Now that we have an idea of just how weird and troublesome our own brains can be when it comes to sorting out truth from fiction, let’s consider some specific claims that are unproven and unlikely to be true even though millions of people confidently claim that they are. As we explore these claims and expose them to the light of skepticism, please keep in mind that in most cases a good skeptic does not claim to know that an unusual claim is not real or true. A very important part of being a good skeptic is maintaining an open mind.
It goes both ways—just as believers shouldn’t pretend to know things that they actually don’t, skeptics ought to avoid following this kind of thinking, too. For example, based on the absence of good evidence and the improbability of a large creature eluding scientific confirmation in a confined space for so many years, I’m very confident that the Loch Ness monster doesn’t exist. But I stop just short of declaring that it’s impossible. After all, stranger things than that have happened. Microscopic mites, germs, and walking on the Moon once seemed pretty crazy, too. The Loch Ness–monster claim doesn’t necessarily contradict the known laws of nature. And I’m not emotionally invested in a world with no Loch Ness monster. I wouldn’t shed one tear or feel awkward for one second if Nessie were netted tomorrow. In fact, I would be thrilled to hear the news. Sure, it would mean that I had been leaning the wrong way on this one, but so what? I don’t care if I was wrong yesterday; I want to be right today. The discovery of a modern-day plesiosaur would be wonderful, something to celebrate. In fact, I would probably be on my way to Scotland within hours of the announcement so that I could try to interview the discoverers. A good skeptic does not stubbornly defend a rigid position against a claim at all costs. A good skeptic only wants to base her or his conclusions on the best available evidence and arguments. If truth and reality were to translate to a world with ghosts, magic crystals, and vampires in it, then that is the world good skeptics want to know about. Skeptics are often accused of being “against everything” when in reality we are against nothing except mistakes, delusions, and lies. Why should anyone disagree with this position? Furthermore, shouldn’t we all be against mistakes, delusions, and lies?
Sources: Gallup, Public Policy Polling (2013), Baylor Religion Survey (2006), Harris Poll (2009). Illustration by Kevin Hand.
Too many good skeptics fall short when talking with believers about their beliefs. It is not enough to simply demand evidence and poke a few holes in a claim. Experience has taught me that a good skeptic who wants to be helpful and make a lasting impression on others needs to bring something more to the party. Relevant ideas, a bit of historical context, some science, some insight into how the brain works, and maybe a good alternate explanation can go much further than ranting about the absence of evidence and leaving it at that. If being constructive and getting people to think more seriously about their beliefs is the goal, then arm yourself with the following skeptical summaries of popular beliefs. If they make sense to you, please share them with anyone and everyone willing to listen. If you happen to believe in some or all of the following claims, I hope you will keep an open mind as you read and give my words fair consideration. No less important, I hope you receive them in the spirit they are offered. I’m not trying to convince you of the truth according to Guy. I’m attempting to help you think for yourself in more effective ways and then draw your own conclusions. So keep reading and keep thinking!
MAGICAL, SUPERNATURAL, PARANORMAL
One of the most consistent things about people everywhere is belief in unusual things that probably are not real or true. It may not be universal, but it’s close. It’s as if we just can’t help ourselves. One can claim just about anything, and somebody somewhere will be willing to believe it. Over the last several thousand years, no matter where we were or what we were up to, you can be sure there was some heavy-duty believing going on. If you were to board a time machine, spin the dial, and land in any random society of the past, you can be certain that you would find many people who believe in things beyond the normal and natural world that we all see before us. The objects of our belief may vary tremendously, but this common susceptibility, urge or need to believe raises fascinating and important questions: Do we really live in a universe that is overflowing with ghosts, gods, and magical phenomena, as billions of believers declare every day? Or could there be a simpler explanation for most or all of these confident claims that people keep making generation after generation? Are believers describing the real universe or misinterpreting it? One thing is certain, our condition as a believing species remains strong, even in the age of science. According to a Gallup poll, 75 percent of American adults say they believe in at least one of the common supernatural/paranormal beliefs such as ghosts, Atlantis, ESP, psychics, alien abductions, astrology, and so on.1 Are they reacting to reality or misreading it? Do we have a fundamental need to believe these extraordinary things, or is this just something we do out of tradition and habit? If for one hundred years no adults taught children (or influenced them by example) to believe in magic/paranormal/supernatural claims, would these things vanish? Or would they pop up independently, created anew over and over again? Finally, is it rude to ask these questions, to challenge unusual beliefs? I hope not, because I have been asking them all my life and the last thing I want to be is rude or mean to people. I am only curious, and I want to know as much as I can about my world and my universe. I don’t want to derail or distract from this by spending my time believing in and fashioning my life around things that aren’t real. What’s wrong with that? I would think that most people don’t want to believe in things that aren’t true. Most people who hold extraordinary beliefs think they are accurate and would want to know if they are not, right?
The intentions of skeptics are often misunderstood, so to be clear, I am not attacking or disparaging anyone when I promote science and encourage skepticism. I’m doing nothing more than suggesting to people that they think more critically for their own good. Nobody really wants to waste their time, their money, possibly their life on a bogus belief, right? If so, then I’m here to help. We’re all on the same side. It is also important for people to recognize that skepticism is not even necessarily antimagic, anti-UFO, anti-ESP, and so on. If unusual claims about magic, alien visits, or miracles are valid, then science and skepticism are not the enemy of those claims. In fact, they are just the opposite. They would be the ways through which to prove that extraordinary and unusual claims are valid.
If we want to know what is real and what is not, if we want to do our best to avoid squandering time and resources on things that are almost certainly not true, then we must make an effort to question everything and do our best to separate truth from fiction. We can’t just take someone’s word for it that a spaceship crashed at Roswell in 1947 or that the Bermuda Triangle is a paranormal zone of death that swallows up ships and planes because a bestselling book or television show says so. We need to test and verify. Fortunately, we have science, which does this very well. Don’t hesitate to utilize the scientific process when you bump up against weird things in everyday life. It includes the following steps:
Ask questions. This is critical. Don’t passively accept what you are told. It’s stunning how many people fail to simply ask questions when confronted by an unusual claim. Nothing more than a couple of key questions can derail most invalid claims.
Observe. Look and listen with deliberate effort. When someone says “prayer heals any and all illnesses,” for example, observe the world. If you see people get sick and die every day—even though they pray—then maybe there is a problem with this claim.
Research. If you look for it, it’s not difficult to find credible information about most claims. Do your own fact-checking. If someone tries to sell you magnetic underwear that cures constipation and adds that it’s been written up in scientific journals, check to see that it has.
Experiment. Can you think of an experiment to test a particular claim before accepting it? Has anyone else conducted an experiment to test it? If not, why not? If astrology is tempting you, for example, have a friend give you random horoscopes of various signs every day for a month. Log how accurate the horoscope is each day. At the end of the month, see if the horoscopes based on your “real sign” were accurate more often than the others.
Share ideas and conclusions with others. This is a great way to get feedback from people who may know more than you about a given claim. The more good information, the better. Remember the goal is not to debunk or discredit. The goal is to get to the truth, whatever it may be.
The scientific process is not perfect, but nothing else comes close. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you are, or where you are. Age, gender, income, educational achievements, nationality, hair color, and shoe size are all irrelevant. The scientific process just works. If you want to be better than most at spotting nonsense and dodging delusions, then step number one is to think! Think like a scientist and become a good skeptic. Go on the offensive when someone tries to sell you a bizarre belief. This does not mean that you must reflexively jump into angry opposition of any claim that hints of magical, supernatural, or paranormal belief. Being a skeptic is not like joining a club or political party and vowing to forever uphold a list of agreed-upon beliefs and nonbeliefs. Good skeptics change their minds, according to the best evidence available. There is just one thing to be loyal to here: reality.
Some people argue that there must be something going on because every known society, without exception, has had high levels of belief in various things that can be described as supernatural or paranormal. How could so many people, today and throughout history, be so wrong about so much? With all this smoke, there must be a few fires somewhere, right? Maybe. But a good skeptic needs to see some actual flames. The smoke of belief is not enough. Who cares if a lot of people believe? We need something more than a majority vote before accepting an extraordinary claim. Popularity has never been a reliable measure of truth and reality. Look back on our shared past. How many times have most of the people been dead wrong about something important in a given society? Consider religion. From at least the earliest beginnings of civilization to the present, millions of unique and contradictory gods have come and gone. Based on their biographies alone, they cannot possibly all exist. Logic and basic math make it clear that, at the minimum, most people have been wrong about their gods for most of history. This simple observation alone shows that we are prone to creating the magical and the supernatural out of thin air and then believing in it with total conviction. Believing or not believing in something doesn’t make it true. There were times in our past when probably 100 percent of the people on Earth would have dismissed the idea of continental drift if it had been presented to them. Entire continents float and move around the Earth on a sea of melted rock? You must be nuts! But our belief in immovable continents never stopped them from moving, not one inch and not for one second.
Reality, as we have seen over and over, operates independently of our beliefs. This alone should make everyone eager, if not desperate, to be a good skeptic. We know that good and smart people can be wrong no matter how confidently they believe in something, so shouldn’t it be common sense to constantly test and reconsider our beliefs? Try to remember always that merely being a human raised in a human society sets you up to believe many things that are probably not true. So always ask yourself the simple questions that matter: Is this real? Why should I believe it? Could all of these people be wrong? Anything worth holding onto won’t be threatened by such simple questions. Only hollow beliefs tremble when confronted by reason, and only false claims collapse when skeptical thinking is applied.
I travel to many countries and ask people about their various beliefs; in those conversations, I am constantly alerted to a severe misperception about what it means to be a good skeptic. Most people, it seems, think of skepticism as a dull, emotionless, and illogical position that requires one to believe in nothing and deny the presence of any mystery and all unanswered questions. They view it as tragic arrogance. This is all wrong. Any good skeptic who understands and appreciates science knows there is a vast universe around us that is bursting with mystery and endless questions. When a typical believer in supernatural/paranormal claims tells me that I don’t know everything so I can’t possibly know that something like ghosts or UFO visits won’t turn out to be true one day, I cringe and patiently explain that I would never claim such a thing in the first place. Of course weird things that seem unlikely or impossible today might become tomorrow’s well-established facts. This is one of the reasons I love science so much: It is the one thing that consistently leads us to stunning discoveries. But it makes sense to withhold belief until we get there.
What is this boundary between the natural/normal and the supernatural/paranormal anyway? Where is it and how can we even say there is such a border when we now have a very good understanding of just how weird and surprising nature can be? Who needs supernatural ghosts when we have the scientific possibility of parallel universes and extradimensional beings standing right beside us? Who needs the unfulfilled promise of magic for thrills when we have the astonishingly weird but very real physics of quantum entanglement to amaze and melt our brains? Why bother with ESP and psychics when applied brain science can actually read emotions, expose lies, and move matter with thoughts? All supernatural/paranormal beliefs are one of two things: They are either wrong or simply have not been discovered and confirmed yet. No good skeptic is opposed to everything that may be described as supernatural/paranormal in an automatic sense because we know that some of them may well turn out to be true one day. Most are doubtful, some are about as close to impossible as is possible. But which ones might be right? Can we decide such a thing? Which is more likely to be true: demons or ghosts? Alien abductions or Atlantis? Most alternative medicines or most miracles? How can I possibly choose to believe in any of these things until the scientific process confirms them? I can’t see the future. It’s best to stay humble, keep an open mind, and withhold belief in weird, unusual, important, and extraordinary things until somebody proves them to be true.
Oh, if only this one were true! If I were ever to let desire, bias, emotion, and fantasy bully my skepticism into submission, this would probably be the first unproven extraordinary claim I would surrender to. At some point during most of my lectures and interviews, I make the point that it’s okay to hope and dream. There is nothing contradictory or hypocritical about having a wild imagination and being a good skeptic. So long as one knows were knowledge ends and hope begins, there is no problem. I have no problem, for example, admitting that I have both the mind of a UFO skeptic and the heart of a UFO believer. For reasons I will share shortly, I don’t think aliens are routinely buzzing around our planet. However, I freely accept the possibility that they could be. It does not embarrass me to confess that I wish they were. The chance that there could be intelligent life somewhere else in the universe thrills me. Contact with intelligent extraterrestrial beings, or at least discovering that they really are there, would literally be a dream come true for me. But I do my best to think like a good scientist and process claims like a good skeptic should. So before I accept UFO belief—the claim that aliens are already here—it needs to survive a few simple questions. Unfortunately, it can’t. But my enthusiasm for the possibility remains.
Not everyone shares my perspective on this. According to a Gallup poll, nearly a quarter of American adults believe that “extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth at some time in the past.”2 A joint study by the National Council on Science and Technology and the National Institute of Statistics and Geography looked at this belief and concluded that as much as one-third of all American adults think aliens are here right now.3
Because I am interested in space, find science fascinating, and love to wonder about alien life, I follow NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) missions, the efforts of astrobiologists (scientists who work on questions about what extraterrestrials might be like and where they might be if they exist), and the work of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). In 2012, after recording a guest segment for SETI’s radio show about the intersection of fictional zombies and real science, I pleaded for a personal tour of the SETI Institute and got it. The Allen Telescope Array is not at the main building in Mountain View, California, of course, and it was a Saturday so the offices were mostly vacant, but for a fan like me that didn’t matter. I was thrilled simply to be around and peek inside the empty offices of Frank Drake (author of the famed Drake equation that calculates an estimate for the number of extraterrestrial civilizations) and Jill Tarter (longtime SETI scientist and inspiration for the character Ellie, played by Jodie Foster in the movie Contact). Wow, I thought to myself, this building is ground zero for the attempt to answer one of the most profound questions ever posed by our species: Are we alone? Let’s just say most six year olds at a Disney theme park show more restraint and dignity than I did that day. My hosts, Seth Shostak and Barbara Vance, were exceedingly gracious and both patiently answered every nerdy question I threw at them.
Near the end of my tour, I noticed an interesting item on a shelf in Shostak’s office. It was a fake alien in a specimen jar. I was happy to see that. It seems like maybe he too has the mind of skeptic but the heart of a believer. Shostak is the senior astronomer at SETI and author of the excellent book Confessions of an Alien Hunter. Over the years, I’ve attended his lectures, read his books, interviewed him, and been interviewed by him. I am certain he does not share the UFO belief that is so popular with millions of others. He may have dedicated his life to the search for aliens, but he remains a scientist and a skeptic. Shostak knows that since the hard evidence isn’t there, it makes no sense to pretend to know they exist. But he still enjoys the idea of aliens being real and even being here among us already. He’s a sci-fi film fan and not above keeping a rubber alien around for kicks. I have a few aliens in my life, too. One is perched on the dresser in my bedroom right now. The point is, UFO believers should understand that they don’t have to give up the attraction or excitement they may feel about the possibility of extraterrestrial life existing. Keep the enthusiasm, but consider trading in the hollow belief and unfounded certainty for solid science and sensible skepticism.
The key problems with UFO belief are easy to identify. First, of course, is the total absence of good evidence. After decades, some say centuries and even millennia, of claims about aliens flying around in our atmosphere, there is nothing substantial to show for it. No one has ever produced any evidence that has been scientifically confirmed to be extraterrestrial in origin. All we have are stories, photos, and videos that prove nothing. Eyewitness accounts are more plentiful than camera shots (Who hasn’t seen an unidentified flying object?) but are even less convincing. This is a very good place to again bring up that old axiom popularized by the late Carl Sagan: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Certainly the claim that alien spaceships are soaring close above our heads qualifies as extraordinary. So where’s the extraordinary evidence?
Another problem with UFO belief is that we can’t trust our eyes or our memory. As covered in chapter 2, there are standard challenges that come with being human. We don’t really see what we look at. Instead our brain tells us what we see, and it doesn’t give us the complete and accurate picture. And never forget that we don’t really remember things we saw or experienced in perfect replay fashion. Instead, our brain tells us a story about what we saw or what happened, based on incomplete images and bits of information. And, like all stories, memories change and memories aren’t necessarily faithful to the true past. All of this is not disputed or controversial in any way. These are basic things we have discovered about ourselves, and they carry huge implications for UFO claims.
How can we trust the eyewitness account of a spaceship sighting when we know eyewitness accounts can’t be trusted? How can we trust someone’s memory of seeing a spaceship when we know that memories can’t be trusted? Once we consider how unreliable our brains can be, it’s plain old common sense to conclude that hard evidence—something more than stories from people—is necessary to make the case for UFOs. We need something tangible, like a piece of an extraterrestrial spaceship that can be analyzed and passed around for our best scientists and engineers to study. Short of that—or an alien pilot, dead or alive—UFO claims are nothing more than high-altitude ghost stories. I certainly wouldn’t discourage anyone from investigating specific claims that seem enticing. But until someone produces evidence, I suggest that our time is better spent doing science or at least supporting the efforts of NASA, astrobiologists, professional and amateur astronomers, and SETI. They channel curiosity and hope into scientific activity. And that’s the way to do it.
