The conspiracy theories started flying just days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC. Over the decade since, several technically elaborate claims have been refined by the “9/11 Truth” movement. Do these intricate arguments—including the rapid collapses of the towers, alleged evidence of thermite usage at Ground Zero, and the collapse of World Trade Center (WTC) 7 (a forty-seven-story building damaged by the fall of WTC 1) “into its own footprint at freefall acceleration”—disprove the mainstream consensus that the September 11, 2001, attacks were the work of al-Qaeda terrorists using hijacked airplanes? In a word: No.

The Players

Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas, the creators of the low-budget documentary film Loose Change, did much to give the 9/11 Truth movement significant momentum in 2005 and in following years. The film, which has undergone several revisions, has been shown on many television stations but is primarily an Internet and DVD phenomenon. Its basic claims are that Flight 77 could not have accounted for the damage at the Pentagon, that the Twin Tower fires were insufficient to cause their collapse, and that cell phone calls from the hijacked airplanes would have been impossible at the time (Avery 2009).

David Ray Griffin is a theologian whose voluminous writings on 9/11 are frequently cited by other 9/11 theorists. NASA scientist Ryan Mackey has written a very thorough critique of Griffin’s claims (Mackey 2008).

Once known as Fleischmann and Pons’s competitor for “cold fusion” research in Utah, Steven Jones has written several 9/11 Truth articles. His work with others (including chemist Niels Harrit of Denmark) on detecting nanothermite in WTC dust is frequently cited as “peer-reviewed research” that proves “inside job” claims.

Physics teacher David Chandler has produced several papers and Internet videos contending that high school physics easily shows that the tower collapses could not have happened from gravity alone. He claims this proves that explosives must have been used.

In the past few years, architect Richard Gage’s group, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911 Truth), has provided “Truthers” with the ability to claim that thousands of engineering and architecture professionals demand a new investigation into the cause of the attacks. Gage travels the world giving presentations, and his group puts on news conferences and mock debates several times a year (but most often around September 11, the anniversary of the attack) (Thomas 2009; Thomas 2010c).

Hollywood stars who have publicly supported 9/11 Truth claims include Rosie O’Donnell, Charlie Sheen, and Ed Asner. Sheen often talks 9/11 with radio host Alex Jones (www.infowars.com). These celebrities frequently cite (and sometimes mangle) claims made by Truther proponents like Griffin and Gage. Former wrestler and Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura has done two 9/11 conspiracy shows on his TruTV series Conspiracy Theory (see “Dave Thomas vs. Jesse Ventura: The Skeptical Smackdown”).

The Claims

As with any well-developed pseudoscience, literally thousands of individual arguments can be advanced in support of the proposition that the United States secretly carried out the September 11 attacks. This report will examine the most enduring and oft cited of these claims: “free fall” of the towers, reports of thermite and molten steel, and WTC 7’s curious collapse. Some of the factions that have developed (such as the “no-planers”) will also be described briefly.

Claim One:
“The Twin Towers collapsed at free-fall accelerations through the path of greatest resistance.”

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of September 11 was the rapid destruction of both 110-story Twin Towers: after the collapses began due to cascading structural failures at the airplane impact locations, each tower fell completely in just fifteen to twenty seconds. Mainstream scientific analyses, including years of work by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), generally looked at the cause of each collapse: the intense fires (started by jet fuel and fed by office contents and high winds) eventually caused floor trusses to sag, pulling the perimeter walls inward until they finally snapped. At this instant, the entire upper section of each tower fell the height of one floor, initiating an inevitable, progressive, and utterly catastrophic collapse of each of the structures.

While the mainstream explanation (dismissed as the “official story” by 9/11 Truthers) usually ends with the initiation of these unstoppable collapses, the 9/11 Truth movement’s attacks begin there. Gage of AE911 Truth says on that group’s website, “Destruction [of the Twin Towers] proceeds through the path of greatest resistance at nearly free-fall acceleration” (Gage 2011; emphasis added). Many 9/11 Truther pundits drop the “nearly” and say simply that the collapses were at free fall. Truthers then insist that free fall acceleration indicates a complete lack of resistance, proving that the structures were demolished with explosives. We are also told that the sheer mass of the towers, “80,000 tons of structural steel,” would simply resist collapse.

View full-size chart.

How could the buildings fall so quickly? It’s been explained very well in the technical literature by Northwestern’s Zdenek Bazant, PhD, and others (see, for example, Bazant 2008). I’ve developed a simpler physics model of the progressive collapses that agrees quite well with the main points of Bazant’s more rigorous results (Thomas 2010b). Here are some of my findings:

• Each floor of the towers contained over two million kilograms of mass. The gravitational potential energy of a standing tower with twelve-foot floors extending upward 110 stories can be calculated straightforwardly; it comes to over 420 billion joules of energy, or the equivalent of 100 tons of TNT per tower. This energy, which was released completely during the collapses, is more than the energy of some of the smaller nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal, such as the W-48 (72 tons TNT) (Sublette 2006). This is where the energy required to break columns, pulverize concrete, and expel debris through windows came from. (Truthers often compare such expulsions of air and debris, visible several floors below the collapse fronts, to “squibs,” explosive devices often used in demolitions. However, they are readily explained by pressure changes as the towers, acting like a gigantic bicycle pump being compressed, collapsed.)
• The Twin Towers used a “tube within a tube” architectural design, which provided considerable open office space in the interiors of the Towers. Much of the structural support was provided by a dense grouping of thick central core columns in the interior and the perimeter walls on the outside. When the towers began to collapse, large parts of the inner cores (called “the Spires” in 9/11 Truth circles) were actually left standing, briefly, before they, too, toppled over. The perimeter walls were largely forced to peel outward in large sections, producing the iconic images of Ground Zero with which we’re all familiar. Between the outer perimeter and the inner core, the weight of the upper sections plowed through one floor after another, breaking the floor connection brackets and support columns, pulverizing concrete decks, and gaining momentum and mass with each additional floor failure. Had the buildings been constructed differently (the Port Authority was allowed to circumvent some existing New York buildings requirements for the Towers), the collapses might not have even happened (Young 2007).
• Even the 9/11 Truth movement’s most eminent physicists are confused about the basic principle of the difference between static and dynamic forces. A piece of paper, taped across a jar’s opening, will support a heavy coin such as a quarter indefinitely (static load). However, if the coin is dropped from just a few inches up, it will tear right through the paper (dynamic load). Given the information at hand—for example, the mass of the upper section of the north tower (fifty-eight million kilograms), the distance it fell (3.8 meters, about twelve feet), and the stiffness/rigidity of the lower structure itself, the dynamic force imparted on the lower section can be estimated as some thirty times the upper portion’s weight. This is many times the lower structure’s safety margin, which explains why it was quickly overwhelmed.
• Once progressive collapse began, there were decreasing time intervals of free fall (between floors), punctuated by very brief, incredibly violent collisions—decelerations—of the upper mass, for each floor in turn. There was resistance at every step of the collapse, as the upper section collided with and incorporated each floor below. Conservation of momentum shows that the reductions in falling speed were slight as each floor was impacted, going as the ratio of floors before to floors after (e.g. 14/15, or about 94 percent, for the first impact). Accordingly, the upper section fell from rest to about 19 mph, was slowed down to 18 mph by the first impact, continued to fall until a speed of 26 mph was reached, was then slowed down to 24 mph by another impact, and so on. While the first plunge lasted about nine-tenths of a second, the upper section took only four-tenths of a second to fall through the next floor, three-tenths of a second for the next one, and so on until the bottom floors, which were crushed at a rate of just seven-hundredths of a second each, at speeds of over 100 mph. Yes, there was resistance at every step, as many tons of structural steel was demolished; yet the entire process, like an avalanche, lasted only fifteen to twenty seconds, about 50 to 100 percent longer than true “free fall” would have lasted.
• Physics teacher David Chandler’s measurements of the first seconds of the collapse of the North Tower (WTC 1) showed that it fell with increasing speed but at only two-thirds of gravitational acceleration (g) (Chandler 2010). Chandler argues that this means the bottom section exerted a constant upward force of one-third of the upper section’s weight upon its mass, and he declares that this force should have been much larger, indicating that “some sort of controlled demolition was at work.”
• Second, Chandler argues that being a Newtonian action/reaction pair, the impact force of the upper section on the lower section was only a third of the upper part’s weight. However, I’ve found that his estimate of the downward impact force was too low by a factor of one hundred. In addition, I found that the actual process—a series of twelve-foot free falls punctuated by violent and brief collisions with each floor—would have resulted in an average acceleration of precisely what Chandler measured for the start of the collapse of WTC 1, namely 2/3 g. (By the end of the collapse, my calculations indicate an average acceleration of only 1/3 g, but this can’t be measured in dust-obscured videos.)

