Our Kingdom for a Room to Meet in

    When the RIT skeptics started, we were just three people. We met every week in the same place: Java Wally's, the campus coffee shop. As the club has grown, it has become increasingly apparent that a public coffee shop is not the ideal venue to meet in. There is often insufficient seating and far too much noise for us to carry out a meeting.
    First we tried for official club recognition. Clubs officially recognized by RIT's student government at allowed to reserve rooms in the Student Alumni union. A few weeks prior to applying, I had been told by the student in charge of that committee that he would not approve a club that had my name on the application. The skeptics voted to apply regardless. The club was turned down on the basis that our goals were too "vague." That particularly specific complaint in hand, we considered other options.
    Most of the members of the Skeptics are students in RIT's College of Science. A number of science related clubs which are not SG recognized meet in the College of Science. First we tried emailing the Dean's office. After one initial request for more information, they did not respond to us for several weeks when we provided that information. When we asked, they requested a meeting with me. I brought a couple of other skeptics to the meeting with the assistant dean.
    She explained her position that we should not meet in the COS because people seeing that we were meeting there might associate us with the College, and believe that the COS was endorsing the activities of the club. Besides the oddness that a College devoted to science did not want to be associated with a club dedicated to the application of the scientific method, the argument did not make sense because the posters we put up would be nearly identical regardless of the room we meet in. If we reserved a room in COS through channels other than the dean's office, the posters would be identical. Our impression upon leaving was that a decision had been already been made, and the claim that we were there for a discussion really meant that they would discuss and we would do what they said.
    At this point we decided to bend the rules of the library room reservation system, which is only for study groups, and reserve a room as the skepticism study group. We ended up getting a room, but it was one with room for four people, and about nine people showing up to meet in it.
    Only after emails being sent to most of the Deans of most of the colleges on campus were we able to find a stable meeting room... for the duration of one quarter. There is no huge skeptical message to our difficulty find a space to meet, just this: if you think that paying an organization tens of thousands of dollars a year will incline the organization want to be helpful, you aren't very familiar with RIT.

Alternatives to Medical School

Recently when waiting to take a final exam here at RIT in a college whose name will be changed to “College of Pseudoscience” to protect its identity, I noticed a flier on a bulletin board. Often graduate schools send these fliers to schools to post as a method of cheap advertisement. They usually have some cards attached that students can rip off and mail in to the school for more information.

This particular poster asked “Have you considered a career in alternative healthcare?” My first thought was that since the alternative to health was sickness, the alternative to healthcare wasn’t something that I would want to associate myself with. The flier advertised a school called National University of Health Services. NUHS offers degrees in naturopathy, chiropractic, acupuncture, and biomedical sciences.

I won’t go into detail about the problems these alternative medicines, but if you are interested, check out the Skeptic’s Dictionary pages: Naturopathy, Chiropractic, acupuncture. Of course I’m willing to discuss these, but there’s no point in redebunking the wheel.

What I find interesting is that a college that supposedly is dedicated to science would advertise such a thing. RIT has a decent life sciences and premed program that trains people to be real doctors doing actual medicine. I’m in the biology degree program and plenty of people around me are studying to get into real science to get into real medical schools to study evidence based medicine.

Steven Novella recently posted a blog entry about the metaphorical evolutionary pressures that shape alternative medicine. I find interesting what causes people to enter these fields as opposed to some other aspect of health care.

A couple of years ago I was an intern in a cancer research lab. The woman who I carpooled to the lab with was considering going to school to become a doctor of Osteopathy. Osteopathy is in a way paradoxical because D.O.s do receive some real medical training in addition to the bunk. In fact, modern osteopaths do many of the same things that medical doctors do, like prescribe medicine and perform surgery. The main difference is that osteopaths are given an option in addition to real medicine of performing ineffective osteopathic manipulations.

