Now we may well be stodgy old stick-in-the-mud grouches who are a few decades behind the times, but it occurs to us that a certain minimal ability to speak the language of the newscast would be an essential job requirement for newsreaders and TV reporters. In this case, that language would be English. Surely the news is intended readily to be understood without its target audience having to scratch its head and ponder at length the barrage of garbled pidgin and gibberish that has issued from the newsreaders’ or reporters’ lips.

It is true that e.tv isn’t entirely innocent of such language abuses. In particular, some of its reporters are obviously speaking a third or fourth language when they speak English, but on the whole the e.tv newscasts are intelligible. Not so in the case of those that the SABC injudiciously broadcasts, which require the skills of an accomplished linguist/phoneticist to extricate meaning from the garble of errant grammar, mispronunciation, malapropism and misnomer (collectively known as “ErrMMM”). Such a failing will be a sad reflection on this country’s ability to produce from its many millions even just a few well-spoken and educated people when the World Cup hordes arrive, many of whom are English speakers who will struggle to make head or tail of the spoutings on TV. Equally importantly, this defective diction and anarchic enunciation by newsreaders and reporters perpetuates among the country’s youth the idea that it’s okay to torture spoken language into a broken heap: after all, they do it every day on TV.

Several local entertainment productions for TV feature actors and personalities who can speak clearly and intelligibly in English. Thus, there really are such people who have the requisite ability. While there are many more who, based on their English impairments, should never have been selected for whichever role they were awarded, the presence in locally-produced dramas of those who have a decent speaking mastery of the language immediately raises a telling question. If there are some actors who can speak properly, why are the unknown and struggling ones who share that talent but who are without fixed work not snatched up to be newsreaders? Instead, we are treated to a compote of minced gobbledegook by people with club-tongues and an assortment of adverse glosso-laryngeal conditions.

It makes no sense at all to us that the SABC would pursue – if that indeed is the driving force behind it – racial quotas (or possibly afrocentrism) ahead of intelligibility on something as important as a news service. Not everything brought by the colonists is automatically bad. Whether one likes it or not, English is the de facto communications standard in all spheres of interest around the globe, be it business, science, the arts, or just about anything else one would care to mention. India and China have realised it and are emphatically engaged in enlightening their populations to that fact. To ignore it is political and ultimately economic suicide by way of parochialism.

And merely to pay lip service to it by employing newsreaders and reporters barely capable of speaking a nominal version of it is stupid, ridiculous and vaguely insulting.

Rather, the aim of this entry is to examine a few of the ethical issues attending the application of homoeopathy and how these often play out in practice.

If one were to Google the phrase “good intentions are not enough,” a plethora of hits would be returned. This signifies, above all, that it is a familiar phrase, something that is no doubt also true of many other phrases, be they English or of a different language. However, the phrase’s popularity cannot be taken to mean that it’s well understood what the phrase (or dictum if you like) intends to convey.

There are numerous stories and anecdotes about preventable harm and death at the hands of homoeopaths. Admittedly, these are just that – anecdotes, even if, in many cases, they are well-documented ones, and homoeopaths will claim the obverse, i.e. that homoeopathy could have prevented harms inflicted through conventional medical endeavours. But conventional practices are continually reassessed and improved whenever possible. It is astonishing, then, that homoeopaths do not seek, with appropriate and comparable vigour, to advance their “science” past the clearly outdated and counterfactual notions of Samuel Hahnemann. The fundamental “science” of homoeopathy retains exactly the same basic nonsensical principles articulated by Hahnemann more than 200 years ago, and is today concerned only with manufacturing ever more elaborate excuses why these must be taken to be not only valid, but also – inconsequently, please note – supportive of homoeopathy’s effectiveness. As an exercise in ethics, it should be self-evident that the “good intentions” of defending – at whatever cost – Hahnemann’s outmoded thinking “are not enough” to justify either the potential or the actual harm resulting from “knowledge” derived from dubious or even bogus premisses.