Claim Two:
“Nano-thermite and military-grade explosives were found in dust from the towers. Tons of melted steel were found in tower debris.”

The thermite reaction is very hot, but it is also very slow compared to high explosives.

Real controlled demolitions commonly use explosives to topple large buildings. However, the hallmarks of actual demolitions (the characteristic “boom-boom-boom-boom” sounds and the flashes of high explosives) were completely absent in Manhattan on the morning of September 11, 2001. Many 9/11 Truth advocates, including architect Richard Gage, insist that high explosives must have been used to bring down the Twin Towers, as they say this is the only process that can possibly explain the “ejection of debris hundreds of feet from the towers.” However, they simultaneously insist that thermite or a derivative (thermate, nanothermite, etc.) was used instead, so as to topple the towers quietly. (This is but one of many instances in which 9/11 Truth claims flatly contradict each other.) Thermite itself fails as an explanation for the destruction of the Towers on many levels:

• The thermite reaction, which takes place between iron oxide (rust) and powdered aluminum, is practical for welding train tracks in the field and for destroying engines of vehicles that must be left behind during combat operations. The self-sustaining reaction, once initiated with heat, produces significant volumes of molten iron, which can melt and cut iron structures beneath it. For thermite to melt through a normally vertical steel beam, however, special high-temperature containment must be added to prevent the molten iron from simply dropping straight down uselessly. The thermite reaction is very hot, but it is also very slow compared to high explosives. Thermite is simply not practical for carrying out a controlled demolition, and there is no documentation of it ever having been used for that purpose.
• Jesse Ventura hired New Mexico Tech to show how nanothermite can slice through a large steel beam. The experiment was a total failure—even in the optimum (horizontal) configuration, the layer of nanothermite produced lots of flame and smoke but no actual damage to the massive I-beam tested. However, Ventura’s TruTV Conspiracy Theory show slyly passed it off as a rousing success (Thomas 2010a).
• Niels Harrit and Steven Jones, along with several coauthors, published the “peer-reviewed” paper “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe” in the Bentham Open Chemical Physics Journal (Harrit 2009). This article does not make the case for thermite use on 9/11. The paper examined “distinctive red/gray chips” found in WTC dust (unfortunately, with no chain of custody for the dust), and these were claimed to be thermitic because of their composition (iron oxides and pure aluminum) and other chemical properties. However, the presence of rust and aluminum does not prove the use of thermite, because iron oxide and aluminum are found in many common items that existed in the towers. Furthermore, the authors admit that their “differential scanning calorimeter” measurements of the supposed thermitic material showed results at about 450 degrees C below the temperature at which normal thermite reacts (Fana 2006). Finally, the scan of the red side of the “thermitic material” of Harrit/Jones is a dead-on match to material Jones himself identified as “WTC Steel Primer Paint” in his Hard Evidence Down Under Tour in November of 2009 (“Sunstealer” 2011).
• Harrit’s article describes the red portion of the chips as “unreacted thermitic material.” But while thermite may be slow, it does not stop its reaction once it has begun. Because thermite supplies its own oxygen (via iron oxides), it can even burn underwater. Suggesting that the samples show partially reacted thermite is preposterous. Claiming that thermite would explain molten pools of steel weeks and months after the attack is equally preposterous.
• The article’s publication process was so politicized and bizarre that the editor-in-chief of the Bentham journal that featured Jones’s article, Marie-Paule Pileni, resigned in protest (Hoffman 2009).
• Thermitic demolition should have created copious pools of melted steel at Ground Zero, but nothing remotely like this was ever found. Truthers say iron microspheres found in the rubble indicate thermite; since hot fires and spot-welding do produce very tiny spheres of iron, though, these “microspheres” are not unexpected. Pictures of cranes holding red-hot materials in the rubble are said to show molten steel. Had this been the case, however, the crane rigs would have immediately seized up (Blanchard 2006). No reports of “molten steel” in the tower basements have ever been credibly verified (Roberts 2008). Some Truthers claim that a few pieces of sulfidized “eutectic” steel found in the towers proves thermate (thermite with sulfur) usage, but this occurred because sulfur, released from burned drywall, corroded the steel as it stewed in the pile for weeks (Roberts 2008).

Claim Three:
“Tower 7, which wasn’t hit by a plane, collapsed neatly into its own footprint.”

Courtesy of the Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

The enigma of WTC 7 is becoming increasingly popular in Truther circles. We’re told that it wasn’t hit by a plane and was subjected to just a few “small office fires.” Yet it collapsed anyway, late in the afternoon of September 11, “falling neatly into its own footprint at freefall acceleration, just like a normal controlled demolition.” In particular, Truthers point to a brief period of freefall (2.25 seconds) that was confirmed by NIST in its WTC 7 final report (Sunder 2008; NIST 2010) as proving that the building was purposely imploded. However, WTC 7, too, fails to prove 9/11 was an “inside job”:

• What is often conveniently left out of the story are actual reports from NYFD firefighters at the scene, which describe huge, raging, unfought fires on many floors at once and visible deformations and creaking of the building prior to its collapse (Roberts 2008). Tower 7 was not hit by an airplane; however, it was struck by a 110-story flaming skyscraper, the North Tower. The fires raged for hours, and they eventually caused a critical column (#79) to fail because of thermal expansion; NIST determined that this column was crucial to the building and could even be considered a design flaw. Its failure would have collapsed the building even without the other structural damage from WTC 1’s collapse and the fires.
• WTC 7’s brief 2.25 seconds of free fall is now the Truthers’ best “smoking gun.” The claim usually goes like this: “The fifty-eight perimeter columns would have resisted and slowed the collapse to much less than freefall. The ‘freefall’ of WTC 7, admitted to by NIST, proves it was controlled demolition.” The problem is that this is a straw man argument. NIST found the collapse occurred in three stages. The first stage, which lasted 1.75 seconds, is when the fifty-eight perimeter columns were buckled; during this interval, the rooftop actually fell only about seven feet. This is because the breaking of columns saps speed, indeed making the collapse slower than free fall. In the second stage, which lasted 2.25 seconds, the already-buckled columns provided negligible support, and the north face of the structure free-fell about eight stories. (Try taking a plastic drinking straw and buckling it by folding it over and then pushing down on the bent straw with your hand. The crimped straw provides almost no resistance to vertical forces, and neither did the buckled columns of WTC 7.) The third stage described by NIST, which lasted 1.4 seconds, was again less-than-free fall, as the structure fell another 130 feet as it impacted more non-buckled structures toward the bottom of the building (NIST 2010).
• The other half of the equation is that WTC 7 resembles a “classic controlled demolition” because it supposedly “imploded, collapsing completely, and landed in its own footprint” (Gage 2011). In actuality, it twisted and tilted over to one side as it fell, and parts of the building severely damaged two neighboring buildings (the Verizon and Fiterman Hall structures). When challenged with the obvious fact that Tower 7 spilled far outside its footprint, however, Truthers will often change their tune and start saying that any resemblance to a natural collapse is part of the cover-up.

Factions within 9/11 Truth

Early on, it was mainly MIHOP (“Made it happen on purpose”) versus LIHOP (“Let it happen on purpose”). Nowadays most serious Truthers down-pedal the “no-planers,” who say no plane hit the Pentagon or even the Towers. There is considerable friction between some groups, with certain 9/11 Truth groups attacking others as “disinformation agents.” However, 9/11 Truth is mostly a big tent. Many “serious” groups such as AE911 Truth quietly champion “no-planers” such as former pilot Dwain Deets, engineer Anders Bjorkman, and Craig Ranke of Citizen Investigation Team (CIT) (Gage 2011). Gage formally withdrew his support of CIT in February 2011, even as his website touted 9/11 articles in Foreign Policy Journal, an online publication notorious for its frequent forays into Holocaust denial.

Conclusion

As Ted Goertzel pointed out in his recent Skeptical Inquirer article “The Conspiracy Meme: Why Conspiracy Theories Appeal and Persist,” “When an alleged fact is debunked, the conspiracy meme often just replaces it with another fact” (Goertzel 2011). In another ten years, will the 9/11 Truth movement have developed new arguments, or will it stick with the polished claims discussed here? Either way, it appears this American conspiracy theory classic is here to stay.

References

Avery, Dylan. 2009. Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup. Distributed by Microcinema International. Released September 22.

Bazant, Dzenek, J. Le, F.R. Greening, and D.B. Benson. 2008. What did and did not cause collapse of World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York? Journal of Engineering Mechanics ASCE 13(10): 892–906. Available online at www.civil.northwestern.edu/people/bazant/PDFs/Papers/476%20WTC%20collapse.pdf.

