn’t be ashamed tobe Australian because that’s no morelogical than being ashamed to behuman. Unfortunately, I suspect thatTiffany is one of those rare individu-als who is in fact ashamed of beinghuman. Or more accurately, ashamedof having human parents and grand-parents.

Tiffany’s post, and the remarks ofthe commenter on her post, led me tocarry out a supplementary websearch. I decided to search onbroader ashamed/proud categories.Here are the results.

Supplementary findings: ashamed andproud men, women, humans

623 posters were “ashamed to be ahuman being”. This is a remarkablefigure. Words fail me. And yet...there was an even more remarkablefigure to consider. 1010 posters were“proud to be a human being”. A ratioof ashamed to proud of 1: 1.6. Thoseself-esteem lessons back in the 80sand 90s must have had some successafter all. But how on Earth is merelybeing a human being a personalachievement for which an individualcan be proud? Read on for even morestartling results.

For every woman “ashamed to be awoman”, there were 1.4 men“ashamed to be a man”.

For every man “proud to be a man”,there were 14.8 women who were“proud to be a woman”.

I’m not touching this one — but I’djust like to say for the record thatsome of my best friends are women,and as a man, I’m proud to knowthem.

At this stage I became excited atthe prospect of gathering even morebizarre results. If a man could beashamed of being a man (completelybeyond volition) and a woman couldbe proud of being a woman (com-pletely beyond volition), what elsewas lurking out there on the worldwide web? Here are the results:

611 posters were “ashamed to beproud” (of some involuntary thing orother).

608 posters were “proud to beashamed” (of some involuntarything or other).

882 posters were “ashamed to beashamed” (of some involuntarything or other).

953 posters were “proud to beproud” (of some involuntary thing orother).

Teresa the babblatriceI was particlarly intrigued by thehits above on “proud to be ashamed”,because this phrase seemed to me tosum up the hypocrisy underlyingmany public claims to be “ashamedto be...”. No better case could befound to illustrate what is going onhere than Teresa the babblatrice. (Ilike to attempt to resurrect archaicwords which are euphonious anduseful — babblatrice is one such.)

Teresa posted on a weblog calledTeen Ink. It is a site set up to facili-tate commentaries on travel andculture by “teens”. Teresa was aninspiration to me, and her post wasthe factor which led me to finallycommit to writing this article. It wasshe who quite unselfconsciously cameup with the phrase “...so that every-one will know I’m proud to beashamed (to be American)”.

Teresa was probably moved to poston Teen Ink because it gave her anopportunity to showcase her literaryskills. Only a literature major at acommunity college could come upwith descriptive passages such asthis:

We eat our grilled panini and squintinto the raw light of noon, listeningto the muted hum of gunning Vespasand adamant Italians, and watch-ing the caravans of nuns glide by.

Without knowing anything aboutthe young woman apart from herprose style, I would venture to haz-ard that she will soon complete herfirst novel — perhaps ErnestHemmingway’s Death in the After-noon.

She gives the game away early inher piece when she quotes her fatheras saying “Don’t talk so loud... they’llthink we’re American”. A few para-graphs later, she sets out her thesis:

Dad looks put out. As the war spi-rals, the death toll rises and the AbuGraib pictures keep coming, myparents have grown furious andashamed. In the past month, my dadhas looked into claiming Greek citi-zenship, donated more money toKerry’s campaign than he can af-ford, and assured us that we’re mov-ing to Barcelona if Bush wins. Ithought he was joking, but he istotally serious. When we packed forItaly, mom and I bought nice shoesand skirts so that we wouldn’t lookso American. Dad planned to do thetalking, since he’d studied thephrase book and looks Italian.

It is therefore established early inthe narrative that Teresa and her“Mom” and Dad have the decency tothe ashamed, and the indecency, andmoral cowardice to hide their nation-ality. Dad seems to be the hero of thestory because later on, Teresa hasher father saying “Be quieter, willyou? They’ll think you’re American,for God’s sake.” After some moremind-numbing banality and uncon-scious irony, Teresa hits the jackpot:

Seemingly every building in Romehas a flag, protesting the invasion ofBaghdad... I make a vow to buy aPACE flag. I will speak English as Ibuy it, speak it loudly and wear myChe Guevara shirt, so that everyonewill know I’m proud to beashamed... (that my) nationalityoozes like an itched scab.

Thanks for the title for my article


Teresa, although personally, I wouldbe ashamed to be proud of wearing aT-shirt depicting the cliched likenessof a wannabe Latin-American Stalin.Ditch the cliche Teresa. Be a trendsetter rather than a trend follower.Wear a Pol Pot T-shirt. Don’t forget,in terms of geography, Che was alsoan American. Wouldn’t it be better towear a T-shirt depicting an Asiansecular saint and saviour, ratherthan an American secular saint andsaviour?

Making sense of nonsenseHow to make sense of all this? Inpart, I suspect my instinctive andoutright rejection of the ashamedbrigade is an idiosyncratic one. Ihave always been supremely indiffer-ent to many common forms of groupsolidarity. I don’t claim this as a vir-tue, it is just a fact.

High school sports carnivals forexample. I felt like a field anthro-pologist visiting a primitive societywhen I witnessed various forms ofinexplicable behaviour (eg, running,jumping). In particular, the artificial“patriotism” generated by teachersand house leaders was a wonder tobehold. I couldn’t care less whichhouse won the day, and I remainedtotally unmoved by exhortations totake pride in the achievements of“my” house. The upside of failing tofeel pride if my house did well, isthat I was also immune to shame ifmy house came stone motherless last(I don’t know what mother has to dowith it either, but we all know whatthe phrase means). I retained thissupreme indifference to artificalgroup affiliation when I later becamea high school teacher. Wise principalsand deputies soon learned to leaveme out of any role involving exhorta-tions to house or school patriotism,as I was wholly unconvincing. If Iwas ever given the role of leading amindless chant, I usually gave anexcrutiatingly unconvincing and of-ten (I have to admit it) effete per-formance. An effete performance by amale teacher at a girls’ school wasinnocuous. At boys’ schools on theother hand, one had to negotiate avery tricky demeanour — nerdishperhaps, but essentially masculine.

I raise the issue of group affilia-tion here because the phenomenoncan cause problems in certain con-texts. I will stay on the theme ofsports for the moment. Followers ofcricket (the gentleman’s game), seemto be able to express prideful affilia-tion at an appropriate level. WhenAustralia plays Sri Lanka — in ei-ther Australia or Sri Lanka, support-ers of either team seem to exerciseenthusiasm without descending intoviolence. However some cricket con-tests between national teams canlead to problematic behaviour fromsupporters (eg, India and Pakistanplaying each other in India or Paki-stan). Other sports create higheremotional temperatures in fans, andheightened conflict between fans.They tell me that soccer in LatinAmerica for example can lead tobloody encounters between support-ers. On one occasion as I recall, agoalie from a Latin American teamwho scored an “own goal” (whichsounds innocuous — indeed perhapseven positive to me) was actuallymurdered by an enraged fan. Foot-ball hooligans are common in Britainand often cause riots and affrays. InAustralia, in my youth, the ethnicaffiliations of Sydney soccer clubsoften led to violence.

My natural indifference to groupaffiliation means that I have a natu-ral resistance to the “ashamed dis-ease”. If an Australian or group ofAustralians somewhere at some timedoes something which is in factshameful, I experience no feeling ofvicarious shame. In any case, I amfairly confident that at the time someAustralians are doing somethingshameful, other Australians are do-ing something for which they can feelproud.

Some concluding pointsMy purpose in writing this article isonly in part to mock the pretensionsof the “ashamed to be Australian”brigade. If mockery was my onlypurpose, then I would have goodcause to be ashamed of this article —and some subscribers to the Skepticwould have good cause to beashamed to be subscribers. (Or per-

haps not, given the general thesis ofthis article.) No, my underlying pur-pose is noble. I want to help thosewho are burdened with vicarious andunwarranted shame. I want to sug-gest the means by which they mightemerge from this debilitating mi-asma of undeserved guilt.

The first thing that the reflexivelyashamed should do is get a diction-ary. Find out what ashamed actuallymeans. For the reflexively ashamedwho don’t have, or don’t want to buya dictionary, I will provide a defini-tion here:

Ashamed: “embarrassed or guiltybecause of something one has doneor characteristic one has”. (OED)

My advice is to read the definitionand practice using the word in sen-tences where it properly belongs. Forexample: “I am ashamed m, mthat Ibroke wind in the lift”. (Note toAmerican readers: lift = elevator.)

However even this apparentlystraightforward locution can be sub-ject to qualification, depending onthe circumstances of the act, thecharacteristics of the individualsinvolved, and the relationships be-tween the participants. Some indi-viduals would be so concerned for thewelfare of other lift passengers, thatthey would be ashamed of breakingwind even if they were to get awaywith it. Other individuals would notbe ashamed unless the source of theact of breaking wind was obvious tothe other passengers. There are evensome individuals who to my certainknowledge would not only be proudof breaking wind in a lift, but wouldbe eager to own up to it.

I can even make a small conces-sion to the vicarious shame brigade. Ican conceive of a circumstance whereI could be momentarily ashamed, orat least embarrassed if somebodyelse broke wind in a lift. If (for exam-ple) I were squiring a group of visit-ing scholars around the universityand a group of my students got intothe lift, greeted me by name andthen deliberately broke wind in con-cert, I would experience some emo-tion akin to shame — but on reflec-tion, not shame. Perhaps

Proud to be Ashamed


embarrassment. The embarrassmentwould come about because of myassociation with the students. Butshame could only be appropriate if Iwas personally responsible for notstopping the outbreak of voluntaryflatulence.

My second suggestion for the re-flexively ashamed is that they shouldget in touch with their emotionallives, and get a vocabulary. Thesetwo go together. Allow me to illus-trate with reference to the scenarioas set out in the cartoon. The twoforeground characters witness acts ofviolence. The reflexive response ofthe character on the left is to say“Look at all that violence... it makesme ashamed to be Australian”. Thecartoon character is experiencing

emotional disturbance, but the emo-tion isn’t (or shouldn’t be) shame. Hecould legitimately be disgusted, of-fended, outraged, repelled, revolted,sickened or angry at the behaviour ofthe perpetrators of the violence, butcollective and unwarranted shame is(as the cartoon is intended to show)fraudulent and disingenuous.

My third point for the reflexively“ashamed to be Australian” brigadeis that their posturing is completelycounterproductive. Moaning,whinging and public posturing of thiskind is far more likely to entrenchopposition to their viewpoint than topersuade others to their view. There’snothing more provocative to an “aver-age” Australian than to be told bysome sanctimonious twit that they

should be personally ashamed ofsomething they are not responsiblefor, and have no control over, ormeans of preventing. And that’s as-suming that they agree with the as-sessment of the act in question.

Having mixed in a great variety ofsettings with many people who aremerely content (not proud) to be Aus-tralian, I know that telling them theyshould be ashamed is more likely tocause them to be reflexively proudthan reflexively ashamed.

Just for the record, I’m proud thatI’m not ashamed for anything that Ishouldn’t be ashamed for.


In this short paper I want to giveyou all a sense of the power of rightsand of rights-talk. I also want to giveyou a potted history of the develop-ment of rights thinking, its philo-sophical bases, and how it came tooccupy the overweening position itdoes today. Then I will discuss someproblem areas where individualrights come into conflict with overallsocial welfare. I will be calling onyou to bring your sceptical inclina-tions to bear in an area outside theusual ones of believers in little greenmen, loony mother earth types, thosewho don’t understand that not allthings natural are good things, andthe plain-out scientifically illiterate.But let’s start with the history ofrights.

A Brief History of RightsThe idea of rights can be traced backto the classical Greek thinkers, notleast to Aristotle. Rights have theirhome in natural law thinking — thenotion that there are moral entitiesthat have an existence which is inde-pendent of human action or belief orslowly evolved sentiments, and thatare as much a part of the structureof the universe as the entities whoseexistence is presupposed and investi-gated by the physical sciences.(Putting it that way, I am assuming Ihave made at least a few Skeptics abit uncomfortable.)

Of course this sort of natural lawthinking was picked up by the greatCatholic thinkers. Aquinas is thebest known. And once you bring intothe equation an omnipotent, per-fectly benevolent theistic God, it’snot hard to see how you explain andjustify these preexisting and histori-cally non-contingent entities callednatural rights (or, in today’s termi-nology, human rights). Each indi-vidual being, as God’s creation, getshis or her rights, even to the pointwhere man-made laws may have togive way to this higher natural lawwith its natural rights. But bewarned.

Lest anyone reading this get theimpression that natural law andnatural rights were, in the Catholictradition, concepts which spurredrevolutionary or progressive policiesand democratic thinking, bear this inmind. The concept can be revolution-ary — think of France in 1789. Onthe other hand, it can be stiflinglyconservative — after all, the Catho-lic Church did not condemn slaveryuntil 150 years ago. How can it beboth? Well, the logic of natural lawand natural rights can work in ei-ther of two ways.

A) It can say “this man-made lawis evil, therefore (because of naturallaw thinking) it doesn’t count as lawat all”. That is how it works when itis revolutionary.