Alternative medicine is one of those topics that can get skeptics into trouble. It’s extremely popular, and many of those who believe in it can be very loyal and protective of it. But fear of controversy is not a good enough reason to keep quiet, not when so many people are ripped off and harmed every day because they believed in unproven medicines and treatments. Anyone who understands the very serious problems with alternative medicine and also cares about their fellow humans has no choice but to speak out. Let’s take a quick glance at some of the ways in which this stuff can go terribly wrong and even result in death:
Helena Rose Kolitwenzew, an eight-year-old diabetic, died after her mother stopped giving her insulin on the advice of alternative-medicine salesman Laurence Perry. Before seeing Perry, the mother had tried many alternative-medicine treatments for the child, including acupuncture and shark-embryo injections. According to a court transcript, the mother said Perry presented himself like a real doctor. He wore a white lab coat, had “medical instruments” in his office, and told her that he consulted the government about viruses. After the child’s death, a North Carolina jury found Perry guilty of involuntary manslaughter and practicing medicine without a license.4
A disturbing Harvard study found that an estimated 365,000 people with HIV died prematurely between the years 2000 and 2005 in South Africa because of government decisions to promote alternative medicines over evidence-based medicine.5
A study of Africans who suffered rapid kidney failure found that a high percentage of them developed this serious health problem because they had used harmful alternative medicines.6
Researchers looked at Pakistani women who had been diagnosed with lumps in their breasts but delayed seeking recommended follow-up care. They found that 34 percent of these women failed to get proper help because they chose to rely on alternative treatments, primarily homeopathic medicine and “spiritual therapy.”7 Obviously delays like this can lead to complications and possible death.
Alternative medicine is far from safe, no matter what those who sell it or defend it say. To be fair, weak skepticism is not the only problem. In many cases, particularly in the developing world, folk remedies and traditional treatments may be all that is affordable or accessible. But the fact remains, alternative medicine does harm people.
It is important to keep in mind that this problem of misplaced trust has relatively little to do with intelligence or education. Just about anyone can fall for the unproven claims of complementary and alternative medicine. The best way to keep bogus beliefs at bay is to think like a scientist and be consistently vigilant with your skepticism. Being smart in a general sense is not enough. Nobody thought Apple owner and tech genius Steve Jobs was a dim guy, yet it seems he may have lost his life by relying on alternative medicine to treat his pancreatic cancer. Jobs shared his regret for wasting critical time on things like hydrotherapy, acupuncture, herbal remedies, and even a psychic.8 Close friend David Kelly said in a 2013 60 Minutes interview that Jobs told him a short time before dying that bad decisions about treatments had doomed him and that he should have trusted in medical science.9 Biographer Walter Issacson said Jobs had expressed regret in his final days to him as well.10 The lesson is clear: It doesn’t matter how smart, cool, popular, or rich you are. Alternative medicine can seduce anyone who isn’t a good skeptic.
One of the bestselling complementary and alternative medicines today is homeopathy. I researched this one for a previous book and was surprised to discover how many people say they believe in it and use it despite knowing little to nothing about what it is or how it is supposed to work. They seem to like the packaging or hear a story from a friend that it works, so they buy it. But slick marketing and word-of-mouth tales should never be the basis for one’s personal healthcare decisions.
Homeopathic medicine traces back to a late-eighteenth-century German doctor named Samuel Hahnemann. His “medicine” is very easy to explain because it’s water. And when I say water, I mean water. Really, there is nothing else in it. I have seen some homeopathic medicines in pill form, but there’s nothing significant in those, either. The basic claim of homeopathic medicine is that water can “remember” an active ingredient in the original brew and that—contrary to logic—the more you dilute the solution, the more potent it becomes for treating diseases. Most homeopathic remedies are diluted to such extremes that there is nothing left of the original active ingredient! Seriously, I’m not making this up. A typical dose is so diluted that a person would have to drink an estimated 25 metric tons of it in order to have even the slimmest chance of consuming just one molecule of the original ingredient.11
Even if such outrageous dilutions were not an issue, the logic behind the selection of the active ingredients in the first place is questionable enough. Hahnemann believed that a substance that caused symptoms similar to those caused by a particular disease would help the body cure that disease. So, if a patient suffers from nausea, you should give him a small dose of something else that causes nausea, just enough to trigger his body’s defense against nausea. (“Small dose” here means nothing, of course.) This is the “like cures like” claim of homeopathy. On the surface, it seems similar to the principle behind vaccines, which do work, but this is different. Vaccines are designed to aid the body in being able to target the disease agent and not just the symptoms of a disease. Vaccines also contain active ingredients, and they have been proven effective by saving hundreds of millions of lives. Finally, the claim that homeopathic water “remembers” the medicine that has been removed from it contradicts what is currently known about water. It’s an extraordinary claim, and the entire fields of chemistry and physics would love to see proof for it. So far, however, it’s nothing more than a belief.
My local pharmacy has a large display of these products. I’ve seen them featured prominently in drug stores in the Caribbean and Europe, too. Homeopathic water is touted to be useful in treating virtually anything. I’ve seen little bottles of it designated for postpartum depression, adrenal fatigue, influenza, anxiety, malaria, Attention Deficit Disorder, psoriasis, joint sprains, depression, migraines, cuts, insomnia, and many more ailments. For all its faults, homeopathy appears to be too scientific for some. I recently found a bizarre display of a similar magic-water product in a major brand-name grocery store in California. The claims for it were astonishing and went beyond even what most homeopathic medicine sellers promise. According to the signage, “doubtfulness,” “loneliness,” and “low confidence” could be cured by selecting the proper vial and consuming it as instructed. I mentioned this while speaking to a psychology class at Dartmouth University a few weeks later, and one student said he knew another medicine just like it: “It’s called beer,” he said. But beer is very different, of course, because it contains active ingredients and it works.
To be fair, I suppose I should mention that the widely touted claim that homeopathic medicine is safer than evidence-based medicine is absolutely true. Of course it is, because it’s water! When a “medicine” contains nothing but water, the risks of side effects or physical addiction are nonexistent. Unfortunately, of course, it doesn’t cure anything, either. Sadly, belief in homeopathy does hurt and kill people. In Australia, a homeopathic doctor and his wife allowed their infant daughter to die a slow and painful death because they trusted in alternative medicine over evidence-based medicine. Thomas Sam, a “practicing homeopath,” was advised to seek proper care for the baby’s severe skin infection but refused. The parents’ faith in this alternative medicine was so great that they refused to waver, even as they watched their child’s hair turn white, body shrink, skin bleed, and corneas melt. The baby was in constant agony and often screaming, according to testimony during the parents’ criminal trial. After suffering for months, she finally died. Both parents—college graduates, by the way—were found guilty for their negligence. The father was sentenced to at least six years in prison, with a maximum sentence of eight years. The wife, Manju Sam, was given a maximum of five years and four months.12
In a similar case, a baby died of a subdural hematoma in Japan in 2009 because, unknown to the parents, a midwife allegedly decided on her own to treat it with homeopathic water rather than give the doctor-advised vitamin K supplement, as she had been instructed to do by the parents.13 Like many complementary and alternative treatments, homeopathic water itself may be safe, but choosing it over real medicine can be costly.
I don’t want to go too far here and leave readers with an exaggerated sense of the dangers of alternative medicine. Yes, some of it does cause direct harm and some of it kills. But it’s not as if people are dropping like flies in the streets after drinking magic water or getting their backs cracked by quacks in strip malls. Much of it is harmless in a direct sense. There is, however, a serious problem with alternative medicine that goes beyond wasting money and threatening people’s health. Alternative medicine is one more thick layer of modern thinking gone bad in which science and skepticism are brushed aside and muted. Unwarranted confidence in alternative medicine is another contributor to the spell of nonsense and irrational fixations that plague our species. By pointing this out, I am not attacking people who believe in alternative medicine; I am attacking the targets of their belief. Consider this description of one alternative medicine:
Flower essence therapy is a form of vibrational healing, which treats with pure energy to generate changes in the energetic field of the client. Healing with flower essences is an extension of the time-honored tradition of herbal medicine and has been used for over 60 years, successfully returning people and animals to balance and health.14
I did not select a fringe treatment to highlight and pick on. I have seen flower-essence-therapy products for sale on the shelves of three large, well-known grocery stores that are less than a ten-minute drive from my house. Chain grocery stores don’t give away shelf space to just anyone, so apparently this stuff sells. One of the displays suggests/promises (can’t quite tell) that the treatments are appropriate for “fearfulness,” “mania,” “phobias,” and “impatience.” I doubt it, but what’s the harm other than wasting a few dollars? Sipping, absorbing, or smelling a bit of flower extract isn’t going to hurt anyone, right? Here’s the problem: Alternative medicine encourages people to trust without evidence and to accept ideas without thinking. It encourages and feeds a culture of gullibility. Show me a person who is capable of believing that flower-essence therapy works as advertised, and I’ll show you a person who is capable of believing virtually anything so long as it’s packaged and presented in a way that suits his tastes. Belief in alternative medicine is both a symptom and a cause of bad thinking.
But it’s natural. The “natural is safer” argument is popular, but that doesn’t mean it holds up to a bit of critical thinking. First of all, not every alternative medicine billed as “natural” is safe. Undoubtedly some can be harmful. “Natural” should be recognized as a silly selling point anyway because natural does not equate with “safe.” Cone-snail venom is natural, but you don’t want any of it in your bloodstream. Cobras are natural, but I wouldn’t advise grabbing one. What’s more natural than water? Drink too much, however, and even it might kill you.15
Real medicine isn’t perfect either. A common tactic used by proponents of complementary and alternative medicines is to make the charge that mainstream or evidence-based medicine has many problems, too. It also harms and even kills people. I agree! Many drugs have brutal side effects. Not all doctors are competent. Not every healthcare administrator is ethical. Many times medical science just has no answer for a disease and can’t help a patient. It is also true that for many sick people a visit to the doctor’s office can be dehumanizing because it feels like a trip to an automobile repair shop. Much of the criticism about mainstream healthcare that comes from fans of alternative medicine is correct. Perhaps because it has devoted so much of its focus on coming up with the things that actually work against injury and disease, medical science has failed in many respects to keep the patient in mind. Somewhere along the way, it seems too many doctors forgot that we are human beings, something more than a collection of organs with glitches in need of repair. We have feelings and fears that doctors don’t always consider. There also seems to be too much emphasis on disease treatment or management as opposed to disease prevention. My response to alternative-medicine fans is to agree with them that there are significant problems with mainstream, evidence-based healthcare. But this does not make their case or support their claims. The failures of medical science do not prove that things like homeopathy, reflexology, and ear candling actually work.
Another key problem with alternative medicine stems from problems of interpretation. We can be very bad at identifying causes. For example, many people get sick, go to a doctor for treatment, but also take an alternative medicine at the same time. When they recover, however, they may give no credit to the doctor or prescribed medicine. Nor do they give any consideration to the possibility that it might have been nothing more than time and their own body’s recuperative powers that did it. They believe and declare to anyone who will listen that an alternative medicine cured them, despite the fact that they cannot know this to be true.
I have never taken alternative medicines in my life, yet I have recovered from every illness I have ever had so far. Had I taken an alternative medicine during one or more of my illnesses, however, I might have been led to believe that it helped me, even though I couldn’t know that for sure. Unfortunately, problems with attributing credit where it is undeserved doesn’t stop people from spreading stories about the herbal potion that cured some guy down the street or the touch-therapy session that fixed Uncle Joe’s bum knee. This raises another problem: Stories are easy to tell and easy to believe. Please understand and remember that mere stories should never be the basis for deciding on the best medical treatment of injuries or disease. Always think about sample size. Has it been scientifically tested on enough people to draw a reasonable conclusion about it? Hearing from a few people here and there who rave about an alternative medicine is just not good enough. Random testimonies won’t do, not if you want to be sensible about truth, reality, and your health. There is a very good reason why medical researchers don’t find just one or two people who had a positive outcome with a drug and then promptly declare it to be effective and send it out to the marketplace. Testing methods and sample size matter. The only way to be sure about a drug is to submit it to the scientific process. It’s not foolproof, but it works better than anything else. What is required in most cases is a study with multiple people receiving either the medicine in question or placebos (inert sugar pills, for example), all distributed randomly, without the researchers or patients knowing who got what until it’s over. This way, bias can be removed (hopefully) and it can be determined if the medicine works.
It’s always a good idea to consider the placebo effect when hearing about some alternative medicine that a salesperson, friend, or family member is raving about. This strange phenomenon is very real and undoubtedly is responsible for much of medical quackery’s success. Some people some of the time can get a positive health benefit from taking a fake medicine (a pill, shot, or treatment that has no medicinal value) instead of real medicine. This is well documented but still is not fully understood. The problem you need to keep in mind, however, is that it’s not consistent, and even if there is some positive gain, it might not be enough to get one through an illness safely. So the placebo effect is not something anyone should rely on.
Ultimately, I think the best way to show people what is wrong with alternative medicine is simply to define it. I’m convinced that if more people understood why it is categorized as it is in the first place, then it would not be nearly as popular. Complementary or alternative medicine is really just unproven medicine. That’s not an unfair criticism; that’s just what it is. When an alternative medicine is openly put to the test and confirmed as useful by the scientific process, then it becomes just plain medicine. So we really should call complementary or alternative medicine unproven medicine and nothing more. By calling it something else, many people are fooled into thinking that it is more credible than it really is. To be clear, “unproven” does not necessarily mean that it doesn’t work. I am sure there are some alternative medicines and treatments out there that do work to some significant degree beyond the placebo effect. But the problem is that we can’t be sure which ones work and which ones do not until someone uses the scientific method to find out.
Standing alone in the hallway of the “most haunted house in America,” I’m about five minutes away from a freaky experience. The Whaley House is a nineteenth-century Greek-revival mansion that once served as a family home and the court house for Old Town, San Diego. It’s been well preserved as a historical site and is a popular point of interest for tourists. Before I began exploring the house, I spoke with a ghost believer outside who said she had a terrifying encounter with former owner Thomas Whaley inside. Dead since 1890, Whaley still roams the property, according to local lore. “There is definitely a presence in that house,” she said. “All the sudden, I was freezing cold. I was so scared; I remember closing my eyes and then I knew he was there. I just knew he was going to pass right through me. I was so scared that I couldn’t move, even though I knew something was about to happen. And then something went through my hair. I felt it touch my hair. You would never believe how it felt. It was pure death.”
“There is definitely a presence in that house,” she said again. “The family is there. I think they are attached to the house. You feel a presence. They don’t seem to ever leave.”
Great story. Extra credit for the dramatic delivery. Good thing I don’t believe in ghosts, or I wouldn’t go near this house.
The Whaley home is clean and in excellent condition for its age. It’s far from the old, dusty, cobweb-draped haunted-house cliché. The ambiance is more Monticello than Amityville, more Brady Bunch than Adams Family. But I’m about to get a lesson in human vulnerability to context and suggestion. I may be a hardcore skeptic, but I’m still human, and the last thing I should have done is listen to a creepy ghost story from some jittery paranormal fan just before entering the “most haunted house in America” all by myself. Something happened to me that day, and I’m sure it had a lot to do with that lady tickling my amygdala (brain’s fear center) beforehand. I’ll spare you the suspense; I didn’t see any ghosts. Mr. Whaley didn’t make me cold, touch my hair, or pass through me. And, no, I didn’t find any reasons to reconsider my position on the existence of ghosts. But I did feel a presence.
The haunted brain. It is a slow day at the Whaley House. Only a few other visitors are downstairs, and upstairs I’m all alone. Or am I? In one of the well-preserved bedrooms, I can see old clothes, books, a quill pen, a hairbrush on the dresser, and so on. The presentation is excellent. It looks as if the Whaley couple might round the corner at any moment and tuck themselves into bed. But it was at the children’s room where things got weird.
A small doll sits in an old rocking chair. The soulless little demon stares through me with her little, dead, black doll eyes. Forget the house, this damn doll alone could inspire a dozen Stephen King novels. Then, as if on cue, a brief flash of bright light startles me. I spin around immediately, but nothing is there. I’m stumped at first, but then I realize it was probably the Sun’s reflection off the window of a passing car outside. Good thing I came up with that possible explanation, or it would have bugged me for the rest of the day. Yes, I admit it; my heart rate is up a bit and I’m extra perky now, thanks to a tiny dose of adrenaline. Continuing on, my mind remains slightly haunted. Staring down a long hallway, I imagine the Whaley family that lived here in the 1800s. I “see” children playing and parents talking, arguing, just living. Then I think about the fact that they are all dead. Okay, I’m really getting my money’s worth now. I see dead people—but only in my head. Are they really here? Could there be a family of ghosts drifting around me? Maybe, but I doubt it, because here at the Whaley House, it’s just like every other “haunted” place: no good evidence for the claims.
Every sincere story of a ghost encounter likely can be explained as misinterpreted sights and sounds or the weird feelings people have when standard human imagination and irrational fear give them a poke. Billions of my fellow humans may say they know ghosts are real, but not one of them can prove it. Most ghost believers probably don’t realize that they are not so different from skeptics when they feel a creepy vibe, sense a presence, or are startled by an unexpected sight or sound. I experienced all of those things within the space of fifteen minutes—despite the fact that I never thought for a second that ghosts are real.
You may be wondering how many people believe in ghosts. The answer? A lot. A Harris Poll study found that 42 percent of American adults think ghosts are real.16 The percentage of children who believe is probably much higher. According to a Gallup poll, 37 percent of American adults believe that houses can be haunted by ghosts17 and twenty percent of US adults say they have visited or lived in a haunted house.18
I think the most important thing for ghost believers to keep in mind is that the best “evidence” we have for ghosts comes in the form of eyewitness accounts. I won’t list the reasons for not trusting eyewitness accounts here. Instead, just consider that many of these reports are about things people heard or saw that they interpreted to be a ghost. Remember the woman I spoke with before entering the Whaley House? She never told me that she saw Thomas Whaley or heard his voice. She said she “felt his presence” and “knew it was him.” Doesn’t that sound like nothing more than imagination run amok? I’m not judging her harshly for having experienced it. This sort of thing is so common that it seems to be a normal human reaction in certain circumstances. After all, nothing more than a flash of reflected light and a creepy doll briefly spooked me once.
