Positive Liberty

Michael Prescott may think he’s pegged me for a dogmatist:

Skeptics are always sure they know what is or is not nonsense. Kuznicki is no exception. “I know nonsense sells,” he fumes. “University presses, however, have certain responsibilities, including above all scientific rigor.” Skeptics are always telling other people how to do science, even though few of them have done any science themselves.

It’s a fair observation that I haven’t done any science. So I’ll call on some people who have: P Z Myers, what do you think of the gold leaf lady? Care to ask any of your colleagues at ScienceBlogs?

I sure hope he does. But in any case, one may very well recognize a flim-flam artist without being a master of high finance, and I think the analogy here is apt: One doesn’t need an advanced degree in science to recognize many forms of bad science or pseudoscience. All one needs is to know the general methods by which proper science proceeds.

More of Prescott’s objections discussed below the fold.

First, I think I should point out that, contrary to Mr. Prescott, I don’t always claim to know what is or is not nonsense. I keep a studied silence, for example, about theoretical physics, a field about which I know little, but in which there are likely some very important discoveries being made — but also in which there are probably a lot of very wrong theories, too. (I don’t even pretend to know which ones are which, but since many modern theories contradict one another, some of them have to be wrong.)

Basically I try to stick to common sense, and to retain a humble attitude when I can’t explain things myself. A showy, strident, I’m-smarter-than-you attitude comports badly with the unexplained. I found just this sort of attitude in the excerpt from The Gold Leaf Lady, and I think it’s a good first reason to be suspicious.

The skeptic prefers common sense not because the extraordinary never happens, but because it rarely happens, and because he knows that the human temperament tends to find just the opposite, and to see wonders where none exist. Human beings intuitively want to be on the verge of something incredible; we all want a life-changing experience of discovery; we want the revolution — and we want it now, too. But this is a dangerous instinct, and it leads down all sorts of blind alleys.

In its place the skeptic offers explanations that are plausible and efficient. He does not insist that he has any grand new systems to explain it all. Nor does he insist that no one can ever explain it all. Either one would be hubris. The skeptic takes the cautious middle path. He tests. He tries to repeat stuff. He shares evidence and tries hard to record everything he can.

The skeptic takes little steps, and he takes them seldom, and he deeply regrets having to venture away from the territory of common sense. Skepticism is often emotionally unsatisfying (witness the increasingly unhinged commenters at Prescott’s blog) but at least it saves one the trouble of having to believe many dozens of contradictory and impossible things all at once (again, witness the increasingly unhinged commenters at Prescott’s blog).

The true skeptic most certainly does claim to recognize nonsense — at times. At times: as when brass foil with recognizably industrial characteristics “somehow” materializes on a woman’s body. And as with the gold leaf lady’s other, even more absurd claims. Indeed, I was surprised to find myself faulted for failing to address them, when even a few moments of thought could provide obvious explanations. But such is the uncritical mind, always hoping for wonders.

So here are her other purported miracles:

She clairvoyantly detected the scent of some marijuana that had not yet appeared in an unsecured place, but that did appear there in the future. Come on people, this is ridiculous. This is so trivially easy to fake that I can’t even believe it made it into the book.

She supposedly helped in finding stolen goods. This though is quite easy when your confederate has stolen them. Let her consistently find objects hidden by independent researchers somewhere in a large public space, and then we will have some very strong evidence of a new phenomenon. Not until, unless an experiment of similar rigor can be designed.

She produced writing in medieval French although she is supposedly illiterate. A skeptic, however, knows that it’s also quite easy to memorize a four-line poem (an exotic-sounding “quatrain”), even if it’s in an unfamiliar language, and even if you’re illiterate. A skeptic also knows that poems in the style of Nostradamus are ridiculously easy to fake, since Nostradamus is widely published, and since much of his writing is ungrammatical nonsense.

So these are the claims we have to deal with in this case. You don’t have to be a dogmatist to think that the simplest explanation is the best here. Particularly not when faced with the alternatives. For the gold leaf lady, your choices are as follows:

a) Angels, ghosts, demons, aliens, or other supernatural beings put foil on her skin for reasons unknown. This is the first time in all of recorded history that they have done such a thing, and the foil just happens to look like the ordinary earthbound stuff. These angels/ghosts/demons/aliens told her about criminal activity happening nearby, since they care very, very much about U.S. laws against marijuana. They also help her to write a few lines in medieval French, which everyone knows is a perfectly impossible feat.

b) A unique and previously unknown chemical reaction is happening in the woman’s body. It produces foil with characteristics identical to the foil produced in a modern metal press. This process creates absolutely no other chemical changes to her body and virtually no physical ones. This is the first time in all of recorded history that the phenomenon has been observed. This process just so happens to render her olfactory passages so sensitive to marijuana that she can even smell it into the future. Oh, and she also writes in medieval French, which everyone knows is perfectly impossible.

c) She stuck foil on her skin when no one was looking. She or a friend aped some bad poetry from Nostradamus, which is not after all impossible. A friend planted some pot on the beach and told her about the stuff he stole.

Call me a closed-minded dogmatist, but until some really compelling evidence changes my mind, I’m going to have to go with c). It’s by far the least improbable. It’s not a certainty, but any claim to the contrary is going to have to face some pretty strict standards of evidence. I found them wanting in the excerpt I read. The skeptic believes that great claims require great evidence. The evidence for this woman’s abilities only occasionally rises to the level of intriguing.

