Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity
By James Hansen. Bloomsbury Press,
New York, 2009. ISBN: 978-160819-200-7.
301 pp. Hardcover, $25.

Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to Save Earth's Climate
By Stephen H. Schneider. National Geographic Society,
Washington, DC, 2009. ISBN: 978-1-4262-0540-8.
295 pp. Hardcover, $28.

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming
By Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. Bloomsbury Press, New York, 2010. ISBN: 978-1-59691-610-4.
355 pp. Hardcover, $27.

Anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming has become an emotional issue rife with political overtones. There is no dispute among climate scientists about the reality of global warming and the fact that it is primarily caused by accelerated burning of fossil fuels. However, there are nontechnical aspects of global warming that should interest readers of the Skeptical Inquirer: Specifically, how scientific evidence should be assessed in such a complex situation-and the way this evidence has been distorted and denied by a handful of scientists who are savvy about the politics of Washington and the media. As skeptics, we need to recognize the techniques used to distort and politicize the science. And as citizens, we should learn to recognize the similarities between these attacks on climate science and those used by creationists to undercut the fundamentals of biological science.

The three books I review here offer complementary frontline accounts of the Climate Wars. Both Jim Hansen and the late Steve Schneider have made important contributions to the development of climate science. Both started as modelers of the global atmosphere and ocean systems. Schneider led the climate team at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, and Hansen worked at (and now directs) the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), located at Columbia University in New York City.

Schneider and Hansen, both members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), rose to prominence partly through their ability to explain complex climate issues to the press, to congressional committees, and ultimately to all of us. These two books of theirs are first-person accounts, geared toward the lay reader, that give about equal space to the scientific issues and to their own sometimes-controversial roles in them. The third book, Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, brings historical perspective to this issue. Oreskes and Conway compare the global-warming controversy to earlier campaigns to undercut the science that linked tobacco smoke to cancer, acid rain to smokestack emissions, and ozone depletion to the release of CFCs. This antiscience propaganda is a topic I will return to later in this review.

*...*

Jim Hansen is perhaps the most famous (or notorious, depending on your politics) climate scientist. This is ironic given Hansen's midwestern roots, his careful approach to science, and his conservative, shy personality. Although he began his career as a planetary scientist studying the atmosphere of Venus, he has been working since the 1970s on understanding Earth's climate, primarily as leader of a small group of climate modelers who use NASA's powerful computers to simulate the processes that influence atmosphere and climate. As his conviction that the Earth is in deadly peril due to the discharge of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere has grown, he has become an activist, first within the government as an advisor to the executive and legislative branches and more recently as an outspoken critic of “business as usual” practice and policies. Storms of My Grandchildren is his first book.

Hansen came to prominence in the hot summer of 1988, when he testified at a hearing before the Senate's Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He said that “Global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause-and-effect relationship to the greenhouse effect.” The next day the New York Times declared: “global warming is here.” There had been a growing consensus among climate scientists that greenhouse warming would take place, but Hansen was the first to state bluntly that it was already happening. People listened. By the end of the year, thirty-two climate-related bills had been introduced in Congress (none passed).

Hansen's book describes his adventures in the public spotlight, including interactions with Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush's Climate Task Force. We also hear about Hansen's experience in 1989 when he revealed, at a Senate hearing chaired by Al Gore, that the White House had altered his written testimony. In 2005 he again became the center of a controversy over censorship, as political appointees at NASA Headquarters tried to control even the basic temperature data that were being posted on the GISS website. When Andy Revkin of the New York Times exposed this heavy-handed attempt at political interference, the NASA Public Affairs officers backtracked and blamed the “misunderstanding” on a twenty-four-year-old intern who had faked his college degree and boasted that his job at NASA was “to make the President look good.”

Above all, Jim Hansen is a hard-working scientist. Much of his book concerns his research on the science behind global warming as published in peer-reviewed academic journals. Hansen explains the fundamentals of climate change in a way that is accessible to the nonscientist. He does not overwhelm us with the mathematics of the greenhouse effect or the results of complex computer models of atmospheric circulation. Instead, he appeals to the more basic idea of conservation of energy, using data about climate changes over the past several million years to derive fundamental truths about our current dilemma.

The climate system reacts to changes imposed upon it, which is called forcing. These changes include variations in the amount of energy received from the Sun, slow changes in the orbit and tilt of the Earth, and of course changes in the composition of the atmosphere and its clouds. Greenhouse forcing is positive, as several watts per square meter of additional energy are radiated from the atmosphere back to the surface. Forcing due to clouds and other aerosols that reflect part of the solar energy back to space is negative. The degree of climate change depends primarily on the balance between the positive forcing by the greenhouse effect and the negative forcing by aerosols. During much of the Industrial Revolution, the two types of forcing were roughly balanced because the same industries that burned coal to release carbon dioxide also poured smoke into the atmosphere. Since World War II, the output of greenhouse gases has greatly increased-not just carbon dioxide but also methane and industrial chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs). At the same time, environmentalists succeeded in reducing the emission of smoke and other aerosols. Thus we now have strong positive forcing, leading to rapid global warming.

Hansen goes further, however. He notes that the current system is not in equilibrium; we are receiving more heat than is being radiated back into space. It is this imbalance that causes rising temperature and is starting to melt the polar ice caps. Much of this excess heat is also going into the ocean reservoir. It is this heat sink that assures us that global warming will continue for several decades, even if greenhouse forcing is held steady or decreased.

We can see from studies of past climate that temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide are highly correlated. Most previous climate changes were much more gradual than those we are experiencing today, but their magnitude has been quite large (5 degrees Celsius in both directions). Hansen calculated the forcing implied from paleoclimate data to estimate the equilibrium temperatures we can expect as a function of the CO₂ content of the atmosphere. He concludes that with the present CO₂ concentration, we will raise sea level by several meters at minimum due to melting ice. If the CO₂ should double or triple, which is likely if much of the Earth's coal deposits are mined and burned, we will slip into a new regime in which most of the ice caps will melt, raising the ocean level at least fifty meters, which was the level when Earth's atmosphere contained this much CO₂ in the past.

These considerations, based in interpretation of paleoclimate data, convinced Hansen of the existence of a tipping point, when the changes we are producing become irreversible (on human timescales). He believes that we are dangerously close to that tipping point, and he is a strong supporter of efforts to limit the CO₂ content of the atmosphere to 350 ppm (which requires a return to the level of the late 1980s). As he frequently asserts, meeting this goal precludes us from burning most coal deposits or trying to extract oil from tar shale and other difficult-to-use forms of hydrocarbons.

Hansen's proposed moratorium on coal-fired generating plants directly confronts our requirement for “base load,” the steady electrical energy that cannot be supplied by solar or wind power. He describes a meeting with energy experts in Germany who said it was impossible to avoid building coal-fired generators because Germany is committed to a policy of phasing out nuclear energy. Hansen, reluctantly but firmly, is now an advocate for nuclear power, specifically for the new generation of clean-burning breeder reactors that can actually consume current radioactive waste. In reply to environmental organizations that oppose nuclear power, he notes that an estimated hundred thousand people per year die from exposure to coal, compared with at most a handful from our only serious nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986.

In his book we can see the gradual radicalization of Jim Hansen, self-described as a “placid, even comfortably stolid” atmospheric modeler and theorist. In 2006, Time magazine listed him among the 100 most influential people in the world. Hansen concludes this book by stressing that we face the most urgent fight of our lives and noting that civil resistance to new coal plants may be our only recourse.

*...*

Stephen H. Schneider, who died this summer (see “The Loss of Climate Scientist Stephen H. Schneider” in this issue), was a leading climate modeler much like Jim Hansen. But while Hansen is basically a reluctant public figure, Schneider epitomized the sophisticated scientist-politician; he was at home in the halls of Congress or on the front line of international climate negotiations. Winner of the MacArthur “genius” prize and co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, he left NCAR for a senior professorship at Stanford University, providing him opportunities to mentor the next generation of atmospheric scientists. His wife, also a Stanford professor, is herself a world-class expert on the response of ecosystems to environmental change.

Schneider began to investigate the risk of climate change in the 1970s. As a graduate student he wrote a thesis on global cooling-when it appeared that negative climate forcing from smoke and other aerosols dominated over greenhouse heating, but the facts soon demonstrated otherwise. The danger of global warming was evident to many during the administration of Jimmy Carter, and a number of bipartisan government actions mandated increases in the efficiency of appliances and required substantial gains in automobile mileage performance. Schneider's first testimony before Congress was in 1979, a decade before Jim Hansen proclaimed the reality of global warming.

Two decades of bipartisan support for environmental science evaporated when Ronald Reagan became president. He and his appointees flatly denied the existence of either an energy problem or a threat of global warming. Famously, Reagan said that government is not the solution to our problems, it is the problem. The linked issues of energy policy and climate change have been sharply polarizing topics in the United States ever since.

In this book, Schneider recounts his personal story of the Climate Wars. The highlight-and the source of the book's title, Science as a Contact Sport-is his description of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and associated international events in which he participated, such as the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero and the 1997 summit that approved the Kyoto Protocol. Along the way he also fought running battles with those who denied the reality of warming and used the media to distort and obfuscate climate science.

One of the common accusations of the climate contrarians is that the IPCC was a radical group in which alarmist scientists made unsupported statements about the dangers of global warming. It was thus with great interest that I read how this large international group, consisting of hundreds of scientists and thousands of reviewers and consultants, worked for three years on each of the three IPCC assessments. To hear the critics, one would think the radicals hijacked this process and then claimed consensus for their views. But as Schneider explains, the IPCC was forced to adopt the UN definition of “consensus,” which is “unanimity.” Every nation had to approve every word in the document, and even one veto could scuttle the entire process. Consequently, each statement of fact had to be documented, and every suggestion of policy approved by even the most conservative delegations.

Schneider's first-hand stories of these negotiations are fascinating. A handful of countries were the source of almost all of the objections: Saudi Arabia, the United States, China, and Russia-not coincidentally the biggest producers and consumers of hydrocarbons. One of the most frequent phrases in the IPCC notes is “Saudi Arabia, with the support of the United States, objected....” Schneider also reports that many of the members of the official U.S. delegation admitted privately that they agreed with the majority of scientists there but were under different orders from their bosses in Washington. He played a central role in finding compromises. At least once, he threatened to expose the obstructionist position of the U.S. delegation to the press and in congressional testimony scheduled for the next week. Schneider's description of the process explains why the IPCC assessments, far from being radical, 
have consistently underestimated future warming and its consequences.

Schneider's own contributions to the IPCC reports centered on providing meaningful estimates of uncertainties in both the anticipated climate changes and their likely effect on ecosystems and economies. Although the current state of the climate is measurable, all estimates of future trends are uncertain to varying degrees. Most of these predictions are based on computer models because, as Schneider often notes, you can't collect data about future conditions. To make such assessments useful to policymakers, the scientists must provide quantitative estimates of uncertainty, and Schneider insisted on a consistent vocabulary in the use of terms such as “likely,” “very likely,” and “high confidence level.”

Schneider also describes his outrage in 1996 when the second IPCC assessment report was released. In a long letter published in the Wall Street Journal, solid state physicist Frederick Seitz personally attacked the lead author of the report, accusing him of a blatant attempt to “remove hints of the skepticism with which many scientists regard claims that human activities are having a major impact on climate” and claimed that this was a falsification intended to deceive the public and policymakers. The accusation was flatly untrue. But what amazed the scientists was that Seitz was a past president of the NAS. Why was Seitz, who was not a climate scientist, launching this personal attack-which was quickly echoed by Fred Singer, another senior scientist, in a Wall Street Journal article, “Coverup in the Greenhouse”?

*...*

The third book in my trilogy deals with the role of contrarians like Fred Seitz and Fred Singer and their sophisticated campaign to undercut the science of global warming. They had previously also disputed the reality of ozone depletion and the links between cigarette smoking and cancer. These individuals and organizations are the “merchants of doubt” referred to in the title of the book by historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway.

Merchants of Doubt places the attacks on climate science and the IPCC in a broader context. Seitz, Singer, and a handful of other scientists have waged a thirty-year campaign against a wide range of environmental issues. They followed what is often called the “Tobacco Strategy.” In the 1950s and '60s, evidence rapidly grew that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer and a variety of other diseases. The tobacco industry could not prove this claim wrong, but they could and did try to undercut the science behind it. Internal tobacco memos state that “doubt is our product.” Big Tobacco used science to fight science by funding a few pliable academic researchers and setting up nonprofit foundations and organizations that released “scientific reports” and engaged in other forms of “education.” Although they lost this fight, their efforts delayed effective government action by more than two decades and indirectly led to the premature deaths of millions of smokers, who were happy to believe that the link between smoking and cancer had not been proven.