Some SkepticismAbout Rights

and Their Effects

Convention Paper

Natural is not necessarilybetter, even in the law

James Allan is the Garrick Professor of Law atthe University of Queensland. He has taughtlaw in Hong Kong, Canada, the US, NewZealand. Most importantly, he was for tenyears a member of the New Zealand Skeptics,serving on their governing committee for acouple of years before crossing the Tasman.He is delighted to have made contact withAustralian Skeptics.


Or

B) It can say “this is law, there-fore (using the same natural lawlogic) it must be good”. This is howit works when it’s being oppres-sively conservative and againstreform.

Now let’s jump forward to the 17th

and 18th Centuries. Men like Lockeand Rousseau started talking aboutthe inalienable rights of man. It wasLocke, after all, that men likeJefferson and Madison had readbefore drafting the Declaration ofIndependence and the US Constitu-tion. The language of rights isclearly attractive. It appeals to one’ssense of personal entitlement. It fitsin with the then growing notions ofliberal individualism. Rights arethere to protect the individualagainst the state — this was the ideain the late 18th Century; rights areentitlements belonging to all indi-viduals simply by virtue of beinghumans. (At this point you are sup-posed to ignore the fact that slavery,as an institution, was still thrivingeven in places where men were de-claring individuals’ inalienablerights.)

Interestingly enough, it was soonafter the American and French revo-lutions that rights-based thinkingand rights-talk went into somethingof a decline. That may explain whybills of rights are recent innovationseverywhere in the world exceptFrance and the US.

What led to the decline, the tem-porary decline, of rights-based think-ing and talking were two factors.Firstly, David Hume showed thatyou cannot derive an ‘ought’ from an‘is’. This simple, logical point under-mined natural law thinking at itscore (because natural law startsfrom a set of claims about what isthe proper end of being human andof human nature, and moves fromthere to make claims, moral claims,about what humans should do orshould be free to do).

As an aside, notice that most ofthe greeny, alternative medicine-type claims fall foul of Hume’s Law;they move from saying the way

things are indicates the way thingsshould be. In other words, they as-sume the way things are is necessar-ily good — and that is patently false.Hemlock is natural, and bad. Dyingin child birth is natural, and bad.Toothaches are natural, and bad.Hume’s point boils down to recognis-ing that some natural phenomenaare good and others bad and deter-mining which is which requiressomething more — some evaluativejudgment — than noting the natu-ralness of what is being assessed orevaluated.

The second factor behind the de-cline of rights-based thinking fromabout the early 1800s was the rise ofconsequentialist, or utilitarian,thinking beginning with JeremyBentham. On the Bentham utilitar-ian model, the right action is the onethat tends to increase overall socialwelfare or happiness. This sort ofutilitarian outlook dominated moralthinking in the West for the nextcentury and a half until the end ofthe Second World War. It gave rise toeconomics, and in that form is stillpowerful. (Utilitarianism aims tomaximise human happiness or wel-fare, which is hard to measure, whileeconomics aims to maximise moneyor wealth, which is much easier tomeasure. Of course the two are notequivalent. More wealth does notautomatically translate into morehappiness in any 1:1 way.)

It was after World War II, after allthe many horrors perpetrated in thatconflict — in other words only in thelast 50 or 60 years — that naturallaw thinking was reborn. It was onlythen, in the lifetimes of many stillalive, that rights and rights-talkbecame the dominant moral cur-rency in all liberal states.

Of course we don’t these days talkin terms of natural law, and goodliberals certainly don’t tie anythingto a theistic God. No, today we talkin terms of human rights, fundamen-tal human rights. But the naturallaw thinking is there just below thesurface all the same because theseproclaimed human rights are said toexist whether recognised or not in aparticular jurisdiction’s legal system.

We all are entitled to free speech, tothe free practice of religion, whathave you. We are all said to havethese timeless, transcendent rightsdue us simply by virtue of being hu-mans.

The antennae of skeptics will atthe very least be twitching at thispoint. Legal rights are easy to under-stand and seem pretty clearly tocarry good consequences with themmost of the time, in terms of happiercitizens. But how do we understandrights when they are not part of aparticular legal system? Notice thatin this modern form the explicit linkto God has been severed but themystery remains. Do rights exist ‘outthere’ somewhere? Do they existindependently of the beliefs andviews of people, cultures or nations?Are they somehow, in some unex-plained way, part of the structure ofthe universe? So ends the pottedhistory. Two points need to be em-phasized and then we can move on tosome problem areas with rights andrights-based thinking.

Clarification Number One:I’ve cheated a bit. I’ve implied thatrights rest solely on a natural law,almost mystical foundation. In fact,the Benthamite utilitarian can givea perfectly good defence of rights. Itwould go something like this — “Cer-tain interests and values should re-ceive extra protection in the form ofrules and rights when doing so tends,on average, over time, to increasesocial welfare.” On that utilitarianbasis it’s quite easy to defend theliberal state or the right to freespeech or freedom of religion. Noth-ing mystical is needed at all. Protect-ing these things through rules andrights increases social happiness,that’s why we protect them (not be-cause such rights have some tran-scendent connection with God orunseen moral forces). Otherwise, ifthey didn’t increase the level of wel-fare or happiness, it would be silly toprotect them.

And let me be clear that there aresome utilitarian liberals out there,people like Richard Posner. However,my introductory characterisation is

Rights


nevertheless mostly accurate. Mostof today’s rights defenders and rightsadvocates — explicitly or implicitly— are natural law adherents. Theysupport rights in natural law termsand with all the hints of absolutismthat implies.

Clarification Number Two:Don’t forget just how recent thisrenaissance of rights-based thinkingis. Today, it dominates all moralthinking, certainly in the West.Rights-talk has pushed out andswamped almost all other sorts ofmoral analyses. But thisrecolonisation goes back fewer than60 years. The UN’s Declaration ofHuman Rights was made in 1948;the International Covenant on Civiland Political Rights in the 1960s.The mad rush of countries to gettheir own bill of rights is even morerecent. Canada’s came in 1982, NewZealand’s in 1990 and the UK’s in1998 (though it didn’t come into forcefor a couple of years after that).Amongst Western nations today, onlyAustralia has no form of bill of rights— the dinky one in the ACT doesn’tcount! And I think we’re the betterfor it, though I say that as a utilitar-ian liberal.

Problem AreasLet’s recap. Most moral and politicaldebate is these days conducted in thelanguage of rights. This doctrine ofhuman rights has largely replacedthe doctrine of utilitarianism whichfocuses on consequences and aims tomaximise social welfare. This lan-guage of rights, with its connotationsof entitlements and at times itsstark absolutism, is to most peoplein the modern Western world im-mensely emotionally attractive — itcan take away one’s skeptical anten-nae.

Rights-talk seems often to carrywith it a capacity to overwhelm alldisagreement not itself framed interms of rights. So only anotherrights-based claim or argument ap-pears to many to be good enough totrump the original rights-basedclaim or argument.

My position is that this pre-emi-

nence of rights is far from obviouslya wholly good thing. No one has yetto give a persuasive, non-utilitarianexplanation of what these things wecall ‘rights’ are or where they comefrom or how they can be satisfacto-rily justified. Their colonizing poweris too great. And as there is no easyway to ground them, most peoplejust pass over the foundational ques-tions about rights in silence. It’s a bitlike assuming that everyone in theroom is a morally sound Guardianreader and won’t raise any awkwarddifficulties.

Meantime the questions keepcoming. How are we to rank rightsagainst each other? For example,how does the right to free speechweigh against the right not to bediscriminated against and how, inturn, do they weigh against the rightto freedom of religion? And whichhuman interests are importantenough to warrant the protection ofrights? We can’t take just any inter-ests anyone happens to have. And itcan’t even be all interests most peo-ple find important, very importanteven, as few of us would want to saythere’s a right to sex, say. And wecan ask if rights cover only individu-als, as was originally thought, orgroups as well. Likewise, is one rightsomehow preeminent? (For instance,is it the right to dignity or perhapsthe right to equal concern and re-spect or to property or to justice or toparticipate in political decision-mak-ing or to something else?)

More practical concerns aboutrights — and their capacity to over-whelm all non-rights-based thinkingand arguments — also exist. Theemphasis on rights can lead to anexcessive politicisation of the judici-ary. It can promote an over-the-topentitlement culture. It can encour-age excessive litigation. All of theseare potential problems in my view. Imuch prefer the hard-nosedBenthamite, or Richard Posner-like,consequentialist view of rights. Thatsaid, let me turn now to examples ofwhere individual rights (which nec-essarily are expressed in vague,amorphous terms) come into conflictwith overall social welfare calcula-tions.

An Example — the Right to FreeSpeech

For skeptics, free speech is clearly abig concern. And justifiably so. Yetonce the value is expressed in thelanguage of rights, difficulties canand do emerge. Take some real lifecases. Here’s one from the CanadianSupreme Court called RJRMacDonald v Canada. It shows thedangers of what I’ve been describing.

In RJR MacDonald the SupremeCourt of Canada struck down legisla-tion aimed at limiting commercialadvertising, including billboardsnear schools plugging tobacco prod-ucts. The court in effect held thatthis sort of advertising trumpedhealth and safety concerns.

Express values in the vague,amorphous, near absolutist languageof rights — who is not in favour offreedom of expression? — and youget universal or near universalagreement. Move from the plane ofvague generalities to the real-lifeconcerns of where to draw lines,however, and you get widespreaddisagreement. Readers of this jour-nal would differ on where to drawthe line when in comes to pornogra-phy, to hate speech laws, to rulesprohibiting defamation, to the rulessurrounding the funding of electioncampaigns, and more. That disagree-ment is between reasonable, intelli-gent, even nice people. And yet manypeople are happy, under a bill ofrights, to hand the deciding of suchissues over to committees of ex-law-yers.

You see, drawing real life lines iscontentious. Mouthing fine-soundingmoral abstractions is almost nevercontentious. The issue is, who do youwant deciding the contentious is-sues, elected politicians (with alltheir admitted faults but also alltheir accountability) or unelectedjudges (with next to no accountabil-ity, other than to their own con-sciences)?

What about in Australia? Well, inthe Australian Capital Televisioncase the Australian High Court “dis-covered” (and I put that in quotationmarks deliberately because in myview it had little to do with discovery


and much to do with making it up)that there was an “implied right” inour Australian Constitution, and thisdespite the fact that the foundingfathers explicitly forswore any sortof real, actual bill of rights. Oh, andthe actual effect of the decision wasthat legislative limits on spendingmoney to buy television time (infavour of that time being allocatedbased on how the parties did lasttime and were polling) was struckdown. Good for free speech in theabstract; good for Rupert Murdochand Kerry Packer in practice. Andnotice again that there’s nothingself-evidently right, or wrong, abouthow to decide such cases.

I could go on and on and on listingbill of rights cases from Canada, theUS, New Zealand and now the UK,cases that the judges have decidedwhere the decisions are highly con-tentious. You might agree with some,and disagree with others. It’s thesame as statutes. Some you willthink are good, but not others. Thedifference is that you have a say overlegislators. It’s a small say, but it’s asay. You have no say over judges.Worse, when judges decide cases,and they disagree, do you know howthey resolve their disputes? They

vote. Four votes beat three, full stop.The most morally moving decisiondoes not prevail. The key differencebetween that and elections is thesize of the franchise.

My point is that when rights haveto be applied — when they come intoconflict with each other or with so-cial welfare policies and calculations— nothing about rights themselvesdoes much to help us (or judges)make those decisions and draw thedifficult lines. One can chant themantra of “right to freedom of reli-gion” until one’s blue in the face. Byitself it won’t help with decidingwhether young Muslim girls canwear headscarves to public schools,whether tax money should go to de-nominational schools, whetherphrases with the word “God” in themare acceptable on a country’s cur-rency, or whether drug-taking issomehow less illicit if done as part ofa particular rite or ritual.

‘The right to free speech’ or ‘theright to justice’ or ‘the right to besecure against unreasonable searchand seizure’ sound great; they reso-nate with most listeners; they areemotionally attractive. But descendjust a bit from the plane of vaguegeneralities, as skeptics are wont to

do, and you notice immediately thatall that comfortable consensus disap-pears. We now find dissensus; wefind disagreement between reason-able people on moral issues. This isjust a fact of living in groups.

There are no grounds I know offor thinking that a few years of lawschool and a decade or more of legalpractice in a big law firm gives onegreater moral perspicacity thanplumbers, teachers, secretaries orordinary voters. And one of the iro-nies of the whole bill of rights phe-nomenon is that lawyers are gener-ally despised or ridiculed and yet,the moment they get appointed tothe bench, they are then generallyheld up as approaching all-knowingparagons.

Skeptics are used to being skepti-cal of medical claims, where the evi-dence is exiguous. They’re used tobeing skeptical of all sorts of emo-tive, fine-sounding claims. Funnilyenough, I’m betting a bunch of youreading this piece find it a lot harderto be skeptical about bills of rights.Give it a try. The evidence is on theside of the skeptics here too.

Rights

National ConventionScience, Truth and the Media

The Age Theatre, Melbourne Museum

November 18-19Watch our web site www.skeptics.com.au for details and updates as they firm up.