As medical practitioners (if only so in name), homoeopaths have a clear ethical obligation to inform their patients of unknown aspects or uncertainties or potential failures of their methods. Homoeopaths are partial to citing Hippocrates at opportune moments, specifically his moral directives concerning patient care – more so than practitioners of conventional evidence-based medicine. In this light, it is, to say the least, surprising that homoeopaths, almost without fail, seem always to know exactly what ails a given patient, and how to go about curing the condition. This last observation is based on discussions with and personal experiences of several different homoeopaths, so it cannot by any means be taken to be authoritative. Still, it is interesting to note that not one of these homoeopaths ever recommended a visit to a specialist, or admitted to being baffled, or hesitated to commit to a diagnosis, prognosis and/or course of treatment. Indeed, their findings were pronounced with firm confidence, as were the prescriptions of “remedies.” Never once was a caution issued along the lines of, “This may not work. Come and see me in a week or two if you don’t improve and we’ll try something different.” Such self-assurance is not warranted when assessed against the facts of homoeopathy’s performance, but perhaps that is exactly how they dupe themselves and the majority of their patients. Who needs ambiguity when buoyant conviction can be had at the same price?

Many homoeopaths also include several other CAM modalities, such as aromatherapy, applied kinesiology, iridology, crystal therapy, naturopathy, etc., in their repertoire. Here, one should immediately feel pressed to ask a very urgent and insistent, “But why!?” After all, if homoeopathy is, as very often claimed, an essentially complete system with only a few minor details left to be sorted out, it is just a little seditious of any homoeopath to augment his or her range of offerings with “skills” or methods that do not fit the homoeopathic mould. It would be akin to a hydrogeologist who professes to use pendulum-on-a-map divination in addition to willow-twig dowsing and remote viewing techniques for the siting of wells. It should, rightly, arouse the thinking individual’s suspicions: If X promises a whole solution, why bother with Y and Z? Could it be that, despite its philanthropic pretensions, homoeopathy and its evidence-free inbred cousins are – O, mon cœur noir! Quelle squalid sordidness, quelle grimy grubbery! – a business!?

When examining the trading of homoeopathic remedies, two further moral aspects rear their hydrocephalic heads. There are many off-the-shelf preparations that sport labels prominently emblazoned with “Homeopathic” (preferring, oddly, the miscreant US spelling – it has little to do with “O homeo, homeo, wherefore art thou homeo” and lots to do with “homoeo—,” Greek homoios). Of these remedies, several turn out, on closer inspection, to be about as homoeopathic as a flamethrower, usually by reason of significant concentrations of active ingredients. That is, the label of “Homeopathic” has been abducted purely for marketing purposes because there is a major subculture out there that buys into the sham and is therefore easy to bilk and milk in perpetuity. However, what is truly telling is that not a single homoeopath, either individually or through coordinated effort, has ever made a fuss about such blatant misuse of their craft. In contrast, it would not take very long before a shaman who sold, say, powdered baboon brains as a “proven” antidepressant, will find him- or herself in heaps of trouble with an assortment of professional bodies over misrepresentation. Thus, one must ask how it is that homoeopaths are apparently quite content to permit the hijacking of their terminology and principles for someone else’s promotional purposes.

Of at least equal significance is the fact itself of the ready availability of off-the-shelf bona fide homoeopathic preparations. To understand this properly, it is necessary to remember that a central principle of homoeopathy, second in status only to Hahnemann’s two founding tenets, is that of the individualised remedy. That is, homoeopaths design a “treatment” after assessing “holistically” the afflicted individual, and this “treatment” is allegedly specific to the individual for whose purposes it was formulated. It should be obvious that there’s a fundamental disconnect between the idea of an “individualised treatment” and that of off-the-shelf preparations (often selling, almost needless to say, at prices a Croesus would find challenging, given what they are). Again, no homoeopaths appear overly concerned about this sort of manipulative misuse.

It is the deception inherent in an “individualised treatment” – a “deception” because as humans we are to the best of medical science’s knowledge biochemically too similar to one another to merit such fine-grained distinctions as homoeopaths would make – that facilitates a further homoeopathic subterfuge. “Randomised double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trials,” proclaims the committed homoeopath in a voice of solemn gravity, “are not a suitable tool for gauging the effectiveness of homoeopathy because treatments must be tailored to the individual.” Well, fuck. And now what? There is an easy way around this, one that no homoeopath has ever proposed. By all means, do the individualised assessments and prescriptions for a significant sample of patients, and only after this has been completed is it time to randomise and placebo-ise (to coin a term) via another independent party whose involvement, except for revealing the group assignments (placebo or prescription) at the conclusion of the study, ends at that point. It’s not by any stretch of the imagination rocket science, proverbial or otherwise, and it’s eminently feasible. But instead of working towards such earnest endeavours to assess the validity of their spiel, homoeopathic apologists offer only superficial pretext and feeble rationale – with homoeopathic dilutions of verifiable fact.

And by these various factors the innate hypocrisy of homoeopathy in its modern practice becomes explicit.

