Apparently the anti-vaccination group SafeMinds, in association with Age of Autism (another abhorrent anti-vax group), is airing this PSA in select movie theaters in major cities. The PSA will be airing for one week starting on Thanksgiving. The PSA is expected to reach about 500,000 people.

Watch it and feel the sensible parts of your brain want to break out of your skull and choke the lady through the screen…

After watching this video I wanted to vomit in anger.

For those who might not keep up with all the anti-vaccination propaganda, let me tell just SOME of the reasons why this PSA is a load of crap:

• There is more mercury found in a tuna fish sandwich than in a vaccination.
• Thimerosal is not a poison. It is a preservative.
• Numerous scientific studies have been done and show that there is no harm to thimerosal in vaccines.
• Thimerosal and vaccines in general are not a danger to pregnant women… however THE FLU AND OTHER VACCINE PREVENTABLE DISEASES ARE!

Unfortunately this fear mongering will probably convince many people that vaccines are dangerous, and unfortunately this will put them, their children, and those around them at risk of sickness and death.

The claim that this sign is making has been debunked several times, but the terror of the exploding cellphones still permeates our collective consciousness. It is so salient in our high-tech culture that the Mythbusters had to tackle not once, but TWICE.

So why am I beating this dead horse some more? Well, first of all, a good friend of mine made a request that I blog about it, and secondly… as I was researching the topic I came to realize that this would be a good vehicle for teaching about how skepticism and critical thinking is a method. Let’s walk through the steps of researching this claim together.

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What is the claim?

The first thing to do when critically analyzing a claim is… you guessed it… identify the claim being made. I know, I know… I’m dangerously riding that line of insulting your intelligence. However, this step is very important. You can’t properly aim the laser of critical thinking if you don’t know what you’re aiming at. So here is the generic claim as I’ve seen it:

“Do not ever, EVER use your cell phone while you are pumping gas at a gas station. The cell phone can cause a spark that will easily ignite the gasoline fumes in the air, which will then cause a fire or explosion. A student in New York was burned when he was pumping gas and his phone rang; a spark ignited the gas when he answered it. In Texas, three workers were seriously injured in an oil fire that started because of a cell phone. These are actual instances investigated by fire and law enforcement officials. This is caused by static discharge easily occurring with intense levels of radio frequency emission. This is why most gas stations post a warning to motorists to not use their cell phones while pumping gas—it’s there for a reason!”

Analyze the parts of the claim…

The next step is to systematically break down each part of the overall claim into smaller claims that can easily be analyzed for fact or plausibility. This step has a lot of different approaches. Sometimes you would need to get your hands dirty and do your own science and testing, other times you can simply do secondary research (especially if it’s something for which there is a large body of evidence that already exists).

I am, of course, going to do this via secondary research. My feet are too tired and hands are too delicate to do my own testing right now. Oh, and I can’t think of any gas stations that would like their business to be potentially exploded.

– FIRST CLAIM –

There have been gas station fires and explosions that were caused by cell phones.

This assumption is never backed up by any evidence other than anecdotal newspaper reports of fires and explosions in gas stations. Some of the reports even include more anecdotal evidence of a person saying they reached for their cell phone just as the explosion occurred or the fire erupted. But can we really say those fires were caused by cell phones? What if the fires were caused by a small explosive charge placed inside the cell phone by a secret government agent or extra-terrestrial spies?

Okay… seriously… my point is that I find it hard to believe that we can pinpoint the cause of the explosion to be that of static electricity discharged by the cell phone. When fires are started by, let’s say, matches, or cigarettes, or gasoline, then there are ways for professionals to detect those sources or substances. What are the signs of a fire started by static discharge? I’m  not going to venture too far into the realm of pretending I’m an expert on the pathology of a fire. That’s not being a good skeptic. It just seems somewhat unlikely to me.

Even if we assume that the fire was caused by static discharge… why does it have to be a cell phone? There are a number of sources of static discharge. Maybe the guy just came from his grandmother’s house and she still has shag carpet. The likelihood of static causing a fire is another claim we will tackle in a moment.

The real problem that I have with these claims is that they are always supported by statements that tap into the argument from authority. Statements which suggest that since law enforcement and fire department officials have investigated it… it MUST be the indisputable truth. That just doesn’t sit will with me as a skeptic. I mean… law enforcement officials have been known to support the claims made by a psychic as evidence. Does that make it truth?