It was towards the end of Januarywhen I first became aware of a story,published in the West Australian,about a 10 year old Perth boy whoclaimed to have found a message in abottle that had drifted from Englandand washed up on a Perth beach.More specifically, it was found atHillarys Boat Harbour which justhappens to be round the corner fromwhere I live. Here was a local storyof interest although I doubted anyclaim that the bottle had actuallydrifted from Lancashire, England toPerth, Western Australia in the re-ported time of 6 months.

Further doubts about the authen-ticity of the story were raised whenBarry Williams sent me an email:

Just had a call from Dick Smithabout the “letter in a bottle” found inPerth boat yard that was throwninto the ocean in England only a fewmonths ago. Dick is certain(and I agree) that it is highly un-likely that a bottle could make thatjourney using only ocean currents inthe time alleged. Can you find outany more details from your localsources? Newspapers here have onlysketchy info, but are playing it up.

Compared to reporting in thewest, newspapers in the east cer-tainly were “playing it up” and myattempts to get more details fromlocal sources quickly drew a blank. Iwas told that the West Australianaccount had been sourced from over-seas in the form of a phone call from

a Lancashire newspaper. I had to goon-line to track down the many over-seas newspapers that had carriedthe story.

All the reports alleged that inJuly, 2005, 4 year-old AleshaJohnson sketched a picture of herselfon a piece of paper and added themessage: “Hello, if you get this mes-sage please write back.” The classhad been discussing the topic “At theseaside” and this led to the idea ofsending a message in a bottle.Alesha wrote down the address ofher kindergarten in Heysham,placed the message in a plastic Cokebottle and, supervised by her Mum,Sonia, threw it into Morcombe Bayon the North West coast of England.

Almost 6 months later, a letterarrived at the Heysham Kindergar-ten. It had been written by a 10year-old boy called Bob who claimedhe had found the bottle at HillarysBoat Harbour, just north of Perth.Doreen Johnson, Manager of theKindergarten confirmed that Aleshahad thrown the bottle into the waterin July and that Bob had repliedfrom Perth approximately 6 monthslater. She said that the people ofHeysham were desperate to knowmore about Bob.

Apparently, Bob’s surname couldnot be deciphered from his handwrit-ing (they thought it started with theletter “F”) and he did not include hisaddress. Bob said they were movinghouse but he didn’t say where theywere going. He promised to write

A Message ina Bottle

John Happs, an education consultant, headsthe Western Australian Skeptics.

Investigation

Spoiling a good storywith facts


once they had settled in their newhome. He also said that his Dad hasshown him where Heysham was on amap and pointed out that the bottlehad travelled about 14,500 kilome-tres in the 6 months since it hadbeen thrown into the Irish Sea.

The Times of London reported:

Nobody knows exactly how the mes-sage got to Perth. The most likelyroute would have been into the At-lantic, past the west coast of Africa,and into the Southern Hemisphere.This marathon voyage would alsohave crossed the Indian Ocean.

news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_4630000/newsid_4630800/4630888.stm

HistoryFor centuries, people have thrownbottles and other containers into thesea with messages they hoped wouldbe picked up by others. Bottles havebeen launched for scientific pur-poses, with the Greek philosopherTheophrastus starting the ball (orbottle) rolling by throwing sealedcontainers into the Mediterranean todemonstrate that water flowed intothe Mediterranean Sea from theAtlantic Ocean. He did this in 310BCE and although there is no recordof any reply as yet, somebody inWestern Australia might find it oneday.

More recently, the Drift BottleProject, started in 2000, haslaunched many bottles from differentships in Arctic waters, along thewest coast of North America andfrom the Panama Canal to the Baha-mas. Dates and exact position arerecorded inside the bottles. This isan inexpensive way to gather infor-mation about ocean currents al-though only one bottle in twenty-fiveis returned while the others sink orbecome buried by sand on some re-mote beach.

Some of these bottles have driftedfrom the Arctic to the Caribbeanwith an average drift rate of 5-10kilometres per day. Information fromdrifting bottles is important since itcontinues to add to the body ofknowledge about ocean currents.

Messages have been sealed inbottles and launched by spies want-ing to report enemy positions, troopnumbers and fleet strength. Thisconcerned Queen Elizabeth I, whomade it a capital crime for anyonebut the official Uncorker of OceanBottles to open bottles located at seaor on shore.

For centuries, messages have beenplaced in bottles and thrown fromships to record their progress andposition. A typical message dated16th February, 1861 was recentlyretrieved on Grand Turk Island. Itread:

H.M. Sloop Ringdove 25th Novem-ber 1859 Lat 26.21 Long 18.7 byobservation. This paper was thrownoverboard at noon on the above dayhaving just entered the North Easttrades. Force wind 3, along Northwesterly swell. Barometer 30.43,Thermometer 75, seawater 73. R. G.Cragie Commander.

Christopher Columbus recorded inhis log that his ship Nina was strug-gling in a wild storm in the middle ofthe Atlantic. Afraid that he mightnot survive, Columbus composed areport of his situation, placed it in-side a sealed cask and threw it over-board. His message asked the finderto notify the Spanish Queen. It wasfound more than 300 years later butnot in Western Australia.

The windward beaches of theTurks and Caicos Islands are con-stantly receiving debris from the sea,including natural materials such asvegetation (tree branches and coco-nuts) along with messages insidebottles. Nils and Grethe Seim live onGrand Turk and have established acollection of the many bottle-bornemessages which have arrived on theislands, having travelled from placessuch as New York (6 years traveltime), The Canary islands (14months), Bermuda (2 months), Lis-bon (16 months) and Miami (2weeks). The (optimistic) assumptionhere is that the bottles were recov-ered shortly after they becamebeached.

www.timespub.tc/Astrolabe/Ar-chive/Fall2001/message.htm

In distressBottles, containing messages of dis-tress, have been dropped into theocean on numerous occasions overthe years. In 1714 ChunosukeMatsuyama and his crew of 44 menwere shipwrecked on a small islandin the South Pacific Ocean. A mes-sage was scratched on a piece ofwood, sealed inside a bottle and setadrift to be found 150 years later ona Japanese beach — much too late tosave Matsuyama and his men.

In 1915, a passenger on board thetorpedoed passenger liner Lusitaniais reported to have placed the follow-ing message inside a bottle:

Still on deck with a few people. Thelast boats have left. We are sinkingfast. Some men near me are prayingwith a priest. The end is near ...

It should be said that there arevarying accounts of this story interms of what the message said,where the bottle was picked up andwho actually found the bottle.

When over 800 Jewish refugeesfled Nazi Germany in 1939, theyfully expected to be granted asylumin Cuba. Unfortunately, the CubanPresident, Frederico Laredo Brurefused them entry and their ship,the SS St Louis remained in HavanaHarbour for 10 days.

It was reported that hundreds ofmessages were placed in bottles andthrown over the side of the SS StLouis while it remained in the Cu-ban port, with the typical plea en-closed:

Please help me President Bru or wewill be lost.

Apparently, many of these mes-sages washed up along the east coastof the USA; a number were found inEurope with the last reported find inthe 1960s. None were located onWest Australian beaches.

Scientific useBottles have long been used by scien-tists to acquire information aboutweather patterns and ocean cur-rents. Understanding drift patternsenables authorities to predict thepaths of oil spills while search and


rescue teams can use driftinformation to moreefficiently search formissing boats,fishers andswimmers.

Many unu-sual “floaties”have beenmonitoredover the yearsand some ofthese have re-vealed valuableinformation aboutocean currents. Theycan move in complexpatterns under the influ-ence of wind, ocean tem-perature, salinity, ocean floortopography, land mass and theEarth’s rotation. Some currents aretransient, covering a relatively smallarea of ocean while others are morepermanent, extending over muchlarger areas.

Warm surface currents, such asthe Gulf Stream, are mainly drivenby winds and the Earth’s rotation.They flow relatively quickly (40 to100 kilometres per day) from thetropics to temperate latitudes. Con-versely, cold surface currents flowfrom temperate and polar latitudestowards the equator.

Continental land masses, border-ing oceanic basins in the NorthernHemisphere, cause the larger oceancurrents to move in clockwise circu-lar patterns called gyres. Gyre sys-tems flow anticlockwise in theSouthern Hemisphere but are gener-ally not as pronounced as the north-ern forms.

The Perth bottleNow it is tempting to take an opti-mistic and simplistic look at therange of different ocean “conveyorbelts” which might connect and in-fluence the movement of a bottlethrown into the Irish Sea. For in-stance, we could see it being takenup by the clockwise flowing Atlanticgyre and moved down the west coastof Europe and Africa.

A further stretch of the imagina-tion could then see our Perth-bound

bottle hooking up with the southerlyBrazilian Current which would con-veniently push it on to the westerlyAntarctic Circumpolar Current. Thefinal leg of this journey would occurif the bottle then hitched a ride withthe westerly South Indian Currentwhich would then push it towardsthe West Australian coastline.

But could this incredible journeyactually take place, at least theoreti-cally? To get a better idea, I emaileda number of people with a profes-sional knowledge of ocean circulationand the movement of drifting ob-jects.

My first contact was Dr SeanChamberlin, Professor of Earth Sci-ences and oceanographer atFullerton College. His initial com-ment was:

Although I am not familiar withthat story in particular, it is indeedpossible.

He (skeptically) qualified thiscomment:

Now that doesn’t mean a 6-monthtrip from Morcombe Bay to WesternAustralia really happened.

My next contact was ProfessorCharitha Pattiaratchi from the Cen-tre for Water Research at the Uni-versity of Western Australia. Heresponded with:

A similar event was reportedabout 4-5 years ago when

a bottle was thrown offa beach in Essex

ended up inGeraldton.

Well I’ll comeback to that in amoment.

He continued:

It is theoreti-cally possible.There are a few

‘hurdles’ whichthe bottle has to go

through - get to the oceanoff say Spain, then somehow

cross the equator in the Atlan-tic. After that the prevailing

winds would bring it to WA. Thetime frame is OK. Assuming that thebottle was a plastic one and there-fore would spend most of its time inthe air.

Once again, there followed a skep-tical word of caution:

. . but twice in 4-5 years would betoo much of a coincidence.

Professor Alexander Gavrilov,from Curtin University of Technol-ogy, didn’t even consider the Eng-land-Perth bottle journey a possibil-ity:

Was it a joke? Even if we don’t haveany continents and the water cur-rent is directed exactly from Eng-land to Hillarys (the path lengthwould be about 15,000 km), it wouldrequire the bottle to travel with thespeed of about 1 m/s, which is 10times faster than typical surfacecurrents. The only way for this bottleto get to Western Australia from UKis to follow the global ocean circula-tion (conveyor belt), which wouldtake decades and, moreover, wouldrequire the bottle to be capable ofdiving to 1000’s of metres on the wayfrom the Northern Seas to the Pa-cific Ocean.

But what was the response fromoceanographers closer to the startingpoint? Penny Holliday from the Na-tional Institute of Oceanography inSouthampton said she had never

Major World Ocean Currentswww.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/8q_1.html

Message in a Bottle


heard of a bottle travelling so far soquickly.

Peter Challinor, also from theNational Institute of Oceanographyin Southampton, was more em-phatic:

I think it is extremely unlikely. Itcould not have travelled unaided.

He expanded on this:the world’s currents would have pre-vented the bottle getting to Australia— it probably got a lift in a ship.

(A Boeing 747 was not consideredat this stage.)

Several oceanographers, from theUSA, suggested that Dr CurtisEbbesmeyer would be the best per-son to consult on this issue. He is aSeattle oceanographer and recog-nised expert on marine debris andocean drift.

Curtis readily acknowledged thecomplexity of ocean currents and thedifficulty in predicting drift patterns:

If two bathtub toys are dumped, say,from a freighter in the middle of thePacific at the same moment in thesame spot, one may wash up in Ha-waii while the other may end upfrozen in an Arctic ice floe.

Interestingly, he appeared com-fortable with the idea of a bottleactually making the journey fromEngland to Western Australia:

Messages in bottles have been knownto drift from England to Perth.

He clearly wasn’t happy with thereported time-frame:

The maximum speed I know of be-tween England and Perth is about25 nautical miles per day over a

distance of some 16,000 miles. So thefastest time is a couple of years. Sixmonths makes me want to re-checkthe times of launch and recovery.

He indicated that the story war-ranted further investigation:

This is a potentially valuable find asthe number of bottles which havebeen reported along this route is onlya handful.

But let’s forget the time-framearguments and get back to the oft-quoted belief that bottles have actu-ally drifted from England to Perth.Remember that even Dr Ebbesmeyersubscribed to such a belief:

Messages in bottles have been knownto drift from England to Perth.

But is there any hard evidencethat any bottles really made such ajourney?

Another bottler of a storyIn 1999, the other well publicisedWA bottle find in Geraldton, WA,involved Charles Harford-Cross, whoclaimed to have found an SOS mes-sage placed in a bottle by two boysfrom Essex.

Media Watch (February 13, 2006)followed this particular story andfound that Harford-Cross had actu-ally picked up the bottle while visit-ing England. He thought it would bea good prank to bring it back to WAand claim he found it in Geraldton.Received more publicity than hebargained for, well and truly paintedhimself into a corner and stood byhis claim for several years. Harford-Cross only recently confessed to thehoax.

Meanwhile — back at HillarysBoat Harbour, we have to ask thequestions:

Will young Bob make himself knownat a later date?

Will Bob’s Dad support the bottlestory?

