Pseudoscience

I recently finished reading a curious book called "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character. It’s a collection of memories and funny stories by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, who tells about all kinds of things: from fixing radios as a child, over his involvement in developing the atomic bomb, to his many adventures with beautiful blondes – the typical life of the average academic, quoi. (Not.)

Now if there was one thing Feynman couldn’t stand, it’s pseudoscience. In his last chapter of the book, he explains why:

During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that a piece of rhinoceros horn would increase potency. Then a method was discovered for separating the ideas--which was to try one to see if it worked, and if it didn't work, to eliminate it. This method became organized, of course, into science. And it developed very well, so that we are now in the scientific age. It is such a scientific age, in fact that we have difficulty in understanding how witch doctors could ever have existed, when nothing that they proposed ever really worked--or very little of it did. But even today I meet lots of people who sooner or later get me into a conversation about UFOS, or astrology, or some form of mysticism, expanded consciousness, new types of awareness, ESP, and so forth. And I've concluded that it's not a scientific world.

On the one hand, it’s really quite fascinating to see that Feynman reacted so heavily against pseudoscience because of his unshakable belief in science itself. On the other hand, it’s quite tragic that what Feynman complained about decades ago (the above was written in 1974), still applies today.

Indeed, it’s tragic how much pseudoscience is still around these days. One very clear example of this is what is known as post hoc ergo propter hoc. Confusing an event that preceded another event with one the cause of the latter event. Indeed, only today there was a very clear example of this kind of mistaken logic in the papers.

Four hours of sport a week reduces your chances of having a burn-out by half the article in question said. An Israeli study had studied workers for nine years and observed that the more people did sports, the less their chances were of getting a burn-out. Ergo: doing sports prevents a burn-out.

But this is faulty logic. It’s not because event A is followed by (post hoc) event B, that event B is caused by event A (propter hoc). It’s not because you do sports, that you don’t get a burn-out; just like it’s not because you don’t do sports that you do get a burn-out. Think about it. Isn’t it much more logical that people who exercise for four hours a week have energetic personalities and are therefore (either genetically or psychologically) less prone to get a burn-out anyway? At the very least the Israeli experiment does not prove that exercise is the cause of the lack of the burn-out.

The same is true for all the alcohol versus life expectancy research. Every so often there is a study that proves that one or two glasses of beer or wine a day supposedly makes you live longer. Indeed, when you observe a bunch of people, those who drink moderately tend to live longer than those who don’t drink at all. But that doesn’t prove that moderate drinking is the cause of living longer. Isn’t it more likely that most people who drink moderately probably live an easier, a funner, in short a happier life than those who never touch a drop of alcohol? And happy equals less stress equals less cardiovascular disease. But if you’re happy because of another reason, like through having a rewarding job, a good family life, etcetera, I’m sure it’s just as beneficial for your life expectancy. So it’s happiness that makes you live longer, not alcohol.

After all, Feynman stopped drinking very early on in his life and he lived to be 70, which was exactly the life expectancy of a male at the time.

Aha!

Pod-heads (6)

It seems like our jobs finally got a grip on this blog. I am not just speaking for myself when I say that Fred's output has been on the low side lately, and this is all because we were too busy working. I wish I could say we were too busy having a life, but that would be a bit of a stretch. We're fighting deadlines, working ourselves through piles of papers and spending (way too much) time in front of - luckily enough - eager students. 

In times like these, when planet Fred seems to be in orbit around the bright sun called our job, I tend to spend time with the usual suspects when looking for comfort: food, friends and erhm... music. Damned, where are the adjectives starting with d- when you need them? Aha! Here. Let's make it fantastic music then. And now that the days are getting longer, as opposed to my shorts (at least during the weekend, damned you ink on the calf), I tend to scroll to the albums listed under 'punk' in my iPod. 

And there, we can find one of the bands that has always been one of my favourites: Pennywise, a Californian punk rock band named after the clown in one of Stephen King's novels. I have a particular liking to this band, because I once shared the stage with them. Well, let me explain: the first time they played at Pukkelpop (2003, if I am not mistaken), they invited people on stage during what is probably their biggest anthem (Bro Hymn, also known as the "Oooh, o-o-o-ooh, oooh, oo-o-o-ooh"), and this Fred was one of them. Jumping up and down, pointing my finger in the air, singing along, enjoying the view: thousands of youngsters moshing around in a giant circle pit. 

Today, I decided to post another Pennywise favourite. As a finger of your choice for everything that prevents you from doing whatever you want to do, because time doesn't permit. Or just because it rocks. Shorts or no shorts...

The wonders of the world

You know us by now. We Freds wonder about stuff. So here’s a few more things I can’t get my head round.

1) Some weeks ago I passed through Ghent’s busiest shopping street while it was close to zero degrees outside. At once I was reminded of something that has puzzled me forever: why the hell are fashion and shoe shops allowed to keep their doors wide open all the time? You can actually feel the wasted heat against your cheeks as you pass by on the pavement! How much energy and money could we save just by shutting the door like mum taught us to?