This claim gets a score of zero. It’s neutral. It doesn’t provide us any evidence whatsoever. Moving on.

–SECOND CLAIM–

Static electricity buildup can be caused by intense levels of radio frequency emissions.

There are actually a bunch of micro-claims being made here… but I don’t want to force you all to read a book.

The first thing to understand is that static electricity is NOT a buildup of electrons. This is a common misconception. Static electricity is caused by an imbalance of electrons and protons between two objects or environments. For example… when two objects are rubbed together (like a balloon and your sweater) the protons and electrons begin to separate. Imagine that all the electrons are jumping over to the balloon. This leaves the protons in your sweater all alone. This creates a negatively charged balloon (electron heavy) and a positively charged sweater (proton heavy). As these two objects are pulled apart they create an e-field (e for ELECTRIC!!) that surrounds them. This is why your hair gets pulled toward the balloon when you put it near your hair. The hair is attracted by the e-field.

What’s the point? These e-fields that cause static shocks when we touch a doorknob are made of extremely high voltage electricity. They can be from 1000 volts to 10,000 volts. Those numbers don’t mean anything to you? Those batteries you use to shock your tongue with as a kid? Those are 9 volts. Cell phone batteries have around 3 to 5 volt batteries. Suffice to say that the cell phone frequencies the antenna picks up does not produce the extra 995 volts.

This claim gets a negative 10 for having multiple false micro-premises.

–THIRD CLAIM–

Cell phones are capable of generating enough power (through radio frequency and battery power) that they can cause a static discharge.

Whoops…  it looks like I’ve already poked the necessary holes in this one. It looks like we don’t have much to worry about at gas stations. We can talk on our cell phones without thinking it may be our last conversation.

BUT WAIT!!

We can’t just quit yet. There are still people exploding and catching fire at gas stations across the globe. Many of these people are claiming that this happened when they reached for their cell phones or when they got a phone call… What’s the deal?

Where’s the plausibility?

Discharges caused by static electricity are definitely powerful enough to ignite gasoline fumes. We haven’t tried to debunk that. All we’ve done is show that those static discharges are the result of your cell phone ringing. However, the static shocks could be coming from somewhere else. But where?

When you are sitting in any environment you slowly begin to match the “charge” of that environment. So… let’s say you’re in your car. As you sit there you will begin to lose or gain electrons to match the charge of your car’s interior. Don’t worry too much about this. It happens everywhere. No harm. UNLESS….

Once you get out of your car you are entering a new environment. If the air around the gas pump you are standing is a different charge than you are, then you and the gas station will have an IMBALANCED CHARGE. Remember, that’s what causes static electricity. Now if you were to touch any sufficiently grounded object: like the car, the gas pump, or even your <dramatic music> your cell phone, then a static discharge of thousands of volts can be created. However, this can happen whether your getting a phone call or not. It has nothing to do with the phone itself. It would be the same if you touched a shopping cart.

The moral of this story? Just because it’s on a sign, doesn’t mean it’s true. Oh… and make sure that you touch the frame of your car and discharge those e-fields before the next time you pump gas. Especially if your pumping gas next to me. I’m not in the mood for being exploded.

You just fell victim to “The Gambler’s Fallacy”

The Gambler’s Fallacy, also referred to as the Monte Carlo Fallacy or the Law of Averages, is the idea that when you observe a series of random independent events that somehow the outcomes of these events will even out over time according to their probability.

Let me put it another way… Imagine that you are flipping a coin. You get heads. You flip the coin again and get heads. Now let’s say you flip the coin 5 more times and get heads every time. You’ve just gotten a result of heads 8 times in a row. If you had to make a bet as to what the next toss would be… what would you guess? The average person would have the gut instinct of betting on tails. But that’s wrong! Every time you flip that coin you have a 50% chance to get either a head or a tails. It doesn’t matter if you’ve gotten heads 8 times in a row or 100 times in a row. You are still just as likely to get a heads or tails on the next flip.

This is often referred to as the “Gambler’s Fallacy” because of how often this pops up on the thinking of gamblers. Casinos make a TON of money off of slot machines because players think that they’re about to break that losing streak. People will bet hundreds of thousands of dollars on someone they think has a “hot hand” because they have been getting lucky the past couple of throws. These concepts of “streaks” are the gambler’s fallacy at work.