In order to be good skeptics who are not easily fooled into believing in things that don’t exist, we have to resist applying answers when we don’t really have answers. For example, a classic haunted-house experience might involve someone lying in bed and hearing creepy sounds coming from down the hall or from another room. Maybe it’s a creak in the wooden floor or the rattle of something that sounds like chains. No doubt, millions of ghost stories have come from such sounds. Never mind that houses, especially old ones, can generate many sounds for many reasons. One mouse scurrying around inside a wall or one drafty room can do it. But guess what? An unidentified sound is an unidentified sound. A good skeptic does not pretend to know something she or he does not. The same rule applies with visual experiences. If someone sees a mysterious shadow, a moving wisp of fog, or an unexpected flash of light as I did, “ghost” is not a justified answer to explain it without a lot more evidence to back it up. Many friends and strangers have shared their ghost stories with me, and I would estimate that at least 90 percent of them involve unknown sights or sounds that they interpreted to be a ghost. They readily admitted to me that they did not see a distinct humanoid with clearly visible facial features standing or hovering before them and speaking about the hardships of being a ghosts, haunting homes, or whatever. Most reported ghost encounters in real life are nothing like A Christmas Carol, in which one clearly sees and carries on conversations with spirits. They are almost always nothing more than unknown phenomenon unjustly defined as ghosts.
I probably should add that I am not antighost. I’m just proreality. As a source of fictional fun and cheap thrills, I have no problem with ghost stories. Within reason, I think it’s great to exploit our insecurities and fears about death for a good emotional jolt now and then. Scary stories are near and dear to my heart. I love taking my son to Monsterpalooza, for example. This annual horror-movie and monster-makeup festival in Burbank, California, is a blast. Ghosts are fun. Monsters are cool. I just think we all ought to know the differences between fantasy, reality, and the unknown. One can be a skeptic and a ghost fan, too. Nothing wrong with that. Fear is a terrible, unwanted thing that we avoid at all costs—except when we seek it out. Roller coasters, horror movies, and scary novels frighten us in ways we love. It’s even okay to be afraid of the occasional shadow or mysterious bump in the night. That stuff can keep us on our toes and remind us that we are alive and want to stay that way. Just make sure to always do your best to distinguish between truth and fiction, between the known and the unknown.
Have you ever found a bruise on your body and been unable figure out how it happened? If so, how do you know it wasn’t from an injury sustained when aliens took you from your bedroom at night to study and experiment on you aboard their spaceship? It’s possible. Maybe they wiped the event from your memory. Have you been feeling a little off lately? Does something seem wrong but you can’t quite put your finger on it? Perhaps it will help if you visit a hypnotherapist, maybe one who specializes in recovering lost memories of traumatic events such as alien encounters.
After a few sessions of hypnotherapy, you can clearly recall many things about the night aliens took you away to do unspeakable horrors to your body. You feel a bit better now that you know what happened, but you are still haunted by the memories of your abduction.
This may seem like a weird and unlikely process to most people, but it’s no joke. Some people seem to believe sincerely that something similar to this happened to them, and they carry around a lot of pain and anxiety because of it. Some of their stories include horrifying experiments that sound a lot like torture and even rape. Others involve the harvesting of eggs or sperm and maybe the implantation of fetuses or alien technological devices. The skeptical view of all this, of course, is that no actual aliens were likely involved and it’s more reasonable to think this is probably a collision of imagination, highly questionable mental-health treatment, cultural influence, and the vulnerability of human memory to contamination by suggestion. According to one poll, nearly four million American adults believe they have “encountered bright lights and incurred strange bodily marks indicative of a possible encounter with aliens”.19 If that is anywhere near accurate, it means a lot of people think they have been close to or were actually snatched by aliens. On top of that, we have to add all those who believe it has happened to other people.
In fairness to people who claim to have been abducted, I think it is important to point out that mental health, intelligence, and education do not seem to have much, if anything, to do with this belief. It’s important to mention this because alien abductees are often the butt of jokes in everything from casual conversations to Hollywood films these days. But be careful. Before you laugh at them, consider the fact that something similar might happen to you. Ever heard of sleep paralysis with hallucinations? This surprisingly common phenomenon may occur in as much as 20 percent of the adult population.20 Think about this statistic: two out of every ten people. That represents a lot of people. And who knows? You might be next. When we fall asleep, our brains normally will restrict our physical movements so we don’t spend the entire night punching ourselves in the head while dreaming. As we wake up, our brains release our bodies from this state of partial paralysis. But sometimes, for some people, the brain “wakes up” before it frees the body. These people find themselves partially awake but unable to move. Add to that an ongoing dream/nightmare or hallucination, and you have the makings of a confusing and potentially disturbing event.
I have a close friend who has had several of these episodes but without the dramatic backdrop of a nightmare or a hallucination. She says she understands very well how one could easily confuse a dream for reality in that state. She also said she has been able to hear sounds and even smell things while unable to move. Fortunately for her, she has had enough of them to know not to panic and just go back to sleep or ride it out until she fully awakes. Clearly, sleep paralysis is a real phenomenon that would seem to set the stage perfectly for an imagined alien-abduction experience in some minority of people. But where do the specific and often-detailed memories of aliens, spaceships, and rude experiments come from? That is easily explained by clarifying how human memory works.
As we saw in chapter 2, memory can fool the best of us. It’s just not anything close to a DVR playback system like most people imagine. We remember things by a weird process of constructing stories about things that may or may not have happened in the past. Without conscious consent, our brains serve up memories to us that can feel 100 percent accurate and reliable. But, in fact, they have been edited, trimmed down to reflect what is probably important and useful to us in a given moment. Elements may also be added whether or not they happened at another time in our lives, happened to someone else, or never happened to anyone anywhere. Our memories can also be heavily influenced by input from the stories we hear, the books we read, the movies we watch, and so on. Obviously, a therapist who believes in alien abductions and assumes it happened to a client could probably coax and encourage him or her into conjuring up such a memory.
Does any of this prove that no one has ever been abducted by aliens? Of course not. As strange and unlikely as it may be, it’s still possible. After all, it’s a very big universe. So far as we know, there is nothing impossible about intelligent beings visiting us. And if they did, it’s not unreasonable to think they might grab a few of us to study, much like an entomologist might snatch a few ants in the Amazon for close inspection. However, the absence of strong evidence, coupled with what we know about the ways in which people can come up with false memories, makes it clear that this is a conclusion that can’t be rationally defended.
Finally, stories of creepy home invasions in the middle of the night by weird nonhuman beings are nothing new. The only thing different today is that they park a spaceship on the lawn. The ghosts and goblins of our past seem to have been updated to reflect our high-tech, space-age times. Abduction skeptic Carl Sagan recognized this: “We had demons from ancient Greece, gods who came down and mated with humans, incubi, succubi in the Middle Ages who sexually abused people while they were sleeping. We had fairies. And now we have aliens. To me, it all seems very familiar.”21
Cryptozoology is the “science” of mythical or undiscovered animals such as dragons, the Loch Ness monster, Yeti (the abominable snowman), and Bigfoot. But cryptozoology is better thought of as pseudoscience rather than science because it operates in reverse of the scientific process. Its fans seem to start with a firm conclusion (these animals definitely do exist) and then go about trying to come up with evidence and arguments to back it up. Science doesn’t work that way. It requires the proof to come before the conclusion. Scientists may have wild hunches or flimsy leads that direct them to search for strange, undiscovered animals somewhere—there’s nothing wrong with that—but they don’t declare to know that an unknown animal exists before they can prove that it does.
Despite the failure of Bigfoot enthusiasts to prove their claim after all these years, 16 percent of American adults say that the creature is “absolutely” or “probably” real.22 Before we analyze Bigfoot belief, however, I want to point out that this is yet another extraordinary belief that is very, very unlikely to be true—but I wish it were. It would make my day to hear news of one captured alive or a recovered body. It may not win me over, but it does bring a smile to my face when I watch “real footage” of Bigfoot or see the plaster cast of a giant footprint. I love apes and I love the idea of an unknown ape species living right under our noses all this time. You have to understand, I’m a guy who obsessed over the original Planet of the Apes films in childhood. When I conducted long interviews with Donald Johansen, discoverer of the famous “Lucy” fossils, and Jane Goodall, the great primatologist, for feature stories, it took a Herculean effort on my part to be professional and stop asking them questions after an hour or so. I even managed to talk my wife into letting me display my museum-quality replica Australopithecus afarensis and Homo erectus skulls in our living room. I feel closer to a couple of the bonobos at the San Diego Zoo than I do to half the humans I know. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure that I would be happier and more excited than most cryptozoologists if Bigfoot were found. I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to good evidence, attempt to suppress or deny it, or feel awkward about it, anyway. Remember, good skeptics don’t declare absolute knowledge about the nonexistence of flying saucers, ghosts, and so on. We simply point out problems with the claims and ask for good evidence. When it doesn’t come, we do the sensible thing and conclude that these things are unlikely to be true so they aren’t worth believing in. But we stop short of claiming to know what the world and the universe do not contain, because it’s a big world and a big universe, so we can’t be sure. Finding Bigfoot would be great for science because it would require an update to our current knowledge of primate evolution. We would have a new species to welcome into the family. Believers in these kinds of things often think that skeptics are against them and their claims. But this is not true. We simply know better than to pretend to know things we don’t know—even when we might love for them to be true.
So what are some of the problems with the claim that there is a giant primate running around in the Pacific Northwest and/or southern swamps of America? The biggest challenge for Bigfoot believers is simple: no body. Skeptics say “show me the body,” just one. But it hasn’t happened yet, and that’s a significant reason for doubt because it is extremely unlikely that after all this time not one camper, forest ranger, hiker, runner, logger, mountain biker, fisherman, or hunter would have stumbled upon a Bigfoot body that had died of old age or injury. All it would take is one body. Just one ten-foot tall bipedal ape in North America and Bigfoot is confirmed. Actually, it wouldn’t even take that much. Biological anthropologists are so good that they could prove it with only a few key bones. After all, they were able to figure out that Gigantopithecus, a 1,200-pound and nine-foot-tall ape, roamed the forests of Asia hundreds of thousands of years ago. And they didn’t even need a complete body to do it. Fossilized teeth and jawbones were enough. So all we likely would need to confirm Bigfoot would be part of a specimen. But we have nothing. All these years, and not even one jawbone turns up? No teeth? Not one unusually long primate femur bone? What are we supposed to believe, that the Bigfoot clans bury their dead in secret, unmarked graves out of sight of outdoor enthusiasts and forever beyond the reach of expanding suburbs?
Another critical problem for the Bigfoot claim is that there can’t just be one out there. Very few people think about this, but for Bigfoot creatures to endure all these years, there would have to be many of them out in the woods eluding people year after year. I raised this point with an anthropologist friend of mine who lives in Oregon (Bigfoot country). He guesses there would have to be at least five hundred Bigfoot individuals in a given area to maintain a genetically viable population capable of surviving long term. Of course, hundreds of creatures would make it even more likely that remains would be found. But they haven’t been. Disappointing, yes, but reality does not always cater to our desires. It just is what it is.
I know what you are thinking. What about that famous Bigfoot film? And what about all those plaster casts of giant footprints? Isn’t that stuff proof? No, it’s not because we have very good explanations for those things that don’t require a population of gigantic apes. First, let’s take care of the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film. Shot by Robert Patterson and Bob Gimlin in Northern California in 1967, this brief bit of footage has impressed millions of people around the world, undoubtedly converting many into believers. I have no idea why, because it’s terrible. (If you are not familiar with it or haven’t seen it recently, search for “Patterson Bigfoot film” online and judge for yourself). I’m no primatologist, but the “creature” seems all wrong to me. It does not look and move like a wild animal. But it does look and move like a human in an ape suit. Furthermore, the way in which it parades by Patterson and Gimlin and then gives the men a dramatic money shot by glancing back at the camera before vanishing back into the woods seems too convenient. Even more difficult to believe is this little detail: Patterson told people in advance that he was going out that day to find and film Bigfoot. Ask yourself, what are the odds that he would have been that lucky? Maybe a pudgy, flat-footed, pear-shaped Bigfoot really did accommodate the two men that day, but I doubt it. It has all the look and feel of a staged hoax, and that ought to be everyone’s first guess because we know hoaxes happen. But let’s not rely on my opinion here. The man who seems to have worn the suit, Bob Heironimos, came forward and confessed!23 Greg Long’s book, The Making of Bigfoot, includes that and more. It lays out the whole story in detail and includes information about Patterson buying a gorilla suit from Morris Costumes in 1967. The owner of that business, former magician Phillip Morris, said Patterson told him he planned to “have some fun with the suit.”24 Seems he did, indeed.
Evidence in the form of plaster casts of Bigfoot prints is even less impressive than the film. Faking giant footprints was something of a cottage industry in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s. For a while, it seemed like everyone was doing it. But the first print-maker may have been Ray L. Wallace, a road-construction worker. When he died in 2002, his son, Michael Wallace, told the New York Times that his father was an enthusiastic prankster who made giant wooden feet and began stomping around in the forest, making prints, from as early as 1958. He said his father never intended it to be a complex plot, nor did he imagine that it would grow into the widespread phenomenon that it did. He only meant to play a trick on a few local people for a laugh.25
Science finds the real monsters. The good news for veteran or aspiring cryptozoologists is that they can do what they love—think about, research, and search for exotic new life-forms—within science instead of outside of it. If the chance to find new creatures sounds exciting to you, then science is the ticket. Take your pick: biology, zoology, microbiology, entomology, astrobiology, and more. These scientific disciplines are not only open to new discoveries, they, unlike cryptozoology, actually make them on a regular basis!
Many people are not aware of it, but science has a long, long way to go when it comes to finding and cataloging the life-forms we share this planet with. There is no doubt that the Amazon rainforest, the hills and mountains of Asia, the African bush, and other more-remote locations are still hiding many surprises from us. Even more promising is the ocean. Scientists can hardly pull up a water sample without finding something new in it. Maverick scientist and visionary Craig Venter of San Diego has had teams trolling the ocean for nine years in search of new life. So far, he and his team have discovered hundreds of thousands of new species and sixty million previously unknown genes.26
Forget life on the planet for the moment, we haven’t even identified the life on us! There is still a tremendous amount of work to be done to discover and understand the microbes that share our bodies with us. Never make the mistake of thinking that the only interesting, important, or scary creatures are big. Sure, a ten-foot ape would be impressive, but have you ever seen images of the little beasts crawling around on your skin and inside your home right now? They look like monsters to me. Have you learned about some of the amazing and bizarre things that microbes can do and the surprising places they can live? No doubt, there are many millions of real monsters awaiting discovery right now, and science is the route to finding them. Popular Harvard scientist Edward O. Wilson is in awe of the still-mysterious microbial frontier:
Bacteria, protistans, nematodes, mites and other minute creatures swarm around us, an animate matrix that binds Earth’s surface. They are objects of endless study and admiration, if we are willing to sweep our vision down from the world lined by the horizon to include the world an arm’s length away. A lifetime can be spent in a Megellanic voyage around the trunk of a single tree.27
One does not even have to limit the search for new life to this planet. Astrobiology is a respectable and growing branch of science that treats the entire universe as a target of opportunity. Astrobiologists do not claim to know that extraterrestrial life exists, of course, only that it’s certainly possible and well worth thinking about and looking for. Much of their work involves the search for and study of weird creatures here on Earth that live in extremely hot, extremely cold, or extremely acidic environments, the kinds of places once thought to be impossibly hostile to life. That line of work has to be more exciting and rewarding than looking for the Loch Ness monster, Bigfoot, or other mythical monsters that are very, very unlikely ever to be found.
Tens of millions of Americans and billions worldwide believe in strange mental powers that the scientific process has been unable to confirm. According to a Gallup poll, 41 percent of American adults believe in ESP, 31 percent believe in telepathy, and 21 percent believe that some people can communicate with the dead.28 They embrace these claims despite the failure of everyone who has ever tried to prove any of it. Apparently, people are sufficiently impressed by the work of professional psychics (mind readers with knowledge of the future) and mediums (live people who talk with dead people). But there are very simple explanations for how psychics and mediums are able to impress so many people. For example, a cold reading can exploit natural human biases and lead some people to believe that there is something supernatural going on when there is not. I was so intrigued by this that I decided to give it a try.
Although I had read enough about cold readings to know how they work, I was still hesitant. The method requires you to use educated guesses about a person for you to convince her that you are peering into her mind. At the very least, it takes a lot of nerve to sit face-to-face with someone and pretend to read his or her mind. It’s useful to know many trends and traits that are common to various people, genders, religions, nationalities, ages, and so on. It also helps to be able to think fast and make immediate adjustments based on real-time reactions and feedback from the subject. Researching cold readings is one thing. Actually doing one, however, is something entirely different. But I wanted to at least try, so I plunged in.
My first “client” is a woman in her midthirties. She’s bright, attractive, and, most importantly, tells me she thinks there is something to psychic powers. She is predisposed to believe me. That’s about 80 percent of the battle won right there because prior beliefs and expectations are known to be powerful influences on how we interpret our experiences. My confidence soars.
