As we creep optimistically into the early and enlightened twenty-first century, it’s time for publishers to acknowledge their seventy-or-so-year lapse of reason and finally admit that horoscopes have as much to do with real journalism as shuffleboard has to do with real sports. Isn’t there something just plain wrong about a newspaper item that’s never been amended in the “Corrections and Clarifications” section? Contrary to what adherents want us to believe, not everyone reads the newspaper’s daily horoscope. Truth be told, I don’t. In our newspaper the horoscope is harbored, logically, on the funny pages to the left of “Dilbert” and above the Bridge column. One would think curiosity would occasionally get the best of me, but I have no more interest in reading my horoscope than reading the microscopic disclaimer accompanying television car commercials.

According to astrological enthusiasts, I’m a Sagittarius because on the day I was born, the sun and moon and planets combined forces to pull, prod, and deep massage my personality into the unique “me.” Apparently I never had a chance. In fact, several years ago, I ended up in surgery to repair a volvulus (my small intestine got twisted up into a knot). The surgeon believed the disorder was likely congenital. Thanks, Jupiter!

Only in the name of exhaustive research did I finally succumb to reading the following horoscope for my sign: “Ease up on your expectations of a new project. Like cakes on the griddle, the first one doesn’t usually turn out so great. Toss it and try again.” Although this was so vague I had no idea what it meant, I did begin to crave pancakes. Maybe it was a subliminal message planted by the IHOP.

A competing newspaper claimed something different about me. Apparently it’s more important which paper you read or to which service you subscribe than the exact moment your obstetrician was calculating your Apgar score.

“What’s the crime?” is one rationalization for printing this hogwash. “It’s only for entertainment purposes.” If it’s only for entertainment purposes, why not reprint The Onion’s version for Sagittarians instead: “You will experience debilitating pain, unspeakable agony, and the loss of all of your hair when a voodoo doll bearing your likeness falls into the hands of a five-year-old girl.” Now that’s entertainment.

To most reasonable people, the horoscope is a waste of valuable newspaper real estate, which could be used for more useful items. Many professional astrologers (by “professional” I mean those who have printed-up business cards) agree; they’re not thrilled with the newspaper horoscope, or sun-sign astrology either, and they believe these brief readings barely scratch the astrological surface.

Since newspaper horoscopes are based only on the sun’s position, card-carrying astrologers claim that it reflects less than 10 percent of a person’s zodiac reading. A true reading requires interpretation of things like houses and a natal chart—something which resembles a Chinese dart board. But since many horoscope readers sooner or later contact an astrologer, why spoil a profitable gig for something as ambiguous as ethics? Let’s face it, the less than 10 percent of an astrological reading based only on the sun-sign probably leads to more than 90 percent of an astrologer’s income, which is probably why you don’t hear them protest too loudly (or at all).

I’m quite sure that newspaper publishers would break out into a cold sweat over the potential backlash that deleting the horoscope column would produce. Convincing the protesters, however, may not be an insurmountable prospect. Since 73 percent of Americans believe in the holy word of a supernatural infinitegenarian, remind them to read their Bible a bit more closely. God actually abhors astrology; he ranks it right up there with reason. According to biblical chatter, man is not allowed to worship the sun, moon and stars, and so astrologers will be summarily swallowed up in flames. I guess the Bible ain’t all bad.

Some might argue I’m infringing on the right of free speech. However, although I generally detest censorship of any kind, the Supreme Court has ruled time and again that although free speech is one of the most cherished guarantees of the Constitution, it doesn’t necessarily protect one from falsely yelling out “Virgo” in a crowded astrology convention.

Granted, this is a tough sell. These aren’t necessarily the best of times for newspapers but for the mental well-being of the country, I’m asking the newspapers to do the right thing. A newspaper can once again start building its credibility and be viewed as something more than a product that can be folded into a hat or used to wrap fish ‘n’ chips. If newspaper horoscopes disappear, just maybe—astrologers, will just fade away. And just maybe—other pseudosciences will follow suit. It’s worth a try, isn’t it? After all, scrapping newspaper horoscopes would be one small step for reason and one giant leap for articles reviewing beer.