You’ve got to remember… if an event is a random, mutually exclusive event (like a dice toss), then every time those dice are tossed the same odds exist.

That’s why I stick to poker.  ;)

Admittedly, this is a funny website. Atheists have no chance of being raptured, so they are in the perfect position to offer a service to those who may be raptured. Now you don’t have to worry about what will happen to fluffy when you get hand-picked to go straight to heaven.

While I could certainly write a whole post about this website (and perhaps I will), this isn’t what I wanted to talk about. This website got me to thinking about quack medicine. You see… this pet rapture business is similar. They are both making claims about services and situations that are highly unlikely to occur or be fulfilled. I know, I know… they aren’t exactly the same… but bear with me. The fact is that the No Pets Go to Heaven website made me think about it…

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about who is responsible for the lies, ills, and injuries that are committed in the name of alternative medical treatments like accupuncture and homeopathy. Do we blame the consumer who foolishly buys into the claims of energy healing and psychic surgery? Or do we blame the practitioner of the alternative medicine for fooling the patient? This can be a sticky topic to approach. However, it is an important question to ponder as we, as skeptics, often put ourselves in the position of criticizing the people in these situations.

The Patient’s Fault?

Many people like to place the blame on the consumer. Often the reasoning behind this is, “The customer was the one dumb enough to buy it.” “It’s not the practitioners fault the customer is so stupid.” “It’s not like they’re MAKING the customer buy it.” “The practitioner has a right to start a business and offer a service. If people are willing to pay for it… then that’s capitalism.” These arguments are usually capitalistic in nature. The idea being that when two people enter into an agreement, as long as both parties are being truthful, then there is no ethical or moral problem on the part of the service provider.

They also place blame in the hands of the consumer, because the service provider wouldn’t be able to offer those services if people weren’t willing to pay for them. So the practitioner is doing nothing but offering a service that people want. Basic capitalism.

Finally, many people simply say (especially when it comes to issues concerning your health) that the consumer has an obligation to educate themselves and be more prudent when picking treatments. If they are purchasing a service that doesn’t work… it’s because they haven’t educated themselves on their particular ailment.

Now that I’ve laid out some of the arguments for blaming the patient… let me tell you what I think.

It’s the Practitioner’s Fault.

Despite all of the arguments that the consumer should have known or that the consumer was willing to buy whatever quack medicine was being peddled to them… despite all of this we still have to place the at least the majority of the blame on the practitioner of these alternative medical practices.

The argument that “the patient should have known” is a ridiculous argument. This argument doesn’t work in regular medicine, why should it work in alternative medicine? If a patient goes to see a cardiologist for heart disease, then that patient is relying on the knowledge and expertise of that medical practitioner. We can’t expect every patient to have an appropriate level of medical knowledge to make their own informed decisions about how to treat their medical conditions. That’s why we pay doctors! They went to school to have that knowledge for us. We trust our health and our lives to these people, and consequently they are held to standards. When a doctor violates these standards they can suffer consequences which include losing their license to practice medicine.

But do we hold so-called “practitioners” of alternative medicine to the same standards? Of course not. However, patients still seek help from accupuncturists, homeopaths, energy healers, and many others. The saddest of these stories being when people forgo science-based medical treatments when they are facing life-threatening diseases and cancers. Instead people will often seek out alternative medicine. In the care of these alternative “practitioners” these patients often die.

Many argue that people have the right to seek the treatment that they want. Patients can choose to have psychic surgery. Patients can choose to seek out prayer healing. Patients can choose to undergo energy crystal therapy. Of course they can… But should the practitioners be allowed to advertise these treatments? Shouldn’t these practitioners be held liable for claiming to practice medicine?

We can hardly blame a desperate patient for looking for ways to cure their diseases when other science-based approaches haven’t worked. We have to place the responsibility into the hands of the practitioner.

Some would make the argument, “Well what if these alternative medicine practitioners truly believe in the power of what they are doing?” It doesn’t matter. As a person who offers alleged treatments for medical conditions, these people have an ethical obligation to make sure that they are educated in the ways their treatments work. They should be educated to the proper degree to be able to analyze the scientific literature. Doctors are required to go through a decade of schooling and medical training… But an accupuncturist needs a couple of months to be handed a certificate. However both will treat you for your cancer, heart disease, etc…

This disconnect is a problem. We can’t blame the patients. We have to blame those people who are dangling a golden carrot in front of these sick and scared people.