She stares, waiting for me to start. I speak slowly and pause a lot, hoping this makes me seem sure of myself. I spend a few moments blabbing about nothing, mostly empty words about me “feeling” her thoughts and how I need her to relax and open up to me. I begin the actual cold reading by peppering her with several rapid-fire statements and questions. While doing this, I pay close attention to her eyes, facial expressions, and body language. I look for any reaction to each thing I say. I notice she is not wearing a wedding ring. Sure enough, she lights up with heightened interest when I blurt out something about frustration with her love life. She’s in her thirties, and I guessed that marriage might be on her mind. Her reaction indicates to me that I should zero in on this subject, so I pretend to know all about boyfriends who have disappointed her in the past, as if that makes her unique. Once I feel I’ve gone as far as I can with made-up predictions and crude generalizations that would fit many women, I move on to money. I tell her she’s not greedy but could use a little more. Then I add in something about just wanting to be a good person and lead a happy life. Overall, I’m feeling pretty good about my performance. But is she buying it? Does she think I’m reading her mind and can see the future? Maybe. I’m not sure. I keep going. I try to ask questions and make statements that have a good chance of feeling personal and relevant to her based on her gender, age, nationality, religion, and so on. I mix in a few flattering comments. It’s surprising how many clues one can pick up when “reading the mind” of a person sitting two feet in front of you. She smiles when I say something that hits and she appears neutral or uncomfortable when I clearly miss the mark. It’s as easy as that. I end by giving her a cliché-filled pep talk: Your future is bright; try your best; never give up.
When I finish, she thanks me but leaves abruptly. That’s it; show’s over. I’m left deflated and disappointed. I conclude that I somehow blew it. Maybe cold readings are a lot more difficult than I thought. Somewhere Sylvia Browne and a million spirits are laughing at me.
But I see the woman a couple of days later and she approaches me.
“How did you do that the other day?” she asks. “It was amazing. How long have you been a psychic? You knew so much about me.”
Wow. Clearly I did better than I thought. She was completely convinced. Of course, I quickly explained to her that I did not have any special mind-reading powers and that I was attempting a cold reading just to see if I could do it. I apologized and said I would have explained it that day but didn’t think she believed me so it wasn’t necessary. The woman was a bit unsettled at first, but as I told her more about how it works and explained confirmation bias, she seemed grateful for the knowledge. The lesson I took away from that experience is that it doesn’t take much to convince someone. If I could do this well on my first try, it’s no wonder that some people who spend years perfecting this routine are able to convince many people and get rich.
This was a stunning realization for me. I had stumbled through a performance that was mediocre at best, but it turned out to be more than good enough. How did I do so well? She believed in psychics to some degree beforehand so was predisposed to accept my act. She also was a human with a human brain. This means, of course, as we saw in chapter 2, that she was vulnerable to confirmation bias. Like all victims of cold readings, she probably clung to and remembered everything I said about her that was correct or close enough because it reinforced her belief in psychics. But she probably missed or soon forgot everything I said that was clearly wrong because my errors did not confirm her bias. Then her memory probably helped me out by exaggerating how good I was every time she recalled our session.
It’s important to understand confirmation bias and be alert to it all the time because it can trip up people not only during a psychic reading but in the context of many other extraordinary claims as well. When we selectively embrace input that matches a conclusion we have already made, virtually anything can seem real and reasonable, regardless of how fake and unreasonable it is. It’s like throwing a thousand darts in the dark and then turning on the lights to find that you hit the bull’s-eye ten times. Hitting a target ten times in the dark might seem very impressive, but only if you ignore, forget, or never see those 990 darts that missed. When a psychic says a hundred things, we can’t allow ourselves to take note only of the correct things and forget all about the incorrect things he says. And we can’t give credit for vague statements and questions. We need to keep score in order to determine if there is anything to this or if it’s just a bunch of semieducated guesses designed to fool people. And don’t forget sample size. We can’t restrict ourselves to considering only one or two individual readings when assessing a psychic. If a psychic does hundreds of readings, for example, it is to be expected that at least a few might go exceptionally well and appear to be eerily accurate. However, placed in proper context with all the readings that go poorly, it’s not impressive.
I have a friend who was good enough at psychic readings to make money at it. He wasn’t a cold-hearted con artist, nor was he doing it as a noble experiment toward a better understanding of the human mind. He was self-deluded, fully convinced that he possessed special powers. But even as the cash rolled in and clients raved about his abilities, he began to have doubts. He noticed that he got credit for making guesses about people, things anyone could come up with. Eventually, he stopped believing not only in his own psychic powers but in all supernatural and paranormal claims. Today he is a good skeptic and big fan of the scientific process. He stressed to me how easy it was to fool people, including himself.
Operating much like psychics, mediums claim to carry on two-way conversations with dead people. Many psychics are mediums as well, which makes sense because it’s the same game. They blast out a bunch of guesses, questions, and platitudes about a dead person and then watch to see what gets a reaction from the surviving spouse, family member, or friend. He’s here with us now and he tells me to tell you that he loves you and is proud of you for doing your best in life. He also said he likes that you keep a photo of him. He says keep working hard and believe in yourself. A good skeptic sees right through this. For some grieving people, however, it can be irresistible. It’s understandable to want to communicate or connect with someone who is gone, but that desire should not override the ability we all possess to think our way through things like this. No one should allow himself or herself to be emotionally exploited and toyed with, even if it does feel good for a fleeting moment.
The bottom line with psychics and mediums is that their claims can be tested. There is a way to confirm once and for all if people can peer into the mind of a stranger, living or dead, and know intimate details about his past, present, and future. If psychics are interested, science can confirm their abilities to the world. All they have to do is submit to the process. It is telling that very few do. If psychics and mediums are not sufficiently motivated by the prospect of scientific confirmation for the sake of truth, one might think that money would do the trick. The James Randi Educational Foundation has a standing one-million-dollar prize available to anyone who can demonstrate a paranormal/supernatural ability under the conditions of a credible scientific test that she or he can design. But for reasons one can easily imagine, today’s best-known psychics and mediums don’t even try. They declare that they can read minds and glean knowledge from dead people but then leave a million dollars on the table.
Hopefully you will be too good a skeptic to fall for the games psychics and mediums play. But you are bound to know someone who believes. Tell that person about me. Tell her the story about the guy who, on his first try, was able to fumble and stumble his way through a short cold reading and convince a smart adult that he was a mind reader. If that guy can do it, anyone can, so keep your guard up.
Without a doubt, the best UFO story of all time is the one about an extraterrestrial spaceship crashing in the desert near the tiny town of Roswell, New Mexico, in the summer of 1947. This was no mere sighting of a strange light in the sky. No, this time we had confirmation from the US military, recovered wreckage, and maybe even the dead bodies of aliens to prove it. Roswell is the Holy Grail of UFO belief. But there’s one catch: it’s almost certainly not true.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the “Roswell Incident.” But I know better than to accept it because I have studied the claims and the facts, spoken with a test pilot who may have inadvertently contributed to the myth, and considered how the tale works so well with the human propensity to believe without evidence. That is not to say, however, that there isn’t a true story to be told here. Roswell believers are right about a few key elements. Something unusual did crash in the desert. Strange wreckage was recovered. And there really was a government cover-up about it.
It all started when local rancher Mack Brazel found debris in the desert outside of Roswell in June 1947. He assumed it was just trash and moved on. (Not the reaction one would expect if it was a crashed flying vehicle of any kind.) Several days later, a private pilot named Ken Arnold reported seeing weird objects while flying in the Pacific Northwest, far from Roswell. He described the objects as flat and shaped something like boomerangs, but the term “flying saucer” was widely reported in the media and that’s what stuck with the US public. It is interesting to think that more accurate reporting of Arnold’s sighting would have led to the “flying boomerang” craze of the 1950s instead of flying saucers and all those black-and-white sci-fi B movies of the era would have depicted flying boomerangs terrorizing the Earth. In the wake of the Arnold story, thousands of people across America made UFO reports in the following months and years. The UFO era had taken flight, and it likely influenced the events at Roswell.
Some three weeks after he found the wreckage, Brazel drove into town, where he might have heard about Arnold’s UFO sighting or other “flying saucer” stories. Regardless, for one reason or another, Brazel now felt that what he found might be important, so he reported it to Roswell’s sheriff, who in turn alerted the nearby Roswell Army Airfield. Personnel from the base recovered the materials and then the story really took off because an enthusiastic public-information officer issued a press release claiming that a “flying disc” had been recovered. Soon after that, the Roswell Daily Record newspaper carried a lead story about it with this headline: “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer in Roswell Region.”29 It’s worth noting that in those days “flying saucer” or “flying disc” didn’t necessarily mean alien spacecraft to people the way it does today. So maybe the press release wasn’t quite as overreaching then as it seems to us today. A very important point in all of this is that immediate descriptions of the material by Brazel, the original discoverer, seem to make it clear that this was absolutely not the remains of spaceship from an advanced extraterrestrial civilization. The following excerpts are from a front-page report printed on July 9, 1947, in the Roswell Daily Record on page 1, just one day after the original “flying disc” story. (Bold added for emphasis.)
“Wilcox [Roswell sheriff] got in touch with the Roswell Army Air Field and Maj. Jesse A. Marcel and a man in plain clothes accompanied him home, where they picked up the rest of the pieces of the “disk” and went to his home to try to reconstruct it.”
“According to Brazel they simply could not reconstruct it at all. They tried to make a kite out of it, but could not do that and could not find any way to put it back together so that it could fit.”
“Brazel said that he did not see it fall from the sky and did not see it before it was torn up, so he did not know the size or shape it might have been, but he thought it might have been about as large as a table top. The balloon which held it up, if that was how it worked, must have been about 12 feet long, he felt, measuring the distance by the size of the room in which he sat. The rubber was smoky gray in color and scattered over an area about 200 yards in diameter.”
“When the debris was gathered up the tinfoil, paper, tape, and sticks made a bundle about three feet long and 7 or 8 inches thick, while the rubber made a bundle about 18 or 20 inches long and about 8 inches thick. In all, he estimated, the entire lot would have weighed maybe five pounds.”
“There was no sign of any metal in the area which might have been used for an engine and no sign of any propellers of any kind, although at least one paper fin had been glued onto some of the tinfoil.”
“There were no words to be found anywhere on the instrument, although there were letters on some of the parts. Considerable scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it had been used in the construction.”
“No strings or wire were to be found but there were some eyelets in the paper to indicate that some sort of attachment may have been used.”30
This is based on reporting that was done very recent to the event, which makes it far more reliable than the extraordinary recollections that would come many years later. Did you notice the absence of any talk about dead alien bodies in or around the wreckage? Don’t you think something like that would have been prominent on the mind of Brazel and others? But they seem concerned only with rubber, string, and Scotch tape. Another key detail is that the men tried to construct a kite out of the materials. They failed, but their attempt says everything we need to know about what planet this wreckage likely came from. Clearly, they did not see this as the remains of a spacecraft. Just imagine if you found a crashed space shuttle in the desert. What are the odds that your first impulse would be to reconstruct a kite out of the debris? While I am sure that any species capable of traveling to Earth from another world would be significantly more advanced than we are, it’s doubtful that they would be so smart as to be able to make it here in a vehicle constructed out of rubber and wood and held together by glue and tape.
Continuing with the story, the materials were then flown to Fort Worth Army Air Base in Texas, where people there immediately recognized what it was. They took one look at the paper, foil, rubber, and balsa-wood sticks and issued an official report declaring that it was nothing more than debris from a downed “weather balloon.” That’s it; case closed. Most people accepted that and forgot about it until the Roswell crash myth grew many years later. But there is more to the original story.
The military lied. Yes, there really was a Roswell cover-up. Today the whole truth is known, and it’s clear that Brazel did not find the remains of a mere weather balloon. Sadly, however, the real story doesn’t include aliens crashing on Earth. This probably explains why it’s not nearly as popular as that other Roswell story.
The only thing the military was honest about was the “balloon” part of their explanation. What they left out is that this balloon was far more interesting and unusual than some run-of-the-mill weather balloon. The debris was almost certainly from one of the many balloon-supported listening devices used in Project Mogul. This top-secret program utilized many large balloons that rose to extremely high altitudes. In some configurations, multiple balloons were connected by chord to form vast “flight trains.” Electronic listening devices were attached to a trailing cord for detecting the sounds of distant explosions, such as above-ground nuclear bomb tests in the Soviet Union. Remember, this was in the mid to late 1940s. Back then, there were no spy satellites or long-distance supersonic spy planes like the U-2 or the SR-71. But the Cold War was underway and the United States was determined to keep an eye, or ear in this case, on its rival. At this time, the United States was the lone nuclear power and was very concerned about the Soviets getting the bomb. All of this was extremely secret work, so it should surprise no one that the military lied.
B. D. Gildenberg, a participant in Project Mogul, says the work was so secret that even many of the people working on the program didn’t know its name or completely understand what it was all about.31 Project Mogul wasn’t declassified until 1972. The reason for the extreme secrecy was that the United States didn’t want the Soviets to know they were listening, because then they would have begun testing underground and made it much more difficult for the United States to monitor them. Gildenberg is certain that what Brazel found in 1947 was the wreckage from one of the kite-like radar reflectors that also hung below the balloons.32 These reflectors were designed to enable ground crews to track the balloons with radar. They were constructed out of rubber, balsa-wood sticks, paper, foil, tape, and glue. Sound familiar?
A big clue that the elaborate Roswell UFO crash story is a made-up tale is the fact that no one in 1947 said anything about seeing an obvious spaceship or alien bodies being recovered and sent to Area 51 for study. All those juicy elements didn’t emerge and become standard components of the story until thirty years later. Only after UFO belief grew, Hollywood unleashed its barrage of alien sci-fi films, alien abduction stories were told, and the classic big-head and tiny-body alien became a prominent fixture in pop culture did the Roswell story morph into what it is today.
Other secret military projects in the region after 1947 may have helped inflate the myth as well. Probably none did this more than the testing of high-altitude ejections systems for pilots. I interviewed former test pilot Joe Kittinger in 2001 about his remarkable aviation career, and he confessed to possibly having played a role in the Roswell myth. He said he and his team dropped short dummies, dressed in futuristic-looking flight suits, from high altitudes for various experiments and tests. Could local people have mistaken some of these dummies for aliens? “Absolutely they did,” Kittinger said. “These dummies that we dropped from balloons were dressed in [silver] pressure suits, so they looked unusual. One time we dropped one and it fell way up in the mountains. These dummies weighed more than two hundred fifty pounds. So how do you carry one out of the mountains? We put it on a stretcher and carried it to the back of an ambulance to take away. Now if somebody is back in the weeds watching this they are going to say, ‘Wow, look at that alien they have there.’ We think that a lot of the alien sightings were actually us doing our work with the test dummies.”33
This was several years after the original “crash” in 1947, however, so how could people remember seeing aliens/dummies in 1947? Because that’s how human memory works. It is well established that the best of us can and do get the timelines of past events confused. It is very easy, natural you might say, to make the mistake of remembering that something happened twenty years ago when it actually happened only five or ten years ago. It is also very easy for the memory of a real event to be contaminated by fictional information obtained from a movie or a book. And it can feel absolutely accurate, no matter how terribly wrong it is.
The Roswell Incident enjoyed a burst of renewed media and public attention in 2011 when Annie Jacobson’s book, Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Military Base, was published. Much to the surprise of many readers, her mostly straightforward and credible history of the secret and important work that went on for decades there included a bizarre story about the Roswell crash near the end of the book. According to the claim that Jacobson presents in a manner that seems intended to convince readers, there really was a flying saucer and tiny humanoids really were recovered at the site. But they weren’t from outer space. According to Jacobson’s unnamed informant, the spaceship was an advanced flying vehicle built by the Soviet Union and sent into American airspace in order to test US defenses and/or terrorize the US military and public. The crew was not made up of aliens but of human children who had been surgically and/or genetically altered by Soviet scientists to look like big-headed, big-eyed extraterrestrials. Josef Mengele, the infamous doctor who conducted experiments on Jews at Auschwitz during World War II, was in Soviet hands then and helped transform the unfortunate kids into alien invaders.34 Great story! What is not so great, however, is any suggestion that it should be accepted as reliable or true. An extraordinary story from an anonymous source—no matter how exciting the story may be—is not good evidence, proof, or anything else other than just another tall tale to be added to the billions of others that humans have been telling for millennia.
I was fascinated by the speed of the conspiracy theories that were generated after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. Within days, if not hours, of the event, claims of lies and cover-ups were flying around the world. An Israeli assassination squad did it to stir up international problems. The US government did it in order to have an excuse to impose radical new gun-control laws leading up to the confiscation of all privately owned guns. Against all logic and without good evidence, conspiracy theorists said no children had been killed at the school. There were no grieving parents, no distraught teachers. The people seen on television and interviewed by journalists were “crisis actors” playing roles designed to dupe us. Sandy Hook—like the Kennedy assassination, the 9/11 attacks, and thousands of other terrible events—will forever have crude, disturbing, and unproven conspiracy theories attached to it. Why does this happen over and over? Why do people believe these kinds of claims?
Before analyzing the conspiracy-theory phenomenon, it is important to be clear that evil, destructive, and criminal conspiracies are very real. They happen all the time. Of course groups of people get together to plan and execute bad deeds. We are social creatures—for better and for worse. Both history books and today’s headlines offer countless examples of mischief by committee. Most popular conspiracy theories are not like supernatural/paranormal claims because they don’t seem to contradict what we know about how the natural world works. The problem is that many of us seem to have an irresistible urge or need to have complex and dramatic explanations when bad things happen, even if they lack proof and on the surface appear to be illogical and very unlikely. This should surprise no one. The following standard human characteristics make conspiracy theories of interest to most and irresistible to some:
We love stories. Telling stories and listening to stories is a fundamental aspect of being human. We are storytellers. Gossip isn’t just fodder for the tabloids and simple minds. Gossip is a crucial glue that binds us to one another. Since deep into prehistory, stories and gossip have been the devices by which we have shared important information, alerted each other of dangers, and inspired one another. One thing all good conspiracy theories have in common is that they are great stories. There usually are victims, villains, secrets, and a chance for justice to prevail—if only enough people will believe the story.
