Alternative practitioners constantly claim that conventional medicine treats only symptoms while they treat underlying causes. They’ve got it backwards.

Chiropractors, homeopaths, naturopaths, acupuncturists, and other alternative medicine practitioners constantly criticize conventional medicine for “only treating the symptoms,” while alternative medicine allegedly treats “the underlying causes” of disease.

Nope. Not true. Exactly backwards. Think about it: When you go to a doctor with a fever, does he just treat the symptom? No, he tries to figure out what’s causing the fever. If it’s pneumonia, he identifies which microbe is responsible and gives you the right drugs to treat that particular infection. If you have abdominal pain, does the doctor just give you narcotics to treat the symptom of pain? No, he tries to figure out what’s causing the pain. If he determines you have acute appendicitis, he operates to remove your appendix.

I guess what they’re trying to say is that something must have been wrong in the first place to allow the disease to develop. But they don’t have any better insight into what that something might be than scientific medicine. All they have is wild, imaginative guesses. And they all disagree with one another. The chiropractor says that if your spine is in proper alignment, you can’t get sick. Acupuncturists talk about the proper flow of qi through the meridians. Energy medicine practitioners talk about disturbances in energy fields. Nutrition faddists claim that people who eat right won’t get sick. None of them can produce any evidence to support these claims. No alternative medicine has been scientifically shown to prevent disease or cure it. If it had, it would have been incorporated into conventional medicine and would no longer be “alternative.”

Are these practitioners treating the underlying cause, or are they simply applying their one chosen tool to treat everything? Chiropractors treat every patient with chiropractic adjustments. What if a doctor used one treatment for everything? You have pneumonia? Here’s some penicillin. You have a broken leg? Here’s some penicillin. You have diabetes? Here’s some penicillin. Acupuncturists only know to stick needles in people. Homeopaths only know to give out ridiculously high dilutions that amount to nothing but water. Therapeutic touch practitioners only know to smooth out the wrinkles in imaginary energy fields. They are not trying to determine any underlying cause; they are just using one treatment indiscriminately.

How do you define “cause”? We don’t know what causes gravity, but we understand enough about how it works to overcome it with elevators, airplanes, and rockets to the moon. We may not know what ultimately causes asthma, but we know enough about the causes of airway constriction and inflammation to devise effective treatments.

Let’s take a simple example: strep throat. The symptom is throat pain. Doctors don’t just treat the pain; they do a throat culture, they determine that a strep infection is causing the pain, and they treat the infection with an antibiotic. But what caused the strep infection? The body had to host the bacteria and respond to their presence by developing symptoms; the bacteria had to be capable of multiplying in the human body. The patient had to be exposed to another person who had a strep infection, who in turn had caught it from someone else, involving a chain of social and epidemiologic causes. The bacteria had to evolve from ancestor bacteria and the human from ancestor animals. And so on.

So you see, it involves a chain of causation and there can even be several simultaneous causes. “Cause” can mean pretty much anything you want it to. But however you look at it, doctors definitely do not “just treat symptoms.”

Philosophy has studied causation. Aristotle said everything had four causes: material, formal, efficient, and final. And he introduced complications: proper (prior) causation and accidental (chance) causation. Potential or actual, particular or generic. Reciprocal or circular causality as a relation of mutual dependence or influence of cause upon effect. The same thing as the cause of contrary effects when its presence and absence result in different outcomes. He recognized that the subject of causation was complicated.

Alternative providers are more “simple” minded. They often claim to know the one true cause of all disease, which is curious because medical science defines several categories of causes falling under the mnemonic VINDICATE:

V – Vascular

I – Infectious/inflammatory

N – Neoplastic

D – Drugs/toxins

I – Intervention/iatrogenic

C – Congenital/developmental

A – Autoimmune

T – Trauma

E – Endocrine/metabolic

And sometimes more than one cause is involved (e.g., a traumatic injury gets infected). Where science finds complexity, alternative medicine imagines simplicity. As H.L. Mencken said, “For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple—and wrong.”

Some homeopaths claim to treat “genetic” illness, tracing its origins to six main genetic causes: tuberculosis, syphilis, gonorrhea, psora (scabies), cancer, and leprosy. Bet you didn’t know tuberculosis was genetic! Neither did I. Science classifies all these as infectious except for cancer, which is neoplastic. Homeopathy disregards science and redefines genetic to suit its own inscrutable purposes.

Science finds many causes for disease and sometimes more than one cause for a given disease. Pseudoscience has identified the one true cause of all disease—many times. I did an Internet search and found sixty-seven single causes of all disease (see accompanying box). This is not an exhaustive list but rather an exhausted list (I stopped when I got tired of searching).

It never seems to bother proponents of alternative medicine that others have found different “one true” causes. In his book Voodoo Science, Bob Park describes a press conference following a meeting to discuss government funding for alternative medicine research:

Perhaps the strangest part of the press conference consisted of brief statements by individual members of the editorial review board of what they saw as the most important issues for the Office of Alternative Medicine. One insisted that the number-one health problem in the United States is magnesium deficiency; another was convinced that the expanded use of acupuncture could revolutionize medicine; and so it went around the table, with each touting his or her preferred therapy. But there was no sense of conflict or rivalry. As each spoke, the others would nod in agreement. The purpose of the OAM, I began to realize, was to demonstrate that these disparate therapies all work. It was my first glimpse of what holds alternative medicine together: there is no internal dissent in a community that feels itself besieged from the outside.

When scientists encounter two mutually exclusive claims, it bothers them. They experience cognitive dissonance and try diligently to find evidence to reject one of the hypotheses and leave a winner. They eventually reach a consensus. Alternative medicine pseudoscientists don’t seem to mind cognitive dissonance. They are content to look for evidence to support their own chosen treatment while blithely disregarding competing claims. They don’t want to look for evidence that something doesn’t work. While each claims to know the one cause of disease, they don’t seem interested in looking for the one truth.

Live and let live? Create your own reality? Truth is only relative? The same thing may be simultaneously true for me and false for you? Maybe it boils down to a mutual tolerance of delusions (okay, I’ll believe that you are Jesus if you believe that I’m Napoleon). For the cynical, follow the money: “I won’t interfere with your livelihood if you don’t interfere with mine.”

I can play the cause-finding game too. I’ve discovered the one cause of all the one-cause theories: a deficiency of critical-thinking skills combined with an overactive imagination. And, of course, a failure to test beliefs using the scientific method.

I recently read Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design, and the Easter Bunny (Barrett Brown and Jon P. Alston, Cambridge House Press, New York, 2007, no relation to the movie Flock of Dodos). It’s a hilarious, no-holds-barred send-up of the lies and poor reasoning employed by the intelligent design movement. I was particularly struck by a quotation from William Dembski’s book Intelligent Design: “We are dealing here with something more than a straightforward determination of scientific facts or confirmation of scientific theories. Rather we are dealing with competing world-views and incompatible metaphysical systems.”

