Now you might think that’s because there was a recent hoax survey which claimed that a psychometric testing company had analysed the IQ of users of different browsers, and had determined that users of internet explorer 6 are most likely to be flat-out dumb, but that’s not actually why I’m calling you idiots. It just a shit browser, massively outdated and an all-round piece of trash, and if you’re using it, you’re objectively an idiot.

That aside, there is something interesting about this hoax survey story. For those that haven’t heard of it, last month the media was all over this story, and not just the usual suspects. The short version is that AptiQuant Psychometric Consulting Company published a press release claiming that after surveying 101,326 people for their IQ and broswer of choice, and mapping this into a good solid graph, they were able to establish that internet explorer users had a ludicrously low IQ, around the 80 mark.

“The study showed a substantial relationship between an individual’s cognitive ability and their choice of web browser,” AptiQuant concluded. “From the test results, it is a clear indication that individuals on the lower side of the IQ scale tend to resist a change/upgrade of their browsers.”

Under an approximately common model, an IQ of 70-80 would be termed ‘borderline deficient’, and anything below 70 being ‘Definite feeble-mindedness’, so it was a pretty staggering correlation if true. Staggering enough to catch the eye of the BBC, CNN, the Daily Fail, the Telegraph and pretty much everywhere else (though many have deleted the initial news story now, annoyingly). At the time, I saw it (I obviously have a google alert to tell me when a new survey story appears, particularly one that’s in the Daily Mail), and I thought ‘huh, that’s clearly PR for this company AptiQuant’ and left it there. I never smelled a hoax, I just didn’t see it worth looking into any further. More on that in a moment.

However, it turns out it was a hoax after all, and soon after some digging work by the BBC uncovered the reality behind the story, newspapers left right and centre updated their coverage to reveal the massive hoax, how everyone had been had and how it was all the fault of one wag who made up the story. Again, more on THAT in a moment too.

The wag in question was one Tarandeep Gill, a web developer pissed off at having to keep supporting ie6 when it’s an old and useless browser, and figuring the story would be a fun way to shame people into upgrading and generally make them aware of the fact that ie6 should be phased out.

What I find particularly interesting is that at the same time that Tarandeep’s quote ‘elaborate hoax’ was being picked apart in the media, detailing how he fooled them and how his con trick was undone by good old-fashioned journalism, the following stories were in the newspaper:

From the Daily Mail:

It has always been considered rude to ask a lady her age. But it seems it’s also a step too far to inquire of her shoe size.

Women are becoming increasingly touchy about the length of their feet as average sizes go up.

Many are embarrassed because they think having large feet is masculine.

The result, according to a study, is that half of women fib to their friends and partners about the size of their shoes.

And 82 per cent of those with size eight or nine feet say their large footprint makes them feel particularly ashamed.

Debenhams, which carried out the research, said soaring demand for size nine shoes had prompted it to increase stocks of larger sizes by 80 per cent.

So, women are ashamed and embarrassed about their big feet, says store advertising a change in its larger-sized-shoe policy.

From the Guardian:

A culture of celebrity and television shows such as Big Brother and The Apprentice have impaired the confidence of a generation of British youngsters, according to a survey of 16- to 24-year-olds.

The research, overseen by academics from Teesside University, found that 82% of British youngsters said the UK’s celebrity culture had created “unachievable role models” which were damaging to their self-esteem.

Teesside youth and communities expert Professor Tony Chapman said the representative sample of 1,500 young adults was part of a long-term study into youth attitudes undertaken by O2, the mobile phone company, looking at the generation who entered adulthood and the job market during the downturn.

O2, of course, being the mobile phone providers who were the primary sponsor of Big Brother for the time it was on Channel 4.

From the Telegraph:

A fifth of married couples go a full week without kissing – with older people among the least romantic.

Even when couples do kiss it is usually a quick affair lasting no more than five seconds, according to a survey.

But younger sweethearts are more romantic with those aged between 18 and 24 saying they lock lips with a partner 11 times a week on average.

The findings have been released to launch a campaign by the British Heart Foundation to teach lifesaving skills such as the kiss of life to school children as part of the national curriculum.

