Feng shui is the ancient Chinese art of creating living space that’s in harmony with the universal energy, or qi, that supposedly flows through it. The practice dates back to the twelfth century and incorporates aspects of astrology, luck, and aesthetics. The aesthetic value of feng shui might have some merit, depending on the individual making the decorating decisions, but scientists are still waiting to see evidence that qi even exists, much less that it influences one’s romantic or financial condition. Besides, there are different schools of thought in feng shui, and masters advising on identical environments have been shown to radically disagree on what changes should be made. (See the episode of Penn and Teller: Bullshit! illustrating this.)

If the value of feng shui for humans is dubious, the joy that it brings into monkeys’ lives seems, shall we say, yet to be established. Indeed, I invite any scholarly research on monkey luck and any evidence showing baboon behavior changing with the alteration of a door’s location.

Since science seemed to be escaping from the zoo, it was time for a visit from CFI. I was the first community speaker to be heard at the zoo’s March 20 Board of Commissioners meeting and was allowed three minutes to try to convince the commissioners that feng shui wasn’t worth forty-five cents, much less $4,500.

To her credit, one commissioner said she was surprised at hearing this had been approved. The zoo staff member who green-lighted the feng fee was not present to defend him or herself, but another staffer said it was an effort to replicate the cultural aspects of a rural Chinese village where these monkeys are from. “Why not just hire someone to recreate the look of a village,” I asked. “You don’t need all that ‘energy’ mumbo jumbo to make it look the same.”

They seemed to agree, and I got the distinct impression there was at least a hint of embarrassment over the whole affair. We can only hope. . . .

Renier, who has been featured in numerous episodes of Court TV’s pro-paranormal Psychic Detectives series, probably trails only Sylvia Browne as America’s—and perhaps even the world’s—best-known self-styled psychic sleuth. But even Browne is notorious for some well-publicized psychic stink bombs, so it’s understandable that Renier might have been clueless that she would get killed in court over the publication of A Mind for Murder, her 2005 memoir.

Renier’s book was promptly pulled when the publisher learned, from Merrell’s attorney, that Renier and Merrell had signed a settlement agreement in 1992 prohibiting either party from ever again publicly disparaging the other. Renier had won a $25,000 libel judgment against Merrell in 1986, which he unsuccessfully contested in two courts, and this settlement, which also included a $23,800 payment to Renier, was to have finally put their battles to bed. It shouldn’t take an attorney, much less a psychic, to recognize that A Mind for Murder’s two chapters devoted to Renier’s history with Merrell, in which she accuses him of lying in court and other misconduct, was a flagrant violation of that agreement. Merrell thus sued Renier in December 2005 for breach of contract.

As the case played out in U.S. District Court in Washington state, where Merrell now resides, a posting (subsequently removed) by Renier on her Web site placed the blame on her publisher for having “neglected to spot the problem that was to materialize in this latest lawsuit, although they were told to be very careful.” I’m no psychic (I don’t even play one on TV), but I sense that they might have spotted the problem had Renier spotted them a copy of her unambiguous, legally binding settlement agreement.

Equally clear was the settlement’s stipulation that, should someone breach the contract, thus precipitating a lawsuit, the prevailing party’s legal fees would be reimbursed by the breaching party. Yet again, Renier’s position strained credulity, with her attorney insisting that, because Merrell failed to claim any substantial monetary damages and his complaints against Renier’s publisher and coauthor had been dismissed, Merrell was not the prevailing party. This was in spite of the judge’s earlier pronouncement that “Ms. Renier breached the agreement.”

Judge James L. Robart’s final ruling, issued on April 5, 2007, reaffirmed that Renier was the breaching party, Merrell was the prevailing party, and that Renier was obligated to reimburse Merrell for his attorney’s fees and other legal costs in the amount of $39,558. All of Renier’s counterclaims were denied. Her book has not been rehabilitated, and her own legal fees are estimated to exceed $35,000.

On his own Web site, Merrell has floated two intriguing, though somewhat fanciful, ideas for Renier to ponder. The first has her coauthoring another book, this time with a skeptic like me or Joe Nickell, revealing “how international psychics have fooled the public and media.” The second has Merrell agreeing to donate $10,000 in Renier’s name to a children’s charity and erasing her $39,558 debt entirely, should she in a timely manner be able to “prove under a qualified and sanctioned test something as simple as her claims of human levitation, psychic sight through clothing, or her two-way communication with trees.” The former—if Renier is consciously aware, and agreeable to confessing, that she is no more “psychic” than the rest—could have best-seller potential. The latter, on the other hand, would require that Renier actually demonstrate psychic ability under properly controlled conditions, and, based upon my own personal history with her, my money says she wouldn’t dare make the attempt—not even for Randi’s $1,000,000 reward.

For the first time, Eve and his fellow researchers have begun to examine how science literacy scores on standardized tests may be partially due to generational or cohort effects. In other words, most of our grandparents didn’t even attend college, so it would be surprising if today’s generation didn’t outscore previous ones. Such research is beginning to make it possible to separate out the effects of innovations in the teaching of science from improvements that might have occurred due to generational effects. The researchers found that in spite of the mass media’s regular litany of doom and gloom about science education in the U.S. recent innovations in teaching science seem to be paying off in somewhat better scores for students, scores that can be attributed to better science teaching—not just cohort effects. The same also applies to the recently reduced belief in pseudoscience, particularly for topics unrelated to religiously influenced pseudoscientific beliefs.

One finding by the panel was that U.S. high school students are leaving high school dramatically unprepared for scientific literacy, but that both at the high school and college levels the situation is improving somewhat. In fact, the percentage of Americans with basic scientific literacy has almost tripled in the last two decades.

As a somewhat surprising result, brand new research presented at the meetings by panel participant Jon D. Miller of Michigan State University shows U.S. adults to now be second in the world in terms of science literacy (behind only Sweden), although this still represents only 28 percent of the total U.S. population. Interestingly, since this is apparently not attributable to high-school preparation per se, Miller said it appears that taking even one course in science in college leads students to become self-educators in science throughout life. (Meaning, for example, that if one gets cancer it doesn’t take long for them to use secondary sources from the Internet and elsewhere to soon know a lot about medicine.) Hence, we now need much better understanding of how a college education can lead to lifelong learning in science and how best to integrate collegiate science learning with informal science learning once out of the academic environment.