That doesn’t just apply to intelligent design. It cuts to the essence of what skeptics encounter on every front, from

dowsing to homeopathy, from ESP to therapeutic touch. We are trying to evaluate the science behind claims that are often not based on science but on beliefs that are incompatible with science. The claimants are happy to use science when it supports them, but when it doesn’t they are likely to unfairly critique the science or even to dismiss the entire scientific enterprise as a “materialistic worldview” or “closed-minded.” We are talking at cross purposes. How can we communicate if we say “this variety of apple is red,” and they insist “it feels green to me”?

We get frustrated when we show these folks the scientific evidence and they refuse to accept it. Dowsing fails all tests, but dowsers “know” from personal experience that it works for them. Homeopathy is not only implausible, but it has been tested and has failed the tests. Yet proponents refuse to acknowledge those failures and still want to talk about data from the nineteenth century and make claims for the memory of water. We have to realize we are not even speaking the same language. We are trying to play a civilized game of gin rummy, and they are dribbling a basketball all over the card table. Before competing, doesn’t it make sense to define what game you’re playing and what the rules are?

Before arguing with a mathematician about the solution to a geometry problem, it’s essential to establish whether he is following the rules of Euclidean geometry, where parallel lines never cross, or non-Euclidean geometry, where they sometimes do.

Science has been a very successful self-correcting group endeavor. It wouldn’t be successful if it didn’t follow a strict set of rules designed to avoid errors. (Note: there are no rules written in stone; I’m talking about conventions that are generally understood and accepted by scientists, conventions that grow naturally out of reason and critical thinking.) If proponents of intelligent design or alternative medicine want to play the science game, they ought to play by the rules. If they won’t play by the rules, they effectively take themselves out of the scientific arena and into the metaphysical arena. In that case, it is useless for us to talk to them about science.

If you want to play the science game, here’s what you do:

1. Submit your hypothesis to proper testing. Testimonials, intuitions, personal experience, and “other ways of knowing” don’t count.
2. See if you can falsify the hypothesis.
3. Try to rule out alternative explanations and confounding factors.
4. Report your findings in journal articles submitted to peer review.
5. Allow the scientific community to critique the published evidence and engage in dialogue and debate.
6. Withhold judgment until your results can be replicated elsewhere.
7. Respect the consensus of the majority of the scientific community as to whether your hypothesis is probably true or false (always allowing for revision based on further evidence).
8. Be willing to follow the evidence and admit you are wrong if that’s what the evidence says.

If you want to play the science game, here are some of the things you don’t do:

1. Accuse the entire scientific community of being wrong (unless you have compelling evidence, in which case you should argue for it in the scientific journals and at professional meetings, not in the media).
2. Design poor-quality experiments that are almost guaranteed to show your hypothesis is true whether it really is or not. Use science to show that your treatment works, not to ask if it works.
3. Keep using arguments that have been thoroughly discredited. (The intelligent design folks are still claiming the eye could not have evolved because it is irreducibly complex; homeopaths are still claiming homeopathy cured more patients than conventional medicine during nineteenth-century epidemics).
4. Write books for the general public to promote your thesis—as if public opinion could influence science!
5. Form an activist organization to promote your beliefs.
6. Step outside the scientific paradigm and appeal to intuition and belief.
7. Mention the persecution of Galileo and compare yourself to him.
8. Invent a conspiracy theory (Big Pharma is suppressing the truth!).
9. Claim to be a lone genius who knows more than all scientists put together.
10. Offer a treatment to the public after only the most preliminary studies have been conducted.
11. Set up a Web site to sell products that are not backed by good evidence.
12. Refuse to admit when your hypothesis is proven wrong.

Changing Our Minds

Scientists will change their minds when the evidence warrants. Before we waste time arguing, one thing we can do is ask our opponents what it would take to change their minds. One woman I asked said no amount of evidence could change her mind because she knew from personal experience that her claim was true, so any evidence that said otherwise would have to be false and fabricated. End of discussion. She’s out of the game.

The rules of science are pretty clear about what it takes to change our minds. I’ll use the example of Helicobacter and ulcers. We used to think that stress and too much stomach acid caused ulcers; now we think a bacterium causes ulcers. Here’s a summary of why we changed our minds:

1. Scientists noticed bacteria in biopsy samples from ulcers.
2. They identified the bacteria as Helicobacter pylori.
3. They found a strong correlation between ulcers and the presence of the bacteria.
4. One of the researchers, who was healthy and not a Helicobacter carrier, was able to induce an ulcer in himself by ingesting the bacteria.
5. They found that treating patients with antibiotics cured ulcers.
6. They found that antibiotics were superior to previous ulcer treatments.
7. The studies were replicated and conducted in different ways that corroborated each other.
8. The bacterial hypothesis was not inconsistent with the rest of scientific knowledge.

If we had the same quantity and quality of evidence for homeopathy, we’d gladly accept it. In fact, if the evidence met criteria 1 through 7, we’d provisionally accept it while we kept checking the data and tried like crazy to figure out the mechanism behind homeopathy. (For more on this, see “Bacteria, Ulcers, and Ostracism” in the November/December 2004 Skeptical Inquirer.)

There are two issues that are often misunderstood: scientific consensus and prior plausibility.

Prior Plausibility

Homeopathy is completely implausible. We would have to accept robust evidence that it worked, but we would require much stronger evidence than we would for, say, a new antibiotic. If the claims for homeopathy were true, we would have to revise much of what we know about physics, chemistry, and physiology.

The crossword analogy is helpful. If you think the answer to 1-across should be “library” but the clue to 1-down is a five-letter word for the author of Tom Sawyer and the clue to 2-down is a four-letter-word for the name of Eve’s husband in Genesis, you have to reject “library” and keep looking for a word that starts with T-A. You have to recognize that no matter how strong your conviction that 1-across must be “library,” you must be wrong and there must be another answer that you just haven’t considered.

Consensus

It’s easy to dismiss the scientific consensus as a popularity contest, a vote on opinions. But it’s far more than that. The body of evidence stands or falls on its own merits, and when the weight clearly tips the balance to one side, everybody can see it. The scientific community is made up of experts who know how to evaluate the evidence and who thrash out disagreements in medical journals and scientific conferences. It is easy for the scientific community to reach an agreement based on clear evidence. There are times when the evidence is less clear and controversy among scientists is appropriate, but there comes a time when it would be perverse not to accept the evidence, just as it is perverse to deny evolution or germ theory. The scientific consensus on evolution and the germ theory is a recognition of reality, not a matter of opinion.