And from the Mail again:

The magical combination of 6-7-8 has been hailed by psychologists as the happiest time of the year.

The sixth day at 7pm in the eighth month – or 7pm on August 6 – is the day people feel most content because of the high temperatures, school holidays and prospect of a summer break.

A study by loyalty scheme Nectar revealed that we smile most between 7pm and 8pm each day, are at our cheeriest on Saturdays and love August more than any other month.

And from the Express:

THE average family kitchen is the setting for 384 arguments, 192 heart-to-hearts, 26,280 meals – and seven sex romps, a study revealed yesterday.

Researchers found the typical family lives in a house for eight years during which time their kitchen sees the entire spectrum of life.

It will play host to 16 burned dinners, 1,824 kisses and six life-changing decisions. And it will be redecorated and refurbished twice.

The study also revealed 13 per cent of couples decide to get married after a kitchen discussion while 15 per cent settle for a divorce.

The survey of 3,000 people was commissioned by Siemens Home Appliances to mark the launch of a fridge freezer.

And from the Express:

RESEARCHERS have uncovered the top 20 tricks women use to make themselves feel seductive.

And it seems the oldest methods are the best – including lipstick with matching nail varnish and an alluring hint of cleavage.

Interestingly, a simple spray of favourite perfume comes top of the list for helping women feel sexy. A new hairdo and a happy smile also rank highly.

Women also hailed settling down into a warm bath, showing off their well-maintained legs and wearing a push-up bra as quick fixes for achieving the “it” factor.

The report also revealed that the average woman only feels truly irresistible once a week – usually on a Saturday night.

Sara Wolverson of Superdrug, which commissioned the research, said: “This poll clearly indicates that while women know exactly what they have to do in order to feel sexy, they obviously aren’t doing it often enough.

These are all from around the same week as the AptiQuant hoax, and trust me I could go on. And this is what I think is particularly interesting about the IQ hoax story – it’s an interesting definition of the word ‘hoax’. The hoaxer, Gill, identified a goal – to get the media to cover the crapness of ie6, invented some realistic-sounding findings – IE6 users are dumb, and presented the press release-friendly story as if true. And this was the ‘elaborate’ hoax the media congratulated themselves on seeing through and giggled about having been ‘had’ by.

Whereas we’ve seen a kitchen appliance brand, reward card scheme, cosmetics shop or whatever identify a goal – getting their name in the press, generating some realistic-sounding findings (often through the biased survey tactics and dodgy research methods I’ve gone over many times), and then presenting a press-release-friendly story as if it’s true… and that’s the news. Nobody says a word. It gets printed as if it wasn’t a carbon fucking copy of the method used by Gill.

It’s kinda like calling out a Bigfoot film as a hoax, because it was faked by an amateur rather than faked by a Bigfoot-film-faking professional. The fact is, it wasn’t so elaborate a hoax. The real elaborate hoax is the dodgy marketing researchers and public relation firms who not only successfully push the products that form their goals AND make a living out of this kind of thing, but even make the journalists who print their work completely oblivious to the fact that in so many cases, there’s almost nothing to tell them from the hoaxers they congratulate themselves in over-turning.

Usually, to achieve this lofty ambition I’d suggest that your options were fairly limited – either plug away at blogs and other self-funded and often-largely-unread outlets, and hope to get picked out of the crowd Little-Orphan-Annie-style by some benevolent throwback of a newspaper magnate (good luck in finding one); or you work your way through the tried-and-tested system: take a journalism course costing thousands of pounds, hope it’s one that the newspaper you’re applying to actually respects/recognises, secure a bottom-rung position and begin covering ‘man bites dog’ stories for the ‘Weird News’ section of your local rag until the will to delve has been so beaten out of you that you’re as unwilling to achieve real depth as an asthmatic scuba diver, and then return to the office to file 300 words of copy only to spend the day watching it getting trimmed back and pruned until your day’s work is a 20-word stub just before the classifieds. I’m joking of course, this doesn’t really happen – you’d not have left the office to do any of that: that’s why phones were invented.

