We Apologise for the Inconvenience

It was meant as a light hearted nod towards US blogger PZ Myers and wasn’t meant to alienate anybody, but when The Skeptic Mag temporarily removed Susan Blackmore from their banner and replaced her with PZ Myers, it left me feeling quite uncomfortable and sad.

I do have a problem with the way in which women are under represented throughout skepticism – I created SheTalks to try and help remedy the problem (and according to the feedback the register is working despite still being in its early days). To see a reputable publication like The Skeptic Mag take the only woman on their banner down - even just for a moment, as a nod to comments made on twitter earlier that day, seems so dismissive and needless. I’m not sure what led to them doing so, or why PZ Myers highlighted earlier in the day via Twitter that he wasn’t there.

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New Statesman article by David Allen Green.

This week’s Private Eye has reported that highly successful “TV Psychic” Sally Morgan is “suing the Daily Mail for implying she is a cheat”. Sally Morgan strongly denies any wrongdoing.

However, it appears that Private Eye was incorrect in suggesting that a formal legal claim has already been commenced. Sally Morgan’s solicitor told me he has “made a formal libel complaint to Associated Newspapers, and [he] expect[s] instructions to sue for libel if the matter is not dealt with imminently”. This is a formal “letter before action” which is required before libel proceedings are issued, rather than an actual legal claim. It has been sent because Sally Morgan strongly denies any wrongdoing.

The Daily Mail has published a number of critical articles about Sally Morgan, including a scathing one by Jan Moir on 22 September 2011. In respect of those articles, Sally Morgan strongly denies any wrongdoing.

Science writer and former libel defendant Dr Simon Singh has suggested there is a better way for any allegations to be dealt with. He told me:

When members of Sally’s Dublin audience suspected she had an earpiece on stage, a group of us (me, Professor Chris French and Merseyside Skeptics) decided that the best way forward was simply to enable Sally to demonstrate her powers in a scientific experiment.

Is she really a psychic?

Can she really communicate with the dead?

We bent over backwards to create a test that would allow her to clear her name. Instead of accepting the challenge, Sally set her solicitor on to me, and I received a series of heavy legal emails. I don’t understand why Sally resorts to a libel lawyer, when her best approach to restoring her reputation would be to prove her abilities.

However, as many people tell me, you don’t have to be psychic to work out why Sally doesn’t want to be tested.

Whatever her reasons for not agreeing to be tested, it is clear that Sally Morgan strongly denies any wrongdoing…

I agree, the people making extraordinary claims should be  offering scientific evidence and scientific data not taking everyone who questions their “abilities” to court.

Ricky Gervais: Science doesn’t concern itself with the non-existence of something. The periodic table of imaginary things would be too big for a classroom- infinitely big in fact, and rather pointless. It’s not trying to prove the non-existence of anything supernatural. All it knows is there is no scientific proof of anything supernatural so far. When someone presents a jar of God it will test it. If it finds some evidence of “godness” it will follow the evidence till it knows everything it can….

Brilliant and touching article by Ricky

Dana Ullman mouthing off about a perceived disinformation campaign against homeopathy led by James Randi and Tracy Brown. (The Merseyside Skeptics Society also gets a mention.) Facts are not his strong point either.

According to her website, Sally Morgan is “Britain’s best-loved psychic”. She is certainly a very successful psychic – she has just released her third book and is currently filming the third series of Psychic Sally on the Road for Sky LIVING. But an incident that took place a few days ago…

Really just a very poor article on EHS by the BBC.  The described study is very poor, the article seems biased, there is very little skepticism and seemingly poorly research on the subject considering this:

There have been no previous studies that scientifically assess whether electromagnetic fields in the environment could produce human symptoms.

Is just not true. Below are the study which was cited in the BBC article (which they didn’t bother to link to) as well as two recent meta studies on the subject which took me about 5 minutes to find.

