I had indeed heard of the film, a New Agey jumble of pseudoscience and mysticism about supposed links between consciousness and quantum physics, produced by followers of J.Z. Knight, a woman who claims to dispense in­formation from a 35,000-year-old ghost. In fact, I had done my best to keep it from misinforming the public when it was first released, writing a few short skeptical pieces about it.

Not wanting to get into an argument with my friend, I just let the conversation trail off. But before I did, she made an interesting comment: “To be honest I didn’t really understand a lot of it. . . . But you’re really smart—you would get it.”

She assumed that the reason she didn’t understand the film’s information was be­cause she had no background in science. I, on the other hand, did not understand the film precisely because I do have a strong background in science. When people don’t understand something they are told, there are three possibilities or root causes.

Most commonly, the person assumes, as my friend did, that the problem lies with the listener. Her (quite reasonable) assumption was that the film was comprehensible and that if she didn’t understand it, it was due to her limitations or lack of knowledge. This was a mainstream, feature-length documentary film with some famous people in it—in­cluding physicists. Surely these people would not appear on camera discussing self-evidently nonsensical ideas such as that thoughts can control reality.

Less often, the problem lies with the speaker’s inability to effectively communicate—perhaps he or she does not share the same native language as the listener, is disorganized, or has a speech impediment for example. In this case the information and message may be correct and clear, but communication does not occur because of a problem with the source.

Sometimes the problem lies neither with the listener nor with the speaker, but instead in the content. In this case, the reason that the listener doesn’t understand what is being said is that what is being said makes little or no sense by any objective measure. This is in­sidious and difficult to detect because people do not like to challenge authority on a topic they are presumably trying to become educated about—especially in public. The speaker is not talking gibberish; quite the opposite: he or she may be very eloquent. Furthermore, identifying nonsense often requires some basic understanding of the subject.

In my book Media Mythmakers: How Journalists, Activists, and Advertisers Mislead Us I discuss this phenomenon at length and refer to it as “the illusion of meaning.” As children we are taught to assume that the words we hear and read have meaning and comprehensible content. When we hear information we don’t understand, the common, default assumption is that we just don’t get it—not that the authoritative person we’re listening to is speaking nonsense. Yet as we grow older, we are sometimes faced with “information” devoid of content—grammatically correct and often impressive words that are either patently untrue, self-contradictory, or simply meaningless.

Too often we are embarrassed to admit that we don’t understand what we are told. We don’t want to appear stupid to the speaker or others in the audience. But more people should ask questions, because others may be just as confused but not want to speak up. There is no shame in not understanding something, and it’s a good lesson to remember that. Asking for clarification not only helps both the speaker and listener communicate more effectively, it is also a powerful tool in revealing bullshit.

Fuzzy thinking and fuzzy language often go hand in hand. Purveyors of pseudoscience usually use vague terms with unclear meanings and definitions. New Age healers, for example, use words and scientific-sounding phrases like “human energy field” and “vibrational frequency” without understanding (or clearly explaining) what it is that they are talking about. This is a case where skeptics should be emboldened to raise their hands and ask, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you’re saying. . . . What vibrations are you talking about? What exactly is this ‘energy field,’ and how can science detect it?”

The next time you hear something you don’t understand, ask for clarification. You don’t have to be apologetic about it, and the situation doesn’t have to be confrontational. Those with science and facts and evidence on their side will be happy to explain what they mean. If the speaker cannot explain what he is talking about in plain language—or without resorting to other, even less clear terms and concepts—that’s a warning sign that there’s confusion on both ends of the line.

Science & Psychic Phenomena: The Fall of the House of Skeptics, by Chris Carter. 2012 (reprint from 2007), Inner Traditions Press. $18.95.

A few months ago I got a press release for a book titled Science & Psychic Phenomena, described as “Chris Carter’s new book that takes on the skeptics and wins.” Being both a prominent skeptic and fan of The X-Files, I was eager to see some meaty refutation of skeptical positions on psi and psychic phenomena.

I was disappointed on both counts. First, this Chris Carter was someone I’d never heard of who had written one other book I’d also never heard of, on near-death experience. Second, his book had little in the way of real, evidence-based arguments and evidence. It was instead populated with mistakes; ad hominem attacks; recycled, long-refuted criticisms of skeptics; and straw man arguments.

So who is this Chris Carter? Carter has a background (and degrees) in economics and philosophy. Not psychology, which might help him understand cognitive processes involved in both deception and self-deception regarding psi issues. Not statistics, which might help him understand the complex number-crunching involved in interpreting mountains of experimental data. Not experimental research design, which might help him spot design flaws in various psi experiments. Nor does Carter have any apparent knowledge of or training in any hard sciences—and certainly nothing that would qualify him to launch into the extended discussion of quantum physics that he does. More on this later.

This would not necessarily be a problem, except that Carter presents himself as an expert in physics. Many skeptics do not have advanced degrees in the hard sciences, as Carter correctly notes. I do not, nor do Joe Nickell, Richard Wiseman, Jim Alcock, James Randi, Ray Hyman, Massimo Polidoro, Jim Underdown, and many others. (It should be noted that researchers such as Hyman and Alcock are indeed well-qualified to conduct statistical analyses of psi experiments.)

As I read through Science & Psychic Phenomena: The Fall of the House of Skeptics, a quote from L. Sprague de Camp about the works of Erich von Daniken came to mind. De Camp wrote that Von Daniken's books are “solid masses of misstatements, errors, and wild guesses presented as facts, unsupported by anything remotely resembling scientific data.” Though desiring to refute Von Daniken’s arguments, de Camp realized that a thorough analysis would “take years of my time; and, if I were mad enough to write it, who would read it?”

Addressing all of Carter’s mistakes and arguments would take far more time and effort than I can devote, but a representative sample of the problems with the book will offer insights into the book’s level of scholarship and analysis.

Carter on Skeptics and Skepticism

The book’s subtitle claims that it described the “House of Skeptics” (presumably an arbitrary reference to Edgar Allan Poe), and what does Carter know about skeptics? Apparently not much.

The boners come fast and early, so let’s dig in. On page 28 Carter states that “CSICOP [here Carter uses an outdated acronym; CSICOP hasn’t existed since 2006—before the first edition of his book came out—a mistake that appears in both the 2007 and the 2012 editions as Carter alternates arbitrarily between the two. This is, at the very least, sloppy editing] has engaged in only one case of scientific investigation,” that of Michel Gauquelin’s astrology claims in the 1970s. Carter repeats this claim on page 42 when he refers to CSI as an “organization [that] no longer performs any research of its own.”

What’s wrong here? Well, Carter’s claim that CSI has conducted only one investigation in the past and does not presently conduct investigations is simply incorrect. It’s an astoundingly ill-informed claim to make, since virtually every issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, the official journal of CSI, contains investigations conducted by CSI fellows, members, and affiliates. Don’t take my word for it: anyone walking into a library or bookstore (or searching online) can immediately see that Carter is wrong.

CSI and Skeptical Inquirer have published so many investigations and research articles it’s hard to know where to begin citing them; here are a few published in six months of 2012 alone: David Thomas on 9/11 thermite claims (July/August 2012); Robert Sheaffer on a UFO seen over Denver in March 2012 (July/August 2012); Robert Bartholomew and Dr. Steve Novella on a mass hysteria case in Le Roy, New York (July/August 2012); Massimo Polidoro on a weeping religious icon in Italy (January/February 2012); Robert Sheaffer on a UFO photo taken in Belgium and touted in Leslie Kean’s 2011 bestselling book (January/February 2012); Benjamin Radford on a UFO videotaped over the London Olympics (November/December 2012); Massimo Polidoro on a curse associated with a famous painting (January/February 2012); Benjamin Radford on a Siberian video alleged to show a woolly mammoth (May/June 2012); Joe Nickell on the alien abduction in Pascagoula, Mississippi (May/June 2012); and so on. There are dozens more, from Daryl Bem’s psychic claims (mentioned elsewhere) to chupacabras, ghosts, psychic detectives, and countless other topics.

Even a cursory glance at CSI’s Wikipedia page mentions several investigations, including the 2004 CSI investigation and experiment of a Russian girl who claimed to have X-ray eyes. How much research can Carter have done if he’s completely unaware of the many dozens of scientific investigations conducted under the auspices of CSI?

Carter is correct in only the strictest technical and legal senses that CSI (as an organization) doesn’t conduct research and investigations—though its employees and others do, and the organization publishes that research. In the same way, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (as an organizational entity) doesn’t conduct medical research into disease, its employees (doctors and investigators) do. The police force (as an organization) doesn’t investigate arrest and criminals, its employees (police and detectives) do. The Postal Service (as an organization) does not gather, transport, and deliver the mail; its drivers and postal workers (many of them independent contractors) do. And so on.

Carter’s statement is at best misleading and at worst intentionally deceptive, like a child who pushes his brother to the floor and then honestly tells their angry mother “I didn’t touch him” because there was no actual physical skin contact between the two. That Carter—a trained philosopher, after all—would resort to such grade-school semantic hairsplitting contortions to assert that no research is done by CSI is revealing.