When evidence began to accumulate in the 1990s that there was also a link between secondhand smoke and disease, the same techniques were used by the tobacco companies, this time with the support of a few famous scientists such as Fred Seitz (former president not only of the NAS but of Rockefeller University), Fred Singer (first director of the National Weather Satellites Service), Bill Nierenberg (former director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography), and Robert Jastrow (founding director of the NASA GISS).

These four retired physicists had worked on Cold War defense projects and held senior advisory positions in the Reagan administration. They first gained national prominence for their outspoken support of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, commonly called “Star Wars”). Jastrow, Seitz, and Nierenberg founded the George C. Marshall Institute, a tax-exempt educational organization promoting “science for public policy” with a goal to “raise the level of scientific literacy ... with an impact on national security.” They were strongly anti-communist, opposed to co-existence or detente with the Soviet Union, and in favor of much larger defense budgets. Many of their education efforts were directed at journalists and congressional staff. The Marshall Institute joined other think tanks with similar political goals, such as the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution, the Hudson Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Cato Institute.

Oreskes and Conway describe several of their campaigns in detail, beginning with their assertions that a “Star Wars” missile-defense system was both feasible and affordable. As physicists who had worked on defense programs, their opinions had considerable weight. At the same time, however, they went well beyond their areas of expertise to question the environmental harm of acid rain and oppose regulations to reduce smokestack emissions. This campaign, led by Fred Singer (affiliated with the Heritage Foundation and a White House insider), placed them in direct opposition to the NAS and 
the Environmental Protection Agency. They were aligned with the Reagan administration, however. “We don't know what is causing it” became the official position of the U.S. government, and action was not taken to mitigate acid rain until 1990, under the first Bush administration.

Meanwhile, there was a growing scientific concern over depletion of ozone in the stratosphere. Ozone blocks short-wave ultraviolet sunlight that would otherwise be a risk for all life on land. The primary culprit was CFCs, which were used as refrigerants and spray-can propellants and to clean electronic components. Billions of pounds of CFCs were being manufactured every year. In their defense, the chemical companies, through their trade organizations, began to follow the tobacco strategy. They dispensed millions of dollars in research grants and established several organizations for public relations purposes, such as the Aerosol Education Bureau. The industry promoted the idea that volcanic eruptions, not CFCs, were destroying stratospheric ozone.

In 1985, public interest and concern were stimulated by the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole. Suddenly the invisible chemical changes in the stratosphere were made visible by satellite images of the Antarctic. A counternarrative was soon developed, led by Fred Singer. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Singer criticized the “ozone scare” and asserted that there is no proof of ozone depletion or of a cause-and-effect relationship with CFCs. His thesis was that the science is uncertain, replacing CFCs will be difficult and expensive, and the scientific community is corrupt and motivated by self-interest and political ideology-the same arguments later used by global warming deniers.

As late as 1995, after the Montreal Protocol had banned most manufacture of CFCs, Singer testified before Congress that the scientific concern about ozone depletion was simply “wrong.” He attacked the Swedish Academy of Sciences when the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was given for analysis of stratospheric ozone chemistry. Singer described his motivation in 1989 this way: “There are probably those with hidden agendas of their own-not just to save the environment but to change our economic system. Some are socialists, some are technology hating Luddites; most have a great desire to regulate on as large a scale as possible.” In 1991 he wrote that the real agenda of environmentalists was to destroy capitalism and replace it with some sort of worldwide utopian socialism-or perhaps communism. (All taken from Merchants of Doubt, which has extensive documentation.)

With this background, it is easier to understand Fred Seitz's 1996 attack on the second IPCC assessment. Actually, the Marshall Institute had begun attacking climate science in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell. The Institute published a booklet titled “Global Warming: What Does the Science Tell Us?” by Jastrow, Seitz, and Nierenberg, blaming whatever global warming might be happening on the Sun. Nierenberg himself briefed the report to the White House. The contrarians founded a faux-scientific journal called the World Climate Review, partly funded by fossil-fuel interests. They used the right-wing Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal, knowing that these papers would not publish rebuttals from the climate scientists.

Even as the scientific case for anthropogenic global warming became more secure, Senator James Inhofe (then-chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works) called global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetuated on the American people.” In 1997, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution blocking adoption of the Kyoto Protocol by a vote of 97–0. In Washington, politics, money, and ideology were in ascendancy over science. The situation became even worse under George W. Bush, with the spectacle of science-fiction writer Michael Crichton appearing as an expert witness before Congress and lecturing at the White House on global warming.

The preceding paragraphs only hint at the detailed history of the science-contrarian movement described by Oreskes and Conway. It is frankly difficult for a scientist to believe that other scientists would consciously misrepresent the scientific facts, but the pattern is inescapable, as Seitz and Singer and a handful of others have taken the same denialist position on one issue after another: tobacco and cancer, acid rain, ozone depletion, DDT, secondhand smoke, and now global warming. As documented in this book, these contrarians are fighting science because of their political conviction that government regulations are in themselves evil. They believe that environmentalism leads to regulation, which will inevitably lead to the loss of our freedom. They call environmentalists watermelons: green on the outside but red on the inside. Having fought for freedom all their lives against the evils of communism, they are now fighting just as hard to protect our liberty from the evils of government regulation. That mission apparently trumps their devotion to science.

*...*

These three books were written before the “climategate” accusations of late 2009, which were used effectively to smear the IPCC specifically and climate scientists generally. Most of the media went along with this sophisticated public-relations campaign, describing this as the greatest crisis faced by science in a generation. Some media later printed retractions and even apologized when impartial investigations showed that the accusations were false. But this episode demonstrated the ability of the contrarians to influence public opinion. I imagine that Oreskes and Conway could add this episode to their long list of public-relations battles, but it did nothing to undercut the reality of global warming or the serious implications it has for our future.

There are many parallels between this campaign against climate science and the widespread efforts to deny biological evolution and block its inclusion in science classes. Both climate denialism and evolution denialism are efforts to fight real science with pseudoscience-these contrarians publish fake science in non-refereed journals, found NGOs, and use sophisticated marketing in the halls of power from Washington to Austin. Apparently even good scientists can be 
seduced by a strong ideological commitment, just as the creationists are much more interested in saving our souls than in addressing the science of biology. Like creationists, the climate contrarians are “merchants of doubt,” using pseudoscience to undercut real science and create a wedge for their nonscientific beliefs.

I recommend all three of these books. They are well written, timely, and provocative. Hansen emphasizes the science and introduces some novel ways to assess future warming without invoking complex computer models. Schneider paints a fascinating picture of the struggle to develop a consensus on global warming, especially through the UN IPCC assessments. Oreskes and Conway place the climate controversy in perspective as the most recent example of how ideology and politics have been used (with considerable success) to attack science. Their message is one that skeptics everywhere will want to read and ponder. n

Note

Of the four leading climate denialists discussed here, only Fred Singer is still going strong. Bill Nierenberg died in 2000, and both Frederick Seitz and Robert Jastrow died in 2010.

I thank several colleagues for helping to educate me on climate science or for offering constructive criticism of this manuscript: Mark Boslough, Clark Chapman, Bob Chatfield, Erik Conway, John Mashey, Naomi Oreskes, Phillip Russell, and Eugenie Scott.

Sightings of alleged UFOs occur pretty often, but it's rare indeed for one to affect scheduled air traffic. We should not be surprised, then, to find that such an event has made the news. What was the mysterious object that allegedly hovered over Hangzhou's Xiaoshan Airport, China's ninth-busiest, on the evening of July 7, 2010? At about 8:40 pm local time, a UFO was reported by a flight crew that was preparing to land. As a precaution, flight controllers delayed or redirected eighteen flights.

As is often the case, conflicting and confusing accounts of the UFO incident make it difficult to determine exactly what happened. Reporters want an exciting story, and UFOlogists want to win converts. They will typically grab onto any photo or video that is supposed to represent the object and report as fact practically any claim that is made regardless of its source or veracity. Many images of the alleged airport UFO--images that were supposed to show the UFO over Hangzhou but obviously showed a different object--soon began circulating in news stories and on the Internet. Most frequently seen is an impressive-looking rectangular object, from which a beam of light shines out underneath (see the accompanying news report at http://tinyurl.com/273h68h). At first I thought the image was the reflection of an interior fluorescent light fixture, as may be seen when looking out a window. After studying the other photos in this series and reading some of the online discussions, I agree that it's probably an exposure of a few seconds showing a helicopter with flashing lights, shining a searchlight on the ground. In any case, because these photos were posted to the Internet a year before the sighting, they obviously have nothing to do with the July 7 incident. Other photos accompanying news accounts of this incident show a rocket launch, probably that of the Russian Progress M-06M supply ship launched to the International Space Station on June 30.

However, it is significant that the brilliant Venus in the evening sky at that time, was nearing its maximum brightness before setting about two-and-a-half hours after the sun. One would think it impossible for a group of educated and seemingly rational people to mistake the brilliant planet Venus for a UFO, but experience shows otherwise. "No single object has been misinterpreted as a 'flying saucer' more often than the planet Venus. The study of these mistakes proves quite instructive, for it shows beyond all possible dispute the limitations of sensory perception and the weakness of accounts relating shapes and motions of point sources or objects with small apparent diameters," wrote the well-known pro-UFOlogist Jacques Vallee in his 1966 book Challenge to Science.

A brief video snippet of the "UFO" about twenty seconds into a Chinese-language news report on the incident shows a tiny, bright dot against a dark sky (see http://tinyurl.com/2c9ft7o). It might be a camcorder image of Venus, although the slight fuzziness on the left side may possibly result from an off-axis image. Alternatively, it might instead show the plumes of a distant rocket launch. Without more information, we cannot say for sure. Officials said that the object did not turn up on radar. Ruan Zhouchang, spokesperson for the Xiaoshan Airport in Hangzhou, said through an interpreter, "There was an unknown object seen in the skies over the airport. So according to our regulations we had to close the airspace. Aircraft movements were suspended from 8:45 pm to 9:41 pm." However, the photo accompanying that news report, supposedly showing the object, appeared to be that of a high-altitude contrail (see http://tinyurl.com/2vd2zuz).

A 2001 incident occurring at the Barnaul Airport in southern Siberia sounds very much like the incident at the Xiaoshan Airport. The Agence-France Presse reported from Moscow on January 27, 2001:

An airport in southern Siberia was shut down for an hour and a half on Friday when an unidentified flying object (UFO) was detected hovering above its runway, the Interfax news agency reported. The crew of an Il-76 cargo aircraft of the company "Altaï" refused to take off, claiming they saw a luminescent object hovering above the runway of the [sic] Siberia's Barnaul airport, local aviation company director Ivan Komarov was quoted as saying.

As in Hangzhou, nothing appeared on the radar. UFO investigator Eric Maillot--from the Cercle Zetetique, a French rationalist organization--looked into this case. He discovered that the time and direction of the UFO matched the position of Venus. And because the crew reported seeing just one bright object, not two, Maillot concluded that the "UFO" reported by the crew was Venus and not some separate object (www.ufologie.net/htm/afp270100.htm).

An official investigation by Chinese aviation experts was launched into the incident at Xiaoshan Airport. They concluded that the object probably was "an airplane on descent reflecting light" (see http://tinyurl.com/2bw272q), one which apparently kept descending for an hour or more. They said it might also have been an "unexpected flying vehicle," whatever that is. Imagine how embarrassing it would be to have to conclude, "Air Traffic Controllers at one of our major Chinese airports mistook Venus for an unknown hovering aircraft."

Whatever may or may not have hovered above Hangzhou, a feverish UFO excitement seemed to grip the region. On July 14, from about 8-9 pm, a UFO was reported in Shaping Park in Chongqing. This sighting also sounds very much like Venus. But according to the Chinese newspaper Southeast Express, at about 11:30 pm on July 9, two men in Xiamen reported seeing "dozens of vertical luminous beams" in the sky. According to one witness, identified only as Mr. Wang, "At first, there were only five of them, hanging very low in the sky, but after a short while, the number increased to about fifty, and they were higher and higher, just like a stave hanging in the sky." The story was accompanied by an impressive-looking photo showing hovering yellow lights in a mostly-cloudy and not-yet-dark sky (see www.whatsonxiamen.com/news13305.html), but it's not clear if the illustration is supposed to be an actual photo of the incident or a reconstruction using photo editing software (even if claimed otherwise, it's probably the latter).

Several explanations for this sighting come to mind. Witnesses may have seen a display involving searchlights or lasers from a distance. I witnessed once--and only once, in my many years of sky-gazing--a rare phenomenon of a mock-Jupiter, essentially the same thing as a mock-Sun or "sun dog," which looks like a vertical ribbon hanging in the sky. I glimpsed it only briefly before an approaching front of cirrus clouds covered it. Possibly the witnesses may have seen a very rare phenomenon of that sort, although I suspect that the clouds containing the ice crystals that were creating the phenomenon would have obliterated the sky before the object count got to fifty. Or, since this account contains very few details and does not contain the full name of any witness, the whole story may be made up. Such are the circumstances one often encounters when one starts to critically investigate UFO claims.

