Alarmed by the impending disaster, most of the farmers asked the governor to proclaim a Day of Prayer and to ask God to intervene and save their fields from the plague. Governor John Pillsbury agreed and set aside Thursday, April 26, as a statewide day of fasting and prayer. Many less religious citizens denounced the governor’s actions and proclaimed that it was a discredit to the intelligence of the people of Minnesota. In fact, a group called “The Liberal League” went so far as to publicly denounce the governor’s action as nonsense with these words: “We hold that this belief in the power of prayer is palpably untrue, its influence pernicious and in this day a marked discredit to the intelligence of Minnesotans. From the beginning down to this day, outside of so-called Sacred History, there is not one well-authenticated instance of such prayer having been answered-not one.”

Priests and clerics, however, were not dissuaded and held masses and prayer vigils to appeal for heavenly assistance. Not only did the entire nation watch these events, but newspapers across the country sent reporters to cover the story. Other states also pitched in and prayed like mad in sympathy with Minnesota’s plight. Prayer Day, April 26, turned out to be warm and sunny over most of Minnesota and predictions were that the same sort of weather would prevail on April 27.

As midnight approached, however, the sky clouded over and a cold rain began to fall over most of the state. Then the wind shifted from the south to the north and the cold rain turned to heavy snow. Throughout the day the snowstorm raged, alternating between rain and snow and a heavy sleet. The ice storm continued through most of the following day, April 28, as well. Surveying the outcome of the storm, the state’s grain farmers discovered that the vast majority of grasshoppers had been frozen and destroyed just as they were hatching. Even the few eggs that did hatch gave forth hoppers who immediately flew away. No eggs were deposited in Minnesota that summer, and the year’s grain harvest turned out to be the most bountiful in the state’s history. Entomologists were astounded. Some Minnesotans were so grateful they built a church to honor the event and in gratitude for God’s answer to their prayers.

While Dossey might be inclined to attribute this miracle to the wondrous power of prayer, most meteorologists are much less certain. Minnesotan springs are notoriously unpredictable and, like the rest of the nation, April is a particularly treacherous month for growing things. One has also to keep in mind that the number of people praying (versus the number of people who were not praying or maintained a neutral stance) were definitely in the minority. We must also consider the literally millions of times that similar sorts of prayers were sent up to the Heavenly Father and were either rejected or ignored. For example, there’s the fact that a considerably large number of people prayed for weeks last year that the Mississippi Valley would not flood and that the heavy rains would stop. Their prayers were clearly never answered.

Dossey’s book is, nevertheless, very entertaining and is filled with delightful anecdotes and some wonderful sound bites, such as this quote from Susan Ertz: "Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.” Most of the time Dossey stays on terra firma but in Chapter 7, titled “Time-Displaced Prayer: When Prayers Are Answered Before They're Made,” he walks over a cliff and tries vainly to make us believe that we “may be mentally able to shape our medical past in order to bring about health not illness now in the present and in the future” (p. 122). William G. Braud of the Mind Science Foundation of San Antonio, Texas, believes we can reach back into the past and shape subatomic processes in the past in order to influence our health now. Can prayers be answered before they're made? Dossey says, “Yes. Why not?” (p.127).

For a book whose stated purpose is to convince the reader that prayer can heal, Dossey amasses a tremendous amount of negative evidence. In Chapter 11, devoted to reviewing the research on prayer and healing, Dossey notes that prayers for kings and clergy never proved to be effective, nor did Sir Francis Galton’s experiments pan out. Dossey also cites Sheldrake’s observation that in spite of millions of Indian parents’ prayers for sons rather than daughters, the sex ratio remains fairly even. As for nearly all of the laboratory studies, Dossey admits that most are either poorly done or logically flawed. Studies like those of Randolph Byrd and his coronary-care- unit patients are filled with holes, and whenever skeptical scientists try to replicate such work they are never able to obtain positive effects. Only true believers in the effect of prayer are so lucky. “Mind shoves the data around,” Dossey says.

Dossey, however, is honest enough to present a list of nonsupernatural reasons for the positive effects of prayer. To wit: (1) Many spiritual practices demand certain austerities that are healthful, e.g., diet, no alcohol, hygienic practices, et al.; (2) social support is gained from the belief and its attendent rites; (3) the psychodynamics of the rites and beliefs can also promote health, in that prayer can release emotions and affect the immune and cardiovascular systems and reduce anxiety; (4) the psychodynamics of faith are indistinguishable from placebo effects; (5) the healer’s presence fosters a sense of belonging and social support; (6) being the object of prayer or the laying on of hands stimulates the endocrine and/or the immune system; and (7) the physical preparations for healing, e.g., meditation, feasts, diets, and abstentions-all may promote “healing.”

Despite some very impressive tables in Dossey’s Appendix #1, one can’t help but note that out of 131 laboratory experiments on prayer effects, only 56 obtained statistically significant results at a probability level of .05 or better, and only 21 at the .01 level. However, when we consider the quality and credibility of these studies we find that 10 of these are unpublished doctoral dissertations, 2 are unpublished master’s theses, and all the rest were published in parapsychological journals. One can only hazard a guess as to the strength of the “file drawer” effect-that is, filing away all the negative outcomes-in all such investigatory efforts.