We don’t like little answers to big questions. It insults our sense of justice to accept that Lee Harvey Oswald, just one man, was able to kill the most powerful man in the world. There must have been many powerful people involved, right? Not necessarily, because human history and contemporary culture are not math equations that must balance in a way that conforms to our subjective tastes. Sometimes unlikely things just happen, and sometimes events violate our perceptions of what is fair and reasonable.
Those damn dots again! Not only can we see things that aren’t really there by connecting “dots” that don’t really have a connection, we often think that way, too. Our pattern-seeking ways do not end when we stop looking at clouds and inkblots. Sometimes we connect random dots within stories and information, too. With our minds, we seek out links between facts, comments, events, and people. If enough forced connections are made, then a conspiracy may come into focus, whether or not it’s really there. Just like our brains create and see the shape of a monster in a passing cloud, many of us create and see a monstrous secret in big events, even though it’s not real.
Because conspiracies really do happen, it is important for people, skeptics included, to avoid lumping all conspiracy theories together. Many of them deserve a hearing, not only for the sake of fairness but also to help counter claims of a cover-up. I think it’s crucial to continually steer away from emotion and conjecture with these ideas and stay focused on hard evidence. It is amazing what people will think and say when it comes to conspiracy theories. In 2012, I was a guest on the AM radio show Coast to Coast to discuss skepticism and science. We talked about many topics, but the conspiracy stuff generated the weirdest comments in the days and weeks after the show. I received e-mails and saw web posts that accused me of being a paid stooge of “Big Pharma,” out to promote profitable vaccines and spread disinformation about alternative medicine. My view that al Qaeda was probably responsible for the 9/11 attacks and that the Moon-landing-hoax claim is almost certainly wrong led some to declare that I was “obviously” a government-paid “black operator” on a mission to mislead the public. Clearly some believers have allowed emotion and suspicions to distract them from the need to focus on evidence. However, some conspiracy theorists don’t have that problem. They go to extremes with evidence. They have mountains of evidence and will happily bury you with it if you allow them to. In my experience, the proponents of conspiracy theories who do the hard work of accumulating evidence are far from dim. They tend to be bright, energetic thinkers. What they seem not to realize, however, is that conspiracy theories are the near-perfect trap for confirmation-bias problems. When one analyzes a complex crime, large organization, or major event, it is all too easy to cherry-pick the data in order to present a lopsided case. I’m not suggesting that they are dishonest. It is only natural to subconsciously do this. Confirmation bias is universal. Conspiracy theorists, no matter how intelligent and how sincere, certainly are not immune to it.
The best advice I can offer about conspiracy theories is to keep an open mind, because groups of people, corporations, religious organizations, and governments really are capable of doing just about anything. History proves it. But don’t embrace a wild conspiracy claim because you think it could be true or because you feel it should be true. Play hard to get. Hold out for proof.
Astrology is the claim that bodies out in space influence bodies down here on Earth. This amazing idea has existed for thousands of years. I get conflicting explanations today, however, when I ask believers if these celestial bodies cause our actions or simply foretell what is going to happen without actively causing any of it. Either way, it’s fascinating to imagine such a spooky connection with stars and planets. There were times in our past when astrology made sense to even the most educated and enlightened people in many societies. It was viewed as respectable science and a productive means of gathering information. But we have learned a lot about both space and human psychology since the days of ancient Babylon. For example, scientists figured out some time ago that the location of stars and planets show no detectable or measurable impact on the personality and fates of individuals. Really, it’s true; Mars and Saturn have nothing to do with whether or not you will get that promotion at work or marry the ideal spouse one day. Venus has no bearing on how high-school cheerleading tryouts will turn out for you.
Astrology presents us with yet another opportunity to pause and reflect on the profound weirdness of humankind. On one hand, we have come so far. People once looked up at the night sky saw gods and animals in the stars. They imagined that they cared about us, influenced us, and whispered secrets. Later, we would walk on the Moon, land robots on other worlds, peer deep into the universe and time itself with powerful telescopes, and even contemplate the end of this universe. Yet for all the brilliance we have shown, many millions of us still look up and see planets and stars that know the intimate details of personal lives.
It is important to be absolutely clear about one thing: Astrology is not scientific. It is not evidence based. It has never been proven that astrology is able to describe our lives or predict the future, so I don’t think it can. But don’t take my word for it. Make up your own mind.
Beyond the fact that it’s unproven, there are two key points that crush the case for astrology. First, its origin reveals just about everything we need to know about how valid it is likely to be. Astrology’s earliest beginnings are lost forever in prehistory. But it’s not difficult to imagine early humans injecting personal meaning into the visible stars, planets, and the Moon. Who can blame them? They knew nothing of astronomy, so the beauty and mystery painted across a typical night sky could easily have sparked magical thinking. These lights above me must mean something. How could they not? Perhaps I am connected to them. Maybe I should fear them, revere them, or use them to understand the meaning of my life. They must be the key to understanding this confusing world I live in. They are telling me something.
History’s earliest mentions of astrology come from the Sumerian and Babylonian cultures, stretching back three thousand to four thousand years ago. Astrology in one form or another has been hugely influential throughout history and is in some ways the ancestor of astronomy. Try not to read too much into that, however. It’s like saying that primate grooming—the practice of picking and eating lice and ticks off your buddy’s hide—is the ancestor of haircuts and shaving. True, perhaps, but not a pastime we necessarily need to hold onto today. In most societies and for many centuries, everyone from queens and kings to generals and doctors did little without consulting an astrologer. Even in modern times, some of the world most powerful leaders have been influenced by astrological beliefs.35 But don’t allow yourself to be overly impressed by age and influence. Popularity and some degree of historical impact are not enough to save astrology.
The ancient Babylonians never conducted scientific studies that linked personality types to the movements of celestial bodies. The Sumerians did not amass data that correlated past historical events with star positions in a way that could be used to reliably predict future historical events. No, they just looked up at the stars, played connect-the-dots, and declared that there was meaning in what they saw or imagined they saw. If a modern-day astrologer claims to rely on some book or source documents, ask for titles. Ask where it or they came from. Ask for early sources that do not simply describe astrology but also explain its origins and how it functions in a way that makes sense. Follow the trail back far enough, however, and it always leads to a familiar place: human imagination. Astrology is layer upon layer of made-up stuff. This is not science. Its predictive powers do not exist. Astrology has nothing to do with the stars and planets of outer space. It has everything to do with the biases and delusions of human innerspace.
Astrology’s second fundamental problem is that nobody seems to know how it is supposed to work. “It just does,” is the most common explanation I hear from believers. Astrology may have been important to the development of early astronomy, and it may have even been useful in keeping time and developing early agriculture. However, as it is practiced and believed in today, it’s pure pseudoscience. There is no underlying theory that explains it, no body of knowledge that supports it, and no set of experiments that confirm it. I know this because I have asked professional astrologers. I listened with an open mind, and when told that my status as a Libra meant that one thing or another would happen to me and that I was inclined to think and feel this way or that, I asked how they know this. “Because the stars say so,” is not an answer, of course. Why do the stars say this? How do the stars say this? These are the simple questions that need to be answered, but never are. I suspect that many believers imagine there must be some vast collection of data stored in the vaults of a giant astrology archive somewhere that serves as the source material for all the horoscopes written today. Or maybe they think there is some centralized supreme council of astrologers that generates the calculations all astrologers base their work on. But there are none of these things.
A final point that everyone should be aware of is that horoscopes are popular and work well for so many people because most of them are written in ways that allow virtually everyone and anyone to recognize something that feels unique and special to them. A good horoscope writer can craft fifty words or so that will feel personal and specific to the individual reading or hearing it—no matter who that individual is. If something is known about the person in advance and the horoscope can be personalized, even better. It’s like psychics with their cold readings. Focus on challenges and concerns common to most of us, and those who are predisposed to believe will think it must apply to them in some special way. As far as predicting things about the future, two things help that along: vague predictions and confirmation bias. A prediction like: “You will enjoy financial gain this week,” could mean winning the lottery, finding $5 on a sidewalk, or nothing more than getting your weekly paycheck. For most believers, confirmation bias will ensure that astrology’s relatively few successful predictions are remembered and its many failures forgotten.
When someone tells me how awesome astrology is, I don’t argue. I just ask a few questions and pay close attention to the answers. Try it. Ask how the stars and planets go about influencing or predicting the course of our lives. What is the force behind this? How does it work? Is it gravity? If so, how can that be when a potted plant in the room exerts more gravitational force on you than a distant planet? Ask them why it is that people born in October have different personalities and talents than people born in December. Don’t let them ramble on about all the ways in which they are different; you want to know why they are different. Asking these important questions and not allowing yourself to be sidetracked by hollow answers are key to becoming a good skeptic and staying focused on reality.
Miracle belief is extremely popular. Just look around, just listen. Miracles are everywhere. One can hardly walk down the street or turn on a television without hearing someone claim that a miracle has occurred. According to Harris Poll, 76 percent of American adults believe in miracles.36 But believing in miracles is easy. Thinking about miracles takes a bit of work, and, despite all the talk, most people don’t bother. They just seem to accept them as a fact of life without question. But a good skeptic doesn’t believe in something only because most people around her say it’s true.
Miracles are generally thought to be supernatural events caused by a god, a magical being, or a person with special, unnatural powers. According to various believers, miracles can be bizarre feats that defy the normal workings of nature. They can also be natural events that are intentionally orchestrated to bring about desired outcomes. So a miracle might be a natural rainstorm that a pious farmer’s prayers bring on just in time to save his crop or it could be a god or preacher bringing a dead man with rigor mortis back to life by supernatural means.37
Maybe miracles really do happen. I don’t know. But I am sure that the claims of miracles that I hear about are obvious cases of people failing to think critically and be good skeptics. Just because something is unexpected, unusual, or extraordinarily well timed does not necessarily mean that it is a magical event. Of course weird things happen all the time. Wouldn’t it be strange if nothing strange ever happened?
A key problem people have when thinking about miracles comes from the fact that we aren’t natural mathematicians. Most people in the world never take a class in statistics or even pause to consider how likely it is for “unlikely” events to occur. Just consider, for example, that there are seven billion people alive right now. Let’s imagine some quirky event that happens every day but at a very low rate—let’s say this event has a one-in-a-billion chance of happening to you or me on any given day. It probably won’t happen to us, but will happen to seven people every day. Those seven people are probably going to feel extremely lucky or unlucky, depending on what it is. But it was going to happen to somebody. Even a rare daily event with one-in-a-million odds of happening to you or me sounds unlikely, right? But seven thousand people would experience the event each day. Over the course of just one year, 2,555,000 people would experience it! It’s the same with lotteries. The chances of winning those things tend to be astronomically small. But people do win them virtually every day, nonetheless. No doubt, the winners feel very special and many of them likely conclude that they must have been on the receiving end of a miracle. But when you consider those few winners in the context of all the losers, it becomes clear that nothing magical necessarily occurred. Somebody was going to win because lotteries are designed to produce winners.
If you are prone to believing in miracles and you think some things happen that just can’t be explained as anything other than the work of a god, then try to imagine being in very different circumstances. Transport yourself into the body of a typical Pleistocene human one hundred centuries ago. You are living in a time before Google, Wikipedia, and soap. Your clothing, footwear, and scent will change, but biologically you are no different. Mentally and physically, you are the same. What you are missing out on, however, is the convenience of being able to call on 100,000 years of accumulated human knowledge and scientific discovery. It’s gone. All you have now is the potential to reason for yourself and figure things out. You also have whatever skills and awareness your prehistoric peers passed on to you around nightly campfire gatherings.
Suddenly a nearby volcano erupts. The ground shakes. A strange, orange-and-black goo flows down the mountain. When it comes into contact with trees, they burst into fire. Smoke and dust darken the sky. You are terrified but also desperately curious. What is going on? How can this be happening? It makes no sense! All you have are questions and no answers. You are smart, but you know nothing of geology, volcanology, the layers of the Earth, magma, lava, and so on. You can’t simply ask someone else to explain what is going on because no one on the entire planet knows. What do you do? You might have a flash of insight and come up with a respectable guess about the Earth’s fiery underbelly releasing a bit of pressure. But even then you couldn’t be sure. No one can look at an erupting volcano for the first time and explain it sensibly and fully with absolutely no knowledge of geology to draw from. So maybe out of frustration you would do what everyone around you is doing: explain the volcano as the work of gods or magic. “The gods did it” and “It’s a miracle,” has probably been the most common quick answer to every mystery faced by people since the dawn of language. But from the perspective of your presence in the twenty-first century, you know that a volcano can be explained by natural forces and doesn’t require the involvement of gods or magical forces. Nothing would have changed about you from the Pleistocene and now other than the availability of a natural explanation. This is key because as natural explanations come, supernatural explanations go. This has been the pattern for thousands of years. Magical explanations lose their appeal when they just aren’t necessary anymore. Thousands of years ago, who wouldn’t have thought that a solar eclipse was a miracle? Today, however, fewer people in most societies feel the need to invoke magic as an explanation for them. Nothing changed in nature. Only our knowledge of astronomy did. Perhaps patience is the first thing we should think of when faced with unanswered questions. If the past is a guide, many of today’s miracles probably won’t seem so miraculous in the future.
It should not be interpreted as insulting or rude to point out that ignorance drives many specific miracle claims and the general belief in them. Ignorance doesn’t mean stupidity or intellectual dimness. It only refers to a lack of specific knowledge needed to understand something in a given situation. We are all ignorant of many, many things, of course. What matters is how we choose to react to our ignorance when it stares us in the face. Some of us freely admit that we do not know some things and proceed accordingly. Others, however, attempt to hide their ignorance under a tent of made-up answers.
It seems to be human nature, or an irresistible impulse, for us to explain things even when we can’t. So we make up answers. We fill in the blanks with “miracle.” But here’s a critical truth every good skeptic knows: It’s okay to say “I don’t know.” Really, it’s fine. I understand that it can be difficult at times, but this is how humans ought to operate. If I were out walking my dog, and an autographed first-edition copy of Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad suddenly fell from the sky and landed at my feet, I would be challenged to come up with a natural explanation. It fell out of a passing airplane currently being leased by a wealthy collector of rare books? It was swept up into the stratosphere by a tornado in Oklahoma and then it blew over to my state before tumbling earthward? Some juvenile delinquent stole it from the Twain museum in Hannibal, Missouri, and then traveled to my neighborhood so that he could throw it at me while perched in a nearby tree? All sound and reasonable possibilities, of course, but none of those would probably be the right answer. Maybe I would just have to live the rest of my life with a nagging mystery, one that gnaws at me every time I hear the name Mark Twain or look at that book on my shelf. As a good skeptic, however, I am sure that I wouldn’t cheat by pretending to know that the gods tossed it down to me as gift. I wouldn’t do that because I couldn’t possibly know such a thing. Mysteries are not miracles.
Did space travelers from a distant world visit the Earth during ancient or prehistoric times? Did they interact with the people, influence their engineering, art, and religious beliefs, and perhaps even interbreed with them to supercharge our evolution?
Maybe. Who knows? I can’t say for sure that it didn’t happen. What I do know is that no one has ever proved this amazing story or even presented any good evidence for it.
Chariots of the Gods?, a 1968 book written by a former hotel manager named Erich von Däniken, is more responsible than anything or anyone else for making this claim so popular. It was an international bestseller when it first came out decades ago, and it is still selling today. But why? Surely people would not just accept a claim this wild without rock-solid proof, right? No, they would and they do. Apparently it doesn’t matter that virtually every professional archaeologist in the world rejects this claim. Nor does it seem to make any difference that every single argument Von Däniken made has been thoroughly addressed and demolished by experts. People seem to like this idea of ancient aliens visiting us so much that they can’t resist boarding the chariot.
I won’t go into detail about the numerous problems with the ancient-astronaut claim. Those who want more can read the chapter about it in my book 50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True. The point I want to make here is that this story is rooted in a view of our ancestors that is both inaccurate and detestable. Von Däniken and others who promote this belief push the premise that prehistoric and ancient people were hopelessly dim and could never have done the things anthropologists and historians say they did. These were such bumbling idiots that they had to have had extraterrestrial help in order to get anything done. If not for the advanced visitors, it’s clear that we would all still be grunting at one another in dark caves or up in trees. Here is a small sample of claims made about ancient people found in Chariots of the Gods?
“In the Subis Mountains on the west coast of Borneo, a network of caves was found that had been hollowed out on a cathedral-like scale. Among these colossal finds there are fabrics of such fineness and delicacy that with the best will in the world one cannot imagine savages making them.”38
“The Great Pyramid is [a] visible testimony of a technique that has never been understood. Today, in the twentieth century, no architect could build a copy of the pyramid of Cheops, even if the technical resources of every continent were at his disposal.”39
“Where did the narrators of The Thousand and One Nights get their staggering wealth of ideas? How did anyone come to describe a lamp from which a magician spoke when its owner wished?”40
“It is an embarrassing story; in advanced cultures of the past we find buildings that we cannot copy today with the most modern technical means.”41
Not only are these assertions condescending, but also they’re just plain wrong. First of all, anatomically modern people have been around for at least 200,000 years or so. This means that people with brains as capable and creative as ours were here for more than 195,000 years before the great pyramids of Giza were built and stories like The Thousand and One Nights were written. Interestingly, prehistoric people had slightly bigger brains than we do today, and they might have been more intelligent.42 This makes sense when you consider how unforgiving life would have been for Stone Age dimwits. Most would have been selected out of the gene pool early by poisonous berries, falling rocks, and hungry predators. Today, however, the dimmest not only survive at high rates, but some of them belong to an extremely successful subspecies known as “celebrities” and star in reality TV shows.