*...*

In the July/August issue of the Skeptical Inquirer, I reported on the stinging comments made by James Carrion when he resigned as head of MUFON, the largest UFO group in the United States. He described the UFO phenomenon as being based in "humans deceiving humans," which is no less than rank heresy to the mostly hardcore UFOlogists in MUFON, to whom UFOs must be extraterrestrial spacecraft. Now Carrion has announced the formation of the Center for UFO Truth (CUT), which according to him is "not a UFO organization nor is it affiliated in any way with Ufology. Instead CUT is a historical research organization focused on examining the question long ignored by historians: was the UFO subject purposely created by the United States and its allies as part of a cold war operation and perpetuated to this day for national security reasons?" (see http://tinyurl.com/UFOtruth).

Almost as soon as this announcement hit the Internet, some of UFOlogy's wolves started howling at Carrion, as he described in his next blog posting, "Blasphemy Will Get You Stoned." He also relates what happened when he presented his theory of psi-war UFO deception at the UFO Crash Retrieval Conference in Las Vegas in 2009. "I realized that presenting a human theory for the origin of UFOs at a UFO conference is tantamount to blasphemy."

I don't think that Carrion is going down the right path here. I don't see how the CIA could have manipulated Kenneth Arnold, Ray Palmer, and the other founding fathers of UFOlogy, or why they would want to. I think that the UFO subject owes its existence not to spy wars but primarily to processes that Charles Mackay described in his book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. However, it is entirely possible that some governments (including our own) may have exploited the public's existing belief in UFOs for their own ends. I commend Carrion for having the courage to go his own way, and I wish him well. Even if his journey doesn't lead to "UFO truth," I'm sure he'll turn up some interesting stuff along the way.

By a very interesting coincidence--if it is a coincidence (cue sardonic laughter)--a book just published in the United Kingdom makes the same kind of argument as Carrion: that the U.S. government has been secretly promoting belief in UFOs. This goes against the conventional UFOlogy belief that the government is trying to cover up the existence of UFOs. Mark Pilkington, a writer and filmmaker living in London, is author of Mirage Men: A Journey into Disinformation, Paranoia, and UFOs. According to the publisher's blurb, "Mirage Men explores the strange and symbiotic relationship between the U.S. military and intelligence agencies and the community who believes strongly that UFOs have visited earth." The review in the U.K.'s Daily Mail says, "According to Pilkington, the campaign to promote the idea of UFOs was masterminded in the Fifties by the head of the CIA, Allen Welsh Dulles. More recently, many of the leaked fake documents and bogus stories seem to have come from the U.S. Air Force's Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI)" (see http://tinyurl.com/28oknqb). Of course, by the 1950s, flying saucers had already promoted themselves quite effectively to the public without any help from the government, and Pilkington's claim that the famous UFO contactee George Adamski was a victim of CIA deception--complete with alien impersonators in fake saucers--is implausible in the extreme.

Still, it is undeniable that one of the early directors of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), the most influential UFO group of the 1950s and '60s, was Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, who was also the first director of the CIA. Another early NICAP director was former CIA "psychological warfare" chief Colonel Joseph Bryan III, and there were at least two other NICAP directors in the CIA (see http://tinyurl.com/NICAP-CIA). Were UFOs just a personal interest of theirs, or were UFOs related to their CIA work? Enough persons with a CIA or other intelligence background have turned up in UFO circles over the years to make the question an interesting one. Even the well-known skeptical believer, the late Karl Pflock, was a former CIA man.

These men should not be confused with what seems like a small army of deceivers and impostors who claim to have intelligence and/or a military background that turns out to be simply made up. For example, a man originally known only as "Source A," who claimed to be a high-ranking Navy officer, gave "confirmation" of tales of U.S. military officials meeting with extraterrestrials. He was recently identified as Richard Theilmann, an impostor who apparently never served in the Navy; he wore a chest full of medals that he never earned (see http://tinyurl.com/SourceA).

More puzzling is the confession of UFOlogist William Moore, co-author of The Roswell Incident and The Philadelphia Experiment, who famously told the audience at a MUFON conference in 1989 that he had been recruited by intelligence agencies to spy on the somewhat unhinged UFOlogist, the late Paul Bennewitz. If Moore is telling the truth, this supposed spy mission makes no sense. If he's not, why would he make up a story that has caused everyone in UFOlogy to revile him? Of course, that assumes that Moore was acting rationally, and in UFOlogy rationality is often in short supply.

II recently saw an episode of the "reality" TV show Ghost Hunters, and the T.A.P.S. team used an infrared camera to look for ghosts. At one point a camera captured a form in the general shape of a person near a wall--but everyone is accounted for and the ghost hunters see nothing except via the camera. Any idea what that was?

Ghost Hunters is the world's top ghost-themed television show, and it has been misinforming the public about both ghosts and science for six seasons (see "Ghost-Hunting Mistakes: Science and Pseudoscience in Ghost Investigations" on page 44 of this issue). The Ghost Hunters team prides itself on using modern technology to detect ghosts and other paranormal phenomena, and infrared cameras are among their staple devices. Like the other scientific gear that ghost hunters employ, infrared cameras are valid and useful devices when used correctly.

More often than not, infrared cameras create false-positive readings that amateur ghost hunters mistake for ghostly activity. Without seeing the specific video clip that you are referring to, it's impossible to know exactly what was recorded, but in my years of ghost investigations I have encountered many similar readings. To uninformed audiences and unscientific investigators, the fact that an infrared camera reveals a human-shaped form where clearly no one is around can seem very spooky and mysterious. There is, however, often a perfectly rational and scientific explanation.

The first step to explaining the nature of these "ghostly auras" is understanding the nature of the electromagnetic spectrum. Visible light--the light that our eyes can see--makes up only a fraction of the electromagnetic waves in the world. The next-lowest category of frequency below visible light (and above radio waves and microwaves) consists of infrared electromagnetic waves. In a nutshell, infrared cameras simply allow us to see a lower-frequency wavelength, detecting variations in heat instead of light.

Heat is of course far less transient than light; if we turn off a light switch in a closed room, the area goes dark almost instantly. But if we turn off a source of heat--including body heat--in an area or room, the heat may remain long after the source has been removed. This can seem mysterious to amateur ghost hunters.

At an investigation I carried out last year for the TV show MysteryQuest, one of the ghost hunters used a forward looking infrared (FLIR) camera to detect a foot-long vertical warm spot on a pillar. No one in the room could explain what caused it; one person suggested it was a sign that a ghost had been watching us. In fact I had seen one of the ghost hunters leaning against the pillar a few minutes earlier, and the warm spot matched exactly the height and shape of the man's upper arm. All the ghost hunters swore that none of them had leaned against the pole, but when I suggested they review a video tape, they saw I was correct. If they had not been recording that area (or if I hadn't seen the investigator create the warm spot), it likely would have remained mysterious. This is quite common on TV ghost-hunting shows, and it is likely the explanation for what you saw.

On November 19, 1995, the town hall of the English market town of Wem burned, leaving only a charred brick shell. Among the locals watching the building burn was Tony O'Rahilly, who brought his camera and took several photos of the blaze. A few months later, in March 1996, O'Rahilly developed the photos of the fire in a little film studio he'd constructed in a shed in the garden behind his home. The series of pictures showed dramatic images of fire, light, and darkness. But one showed something even more astonishing-a ghostly girl standing amid the flames (Topham, n.d.).

O'Rahilly sent the photos to the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena (ASSAP) for analysis. The ASSAP, which specializes in paranormal investigations, assisted O'Rahilly by having Vernon Harrison, former head of the Royal Photographic Society, examine the photos. Harrison concluded, “The negative is a straight- forward piece of black-and-white work and shows no sign of having been tampered with” (Laursen 2007).

The ASSAP's conclusion was that the photo (see figure 1) showed a simulacrum (a random, ambiguous image interpreted as meaningful) caused by falling debris filmed during the fire. It did not appear to be a hoax. However, this conclusion was called into question by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), which investigated the case for its television show Out of this World, hosted by current Independent Television (ITV) presenter Chris Choi.

Fig. 1

In the BBC show, Choi interviewed O'Rahilly in his garden and also toured the burned-out remnants of the town hall. The conventional story of the ghostly photo was also told. But when the BBC took the photo to the National Museum of Photography, Film, and Television (now known as the National Media Museum), viewers learned a different story. Both of the photography experts there, Paul Thompson and Will Stapp, agreed that the photo showed signs of manipulation and double exposure. Thompson in particular noted that he saw horizontal scan lines, as though the image consisted of a photo of a face on a video screen pasted into the picture of the fire. With that damning revelation, Choi returned to confront O'Rahilly, who responded, “No way ... It's none of my doing.”

I first became interested in investigating this case in September 2009. At that time, the allegations of the Out of this World show were not widely available on the Internet. As is usual in the echo chamber of ghost literature, the ghost stories rang loud and clear while the facts lay quietly subdued out in the back shed. I came across the BBC piece online and found it very interesting. A check of the ASSAP's website showed that they still felt the case was one of pareidolia instead of hoaxing. I found that intriguing and asked them why; they replied that the photo they'd provided to the BBC during the television investigation had been a duplicate, and in their opinion the “scan lines” observed by Paul Thompson had been the result of duplication, not hoaxing.

Trying to find a more pristine copy of the photograph to examine, I reached out to Janet Bord at the Fortean Picture Library. She was able to provide me with a high-resolution photo as well as a shot of the negative strip from which it was produced. As the ASSAP had said, the original did not have any scan lines. It showed a ghostly girl in the fire, but there was no evidence of digital scan lines.

I tried to contact Paul Thompson and Will Stapp. Both are still involved in photography but are no longer working with the National Media Museum. Neither Thompson nor Stapp responded to my inquires, and other photography experts I approached were unwilling to opine on the matter.

To be clear, I didn't think the photo showed a ghost-but I was deeply curious to know whether O'Rahilly had photographed a piece of debris with an uncanny resemblance to a girl or had deliberately faked the photograph. I would have liked to have asked him, but he passed away in 2005.

And then the answer arrived in the morning mail. On Monday, May 17, 2010, the Shropshire Star, the local paper serving Wem, ran a story titled, “Does Postcard Solve Ghost Riddle?” The Star had run a photo a few weeks earlier showing a postcard from 1922 of a street in Wem (see figure 2). An alert reader named Brian Lear, a seventy-seven-year-old grandfather, noticed that the girl pictured in the postcard (see figure 3) bore a strong resemblance to the famous ghost girl and alerted the Star. In the May 17 article, the newspaper showed details from O'Rahilly's photo and the postcard and agreed with Lear that the resemblance was “striking” (Neal 2010).

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Striking may be an understatement. Rarely does such a clear explanation for a ghost photo come to light. Rather than simply show both photos, I have created an animation demonstrating that the two girls are indeed the same photographic image: the one superimposed on the fire photograph by O'Rahilly via a double exposure. On the blog of The Atlanta Skeptics, my animated image of the girl on the postcard dynamically fades in over the ghost photo; the alignments should also be apparent from the still image shown in figure 4. The points of the girl's hat, the eyes, the nose, the neckline, and the beltline align perfectly between the two photos. O'Rahilly used this postcard image to make his ghost photo. Details missing from the ghost photo-but appearing in the postcard-are due to either the photographic process used to make the fake image or to O'Rahilly cropping the postcard prior to shooting his double exposure.

Fig. 4

In the years since the fire, Wem has come to embrace the ghost. The town's history tells of a devastating fire back in 1677, allegedly caused by a girl named Jane Churm. People have reported seeing the ghost of Jane in the intervening years, usually carrying a candle (Karl 2007). It is no surprise that many have claimed that the girl in the photo must be Jane. After all, what's a ghost photo without a backstory? Even the spot where the ghost was “photographed” had been adorned with documentation of the paranormal event. Perhaps Wem's townsfolk should move that bit of documentation over to the late O'Rahilly's shed?

It's a pity that O'Rahilly died before this postcard came to light. He got plenty of media coverage when the photo was released originally, and now with the coverage of the explanation he could have enjoyed a second wave of interest. Indeed, he would have gotten double the exposure. n

References

Karl, Jason. 2007. An Illustrated History of the Haunted World. London: New Holland Publishers, Ltd.

Laursen, Chris. 2007. In the doorway of a burning building. Available online at http://seminars.tor

... ontoghosts.org/blog/index.php/2007/07/11/wei

rd_wednesday_with_chris_laursen_32.

Neal, Toby. 2010. Does postcard solve ghost riddle? Shropshire Star (United Kingdom). Available online at www.shropshirestar.com/news/2010/05/17/does-postcard-solve-ghost-riddle/.

Topham, Ian. n.d. Wem town hall. Available online at www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/england/shropshire/hauntings/wem-town-hall.html.