These data comprise some of the criteria by which to avoid an unfortunate series of incorrect grammatical phenomena.

That’s all.

P.S. This is not an April Fool’s gag.

This being an emotionally charged issue, it is inevitable that everyone should have an opinion on this matter.

Everyone.

That includes us, and ours is very simple: Malema and the ANC’s position is untenable for being both self-contradictory and ostentatiously self-righteous ― just like religious dogma, in fact.

The self-contradiction should be obvious. On the one hand, the ANC professes reconciliation, progress, tolerance and harmony, while on the other it seeks to cling to bygones and sweep such an overtly inflammatory incitement-to-violence song under the “It’s only meant symbolically” and the “historical legacy lest we forget” mats. It is arguable whether the song with its rabble-rousing flavour even should have had a place in the past at all given late-20^th century values, but that question is largely academic anyway; what is clear is that its sentiments do not accord with the values the ANC is paying lip service to. Malema’s quite blatant and deliberate cultivation of fear in a minority is inimical to the ANC’s professed aims of harmony and upliftment. The ANC’s defence is therefore evidently a hollow sham, born, one supposes, of a fear of appearing divided over this issue ― or any other for that matter.

Simultaneously, and shoe-on-the-other-foot notwithstanding, the ostentatious self-righteousness of the ANC’s position becomes obvious when one imagines a reversal of the situation. With all the clarity afforded by 20/20 hindsight, the various minority organisations – yes, that would be you, AfriForum – that objected so vehemently, should have approached the issue very differently to the whingeing and whining we’ve been cringing witness to. Imagine that AfriForum had instead commissioned a poet or songwriter to compose on their behalf a simple anthemic tune with lyrics exhorting the boer to “Kill the Munt” because “he’s a thief and a rapist and a savage, uncivilised killer” or somesuch. Imagine this song gaining ground over the next few months in response to Malema’s stupid intransigence. Imagine the uproar and protest and finger-pointing. Imagine, finally, that when such confrontation reached a fevered frenzy, AfriForum (or whoever) offered to cease and desist provided Malema did the same.

While the merits are debatable, being perhaps too confrontational, we think that the above scenario would be considerably more sobering to the ANC because they could hardly fail to notice that condoning either or both songs serves only to polarise people, not unite them, making their latest position on the question incompatible with their espoused values.  Moreover, condemning one but not the other would be just too obviously hypocritical.

But, as said, that’s our opinion.

A safe and enjoyable festive season to all our readers.

The Reformation marks the historical divide where authoritarianism started receiving an escalating barrage of well-placed kicks in its proverbial nuts. Judged without overt reference to its religious background, the legacy of Luther and his precursors and collaborators is essentially the novel idea that the common person not only can, but indeed should think and act with a due degree of autonomy, latitude and sovereignty over his or her own life. It is this idea perhaps more than any other to which we owe our present-day liberties. Moreover, in the longer term it directly aided in the acquisition and growth of new knowledge (because contribution was less and less the exclusive province of an elite), culminating in a system where certain freedoms and the possibility of prosperity for anyone willing to make a sufficient effort are the hallmarks of a just, egalitarian and desirable social fabric.

To be sure, Luther’s thinking was confined principally to religious questions, but any good idea will inevitably show spillover into other areas. In particular, Luther rejected the notion that the Catholic Church, its cardinals and the Pope were the incontestable authority on all matters of religious doctrine, a position they had historically appropriated for themselves, mostly through tradition and arrogation. Luther challenged this status quo because he had observed numerous endemic abuses that were perpetrated on ordinary people but for which no good (read: “scriptural”) justification was evident. Not content to be told to “shut up, or else,” tensions between Luther and Rome escalated, and soon assorted flavours of Protestantism were born from the friction, all essentially based on the idea that Papal infallibility concerning scriptural interpretation, as well as the Catholic Church as ultimate arbiter of Truth and Justice, is a steaming, scheming pile of shit. (As an aside, that’s exactly what it is, so one might wonder why more than one-sixth of humanity revels in it.)

Thus, by insisting that doctrinal issues require rigorous scriptural justification, Luther pulled the self-accorded authoritarian rug out from under the Church. One might note tangentially that the selfsame insistence on scriptural validation still characterises many of the more fundamental flavours of reformed Christian sects, denominations and churches (of which, at ±38,000, there are far more than one might at first suppose), and that scriptural authority is hardly the alpha and omega when it comes to facts about the real world.