Blanchard, Brent 2006. A critical analysis of the collapse of WTC Towers 1, 2, and 7 from an explosives and conventional demolitions viewpoint. Journal of Debunking 911 Conspiracy Theories 1(2). Available online at www.jod911.com/WTC%20COLLAPSE%20STUDY%20BBlanchard%208-8-06.pdf.

Chandler, David. 2010. Destruction of the World Trade Center North Tower and fundamental physics. Journal of 9/11 Studies 28 (February). Available online at www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2010/ChandlerDownwardAccelerationOfWTC1.pdf.

Fana, Run-Hua, Hong-Liang Lü, Kang-Ning Sun, et al. 2006. Kinetics of thermite reaction in Al-Fe2O3 system. Thermochimica Acta 440(2) (January 15): 129–31.

Gage, Richard. 2011. Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Available online at www.ae911truth.org.

Goertzel, Ted. 2011. The conspiracy meme: Why conspiracy theories appeal and persist. Skeptical Inquirer 35(1) (January/February): 28–37.

Harrit, Niels H., Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, et al. 2009. Active thermitic material discovered in dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center catastrophe. Bentham Open Chemical Physics Journal 2: 7–31. Available online at www.bentham.org/open/tocpj/articles/V002/7TOCPJ.pdf.

Hoffman, Thomas. 2009. Bentham editor resigns over Steven Jones’ paper. Danish Science News Service (April 28). Available online at http://videnskab.dk/content/dk/naturvidenskab/chefredaktor_skrider_efter_kontroversiel­_artikel_om_911. (Translation available online at http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/2009/04/bentham-editor-resigns-over-steven.html.)

Mackey, Ryan. 2008. On debunking 9/11 debunking: Examining Dr. David Ray Griffin’s latest criticism of the NIST World Trade Center investigation. Journal of Debunking 911 Conspiracy Theories 1(4). Available online at www.jod911.com/drg_nist_review_2_1.pdf.

NIST. 2010. Questions and answers about the NIST WTC 7 investigation (updated September 17). Available online at www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/wtc_qa_082108.cfm.

Roberts, Mark. 2008. World Trade Center building 7 and the lies of the ‘9/11 Truth movement.’ Available online at http://sites.google.com/site/wtc7lies/introduction.

Sublette, Carey. 2006. Complete list of all U.S. nuclear weapons. Nuclear Weapon Archive Organization. Available online at http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Allbombs.html.

Sunder, Shyam, Richard G. Gann, William L. Grosshandler, et al. 2008. NIST Final Report on the Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7. Available online at http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201A.pdf.

“Sunstealer.” 2011. The sad case of Niels Harrit. JREF forum. Available online at http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=6959549.

Thomas, Dave. 2009. How I debated a 9/11 Truther and survived. Skeptical Briefs 19(4) (December). Available online at www.csicop.org/sb/show/how_i_debated_a_9_11_truther_and_survived/.

———. 2010a: The video Jesse Ventura doesn’t want the world to see! NM Skeptic Blog (March 24). Available online at http://nmskeptic.blogspot.com/2010/03/video-jesse-ventura-doesnt-want-world.html.

———. 2010b. Institute of Theoretical and Experimental 9/11 Physics 9-11 ‘Truth’ resources. New Mexicans for Science and Reason (August). Available online at www.nmsr.org/nmsr911.htm.

———. 2010c. 9/11 truth: The Coast-to-Coast AM debate. Skeptical Briefs 20(4) (December).

Young, Jeffrey R. 2007. A Berkeley engineer searches for the truth about the Twin Towers’ collapse. Civil and Structural Engineers on WTC Collapse. Available online at http://911-engineers.blogspot.com/2007/06/berkeley-engineer-searches-for-truth.html.

9/11 Internet Resources

The James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) Forum
http://forums.randi.org, 9/11 Conspiracy Theory area.
If you need every single 9/11 Truth claim sliced and diced a 
thousand ways, this is your site.

Mark Roberts (“Gravy”)
http://sites.google.com/site/wtc7lies

Screw Loose Change blog

http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com

AE911Truth.Info (Joseph Noble) 

“Answering the questions of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth”
http://ae911truth.info/wordpress/

9/11 Myths: Reading between the Lies
www.911myths.com/indexold.html

“I was fifty-five years old when I began to understand the world in my view. . . . I’m actually quite certain, and I don’t want to believe it . . . that the people we call the government murder us in order to start wars that make money for them.” ¹

In his article “The Conspiracy Meme: Why Conspiracy Theories Appeal and Persist” (SI, January/February 2011), Ted Goetzel suggests conspiracy theorizing is a meme—a way of thinking that spreads, survives, or dies according to a process analogous to genetic (termed mimetic) selection. The conspiracy meme competes with others, such as the scientific meme or the fair debate meme, as a way of describing and making sense of the world.

Conspiracy theorizing is, according to Goetzel, a rhetorical meme that “transforms scientific controversies into human dramas. . . . It uses controversial facts and speculations to undermine scientific evidence.” It is a surprisingly resilient and successful meme, a growing body of scholarly literature suggests, because of a growing mistrust in “experts” and established sources of knowledge (Hardwig 1991); an ideological response to structural inequalities (Fenster 1999); and a natural human tendency to seek order in an ever more complex, confusing world (Popper [1945] 2006). Once implanted, it is incredibly difficult to shake.

Over the past year we have been watching and confronting one particular version of this meme: the 9/11 Truth movement. In August 2010, we released a paper about conspiracy theories, “The Power of Unreason.” Within hours, the online conspiricist community hit back. Our paper was featured, or mirrored, on literally thousands of websites, blogs, and discussion forums; appeared as a topic on conspiricist radio shows; was mentioned in a dozen YouTube videos; and attracted hundreds of pages of comments and critique from the 9/11 Truth movement.²

The crucial point is that “The Power of Unreason” was not actually about the 9/11 Truth movement. As a study of the role of conspiracy theories in extremist and terrorist groups, it mentions 9/11 Truth sparsely and incidentally. That the 9/11 Truth movement responded in such an aggressive manner prompted us to analyze the response itself as a means of understanding this broadly nonviolent movement that nonetheless represents a damaging cultural habit.

The response illustrated, and continues to illustrate, Goertzel’s conspiracy theory meme in action. First, the online conspiracy community wrapped the report around faulty preconceptions. The paper was misrepresented in an exaggerated, distorted, inaccurate way that was soon recycled and re-presented within the conspiricist community. The recommendation to teach critical thinking in schools became “pushing propaganda on our children.” The recommendation to introduce alternative information into conspiracist sites became a dark, Orwellian plot to end free speech. The key finding that terrorist organizations often use conspiracy theories as part of their propaganda became “Demos accuses the 9/11 Truth Movement as [sic] being terrorists.”³ Many of these comments came from people who freely confessed that they had not read our paper.

Quickly, the focus turned onto our organization, Demos, a non-government public education charity. The Greek letter theta, taking the place of the o in the Demos logo, became the eye of the Illuminati.⁴ As authors, we were roundly accused of being part of the conspiracy itself: at best unknowing, naive, and myopic writers; at worst disinformation specialists or government agents openly supporting state terrorism.⁵ This technique of folding any dissenters into an ever-growing conspiracy is precisely what Goertzel predicts: cascade logic. Here, it was a spontaneous, semi-concerted effort to discredit the report and its arguments.

According to various polls, belief in the 9/11 conspiracy is incredibly high. In the United Kingdom, only 56 percent of the population believes al-Qaeda was responsible for the attacks; some smaller polling suggests that as many as one-third of Americans consider it “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that U.S. government officials either allowed or actually carried out the attacks on September 11, 2001.⁶ In fact, it is not quite as simple as that. Based on our encounters, we believe the 9/11 Truth movement is composed of different kinds of people who are involved in the movement for different reasons and derive different types of fulfillment and satisfaction from this engagement. This is a story of a dominant meme finding fertile ground in several psychological habitats.

We’ve observed groups from three of these habitats. The first can be called the “hardcore” group. Much of the noise of the 9/11 Truth movement is caused by a relatively small, tight-knit group of highly connected, highly motivated individuals. They are prodigious producers of information and theories who spot anomalies and technical inconsistencies. They are veterans of the John F. Kennedy assasination and Moon-landing-hoax theories, and so their worldview favors the “super-conspiracy,” linking conspiracies to a hidden overarching, sinister master plan (Cline 2007).

In our debates with them, hardcore 9/11 Truthers claim to be interested only in “facts”: the physical “fact” of the free fall speed of the Twin Towers, the collapse of World Trade Center (WTC) 7—which to them proves a demolition—or the “fact” that traces of super thermite have been identified in the Lower Manhattan dust by Steven Jones.

