The Skeptic Canary

Did we land on the Moon? Yes. Yes we did.

I’ve just spent the last hour launching a furious diatribe on Twitter having sat through one of the worst pieces of television it has ever been my misfortune to witness. Channel 5 have just broadcast a “documentary” (and I use the term very loosely) asking “Did we land on the Moon?”. They trotted out the same tired old arguments, let me just run through a few of them:

• How could the flag fly if there was no atmosphere? – They had a pole running through the flag
• How come shadows appeared at different angles? – Perspective. The moon is quite big.
• How could they have used those chest-mounted cameras? – They practised before they went.

I could go on, but pretty much every Moon hoax conspiracy has been debunked many times on clavius.org. However, this program went far beyond the usual shite, and got pretty damn sickening. In 1967, the Apollo 1 mission ended in tragedy when three astronauts (Gus Grissom, Edward H. White and Roger B. Chaffee) died in a cabin fire. A terrible accident? Not according to the documentary. They went so far as to ask if the three astronauts could have been killed because they “knew too much”. Unbelieveable. I find that this kind of lazy sensationalism an afront to the memory of those brave, pioneering heroes.

I also find it incredibly distasteful of Channel 5 to broadcast such a shoddy and morally bereft program about the Moon just days after the death of Patrick Moore. If you really want to watch “Did we land on the Moon?” the page for the program on Channel 5′s website can be found here. There is talk on Twitter of complaining about the program to Ofcom. I don’t know what the grounds for complaint would be but I will certainly consider it.

At least Brian Cox has the right idea.

Oh for gods sake why have channel 5 conspired to fill my timeline with nob ends. #yeswelandedonthemoonyoufuckwits

— Brian Cox (@ProfBrianCox) December 12, 2012

Last week I had the privilege of being a guest host on the Greater Manchester Skeptic Society’s podast “Just Skeptics”. I had a blast recording it, and it’s a really intereting show covering Vitamin K injecions, Police and Crime Commissioners, Nadine Dorries’ appearance on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, and Donald Trump’s meltdown on Twitter following the US Presidential elections. My own contribution was a quick quiz from wisdomofchopra.com and a chance to enthuse about Brass Eye. Enjoy!

• Just Skeptics episode 28
• wisdomofchopra.com
• Brass Eye on 4OD

It’s Halloween, which means that the results of the Merseyside Skeptics Society’s Halloween Psychic Challenge are out! Not surprisingly, the test found no evidence of psychic ability. The guys have done a great job with the publicity, even getting an article on the BBC News website!

This week has also seen the Good Thinking Society announce the shortlist for it’s very first “Golden Duck” award. I talk about both the MSS Psychic Challenge and the Golden Duck award nominees in my latest car vid, enjoy!

This weekend, the Merseyside Skeptics Society held their annual Halloween Psychic Challenge at Goldsmith’s College, London. I think the challenge is a great idea, and I for one am eagerly awaiting the results on the 31st. However, some aren’t so keen, and have had a bit of a dig at the society and skeptic societies in general. I’ve made a car vid talking about these concerns. Enjoy!

The other night a group of us went out in Liverpool to celebrate my immenent 30th birthday. I had a great time and I’d like to thank everyone who turned up! Andrew Johnston, the Merseyside Skeptics Society board member we affectionately refer to as “AJ” (pronounced “Adj”), came up with a skeptic-based drinking game that was great fun to play, so I thought I’d share the rules to it here so you can play it with skeptics where you are. I’ve tweaked the rules a little, simply because AJ’s rules were quite specific to myself, so here we go:

It’s a varient of the “name game”, where each person in turn has to say a name where the first letter of the first name starts with the first letter of the last name that the person before said. You have to think while you drink, and if you can’t think of a name you can pass but you have to drink. If someone says a name where the first and last name start with the same letter, the order changes. In our skeptics version, the names you can say are skeptics, scientists and anti-skeptics. Here’s the twist: if someone says a name and one of the players has been blocked by that person on Twitter, then everyone has to drink! So, here’s an example:

• James Randi
• Richard Dawkins
• Dan Dennett (change order)
• Dana Ullman (everyone drinks!)