A reasonable default assumption is that the scientific consensus is usually right; if it isn’t, it will change as the evidence becomes clearer. Truth will prevail. It does no good to attack the scientific consensus as prejudiced or closed-minded. The consensus will change only when it incorporates new and better evidence. One of the irrational tactics we’ve seen over and over is for opponents to cite one or a handful of studies to support their belief. They ridiculously assume that it was new information that the people who reached the scientific consensus had failed to consider or that it somehow outweighs all the other studies that found the opposite to be true.

Play by the Rules or Go Play Your Own Game

There’s no point in arguing scientific facts with someone whose worldview is metaphysical and nonscientific. There’s no point in presenting geological age data to someone who “knows” the age of the Earth from the Bible. Before we get into a useless debate, maybe we should find out what game our opponents are really playing. If they are playing ping pong, it’s silly for us to bring a football to the table. It would be handy if we could get them to say up front what game they are really playing, but all too often they have deluded themselves into truly believing they are following the rules of science.

If they won’t play the science game by the rules, we are justified in crying “foul” and disqualifying them. Then they can go away somewhere else and play their own game by whatever rules they want, and we won’t be able to refute them. If they are relying on beliefs unsupported by evidence, let them say so. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to hear a homeopath say, “I believe homeopathy works based on my personal experience and on nonscientific evidence like testimonials, and I categorically reject the results of any scientific trial that fails to support my beliefs. Homeopathy cured my neighbor’s uncle’s cousin of cancer. Trust me. I’m a nice guy so you should believe whatever I tell you.”

If they’d say that up front, we wouldn’t waste any of our valuable time rehashing scientific evidence that they will just ignore. They would be out of the game, permanently. And patients would have a better basis for giving truly informed consent.

I like to read advertisements for quack remedies. I’ve come to suspect that “clinically proven” means “we gave it to three of our friends and got them to say it worked.” When the ads cite published medical studies, I like to track down and read those studies. I usually find that they have nothing whatsoever to do with the product in question and I get a lot of amusement from the pseudoscience and the testimonials.

I really hit the jackpot when I noticed an ad for a weight-loss product called Akavar 20/50. It made the usual claims: eat all you want and still lose weight. But it had the best advertising slogan ever: “We couldn’t say it in print if it wasn’t true!” I laughed out loud. Anyone can say anything in print until they get caught. These diet ads all say things that aren’t true, and the Federal Trade Commission can’t begin to catch them all.

The ad describes research results on Akavar as “staggering.” It claims to have published scientific research showing that twenty-three out of twenty-four patients using Akavar’s active ingredient lost weight and describes a controlled, randomized clinical trial of the actual product in which twenty-three out of twenty-four patients lost “a substantial amount of weight.” Two questions immediately came to mind: why were the numbers the same in both studies, and if a single active ingredient worked just as well, why was there any need to develop the Akavar formulation?

There was a toll-free number to call for further information. I called and asked where I could read the two studies they referred to. The man who answered was flummoxed: “No one’s ever asked me that before.” He had to go for help. Finally he came up with the names of two journals but no further information.

I searched PubMed for anything in either of those journals that might even remotely be considered studies of Akavar and couldn’t find anything. I wrote the company’s customer service representative and asked for more information. That led to the following surreal e-mail exchange over the next month and a half.

September 30: [Me] Your ad for Akavar describes a high rate of success in clinical studies. I’d like to read those studies for myself. I called your 800 number and the person who answered told me there were two studies published in the Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics and in the journal Medical Psychopharmacology. He was unable to give me the full citations, and I have searched PubMed and elsewhere and have been unable to locate the articles. Could you give me the exact citations (date, author, title of article, journal, volume, and page number)? Or better yet, could you possibly send me electronic copies of the articles? I would really appreciate it.

October 9: [Akavar] Thank you for your interest in Akavar 20/50. I will be happy to submit a request to our Compliance dept. and have these studies prepared for you to send via email or via mail. We request to know as to what use these will be used for and will require a phone number and address. As soon as I have this information I will submit the request and have these prepared for you to save any trouble of having to look these up yourself. Thanks so much.

October 9: [Me] I would prefer you send them by e-mail. What they will be used for? To help me decide for myself whether there is adequate evidence to recommend Akavar 20/50 to patients.

October 10: [Akavar] Thank you so much for this. I will forward this request to compliance and send via email when they have finished preparing the study.

October 15: [Me] I’m still waiting. The delay is making me wonder... if you really have legitimate scientific studies to back up your claims, why are they not posted on your web site or linked to the PubMed abstracts or at least listed in such a way that they can be located by interested physicians?

October 17: [Akavar] I apologize for the delay. I will follow up with our Compliance/Legal department to see if they have prepared these for you or not. I will let you know shortly.

October 30: [Me] It is now October 30, and I still have not received the studies. If they are not available in electronic format, all I really need is a proper citation: title of article, name of journal, names of authors, date, volume and page. If these studies really exist, and if they really support your product, your company certainly doesn’t seem very proud of them! If you cannot provide me with the citations, I will be forced to assume they do not exist and I will report your company for false advertising.

November 2: [Me again] OK. Still no response. I will have to give you a deadline. If you have not sent me the citations by November 5, I will take it as an admission that you are crooks who tell deliberate lies in your advertising and I will report you to the FTC. I will remind you that ALL I’m asking is that you tell me where I can find the clinical studies you advertise as supporting your product.

November 2: [Akavar] I just spoke with our Legal department as I have been out of the office this week. They informed me that they are contacting you via mail as they are requesting more information from you. I can not handle this request other than our legal department. This was sent to the address you provided me below and should be received within normal postal delivery time. [I never received anything by mail.] I apologize sincerely for this delayed response. It should be taken care of now. Thank you.

November 2: [Me] How about you give me the e-mail address of the legal department so you don’t need to act as intermediary? There is no reason for them to request more information from me—that is ridiculous! And even if they are mailing me copies of the studies, there is no reason they can’t also immediately provide me with the citation information via e-mail. Reputable companies usually display that kind of information proudly on their web sites, often with a link to the studies.

November 5: [Akavar] Our compliance/legal department has prepared the following for you and are sending via email at your request via the above attachments. Please respond accordingly. Thanks again for your patience.

[Attachment] We have received your request to provide you with all studies relating to our Akavar 20/50 product. Due to the confidential nature of these studies, we cannot release these studies without a signed Non-Disclosure Agreement. Our standard Non-Disclosure Agreement is enclosed. Pleases [sic] review and sign the Agreement. Upon receipt of the signed Non-Disclosure Agreement, we will happily provide you the information you requested. . . . [This was accompanied by a complicated, multi-page legal document.]

November 5: [Me] You have GOT to be kidding!! I did NOT ask for “all” studies relating to your product. I did NOT ask for any proprietary information. All I asked for was the correct citations for the two published studies referred to in your advertising. This is not anything that requires any signature or agreement. Published studies are in the public domain. This is becoming a surreal experience. Perhaps I’d better start all over again by copying my initial request: [My initial e-mail was copied here.]