In the last analysis, however, when they're in a really tight spot-when people are between a boulder and an I-Beam-most individuals tend to go along with Pascal’s rationalization for believing in God: If God exists and you don’t believe, you lose; If God exists and you do believe, you win. Ergo: you'd best go along with prayer and belief since its your only chance to win. The most peculiar thing about Healing Words, however, is that Dossey can’t seem to make up his mind about whether Pascal is right. We'd all be better served-Dossey, his patients, his readers, and the general public-if Dossey would take his head out of the clouds, plant his feet on the ground, and stop talking nonsense. Everyone knows that evil looks won’t kill you. We also know that sticks and stones will break your bones and a doctor’s words alone-no matter how kind or gentle-will never heal you.

What I like is the irrelevant logic. “Because of its speed, Tachyon can exist everywhere.” A non sequitur if I ever heard one. Before it can exist anywhere, a tachyon must exist somewhere. And there’s the rub.

About 25 years ago, a number of physicists suggested the possibility that there exist particles that normally travel faster than the speed of light. In order for this hypothesis to be consistent with relativity, the mass of such particles would have to be imaginary-that is, contain the square root of minus one. Gerald Feinberg gave this hypothetical particle the name “tachyon” and was most prominent in publicizing his brainchild, with the aid of an avid press corps. Mind you, the theory was a proper theory in the sense that it was mathematically consistent, and also because it predicted certain observable consequences-namely, that if tachyons existed they would emit a certain type of radiation (Cerenkov radiation) in a vacuum. This radiation was searched for, and none was found. So, after a flurry of excitement, physicists lost interest in tachyons and went on to more massive hypotheses, such as black holes. As far as physicists are concerned, tachyons do not exist. (But black holes do!)

However, that small fact does not deter the spiritualists of the Pacific Coast. To them, giving the tachyon a name is the same as proving its existence. They then expect the skeptics to prove that it does not exist. For this reason we must always remember the first rule of skepticism: Those who claim the existence of any object or entity have the responsibility of proving its existence.

Don't let the believers sucker you into thinking you have to prove the nonexistence of something that does not exist.

Pseudoscience in the media, Part II

In the last issue I related my experiences as an interviewee for a TV magazine show that dealt with healing by prayer (The Bulletin with Larry Kane, which aired on April 15 at 8:00 PM, on KYW-TV, an NBC affiliate). I was pleased at having a whole interview to myself, in my own office. It seemed a lot better than being part of a talk show with three psychics arrayed on the stage against little me.

When I finally saw the show, I realized that I had not counted on the mighty power of the editor. In the 15 minutes devoted to the topic of psychic healing, the only skeptic (me) got at most one minute. Brenda Dunne made the most of her prestigious connection with Princeton University. (Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne have spent many years in a laboratory at Princeton purporting to demonstrate that the mind can change the motions of electrons and the workings of random-number generators.) The fact that most of the faculty at Princeton considers this work an embarassment wasn’t mentioned. The program also gave much time to research I had never heard of showing that prayer improves the life of bacteria and earthworms, as well as humans.

I must say, however, that in my one minute of fame I sounded very good. All I said was that nobody had demonstrated the existence of psychic forces that allow one mind to directly influence things happening at a distance. As far as physics is concerned, these forces do not exist.

Once more we find ourselves dealing with the fundamental question posed in the paragraph above: If somebody says something exists, who is responsible for proving its existence? There is no physical evidence for any kind of psychic force. Yet a majority of people (even many scientists) believe that they exist. Belief without evidence is a symptom of a religious system. You can’t argue with that kind of belief, and I don’t want to. But as soon as you claim that scientific experiments give evidence for that belief, then scientists have the responsibility to examine that claim and to see if that evidence is truly valid. And as soon as you get into that area, the rigid rules of scientific research must be followed.

An article in the Buffalo News (March 27, 1994) comes with the headline “Time Travel into the Past is a Theoretical Possibility". Well, so it is, if you can find yourself a convenient black hole in the right position and manage to get through it without being destroyed, while ending up back on earth in the past or future. This author disposes of the various time-travel paradoxes by proposing that everytime there is a time-travel event the universe splits into two branches, so that after your temporal voyage you find yourself on a different branch and you can’t kill your grandmother after all. (Or, more precisely, if you kill a lady you think is your grandmother in this branch of spacetime you never get born; but your birth was in another branch.) Gee whillikers, I think the first time I encountered this idea was in a science-fiction story about 15 years ago. Let’s get with it, fellas.

A most fascinating notice recently came to my attention via Barry Karr. It is an announcement for an International Symposium on New Energy held in Denver on May 12-15. (Sorry this date has already passed.) The list of topics is exhilaratingly comprehensive: cold fusion, quaternions (a mathematical device of nineteenth-century origin), “N” machine, Perpetuum Mobile, Zero Point Energy, Casimire effect, Anti-Gravity, Space Power, Vacuum Triode Amplifier-Vacuum Triode Amplifier! I haven't seen one of those in 30 years. What are they doing with it now? Have they made one with an efficiency greater than 100 percent?

Sorry I couldn’t be at what must have been a very educational event, but I was spending the time posing as a target for 10-Mev X-ray machine, converting high energy photons into low energy electrons, positrons, and ions, with enough efficiency to burn my innards to a crisp. Ooh.

I am probably not the first person to entertain this thought, but it appears to me that the proposals described in the paragraphs above are examples of a general law of psychology called Conservation of Ideas. This law says that ideas cannot be destroyed-once an idea has been proposed it never goes away. Perpetual motion, cold fusion, tachyons, Elvis Presley, etc., all remain active somewhere no matter how many times they are killed. Even the idea of a a messiah, more than two thousand years old, remains powerful in spite of a total absence of material evidence in its favor. The recent death of Rabbi Schneeman will do nothing to change the beliefs of his followers.