Their arguments, however, are not scientific at all, because the methods used are nonscientific: proponents decide on the answer and then search for corroborating evidence while ignoring the overwhelming peer-reviewed, independent research that suggests that, for example, WTC 7 collapsed in a manner consistent with severe damage from falling debris and fire (National Institute of Standards and Technology [NIST] 2008). This self-avowedly dispassionate search for truth is emotional.⁷ The hardcore group’s involvement in 9/11 Truth is monochrome and Manichean: it’s a “good/bad,” “black/white” struggle against an oppressive influence whose existence hardcore members believe they are on the cusp of proving.

The second layer could be called the “critically turned” group. It is often a source of surprise that many young students and political activists are part of the 9/11 Truth movement. Some are influenced heavily by that heady bundle of postmodern theory and the critical turn that Geoffrey Elton so memorably termed “the intellectual equivalent of crack” (Elton [1991] 2002). Their approach and language center on the dizzying ideas of relativism and subjective truth and the post-structural deconstruction they allow and demand (Sokal and Brickmont 1998).

But more than anything, the critically turned’s membership in 9/11 Truth arises from anger at the political order they will soon inherit. It is too closed. There is too much power in the hands of too few. Their sense of justice and idealism is rudely confronted by a world of state espionage, links between big business and government, and lies over weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). These are as significant as any specific theories about WTC 7 or the size of the hole in the Pentagon outer wall. Their interests often span to other forms of resistance against perceived oppression and injustice: support for Palestine, affiliation with the anti-war movement, and hatred of greedy bankers. It is this group that produces much of the cool, countercultural content of the movement. A recent YouTube video about Demos was set to the electronic dubstep track “Could This Be Real (Joker Remix).”⁸ Some of the most popular conspiricist films, such as Loose Change and Zeitgeist, make great use of atmospheric drumbeats and eye-catching graphics.

Finally there is a much larger, more diffuse group, which we term the illiterati. They are people for whom membership in 9/11 Truth is as much a social and recreational pursuit as an exercise in critical inquiry.⁹ Their involvement is predominantly through web 2.0 social networking. Often this user-generated commentary really acts as interactive entertainment masquerading as a public-spirited, free-thinking quest for the truth. They are the worst offenders for flouting the basic tenets of good journalism—accurate quotation, avoidance of misrepresentation, and fidelity of source—and their contributions, almost entirely devoid of genuine intent to find truth, are almost always nakedly and transparently propagandistic. For them, it is the thrill of the chase and participating in a largely online struggle that animates their involvement, not the end result.

Though the conspiracy theorizing meme is the same, its success within the 9/11 Truth movement depends on quite different characteristics depending on its adherent. These unlikely comrades in arms have joined to make a formidable movement. The hardcore group supplies much of the physical organization and structure: its members organize events, discussions, and marches; distribute leaflets; and edit the “peer reviewed” journals. The critically turned have done much to manufacture its broad appeal—giving it a countercultural street cred and, through the production of content and the skillful exploitation of virtual networks, exposure to millions. The illiterati form the group’s mass-membership backbone. They provide the thousands of comments and millions of YouTube hits on which the movement’s exaggerated claims of popularity and influence are founded. So can anything be learned from this?

The hardcore group claims to share at least the same epistemological rules—rationalism, empiricism, and a grounding of basic scholarly practice and conduct—as skeptics. Yet the emotionalized substrate of this conduct makes broad attempts at logical reasoning—such as pointing out the cascade logic suggested by Goetzel—insufficient. Any chance to believe conspirators exist is good enough for them. Any hanging anomalies or unanswered challenges of the official narrative will be taken as proof of the conspiracy. So the necessary response here is most painstaking: their claims must, as far as is possible, be rebuffed fact by fact, anomaly by anomaly, with the scientific tools they claim to be using.

The critically turned might not accept this approach, because conspiracy theories for them fit in with what they see happening in the world—it is part of a bigger story. The use of logical reasoning could help. Highlighting cascade logic might stick, as might emphasizing other tools of logic and rhetoric. For example, why would the American government, if it wanted to keep this secret, fly planes into the Twin Towers before bringing them down with a controlled demolition? Was flying fully fueled passenger jets into the Pentagon and the center of U.S. business not sufficient? Why did the U.S. government not plant WMDs in Iraq—a far easier and equally important subject?

The illiterati have not actually looked at much of the material, but it fits not only with their worldview but also with an explicit position to which they have committed socially and around which they have formed an identity. This makes ideas very difficult to dislodge (Riso et al. 2007). Neither facts nor logic are likely to do much here. We can only address the real structural inequalities that condition a milieu as fertile for such beliefs. This, of course, is a major endeavor. Some smaller changes may help too, such as more critical thinking in schools: a recent study by an independent organization in the United Kingdom found that 43 percent of sixteen- to twenty-four-year-olds base their trust in web content on how the site looks, while 32 percent of twelve- to fifteen-year-olds believe that Google search results are listed in order of accuracy.¹⁰

Memes must exist within a human ecology. Conspiracy theorizing is not only, or even predominantly, an intellectual process. It is “whole-person”: both emotional and social. That is why changing the dominant meme must be done in person: the hard graft of speaking, discussing, and arguing face-to-face. The 9/11 Truth movement has successfully done that. The skeptics must continue to do the same.

Notes

1. A direct quote from a very angry man at an event we attended (publicized by 9/11 Truthers as “Demos vs. 9/11 Truth”). He sat in the front row directly across from coauthor Carl Miller and yelled this fairly typical outburst into his face. (Available online at www.vimeo.com/16395101, approximately forty-six minutes and twenty seconds into the video clip.)

2. See, for example, www.infowars.com/government-think-tank-calls-for-infiltrating-conspiracy-websites and www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20100829144303310 (both accessed October 11, 2010).

3. See the Demos blog for a good overview of the response at www.demos.co.uk/blog/engaging-.

4. http://seeker401.wordpress.com/2010/09/06/demos-calls-for-governments-to-infiltrate-conspiracy-sites (accessed October 11, 2010).

5. http://kevboyle.blogspot.com/2010/10/demos-meets-911-truth.html (accessed October 11, 2010).

6. See www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/international_security_bt/535.php and Lev Grossman’s article “Why the Conspiracy Theories Won’t Go Away,” Time magazine in 2008 (www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1531304,00.html).

7. See, for instance, the “personal validation effect”: a cognitive bias of considering a piece of information to be correct if it has a personal significance. See B.R. Forer’s 1949 article “The Fallacy of Personal Validation: A classroom Demonstration of Gullibility,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology (volume 44, pp. 118–21.)

8. www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqLOtQb1DwE.

9. See Cass Sunstein for a study of reputational cascades, in which people “profess belief in a conspiracy theory, or at least suppress their doubts, because they seek to curry favor.” Sunstein and Vermeule, University of Chicago Law and Economics Research Paper Series, Paper No. 387, p.12.

10a. UK children’s media literacy. 2009. Ofcom. London.

10b. Digital lifestyles: Young adults aged 16–24. 2009. Ofcom. London.

References

Cline, Austin. 2007. Flaws in reasoning and arguments: Subjective validation, seeing patterns and connections that aren’t really there. About.com (September 10).

Elton, Geoffrey R. (1991) 2002. Return to Essentials: Some Reflections on the Present State of Historical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fenster, Mark. 1999. Conspiracy theories: Secrecy and power in American culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Goertzel, Ted. 2011. The conspiracy meme: Why conspiracy theories appeal and persist. Skeptical Inquirer 35(1) (January/February): 28–37.

Hardwig, John. 1991. The role of trust in knowledge. Journal of Philosophy 88(22).

National Institute of Standards and Technology. 2008. Final report on the collapse of World Trade Center building 7.

Popper, Karl. (1945) 2006. Conspiracy theory of society. In Tom Rockmore and Daniel Breazele, eds, Rights, Bodies and Recognition: New Essays on Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right, 13–16.

Riso, Lawrence P., et al. 2007. Cognitive Schemas and Core Beliefs in Psychological Problems: A Scientist–Practitioner Guide. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Sokal, Alan, and Jean Bricmont. 1998. Fashionable Nonsense. New York: Picador.

When we think of conflicts of interest, we almost automatically think of money. In my area of research, complementary alternative medicine (CAM), there is no money—well, almost none (contrasted with most areas of mainstream medicine). Despite this fact, conflicts of interest are rife in CAM research. I am, of course, talking about a different type of conflict: the one that is created by strong belief and evangelic conviction.

Across the globe, I personally know many individuals who are full-time CAM researchers. They have different personalities, backgrounds, and skills. But they all have, as far as I can see, one characteristic in common: they are strong believers in the benefit of at least some aspects of CAM. On the one hand, this may seem entirely reasonable: if one didn’t believe in CAM, why would one dedicate one’s career to investigating it?