Most people probably realize that the name “Frankenstein” is properly applicable to the creator, Victor Frankenstein, and not his creation, which is often referred to as “the creature” in the novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. Still, popular culture continues to identify the creation, or “the monster,” as “Frankenstein.” This corruption of the name can be directly attributed to the numerous motion pictures stemming from the extraordinary novel, in particular the eight made by Universal Pictures during the 1930s and '40s (beginning with 1931's Frankenstein and ending with 1948's Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein). The latter movie and some of the others-namely The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), and Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1942)-compound this confusion because their titles refer directly to the creature, not the creator.

Although Universal's Frankenstein and its sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein, are now considered classics, it is most likely in the original film that the misapplication of the name began. When the newly created and somewhat unsteady being first appeared on screen, his creator cautioned him, “Take care, Herr Frankenstein, take care!” This endearing scene is not found in the novel, in which the initial encounter between Frankenstein and his creation is quite different:

I beheld the wretch-the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped and rushed downstairs. (Shelley 1991, 43)

In addition to the misuse of Victor's last name, the Universal screenwriters took the curious step of reversing the first names of Victor Frankenstein and his friend Henry Clerval; Frankenstein becomes “Henry” and his friend is “Victor.” There seems to be no motivation for, or benefit derived from, such an alteration. Shelley saw Victor Frankenstein as playing God and may have drawn his name from Paradise Lost, in which Milton refers to God as “the Victor”; thus the filmmakers violated Shelley's original intention with this unwarranted editing.

Another misconception from the movies is the belief that the creature is inarticulate, though an attempt is made in The Bride of Frankenstein to follow the novel by giving him speech. Able to communicate, the creature forces Frankenstein to create a mate for him. Although this storyline is similar to what happens in the book, the results differ sharply. In the original story, Frankenstein destroys his work on a female being before completion, thus incurring the further wrath of the creature. In the movie, Frankenstein completes his work, but the creature experiences another rejection when his intended “bride” finds him repugnant and will have nothing to do with him.

In this same film, the creature learns language from a blind hermit with whom he shares some tender moments, learns to laugh, and even sheds some tears. These appealing scenes are not found in the novel, but they do resemble a meeting therein between the creature and a blind man named De Lacey who lives with his family in the woods. Unfortunately, while The Bride of Frankenstein makes an effort to develop the creature along lines similar to the novel, later film versions return him to the role of dumb, murderous brute.

On the contrary, Mary Shelley's creature becomes an articulate, educated being who learns to speak and read French. He knows the history of prior civilizations and is familiar with great literature, such as Milton's Paradise Lost, in which he compares himself to the rejected Satan instead of the nurtured Adam. Frankenstein's creation achieves all this while hiding in a hovel next to the De Lacey family cottage, observing them for a year. At one point, while the rest of the family is away, he presents himself to the blind family patriarch in a passionate but naive appeal for friendship. He experiences initial success because his host cannot see his hideous appearance but hears only his inner suffering and need, a further indication of the creature's humble, not hostile, nature. Sadly however, the returning family, who see only the creature's outward ugliness, drive him away to continue his friendless wandering. His hatred toward his creator for abandoning him intensifies daily.

The creature becomes capable not only of logical thought and speech but also of diabolical scheming. He innocently approaches Victor's little brother William for solace but strangles him when the boy also rejects him. The creature then plants the boy's locket on Justine, Frankenstein's sleeping servant girl, in a successful attempt to have her accused of the crime and hanged. Such devious planning and forethought reveal a mind capable of complex reasoning. Thus the creature is, admittedly, quite a vengeful character in the book and does commit murder to cause suffering to Frankenstein and family. In his tormented mind, he feels justified for his crime; there is rationale and purpose to his horrific deeds, and he is not the ignorant automaton of the movies.

In the novel, Victor Frankenstein tells us through his journal that his time and effort during his stay in college were devoted to the study of the human frame and, in particular, the monumental question of just where life originated. In reading the novel, we too become curious and wonder just what secret Frankenstein discovered and by what process he applied it to his creation. Because we are so engrossed in the story that we half expect a valid answer, we find Frankenstein's rather casual revelation somewhat disappointing:

After days and nights of incredible labor and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause and generation of life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter. (Shelley 1991, 37)

After this profound understatement, Frankenstein refuses to share the secret of life on the grounds that it will lead the reader to “destruction and infallible misery” and “mankind will be happier without it.” Obviously Mary Shelley did not know the secret of restoring life to the dead. Hollywood answers the question of the life-giving process with an awesome and frightening display of lights and electricity amid showers of sparks and explosions produced by an array of electrical machines. The machines harness the lightning and feed it through the electrodes attached to the creature's neck, causing a quickening of muscles, activation, and life. The process described in the novel is not nearly as dramatic:

I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse some spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs. (Shelley 1991, 42)

Frankenstein's success seems to stem more from chemical or mechanical stimuli that result in a slow physiological transformation than from a sudden “shocking” into existence. Furthermore, the scientist's studies had always been devoted to natural philosophy, including fields such as chemistry and mathematics, not electricity-which would support a quieter, less spectacular event than what the movies give us. (Just what the “instruments of life” are, we're left to ponder.)

In her author's introduction to the novel, Shelley is a bit more specific when she describes her dream that inspired the frightful tale:

I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a Man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life and stir with an uneasy half-vital motion. (Shelley 1991, xxv)

Still, it is not clear exactly what transpired to quicken and give life to Frankenstein's assembly of dead tissue. “The working of some powerful engine” should not be equated with Hollywood's shocking electrical display because the phrase was used in Shelley's time and earlier as a vague catch-all referring to any mysterious or seemingly magical device, procedure, or manifestation. (See, for example, chapter 2 of Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, in which Gulliver's watch, comb, and razor are called “powerful engines” by the Lilliputians.)

All the descriptions in the novel and the movies of Victor Frankenstein's obvious scientific knowledge and surgical skills lead us to assume that he must have been a doctor, and he is often referred to as such in films, television, and commentary. However, he is never referred to as such in the novel. Had Victor achieved such status, surely he would have been addressed as “Dr. Frankenstein” by Shelley. Although Frankenstein was educated in the schools of Geneva and attended the University of Ingolstadt, where he became quite successful with his studies and experiments, there is no evidence in the novel that the scientist ever graduated or received any kind of medical degree. In fact, the title character tells us that he had reached the point where he felt he could learn no more, and that his presence at Ingolstadt was no longer conducive to his improvements; thus, he considered returning home to Geneva, until his astounding discovery prompted him to delay his departure.

After his discovery, Frankenstein pushes his efforts to their eventual horrible success, but he is wracked with regret over what he has done and lapses into bouts of intense fear and fever-requiring medical attention and a return home. The rest of his life is consumed by determined but frustrating efforts to right his wrong and destroy his creation due to the death and sorrow it has inflicted upon his family. Shelley gives no account of Frankenstein returning to the university or receiving any medical award that would qualify him as a doctor.

For those who “grew up” with the Frankenstein films but have not read the novel, these movies are their first, and perhaps only, exposure to the story; people may be surprised to learn that they don't know the real version at all. Subsequent films and television shows have missed opportunities to correct this problem, and in fact they may have exacerbated it by claiming to be “the true story of Frankenstein.” Kenneth Branagh's 1994 film interpretation is entitled Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which implies that the movie is based directly on the novel. Though it is faithful to a point, there are many errant details, culminating in a silly sequence that has Victor revive his wife, Elizabeth (whom the creature has killed), only to have her die again in a fiery suicide. This drama is not taken from the book, in which Elizabeth dies just once, permanently.

Aside from plot details, there are also major thematic differences in the story between the novel and the film interpretations. The question of how far scientists should go in their quest for knowledge is a major theme of the novel but is only implied in the films. This is still an important and relevant question in this age of technological developments such as cloning. Secondly, the intense suffering resulting from the rejection and isolation of Frankenstein's creation-because he is different-forms a very important theme of the work, which Shelley clearly emphasizes but the movies fail to consider.

Richard Holmes, in his remarkable study, The Age of Wonder (2008), reveals that the corruption of Mary Shelley's novel began in stage plays soon after its publication. Holmes goes on to state that the changes in these plays have influenced almost all subsequent stage and film productions (p. 334). However, it is difficult to believe that these early stage productions, so far removed from the Universal films of the 1930s and '40s, could have had any direct influence on them, and it is not these stage plays with which most people identify when they contemplate Frankenstein. Although Holmes's work does reveal an early tendency to change Shelley's plot details, such as portraying the unfortunate creature as an inarticulate monster, these changes have been burned into the human psyche not by the stage plays but by the various movies with which most people are familiar.

Does it really matter that a work of fiction has been so misinterpreted? After all, the movies are fun to watch, the story they tell is an intriguing one, and a movie can't be expected to replicate a book in all aspects. While all this may be true, it does matter that the Hollywood versions of this story are lacking the novel's major themes and plot details. What we believe about this classic literary work is simply false, yet society has accepted it as true. It's as if the novel has been cast aside and forgotten, and that probably matters most of all.

Hollywood filmmakers have created such a vast gap between the novel and the films that what we have today is not just two types of media telling the same story, but two types of media telling completely different stories. They are both about a man who creates a man, but that is where similarities end. Other film adaptations, such as Gone with the Wind, have been much more successful in maintaining the integrity of the original work. Original books can often still be recognized in their associated films, but Frankenstein has been so overshadowed by film versions that the book is no longer relevant to most people. This is a shame because Shelley's Frankenstein is a great work of literature with multiple levels of meaning; however, contrary to popular belief, Shelley's story has never been told accurately on the screen.

References

Shelley, Mary. 1991. Frankenstein. New York: Bantam Books.

Holmes, Richard. 2008. The Age of Wonder. New York: Pantheon Books.

Adam Savage is co-host of the Discovery Channel's MythBusters. He has a diverse background in animation and design, and for almost two decades he's concentrated on the special effects industry in film, theater, and television. A prominent skeptic, Savage lectures in science education and is a strong promoter of critical thinking. Karen Stollznow, a host of the Center for Inquiry's Point of Inquiry podcast, recently spoke with him.

Do you consider yourself to be a skeptic? Do you call yourself a skeptic or an atheist or a free thinker or a humanist?

All of the above. I had never sought out to identify myself as a skeptic. I hadn't quite realized where MythBusters placed within the cosmology of the skeptical universe, but, you know, we're smack in the middle of it. We always are thinking critically, especially about ourselves.

We are, I think, still the only television show willing to say that we got an entire hour of programming wrong. We'll go back and revisit our results. Often the episodes in which we come back with new data and come to different conclusions than before are our favorite episodes. We recognize that's probably the most important scientific lesson we can teach in the show. It just grew out of our realization that we had done something wrong.

It's brilliant that you're open to saying that you're wrong about something and to be able to re-evaluate. That is part and parcel of being a critical thinker.

There's a phrase I came up with early on in doing the show: "Failure is always an option." I had that printed on our crew hats and crew shirts and I realized, in fact, it is a deeply scientific phrase because people think of an experiment as something set out to prove something. And it's not. It's something set out to test something. So whether you're right or wrong about your preconceptions, the experiment that yields data is still a successful experiment. That's what we mean by "Failure is always an option."

So how would you say you apply that to your experiments?

Probably the best tool that Jamie [Hyneman, my MythBusters co-host] and I have applying skepticism to our experiments is each other. Our relationship, like any strong partnership, is based on a tremendous amount of creative tension. We have large and small disagreements constantly about the way to proceed with things.

Healthy skepticism?

Yeah. We are always poking holes in the other's ideas. We will fight for what we want to do until the right idea really does make itself clear. Then we'll give up. We have no ego when it comes to the elegant solution. But the fact is, up until that elegant solution has been reached we argue almost constantly. We recognize that in that push-pull there's a tremendous amount of strength. There's a check and a balance that means that everything we work on together is inherently going to be stronger than the things we work on separately.

So what do you say to people who claim that your show is not sufficiently rigorous and that you don't always apply the scientific method?

I admit outright that our show is not sufficiently rigorous. It's not meant to be a show about scientific inquiry. It's meant to be a show about critical inquiry and where to begin looking at it from a scientific standpoint. I say that we do not stand by our results. I stand solidly behind our methodologies. We always would like to have more than one test, more than three tests. Our show is not meant to be taken as any kind of science fact in terms of our results. The science is in how to proceed from one experiment to the next with what you've learned.

Preliminary tests [are] not meant to be conclusive.

Exactly. The structure of our show is five or six acts depending on the commercial break and on where in the world you watch it. In general, you start out with, What's the myth? What's the plan? Then we go down to the shop; we do some scale testing. We often do medium-scale testing. Then we do full-scale testing. Pretty much all the science happens by the time we're done with the medium-scale testing. That's the point at which we have really illuminated the features of the physics that we're exploring. The full-scale testing is usually just the trick we use to keep people watching until the end where they get to watch full-size cars smash into each other and prove the point that we demonstrated with the medium-scale testing.

That's ultimately what everyone wants to see.