CSICOP is pleased to report that interest in the booklet has been rewarding, not only do we receive orders from many individuals, but also from such institutions as the St. Louis Science Center, which is now selling the booklet in its Shop for Science. We also received an order for 100 copies to be used by the Smithsonian National Air Space Museum.

“Perry,” I replied, “What on earth are you talking about?”

“Well, you’re only fooling yourselves if you really think you've fooled the nation. I've been onto you people from the beginning!”

“What people are you talking about? Who have we been supposed to fool?” I queried.

“I’m talking about that organization of yours,” Perry answered, “That Psy-Cop bunch.”

“You mean CSI-COP, not PSY-COP,” I corrected.

“Well, whatever you call it. It really doesn't matter. I know exactly what you've been doing!”

“You do?” I smiled, “Well what is it that we've been doing?” I queried. “You can’t fool me,” Perry sputtered into my face. “I know that you’re working for the government and that you’re a tool of the CIA.”

“Oh, really?” I replied, my face showing my amazement.

“Yessiree. And I even know the year that the boys in Virginia created you. It was in August 1947, right after the Kenneth Arnold affair in which he reported those silvery objects in the air. They created you as a disinformation agency!”

All I could say to this was, “Oh, really, tell me more.” And he did.

“I figured it all out. And things really picked up after people started to contact and then started getting abducted. To keep the public off balance they had to create an entirely independent organization that would debunk everything the public was learning on its own. That’s when they created your group. And I know what your name really stands for too. It really means Committee for the Subversive Insemination of Counter- Offensive Propaganda. Our boys in Virginia are no dummies. They know that the best way to keep a secret of this magnitude, to really convince the public, is to pretend there is no secret and buy off the smartest and best people in the country-stooges, in a word-who will work on the public and persuade them that anybody who screams ‘Cover-Up’ is stark raving nuts!”

“Perry,” I remonstrated, “I have never heard anything more ridiculous in my life. I know these people and their-” He wouldn’t let me finish, but answered: "I know how they work! They get a bunch of scientists and scholars like Asimov, Sagan, Paul Kurtz, and Nobel laureates and have them debunk the truth and the real secret. The more educated, influential, and intelligent members of the general public will buy this in a minute and laugh their heads off at all the little ignoramuses who believe in the TRUTH that is alleged to be nonsense. You did manage to fool some people, but not me!”

“Perry, I hate to tell you this, but you are very, very wrong and you are talking crazy talk.” I tried to reason with him in vain.

“You can’t fool me. I’m onto all your scams. Even going back to that Orson Welles thing in 1938. Then there was that Jim Jones thing in Guyana in 1978. Then the space shuttle disaster thing that fooled the public into believing that the O-rings caused it. Well, none of these things fooled me for a moment! I knew all along what was really going on!”

Still trying to use logic and reason, I asked, “Well Perry, what was really going on?”

“Experiments designed by the best psychologists and media experts in the country to test the public’s credulity. That’s what! As if you didn’t know all along!”

“Perry, old man, you may be right, but this is the first I've heard about it. Believe me!” I put on my best mask of sincerity.

“Come on now. I know you’re on the inside and are playing footsie with all those psychologists and magicians from all over the country. Why you have managed to get even the media on your side. Every time they have a show where some poor but honest, uneducated slob gets on the tube and tells the truth about seeing ghosts or angels or extraterrestrial aliens or people bursting into flames spontaneously, the program always has one of you guys there to make a fool of him and sway the public not to believe these things really happen!”

“Do you really believe this my friend, or are you just pulling my leg?” I responded.

“Now don’t you try this ploy on me. I know what’s going on. This latest game of yours, where you all are trying to shift the public’s interest in alien abductions and UFOs to false memories of sexual abuse to see just how easy it is to manipulate them. Your attack on that poor Harvard professor who is trying to save us is not going to work either. I have been watching all of you very, very carefully, and I can tell you now that just because you are attracting more and more attention doesn't mean you will succeed. Sooner or later the public will catch on just like I did.”

Changing my tactics, I decided to go along. “Well,” I said, “What gave us away?”

“Oh it was almost obvious,” Perry sputtered. “I realized that you people went overboard. Methinks they protesteth too much! It was patent that Carl Sagan’s efforts in support of the U.S. Space Program were at base subversive and that he was secretly undermining it all along. That’s why SETI was canceled. And look at what Asimov did. Why, he fooled people into thinking he was dead! We both know that he is hiding out in Miami and writing propaganda for the secret service under an assumed name. And look at Paul Kurtz and his religious connections with the Soviet Union. Under the guise of humanistic atheism he has been building and strengthening the religious revolt behind the former Iron Curtain. Phil Klass’s secret efforts on behalf of the U.S. Air Force, the FBI, and the CIA to convince the public neither UFOs nor aliens exist has been wildly successful! Moreover, everyone knows all about Randi’s many, many trips to foreign climes and his success in undermining people’s belief in the facts of parapsychology and true magic which Randi knows better than anyone on Earth. And no one can ever deny that Joe Nickell’s efforts to demean and discredit the Shroud of our savior have been wildly successful, when Nickell himself knows it is Christ’s burial cloth! Then, if you look at the people in your organization’s front office: take this Barry Karr, who is obviously a KGB conspirator. His real name is probably Karr-ensky! Or something similar. And people with names like Doyle and Hays-obvious aliases for Doyavronsky and Haysanova.”