On the other hand, if the vast majority of CAM researchers are made up of CAM believers, things might not be quite right either. In other areas of medical research, the situation is—in my experience—very different. I know many pharmacologists, for instance, who are keenly aware of the dangers of medicines and extremely critical of some of the activities of the pharmaceutical industry. I cannot say that I know many CAM researchers who are truly concerned about the dangers of CAM or of the activities of those individuals or organisations that promote CAM uncritically.

Conflicts of interest are precarious because they tend to cloud judgment and generate bias—the type of bias that creeps in unnoticed and cannot be readily identified when studying a published paper. After some detective work, we might be able to find out, for example, that a certain paper that draws positive conclusions about the homeopathic remedy Traumeel® (Schneider et al. 2008) was coauthored by at least one “expert” who is on the payroll of the manufacturer of that very remedy—even if the paper itself fails to disclose this fact (Schneider et al. 2008). But what about more subtle yet potentially powerful conflicts of interest? I fear that they have far too much impact on CAM.

If the totality of researchers in one field is open to unidirectional bias, one has to worry about the area as a whole. The danger, then, is obvious: the field will collectively lose its balance and make serious and repetitive mistakes without even noticing them. In the absence of criticism “from the inside,” such an area of research can neither prosper nor mature. In my experience, CAM has very little internal criticism, as the following examples suggest.

Chiropractic

After the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) sued science writer Simon Singh for libel, the United Kingdom’s General Chiropractic Council (GCC, the regulatory body of its members) was inundated with about 700 complaints from skeptical bloggers about chiropractors who had made similarly bogus therapeutic claims. The GCC reacted by commissioning North American chiropractors to write an “evidence report.” Presumably, the GCC hoped that the report could clarify the evidence regarding the disputed claims. Bronfort et al.’s (2010) published report revealed no strong evidence for “manual therapies.” Despite this seemingly critical stance, the report is still not critical enough, in my opinion. The reason becomes clear upon a reading of its fine print. Even though the authors repeatedly mention the “quality of the evidence,” they fail to formally evaluate it. Thus, poor-quality primary studies are taken at face value, which inevitably leads to false-positive conclusions. Without the very obvious conflict of interest (chiropractors commissioned by the GCC), the report might have been far more critical than it turned out to be.

A similar situation occurs with systematic reviews of chiropractic as a treatment for specific conditions. Such articles are now emerging regularly, and they tend to display interesting discrepancies. For example, a review on the subject of asthma written by four chiropractors concluded that “chiropractic care showed improvement in subjective measures . . .” (Kaminskyj et al. 2010). Meanwhile, my own review, which included a critical assessment of the quality of the primary data, stated that “spinal manipulation is not an effective treatment for asthma” (Ernst 2009). Here I should mention perhaps that I, as an independent academic, have no conflicts of interest and receive no payments from Big Pharma or similar institutions that might have an axe to grind.

Years ago, I had already noted that reviews published by chiropractors tend to arrive at positive conclusions while those by independent experts do not (Ernst and Canter 2006). The explanation for this phenomenon seems to be simple: conflict of interest.

Acupuncture

Vickers et al. (1998) and others (Tang, Zhan, and Ernst 1999) have shown that 100 percent of all acupuncture trials originating in China report positive results. Recently, an in-depth analysis of acupuncture articles published between 1991 and 2009 revealed that China is now producing more acupuncture research papers than any other country (Han and Ho 2011). To make matters worse, this analysis also names the journals that publish the bulk of these articles: unsurprisingly, they tend to be the ones I have previously identified as publishing virtually no negative results (Ernst and Pittler 1997). Thus there is reason to fear that we are currently exposed to a mountain of research on acupuncture, much of which might be less than reliable.

Here the explanations might be more complex, and there could be more than one factor at play. Yet I have little doubt which one is the most important: conflict of interest.

What Can Be Done?

My message is clear: non-financial conflicts of interest can be just as powerful as financial ones, and in my area of research they seem to be quite overpowering. This problem will inevitably lead to significant distortions of the truth about the value of alternative medicine. The issue at hand is more than just academic: misleading results in health care endanger our health.

It is relatively easy to identify the problem, yet it is hard to solve it. I don’t pretend to have the ideal solution. All I can suggest is that journal editors consider making their authors’ conflicts of interest transparent and that readers of such papers apply a healthy dose of skepticism. Whenever there are two discrepant opinions (and that is the case more often than not), my advice is to determine which one might be prompted by a conflict of interest. In theory, this sounds fine; in practice, I am afraid, it will not be nearly enough to remedy the problem.

References

Bronfort, G., M. Haas, R. Evans, B. Leninger, and J. Triano. 2010. Effectiveness of manual therapies: The UK evidence report. Chiropractic and Osteopathy 18(3). doi: 10.1186/1746-13 40-18-3.

Ernst, E. 2009. Spinal manipulation for asthma: A systematic review of randomised clinical trials. Respiratory Medicine 103(12): 1791–95.

Ernst, E., and P. Canter. 2006. A systematic review of systematic reviews of spinal manipulation. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 99(4): 192–96.

Ernst, E., and M.H. Pittler. 1997. Alternative therapy bias. Nature 385: 480.

Han, J.S., and Y.S. Ho. 2011. Global trends and performances of acupuncture research. Neuroscience and Behavioural Reviews 35(3): 680–87.

Kaminskyj, A., M. Frazier, K. Johnstone, and B.J. Gleberzon. 2010. Chiropractic care for patients with asthma: A systematic review of the literature. Journal of Canadian Chiropractic Association 54(1): 24–32.

Schneider, C., B. Schneider, J. Hanisch, and R. Van Haselen. 2008. The role of homoeopathic preparation compared with conventional therapy in the treatment of injuries: An observational cohort study. Complementary Therapies in Medicine 16(1): 22–27.

Tang, J.L., S.Y. Zhan, and E. Ernst. 1999. Review of randomised controlled trials of traditional Chinese medicine. BMJ 319 (7203): 160–61.

Vickers, A., N. Goyal, R. Harland, and R. Rees. 1998. Do certain countries produce only positive results? A systematic review of controlled trials. Controlled Clinical Trials 19(2): 159–66.

Psychic Allison DuBois has built an industry around her claims of helping law enforcement. A primetime network television show was based on her. She has three best-selling books and an army of devoted fans. But despite DuBois’s celebrity power, the evidence for her supposedly accurate predictions is less robust than her profits. She has made several claims that are hard to accept—even for those who believe in psychic abilities. Even still, DuBois has walked a careful line in order not to reveal too much information. That strategy, until recently, has worked for her. In 2010, DuBois was asked by KPHO-TV, a Phoenix, Arizona, CBS affiliate, about a missing baby. The case marks the first publicly reported event in which DuBois has been specific in her predictions and offered a timeline for a criminal case. As it turns out, DuBois’s predictions not only failed to solve the crime but were completely wrong.

Allison DuBois (KH1 WENN Photos/Newscom)

DuBois was raised in Arizona and still lives in Phoenix with her husband. In 2005 she told Dan Abrams of MSNBC that she has “read over 1,200 people”; in 2006 she claimed to have performed 2,000 readings (with a waiting list of 3,000) (Pierlioni 2006). She has long claimed to use psychic powers to help law enforcement, including the Texas Rangers, and has said that she is “used for jury selection in rape/homicide cases, in order to obtain the sentence the prosecution wants” (DuBois 2005). Yet these claims have never been verified, and the Texas Rangers deny any involvement with her (Radford 2005). Medium, the network television show based on DuBois, has highlighted the character Allison DuBois “using her psychic smarts to help the DA in his efforts to find twelve people happy to send Mr. Psycho to the chair” (Bell 2005). The real-life DuBois claimed to be working on 150 cases in 2005 and says she’s “never worked a case and not provided them with specific information” (MSNBC 2005).

When a crime story grips the nation, DuBois will typically discuss the event in an interview or claim involvement. In her 2005 book Don’t Kiss Them Goodbye, DuBois wrote that she correctly described the man involved in the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping. Dubois wrote that her “friend Catherine” (no last name given) asked for a profile of the kidnapper, which DuBois gave, offering vague details that matched the kidnapper—that he was “a groundskeeper/handyman. He was a transient, but he managed to function in society.” DuBois notes, “These details could have helped much sooner if they had been used.” In the middle of this narrative, she writes, “All the information I provided is on record and verifiable.” The problem is that her claims are not verifiable because she supplies no names beyond her friend’s first name. There is no mention of who she talked to or what law enforcement agency or volunteer group had the information. The only public details of DuBois making a prediction about Smart in 2002 came from her 2005 book. In addition, DuBois’s own passage points out that her reading was not used in the high-profile Smart case. Smart’s family had suspected Brian Mitchell was involved with the kidnapping. Mitchell was captured in the company of his wife and Smart on a Salt Lake City street after his image was broadcast on America’s Most Wanted in 2003.