No one with any sense has ever suggested that we went from Australopithecines sleeping in trees to Homo sapiens building pyramids in one flash of insight. A lot happened between Homo erectus and the reign of Khufu. The progression of technology was not so unusual that it requires extraterrestrials to explain it. In short, there is nothing about ourselves or our past that indicates that we were incapable of doing the things we did. And, contrary to what Von Däniken says and writes, we could in the past and can today build a giant pyramid if we wanted to. Researchers have even demonstrated ways in which people might have moved and placed large stone blocks using only ancient technology and muscle.43 There is no doubt it could be done with modern technology.
Even within Egypt, the progression is evident. The three famous pyramids at Giza did not spring up from the sands in a way that defied the flow of ancient Egyptian history. I have visited the nearby Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, for example, and this older pyramid is precisely what one would expect to see. It’s huge and impressive yet less of a technical and artistic achievement compared with the pyramids that followed. What are we to believe—that less intelligent and less capable aliens helped the Egyptians at Saqqara earlier and then, years later, slightly more sophisticated aliens lent a hand at Giza to produce the superior pyramids?
Writing about science can open one up to a universe of opportunities. For example, I regularly get invites to talk about everything from astronomy to zombies.44 In 2012, I was one of the speakers at Doomsday Live! a radio show and live-audience theater event organized by the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute.45 It was a slick production, hosted by the Computer Science Museum in Mountain View, California. The topics seemed thrilling enough to me: asteroid strikes, viral plagues, rebellious computers, environmental chaos, irrational doomsday predictions, and more. But it might easily have been a disaster about disasters. I wasn’t sure how people would react. Fortunately, it turned out to be one great apocalyptic spectacle. The live audience was one of the warmest and most enthusiastic I have ever spoken to. At times, I felt like I was at a Super Bowl bash or maybe one of those Tony Robbins seminars. Yeah, there is just something about the end of the world that picks up a party. But I should have expected it because this is nothing new.
Apocalyptic fears and fantasies have intrigued, excited, burdened, and haunted humankind for millennia. I would not be surprised if Homo erectus bands often paused between hunting and gathering to worry about the end of the world, too. Maybe caves were the first doomsday bunkers and cavemen the first doomsday preppers. What is certain is that we have a strong and enduring interest in a final day of reckoning that borders on obsession. Just note the steady flow of films, books, and television shows with apocalyptic themes in pop culture today. Numerous religions, past and present, were built on a foundation of end-of-the-world threats and promises of escape. Science has done its part too by providing several charming, evidence-based doomsday scenarios for us to contemplate at bedtime. I understand the appeal. Horrible as global death and destruction may be, there is also a certain attraction to it for some people who think the idea of hitting the reset button might not be so bad. No more rent or mortgage payments to worry about. No lame job to show up for anymore.
The end of the world, human extinction, and the collapse of civilization are all interesting subjects for the skeptic because the world really could “end” and take us with it. It’s not an entirely crazy topic. For example, gamma rays, a nearby supernova, and solar flares are no joke. They are all real things that do happen. One event could scorch us into oblivion. Some threats are not only possible or likely to happen; they will happen. Wandering rocks in space called asteroids will threaten to devastate our planet and destroy most life here one day, just as they have done in the past. Right now, we know there are approximately a million objects in our solar system that could pose a direct threat to us one day. We might be in the crosshairs in a few years, a few decades, or a few million years from now. But it’s going to happen.
Supervolcanoes are thousands of times more powerful than the regular volcanoes we are familiar with. These gigantic monsters are rare, but they have erupted in the past and will erupt again. One of them, Toba in Sumatra, almost wiped us out 74,000 years ago when it spewed tons of dust and smoke into the atmosphere to darken and chill the world. The total human population may have dipped to as few as two thousand people worldwide as a result. It is unlikely but plausible that a virus could evolve or be engineered to kill us all one day. Nobody seems to worry about nuclear war since the Cold War ended, but it remains probably the greatest threat to civilization right now. It’s mostly out of the public’s thoughts these days, but the United States and Russia still have thousands of nuclear weapons ready to fly—by order or by accident.
My favorite end-time scenario, by far, is human extinction via a massive “methane burp” from the seafloor. Yes, believe it or not, the gaseous residue of hundreds of millions of years of microbial activity beneath the bottom of the ocean might be unleashed in one colossal fart that kills us all by abruptly altering the atmosphere and climate we depend on. Critics less forgiving than me might feel it would be poetic justice, a fitting end for the species responsible for two world wars and too many boy bands.
Don’t panic and run screaming into the streets just yet, however. Even these frightening, evidence-based scenarios probably wouldn’t cause our extinction because we may develop the means to predict, avoid, eliminate, or lessen their impact. This is why it is vital for us to continue exploring and discovering. Some of the answers we find today may save us tomorrow. There is also strength in numbers. Remember, there are more than seven billion of us now, and we are spread across much of the planet. Our large population, combined with our creative intelligence, makes us a very tough species to kill off. A 2009 University of Colorado study supports my view on this, concluding that we are “unlikely to become extinct without a combination of difficult, severe, and catastrophic events.”46 The researchers said that it was hard to come up with plausible scenarios capable of killing everybody. But this doesn’t mean that the world isn’t doomed. In fact, it almost surely is.
In four or five billion years, our star will die like all stars eventually do. But the Sun won’t go quietly. It will behave like an angry man dying, punching and flailing at anyone near. After all the life-giving support it provided for billions of years, the Sun’s final act will include frying the Earth and boiling away all its water. But there is still plenty of room for hope. Four billion years is a long time. It is unlikely, if not impossible, that we would be close to anything resembling what we think of as human today, if we still exist. Maybe by then our decedents will be living comfortably on a safer planet far away or on an artificial world they built. Maybe they will have become so technologically advanced that they can control the Sun or somehow protect the Earth from its fury. But even if we can dodge the Sun’s wrath, we might not be able to escape ultimate doomsday. Current thinking among astronomers says our expanding universe is likely to go dark in about 100 trillion years or so. Still we might escape by jumping to another universe or circling back in time. Then again, maybe humanity—along with all our accomplishments, creations, and memories—will be erased from the cosmos forever. Time will tell.
Evidence-based predictions of possible doomsday scenarios, while fascinating and well worth concern where appropriate, just are not a big problem for very many people. If one thinks critically and carefully about such ideas, and assesses the danger like a good scientist might, then there’s not much to lose sleep over. Yes, we need to improve our early-detection abilities for near-Earth objects that may threaten us. We also need to be ready to respond effectively when they do. Yes, we should do more to discourage and prevent people and nations from weaponizing viruses and bacteria. We also might want to reduce nuclear arsenals to only enough firepower needed to destroy civilization, say, once or twice and no more.
The key to dealing with this subject sensibly is, of course, science and skepticism. When irrational thinking creeps in, apocalyptic thoughts not only become silly, but also can turn dangerous. There are many examples of irrational believers doing terrible things in the name of doomsday. To my knowledge, however, there are no suicidal groups based solely on a scientific reading of the Sun’s expiration date. There are no apocalyptic religions centered on what geologists say about supervolcanoes. I doubt anyone has quit his job and sold his house in anticipation of the big methane burp or the rise of artificial intelligence. No, the science of doomsday, while important, is just not a popular source of self-destructive behavior. It is belief in unscientific doomsday claims that consistently causes the trouble.
Far back in time, during the first days of civilization or even earlier perhaps, some man or woman told anyone who would listen that the world was about to end in some spectacular way that would kill everybody. And people bought it. So began a weird and steady freak show of human behavior. For generation after generation, in society after society, hundreds of millions of people have believed in countless doomsday claims. They always come with excessive drama and are delivered with unwavering confidence. But good evidence and logical arguments are never part of the presentation, which probably explains why the failure rate of these predictions is 100 percent to date. Why does this diseased thinking keep infecting us? I’m not sure, but I do know that skepticism is the cure.
It’s impossible to know accurate numbers, but there is no doubt that throughout history many millions of people have suffered and/or died as a direct result of belief in irrational, never-going-to-happen doomsday declarations. Does our fascination with death somehow derail our ability to recognize and reject stories that are clearly made up? Maybe all or most of us come with a built-in doomsday fetish that makes this weird seduction inevitable. Maybe our fondness for patterns leads us to imagine a near and specific end to the human story, just for the sake of completing the picture or closing the loop.
The good news is that you never have to fall for these stories. All you need to do is think like a scientist, and the madness bounces right off. Skeptics are the last people on Earth who will burn up nervous energy, throw away money, join a kooky organization, kill themselves, or harm anyone else in anticipation of a doomsday prediction that no one is able to back up with good evidence. We know that it makes sense to assume that there will be a tomorrow. Skeptical thinking has defied doomsday and saved the world many times before and can again. All we have to do is think, and those scary predictions wither and die.
How did this happen? How could humankind’s greatest adventure and greatest technological achievement end up being called a hoax and a secret conspiracy by millions of people around the world? The Apollo program landed men and on the Moon six times! The astronauts talked to us from the Moon. They took photographs. They filmed their moonwalks. They brought back nearly a thousand pounds of rocks. Nevertheless, many people deny that the Moon landings ever happened. They charge that it was an elaborate trick designed to make the United States look good during the Cold War. President Richard Nixon and NASA lied to us. The astronauts were actors.
As we covered in the section on conspiracy theories, great stories are irresistible to the human brain. We can’t help ourselves. We have to listen to stories and gossip. We can’t stop ourselves from considering them and imagining if the wild claims are true. The juicier, the better. The urge to believe in and spread gossip is probably instinctual, just part of who we are, say some researchers.47 It’s less about what we do and more about who we are. “Gossiping Primates” is not only a great name for a rock band, it’s also who we all are deep down. In light of this, I think that something like the Moon-hoax claim should be viewed as less a kooky aberration and more an inevitability. The Apollo missions were too big, too complex, too difficult, and too spectacular for everyone to accept. When the moment arrives that a human finally walks on Mars, I guarantee that some subset of the world will say it’s happening on a Hollywood soundstage.
Because I am committed to being an open-minded skeptic, I have always made the effort to listen to and consider the arguments of Moon-hoax proponents. No matter how ridiculous some of the ideas may seem to me, I don’t automatically dismiss them without at least thinking them over. One never knows what will happen tomorrow, but this claim does not appear to be doing well in America today. Only about 6 percent of the adult population believe it was all a hoax, according to Gallup.48 Although that figure represents millions of Americans, it’s definitely a fringe number for a poll. One can ask just about anything and get at least 6 percent to agree to it. However, we also have to consider how many people doubt the landings, if not deny them. There is also the question of how many non-Americans don’t believe anyone has been to the Moon. I have lived outside the United States and traveled extensively, and many times I have been shocked to discover how widespread this belief is. Based on my experiences, it’s very common in many Asian, African, and Caribbean countries. One poll found that a quarter of all British people are Moon-hoax believers.49 Motivations for this belief vary, I’m sure. It might be ignorance about science (What’s the Moon?), poor knowledge of history (President Nixon was impeached for his role in the Moon hoax, right?), lack of imagination (There’s just no way!), or even anti-American sentiments (I hate Americans, therefore they never went to the Moon.). Late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez was a Moon-hoax believer, probably in large part because he didn’t like the United States.50 Some people, members of the Taliban in Afghanistan are a good example, are so lost in medieval thinking and superstition that they likely view it as impossible for mere mortals to achieve such a voyage. For some it may be a result of the formal education they received. I had heard, for example, that the Moon-hoax claim is taught to children as fact in Cuban schools. I was very curious about this when I visited that country. But as an American citizen allowed in as a journalist, I wasn’t in a position to stir up political debates, so I skirted around the issue. The Cuban people I encountered were consistently bright and had positive views about science—but some were unconvinced that NASA ever sent men to the Moon.
Young people today in all countries seem particularly vulnerable to this belief, perhaps in part because the landings happened in the 1960s and 1970s and therefore feel like ancient history to them, which makes it more difficult to believe. After all, they don’t see anyone going to the Moon today. So how did people do it with “prehistoric” twentieth-century technology? No cell phones or laptops, but they went to the Moon? Sure. It doesn’t help that any curious kid with a computer can watch or read Moon-hoax propaganda on the web. Without some honest context and sensible counterarguments, it can seem credible, I’m sure.
In 2001, Fox TV broadcast a terrible pseudo-documentary during primetime called Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? It probably helped inspire a new wave of irrational deniers then, and it’s still derailing brains online today. YouTube clips from it have drawn hundreds of thousands of views. Professional presentations work, regardless of how factually incorrect or dishonest they may be. One survey found that 27 percent of young Americans aged eighteen to twenty-four had “some doubt” that astronauts went to the Moon, and 10 percent said it was “highly unlikely.”51
When I read about such statistics or meet people who believe in the hoax, my first reactions are sympathy and disappointment. I feel sad for those who feel no connection to this important accomplishment. It was a human feat that all people should at the very least take some measure of pride in. Sure, it was motivated by Cold War militarism and shallow nationalism, but it was still profoundly special and meaningful. The moment the first humans landed on the Moon, we were no longer an Earth-bound species. We had extended our physical reach and in doing so expanded our collective ability to dream bigger dreams. Or at least that’s what should have happened.
The following are a few of the more common Moon-hoax ideas that I have heard, followed by brief responses. Remember, as with everything else in this chapter, I’m not encouraging you to agree with me “because I’m right.” Whether you’re in your sixties or in the sixth grade, I want you to think for yourself and make up your own mind. So when I share personal insights and experiences, please don’t think that I am suggesting that you follow my lead because I’m some kind of an authority figure. You need to make up your own mind about this and every other extraordinary claim.
Where are the stars? This is probably the most common of all the challenges to the Moon landings. It’s also the easiest to explain. If those astronauts were really on the Moon, hoax believers ask, then why are there no stars in the black space behind them? It looks suspiciously like the black wall of a movie-studio soundstage. The reason for this is simple. Stars in space are relatively faint dots of light. The surface of the Moon, however, is very bright when the Sun is shining on it. So too are the lunar module (landing vehicle) and the white spacesuits the astronauts wore on the Moon. Therefore, in order to take a decent photograph in such conditions, the camera’s shutter speed must be set to a speed that is too fast to take in the relatively faint light from stars. The result is a photograph with properly lit astronauts but only black space behind them. If you still have doubts, try it yourself. Go out on a starry night and take a photo of a well-lit building or person. If the shot comes out well for the primary subject, you won’t see stars. It’s about differences in light. The contrast was so great, in fact, that Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke says he couldn’t even see stars with his eyes while on the surface of the Moon.52
The flag waved. There is a film clip hoax believers say shows the American flag waving in the wind on the Moon. Of course, this could not have happened because the Moon has no atmosphere, no wind. But there it is, plain as day for anyone to see, flapping around. Clearly somebody opened a door in the studio or turned on a fan while the fake flag planting on the Moon was being filmed.
Don’t confuse moving with flapping in the wind. Yes, the flag moves. But why? It moves because an astronaut wiggled the flagpole while driving it into the lunar surface. There may not be wind, but the laws of physics are still enforced up there just like they are down here on Earth. The flag moves because of inertia. Movement of the flagpole results in movement of the attached flag. Simple as that.
Tricky Dick. Some people point to the man who was in the White House during the Apollo landings as a key reason to believe this conspiracy theory. But just because someone is known for lying and being involved in conspiracies doesn’t mean everything he or she was ever involved with is necessarily corrupt. President Richard Nixon may have been an unethical politician, but this alone is not proof that he orchestrated six fake Moon landings. Watergate does not prove Moongate.
They lied. I have met many people who participated directly in America’s space program during the Apollo years. I spoke with some casually at science conferences, others I conducted lengthy, formal interviews with for various writing projects. The following is a partial list:
Gene Cernan (Apollo 10, Apollo 17 commander)
John Young (Apollo 10, Apollo 16 commander)
Charlie Duke (Apollo 16)
Gene Kranz (Mission Control Center flight director)
Alan Bean (Apollo 12)
Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11)
Scott Carpenter (Mercury Seven astronaut)
Tom Stafford (Apollo 10 commander)
Frank Borman (Apollo 8 commander)
Rusty Sweickart (Apollo 9)
Jim McDivitt (Apollo 9)
Walter Jacobi (engineer, member of Wernher von Braun’s rocket team)
Dave Scott (Apollo 9, Apollo 15)
Ted Saseen (Apollo spacecraft engineer)
Jack Cherne (lunar module engineer)
James O’Kane (Apollo spacesuit engineer)
I think it is important to bring this up because if the landings were a hoax, it means that all of these people, and many more, are liars. If no one ever went to the Moon, then, for all these years, they have kept the greatest secret in history. Perhaps it’s possible that they could be lying, but it does not seem plausible to me, because I looked in the eyes of astronauts John Young, Gene Cernan, and others as they shared personal memories of their time on the Moon with me. Prominent Apollo engineers told me about the hard work and long hours it took to create machines capable of carrying people to the Moon and returning them safely to Earth. Mission Control flight director Gene Kranz described to me how he felt during those long missions. It is easy to accuse men of lying when they are nothing more than printed names or two-dimensional faces on television. But when you meet them and listen to their heartfelt stories firsthand, it is difficult to imagine how they could all be liars. For example, Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke told me that he left a photograph of his wife and children on the Moon. Seems like overkill if he’s just protecting a hoax. It can’t be for the money, because an Apollo astronaut could make millions by coming clean and exposing the conspiracy. Besides, why would they go so far above and beyond the call of duty to sell a scam after so many years have passed? The Cold War ended a long time ago. The Soviet Union doesn’t even exist anymore. Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon are all dead. I suppose it is possible that they all lied to me as they have to the world. Perhaps all of them are great actors. And maybe every one of them found the will to keep this secret for more than forty years. But I doubt it.