Still, that’s what I’d usually offer as advice (not that I’ve been a journalist myself, you understand, so my advice is purely pithy conjecture and semi-satirical commentary). However, today I’m feeling a little more generous, so I’m going to let you into a little secret: there are simpler solutions, easier paths to tread. In short, there are shortcuts. And I’m going to share those shortcuts with you right now:

Ctrl+C.  Ctrl+V.

Sorry, perhaps I should have clarified – when I said shortcuts, I meant keyboard shortcuts. PC keyboard shortcuts at that – I’m sure there are Apple+C and Apple+V professionals out there, but I can imagine they largely went on to become designers.

Now, you might think it dismissive of me to write-off large sections of a vocation (and a vocation I have a lot of affection and admiration for, at it’s best) by reducing it to simple copy and pasting. Yet, that’s often what modern journalism has become – see, for example this fine piece of work in yesterday’s Telegraph:

Half-term costs parents £400 keeping kids entertained

Parents can expect to fork out over £400 keeping the kids entertained over half term, it was revealed yesterday.

Researchers found shelling out for childminders, babysitters and food and drink through the week leaves a huge dent in the pockets of mums and dads up and down the country.

And then compare it to this press release from nPower:

Parents can expect to fork out over #400 keeping the kids entertained over half term, it was revealed yesterday (Sun).

Researchers found shelling out for childminders, babysitters and food and drink through the week leaves a huge dent in the pockets of mums and dads up and down the country.

While you’re at it, why not compare the full article in the Telegraph with the full press release, and spot the difference between the two. I’ll give you a clue, other than replacing the #s with £s, there isn’t one.

Still, this is an unnamed, uncredited, byline-less article, so there’s no real deceit here – I mean, other than passing off word-for-word PR copy as actual news without marking up to the reader that the words they’re reading are not those of the respected news source, but are essentially paid-for copy from a company looking to get its name in the papers – right? If only it stopped there… but it doesn’t. Just ask Daily Record reporter Vivienne Aitken, who penned this scaremongering piece on childrens’ habits:

THE nation’s “tweens” are growing up faster than ever before, a study revealed yesterday.

A report found the majority of children between the ages of eight and 12 now own a mobile phone, have an email account, make their own meals and regularly eat takeaways.

They are likely to be fashion-conscious, worry about their weight, shop for their own clothes and own a laptop.

It also emerged a large percentage of girls in the age group are already wearing make-up.

The study of 1500 parents revealed eight out of 10 are terrified their children are already “behaving like adults” despite their tender years.

Shocking stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree. And you’d not be the only one to agree, as a press release from www.TheBabyWebsite.com agrees with Vivien slightly more than you’d think possible:

The nation’s ‘Tweens’ are growing up faster than ever before, a study revealed yesterday (Sun) .

A report found the majority of children between the ages of eight and 12 now own a mobile phone, have an email account, make their own meals and regularly eat takeaways.

They are also likely to be fashion-conscious, worry about their weight and appearance, shop for their own clothes and own a lap-top.

It also emerged a large percentage of girls in the age group are already wearing make-up.

The study of 1,500 parents also revealed eight out of ten are terrified their children are already ‘behaving like adults’ despite their tender years.

Again, barring the deletion of a few superfluous ‘also’s and the application of a house style of numbering, the copy is entirely untouched. You might wonder – why would any journalist be content with putting their name to an article despite not having written a single word of it, and presumably knowing full-well that it’s paid-for copy from a company looking to get it’s name in the news? Unfortunately, this is modern churnalism. And it’s why I’d advise any would-be Lois Lane to stick to hoping for a Daddy Warbucks to notice your income-less blog.

Apparently, Croatian doctors are baffled after a teenage girl who fell into a mysterious coma woke up speaking fluent German. The teenager has been unable to speak Croatian – although can understand it when it is spoken to her – and now communicates only in German.

Pretty off-the-wall I think you’ll agree. This is the kind of thing that would have steadfast believers in past lives screaming “Proof!” in very loud voices, particularly if this unfortunate teenager didn’t speak German beforehand. Going by the tone of the article, you would think that this is what had actually happened. That would be a bona-fide miracle. However, despite it’s ‘mysterious event’ tone, the article is quick to point out that the girl in fact did know ‘a bit’ of German, although apparently her usage of the language following the coma was far superior to the mastery of the language she had when she was intially taken ill.