By now I was beginning to feel very anxious, and I guess it showed in my astonished expression because Noyeyuh then outdid himself.

“Now as for that other CIA tool of yours-the Weekly World News- it’s not working either!” Perry practically spit at me.

“It isn’t?” I asked incredulously.

“Of course not! We both know the aliens have already seized control and that you and yours now control the government and most corporations on earth. We also know that years ago you kidnapped Elvis and are holding him hostage. We also know that wealthy alien LBJ supporters had Kennedy shot, and that you aliens have already established bases on the Moon, Venus, and Mars. That’s how those WWII bombers and those faces and monuments got there. I know all about it, you see, because I am an alien too!”

With these terrible words he started ripping his clothes off, frothing at the mouth, and spilling his briefcase full of Prozac capsules all over the sidewalk. Fortunately, there were some of my alien friends nearby, so we managed to get him sedated and into one of our isolation wards before any harm was done. I really don’t think anyone else knows about either our mission or our true identity. I really don’t think anyone even suspects. I certainly hope not. But one never knows, does one?

The idea is not exclusively Christian, though the Book of Revelation is probably one of the most influential statements of millennialist ideas we have. But all that’s necessary to develop the notion of a final transformation of the world is the recognition that it isn’t perfect. Since anyone at all can see this, it follows that everyone can, and a great many people do, imagine its eventual change into something better, something perfect; in a word, into paradise.

Just about every culture has the idea that at the beginning the world was perfect; it is striking how similar visions of this Eden are, wherever they are found. The defining quality of paradise is simplicity. It is characterized everywhere by what it lacks. In paradise there is no illness, hence no doctors, no injustice, hence no conflict, courts, or lawyers. God governs, so there are no taxes. No one works; all the apparatus of wage slavery is also lacking. There is no economics in heaven, since there is plenty for all. There is no suffering, no deprivation, and no constraint. Gods and animals are like us, and we can talk to them. Heaven is a place where there are no categories. Paradise, if it’s to be had at all, is always to be restored.

Most of the time, for most people, the world as it is, is generally acceptable. We know how to get along inside the borders of common sense, and recognize that we have to accept what is and the rules that govern survival.

For some people all the time, this state of affairs is unacceptable. Nearly everybody becomes a millennialist, at least in potential, under certain special circumstances. Something happens to the rules. They stop making sense, and most of us can no longer make sense of our lives. Change is both pervasive and very rapid, and the structures of the everyday are overwhelmed, often all at once. For some years the paradigm for this situation was the colonial context, and colonial countries were where anthropologists went to study world-changers. There were always a few tiny “fringe” groups here in America as well, for America, in this as in so many ways, is a special case.

Many sources make plain their belief that American society and culture are in severe decline, as well as is the planetary infrastructure that support them. Many people are deeply concerned about their own and their country’s future. This perception is so commonplace that it hardly needs to be mentioned; it is also supported by census data.

A second condition that leads people to the millennium is an accepted belief in a final redemption of the world, or part of it. It may be argued that in America, or in Mainstream America at any rate, the people who “really count” don’t have these beliefs. It’s true that such ideas are certainly not part of liberal education, at least not in the sense that a supernatural intervention is foretold by practitioners of that discipline. (Religious education, of course, is another matter.)

But even in the most secular schools of American thought, ideas of world-redemption arise repeatedly, in various costumes, but still offering a millennial hope, for all that. For a long time it was fashionable to talk of America as having a “manifest destiny"; its role was to “make the world safe for democracy.” And America is not the only refuge for or victim of these fantasies. Marxism has found kinder homes elsewhere, but it promises a global salvation no less sure than Christianity’s. Nazism made the same offer.

America is a culture whose single deepest belief is that humans and their lives are perfectable, and America is also thought to be in decline. This primary cultural value is no longer routinely accessible. Bettering oneself is ever harder to do, and the likelihood of millennialist excitement grows. When this mix is confronted with a context in which a millennium actually is approaching, even though it’s no more than calendrical, the probability gets so close to certainty as not to matter.

When many people are, or think they are, afflicted in this way, they begin to seek some kind of redress, but they have to look outside the familiar structures, because by definition they have failed. It is in this context that the most successful prophets arise.

Still, there are certain factors that seem likely to prevent such movements from attracting large followings. Among them is the country’s cultural and social diversity. An intense and quasi nationalist outsider group (that is, a small one) is the best breeding ground for these ideas, which flourish in neo-Nazi and racist circles, among others. Ideas of threatened purity are often central to the millennium. This will probably be a limiting factor on the size and influence of these groups. Another is that they rarely attract those in socially elite positions-after all, why should the well off invite an end to their comfortable world? Nevertheless, such people do sometimes become active in these groups, and can be problematic in that position, since they may provide an entree to the establishment that might otherwise be wanting.

This situation is always potentially dangerous, primarily for the members of the group. First, governments in this country are almost by law profoundly ignorant of the meaning and power of religious ideas. Religion is explicitly, and properly, none of their ordinary business. Consequently, it is nearly incomprehensible to them that religious suicide like what may have happened at Waco could be a sane choice. But for believers in the millennium, death in defense of the cause is never a misfortune, but rather an opportunity; to live forever in paradise, the martyr’s reward.

