In a previous critical report in the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER (Nickell 2002), I suggested the identity of “Mothman.” Subsequently I was able to make an investigative trip to Point Pleasant, spending a few days there in mid-April 2002. I came back with some interesting and illuminating information on the case.

Pranklore

A popular legend of the Point Pleasant area holds that “Mothman” was the creation of a prankster. Supposedly, a local man dressed in a Halloween costume had hidden at night at the abandoned munitions complex known as the TNT area, about five miles north of Point Pleasant, and had scared young couples by jumping out at their cars.

But this local legend is not credible, in my opinion. For one thing, knowledgeable area residents call attention to the fact that there have been several different claimants. For example, Rush Finley (2002), who with his wife Ruth owns the historic Lowe Hotel where I stayed, told me there were “at least half a dozen people” who now claim responsibility for the pranking, supposedly done when they were teenagers. Finley’s opinion is echoed by Charlie Cline (2002), manager of the music store Criminal Records, who thinks many are “jumping on the bandwagon” in this regard. Cline has also heard several such stories.

Another reason this explanation is not credible (except perhaps for later, bandwagon pranks) is that the appearance of such a trickster is not at all compatible with the original eyewitness descriptions of the creature—especially with regard to its glowing red eyes (as we shall see presently).

Costumed prankster or not, there were Mothman hoaxes. Rush Finley told me how some construction workers had used helium from welding tanks to make balloons from sheet plastic and tied red flashlights to them one night. Thus weighted, these Mothmen did not soar high but only drifted over the treetops.

Still other pranks occurred following the first wave of sightings. The spring of 1967 brought a number of UFO reports that were described in local newspapers and involved both misidentification of mundane phenomena and deliberate hoaxing.

Some of the UFOs were soon identified as commercial or military planes (notably a U.S. C-119 “flying boxcar” on a training mission from Columbus, Ohio). However, a private plane with a “prankster pilot” was reported to have been “gliding back and forth across the river for several nights” to frighten locals. On one occasion, however, according to a newspaper account, the pilot came too close to a hilltop and was suddenly forced “to cut his engines on.” (See newspaper clippings in Sergent and Wamsley 2002.)

The Sightings

Detailed reports demonstrate that the original Mothman sightings were not hoaxes. They occurred on Tuesday night, November 15, 1966, when two couples drove through the TNT area and saw a winged creature, “shaped like a man, but bigger,” with glowing red eyes. It walked on sturdy legs with a shuffling gait and, when it took flight and seemed to follow them, it “wasn’t even flapping its wings.” They said it “squeaked like a big mouse” (quoted in Keel 1975, 59–60).

Other reports soon flooded in, including one by two Point Pleasant firemen who visited the TNT area only three nights after the first sighting. They saw the “huge” creature but were positive: “It was definitely a bird.” Many witnesses described it as headless, with shining red eyes set near the top of its body, although one woman spoke of its “funny little face” (Keel 1975, 64–65, 71).

Despite accounts of “glowing” eyes, one of the original eyewitnesses, Linda Scarberry (1966), specifically stated that the effect was related to the car headlights. “There was no glowing about it until the lights hit it,” she said. Others echoed her statement. For example, one man, alerted by his dog, aimed his flashlight in the direction of his barn, “and it picked up two red circles, or eyes, which,” he said, “looked like bicycle reflectors” (Keel 1975, 56).

Eyeshine

The reflector-like nature of the creature’s eyes is revealing. As ornithologists well know, some birds’ eyes shine bright red at night when caught in a beam from auto headlights or a flashlight. “This ‘eyeshine’ is not the iris color,” explains an authority, “but that of the vascular membrane—the tapetum—showing through the translucent pigment layer on the surface of the retina” (Gill 1994).

The TNT area, which I visited both days and nights, is surrounded by the McClintic Wildlife Management Area—then, as now, a bird sanctuary! Owls, which exhibit crimson eyeshine, populate the area. Indeed, Steve Warner (2002), who works for West Virginia Munitions to produce .50-caliber ammunition in the TNT compound, told me there were “owls all over this place.” Conversely, neither he nor a coworker, Duane Chatworthy (2002), had ever seen Mothman, although Warner pointed out he had lived in the region all of his life.