Similarly, during Natalee Holloway’s disappearance a few years later, DuBois appeared on MSNBC’s Rita Cosby Live to claim, “You have the right suspects. I mean, they’re completely guilty.” DuBois’s information was incorrect. The case remains unsolved and those suspects were not charged. More recently, a story about a missing baby garnered national headlines, and DuBois made a prediction that finally put her claims to the test.

In December 2009, Elizabeth Johnson took her eight-month-old son, Gabriel, from his father in a custody dispute. For the next five days, Elizabeth spent nights in two different hotels with the baby. In the process, she texted messages to the father, Logan McQueary, saying that she killed the baby and threw his body in a trash can after wrapping him in a diaper. She was arrested on December 30 but refused to help police locate the baby. As national interest in the case grew, police interrogations and interviews with friends and family members were reported in the news. On March 3, 2010, Allison DuBois spoke to CBS 5 (KPHO-TV) about Gabriel Johnson. This is one exchange that was televised:

Interviewer (voice-over): It’s something we all feel and why Allison feels investigators will find this baby boy, but not, she says, in a San Antonio landfill.

DuBois: I feel like he’ll be found. It does feel like helicopters are overhead. It’s a place they’re already looking.

Interviewer (to DuBois): Do you feel like we will find him soon or later?

DuBois: Sooner than later. I feel like he’ll be found within the year, within 2010. The people working this will make sure he’s found.

Much of what DuBois states early in the interview—which took place more than two months after the events in question—had already been reported in the press. The reporter said that she planned to share DuBois’s reading from the ninety-minute interview with Gabriel’s father. However, what the station aired was general information: details already reported about the mother’s text messages to the father, the ongoing custody dispute, and the actions of the mother. DuBois revealed the mother’s motive during the KPHO-TV interview, saying, “I think she did it because she wanted to hurt the father like she said” (emphasis added). As KPHO-TV reported, “What she can’t read from Gabriel, Allison said she can read from this video of Elizabeth in court and the sound of her voice on tape . . . and she also looked to the text messages Elizabeth sent Gabriel’s father Logan McQueary just after the boy was last seen.” The Phoenix New Times pointed out, “In the final analysis, after devoting nearly four minutes of airtime and a ninety-minute interview to the claims of a psychic, CBS 5 has told us nothing we didn’t know a week ago” (King 2010).

However, DuBois’s prediction that Gabriel would be found “within” 2010 was something that no one could have evaluated at the time. It is important to note that DuBois made no statement about whether Gabriel would be found alive or dead or where the baby boy might be. If DuBois is psychic, one would expect her to correctly predict the fate and location of the baby, but she didn’t. It is reasonable to think that a baby who is missing will be found—based on police interviews, a plea bargain with the mother, or finding the child’s body—as has happened in other high-profile missing-child cases. In any case, DuBois was wrong. Gabriel was not found in 2010. In January 2011, as police continued to look for him, the Tempe, Arizona, Police Department released documents detailing its search, including unconfirmable claims from an unnamed psychic about the baby. The mother had been charged with kidnapping, child abuse, and custodial interference, with a trial scheduled for later in 2011. Her son is still missing. DuBois has emphasized that her statements are based on psychic “feelings” and “impressions.” In particular, DuBois explained how she feels about the case is based, in part, on looking at “a picture of Gabriel, first thing I do is look in his eyes that’s my window in to him.”

DuBois had a rough start to the new year. First, CBS cancelled Medium, and its last show aired in January 2011. Then DuBois received criticism about her December appearance on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, a reality television show aired on the cable channel Bravo, in which she visited her friend Camille Grammer, now ex-wife of famed Cheers actor Kelsey Grammer (Phillips 2011). Sipping on a drink and smoking what appeared to be a cigarette, DuBois traded insults with other members of the show. One of the insults was aimed at Kyle Richards, who DuBois said “was every girl in a high school that made somebody kill herself.” While holding her cigarette, DuBois said, “I’m gonna shove this up her [censored] ass just to prove a point. Except I think she’d need a bigger one just to feel it. Oh yeah, I went there.” In response to questions about her behavior, DuBois blamed the show’s editing and denied being intoxicated. In early January 2011, DuBois told The Examiner she smoked an electronic cigarette, not a real cigarette, and added, “I had two to three cocktails in four hours and was most definitely not intoxicated. If it offended any fans I apologize.”

Then in February, Bravo aired the now infamous dinner party in a much longer format and made clips of the show, including “Allison’s Full Rant,” available online. The longer video was more revealing but probably not in the way DuBois wanted. During one part of the “full rant,” DuBois angrily told the women at the table about Richards, “I don’t give a [censored] what she thinks about me. She can [censored] off. I can tell you when she’s going to die and what’s going to happen to her family. I love that about me.”

In another clip, appropriately titled “Lisa Takes on the Psychic,” Lisa Vanderpump asked DuBois about Vanderpump’s deceased grandmother. As DuBois started giving Vanderpump a reading, the video cut to Taylor Armstrong, who pointed out that what DuBois was saying “didn’t make any sense.” The show then cut back to Vanderpump saying to DuBois, “you don’t know if she’s with me.” In response DuBois told Vanderpump, “You’re thinking, I’m feeling; that’s how we are different.” DuBois then followed with “She was the mother that raised you or that was the mother you needed and so do you.” The segment cut to Vanderpump telling the camera, “As soon as she said my grandmother raised me I lost interest because she didn’t.” Vanderpump disputed other claims DuBois made by bluntly saying “no” to her assertions, causing DuBois to look down and nervously laugh at one point. In reflection, Adrienne Maloof said the “reading sounds like a canned statement.” Clearly, a reading with DuBois convinced neither Vanderpump nor Maloof that DuBois is psychic.

Viewing Allison DuBois as a case study in psychic ability, we can see that her paranormal claims are not backed by evidence. When an incorrect prediction is made, even considering its likelihood, the psychic fails. Not only have her claims about working with law enforcement been denied, but third-party evidence supporting the assertion that she has psychic powers is lacking. This scenario should be construed as a lesson to the public: claims should be supported with evidence if they are to be accepted. In response to questions about skeptics, DuBois told the Sacramento Bee: “I’m very proud of what I do.” Perhaps DuBois is proud of what she does, but that doesn’t change the lack of proof for her claims and her incorrect prediction in baby Gabriel’s case. The evidence, not pride, speaks for itself. Although the character of Allison DuBois on CBS’s Medium solves crimes by using psychic ability, evidence for DuBois’s ability in the real world is sorely lacking. CBS cancelled Medium, but there is little doubt that the real-life Allison DuBois will continue to claim that she helps law enforcement even if she can’t supply evidence for her claims.

References

Abrams, Dan. 2005. The Abrams Report. MSNBC (February 8).

Anaya, Catherine. 2010. Allison DuBois: ‘Baby Gabriel will be found.’ KPHO-TV (March 3). Available online at http://www.kpho.com/story/14780080/allison-dubois-baby-gabriel-will-be-found-3-03-2010.

Bell, Ian. 2005. The psychic with a bad memory who prompted a mass superstition. The Herald (Glasgow) (September 14).

Bravo TV. 2011. Allison’s full rant (video). February 16. Available online at www.bravotv.com/the-real-housewives-of-beverly-hills/season-1/videos/allisons-full-rant.

———. 2011. Lisa takes on the psychic (video). February 16. Available online at www.bravotv.com/the-real-housewives-of-beverly-hills/season-1/videos/lisa-takes-on-the-psychic.

DuBois, Allison. 2005. Don’t Kiss Them Good-bye. New York: Fireside Books.

Gonzalez, Nathan. 2011. Baby Gabriel report released by Tempe police. Arizona Republic (January 18). Available online at www.azcentral.com/community/tempe/articles/2011/01/18/20110118baby-gabriel-tempe-police-report.html.

King, James. 2010. Baby Gabriel will be found, psychic claims; glad that’s cleared up. Phoenix New Times (March 3).

Phillips, Cheryl. 2011. Allison DuBois speaks about Real Housewives of Beverly Hills dinner party. Examiner.com (January 3). Available online at www.examiner.com/celebrity-social-media-in-national/allison-dubois-speaks-up-about-real-housewives-of-beverly-hills-dinner-party.

Pierleoni, Allen. 2006. The medium has a message; hosting encounters with ghosts comes (super) naturally for Allison DuBois. Sacramento Bee (June 19).

Radford, Benjamin. 2005. Psychic detectives fail in the real world but succeed on TV. Skeptical Inquirer 29(2) (March/April).