Carter quotes veteran CSI critic George Hansen as stating that “In keeping with CSICOP’s one-sided approach, ‘SI’ [Skeptical Inquirer] has given scant attention to papers in well-known, orthodox scientific journals that present evidence for psi” (p. 36). Once again Carter demonstrates a glaring ignorance of his subject, and one that can be easily fact-checked. Instead of “scant attention,” Skeptical Inquirer has devoted considerable resources and coverage to psi research, including that of Gary Schwartz by Ray Hyman (“How Not To Test Mediums: Critiquing the Afterlife Experiments” the cover article in the January/February 2003 issue); on Gary Schwartz by Harriett Hall (March/April 2008); James Alcock on Daryl Bem’s 2011 psi experiments (March/April 2011); Ray Hyman on Daryl Bem’s 2011 psi experiments (March/April 2011); Amir Raz on psi research (July/August 2008), Ray Hyman on psi research (July/August 2008), and others. CSI investigates a wide variety of claims (from astrology to UFOs to ghosts to alternative medicine and hundreds of other subjects), and there are finite issues with finite pages. Psi research has been covered just as much, if not more than, other topics. It’s unfortunate that Carter apparently didn’t fact-check some of these easily-verified claims, and readers can be forgiven for wondering just how good his scholarship is in the rest of the book.

Many of Carter’s “hard-hitting” criticisms are merely non-sequiturs, such as that “The proportion of magicians in CSI is much higher than in the general population” (p. 38). It’s not clear where he got that factoid (he offers no data or statistics), nor is it clear what the relevance is of such a statement even if it was true. The list of CSI Fellows appears on the inside front cover of every issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine (which Carter has apparently never bothered to pick up); it lists about 100 Fellows, six of whom are listed as (or, to the best of my knowledge, have experience as) practicing magicians. The other 94% are psychologists, biologists, physicists, mathematicians, linguists, researchers, science writers, medical doctors, etc. Even if the 6% of people who have some experience in magic somehow controlled the agenda for CSI (which they don’t), they would be greatly outnumbered by vast majority of members who are psychologists, doctors, science writers, and physical scientists.

Ironically, Carter seems unaware that George Hansen, who he quotes extensively and from whom he cribs many decades-old complaints against skeptics, is himself a magician and a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians. If you’re going to ridicule magicians’ involvement in psi research, it is unwise to quote them in support of your claims about psi.

Carter predictably attacks James Randi’s famous $1 million challenge, claiming that the testing is nothing “but a publicity stunt.” Why? Carter offers various reason, such as that “Randi himself acts as policeman, judge, and jury” (p. 123). Actually, this is completely inaccurate: Randi helps design the tests (which the claimants help design and agree to), but he does not act as a judge; instead, a third-party person or panel agreed to by both the claimant and Randi is chosen, and Randi may not even be on the premises when the test is done. Often, in fact there is no real “judge” at all, but instead a set number of successes that everyone agrees must be met. For example if a person claims they can correctly predict random numbers in a drawing, either they can do it at a rate higher than chance, or they cannot; there is no possibility for biased judging by Randi (or anyone else) because there is nothing to “judge.”

Carter compounds this basic error with another statement; see if you can follow his logic: “Randi also insists on a ‘preliminary test’ before the real test, and he has never let anyone past the preliminary stage” (p. 124). Observant readers may catch Carter’s mistakes, but in case you didn’t here’s two issues. First—apparently unbeknownst to Carter—Randi does not conduct the preliminary tests; that is done at the local or regional level by trained skeptical or CSI-affiliated investigators such as the Independent Investigations Group (IIG) in Los Angeles. Randi may or may not be consulted in designing the preliminary tests, but he doesn’t conduct them and otherwise has little or nothing to do with them.

Second, the claim that he “has never let anyone past the preliminary stage” is non-sensical: A person with genuine psychic (or other paranormal powers) cannot be prevented from passing the test in any way, by Randi or anyone else. If a psychic claims to be able to accurately dowse water, or predict numbers ahead of a random-number generator, either they can do it or they can’t. A person who correctly predicts random events far above chance (and does it on videocamera, as per protocol) cannot be prevented from demonstrating their abilities, any more than a psychic can be “stopped” from predicting tomorrow’s headlines.

These mistakes betray a fundamental misunderstanding by Carter not only of skeptical claims and procedures, but skepticism in general. This might be excusable in a slapdash blog by someone with little knowledge just touching on the subject, but when an author with two Oxford University degrees writes a 300-page book largely claiming to address skeptical arguments, this is troubling.

Carter on Psi Skeptics

Broadening the scope a bit beyond CSI and James Randi, Carter insists that much of the reason that psychic powers have not been proven is that scientists are unaware of the research, or refuse to take it seriously because “Clearly many scientists find the claims of parapsychology disturbing.” Carter repeatedly states that scientists and skeptics are unwilling to examine well-run research for psi, largely because if psychic powers were proven it would challenge their dogmatic scientism worldview: “if a person’s a priori conviction is that the existence of psi phenomena would render most of modern science obsolete, then almost any normal explanation, no matter how improbable or convoluted, will be preferable to an explanation involving psi” (p. 198).

This is a very common charge leveled against skeptics and scientists: that they refuse to acknowledge the existence of paranormal phenomenon (psychic abilities, ghosts, extraterrestrial visitors, etc.) because it would destroy their worldview. Skeptics and scientists, they say, are deeply personally and professional invested in defending the scientific status quo.

But is this really true? Do scientists ignore and dismiss claims and evidence that challenges dominant scientific ideas? Let’s examine a recent example of how scientists and skeptics have responded to published research about psi.

A study published in 2011 in a scientific journal claimed to have found strong evidence for the existence of psychic powers such as ESP. The paper, written by Cornell professor Daryl J. Bem, was published in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and quickly made headlines around the world for its implication: that psychic powers had been scientifically proven.

Replication is of course the hallmark of valid scientific research—if the findings are true and accurate, they should be able to be replicated by others. Otherwise the results may simply be due to normal and expected statistical variations and errors. If other experimenters cannot get the same result using the same techniques, it’s usually a sign that the original study was flawed in one or more ways.

Bem’s claim of evidence for ESP wasn’t ridiculed or ignored; instead it was taken seriously and tested by scientific researchers. The experiment was replicated, and failed. A team of researchers (including Professor Chris French, Stuart Ritchie and Professor Richard Wiseman) collaborated to accurately replicate Bem’s final experiment, and found no evidence for precognition. Their results were published in the journal PLoS ONE. Bem—contradicting Carter’s suggestion that skeptics set out to discredit his work or refused to look at it—acknowledged that the findings did not support his claims and wrote that the researchers had “made a competent, good-faith effort to replicate the results of one of my experiments on precognition.”

The following year a second group of scientists replicated Bem’s experiments, and once again found no evidence for ESP. The article, “Correcting the Past: Failures to Replicate Psi,” by Jeff Galak, Robyn LeBoeuf, Leif D. Nelson, and Joseph P. Simmons, was published inThe Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and is available on the web page of the Social Science Research Network.

Another clear example disproving Carter’s claim occurred in 2011 when physicists reported to have recorded faster than light neutrinos, which if true would violate the fundamental laws of physics. What was the reaction from the scientific community to the news? They didn’t ignore the results, hoping the inconvenient truth would go away. They didn’t brand the scientists liars or hoaxers; they didn’t shout, “Burn the witch, this is heresy and cannot be true!”

Instead, they did what all scientists do when confronted with such anomalous evidence: They took a closer look at the experiment to make sure the results were valid and tried to replicate the research. It later turned out that the anomaly was caused by at least two measurement errors, possibly including a loose cable. The experiment was flawed. The scientists were not skeptical because accepting that Einstein was wrong about something would lead to a nervous breakdown, or that their whole classical physics worldview would crumble beneath them, or that they would have to accept that science doesn’t know everything. They were skeptical because it contradicted previous research. The evidence for psychic powers, like the evidence for anything else, stands or falls on its own merits. There’s no reason in the world that scientists would fear the unknown, or be afraid to learn more about the world we live in.

Carter on Psi Research & Physics

In several places even Carter is forced to admit that the evidence for psychic powers is weak, stating for example that “the overall hit rate so far seem fairly consistent at around 33 percent, when 25 percent is expected by chance. This corresponds with a hit about every third session, when chance would predict one out of four. This may not seem very impressive...” (p. 103) and indeed it isn’t.

Carter basically blames scientists and skeptics for not accepting the low level of evidence offered for psychic ability, and admits that current physics basically says that psi doesn't exist. One example: “Despite what... skeptics claim... it should be clear now that the existence of psi is consistent with the new metaphysics of science” (p. 198). What is he talking about? What's this “new metaphysics of science” he’s referring to? Quantum physics, which he knows nothing about, and which he (and people like Deepak Chopra) love to cite and reference because it sounds mysterious and paranormal. Unlike Carter, I don’t claim to understand quantum physics, but the real, actual physicists I’ve spoken to break out laughing at this crap. Nobel-prize winning physicist Murray Gell-Man, who certainly knows something about quantum mechanics, has dismissed claims about psi and physics as rubbish.

Unlike Carter, no skeptics are claiming that quantum physics supports the existence of psi. In science, as in law and logic, the burden of proof is on the claimant: the person making a claim has the burden of proving it. It is not skeptics’ responsibility to prove that psychic powers, ghosts, or Bigfoot don’t exist, as it is impossible to disprove a universal negative. If Carter wishes to posit that quantum physics provides a plausible mechanism for psi, then it is his responsibility to show that, and he clearly fails to do so. Unable to muster a significant number of modern, working physicists to support his claim that psi exists (and that its roots lie in quantum physics), Carter is reduced to cherry-picking a handful of generally noncommittal quotes from scientists throughout history.

In a few especially revealing examples, Carter quotes physicists such as Nobel laureate Brian Josephson and Olivier Costa de Beauregard making statements that seem open to the possibility of physics supporting psi. However a quick look at the references reveals that those quotes date back to the mid-1970s. It seems very curious indeed that Carter must dig back nearly 40 years to find quotes that (at least superficially) support his theories. Were there no present-day working scientists familiar with advances in physics since Gerald Ford’s presidency who Carter could find to bolster his claims?

