----------------------------------
>>>Skeptical Digest 20.3 (Autumn 2007)
----------------------------------------------------------------
--Please forward as widely as possible without spamming anyone--
----------------------------------------------------------------
>>>CONTENTS>>>
>>>Skeptical Stats>>>Dubious News>>>In this
issue>>>Administrivia>>>Skeptics in the Pub>>>

>>>SKEPTICAL STATS>>>
1. Total increase, per minute, of personal debt in Britain: 115 million

2. Increase in sale of "No. 7 Preserve and Protect" serum in the 24
hours after a Horizon episode reported that research from Manchester
University supported its claims to reduce wrinkles in aging skin: 2,000
percent

3. Days a cat survived without food or water, trapped in a crate of
motorcycle helmets travelling by sea from China to America: 35

4. Percentage of websites a May, 2007, Google study showed can infect
visitors' computers with malicious software: .01
5. Proportion of malicious websites press reports said that the Google
study found: 1 in 10

6. Number of children, many with no criminal record, whose DNA has been
stored without permission on the police DNA database: 521,901

7. Highest bid for 'Jon Malipieman', an imaginary friend for sale on
eBay, before the service deleted the listing: $3,062

8. Number of years of no-claims bonus recently lost by Britain's oldest
driver, 105-year-old Sheila Thompsons: 71

9. Number of counts the Advertising Standards Authority upheld against
the Reverend Peter Popoff over ads for "Miracle Spring Water" and
"Miracle Olive Oil" on the shopping channel Soap on Deal TV: 11

10. Percentage by which teens in a New York state study who watched
more than three hours of TV per day were less likely to graduate high
school: 82

11. Number of previous driving licence suspensions or revocations
Michael Wiley, a one-legged, armless man, had prior to evading Florida
police in a 100 mph car chase in the spring of 2007: 18

12. Height of the location of the world's highest swing, a viewing
platform on a 1,100 foot TV broadcast tower in China: 700 feet

13. Cost of a nine-inch origami Hanji-paper bull moose from the website
of expert folder Robert J. Lang: $800

14. Number of children of donors to the Nobel prize winners' sperm bank
profiled in the 2005 book Who's Your Daddy?: 30

15. Number of copies sold as of February 2007 of the Left Behind book
series, which imagines a contemporary Rapture: more than 43 million

16. Number of litres of water Americans use per day: 400 to 600
17. Number of litres of water most Europeans use per day, compared to
Americans: less than half
18. Proportion of the world's people who do not have the level of clean
water and sanitation services available 2,000 years ago in ancient
Rome: nearly half

19. Amount by which world primary energy consumption increased in 2005:
2.7 percent

20. Amount for which entrepreneur Gary Kremen sold the domain name
"sex.com" in 2006, after a 10-year legal battle to win it back after it
was stolen from him: $12 million
21. Amount the court ordered the conman who stole sex.com, Stephen
Michael Cohen, to pay Kremen: $65 million
22. Amount Cohen has actually paid: approximately $3 million in seized
real estate

23. Proportion of drugs sold in developing countries that is fake: 25%
to 50%

24. Potency of the frequently abused prescription drug Fentanyl
compared to heroin: 80:1

25. Number of countries in which governments block access to Internet
sites for political, social, or security reasons: at least 25

>>>DUBIOUS NEWS>>>

>>>Uri Geller recently offered to save Carlisle from an ancient curse
which causes floods, pestilence, and sporting humiliation (according to
Reuters, he offered to repurpose the city's "cursing stone" as a garden
ornament), but it seems he still had time for legal action against a
sceptical video posted to YouTube. Recently acquired by the Web search
engine company Google, YouTube is a site where anyone may post video
clips of up to ten minutes long, and millions do, anything from
highlights of 1970s tennis matches to self-filmed personal thoughts on
life. As you might expect, much of the material uploaded to the site is
copyright to someone other than the uploader, and since the Google
acquisition the pace of legal complaints has stepped up. Most of these
complaints come from large media companies like Viacom, which not long
ago followed up a failed licensing deal with a demand that all its
copyrighted material be removed from the site. However, according to
The Times, the latest workout of Geller's toned legal biceps focuses on
a short video featuring James Randi bending metal using sleight of hand
techniques. Geller is claiming he owns the copyright in ten seconds of
this video excerpt, taken from the 1993 TV programme Secrets of the
Psychics. Geller may have bitten off more than he realised. Suing
individual sceptics is one thing, but in straying into the field of
copyright claims he's taking on much bigger opponents. The Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF), a lobbying group focused on defending civil
liberties online and a staunch opponent of over-reaching copyright
claims, retaliated by filing suit against Geller for using "baseless
copyright claims" to stifle free speech. The crux of the issue is the
'fair use' (in the UK known as 'fair dealing') clause in US copyright
law which permits some limited use of copyright material for education,
criticism, or parody without the permission of the rights-holders. In
short, while it is questionable whether ten seconds of video footage
falls within fair use, silencing sceptical review on this basis may
similarly infringe the US First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
YouTube removed the video rather than risk prosecution under the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (1998). However, the EFF has posted
all the relevant documents in the case, on its website
(http://www.eff.org).