Will there ever be real proof of abottle having drifted, unaided fromEngland to WA?

Call me skeptical but I have atendency to answer NO to all of theabove. If I’m wrong, you’ll certainlybe hearing from me again and itshould be a story worth bottling.

Further Reading

www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues01/jul01/beachcombing.html

www.sci.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/osap/projects/driftbottle/default_e.htm

www.guinntiques.com/bottledrop/

www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/other_news/&articleid=261947

www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7002016484

www.yachtingmonthly.com/auto/newsdesk/20060019113239ymnews.html

english.peopledaily.com.cn/features/arctic/express/7.8.htm

Check our site for books, CDs, DVDs, tapesand other merchandise

www.skeptics.com.au


WHY fast-track, scan-read, time-frame, self-promotion, process-writ-ing, Comb-Over, chuck-writing orprint-outs?

The italicised hyphenated wordsabove (and below) are all examplesof another punch in the face forpunctuation at the hands of a phe-nomenon that could be called hy-phen-panic (sic; sick, even). Ironi-cally, the examples of hyphen-panicabove were used without jest in JefClark’s otherwise-noble piece, “Eng-lish expression; is their cause forconcern?” (the Skeptic, 25:3), lament-ing the hazy use of language. I amonly quibbling with Jef ’s own hazyoveruse of hyphens because he maybe one of the few people to take mypoint seriously — rather than asanal-retentive ramblings.

Jef could claim that he sharesesteemed company in his usage ofhyphens. Yes, I have noticed ill-effects in the usually-precise prose ofThe Spectator, and breast-feeding inthat other stickler for style, Timemagazine.

Hyphen-panic seems to come inoccasional and irrational jolts thatare gripping a raft of thoughtful andarticulate modern authors of excel-lent books, such as Michio Kaku whohyphenates light-years in his Paral-lel Worlds, and Luke Slattery in Dat-ing Aphrodite (hyphenating sea-

crossings, stomach-churners, no-oneand “Dionysus the god of letting-go”).Peter Watson’s Ideas: a history fromfire to Freud hyphenates hand-axes,word-plays, sea-change, well-being.

I was perversely pleased to findfree-will used throughout JohnCarroll’s book, The Wreck of WesternCulture: Humanism revisited, onlybecause it tied in with that book’swoolly line of argument. A.C. Gray-ling, in his great new biography onDescartes, briefly restored my faith.Here was “free will” without a hy-phen. But, alas, also here was still-births, counter-attack, pen-portraitand no-one.

Iain McCalman does not hyphen-ate “no one” in The Last Alchemist:Count Cagliostro: Master of Magic inthe Age of Reason, but lapsed withgood-bye, wonder-worker, show-off,wife-beater and next-door. In anothergreat book, The Tyrannicide Brief,Geoffrey Robertson was also blightedby hyphen-panic with court-martial,king-killing, cross-examine, letter-bomb — but “no one” was used with-out a hyphen. (Time magazine,thankfully, is holding the no-hyphenline on “no one”. Why should it behyphenated? No one knows.)

So what is hyphen-panic and itssymptoms? It occurs when we arefaced with using two associatedwords such as “free will” or “babyboomers”. There seems to be hazi-ness as to how to treat them. Arethey:

Hyphen-panic (sic)

Courage is the Word*

Mike Robinson is a semi-retired journalistworking on his fourth novel. The first threenever got past Chapter One. * Without a Hyphen

An over-due fight-back froma cool-headed word-smith

Language


• two separate words,

• two hyphenated words, or

• one joined complex word?Take, “bully boy”, for instance. It

could easily be joined as “bullyboy”without causing mayhem. So whyhyphenate bully-boy? (The WeekendAustralian Magazine, Nov 19-20,2005, p31). No reason, except thateven the best reporters and sub edi-tors are getting caught in the panicand confusion.

Just two other instances of theconfusion. A headline says “Re-sources groups rock solid” — but inthe body of the story we are told “bigresources players are now about asrock-solid as any investment”. (TheWeekend Australian, Nov 19-20,2005, p41). Also, Kerry Packer faceddeath head-on, according to an Ad-elaide Advertiser headline (Dec. 29,2005), but the report tells us that his“wish was to face death” — without ahyphen — “head on”.

This is hyphen haziness that canlead to laziness, if not craziness. Ihave always found The MacquarieDictionary to be a source of this hazi-ness. My pickpocket (as distinct frompick-pocket) edition of the Macquariehas, for instance, water-column andwater-bottle hyphenated but not “wa-ter cycle” and “water dragon”. Thenthe Mac has sea-urchin but “seawasp” sans hyphen, along with ahost of other bewilderinghyphenations such as fence-sitter,pen-name and lime-juicer. This ex-tends into the latest Macquarie Aus-tralian Slang Dictionary. Why aredung-puncher and leg-opener hy-phenated but not “Toorak truck”?

So what is wrong or right in howwe use hyphens? Somewhere thereare arcane rules, such as the oneabout not hyphenating an adverb,which are receding beyond thememory of the best writers. That’swhy even they get hyphen-panic.

Life would return to an unclut-tered elegance — the haze wouldclear — if we had just one primaryuse for the hyphens: as the means tolink words that are adjectivaldescriptors of another key word. Thisis where the hyphen shines.

The hyphen’s importance in mak-ing sense of what we write can beseen in the example of a “man eatingtiger” as against the intended “man-eating tiger”. Or, more delicately, “aman-eating woman” as against a“man eating woman”.

A “once in a lifetime opportunity”should have the words “once-in-a-lifetime” hyphenated to qualify “op-portunity”.

Hyphens, as these examples show,not only improve the sense of ourwriting. They are crucial in punctua-tion’s other role: to orchestrate therhythm of language as we read it.Punctuation is the literary equiva-lent of musical notations. That iswhy the hyphens in “once-in-a-life-time” are a signal to mentally absorbit at a faster pace (the pace at whichwe would speak it) than “once in alifetime” without hyphens.

To hyphenate free-will demeansthe full weight that should be givenintellectually and rhythmically totwo special words: free will.

Not using hyphens demandscourage (derring do, not derring-do— bravely defying the Oxford Dic-tionary’s insistence on a hyphen).

This need for courage relates tothe vexed question of when andwhether two associated words, suchas “high” and “way” suddenly be-come one word: “highway” — with-out going through that wimpy half-way period of being high-way.

That moment when two wordssuddenly become joined as one com-pound noun is cloaked in mystery.Maybe it happens on winter solsticenights when all those buried cowhorns filled with dung start weavingtheir magic. The Germans havemany compound words in theirWorterverzeichnis or vocabulary.Rudolf Steiner spoke German. Jointhe dots.

But there are many English wordsthat could be compounded if we hadthe courage to give them a go. Asso-ciated words could be made into com-pound nouns, such as “takeoff”,“leadup”, “washout”, “breakin”, in-stead of copping out with the hy-phenated take-off, lead-up, wash-outand break-in.

Nor is there any need for a hy-phen after “self”, as in “self defence,self determination and self control”,when “self” is being used as just anadjective. And let’s rise up and rejectstyle books or dictionaries that sayreferences to a commander in chiefor a bride to be or an attorney gen-eral or lieutenant colonel need to behyphenated.

We could even learn to live withthe dreaded joining of vowels in“coordinate” and “cooperate” if wegave them a go. OK, maybe “reenter”and “reelected” should not be at-tempted in front of children, but it isbetter to avoid them rather thanresorting to re-elected and re-enter.

The choice is clear: either associ-ated words, such as “breast feeding”(when they do not adjectivallyqualify another word) are two sepa-rate words or they should be joinedin holy matrimony as one compoundword, “breastfeeding”. But theyshould never be split asunder by arogue hyphen.

Conversely, as a side symptom ofhyphen-panic, compound words suchas “anymore” and “everyday” arestarting to crop up in a contextwhere they should remain twowords. We are losing the distinctionbetween everyday happenings everyday.

The prime example of this sidesymptom is the case of “underway”— as in: “The project is about to getunderway”. Surely, in this case, itshould be, and always be, “underway” as two words — while an“underway” describes the opposite ofan overpass. But, no, this profligatemisuse of “underway” is out therebreeding like rabbits. It even bobbedup in Slattery’s erudite DatingAphrodite. How did all theseunderways get under way? What setthem off? This remains one helluva(not hell-uv-a) mystery.

Perhaps a few cow horns withbung dung were buried that winter— by someone. Ah! “Someone” — thewedding of “some” and “one” with asharing of vowels and a happy loss ofhyphen.


\

Money Down theToilet

Stuart Adams is a qualified nutritionist (with areal degree from from a real university) whowrites articles and regularly lectures forNutrition Australia.

The terms ‘down the toilet’ or ‘downthe drain/gurgler’ are frequentlyused as hyperbolic metaphors todescribe waste; especially when thatbeing wasted is money. Literallyspeaking however, most things thatare wasted, including money, do notactually end up in a toilet — this isjust a saying. The enormous amountof money that Australians spendeach year on vitamin and mineralsupplements, however, is an excep-tion. The excessive amounts that areingested in the pills, powders or po-tions, that people pay big bucks for,are generally passed through thebody and are excreted as waste;quite literally into the toilet. Thisarticle takes a critical look at theneed for vitamins, and explains whypopping vitamin pills is not simply apoor substitute for a healthy diet, itis a waste of money and may be po-tentially dangerous.

Supplement useIn 1986, the Parliament of VictoriaSocial Development Committee pub-lished a study which revealed thatthe health-food industry had grownrapidly between 1970 and 1986, re-sulting in a five fold increase inhealth-food outlets.1 To date, thelargest study to examine the preva-lence and cost of alternative medi-cine in Australia was performed byMacLennan & co-workers in 1996.2

They found that the overall use of atleast one non-medically prescribedalternative medicine was 48.5 %,

and that the majority of these werenon-prescribed vitamin and mineralsupplements. They calculated thatAustralians spent approximately$621 million dollars annually onsupplements and other alternativemedicines; almost twice as muchmoney as that spent on pharmaceu-tical drugs. Furthermore, in 2000the same researchers discovered thatthere had been a 120% increase inthe amount spent annually on sup-plements and other alternativemedicines since 1996.3

Reasons for taking supplementsWhen asked why they take vitaminand mineral supplements, manypeople explain that it is because theyfear that they may not be gettingenough from their food alone, andthat our food supply is somehowlacking in the nutrients we need tostay healthy. In reality, nothingcould be further from the truth —this single misconception is largelyresponsible for the widespread un-necessary use of these supplements.

Nutrient DepletionThe source of this misconceptionprobably comes from advertisingmaterial pushed by supplement com-panies; often making vague, general-ized statements about it being diffi-cult to obtain adequate vitamins andminerals from our food supply, due tofarming techniques, nutrient deple-tion and processing methods.

Feature

A critical look at the need(or not) for nutritional

supplememts


US Senate Document 264A frequently cited source of this in-formation is knows as US SenateDocument 264. Below is an extractfrom this document;

Do you know that most of us todayare suffering from certain dangerousdiet deficiencies which cannot beremedied until depleted soils fromwhich our food comes are broughtinto proper mineral balance?

The alarming fact is that foods(fruits, vegetables and grains) nowbeing raised on millions of acres ofland that no longer contain enoughof certain minerals are starving us— no matter how much of them weeat. No man of today can eat enoughfruits and vegetables to supply hissystem with the minerals he requiresfor perfect health because his stom-ach isn’t big enough to hold them.

Donald Davis PhD, of the Univer-sity of Texas, Austin, located thisdocument and discovered that it ismerely a reprint of a baseless opin-ion piece that originally appeared in

the June 1936 issue of Cosmopolitanmagazine and was placed into theCongressional record by a Floridasenator. It did not arise from anygovernment research study, or anyscientific study at all; it was simply aspeculative opinion that happened tocatch the attention of a US politi-cian. Davis presented his findings inthe November, 1997, Townsend Let-ter and reported it to the NationalCouncil Against Health Fruad(NCAHF), who have since publishedwarnings to consumers to be wary ofthose citing this erroneous documentas evidence of nutrient depletion.4

Nutrient AvailabilityA few years ago, the Australian In-stitute of Health and Welfare pub-lished a report which examined thesupply and availability of nutrientsin Australian foods, as well as theirapparent consumption.5 The foodconsumption data was derived fromThe Apparent Consumption of Food-stuffs compiled by the AustralianBureau of Statistics (ABS). The re-port estimated the nutrient content

in the food supply of all foodstuffsavailable for consumption by theAustralian population, from whichassessments could be made as towhether the nutrients available forconsumption are adequate to meetthe needs of the population. Theresults of this data take into accountthe expected nutrient loses that mayoccur from various processing andcooking techniques, and also otherpotentially confounding variables, sothat the data accurately reflects ac-tual nutrient consumption by con-sumers. The results indicate that thesupply of nutrients available re-mains relatively constant over manyyears and that the Australian foodsupply is characterized by an abun-dance of macronutrients, as well asvitamins and trace minerals. Thefollowing graph represents the nutri-ent consumption per capita, in rela-tion to the Recommended DietaryIntake (RDI) levels.5

Evidently, the availability of nu-trients in the food supply substan-tially exceeds the RDI levels. Otherstudies which have examined the


composition of foods in various areasof the world have also indicated thatthere is generally an abundant sup-ply of nutrient availability in foodsconsumed in Australia 6-8 as well asGreat Britain9 and the UnitedStates.10

Nutrient IntakeThis evidence clearly shows that thevitamins and minerals are there inour food supply, however many peo-ple may believe that they are notgetting enough of them due to poordietary habits. Once again, this is acommon misconception.