Because of Mothman’s squeaky cry, “funny little face,” and other features, including its presence near barns and abandoned buildings, I identified it as the common barn owl (Nickell 2002). One Skeptical Inquirer reader (Long 2002) insisted it was instead a great horned owl which, although not matching certain features so well, does have the advantage of larger size. It seems likely that various owls and even other large birds played Mothman on occasion.

I did some further research regarding eyeshine, learning that the barn owl’s was “weak” and the great horned owl’s only “medium.” However the barred owl exhibits “strong” eyeshine (Walker 1974) and—
according to David McClung (2002), wildlife manager at McClintic—is common to the area; indeed, it is even more prevalent there than the barn owl. It is also larger than the barn owl, which it somewhat resembles, and is “only a little smaller than the Great Horned Owl” (Kaufman 1996, 317). (Mounted specimens of these and other species of owls are profusely displayed in the West Virginia State Farm Museum near the McClintic preserve. Museum Director Lloyd Akers generously allowed me special access to examine and photograph them.)

In light of the evidence it seems very likely that the Mothman sightings were mostly caused by owls—probably more than one type. A man named Asa Henry shot and killed one, tentatively identified as a snowy owl, during the Mothman flap. Although only about two feet tall, a newspaper dubbed it a “giant owl” due to its wingspan of nearly five feet (Sergent and Wamsley 2002; 94, 99). In Point Pleasant I was able to view the mounted specimen and to speak with Mr. Henry’s grandson, David Pyles. Himself a taxidermist, Pyles (2002), who is “very skeptical of Mothman,” told me his grandfather always maintained that the Mothman flap ended after he had shot the bird.

“Bighoot”

Owls are very likely responsible for other birdman sightings. One of the these is the 1952 case of the Flatwoods Monster that supposedly arrived in Flatwoods, West Virginia, aboard a flying saucer. Loren Coleman in his Mothman and Other Curious Encounters (2002) sees in that case “elements foreshadowing” the subsequent Mothman reports. However, as a Michigan Audubon Society publication concluded, my investigative report on the case (Nickell 2000) “convincingly demonstrates that the alleged flying saucer was really a meteor and the hissing creature from outer space was none other than a Barn Owl! Check it out, it’s a real scream!” (Those Monster Owls 2001).

Somewhat similarly, several sightings in 1976 in Cornwall, England, featured a “big feathered bird man” that was first seen “hovering over a church tower”—a common nesting place for barn owls (Kaufman 1996, 306). Appropriately, the entity became known as “Owlman” (Coleman 2002, 34–36).

As to Mothman, “cryptozoologist” Mark A. Hall (1998) has opined that it may be a hitherto undiscovered species of giant owl! He has dubbed it “Bighoot” and cites evidence that it has long existed in the Point Pleasant area. I take this as an implicit concession that Mothman—of all the creatures known to science—most resembles an owl, except for size.

Here then is the question separating the mystifiers from the skeptics: Is it more likely that there has long been a previously undiscovered giant species among the order strigiformes (owls), or that some people suddenly encountering a “monster” at night have misjudged its size? The latter possibility is supported by the principle of Occam’s razor, that the simplest tenable explanation is to be preferred as most likely correct. The principle seems especially applicable to the case of Mothman.

References

Chatworthy, Duane. 2002. Interview by author, April 12.

Cline, Charlie. 2002. Interview by author, April 12.

Coleman, Loren. 2002. Mothman and Other Curious Encounters. New York: Paraview Press.

Finley, Rush. 2002. Interview by author, April 12.

Gill, Frank B. 1994. Ornithology, 2nd ed. New York: W. H. Freeman and Co., 188.

Hall, Mark A. 1998. Bighoot—the giant owl. Wonders 5:3 (September), 67–79; cited in Coleman 2002.

Kaufman, Kenn. 1996. Lives of North American Birds. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Keel, John A. 1975. The Mothman Prophecies. Reprinted New York: Tor, 1991.

Long, Chris. 2002. Letter to editor, SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, July/August, 66.

