Law and Magic Blog

How Do We Know What We Know? And Do We Really Know What We Know?

Given the increasing shrillness of debates about religion in the public square and in the schools, and over what children should be taught about evolution in the public schools, last night's Nightline debate among several leading thinkers (including Deepak Chopra and Michael Shermer) on religion, philosophy, and science was of interest. Here's a link to the debate if you'd like to hear it again or if you'd like to hear it for the first time.

Gender, Ethnicity, Fortune Tellers, and Stereotyping

Of interest, a piece on discrimination against Romany people, particularly women, and particularly those who practice fortune telling. Here's the cite, with an abstract.

 Alexandra Oprea, Commentary: Psychic Charlatans, Roving Shoplifters, and Traveling Con Artists: Notes On a Fraudulent Identity, 22 Berkeley Journal of Gender of Law and Justice 31 (2007).

I aspire to become a lawyer one day. But as I check the boxes marked "other" on law school applications, I think back to when I first became aware of Romani marginality in the legal system. I was a sophomore in college and was interning at the nearby family court. As the judge adjourned another case, the court reporter, clerk, and attorneys began to engage in the usual banter. After a case involving a rambunctious teen, an older white woman serving as the clerk said something to the effect of, "If that were my kid, I'd give him to the Gypsies." After crying in the bathroom, I returned to the courtroom and told them that unfortunately for them, I was "a Gypsy."  I tried to explain the term "Roma," our origins, and the problematic nature of what was said. I calmly explained that her statement presenting Romani parentage as a form of punishment is based on deeply-seated stereotypes of Roma as baby-thieves and generally suspect people. They responded defensively, and I quit my internship. Reflecting on the incident, I wondered, what if there was a Romani fortuneteller fighting to regain custody of her children from the state? Or what if the judge were in criminal court, and the defendant was Romani? With such stereotypes so deeply ingrained within the collective psyche, what prospects for justice are there for Roma and Romani women in particular? I have recently confronted this question again in the context of fortunetelling.

 

British Inspector Credits Prayer For Drop In Crime Rate

Apparently a local police chief is relying on prayer to help cut crime in Devon (England), and he says it's working. Inspector Roger Bartlett says he started his initiative several years ago with local prayer meetings and since then, crime rates have dropped in several categories. While he seems to attribute the drop to prayers, I note that his initiative also includes locals who patrol the streets. I would think citizen vigilance would do a lot to deter crime, whether or not it's linked to religion. Read more about Inspector Bartlett and his praying officers and volunteers here and here.

I do wonder if only Christians are allowed or invited to participate in praying, and if police officers who aren't Christian feel pressured to participate in the meetings. The UK does, after all, have a Human Rights Act that protects religious freedom and speech rights, but it doesn't do much good if people feel that they can't express themselves because their supervisors are, well, expressing their own selves quite so openly.

Lancet Retracts Wakefield Paper On MMR, Autism

The Lancet has retracted that 1998 paper in which Dr. Andrew Wakefield put forth the idea that the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine could have links to autism. The Lancet's move is nothing less than earthshaking in a field in which peer review is the standard for accepting scientific publications. Meanwhile, a panel investigated Dr. Wakefield's fitness to go on practicing medicine.

Will those who have believed the MMR vaccine is linked to the condition stop believing that? Probably not. One cannot unring a bell. Nor can one fail to feel for families with loved ones who have such a condition. But the answer isn't to find something, anything, on which to pin the blame, if that something isn't truly the cause. Such a path only means that treatment or cure moves farther away. The answer is to find the cause or causes, or failing that, to find effective treatments.

Copperfield Accuser Charged In Separate Case

The woman who reported to federal authorites two years ago that magician David Copperfield had sexually assaulted her at his home in the Bahamas has now been arrested on prostitution charges. Lacey Carroll was charged in connection with events that occurred early in December 2009. 

Federal authorities closed the case involving Mr. Copperfield after a two year investigation without bringing charges.

Magazine Covers, Publicity, and Jinxes

Michelle Harner of Concurring Opinions writes about jinxes: that supposed Sports Illustrated cover jinx and a possible Time Magazine "Person of the Year" cover jinx.

Sports fans are probably familiar with Sports Illustrated’s cover jinx. As SI itself explains, “Millions of superstitious readers — and many athletes — believe that an appearance on Sports Illustrated’s cover is the kiss of death.” (The SI jinx timeline really is remarkable, see here.)

So, is the same type of jinx emerging with Time’s “Person of the Year” cover? Richard Nixon receives the honor (for a second time) in 1972, and the Watergate scandal breaks in 1973. Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all receive the honor in the year they are elected President of the United States, and their approval ratings drop dramatically in the following, first year of their presidential terms. “You” receive the honor in 2006, and we all know what happens to the bank accounts of many of those honorees in 2007 and 2008. And now just a month after being named Time’s Person of the Year for 2009, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s confirmation is in question. (See here and here.)