It is. Even after a hundred and ninety eight hours and eight years of doing this show, everyone still comes up and says, "I love that cement truck when it blows up!" After three thousand different explosions over the years…

You can remember all of them?

...they're like wines to Jamie and me. We can sense their differences and their nuances. But for me, falling hot water heaters is the single greatest thing I like to watch blow up. There is no more satisfying thud in the world.

Are there any topics that are off-limits to you guys?

There are several categories we don't touch: what [James] Randi would call woo-woo [and] what we call oogie-boogie. I'm still ashamed we ever went near pyramid power as a story to test. All of those mystical things. Dowsing is an open question that we've been thinking back and forth about for years whether or not to do it on the show. We're never going to look for the Loch Ness Monster. We're never going to look for Bigfoot. We're not going to try to prove a negative. We are always going to look for something that we can actually get our hands on and do tests toward the goal of coming to a conclusion.

There are a lot of paranormal and pseudoscientific themes that you could test and actually come up with a reasonable conclusion. So have you ever wanted to do a show or a spin-off show that focuses on the paranormal?

It's very difficult. One of the things I like about our show is it's very localized to us. We have brought experts in from the outside from time to time. That introduces problems from a production standpoint. If you're going to be testing the paranormal, by definition you're bringing people in, and there's a gotcha aspect to that. That is not what MythBusters is about. It's not to say that I don't realize that everyone claiming to have mystical powers is a charlatan, but I don't think within the narrative of our show that kind of arc works for us. It's very, very tricky. It sounds very easy to test whether or not someone can stop a watch with their mind, but when you get into it, if all you end up with are negatives, you don't really have a television show there. Not, at least, MythBusters.

To some extent you need to have brief shows where you can treat something sufficiently within a single episode.

We are constrained by the time. It's absolutely true. One of the shames is the international cut of MythBusters is fifty-two minutes long, but the U.S. cut is forty-four minutes long, so there are eight minutes missing from every U.S. episode. Often, great jokes lose their punch lines in the edit. It's unfortunate.

The show is so popular, but how do you think people feel when you're taking away these myths and these legends from them?

I've never gotten a complaint. Also I've never had anyone e-mail me on the positive side and thank us for all the groundbreaking work we're doing in urban legend research. I think everyone realizes that the premise of the show is an excellent scarecrow on which to hang a show that tricks you into learning about science.

We recognized early on that the structure had that sort of trick in it. We have [had] these great stories that often ended with hilarious or terrible things happening, and we got to demonstrate them, which is inherently interesting. And then there's our enthusiasm. We realize our enthusiasm is a great driver toward what the audience enjoys watching. We as communicators, both of us through totally different means, are good at communicating what we're enjoying and why we're enjoying it. That is inherently involving.

What influence do you think you've had on science communication and science education?

Science teachers are among our most fervent fans. They say Thursday mornings after our show airs are some [of] their most exciting talks in their classes. An MIT professor told us that he thought MythBusters was a significant reason that engineering schools, which about ten years ago often would allow people to go all the way through a PhD program doing all theoretical work on the computer, now require their grad students to do hands-on work. He believes it is in no small part due to how MythBusters has been part of the DIY zeitgeist that has absolutely exploded in the last five years.

It's a winning formula for you guys.

I hope so, because we want to develop some more shows for Discovery. We've just signed on for several more years of MythBusters. It's still rating as strong as it ever has been, actually. It's the longest-running show on Discovery, at this point. In addition, we've signed up to develop for Discovery several new shows with some business partners we have. We're really, really excited about it. We have a deck of ideas. Some very strong, some medium formed, some very loosely formed.

You've got the best job on Earth! How did all these myths originate?

I've thought a lot about why great myths perpetuate. We all want to know how the world works. That's the natural human inclination. When a good narrative helps you understand how the world works you latch onto it. The narrative provides a mnemonic device for your brain. A meme, if you will. I think we pass those around because they're easy bites of information to pass around. Also we are storytellers. We like telling each other stories whether they're true or not. Sometimes the most elaborate stories for us provide the most lovely fodder for a myth because there are so many parts to work on.

Would you say that more of the myths you investigate happen to be true or false? What's the ratio?

Something like sixty percent of the stories are busted, and then an even split of them are plausible or confirmed. We don't care whether we bust or prove something. We're totally agnostic where that's concerned.

Has there ever been any kind of backlash coming out as a skeptic?

I've had kids e-mail me and say, "Why do you think this?" I don't respond to all of it; I'm not looking for a fight. I have occasionally written back to someone and said, "How nice for you" when they've told me I'm an idiot. But for the most part, everyone is incredibly respectful.

Do you find that most of the detractors complain about your being an atheist rather than your being a skeptic?

Actually, I get far more complaints about being an idiot than an atheist. If you troll the Discovery forums, you will find countless, countless posts of people saying we are total idiots; we have no idea what we're doing. Then the people who step up and defend us are working scientists at NASA, Sandia [National Laboratories], and [Jet Propulsion Laboratory]. All over the country working scientists are the ones knowing that we are doing the right kind of work, even if we're not doing it as rigorously as anyone, especially us, would like. The methodologies are sound.

How does it feel to be such a guardian for science and skepticism and atheism?

A guardian for science? [Laughing.]

I take the responsibility seriously. I follow my natural inclination, and the success comes from that. I follow what feels right to me. I let that guide me rather than the idea that I am a guardian or I am a voice. When you are a public figure, your job is to be truthful.

Although there is little justification in either the Old or the New Testament to support what would become a cult of relics in early Christianity, such a practice did develop. The earliest veneration of Christian relics can be traced to about ce 156 when Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna, was martyred and his burned remains were gathered for veneration. In time, the distribution and veneration of packets of dust and tiny fragments of bone or cloth, and the like--associated with martyrs and saints--became common. At about CE 400, St. Augustine deplored the excesses and outright fraud of the relic business, disparaging "hypocrites in the garb of monks for hawking about the limbs of martyrs," adding skeptically, "if indeed of martyrs" (Encyclopedia Britannica 1978, s.v. "Relics").

Among other, later, critics was Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1340-1400), whose great unfinished work The Canterbury Tales contains a satirical attack on relic mongering. An even more scathing condemnation comes from John Calvin (1509-1564), the Protestant reformer, whose Treatise on Relics is a surprisingly modern look at the Roman Catholic Church's veneration of relics. Both Chaucer and Calvin weighed in on those most quintessentially Christian relics, fragments of the reputed Holy Cross itself. Here is a summary of their views, supplemented by my own investigations and research on the cross, which according to legend was discovered in the fourth century by St. Helena.

Chaucer's 'Pardoner's Tale'

The Canterbury Tales (ca. 1386 -1400) is Geoffrey Chaucer's fictional classic compilation of stories told by traveling pilgrims, including the host of the Tabard Inn in Southwark, England, from whence said Pilgrims set out, wending their way to Canterbury Cathedral. "The Pardoner's Tale" satirizes phony relics in a classic of skepticism worthy of a brief retrospective here. The Pardoner--one who sells the church's forgiveness of sins--is a pretentious fellow, as hinted in the opening lines (in quaint Middle English):

'Lordynges,' quod he, in chirches whan I preche,

I peyne me to han an hauteyn speche,

And rynge it out as round as gooth a belle,

For I kan al by rote that I telle.

My theme is alwey oon, and ever was--

"Radix malorum est cupiditas."

That is, as I translate it (and all that follows) into modern English:

"My Lords," said he, "in churches when I preach,

I do take pains to have a haughty speech,

And ring it out as roundly as a bell,

For I know by rote all that I tell.

My theme's to be the same and always will

That 'Greed is at the root of all evil.'"

But the Pardoner is merely a hypocrite. First, he displays his letters of approval signed by the Pope. Then he brings out his reliquaries, with bits of cloth and other alleged relics, including the shoulder bone of a sheep, and declares:

"If when this bone be washed in any well,

If cow, or calf, or sheep, or ox should swell

From eaten worm, or by a snake's been stung,

Take water of that well and wash its tongue,

And it is healed forthwith; and furthermore,

Of poxes and of scabs and every sore

Shall every sheep be healed, that of this well

Drinks a draft; take heed of what I tell."

He adds that the relic-treated water will cause farm animals to multiply and will put an end to all human jealousy, including distrust of a wife's faithfulness--even if she has lain with two or three priests! Of another ruse, he admits,

"By this trick I've won, year by year,

A hundred marks since I was Pardoner.

I stand as if a cleric in my pulpit,

And when the common people down do sit,

I preach, so as you've heard me say before,

And even tell a hundred falsehoods more."

Acknowledging his hypocrisy, he states:

"Thus can I preach against the self-same vice

Which I do use, and that is avarice.

But, though I too am guilty of that sin,

Yet can I make other folk to turn

From avarice, and hurry to repent.

But that is not my principal intent."

The Pardoner then goes on to tell his tale. (It features three young rogues who set out on a drunken quest to slay evil Death. An old man directs them to a spot where they instead discover a treasure of gold coins. Unfortunately they end up killing each other out of avarice and so indeed find death.)

Finished with his morality tale, the Pardoner makes a direct pitch to his host, who rails against the fraudulent relics while indicating his own belief in the relic of the True Cross. The Pardoner begins the exchange:

"Come forth, sir host, and offer first then,

And you shall kiss the relics every one,

Yes, for fourpence! Unbuckle now your purse."

"Nay, nay," said he, "then I'd have Christ's curse!

It shall not be, however you beseech me.

You would have me kiss your old breeches,

And swear they were a relic of a saint,

Although they're stained with your own fundament!

But by the cross which Saint Helena found,

I'd like to have your bollocks in my hand

Instead of relics or reliquarium;

Let's cut them off, I'll help to carry them;

They shall be enshrined within a hog's turd."

This pardoner answered not a
word....

(The Knight helps make peace between the two men, whereupon the pilgrims "rode forth on their way.")

Now, Chaucer's own view of the True Cross is unstated, but having it endorsed by his central character, a good Christian and a man of seeming integrity, suggests that Chaucer accepts the relic allegedly found by St. Helena as authentic. Nevertheless, if he does not condemn all relics outright, Chaucer does identify and disparage fraudulent relic practices. At the time when he was writing, this was a bold stance for a writer to take. Reformist John Calvin, however, writing a century and a half later, took the matter several steps further.

Calvin on Relics

John Calvin's condemnation of relics is sweeping. In his Treatise on Relics (1543), he observes that "the desire for relics is never without superstition, and what is worse, it is usually the parent of idolatry" (Calvin 1543, 218). He is unrelenting in his withering look at relics--from the reputed Holy Blood, "exhibited in more than a hundred places" (226), to the many bogus Holy Shrouds (including today's controversial one, which was kept at Nice in Calvin's time; it wasn't transferred to Turin until 1578 [Nickell 2009, 40]).

Calvin had much to say about the pieces of the alleged True Cross--the location of which was supposed to have been miraculously revealed to St. Helena in ce 326. Calvin suggested that "if we were to collect all these pieces of the True Cross exhibited in various parts, they would form a whole ship's cargo." He also said that there were more relics of it "than three hundred men could carry!" adding: "As an explanation of this, [the relic mongers] have invented the tale, that whatever quantity of wood may be cut off this true cross, its size never decreases. This is, however, such a clumsy and silly imposture, that the most superstitious may see through it" (233).

Calvin specifically refers to the alleged fragment known as the Titulus Crucis (cross title board). Bearing the inscription "This is the King of the Jews," the Titulus--with text in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew--was ordered by Pilate to be placed on the cross (Luke 23:38). Two churches, Calvin delights in observing, lay claim to this relic. Actually, Helena supposedly divided the Titulus into three pieces, only one of which now remains--kept, as Calvin noted (234), in Rome's Church of the Holy Cross.

Modern science has validated Calvin's skepticism of the Titulus. First, the artifact contains a number of anachronisms and other problematic elements that indicate it is a probable forgery (Nickell 2004). For example, although the Hebrew (or Aramaic) letters are correctly written from right to left, so--incorrectly--are the Greek and Latin lines. Based on my research on the history of writing, as soon as I saw this error (See my drawing, figure 1), I thought it a prima facie indication of spuriousness. (See my Pen, Ink, and Evidence [Nickell 1990].)

Another paleographic error is found in the Greek line. Although it is written in mirror-image fashion from right to left, one letter--the z--is not reversed. This further emphasizes the problematic nature of the writing and suggests that the writer may not have been familiar with the ancient languages. Unless we accept the rationalizations of the Titulus's defenders (Thiede and d'Ancona 2000, 96-100), spelling errors also cast doubt on the inscription. Another doubtful feature is the letters having not just been painted but first incised into the wood--a seemingly gratuitous enhancement--whereas one would instead expect a hastily prepared placard intended to be used quickly and then discarded.