Let’s make this really simple:

1. Are there two published studies?
2. If so, please provide me with the information I will need to locate and read those studies: Name of author(s), title of article, name of journal, volume, page number and date of publication.

November 7: [Akavar] Any update from MKF?

November 7: [Me] No. Who or what is MKF?

November 13: [Akavar] We regret that you refused to sign the NDA, which would have allowed us to provide you the highly confidential, proprietary data related to Akavar. We are, however, enclosing the citations for the published articles relating to Akavar’s efficacy. [Lieberman, H.R., Tharion, W.J., Shukitt-Hale, B., Speckman, K.L., & Tulley, R. (2002). Psychopharmacology (Berl), 164(3), 250–261. Andersen, T. and J. Fogh (2001). J Hum Nutr Diet 14(3): 243–50.] Any representation on your part that the published studies comprise the full substantiation for Akavar 20/50 or that the substantiation is lacking in any way would be false and intentionally misleading on your part since your [sic] were not privy to the full documentation. Again because of your refusal to sign a simple NDA. [This letter was signed by a paralegal.]

November 13: [Me] You did not provide the titles of the studies, but I easily found them. I can see why you didn’t provide the titles, and I can see why I didn’t find them when I looked before, because it is obvious that they were not studies of Akavar 20/50.The Lieberman study is titled “Effects of caffeine, sleep loss, and stress on cognitive performance and mood during U.S. Navy SEAL training. Sea-Air-Land.” The Andersen study is “Weight loss and delayed gastric emptying following a South American herbal preparation in overweight patients.” The herbal preparation was a mixture of yerba mate, guarana, and damiana. The patients initially lost a few pounds, but those who took the active drug for 12 months “maintained” their weight during that period. The abstract of the study does not say that the study participants were instructed not to alter their eating habits. And the numbers of patients do not correspond to either of the studies described in your ads.

Your ad says, “this is scientific fact, documented by published medical findings.” Are you now admitting that there are no published clinical studies of Akavar 20/50 and that the statements in your ads are false?

I never heard back from them, and I decided I had had enough fun. I reported them for false advertising. I was not the only one to complain. A class action suit was filed against the company for “fraudulent, deceptive, and otherwise improper advertising and marketing practices.” The lawsuit says, “Akavar has not undergone scientific evaluation by a team of doctors, nor has Akavar been tested in controlled random clinical trials.” The lawsuit also mentions that Akavar is identical to another of the company’s products, Estrin-D, which is also the subject of an unrelated lawsuit.

Later a friend contacted the company and signed the nondisclosure agreement to see what would happen. All he got was a written summary of some unspecified studies with no authors or publications listed.

Imagine a pharmaceutical company telling me they couldn’t divulge the title of an article about their new drug in the New England Journal of Medicine unless I signed a nondisclosure agreement! What planet are we on? Even worse, imagine if a pharmaceutical company asked the FDA to approve a new drug on the basis of two studies that had little or nothing to do with that drug, insisting they had more proof, but it was a secret!

I don’t know why I’m surprised. Quacks have to defend themselves any way they can, since they can’t defend themselves with facts.

You might be curious to know what ingredients are in this miracle product. Nothing even remotely likely to promote weight loss except for caffeine and related xanthines. Drinking lots of coffee is probably just as effective.

A recent issue of the Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database newsletter said:

Akavar 20/50 is a new supplement promoted for weight loss. It contains a long list of ingredients, including large amounts of caffeine from yerba mate, guarana, green tea, and kola nut extracts. It also contains damiana, ginger, schisandra, scutellaria, vitamin B6, magnesium, and other ingredients. Some research suggests that a few of these ingredients might help for weight loss, but this is preliminary. There is no proof that this specific combination of ingredients is effective. Product advertising says, “Eat all you want and still lose weight. . . .” Remind patients that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

And remember, the Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database could say that in print if it weren’t true—but they wouldn’t!

Gary Schwartz says his experiments reveal our natural power to heal based on our ability to sense and manipulate human energy fields. Has he discovered scientific truths, or has he only demonstrated the human talent for self-deception.

Gary Schwartz believes many things. He believes in psychics, mediums, and life after death, and he believes there is scientific evidence to support these beliefs. Schwartz is now focusing his powers of belief on a new field: energy medicine. In a new book, The Energy Healing Experiments: Science Reveals Our Natural Power to Heal, he explains that we all emit human energy fields, that we can sense each other’s fields, and that healers can influence these fields to heal illnesses and injury. He believes these are not just theories but scientifically supported facts.

The book starts with three “gee-whiz” testimonials of supposed energy healing (which are frankly not very convincing and could be easily outdone by any self-respecting purveyor of quack remedies). He goes on to describe experiments done in his own lab that he claims establish not only our ability to detect and alter human energy fields but our ability to detect the thoughts and intentions of others. In the final part of the book, he descends into blethering about quantum physics, the oneness of the universe, the connectedness of all things, and the possibility that energy awareness will solve all of mankind’s problems.

He claims to have demonstrated many things. First, he claims to have shown that a subject can sense when a researcher’s hand is being held over his or her own hand and can sense when the researcher’s hands are being held near his or her ears from behind. Other experiments supposedly show that people can tell when someone is looking at them or thinking about them. He goes on to describe purported measurements of subtle human energy emissions, Reiki influences on lab cultures of bacteria, and photography of biophoton emission from plants, among other phenomena of dubious reality or significance.

He makes a big deal of the fact that humans emit electromagnetic energy (as picked up by EKG, EEG, etc.), and he would like to think energy healers can pick up that energy and decode it in the same way your radio picks up Rush Limbaugh out of the atmosphere. And then he would like to think that energy healers can send something back into the patient’s body to enable healing. He misses the crucial fact that there is information encoded in the electromagnetic waves your radio detects, but there is no reason to think there is any analogous information coming from the body, much less any way to change that information and send it back to produce healing. I only wish we could use “energy healing” on radio and TV waves to improve the quality of programming!

He makes a big deal of the fact that everything affects everything else. He seems to mean this in a holistic, metaphysical, New Age, “the universe is one and is conscious and we can create our own reality” sense. Science recognizes that small events can have far-reaching effects, but that doesn’t mean one thing can predict or control another. The flap of a butterfly’s wings may set up initial atmospheric conditions that will result in a tornado somewhere else, but that doesn’t mean you can predict the tornado or deliberately use a butterfly to cause one. Theoretically, a change in the magnitude or position of your body mass will enter into the overall gravity equations of the universe, but that doesn’t mean one thing can control or predict another. You could hardly expect to meaningfully influence someone out there beyond Alpha Centauri by losing ten pounds or moving to Antarctica. You can’t expect to change the EEG of an astronaut in the Space Station by exercising to change your own EKG. We are talking about very small influences. If a gnat pushes an elephant, it’s not likely to fall over; it’s not likely to even notice. And then there are inconvenient complications like quantum theory and chaos theory.