2) A while ago my car battery was dead. When I had finally found someone who had jump cables, he wanted to listen to the sound the car made first. He knew cars; so he would  be able to tell if it was a mechanical thing, not an electric one. I put the key in the ignition, turned it and voilà, the car started no problemo. Crap, just bothered someone for no reason. But why is it every time something is broken it miraculously fixes itself once the expert has shown up? Think plumbing, toilets, computers, phones and such. Only to break when the expert has left…

3) Also: why do we still have announcements in our railway stations? You know, those announcing stupid stuff like The train for Brussels is arriving at platform 2. First of all, in 99% of the cases, you’ll hear this several minutes before the train arrives. (That just gets me nervous.) Secondly, the volume is usually louder than shit. (I want to listen to my iPod, dude!) And thirdly, it’s not as if I don’t know where to go if I didn't hear these messages. I mean, either you look it up on the Internet or you look at the giant screen in the entry hall, or at the television screens in the corridors, or at the screens on the platforms themselves. We don't need an uninterested woman’s nasally drone announcing which train is arriving or (more often) delayed. (We saw the red +5, thank you very much!)

4) And the most frightening thought: today I realised that I have no idea when the last time was I swam. Suddenly I wondered: on average, how long until you forget how to and drown? 

Holy crap! 

Hide and seek

Almost two weeks ago, a sperm whale was found stranded on the beach in Knokke-Heist, a small town along the Belgian coastline. It goes without saying that it was obviously found: sperm whales don't really qualify as excellent creatures to play hide and seek with. Especially not when compared with the reigning world champion, a dwarf chameleon living in Madagascar. It's only fair to add that this tiny creature (growing at a maximal length of 30 millimeters, from snout to tail) must have had access to a decent manual on basic hide and seek strategies (damp rain forests are somewhat better than stretches of beach, when plotted on a degree-of-shelter scale), but still: unlike the sperm whale, it took scientists up to a few days ago to discover this peculiar reptile...

As always the stranding of a sperm whale, the biggest mammal known to men - unless there is a creature playing hide and seek to perfection, lead to a bunch of newspaper articles and buses of disaster tourists, staring at zealous biologists cutting the carcass into pieces for further investigation. That, and energy production: the creature will be recycled, in the sense that its body fat will be converted into renewable energy. As a matter of fact, 12 and a half tonnes (roughly half of its total weight) of biomass can produce the equivalent of what 14 families consume in the span of a whole year!

By far the most heart-warming piece of documentation, was an interview with the family of Theofiel De Groote, after whom the sperm whale was named. This man had a name that rung like a bell, even before the unfortunate creature beached itself. Unless you weren't part of the fishermen community in Knokke-Heist, that is, as he was a famous shipowner often setting sail to Iceland. Theofiel passed away in 2010, leaving behind his wife Simonne who declared to be proud that the whale was named after her late husband. I found that rather sweet, especially because it had a rather unconditional air to it. I mean, for all we know this mammal could have been the dork amongst the sperm whales. It's not that I want to ruin the party, but Theofiel De Groote may have been bullied around at Whale School, because he was too fat (don't worry Theofiel, your additional biomass will serve a great purpose) or because he had a strangely shaped head (don't worry Theofiel, your cranium may serve as the topic of a rather mystifying PhD-thesis). As a matter of fact, Theofiel's stranding along the Belgian coastline may have been a final attempt to finally find peace and quiet. In which case his solution, beaching itself in Belgium, can hardly be called a bright solution - can it?

If I ever happen to reincarnate as a bullied sperm whale with a disfigured head and a rather strong inclination towards suicide, I would at least find myself a nice stretch of beach in the Caribbean Islands; being mourned over by a bunch of half-naked locals - trying everything they can to keep me alive, splashing coloured cocktails and lukewarm ocean water over my body, feeding me shrimps from the BBQ, playing chilled reggae tunes to relax me - doesn't seem that bad to me. So yes, I thought the interview with Simonne was heart-warming: after all, who knows how the underwater world thought about what will forever live on as a whale in our minds...

Air cats

Yesterday I was in a bar with Fred and his girlfriend. As per usual the conversation meandered in all kinds of directions, until we hit one of my all time favourites: animals. Fred’s girlfriend mentioned that she found it strange that in Dutch we have a product called ‘WC-eend’ (Toilet Duck – I’ve complained about it before), which should really be called ‘WC-swan’ (Toilet Swan) if you think about it. Indeed, the bottle looks much more like a swan than a duck.

Which brought me to the following thought. There are actually loads of animals that have funny names in the sense that they don’t look like the aninal they’re named after. Especially sea animals, it seems.

Oh sure, there’s a sea spider or a sea horse which do look like spiders or horses, but there are others that just don’t make any sense to me.

Like the different kinds of seal-like creatures – you know, those slippery bastards with big snouts and whiskers that shout ‘uh uh uh’ all day and used to stink up your local Aquaworld. They have the most funny names like sea lion, sea cow and even sea bear or sea elephant!