Second, millenarists generally cast the government, the powers of this wicked world, as Antichrist and consequently can scarcely help but anticipate destruction. Confrontations with government are nearly inevitable, since by definition millennialists owe obedience to God, not to “Satan’s” earthly rule of law. They may sometimes provoke a confrontation, as the People’s Temple surely did with the murder of Congressman Ryan at Jonestown. Their suicide is religiously explicable as a sort of pre-emptive strike, to avoid falling into the hands of the Moloch state.

Third, movements like these attract and grow charismatic leaders, of which this century has already seen more than its share. These leaders are always unpredictable, and may have an excessive degree of power, since the devotion they demand is never less than total. Stalin and Hitler come to mind as prime examples of the type.

A good deal of the danger of bloody confrontations can be averted, however, if police agencies and other government officers can learn to take into account what millennialists believe-for their beliefs will determine their actions, as they do for everyone. What this means is that officers making arrests or serving warrants will be well advised to make a minimum show of force under the circumstances. David Koresh stood trial for murder in 1987; that warrant was served by telephone, according to my sources. Koresh came voluntarily, when he heard of the warrant.

The opposite tactic, used by both the BATF and the FBI at Waco, seems unnecessary on the face of it: Koresh wasn’t actively threatening anyone with his arsenal. What’s worse, it can only have fueled the Davidians’ fears of Armageddon. Seeing their prophecies fulfilled can only have incited them, and the FBI’s subsequent behavior in what they imagined to be a “hostage” situation alleviated nothing. (How they arrived at that conclusion about people who had gathered in a commune because they wanted to be there eludes me). I suppose the fact that they were in an enclosed space and didn’t want to come out persuaded the officers that they were dealing with a more or less routine hostage situation. If I were to give someone a script for the role of the Antichrist I would definitely have him play tapes of the screams of butchered rabbits to “demoralize” people in a siege. The actual effect of these tactics was certainly the opposite of that intended. They can only have strengthened the Davidians’ resolve to resist to the end.

There was one remarkable omission from “The Diary of a No-Body” (SB, June 1994). Lewis Jones made absolutely no mention of dreams and dreaming. Yet no one seems to have offered any reason why we should not say that those who have near-death or out-of-body experiences (NDEs or OBEs) are having dreams of a sort.

So if anyone wants to say that some patients with such experiences somehow did actually make trips out of their bodies and did not merely dream that they did, then we need to be told not only why something more than a dream was involved but also what that something was that supposedly made a trip out of its body.

The only reason for holding that something more than a normal dream has sometimes been involved which has ever been offered to me is the claim that sometimes patients who had OBEs have subsequently produced, about places supposedly visited while out of the body, information that was not accessible to them from the positions in which their bodies were at the time of their OBEs.

If the truth of such claims could be established, then that certainly would constitute evidence of paranormal extrasensory perception (ESP); but of ESP by the patients of the OBEs lying in their beds and to all appearance asleep. Since the immaterial something hypothesized as the supposed out of the body tripper could have no sense organs, any information it obtained would have to be obtained by ESP. It would, therefore, be a gross offense against Ockhamist principles of postulational economy in addition to attempt to hypothesize an immaterial out of the body tripper. “Attempt” is the key word here, for it is very far from certain that such an attempt can succeed. See, for instance, Part V of Readings in the Philosophical Problems of Parapsychology, ed. by Antony Flew (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1987).

Yours Faithfully,
Antony Flew

To the Editor: Bob Dietz (SB, June 1994) objects to Carl Sagan’s assertion (following the work of Tom Gilovich) that the “hot hand” in basketball does not really exist. Dietz urges that you “keep this stuff out of SB unless you have someone in-house who has some semi-sophisticated sports knowledge.”

I suggest that Dietz refrain from such comments unless he has some "semi-sophisticated” statistics knowledge. The hot hand is a relatively simple example of the kind of phenomena that CSICOP watches regularly. There is no objective evidence for a hot hand in basketball either at the professional level or at the college level, despite several observational studies and some designed experiments. (See How We Know What Isn't So, by Tom Gilovich, [Free Press, 1991].

The natural null hypothesis in this case is that there is no special magical effect of making several baskets in a row. That is, a player’s chance of making the subsequent field goal is a probability that reflects his overall abilities and changes little during a game-or even across several games. Apparent runs of successes and failures are the naturally occurring runs of a random binomial event (a coin flip with an unbalanced coin) with that success probability. Those who assert, as Dietz does, that there is a hot hand in basketball have the onus of proof on them. Simply asserting that the hot hand exists because you believe in it is no different from asserting that astrology predicts the future or that UFOs exist. The fact that a supposed phenomenon is widely believed to exist is hardly objective evidence of its existence.

Gilovich explains how people can come naturally to believe in a hot hand when what they see is only a random binomial process. I discuss the hot hand in my statistics classes and never fail to find students who are as certain as Dietz that I must be wrong. The illusion is so compelling that, even when we know that what we are seeing is random, it is hard not to find a pattern. SB should be commended for bringing this phenomenon (and Gilovich’s book) to wider attention.

Paul F. Velleman
Dept. of Economic and Social Statistics
Cornell University
Ithaca, N.Y.

Dear Editor: It is articles like Lewis Jones’s “The Diary of a No-Body", that unfortunately give skepticism a bad name. His simplistic discussion of “Near Death” and “Out of Body” experiences, which limited itself to a false dichotomy of either soul/astral body on the one side or fantasy/urban myth on the other, showed a surprising ignorance of Susan Blackmore’s third approach, as discussed in her Fall 1991 article in the Skeptical Inquirer.