Apparently. (I’m getting used to that word, now.)

The parents of the girl, a thirteen-year-old from the Southern town of Knin, said that their daughter had only just started studying German at school and had been trying to read German books and watch German television – but had never been that good at german.

Yes. She was ‘studying’ it, ‘reading’ it and ‘watching’ TV programs in it, but despite all that she was, you know, a bit rubbish…

Excuse me while I prop up my dying sense of hope in a rational world and try to shake it violently awake.

The article is filled with references to the “mysterious coma” and “the unusual case”, and speaks of “getting to the bottom of the mystery”. It really tries its best to make it all seem as mystical and impossible-seeming as it can. Despite this, they are forced in their final paragraph to point out that the coma only lasted twenty-four hours and was probably caused by extremely high body temperature. So it seems as if the doctors aren’t quite as baffled as the Daily Fail/BellyLaugh axis of evil suggests.

In fact, the hospital director, Dujomir Marasovic, said:

“You never know when recovering from such a trauma how the brain will react. Obviously we have some theories although at the moment we are limited in what we can say because we have to respect the privacy of the patient.”

I like to think that the girl was a secret foreign languages junkie, staying up late in her room at night with a torch under the covers, speaking fluent German to herself.

Of course, the case is still unusual. A psychiatrist involved with the case, Dr Mijo Milas, wisely pointed out that:

“In earlier times this would have been referred to as a miracle; we prefer to think that there must be a logical explanation – it’s just that we haven’t found it yet.”

Fair enough, and about as skeptical as you get in the Daily Fail/BellyLaugh. Unfortunately, the wise Dr Milas then goes on to say:

“There are references to cases where people who have been seriously ill and perhaps in a coma have woken up being able to speak other languages – sometimes even the Biblical languages such as that in old Babylon or Egypt – at the moment though any speculation would remain just that – speculation – so it’s better to continue tests until we actually know something.”

Damn right it is! Personally I’d love to see ANY evidence of people suddenly speaking ancient languages following a coma, because I’m willing to bet money that if anyone ever did, they were probably students of ancient languages!

Gaahh…

That was the last gasp of my hope in a rational world.

Now, to the girl’s condition itself. The brain does funny things. People with brain injuries can lose short term memory, forget their own families, forget how to speak, all kinds of bizarre and unusual things. Severe stutterers can sometimes sing and speak their second languages fluently. Aphasia sufferers speak the wrong words because they simply can’t access the right ones, even though they’re attempting to make perfect sense, and grammatically they do. If this coma affected the parts of the girl’s brain which dealt with speech and language, I see no technical reason why something like this couldn’t happen. You don’t even need to be personally ‘fluent’ in the language as such. There is a gap between the amount of information you absorb and how efficiently and capably you can use that information. This girl may very well have read and heard more German words than she could personally recall consciously in a conversation. Somewhere she will have taken in that information, but just not immediately processed it for her conscious mind.

In addition, I would probably dispute the supposed high level of German she purportedly now speaks. That to me sounds like simple exaggeration, provided by those around the girl and then amplified by the reporters themselves. However, I can’t know that for sure, so I’ll leave that.

This story is fascinating and amazing on its own. Even if she woke only speaking the five words of German she knew and none of her first language, that would be fascinating enough on its own. It infuriates me when newspapers feel they have to portray stories like this in almost mystical terms, as if they’re reporting on a miracle. No: give us the facts, we’ll decide whether it’s a miracle or not. This tends to happen a lot with stories from abroad. I suspect it is because it makes it more difficult for readers and other journalists to verify the truthfulness of those stories. Indeed, I tried my best to find a source for this story outside of the identical articles in the Daily Fail/BellyLaugh but found absolutely nothing.

In fact, I’m not sure it even exists. Maybe it’s all just made up.

What a miracle!

As the Times reported:

“Psychics told detectives that they had been contacted from beyond the grave. Far from having killed himself, Mr Assaf, a baker from Lampeter, west Wales, informed the mediums that he had been strangled by gangsters who forced him to drink petrol and bleach. In their visions the psychics, who were friends of the dead man’s family, saw a lion, a horse and the name Tony Fox.”