Carter spends pages and pages discussing determinism and differing philosophies of science (his background is in philosophy, after all), and explaining why he believes that the old scientific paradigms are outdated and inadequate. Fair enough; so if our modern understanding of physics is wrong (though it seems to work pretty well so far), then how does psi work? Carter doesn’t have an answer. What’s the explanation for how psi could work? Carter doesn’t have an answer. What published, peer-reviewed studies (in quantum physics or anywhere else) show the mechanism by which psi operates? Again, Carter doesn’t have an answer. All he offers is a shrug, and bold self-assured predictions that one day quantum physics will figure it out.

Carter finds himself in a seemingly untenable, semi-paradoxical position of trying to discredit classical physics while at the same time referencing research based on that same model in support of his claims. Carter can’t totally dismiss and disregard our current models of physics, since the psi-positive studies he cites and references were conducted using that model (as far as I know, research conducted by people like Rupert Sheldrake, Daryl Bem, Robert Jahn, Charles Honorton, and others involved classical, not quantum, physics).

Or, to use another obvious example, Uri Geller’s spoon-bending and other alleged psychokinesis-related phenomena did not occur on a “quantum level.” The spoons were actually, physically bent—not at the subatomic level but here in the real-world realm of classical physics. Carter tries to claim that the unknown mechanism by which psi operates is (or might be) found in quantum physics, but even if that were true it would not invalidate classical physics as outmoded, nor explain away the fact that there is an inverse correlation between how strong a given psi experiment’s controls are and how large an effect it finds.

I assume that in his areas of knowledge and expertise, economics and philosophy, Carter knows what he’s talking about. Unfortunately in Science and Psychic Phenomena, he is adrift with little or no understanding of statistics, physics, or even psychology. Unable to marshal strong evidence in support of psychic powers and forced to acknowledge that “psi is certainly incompatible with the old scientific view” (p. 198), Carter is reduced to a lukewarm and topsy-turvy assertion that “nothing in quantum mechanics forbids psi phenomena” (p. 228). Carter is fervently hoping that his readers don’t realize that even if this is true (and despite his labored efforts to assure us that he understands the quantum physics he’s talking about), not ruling something out is quite different than supporting it. In the real world, just because we don’t rule something out as defying the laws of physics doesn’t mean we say it’s true—or even that there’s any evidence for it at all. Nothing in modern physics forbids Abraham Lincoln from still being alive and enjoying a hedonistic life in Paris, or thousands of Bigfoot and giant alligators from living in New York City sewers. Theoretically possible? Sure. Any good evidence for it? Nope.

My favorite part of the book is chapter 13, in which Carter complains bitterly that mainstream scientists reject the (otherwise obviously true) reality of psi for several reasons: 1) ignorance of the evidence for psi; 2) fear of ridicule by CSICOP [sic]; 3) “adherence to outmoded metaphysics of science”; and 4) inability to explain psi within accepted theories of biology and psychology. Yes, the blame resides everywhere except with the psi researchers.

Conclusion

There are many other mistakes I could touch on, but just because Carter includes them in his book doesn’t obligate me to spend my time enumerating and correcting them. The fact that many of Carter’s basic claims (for example about skeptics’ closed-mindedness and refusal to address psi research) have been refuted by prominent psi researcher Daryl Bem—whom Carter himself references at length—should be a red flag that at least some of the book’s information and arguments are outdated and on shaky ground.

Despite its factual errors and many flawed arguments, Science & Psychic Phenomena: The Fall of the House of Skeptics is an interesting book, if for no other reason than that it provides insight into the mindset of many psi proponents. The fact that several prominent people, including Larry Dossey, Rupert Sheldrake, Jessica Utts, and Dean Radin—several of them smart people who should know better—have endorsed Carter’s book as some sort of masterful discrediting of skepticism is revealing. If this book truly is the best attack that proponents of psi can muster—mottled as it is with poor scholarship, logical errors, and obvious factual mistakes—then the house of skeptics is on firmer ground than anyone imagined.

Full disclosure: I am a Research Fellow with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and deputy editor of the organization’s official journal, Skeptical Inquirer. To some people this may invalidate my critique, while to others it makes my critique more valid since I happen to be familiar with many of the claims and issues in Carter’s book. At any rate, as readers will see, many of the problem in Carter’s book are matters of fact, not opinion, and anyone—skeptic or believer—can research the accuracy of the statements made herein.

According to a CBS News story, “A government panel renewed a call Monday for every adult to be screened for obesity during checkups, suggesting more physicians should be routinely calculating their patients’ BMIs. And when someone crosses the line into obesity, the doctor needs to do more than mention a diet. It's time to refer those patients for intensive nutrition-and-fitness help, say the guidelines issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.”

Bashing the BMI

Yet a lot of people are not impressed; in fact the BMI had been attacked and ridiculed for years. Just how reviled is the BMI among many the public? Do a Google search for “BMI is...” and the top three returns are “bullshit,” “wrong” and “a joke.”

Why such hate for an otherwise boring, uncontroversial medical formula?

Part of the reason is that the BMI has come under attack—not so much by medical professionals (who use it on a fairly regular basis) but by fat acceptance activists who believe that the BMI unfairly discriminates against overweight people. Author and Salon.com blogger Kate Harding, for example, created a slideshow explaining why BMI is badly flawed. Many other bloggers and writers have echoed her complaints, including at Jezebel, Huffington Post, and elsewhere.

By far the chief complaint is that BMI doesn’t give accurate readings for everyone, and overemphasizes the role of weight in health. An article provided by Men’s Health magazine for the Huffington Post notes “The next time you happen to catch a Minnesota Vikings game, take a look at Adrian Peterson, the team's 6'1, 217-pound running back. Now ask yourself: what kind of physical characteristics would you attribute to him? Athletic? Lean? Fit? All of these certainly sound like valid answers to us—but his clinical classification might surprise you. By any normal standards, Peterson is one of the fittest men on the planet. But by our country's system of measuring body fat, he’s overweight.”

For many social activists and feminists the issue is not really about a height-weight ratio formula but instead what they believe the BMI represents: judgment against overweight women (and men), and an attempt to impose high beauty standards on women. As a blogger for Change.org asks in a piece typical of anti-BMI pieces, “If the BMI doesn’t...take into account any distinctions of age, race, and sex, than perhaps its at best an outmoded, ineffective, and ultimately demoralizing standard by which to judge a woman’s health?”

There are several problems with this characterization. The questions of whether the BMI is outmoded and ineffective will be addressed shortly, but suggesting that the measure is a “demoralizing standard by which to judge a woman’s health” is bizarre: The BMI is not a “standard [of] health” (for men or women); it is a measure of adiposity (fatness). Though there is a strong positive correlation between excess weight and poor health, it is quite possible to be overweight (or even obese) and healthy. Thus the suggestion that the BMI is a measure of health is patently false. And any medical measure can be “demoralizing” in some way if it does not give its user the desired results, from a blood sugar strip to a bathroom scale. The purpose of any weight scale or measure is to be accurate, not to provide comforting assurances (like the magical mirror in “Snow White,” proclaiming that its user is the fairest—or thinnest—of them all).

BMI Limitations

It is absolutely true that the BMI overestimates the amount of body fat (mistaking muscle for fat) in people like football running backs. However the critics gloss over the fact that most of us are not professional football running backs; the vast majority of people are not in categories where BMI’s validity is skewed. The limitations of the BMI are well-known to doctors; the measurement was developed as a general guideline. No medical professional would classify a patient as underweight, normal, or obese based only on a BMI score; it’s a starting point, a general guideline, not a strict rule that correctly predicts overweight in everyone.

To use another medical example, doctors issue guidelines to the public about warning signs of a stroke (including arm weakness, speech difficulty, and face drooping). These guidelines are not perfect (people experience these symptoms without having a stroke), and are not a substitute for a doctor’s medical diagnosis. Like the BMI, the guidelines were not designed to be—and never claimed to be—the best diagnostic tool out there, but instead a general rule of thumb to give the layperson a guide to their health status. Nobody would suggest getting rid of the simple stroke checklist because it does not correctly diagnose stroke in everyone (and has the potential for false positives), yet many suggest getting ride of the BMI for exactly the same reason.

Dr. Steven Novella, a Yale physician, has examined the BMI “controversy” in-depth. Writing on his Science-Based Medicine blog, Novella notes that “It is widely recognized and admitted that BMI is problematic as applied to individuals. Muscular and athletic people may have a high BMI and not have excess adiposity, for example. Also at the extremes of height the BMI becomes harder to interpret. But this does not mean the BMI is useless. In fact, for most people BMI correlates quite well with adiposity. In one study researchers compared BMI to a more direct measure of body fat percentage using skin-fold thickness. They found that when subjects met the criterion for obesity based upon BMI, they were truly obese by skin-fold thickness 50-80% of the time (depending on gender and ethnicity). When they were not obese by BMI they were not obese by skin-fold 85-99% of the time. So BMI is a rough but useful estimate, good for large epidemiological studies where more elaborate fat percentage measurements are not practical.”

Flawed Logic

For those who reject the BMI because it is imperfect, using that logic nobody should take any medical drugs or undergo any medical procedures or surgeries, since they are imperfect and have varying success rates. The usefulness of any drug or medical procedure does not depend on whether it is completely appropriate or useful for everyone. For example a drug prescribed to treat high blood pressure is not completely effective for every single patient; for most patients it will significantly improve their symptoms—but individuals vary, and it works better for some people than others. This is not a logical reason not to use them.