Where is the crater? If you look at photographs of the lunar module (the Apollo landing vehicle) on the Moon, you will notice that there is not a deep crater beneath it. Why not? ask hoax believers. Why didn’t the lunar module, with its powerful rocket engine, blast a big crater in the lunar surface? The answer is simple: Those clever NASA engineers thought to install a throttle in the lunar module.
What happens when sprinters cross the finish line in a 100-meter race in outdoor stadiums? They slow down, right? They decrease their effort and coast a bit before stopping short of running into a wall or a fence. They certainly don’t continue running at full speed until a wall or fence stops them. Same with the lunar module. When Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan wanted to descend to the lunar surface, he throttled back for a gentle landing. He didn’t make a crater because he didn’t land with the engine at full output. He couldn’t have, because an engine at full throttle would have made landing impossible.
As with many such odd beliefs, a little knowledge can go a long way with the Moon-hoax claim. Unfortunately, most Americans know very little about the Apollo program and know even less about the efforts of the US military and NASA that preceded it. They are also mostly unfamiliar with the Soviet Union’s important and successful space program. The Soviets were very sophisticated and ahead of the United States during much of the 1960s. They almost certainly would have figured it out if the United States faked the landings, and we can be sure that they would have told the world about it. The late Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the Moon, summed it up nicely: “It would have been harder to fake it than to do it.”53
Only 5 percent of Americans know how many astronauts walked on the Moon. Most think it is only one, two, or three.54 The vast majority of people seem to think there was just one mission, Apollo 11, presumably. But the reality is that NASA made nine voyages to the Moon. Six of those landed, and a total of twelve men walked on the surface. This raises the question of why the government would have gone to all the trouble of faking it so many times. Every new filming session on a movie set somewhere would have increased the chances of being caught.
Perhaps if Moon-hoax believers were familiar with all of the Apollo missions and understood something about the critical preliminary Mercury and Gemini work of figuring out how to launch, orbit, spacewalk, rendezvous, and live in space, they would see this in a new light. No one just announced to the world out of the blue that men were on the Moon. Thousands of people put in years of very hard work to make it happen. This was one of humankind’s finest moments, one everyone should share in.
Excluding purely religious figures, Michel de Nostredame, or Nostradamus, is easily the most popular supernatural/paranormal predictor of future events in all of human history. This guy died in 1556, and yet today he continues to pop up in new books, websites, and TV shows. The History Channel seems committed to making sure the Nostradamus legacy lives on with its onslaught of questionable documentaries that link his writings to everything from the war in Afghanistan to Area 51. The funny thing is, however, Nostradamus doesn’t deserve any of this attention. His predictions, if we can even call them that, collapse under the cruel and unforgiving weight of about five minutes of thoughtful analysis.
Nostradamus was a sixteenth-century French doctor and astrologer. That mix of trades was not as crazy then as it might seem today. People in the 1500s were deeply ignorant about medicine and astronomy, so it made perfect sense to have your doctor explain how your birthdate determined the fate of your career and love life while he bled you dry in order to cure your sore throat.
Understandably, one might think that there must be something special about Nostradamus. After all, there were many fortunetellers, astrologers, and soothsayers banging about in Europe back in his day, but it’s his name that we all know. Even now, there are plenty of people who make magical predictions all the time. Some of them have many followers and earn lots of money. Their track records seem no better or worse than Nostradamus, yet he towers over them. Why?
Nostradamus is known today for only two reasons: good marketing and bad thinking. The reason his name survives and thrives is because few people take the time to think critically about what he is supposed to have written and whether or not any of it can reasonably be considered accurate predictions of important future events. The weak skepticism that is endemic in the public has allowed his myth to grow against all odds. His fame comes from the snowballing momentum of a concoction long known to capture minds and win hearts. It’s often described as “smoke and mirrors” or, if you prefer, just plain “bull.” The Nostradamus phenomenon is a good example of the illusion-of-truth effect. Hearing something over and over makes it believable to many people—no matter how silly it may be. No doubt conformity or the bandwagon effect comes into play here for many people as well. If you happen to have a circle of friends who constantly rave about the remarkable powers Nostradamus had, then your fallible human brain might be lured in.
A crucial piece of the Nostradamus puzzle is the manner in which he went about communicating his predictions. He wrote them as quatrains, four-verse poems. If you ever want to make it as a prophet, make sure to be as poetically ambiguous and confusing with your words as you can. The more flowery and hazy your language is, the more likely your predictions will be hailed as correct by sloppy thinkers one day. For example, Nostradamus did not write, “A viral plague will sweep across the world in 1918 and kill more than twenty million people.” He did not write, “On July 20, 1969, three men will journey to the Moon and two, named Armstrong and Aldrin, will walk upon its surface.” Predictions like that are far too clear and easy to give a pass or fail grade to.
We can’t even be sure that Nostradamus wrote the things his fans say he wrote because none of his original works have survived. The quotes you may have read or heard about on TV are translations of questionable copies of secondhand copies, and so on. Who knows? Maybe he really did predict the future with total accuracy, but we’ll never know because we can’t assess his original work. What we do know is that the predictions that have been popularized are not impressive by any reasonable standard. Read these lines attributed to Nostradamus and judge for yourself:
Well, that couldn’t be any more clear. Obviously it is referring to Adolf Hitler, which is precisely what countless Nostradamus experts have declared. “Hister” is very close to “Hitler,” right? No denying that. Here we have a reference to someone who would not even be born until centuries after Nostradamus’s death, and yet Nostradamus knew of him. But hold on, “Hister” may sound a lot like “Hitler,” but it sounds even more like Hister, which is what the Danube River in Germany was called during Nostradamus’s day. Another clue that this might be about a river and have nothing to with a twentieth-century dictator is the fact that the line preceding it says something about crossing a river. Don’t think I picked out a bad example to make Nostradamus belief seem silly. This is one of the most popular quatrains of all. No doubt some Nostradamus believers do not agree with the Hister-Hitler connection. Without exception, however, every believer I have had discussions with cited this one in attempt to convince me that Nostradamus had supernatural powers.
There may not be much to the Nostradamus myth, but there is a valuable lesson here that can be applied broadly. If we don’t want to be duped, we have to resist placing trust in strained interpretations and trying too hard to make a claim fit the facts.
Good skeptics also give thought to context. Just because someone may be on a fancy television show that has nice special effects and a pleasing music score doesn’t mean that she necessarily knows what she is talking about or is telling the truth. Too many people hear a sound bite from a UFO, ghost, or Nostradamus “expert” and feel inclined to accept it as fact. Don’t do that! Think less about who is making a big claim and more about what is being claimed. Even if a Nobel Prize–winning scientist were to announce tomorrow that after careful study she had come to the conclusion that Nostradamus was a genuine prophet with supernatural abilities, it wouldn’t be enough to convince me. She would get my attention based on her credentials, of course, but without very good evidence, her claim would mean nothing.
One of the most popular beliefs of all time is the one that says we get to live on in a different form and in a different place after we die. If true, it means that death isn’t really death in the sense that it marks the true end of it all. It’s a transition, nothing more. This is an extraordinary claim, of course. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have any extraordinary evidence to go with it. The best we have are unusual stories from a small number of people who claim to have died and then been whisked away to heaven or hell for a brief visit before returning to Earth to live again.
Near-death experiences are viewed by many people as nothing less than absolute proof that there is an afterlife. I certainly agree that these accounts can be powerful and make a huge emotional impact on us. I met a woman who said she died and visited heaven before being sent back to Earth by Jesus himself. She told me all about the gates of heaven being “fixed with pearls and diamonds,” streets that were literally paved with gold, and fruit bowls that magically replenished themselves when emptied. She saw angels teaching newcomers how to properly worship God. And then she met Jesus. “His beard was cut perfectly,” she said. “And he had the most beautiful, crystal-blue eyes. He spoke to me, saying he would anoint me and send me back to Earth.”56
I also have read books by people who claim to have died and gone to heaven. I even read one by a man who says he died and went to hell for a brief time. When people cite stories like this in an attempt to convince me that there is an afterlife, however, I point out that although there may be an afterlife, we can’t rely on stories to prove it. This is too big and too important to simply trust a tale told by a person who is no less fallible than the rest of us. I may be willing to assume that a particular storyteller is sane and honest, but how can I be sure that this person did not simply experience an extreme dream that left him with an emotionally charged memory that he then confused for a real experience? We know that this kind of thing can and does happen. The man who went to hell, for example, began his amazing journey from his bed after going to sleep at night. He woke up on the floor next to his bed. He was shaken up and scared, and says he clearly remembers being in hell. But did he really ever leave his bedroom? Aren’t a dream and the imperfections of human memory the most likely explanations for what happened to him? Without evidence, I would never accuse any of these people of being dishonest. But I do accuse all of them of being human. And with that comes an inescapable vulnerability to wild dreams, delusions, hallucinations, and flawed or false memories.
Brain science can provide likely natural explanations for the standard components of most near-death-experience stories. A light at the end of tunnel, feelings of peace and tranquility, seeing loved ones, and meeting religions figures can all be explained by natural processes in the stressed or dying brain. Nothing supernatural is necessary. This does not disprove the existence of some kind of an afterlife, of course, only that these near-death-experience stories are not the overwhelming proof so many people think they are. If only some of these people could bring back a piece of heaven to show us and prove their claim. Maybe a magically replenishing fruit bowl, for example. If physical objects can’t make the return trip, what about information, something so special and unique that we all would know that somebody really did go to heaven or hell? But all we ever hear are dramatic stories that easily could have been produced by dreams and imagination.
When the brain is short on oxygen, very weird things can happen. Pilots report having tunnel vision (light at the end of a tunnel) before blackout from extreme g-forces in a cockpit or during a centrifuge ride. This is because blood drains from the eyes first before blackout. People who are not dying but who have brains that are being stressed and oxygen-deprived also report seeing people and things that are not there. Scientists can even induce hallucinations and out-of-body experiences in a person who is not oxygen-deprived or dying by simply targeting a specific area of the brain with a mild electrical current. That’s it. No afterlife needed, just electricity.
I can personally connect with stories that describe feelings of pure peace and calm even as death approaches. When I was around twelve years old or so, I banged my face and cut my leg during a bad fall while crossing a canal on an elevated sewer pipe. Battered and bleeding, lying on the canal’s bank, I was in bad shape. But I felt great! My brain took me someplace far away from agony and panic. I remember lying there, face in the dirt, feeling nothing but groovy. It wasn’t bad enough to qualify as a near-death experience, and I don’t remember feeling like I ever left my physical body, but it was definitely an unusual experience. The nice feelings soon faded, of course, and pain arrived. Because of that incident, I have no problem understanding what people are talking about when they say they felt happy and wonderful even though they were dying. I also can believe people when they say they had unusual visions or felt like they went somewhere in this state. But why would anything like this be proof of something so extraordinary as heaven, hell, or some other kind of afterlife?
Maybe it would help if we all keep in mind what the human brain is capable of conjuring up when things are going well. On a nice day, when the Sun is shining and our health is optimal, we are all capable of being fooled by our brains to see, hear, feel, experience, and remember things that are not real and never happened. If this is possible—and we know it is—then shouldn’t we be skeptical about claims of experiences that occur to people who are near death or thought to be “dead” briefly? Don’t you think a human brain under that kind of stress would be even less reliable?
If one wants to hope for something more after death, that’s fine, of course. Like most people, I certainly would love to cheat death somehow. But no one should be misled to think that there is some vast collection of near-death cases that have proved the existence of an afterlife. All we have are stories, which alone prove nothing.
There is a mysterious zone over a patch of sea that functions a some kind of a natural or supernatural black hole, sucking up ships and planes that are never to be heard from again. Is it a portal to another universe? Could there be extraterrestrial involvement? Is the lost city of Atlantis involved? All we know for sure is that something very strange and very dangerous is happening in the area known as the Bermuda Triangle. Wow! What an exciting claim! I have lived much of my life very close to the Bermuda Triangle. I’ve even gone swimming in it. How exciting! Too bad it’s nonsense.
One way to better understand and evaluate a weird claim such as the Bermuda Triangle is to look at its history. Where does it come from? Who was the first person to make the claim? What was the original context? How was the case for it first made? Finding the answers to such basic questions often sheds enough light on the belief to expose it as unworthy of your time. As we will see shortly, there are the usual problems with evidence and interpretation that slay the Triangle myth. But first, its origin makes it clear that this claim was hopelessly lost at sea from the start.
The earliest known mention of the Bermuda Triangle was an article in Argosy (February 1964). This was a pulp-fiction magazine that published fictional stories designed to excite and entertain young males. That’s right, it wasn’t the US Navy, the US Coast Guard, or National Geographic that broke the story and first alerted the world to the dangers of the Bermuda Triangle. No, it was a magazine that specialized in adventure fiction. The article’s author, Vincent Gaddis, was probably looking for nothing more than another freelance check and never imagined he would help to create one of the great myths of modern times. But he did.
A writer named Charles Berlitz outdid Gaddis and really cashed in on the Triangle with his “nonfiction” bestseller The Bermuda Triangle in 1974.57 Against all reason, it was such a hit that it anchored the Bermuda Triangle in pop culture by convincing millions around the world that the threat was real and deadly. Sadly, it didn’t matter that he failed to present a convincing case based on facts and logic. Berlitz’s “evidence” consists of nothing more than a collection of outrageous, unproven claims and heavily embellished sea tales. Berlitz also wrote other books, such as Atlantis: The Eighth Continent and The Roswell Incident, whose “evidence” is of similarly questionable accuracy.58
For a comprehensive takedown of this belief, read Larry Kusche’s excellent book, The Bermuda Triangle Mystery—Solved.59 Kusche dismantles claim after claim and shows how a minor story, or a made-up story, can be twisted and embellished to seem like compelling evidence of something sinister and supernatural. For example, the tragic incident of Flight 19 is probably the most famous of all Triangle stories. According to Berlitz and other Triangle proponents, however, the five US Navy Avenger torpedo planes took off from Fort Lauderdale airbase on December 19, 1945, and in ideal flying conditions vanished without a trace in a way that defies any natural explanation. Kusche shows that an honest look at the facts reveals a different story, however. Flight 19’s commander was new to the base and unfamiliar with south Florida. He probably got his group lost, and they ran out of fuel before they could find land. They then ditched at sea, in the dark and in rough sea conditions. It should surprise no one that no wreckage was ever found. Heavy things like airplanes tend to sink in the ocean. Suddenly it doesn’t seem quite so paranormal, right?
This leads us to the greatest of all problems with the Bermuda Triangle claim: When planes and ships travel over water, bad things sometimes happen. We should expect this. Due to the nature of accidents at sea away from land, there are not always clear and obvious explanations available. But a mystery or unanswered questions is not proof of a supernatural or paranormal event. This is the problem with the Bermuda Triangle. People have attempted to explain many different incidents with one overall theory. But there is not one cause, supernatural or natural, for thousands of mishaps over many decades in this one area or any other. “My research, which began as an attempt to find as much information as possible about the Bermuda Triangle, had an unexpected result,” writes Kusche. “After examining all the evidence I have reached the following conclusion: there is no theory that solves the mystery. It is no more logical to try to find a common cause for all the disappearances in the Triangle than, for example, to try to find one cause for all automobile accidents in Arizona. By abandoning the search for an overall theory and investigating each incident independently, the mystery began to unravel.”60
I’m confident that ships and planes do not vanish in the Bermuda Triangle at a rate or in a manner that indicates there is anything unusual going on there. But I like to be thorough, so I checked with both the US Navy and the US Coast Guard, just to be safe. Neither organization seems worried about this. The US Navy has more reasons than anyone to be concerned about threats to ships and planes. After all, it routinely sends thousands of sailors and aviators into the zone, along with billions of dollars’ worth of ships, submarines, and aircraft. Yet the navy has gone on record rejecting any consideration of the Bermuda Triangle as an unusual threat to them.61
Finally, if anyone should know if there is anything to the Bermuda Triangle claim, possibly even more so than the US Navy, it would be the people who are specifically responsible for safety and rescue in and around the Triangle area. So I phoned the Miami station of the United States Coast Guard and spoke to an officer there who told me that they do not believe in the Bermuda Triangle story, nor do they give it any consideration when going about their duties. He also referred to this official statement by the Coast Guard:
The Coast Guard does not recognize the existence of the so-called Bermuda Triangle as a geographic area of specific hazard to ships or planes. In a review of many aircraft and vessel losses in the area over the years, there has been nothing discovered that would indicate that casualties were the result of anything other than physical causes. No extraordinary factors have ever been identified.62
Case closed. Mystery solved. Let’s have a long-overdue burial at sea for this one. The Bermuda Triangle needs to go back to being what it originally was: just a good story meant to entertain and not to be taken seriously by serious people. It’s a great campfire tale to tell the kids while vacationing in South Florida or the Caribbean but nothing more.
Sadly, however, after appearing to fade in the 1990s, the Bermuda Triangle is enjoying a bit of a renaissance today. No doubt this is due to the abundance of misleading websites that promote its existence as historical truth and scientific fact. There has also been an avalanche of terribly misleading pseudo-documentaries about it on cable TV. These have modernized and popularized the myth for a whole new generation of uncritical thinkers.