Indeed, such suspicions are confirmed via radiocarbon dating. A sample of the walnut wood ( Juglans regia) was taken from the back of the slab, cleaned to remove any contamination, and then subjected to the carbon-dating process. Control samples of varying ages were also included to confirm the accuracy of the process. The tests on the Titulus revealed that it was made between ce 980 and 1146 (Bells and Azzi 2002)--a date range incompatible with its alleged first-century origin, but consistent with the period (1144-1145) when the artifact was apparently acquired (Nickell 2007, 86-90).

The Fragments

Over the years I have encountered pieces of the alleged True Cross (figure 2), together with the pious legends of their acquisition. In my own collection are a pilgrim's token of the True Cross (reputedly made in the seventh century by mixing clay with some ash from a burned piece of the cross) and a small bronze Byzantine cross of about the same time period (Nickell 2007, 79, 93). The latter was a legacy of Constantine the Great (274-337), who made Christianity the Roman Empire's official religion after having a miraculous vision of a flaming cross in the sky--a vision, as doubtful as it is, of late vintage (Nickell 2007, 77-79).

It is another reputed vision--that of Constantine's mother, Queen Helena (later St. Helena)--to which is attributed the finding of the True Cross. In 326, nearly three centuries after the crucifixion, Helena went to Jerusalem where she allegedly discovered the site of the cross's concealment, supposedly with divine inspiration: either by heavenly signs, dreams, or the guidance of a Jew named Judas. In fact, she supposedly located, beneath rubble, three crosses--supposedly of Jesus and the two thieves crucified with him (Matthew 27:38)--but was unable to distinguish which was Jesus's own. Each cross was then tested on a mortally ill woman, and one--according to the fanciful legend--miraculously healed her, thus proving it was the Vera Crux, the True Cross.

Supposedly a portion of the cross was given to Constantine, while another was taken to Rome. The main portion remained in the custody of successive bishops of Jerusalem; it was captured by Persious in 614 but then victoriously returned in 627. Finally, in 1187 it was lost forever, after crusading Franks occupied Jerusalem.

Nevertheless, alleged fragments of the True Cross and Roman nails from the crucifixion proliferated. As early as the mid-fourth century, St. Cyril of Jerusalem (ca. 315-386) wrote that "already the whole world is filled with fragments of the wood of the Cross." From the fifth century on, a "cult of the Cross" developed and churches were erected in the True Cross's name. In a letter, St. Paulinus of Nola (353-431) dared to explain (and Calvin would later satirize, as we have seen) the claim that, regardless of how many pieces were taken from the cross, it never diminished in size--a "fact" that has been compared with Jesus's miracle of the multiplying loaves and fishes (Cruz 1984, 39).

In Turin in 2004, I was able to view a purported piece of the True Cross, set in a cruciform reliquary (along with a purported relic of the Holy Blood). The lighted reliquary is the focal point of a relic chapel--the crypt of the Church of Maria Ausiliatrice--which contains a fabulous collection of some five thousand relics of saints, exhibited in seemingly endless panels and display cases along the walls. Included are relics alleged to be from Mary Magdalene and, more credibly, St. Francis of Assisi.

In 2009 in Genoa I saw no fewer than four pieces of the "True Cross" arrayed in an elaborate reliquary cross (figure 2). The fragments were specifically claimed to be from the True Cross--or so "tradition has it." (Translation: "This is only a handed-down tale.") Known as Croce degli Zaccaria (or "cross of the Zaccaria"), it was formerly owned by a family of that name, who were among the major merchant traders of the eastern Mediterranean when Genoa was at its commercial and political peak. The reliquary was reportedly first commissioned in the ninth century, then remade in its present form (again see figure 2) between 1260 and 1283--a gilt and bejeweled cruciform artifact now displayed in the Museum of the Treasury of the Cathedral of San Lorenzo (St. Lawrence) of Genoa (Marica 2007, 6; "Museum," n.d.).

Again, the lack of any credible provenance (its traceability to some known point)--together with the incredible proliferation of such fragments and even the suspicious neatness of these four pieces of the "True Cross"--makes the Croce degli Zaccaria a piece to be entirely skeptical of, not revered.

Conclusion

There is no credible evidence that Helena, or anyone, found Jesus's cross (with or without accompanying crosses of the two thieves) in the fourth century--or at any other time for that matter. The provenance is laughable. Even more so is the absurd tale of its miraculousness: its infinite ability to restore itself, no matter how many pieces were taken from it.

The proliferating pieces of the True Cross have been rivaled for outlandishness by many other bogus relics--such as over forty shrouds of Jesus and multiple corpses of Mary Magdalene (Nickell 2007, 40, 116). Geoffrey Chaucer and John Calvin were justifiably critical of relic hucksterism in their respective times, and we--with our modern scientific means of analysis, such as radiocarbon dating--must be no less so. n

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to my many Italian friends--notably Massimo Polidoro, Luigi Garlaschelli, and Stephano Bagnasco--for helping make possible my visits to many relic sites in Italy. At the Center for Inquiry, Director of Libraries Timothy Binga assisted as usual with research. Financial assistance came from John and Mary Frantz and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, whose executive director is Barry Karr. I also want to express my gratitude to Paul Kurtz and his Prometheus Books for publishing John Calvin's Treatise on Relics and inviting me to write the introduction. To the many others who help make such investigations possible: CFI staff, donors, friends, and family--especially my wife, Diana Harris--I express my sincerest thanks.

References

Calvin, John. 1543. Treatise on Relics, trans. Count Valerian Kasinski 1854; 2nd ed. Edinburgh: John Stone, Hunter and Co., 1870, 217-18; reprinted, with an introduction by Joe Nickell, Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2009, 49-112.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. Ca. 1386-1400. The Canterbury Tales. Various editions, e.g., trans. by Coghill (2003) and Tuttle (2006); see also No Fear (2009) and Dunn (1952).

Coghill, Nevill, trans. 2003. Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales. London: Penguin Books.

Cruz, Joan Carroll. 1984. Relics. Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor.

Dunn, Charles W., ed. 1952. A Chaucer Reader: Selections from The Canterbury Tales. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.

Encyclopedia Britannica. 1978. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.

Marica, Patrica. 2007. Museo del Tesoro di San Lorenzo. Genoa, Italy: Sagep Edditori Srl.

"Museum of the Treasury of the Cathedral of St. Lawrence of Genoa." N.d. Four-page guide text in English, provided by the museum.

Nickell, Joe. 1990. Pen, Ink, and Evidence: A Study of Writing and Writing Materials for the Penman, Collector, and Document Detective. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

------. 2007. Relics of the Christ. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

------. 2009. Introduction to Calvin's Treatise on Relics 1543. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2009, 7-48.

No Fear: The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. 2009. New York: Spark Publishing (div. of Barnes and Noble).

Thiede, Carsten Peter, and Matthew d'Ancona. 2002. The Quest for the True Cross. New York: Palgrave.

Tuttle, Peter, trans. 2006. The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer. New York: Barnes and Noble Classics.

Everyone knows the tragic tale of Victor Frankenstein, the man who, in the 1818 novel by Mary Shelley, succeeded in bringing back to life a corpse, only to immediately lose control over it. But the human dream of creating artificial life goes far beyond the creature that terrified Victorians.

This dream belongs to the Roman poet Ovid, whose short story "Metamorphosis," dating back to 8 ce, tells the story of Pygmalion, King of Cyprus, who modeled a female statue in ivory. He called her Galatea and fell in love with her, considering the statue to be well above any flesh and blood woman. Pygmalion ended up praying to Aphrodite to let him marry the being he had created, and the Goddess relented. Ovid tells how Pygmalion saw his statue slowly coming to life, breathing, and opening her eyes.

With his story, Ovid meant to underscore the devotion of the artist to the product of his work, which can go as far as identifying oneself in it. Ovid did not imagine that he was writing the prototype of many modern science-fiction tales!

Creatures without Control

Much older than Ovid's Galatea, however, is the figure of the golem, a sort of giant created by magic in Jewish mythology who first appears in the Bible. Jews link the word gelem ("raw material"), which appears in the Old Testament (Psalm 139:16), to the figure of Adam before life was infused into him.

In classic tradition, the golem is a strong and obedient creature made of clay that a rabbi can activate for servitude just by writing on his forehead a word meaning "God is truth." By erasing one of the letters of this word, the word that remains means "God is dead," and the golem stops.

In a version of this tale set in seventeenth-century Poland, of which traces can be found in a letter dated 1674, a golem became an unstoppable menace for his master. The master, Rabbi Elija Ba'al Schem from Chelm, asked the golem to take off his shoes; when it kneeled down, the clever Rabbi wiped the word life from the creature's forehead. The golem then died, but he fell upon the rabbi and killed him.

The most famous version of the story, however, dates from the eighteenth century and is set in Prague's ghetto. Here, the golem--created by beloved Rabbi Jehuda Löw Ben Bezalel at the beginning of the seventeenth century--was a defender of the Jewish people from persecutions and anti-
Semitic pogroms. The rabbi, however, lost control over the golem, and it began to destroy everything it met. Once the rabbi regained control over the situation, he decided to deactivate the golem and hide it in the attic of Prague's Old-New Synagogue, in the heart of the old Jewish quarter, where--according to the legend--his body still rests today. (Czech investigator Ivan Mackerle went searching for the golem's body in the roof space of the synagogue but couldn't find anything useful; his interesting report can be found in Fortean Times 238, July 2008).

Androids and Humunculus

Other examples of artificial creatures with human-like features can be found in Greek mythology as well. Cadmus, founder of Thebes, buried dragon's teeth, which transformed into soldiers. Hephaestus, god of metalwork, created mechanical slaves, ranging from girls made of gold and with a sentient mind to three-legged tables that could move by themselves.

Inuit legends tell of the Tupilaq, an avenging monster created by a wizard to hunt and kill an enemy. But the Tupilaq can be a double-edged sword, for a victim who knows magic can stop the creature and turn it back on its creator.

In the fourteenth century, philosopher, theologian, and scholar Saint Albertus Magnus was the first to use the word android to define living beings created by man through alchemy. According to legend, Albertus was able to build a real android made of metal, wood, wax, and glass. He gave it the power of speech and used it as a servant at the Dominican monastery of Cologne.

It was in the Middle Ages that technology allowed people to not only imagine but to build the first mechanical automatons, which were mainly moving dolls used to embellish bell towers and churches. Even Leonardo da Vinci showed interest in the subject; project plans dating to about 1495 show a mechanical knight in armor. In da Vinci's plans, the figure should have been able to stand up; move his arms, head, and jaw; and emit sounds from his mouth due to a complex percussion mechanism hidden in his chest. It is possible that the mechanical knight was just an idea da Vinci drew up for Duke Ludovico Sforza, for whom he worked at the time, to liven up parties at the Sforzesco Castle in Milan. Nobody knows if it was ever built.

It was only in the eighteenth century that automatons became sophisticated figurines able to write, dance, do magic tricks, perform acrobatics, and play chess and musical instruments. However, even then they were just mechanical creatures controlled by man without a will of their own--unlike the homunculus, which according to alchemical tradition was a real human being created in vitro. Paracelsus, the Renaissance alchemist, went so far as to write a recipe for creating a homunculus. The recipe began with a man's semen, which was left resting for forty days in a vial kept warm by a horse stomach and fed with human blood. After forty weeks the contents of the vial would supposedly transform into a real boy--complete and perfect but smaller than a human baby and, like the golem, lacking a soul.

Frankenstein and Pinocchio

At the start of the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing. Taking inspiration both from the experiments of Luigi Galvani (who used electrical arcs to induce movement in a corpse) and from the golem story, in 1818 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley anonymously published her celebrated gothic novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. It's the story of a Swiss scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who, shocked by the death of his mother, cultivates an impossible dream: creating an intelligent human being with perfect health and a long life. Frankenstein's illicit studies, which include dissecting corpses stolen from cemeteries, allow him to obtain the knowledge necessary to turn his dream into reality. But the creature, deformed and with superhuman strength, escapes his creator.

Even more so than the golem, then, the figure of Frankenstein (a name often misapplied to the monster itself) became a real modern myth, drawing his mythical power from the fear that technological progress can escape man's control. It is no surprise, then, that many consider Frankenstein the first true science-fiction novel.

Throughout the 1800s, there were stories and novels telling of unusual mechanical or artificial creatures. In "Sandman" (1815), writer E.T.A. Hoffmann told the story of a love between a man and a mechanical doll. The Steam Man of the Prairies (1815), a dime novel by Edward S. Ellis, is about a big mechanical steam man used to carry coaches across prairies.

Luis Senarens, known as the "American Jules Verne," in 1885 imagined the first mechanical man activated by electricity in his book Frank Reade and His Electric Man. The following year, Frenchman Mathias Villiers de l'Isle-Adam first used the word android in a novel, L'Eve Future, in which he imagined inventor Thomas Edison creating an almost perfect artificial woman.