Indeed, Benjamin Radford and I co-authored a major study of the phenomenon, Lake Monster Mysteries (Radford and Nickell 2006), which has received very good reviews—even from “believers.” For example, the newsletter of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club (of which we are both members) spoke of “the incredible amount of investigative work” we had “put into the field of cryptid investigations,” noting that we “have done more fieldwork than many cryptozoology enthusiasts and have been very diligent about it” (Kirk 2006).

The reviewer—respected cryptozoologist John Kirk, author of In the Domain of the Lake Monsters (1998)—did fault us a bit, finding that Ben was somewhat too dismissive of eyewitness reliability, and that I had perhaps “too broadly applied” a particular explanation for sightings of multi-humped creatures.

Actually, I feel that if we erred it was on the side of being too open-minded. Ben’s essay, “Eyewitness (Un)Reliability,” appeared as an appendix and simply demonstrated the fact that eyewitnesses are often mistaken. If further evidence is needed, consider a case that transpired in Rotterdam in 1978. A small panda had escaped from a zoo, whereupon officials had issued a media alert. Soon panda sightings—around one hundred in all—were reported across the Netherlands. However, a single animal could not have been in so many places in so short a time; in fact, no one had seen the panda, because it had been killed by a train when it reached railroad tracks near the zoo. How do we explain the many false sightings? The answer is, people’s anticipations led them to misinterpret what they had actually seen—a dog or some wild creature—as the escaped panda. (The publicity generated by the case may even have sparked some hoax calls [Nickell 1995, 43].) If such misperceptions could happen with pandas, surely they could also occur with aquatic cryptids.

Which brings me to Kirk’s criticism (mild criticism, to be sure) of my hypothesis regarding certain sightings. I had discovered that there was a notable lake-monster lookalike in the vicinity of many reported encounters. Consider, for example, the experience of a senior wildlife technician with New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, Jon Kopp. As he explained to me, it had been dark and he was in a duck blind on a lake in Clinton County. Suddenly, he saw, heading toward him, a huge, snake-like monster swimming with a sinuous, undulating motion. As it came closer, however, Kopp realized that he saw not one creature but half a dozen—a group of otters swimming in a line diving and resurfacing to create the effect of a single, serpentine creature. “After seeing this,” Kopp said, “I can understand how people can see a ‘sea serpent’” (Radford and Nickell 2006, 38).

Figure 1. Author’s composite drawing of Ogopogo (top) is compared with otters swimming in a line (after Gould 1976).

As another example, one witness to a Lake Champlain sighting of 1983 stated, “It could have been one large creature or four smaller ones,” a concession underscored by the fact that the sighting was at the “mouth of Otter Creek”—actually Vermont’s longest river, but in any case aptly named as a habitat for the northern river otter (Zarzynski 1983).

That creature—Lutra canadensis—measures up to fifty-two inches long, and when treading water with its hind paws, can extend its head and long neck well out of the water. It thus invites comparison with the extinct plesiosaur, which is often cited as a possibility for supposed lake-monster sightings (Binns 1984, 186—191). Moreover, otters are playful and enjoy “chasing each other” and “following the leader” (Godin 1983, 173), thus being especially prone to creating the illusion of a single multihumped creature. Figure 1 illustrates how this behavior can help explain, for instance, many of Lake Okanagan’s fabled “Ogopogo” sightings.

Of course, otters are not responsible for all lake-monster sightings, any more than weather balloons are the only instigators of UFO reports. In fact, in Lake Monster Mysteries, I mentioned many possible culprits, such as sturgeon, gar, and other large fish; swimming animals like beavers; deer; long-necked birds; bobbing logs; clumps of dislodged lake-bottom debris; and additional possibilities, including wind sticks and boat wakes. Hoaxes are also possible, and there have been faked monsters on pulleys as well as phony photographs, like the celebrated Loch Ness monster photo, which was publicly revealed as a hoax in 1994 (Radford and Nickell 2006).