Wilson, Kelly. 2005. Allison DuBois’ ability to talk to dead people is taking her on the ride of her life. East Valley Tribune (April 21).

Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore by Benjamin Radford. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 2011. ISBN: 978-0-82635-015-2. 202 pp. Softcover, $24.95.

Benjamin Radford is a longtime scientific investigator of fringe-science topics with an emphasis on cryptozoology. The University of New Mexico Press has published Radford’s latest book, Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore. Though modestly titled, this book is arguably the greatest cryptozoological book ever written. It’s a winner in every way, a slam-dunk debunk of the mystery surrounding the new monster on the block: el chupacabra.

Radford builds his case methodically, starting off with a history of vampire legends in general. After all, chupacabra literally means “goat sucker” in Spanish and as such falls squarely within the realm of vampiric tradition. Many people become familiar with vampires through popular media such as books or movies. In America, the emphasis is on European or American monsters. Yet Radford demonstrates that vampiric legend is a worldwide phenomenon that goes far back in history. Not surprisingly, each culture has a slightly different spin on the legend, and the culture of Puerto Rico, where the first chupacabra reports originated, is no exception.

The Puerto Rican version of the chupacabra legend incorporates elements of anti-American sentiment as well as conspiracy theories and religious “end times” notions. The chupacabra myth sprang up to explain dead animals left behind that had been killed (and supposedly left bloodless) by unknown predators. Radford methodically investigates how these animals probably died.

There’s an entire branch of science, taphonomy, that deals with what happens to animals after they die. Radford’s account is both accessible to the lay reader and sparing in unnecessary gore; all photos are in black and white. A near-reprise of the cattle mutilation flap of the 1970s, virtually all cases of alleged chupacabra attacks involve animals dying by ordinary predation, not by having their blood sucked. Using both photographs and drawings, Radford illustrates how an untrained individual might come to misinterpret an animal’s death as the result of a blood-sucking beast.

Sometimes asking a simple question leads to a surprising result. By the time the chupacabra legend went north to the United States, the beast had changed from a bipedal being with spikes down its back to a quadruped, something along the lines of a dog, wolf, or coyote. These animals are all canids, and as such have certain familial characteristics. Radford works through a very simple, non-intuitive question: Is a canid even physiologically capable of sucking blood from an animal’s wound?

The technology behind DNA analysis has progressed so quickly during the beginning of the twenty-first century that it’s not surprising that it has been used to identify the carcasses of animals claimed to be chupacabras. Without fail, DNA analyses of these animals have shown them to be known species or, occasionally, hybrids of known species. In many cases the carcasses are hairless, or nearly so. Radford includes a treatment of the nature of sarcoptic mange, which can cause an animal to lose most if not all of its fur. Hairless canids often look very different from normal, healthy animals.

The real death blow to the chupacabra legend was Radford tracking down and personally interviewing the first known chupacabra eyewitness, a Puerto Rican woman named Madelyne Tolentino. To borrow a term from epidemiology, Tolentino was “patient zero,” i.e., the single person from whom the tale originated and spread. This is the point at which everything falls into place, giving Radford’s investigation an almost Euclidian elegance. A careful examination of Tolentino’s account demonstrates virtually beyond a doubt that her sighting was a confabulation with a work of fiction.

As with a geometric theorem, the elegance lies in the process of the proof, not just the result. Radford freely admits that it may seem like overkill to put so much time and energy into debunking an intrinsically unlikely monster. Yet the beauty of Radford’s book is that we get to watch how things ought to be done. The investigative process is as important as the ultimate conclusion. Radford’s book is a must-have in any good crypto-library.

The Origins of Spirit Photography

The practice of spirit photography was officially born in 1862 when William H. Mumler, a Boston photographer, discovered that in a picture he had taken of himself there also appeared the image of his dead cousin. Photographic techniques were still at a rudimentary stage: the first working photographic process, the daguerreotype, had been developed only twenty-two years earlier by Louis-Jacque-Mandé Daguerre. Therefore photography was a relatively young art when Mumler announced that he had been able to capture a ghost on film. The public rushed enthusiastically to his studio to get pictures of dead relatives.

The fundamental technique used by every spirit photographer simply involved taking a picture of the client. It was only in the developing process that one or more extras in the form of ghostly faces were added to the photograph. Usually, the clients would recognize in these images a dead relative or friend.

When it was discovered that some of Mumler’s most famous pictures contained extras resembling people still quite alive, even believers became suspicious. One of Mumler’s most touching photos, displayed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle during his lectures, was later shown to be a fake. It showed a crowd of mourners at the London Cenotaph on Armistice Day; above the crowd was a fog of spirit faces—those of fallen heroes, it was supposed. However, it turned out that some of the spirits were faces of living football players, and one belonged to the living African boxer Battling Siki.

Mumler’s trick was to use double exposures, a technique almost unheard of in those days, by which he had been able to superimpose faces from other pictures onto the pictures belonging to his clients. He was accused of fraud and taken to court; at the trial, however, he was acquitted. Mumler later died in poverty in 1884.

The Case of the Crewe Circle

At the turn of the century, one of the most famous spirit photographers was William Hope (1863–1933), a member of the Crewe Circle—a group of spiritualists from Crewe, England, whose members appeared to be able to register the faces of spirits on photographic plates simply by holding the plates in their hands. It was further claimed that the plates could be furnished by Hope’s clients themselves. Even Conan Doyle obtained a picture made in this fashion resembling his dead sister.

However, in February 1922, psychic researcher Harry Price (1881–1948) of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), along with a magician named Seymour, conducted an investigation into the methods of the Crewe Circle. Along with fellow SPR researcher Eric J. Dingwall and magician William S. Marriott, they devised a plan that consisted of presenting Hope with a set of glass negatives that had been secretly marked with X-rays. The trap worked: when Hope returned the plates, the one containing the “extra” spirit image showed no sign of the markings; this meant that Hope had switched a prepared plate for the secretly marked one. “In the above case,” began the Price accusation that appeared in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, “it can, we think, hardly be denied that Mr William Hope has been found guilty of deliberately substituting his own plates for those of a sitter…. It implies that the medium brings to the sitting a duplicate slide and faked plates for fraudulent purposes.”

Spiritualists denounced the report as part of a conspiracy against Hope, and Conan Doyle, who was then vice president of the Society for the Study of Supernormal Pictures, took up the defenses of the Crewe Circle. He begged Price to reconsider his position, hoping to settle the controversy “in some honorable fashion.” Conan Doyle wrote, “It makes an open sore in the movement.” Price, however, refused to recant his report, so Conan Doyle started working on a pamphlet on spirit photography detailing his side of the affair. He talked about the case to Houdini in a letter he wrote on April 13, 1922:

I have written a book on Psychic Photography with special reference to the Crewe Circle. The evidence in their favor is overwhelming, tho’ what happened on a special occasion with 2 amateur conjurers, out for a stunt, and a third (Dingwall) behind them is more than I can say. We find that another test was independably [sic] carried out about the same time, when the Kodak Co. marked a plate. The mark was found by them all right afterwards, and also an extra. Our opponents talk of one failure and omit the great series of successes. However, truth wins and there’s lots of time.

Houdini was not impressed. He had tried to get an audience with Hope in December 1921 but was informed that the medium’s engagements would keep him busy for months. Houdini then asked fellow British magician DeVega (Alexander Stewart, 1891–1971) if he would sit for a photograph with Hope. During the sitting, DeVega was sure that the slide he had loaded had been changed for another one and told Houdini. His skepticism toward Hope, then, seemed to be justified. Conan Doyle, however, was still convinced that Hope’s spirit photos were genuine, as he reported to Houdini in his letter dated August 6:

We seem to have knocked the bottom out of the Hope “exposure.” The plates were marked by X-rays and we find by experiment that X-ray marks disappear on a 20-second exposure, which was the exact time given. Our time is continually wasted over nonsense of this sort, but I suppose it has to be done.

Belief Never Dies

Famous photo of Mary Todd Lincoln with the “spirit” of her husband, President Abraham Lincoln. (William H Mumler from Wikimedia Commons)

Conan Doyle’s letter worried Houdini because he had already started to talk publicly about the “unmasking” of the Crewe Circle. The magician then contacted Harry Price, who at the time was experimenting to see whether X-ray markings really disappear on exposure. At first the results seemed to confirm Conan Doyle’s theory; however, further experimentation proved that X-rays do not disappear with prolonged exposure, thus proving that the plates had been switched. Meanwhile, Conan Doyle continued working on his pamphlet The Case for Spirit Photography, which he eventually privately published in the early twenties.