Why would a young student choose to study osteopathy as opposed to scientific medicine? Medical school is very difficult to get into. Osteopathic schools often have less rigorous entrance requirements, which make them attractive to students who feel that they cannot get into medical school. I have seen many premed students around me invest huge amounts of emotion in to getting into medical school to the point of breaking down in tears at the sight of a test question that they did not know the answer to. Obviously that is an extreme example, but after spending four or more years of doing nothing but work toward getting into medicals school, a rejected student might see Osteopathy, or other “alternatives,” as viable options.

Some students might not be able to distinguish between evidence based medicine and bunk medicine. In the “College of Pseudoscience,” we learn a great deal of science. That doesn’t mean that we learn to think like scientists. This is especially true in students who want to go into the medical field. I don’t mean to disparage the medical field, but the modes of thought required for an MD are different from those required by a PhD researcher. An MD does not necessarily need to understand the methods of science to effectively treat patients. In the research field understanding how science is done is directly correlated with success.

It is entirely possible to graduate with a four year degree in biochemistry at RIT without an understanding of evolution. I know because I’ve seen people do it. The question then is one of educational priorities. Yes, the facts that have been established scientifically, and the specific techniques used to establish them are important. I’m confident that a graduating RIT student can have a very good knowledge of their field and the experimental techniques necessary for it. No less important however is learning how to do good science.

Regardless of our chosen career path, we are all receiving a science education, and that should mean an education in science itself. Observations of scientific literature sometimes confirm that this is a real problem. Published studies, especially some of those that become blurbs in the popular media, may display the application of all the techniques of science, but often follow a thought process that doesn’t demonstrate sound reasoning, or do not present a valid rational for their research, or steps taken in their research.

Scientists and science students aren’t immune to errors in logic or thinking, but good scientific thinking is something that can be taught if we take the time in our education to teach it. Otherwise we might loose good minds to alternative medicine, or other pseudoscientific fields.

Ask a Skeptic

This December the RIT Skeptics will be beginning a new Podcast/campus event called "Ask a Skeptic." This will be recorded once a month for an hour, and will give RIT students and Rochester community members the chance to come ask questions to a panel of a few skeptics.

We will also accept questions from the web. They can be emailed to ritskeptics@gmail.com.

It should be a good time.

Hugh Ross: Creationist, Incorrect

A long time ago, Hugh Ross was a scientist. Nowadays he is a professional creationist who manipulates real science to justify his belief in the Christian God.

Recently he visited the Rochester Institute of Technology, so not only was he on our physical turf, but our intellectual turf as well: he claims to have a scientifically testable creation theory.

For a review of his claims and the skeptical responses to them, this site is a good resource.

The main thrust of his argument amounted to what is called the Anthropic argument. The anthropic argument essentially states that because the universe is so "fine tuned" for life, that it had to have been created by an intelligence that desired life to exist.

The anthropic argument is in a way a confusion of causation. Douglas Adams wrote about the puddle which believed that the pavement had been designed for it because the pothole fit the puddle perfectly. It may be true that life as we know it would not exist if the universe was different, but we only have one sample for what type of life could exist. Even on Earth, where life did evolve, human life isn't the only type of life. There is a huge diversity of lifeforms that have managed to fit into our particular pothole.

Furthermore, when we examine the universe it isn't even particularly well suited to life. All the life we know exists in a thin layer surrounding a single planet. Humans, for example depend on a narrow temperature range, specific atmospheric gas mixture, pressure, chemical intake (food), lack of radiation, etc. Since we can only exist in a very small space in a universe that is unimaginably huge, it does not follow that that universe was designed for us to exist in.

The anthropic argument tends to involve probabilities, usually without scientific basis, or context. Occam's razor says that we shouldn't multiply hypotheses. The answer that has the fewest improbabilities is usually the correct one. The hypothesis that an omnipotent, omniscient god created the universe is a more complex explanation than one that posits a natural universe.

The second part of Ross's argument was that the Christian bible was proved to be true by physics. The whole argument smacked of the Post hoc fallacy. He claimed that the bible predicted the expanding universe theory. Had this been true, however scientists discovering the theory would not have been so surprised. To say that the bible was making actual predictions about the physical world, you would have to be able to write down the predictions beforehand, and then test them. Applying scientific knowledge to a text in a way that is better interpreted as being metaphorical, after the information is available does not lend any credibility to the text.