Also, I find it pretty telling that our test subject refused a strip search by an impartial observer. As one of my commenters noted, Katie’s near-Victorian concerns for modesty could easily have been addressed in a dignified and professional manner: If we really are on the verge of discovering angels/ghosts/aliens/the astral plane/some wacky new biochemistry, then one might think that modesty could be set aside, perhaps for a few seconds at least. But no! Modesty is just too, too important, and only a friendly doctor can be consulted.

I have to assure you that I’m sorry to rain on your parade. I know which world you’d rather live in. You’d rather have the spirits, and the unexplained mysteries, and the sense of wonder. It’s a gripping and even a beautiful vision of the universe. Yet it just takes too many clunky improbable ad hoc new hypothetical phenomena to make it work. And all of them are centered on this one woman who curiously doesn’t like submitting to scientific examinations. Doesn’t that strike you, even a little, as suspicious?

I’ve been accused of a number of further omissions of fact, so I’ll deal with all of these in turn:

Kuznicki does not mention the strenuous efforts made by Braude to prevent sleight of hand.

Braude’s efforts could not produce even a single clearly videotaped occurrence of the materialization. From all I can tell, the studies ran as follows: When he didn’t make strenuous effort, the foil appeared. When he tried to record everything, the foil did not appear.

He does not mention that Katie was strip searched by a doctor before each session, and that the sessions were videotaped.

A friendly doctor, and always the same doctor. And see above, regarding the videotape. The videotaped sessions never once showed the foil clearly appearing on her skin. The fact that the sessions were videotaped is evidence in my favor, not in hers, and it sort of boggles my mind that I’m faulted for omitting it.

He does not mention that large quantities of foil were found under Katie’s shirt – quantities too large to have escaped detection in the search, and too extensive to have been applied by sleight of hand while the camera was running.

How large is too large? Is this a measurable quantity? Or are you just saying that you personally can’t explain it?

There are lots of things out there that I, personally, cannot explain, including my computer, my car, and my toaster. But I don’t pretend that the explanations do not exist, or that some mysterious power is treating our world as its plaything every time I heat up a bagel. When I can’t explain something, I don’t conclude anything fundamental or metaphysical about it. This would be to proceed from ignorance. (And to tell the truth, given how easy many sleight of hand techniques are, it’s not even a very well-founded ignorance.)

No, my guess is that “too large” is an amount of foil in inverse proportion to one’s willingness to believe in angels, ghosts, aliens, or other wildly improbable explanations. Or perhaps in inverse proportion to your desire to think yourself superior to all the pedestrian skeptics. Sure, it may well be hard to explain the foil using sleight of hand. But sleight of hand is still a likelier course than all the rest. So, well aware that I may be wrong either about the details or about the overall explanation, I still say that c) above is the best hypothesis.

He does not mention that Katie is not a professional psychic, earns no money with her abilities, shuns publicity, and seems embarrassed and annoyed by the phenomena.

Prescott, meanwhile, does not mention that one need not be a professional psychic to be a full-time fraud. He doesn’t mention that money is not the only motive for the fraudulent, and he doesn’t mention that Katie is hardly shunning publicity, whatever she claims to be doing. I mean, getting published by a university press? Yeah, she’s really shunning that publicity.

He does not mention that Braude discussed the case with a professional conjurer, who said that manipulating the foil by sleight of hand would be extremely difficult because of its “clingy” qualities.

“Extremely difficult?” Is that the best you can do? How easy is it to summon brass foil from the astral plane? Or out of the pores of your own skin? I’m guessing that these other alternatives are well beyond “extremely difficult.”

Again, this is a very, very important concept to grasp: It’s not about whether the prosaic explanation would be difficult. It’s about whether the other explanations would be even more difficult. Paranormal explanations are in this second category, as are all new biological or physical phenomena that have never been encountered before, at least until they can be properly recorded and, if possible, replicated.

He does not mention the attempt by another conjurer to duplicate the phenomenon – an attempt that reportedly failed.

Aha — here we have proof! Because one person couldn’t duplicate the phenomenon, it must be unexplainable! By this standard, nearly everything would be unexplainable. Truly, we live in a mysterious world.

Oh and one more thing. Prescott reads a great deal into my failure to mention the name of Ulrich Mohrhoff, the reviewer who seemed to agree with the book’s paranormalism. Prescott writes:

Now, it’s a safe bet that most readers, gauging the scientific expertise of an unknown blogger against that of a leading quantum physicist, would put their money on the physicist. Which is perhaps why Mohrhoff must be made a nameless unperson. If he were identified, Kuznicki’s conclusions would suddenly look a lot less authoritative.

I hereby apologize for failing to name Mohrhoff. He was an unknown to me before this exchange, and I did not think that his name was particularly important.

Nor is it particularly important that some individual scientists have believed in the existence of paranormal phenomena. Their isolated belief does not create any obligation on my part to believe likewise. Scientists too may believe something for unscientific reasons.

Me, I’ll always trust the method, not the man: That a given scientist believes in the reality of the gold leaf lady does not make the prosaic explanation any less likely. It’s still by far the likeliest of any on the list. Let the scientific community as a whole review the evidence, and let’s proceed from there.

So as I mentioned above, I’ll ask some other scientists to read The Gold Leaf Lady, read my response, and then read Mr. Prescott. I’d really like to know what they think.

So… PZ Myers, I call on you! Please feel free to bring this to the community at ScienceBlogs and let me know what they think.

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