McClung, David. 2002. Interview by author, April 13.

Nickell, Joe. 2000. The Flatwoods UFO monster. Skeptical Inquirer, November/December, 15–19.

———. 2002. ‘Mothman’ Solved! Skeptical Inquirer, March/April, 20–21.

Pyles, David. 2002. Interview by author, April 12.

Scarberry, Linda. 1966. Handwritten account reproduced in Sergent and Wamsley 2002, 36–59.

Sergent, Dorrie, Jr., and Jeff Wamsley. 2002. Mothman: The Facts Behind the Legend. Point Pleasant, W. Va.: Mothman Lives Publishing.

Those monster owls. 2001. The Jack-Pine Warbler, March/April, 6.

Walker, Lewis Wayne, 1974. The Book of Owls. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 218–222.

Warner, Steve. 2002. Interview by author, April 12.

Here’s a quick summary of this year’s crazy cabal of crankery:

“Holy Meter of Zion!”

Amiri Baraka, the New Jersey poet laureate, thinks that the Israeli government had foreknowledge of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center towers. Faced with criticism from several quarters, Baraka circled his wagons rather than surrender to reason. On his Web site he has defended all sorts of bunk, such as the claim of 4,000 Israeli/Jewish absentees from the World Trade Center, citing, of all things, Michael Ruppert’s conspiracy video titled “The Truth and Lies of 9-11.”

In September, Baraka made himself the center of controversy after reading a poem titled “Somebody Blew Up America” at the September 19, 2002, Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Stanhope, New Jersey. In it, he asks who is responsible for a wide variety of current and historical atrocities, including the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. One verse in particular incited outrage among several prominent Jewish groups. The offending verses are as follows:

Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed

Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers

To stay home that day

Why did Sharon stay away?

Baraka had been appointed to a two-year term as poet laureate in September 2001 with endorsements from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities and the state’s Council on the Arts. In reaction to the outrage over “Somebody Blew Up America,” New Jersey Governor James McGreevey requested that Baraka apologize and resign from his post; Baraka promptly refused. New Jersey state law makes no provision for removing a poet laureate from the post. However, McGreevey has sought the power to revoke Baraka’s poetic license from state legislators, according an October 7, 2002, New York Times story.

C'est la Conspiracie

Theirry Meyssan rose to worldwide recognition earlier in 2002 as the auteur of one of France’s best-selling books: L'Effroyable Imposture ("The Frightening Deception”). He claims that the destruction at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, was not caused by the impact of hijacked American Airlines Flight 77, but rather a truck bomb. He alleges that the U.S. government covered up this fact from the world as part of a larger scheme by the military-industrial complex to covertly orchestrate the September 11 massacres in order to justify the campaign in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Although sales were brisk, it remains uncertain just how many French readers actually bought into Meyssan’s claims. He jump-started the book’s popularity with an appearance on the French TV infotainment program Tout le Monde en Parle ("Everybody’s Talking About It”). However, the more respectable French media were unwavering in their criticism. According to the weekly journal Le Nouvel Observateur, “The theory suits everyone-there are no Islamic extremists and everyone is happy. It eliminates reality.” Liberation renamed the book A Frightening Confidence Trick and called it “a tissue of wild and irresponsible allegations, entirely without foundation.”

“Number One, Meet Vulcan Ambassador Gumbel on the Bridge!”

In November, the Sci Fi Channel aired two shameless pseudo-documentaries, “Abduction Diaries” and “The Roswell Crash: Startling New Evidence.” These programs were clearly aimed at whetting viewers’ appetites for The X-Files ripoff mini-series drama “Steven Spielberg Presents: Taken,” which aired on ten weeknights, from December 9 to December 13. The drama featured allegations of government UFO cover-ups and other unfounded claptrap, and appears to be aimed at the confused diaspora of displaced X-Files refugees.