The only thing of substance in the book is the experiments, which lose credibility because they were not accepted for publication in mainstream peer-reviewed journals. Schwartz claims this is because of politics. He says prestigious journals tend to reject positive-energy studies. He doesn’t believe that his studies could have been rejected because they didn’t meet the standards of good science. I feel sorry for him: he’s a smart guy, he means well, he really believes he has found something wonderful, but he has a blind spot and just doesn’t get it when others try to point out the flaws in his experimental methods and reasoning. (See Ray Hyman, “How Not to Test Mediums: Critiquing the Afterlife Experiments,” Skeptical Inquirer, January/February 2003, and the follow-up exchange between Schwartz and Hyman, May/June 2003, plus the critical letters to the editor in that issue.)

To put the accusation of “politics” into perspective, consider the Helicobacter experiments. When researchers first suggested that ulcers might be caused by bacteria, they were laughed at. They published their results, peer review had a field day, other labs looked into the idea, more data came in, results from various lines of research coalesced, and within a mere ten years it became standard practice to treat ulcers with antibiotics. It didn’t matter that the idea sounded crazy at first; science responded to good evidence. (See Kimball C. Atwood IV, “Bacteria, Ulcers, and Ostracism,” Skeptical Inquirer, November/December 2004.) If Schwartz had evidence of equal quality, he would get an equal hearing by the scientific community.

Sure, Schwartz has some data that he finds convincing. So did the discoverers of N-rays, polywater, and cold fusion. Good science demands that we withhold judgment until data can be replicated in other labs and validated by other methods—especially when the data come from a researcher as clearly prejudiced as Schwartz. Even the best researchers can fall prey to errors of unconscious bias and unrecognized pitfalls in experimental design.

A good scientist considers the entire body of available evidence, not just the claims of one group of researchers. Schwartz only describes experiments that support his beliefs. Not until the end of the book does he even bring up the fact that other experiments have directly contradicted his findings. He finally gets around to mentioning Emily Rosa’s landmark experiment, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1998, which showed that therapeutic touch practitioners could not sense human energy fields as they claimed. She tested twenty-one experienced practitioners of therapeutic touch.1 They all thought they could detect Rosa’s human energy field and feel whether she was holding her hand over their right or left hand, but when they were prevented from seeing where her hand was, their performance was no better than chance.

Rosa was nine years old at the time, and the article grew out of her school science fair project. The experiment was beautiful in its simplicity. Adult true believers had published much research on the techniques and effects of therapeutic touch, but in the true spirit of childlike questioning, Rosa went back to basics and asked the crucial question: “Is the phenomenon itself real? Can they really feel something or is it possible they are fooling themselves?” Amazingly, no researcher had ever asked that question before. They had ignored one of the basic principles of the scientific method as explained by Karl Popper: it’s easy to find confirmation for any hypothesis, but every genuine test of a hypothesis is an attempt to falsify it.

Schwartz dismisses her experiment as having five “potential problems”:

1. It was a science-fair project done by a young girl.
2. She was the only experimenter.
3. She randomized by flipping a coin, which he calls “an unreliable procedure.”
4. One of the authors was the founder of Quackwatch.
5. The subjects did worse than chance.

These objections are just silly; they are either inaccurate or are ad hominem attacks:

1. It shouldn’t make any difference whether Rosa was a young girl or an old man or a sentient purple octopus from an alien planet. It shouldn’t matter whether she did the experiment for an elementary school project, a doctoral dissertation, a Coca Cola commercial, or a government grant. What matters is the quality of the evidence. In this case, her project was well designed and executed, had clearly significant findings, and was of high enough quality to be approved for publication in a prestigious peer-reviewed medical journal.
2. She was not the only experimenter. Others were involved; the experiment was repeated under expert supervision on Scientific American Frontiers. This should preclude any accusations of deliberate cheating or inadvertent failure to follow the protocol properly. Rosa was the only one to carry out the trials, but what would multiple testers have added to the experiment? The results didn’t depend on any special ability or quality of hers, but on the ability of the subjects who claimed they could sense anyone’s energy fields. For the televised trials, they even got to “feel” the “energy” from each of Rosa’s hands and choose which one they wanted her to use in the trials. About half chose her left hand and half her right. No one objected, “I can’t feel energy from either hand.”
3. Flipping a coin is not an “unreliable procedure”—unless the flipper is deliberately cheating. I hope Schwartz didn’t intend to suggest that. The number of heads and tails was approximately equal, and the distribution appeared random. The editors of JAMA found the method acceptable. There are situations where coin-flipping could legitimately be criticized, for instance in psi experiments where researchers are looking for minuscule differences in large bodies of data and even their computerized random number generators have been criticized for not being “perfectly” random. But in this experiment, the results were clearly significant; it is hard to envision how a different method of randomization could have altered the results. The coin flip was only used to determine which of the subject’s hands she would hold her hand over. The subjects claimed to be able to sense energy fields with either hand, so it shouldn’t have made a bit of difference to their perception. Faulty randomization might have allowed the subjects to perceive a pattern and guess, which would have tended to give false positive results rather than the negative results Rosa got.
4. One of the authors, the founder of Quackwatch, was admittedly skeptical of therapeutic touch. Yes, someone with possible bias was indirectly involved in the experiment. If that is an objection, there is an even greater objection to Schwartz’s own experiments: he and his colleagues are all strongly biased toward belief in energy phenomena and they were directly involved in their experiments.
5. It is simply not true that the subjects did “worse than chance.” Their performance was consistent with chance. If they had done worse than chance (significantly worse) that would have tended to support Schwartz’s claim that some kind of effect was present, even though it would have been the reverse of what he claimed to find.

In my opinion, none of these “problems” invalidates the conclusion that the therapeutic touch practitioners failed to do what they claimed they could do. And if he thinks these were valid problems, why didn’t he simply repeat her experiment in his own lab with multiple experimenters and a more reliable method of randomization? He could have published a failed replication study, and the scientific community could have proceeded to evaluate both studies and sort out the truth. In reality, Rosa’s experiment was a great example of a young child being able to see more clearly than prejudiced adults—a real “Emperor’s New Clothes” story.

I see a lot of “potential problems” in Schwartz’s research—not just ad hominem problems but flaws of experimental design. To start with his most basic experiment: his subjects were blindfolded, sat facing the experimenter with their hands on their laps, and tried to detect which hand the experimenter was holding his hand over. The experimenter held his hands together between trials to keep his hand temperature constant. The subjects often didn’t think they could tell, but they were asked to guess, and their guesses were statistically significant.