The Argument From Authority: or “Jenny McCarthy said so… it MUST be true!”

This logical fallacy occurs when someone tries to claim that a fact or argument is correct because it was said by a person who is typically regarded as an authority figure of some sort. Formally the fallacy can be shown this way:

• Person A makes claim C.
• There is something positive about A that causes them to be regarded as an authority figure in some way.
• Therefore claim C is true.

Anyone who has ever been a student of formal logic will see the problem right away. The reason that this is a fallacious argument is because the personal qualities of Person A have abso-stinkin-lutely nothing to do with the truth or soundness of any facts or arguments that they make.

An example of an Argument from Authority is when pilots are cited as rock-solid eyewitnesses in UFO sightings. It is often said that pilots spend a lot of time in the sky, they understand the capabilities of aircraft, and they are trained to be keen observers… so if a pilot thinks they saw an alien spacecraft… it MUST be true! What they fail to realize is that pilots are just as capable as everyone else of making illogical leaps in judgement, and the cognitive processes of a pilot are the same as everyone else. They can be fooled just as easily.

This fallacy is tricky. We do it all the time. We use this fallacy so often that we probably rarely realize we’re doing it. Think about it… When a politician cites the comments of some economist he’s appealing to an authority. When we claim that something is true because our professor in college told us so… that’s an argument from authority. However, the real reason this is such a tricky fallacy is… sometimes we just have to do it.

I can hear all the shocked and angry grumbles now, “Logical fallacy? Have to use it?! Absurd! Heresy!” Well it’s true… Especially as skeptics. We critical thinkers are often those people who take up the challenge of defending science and critical thinking. Well… we can’t all be experts in every scientific field, can we? Therefore… sometimes we have to use Steven Hawking as a source to give weight to our information.

We always have to be careful about the fallacy, though. Using Steven Hawking to claim truth in our argument about physics is still technically a logical fallacy. Just because Steven Hawking said it, it doesn’t make it true. It provides a certain amount of credibility to your argument, but it can never prove that you’re correct.

So stay vigilant my logical brethren. Don’t let anyone catch you in a fault of logic.

Do you have any logical fallacies that you’d like to see me explain on this blog? Let me know in the comments.

My wife and I went to the State Fair today and I got to thinking about fair games. Her and I talked about probabilities of winning games, how fun the different games were, and the general distaste with dealing with high pressure sales carnies.

So I wanted to ask you guys…

Logic School is going to be a weekly feature where I present a logical fallacy, describe what it is, and explain how it is used to fool others as well as ourselves. I thought about a few other names for this feature, but since the word “fallacy” sounds dangerously similar to “phallus” it kind of made “Fallacy School”, “The Fallacy Room”, or “Instructions on How to Properly Use a Fallacy” seem… uncomfortable…

I’m super geeked about this new feature. It’s not even the opportunity to teach other people about logical fallacies that gets me pumped. The most exciting part about this is the excuse for me to learn about logical fallacies myself and call it “research”.

I imagine the conversations with my wife will be like this…

WIFE:  ”Bobby, are you coming to bed?”

ME:  ”In another few minutes, sweety. I’m working.”

WIFE:  ”You’re just reading Wikipedia again, aren’t you?”

ME:  ”Yes, but it’s for research. My readers are counting on me! I can’t let them down!”

WIFE:  ”Oh Bobby! You’re so passionate and brave!”

This is, of course, only one of many possible outcomes.

Logical fallacies are a really great subject for any new or experienced critical thinker to study and keep up with. Knowing about the ways that we fool other people and ourselves keeps our wits sharp when we’re cutting through what’s truth and what’s fiction. We can also keep OURSELVES in check when we know these logical fallacies. Just because we are skeptics and enthusiasts of critical thinking does not make us immune to committing many of these fallacies ourselves.

Well I look forward to learning about these with you guys. The first on the list is going to be the “Argument from Authority”.

So do you guys have any that you are particularly interested in learning about? If you had to cast your vote to pick one fallacy that I will definitely cover, what would it be?