Though overwhelmingly dedicated to the UFOlogists like Stanton Friedman, “The Roswell Crash” producers attempted to cover up a lack of credibility by recruiting former NBC Today Show anchor Bryant Gumbel to host and narrate the show. A further gimmick used to hoodwink viewers involved an “excavation” of the Roswell “crash site.” Assorted bags of junk gathered from the site are now in safekeeping at the Wells Fargo Bank in Roswell, “until,” Gumbel proclaims, “they can undergo extensive testing at a materials lab.” “Startling new evidence,” indeed, of the desperate lengths to which Sci Fi producers will go to squeeze the last drop of snake-oil out of the tired Roswell myth.

Recent polls show an increasing belief in alien visitation among otherwise informed Americans. A 2001 Gallup poll revealed that 33 percent of Americans believe that “aliens have visited the [E]arth at sometime in the past.” That’s up from 27 percent in 1990. A 1996 Gallup poll showed that 71 percent of Americans believed that the U.S. government knows more about UFOs than they have told the public. There is not a single shred of good evidence to support such beliefs.

Nevertheless, cash evidently trumps truth at the Sci Fi Channel.

“Al-'Sieg Heil’ Alaykhum,” or “Happy Rommel-dan”

In Egypt, as elsewhere in the Middle East, there’s a growing belief in an international Zionist conspiracy, which is responsible for everything from pro-Israeli American foreign policy to chronic halitosis. This conspiracy theory has culminated in a turgid thirty-part “documentary” series titled “Horsemen without a Horse,” which aired during Ramadan on state-run Channel 2 and the aptly chosen satellite network “Dream TV.” The series tells the story of a fictional early twentieth-century journalist Hafez Naguib, who goes undercover to “discover” the “truth” behind the venerable hoax conspiracy screed known as the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Mohammed Sobhi, who co-authored the script and plays the role of Hafez Naguib, was quick to defend his magnum opus to Western journalists. Quoted in a November 2 Boston Globe story, Sobhi told Globe correspondent Ashraf Khalil. “I don’t care about the Zionist opposition. We don’t interfere in their work or media, and they also don’t have the right to interfere in our artistic work and media.”

A Shameless Pattern

The most disturbing fact of all of these cases is that the above-mentioned conspiracy claims were not disseminated on poorly printed leaflets at some Idaho White separatist compound. With one exception, these ideas were widely promoted thanks to the ill-formed decisionmakers at major TV networks and publishing houses putting greed over integrity. That said, I’ll leave readers with a quote from Chris Mooney, writing for Slate.com on November 27, 2002:

Suppose that the truth really is “out there,” as The X-Files postulated, but not exactly where you might expect. In other words, rather than a vast government conspiracy to conceal proof that aliens have visited Earth, perhaps the real plot lies elsewhere. The entertainment industry, for instance, is constantly putting out films, TV shows, and pseudo-documentaries suggesting that Americans are being visited or even abducted in droves by gray-skinned, strangely kinky spacemen-and the government wants to keep it all quiet. . . . Could the real conspiracy be on the part of the mass media and designed to make people believe in UFOs because it helps ratings?

Now that’s a conspiracy theory skeptics can believe in!

Tune in to 530 AM for thelatest ch'i updates.

Residents of Los Angeles take all this for granted. They know that the globes and banners and fish tanks and highway signs are part and parcel of the latest lifestyle craze to hit Southern California: feng che.

Feng che (the words literally mean “wind” and “vehicle”) is a variation on feng shui, the ancient Chinese philosophy that seeks to put human beings in harmonious balance with their surroundings. Several years ago, feng shui took Los Angeles by storm. From Pasadena to Santa Monica, a groundswell of Angelenos suddenly began rearranging their furniture and positioning mirrors and wind chimes in strategic locales to maximize the flow of positive ch'i (natural energy) into their personal space. Businesses, too, took on the ch'i challenge. Feng shui consultants, some earning as much as $750 an hour, were recruited from Hong Kong and Taiwan to redesign entire buildings and, where necessary, install structures that could ward off negative energy surreptitiously infiltrating a room or edifice.