The workshop’s sponsor was PESI, LLC, which, according to its Web site, provides “quality continuing education to nursing, mental health, legal, business, education, real estate, and other professionals nationwide.” Contacted about the content of the workshop, Cindy King, of PESI customer service, stated that PESI, LLC, makes no claims about the scientific basis of the research provided in the psychic events workshop. She indicated that PESI, LLC, provides a number of other workshops that are scientifically based but that many customers enjoy other types of workshops.

It’s disconcerting that a psychic events workshop that the sponsor indicates is not necessarily scientifically based is offered simply because it is enjoyed by customers. The fact that continuing education credit for this workshop would be granted to psychologists, counselors, nurses, social workers, and marriage and family therapists is appalling. An e-mail addressing the content of the workshop was sent to the associations and boards that had designated PESI as an approved provider. Karen Kanefield, the director of the Continuing Education Sponsor Approval System of the American Psychological Association, responded immediately. She said that the content of the psychic-events workshop does not meet the curriculum-content requirements of the APA and that PESI would be informed that the workshop “is not suitable as continuing education for psychologists.” 

An answer from Anne Garfield, Recertification and Continuing Education Assistant for the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC), was not so direct. Garland indicated that she would followup with PESI to get further information. Garland and Pamela Leary, NBCC Credentialing Services Department administrator, reviewed the presentation materials and concluded that although the topic of psychic events is “uncomfortable” for many people and not “completely in the mainstream” the information to be presented came from “noteworthy sources” including Einstein, Edison, Freud, Jung, Margaret Mead, and Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. Garland said the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the American Journal of Psychiatry are referenced throughout the presentation and that much of the presentation is based on work from the Rhine Research Center at Duke University.

In a follow-up e-mail to Garland, it was pointed out that the fact that Jane Goodall and other “noted and respected” individuals believe that they have experienced psychic events does not make such events scientifically valid. Furthermore, the Rhine Research Center is no longer affiliated with Duke University, and the most recent research conducted at the Rhine Center—in the words of the parapsychological researchers themselves—reveals weak effects, no effects, or “controversial” results. Furthermore, Garland was informed that a search of JAMA and the American Journal of Psychiatry for information on psychic phenomena revealed eleven articles published between 1972 and 1985. Of the eleven articles, seven report on actual studies of psychic phenomena.

Without exception, the research involved retrospective, anecdotal accounts of events—weak methodology with virtually no controls. Garland responded immediately and said that they would reexamine the presentation “in greater detail” based on the additional information that had been provided. However, a follow-up e-mail to Garland regarding the results of the reexamination went unanswered. To have such a workshop considered for presentation is cause for alarm. But the fact that the APA deemed the workshop inappropriate for continuing-education credit and that the NBCC agreed to reexamine the workshop are promising and positive steps. Perhaps we have taken a step toward indeed “coming to our senses.”

Now, the point I’d like to make is this: the fact that we don’t comprehend something doesn’t necessarily mean that the thing is absurd. Or profound. Our mere lack of comprehension should not cause us either to dismiss it out of hand or to think that it must be wonderfully brilliant. This is a somewhat obvious cautionary reminder, but people have a tendency to view ideas and other things they don’t quite understand as being at one of these two extremes. For example, an awful lot of total nonsense has been written by cultural relativists about there being no such thing as objective truth, that truth is nothing but a mere cultural artifact, a social creation and convention, and that goes for science and all other values of all descriptions about everything. Postmodern philosophers write incredible rubbish about science, about art, about literature, about anything that comes to mind, and the intellectually chic and with-it lap it up, because they’ve decided it must be very profound stuff if they can’t fathom it. (Of course they don’t say they can’t fathom it.) And if our pretensions go the other way, if our intellectual posturings respond in the alternative direction, we decide that if we, in all our glorious and majestic wisdom, can’t understand something, it must, ipso facto and slam dunk, not be worth our time and effort to try. Both attitudes, both posturings, are self-destructive of intellect. Both should be avoided like the plague.

It’s not easy to do this, to keep our minds open and at the same time know when to slam them shut, to know what is very possible, what is vaguely plausible, and what is total crap. Naturally, the more we know about the subject, the more likely it is that we won’t come to ridiculous conclusions about it. But there’s no ironclad guarantee about that. Very knowledgeable people have come to very wrong and even stupid conclusions about all manner of things throughout human history, even before Aristotle, one of the most intelligent human beings who ever lived and who came to all kinds of wrong conclusions. And then there was his teacher, Plato, who has confused more people about more things over more time than anyone else who ever lived. So it isn’t that the experts are necessarily stupid (not necessarily) as much as it is that they lack enough detailed knowledge and therefore the ability (often through no fault of their own—Newton would have profited by having knowledge of special and general relativity but can hardly be blamed for this failure) to use that knowledge properly, to work out, interpret what facts they do have in the right way, because the facts they don’t have and maybe can’t possibly have preclude this. Added to this is the likelihood that they can’t possibly know precisely what facts they are lacking. Generally, no one can be blamed, but that shouldn’t prevent us from bearing this problem in mind the next time an expert tells us something based on his expertise. More worryingly, there are many occasions when the experts can be and should be blamed, even scientific ones. Witness the Bogdanov brothers, proclaimed as geniuses by one set of physics experts and as makers of absolute rubbish by another set of physics experts.

And then there is the case of an undisputed genius.

While working on the mathematics of his general theory, Einstein discovered to his surprise that, according to his calculations, the universe wasn’t static but must be expanding or contracting. But all the experts knew the universe was static, and so Einstein, who was no expert in astronomy, bowed to their superior expertise and forced himself to invent a get-out clause, the Cosmological Constant, an ad hoc, arbitrary force by which the universe stayed the same size forever by counteracting gravity. A few years later, when Friedmann in Russia and Hubble in California showed that the universe was expanding, Einstein sighed oy veh and called his Constant the biggest blunder in his life: he had discovered that the universe was increasing in volume and threw this immensely important discovery away in order to, as the saying goes, “save the appearances” rather than have faith in what his equations told him, whatever the experts said.1

And just to show that there is irony within irony, over the last twenty years or so, several cosmologists have re-thought the Cosmological Constant and decided that it, or something very much like it, may well be required after all, and they call it “dark energy,” “vacuum energy,” “lambda,” “quintessence,” and one or two other things that I can’t recall at the moment. I guess it shows that we shouldn’t be too quick to jump. And it also shows that we shouldn’t be too slow to jump. This is the celebrated Goldilocks Principle, finding Baby Bear’s chair, porridge, and bed not too hard, not too soft, not too hot, not too cold, but just right. Easy to talk about, not so easy to put into effect, especially when you don’t know everything, which is always the case, even with experts. For example, a slight problem still remains with vacuum energy, the “dark energy” of so-called empty space. According to the arithmetic, the amount of this energy exceeds the amount that has been actually observed by a factor of 10123—that is to say, 1 followed by 123 noughts, a noticeable discrepancy. (To be fair to the physicists, I’ve come across other, lower estimates, the lowest discrepancy being merely 1056.)