Blackmore searches for an alternative (in the structure of the brain and the workings of consciousness) to the “certain afterlife/separate soul” theory of these phenomena, without disregarding either their existence or the effect they have had on numerous lives. It is a fact that many people have had spontaneous, life-changing NDEs and OBEs, regardless of the literal accuracy of their philosophic comprehension of these events.

One may discount (as I do) the existence of a “personal savior god,” or an afterlife, or a separate “spirit-soul,” without disregarding the actual experiences of a large and growing group of people. OBEs and NDEs are phenomena to be studied and understood, not dismissed out of hand through the convenient and somewhat condescending limitations of simplistic false dichotomy.

Whether or not there is something that actually leaves the body, something experiential is happening that, at the very least, has convinced a sizable collection of individuals that this is the case. Blackmore and others feel that this is a worthwhile and potentially valuable area of study.

It is sometimes true that between any two choices, the third may be most promising.

Michael Steinberg
Berkeley, Calif.

Lewis Jones responds: My article was not about experiences: it was about claims that something physical can literally leave the human body and roam the world, seeing and remembering. (At the London Institute of Psychiatry, they are trying to track down some entity that wanders up to the ceiling and makes observations.) The decision to forget about the claims and simply study “experiences” is a familiar fallback position in the world of the paranormal. I know there are those who consider this “a worthwhile and potentially valuable area of study.” I don’t, since nothing follows from it.

Keyhoe could not accept the case 100 percent, he admitted in a 1975 interview, but he did not reject it either. As mysteries go, Keyhoe’s question seemed safely rhetorical. Who knows why anyone dreams of one monster and not another? How would anyone even begin to investigate such a problem?

What could not have been foreseen was how serendipity would step in to break this minor mystery. The local PBS station a few years ago decided to rerun the old TV series “The Outer Limits.” It was one of the most visually amazing programs of my youth, and I eagerly tuned in to experience once more such sights as the horrifying Zanti misfits, the bee girl, moonstone, Borderland's ionic gale, the downshifting time machine of ”Controlled Experiment,” and David McCallum’s evolution into a megabrain.

It was during the showing of the ”Bellero Shield” episode that I felt the uncanny frisson of deja vu. The eyes of the alien were unusually long and wrapped around the side of the face. It quickly hit me that these eyes were just like the wraparound eyes that were drawn in The Interrupted Journey and the later, more-detailed drawing the Hills did in collaboration with the artist David Baker. Though I couldn’t articulate it at that instant, there were other similarities that contributed to the sense of a close relationship: no ears, no hair, no nose, and a cranium shaped like a bullet tilted backwards 45°. I was excited by the possibility of a match, because I was reasonably sure there were few or no other examples of aliens with wraparound eyes in science-fiction cinema. Moments later however my excitement became subdued. It dawned on me that “The Outer Limits” was a series of the mid- sixties and the Hill case dated to the early sixties-1961 or 1962. “The Bellero Shield” couldn’t have been an influence. Still, the book came out in 1966. Could the lag be significant? After the program ended, I dug into my library for a round of late-night research. “The Bellero Shield” aired February 10, 1964. The Hills’s UFO encounter happened in the morning of September 20, 1961. That probably should have killed the idea of any kind of influence, but the resemblance was just so compelling I couldn’t shake the feeling there had to be a relationship. I reread The Interrupted Journey. To my delight I discovered there was no mention of wraparound eyes in the earliest account. Betty’s dreams, written down a matter of days after the UFO sighting, mention men with Jimmy Durante noses, dark or black hair and eyes, and a relaxed human appearance that she said was “not frightening.” This is all quite different from the final product. The changes emerge in the hypnotic regression with the Hills’s psychiatrist, Dr. Simon. The most salient issue was when the wraparound eyes were first described. That turned out to be during a hypnosis session involving Barney Hill dated February 22, 1964. Not only did “The Bellero Shield” precede Barney’s first mention of wraparound eyes, it did by only 12 days!

I ordered the script of the show next. My thoughts were so distracted I realized I had missed the dialogue. This yielded additional evidence for the relationship. Judith, played by Sally Kellerman, is conversing with the Bifrost alien and asks it if it can read her mind. It answers, “No, I cannot read your mind. I cannot even understand your language. I analyze your eyes. In all the universes, in all the unities beyond all the universes, all who have eyes have eyes that speak.” Judith, intrigued, asks how it speaks her language. It elaborates, “I learn each word just before I speak it. Your eyes teach me.”

In saying that all eyes speak, the Bifrost alien is conveying a truth and simultaneously dodging the human/alien language-barrier problem by a unique dab of poetic license.

In the same hypnosis session in which Barney drew the wraparound eyes, there is this exercise in confusion: Yes. They won’t talk to me. Only the eyes are talking to me. I-I-I-I don’t understand that. Oh-the eyes don’t have a body. They're just eyes...” (Interrupted Journey, p. 124). Barney’s confusion about the talking eyes is one most viewers probably shared over the writer’s gimmick employed by the episode’s creators. The notion shared by both texts that eyes can talk defies dismissal via appeal to commonness or coincidence. By any measure, the case for influence here is not just satisfactory, it is exemplary. At least one abduction researcher has granted this point-Thomas Bullard, in “Folkloric Dimensions of the UFO Phenomenon", Journal of UFO Studies #3, 1991, p. 40).