My hometown is in the news again! This time it’s not about the alleged brutality and racism of my former high school. Now the Berkeley County prison system is getting sued for the potential violation of human rights.

This morning I read on PZ Myers blog that Berkeley County in South Carolina  is being sued by the ACLU for the violation of prisoner’s rights. The lawsuit is based on prisoner complaints that began in 2008. Apparently prisoners in Berkeley County jails are not allowed to read anything other than the bible. Not only that, but they can’t receive ANY mail unless it’s a soft back copy of the bible sent directly from the publisher.

Way to go Berkeley County. Making me facepalm-proud to be from the bigoted lowcountry of South Carolina as usual…

Let’s go through the problems of this Berkeley County jail regulation one at a time. Oh, and let’s try to analyze this through our Lens of Critical Thinking, because obviously Berkeley County has misplaced there’s. Ours gives us plus 10 to our Make a Smart Decision roll.

Incarceration… What is the Purpose?

The first thing that we should do before deciding to take away the civil rights of a human being in jail is to consider why we are taking these rights away. Does taking away the right to free speech and access to education and news accomplish the goal of incarceration? Well to answer that we first have to figure what the goal of incarceration actually is.

Generally speaking, the goal of any sort of correctional facility is to CORRECT the behavior that is undesirable. This would be what we know as “rehabilitation”. I will tackle the profound problems with this stated goal later in the post, but for now let’s just go with this as the goal. If you restrict a person’s reading material to nothing but the bible, does this help us to accomplish the goal of correcting their behavior? Well let’s first look at what we CAN assume that it will do…

First, it will provide them with only the Christian bible to read. They will have nothing else to read. Now, I’m guessing that the assumption is that they will then be exposed to nothing but good moral teachings and salvation that the Christian bible has to offer. That’s a BIG assumption. What if the inmate decides only to read Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus. In those books he reads all about the wonderful violence God inflicts and also the cruel and immoral laws endorsed in it. He gets to read about the killing of those who work on the Sabbath, selling your daughter as a slave, the beating of slaves, and the stoning of gays. Sounds like great reading material to get you off to a good and moral start…

Now, I know that’s not the best argument. You could easily counter that and say, “Well what if the prisoner only reads the New Testament”. I’ll ignore the obvious flaws with the assumptions made there and just jump straight to the point… It is culturally insensitive to assume that the best and only choice of literature in rehabilitating somebody is the Christian Bible. Plain and simple.

Now what about the issue of keeping them from getting mail? They can no longer communicate with ANYBODY let alone their family. Is this the type of isolation that gets people to have a change of heart? Do people sit alone in a cell with their soft back bible and have a genuine change of heart? It’s the government equivalence of sending a criminal to time-out. Now let me ask you… when you were sent to your room for stealing a cookie from the pantry, did you honestly decide in that moment never to steal another cookie again?

Let’s move away from this angle. We could argue all day about whether or not this is even a logical regulation from a fiscal perspective… instead let’s talk about human rights.

Personal Freedoms

The reason that the ACLU is taking this case is because they claim that this is a violation of the prisoner’s basic human rights. Specifically they claim that these are rights guaranteed under the “Speech, Establishment, and Due Process Clause of the First and Fourteenth Amendments”, and they are doing this by “censoring and failing to deliver multiple copies of journals and books sent to detainees.” Many of these magazines and books are being sent to the prisoners by advocacy groups that are trying to empower the prisoners who may attempt to defend themselves in court. The actions of Berkeley County could force those detainees to be poorly prepared in court.

These people have a right to due process, and they  have a right to a FAIR trial in a court of law. This type of restriction makes it next to impossible for someone to be adequately prepared. How are they supposed to find out about people willing to represent them? How are they supposed to tell their story to the media? They are creating a cloak of silence, a virtual iron curtain, around these people… it practically guarantees their future in that prison.

Does Rehabilitation Even Work?

The data is not promising. There is research that suggests that rehabilitation programs CAN work, but only when done in a very specific way. Want to guess whether or not that way includes isolating prisoners from reading material other than the bible?

Time and time again individual studies as well as many meta-analyses of the prison system have shown that, in general, incarceration does not reduce the chances of repeat offenses. The statistics range from showing a 3% to 7% increase in repeat offense after release from a prison sentence. This seems to be entirely contradictory to the goal of imprisonment. By putting people in prison we are actually INCREASING the likelihood that they will commit another crime.