So, is Mr. Bernanke in trouble because of his appearance on the cover? Or do his problems simply come around the same time as the appearance? Did he appear on the cover because he's of interest and do his problems also relate to the fact that he's of interest (under scrutiny)? I think the latter is more likely. People who make Time's cover are in the public eye (except for "You"). What happens to them, or what they do, good or bad, tends to make the headlines. I don't think we need to employ magic, jinxes, or luck to explain that.

The Prosecutor Vanishes?

Apparently, the threat of prosecution over a rape charge has vanished for magician David Copperfield. After a two year investigation, the authorities have decided not to indict him over a Seattle woman's allegation. The woman has brought a civil suit against Mr. Copperfield, whose birth name is David Kotkin. Here's more from the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Magicology

Another article (from 2008) on "magicology," the newly named study of the interaction of neuroscience and magic. It's Devin Powell's "Magicology: Casting a Spell on the Mind," New Scientist, Dec. 24, 2008. The author says in part,

Over the past couple of years, neuroscientists and magicians have been getting together to create a science that might be called “magicology”. If successful, both sides stand to benefit.

 

By plundering the magicians’ book of tricks, researchers hope to develop powerful new tools for probing perception and cognition. And if they find any tricks they can’t explain, that could lead to new knowledge about how the brain works.

 

Similarly, magicians hope that the collaboration will lead to new magic tricks by alerting them to perceptual or cognitive weaknesses that they didn’t already know about. “The real proof that a science of magic has come of age will be when we can use science to build a better magic trick,” says Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, UK.

Interesting. I'd suggest that some of the additional value of a real science of magic might also be in explaining why and how the brain continues to accept (rationally) fakes and understandable but error-prone identifications, for example. That could be helpful in prosecuting fraud and other crime.  The study of "seeing things that are not 'there'" encompasses more than just the study of magic and neuroscience. Check out David Eagleman's "Visual Illusions and Neurobiology," from 2001. There are lots of studies of optical illusions and their effects on the brain. I would suggest that if adherents of "magicology" are really talking about just the active creation of magic effects, deceptions, and illusions primarily for entertainment purposes, they're missing out on an opportunity to help out with some really valuable insights into social and legal issues. Why do people who "know" that something is impossible believe that it "could" be possible after seeing a magician perform a trick? What effect on critical thinking? Why do children believe as they do after seeing a magic trick? Two researchers, Karl Rosengren and Anne Hickling, have published some interesting material on how children as young as 4 or 5 perceive magic tricks. Contrast it with a publication by Andrew Shtulman and Susan Carey on how children think about unusual events.

The Intersections of Science and Law

Susan Haack, University of Miami School of Law, and University of Miami Department of Philosophy, has published "Irreconcilable Differences? The Troubled Marriage of Science and Law," in volume 72 of Law and Contemporary Problems (2009). Here is the abstract.

Because its business is to resolve disputed issues, the law very often calls on those fields of science where the pressure of commercial interests is most severe. Because the legal system aspires to handle disputes promptly, the scientific questions to which it seeks answers will often be those for which all the evidence is not yet in. Because of its case-specificity, the legal system often demands answers of a kind science is not well-equipped to supply; and, for related reasons, constitutes virtually the entire market for certain fields of forensic science and for certain psychiatric specialties. Because of its adversarial character, the law tends to draw in scientists who are more willing than most to give an opinion on less-than-overwhelming evidence; and the more often such a witness testifies, the more unbudgeably confident he may become in his opinion. Legal rules can make it impossible to bring potentially useful scientific information to light, and the legal penchant for “indicia” and the like can transform scientific subtleties into legal shibboleths. And because of its concern for precedent, and the desideratum of finality, the law sometimes lags behind scientific advances.

Download the article from SSRN at the link. Professor Haack is the author of the highly acclaimed Defending Science: Within Reason (Prometheus Books, 2007).

BBC Rejects Calls To Open Up "Thought For the Day" To Non-Religious Commentators

The BBC Trust has decided not to open up its six-day-a-week segment Thought for the Day, broadcast on Radio 4, to non-regilious commentators, as requested by humanist, secular and atheist organizations. However, it has agreed to handle complaints about content of the program in a different way, apparently acknowledging that management has been somewhat insensitive. The Trust is maintaining its position that content for the Thought for the Day program is a matter of editorial discretion, and is intended as religious programming, not merely commentary. However, the committee examining the question noted that when commentary extends to issues of the day "from a faith perspective , the BBC runs a risk that a Thought for the Day contributor might go beyond reflection – in colloquial terms, stepping out of the pulpit and on to a soapbox".