Hugh Ross is a charismatic speaker, and it is easy to see how people might be convinced by him. Part of his charisma comes from techniques of sophistry that he uses, what are at the very least intellectually dishonest.

Overall, those of us who attended were not convinced of Ross' argument.

Pagan Pride

This September the RIT skeptics visited the local Pagan Pride festival. We thought that it might make a good group activity because there is an association between some Pagan groups and New Age beliefs, which we have and interest in examining scientifically.

We scheduled ours to arrive in time for the "Ghost Hunting 101" seminar. When we got there and made our mandatory canned food donation, we heard about some Christian protesters who causing trouble. We decided to go watch. On the way we encountered a druid in a bright green tunic, with a red beard. "Why are they preaching hate?" He inquired of us. We did not have a satisfactory answer.

It turned out just to be two Christians, yelling incoherently from the parking lot, blocked off by about seven security personnel who joined hands to pray, or cast a spell, or something.

After a while we went back to the main concourse of the festival to go the the ghost hunting seminar. I'm familiar with many of the local paranormal groups and this was a new one. Most of the information presented was fairly standard "ghost hunter" drivel.

Two things were especially striking, though. First was the emphasis on the laws regarding trespassing. Apparently the increase in the popularity of that hobby has led to some recurring legal trouble that requires warning against. The seconds was when the presented showed us a series of photographs with "anomalies" in them and then proceeded to debunk them by giving a perfectly reasonable naturalistic explanation for each. Then he took out one that he claimed was unexplainable and therefore a ghost photo. Hello argumentum ad ignorantum.

We stay a while to look at the booths that were there, selling things like wands, robes, animal skulls, swords, and incense burns. We watched some belly dancers, and some mind readers. Unfortunately we did have time to have our own fortunes told, since that would be a good way to learn about cold reading first hand.

Overall, a good time.

The White Lady

Recently the RIT skeptics investigated a local ghost legend here in Rochester: the White Lady.

Various versions of the white lady story exist, but the central story is about a mother whose daughter goes missing one evening during the middle of a walk. The mother goes looking for the daughter with her two dogs, but does not find her. Subsequently the mother commits suicide and haunts the park, in some versions attacking men.

Local legends claim that one of her favorite haunts is an old stone wall called "The White Lady's Castle." What the wall is actually from differs from story to story, but according to the Irondequoit town historian, it's from an old refectory (dining hall).

The RIT skeptics volunteered to appear in a documentary by a local film maker about the legend. We traveled to the "castle" and investigated. Our main reference for the legend was the book Spooky New York by S. E. Schlosser. We demonstrated that the particular version retold in the book wasn't true because it claimed that Durand Lake was visible from the top of the hill that the castle sits on. It isn't. There are other inconsistencies with what the book describes and the actual layout of the location. This only demonstrated that one version of the story was not true in full, not that they entire ghost hypothesis was wrong.

Since the ghost lady is said to rise from the mist off Durand Lake, we tested the lake water for luminescent bacteria, which might cause people to see lights which combined with mist might account for ghost reports. We did not find any luminescent bacteria, but we did find that the lake was filthy.

A preexisting photograph claimed to show the ghost. One of our members was able to recreate the photograph with about five minutes of work. The original photograph was of extremely poor quality and did not constitute good evidence.

We noticed a tendency of mist to raise off Lake Ontario over the road that separates Lake Ontario from the "castle." It is possible that headlights passing through the fog could be mistaken for a ghost.

One very plausible possibility did present itself. The location is known to be used by youths as a location to go and neck without parental supervision. The explanation that horny teenage males invented a ghost story to scare their female companions and perhaps draw them a little closer at night is very likely, especially since many people have reported first hearing the story in high school.

Ultimately, the story isn't particularly harmful, but it does people out to a beautiful natural setting. Besides, who doesn't enjoy a good ghost story?