Of course, when presented with these so-called leads the police had little choice but to exhaust every avenue of investigation open to them – including visiting pubs named Red Lion or Black Horse, and tracking down a known felon by the name of Tony Fox – who they then ruled out of their investigations.

In the wake of criticism of the investigation – which cost in  excess of £20k – Sergeant Mark Webb defended his force’s actions:

“We interviewed the mediums and, having carried out an investigation, we found the information far from conclusive. We wanted to be absolutely satisfied there was no third party involved”

Going further, a spokesman for the Dyfed Powys Police told the Telegraph:

“Police have a responsibility to the deceased, their family and the public to investigate all deaths thoroughly.”

For me, the outcry and ridicule here is misdirected – instead of criticising police for their investigation we should be all over the time-wasting ‘mediums’ who felt the need to involve themselves in an investigation into a man’s death and muddy the waters with their false leads.

Imagine, for example, that the police dismissed these ‘psychics’ as frauds, attention-seekers, vultures and deluded individuals – what happens then in the one case where the ‘psychic’ us directly involved in the crime – either as the murderer or as a real (non-mystic) witness? The police force who let a killer run free when presented with a genuine lead – albeit one dressed-up in fantasist trappings – would be even more in the firing line.

It’s not the police that are to blame here – they’re only really doing their job, to the fullness of the law. Instead, it’s the individuals who provided false leads – either knowingly or when deluded into believing them to be true – who deserve the scorn and derision. In fact, any psychic or medium who wished to be involved in a police investigation should be charged with wasting police time and punished with a significant fine or jail sentence when their leads are proven to be entirely fictitious – then we’d see how many ‘mediums’ wish to be involved in serious police investigations. I wonder then how many psychics would be cashing in on disappearances like Madelaine McCann’s when false leads would be punishable by the law.

Every false lead provided by these fantasists or frauds (and if their leads prove false, they’re either one or the other) is a waste of time police could be out catching real killers, following real leads and stopping other crimes. In short, ‘psychic tipsters’ should be held accountable for their actions, and the harm they cause with their interfering with police business.

Noel Edmonds, host of Deal or No Deal

This week it’s emerged that bearded box-opener Noel Edmonds of the granny-pleasing game show ‘Deal or No Deal‘ has something other than dumb luck and a penchant for stripey jumpers on his side. Noel, who’s career was saved by the quiz show after his popularity plummeted with the demise of his long-running 90s show ‘Noel’s House Party‘, has pinned his recent success firmly on ‘Cosmic Ordering‘.

For the uninitiated of our listeners, Cosmic Ordering is the mystical self-help movement whereby followers are encouraged to write down a wish list of things they want to come true and submit it to the cosmos and wait for it to happen. In that way it’s a lot like the Oprah-tastic self-help piddle ‘The Law of Atraction‘, essentially telling people that if you wish hard enough, anything you want will come to you.

In Noel’s case he was turned on to the power of the cosmos by that sure-fire source of life expertise – his reflexologist. Because, obviously, anyone who spends their day magically rubbing the feet of strangers clearly has the secret to getting ahead in life… but enough of the ad hominems. Instead lets look at this from a professional, respectable angle. Oh, sorry, mistake – let’s look at this in the Daily Mail.

The Mail opens with a small and characteristically-understated claim:

“Want a great new job or meet that special someone? Television presenter Noel Edmonds has launched an iPhone application that will call on the cosmos to help you” – Source: Mail Online, 21/09/09

Bet you didn’t see that coming! Because not only has Noel got the secret to getting what you want from the world, he’s prepared to let you download it straight to your iPod, for a nominal fee of course. This is self-help after all, and Noel needs to self-help too you know… The article goes on to explain:

“The app is based on the New Age philosophy of ‘cosmic ordering’ and allows people to place orders with the cosmos asking for their wishes to come true and then record what happens.”