Nowhere did feng shui gain a more dramatic foothold than in the entertainment industry. Showbiz proponents of feng shui enthusiastically proselytized for this mysterious innovation from the inscrutable East, declaring that the reconfiguration of their work and living spaces was leading directly to a more productive psychic environment and resulting in better deals, better scripts, better performances, better movies, and in some cases, better marriages. By positioning a small fountain or an aquarium in the southeast corner of one’s living room, it was said, one could generate sufficient positive energy to significantly enhance one’s percentage of the gross in a low-budget action film with only one or two big names attached to the project. Conversely, by placing a small statue of the Three-Legged Toad God of Wealth near the medicine cabinet and making sure that the toilet seat was always down, it was possible to prevent positive ch'i from being flushed into the sewage system. By all indications, the advent of feng shui was making movie industry people smarter, more efficient and happier.

Then came Meet Joe Black. Some of the key figures involved in the making and distribution of this Brad Pitt bomb were inhabiting pristine feng by shui-ed offices and domiciles and had been energetically seeking to lead lives according to venerable principles established more than 4,000 years ago in the wilds of rural China. And yet the movie was a complete disaster. What went wrong? Who was to blame? Were feng shui consultants now unmasked as the proverbial emperors having no clothes?

In retrospect, it is apparent that the lifestyle-enhancing powers of feng shui were seriously oversold from the very beginning. By removing sharp angles from buildings, by positioning radiant mirrors and glistening pools of water in such a way that they would deflect negative energy, and by introducing bold, topographically adventurous elements into contemporary garden design, feng shui practitioners had been able to transform defective work and living spaces into spiritually cohesive sanctuaries in which it was possible for entertainment industry luminaries to work to the best of their abilities. But as anyone who has ever visited Los Angeles is well aware, an enormous amount of deal-making is transacted on car phones while executives and stars are navigating some of the worst traffic in North America. Until recently, most of those people were riding in vehicles that had the wrong colors, the wrong interiors, the wrong positioning of mirrors and, most calamitously, the wrong accessories. Worse than that, industry movers and shakers were driving to work without paying the slightest attention to the direction from which positive or negative ch'i was flowing into their Mercedeses, BMWs or Range Rovers during their lengthy commutes.

The time for feng che had arrived.

“Feng che is a somewhat more recent, but nonetheless ancient Chinese philosophy that dates from the third century b.c., when the Great Wall of China was being built,” explains Li Sang Yin, the most sought-after feng che practitioner working in the United States today. “After they'd finished building the first 1,200 miles of a wall meant to keep barbarian invaders out, work slowed to a crawl because laborers were turning up for work each morning in a terrible mood. The Emperor ordered feng shui experts called in. These ch'i specialists immediately investigated the number of sharp turns workmen made on their way to the construction site and discovered that, indeed, protracted exposure to sharp corners had exerted a catastrophic effect on the personal productivity of the labor force. As all enlightened ch'i watchers know, negative ch'i seeps through the holes in the universe via the microscopic intersection where two sharp edges do not exactly meet. That’s how feng che-the science of making sure that the traveler is in complete harmony with the physical space he is moving through-came into being.”

But how does a discipline rooted in ancient sino-architectural managerial techniques work in a modern, free-market environment like the entertainment business? Basically, the process runs something like this: an individual-a film producer, say-first hires a feng che master to visit his house and office. Using a diagnostic device called the denkon guagua an octagonal template on which are printed symbols for each of the eight areas that define human existence (money, sex, fame, power, contacts, fitness, enemies and revenge)-the master ascertains the quantity and quality of negative ch'i in the living or work space. The master then superimposes the denkon guagua over a scaled diagram of the client’s automobile and decides which objects-banners, globes, fish, flowers, draperies, mirrors, statues of the Three-Legged Toad God of Wealth, etc.-need to be inserted in each section of the car to maximize the proximate ch'i, and which objects need to be removed.

No small amount of intuitive brilliance is called upon from the feng che master in this process. For example, a producer with a great deal of money but very few friends would be instructed to position delicate flowers over the steering wheel, while a famous producer with numerous enemies would be counseled to reposition his rearview mirrors so that anyone looking into them would catch his own direct reflection and be pummeled into a stupor by his own reverberatingly negative ch'i. Obviously, there’s a risk in the daring concept of feng che. “Positioning your rearview mirror so that the negative energy flowing from a rival’s reflection boomerangs back into his vehicle is one of the linchpins of modern feng che,” says Lt. Teddy Carmody of the LAPD. “But it also makes it almost impossible to make that eastbound ramp exit onto Santa Monica Boulevard from the middle lane, because you can’t see the dead spot right behind you. Especially if you've got a statue of the Three-Legged Toad God of Wealth in the back window. This is the downside of the feng che boom.”