The first problem is that blindfolds don’t work. Rosa knew this. Instead, she had her subjects put their arms through holes in a screen and covered the gaps with a towel to preclude any possibility of conscious or unconscious visual cues. She also had subjects lay their arms on a table instead of on their laps, thus reducing the chance of their detecting subtle clues from the person sitting in front of them. Another problem is that when the researcher holds his hands together, that raises the skin temperature and raises the possibility that heat is being detected rather than any other type of energy. And if Schwartz’s results are real, independent researchers should be able to replicate them using the same protocol. Apparently they have not been replicated elsewhere. In fact, Rosa’s experiment amounts to an independent attempt to replicate Schwartz’s basic experiment, only with better controls; and it failed to confirm his results.

If a rigorous scientist thought he had found evidence that people could detect “human energy fields,” he would maintain a healthy skepticism; he would immediately try to prove himself wrong, and he would enlist his colleagues to help show him where he might have gone wrong. He would try to rule out all other possible explanations (the subject might be sensing heat, sound, motion, air currents, might be able to see under the blindfold, etc.). If the phenomenon proved robust, he would try to refine his understanding by doing things like varying the distance to see if it obeyed the inverse square law and interposing a sheet of cardboard or glass to see if the effect could be blocked. Then he would try to use instruments to measure what kind of energy was being sensed.

When a believer thinks he has found something to justify his belief, his approach tends to be less rigorous. Instead of subjecting his original experiment to outside scrutiny, he tends to do more new experiments to try to convince others that he is right. Schwartz goes off on a tangent doing other experiments that purportedly show that the subject is not sensing the energy field but is actually sensing the conscious intention of the experimenter. In one, he claims to show that persons can tell whether someone standing behind them is staring at their head or at their back! If he really believed energy medicine was some kind of psychic thought transmission, he would concentrate on that route of research, but instead he keeps trying to document the ability to detect measurable physical energy fields. His thinking is confused, and he’s trying to eat his cake and have it too.

Schwartz’s style of reasoning was revealed when an experiment to influence E. coli bacteria with Reiki didn’t produce the desired results. Instead of accepting that it didn’t work, he tried to find a way to make the experiment look like it worked. He did some inappropriate “data mining” and tried to show that before the trials where the Reiki practitioners apparently failed, they had been under more stress than before the trials where they apparently succeeded.

He finds a gifted individual who can detect whether a wooden box has a rock in it or not—his success rate is 95 percent for natural crystals, although barely chance for manmade crystals. Unfortunately, before this individual can be tested properly in an independent lab, he develops medical problems and loses his ability. (It’s strange how often these inconvenient things happen when psychic claims are involved.)
Schwartz is mystified by the work of John of God, the Brazilian spiritual healer who performs bloodless, painless surgery. He doesn’t recognize that this charlatan is merely using old gimmicks from the carnival sideshow repertoire to fool the gullible. Schwartz also believes science has established that the human mind can change the pH of water over long distances. He is far less skeptical about such claims than the average scientist.

Schwartz has tried to bolster his credibility by getting a former Surgeon General’s endorsement. In Richard Carmona’s foreword, he says he has seen things he can’t easily explain and says we don’t have all the answers. He helped establish the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM, which he curiously refers to as the National Center for Alternative and Complementary Medicine). The purpose of the NCCAM was allegedly to test complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and find out which treatments worked and reject those that didn’t. But in its entire history, despite consistently negative results, it has never dared to reject anything. Carmona is currently CEO of Canyon Ranch Health, where Schwartz is the Director of Development of Energy Healing. Canyon Ranch offers integrative medical wellness services, including therapeutic touch. Carmona says, “Where the science supports these integrative concepts of energy medicine, let’s use them. Where there is not enough science, let the studies begin and continue.”

What about “if there is no convincing science or plausible mechanism to support them, let’s stop wasting our time chasing moonbeams”? All of energy medicine hinges on one basic claim: that people can detect subtle human energy fields. If Schwartz is wrong about that, the rest of the claims for so-called “energy medicine” fizzle away.

Since 1996, the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) has offered a substantial reward (currently $1,000,000) to anyone who can demonstrate an ability to detect a “human energy field” under conditions similar to those of Rosa’s study. Of the more than 80,000 American therapeutic touch practitioners who claim to have such ability, only one person attempted to demonstrate it. She failed. The JREF challenge is admittedly not a definitive scientific test, but prudence would seem to dictate that if no one can even meet this simple challenge, we shouldn’t be wasting research money on what is probably a myth.

Others have attempted to establish the “science” of energy medicine and have failed.2 Even the NCCAM, which is willing to consider almost any possibility in alternative medicine, is skeptical. It distinguishes between real energy (sound waves, electromagnetism, and other energies measurable by physicists) and the kind of “putative” energy Schwartz is trying to validate. It concludes that the “putative” energy approaches “are among the most controversial of CAM practices because neither the external energy fields nor their therapeutic effects have been demonstrated convincingly by any biophysical means.”

Schwartz sounds like a scientist. He tries to talk the talk and walk the walk. He even makes some skeptical noises to try to convince us he is objective. But there is also a lot of very unscientific language in his book.

For instance:

Human rage and pain, especially generated by terrorism and war, create a global energetic climate whose negative effects can extend from the physical and environmental—potentially including climate—to the psychological and ultimately spiritual. . . . [P]ollution is not simply chemical, it is ultimately energy based and therefore conscious as well.

Really? Conscious pollution? So maybe if we talk nice to pollution it will cooperate and go away? Or should we try doing Reiki to lower the atmospheric CO2 levels? Does Al Gore know about this?

“Energy medicine” is an emperor whose new clothes still look awfully transparent to critical thinkers and to the scientific community no matter what glorious colors and fabrics Schwartz and his colleagues imagine they are seeing.

Notes:

1. “Therapeutic touch” is a bit of a misnomer because these practitioners don’t actually touch but simply massage the air a few inches from the patient’s body. They are convinced that they are detecting and manipulating the energy field, balancing and smoothing it, and correcting any abnormalities, thus allowing the body to heal itself.
2. Hall, H. 2005. A review of Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis. Skeptic 11(3): 89–93. Available at quackfiles.blogspot.com.
3. nccam.nih.gov.

References:

• Rosa, L., E. Rosa, L. Sarner, and S. Barrett. 1998. A close look at therapeutic touch. Journal of the American Medical Association. 279:1005–1010. Schwartz, Gary E., with William L. Simon. 2007. The Energy Healing Experiments: Science Reveals Our Natural Power to Heal. New York: Atria Books.

A skeptic encounters psychics, astrologers, and other strange creatures and discovers firsthand how they react to science and reason. Included: a fable about testing the Tooth Fairy.