In a nutshell, the Catholic Church had taught that it is the one and only pipeline to god. The ordinary person is simply incapable of comprehending, let alone wrestling with, the intricacies and subtleties of theology and the dogma inspired by it. The Catholic Church opposed both bible translation and bible publication. Instead, it insisted that the ordinary person must base their faith in the full acceptance that the Catholic Church with its various officials, and it alone, is in the right position to mediate between god and the individual, a precept that led to the observed abuses mentioned above, and one the Church was quite reluctant to relinquish for obvious reasons. Through calling the Church’s authority into question in perhaps the only way that could conceivably count, i.e. god’s word, Luther made it not only at first possible, but later also respectable for ordinary people to examine doctrinal issues for themselves.

Luther’s underlying hope was to supplant the authority of men (the bishops, the cardinals, the popes of the church and their lackey princes and kings) on matters of religious doctrine with what he held to be the greatest of all sources of authority, namely god. To facilitate this, he put scripture within reach of ordinary Germans by preparing a translation of the New Testament into his mother tongue. He became a “man of the people” when he showed that a more-or-less ordinary person, i.e. one who stood outside of the “system” (even if only partially or to the extent of not being a member of the inner circle), could successfully challenge the established orthodoxy. Thus, he became an archetype, perhaps even the archetype, for the idea that ordinary people could sometimes heroically achieve an extraordinary social shift even in the face of formidable odds and adversity.

His idea was at first slow to catch on not least owing to a collective cultural inertia and the active resistance of entrenched authority. It resulted in violence, coercion and bloodshed. Catholics persecuted Protestants, and later vice versa. In modern times, they mostly resort to calling one another heretics upon clashing instead of, say, visiting death and destruction on each other, although this too still happens sometimes. Soon enough people began realising that finding out for themselves need not be restricted only to questions of faith. Science and progress flourished geometrically as the idea gained ground and respectability, setting up a positive feedback loop that snowballed us into the present amidst which we now find ourselves.

And that, in broad strokes, is Luther’s valuable and enduring contribution to humanity. As said at the beginning, all in all a good thing. This can hardly be overstressed.

So what, then, is the “dark side” of which the title of this piece speaks?

In short, it is that Luther’s example has nourished and encouraged the increasingly widespread notion that anyone and everyone can be a meaningful contributor through minor acts of rebellion. This situation is, of course, fuelled in no small measure by technology (itself arguably contingent on Luther’s actions) that both makes information ever more readily accessible and facilitates its dissemination – foremost the Internet. Digesting five minutes’ worth of soundbites and sampling the odd phrase here and there, and before you know it Joe and Jane Soap think themselves expert on this or that thing, suitably qualified and ready to challenge the orthodoxy. What they forget is that serious challenges to prevailing canons usually come from within and are marshalled by those with more than a superficial acquaintance of the subject matter. To wit, Luther had a doctorate in Catholic theology and taught its doctrines as well. He was learned in the topics of Catholicism and he had ministered to ordinary Germans (read: “peasants”). He knew his oats.

In contrast, today’s self-styled “experts” too often dispute issues not because their knowledge thereof is sufficient, but because it is woefully deficient. The supreme and risible arrogance is odiously manifest of those who would presume to argue against Darwinism (and the overwhelming throng of bona fide experts who know it to be true) not because they can rally any adequately countermanding evidence but because it offends their sensibilities and preconceptions. Ditto for those who seek to challenge any given established order for no good reason other than that it may induce in them a vague sense of unease.

More insidiously, we find ourselves increasingly burdened with the expectation that such half-baked disputations are to be met with an incommensurate and undeserved leniency, temperance and forbearance for what is more often than not, plainly put, no less than utterly ridiculous drivel. Declaring, “Oh, what ignorant rot!” in reply is all too often viewed as a social gaffe roughly on a par with vomiting drunkenly on the Queen’s birthday cake in her plain sight. That social attitude too is part of Luther’s legacy, and while it might make for continued social cosiness, the clear danger it presents is that factuality must bow to the vagaries of social etiquette. The suggestion is hardly that such blunt denunciation should displace reasoned argument in toto. That would be fruitless.

But it does strongly appear as if the old adage that goes “Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt” seems frequently to be misread as “If I’m thought a fool, I’ll just open my mouth wider and drown ’em out that way.”

And that goes as much for all that you have just read here.

To postulate non-material accounts of certain phenomena such as “mind” and “life” and so on is to be ignorant of the history of science. More accurately, it is to be impatiently, desperately, pervasively ignorant, full stop. While there are many deep scientific questions that have yet to find an answer, there are no examples of a real effect that has usefully, fruitfully and/or informatively yielded to or been illuminated by a non-material account.