The other crucial component of feng che is devising a route from one’s home to one’s office that will maximize the flow of positive energy into one’s vehicle and, ultimately, one’s life and deals. Above all, this means minimizing the number of four-way intersections you encounter. So much negative ch'i can leach into the street through the competing quartet of right angles at intersections that after a certain number of them, drivers sometimes become too depressed to go to work, or even leave the intersection.

“From centuries before the Mongol invasions, it was always understood that fastidiously adhering to feng che principles was inevitably going to mean longer commutes,” says Li Sang Yin, who charges $500 an hour to feng che sports cars ($750 for SUVs). “So anyone wishing to gain the benefits of integrating feng che into his lifestyle must be prepared to take circuitous routes to work.”

The desire to drive to and from the office via winding roads with a minimum of sharp angles has contributed to the massive traffic jams reported on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, Mulholland Drive and the Bel Air portion of Sunset Boulevard in the past year. Feng che aficionados have taken to navigating around entire escarpments of Los Angeles real estate in an effort to reach the office with as little involvement in hard-edge geometry as possible. Seeking to cope with this unprecedented flow of traffic through serpentine byways, Los Angeles and the various independent civic entities that are adjacent to it (e.g., Beverly Hills) have passed resolutions designating certain roads as off-limits to feng che motorists. In Culver City, feng che driving is permitted only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and not before nine a.m. or after six p.m. “In a place like L.A., where nobody believes in carpooling or public transportation, feng che is a double-edged sword,” says Barry Alvaro, author of Diffident Azures: Feng Che in the Age of the Han Dynasty and Feng Che for Bozos.

“Feng che is about personal commuting, not group transportation,” adds Li Sang Yin. “Sharing the commuting space with another human being inevitably reduces the amount of positive ch'i flowing into the vehicle. But more to the point, feng che will not work in most minivans because of their sharp edges. The only vehicle that is truly amenable to the feng che philosophy is the Toyota Previa. Unfortunately, Toyota stopped making them in 1997.” It goes without saying that car design is one of the most important components of a fully feng che'd lifestyle. Sid Mamet, founder of Forbidden City Fiat, which now operates six showrooms in the Greater Los Angeles area, stresses the importance of rounded automotive features. “Basically, you want to go small and curvy, with nice scalloped headlights and fenders,” says Mamet, noting that it’s no accident the 2000 models of high-end car manufacturers are a lot less boxy than these same cars were in the ‘90s. “Just forget about Humvees,” he adds.

To help neophytes devise the most psychically salubrious routes to and from work, a company called Santa Monica Geomantic.com has devised a software program that produces detailed maps showing you how to get from your particular point “A” to point “B” without traversing too many four-way intersections-or driving too close to the ocean. “In theory, the Pacific Ocean should be a source of tremendous positive ch'i,” says Kim Poulin, founder of Santa Monica Geomantic.com. “But medical waste and sewage discharges brought on by El Niño have seriously eroded the ocean’s upside ch'i. So, if it’s at all possible, you want to drive as far inland as possible, even if it means taking that long detour through the Valley.”

Long detours are no obstacle to people who are serious about feng che. One high-ranking MGM executive, already uncomfortable with the nearness of both the studio and his home to the Pacific Ocean, was so determined to approach the studio parking lot uniquely from the north (a particularly demanding tenet of feng che) he took to driving all the way to Santa Barbara in order to keep directionally correct without making a complete U-turn (feng che strongly discourages U-turns). He was one of the few executives who had nothing to do with The Mod Squad but was fired anyway because he spent so little time in his office. One struggling producer trying to turn his life around via feng che was killed on the way back to his house in Topanga when he swerved to avoid a pack of coyotes while navigating the winding turns of Topanga Canyon Boulevard. According to his wife, the man had gone out to buy some echinacea and goldenseal but had driven thirty-four miles out of his way to avoid the negative energy emanating from Malibu Beach.