The discovery of this pseudomemory will not shock hypnosis experts. They have long been aware of the danger of confabulation in regression work. There was no reason to expect The Interrupted Journey's narrative to be immune from such contamination. Belatedly, Keyhoe’s question thus finds itself answered with the mundane corollary that Barney had watched the science-fiction/horror series The Outer Limits shortly before his subconscious was called upon to imagine what a scary alien ought to look like. Betty Hill’s dream aliens were too normal to justify the fear he displayed during the original UFO experience.

Barney’s confabulation has other interesting repercussions. As Thomas E. Bullard (UFO Abductions, 1987) has pointed out, “wraparound eyes” is a term that has become common in the abduction literature. Case after case can be pointed to of people describing alien abductors with eyes that wrap, curl, or taper around the head.

This indicates the influential nature of the Hill case on the history of the imagery of abduction experiences. Before the Hills, wraparound eyes seem largely, probably totally, absent in the UFO literature. Cinematic aliens sporting wraparound eyes are similarly largely absent. But not totally. I eventually discovered one other instance. It is an unnamed mutant in Evil Brain from Outer Space, a Japanese film imported in 1964. Interestingly, one of the heads of Projects Unlimited, which provided the monsters for The Outer Limits, was named Wah Ming Chang. He was a talented sculptor and designed most of the head sculpts for the series. This may hint at cultural roots in Eastern myth or kabuki theatre, but I’m not prepared to follow the trail the distance to prove it.

The motif of the speaking eyes did not share in the popularity of the wraparound eyes. There is one example in Edith Fiore’s Encounters. The abductee named Victoria describes aliens communicating by simply looking at each other. It is tempting to speculate that the alien bonding practices involving staring described in Secret Life are descended from Barney’s talking eyes, but there are many complicating factors like strong hints of Star Trek’s Vulcan mind meld and a rich cluster of psychological symbolisms in staring eyes, such as love, intimacy, supervision, contempt, and predators, that seem more rewarding avenues of interpretation. The paucity of speaking eyes probably reflects the poor nature of verbal memory compared with visual memory. The confusing nature of the idea of talking eyes probably doesn't help. It may also be that hideous eyes have a defining role in creating an appropriately paranoia-inspiring iconography. As Keyhoe apparently sensed, they are more believably alien. The eyes say Them.

To the psychosocial theorist, the eyes whisper Us.

Can't wait that long? Well, according to Harold Camping, operator of the Family Network Radio, it is “very likely” the world will end this month—September 1994. In a New York Times article, reprinted in the July 16 Buffalo News, Camping said: “I keep checking and checking and listening to everyone that wants to speak to the issue. Is there anything I've missed? Is there anything I've overlooked? Is there anything that [my debate opponents] could offer that I've missed? And, frankly, I didn’t hear that.” The article goes on to mention that if Christ doesn't return in September, “it is a win-win situation since Family Radio and supporters have gotten better at proclaiming the Gospel. Family Radio’s giving is up 15 percent this year. Its annual budget is $12 million.”

Number of end-of-the-world predictions reported throughout all of recorded human history that have (so far) come true: 0. And counting. They keep makin’ ‘em, and we'll keep reportin’ ‘em.

Having this in mind, it is certainly no surprise that fringe science is alive and well in Puerto Rico. The media there often report on weeping icons, UFO sightings and alleged alien abductions, miracle healings, and even the local version of Bigfoot. Television and print coverage is unashamedly uncritical of such reports. Even insignificant and easy-to- dismiss claims are given inordinate amounts of coverage on local talk-shows, contributing to the public’s belief that there must be something to them. The academic community is not exempt from such beliefs either. I still remember when a psychology professor of mine planned a class trip to see a replica of the Shroud of Turin on display in a nearby shopping mall. “A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he said, “empirical evidence of a miracle.” I dropped the course that afternoon.

At one time, the university I attended sponsored a talk by Duane T. Gish, the creationism champion. Around 60 people attended the presentation and nearly every one of them was a supporter of creation science. I could see the nods and smiles of assent at everything Gish said. It was amusing to see that some of them seemed to agree with his ideas even when they did not know what he was talking about. For example, after the talk, I asked a fellow student sitting in front of me why he agreed with Gish. “I really cannot say for sure. He seems to know what he’s talking about,” he replied.

It appeared that there were only three skeptics in the room: a friend of mine, a professor of biochemistry, and myself. During the question period, the biochemistry professor took the opportunity to debate Gish on the issue of the probability of amino acids assembling themselves so as to permit the development of life, a topic Gish had discussed early in his talk. After an exchange of impressions, Gish decided to end the argument by questioning the professor’s credentials, saying something to the effect that she was not qualified to speak on those matters. Just for the record, she had a Ph.D. in biochemistry and her dissertation had been on that very topic.

The pervasiveness of fringe-science claims among the Puerto Rican culture was patently laid out for me while I was working at a local bookstore in the metropolitan area. As in the U.S., the self-help and New Age sections attracted the most people and accounted for a large part of the sales. Top-sellers included astrology literature, books on the so-called medical alternatives to Western medicine, reincarnation/past-lives accounts, and practically anything written by Edgar Cayce, Carlos Castaneda, and the late Norman Vincent Peale. (Curiously, Shirley McLaine was not in demand.)

