Law and Magic Blog

Homeopathy, Newspapers, and Law

Ben Goldacre drew the ire of the Society of Homeopaths with his column "A Kind of Magic?", published on November 16, 2007, in The Guardian. A Society representative filed a complaint with the appropriate British watchdog agency, the Press Complaints Commission. The Society thought that Mr. Goldacre had violated the PCC's Code of Practice. The PCC "considered" the complaint, and decided that, since the newspaper offered the complainants a remedy in the form of what we might call "equal space" the problem could be considered resolved.

"The Commission considered the complaint and recognised the newspaper’s argument that the specific claim had to be understood in the context of the article when read as a whole, noting its position that the reference sought to sum up the points made in a lengthy, polemical article about homeopathy. Nonetheless, the Commission was concerned that the article had moved from what appeared to be a legitimate argument (that homeopaths could be seen to be endangering lives, something with which others may have disagreed) to a serious claim which had not been fully substantiated.

"In the circumstances, the Commission took the view that the newspaper’s offer of an opportunity in which to respond to the allegation – in the form of a letter for publication – represented a sufficient form of remedial action. While the complainant did not wish to take up the newspaper’s offer, she considered that the complaint was resolved on this basis."

 

 

Only a Theory?

Here's a link to Talk of the Nation: Science Friday's June 13th podcast on the debate over teaching the strengths and weaknesses of evolution. Joe Palca welcomes Dr. Kenneth Miller, author of Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul (Viking, 2008). As one reviewer (Francis Collins) notes about Dr. Miller's book, "...[M]ake no mistake, this is not some atheistic screed -- Prof. Miller's perspective as a devout believer will allow his case to resonate with believers and non-believers alike."

Some Publications on Alfred Russel Wallace, Spiritualist

Some interesting publications on Alfred Russel Wallace, who along with Charles Darwin, championed natural selection (although Wallace came up with it independently and had a somewhat different understanding of the phrase). Wallace was a follower of spiritualism; here are some discussions of that period of his life and philosophy.

John R. Durant, Scientific Naturalism and Social Reform in the Thought of Alfred Russel Wallace, 12 British Journal for the History of Science, 31-58 (1979).

Malcolm Jay Kottler, Alfred Russel Wallace, the Origin of Man, and Spiritualism, 65 Isis 145-192 (1974).

Michael Shermer also has some discussion of Wallace's Spiritualist leanings in his book In Darwin's Shadow (Oxford, 2002).

Simon Singh on Alternative Therapies

Speaking of Simon Singh, he and Edzard Ernst have a new book out: Trick or Treatment (2008), on alternative therapies. Right now the book is pre-pub in the U.S. Here's a link to a podcast in which he discusses it. Here's an article by Dr. Singh from the Times on the subject of homeopathy.

The Next Wave

"...[T]he advance of man's knowledge is a greater miracle than all the sticks turned to snakes or the parting of the waters."

Henry Drummond, Inherit the Wind

The Chronicle of Higher Education notes that five states have or are considering legislation that would promote "academic freedom" in K-12 education, in order to promote "critical thinking" brought to bear on the presentation of evolution to students in the public schools. The states are Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, and Missouri. Read stories here and here. Such bills are the newest wave of legislation after the court loss by the Discovery Institute and its supporters in Kitzmiller v. Dover, which challenged the teaching of Intelligent Design  (ID) in the Pennsylvania public schools. The plaintiffs won in Kitzmiller, the judge ruling that ID was creationism "in disguise", but voters had already turned the school board members who supported the teaching of ID out of office.

Read more about that case in these books.

• Matthew Chapman, 40 Days and 40 Nights (HarperCollins, 2007).
• Barbara Forrest, Creationism's Trojan Horse (Oxford, 2007).
• Edward Humes, Monkey Girl (HarperCollins, 2007).
• Laurie Lebo, The Devil in Dover (The New Press, 2008).
• Gordy Slack, The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything (Wiley, 2007).

 

Before ID, there was creationism, and the Louisiana case of Edwards v. Aguillard. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that the statute involved was unconstitutional because it constituted endorsing religion. "The Act does not further its stated secular purpose of "protecting academic freedom." It does not enhance the freedom of teachers to teach what they choose, and fails to further the goal of "teaching all of the evidence." Forbidding the teaching of evolution when creation science is not also taught undermines the provision of a comprehensive scientific education. Moreover, requiring the teaching of creation science with evolution does not give schoolteachers a flexibility that they did not already possess to supplant the present science curriculum with the presentation of theories, besides evolution, about the origin of life. Furthermore, the contention that the Act furthers a "basic concept of fairness" by requiring the teaching of all of the evidence on the subject is without merit. Indeed, the Act evinces a discriminatory preference for the teaching of creation science and against the teaching of evolution by requiring that curriculum guides be developed and resource services supplied for teaching creationism, but not for teaching evolution, by limiting membership on the resource services panel to "creation scientists," and by forbidding school boards to discriminate against anyone who "chooses to be a creation scientist" or to teach creation science, while failing to protect those who choose to teach other theories or who refuse  to teach creation science. A law intended to maximize the comprehensiveness and effectiveness of science instruction would encourage the teaching of all scientific theories about human origins. Instead, this Act has the distinctly different purpose of discrediting evolution by counterbalancing its teaching at every turn with the teaching of creationism."