Even in my country of Italy, the subject has fascinated our literati. Ippolito Nievo, in his 1860 novel Storia Filosofica dei Secoli Futuri (Philosophical History of Future Centuries), imagined that in the future there would be "man-machines," which he labeled an invention "that surpasses anything man has ever imagined." Much more modestly, but with a genial stroke of fantasy that still warms the hearts of children today, Carlo Collodi imagined in 1883 that a block of wood could take on life and transform into a boy, Pinocchio. It's true that Pinocchio is a fairy tale, but the story contains all of the fundamental elements of future tales about androids (including Steven Spielberg's sci-fi movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence).

Robots and Androids

It wasn't until 1921 that the very first true robots made their appearance in the three-part drama by Czech author Karel Čapek titled R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots). These robots (more properly androids because they have human features) are the product of Rossum's factory and are used as low-cost laborers. The dream of the owner of the factory is to free the human race from slavery and physical work, but the effects are catastrophic. Humanity reacts by embracing all sorts of vices and idleness, allowing robots to take control and aim for inevitable human extinction.

But if R.U.R. was the first to introduce the word robot, the most famous android of the 1920s certainly is femme-bot Maria from Fritz Lang's film Metropolis (1927). The complex plot devised by Lang, set in a disquieting future world with strong class separation, sees Maria as an evil creature who creates dissent among the masses in revolt.

Although certainly the most famous, Lang's robot was not the first mechanical android in cinema. That medal goes to magician Harry Houdini, who in 1919 introduced one such creature in his cliffhanger serial for the cinema titled The Master Mystery. Here, the robot, called Automaton, is at the service of a criminal gang against whom Houdini, star of the series, has to fight. By the end of his adventures, Houdini is able to destroy the armor of the robot and discover--hidden inside the robot--the boss of the gang. It was, then, a half robot. Or perhaps it could have been called a cyborg: a cybernetic organism made of both artificial and biological parts.

From the 1930s on, the idea of the automaton, the robot, or the replicant artificially created by man has become very popular and is constantly seen in sci-fi novels and films. From the many books about robots by Isaac Asimov to movies like Westworld, Star Wars, Terminator, Blade Runner, Alien, RoboCop, Star Trek, and so on, the subject has never lost its appeal. It will certainly continue to fascinate people, at least until the day when robots become so common that nobody takes notice of them anymore. If such a day ever comes, that is.

Millions of people are interested in ghosts. One 2005 Gallup poll found that 37 percent of Americans believe in haunted houses, and even more believe in ghosts. The “reality” TV show Ghost Hunters has been a huge hit for the Syfy channel, lasting six seasons so far and inspiring other shows. The show's ghost-hunting methods have been adopted by thousands of amateur ghost investigators across the country and around the world.

Just about every ghost-hunting group calls itself “skeptical” or “scientific.” Many investigators believe they are being scientific if they use electromagnetic field (EMF) detectors or infrared cameras-or if they don't use psychics or dowsing rods. But the best way to know whether an investigator or group is scientific is to examine methods and results. Does the investigator use the pseudoscientific methods described here? What is the group's track record of solved cases? Does an investigation end with inconclusive and ambiguous results or a solved mystery?

Ghost investigations can be deceptively tricky endeavors. Very ordinary events can be-and indeed have been-mistaken for extraordinary ones, and the main challenge for any ghost investigator is separating the facts from a jumble of myths, mistakes, and misunderstandings. It can be very easy to accidentally create or misinterpret evidence: Is that flash of light on the wall a flashlight reflection-or a ghost? Are the faint sounds recorded in an empty house spirit voices-or a neighbor's radio? It's not always clear, and investigators must be careful to weed out the red herrings and focus on the verified information.

The most famous ghost hunters in the world, Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson (co-founders of The Atlantic Paranormal Society-T.A.P.S.-and stars of Ghost Hunters), agree that using science is the best way to approach investigations. They have always claimed to use good scientific methods and investigative procedures, for example writing that “T.A.P.S. uses scientific methods to determine whether or not someone's home might be haunted,” and “We approach ghost hunting from a scientific point of view” (Hawes and Wilson 2007, 270).

Yet in their 2007 book Ghost Hunting: True Stories of Unexplained Phenomena from The Atlantic Paranormal Society, Hawes allots a grand total of four paragraphs (within 273 pages) to a chapter titled “The Scientific Approach.” He doesn't have much to say about science or scientific methods, and in fact it's the shortest chapter in the book. Hawes is wrong in his belief that he and his T.A.P.S. crew are using good scientific investigative methods. After watching episodes of Ghost Hunters and other similar programs, it quickly becomes clear to anyone with a background in science that the methods used are both illogical and unscientific.1

Some of the T.A.P.S. crew's methods are slightly better than those of earlier groups (for example, Hawes and Wilson were among the first ghost hunters to dismiss the “orbs of light are ghosts” theory), but they are not much more scientific. The Ghost Hunters lacked good science to begin with, and their methods have not become any more scientific (or any more effective) since they began.

What follows is a short survey of the most common logical and methodological mistakes being made by the T.A.P.S. team and other groups that carry out ghost investigations.2

1.Assuming that no specialized knowledge or expertise is needed to effectively investigate ghosts.

One of the most common assumptions among ghost investigators is that in the paranormal field “there are no experts.” If there are no experts, then of course anyone can effectively investigate ghosts. Almost all ghost hunters are amateur, part-time hobbyists, and they come from all walks of life. On Ghost Hunters, two ordinary guys who work as plumbers during the day are touted as experts on ghost investigations, although none of the team members has any background or training in science, investigation, forensics, or any other field that might help solve mysteries.

Why it's a mistake: Paranormal investigation requires no certificate; anyone can do it with no training, knowledge, or expertise whatsoever. Whether they are effective or not-actually able to solve mysteries-is another matter entirely. Effectively investigating claims and solving mysteries does require some experience and expertise-specifically in investigation, logic, critical thinking, psychology, science, forensics, and other areas.

2.Failing to consider alternative 
explanations for anomalous or 
“unexplained” phenomena.

Ghost hunters often over-interpret evidence and fail to adequately consider alternative explanations, assuming for example that “orbs” are ghosts, EVPs (electronic voice phenomena) are ghost voices, and so on.

Why it's a mistake: The designation of “unexplained” or paranormal must be accepted only when all other normal, natural explanations have been ruled out through careful analysis. The explanation that orbs are flash reflections of dust, insects, mist, etc., has been widely discussed for years (see Radford 2007, Nickell 1994). Many ghost hunters who accept the scientific, skeptical explanation for orbs continue to record EVPs as ghost voices despite the fact that scientific evidence of the validity of EVPs is as poor as it is for orbs.

Another common error is over-interpreting supposedly anomalous phenomena. Ghost reports are filled with phrases like “one investigator heard a young girl singing softly” or “the shadow of an old man appeared in the hallway.” How, exactly, does the ghost hunter know for a fact it was a young girl's voice or an old man's shadow? I know adult women who can convincingly mimic the soft singing of a young girl or cast a shadow that might look exactly like an old man's. It is of course possible that the sound and shadow are of a young girl and an old man, respectively, but an investigator must be careful not to go beyond the established facts and assume that his interpretation is the correct one. After you have made a specific, declarative statement like “a young girl singing softly,” you have locked yourself into that interpretation without keeping an open mind about other interpretations. Unless someone verifies the source of a sound, it is logically impossible to identify with any certainty who or what created that sound. An adult, an animal, a breeze whistling through an unseen passage, or something else altogether might sound like a child's voice. These types of reports are very common and cannot be accepted at face value.

3.Considering subjective feelings 
and emotions as evidence of 
ghostly encounters.

Ghost hunters often report descriptions of personal feelings and experiences like “I felt a heavy, sad presence and wanted to cry,” or “I felt like something didn't want me there,” and so on (see, for example, Avakian 2010). They may also describe in detail how they got goose bumps upon entering a room or grew panicked at some unseen presence, assuming they were reacting to a hidden ghost.

Why it's a mistake: Subjective experiences are essentially stories and anecdotes. There's nothing wrong with personal experiences, but by themselves they are not proof or evidence of anything. Most people who report such experiences are sincere in their belief that a ghost caused their panic, but that belief does not necessarily make it true. The problem, of course, is that there is not necessarily any connection between a real danger or a ghostly presence and how a person feels. The power of suggestion can be very strong, and a suggestible ghost hunter can easily convince herself-and others-that something weird is going on in a dark and creepy house.

4.Using improper and unscientific investigation methods.

Ghost hunters often misuse scientific equipment and ignore good scientific research methods. A few typical examples of this type of error follow.

Investigating with the lights off

Nearly every ghost-themed TV show has several scenes in which the investigators walk around in a darkened place, usually at night, looking for ghosts. Purposely conducting an investigation in the dark intentionally hobbles the investigation and is completely counterproductive. It also violates common sense and logic: If you are trying to identify an unknown object, is it better to look for it under bright lights or in a darkened room? There are no other objects or entities in the world that anyone would think are better observed in darkness instead of light; why would ghosts be any different? Humans are visual creatures, and our eyes need light to see-the more light, the better. Darkness, by definition, severely limits the amount of light and therefore the amount of visual information available. Searching at night in the dark puts investigators at an immediate and obvious disadvantage in trying to identify and understand what's going on around them.

Furthermore, this strategy fails on its own terms. Although some report seeing ghosts as glowing figures, many people report them as shadows or dark entities. Searching a dark room for a shadowy figure is an exercise in futility. Unless a ghost or entity has been specifically and repeatedly reported or photographed emitting light, there's no valid, logical reason for ghost investigators to work in the dark. The reason it's often done for television shows is obvious: it produces more dramatic footage. It's spookier and more visually interesting to film the ghost investigators with night-vision cameras.

Sampling errors

In my book Scientific Paranormal Investigation, I explain why a ghost stakeout or overnight investigation is a bad idea. But there's another, less obvious, basic scientific mistake made by many ghost hunters. Usually ghost hunters will begin their stakeout by taking readings with their high-tech equipment. Even though a thorough investigation into specific claims or phenomena (such as a door opening on its own or a strange noise) can be conducted in a matter of hours, a complete investigation into a haunted location can't be done in a few hours or even during an overnight stay. The reason is very simple: a few hours or overnight is not enough time in which to gather enough information. Establishing a valid set of baseline (or control) measurements for what “normal” (i.e., presumably ghost-free) conditions are at the location takes a lot more time.

To know what is extraordinary for the area, an investigator must first determine what is ordinary. Many ghost hunters understand this general principle but greatly underestimate the importance of valid sampling. For valid experiments, scientists must take dozens-sometimes hundreds-of independent measurements and analyze the results to derive a statistical average (along with a range of normal variation), which then can be used as a basis for research. The time frames and number of samples that most ghost hunters use are far too small to yield any scientifically meaningful baseline numbers.

Using unproven tools and equipment

Many ghost hunters consider themselves scientific if they use high-tech scientific equipment such as Geiger counters, EMF detectors, ion detectors, infrared cameras, sensitive microphones, and so on. Yet for any piece of equipment to be useful, it must have some proven connection to ghosts. For example, if ghosts were known to emit electromagnetic fields, then a device that measures such fields would be useful. If ghosts were known to cause temperature drops, then a sensitive thermometer would be useful. If ghosts were known to emit ions, then a device that measures such ions would be useful.

The problem is that there is no body of research showing that anything these devices measure has anything to do with ghosts. Until someone can reliably demonstrate that ghosts have certain measurable characteristics, devices that measure those characteristics are irrelevant.

Ineffectively using recording devices

EMF detectors, ion counters, and other gear have no use in ghost investigations. Ordinary cameras and audio recorders, however, can be helpful if used correctly. Unfortunately, many ghost hunters don't know how to use such equipment effectively.

One common example is the use of voice recorders. Most ghost hunters, including the T.A.P.S. team, use handheld voice recorders in an attempt to capture a ghost voice or EVP. Often the ghost hunter addresses the supposed spirit while holding the recorder and either standing in the middle of a room or walking around. Sometimes a voice-like sound or noise will be heard at the time; if so, the ghost hunter(s) will ask more questions, or the sound or EVP will be saved for later analysis.

Unfortunately, this is an ineffective protocol. To identify the nature of the sound (human, ghost, cat, furnace, etc.), an investigator must first determine its source, which in turn involves locating the sound's origin; this can be very difficult for a ghost hunter to do, especially in a darkened room. If the sound came from an open window, that suggests one explanation. If the sound's origin can be traced to the middle of an empty room, that might be more mysterious. Locating the source of a sound is nearly impossible using only one recording device.

A better way to scientifically determine the source location of a sound is with more than one microphone-at least three, and the more there are the better. By placing sensitive microphones throughout the location (and certainly in the four corners of a room), the signal strength of the sound can be measured at each microphone. Along with a basic knowledge of acoustics and math, these readings allow the investigator to triangulate within a few feet where the sound came from. Ideally this work should be done in real time so that ghost hunters can immediately investigate the cause; finding some “anomaly” while reviewing evidence days or weeks later is pointless.