>>>It sounded like a glorified tour of Edinburgh's most 'paranormally
active' (and media-friendly) areas, but the third annual Mary King's
Ghost Fest (held 11-20 May, 2007) featured the world's first infrasound
experiments in an allegedly haunted location. The research, led by
Ciaran O'Keeffe of Most Haunted fame, complemented what the Ghost Fest
website described as the "hugely popular overnight vigils in the
shadowy Blair Street Vaults" and "Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP)
Workshops". Aside from the curiosity with which one might approach an
EVP workshop — perhaps they teach you how to create the phenomenon
after you die? — this experiment appears to be the most interesting
event. O'Keeffe and Steve Parsons, an investigator from the research
group Para.Science, were to play Pied Pipers, guiding the public
through the notorious underground network beneath Edinburgh's Royal
Mile. Along the way, Parsons would expose some of the visiting groups
to an infrasound stimulus created by his custom-built generator.
Because the generator operates at frequencies below 20Hz, the sound
should be below the range the human ear can perceive. The idea is to
establish whether, as O'Keeffe and Parsons' press release put it,
"infrasound could be the cause of feelings associated with paranormal
experiences or if such feelings truly are an inexplicable phenomena."
The release also claimed that this research is the first of its kind to
examine this question. The basis comes from the late Engineering and
Design graduate and 'ghost hunter' Vic Tandy, who in "Ghost in the
Machine", a 1998 paper published in the Journal of the Society for
Psychical Research, hypothesised that infra-sound of the order of 19Hz
might be responsible for many ghost sightings, as it closely matches
the natural resonant frequency of the human eye. Infrasound emitters
such as traffic, trains, thunder, and wind are now common in everyday
life, and infrasonic waves can carry over long distances with less
susceptibility to interference or disturbance than higher frequencies.
Testing Tandy's theory could, therefore, yield important and
interesting results. We'll keep you posted.

>>>Geeks everywhere were groaning at the BBC's Panorama programme in
May, when it ran "Wi-fi: a warning signal". In that story, Panorama
claimed that wi-fi – also known as wireless networking – was
potentially more dangerous than mobile phone masts. And it's in our
schools! And children have skulls that are immature and unformed! A
decade after people started worrying about mobile phone masts – during
which time all those same worried people bought themselves and their
children mobile phones – it's clearly time for the next Great
Technology Scare. The programme obliged with all the necessary
elements: a few scientists to say "We just don't know – so we're
worried"; an MP to accuse the government of complicity with industry in
ignoring the issue; a guy with a measuring device; and a miserable
victim (because apparently no one has told the producers of Panorama
that the plural of anecdote is not data). The victim in the case was a
woman who claims to be so sensitive to electromagnetic radiation that
she must shield her house with metal foil (helpfully supplied by one of
the programme's worry-mongers). We would point out that at heart what
wi-fi and mobile phones are is radios. The radiation they broadcast is
radio waves. Yes, the right frequencies and intensities of radiation
can be dangerous. But we've had radiation in the form of broadcast
media for some decades now. It only matters that wi-fi gives off three
times as much radiation as mobile phones (but much further from the
head) if that radiation is dangerous in the first place. Should we do
research into the long-term effects of the various types of radiation
we're surrounding ourselves with? Certainly. Should we panic on the
basis of a few vaguely ill people and rip out a technology being
embraced by millions because it's useful and functional? No. If we are
so concerned about children, shouldn't we be banning automobiles (which
kill 170 and seriously injure 4,000 every year), pollution (the WHO
found in 2004 that exposure to pollution or unsafe living conditions
kills 100,000 European children every year), or poverty (another 1,000
a year in Britain alone)? The BBC's own technology writers were
disgusted enough to publish their own critique of the programme on the
BBC website. We can only be grateful no one told the Panorama team that
wi-fi broadcasts in the same frequency band as microwave ovens.

>>>If there's one thing that's more galling than another, it's seeing
the limited public resources for health care spent on things like
homoeopathy rather than treatments with a sound basis of evidence. The
good news is that homoeopathy on the NHS is under increasing pressure.
According to The Times, more than half of English Primary Care Trusts
are now refusing to pay for homoeopathy or severely restricting access
to it, in part due to last year's letter from 13 scientists that
opposed NHS support of unproven or disproved treatments. Two
homoeopathic hospitals – Tunbridge Wells and the Royal London – are
being threatened with closure. An NHS report published at the end of
May concluded that what evidence there is to support homoeopathy is
"very weak" and "the evidence of cost-effectiveness is lacking".
(Clearly the evidence needs further dilution.) The report suggested
that PCTs should reduce their coverage or eliminate it entirely. The
biggest difficulty now may be convincing the public that this is a
question of ensuring that funding goes to treatments that work, not of
suppressing "consumer choice" or serving the interests of Big Pharma.