Another criticism is that the BMI was developed over 150 years ago, and its longevity somehow discredits it. What would become the BMI was developed around 1850 by a Belgian statistician named Adolphe Quatelet, and has been used more or less since then. This is, of course, flawed logic: if anything the fact that the BMI has been widely used for so long is actually evidence that it works—not that it doesn’t work. To use only one example of many, germ theory has been around since at least 1815 (when Agostino Bassi did experiments showing that the etiology of disease could be traced to germs), and no one suggests that germ theory is “outmoded” or incorrect merely because it’s been around for nearly 200 years.

Ironically, efforts by critics (including many feminists) to challenge the BMI’s validity often undermine the very research they promote. By challenging the validity of the BMI, they are also indirectly (but significantly) challenging the instrument validity of research that uses BMI in its methodology—often research they themselves cite in support of their claims. Hundreds of studies related to women’s body image, self-esteem, and media exposure dating back decades have used the BMI as a measure of weight in the study’s subjects. Some of those studies are widely-cited and referenced, offered as evidence, for example, that exposure to images of thin women on television encourages eating disorders (“Eating behaviours and attitudes following prolonged exposure to television among ethnic Fijian adolescent girls.” 2002. Becker A.E., Burwell R.A., Gilman S.E., Herzog D.B., and Hamburg P. British Journal of Psychiatry. June; 180:509-14.).

If the BMI really is an invalid measure as often claimed, the validity of countless studies that using that measure must be questioned. This problem has received little if any attention, likely because most people promoting social agendas don’t actually read the original studies they cite in support of their arguments and claims. They don’t examine the research for strengths, flaws, and important caveats but instead skim the abstract, or rely on news stories to tell them what the research means.

One reason that BMI is useful is that many people do not notice weight gain. Contrary to the popular idea that most people (especially women) weigh themselves constantly in fear of gaining an ounce, studies show that that a significant number of women evaluated at six-month intervals did not recognize recent gains in weight. Nearly one-third of women did not notice a weight gain of approximately 4.5 pounds over a six-month time, and one-quarter of women did not notice a weight gain of nearly 9 pounds over the same period. Such findings concern researchers because if people don’t realize they are overweight they won’t make effort to lose weight.

The BMI is also useful in that it is a calculation that anyone can make, and does not require medical knowledge nor a medical office visit. Not everyone has affordable access to medical care and private physicians, and the BMI helps poor and underprivileged people determine whether or not they are at a healthy weight.

Many of the BMI critics’ complaints are straw man arguments stemming from a fundamental misunderstanding of what the BMI is and what it claims to do. It is not a tool used by the patriarchic medical establishment for oppressing women, nor pressuring them to conform to impossible standards of beauty. It is instead a generally useful, accurate guide to helping average men and women determine their weight status.

Encyclopedia of Urban Legends: Updated and Expanded Edition. By Jan Harold Brunvand. ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, 2012. ISBN: 978-1-59884-720-8. 782 pp., $173.

With his new Encyclopedia of Urban Legends: Updated and Expanded Edition, Jan Brun­vand—the professor emeritus of Eng­lish at the University of Utah widely considered to be the world’s foremost expert on urban legends—updates and greatly expands his previous magnum opus of folklore.

Brunvand is author of many books on urban legends that are (or should be) familiar to skeptics, including The Baby Train, The Choking Doberman, and The Vanishing Hitchhiker. Brunvand’s other books provide much more detail, history, and variations of the legends, but for a comprehensive single source, this encyclopedia (which runs nearly 800 pages over two volumes) is the best of its kind. The entries are generally short, ranging from a paragraph to a few pages, and give a concise narrative of the legend and some analysis. Each entry provides references, and many of them are cross-referenced with other entries, Brunvand’s books, other books on urban legends, folklore journals, and even the occasional Snopes.com page.

This book is more than just a collection of urban legends—it also includes interesting entries on important folkloric concepts and topics such as Memorates (“a first-person account of a personal experience with the supernatural”), Bogus Warnings, the Satanic Panic, and my favorite, the Body Parts Legends. Folklore, because it is amorphous and constantly changing, is notoriously difficult to quantify and categorize (for example, the story of the Vanishing Hitchhiker is clearly an urban legend—but is a forwarded email warning about a mall rapist? Or what about a true news story about a woman who microwaved her dog?). To help with this, Brunvand offers a useful Type Index of Urban Legends, categorizing various legends according to theme.

The Encyclopedia of Urban Legends also helps clarify what exactly is meant by “urban legend”; the public often uses the term overly broadly. As Brunvand notes in his introduction, “I am not in­cluding plotless rumors, gossip, bits of misinformation, etc. Although these materials share some of the same features as urban legends they are not technically in the same genre, even though a few such borderline cases do merit mention in some of my entries” (xxvii).

Folklore often informs skeptical in­vestigation, and it has been invaluable in my research into such varied topics as ghosts, djinn (genies), lake monsters, kidney-theft rumors, chupacabra myth­ology, and Halloween poisoned candy scares. Just about every paranormal or “unexplained” subject (whether objectively real or not) has a robust and rich mythology surrounding it; without at least a passing knowledge of its folkloric aspects, an investigation is incomplete at best.

Accessible enough for the casual reader yet scholarly enough for academic researchers, The Encyclopedia of Urban Legends is an invaluable and fascinating book that merits a place on the shelf of any skeptic and student of folklore. The book is currently priced as an academic book but will hopefully be issued in a cheaper edition next year.

In my books and workshops on scientific paranormal investigation, I discuss how best to conceptualize a mystery: basically, an event out of context. A live dolphin lying on a Manhattan sidewalk is a mystery; that same dolphin in a tank at an aquarium is not. Ten thousand gallons of boiling caramel inside a Boeing 747 airplane is a mystery; that same caramel in a candy factory is not. Every mystery or strange event has some surrounding circumstance or context that will render it non-mysterious.

The investigator’s job is to find a scientifically plausible context in which the mysterious phenomenon makes sense. Often a mystery is created when the facts are merely lacking a context, but a mystery can also be created when the facts are put into the wrong context.¹ Thus, one of the chief duties in examining “unexplained” claims is un­derstanding the (environmental, social, cultural, psychological, etc.) context of miracle reports, UFO photographs, and so on.

I was reminded of this during a recent visit to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. One featured exhibit, Lifelike, “invites close examination of artworks—startlingly realistic, often playful, and sometimes surreal—based on commonplace ob­jects and situations.” The show featured ninety works from fifty artists, including Alex Hay’s Paper Bag (1968), an exact replica of an ordinary paper bag (except that it’s six feet tall and made of fiberglass); Vija Celmins’s Freeway (1966), a photorealistic oil painting one would swear is a photograph at first glance; Daniel Douke’s Ace (1979), a seemingly ordinary mailing box complete with packaging tape and scuffs yet mounted chest-high on a wall and made of acrylic and Masonite; and Ron Mueck’s Crouching Boy in Mirror (1999–2000), a stunningly realistic life-size sculpture of a boy looking at himself in a mirror. In this world, scale and apparent utility cannot be trusted: pocket combs are as large as filing cabinets and working elevators are scaled down to the size of a deck of cards.

This is fertile playground for artists, illusionists, and skeptics: Things that seem real often are not, and things that don’t seem real sometimes are. Every­thing must be questioned: every basic assumption and premise, even the ordinary—especially the ordinary. The same is true for investigations and skepticism in general.

One of the most interesting pieces at Lifelike was also the most mundane (and for the same reason). It was Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone’s still.life (cardboard leaning on the wall) (2009). The piece, about four feet square, is a slightly banged-up piece of cardboard, with all the familiar patterns and creases we’d expect to find on any ordinary piece of cardboard sitting next to a city dumpster. It is in fact an incredibly detailed bronze sculpture (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. This seemingly ordinary piece of cardboard is actually a bronze sculpture.

Which brings me back to the issue of context. A photograph (indeed, even a close visual inspection) of the piece does not betray its true nature. Without touching or weighing it, we have no way of deducing anything about it. The same is often true for photographs of Bigfoot, UFOs, ghosts, etc. This is where context informs the investigation: If I photo­graphed still.life in an alleyway, there would be no reason to think or assume it was anything except what it seems to be.² Rondinone’s sculpture, seen or photographed, does exactly what it is in­tended to do: fool the viewer. (Even when photographed against a gallery wall, the context doesn’t give the viewer much of a clue to its true nature.)

But what if there was an additional piece of important information that gave the mystery (or, rather, apparent non-mystery) context? If I showed someone a photograph of still.life and mentioned that the photo was taken at a famous art museum, that changes everything, providing both a reason to doubt its apparent nature and context for solving the mystery. The information doesn’t completely explain it—after all, it could simply be a piece of discarded cardboard leaning against a wall in the receiving dock because it’s too big to fit in the trash. But it provides a clue, an important first step in solving mysteries.

Art means many things to many people—and it can even include les­sons in skepticism from a piece of cardboard that’s not really a piece of cardboard.

Notes

1. For example, if a woman is thinking about her friend who then suddenly calls, that context might make them think they share a psychic link, whereas the correct—and less mysterious—context is that the incident was likely an illusion created by confirmation bias.

2. Note that this is not a fallacy but instead a completely reasonable and logical assumption; in fact, since the piece is unique in the world—there are no other bronze sculptures that size that look exactly like an ordinary creased cardboard panel—one would be completely justified using Occam’s razor in assuming it is precisely what it appears to be.