5.Focusing on the history of a haunted location instead of the specific phenomena reported at it.

Ghost hunters often spend considerable time and effort researching the history of a house or building by scouring local records and newspapers to determine when the place was built, who built it, and who may have lived or died there or by looking for stories, legends, tragedies, lists of past owners, and so on. This is a staple of Ghost Hunters investigations, which often begin with the T.A.P.S. crew and the TV audience listening to (real or fictional) stories about the history of the place.

Why it's a mistake: Although a supposedly haunted location might have a fascinating history, this almost always has little or nothing to do with the current haunting claims or phenomena. If a ghostly figure is reported in a stairwell, a spooky face is photographed in a bedroom, or a mysterious noise is reported coming from the attic, knowing who built the place in 1928 (or the name of the little girl who died in a fire there fifty years ago) is completely irrelevant. It has nothing to do with the face or noises, which must be investigated completely independently of this information. Sometimes ghost hunters will hear or record what they believe is the sound of a voice and assume it must be a ghost, then get so wrapped up in researching the house's history trying to “identify” the ghost that they neglect to fully investigate the source of the sound.

6.Conducting a stakeout or “lockdown.”

A stakeout is typically an overnight “investigation” into a haunted location, usually with a half dozen or more people wandering around the premises, setting up cameras, taking readings, and so forth. All ghost-themed TV shows feature this activity, which is standard procedure for most ghost-hunting groups. It's also a sure sign of pseudoscience and amateur investigation.

Why it's a mistake: As an investigative modus operandi in ghost hunting, the stakeout (or “lockdown,” as it's sometimes melodramatically called) has a 100 percent track record of failure; of the hundreds of stakeouts conducted by ghost hunters, not a single one has yielded any significant evidence of ghosts. (As I previously noted, they might have better success if they left the lights on.) A stakeout is essentially a scientific experiment without the science. Real experiments are carefully controlled by the investigator: he or she controls some variables or conditions and measures the variation. Ghost hunters seem to think that by controlling access to the property in question, they are reducing or eliminating any false evidence of ghosts.

However, in a stakeout the ghost hunter cannot control all, or even most, of the variables and conditions in the experiment he's conducting. It's important to remember that nearly anything that anyone thinks is odd for any reason can be offered as evidence of a ghost. There is an impossibly broad spectrum of phenomena that have been claimed as signs of ghosts, including lights, shadows, noises, silence, heat, cold, moving objects, smells, uneasiness, and so on. If the presence of a ghost could be narrowed down to a specific phenomenon-for example, if everyone agreed (or it had been somehow proven) that ghosts give off red light or a certain high-pitched sound-then the problem of not having a controlled location would be greatly reduced. An investigator wouldn't need to rule out every possible source of sound, smell, light, etc., but instead would need to rule out merely any sources of red light or high-pitched sounds. But because just about any phenomenon can be attributed to ghosts, there is no way to rule out or control for the conditions. A ghost stakeout or lockdown is a completely unscientific waste of time.

Ultimately, of course, whether ghost hunters choose to use scientific methods and strategies is up to them. I personally don't care either way; it's not my time, effort, and money that's being wasted by doing fundamentally flawed investigation. But over the years I have gotten results and solved many cases using scientific techniques.

If ghost hunters don't care about performing scientifically valid investigations and are happy with the level of evidence they are getting, they are welcome to ignore this information. But they can't complain that no one offered a science-based paradigm for paranormal investigation. I believe that if ghosts exist, they are important and deserve to be taken seriously. Most of the efforts to investigate ghosts so far have been badly flawed and unscientific-and, not surprisingly, fruitless. If investigation is to be done, it should be done right. n

Notes

1. Ironically, Hawes and Wilson formed T.A.P.S. because they were dissatisfied with the lack of good investigation methods they saw among ghost hunters. According to Jason Hawes, “Finally I said, ‘Screw the rest of what's out there,' referring to other ghost hunters and their methods. ‘Let's do it our own way'” (Hawes and Wilson 2007, 5).

2. There are far too many mistakes in the typical ghost investigation to discuss them in any depth here. A fuller discussion can be found in chapter 4 of my new book, Scientific Paranormal Investigation.

References

Avakian, Laura. 2010. Surviving lockdown: Behind the scenes with the Ghost Adventures crew. Haunted Times 4(3): 19.

Hawes, Jason, and Grant Wilson. 2007. Ghost Hunting: True Stories of Unexplained Phenomena from The Atlantic Paranormal Society. New York: Pocket Books.

Nickell, Joe. 1994. Camera Clues: A Handbook for Photographic Investigation. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

Radford, Benjamin. 2007. The (Non)mysterious orbs. Skeptical Inquirer 31(5) (September/October): 30.

A recent study looking into the effects of acupuncture on relieving back pain was widely reported in the media as finding that "acupuncture works, even fake acupuncture." Behind the headlines, the authors were more circumspect in the paper itself, concluding:

Although acupuncture was found effective for chronic low back pain, tailoring needling sites to each patient and penetration of the skin appear to be unimportant in eliciting therapeutic benefits. These findings raise questions about acupunctures purported mechanisms of action. It remains unclear whether acupuncture or our simulated method of acupuncture provide physiologically important stimulation or represent placebo or nonspecific effects. (Cherkin et al. 2009)

The authors compared acupuncture to placebo acupuncture (creating the sensation of acupuncture with toothpicks that do not penetrate the skin) and found no difference. When a drug is compared with a placebo and there is no difference in the response, the standard conclusion is that the drug has no effect--it does not work. But that logic is being turned on its head by what is being called "placebo medicine," in which the placebo effect is seen as a real, valuable, and desired outcome of patient treatment (Novella 2009).

Placebo effects (plural), however, are varied and complex. For the most part they are not a biological response to the expectation of benefit, which is what most people assume. Understanding placebo effects is critical to making sense of medical research and ever-expanding health claims within an increasingly unregulated market.

Operational Definition of Placebo

In the context of research, the "placebo effect" has a very specific operational definition: it is the treatment effect measured in the placebo arm of a clinical trial, which includes those subjects who have received a fake or inert treatment. If a trial is rigorously designed, placebo effects should include everything other than a physiological response to a biologically active treatment. Therefore, we can subtract placebo-effect findings from the treatment group, who will display treatment effects plus placebo effects, and we are left with a measurement of the treatment effect alone.

This simple but effective logic is the cornerstone of medical research. It is necessary because there are a variety of effects that can create the false impression that a treatment is working even when it isn't. It is a mistake to assume that the only relevant false impression is a "mind over matter" effect resulting from belief in the treatment. This is not the case.

Placebo Effects

Placebo effects fall into several categories: illusions of observation, bias, nonspecific effects, and physiological effects. Much of what is measured as a placebo effect is, in fact, simply an illusion of the process of observation. These illusory effects include regression to the mean, which is a statistical phenomenon that includes extreme symptoms becoming less extreme as a matter of course. For any variable symptom, periods of time when symptoms are at their worst are likely, by chance alone, to be followed by a return to more average symptoms.

Other artifacts include the biases of the researchers and the subjects. Researchers want their interventions to work and may therefore bias their assessments to be more positive. Subjects want to receive an effective treatment and to meet the expectations of the researcher. They want to justify their risk, expense (even if its just time), and their decision to receive a treatment or enter a trial. Conditioning, in which one associates a treatment ritual with feeling better, is another related placebo effect.

There are also a number of nonspecific effects, such as the well-documented observer effect (also called the Hawthorne effect), in which the very fact of being observed in a clinical trial results in a change in behavior and reporting (McCarney et al. 2007). People are more likely to be compliant with treatment, take better care of themselves, and get regular medical attention as part of a trial. Related to this is the cheerleader effect: for any functional assessment, people will tend to try harder if they are being encouraged, if they feel they should be doing better, or if they have hope that the treatment is working.

And finally there are real physiological effects resulting from the ritual of treatment. For example, treatment may involve relaxation or simply taking a break from your otherwise hectic daily routine. Believing one is being treated may reduce anxiety about the illness or symptoms, which in turn may reduce sympathetic activity, reduce blood pressure and strain on the heart, and reduce the levels of stress hormones. Hands-on treatments have the benefit of human contact, which improves mood and provides an overall feeling of well-being.

The perception of pain in particular is subject to these nonspecific effects, such as when an improved mood reduces the perception of pain. In addition, conditioning, expectation, and nonspecific benefits may actually cause the release of natural endorphins that reduce pain transmission (Benedetti 2007) or the release of dopamine in the reward centers of the brain (de la Fuente-Fernández and Stoessl 2004).

Breaking It Down

Given this more thorough understanding of placebo effects, it is not reasonable to assume that the measured placebo effect in a clinical trial is mostly or entirely a real "mind over matter" health benefit. Instead, the placebo effect may consist mostly or entirely of illusion and bias. One might ask, "Which kinds of effects are contributing to the measured placebo effect of specific treatments?" The answer is that it depends on what is being treated.

For example, a study of placebo effects in the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome (Kaptchuk et al. 2008) found a substantial placebo effect in place with the use of placebo acupuncture. The same study also found that the enhanced placebo group--members of which received placebo acupuncture with enhanced interaction between the therapist and the subject--reported added "warmth, attention, and confidence." After three weeks, the waiting-list group (those who received no treatment--not even placebo) had about a thirty-point drop on the symptom severity scale, with almost 30 percent of patients reporting adequate relief; the treatment group (those who received placebo acupuncture) had a forty-two-point drop, with 44 percent of patients reporting relief; the augmented group (those who received placebo acupuncture plus enhanced interaction with the therapist) reported a drop of over eighty points, with over 60 percent of patients reporting relief.

It's very interesting that the group that received no intervention, not even a placebo, still had a 30 percent response. This response is likely entirely due to observational artifacts (Hawthorne effect, etc.). The placebo intervention also led to an improved response--in this case, expectation and conditioning might be having an effect. The enhanced intervention group showed the strongest effect, likely representing an increase in the nonspecific benefits of a positive therapeutic relationship.

Hróbjartsson and Gøtzsche have been studying placebo effects for years. They recently reviewed clinical studies that contain a no-treatment arm as a way of measuring placebo effects. They conclude:

We did not find that placebo interventions have important clinical effects in general. However, in certain settings placebo interventions can influence patient-reported outcomes, especially pain and nausea, though it is difficult to distinguish patient-reported effects of placebo from biased reporting. The effect on pain varied, even among trials with low risk of bias, from negligible to clinically important. Variations in the effect of placebo were partly explained by variations in how trials were conducted and how patients were informed. (Hróbjartsson and Gøtzsche 2010)

Let's break this down a bit. First, Hróbjartsson and Gøtzsche found that when you look at any objective or clinically important outcome--the kinds of things that would indicate a real biological effect--there is no discernible placebo effect. That is, there is no "mind over matter" self-healing that can be attributed to the placebo effect.

What the authors found is also most compatible with the hypothesis that placebo effects, as measured in clinical trials, are mostly due to bias. Specifically, significant placebo effects were found only for subjectively reported symptoms. Further, the size of this effect varied widely among trials.

Conclusion

Increasingly, placebo effects are being used to justify the use of ineffective and even inert treatments, with the assumption that "the" placebo effect is a true healing effect. What the research indicates, however, is that there are many placebo effects, and they are mostly bias and illusion--not real effects. There are also nonspecific effects that are likely valuable, but these effects can mostly be categorized as stress reduction and improvement in mood through attention and encouragement. It should be remembered that any placebo effect worth having will also accompany a legitimate treatment that actually works. On close inspection, placebo effects are not a justification for substituting hocus-pocus for real medicine.

References

Benedetti, F. 2007. Placebo and endogenous mechanisms of analgesia. Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology 177: 393-413.

Cherkin, D.C., K.J. Sherman, A.L. Avins, J.H. Erro, L. Ichikawa, W.E. Barlow, K. Delaney, et al. 2009. A randomized trial comparing acupuncture, simulated acupuncture, and usual care for chronic low back pain. Archives of Internal Medicine 169(9): 858-66.

De la Fuente-Fernández, R., and A.J. Stoessl. 2004. The biochemical bases of the placebo effect. Science and Engineering Ethics 10(1): 143-50.

Hróbjartsson, A., and P.C. Gøtzsche. 2010. Placebo interventions for all clinical conditions. Cochrane Database Systematic Review (1): CD003974.

Kaptchuk, T.J., J.M. Kelley, L.A. Conboy, R.B. Davis, C.E. Kerr, E.E. Jacobson, I. Kirsch, et al. 2008. Components of placebo effect: Randomised controlled trial in patients with irritable bowel syndrome. British Medical Journal 336(7651): 999-1003.

McCarney, R., J. Warner, S. Iliffe, R. van Haselen, M. Griffin, and P. Fisher. 2007. The Hawthorne Effect: A randomised, controlled trial. BioMed Central Medical Research Methodology 7: 30.

Novella, S.P. 2009. The rise of placebo medicine. Available online at www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=672.