Nevertheless, in light of considerable evidence, I decided to see how well monster-inhabited lakes and rivers correlated with otter populations, and my research led to the map in figure 2. For this, I relied on the list of “Lake Monsters of the World” given by Kirk (1998, 293—303), and for otter distribution, I consulted the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mammals (Whitaker 1996).

Figure 2. This map shows the numbers of monster-inhabited lakes and rivers correlated with the distribution of otter populations.

For practical reasons,¹ I limited my scope to North America, but it should be noted that otters (any of various aquatic carnivores belonging to the weasel family) are “found on all continents except Australia” (Webster’s 1997). At Loch Ness, for example, the European otter (Lutra lutra) is an often-cited potential lookalike for Nessie (Binns 1984, 186—191).

Clearly, there is a strong correlation as expected. Note that the large number of aquatic-cryptid sites in British Columbia (25), Ontario (16), and Quebec (21), are in prime river-otter territory. Of course it can be argued that lakes themselves are in abundance there, and that, conversely, where water is relatively scarce (e.g., the southwestern United States), naturally otters are also scarce. But I rather think that that helps prove my point: wherever there are lakes and rivers with “monsters”—especially of the long-necked multihumped variety—otters are usually known to the area. They thus become viable candidates for the apparent misperception—a variation on the old if-it-looks-like-a-duck adage.

However, we must continue to investigate claims on a case-by-case basis. Our aim must be to solve lake monster mysteries, not to foster or dismiss them.

Notes

1. Including all the monster-inhabited lakes of the world on a simple map would have resulted in a large illustration with too much detail to be reasonably publishable in reduced size in a magazine or book.

References

• Binns, Ronald. 1984. The Loch Ness Mystery Solved. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
• Godin, Alfred J. 1983. Wild Mammals of New England. Chester, Conn.: Globe Pequot Press.
• Kirk, John. 1998. In the Domain of the Lake Monsters: The Search for Denizens of the Deep. Toronto: Key Porter Books.
• —. 2006. Cryptozoological publications, media and film reviews. BCSCC Quarterly, Spring, 11.
• Nickell, Joe. 1995. Entities: Angeles, Spirits, Demons, and Other Alien Beings. Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky.
• —. 2005. Secrets of the Sideshows. Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky.
• Radford, Benjamin, and Joe Nickell. 2006. Lake Monster Mysteries: Investigating the World’s Most Elusive Creatures. Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky.
• Webster’s New Universal Encyclopedia. 1997. New York: Barnes & Noble, s.v. “otter.”
• Whitaker, Jon O., Jr. 1996. National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mammals. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
• Zarzynski, Joseph. 1983. LCPI Work at Lake Champlain. 1983. Cryptozoology 1: 73—77.

Unwin’s result: 67 percent. Physicist Larry Ford (private communication) has examined Unwin’s calculation and made his own estimate using the same formula. Ford’s result: 10^-17.

Here’s how the Bayesian method works. Let P(G) be the prior probability that a proposition G is true. Now, suppose we have some new evidence E. Let P(G|E) be the probability that G is true in light of the evidence E. Let P(E|G) be the probability that E is true if G is true and P(E|G*) be the probability that E is true if G is false. Then is it easy to prove that

This is Bayes’ Theorem. Let G be the proposition that God exists. Unwin rewrites (1) as

where

he calls the “divine indicator,” which represents how much more likely the evidence E would be if God exists compared with him not existing.

Unwin then puts in some numbers. He takes the prior probability of God existing, that is, the probability before any evidence is submitted, to be Pbefore=0.5. Then he introduces a series of six observations and estimates the divine indicator D for each. At each step he calculates a Pafter and equates that to Pbefore for the following step.