Atlantis, the extraordinary ancient city/continent that was struck by disaster and sank into the sea is an example of an unproven belief that may be more fun than threatening. So what if some people believe in a mythical place that was more technologically advanced than we are today and spawned all the great ancient civilizations? What’s the harm?
The problem is that Atlantis belief is a symptom of something more serious. Falling for this claim can be viewed as a wailing alarm that indicates something is wrong with a person’s thinking process. If Atlantis belief makes it into one’s head, then it means that one’s skepticism force field is either switched off or turned down way too low. After all, if one is capable of believing this claim—despite all of its logical problems and a total absence of proof—then it’s likely not going to take much of a leap for this person to believe in a potentially dangerous medical product, invest in scams, or be exploited in a variety of ways by unscrupulous people and organizations. Alone, such beliefs may initially appear to be harmless. But seemingly benign claims may lead people deeper into a variety of weird beliefs and delusions that do cause harm. For example, Atlantis belief has an odd connection to unproven New Age claims about crystals having healing powers. How easy would it be for some people, encouraged by their Atlantis belief, to begin wasting time and money on crystals? This could easily lead to serious problems if people choose crystals over medical science. A “harmless” belief in Atlantis could become a very dangerous belief in the medical value of overpriced rocks. By the way, some readers may suspect that Atlantis is a fringe belief in the extreme, one not worth addressing because it involves so few people. According to surveys, however, this is not so. A 2006 Baylor study, for example, found that more than 40 percent of American adults believe in “ancient advanced civilizations such as Atlantis.”63 More alarming than that, however, is another study that found 16 percent of high-school science teachers believe in Atlantis.64
As is so often the case when evidence is not involved, the description of a belief varies wildly and depends on which believer one asks. Some Atlantis believers say it was a prominent city/continent that existed several thousand years ago and was advanced far beyond its ancient peers and, some say, even beyond twenty-first-century civilization. For example, some claim that the Atlanteans had nuclear weapons, aircraft, and energy-production technology that was far superior to ours today. Some believers go so far as to claim that extraterrestrials were/are involved with Atlantis either as visitors or were the Atlanteans themselves. Virtually all believers agree that the city/continent vanished due to a catastrophic event such as an earthquake or a tsunami. Today it is supposed to rest on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea, at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, or maybe under antarctic ice somewhere, awaiting discovery. Another popular component to the myth is that before its violent end, Atlantis spawned satellite cultures that were the seeds of modern civilization. One version says we are the descendants of inferior slaves who escaped just before disaster struck the city. Either way, all people today are deeply connected to Atlantis. Okay, I admit it, this is another great story. I get why people might feel an urge to believe it. But if you think first, it’s not quite so impressive.
Before we consider some of the reasons why doubt is in order, let’s be clear about something important: Atlantis has not been discovered, and no compelling archaeological or historical evidence for it has ever been produced by anyone. This needs to be stated because many people seem to think it has been found or, at the very least, there is enough evidence to confirm that it did exist. Many people have likely been misled about the status of Atlantis because its discovery or near-discovery is reported frequently by the mainstream news media. Consider these recent headlines: TSUNAMI CLUE TO ATLANTIS FOUND65; SATELLITE IMAGES “SHOW ATLANTIS”66; ATLANTIS “OBVIOUSLY NEAR GIBRALTAR.”67 I chose these headlines specifically because they all come from the BBC, one of the world’s most respected and trustworthy news organizations. In fairness, the BBC did place quote marks around key words within two of these headlines. This is to shift the burden of the claim off of the BBC and onto some person who made the claim. Also, in many cases, reports like this usually do reveal somewhere in the text of the article that nothing of consequence has been found and absolutely nothing about Atlantis has been confirmed. These kinds of reports have always turned out to be nothing more than an “exciting lead,” a “possible clue,” or “encouraging data”—anything but actual artifacts that confirm the existence of Atlantis. The damage is done, however, because many people see headlines like these and don’t bother to read the entire article, or, if they do, can still be deeply influenced by the eye-catching headline. If they don’t quite turn into confident Atlantis believers, they still might come away with the false impression that there must be something to this claim. But, as we are about to see, there is nothing here but a tall tale.
The only references to Atlantis in ancient times come from an impressive source: Plato, one of history’s great philosophers. He mentions the city in two of his dialogues, the Timaeus and the Critias. But what did he actually communicate about Atlantis? It seems that for the purposes of teaching a lesson, Plato referred to an old “story” about a city-state that was too militaristic and too arrogant for its own good. This suggests that he wasn’t presenting a serious historical report on a real place and real people. He was almost certainly using a fictional tale to help make a point to the people he was addressing. There is nothing about Plato’s mention of Atlantis that makes the case for its existence. This view is supported by the fact that there is total silence about Atlantis from the rest of the ancient world. Atlantis was supposed to have been vastly superior in technology, science, and culture, and to have given rise to all other great civilizations, yet there is no mention of it from the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Romans, Sumerians, Babylonians, Ionians, Macedonians, and so on. Archaeologist Kenneth L. Feder hammers this point home in his excellent book, Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology: “You will not read the discourses of modern historians arguing for or disputing the historicity of The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, because these are understood, of course, to be works of fiction. In much the same way, Greek historians who followed Plato did not feel the need even to discuss his story of Atlantis; they understood it as the work of fiction Plato intended it to be.”68
An important thing to keep in mind is that believers often try to lure skeptics into arguing against things they don’t even oppose. For example, I have had discussions with Atlantis believers who, after becoming frustrated by their failure to convince me, changed course and accused me of being close-minded, antiscience, and unwilling to consider the possibility that underwater archaeologists might find an ancient city one day, maybe even one that was called Atlantis. Of course they might. I am a big fan of underwater archaeology. I have interviewed Bob Ballard, discoverer of the Titanic and the Galapagos Rift hydrothermal vents, and I share his enthusiasm and optimism for underwater archaeology’s potential. We have been a coastal-dwelling and seafaring people for a long, long time. Lakes, seas, and oceans undoubtedly hide many amazing artifacts that can shed new light on our past. Furthermore, given the volatile nature of our world and its changing shorelines, the claim that an ancient city is lying in ruins underwater somewhere is not only reasonable, it’s very likely to be true! Who knows? Maybe there is even a city that was named “Atlantis” out there. But until somebody finds it, we don’t know. And if the ruins of such a city are found, that still would not prove that it had once been inhabited by an advanced race of people or some alien species. To stay true to the real world, we have to ask the right questions, hold out for evidence, and not allow ourselves to be sidetracked by claims we’re not refuting—in other words, we need to try to become and remain good skeptics.
Imagine you are the president of the United States or a top Air Force general. A frantic aid has just burst through your office door. “My God, it’s been confirmed! Our team on the ground has secured the crash site and report that it is definitely an extraterrestrial vehicle of some kind, and the deceased bodies of four alien occupants have been recovered. What are your orders?”
You would have the wreckage and the bodies sent to Area 51, of course. Where else? Everyone knows that’s where the government stashes all visitors from outer space. Area 51 shows up in so many science-fiction books and films and has been a flashpoint for UFO believers for so many years now that is has evolved into something of a comical cliché in pop culture. I won’t be surprised if I turn on my TV one day soon and hear something like this: Lee Harvey Oswald, an alien-hybrid Libra with psychic powers, teleported to a hangar inside Area 51 where his brain was reverse engineered by former Nazi scientists who themselves had been chemically lobotomized by the Men in Black who were actually rogue CIA agents in close communication with fluoride-free extraterrestrials. How did Area 51 become ground zero for weird American myth? What is Area 51? And what really goes on there?
First of all, Area 51 does exist and mysterious things do happen there. No one can deny that. After many years of secrecy and denial, it is now a matter of public record that very unusual things have been going on at this top-secret government base for decades. But aliens on ice? Flying saucers? Reverse-engineered extraterrestrial technology? Probably not. Believers in Area 51 mythology get tripped up when they confuse plain secret aviation activity for secret aviation activity involving aliens. They also mistake secret military aircraft with extraterrestrial spaceships.
For such a big secret, an awful lot is known about Area 51. We know, for example, that it is part of a larger US military base located in the Nevada desert, less than ninety miles from Las Vegas. The general area is also called Paradise Ranch and Groom Lake. The US military develops and flies new aircraft there. Many of these flights are conducted at night to enhance secrecy. The CIA also uses the base for the same purpose. One would have thought that “UFO sightings” around a region like this would be expected by everyone, not met with suspicion and runaway imagination.
The list of aircraft now publicly known to have flown at Area 51 includes some revolutionary planes. Amazing flying machines like the U-2, A-12, and the now-famous SR-71 Blackbird flew there in extreme secrecy from the 1950s through the 1990s. These sleek reconnaissance planes were extraordinary both in appearance and for what they could do. They were capable of flying at speeds faster than 2,000 mph and reaching altitudes above 85,000 feet. By comparison, the cruising altitude for a typical modern commercial jet is 35,000 feet, and they usually fly at speeds of less than 600 mph. The SR-71’s Cold War mission was to fly far, high, and fast in order to take photos of Soviet bases and activities on the ground. Even today, it’s difficult not to be impressed by the sleek and futuristic lines of the SR-71. There is one on an elevated display at the San Diego Air and Space Museum that allows visitors to walk under it. The underbelly view makes it very easy to imagine how a layperson fifty years ago might have felt certain that she had seen something from another world if one of these roared overhead shortly after takeoff or was spotted out of a window high above a “normal” plane in flight.
The B-2 Spirit bomber and the F-117 Nighthawk also flew at Area 51 before anyone outside of select military and government channels knew anything about them. The B-2, with its sweeping batwing and tailless design, looks like something a Hollywood special-effects company might have come up with. Seen in flight, from some perspectives, it does not appear to be a conventional plane at all. It can look—surprise!—very much like the stereotypical flying saucer. The F-117 Nighthawk is another bizarre warplane. It has a boxy design with unusual angles and an unexpected rudder-elevator-fusion configuration in the rear. We’ve come a long way from the Wright brothers. How far is anyone’s guess, however, because the strange aircraft that we know flew at Area 51 can only tease us and hint at what we don’t know and what might be flying in secrecy there or at some other base right now.
Some people cite what they say is a high number of UFO-sighting claims around Area 51 as proof or evidence that the government has alien spacecraft there and is operating them or has reversed engineered alien wreckage and built its own. The first problem with this is that seeing unknown aircraft near a secret base that flies secret aircraft is not strange. Another problem is one common to many extraordinary claims like this: unanswered questions are not answers. Not being able to identify or explain what something in the sky is does not warrant jumping to the amazing and outrageous conclusion that it must be a spaceship of extraterrestrial origin. Some people are very critical of the US military for its secrecy and refusal to give straight answers about what it is up to. But what else should we expect? Secrecy is to be expected from secret military and CIA operations. It certainly is not proof of anything having to do with aliens.
Keep in mind that many years may pass between the time new, secret aircraft are first tested at a base like Area 51 and when the existence of that aircraft becomes known to the public. This is how it has been in the past, so why wouldn’t it be true today? I have no doubt that there are strange things being flown in the night skies over America right now, vehicles that would shock those of us who are out of the loop. I suspect that this may be truer today than ever before because of the explosion of UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones) and the impact of the post-9/11 “war on terror.” Tremendous amounts of money and creative thought are being poured into making new, better, and increasingly exotic aircraft. Smithsonian’s Air and Space magazine reports that an estimated 30 to 36 billion dollars per year is being spent on new aviation technologies specifically at Area 51 alone.69 That works out to be as much as $100 million per day. The UAVs or drones we know about today are weird enough, so imagine all the bizarre designs that are likely being tested right now. At the very least, you can be sure that some very interesting work is going on at Area 51 or somewhere else that we don’t know about. And if you ever catch a glimpse of some of that work in flight on a dark night, you just might suspect that it is something from another world. But that hunch would not make it so.
EXTRAORDINARY RELIGIOUS CLAIMS
It would be easy to sidestep religion and just stick to raising questions about less contentious topics such as astrology and UFOs. But good skeptics don’t give a free pass to anyone or anything. Good skepticism demands consistency. It does no good to figure out that giving thousands of your hard-earned dollars to a psychic is a bad idea only to go running into the open arms of a faith healer who wants you to help pay for his fleet of luxury cars. I understand that religion tends to be far more serious to most people than many of these other claims, but doesn’t this greater importance indicate a need for more vigilance rather than less? If gods, sacred books, and heaven and hell really are crucial to our well-being, then why would anyone want to risk worshipping the wrong god, following the wrong rules, reading the wrong book, or trusting the wrong prophet? It’s complicated, to say the least, and skeptical thinking can help to sort it out. Over the last several thousand years, people—most of them smart, well-meaning, and sincere—have confidently believed in millions of gods and created hundreds of thousands of unique religions, most of them too contradictory to ever be reconciled logically. It is not rude to encourage everyone to think critically about this situation. If anything, it’s demanded by what we see in human belief today and in our past.
Many people who hold to one form of religious belief or another are pretty good skeptics already. They see right through the cons, distortions of history, logical errors, and outright lies that infect so many religions, including their own. There are numerous believers, for example, who are unflinchingly skeptical of the work of some millionaire holy men and consider them to be nothing more than liars and thieves who prey on believers who are not skeptical enough. Millions of believers think well enough to reject the teachings of leaders who insist that every storm is a divine punishment and every lucky break is a gift from the gods. The point is, skepticism should not halt at religion’s front door. It is appropriate, useful, and vital even for those who may feel they will not or cannot give up their core belief in a god or gods.
I suspect that far too many religious people shy away from skeptical thinking, or even feel hostile toward it, because they see it as a direct attack on the most important belief of all. But when religious people turn away from critical thinking, what happens? They leave themselves open to problems they don’t want. For example, how many millions of religious people have fallen victim to medical quackery and other scams or wasted their time and money on bad beliefs that they could have identified and rejected if they had been better skeptics? The answer is too many. I don’t hold back from encouraging religious people to be good skeptics because they need it, too. They have to live in this crazy world, too. Religious people need skepticism as much as anyone. I certainly don’t care about them any less than I do nonreligious people. It’s so important, in fact, that I encourage religious people to become good skeptics even if they insist on being selective about it. That’s not ideal, of course, but it’s better than not trying at all. Even if one decides that it is necessary to leave one’s particular god or gods untouched by critical thinking, at least apply vigorous and consistent skepticism to every other aspect of life.
Skepticism is important for religious people within their religion because wrong ideas and bad beliefs can sprout up there, too. The question of the existence of gods aside, religions often provide a protective bubble that nurtures and protects ideas nobody needs banging around in their head. This is not meant to insult any particular religion; it’s just reality. Everyone knows that religions, like any organization, can be used to motivate, excuse, and protect both self-destructive and socially destructive behavior. Consider the suffering of hundreds of millions of women who are mistreated every day, worldwide, by men who believe that such behavior is what their religion expects of them or that such treatment is acceptable because their religion allows them to get away with it unpunished. Think about the countless children who are taught outrageously bad pseudohistory and pseudoscience by parents and teachers who think it’s their duty because of a religion they adhere to. Creationism, for example, includes the profoundly unscientific claim that our world is only about 6,000 to 9,000 years old. But the Earth is around 4.5 billion years old. So this claim is not just wrong; it’s stunningly wrong. It’s no less silly than saying that the distance between the Earth and the Moon (approximately 240,000 miles) is about one-third of a mile. Or that the distance between New York and Los Angeles is about twenty feet. Honestly, that’s how far off the mark this popular claim is. Although you would expect that no educated person in his or her right mind would believe in a 6,000-year-old Earth in the twenty-first century, in fact, many millions of otherwise-sensible people do because it’s a bad idea that thrives under the protective dome of some versions of some religions. Religious people who also happen to be pretty good skeptics, however, would easily identify problems with this claim and reject it. They would ask a few simple questions, note the convergence of so much evidence from astronomy, physics, paleontology, paleoanthropology, archaeology, botany, biology, and geology, and conclude that the Earth is obviously much, much older than 6,000 years. The end result would be a more enlightened person who still believes in his god or gods but is not clinging unnecessarily to a pseudoscientific claim that makes him less aware and less appreciative of the real world and universe he lives in.
Skepticism is good for everyone at all times. There should be no religious zones that are off-limits to asking questions and requesting evidence. Religious people are no different than everyone else in that they are confronted with lies and popular delusions every day. Sometimes this happens within the bounds of their particular religion. Hopefully believers will agree that all religions are imperfect because they are organized and led by imperfect human beings. Every religion has taken wrong turns somewhere in its past, and every religion has had some leaders who turned out to be underserving of their followers’ trust. For these reasons, it only makes sense for religious people to embrace and apply skepticism for their own protection.
Good skeptics do not claim to know with absolute certainty that all unusual and unproven claims are not true and could never possibly be true. A very important part of being a good skeptic is maintaining an open mind.
A good skeptic doesn’t stubbornly defend a rigid position against a weird claim. The goal is to base sensible conclusions on the best available evidence and arguments. If truth and reality were to translate to a world with ghosts, magic crystals, and vampires in it, then that is the world good skeptics want to know about.
Skeptics are often accused of being “against everything” when in reality it is only mistakes, delusions, and lies that they are opposed to.
It helps if skeptics can do more than just demand evidence when faced with an unusual belief. Try offering ideas that are relevant to the claim, a bit of historical context, some science, some insight into how the brain works, and maybe a good alternate explanation. Good skeptics encourage people to think critically about ideas; they dismantle bad beliefs, not believers.