We were getting a bit desperate at one point, allowing “Heinrich Himmler” as an anti-skeptic! Still, I had fun with this game, so why not give a go? Enjoy!

I’ve been experimenting with “in car” videos, where you record yourself speaking about something while driving. I’ve been inspired by Matt Dillahunty, so I thought I’d give it a go. The first video is about Internet comments, let me know what you think!

Today at the appropriate time of 10:23am, tickets for QED 2013 go on sale! QED is a two day convention of science and skepticism taking place at the Mercure hotel in central Manchester on the weekend of April 13th 2013. The last two QEDs were absolute blasts and I’m sure things will be no different in 2013. What’s more, full price tickets are just £99, and students can attend for £59, a total bargain!

I’ll be standing by with my credit card and finger over the F5 key at 10:23 today, as I don’t want to miss out on the dinner, which sold out within about a day last time. Hopefully many of you will be doing the same!

www.qedcon.org

I wanted to bring people’s attention to a worrying study on acupunture, in part by written by researchers from my old alma mater, the University of York. The study itself is a meta analysis of 29 randomised clinical trials of acupuncture in back pain, neck pain, headache, and osteoarthritis which comes to the conclusion that acupuncture is effective for chronic pain and is suitable as a referrel option. I think the study suffers from certain biases and the conclusion reached by the authors is simply not supported by the evidence presented, but rather than give a detailed examination of it myself I shall recommend Steve Novella’s article on Science Based Medicine. I’m just rather concerned that a university which I still have a great affinity for is promoting such controversial treatments.

The guys at the Merseyside Skeptics Society (MSS) have been busy with some world class skeptical activism! The people that brought the ludicrous nature of homeopathy to the world’s attention with the 10:23 campaign have cast their eyes on a wristband made by the company Shuzi. The band makes all sorts of claims, similar to Power Balance bracelets (and we all recall what nonsense they were).

Unimpressed by Shuzi’s claims of it’s “Nano Vibrational Technology” being able to “unclump” and “improve communication” in your blood, the MSS devised a simple but comprehensive protocol to test the Shuzi band. They enlisted the help of a rugby player, who was tested to see how many kicks he could make when we was wearing either a genuine Shuzi band, or a “sham band (a Shuzi band with the “chip” removed). He attempted 50 kicks with and 50 without the band, but what I found impressive about this test was the blinding. In this sort of test, it’s hugely important to remove as many biasses as possible. The bands were covered by a sweatband, so the rugby player did not know which was which, and the identity of each band was kept a secret from the experimenter. The results were unsurprising. When wearing the real band, the player scored 26 out of 50, and with the “sham” band he scored 22. Although he scored more with the real band, this difference is not statistically significant. I’ve taken the liberty to illustrate the results in a graph.

As you can see, the above graph is pretty dull, not really showing much of a difference between the two tests. However, imagine I am a marketeer for Shuzi and I want to make this graph look as good as possible. I could do something like this:

Look at how much better this is! It’s the same data, except it’s in 3D, the Shuzi bar is a gold colour, and most importantly I’ve changed the axis so that the Shuzi bar is so much bigger than the sham bar. See how a little creative presentation can make your data look so much better than it is?

Anyway, it has to be said that they’ve got a good deal of press coverage from this. It’s appeared in the local Liverpool Echo, and even made it onto the Daily Mail of all places, making a nice change from the pseudoscientific guff we are all used to. Job well done guys!

wisdomofchorpa.com, a site that generates Deepak Chopra style pseudo-profound meaningless quotes, has had a major facelift thanks to the generous guys at peltenberg.eu. It’s certainly a vast improvement on my own design! Thanks guys, much appreciated! Go and check it out:

• wisdomofchopra.com