1. The evidence for goodness, such as altruism: D=10 fi Pafter = 0.91.
2. The evidence for moral evil, done by humans: D=0.5 fi Pafter =0.83.
3. The evidence for natural evil (natural disasters): D=0.1 fi Pafter =0.33.
4. The evidence for “intra-natural” miracles (successful prayers, etc.): D=2 fi Pafter =0.5.
5. The evidence for “extra-natural” miracles (direct intervention by God in nature): D=1 fi Pafter = 0.5.
6. The evidence for religious experience (feeling of awe, etc.): D=2 fi Pafter = 0.67.

Unwin then adds a boost based on faith raising the final probability of God to 0.95.

Now let’s look at Ford’s alternate estimate of these numbers. First he notes: “propositions that postulate existence have a far less than 50 percent chance of being correct.” That is in absence of any evidence or other reason for us to believe some entity exists, it is highly unlikely that it does. So the prior probability of God should be more like one in a million or less. So let’s take Pbefore =10^-6.

With respect to the divine indicator, D, we must evaluate it for each kind of evidence. Taking miracles for example, P(E|G) is the probability of the observed evidence of miracles given God exists. We see no evidence of miracles, and since God should be producing them if he existed, this probability is small. On the other hand, the absence of evidence for miracles is just what we expect if there is no God, so P(E|G*) is near one. Consequently, the divine indicator based on the absence of evidence for miracles is D < 1.

Unwin exhibits the typical theistic fallacy that goodness can only come from God and assigns a high divine indicator D=10 for this. Ford points out that we should see a lot more goodness in the world than we do if God exists. So he assumes D=0.1.

Ford notes that the existence of both moral and natural evil in the world is evidence against God’s existence. Unwin seems to agree by assigning D-values less than one, but not sufficiently low to describe the true situation in which millions die or suffer needlessly each year from the evils of both humanity and nature. Ford’s values of D=0.01 and D=0.001 for moral and natural evil respectively, are far more reasonable.

Unwin thinks that miracles such as prayers being answered have been observed and so assigns a diving indicator D=2 to what he calls intra-natural miracles. However, the scientific fact is that the best, controlled experiments on intercessory prayer show no positive effects. These scientific results make Ford’s estimate of D=0.01 in better agreement with the data.

Unwin assigns D=1 for extra-natural miracles where God intervenes directly in nature. Since there is not a scintilla of evidence that God does this, including the fact that no miracle was required to bring the universe into existence, Ford’s estimate of D=0.1 for this property actually strikes me as far too generous.

Finally, there is no evidence that so-called religious experiences have any divine content. If they did, we would expect the people having them to return with information about reality that they could not have known before the experience. These “prophecies” could be tested scientifically to see of they came true. None ever have. So, instead of Unwin’s D=2, Ford’s D=0.01 is also more reasonable.

In any case, here is the summary of Ford’s calculation: P_before = 10^-6.

1. The evidence for goodness, such as altruism: D=0.1 fi P_after =10^-7.
2. The evidence for moral evil, done by humans: D = 0.01 fi P_after =10^-9.
3. The evidence for natural evil (natural disasters): D = 0.001 fi P_after =10^-12.
4. The evidence for “intra-natural” miracles (successful prayers, etc.): D=0.01 fi P_after =10^-14.
5. The evidence for “extra-natural” miracles (direct intervention by God in nature): D=0.1 fi P_after =10^-15.
6. The evidence for religious experience (feeling of awe, etc.): D =0.01 fi P_after =10^-17.

Of course, many of you are likely to say this is a silly exercise, that the numbers used are a matter of taste and obvious prejudice. However, I think it is useful to go through it anyway. The mathematically challenged are often awed by any sort of quantitative calculation, which they are unable to evaluate, and are likely to view Unwin’s work as providing scientific support for their beliefs. It does no such thing. Unwin loses. If anything, his method demonstrates the high unlikelihood of God’s existence.