“David led a feng che life and I’m sure he would have wanted to meet a feng che death,” says his widow, Melissa Redon. “Feng che had completely turned his life around: he was off drugs, he was reconciled with his parents, and he was getting ready to show his new script to Edward James Olmos. Without feng che, David would have ended his life as a complete loser.”

It remains to be seen whether feng che will ever preside over an empire as far-flung as its more ancient cousin feng shui. Even the buyers of O.J. Simpson’s former house had a feng shui expert assess the property (she concluded it had been a source of positive energy for Simpson, with its southwest direction and large swimming pool). And in case anyone doubts the ability of the entertainment industry to amplify the effects of any trend it fixes upon, presidential hopeful Donald Trump incorporates feng shui principles into the design of his new real estate ventures. Clearly, feng che has a long way to go before it can claim that kind of influence, but if the current mood in Los Angeles is any indication, feng che will soon be coming to an interstate, an intersection or a multilevel parking garage near you. These days, California freeways routinely provide motorists with updates on negative ch'i emanating from fatal accidents, and parking lots all over Los Angeles are hastily being redesigned in circular or oval shapes so that no one will ever again have to park in a dark corner where killer ch'i will seep into their vehicles. The entertainment community has so completely embraced the feng che approach to vehicle design that cars with sharp edges are instantly identifiable as being driven by inner-city gangs, migrant workers, irony boys, or goths.

As Li Sang Yin puts it: “Feng che isn’t simply about harmonious commuting. Feng che is about life itself. When positive ch'i flows in from the highways, the byways, the upholstery and even the carburetor, things like Bicentennial Man just don’t happen. That’s why this town loves feng che.”

THE PRINCIPLES OF FENG CHE: A PRIMER

1. Replace all car ornaments with wind chimes, bamboo pipes and red or gold sashes. Remove such objects as velour dice, Fighting Irish Leprechauns or bobbing-head baseball mascots, which deflect positive ch'i away from the vehicle. This is particularly true of leprechauns, whose negative ch'i derives from substratal ethnic incongruity.
2. Remove all bumper stickers, especially confrontational or vulgar messages. These attract enormous quantities of killer ch'i.
3. Always drive with the windows closed, even on days when neither heat nor air conditioning is necessary. Open windows squander positive ch'i.
4. Plug up all apertures such as cigarette lighters, ashtrays, vents, and glove compartments, preventing the egress of positive ch'i. Tape decks and compact disc players must always be occupied by cassettes or CDs.
5. Never drive to work from the south. If you live far to the south or your office, move. If this is not possible, drive east, then north, then south, but only in a very wide arc. Or hire a driver and sit with your back to him facing an inflatable replica of the Three-Legged Toad God of Wealth.
6. Never leave your car in the corner of a parking lot, especially if you work in the film industry. There is more negative ch'i in the corner of a Los Angeles parking lot than any other place in the world, not only because of the negative ch'i seeping into the lot from the corners, but because of the residual negative ch'i from all the other drivers who once parked in your spot.
7. Never try to feng che a station wagon. Sell it, give it away, burn it. Just don’t try to feng che it. You are merely throwing good money after bad.

This article originally appeared in the February 2000 issue of Movieline.

While many parapsychologists admit that the existence of psi is still not conclusively demonstrated, a few have insisted that the evidence in its favor is now overwhelming. Since they are not able to make this assertion based on conventional scientific criteria, they invent other criteria. Current claims rest on a dubious procedure called meta-analysis in which the statistically insignificant results of many experiments are combined as if they were a single, controlled experiment.

Where several similar experiments are available, the meta-analyzed probability for the whole package resulting from chance is estimated using statistical techniques. If the combined result is statistically significant, then the phenomenon is regarded as confirmed. But this procedure is fraught with dangers. I cannot think of a single example of a new phenomenon that has been established by meta-analysis.