Throughout 1995, the AustralianBureau of Statistics surveyed ap-proximately 16,400 homes evenlydistributed throughout Australia,collecting data for the National Nu-trition Survey.11 The purpose of thisstudy was to provide insight into thedietary habits of Australians andasses what areas of nutrient intakewere of the greatest concern. Theinformation collected by ABS re-searchers revealed that the averagevitamin and mineral consumptionamong adults was generally greaterthan RDI levels, as represented bythe graph above (in relation to RDIlevels).

Recommended Dietary Intakes —a bare minimum?

Another common misconception isthat the Recommended Dietary In-

take (RDI) levels (also called Recom-mended Dietary Allowance (RDA) inthe US), are the bare minimum lev-els of specific nutrients needed toavoid a deficiency, and that it issomehow advantageous to obtainmuch higher levels.

The RDI for vitamins and miner-als are devised by the NationalHealth and Medical Research Coun-cil, and are designed to be greaterthan the actual physiological re-quirements; thus providing a kind ofmetabolic ‘safety net’.12 They state:

Recommended Dietary Intakes(RDIs) are the levels of essentialnutrients considered adequate tomeet the nutritional needs of mosthealthy individuals. They are basedon estimates of requirements for ageand sex groups and, therefore, applyto group needs. As they incorporategenerous factors to allow for varia-tions in metabolism, absorption andindividual needs, RDIs exceed theactual nutrient requirements forpractically all healthy people. There-fore, they are not synonymous withrequirements.

Issues to be taken into account whencomparing population intakes withRDIs include:

• The RDIs exceed the actual nutri-ent requirements for practically allhealthy people, as described above;

• The proportion by which the RDIexceeds the mean physiological re-

quirement differs between nutrients.Some RDIs incorporate more gener-ous factors to allow for variation inabsorption and metabolism. It istherefore not possible to comparedirectly the proportion who exceedthe RDI for different nutrients.

To give an example, the minimumamount of Vitamin C needed to pre-vent and cure a deficiency (scurvy) inadults is approx 5-10mg/day13,14 yetthe RDI is set at 60mg/day in Aus-tralia12 and even larger in the US.13

Our plasma concentrations become‘full’ at around 200mg/ day, at whichpoint we start to excrete excess lev-els. Although excess amounts areexcreted, they alter the equilibra ofvarious biochemical pathways in thebody (in the case of vitamin C, thesynthesis of certain sex hormonescan be disrupted, resulting in altera-tions in the ratio between progester-one and oestrogen which may inducemiscarriage in early pregnancy.14)Most studies indicate that in healthypeople, amounts greater than theRDI do not appear to be helpful.With a few exceptions, little or noevidence exists to support the notionthat larger than RDI levels ofmicronutrients are needed for ‘opti-mum health’; in fact, ‘mega’ doses ofcertain nutrients such as vitamin A,Niacin, vitamin B6, vitamin D, folicacid, iron and selenium can veryeasily become toxic.14

Money Down the Toilet


When are supplements appropriate?Not all vitamin and mineral supple-ments are entirely worthless. Thereare certain conditions that may ne-cessitate the use of dietary supple-ments.14 Some examples include:• Folic acid among women of child-bearing age

• Therapeutic administration of folicacid, vitamin B6 and vitamin B12 tocontrol homocysteine metabolism inthose with elevated levels.

• Calcium and Vitamin D for people(especially the elderly) who do notconsume adequate amounts of dairyfood.

• Iron in female vegetarians whohave low haemoglobin or those whoare being treated for iron deficiencyanaemia.

• Iron and / or vitamin B12 in ve-gans to prevent or treat anaemia.

• Certain medical conditions such ascystic fibrosis or celiac disease maynecessitate the therapeutic adminis-tration of large doses of certain nutri-ents due to a diminished ability toabsorb them. Some elderly peoplemay also need B12 supplements dueto a diminished capacity to absorb itas a result of low gastric acidity.

• Large therapeutic doses of certainvitamins may be of use in treatingcertain medical conditions (eg, niacinfor high cholesterol, Vitamin B6 forcarpel tunnel) however are generallyless effective than other pharmaco-logical treatments.

Is poor nutrition a problem?Given this information, one mayreasonably ask why the prevalenceof dietary related diseases is so sig-nificant if the population is obtain-ing adequate levels of vitamins andminerals. To put it simply, there is alot more to good nutrition than justvitamins and minerals. Too manypeople’s diets are excessively high inunused energy, saturate fats, saltand added sugar, whilst not contain-ing adequate levels of fruit, vegeta-bles and whole grains.11

Why are plant foods so protective?Population studies have revealedthat diets high in whole grains,fruits and vegetables significantlydecrease the risk of many diseasessuch as cardiovascular disease15,16,

type 2 diabetes16,17 and certain can-cers.18,19 Precisely what substances inthese foods that are responsible fortheir protective effect has been thesubject of much investigation. Fol-lowing this line of thought, however,has thus far led researchers to nocertain conclusion.

For example; a lower incidence oflung cancer was observed amonghigh consumers of carrots as well asother red and orange coloured veg-etables in population studies.20

These foods are known to be rich incarotenoids, most notably beta-caro-tene; a precursor form of vitamin A.Because beta-carotene possessessignificant anti-carcinogenic activityin laboratory studies,21 it was as-sumed that it was the beta-carotenein these veggies that was responsiblefor the apparent protection againstlung cancer.

This led to several large clinicaltrials which involved giving either aplacebo or a large dose of beta-caro-tene to high risk subjects for severalyears.22-24 The combined results ofthese trials was adequately summedup by the authors of Physicians DeskReference for Nutritional Supple-ments14, which states:

…three other large interventionstudies in normally nourished sub-jects, long-term smokers, formersmokers and those exposed to asbes-tos found no overall benefit fromhigh-dose beta-carotene. Moreover,in one of these studies, there was asignificant 18% excess incidence oflung cancer among those who re-ceived beta-carotene supplements.

Evidently, whatever the substancein carrots and carotenoid-rich veg-etables was that was protecting peo-ple against lung cancer was not thebeta-carotene. So what was it?

PhytochemicalsUltimately, it is not known whatsubstances in plant foods are respon-

sible for their protective effect; clini-cal trials testing individual nutrientsin the treatment or prevention ofcancer and heart disease have gener-ally resulted in disappointing out-comes. There are potentially hun-dreds, if not thousands, ofsubstances present in plant foodsreferred to as ‘phytochemicals’.Many phytochemicals have beenidentified as having various protec-tive effects including protectionagainst cancer;25 however there areseveral factors that need to be con-sidered:1. There are far too manyphytochemicals to study; some ofthem may not have even been identi-fied yet.

2. There are far too many of them tosimply put into a supplement pill.

3. Most importantly, the beneficialeffect that consumption of plant foodshave, more than likely comes fromconsuming the combinations of manyphytochemicals found in fruits andvegetables, rather than just a smallhandful of them found in supple-ments.26

Consequently, taking supplemen-tal doses of only a small number ofthese phytochemicals is a poor sub-stitute for eating plant foods. Wemay never identify the specificphytochemicals or combinations ofphytochemicals responsible for thecardioprotective andchemoprotective effects that fruitand vegetable consumption has dem-onstrated in population studies. Putsimply, if you want the protectiveeffect of eating fruits, vegetables andwhole grains, you have to eat them— there is no other way.

JuicingIt is also important to note thanmany of the beneficial substancespresent in plant foods are found intheir skins and fibrous content/roughage.27,28 Consequently, drinkingfruit and vegetables juices, whilstproviding some phytochemicals, is apoor substitute for eating themwhole, and generally provides a verydense source of sugar.29


Antioxidants — not all are equalAntioxidants have become a muchtalked about issue in the media. Anti-oxidants help to defend against freeradicals which disrupt DNA, oxidizelipids and damage cell membranes —all factors that contribute towardsthe causation of both cancer30 andcardiovascular disease.31 Unfortu-nately, there are two factors thatneed to be considered in regards toantioxidants. The first is that there isa lot more involved in the pathogen-eses of these diseases than simplyfree radical attack.32 The second isthat whilst various plant foods pro-vide substances that do possess sig-nificant antioxidant activity, thesame substances also possess aplethora of other actions that helpdefend against disease. Substanceswhose only mechanism of action is anantioxidant one may help to defendagainst free radicals, but may nothelp to defend against the manyother factors involved in the develop-ment of these diseases.

To give an example, it is knownthat large supplemental doses of theantioxidant vitamin alpha-tocopherol(vitamin E) decreases the susceptibil-ity to low-density lipoprotein (LDL)‘bad’ cholesterol oxidation (which is asignificant contributing factor in thepathogeneses of coronary heart dis-ease).33 Population studies have re-vealed that diets high in vitamin Erich foods such as nuts,34 olive oil35

and whole grain cereal foods16 signifi-cantly decrease the risk of heart dis-ease. Despite these observations,large well-designed clinical trialshave generally failed to find any re-duction in the incidence of heart at-tacks between subjects given vitaminE supplements, and those given aplacebo over several years.36

To give another example, this timeusing cancer as the model; it is wellknown that tea, particularly greentea, possesses a very potent antioxi-dant action (far greater than that ofvitamin E). The graph (above) com-pares the antioxidant activity of teawith various vegetables.37

Despite having such a powerfulantioxidant activity, the majority ofwell designed population studies havefound little if any significant reduc-tion in the risk of cancer amongdrinkers of both green and blacktea.38-42 On the other hand, a majorityof well designed population studieshave demonstrated a significant re-duction in the risk of cancer18 andcardiovascular disease15 associatedwith higher intakes of fruits and veg-etables, despite having an antioxi-dant action considerably less power-ful than tea. It is important tounderstand that many of the sub-stances found plant foods such aswhole grains43 fruits vegetables44 (andeven tea45) also possess a wide rangeof protective mechanisms, only one ofwhich is an antioxidant action.

Antioxidant NutrientsUnfortunately, some people may beunder the impression that takinglarge doses of certain antioxidantsmay be all that is required to helpprotect against diseases such as can-cer. Vitamins C, E, beta-carotene andSelenium are all essential nutrients,and all possess an antioxidant activ-ity. Due to their antioxidant activity,it was thought that they may help todefend against cancer.

In 2004, a review of 14 clinicaltrials involving more than 170,000people published in The Lancet, foundantioxidant vitamins C, E and betacarotene offered no protection againstcancer.46 This study provided strongevidence that antioxidant vitaminsupplements are not effective in pro-tecting against cancer. It was of con-cern to note that this review found asmall increase in mortality amongpeople taking antioxidants comparedwith those given a placebo.

Vitamin and Mineral Supplements —The bottom line

Population studies have foundstrong evidence that higher con-sumption of plant foods such asfruits, vegetables and whole grainscan significantly decrease the risk ofserious diseases such as cardiovascu-lar disease, diabetes and certaincancers. It is not known preciselywhat substances in these foods are



responsible, as there are so many ofthem; many having a diverse rangeof potentially protective biochemicalmechanisms. Whilst they are goodsources of vitamins and minerals,most people can, and do, get enoughvitamins and minerals from theirdiets, and do not need additionaldoses in the form of supplements.Additionally, while plant-foods docontain substances that have anantioxidant activity, they also pos-sess various chemoprotective andcardioprotective mechanisms thatantioxidant vitamins do not. Basedon the available data, it is recom-mended that we consume atleast two serves of fruit andfive serves of vegetables perday, as well as replacingrefined grain foods withwhole grain foods and in-cluding several serves oflegumes per week.47

As stated previously: ifyou want the beneficial ef-fect of fruits and vegetables,you have to eat them —there is no other way.

What about othersupplements?

Although many of the mostpopular dietary supplements containvitamins and minerals, the othertypes of supplement products avail-able on the shelves in health foodstores sold as ‘listed therapeuticgoods’ are classified as ‘functionalfood’ supplements, or herbal medi-cines; not all of which are entirelyworthless.

Functional Food SupplementsAlthough their efficacy in the treat-ment of acute or chronic medicalconditions may be limited (their useis probably more effective in combi-nation with other treatments), cer-tain ‘functional food’ supplementsmay be of value as an additionsource of functional nutrition, thuspotentially contributing towardsdisease prevention. Although thediscussion regarding the use of thesesupplements lies beyond the scope ofthis article, suffice to say, that manyof these supplements may be of some

worth, but are generally poor [andexpensive] substitutes for the foodsthey are replacing. Briefly, someexamples include:Fish Oil — Higher consumption offish is associated with a decreasedrisk of cardiovascular events, asthmaand cognitive/behavioural problems,presumably due to the Omega 3 fattyacids DHA and EPA. Clinical trialshave demonstrated that fish oil sup-plementation may be an effectivetreatment for some of these prob-lems.48 Fish however is also a richsource of vitamin D and seleniumwhich fish oil supplements are not.