Here is the study cited by the BBC

ABSTRACT

Objective: We sought direct evidence that acute exposure to environmental-strength electromagnetic fields (EMFs) could induce somatic reactions (EMF hypersensitivity). Methods: The subject, a female physician self-diagnosed with EMF hypersensitivity, was exposed to an average (over the head) 60-Hz electric field of 300 V/m (comparable with typical environmental-strength EMFs) during controlled provocation and behavioral studies. Results: In a double-blinded EMF provocation procedure specifically designed to minimize unintentional sensory cues, the subject developed temporal pain, headache, muscle twitching, and skipped heartbeats within 100 s after initiation of EMF exposure (p < .05). The symptoms were caused primarily by field transitions (off–on, on–off) rather than the presence of the field, as assessed by comparing the frequency and severity of the effects of pulsed and continuous fields in relation to sham exposure. The subject had no conscious perception of the field as judged by her inability to report its presence more often than in the sham control. Discussion: The subject demonstrated statistically reliable somatic reactions in response to exposure to subliminal EMFs under conditions that reasonably excluded a causative role for psychological processes. Conclusion: EMF hypersensitivity can occur as a bona fide environmentally inducible neurological syndrome.

ABSTRACT

Objectives: The objectives of this study were to assess whether people who report hypersensitivity to weak electromagnetic fields (EMFs) are better at detecting EMF under blind or double-blind conditions than nonhypersensitive individuals, and to test whether they respond to the presence of EMF with increased symptom reporting.

Methods: An extensive systematic search was used to identify relevant blind or double-blind provocation studies. This involved searching numerous literature databases and conference proceedings, and examining the citations of reviews and included studies. The results of relevant studies were tabulated and metaanalyses were used to compare the proportions of “hypersensitive” and control participants able to discriminate active from sham EMF exposures.

Results: Thirty-one experiments testing 725 “electromagnetically hypersensitive” participants were identified. Twenty-four of these found no evidence to support the existence of a biophysical hypersensitivity, whereas 7 reported some supporting evidence. For 2 of these 7, the same research groups subsequently tried and failed to replicate their findings. In 3 more, the positive results appear to be statistical artefacts. The final 2 studies gave mutually incompatible results. Our metaanalyses found no evidence of an improved ability to detect EMF in “hypersensitive” participants.

Conclusions: The symptoms described by “electromagnetic hypersensitivity” sufferers can be severe and are sometimes disabling. However, it has proved difficult to show under blind conditions that exposure to EMF can trigger these symptoms. This suggests that “electromagnetic hypersensitivity” is unrelated to the presence of EMF, although more research into this phenomenon is required.

A meta study from 2010/11

ABSTRACT

For the last two decades, a large number of studies have investigated the effects of mobile phone radiation on the human brain and cognition using behavioral or neurophysiological measurements. This review evaluated previous findings with respect to study design and data analysis. Provocation studies found no evidence of subjective symptoms attributed to mobile phone radiation, suggesting psychological reasons for inducing such symptoms in hypersensitive people. Behavioral studies previously reported improved cognitive performance under exposure, but it was likely to have occurred by chance due to multiple comparisons. Recent behavioral studies and replication studies with more conservative statistics found no significant effects compared with original studies. Neurophysiological studies found no significant effects on cochlear and brainstem auditory processing, but only inconsistent results on spontaneous and evoked brain electrical activity. The inconsistent findings suggest possible false positives due to multiple comparisons and thus replication is needed. Other approaches such as brain hemodynamic response measurements are promising but the findings are few and not yet conclusive. Rigorous study design and data analysis considering multiple comparisons and effect size are required to reduce controversy in this important field of research. Bioelectromagnetics 32:253–272, 2011. © 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

A short rebuttal to Frank Skinner from the brilliant Mike Hall.

Yeah, God could have me tortured for all eternity for not believing in him but I wont anyway because then people will think I’m cool. *rolls eyes*