It gets worse. Some physicists have begun challenging long-held shibboleths about the “constants” of nature, like gravity’s strength, light’s velocity, the ratio between the proton’s mass and that of the electron, and the “fine-structure constant,” which governs the interaction of light and electrons. These soi-distant constants vary over time, they proclaim. Other physicists hotly reject this blasphemy, this shattering of physics’ holy-of-holies.

So, what is the point of all this? The point is that a balance must be struck so that nonestablishment science ideas are given a public outing, while nonscientific ideas masquerading as science are not allowed to get away with calling themselves science, or at least not get away with it without a big rumpus. Of course, the problem involves separating the sheep from the goats. Don’t ask me for the magic formula of how you do this. All I know is that some funny scientific ideas are worth thinking about and worth going out looking for evidence for and against and some aren’t. You work it out. I’m just the idea man. All I can say is that it involves balance.

Balancing things, one against the other, is always a good idea; it keeps us from being too credulous or too cock-sure, believing whatever nonsense the experts dish out, just because we don’t understand, or sneering an idea out of our contemptuous consideration, just because we don’t understand.

And so, now I read that someone at the University of Ulm has decided that the universe is shaped like a trumpet— not the modern sort that curls around and has valves but like the old-fashioned kind that blew fanfares and flourishes, and has a straight tube that flares out into negative curvature, like a Pringle potato chip, at one end and, at the other, just tapers down to a point—no mouthpiece, just a point—and beyond the point, nothing. I’m writing this well after breakfast but I’m still not able to believe in six impossible things. And then I think: is this just the wise old skepticism of a wise old man who has heard it all before? Or is it just the arrogance of ignorance? I’m not sure. But I feel vaguely worried. And then I ask a God I don’t believe in to let me learn a whole lot more than I know now, or think I know now. So that I won’t run the risk of being too clever by half, or too stupid by a hundredfold.

Because, when you stop to think about it, this is an utterly incredible, marvelous universe we inhabit. We shouldn’t worship it, but we should, I think, be awestruck by it and learn as much as we can about it, as a sort of tribute to it. And be grateful that we have had the opportunity to become, if only for a little while, acquainted with some small part of it. And what a rare and extraordinary privilege to be part of it. Think (as well as you can) of all the possible beings, all the life-forms, conscious or not, that might have existed since the dawn of time (if time had a dawn) but never got the opportunity to exist because, as bad luck and circumstance dictated, Darwinian natural selection and accident ruled them out, through no fault of their own. Yet, somehow, for reasons we cannot begin to understand, we have existed, we have occupied time and space. And, what’s more, been granted brains to use, if we choose to. Incredible. Wondrous. Miraculous.

And so you wonder why on earth—or anywhere—beings supplied with a brain need gods and their miracles and the whole shebang, the whose paraphernalia of the paranormal and the supernatural and all the rest of that malarkey, in order to feel amazed with the way things are.

You got to laugh, you really got to laugh.

Notes

1. Woody Allen vividly describes his trauma when, as a teenager, he first learned that the universe was expanding. He thought this meant that everything else, including Brooklyn, was expanding, too. His mother had to inform him firmly that Brooklyn was not expanding and he should eat his supper. Like all Jewish mothers, she was right: Brooklyn is not expanding.

In this article, we point out inconsistencies associated with the ghost, vampire, and zombie mythologies as portrayed in popular films and folklore and give practical explanations to some of their features. Of course, the paranormalist or occultist could claim that the Hollywood portrayal is a rather unsophisticated and inaccurate representation of their beliefs and thus the discussion we present is moot. However, if they are to change their definition each time we raise an issue, then all that they are really arguing is that there exists something out there that may be given the name “ghost,” for instance. Surely, no skeptic could argue with this.

Ghosts Sudden Cold

Figure 2. These diagrams show the motion of convection currents in a fluid.

It has become a Hollywood cliché that the entrance of a ghostly presence is foreshadowed by a sudden and overwhelming chill (see, for example, The Sixth Sense). In fact, sharp temperature drops are very commonly reported in association with supposed real-life encounters with ghosts or poltergeists. This feature of supposed ghost sightings lends itself naturally to physical explanation.

The famous Haunted Gallery at Hampton Court Palace near London is reputedly stalked by the spirit of Catherine Howard, who was executed on February 13, 1542, by order of Henry VIII. Visitors to the room have described hearing screams and seeing apparitions in the gallery. A team of ghost-busting psychologists, led by Richard Wiseman1 of Hertfordshire University, installed thermal cameras and air-movement detectors in the gallery. About 400 palace visitors were then quizzed on whether they could feel a “presence” in the gallery. More than half reported sudden drops in temperature, and some said they sensed a ghostly presence. Several people claimed to have seen Elizabethan figures.

Before moving on to an explanation, we will need to outline the concept of heat. When a “warm” object is placed next to a “cool” object (see Figure 1) energy will begin to flow from the warmer body (causing it to cool) to the cooler body (causing it to warm). This energy, which is being transferred between the two objects due to their difference in temperature, is called heat. Note that an object is never said to “possess” any amount of heat; heat is only defined through transfer. For instance, no matter how hot a stove, it never possesses any degree of heat. When someone suddenly touches the stove, however, there is heat—it is the energy flowing from the stove to that person’s hand.

As heat continues to be transferred from the warmer body to the cooler one in figure 1, and the warmer body’s temperature continues to drop while the cooler body’s temperature climbs, there comes a point when the two bodies are at the same temperature. At this point, heat ceases to flow between the two objects, since neither is the hotter one and heat has no definite direction in which to be transferred. This condition is called thermal equilibrium.