Among my duties at the bookstore was to order the books for the Science, Philosophy, Science Fiction, and Psychology sections. At times I would order books critical of pseudoscience and the paranormal to include them in the science section. Needless to say, they did not sell well at all. Just about the only copies sold were those I acquired for personal enjoyment. I quit the job a year ago (for unrelated reasons), and I would bet that the skeptical books are still sitting on the shelf, waiting to be savored, while in the meantime pseudoscientific titles are bought as quickly as they can be restocked.

I remember at one time asking the owner of the store— half-jokingly—why he carried so many books of questionable quality, to which he replied, quite predictably: “I know most of it is rubbish. However, it sells and ultimately provides for your paycheck.” I had considered asking him to include the Skeptical Inquirer in the magazine rack, but after this I knew better.

Working in the bookstore was interesting also because people with altogether different outlooks were working together. There we were, the oriental philosophy junkie, the New Age buff, the UFO proponent, the religious devotee, the parapsychology supporter, and me, the lonesome skeptic. On more than one occasion I found myself engaged in lively argument with one or more of my co-workers on matters paranormal. As is usually the case, nothing was accomplished. To this date, I still receive letters from my good friend the New Age enthusiast urging me to “get in touch with my sensitive self” and reminding me there are other wonderful things out there that science “can’t even hope to envision.” Oh, well.

Last Christmas, New Scientist readers came up with suggestions for gifts to famous individuals. Some rubber ducks for Archimedes. A set of dice for Einstein. Protective headgear and a cider press for Newton. The address of a good patent lawyer for Leonardo da Vinci. A cat flap for Schrodinger. A bigger notebook for Fermat.

The aftershave, as you may have guessed, was for William of Occam. The village of Occam, where he was born, was in the southern English county of Surrey; it still is-only a mile or two off the orbital freeway that rings London.

If you come across his name these days, it’s likely to be as part of the term Occam’s Razor: “Entities should not be multiplied without necessity.” To persuade you of its authenticity, the statement often drags in tow the original Latin formulation: “Entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate.” But if you bump into it again, you might find it presented as “Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.” Yes, you spotted the catch-how can there be two different authentic versions? In fact, there are not two. There isn’t even one. The statement appears nowhere among his extant writings, even though he would probably have agreed with the gist of it.

It was not new. Robert Grosseteste, a chancellor of William’s own university (Oxford) had written: “That is better and more valuable which requires fewer, other circumstance being equal; which necessitates the answering of a smaller number of questions for a perfect demonstration.... As Aristotle says in Book V of the Physics, “Nature operates in the shortest way possible.” And the Franciscans in general leaned heavily on the principle.

William took against the prevailing notion that universals (or abstractions, as we would call them today) existed separately in their own right, apart from individual things. Abstractions, he said, were no more than convenient names. The idea that abstractions should be afloat in the world divorced from objects was, he wrote, “simply false and absurd.”

Then came the step that caused trouble. You could not, he said, find out about the world by just sitting and thinking. Reason alone could prove nothing: you had to deal with things you could observe. It sounds an innocent move in the argument. But its continuation went like this: no one can therefore show that God exists by simply reasoning about it. This was what probably cost William his doctorate at Oxford. The Pope declared him a heretic, and excommunicated him. William compared the papal lifestyle unfavorably with the Franciscan doctrine of absolute poverty and said it was the Pope who was the heretic. Things were never the same again between Pope John the 22nd and “the great iconoclast.”

These days, the Razor is used mostly in the context of discussions about scientific method. It is often said that the Razor means choosing the explanation that is simplest. This is almost always a mistake: the search for the “simplest” is a semantic minefield. Besides, this so-called Law of Parsimony is far from true, as a browse through some of the devious and often wasteful mechanisms of evolution will soon show you. (Divine whim is a much "simpler” explanation of the remnants of a whale’s back legs.) The Razor is most sensibly used to advise against explaining the unknown by inventing things that are themselves unexplained (such as the mental furniture devised to explain the workings of psychoanalysis, or the concoction of “thought waves” to explain claims of telepathy).

In recent years, I've noticed that the Razor has tended to divorce itself from the name of William of Occam and has taken to attaching itself to new partners. Karl Popper (in Conjectures and Refutations) has proposed Berkeley’s Razor-"This razor is sharper than Occam’s: all entities are ruled out except those which are perceived.”

There is also the Liberal Razor-"The state is a necessary evil: its powers are not to be multiplied beyond what is necessary.”

And Popper (in Objective Knowledge) is the only one I have come across who has warned against oversimplifying a complex world by a too enthusiastic use of the Razor: “My point is that only after recognizing the plurality of what there is in the world can we seriously begin to apply Occam’s razor. To invert a beautiful formulation of Quine’s, only if Plato’s beard is sufficiently tough and tangled by many entities, can it be worth our while to use Occam’s razor. That the razor’s edge will be dulled in being used for this tough job is only to be expected. The job will no doubt be painful. But it is all in a day’s work.”

My memory told me that I had come across Hume’s Razor somewhere, but a search through hundreds of pages of philosophical writings failed to reveal it. I finally asked Antony Flew if he could come up with a reference for me. He convinced me that I had simply misremembered, but to fill the vacancy he reminded me of an excellent candidate from Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: “If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, does it contain any abstract reasoning, concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning, concerning matter of fact or existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”

Hume’s Razor? Why not? But in all of this, let us not forget to tip our hats in the direction of the fourteenth-century Franciscans, and in particular, William of Occam-the monk who could really cut it.