Garlic — Garlic is truly a healthyvegetable which may decrease therisk of gastro-intestinal cancers,49

however garlic is only one of manyhealthy vegetables; consequently, itonly replaces one of them. Garlicsupplementation has demonstratedmodest alterations on a number ofcardiovascular disease ‘risk factors’50,however has yet to demonstrate adecrease in actual cardiovascularevents (ie, heart attacks or strokes).

Flax seed oil — Flax seed is a richsource of phytoestrgens, lignans andessential fatty acids; all which con-tribute towards its healthful effects.Flax seed oil, however, is a poor sub-stitute because most of the beneficialeffect is due to the substancespresent in the fibrous flax seeds, notjust in its oil.51

Grape Seed Extract — Grape seedsare a rich source of antioxidantphytochemicals which may possess a

range of cardioprotective mecha-nisms. Thus far, however, most of theevidence to support this notion comesfrom laboratory studies.52

Green Tea Extract — Green teamay have some healthful benefits,however, at least some of that benefitcomes from being absorbed in themouth and present in the saliva —something which does not occur uponadministration of a green tea extractcapsule.53

Probiotic Supplements — Prelimi-nary evidence from clinical trialshave demonstrated a range of poten-

tial medicinal uses of lacticacid bacteria supplements,however more research isneeded.54

Plant sterols, stanols andwax alcohols — These sub-stances are extracted fromplants and are used in thera-peutic doses to treat highcholesterol levels (hyperlipi-daemia). They are especiallyeffective in combination withstatin drug therapy. They areusually added to foods such asmargarine, however are avail-able as supplements as well.Despite their efficacy in cho-

lesterol lowering, whether they de-crease the risk of heart attacks is yetto be adequately demonstrated inwell designed clinical trials.55,56

Glucoasmine and Chondroitin —Glucosamine sulphate and Chondroi-tin sulphate are not exactly dietarysupplements, because they do notsupplement anything that wouldnaturally occur in our diet, and aretherefore more like a drug or medi-cine. They do appear to be more effec-tive than a placebo in the treatmentof osteo-arthritis.57

Vegetable Juice Extract Supple-ments — Generally provided as pow-ders, they are usually made of thesolidified extracts of vegetable juice.The health benefits of these supple-ments are most likely comparable tothat of juicing.58

Psyllium Husk — Usually con-sumed as a powder, psyllium husk isoften used as a fibre supplement. As

Popping supplement pills is a poor substitute for a healthy dietPhoto courtesy of Chi Tan, with thanks.


is the case with other foods rich insoluble fibre, preliminary evidencesuggests that in significant quanti-ties, psyllium husk may be effectivein the treatment of chronic constipa-tion59 and may lower serum choles-terol and glucose levels.60

Herbal Medicines — A significantportion of the products found inhealth food stores are not dietarysupplements but herbal medicines.The difference between a dietarysupplement and an herbal medicineis that a dietary supplement is de-signed as just that — a supplementfor a food or nutrient. That is, theyprovide approximate levels of thatfood that would be obtained fromdietary sources. Herbal medicines areeither derived from plants which arenot intended to be eaten, or are madefrom highly concentrated extracts ofcertain foods, which provide levelsnot normally provided by dietarymeans. Dietary supplements aregenerally meant to substitute a com-ponent of a diet, whereas herbalmedicines are specifically meant formedicinal purposes — that is, theyare used to treat specific medicalconditions.

Of course, there is some overlap inthis definition, as many productssold as herbal medicines are simplyextracts of a food designed to providea high-dose supplemental form ofthat food — garlic being a typicalexample. Additionally, many herbalmedicines can be taken as an infu-sion or tea, in which case, althoughthey are being used for medicinalpurposes, they are contributing toone’s diet. Consequently, there is nota clear-cut definition, as some overlap exists between dietary/nutri-tional supplements, functional foodsupplements and herbal medicines.

It should be noted that herbalmedicines designed for medicinalpurposes often come from plantswhich are not meant to be consumedordinarily, and although they may be‘natural’, they can contain highlyconcentrated extracts ofpharmacologically active substances.Consequently, they are acting as adrug, and should be treated with thesame precautions as a drug. Many

can have unfavourable side effects orcan react adversely with other medi-cations. Some can also be toxic if notused correctly. Whilst there are a fewherbal medicines which have beenthoroughly studied, many have notbeen, so available information isoften based on anecdotal accounts or‘traditional’ uses. Although someherbs have demonstrated efficacy inmanaging certain diseases, they aregenerally not the best choice for pri-mary pharmacological treatment.61

More InformationIf you would like some reliable infor-mation on specific dietary supple-ments or herbal medicines, here aresome good websites:

Sloan Kettering — About herbs,botanicals and other products. Thiswebsite provides some good reviewsof the scientific data available onvarious herbs and dietary supple-ments. Available at:www.mskcc.org/mskcc/html/11570.cfm

PDR — Physicians Desk Refer-ence. This website has some goodreviews on nutritional supplements,however its information on herbalmedicines is unreliable, as it isbased largely on ‘traditional’ usesinstead of scientific evidence. Avail-able at: www.pdrhealth.com

Medline Plus: Herbs and Sup-plements. — Provides scientificreviews on various popular herbsand supplements, and is publishedby the National Institute of Health’sNational Library of Medicine. Avail-able at: www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/herb_All.html

HerbMed — Provides collations ofscientific literature available forvarious herbal medicines, howeverdoes not cover all herbs, and somerequire payment to access. Availableat: www.herbmed.org

Quackwatch — Excellent, scien-tifically accurate, information onvarious forms of complementary andalternative medicine including somesupplements. Available at:www.quackwatch.org

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[22] The Alpha-Tocopherol, Beta CaroteneCancer Prevention Study Group. The effectof vitamin E and beta-carotene on the inci-dence of lung cancer and other cancers inmale smokers. N Engl J Med . 1994;330:1029-1035.

[23] Omenn GS, Goodman GE, ThornquistMD, et al. Effects of the combination of betacarotene and vitamin A on lung cancer andcardiovascular disease . N Engl J Med1996; 334:1150-1155.

[24] Hennekens CH, Buring JE, MansonJE, et al. Lack of effect of long-term supple-mentation with beta carotene on the inci-dence of malignant neoplasms and cardio-vascular disease. N Engl J Med. 1996;334:1145-1149.

[25] Nishino H, Murakoshi M, Mou XY,Wada S, Masuda M, Ohsaka Y, Satomi Y,Jinno K. Cancer prevention byphytochemicals. Oncology. 2005;69:38-40

[26] Suter PM, Moser C. Fruit and vegeta-ble Ther Umsch. 2005;62:607-610.

[27] Boyer J, Liu RH. Apple phytochemicalsand their health benefits. Nutr J. 2004;3:5

[28] Monagas M, Hernandez-Ledesma B,Gomez-Cordoves C, Bartolome B. Commer-cial Dietary Ingredients from Vitis viniferaL. Leaves and Grape Skins: Antioxidant andChemical Characterization. J Agric FoodChem. 2006 ;54:319-327.

[29] USDA National Nutrient Database forStandard Reference, Release 16-1 USDANational Nutrient Database for StandardReference, Release 16-1 Sugars, total(g).Content of Selected Foods per CommonMeasure, sorted alphabetical

[30] Valko M, Rhodes CJ, Moncol J,Izakovic M, Mazur M. Free radicals, metalsand antioxidants in oxidative stress-inducedcancer. Chem Biol Interact. 2006; Jan 20

[31] Violi F, Cangemi R. Antioxidants andcardiovascular disease. Curr Opin InvestigDrugs. 2005;6:895-900.

[32] Underwood, J.C.E. General and Sys-temic Pathology, 4th Ed. 2004; ChurchillLivingston, London

[33] Porkkala-Sarataho EK, NyyssonenMK, Kaikkonen JE, Poulsen HE, Hayn EM,Salonen RM, Salonen JT. A randomized,single-blind, placebo-controlled trial of theeffects of 200 mg alpha-tocopherol on theoxidation resistance of atherogenic

lipoproteins. Am J Clin Nutr. 1998;68:1034-1041

[34] Kris-Etherton PM, Zhao G, BinkoskiAE, Coval SM, Etherton TD. The effects ofnuts on coronary heart disease risk. NutrRev. 2001;59:103-111.

[35] Panagiotakos DB, Pitsavos C,Polychronopoulos E, Chrysohoou C,Zampelas A, Trichopoulou A. Can a Mediter-ranean diet moderate the development andclinical progression of coronary heart dis-ease? A systematic review Med Sci Monit.2004;10: 193-198

[36] Jialal I, Devaraj S. Scientific evidenceto support a vitamin E and heart diseasehealth claim: research needs. J Nutr.2005;135:348-53.

[37] Prior RL, Cao G. Antioxidant capacityand polyphenolic components of teas: impli-cations for altering in vivo antioxidantstatus. Proc Soc Exp Biol Med.1999;220:255-261.

[38] Seely D, Mills EJ, Wu P, Verma S,Guyatt GH. The effects of green tea con-sumption on incidence of breast cancer andrecurrence of breast cancer: a systematicreview and meta-analysis. Integr CancerTher. 2005;4:144-155.

[39] Hoshiyama Y, Kawaguchi T, Miura Y,Mizoue T, Tokui N, Yatsuya H, Sakata K,Kondo T, Kikuchi S, Toyoshima H,Hayakawa N, Tamakoshi A, Yoshimura T;JACC Study Group. Green tea and stomachcancer—a short review of prospective stud-ies. J Epidemiol. 2005;15:S109-112.

[40] Borrelli F, Capasso R, Russo A, ErnstE. Systematic review: green tea andgastrointestinal cancer risk. AlimentPharmacol Ther. 2004;19:497-510.

[41] Arab L, Il’yasova D. The epidemiologyof tea consumption and colorectal cancerincidence. J Nutr. 2003;133:3310S-3318S.

[42] Sun CL, Yuan JM, Koh WP, Yu MC.Green tea, black tea and breast cancer risk:a meta-analysis of epidemiological studies.Carcinogenesis. 2005 Nov 25;

[43] Slavin JL, Martini MC, Jacobs DR Jr,Marquart L. Plausible mechanisms for theprotectiveness of whole grains. Am J ClinNutr. 1999;70:459S-463S.

[44] Steinmetz KA, Potter JD. Vegetables,fruit, and cancer prevention: a review. J AmDiet Assoc. 1996;96:1027-39.

[45] Lambert JD, Yang CS. Mechanisms ofcancer prevention by tea constituents. JNutr. 2003;133:3262S-3267S.

[46] Bjelakovic G, Nikolova D, SimonettiRG, Gluud C. Antioxidant supplements forprevention of gastrointestinal cancers: asystematic review and meta-analysis. Lan-cet. 2004;364:1219-1228.

[47] National Health and Medical ResearchCouncil. Dietary Guidelines for AustralianAdults. Canberra.

[48] Oh, R. Practical applications of fish oil(Omega-3 fatty acids) in primary care. J AmBoard Fam Pract. 2005;18:28-36.

[49] Fleischauer AT, Arab L. Garlic andcancer: a critical review of the epidemiologicliterature. J Nutr. 2001;131:1032S-1040S.

[50] Spigelski D, Jones PJ. Efficacy ofgarlic supplementation in lowering serumcholesterol levels. Nutr Rev. 2001;59:236-241.

[51] Bloedon LT, Szapary PO. Flaxseed andcardiovascular risk. Nutr Rev. 2004;62:18-27.

[52] Bagchi D, Sen CK, Ray SD, Das DK,Bagchi M, Preuss HG, Vinson JA. Molecularmechanisms of cardioprotection by a novelgrape seed proanthocyanidin extract. MutatRes. 2003;523-524:87-97.

[53] Yang CS, Lee MJ, Chen L. Humansalivary tea catechin levels and catechinesterase activities: implication in humancancer prevention studies. CancerEpidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 1999;8:83-89.

[54] Senok AC, Ismaeel AY, Botta GA.Probiotics: facts and myths. Clin MicrobiolInfect. 2005;11:958-966.

[55] Gylling H, Miettinen TA. The effect ofplant stanol- and sterol-enriched foods onlipid metabolism, serum lipids and coronaryheart disease. Ann Clin Biochem.2005;42:254-63.

[56] Chen JT, Wesley R, Shamburek RD,Pucino F, Csako G. Meta-analysis of naturaltherapies for hyperlipidemia: plant sterolsand stanols versus policosanol. Pharmaco-therapy. 2005;25:171-183.

[57] Richy F, Bruyere O, Ethgen O,Cucherat M, Henrotin Y, Reginster JY.Structural and symptomatic efficacy ofglucosamine and chondroitin in kneeosteoarthritis: a comprehensive meta-analy-sis. Arch Intern Med. 2003;163:1514-1522.

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[59] Krammer H, Schlieger F, Singer MV.Therapeutic options of chronic constipation.Internist (Berl). 2005;46:1331-1338.

[60] Sierra M, Garcia JJ, Fernandez N,Diez MJ, Calle AP. Therapeutic effects ofpsyllium in type 2 diabetic patients. Eur JClin Nutr. 2002;56:830-842.