However, having lost one possible explanation for the disappearing marking, the spiritualists had to account for it in another way. One possible solution was that the investigators did not actually give Hope the marked plate in an attempt to frame him, and this is what Conan Doyle suggests to Houdini in his letter of October 29:

The Hope case is more intricate than any Holmes case I ever invented. I am sure now that there was trickery on the part of the investigators and that the marked plates were not in the packet when taken to the dark room. One of them was returned by post anonymously undeveloped to the S.P.R. Now, since Hope and the College people knew nothing of the test, until four months later, how could they return an undeveloped plate, for how could they pick it out as a marked one, since the marking only shows on development? Clearly it was done by one of the Conspirators, and he could not have picked it out of all the other plates in the dark room, even if he had access to it. It is clear to me therefore that it never went to the dark room at all, but was taken out before. My pamphlet is ready but I hold it back in the hope of learning who the rascal was.

After receiving this letter, but without revealing his source, Houdini wrote to Harry Price on November 18 asking whether these allegations were true: “There is a rumor afloat here that the Crewe circle were ‘framed.’ There is talk about an undeveloped negative being sent back anonymously. Have they any reason at all to claim that they were ‘framed’?”

Actually, the return of the undeveloped plate could also be explained by Price’s hypothesis of fraud: if Hope had switched the marked plate for a previously exposed one, he would still possess the plate that Price had originally brought. The controversy between Conan Doyle and Price would resurface again during the following months, and Houdini would find himself right in the middle of the two opposing parties.

Price, for example, reprinted the results of his experiments with the Crewe Circle in the booklet Cold Light on Spiritualistic Phenomena because, he explained in the booklet’s preface, “the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research is printed only for circulation among its Members and Associates.” The booklet caused quite a stir among spiritualists, and Conan Doyle entreated Price for years to take it out of circulation: “I do feel strongly that the popular sixpenny pamphlet designed to ruin a man who had 17 years of fine psychic work behind him is wrong . . . my belief is that you yourself did not write it. However so long as your name is on [it] we can only go for you.” In his autobiography, Confessions of a Ghost Hunter, Price recalled, “Arthur Conan Doyle and his friends . . . abused me for years for exposing Hope.”

As for the magician Marriott (see also my column “William S. Marriott’s Gambols with the Ghosts,” SI, March/April 2003), he was able to score a point with Conan Doyle. In 1921 a journalist named James Douglas had a photo of himself taken by William Hope that, when developed, showed the presence of a spirit extra. Douglas was so impressed by the phenomenon that he issued a public challenge to anyone who could duplicate the feat without using psychic powers. Marriott accepted the challenge and performed not only in front of Douglas but Conan Doyle as well. He produced a picture of Douglas and Conan Doyle with a young woman and a picture of Conan Doyle with little fairies dancing in front of him. He then explained in detail how he had manipulated the photos, and Conan Doyle felt compelled to write a public statement: “Mr. Marriott has clearly proved one point, which is that a trained conjurer can, under the close inspection of three pairs of critical eyes, put a false image upon a plate. We must unreservedly admit it.”

This episode, however, did not convince the believers even though the saga came to an end in 1932 when Fred Barlow, a former friend and supporter of Hope’s work and former secretary of the Society for the Study of Supernormal Pictures, gave a joint lecture along with Major W. Rampling-Rose to the SPR to present findings gleaned from an extensive series of tests on the methods Hope used to produce his spirit photos. The two, who presented their case in depth in Volume 41 of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, concluded that the “spirit extras” that appeared in Hope’s photographs were produced fraudulently. It was only Hope’s death at Salford hospital during the publication of the report that ultimately ended the debate. The believers would soon start to find extras of his face in the spirit photographs of others.

The case of William Hope and his Crewe Circle deserves to be remembered today because it shows that it is practically impossible (and futile) to try to convince someone who wants to believe even in the face of quite convincing contrary evidence.

Acupuncture is often referred to as an ancient Chinese practice, but in actuality it’s neither very ancient nor exclusively Chinese. The modern practice of acupuncture is only decades—not centuries or millennia, as is often claimed—old (Ramey 2010). It has antecedents in ancient times, but the practice of needling in Asia was not much different from the practice of bloodletting in the West (Novella 2010).

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) has this to say about the definition of acupuncture:

The term “acupuncture” describes a family of procedures involving the stimulation of anatomical points on the body using a variety of techniques. The acupuncture technique that has been most often studied scientifically involves penetrating the skin with thin, solid, metallic needles that are manipulated by the hands or by electrical stimulation. (NCCAM 2011)

It appears the definition of acupuncture is not tied to any alleged mechanism of action. Some definitions mention Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and either directly state or imply that acupuncture works by influencing the flow and balance of chi, or life energy. Such notions are little more than prescientific superstition, so modern proponents are often vague on mechanism or refer to highly speculative and unproven physiological mechanisms. Regardless of any potential mechanism, there are two features that seem to define acupuncture: the existence of specific acupuncture points at various locations on the body and the stimulation of these points by “a variety of techniques,” most commonly inserting thin needles through the skin.

So-called electroacupuncture is very problematic in terms of scientific specificity, because electrical stimulation through the skin has known physiological effects independent of the existence of acupuncture points. Scientific experiments are designed to control for as many variables as possible; only by isolating variables can we say which variable is having which effect. Electroacupuncture mixes variables, making it impossible to separate out the ones specific to acupuncture from the effects of electrical stimulation itself.

Needle insertion also has nonspecific physiological effects independent of any notion of acupuncture, but these are likely minimal, transient, and local. So for the purpose of experimentation, it is reasonable to define acupuncture as the insertion of thin needles into acupuncture points.

Clinical studies into the effectiveness of acupuncture have evolved over recent years, and there have actually been quite a few well-designed studies that adequately isolate these two variables (acupuncture points and needle insertion). For example, many studies compare verum acupuncture (true acupuncture in which needles are inserted into the alleged proper acupuncture points for the condition being treated) to sham acupuncture (in which needles are inserted into the “wrong” locations). These studies overwhelmingly show that needle location does not matter—verum acupuncture is no more effective than sham acupuncture (Moffet 2009; Ernst 2009).

Some trials also control for the variable of needle insertion, using placebo or simulated acupuncture in which opaque sheaths are used and a dull needle is pressed against the skin when the plunger is depressed, but there is no skin penetration. Alternatively, toothpicks have been used to simulate the sensation of acupuncture without going through the skin. Again, when this variable is isolated, it turns out that simulated acupuncture works as well as verum acupuncture. This is true of the largest and best trials of acupuncture for the most common uses, such as reducing back pain (Haake et al. 2007) and treating nausea (Enblom et al. 2011).

Therefore, if we define acupuncture as using needle insertion to stimulate acupuncture points, and the best scientific evidence shows that acupuncture points do not exist (it doesn’t matter where you stick the needles) and needle insertion has no effect (it doesn’t matter whether or not you stick the needles), then does acupuncture work? I think the only reasonable answer is no; there is no reality to acupuncture or the concepts upon which it is based.

If anything can be said to have a measurable effect in acupuncture trials it is the therapeutic ritual that surrounds acupuncture (but not the acupuncture itself). Even these effects are modest and nonspecific—they result from a subjective sense of well-being gained from the kind attention and relaxation that attends the acupuncture ritual.

We have known for decades that a good bedside manner, with some relaxation and encouragement, makes people feel better. This may create the illusion that whatever specific intervention accompanies these nonspecific effects is itself having some effect. That is the very point of scientific experiments: to isolate these variables. And when that is properly done, it becomes increasingly clear that acupuncture (the sticking of needles into alleged acupuncture points) does not work.

References

Enblom A., M. Lekander, M. Hammar, et al. 2011. Getting the grip on nonspecific treatment effects: Emesis in patients randomized to acupuncture or sham compared to patients receiving standard care. PLoS ONE 6(3): e14766. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0014766.

Ernst, E. 2009. Acupuncture: What does the most reliable evidence tell us? Journal of Pain and Symptom Management. 37(4) (April): 709–14.

Haake, M., H.H. Müller, C. Schade-Brittinger, et al. 2007. German acupuncture trials (GERAC) for chronic low back pain: Randomized, multicenter, blinded, parallel-group trial with 3 groups. Archives of Internal Medicine. 167(17): 1892–98.

Moffet, H.H. 2009. Sham acupuncture may be as efficacious as true acupuncture: A systematic review of clinical trials. Journal of Alternative Complementary Medicine. 15(3) (March):213–16.

National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). 2011. Acupuncture: An Introduction. Available online at http://nccam.nih.gov/health/acupuncture/introduction.htm.

Novella, S. 2010. Modern bloodletting (blog post). Neurologica (July 6). Available online at http://theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=2099.

Ramey, D. 2010. Acupuncture and history: The “ancient” therapy that’s been around for several decades (blog post). Science-Based Medicine (October 18). Available online at www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=7660.