Why bring this up? Many argue that the best way to rehabilitate a prisoner is to lock them up in an empty cell with a copy of the bible and they’ll come out a new man. The evidence says it won’t happen. The evidence supports an approach where we target people at a high risk of repeat offense, attempt to address the causes of criminal behavior, and do this all with a Cognitive Behavior Therapy approach. Research shows that when these three principles are followed many detention centers can reduce repeat offenses by as much as 35%. A 35% reduction from science-based approaches sounds a lot better than a 7% increase from intuition and vengeance.

Religious Tolerance

Now how about the obvious problem with Berkeley County’s boneheaded decision? They chose the CHRISTIAN bible… This is a blatant lack of regard for people of other religious backgrounds. This is an oversight that really shouldn’t be made by a government body. Jewish, Islamic, and heck… even Wiccan criminals should have access to their religious texts as well. This doesn’t even mention the fact that there are NUMEROUS Christian religions with different bibles. Do they offer the Catholic bible? The Mormon bible? Or is it just the King James bible? I’m guessing the latter considering that’s it a South Carolina lowcountry county.

All in all this was a pretty bone-headed move on my County of origin. I still remain a proud member of the Southeaster United States, but it gets harder and harder to defend my part of the country when they make moves like this.

How do you guys feel about this controversial topic? I’ll see you on the comments page.

Tools:

- 1 wooden plank (a 2-by-4 is fine)

- Rope (the length will vary depending on whether you will use it to trace your circle or not)

- measuring tape (the big, long, flexible kind that comes in those big spools)

- A baseball cap (any hat with a brim on the front will do)

- A thick wire with a loop at the end. (I think a wire coat hanger works great for this)

Procedures:

Your wooden plank should be 2 to 3 feet long. Your going to use this to help you press down a lot of crop quickly and uniformly. You need to take your rope and attach it to both ends of the plank. The rope should be long enough so that you can stand on the wooden plank and still hold the rope with both hands at about waist height. The end product will look something like this.

This is going to be your main tool. Your trusty plank. This tool is used in a very very simple way. So simple that it’s difficult to put into words. I’ll try. Basically, you’re going to hold onto that rope and put one foot down on the plank. You’ll use your foot and the plank to stomp down the crop as you move. It pushes the crop down so uniformly that crackpot cereologists (aka: crazy people who study crop circles as a paranormal phenomenon) will claim that no human could have laid them out so perfectly. And then when you tell them you did it with your wooden plank, they will either call you a liar, or claim that you 2-by-4 is an ALIEN 2-by-4 with ALIEN TECHNOLOGY! Sweet.

Here’s a video showing some folks making a crop circle in England.

Now you could ge

t away with just making circles. If that’s all you want to do, then that’s all you need. You might need to throw in a tiny flashlight for help working at night.

Straight lines can get tricky. In fact, some self-claimed “experts” (as if there were some standard for becoming a crop circle expert) state that the incredibly straight lines are an indication that crop circles can’t be made by hoaxers. They claim that no human on the ground could make such straight lines of such incredible length. Well that’s just plan wrong.

This is where the hat and the wire loop come in. If you can attach a loop to the brim of a hat with a long stiff piece of wire, then you can do straight lines. You simply match the loop up with your eye, kind of like a cool sci-fi-esque targeting reticule, and you use that loop to target some landmark in the distance. This gives you a point of reference for making straight lines. You can see a picture here of  Doug Bower, one of the original pair of crop circle hoaxers, demonstrating the baseball cap and loop.

Planning

One of the other arguments made for the alien origin of crop circles is that the designs are far too complex to be made at such a large-scale at night, in the dark, as quickly as their made.

The designs are somewhat complex, but it really just boils down to simple geometry. Designs are made on a piece of paper using basic circles and rectangles as reference points. The design is then just blown up to the appropriate scale. It does take some planning, but once planned out it seems that it’s just a matter of getting as many people as necessary to pull it off quickly.

Here are some design schematics I found for crop circles.

Well, now that you know how easy it is to make a crop circle you can go out and make your own! Although… I wouldn’t suggest it. It is still illegal to trespass and vandalize on a farmer’s field. However, there are plenty of artists who will pay farmers for the destroyed crop so that they can freely make their crop circles.