[61] Ernst, E. Herbal medicines put intocontext. BMJ. 2003;327:881-882


In late 2005, a new film about exor-cism was released in America andbecame a minor hit. The Exorcism ofEmily Rose, starring Laura Linneyand Campbell Scott, is about a priestaccused of negligence resulting inthe death of a nineteen-year-oldwoman during an exorcism. Whiledemons, devils, and exorcisms areobviously great grist for horror films,The Exorcism of Emily Rose is inter-esting because it shows (howeverfictionally) the potentially dangerousconsequences of exorcisms. (For mysceptical review of the film, seewww.radfordreviews.com/cgi-bin/rview.cgi?rm=mode2&type=article&name=exorcismemi.)

As the film opened across thecountry, a Romanian priest stoodaccused of just such a crime in real-life. An exorcism at a convent in thesmall Romanian town of Tanacuresulted in the death of Maricica

Irina Cornici, a twenty-three-year-old nun who said she heard the deviltelling her she was sinful. With as-sistance from four nuns, priest Dan-iel Corogeanu bound Cornici to across, gagged her mouth with atowel, and left her for three dayswithout food or water. The ritual, thepriest explained, was an effort todrive devils out of the woman.Cornici was found dead on June 15,2005; an autopsy found she had diedof suffocation and dehydration.Cornici, who had a history of schizo-phrenia, reportedly had recentlyvisited the convent and soon afterjoined the order. The OrthodoxChurch admitted that Corogeanuhad been ordained as a priest with-out completing his theological stud-ies, and condemned Cornici’s death.

While many Americans likelythink of exorcisms as relics of theDark Ages, exorcisms continue to beperformed, often on people who areemotionally and mentally disturbed.Whether those undergoing the exor-cism are truly possessed by spirits ordemons is another matter entirely.Most often, exorcisms are done onpeople of strong religious faith. Tothe extent that exorcisms “work,” itis primarily due to the power of sug-gestion and the placebo effect. If youbelieve you are possessed, and that agiven ritual will cleanse you, then itjust might. (For more on exorcisms,see Joe Nickell’s Investigative Filescolumn in the January/February2001 issue of Skeptical Inquirermagazine.)

A 2001 book on the topic, MichaelCuneo’s American Exorcism: Expel-ling Demons in the Land of Plentyfound no reason to think that any-thing supernatural occurs during

exorcisms. After attending fifty exor-cisms, Cuneo is unequivocal aboutthe fact that he saw nothing super-natural—and certainly nothing re-motely resembling the events de-picted in the 1974 blockbuster filmThe Exorcist. No spinning heads,levitation, or poltergeists were seen,though many involved some cursing,spitting, or vomiting. As far as sci-ence is concerned, possession is amental health issue.

Maricica Cornici is not the firstinnocent victim of an exorcism. OnAugust 22, 2003, an autistic eight-year-old boy in Milwaukee wasbound in sheets and held down bychurch members during a prayerservice held to exorcise the evil spir-its they blamed for his condition. Anautopsy found extensive bruising onthe back of the child’s neck and con-cluded that he died of asphyxiation.In the past ten years, there havebeen at least four other exorcism-related deaths in the United Statesalone, two of the victims were chil-dren. Then there are several tragiccases like that of Texas motherAndrea Yates, who drowned three ofher children in an effort to exorcisethe devil from herself in 2001. Morerecently, a South African couple wasarrested for keeping their fifteen-month-old daughter caged, unfed,and tied up because they believedthe child was possessed.

Exorcisms in film and fiction canbe entertaining, while exorcisms inreal life can be fatal. The tragic ironyis that in many cases the evil is com-mitted not by the Devil, but by thosewho believe in him.

Exorcisms, Fictionaland Fatal

Benjamin Radford is an investigative writerand film critic based in the US. His article onthe true story behind The Exorcist can befound at www.radfordreviews.com.

Review


The Root of All Evil?Channel 4 (UK) production featur-ing Professor Richard Dawkins

I sometimes disagree with myfriends about Dawkins’ approach todebating religious people. I haveseen him be extremely (and unnec-essarily) rude to people who havebeen expressing their faith, andthis can come across as arroganceand bullying. This sort of conductcan often be counterproductive andprovide ammunition for those whoclaim that atheists are either boor-ish buffoons or people who are justpushing a religion of their own. (Insome cases these impressions arecorrect, of course.) Before the DVDarrived at my place I had read tworeviews of the program, one writtenby a scientist and one by a believer,and what I had read had preparedme to have my prejudices aboutDawkins reinforced. All I can say isthat the reviewers either watched

a choice also. Nobody is born withbeliefs and faiths, but children areborn with the innate need to obeyauthority figures. This is so thatparents can pass on knowledgeabout dangers and other lifestylematters of importance, and wewould not be here unless our ances-tors managed to avoid falling offcliffs and being eaten by wild ani-mals. It is sad to see this evidenceand product of our evolution beingmisused to propagate unscientificand often ridiculous ideas. It is ofcourse much worse when childrenare not only taught nonsense butare quarantined from any otherchildren (and even adults) whomight have been taught differentthings.

This an excellent program. If youget a chance to see it on your localstation, don’t miss it. I do have onesmall quibble with the consistencyof Professor Dawkins’ opinions,though. He seems to believe thatnothing good or even useful hasever come or could ever come fromreligion. I wonder if when he iswalking around the grounds of hisemployer, Oxford University, heever gives a thought to who mighthave started the teaching there in1096. But that was a long time ago.

NoteTo date no TV channel in Australiaappears to have taken up this pro-gramme. Feel free to lobby your net-work of choice.

Review

another version of the show orplaying the thing upside-down rela-tive to England changes things.(Perhaps it’s the Coriolis force thatmakes the water go down the otherway in the bath acting on the DVDplayer. This could explain whyDVDs from one region won’t play inanother, but I digress ...).

Yes, Professor Dawkins was firmwith the people he talked to, evenon the occasions when his polite-ness and patience were obviouslybeing stretched, but the people hetalked to deserved firmness. It israre that anyone challenges reli-gious nutcases about their faith(and there were several nutcasesexhibited here), but it is interestingand informative to see the ration-alisation that can go on to justifybelief not only without evidence(because that is what faith is) butbelief in the face of contrary evi-dence. It was scary, but not surpris-ing, to see that the principle of theend justifying the means is still ingood health, as well as the hypo-critical notion that religious textsare absolutely inerrant in thoseplaces where the reader orpreacher likes what is written butare just allegorical guides else-where.

Dawkins likens religion to a vi-rus, and in some ways I agree withhim. It seems to be something thatpeople catch, particularly childrenwho catch it from their parents. Hemakes the point that children arelabelled by the religion of theirparents but you would be thoughtmad (or at least a little strange) ifyou insisted on classifying childrenby the political parties their par-ents vote for, the types of cars theparents drive, or the music stylesthat the parents prefer. All of theseare choices, and religion should be

The Root of All Evil?

Peter Bowditch is VP and Webmeister ofAustralian Skeptics, as well as running hisown Ratbags,com sites. In real life heperforms unnatural acts on computers.


Talk given by Nigel Sinnott to Vic-torian Skeptics on Feb 20, 2006

On January 16 this year, Dr GeoffGallop announced his resignation aspremier of Western Australia and asa member of the state parliamentbecause he was suffering from de-pression. In his resignation speech,reported on the front page of The Ageon January 17, Dr Gallop admittedthat “Living with depression is avery debilitating experience” andthat he had “sought expert help”. Hethen added: “My doctors advised methat, with treatment, time and restthis illness is very curable”.1

In the following day’s Age therewas an article by Jeff Kennett,former premier of Victoria and nowchairman of BeyondBlue, the so-called “national depression initia-tive”. Mr Kennett informed readersthat “depression is an illness, it isnot a weakness, and it can be curedor managed”.2

Well, every illness can be man-aged or treated, but can depressionreally be “cured”?

A real cure for depression wouldalmost certainly receive the samepublic adulation as a cure for AIDS,Alzheimer’s disease or schizophre-nia: massive world-wide media at-tention and one or more NobelPrizes. Have I been asleep andmissed something?

Almost anyone who has soughthelp for depression, or who has dealtwith people who are depressed,knows that treatment for depressiongets very mixed and uncertain re-sults. This alone should raise doubtsabout the claim that depression canbe cured, but what makes the claimparticularly outrageous is that, be-cause present day knowledge of de-pression is far from perfect, and ex-perimental methods for evaluatingtreatment of mental illness havegrave limitations, it is quite impossi-

ble to devise a protocol for unequivo-cally demonstrating that anythingdoes or does not or could cure de-pression.

To show scientifically that a typeof treatment cures depression wewould need to establish that remedyX, and nothing else, has clearly putan end to all symptoms of depressionin subject Y and preferably in a fewother subjects. We would also needproof that we can rely — beyonddoubt — on the beneficial result be-ing either very long term or prefer-ably permanent.

In the real world, however, de-pression can “get better” spontane-ously (in the absence of any treat-ment) and sometimes return yearslater. This makes it difficult to estab-lish that improvement, while takingan antidepressant drug or undergo-ing a course of psychotherapy, hasreally been caused by the treatment.Furthermore, someone taking anantidepressant may not get better ormay report improvement. Patientswho report improvement may feelwell only as long as they continuethe treatment, and will relapse verysoon after they go off the drug. Oth-ers will continue to feel well longafter stopping the drug; and stillothers will relapse (will feel de-pressed again) while still taking thedrug. (In other words, the benefitseems to have “worn off” in thesecases.)

If someone feels better after acourse of treatment, no objective testwhatsoever is available to establishor predict that the person will neverfeel depressed again, years later.

The sort of people who claim thatdepression is curable are probablythose who want to give the publiconly “the good news” about depres-sion. They imagine, I assume, that adiet of undiluted “good news” willmake depressives happier and morehopeful.

This is patronising piffle, and, inthe long term, very harmful drivel.Such spouters of platitudes remindme of the arrogant notion back in the“bad old days” that telling “littlewhite lies” to women, children andservants was justifiable because itkept them contented and docile. Youmight get away with lying to a de-pression patient once, or even twice,but eventually the patient will be-come angry and distrustful, and willcome to regard consulting mentalhealth professionals as a waste oftime and effort. The result: a disillu-sioned, despairing and — worst of all— isolated depressive!

I have suffered from depression invarying degrees for fifty years. Mymaternal grandmother was almostcertainly a chronic depressive aswell. She committed suicide in 1968.

There is, however, a mite of poten-tially encouraging news in the areaof depression research. I emphasisethe words potentially encouraging.Researchers in the United Stateshave identified a brain protein,called P11, that affects serotoninlevels, and serotonin and depressionare known to be linked. It seemsthat low levels of P11 correlate withdepression and high levels with hy-peractivity. What is not yet known ishow to increase the amount of P11 inthe brain cells of depressed people.3

1. The Age, Jan 17, 2006: p1. For thenext few days I scanned the newspaperclosely for any claim that Geoff Gallophad misunderstood or misquoted hisdoctors. I have seen no denial, so I see noreason to doubt that the doctors did saythat depression was “very curable”.

2. “Now it’s up to the rest of our leadersto match Gallop’s courage”; The Age, Jan18, 2006: p15.

3. Andy Coghlan, “Found: a dimmerswitch for depression”; New Scientist, Jan14, 2006: p13. Paul Greengard, Science, v.311: p77.

Is Depression Curable?Forum


I have recently spent some time inIsrael. On the morning of arrival, Iread Israel’s leading newspaper(Yediot Aharonot). On page two,there was a title that included theword miracle. It reported the story ofa man who was on a train thatcrashed into a car at a level crossing.He was quoted as saying that he wasthrown around and knocked hard,and that there was glass every-where, and that it was a miracle thathe did not die. Well, it was an evenbigger miracle than you would guess,because later in the piece it is re-ported that he was treated on thescene by paramedics and sent homewith no serious injury. The miracledid not extend to the driver of thecar, who died at the crash. (Duringmy visit to Israel, there have beenfive level crossing accidents betweencars and trains. Each has been re-corded as a miracle, either becausenobody died, or because not as manypeople as could have died, did. Itlooks like god works very hard tocreate miracle opportunities, sparingno life in an effort achieve maximumimpact).

The next day brought anothermiracle story in the same newspa-per, this time on page three. It in-volved the fall of a child from a thirdfloor balcony, which resulted in seri-ous head and back injuries. Thechild was still alive as the paperwent to press, but he was in a criti-cal and unstable condition. That hewas alive was attributed to a mira-cle. Why the miracle maker couldnot extend the gesture to the childnot losing his balance and falling inthe first place, has not been re-ported.

From that point, I decided to keeptrack of reported miracles; after all,where else but the Holy Land wouldyou expect to have an abundance ofinterventions by god? I read the pa-

per each day, looking for the wordmiracle in a title, and noted the pageon which it first appeared. In overfive weeks, I only reached page fiveonce. Page four accounted for abouthalf of all miracle reports, and pagestwo and three (often printed as onewide page in the tabloid format ofthe two major Israeli papers) ac-counted for all the rest except for onefront page miracle.

That miracle report deserves spe-cial attention, because it was justone of many that related to thestroke suffered by Prime MinisterSharon on January 4. Most mentionsof miracles were actually about peo-ple hoping or praying for a miracle(the PM’s office has even issued astatement that they are “expecting amiracle” — no less), but the miraclethat made it to page one has to dowith a very famous rabbi who, asreported, was asked by Sharon’sfamily (who are known as a verysecular family) to pray by his bed-side. On leaving, the rabbi reportedthat Sharon had opened his eyes forthe first time as soon as he finishedhis prayer. This was obviously attrib-uted to god’s response to the prayers.Why god would need somebody toactually be at the sick person’s bed-side to make the link has not beenreported, but I couldn’t help thinkthese people do not think much oftheir god.