Award-winning cartoonist, fine artist, and stand-up comedian Dan Piraro is best known for his daily syndicated newspaper cartoon Bizarro. Appearing in over three hundred newspapers on six continents, Bizarro has won an unprecedented three consecutive “Best Cartoon Panel” awards from the National Cartoonists Society, and in 2011 Piraro won its highest honor, “Cartoonist of the Year.” Over his twenty-seven-year career, Piraro has published sixteen books of his cartoons as well as three books of prose. Piraro has appeared on NPR, CNN, and HBO and is currently negotiating a half-hour, animated comedy show for television. The Onion referred to him as “one of the best cartoonists that has ever played the game.” Piraro’s cartoons have appeared on the Skeptical Inquirer’s “Last Laugh” humor page for several years, and an issue about where skepticism meets art wouldn’t be complete without him. Piraro was kind enough to answer a few questions from SI Deputy Editor Benjamin Radford.

You sometimes have “mysterious” or “paranormal” subjects like Bigfoot, UFOs, Egypt’s pyramids, and psychics as themes in your cartoons—often with a clever angle deflating the mystery or pretension. Are you a skeptic at heart, questioning everything?

Yes, always have been. I loathe superstition and am horrified by the amount of suffering and death that has been caused throughout history because of mythology. Though we like to think those days are gone, it still goes on daily. The fact that same-sex marriage is not uniformly legal throughout the world is a perfect example of superstition over reason.

As someone with a refined sense of the absurd, do you simply find the topics are just irresistibly ripe for lampooning?

That, too. I know that belief in “the unseen” is an evolutionary quirk and not directly tied to intelligence, but I can’t help but feel that the sorts of wacky stuff people believe in are just ridiculous. So I lampoon them. God included.

Hypocrisy is a common theme in your work, using humor to highlight the disparity between what people say and what they do (or between obvious reality and what people think). Why is that such a rich vein for you?

I’m not sure, really. I’ve always been an observer, both visually and behaviorally, so I see a lot of hypocrisy everywhere, of course. Combine that with my affinity for using logic and reason to make sense of things, [and] these kinds of things just pop out.

Another source of your humor has been puns—sometimes truly awful ones. Are there any especially atrocious puns that have earned you threats of bodily harm, or ones you regret and would like to publicly apologize for?

I’ve always been a fan of puns, but for years I tried not to use them in cartoons because I thought they were too easy. But over the years I’ve learned that readers really love puns, too. Even the groaners. So I started using the puns submitted to me by readers in a feature called “Sunday Punnies,” and it’s been extremely popular. My guideline regarding puns is this: if it makes me smile, I use it. I don’t care if anyone thinks it is “bad”; I just do it. No threats yet, fingers crossed. . . .

Obviously the main goal of your work is entertaining people, but many of your cartoons indirectly encourage critical thinking by offering a skeptical perspective. What do you think about the role of art and satirical humor as vehicles for exposing truth and hypocrisy?

I think there is no better way to get people to think about issues like critical thinking and reason than humor. Traditionally, a good cartoon can have more political impact than a thirty-minute stump speech. I think that is often true in areas other than politics, too. There is no better way to disarm and diffuse than with humor. When you start making fun of a principle, person, or behavioral trait, it immediately makes it less powerful. I used to disarm bullies in this way in school. I was not big enough to beat them physically, but I realized if I could get other kids to laugh at them, they were no longer intimidated by them.

One of the many small hidden (and not-so-hidden) icons you sometimes use in your cartoons (along with a slice of pie and a lit firecracker) is a little alien in a UFO, a “Flying Saucer of Possibility.” Also, according to something I either made up or read on the Internet, it represents a UFO you saw as a young child from the porch of your filthy mobile home at the bottom of a strip-mining pit in downtown Tokyo. True or false?

If philosophy teaches us anything (and it doesn’t) it’s that all things are both true and false. If I say I lived in a filthy mobile home at the bottom of a strip-mining pit in downtown Tokyo, I probably did.

A Canadian spiritualist ghostbusting actor walks into a bar wearing New Age crystals and a crystal skull around his neck, goes up to the bartender, and orders a vodka. . . . No, this weird mashup is not the setup to a joke (certainly not a funny one) but instead more or less describes one of the strangest intersections of Hollywood, New Age paranormal belief, ghost hunting, and alcohol.

This story involves crystal skulls. There are many skulls in the world carved out of quartz crystal of varying sizes and designs. I’ve seen them in a lot of places, especially in South and Central America, where they are sold as tourist trinkets. The ones you can buy for a few dollars are rather plain, but the big ones (life-size or so) are steeped in myth and romance. There are only a handful of the life-size skulls in existence, and they have inspired awe for generations. They are said to be hundreds of years old and possibly of Mayan or Aztec origin.

Figure 2. A rare crystal skull on display at the British Museum in London, England. Photo by Benjamin Radford.

I examined a glowing crystal skull in the British Museum (see Figures 1 and 2), and the skulls are indeed a sight to behold. Of course I’m not the only one interested in them. Many people have been enchanted by the world’s crystal skulls. Screenwriter George Lucas has said in interviews that he has been interested in crystal skulls for many years. He even wrote a script about them, which finally became the 2008 film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls (See Figure 3). While there is little evidence for the reality of most of the artifacts that Indy chased in his earlier films (such as the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail), crystal skulls are quite real. The crystal skulls are said to have no tool marks that show when or how they were made. Beyond the artistry of carved crystal, many believe the skulls have special abilities, such as aiding psychic abilities, healing the sick—or even power over death.

Figure 3. A “crystal skull” (actually plastic resin), sold in conjunction with the film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls, displayed at Disneyland. From the author’s collection, photo by Benjamin Radford.

Another person interested in crystal skulls is Dan Aykroyd. He’s famous, in skeptical circles anyway, for enthusiastically endorsing all manner of paranormal phenomena and producing a plethora of mystery-mongering TV shows. His website refers to him as “a well-known actor, musician, entrepreneur and spiritualist; a believer in what he calls the ‘invisible world’ where otherworldly presences are a ‘form of reality as valid as our normal reality.’” His father, Peter, is a Canadian author and historian who wrote a book on ghosts titled A History of Ghosts.

Dan Aykroyd was so taken with the skulls, in fact, that he cofounded a Canadian company called Crystal Head Vodka, which launched in 2008 with the bottling of its crystal-filtered libation in novelty glass skulls (Figure 4). The vodka’s packaging states,

A controversial archaeological mystery, 13 crystal heads have been found in regions around the world, from the American southwest to Tibet. They’re dated between 5,000 and 35,000 years old, and were supposedly polished into shape from solid quartz chunks over a period of several hundred years. Although according to Hewlett Packard engineers, they bear no tool marks to tell us exactly how they were made. The heads are thought to offer spiritual power and enlightenment to those who possess them, and as such stand not as symbols of death, but of life.

In a video introduction on the vodka’s website Aykroyd states:

I have always been an avid researcher of the subject of the legendary thirteen crystal heads which have been unearthed at numerous locations and at various times on our planet. The story goes that thirteen crystal heads have been found in places varying from the Yucatan peninsula in Central America to the American South­west in New Mexico and also in Tibet. There are now seven heads known to be in mankind’s custody . . . and one is currently owned by a woman in the South­west who claims that she had to finally put it in a closet after he (or she) began speaking to her. Scientists estimate that it took between 300 and 500 years to carve one of these heads from a single piece of quartz. However, in tests conducted on the Mitchell-Hedges head by Hewlett-Packard labs in the 1960s [sic], they could find no discernable tool marks on the head to show how it was carved. Equally fascinating is that according to both physicists and jewelers these heads should not exist but should have shattered in the course of making them. . . . The Navajo believe that [the skulls] were bestowed on their people as a gift from higher beings not of this Earth as a means of cataloguing sacred cultural knowledge from the past, assessing the present, and foretelling the future. Contrary to the common perception of a skull as representing death, the people from these cultures—the Aztec, Mayan, and North American First Nations, for whom these artifacts possess sacred and mystical properties—associate the crystal heads with a life-affirming symbology. In ancient tellings, the heads are living and sentient sources of knowledge, insight, and power. (Aykroyd 2008)

Figure 4. A bottle of Crystal Head vodka: filled to the brim with vodka and pseudoscience. From the author’s collection; photo and consumption by Benjamin Radford.

Perhaps Aykroyd was sampling some of his own product, because very little of what he said is accurate. Tool marks have indeed been found on several of the crystal skulls (see Sax et al. 2008); the Hewlett-Packard report says nothing of the sort (Hewlett Packard 1971); and in any event Aykroyd seems unaware that one of the crystal skulls he highlights, the New Mexico “crystal skull,” is in fact not crystal at all but instead made of blown glass (Smith 2008; see Figure 5) and therefore would not have “shattered in the course of making” it, as he claimed. As for the most famous crystal skull in the world, researchers such as Joe Nickell (2006) and Daniel Loxton (2008) note that the Mitchell-Hedges skull was not in fact found in the Yucatan peninsula but was instead bought at auction, and its reputed history is thoroughly fraudulent.

Crystal Diamonds

Figure 5. A “crystal” skull (actually made of glass) identical to one found in northern New Mexico. From the author’s collection; photo by Benjamin Radford.

Not only is the vodka made from pure New­found­land water and bottled in a replica (glass) crystal skull, but Aykroyd (2008) would not stop there in his quest to imbue his vodka with New Age woo—if not better flavor: “A quadruple-distillation process made Crystal Head as pure as vodka can be, but the quest for an almost mystical purity continued. As a final stage, the liquid was filtered through 500-million-year-old crystals known as Herkimer diamonds. These quartz crystals are found in very few places in the world, including Herkimer, New York and regions in Tibet and Afghan­istan. Perhaps because they share the raw material from which the original crystal heads were carved, they are thought to have similar spiritual qualities.”

The Herkimer “diamonds” through which the vodka is filtered have another interesting connection to the paranormal, as Joe Nickell noted in his book Real-Life X-Files (2001). They were used as so-called “crystal tears” by a woman named Katie who was reputed to be a physical medium and who could miraculously produce apports from the Great Beyond, including the tears.