None. Not any. Not a single, solitary one.

If there were even just one, we’d have at least some cause to take other proposals in such a vein more seriously. Anti-materialists will argue that science, by its pigheaded insistence on objectively repeatable evidence, excludes from the outset anti-materialist accounts because the essence of “evidence” is a materialist notion: that which is in some way perceptible. And therein, as the Bard put it, lies the rub. If it isn’t perceptible, whether directly or indirectly, you’re arguing with hot air anyway, aren’t you? If it is perceptible you’re refuting your own anti-materialist premise. So it’s quite a mystery why some people still feel compelled to bang a goofy-shaped peg into a fractal hole.

Demolish the brain, and life disappears. Injure the brain, and mind diminishes. Enter a sleep state and brain activity changes qualitatively, erasing consciousness. Those are oddly incongruent things to happen to ectoplasmic quintessences that ostensibly can exist without any material carrier. The limits of philosophical materialism have hardly been exhausted. Inductively (with all the, er, grave, er, spectres that induction raises), attempting to construct non-material accounts is a premature act of wishful thinking. Or desperation maybe: Any answer will do as long as it’s not “I don’t presently know.”

Going out, my expectation of brevity is largely met: Anti-materialists want security at the cost of what is properly defensible. Their baser instinct, in particular the one that says “I am not my body alone,” trumps their intellect. Clear thinking takes effort, discipline and humility, and that’s why superstition and stupidity will always win.

The Big Question is: Whatever happened in the curious case of George Claassen’s dual blogicides?

For the past few years, George maintained a blog called “Prometheus Unbound”. This sceptical blog dealt with various issues like psychics, pseudoscience and charlatanry, but it focussed particularly on the folly that is religion. The blog disappeared unannounced a few weeks ago with the hosting site reporting that the blog had been deleted by the authors. The final blog entry was a contentious one that examined how certain public schools were violating their purely secular mandate by promoting religious practices among pupils. The possibility of legal action against those schools was raised.

At first, the possibility was mooted that the blog had been deleted by a vengeful religious fanatic who had managed somehow to obtain administrative login credentials. This now seems very unlikely, as will be clear from subsequent developments. George soon after established a new blog called “Prometheus Liberated” and posted three entries in rapid succession. He gave no public explanation on the new blog as to what had occurred with the old one, but shortly before the latter’s deletion, he withdrew from the campaign against the schools, citing as motivations personal reasons as well as attacks on his person. At first, he had mentioned “technical problems” that allegedly were being attended to. The blog is still deleted.

The new blog suffered the same fate a few days ago, again without any prior announcement or explanation. While it will probably do little good to hypothesize about what prompted a virtual repeat, one is left to wonder. Is George fed up with contributions of some or all of the regular commenters? Is he being threatened somehow to leave off writing against religion? Blackmailed, maybe? Or is it something like indecision about whether to continue this work or to wipe the slate clean in some privately cathartic eruption of on-and-off misanthropy?

None of the above possibilities seems to fit properly.

We think George has something of a moral obligation to clarify these odd happenings, even if only to that small group of regular commenters that has travelled alongside him over the past few years. Depending on the circumstances, some kind of assistance with, or resolution of, the problem could be reached.

George, scepticism and atheism do not necessarily mean that you have to fight every battle alone.

There can be little doubt that this little “bad stuff equals god’s absence” puff piece will fill Christian hearts that share a taste for pedagoguery with smug contentment. There are a few obvious problems, though. Firstly, the bible describes Satan, the alleged supreme malefactor, together with his cohorts as a band of fallen angels, not as the absence of god, so the “absence of” analogy doesn’t even accord with the fundamentals of religious doctrine. Dogma and the bible itself say that evil properly exists as a separate entity, and so this “absence of” thesis is a big swindle. Plus, it’s a double swindle when one considers the theological precept that this god is supposedly omnipresent. In case it’s not clear, “omnipresence” means that this god supposedly is everywhere all the time, so how is one to reconcile this with the proposed absence?

Secondly, the whole elaborate storyline is contrived to obfuscate the obvious. The professor begins by asking germane “what if” questions that can reasonably be asked, assuming the existence of a god with the presupposed attributes. Reductio ad absurdum is a very useful weapon in the arsenal of the logician, be s/he professional or merely aspiring. Instead, the storyline surreptitiously changes so that no one, including the professor, ever confronts this a priori assumption. The reader hardly notices said narrational subterfuge (it’s a story, remember?), and uncritical heads will surely nod their eager agreement as if some great truth has found dazzling vindication – i.e. where the student’s arguments actually persuade the professor rather than, say, incurring a bray of derisive laughter.