In our stove example, heat was transferred via conduction—the exchange of heat through direct contact. There are other ways that heat can be transferred. These involve the exchange of heat by two objects separated by some distance. If these two objects are emersed in a fluid (Earth’s atmosphere, for example), then the warmer body may provide heat to the fluid in its immediate vicinity. This warmer fluid will then tend to rise, thus coming in contact with a cooler body above. There may also be a lateral current in the fluid, thus allowing the heated fluid to affect a cooler body to the side. This type of heat transfer, by an intermediary fluid, is called convection.

Figure 3. These two stills are taken from the movie Ghost. In the left still, the ghost goes through a door. In the right still, the ghost, who follows a burglar in his girlfriend’s home, loses his balance as he ascends the staircase and falls on—not through—the stairs.

In figure 2a, we give a simplified example of what are known as convection currents. Suppose that the right wall is kept warm and the left wall is kept cool. Air in contact with the right wall will tend to gain heat and then rise, while air in contact with the left wall will tend to lose heat and then sink. The circular flow that forms is called a convection current. Air cycles around in a loop, picking up some heat at the right wall, dropping it off at the left wall, and then coming back around again. Actually, the air-current pattern will be somewhat more complicated than what we just described. There will be all kinds of smaller cycles and eddies embedded in complex patterns, as in figure 2b. The overall flow, however, will be as in figure 2a.

The third mode of heat transfer allows for exchange between two separated objects even if they are in a total vacuum. How can two objects exchange heat if there is no matter in between them? The answer is radiation. The thermal energy of a body is expressed in the “jiggling” of its various constituent particles. As electrically charged particles within a body jiggle about, they produce electromagnetic waves. When these waves hit another body, they cause the particles in that body to jiggle more than they were before, and the body heats up. Since hotter bodies produce more of this radiation, there will be more radiation from the hotter body falling upon the cooler body than from the cooler body falling upon the hotter body. Thus, overall, the hotter body will be losing heat while the cooler body will be gaining heat. We will not be too concerned with this particular mechanism for heat exchange in this article.

Returning to the Haunted Gallery at Hampton Court Palace, Richard Wiseman’s team reported that the experiences could be simply explained by the gallery’s numerous concealed doors. These elderly exits are drafty, and the combination of air currents they let in cause sudden changes in the room’s temperature. In two particular spots, the temperature of the gallery plummeted by up to 2°C (3.6°F). “You do, literally, walk into a column of cold air sometimes,” said Wiseman. “It’s possible that people are misattributing normal phenomena . . . . If you suddenly feel cold, and you’re in a haunted place, that might bring on a sense of fear and a more scary experience.” Thus, the rumor that “cold spots” are associated with ghosts seems to be a myth created by the construction of old buildings and vivid imaginations.

But how could a few degrees drop in temperature explain the dramatic chills described in so many ghostly accounts? First off, what we sense as cold is not correlated to temperature so much as to the rate at which heat is being transferred from our bodies to the environment. For instance, even in a temperate pool, one feels a very sharp chill when one first enters. A moderate draft containing condensed moisture could cause a very sharp sensation of cold. Second, we are all aware of the “tall-tale” effect. Memories tend to become distorted and exaggerated. It is exactly this reason why scientists tend not to rely on unchecked eyewitness accounts.

The Inconsistency of the Notion of Immaterialness

Figure 4. Newton’s third law, known as the action-reaction law, is demonstrated here.

Popular myth holds that ghosts are immaterial. For instance, in the movie Ghost, the recently deceased main character tries desperately to save his former lover from a violent intruder. His attempts to intervene grant him no avail, as, at each lunge, he passes right through the perpetrator. It is interesting, however, that he was able to walk up the stairs at the same time. In fact, this is a common feature of the ghost myth. Ghosts are held to be able to walk about as they please, but they pass through walls and any attempt to pick up an object or affect their environment proves fruitless unless they are poltergeists, of course!

Walking requires an interaction with the floor, and such interactions are governed by Newton’s Laws of Motion. Newton’s first law is the law of inertia. It states that a body at rest will remain at rest until acted upon by an external force.

Therefore, a person cannot start walking unless a force, applied by some body other than herself, is acting upon her. But where is the force coming from? The only object in contact with the person while walking is the floor. So, the force moving a person while walking is coming from the floor. But how does the floor know to exert a force when the person wants to start walking and stop exerting it when the person wants to stand? Actually, there is no magic here. The person actually “tells” the floor using Newton’s third law.

Newton’s third law says that if one object exerts a force on another object, then the second object exerts a force that is equal but oppositely directed, on the first object—hence “for each action there is an equal but opposite reaction.” Thus, when the skate-boarder in figure 4 pushes on the wall, the wall pushes right back on her, causing her to accelerate off to the left.

Figure 5. Multiple forces act on the feet of a person while walking.

The mechanics of walking are shown in Figure 5: the person wanting to walk must remain at rest unless a force acts on her. She gets the floor to apply a force on her by applying an opposite force on the floor with her foot. She keeps repeating this action, alternating feet. The point is that, for the ghost to walk, it must be applying force to the floor. The floor is part of the physical universe, so, in order to walk, the ghost must have an affect on the physical universe. If this is so, then we can detect the ghost via physical observation. The depiction of ghosts walking contradicts the idea that ghosts are immaterial.

So which is it? Are ghosts material or immaterial? Maybe they are only material when it comes to walking. Well, then we must assume that they can’t control this selective immaterialness, otherwise Patrick Swayze would have saved his girlfriend in Ghost. In this case, we could place stress sensors on the floor to detect a ghost’s presence. Maybe they walk by some other supernatural means. Well, why can’t they use this power to manipulate objects when they want to? Even more, it seems strange to have a supernatural power that only allows you to get around by mimicking human ambulation. This is a very slow and awkward way of moving about in the scheme of things. In any case, you’d have to go to some lengths to make this whole thing consistent.

Incidentally, the reader may have noticed that we skipped a law in our discussion. We discussed the first and third of Newton’s laws. Newton’s second law of motion states that the acceleration of an object—the rate at which it speeds up—is proportional to the net force applied, the constant of proportionality being the mass. We didn’t need the precise statement of this law but, silently, we did use it. The second law implies that the acceleration of an object will be nonzero (and thus the object will be able to change its state of motion) only if a net force is acting on it. This was exactly our statement: “Therefore, a person cannot start walking unless a force, applied by some body other than herself, is acting upon her.”