From a distilling point of view, it’s not clear why “filtering” a vodka through crystals would improve its flavor or purity any more than filtering it over rocks or glass marbles. Of course, truth never stands in the way of a good story—and certainly not a good advertising campaign. Crystal Head vodka can be found at the intersection of New Age woo, pop culture, and mystery-mongering pseudoscience.

References

Aykroyd, Dan. 2008. Promotional video for Crystal Head Vodka, accessed on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKqjIv91Zx8.

Hewlett Packard. 1971. History or hokum? Measure February: 9–10.

Loxton, Daniel. 2008. Crystal skulls. Junior Skeptic (Skeptic magazine) 14(2): 96–89.

Nickell, Joe. 2006. Riddle of the crystal skulls. Skeptical Inquirer July/August: 15–16.

Sax, Margaret, Jane Walsh, Ian Freestone, et al. 2008. The origin of two purportedly pre-Columbian Mexican crystal skulls. Journal of Archaeological Science (May 18).

Smith, Mike. 2008. The San Luis Valley crystal skull. Skeptical Briefs (December): 3–5.

I found Feltham more or less by accident. I was at Scotland’s famous loch for about a week following a speaking engagement in London where I discussed my original research into “America’s Loch Ness Monster,” the creature supposedly inhabiting Vermont’s Lake Champlain. I had spent much of the day near Inverness, conducting a series of experiments on judging the size and distance of unknown objects in lake waters. By mid-afternoon the weather grew too Scottish, and I had to pack it up.

Instead of conducting more experiments, I walked along a chilly beach near the town of Dores, where, to my surprise, I found about twenty Loch Ness monsters. They were various colors—mostly red, green, purple, and blue. Some were perched on rocks; others were on little acrylic ice cubes; all were on a wooden shelf supported by a waist-high tree stump. They were only a few inches high and had big, cute eyes. Above them was a multicolored, hand-drawn sign that read, “Nessie Models For Sale.” Just behind that lay a converted mini-bus with faux wood paneling and a giant logo that read, “Nessie-sery Independent Research.”

The Loch Ness monster—in doll form—can be found in the tourist traps at Inverness.

It’s part tourist shack, part library, part monster research facility, and all home to Steve Feltham, the world’s only full-time Loch Ness monster researcher. Feltham, with his easy smile, shock of gray and white hair, and clipped British accent, is a fixture at Ness. He’s lived on its shores since 1991, when he abruptly moved from England. The vehicle, which is not much bigger than some walk-in closets, has everything he needs: a bed, a desk, a tiny sink, and a cooking burner. The walls are plastered with posters, photographs, maps, and shelves with Loch Ness-related books and papers. (I was pleased to see some of my own articles and research on his shelves.)

Being both in the (very) shallow pool of serious lake monster researchers, we talked shop for an hour, swapping stories, research findings, and theories about our elusive prey. He asked me about some of my lake monster investigations and gave me a tour of his place.

Steve Feltham in his trailer at Scotland’s Loch Ness.

I perched on a tiny stool, and Steve Feltham told me his story. He spoke of a fairly ordinary childhood and rattled off a list of his previous occupations: “I was a potter for a while . . . then I installed alarm systems. You know, peoples’ houses, commercial, all that lot. And, I’m an artist, of course,” he quickly added, gesturing to the Nessie figurines. He sculpts them in his spare time (which he has a lot of) to earn a living, selling them for £10 each (about $20).

Growing up he’d always been fascinated by Scotland’s Nessie but never seriously pursued it. When he installed residential burglar and fire alarms in London, he said he’d usually make small talk with the owners, who were often elderly. As old folks are often wont to do, the pensioners shared stories of their lives. Feltham noticed a common theme: many expressed regret at not having followed the dreams of their youths. One retiree had spent years working in a pastry shop and always wanted to open his own bakery, but he never did. Another woman once had dreams of moving to America and pursuing a career in dance or theater; instead she spent thirty years in a comfortable but unfulfilling office job. Feltham took that as a sign that he should seize his dream of searching for the Loch Ness monster and dedicate himself to it full time. He quit his job; left his friends, family, and life; and drove to Loch Ness to live alone in a van and spend all day, every day, looking for the beast (and greeting the occasional tourist).

I know better than most people what a bold move that was. Monsters in Loch Ness are a possibility but a very remote one, given the fact that there is no hard evidence that they exist. No such creatures have ever been captured. If they exist (and there would have to be dozens of them in the lake to sustain a breeding population), they have miraculously managed to avoid leaving any teeth, bones, or carcasses.

Loch Ness has been repeatedly searched for over seventy years, using everything from miniature submarines to divers to cameras strapped on dolphins. In fact just three years before my meeting with Feltham, a team of researchers sponsored by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) undertook the largest and most comprehensive search of Loch Ness ever conducted. They scoured the lake using 600 separate sonar beams and satellite navigation. One of the lead searchers, Ian Florence, was quoted in a BBC press release: “We went from shoreline to shoreline, top to bottom on this one; we have covered everything in this loch and we saw no signs of any large animal living in the loch.” No monsters; no nothing. I asked Feltham what he thought about that.

The author scans the cold, dark waters of Loch Ness near Dores Beach.

He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “It was flawed,” he sniffed. “Yes, it made the papers, but they didn’t scan [the loch] all at once, so to me the results are suspect. They searched it over three days in three parts, so the animals might have moved around between the searches.”

I understood his point, though it seemed unlikely to me that such a thorough search had somehow missed a half dozen or more large creatures. I didn’t challenge him on it.

Though I was used to being the only skeptic in the conversation when it comes to eyewitness reports, Feltham shared my doubts about many sightings. He explained that many “eyewitness” sightings of Scotland’s famous lake monster can be traced back directly to Hollywood movies about the creature. He had no doubt that eyewitnesses sometimes describe seeing things that they really saw only in fiction: “You remember the movie here on the loch that came out [in 1996]? The one with Ted Danson? Well, there’s a scene at Urquhart Castle that shows two Nessies there with long, thin necks.” That scene, Feltham told me, changed real-life eyewitness descriptions of things people saw on the loch: all of a sudden people started reporting seeing monsters with necks exactly like those depicted in the film. “Nobody reported seeing twenty-foot-long necks until after that film came out,” he said. Unless the Nessie monsters had somehow seen the film and changed their appearance to fit what people were expecting them to look like, this was a clear example of how pop culture influences the public’s sightings.

The picturesque ruins of Urquhart Castle sit along the shores of Loch Ness.

He said that a few years earlier he had been contacted by a woman offering a video of what she thought was the neck of the Loch Ness monster, low in the water. “She’d come out to the loch on holiday and had a video camera with her. She was out by the castle [the ruins of Urquhart Castle, the most famous and most photographed spot on the lake] on a tour, I think it was, and she’d panned along the shore and countryside. She didn’t think a thing of it at the time.” It wasn’t until she and her husband returned home that they watched the video of their vacation and noticed a long, dark, indistinct form seeming to come vertically out of the water. They were sure she had accidentally filmed the Loch Ness monster’s neck; what else could it be?

“It was a boat mast,” Feltham said with a weary smile. “Clear as day, a boat mast. You don’t see the rest of the boat because she was taping the hills instead of the water, but there it was.” At Loch Ness—as at many reputedly monster-haunted lakes around the world—the bulk of lake monster sightings are made by tourists. If the creatures live in the lakes, one would think that the people who spend the most time on the lakes would be more likely to see them than someone who’s at the lake only for a few days. Over and over I have interviewed fishermen and boat captains who have criss-crossed lakes daily (sometimes several times daily) for years or even decades and never seen anything unusual. Feltham’s story provides part of the explanation: people who are often around the lake recognize normal features of the lake that weekend tourists might mistake for a monster head or neck (unusual wave patterns, masts, floating logs, swimming deer, and so on).

One of the most popular theories about what the Loch Ness monster might be is a dinosaur-like plesiosaur. There are myriad problems with this theory, including that plesiosaurs died out millions of years ago and Scotland’s lochs are only about 10,000 years old. Feltham rejects the plesiosaur suggestion, offering instead his best guess: Nessies are probably fish, most likely catfish.

I asked how he would feel if he was proven correct—if, after all the monstrous speculation and blurry photos, the world-famous Loch Ness monster turned out to be an ordinary catfish (albeit a large one). How would he feel if, after spending twenty years of his life searching for the mysterious beast, the monster turned out to be something most people can find in their local supermarket? He thought for a few moments and answered in a soft voice: “I guess I’d be philosophical about it,” he said as his sweatered shoulders betrayed a slight shrug.

I bought one of his Nessie sculptures, shook his hand, and wished him luck. As I left Feltham’s van/home/research center on the windy shores of the small, cold lake in Scotland, I couldn’t help admiring his dedication. People should pursue their dreams and quests—but also realize that those dreams can come at a high cost.

When we hear news stories about Bigfoot or Nessie or ghosts (whether we believe in them or not), it is easy to forget that some people—in some cases many people—are completely convinced that they exist. Some hardcore enthusiasts spend precious years of their lives (and tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars) searching for them in vain. The lines between casual interest, serious hobby, and outright obsession can be fuzzy.

I realize that Feltham and I are in many ways more alike than different. There are millions of people around the world who are interested in unexplained mysteries, yet you can count the number of serious, scientific investigators—not the weekend warriors who go on camping trips looking for monsters or to cemeteries at midnight looking for ghosts—on one hand. We scientific investigators spend years and even decades writing, investigating, and researching these topics. For better or worse (and I’m not sure which), Feltham and I are part of a very exclusive club.