The most prominent proponent of using meta-analysis to demonstrate the reality of psi is Dean Radin, whose 1997 book The Conscious Universe is subtitled The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena. Radin asserts that when one looks at the aggregate of data collected over time, you can only conclude that psychic phenomena are scientifically validated.

For example, Radin notes that 186 ESP card tests involving four million trials were published worldwide from 1882 to 1939. He takes these results at face value, downplaying any possibilities of cheating or other plausible conventional explanations that skeptics have been able to uncover in virtually every case where sufficient information about the data and procedures has been made available. Making the disputable assumption that the ESP data are all trustworthy, Radin claims that the odds against chance are more than a billion trillion to one.

Radin is aware of the file-drawer effect, in which only positive results tend to get reported and negative ones are left in the filing cabinet. This obviously can greatly bias any analysis of combined results and Radin cannot ignore this as blithely as he ignores other possible, non-paranormal explanations of the data. Even the most fervent parapsychologists recognize this problem. Meta-analysis incorporates a procedure for taking the file-drawer effect into account. Radin says it shows that more than 3,300 unpublished, unsuccessful reports would be needed for each published report in order to “nullify” the statistical significance of psi.

In his review of Radin’s book for the journal Nature, statistics professor I.J. Good disputes this calculation, calling it “a gross overestimate.” He estimates that the number of unpublished, unsuccessful reports needed to account for the results by the file drawer effect should be reduced to fifteen or less. How could two meta-analyses result in such a wide discrepancy? Somebody is doing something wrong, and in this case it is clearly Radin. He has not performed the file-drawer analysis correctly.

Douglas Stokes is a specialist in statistical analysis who is very sympathetic to the psi movement. In his book The Nature of Mind, Stokes considers the wide range of reports of psychic phenomena, from the anecdotal to the experimental. Although he concludes that psi has not been scientifically demonstrated, he still wants to believe in it based on the “compelling stories” he has heard and his own personal “spontaneous psi experiences.” Nevertheless, in an article published in Skeptical Inquirer (25[3], May/June 2001, 22-25), Stokes describes the fundamental errors that Radin and others have made in their calculations.

The file-drawer problem is not limited to meta-analyses but applies to single experiments as well. Stokes looked specifically at an experiment by Alan Vaughn and Jack Houck involving ESP-card guessing questionnaires sent to them by twelve subjects, each significant at the 5 percent level. The authors claimed that over 33,000 subjects would have had to be tested to produce the reported effect as a statistical fluctuation. Since they did not send out anywhere near that number of tests, they conclude that the net effect was real.

To test this calculation, Stokes simulated the experiment on a computer, which the authors also could have easily done-and indeed should have done. This is called a “Monte Carlo analysis.” I spent a good portion of my research career in particle physics doing such analyses, in which you try to learn all the possible sources of error in an experiment, statistical and systematic, by “doing the experiment in the computer.” This procedure is simple, straightforward, and does not rely on any problematic statistical techniques or packaged programs that the users apply blindly. As an example, Stokes generated random data for thirty subjects and selected out the twelve highest scores, all of which had statistical significances (p-values) of one percent or better. This left only eighteen in the file-drawer, not 33,000 as Vaughn and Houck claimed were needed. The experiment was designed so that the subjects knew their scores before mailing them in. One can easily imagine eighteen people with low scores not bothering to report.

Why this vast difference? In a detailed analysis of the file-drawer problem, Jeffrey Scargle has shown that a widely-used technique called “Fail Safe File Drawer” analysis is deeply flawed because it assumes that the experiments in the file-drawer are unbiased. In fact, as we saw in the above case, they are biased, by definition.

I regard it as especially significant that psi sympathizer Stokes has spoken out against meta- (and file-drawer-) analyses. Critics of paranormal claims are often accused of being closed minded, dogmatic worshippers of the “religion of scientism.” This accusation is false. We are not closed to any paranormal claim nor prejudiced against any individual adherent. Show us the evidence and we will consider it. However, we will steadfastly insist on applying the same rules that we would to claims for a new particle or a new drug. In particular, we refuse to agree to adopt new criteria, such as proposed by Radin, just for the benefit of researchers in a field of study that cannot seem to get positive results any other way.