Vampires

Anyone who has seen John Carpenter’s Vampires, Dracula, Blade, or any other vampire film is already quite familiar with the vampire legend. The vampire needs to feed on human blood. After one has stuck his fangs into your neck and sucked you dry, you turn into a vampire yourself and carry on the blood-sucking legacy. The fact of the matter is, if vampires truly feed with even a tiny fraction of the frequency that they are depicted as doing in the movies and folklore, then humanity would have been wiped out quite quickly after the first vampire appeared.

Let us assume that a vampire need feed only once a month. This is certainly a highly conservative assumption, given any Hollywood vampire film. Now, two things happen when a vampire feeds. The human population decreases by one and the vampire population increases by one. Let us suppose that the first vampire appeared in 1600 c.e. It doesn’t really matter what date we choose for the first vampire to appear; it has little bearing on our argument. We list a government Web site in the references (U.S. Census) that provides an estimate of the world population for any given date. For January 1, 1600, we will accept that the global population was 536,870,911.2 In our argument, we had at the same time one vampire.

We will ignore the human mortality and birth rate for the time being and only concentrate on the effects of vampire feeding. On February 1, 1600, one human will have died and a new vampire will have been born. This gives two vampires and 536,870,911—1 humans. The next month, there are two vampires feeding, thus two humans die and two new vampires are born. This gives four vampires and 536,870,911—3 humans. Now on April 1, 1600, there are four vampires feeding and thus we have four human deaths and four new vampires being born. This gives us eight vampires and 536,870,911—7 humans.

By now, the reader has probably caught on to the progression. Each month, the number of vampires doubles, so that, after n months have passed, there are

vampires. This sort of progression is known in mathematics as a geometric progression—more specifically, it is a geometric progression with ratio two, since we multiply by two at each step. A geometric progression increases at a tremendous rate, a fact that will become clear shortly. Now, all but one of these vampires were once human, so that the human population is its original population minus the number of vampires excluding the original one. So after n months have passed, there are:

536,870,911 - 2ⁿ + 1

humans. The vampire population increases geometrically and the human population decreases geometrically.

Table 1. Vampire and human populations at the beginning of each month during a 29-month period

Table 1 lists the vampire and human population at the beginning of each month over a twenty-nine-month period. Note that by the thirtieth month the table lists a human population of zero. We conclude that if the first vampire appeared on January 1, 1600, humanity would have been wiped out by June of 1602, two and a half years later.

All this may seem artificial, since we ignored other effects on the human population. Mortality due to factors other then vampires would only make the decline in humans more rapid and therefore strengthen our conclusion. The only thing that can weaken our conclusion is the human birthrate. Note that our vampires have gone from one to 536,870,912 in two and a half years. To keep up, the human population would have had to increase by the same amount. The Web site (U.S. Census) mentioned earlier also provides estimated birth rates for any given time. If you go to it, you will notice that the human birthrate never approaches anything near such a tremendous value. In fact, in the long run, for humans to survive in the given scenario, our population would have to at least double each month! This is clearly far beyond the human capacity for reproduction. If we factor in the human birthrate into our discussion, we find that, after a few months, the human birthrate is very small compared to the number of deaths due to vampires. This means that ignoring this factor has a negligibly small impact on our conclusion. In our example, the death of humanity would be prolonged by only one month.

We conclude that vampires cannot exist, since their existence would contradict the existence of human beings. Incidently, the logical proof that we just presented is of a type known as reductio ad absurdum, that is, “reduction to the absurd.” Another philosophical principle related to our argument is the truism given the elaborate title, the anthropic principle. This states that if something is necessary for human existence then it must be true since we do exist. In the present case, the nonexistence of vampires is necessary for human existence. Apparently, whoever devised the vampire legend had failed his college algebra and philosophy courses.

Zombies

Pic 1. Wilfred Doricent, the zombie, is shown in Haiti with his parents.

The zombie legends portrayed in movies such as Dawn of the Dead or 28 Days Later follow a similar pattern to the vampire legends. Once you are bitten by zombies, while you may manage to escape immediate death, you will eventually die and turn into a zombie, yourself. Thus, this particular type of zombie legend suffers the same flaw that we previously pointed out for the vampire legend. We still have some more work to do, however. There exists a second sort of zombie legend that pops its head up throughout the western hemisphere—the legend of “voodoo zombiefication.” This myth is somewhat different from the one just described, in that zombies do not multiply by feeding on humans but come about by a voodoo hex being placed by a sorcerer on one of his enemies. The myth presents an additional problem for us: one can witness for himself very convincing examples of zombiefication by traveling to Haiti or any number of other regions in the world where voodoo is practiced.

We describe the particular case of Wilfred Doricent,3 an adolescent schoolboy from a small village in Haiti. One day, Wilfred became terribly ill. He experienced dramatic convulsions, his body had swelled tremendously, and his eyes had turned yellow. Eight days later, Wilfred appeared to have died. This was confirmed by not only the family and family friends present but also by the local medical doctor who could detect no vital signs. Wilfred’s body appeared to show bloating due to rigor mortis and gave off the foul stench of death and rot. He was buried soon thereafter.

Pic 2. Puffer fish such as this one are the source of a highly potent neurotoxin.

Some time afterward, the weekly village cockfight was interrupted as an incognizant figure appeared. The villagers were shocked as they gazed upon the exact likeness of Wilfred. The person was indeed Wilfred, as his family verified by noting scars from old injuries and other such details. Wilfred, however, had lost his memory and was unable to speak or comprehend anything that was said to him. His family had to keep him in shackles so that he wouldn’t harm himself in his incoherent state. It appeared that Wilfred’s body had risen from death, leaving his soul in the possession of some voodoo sorcerer. Word of Wilfred’s “zombiefication” spread quickly throughout the village. It was believed that Wilfred’s uncle, a highly feared voodoo sorcerer who had been engaged in a dispute over land with Wilfred’s family, was the culprit. Wilfred’s uncle was later charged with zombiefication, a crime in Haiti equivalent to murder.