Of course I didn’t quit my job, leave my friends and family, and go live alone in a minibus on a clammy Scottish lakeshore for the sake of my research. I like to think that makes me more grounded than Feltham is, but maybe we aren’t so different. Part of me admires his certainty and wishes I had the courage of his convictions. If I were as convinced as he that some strange creatures existed out in the loch—and that I’d discover their nature if I moved there and devoted my life to searching for them—would I do it?

Maybe his obsession will pay off; maybe one day I’ll pick up a copy of The New York Times or the Albuquerque Journal to see a front-page story with a big color photo of Feltham, beaming his triumphant smile next to a monstrous beast he’s captured or found in the loch. Maybe he will go down in history books as having solved the most famous lake riddle of all time.

But maybe he won’t.

There will be a certain irony if the Nessie creatures turn out not only to exist but to be an endangered species, be it plesiosaur, monster, or catfish. The lake creatures might live and die without ever having been proven to exist. Stories and eyewitness reports of the Loch Ness monster will continue—with or without any actual creatures in the lake. Tourists will continue to mistake floating logs, boat masts, fish, wakes, and other normal lake phenomena for potential monsters. The existence of lake monsters, like that of Bigfoot and ghosts, cannot be disproved, but it takes only one live or dead monster to prove forever that they exist. Until that time, Steve Feltham will continue his search.

This article is adapted from one that first appeared in the July 15, 2010 Weekly Alibi newspaper.

II recently saw an episode of the "reality" TV show Ghost Hunters, and the T.A.P.S. team used an infrared camera to look for ghosts. At one point a camera captured a form in the general shape of a person near a wall--but everyone is accounted for and the ghost hunters see nothing except via the camera. Any idea what that was?

Ghost Hunters is the world's top ghost-themed television show, and it has been misinforming the public about both ghosts and science for six seasons (see "Ghost-Hunting Mistakes: Science and Pseudoscience in Ghost Investigations" on page 44 of this issue). The Ghost Hunters team prides itself on using modern technology to detect ghosts and other paranormal phenomena, and infrared cameras are among their staple devices. Like the other scientific gear that ghost hunters employ, infrared cameras are valid and useful devices when used correctly.

More often than not, infrared cameras create false-positive readings that amateur ghost hunters mistake for ghostly activity. Without seeing the specific video clip that you are referring to, it's impossible to know exactly what was recorded, but in my years of ghost investigations I have encountered many similar readings. To uninformed audiences and unscientific investigators, the fact that an infrared camera reveals a human-shaped form where clearly no one is around can seem very spooky and mysterious. There is, however, often a perfectly rational and scientific explanation.

The first step to explaining the nature of these "ghostly auras" is understanding the nature of the electromagnetic spectrum. Visible light--the light that our eyes can see--makes up only a fraction of the electromagnetic waves in the world. The next-lowest category of frequency below visible light (and above radio waves and microwaves) consists of infrared electromagnetic waves. In a nutshell, infrared cameras simply allow us to see a lower-frequency wavelength, detecting variations in heat instead of light.

Heat is of course far less transient than light; if we turn off a light switch in a closed room, the area goes dark almost instantly. But if we turn off a source of heat--including body heat--in an area or room, the heat may remain long after the source has been removed. This can seem mysterious to amateur ghost hunters.

At an investigation I carried out last year for the TV show MysteryQuest, one of the ghost hunters used a forward looking infrared (FLIR) camera to detect a foot-long vertical warm spot on a pillar. No one in the room could explain what caused it; one person suggested it was a sign that a ghost had been watching us. In fact I had seen one of the ghost hunters leaning against the pillar a few minutes earlier, and the warm spot matched exactly the height and shape of the man's upper arm. All the ghost hunters swore that none of them had leaned against the pole, but when I suggested they review a video tape, they saw I was correct. If they had not been recording that area (or if I hadn't seen the investigator create the warm spot), it likely would have remained mysterious. This is quite common on TV ghost-hunting shows, and it is likely the explanation for what you saw.

Millions of people are interested in ghosts. One 2005 Gallup poll found that 37 percent of Americans believe in haunted houses, and even more believe in ghosts. The “reality” TV show Ghost Hunters has been a huge hit for the Syfy channel, lasting six seasons so far and inspiring other shows. The show's ghost-hunting methods have been adopted by thousands of amateur ghost investigators across the country and around the world.

Just about every ghost-hunting group calls itself “skeptical” or “scientific.” Many investigators believe they are being scientific if they use electromagnetic field (EMF) detectors or infrared cameras-or if they don't use psychics or dowsing rods. But the best way to know whether an investigator or group is scientific is to examine methods and results. Does the investigator use the pseudoscientific methods described here? What is the group's track record of solved cases? Does an investigation end with inconclusive and ambiguous results or a solved mystery?

Ghost investigations can be deceptively tricky endeavors. Very ordinary events can be-and indeed have been-mistaken for extraordinary ones, and the main challenge for any ghost investigator is separating the facts from a jumble of myths, mistakes, and misunderstandings. It can be very easy to accidentally create or misinterpret evidence: Is that flash of light on the wall a flashlight reflection-or a ghost? Are the faint sounds recorded in an empty house spirit voices-or a neighbor's radio? It's not always clear, and investigators must be careful to weed out the red herrings and focus on the verified information.

The most famous ghost hunters in the world, Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson (co-founders of The Atlantic Paranormal Society-T.A.P.S.-and stars of Ghost Hunters), agree that using science is the best way to approach investigations. They have always claimed to use good scientific methods and investigative procedures, for example writing that “T.A.P.S. uses scientific methods to determine whether or not someone's home might be haunted,” and “We approach ghost hunting from a scientific point of view” (Hawes and Wilson 2007, 270).

Yet in their 2007 book Ghost Hunting: True Stories of Unexplained Phenomena from The Atlantic Paranormal Society, Hawes allots a grand total of four paragraphs (within 273 pages) to a chapter titled “The Scientific Approach.” He doesn't have much to say about science or scientific methods, and in fact it's the shortest chapter in the book. Hawes is wrong in his belief that he and his T.A.P.S. crew are using good scientific investigative methods. After watching episodes of Ghost Hunters and other similar programs, it quickly becomes clear to anyone with a background in science that the methods used are both illogical and unscientific.1

Some of the T.A.P.S. crew's methods are slightly better than those of earlier groups (for example, Hawes and Wilson were among the first ghost hunters to dismiss the “orbs of light are ghosts” theory), but they are not much more scientific. The Ghost Hunters lacked good science to begin with, and their methods have not become any more scientific (or any more effective) since they began.

What follows is a short survey of the most common logical and methodological mistakes being made by the T.A.P.S. team and other groups that carry out ghost investigations.2

1.Assuming that no specialized knowledge or expertise is needed to effectively investigate ghosts.

One of the most common assumptions among ghost investigators is that in the paranormal field “there are no experts.” If there are no experts, then of course anyone can effectively investigate ghosts. Almost all ghost hunters are amateur, part-time hobbyists, and they come from all walks of life. On Ghost Hunters, two ordinary guys who work as plumbers during the day are touted as experts on ghost investigations, although none of the team members has any background or training in science, investigation, forensics, or any other field that might help solve mysteries.

Why it's a mistake: Paranormal investigation requires no certificate; anyone can do it with no training, knowledge, or expertise whatsoever. Whether they are effective or not-actually able to solve mysteries-is another matter entirely. Effectively investigating claims and solving mysteries does require some experience and expertise-specifically in investigation, logic, critical thinking, psychology, science, forensics, and other areas.

2.Failing to consider alternative 
explanations for anomalous or 
“unexplained” phenomena.

Ghost hunters often over-interpret evidence and fail to adequately consider alternative explanations, assuming for example that “orbs” are ghosts, EVPs (electronic voice phenomena) are ghost voices, and so on.

Why it's a mistake: The designation of “unexplained” or paranormal must be accepted only when all other normal, natural explanations have been ruled out through careful analysis. The explanation that orbs are flash reflections of dust, insects, mist, etc., has been widely discussed for years (see Radford 2007, Nickell 1994). Many ghost hunters who accept the scientific, skeptical explanation for orbs continue to record EVPs as ghost voices despite the fact that scientific evidence of the validity of EVPs is as poor as it is for orbs.

Another common error is over-interpreting supposedly anomalous phenomena. Ghost reports are filled with phrases like “one investigator heard a young girl singing softly” or “the shadow of an old man appeared in the hallway.” How, exactly, does the ghost hunter know for a fact it was a young girl's voice or an old man's shadow? I know adult women who can convincingly mimic the soft singing of a young girl or cast a shadow that might look exactly like an old man's. It is of course possible that the sound and shadow are of a young girl and an old man, respectively, but an investigator must be careful not to go beyond the established facts and assume that his interpretation is the correct one. After you have made a specific, declarative statement like “a young girl singing softly,” you have locked yourself into that interpretation without keeping an open mind about other interpretations. Unless someone verifies the source of a sound, it is logically impossible to identify with any certainty who or what created that sound. An adult, an animal, a breeze whistling through an unseen passage, or something else altogether might sound like a child's voice. These types of reports are very common and cannot be accepted at face value.

3.Considering subjective feelings 
and emotions as evidence of 
ghostly encounters.

Ghost hunters often report descriptions of personal feelings and experiences like “I felt a heavy, sad presence and wanted to cry,” or “I felt like something didn't want me there,” and so on (see, for example, Avakian 2010). They may also describe in detail how they got goose bumps upon entering a room or grew panicked at some unseen presence, assuming they were reacting to a hidden ghost.