Thirdly, is a natural disaster like a tsunami that wipes out a large number of people in one fell swoop also the absence of god? Are the thirty to forty million human foetuses who are miscarried annually also the absence of god? Are the Aids orphans and droughts and crop failures affecting millions also the absence of god? Is the genocide and large-scale slaughter of people also the absence of god even when the victims are devout and committed believers? Assuming this god to exist purely for the sake of argument, one must conclude that if these things are as they are owing to an absence of this god then this god is clearly a shirker and possibly a malingerer, too. If it’s not shirking, this god is either powerless or purposely evil, possibly both.

Fourthly, the analogy relies on a deeply naïve conception of physics. For example, there is no difficulty in reversing the heat/coldness situation to claim that heat is merely the absence of coolth without substantively affecting the physics – in fact, the air-conditioning industry often does just that for reasons of convenience. This means that one could just as well reason that the presence of good is merely the absence of Satan, not the presence of god. Moreover, the mechanisms of many physical phenomena are well understood. Such understanding allows us to establish reliable protocols and procedures for detecting the presence or absence of various things. We have no reliable criteria of such a kind to apply to god (or Satan), which means that “good” or “bad” can be whatever suits someone’s momentary perceptions and circumstances because god’s presence or absence cannot dependably be ascertained.

Finally, direct sensory perception of a phenomenon is hardly necessary when a reliable facsimile is available whose origin is causally bound to that phenomenon. To illustrate: the presence of the professor’s brain can reliably and repeatably be confirmed through an MRI scan or similar. An EEG will also do the trick, and several other techniques, e.g. the Turing Test, can be applied that will produce results in direct conflict with the “no-brained-professor” hypothesis. The operative concept here is that of scientifically compelling evidence. There is none such in support of any kind of omni-everything personal god, and much evidence that speaks against it. Therefore, to draw parallels between physical phenomena that are well understood like heat, light and electromagnetism, and some amorphous, indefinable, ineffable hypothetical deity is seriously to overstep the line of plausibility.

The only lessons to be drawn from the above concern the logical consistency of apologetics: (1) Apologists will say literally anything to preserve the illusion of respectability for their mythical absurdities, and (2) they will insist that their argumentation is perfectly rational when in fact it cannot be simply because it is predicated on fundamentally incomprehensible tenets to begin with.

When, to name a particularly glaring example, a Jenny McCarthy stands up and clamours on the very flimsiest of evidence that vaccination causes autism, these media swiftly seize upon such a story in their never-ending pursuit of ever more sensational drama and titillation.  (Important to note here is that the case of McCarthy is used to illustrate general principles that pervade the publishing industry, not to analyse specifics of her averments.)  Some of the reporters and columnists will perhaps consult a relevant demurring specialist (or two if they’re feeling especially energetic) so as to add some interest to their stories and to flesh them out a little, but mainly to pride themselves on that in doing so they are being fair and impartial and – above all – balanced.  Mostly, subeditors and editors will approve those stories for publication because, after all, they include the establishment or contrary position, thereby presenting opposing sides of the issue, and therefore they cannot be other than “balanced.”

Or can they?  Are they really balanced?

No, they usually are not, and for several reasons.  First, contra the postmodern conception, reality is not generally subjective.  There are objective criteria for consistent, observer-independent and repeatable assessment of the validity, or otherwise, of material claims about the real world, and these are the currency that science deals in.  The success thereof is radiantly manifest.  While every person is entitled to their own opinion and their own interpretation of the facts, it is not true that everyone is entitled to their own facts per se.  That is to say, an opinion about the merits of an actor’s performance is a very different thing to an opinion about precisely what the actor’s body mass index is.  The first, lacking any unified yardstick, is a wholly subjective assessment that can, at best, attain some consensual agreement among critics, whereas the second is objectively verifiable.  Writers often simply ignore this obvious distinction because nobody really wants to be a stodgy old stick-in-the-mud, a naysayer, a slayer of comforting fantasies.  Consequently, the writers and publishers, obeying the inapt dictates of an industry gone astray, perpetuate juiciness and controversy as somehow laudable ends in themselves instead of facing up to the somewhat harder task of doing adequate background verifications of the salient facts of the story.