Is this truly a case of supernatural magic? To answer this question, we turn our attention to a highly toxic substance called tetrodotoxin (TTX). In an article in New Scientist (2001), Bryan Furlow gives an overview of TTX’s effects blended with a headlining news story:

Pic 3. Frère Dodo, a former voodoo priest, confirms that the recipe used to make the drug for zombiefication includes a powder derived from the puffer fish.

At first the U.S. federal officers thought they had stumbled upon a shipment of heroin. The suspicious package they intercepted last year [2000], en route from Japan to a private address in the US contained several vials packed with a white crystalline powder. But on-the-spot tests revealed that it was no narcotic. It took a while for forensic scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California to identify a sample, and what they found was alarming. The powder turned out to be tetrodotoxin (TTX): one of the deadliest poisons on Earth.

Gram for gram, TTX is 10,000 times more lethal than cyanide. . . . This neurotoxin has a terrifying modus operandi—25 minutes after exposure it begins to paralyze its victims, leaving the brain fully aware of what’s happening. Death usually results, within hours, from suffocation or heart failure. There is no antidote. But if lucky patients can hang on for 24 hours, they usually recover without further complications. . . .

The Livermore team estimated that to extract the 90 milligrams of TTX discovered by the Feds, you’d need between 45 and 90 kilograms of puffer-fish livers and ovaries—the animal’s most deadly tissues. No one knows what use its intended recipient had in mind. . . .

Pic 4. A doctor points to lesions in the ventricular system of the right frontal cone in a brain scan of Wilfred Doricent.

TTX is found in various sea creatures and, in particular, in the puffer fish. Puffer fish are a delicacy in Japan known as fugu that only trained and licensed individuals prepare by carefully removing the viscera. Of course, despite the care taken in preparation, about 200 cases of puffer-fish poisoning are reported per year with a mortality rate of 50 percent. The symptoms of the poisoning are as follows (U.S. FDA):

The first symptom of intoxication is a slight numbness of the lips and tongue, appearing between twenty minutes to three hours after eating poisonous puffer fish. The next symptom is increasing paraesthesia in the face and extremities, which may be followed by sensations of lightness or floating. Headache, epigastric pain, nausea, diarrhea, and/or vomiting may occur. Occasionally, some reeling or difficulty in walking may occur. The second stage of the intoxication is increasing paralysis. Many victims are unable to move; even sitting may be difficult. There is increasing respiratory distress. Speech is affected, and the victim usually exhibits dyspnea, cyanosis, and hypotension. Paralysis increases and convulsions, mental impairment, and cardiac arrhythmia may occur. The victim, although completely paralyzed, may be conscious and in some cases completely lucid until shortly before death. Death usually occurs within four to six hours, with a known range of about twenty minutes to eight hours.

Sometimes, however, a victim pronounced dead is lucky enough to wake up just before his funeral and report to his bewildered family that he was fully conscious and aware of his surroundings throughout the entire ordeal. Therefore, TTX has the unusual characteristic that, if a nonlethal dose is given, the brain will remain completely unaffected. If just the right dose is given, the toxin will mimic death in the victim, whose vitals will slow to an immeasurable state, and whose body will show signs of rigor mortis and even produce the odor of rot. Getting such a precise dose would be rare for a case of fugu poisoning, but can easily be caused deliberately by a voodoo sorcerer, say, who could slip the dose into someone’s food or drink.

The secrets of zombiefication are closely guarded by voodoo sorcerers. However, Frère Dodo, a once highly feared voodoo sorcerer, who is now an evangelical preacher and firm denouncer of the voodoo faith, has revealed the process. It turns out that zombiefication is accomplished by slipping the victim a potion whose main ingredient is powder derived from the liver of a species of puffer fish native to Haitian waters.

This provides an explanation for how Wilfred could have been made to seem dead, even under the examination of a doctor. However, we have already said that the TTX paralysis was unlikely to have affected his brain. How does one account for Wilfred’s comatose mental state? The answer is oxygen deprivation. Wilfred was buried in a coffin in which relatively little air could have been trapped. Wilfred’s story probably goes something like this: slowly, the air in Wilfred’s coffin began to run out so that, by the time he snapped out of his TTX-induced paralysis, he had already suffered some degree of brain damage. At that point, his survival instincts kicked in, and he managed to dig himself out of his grave—graves tend to be shallow in Haiti. He probably wandered around for some time before ending up back at the village. This topic was the subject of a horror film, The Serpent and the Rainbow.

Neuropsychiatrist Dr. Roger Mallory, of the Haitian Medical Society, conducted an MRI of zombiefied Wilfred’s brain. He and his colleagues found lesions of the type normally associated with oxygen starvation. It would seem that zombiefication is nothing more then a skillful act of poisoning. The bodily functions of the poisoned person suspend so that he appears dead. After he is buried alive, lack of oxygen damages the brain. If the person is unburied before he really dies from suffocation, he will appear as a soulless creature (“zombie”), as he has lost what makes him human: the thinking processes of the brain.

Conclusion

We have examined the science behind three of the most popular pseudoscientific beliefs encountered in Hollywood movies. We have shown two of them—the idea of ghosts and vampires—to be inconsistent and contradictory to simple facts. For the third—the idea of zombies—we have made no attempt to deny that it relies on real cases. However, we have reviewed evidence showing that the concept is a misrepresentation of simple criminal acts.

Popular belief in these myths is an indication of a lack of critical-thinking skills in our society. With simple arguments, one can easily discredit the validity of such claims. We thus finish with the following quote by Carl Sagan (Sagan 1979):

Both Barnum and H.L. Mencken are said to have made the depressing observation that no one ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the American public. The remark has worldwide application. But the lack is not intelligence, which is in plentiful supply; rather, the scarce commodity is systematic training in critical thinking.

Notes

1. Details on his research may be found on Wiseman’s Web site at www.richardwiseman.com.
2. It may seem odd to the reader that we have specified the population with so much precision—we have a number in the one hundred millions and have specified it all the way down to the “one’s place” (. . . 911). We chose the particular value for convenience. The actual estimated population in the seventeenth century is 562±17 millions. Beyond mathematical simplification, our choice has little impact on the argument to follow. If we were to report any number in the range of possible values for the population in the year 1600, the end result of our calculations would be essentially the same.
3. We claim no major originality in the presentation of what follows—except in collecting the material from the sources and arranging it as seen. Doricent’s case is nicely described in a documentary (Clark 2002). The relation between zombies and TTX was first noticed by the Harvard ethno-botanist Wade Davis in 1982.