Why it's a mistake: Subjective experiences are essentially stories and anecdotes. There's nothing wrong with personal experiences, but by themselves they are not proof or evidence of anything. Most people who report such experiences are sincere in their belief that a ghost caused their panic, but that belief does not necessarily make it true. The problem, of course, is that there is not necessarily any connection between a real danger or a ghostly presence and how a person feels. The power of suggestion can be very strong, and a suggestible ghost hunter can easily convince herself-and others-that something weird is going on in a dark and creepy house.

4.Using improper and unscientific investigation methods.

Ghost hunters often misuse scientific equipment and ignore good scientific research methods. A few typical examples of this type of error follow.

Investigating with the lights off

Nearly every ghost-themed TV show has several scenes in which the investigators walk around in a darkened place, usually at night, looking for ghosts. Purposely conducting an investigation in the dark intentionally hobbles the investigation and is completely counterproductive. It also violates common sense and logic: If you are trying to identify an unknown object, is it better to look for it under bright lights or in a darkened room? There are no other objects or entities in the world that anyone would think are better observed in darkness instead of light; why would ghosts be any different? Humans are visual creatures, and our eyes need light to see-the more light, the better. Darkness, by definition, severely limits the amount of light and therefore the amount of visual information available. Searching at night in the dark puts investigators at an immediate and obvious disadvantage in trying to identify and understand what's going on around them.

Furthermore, this strategy fails on its own terms. Although some report seeing ghosts as glowing figures, many people report them as shadows or dark entities. Searching a dark room for a shadowy figure is an exercise in futility. Unless a ghost or entity has been specifically and repeatedly reported or photographed emitting light, there's no valid, logical reason for ghost investigators to work in the dark. The reason it's often done for television shows is obvious: it produces more dramatic footage. It's spookier and more visually interesting to film the ghost investigators with night-vision cameras.

Sampling errors

In my book Scientific Paranormal Investigation, I explain why a ghost stakeout or overnight investigation is a bad idea. But there's another, less obvious, basic scientific mistake made by many ghost hunters. Usually ghost hunters will begin their stakeout by taking readings with their high-tech equipment. Even though a thorough investigation into specific claims or phenomena (such as a door opening on its own or a strange noise) can be conducted in a matter of hours, a complete investigation into a haunted location can't be done in a few hours or even during an overnight stay. The reason is very simple: a few hours or overnight is not enough time in which to gather enough information. Establishing a valid set of baseline (or control) measurements for what “normal” (i.e., presumably ghost-free) conditions are at the location takes a lot more time.

To know what is extraordinary for the area, an investigator must first determine what is ordinary. Many ghost hunters understand this general principle but greatly underestimate the importance of valid sampling. For valid experiments, scientists must take dozens-sometimes hundreds-of independent measurements and analyze the results to derive a statistical average (along with a range of normal variation), which then can be used as a basis for research. The time frames and number of samples that most ghost hunters use are far too small to yield any scientifically meaningful baseline numbers.

Using unproven tools and equipment

Many ghost hunters consider themselves scientific if they use high-tech scientific equipment such as Geiger counters, EMF detectors, ion detectors, infrared cameras, sensitive microphones, and so on. Yet for any piece of equipment to be useful, it must have some proven connection to ghosts. For example, if ghosts were known to emit electromagnetic fields, then a device that measures such fields would be useful. If ghosts were known to cause temperature drops, then a sensitive thermometer would be useful. If ghosts were known to emit ions, then a device that measures such ions would be useful.

The problem is that there is no body of research showing that anything these devices measure has anything to do with ghosts. Until someone can reliably demonstrate that ghosts have certain measurable characteristics, devices that measure those characteristics are irrelevant.

Ineffectively using recording devices

EMF detectors, ion counters, and other gear have no use in ghost investigations. Ordinary cameras and audio recorders, however, can be helpful if used correctly. Unfortunately, many ghost hunters don't know how to use such equipment effectively.

One common example is the use of voice recorders. Most ghost hunters, including the T.A.P.S. team, use handheld voice recorders in an attempt to capture a ghost voice or EVP. Often the ghost hunter addresses the supposed spirit while holding the recorder and either standing in the middle of a room or walking around. Sometimes a voice-like sound or noise will be heard at the time; if so, the ghost hunter(s) will ask more questions, or the sound or EVP will be saved for later analysis.

Unfortunately, this is an ineffective protocol. To identify the nature of the sound (human, ghost, cat, furnace, etc.), an investigator must first determine its source, which in turn involves locating the sound's origin; this can be very difficult for a ghost hunter to do, especially in a darkened room. If the sound came from an open window, that suggests one explanation. If the sound's origin can be traced to the middle of an empty room, that might be more mysterious. Locating the source of a sound is nearly impossible using only one recording device.

A better way to scientifically determine the source location of a sound is with more than one microphone-at least three, and the more there are the better. By placing sensitive microphones throughout the location (and certainly in the four corners of a room), the signal strength of the sound can be measured at each microphone. Along with a basic knowledge of acoustics and math, these readings allow the investigator to triangulate within a few feet where the sound came from. Ideally this work should be done in real time so that ghost hunters can immediately investigate the cause; finding some “anomaly” while reviewing evidence days or weeks later is pointless.

5.Focusing on the history of a haunted location instead of the specific phenomena reported at it.

Ghost hunters often spend considerable time and effort researching the history of a house or building by scouring local records and newspapers to determine when the place was built, who built it, and who may have lived or died there or by looking for stories, legends, tragedies, lists of past owners, and so on. This is a staple of Ghost Hunters investigations, which often begin with the T.A.P.S. crew and the TV audience listening to (real or fictional) stories about the history of the place.

Why it's a mistake: Although a supposedly haunted location might have a fascinating history, this almost always has little or nothing to do with the current haunting claims or phenomena. If a ghostly figure is reported in a stairwell, a spooky face is photographed in a bedroom, or a mysterious noise is reported coming from the attic, knowing who built the place in 1928 (or the name of the little girl who died in a fire there fifty years ago) is completely irrelevant. It has nothing to do with the face or noises, which must be investigated completely independently of this information. Sometimes ghost hunters will hear or record what they believe is the sound of a voice and assume it must be a ghost, then get so wrapped up in researching the house's history trying to “identify” the ghost that they neglect to fully investigate the source of the sound.

6.Conducting a stakeout or “lockdown.”

A stakeout is typically an overnight “investigation” into a haunted location, usually with a half dozen or more people wandering around the premises, setting up cameras, taking readings, and so forth. All ghost-themed TV shows feature this activity, which is standard procedure for most ghost-hunting groups. It's also a sure sign of pseudoscience and amateur investigation.

Why it's a mistake: As an investigative modus operandi in ghost hunting, the stakeout (or “lockdown,” as it's sometimes melodramatically called) has a 100 percent track record of failure; of the hundreds of stakeouts conducted by ghost hunters, not a single one has yielded any significant evidence of ghosts. (As I previously noted, they might have better success if they left the lights on.) A stakeout is essentially a scientific experiment without the science. Real experiments are carefully controlled by the investigator: he or she controls some variables or conditions and measures the variation. Ghost hunters seem to think that by controlling access to the property in question, they are reducing or eliminating any false evidence of ghosts.

However, in a stakeout the ghost hunter cannot control all, or even most, of the variables and conditions in the experiment he's conducting. It's important to remember that nearly anything that anyone thinks is odd for any reason can be offered as evidence of a ghost. There is an impossibly broad spectrum of phenomena that have been claimed as signs of ghosts, including lights, shadows, noises, silence, heat, cold, moving objects, smells, uneasiness, and so on. If the presence of a ghost could be narrowed down to a specific phenomenon-for example, if everyone agreed (or it had been somehow proven) that ghosts give off red light or a certain high-pitched sound-then the problem of not having a controlled location would be greatly reduced. An investigator wouldn't need to rule out every possible source of sound, smell, light, etc., but instead would need to rule out merely any sources of red light or high-pitched sounds. But because just about any phenomenon can be attributed to ghosts, there is no way to rule out or control for the conditions. A ghost stakeout or lockdown is a completely unscientific waste of time.

Ultimately, of course, whether ghost hunters choose to use scientific methods and strategies is up to them. I personally don't care either way; it's not my time, effort, and money that's being wasted by doing fundamentally flawed investigation. But over the years I have gotten results and solved many cases using scientific techniques.

If ghost hunters don't care about performing scientifically valid investigations and are happy with the level of evidence they are getting, they are welcome to ignore this information. But they can't complain that no one offered a science-based paradigm for paranormal investigation. I believe that if ghosts exist, they are important and deserve to be taken seriously. Most of the efforts to investigate ghosts so far have been badly flawed and unscientific-and, not surprisingly, fruitless. If investigation is to be done, it should be done right. n

Notes

1. Ironically, Hawes and Wilson formed T.A.P.S. because they were dissatisfied with the lack of good investigation methods they saw among ghost hunters. According to Jason Hawes, “Finally I said, ‘Screw the rest of what's out there,' referring to other ghost hunters and their methods. ‘Let's do it our own way'” (Hawes and Wilson 2007, 5).

2. There are far too many mistakes in the typical ghost investigation to discuss them in any depth here. A fuller discussion can be found in chapter 4 of my new book, Scientific Paranormal Investigation.

References

Avakian, Laura. 2010. Surviving lockdown: Behind the scenes with the Ghost Adventures crew. Haunted Times 4(3): 19.

Hawes, Jason, and Grant Wilson. 2007. Ghost Hunting: True Stories of Unexplained Phenomena from The Atlantic Paranormal Society. New York: Pocket Books.

Nickell, Joe. 1994. Camera Clues: A Handbook for Photographic Investigation. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

Radford, Benjamin. 2007. The (Non)mysterious orbs. Skeptical Inquirer 31(5) (September/October): 30.