And for the granddaddy (as it were) of all evolution trials, check out the Scopes "monkey trial". Doug Linder has a webpage devoted to the case. Inherit the Wind, the play based on the trial, has been filmed several times: with Spencer Tracy and Fredric March playing the attorneys (1960), with Melvyn Douglas and Ed Begley (1965), with Jason Robards and Kirk Douglas (1988), and with Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott (1999).

 

 

 

The Causes of Laughter: Tanzania (Tanganyika) 1962

Listening to the public radio show Radio Lab this afternoon, I heard this segment on "laughing sickness" in Tanzania (the segment's a re-broadcast from February). Back in the 1960s, girls in a boarding school suffered from an unexplained outbreak of laughter, a kind of mass hysteria that quickly overtook the school. They couldn't control it, and no one could explain it. The laughing sickness spread throughout the countryside and lasted for quite a while.

A producer from the show recently went back to the country to try to unravel the mystery after forty years. She discovered that whatever causes people to suffer from attacks of prolonged laughter still occurs. She spoke to a woman who as a six year old suffered from the hysteria, surprisingly far from the school, but where some of the girls who attended it lived. Like many others, the girl's mother decided to go to the local witch doctor for a cure. The witch doctor suggested the cause was the souls of angry dead caterpillars. The interviewee, however, rejected this explanation, telling the producer she thinks it might have been bacteria or some other scientific cause.

By following such leads, the producer comes up with this explanation. What's interesting about the period in question, she points out, is that the outbreak occurred just around the time of Tanzanian independence, when people were under tremendous psychological stress. Further, as a local assistant to a witch doctor who was present at the time of the outbreak told her, churches were busily competing for the allegiances of the citizenry. I'd suggest this creates more stress, particularly for those who had been used to traditional (non Western) religious practices. As the producer says, the first girl who started laughing uncontrollably represented her nation--she went a little nuts under all the pressure. There are likely to be bumps in the road for any young person coming into adulthood, and any nation joining the world community. For more about mass hysteria in school settings see this article from the Guardian dated 2007

See also Christian F. Hempelmann, The laughter of the 1962 Tanganyika ‘laughter epidemic’, 20 Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 49-71 (2007).

Here's the abstract provided for Mr. Hempelmann's article. "The present article discusses the role of laughter in the much cited ‘laughter epidemic’ that occurred in Tanganyika in 1962. Despite its extraordinary nature, the veracity of the event is confirmed, crucially on the basis of similar reports. But most current representations are flawed by their exaggeration and misinterpretation of the role of laughter in the event, relating it to a humorous stimulus, a virus or environmental contaminant, or identifying it as contagious laughter. It is argued that the event is a motor-variant case of mass psychogenic illness of which laughter is one common symptom. Therefore it cannot serve as support for other arguments in humor research."

 

UFOs Caught on Tape

MSNBC.com offers this look at close encounters caught on tape. Enjoy!

[Now, do these folks have their travel documents in order?]

Michio Kako On Science Fiction Physics

In his provocative new book, Physics of the Impossible (Doubleday), Michio Kaku discusses all sorts of speculative technologies, particularly those that we've become used to through science fiction, like time travel, robots, and force fields. Many of them he explains as possible, and he lays out why for us folks who did not do well in high school physics. But a couple of them--precognition and perpetual motion machines--are what he calls "Class III impossibilities"--"technologies that violate the known laws of physics," and he explains why clearly, and with originality, they are a no go as far as that science is concerned. With regard to perpetual motion machines, he also repeats what IP lawyers know, which is that the US Patent Office won't grant a patent for such devices if the inventor doesn't supply a working model. Dr. Kako's latest book, like his other works, is easy to read for the non-specialist, and very informative.

The Still Unexplained (But We're Working On It)

MSNBC.com highlights some "weird science" written up by Benjamin Radford here, in a sidebar for an article discusses why Indiana Jones is an entertaining character but a really bad archaeologist. [He seems utterly unaware of the law regarding historic artifacts, even in the 1930s. Ya don't just grab 'n go, pal.] Mr. Radford reviews Bigfoot, near-death experiences, deja vu, psychic detectives, ESP, and the placebo effect, among other unexplained phenoms. All interesting, and worthy of discussion. A tip of the hat to MSNBC and Mr. Radford for this overview of the subject metter.

Intelligent Design and Academic Freedom

In a Volokh Conspiracy post, Jonathan Adler addresses those bills that purport to grant academic freedom to high school teachers who wish to present alternatives to the theory of evolution. Citing a Wall Street Journal article on the subject of various bills wending their way through state legislatures, Professor Adler concludes,

Unlike some critics of "Intelligent Design" and other creationist theories, I am not convinced that teaching alternatives to evolution necessarily violates the Establishment Clause. That said, these bills make for horrible public policy, as there is nothing scientific about these "alternatives" to evolution. Encouraging attacks on evolution in high school science classes promotes academic fraud not “academic freedom.” If school boards or state legislatures want public school students to be exposed to competing theories about the origins of life — a question evolutionary theory does not address — they should do it in a world religion or social studies class and leave science alone.