References

• BBC. 2001. Palace ghost laid to rest. BBC News. March 29. Available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/1249366.stm.
• Clark, Arthur C. 2002. Zombies: The living dead? (from the Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious Universe [DVD]). Richmond Hill, Ontario: American Home Treasures. Furlow, Bryant. 2001 The freelance poisoner. New Scientist. 2274 (January 20): 10 Sagan, Carl. 1979. Broca’s Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. New York: Ballantine Publishing Group: 58.
• Sparks, Glenn G. 1998. Paranormal depictions in the media: How do they affect what people believe? Skeptical Inquirer. 22 (4) (July/August): 35.
• —2006. Media Effects Research: A Basic Overview, 2nd ed. Bemnont, Calif.: Thomson.
• U.S. Census (United States Census Bureau). N.d. Available at: http://www.census.gov; accessed May 20, 2007.
• U.S. FDA (United States Food and Drug Administration). 2006. Available at: http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/%7Emow/chap39.html; accessed May 20, 2007.

One of my earliest geology lessons came when I was about ten years old. Like my smattering of Russian, it wasn’t a full, formal lesson. But I did learn some interesting and scientifically sound facts, including that because limestone in the earth is partially water-soluble it often creates caves and sinkholes. I overheard a young duck without pants discussing this.

I don’t recall if it was Huey, Dewey, or Louie, but, in any event, they were searching a cave for hidden treasure on behalf of their avaricious great uncle, Scrooge McDuck. (In the same comic I also learned that Scots are tight with a penny, but perhaps that was a stereotype I shouldn’t have picked up.)

I learned scads of (mostly accurate) factoids from my youthful reading, following the adventures and exploits of Encyclopedia Brown, Tintin, Tom Swift, Doc Savage (and his band of scientists including a chemist and an electrical engineer), and, of course, comic-book superheroes.

The world of comics is not just for kids anymore, with complex storylines and very adult graphic novels. Comic- book heroes have jumped from colored splash panels to the big screen in blockbuster films such as Batman, Superman, X-Men, and, of course, the Spider-Man franchise (Spider-Man 3 was recently released in theaters on May 4).

Visitors to the Spider-Man swing can hang by a super-strong thread.

It’s easy to forget that many of the superheroes who have repeatedly (albeit fictionally) saved the world are scientists: Spider-Man (Peter Parker) is an accomplished science student; the Incredible Hulk (in his human form, Bruce Banner) is a nuclear physicist; Mr. Fantastic (Reed Richards) holds doctorates in physics and electrical engineering; and so on. Most Marvel Comics superheroes have some strong link with science or technology (for example, Peter Parker invented his own web-slinging mechanism, and engineer Tony Stark created his own Iron Man exoskeleton). (For an in-depth look at science and superheroes, see The Science of Superheroes, by Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg.)

Marvel Comics founder Stan Lee had created dozens of superheroes to populate his comic books, each with amazing and wondrous powers. He had heroes who could do amazing things rarely if ever seen in the real world. They could fly, walk through walls, teleport, turn invisible, and so on. But Lee had a problem: coming up with the powers was the easy part; coming up with a reason why they had those powers was tricky. So Lee—whose grasp of science is admittedly shaky—used science to ground and lend a sense of validity to the characters. Thus, many heroes gained their powers through scientific, naturalistic (if not wholly realistic) processes. The Fantastic Four were exposed to cosmic rays; Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider; and so on.

A couple watch themselves through a thermal imaging camera.

This worked for a while, but, finally, Lee just got lazy. Once he read about the process of genetic mutation, that opened up a whole new world where mutations could be used as a blanket cause of myriad abilities ranging from psychic powers to teleportation to weather control. Thus, the X-Men were born.

Of course, the veneer of science only goes so deep; children wishing to climb walls and have superhuman Spider-Man strength can stop taunting their radioactive spiders. (And where do you get radioactive spiders, anyway?)

Part of the reason the comics had an educational element was that Stan Lee did not believe in talking down to his audience. He wrote his scripts and dialogue at a college level, unafraid of making his readers reach for a dictionary now and then.

Recently, Marvel Comics launched an educational science exhibit using many of its most popular comic-book superhero characters. The goal was to educate children and the public about scientific principles in a fun and interesting way. The exhibit introduces the public to many scientific topics and principles, including magnetism, engineering and hydraulics, acoustics and the physics of sound waves, chemistry, genetics and evolution, visual perception, and arachnology. Instead of dry display panels, the thirty action stations are geared toward hands-on demonstrations and learning. Among them:

• Doctor Octopus, a veteran Spider-Man foe who has four robotic tentacle-arms, serves to introduce a fascinating discussion of prosthetic limbs. Photos and artifacts illustrate the evolution of prosthetics from rudimentary hook hands to modern mechanical limbs.
• The Spider-Man display explains that the tensile strength of spider’s silk is higher than any artificial material, and allows people to hang from hair-thin fibers, eight times stronger than steel.
• A station featuring Professor X, who trains his band of mutants to become crime-fighting X-Men, explores how mutations come about. Visitors are given three examples of living organisms, and then asked to guess the percentage of DNA that the three share.
• Daredevil, a blind superhero, is used as an example of how blind creatures can navigate using echolocation and acoustics.

The X-Men exhibit discusses the science behind evolution and mutation.

Other superheroes who took time off from ridding the world of evildoers in order to educate kids for the exhibit include the Hulk, Iceman, Wolverine, the Human Torch, Storm, Banshee, and Iron Man. While some of the exhibits and displays are a bit silly (does matching the Hulk’s angry facial expressions help us understand the physiology of anger?), overall, the exhibit is very well-designed, fun, and informative. Any exhibit that educates as it entertains is well worth a visit, and this is one of the best. Excelsior!

The Marvel Superheroes Science Exhibition premiered at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto, Canada, and will be at the St. Louis (Missouri) Science Center from April 28, 2007, until September 4, 2007. For more information on the exhibit and tour schedule, see marvelscienceexhibition.com.