A couple of years ago, I saw an announcement for an astrology presentation to a local discussion group called Mingling of the Minds. My first reaction was, “Surely, nobody really believes in astrology anymore! At least not in my well-educated community.” I decided to go “mingle my mind” and find out.

I was appalled. These people had heard some of the arguments against astrology, but they entirely discounted them. Their personal experience was that astrology worked, and that’s all they cared about. The speaker had prepared charts for several members of the group, with scientific-looking symbols and calculations, and they seemed very impressed. I tried to introduce a bit of skepticism by asking questions like, “How did the first astrologers learn which human characteristics corresponded to which heavenly signs?” The speaker said that was an interesting question that could never be answered, because we lack any historical records. Of course, he didn't doubt that they had obtained their knowledge by some reliable means.

Sure they had. I heard about a woman who told a group of friends she had identified new constellations for a more up-to-date astrology; instead of names like Sagittarius and Pisces, the new constellations had names like Vacuum Cleaner and Telephone. She explained how those born under the Vacuum Cleaner are perfectionists who like everything to be neat and clean, and how those born under the Telephone sign are verbally oriented, good communicators, and have lots of friends. Her friends didn't get the joke. They asked where they could learn more about this great new system!

In retrospect, I probably should have told the astrologer I wasn't going to believe in astrology because my horoscope said I shouldn't be gullible.

Future “Mingling of the Minds” sessions were planned with psychics and other strange creatures. I decided that these people were in desperate need of a resident skeptic, so I appointed myself. I knew there was no hope of converting any true believers, but I thought there must be at least a few people who had not irrevocably made up their minds and might like to know the facts.

My skeptic friends tried to warn me: “Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.” I knew this, but I didn't think it applied here. I'm an optimist-these were nice, friendly, reasonable people, and I thought at least some of them would enjoy learning some of the things I had learned. I used to believe a lot of weird things myself, until evidence and reason persuaded me to change my mind. I find it intellectually satisfying to discard an error and learn a truth. I thought others might get the same satisfaction. My friends laughed at my naïveté; but I am a skeptic, so I had to find out for myself.

It was the beginning of an odyssey that introduced me to a strange race of people who believed in angels but not in germs. I can only compare it to visiting a carnival freak show of intellectual, rather than physical, anomalies. I observed how the average nonskeptic member of the public reacts to these anomalies. It almost destroyed my faith in human reason.

We heard from a feng shui practitioner. He explained that feng shui is a science, and he went into details like how you should position the head of your bed to the north. I asked him if he meant geographic north or magnetic north. I'm not sure he even knew the difference, but he guessed that it was probably magnetic north because feng shui has to do with forces that are sort of like magnetic forces. The magnetic north pole is in northeastern Canada; I asked him what he would tell a client who lived in northeastern Canada, directly north of the magnetic north pole-if the client put the head of his bed towards the magnetic north pole, it would be actually be pointing due south. His only answer was, “Gee, that’s an interesting question.” I thought so too. It’s an interesting science if it only applies to certain parts of the globe.

The feng shui guy also sells Chinese medicines. He always checks by opening each bottle and tasting or at least looking to be sure it contains what the label says, because sometimes he finds an entirely different herb in the bottle. That’s his idea of quality control. Nevertheless, he is quite confident that these herbal products are safe. One of the safe remedies he showed us was a Chinese pain reliever called Lemonin. I could see from the label that it was an overpriced mixture of paracetamol, caffeine, and vitamin C. He didn't know that paracetamol is the British name for acetaminophen (Tylenol), so of course, he couldn't warn his victims (oops, I mean clients) that taking Tylenol along with Lemonin could result in a fatal overdose.

A chiropractor insisted that newborn babies needed immediate chiropractic adjustment, because their necks are stretched to over twice their normal length during childbirth, even by C-section. I told him that I knew that was not true, because I used to deliver babies. It couldn't be true, because that amount of stretch couldn't happen without killing the baby. He assured us that, yes, it really does a lot of damage.

Another chiropractor explained that he doesn't believe in the germ theory, because if germs caused disease, we'd all be dead. The only reason some people get sick is because their spines are out of alignment. He has never been vaccinated, yet he is confident he could be exposed to any infectious disease without catching it. Next time we need volunteers to treat a case of Ebola, let’s call on him!

A third chiropractor told us how he diagnoses allergies. He has the patient hold a closed vial containing an allergen in one hand, and he tests the muscle strength in her or his other arm. If it is weaker than before, they are allergic to what’s in the vial. He thought one patient might be allergic to his workplace, and he didn't have a vial of “Boeing,” so he had the patient just think about Boeing, and that worked just as well. He found people were allergic to all kinds of things they had never imagined. He had all kinds of testimonials about miraculous cures. I pointed out that this method, called applied kinesiology, had failed all controlled tests and was rejected even by the majority of his own profession. I read him the words of a professor of chiropractic, who essentially said applied kinesiology was about the stupidest quackery any chiropractor had ever fallen for. He was not impressed: his method works.

I took out a small implement and handed it around the group. No one could guess what it was for. I explained that it was a fleam, a lancet used in bloodletting. The ancient Greeks believed there were four humors, and they balanced the humors by bleeding the patient for fevers and other illnesses. George Washington’s death was hastened (if not caused) by bloodletting. The treatment was in use for many centuries, until science finally tested it and found out it did more harm than good. I told the chiropractor that I could come up with more testimonials for bloodletting through the centuries than he had for muscle testing. If he rejected the scientific evidence that applied kinesiology didn't work, it would be consistent to reject the scientific evidence that bloodletting didn't work. If he accepted the evidence of testimonials for muscle testing, it would be consistent to accept the evidence of many more testimonials for bloodletting. Would he use a fleam? No, he wouldn't. A lady friend asked, “But what does his method hurt, as long as his patients feel better?” I reminded her that bloodletting also made lots of people feel better, and I offered to use the fleam on her to see if it made her feel better. She declined. I can't imagine why.

A massage therapist specialized in energy medicine. She could feel the energy fields around a patient’s body and twiddle them to help patients heal. She knew this was real, because a scientist had actually measured the human aura with some scientific instrument. What kind of instrument? Where were the data published? She didn't have the specifics, but she assured me I could learn about it in a book called The Isaiah Effect. I got that book and read every word of it, but couldn't even find the word aura, much less anything remotely scientific. It is arguably the worst book I have ever read, with an average of one and a half errors of fact or logic per page-I counted. I told her that I found nothing in the book about measuring auras, and her only answer was, “Oh.”

A couple of self-styled “intuitives” (i.e., psychics) spoke to us, and did some amateurish cold readings. One explained away apparent failures by saying that she might be seeing something in the future, and that her intuitions could not perceive time; she immediately contradicted herself by saying the next person would have a new job “within the next three years"! She “read” a hypochondriac man and apparently intuited that he wasn't worried enough already, so she told him she could see something terribly wrong in his abdomen that needed urgent care. Another psychic told us she could actually see angels beside each of us. (In psychiatry, this is called a hallucination and is a sign of mental illness.)