As details started to come out overthe next two days, it became knownthat while the rabbi was at Sharon’sside, Sharon’s son played him a re-cording of his young son (Sharon’sgrandson) asking him to wake up.This, it was reported, caused Sharonto open his eyes. Nothing was nowsaid about any conflict with theprayer (synergy at work, perhaps?)and it was still deemed a miracle.Finally, the doctors started talking.The hospital spokesperson (a medi-

cal doctor) said to the press thatSharon did not open his eyes. Hemay have moved his eyes a bit, butthat happened fairly often and didnot suggest any change in his condi-tion. So much for a miracle.

The prominence of prayers did notstop at Sharon’s bedside. Referencesto prayers were made in the mostunexpected places. None was as un-expected as hearing the eveningnews anchor on Israel’s public televi-sion service say “god willing”(be’ezrat hashem) on several differ-ent occasions. Here is a secular per-son, who enjoys public standing thatcan perhaps be compared to thatenjoyed by Ray Martin in Australia,using a superstitious, religious say-ing as if it were the most obviousthing to say. If that were a worry, theresponses of people I talked to aboutthis occurrence were downright de-pressing. Most people simply did notunderstand what the problem was,and I should emphasise that I’m notreferring to religious people.

Several other religious habitsseem to be taking hold among secu-lar society. Prominent among thoseis the kissing of the mezuzah, a rollof parchment carrying a prayer thatis enclosed in a small compartmentand stuck to the right hand side ofall entrances except for toilets (whenI lived in Israel, I had a mezuzahtoo, but the parchment had beenreplaced by a team photo of Man-chester United). Since it is easy todistinguish religious Jews from non-religious ones by the differences indress code, I was astonished at thenumber of non-religious people whoperform this superstitious act, whicheven some religious people do notperform.

Another such habit is the imprint-ing of an acronym for the Aramaic

Miracles, Prayers and OtherHoly Land Oddities

Continued p 67 ...

Forum


In 2005, in response to the very suc-cessful public campaign by advocatesof ‘Intelligent Design’, both in the USand in Australia, the editors of Na-ture Australia, the Australian Muse-um’s prize-winning magazine(founded 1922), asked me to write aresponse to ID, for “The Last Word”column in the Autumn 2006 issue.

Seeking a new angle to a well-worn subject, I decided to examinethe evolution of creationism. Withonly 700 words available to explain acomplex topic, I fought for, and got,approval to include important web-sites explaining the background toID. Here is my article, slightly modi-fied.

Many long-term observers of crea-tionist organizations must have beenstruck, as I have been, by the evolu-tion of creationism over the yearsfrom crude early prototypes to themore refined and successful descend-ants around us today. Ironically, thegradual modification and adaptiveradiation of creationism in its manyguises mimics the very process thatis anathema to all true creationists— evolution by natural selection asfirst expounded by Charles Darwin.

As in the natural world, not all ofthe earlier, primitive varieties ofcreationism have become extinct.Some have even survived to thepresent in protected niches alongsidetheir more successful relatives. Inthe early 21st Century, the Flat-Earthers and Geocentrists are defi-nitely endangered species nearingextinction, but the Young EarthCreationists (YECs) are still common

Alex Ritchie is a Research Fellow in Palaeontol-ogy at The Australian Museum and is anHonorary Life Member of Australian Skeptics.Everyone know what he looks like from the front.

Supernatural Selection:Intelligent Design and theEvolution of Creationism

and widespread. The past decade,however, has seen the remarkablerise of a new mutant offshoot, theIntelligent Design Creationists(IDCs). I prefer to call them theIDeists, because when they use ‘De-signer’ they really mean ‘God’ but,for tactical reasons, prefer not tomention him/her.

Progressive displacement of YECsfrom their ecological niches byIDeists appears to be largely due todirect competition and the latter’smore effective camouflage, disguis-ing their true colours as apseudoscientific religious movement.This accounts for their considerablecurrent success, especially in NorthAmerica and Australia, at the top ofthe creationist food chain.

We can illustrate this by compar-ing YECs with their newer competi-tors, the IDeists. We haven’t spacehere for a full analysis but fortu-nately, in the Age of Google, igno-rance is no excuse.

YECs are clearly an obsolete crea-tionist model locked into a literalinterpretation of Biblical Genesis.YECs cite a mythical 6-day CreationEvent around 6000 years ago, and alater one-year Flood Event some4,300 years ago, to explain theEarth’s geological and life history.For a colourful illustration of thelatest refinement in young earthcreationism check Answers in Gen-esis, a Qld-based YEC organizationand the personal web-site of theirgeological spokesman, Tas Walker’sBiblical Geology which is clearlybased on Bishop Ussher’s 17th Cen-

Article

Evolution occurs in theoddest places


tury model! www.uq.net.au/~zztbwalk. Note that it is accessedon the University of Queensland’swebsite — presumably seeking re-spectability by association!

For decades YECs have tried toinfiltrate their creationist model intoscience classes of American schools.They have failed because of itsovertly Biblical basis and thanks tothe protection of the US Constitu-tion. Australia unfortunately lacksconstitutional protection againstteaching religion in its scienceclasses.

Observing the YECs’ lack of suc-cess, their successors, the IDeists,have regrouped, mutated andevolved a new attack strategy. Theyhave abandoned the Book of Genesisand replaced it with the less confron-tational Book of John (“In the begin-ning was the word….”) and haveeven tossed out the six-day BiblicalCreation and Flood — the very basisof young-earth creationism.

In their version of creationism theIDeists have resurrected an early19th Century model, propounded byWilliam Paley (1803) with his‘watchmaker’ analogy (aka Argu-ment from Design). The IDeists haveskilfully refined this and repackagedit with a snappy new label, ‘Intelli-gent Design’.

By accepting and incorporatingmany of the discoveries (but not theconclusions) of modern science theIDeists have achieved remarkablepublic success with their books andDVDs, some of which are coming toschools near you. The ID movement

has even received public endorse-ment from no less than PresidentGeorge W. Bush in the US and fromDr Brendan Nelson, Federal Minis-ter of Education, Science and Train-ing in Australia!

For those confused by claims thatID represents an alternative scien-tific view of origins, a recent book,Intelligent Design: Creationism’sTrojan Horse by Barbara Forrest andPaul Gross, documents why ID is apseudoscientific religious assault onscience. For an on-line summary see‘A Conversation With BarbaraForrest’ at www.au.org/site/PageServer?pagename=cs_2005_02_special

Here in Australia you and yourchildren may soon encounter a docu-mentary video called Unlocking theMystery of Life (UML). Produced bythe ‘Intelligent Design’ movement inthe US, this is currently being heav-ily promoted here in DVD format byfundamentalist Christian groups. Ihave seen it. UML is a very slickpresentation. To non-scientists it willappear very convincing. It combinesthe skills of modern computer ani-mation with the tricks of a fair-ground hustler to create the mislead-ing impression that there is agenuine controversy amongst scien-tists about the Theory of Evolutionand that ‘Intelligent Design” is theanswer. For a scientific review of theDVD Unlocking the Mystery of Life,see www.talkdesign.org/faqs/bottaroslettertoWNYE.htmln — itmakes interesting reading.

ConclusionIntelligent Design is supernaturalselection, not natural selection. It isnot science and it has no place in ourschool science classes or our muse-ums.

FootnoteUnfortunately, you will never havean opportunity to read the abovearticle (or any other article) in Na-ture Australia. Unknown to me whenI wrote it, the Australian Museum’smanagement, were planning to ter-minate our very fine 84 year oldnatural history magazine, with mini-mum fuss and publicity. The officialannouncement of its demise tookplace quietly in mid-December, coin-ciding with the publication of theSummer 2005-6 (and last) issue, andwith no advance warning to sub-scribers. To get some idea of what wehave lost, take a look at the Muse-um’s web-site onwww.natureaustralia.net/

It took some time for a public re-sponse to appear. On February 4,2006 the ABC’s Science Show in-cluded an item entitled “Nature Aus-tralia magazine closes”. This featurethe response of one long-time sub-scriber, Dr Rob Morrison of FlindersUniversity, Adelaide and recipient ofthe 2002 Skeptics Eureka Prize forCritical Thinking and also of MrFrank Howarth, Director of the Aus-tralian Museum explaining whyNature Australia had been termi-nated. You will find their responsesat www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s1559965.htm

expression of “with god’s help”, atthe top right of a written page. Peo-ple do not do it so much on privatewritings, but many signs now havethis printed on them. One of thestrangest views in that respect wasadvertising posters with the reli-gious acronym on them posted nextto similarly sized posters showingvery scantily clad young ladies.

There is a profound dichotomy in

Israel. It is a largely secular andmodern country, where most peopledress the same way people dress inthe West; where one of the mostpopular singers is a transsexual; andwhere a vast majority do not keepkosher or go to synagogue. At thesame time, religion is extremelyprominent in its effects on the waypeople talk and on local and regionalpolitics. This dichotomy is one of themost troubling aspects of life in Is-rael. The fact that so few people are

disturbed by this dichotomy is a sadindictment on Israeli society, per-haps best represented by the factthat the Israeli Skeptics Society is aone man show, and even he is notactive at this time.

Eran Segev, a member of the NSWSkeptics Committee, was born in Israel,but now barracks for the Australiancricket team.

...Miracles from p 65


Heresy and syntax

John GibbsGold Coast

Whilst agreeing heartily with the mainthrust of Helen Lawrence’s article (NewGuise for an Old Idea; the Skeptic 25:4)there are a couple of comments which Iwould like to make:

Ms Lawrence states that, in 1759,“...Britain was no longer a theocracywhere Hume could have been tried forheresy in an ecclesiastical court”. Infact, for nearly another century Britonswere tried for blasphemy in civil courts!In 1819 Richard Carlisle was impris-oned for six years for blasphemy forhaving published Thomas Paine’s AgeOf Reason (actually he was sentencedto three years and a fine but he couldn’tpay the fine and had to serve anotherthree years in lieu). Approximately 150other people were jailed for blasphemyfor selling the book.

In 1842, George Jacob Holyoake,while lecturing at the Mechanics Insti-tute in London, replied to a questioner“Morality I regard, but I do not believethere is such a thing as God”.He wasarrested,charged with blasphemy andimprisoned for six months.

Secondly,towards the end of her ar-ticle, Ms Lawrence states that “...wecan’t prove that such a being [God] doesnot exist.” as though this lends somecredibility to the concept. We can’t provethat the universe was not created by thefairies at the bottom of my garden, ei-ther, nor that everything in the universeis doubling in size every minute.

Propogators of nonsense —and,unfortunately, some of their criticslike Ms Lawrence — derive undue com-fort from the fact that their propositions

obey the same syntactical and gram-matical rules as meaningful state-ments. The fact that ‘God does not ex-ist’ is of the same form as ‘The EiffelTower is not in Paris’ does not bestowsignifcance on the former. It is the primeindicator of hogwash when people makestatements, purportedly about theworld, which cannot be verified or fal-sified. Thus “God does not exist’, likethe statement ‘The round rectangle waslate for lunch’ is not true or false; it ismeaningless.

Bible does not stack up.

Sten BjerkingCranbourne VIC.

Martin Hadley’s “A Skeptic’s Search foGod” (25:3 aqnd 4) is good reading andmost informative. Having read some ofthe bible myself — for light entertain-ment — I have been consistentlyamazed by the inconsistency of thisbook. I guess that’s why theologiansdevote their whole lives trying to makesense of this nonsense.

Martin points out the discrepancybetween the tracing of the genealogy ofJesus by Matthew and Luke. I wonderwhy this recorded anyway because it isnot the genealogy of Jesus but that ofJoseph and he was not the father ofJesus — Mary was a virgin remember.

The antics that God gets up to in theOld Testament are most inconsistentand questionable. He is a racist Godwho shows discrimination by selectingone group as his “chosen people”. He isa jealous God that cannot tolerate peo-ple worshipping other Gods. He is avengeful God who punishes directly or

Lettersorders his followers to go and slaugh-ter other groups including women, chil-dren, and animals because he is of-fended by them.

These are hardly the acts one wouldexpect from a just and loving God. Whyanyone would revere such an entity isbeyond my understanding.

If we turn to the first page of Gen-esis we find a small sentence tacked onto the end of verse 16 — something ofan afterthought, almost forgotten. Thissmall sentence is one of the most sig-nificant in the entire bible. The sentenceis — “he made the stars also”.

The significance of this small sen-tence is how small it is — the completelack of emphasis. These words werewritten by someone who was ignorantof the immense size of the universe andhow small planet Earth is by compari-son.

Now it doesn’t matter if God madethe earth in six 24 hr days or if eachday was a million years. Its the lack ofproportion of the time spent making thestars as compared to this tiny planetthat is way out.

One would think that if God inspiredthe writing of this book he would havegiven some clue to indicate the scale ofeverything. This may have puzzledreaders a couple of thousand years agobut it would have impressed us today.

Early colonial AltMed

Bill DowerChudleigh TAS

It appears that bovine manure hasbeen the basis for much alternativemedicine for quite a long time.


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