Nevertheless, most scientists seem to prefer as a practical matter that science should stay clear of religious issues. This is a good strategy for those who wish to avoid conflicts between science and religion, which might lead to less public acceptance of science and that most dreaded of all consequences—lower funding. However, religions make assertions about the natural world, and these have no special immunity from being examined under the cold light of critical analysis. Scientists are abdicating their responsibilities when they avoid applying their expertise to evaluate religious claims that can be tested against empirical facts, especially when religious thinking is used to override science in the making of public policy.

In one of its official statements supporting evolution, the Academy states, “Science is a way of knowing about the natural world. It is limited to explaining the natural world through natural causes. Science can say nothing about the supernatural. Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral” (National Academy of Sciences 1998). This is simply untrue. Not only can science examine any claim that bears on empirical data, reputable scientists from reputable institutions are doing just that, for example, in experiments on the efficacy of intercessory prayer.

In the battle between evolution and creationism, the political strategy adopted by many scientific organizations such as the Academy and the National Center for Science Education has been to seek support of Catholics and moderate Christians whose clergy have stated their support for evolution. The uncomfortable fact that evolution implies humanity is an accident, rather than the special creation of God in his own image, is conveniently swept under the rug.

But there are worse things happening in America and the world as the direct result of religious thinking than children hearing the dreaded word creation in the classroom. Both abroad and at home, we are engaged in cultural wars that threaten the very existence of secular society and the health, safety, and well-being of humans everywhere. Islamic radicals have declared war on the modern world and are steadily gaining adherents in all countries with large Muslim populations. George W. Bush’s “War on Terror,” which he has characterized in religious terms as a holy war of good against evil, has advanced rather than deterred this trend.

The born-again U.S. president has based his policies, foreign and domestic, on faith rather than evidence—faith that his own instincts are divinely inspired and any evidence that contradicts these instincts may be ignored and even suppressed.

A series of recent books has extensively documented how a small group of influential Christian extremists, with large financial resources at their disposal, have taken control of the Republican party and used churches to build enough support at the polls to gain control of the White House and Congress in 2000 and 2004 (Mooney 2005, Phillips 2006, Goldberg 2006, Linker 2006, Hedges 2007). Only with the 2006 midterm election has their influence slipped. But this may be attributed to the unmitigated disaster of Iraq rather than any sea change in public opinion. You can bet these groups have not thrown in the towel on their goal of converting America to a Christian theocracy.

Let me list some examples of Bush policies that are founded in theology rather than evidence and how he and his administration have acted to suppress scientific studies that contradict the faith-based assumptions that lie behind these policies.

In one of his first acts as president, Bush restored a gag rule on aid to international organizations that counsel women on abortion. Of millions of dollars spent on preventing and treating AIDS in Africa, 30 percent was earmarked for promoting sexual abstinence and none for condoms. Here at home, $170 million was spent in 2005 alone on promoting abstinence-only sex education in schools. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was pressured to remove from its Web site scientific findings that abstinence-only programs do not work. According to a 2003 report issued by Democratic Congressman Henry A. Waxman and the minority staff of the Government Reform Committee, the Bush administration modified performance measures for abstinence-based programs to make them look effective.

Similarly, under pressure from conservatives in Congress, a National Cancer Institute Web site was changed to reflect the view that there may be a risk of breast cancer associated with abortions, a claim made by evangelicals that has no scientific support (Mooney 2005, pp. 206—207).

Bush’s obstruction of stem-cell research, which holds promise to provide a wide range of therapies, is based on the theological view that a 150-cell embryo contains a human soul. While scientists may prefer to remain neutral on the matter of souls, they should point out that an embryo cannot suffer while stem-cell research could result in the reduction of real suffering in fully developed humans (Harris, 2005, pp. 165—167; Mooney 2006, pp. 185—204).

Bush’s appointee to the Food and Drug Administration’s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory committee, gynecologist W. David Hager, is an evangelical who prescribes Bible readings to treat premenstrual syndrome. Hager was primarily responsible for the FDA blocking over-the-counter sales of the birth-control drug known as Plan B. This was despite testimony before his committee by a scientific advisory panel that “Plan B was the safest product that we have ever seen brought before us” (Mooney 2005, pp. 215—220).

Evangelicals have also influenced Bush administration policies on the environment, leading the White House to intervene in 2003 to remove cautions against global warming from a report on the environment (Mooney 2005, p. 90). More recently, Bush has seemed to make an about-face on global warming, but NASA is still delaying or canceling a number of satellites designed to obtain critical information on Earth climate. Bush gives the space station higher priority, despite the fact that a consensus of scientists regard it as scientifically useless.

In October 2005, George Deutsch, a presidential appointee at NASA headquarters, sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations for middle-school students. The message said the word theory should be added after every mention of the Big Bang. The Big Bang is “not proven fact; it is opinion,” Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, “It is not NASA’s place, nor should it be, to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator” (Revkin 2006b). This was just another instance where NASA scientists were pressured to limit discussions on topics uncomfortable to the Bush administration, including global warming (Revkin 2006a).

While scientists have begun to speak out on these issues, they have not directly confronted the religious thinking that forms the basis of these policies. Presumably, they fear offending “deeply held beliefs.” I am pleading that religion no longer be given this free ride. The stakes are too high.

Let science compete with religion in the marketplace of ideas. Scientists should question religious assumptions just as they question those of other scientists. And they should vigorously protest whenever faith is used to suppress sound scientific results.

References

• Goldberg, Michelle. 2006. Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism. New York: W.W. Norton.
• Harris, Sam. 2005. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New York: W.W. Norton.
• Hedges, Chris. 2007. American Fascists. New York: Free Press.
• Larson, Edward J., and Larry Witham. 1998. Leading scientists still reject God. Nature 394:313.
• Linker, Damon. 2006. The Theocons: Secular American under Siege. New York: Doubleday.
• Mooney, Chris. 2005. The Republican War on Science. New York: Basic Books. National Academy of Sciences. 1998. Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science. Washington, D.C: National Academy of Sciences: p. 58. Available at: www.nap.edu/ catalog/5787.html; accessed March 5, 2006.
• Phillips, Kevin. 2006. American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century. New York: Viking Penguin.
• Revkin, Andrew C. 2006a. Climate expert says NASA tried to silence him. The New York Times. January 29.
• Revkin, Andrew C. 2006b. NASA chief backs agency openness. The New York Times. February 4.