But I don’t get it. What kind of biologist was observing this animal:

and thought to himself: “That kind of looks like a bear! That’s it, I’m gonna call it a sea bear!"? Didn’t it cross his mind that it would be pretty confusing to have a sea bear if we already have a polar bear, which is basically a bear that (partly) lives in the sea?

I mean, it’s almost as if we were out of inspiration when it came to giving names to the sea animals. Instead of inventing something new we just said. Okay that’s a sea eal, that’s a sea spider, that’s a sea turtle, that’s a sea snail. There’s no end to it!

Imagine we’d done that to birds? Look, son, there’s an air cat:

   

Lazy biologists.

Movie of your life

I had a near-death experience the other week. Not in the true sense of the word, as I wasn't actually floating through the peaceful passageway usually mentioned by people who were clinically death for a while. I didn't see the blinding white lights, nor was I weightlessly hovering towards an eternity of rice pudding in golden bowls with matching spoons (which never appealed to me anyway: I'd rather settle for more copious portions of food, even if these are served in dog bowls and meant to be eaten with my hands tied behind the back). 

So what happened? I wanted to cross the street, one of these streets that doesn't have a traffic light telling you when to go, but for some strange reason my brain told me not to do so. Luckily enough, because the next thing I knew a crazy bad-ass wanna-be rally-driving nutcase raced past my nose. Leaving me gasping, and wondering what could have been no longer. This wasn't the first time something like this happened to me, and the same interesting question crossed my mind: exactly which part of the brain is it, that does this useful trick? I don't know the answer to this riddle (intuition? pre-historic instincts?), but I do know that I felt happy to (still) be alive. Because despite the fact that I am looking forward to seeing the movie of my life (Who will play me? What genre will it be?), I'm not ready for it yet. 

The incident also made me wonder: what did people expect to see when they passed away before the advent of moving images? The play of their life? Just imagine watching the story of your life in a Shakespearian version. Or as a traditional Indian Sanskrit drama performance - the horror... Nothing against drama obviously, but I'd prefer to be able to press pause every once in a while (getting more beer from the fridge, cutting more cheese cubes, going for a little wee), or skip certain passages forward. And backwards, for that matter. 

At least this explains why people claiming that eternal life awaits after we die, are actually right: after all, we will end up watching ourselves, watching ourselves. Ad infinitum. 

Why I don’t like pie

This morning, as I was fumbling with the three digit number lock for my bike and as I later read some tweets about Valentine cancelling itself out this year (14-2-12=0), I was reminded how much numbers matter in our lives.

For me, however, this has always been the source of much frustration. Indeed, if it had been invented back then, I’m sure I would have been diagnosed as a child with at least a mild form of dyscalculia. I remember having to sit through hours and hours of extra math lessons just to be able to do basic sums and even today I struggle. Honestly, I cannot do something like 15+7 immediately. I have to split it up in 15+5 and 20+2. I’m also notoriously bad at mixing up stuff like 97 and 79, thanks partly to the confusing Dutch system of saying zevenennegentig and negenenzeventig. (Even as I wrote this down I noticed that I had confused them).

Later on my dyscalculia developed into a very apathetic relationship to numbers in general. For instance, for someone who likes history it didn’t help, I’m profoundly uninterested in dates. I always needed a little trick just to remember them, like 1798 for the French Revolution. But the Battle of Marathon (490 BC) or the one at Actium (31 BC), two of the most iconic dates of Ancient History – a subject I took at university –, will be forgotten almost as I’m writing this down.

The trouble is numbers don’t mean anything to me. Which is a pain in the ass. I mean, there are phone numbers to remember, credit card codes, locks, birthdays, licence plates (I think mine ends in 927 but honestly, I’m not sure), and so forth. So every so often I get into trouble. Like that morning this summer when I woke up, turned on my cell phone and realised I had suddenly forgotten my PIN code. So I tried once, I tried twice and I tried three times… And then you need a PUK code, in the middle of France, in a hotel, at 6 o’clock in the morning. At which point you yell something that rhymes with PUK…

It has always puzzled me why I am so bad with numbers. The only explanation I can think of is that there are too few numbers. Indeed, there’s only 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and all the rest are combinations of those signs (I have no place in my life for i, e, or π). At least with things and feelings and places and people there are loads of words! And I’ve never had any trouble remember those.

But with numbers, it’s all the same to me. When I use words there is a certain darkness to black and a certain brightness to white (try it, don’t you agree?), but there’s no Constantinopleness to 1453 (The Fall of Constantinople, in my world also dated 1345 or 1354) and 3,14 has nothing to do with pie for me.

Which reminds me. When I was thirteen, I went to a summer camp in Switzerland where one of the guides was an engineer. He was fascinated with numbers and one day even boasted: ‘I can recite π up to 100 digits after the 3!’. At which point a friend of mine, nowadays a paratrooper and in the army’s special forces, replied: ‘So?’.

Quite.