To use again the prior example, Jenny McCarthy’s “facts” are shot full of holes, something a decently thorough investigation would have revealed ab initio but which would have turned the story into a non-story – annoyingly so for the shallow-minded excitement junkies that are its target.  That way, it’s just too damn boring, and never mind that the promotion of McCarthy’s beliefs has cost people their herd immunity to polio and measles in some places.  Collectively, the publishing industry thus fails to exercise due critical diligence in the headlong rush to galvanise an otherwise bored audience and to publish ahead of competitors (and, indeed, in its hurry to stumble over its own easy credulity).  Where is the balance in this equation?

Second, there is the cautious jargon employed within the scientific community.  When publicly critiquing some or other ill-founded notion, scientists often use euphemistic terms such as “unconvincing” or “poorly substantiated” or “misunderstanding” or “improbable.”  It is a mistake to think that their soft-pedalling belies hesitancy, incomprehension and/or a lack of certainty.  They do so because those are the norms and conventions within the scientific enterprise itself, and such language means exactly what it says: “unconvincing,” “poorly substantiated,” etc.  It is used to render impersonal assessments based on an impartial review of the evidence and reasoning offered in support of a given contention, insofar as impartiality is practically achievable by an individual.

That is, scientists do not generally understate in order to signal that theirs is a subjective opinion, supposedly as valid as any other.  In contrast, the purveyor of unsustainable nonsense will usually state their case with much forceful conviction and sincerity, even in the face of strong countermanding information, thereby giving the false-but-emotionally-laden impression that their view is considerably more solid.  And therein lies what may be one of the scientific enterprise’s most notable practical failings, i.e. its reticence to issue clear declarations concerning the veracity of an interminable array of common superstitions, myths and popular delusions.  That scientists, unlike stockists of pseudo- and anti-science, are generally loath to make firm declarations is symptomatic of the scientific method and an upshot of adhering to its practices.  Where is the balance in this equation?

Third, the writers and publishers of such stories almost invariably neglect to mention perhaps the most important facet, probably the overriding one.  For each doubting, soft-spoken expert who, based on well-established scientific findings, objects to a fringe claim, there are literally hundreds, possibly even thousands, of other relevant soft-spoken experts who are eminently qualified to deliver an appraisal, and who, when asked, would criticise the idea in question on much the same grounds and in much the same way as the cited one does.  That they are rallied unobtrusively behind the one whose objections are mentioned cannot be taken to mean that they aren’t there.  The same is hardly, if ever, true of cranks because each one has their own, usually exclusive brand of baloney to sell.  Failing to draw attention to this noteworthy matter of scientific consensus among specialists does a significant disservice both to the readership and to the upholding of truly balanced reporting because it creates the slyly misleading impression that the truth of the thing in question is about 50:50.  This is near enough never so.

Preposterous claims are not at all hard to come by simply because there are infinitely more ways of being wrong than there are of being right, and we would all like to think of ourselves as not much short of infallible in our perceptions and reasoning.  Good, well-founded sense is not so easy to find because it demands effort, discipline, humility and a healthy respect for certain rigours.  Attempting to offset one voluble crackpot with one expert is “balanced” only in the most trivial sense of that word, and it is a large part of why so many varieties of nonsense proliferate – so much so that it facilitates the emergence of essentially self-styled “experts” and aids the accumulation of a faux respectability, thereby making it all the more difficult to dispel.  That, together with much unchallenged repetition, is how we end up with alternative/complementary “medicine,” astrology, the asinine goo punted on Free Spirit and Journey to the Core (and sometimes 3Talk too), “psychic” dating show hosts who apparently converse with speech-impaired dead people, and Danie Krügel.  Furthermore, celebrity status notwithstanding, a Jenny McCarthy’s pronouncements on scientific matters are no more compelling or plausible than those of a petrol pump attendant.  Celebrity does not automatically confer authority or expertise in another field, and to conflate celebrity and expertise in this way is an insidious lapse of sound judgement.  Where is the balance in this equation?

Finally, in all such matters, it is wise to heed Bertrand Russell’s guiding principles and to apply them assiduously:

1. When the experts are [mostly] agreed, the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain;
2. When the experts are not agreed, no opinion can be regarded as certain by a non-expert, and
3. When the experts hold that no sufficient grounds for a positive opinion exist, the ordinary person would do well to suspend judgement.

Are we so focussed on revering, even vaunting, every kind of mediocrity just in case we miss an opportunity to tell a story, or to enjoy a transient thrill, or in case not doing so might give offence?  Are we so hungry for relentless novelty that we feel it safe to sidestep our painfully-won evidentiary standards and requirements?  Because if these are the motivations then their price is wholly disproportionate.  It will cost us nothing less than the injudicious and unwitting subversion, the gradual erosion, of proper journalistic balance.