Here are just a few of the astounding comments I heard:

“A molecule made in a plant is natural, so it has to be better than the exact same molecule made in a lab.”

“I had to stop taking my homeopathic sleep remedy because it caused side effects.” (Water causes side effects?)

“I know my headache didn't go away because of any placebo effect, because I would be able to tell if it were just placebo.” (So why do you think scientists bother with placebo-controlled double-blind trials?)

“Truth doesn't matter.”

“What’s true for you may not be true for me; it’s okay if we disagree.”

“We create our own reality.”

I asked one woman what she would think of me if I still truly believed, at my age, that the Tooth Fairy really exists. She said, “I'd think that was really sweet!”

The last meeting I went to was a pro-and-con discussion of dowsing. The “pro” side consisted of “I saw it work; there are lots of dowsers.” I gave the scientific “con” side, explaining the ideomotor effect and the consistent failure of dowsers to find water beyond the level of chance when tested objectively. My information did not go over well. They wanted to hear more about how it works and less about how it doesn't work. The “pro” presenter explained to me that science just hasn't learned how to test dowsers to get a positive result; it doesn't know the right questions to ask. He also explained that science is based on assumptions, so he doesn't trust science; he trusts his intuitions more, even though he admits his intuition can be wrong.

The Pig Instructor Reconsiders

At this point, I had to recognize that these people did not inhabit my universe. They rejected the scientific method, they didn't care about objective truth, and they were happy in their superstitions. I tried hard to understand them, but I failed. I find science and reality far more exciting than superstition. I agree with Lily Tomlin that “the best mind-altering drug is the truth.” Why were the people at “Mingling of the Minds” so reluctant to give up their unfounded beliefs?

Maybe there was something wrong with me. Whenever I told my father I had changed my mind about something, he used to tell me, “If I had a mind like that, I'd change it too.” After being exposed to all these “minglers” who refused to change their minds, I began to wonder if I was the one who was abnormal. Maybe I lacked the gene for certainty. Maybe I am unduly prejudiced in favor of reality testing. Maybe they are right: personal experience and belief are all that matters. I was really beginning to get worried.

Then two things happened to reassure me. First, I read the list of obituaries in the Encyclopedia Britannica yearbook. Among the famous in all walks of life, the important people, the people who mattered, there were plenty of scientists who had contributed to human knowledge and welfare; there wasn't a single homeopath, astrologer, or psychic on the list. Second, I read Saturday, by Ian McEwan. Enough people are reading this novel to put it on the best-seller list, and its main character is a skeptic and critical thinker who says, ” . . .[belief in] the supernatural was the recourse of an insufficient imagination, a dereliction of duty, a childish evasion of the difficulty and wonders of the real, of the demanding reenactment of the plausible.” Maybe science and reason are slowly winning the war against superstition, even if they are losing some of the smaller skirmishes.

In a sense, the people I met at Mingling of the Minds were the norm and I was the anomaly. Minds are not meant to change easily. Absolute certainty based on authority and eyewitness accounts must have had some evolutionary survival value. Humanity has managed pretty well with instinct, magical thinking, and superstition for a very long time, and it will probably continue to muddle through. The scientific method is a recent innovation; it isn't easy, and it doesn't come naturally.

Time is money, and I finally had to admit that Mingling of the Minds was not a good investment. I cut my losses and resigned. I'm too stubborn to not get the last word in, so I wrote this little fable and sent it to Dan, my opponent in the dowsing debate.

Is the Tooth Fairy Real?: A Fable

Harriet told her little brother Dan that there was no Tooth Fairy; it was their parents who put the money under the pillow.

Dan refused to believe Harriet. He knew there was a Tooth Fairy. Every time he put a tooth under his pillow, there was money there the next morning. And all his friends said the Tooth Fairy brought them money too. And it couldn't be Mom and Dad because he'd wake up if they came in the room and lifted his pillow. Anyway, Mom and Dad said there was a Tooth Fairy, and they wouldn't lie.

Harriet asked him how he thought the Tooth Fairy found out about lost teeth, how she got into the house, where she got the money from, and what she did with the teeth. Dan said he didn't know, but wasn't it a wonderful mystery? Harriet pointed out that older kids all eventually stopped believing in the Tooth Fairy. Dan said that only proved that the Tooth Fairy would only bring money to those who still believed in her.

Harriet got several neighborhood kids to help test whether the Tooth Fairy would appear if the parents didn't know a tooth had been lost. It turned out that every time the parents knew about the tooth, there would be money under the pillow the next morning, and every time the parents didn't know about the tooth, there would be no money. Dan said the Tooth Fairy was just refusing to cooperate in those cases, because she wouldn't bring money if she knew she was being tested.

Harriet got out her Junior Detective kit and dusted Dan’s Tooth Fairy money for fingerprints. Sure enough, she found their parents’ fingerprints on it. Dan said that didn't prove anything, because there are lots of ways the Tooth Fairy could get hold of money the parents had previously touched. Or she could have magically put the evidence there to confuse us. And of course, the Tooth Fairy wouldn't leave any fingerprints of her own because she was magical.

The next time Dan lost a tooth, Harriet spread flour on the floor, and the next morning, she showed Dan their parents’ footprints between the door and the head of his bed. He said that didn't prove anything-his parents had probably just checked on him, and the Tooth Fairy had come later. There were no Tooth Fairy footprints, because fairies don't leave footprints.

The next time Dan lost a tooth, Harriet set up a video camera in Dan’s room and caught their parents in the act. (For those readers with dirty minds, I mean the act of removing the tooth and putting money under the pillow.) Dan told her that didn't prove a thing. Maybe the Tooth Fairy wouldn't appear when a camera was present. Maybe she is a shape-shifter who made herself look like their parents on videotape. Maybe she asked Mom and Dad to do the job for her just this once.

Harriet led Dan into their parents’ bedroom, opened a dresser drawer, and showed him a box containing all of Harriet’s and Dan’s baby teeth neatly labeled and dated. She said that was proof their parents were taking the teeth and leaving the money. Dan said it was no such thing; the Tooth Fairy probably passed the teeth on to parents for keepsakes, or maybe she sold teeth to parents to raise the money she put under the pillows. Hey, yeah, that would explain the fingerprints!

Harriet and Dan confronted their parents, who admitted they had been taking the teeth and leaving the money under the pillow. Dan said either they were lying before or they're lying now, and they're probably lying now. Why trust what anyone says? He was just going to ignore everything except what he knew: the tooth-under-the-pillow thing worked. The Tooth Fairy was real.

Harriet screamed in frustration and tore all her hair out. She left it under her pillow. It was still there in the morning.