>>>IN THIS ISSUE OF THE SKEPTIC (20.3, Autumn 2007)

Features:
Psychics on eBay (Emma-Louise Rhodes)
Haunting the Bereaved (Mark Williams)
R. E. Ality Check: An Alternative Approach to Religious Education
(Damien Morris)

Columns:
Editorial (Victoria Hamilton and Chris French)
Hilary Evans's Paranormal Picture Gallery
Hits and Misses (Wendy M. Grossman)
Rhyme and Reason (Steve Donnelly)
Philosopher's Corner (Julian Baggini)
Sprite (Donald Rooum)
ASKE News
Letters

Reviews:
Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way we Think edited by
Alan Grafen and Mark Ridley
The Occult Tradition: From the Renaissance to the Present Day by David
S. Katz
Fakers, Forger & Phoneys: Famous Scams and Scamps by Magnus Magnusson
Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of
Beliefs by Lewis Wolpert

>>>SOURCES FOR SKEPTICAL STATS>>>
1 Credit Action; 2 Observer Woman; 3 Ananova.com; 4 Information Week; 5
Google; 6 The Register, 7 Metro, wwwfastlanetransport.ca; 8
Ananova.com; Advertising Standards Authority; 10 New Scientist; 11 New
York Post; 12 Gading.com; 13 www.langorigami.com; 14 Business Week; 15,
16, 17, 18 The New Yorker; 19 BP Statistical Review 2006; 20, 21 The
Guardian; 21, 22, 23 Sex.com, by Meren McCarthy; 24, 25 The Guardian

>>>ADMINISTRIVIA>>>
Thanks to this issue’s clippings contributors: Mark Williams, Sid
Rodrigues, the Wizard's Star List, Skeptic News. A special thank-you to
Sid Rodrigues, who persistently and indefatigably keeps filling The
Skeptic's blog (http://ukskeptic.livejournal.com) with news stories and
pointers.

Editorial and other e-mail to The Skeptic should be addressed as
follows:
Subscription inquiries: subs at skeptic.org.uk (please do not phone)
Letters to the editor: letters at skeptic.org.uk
Contributions for Skeptical Stats and Hits and Misses: news at
skeptic.org.uk
Book review section: reviews at skeptic.org.uk
Article ideas and other editorial queries: edit at skeptic.org.uk

Unsolicited commercial email is NOT welcome at any of these addresses.
E-mail one address ONLY. If you do not get a reply, it probably means
that our reply email bounced.

The Skeptic (UK) Digest is written by Wendy M. Grossman
(www.pelicancrossing.net) and e-mailed quarterly alongside published
issues of The Skeptic; there may be occasional additional mailings. To
sign up to receive the digest or to get off the list, visit
www.skeptic.org.uk/digest (we do not sell, give away, or rent the
e-mailing list).

The Skeptic is published quarterly. For details see www.skeptic.org.uk.
A free sample issue is available in return for a self-addressed stamped
A4 envelope. Subscriptions cost UKP15/year for UK residents. For
pricing and availability of back issues and non-UK pricing, see our Web
page or the back page of any printed issue. The Skeptic accepts payment
by credit card or by cheques in pounds Sterling drawn on a British bank
(sorry, but the banking charges for foreign cheques and postal orders
are impossibly high). The Skeptic is no relation to the (more recent)
American magazine or the (older) Australian magazine of the same name.

>>>ENDS>>>

>>>SKEPTICS IN THE PUB>>>
Skeptics in the Pub meets (usually) on the third Tuesday of every month
at 7:00pm at the The Penderel's Oak, 283-288 High Holborn, London WC1V
7HP (Nearest tube: Holborn and Chancery Lane). A £2 donation is
requested to cover the guest speaker's travelling expenses and
sundries. Non-skeptics welcome. Turn up at any time during the night.
Detailed directions, a list of upcoming speakers and a map of how to
get to the pub can be found at www.skeptic.org.uk/pub.

Tuesday 11th December 2007
Dr. Mark Vernon "How to be an Agnostic and Why it Matters"

Tuesday 15th January 2008
Nick Pope "The British X-Files"

Tuesday 19th February 2008
Paul Taylor "Why don’t creationists just shut up?"

The talk will be followed by informal discussion in a relaxed and
friendly pub atmosphere. Skeptics in the Pub is a regular evening for
all those interested in and/or skeptical of the paranormal, alternative
medicine, psychic powers, pseudo-science, UFOs, alien abductions,
creationism, Fortean phenomena, cult religions, water-divining, lost
civilizations, etc. Further information and mailing list announcements
available from pub ay skeptic.org.uk. Suggestions for speakers or
offers to speak are gladly welcomed.

>>>END ANNOUNCEMENTS>>>

You can contact the administrator at http://www.skeptic.org.uk/digest