Such programmes rile us.

Intensely.

And then some. Oh, would that we could be such solemnly wonderful people. The slings of reason thwart us so.

So, after tracking down the host website, one of us fired off the following missive to their feedback line:

I find this type of egregious and total disregard for the methods of science and rational discipline deeply insulting, as would, I think, anyone with half a brain. Such New Age nonsense, where “you can be as ignorant, stupid, vague, ridiculous, foolish, inaccurate, superstitious and open-ended as you like,” is just a substitute for religion that has crawled down a hole of its own absurdity. These foolishnesses you punt, like “dream mapping” and “spirituality” and so on, are entirely bereft of any formal rigour and are thus no more than intellectually bankrupt we-do-it-because-it-thrills-us endeavours to be indulged in at whim. The person who can reliably demonstrate the validity of “dream mapping” stands to make one million US dollars from the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). But nooo, you people will invent any excuse to avoid meeting your evidentiary obligations.

You all take the benefits of science for granted but apparently fail to realise the magnitude and the nature of the effort that produced them. Those would be the selfsame benefits that make it possible for you to spit on science as “unsatisfactory” in the first place. You should at least think about that before taking the preposterous assertions of self-appointed charlatans like Baruch Banai as gospel. You’re so engrossed with finding ever more novel ways of feeling good that you forget to think and sacrifice your critical faculties on the altar of mental lassitude. Feeling good is not enough. You also have to anticipate the future with this thing called “reason.”

You people would be a joke if your lunacy wasn’t so dangerous to the future of humanity.

Fat lot of good it will do, though.

As is usual in such cases, Danie Krügel has strongly polarised others’ opinions regarding the feasibility of what he claims to be able to do. On one side is the rather swollen peanut gallery of uninformed New Age dupes rallying behind a—in their parochial view—Galileo-candidate, one more in an interminable succession of such, clamouring, “It’s possible, it’s possible! Science can’t prove everything. Look at how many people he’s already helped!”

On the opposite side are the sceptics, rationalists and scientists, including yours truly, who strongly doubt that Danie Krügel has stumbled onto something so revolutionary while tinkering in his garage. We would like some actual and credible proof, please, before buying into something this big — proof whose provision Danie Krügel has, so far, successfully avoided, evaded and generally connived his way around.

Now, a group of South African Sceptics has put up a “Stop Danie Krügel” website that aims to put pressure on Danie Krügel so that he will perhaps agree to being tested before accepting any more missing persons cases. Equally important is the website’s function as a consolidated resource of Danie Krügel’s cases, which are examined briefly on an individual basis. It hopes to improve awareness of some very important questions people should ask themselves before asking Danie Krügel for his help.

Please amble over there and lend your support to this worthy initiative in the name of reason.

A fundie born of parents young,
soon baptised in a cave,
as other fundies praised and sung
of hopes beyond the grave.

The leader of his cavish clan
with stern and chiding air
spoke reams on death and god’s great plan,
on evils to beware.

The risks of thought and doubt made plain,
these warnings rudely prod:
a burning hell of endless pain
awaits the foes of god.

Their future is a life of bliss,
forever and a day!
’Twas paid for by a Judas kiss
and he to whom they pray.

“May part of us rise up to god
upon the day we die!
Our bodies buried in the sod
will follow by and by!”

But reason is god’s stoutest foe,
the fundies all agree,
while grunting in their caves of woe
how privileged they be.

And so they taught the young man tales
as though the tales were real,
of virtue vested in three nails
that mankind’s ills would heal.

Before the youngster had a chance
to learn of reason pure,
his teachers held him in a trance,
a questing mind to cure.

And crippled thus, with no defence,
his fettered mind gave in:
to query fables made no sense,
a frightful, mortal sin!

But every time the fables clash
with sober facts stripped bare,
the fundie caveman comes out brash
to fight the ones who dare.

With grunts and howls and swinging sticks,
they raze a broken track
through men of straw and tired tricks,
at truth they vainly hack.

And when the day’s brave fight is done,
they draw back to their hide,
and wait that Luna ousts the sun,
to howl with baleful pride.

The joke’s on them, themselves they bind,
their efforts cannot quell
the sharpness of a thinking mind
they would condemn to hell.

(With apologies to STC, and thanks to all the fearless heretics over at Prometheus Unbound.)