I’ve never made a crop circle myself. So… if anyone wants to let me make crop circles on their field for free… I’ll TOTALLY do it! Or if anyone is planning on doing one of these legally I’d love to tag along!

“Bad Universe” is a show that is based around the idea of critically analyzing myths and claims of global destruction and catastrophe.  The show’s inspiration comes from Phil Plait’s book  ”Death From the Skies“.

I originally approached this show with some excitement, but a lot of caution. There are numerous shows on television that tackle the topics of world destruction and astronomical catastrophe. The challenge that “Bad Universe” had to tackle to keep me interested was, “How will this show do it differently?” Well good news everyone… The show is awesome. Pure and simple.

Phil Plait approaches the topics from a refreshingly skeptical position, and he approaches it with a giddy excitement that keeps me laughing and smiling the entire time. Many shows that present topics like alien invasions, meteor destructions, or other global disasters do so in a very sensationalist way. They often present the facts, tell us how we’re going to get smashed by a meteor with 100% certainty, and then speculate on what we can do about it besides running around screaming and joining space ship cults.

While, admittedly, I find these shows pretty entertaining, “Bad Universe” does things differently. For example, in the second episode that aired last night, Phil examined the idea of alien invasion. Instead of just reporting on the facts and then getting three or four experts to tell us how scary it will be or how stupid the idea is… Phil critically analyzes the claims. He’s a skeptic, and he shows it in this show.

One by one Phil presents the claims of alien invasion. Will we get attacked by alien space ships? Bacteria or viruses on board an asteroid? Robots? Then he does the skeptic thing… he analyzes the plausibility of these claims. He looks at the facts. How far would an alien have to travel? Is this possible? What about robots? Can bacteria even survive an impact with earth? Then he does my favorite part of the whole process… he let’s the viewer decide. Now this seems like a cop out to some people. It’s not. It’s the best critical thinking approach that could be done. Present the facts, analyze plausibility, and then ask the question back to the viewer. Beautiful.

I really love this show so far, and I urge people to check it out. However, I want to spend the rest of this post addressing a few of my skeptical comrades who are being grumpy sourpusses about Phil’s show…

To the Grumpy Old Men Out There

Ever since the first episode in this series aired I’ve been hearing a lot of complaints about “Bad Universe”, and I’m hearing those complaints echoed again after the airing of this episode. Many people are complaining that he doesn’t inject enough “science” into his episodes. Many complain that it’s just another Mythbusters style show full of explosions and jets. Some even complain that his math is not entirely accurate. Many skeptics around the community are tearing into “Bad Universe” simply because it doesn’t appeal to them as hard-core scientific skeptics.

I’ve got some news for you guys out there… and this might hurt your feelings a little bit… but… You are not the target audience of this show.

Now maybe I’m over-stepping my bounds here and making assumptions that I shouldn’t, but it seems to me that this show has the goal of reaching those people who are not astronomers and scientists and skeptics. This is not a show that is supposed to cater to the small group of people who already know this stuff. This show is trying to educate and inspire critical thinking. In my opinion, it does a great job.

In order to accomplish this goal some concessions have to be made to make the show more accessible to the general public. First, it needs to be pretty entertaining. That means less calculus and more explosions. Sorry… that’s just the way it is. I know some of us out there geek out and get giddy over derivatives and integrals… but we’re not the ones that need to be inspired.

Secondly, the show needs to be easy to understand. This means that sometimes you have to cut corners and say it will take around a year to get to Mars. Sure, it might be more like 260 days depending on the distance Mars is to the earth at the particular time of launch… but explaining the minutia will not help accomplish the goal of getting little 12-year-old Susie excited about using her telescope or studying physics.

After all… THAT is what we should be trying to do. We should be trying to recruit critical thinkers. When a company goes to a university and tries to recruit students as employees… they don’t bore them with 20 minute presentations on how much they match on a 401k. They tell them about how awesome and fun it is to work for their company. Well Phil made me feel like I was having an awesome amount of fun critically exploring the ideas of alien invasion. I’m sure a few high school students on the verge of choosing their college majors had just as much fun with me.

In short… “Bad Universe” is awesome, stop being such a curmudgeon, and Phil really needs to thank the Discovery editors for easing up on the “Holy Haleakala” this time.

What about you guys? Did you see the show? What did you think about it?