I love the phrase ‘place orders with the cosmos’ – like it’s some kind of ethereal room service. ‘Hi, is that the cosmos? Yeah, I’d like a ham sandwich, a black coffee, and my own infuriatingly simple and irritatingly popular game series whereby I create drama out of people literally saying random numbers while a bunch of strangers open cheap boxes with other numbers written inside them. Oooh, could you give me my own phone where I can pretend to talk to someone else when really I’m just talking to myself like an bearded simpleton too, please? Excellent’

Noel Edmonds' Cosmic Ordering will help you gain success and good fortune

Also, what the hell does it even mean to place your order with the cosmos. The cosmos is space, it’s the universe. There’s no placing an order – you’re a tiny insignificant blob of carbon on a tiny planet far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy. The universe owes you nothing, Noel. But download Noel’s app and you will owe him £1.20. Well it’s tacky nonsense, but at least it’s relatively cheap tacky nonsense.

You might ask me: ‘How does the app work?’ Well, it doesn’t, obviously. Then you might say: ‘No, no, I mean what does it do?’ In which case I’d chastise your lack of clarity, tell you I’m not a mind reader, and then explain to you that it apparently allows phone users to record their orders and how the cosmos responded to the request. What’s more the orders can be viewed by date placed, the target date for delivery as well as the subject, such as Family, Love, Health and Wealth. Which, again, is just meaningless dribble. While there is something to be said for writing down and recording achievable, progressive steps towards your goals (something Richard Wiseman covers in his latest book, I believe), the notion that writing down where you want to be and what you want to get and it will come to you is false; attaching it to a magical, mystical cosmic force is palpably nonsense.

Noel says of the scam – sorry, scheme:

“We must never forget that the cosmos exists solely to help those who want to help themselves. It is an incredibly powerful force and a wonderful friend and ally for all who adopt a positive approach to life. However, the cosmos won’t, indeed it can’t, assist you unless you adhere to the three basic rules of cosmic ordering, the most important of which is belief in yourself and your right to be successful.”

This is where it gets a bit nasty, if you ask me – sure, the idea that if you believe hard enough you’ll get anything you want is seductive, and sweet, and blah and blah and blah. But what about those who don’t get what they want? Who stay poor, or stay alone, or stay ill with disease – what of them? By Noel’s cosmic ordering, they didn’t wish hard enough, didn’t believe strongly enough. By the very logic of this self-help crap, anything that you don’t get, you don’t deserve; anything bad that happens to you, is your own fault. Charming. Kind makes me wish for the good old days when the only irritating crap Noel was pushing on us was Mr Blobby.

Except, I was wrong. That’s fine though, I’m always happy to admit when I’m wrong (I am! What do you know, anyway?!). So it was with equal parts incredulity and glee I allowed my love/hate affair with the Telegraph to take me in its warm and scientifically-bereft arms with the headline ‘Do you believe in angels?‘

No, I don’t. Nor should you. Silly Telegraph.

Still, it’s been a while since we wrote about them, and it’s rude of me to deny the Telegraph their fun, so let’s see what it’s all about. Well, as Journalist Christopher Howse reports:

“A university lecturer has criticised parents for being dismissive when their seven-year-old daughter told them that she saw an angel at her bedside every night, which she felt comforted by. Quite right, too. Perhaps she had seen an angel. Children, if they are truthful and well, should be taken seriously”

So children should be taken seriously, even when what they’re being serious about is something fringe, wildly unlikely and patently silly? This is a bizarre attitude to take – we all know children are prone to make believe, and to accept their reports of angels uncritically is to teach our children that critical thinking and questioning experiences isn’t important. If we accept angels, should we accept invisible friends and monsters under the bed, too? Are these any more ridiculous claims?

“Angels are not cuddly toys, and it is not just children who believe in them. They have become an adult craze. Gone are the merely jokey fancies. Unjokey books like Angels in My Hair by Lorna Byrne or Angels Watching Over Me by Jacky Newcomb sell millions”

Bzzzt! Argument from authority – just because it’s the belief of adults rather than children does not make the claim any less ridiculous. Unjokey books selling millions? Bzzzt! Argumentum ad populum – a million people can be wrong, just because something sells in vast numbers doesn’t make it true. The Bible, for example…

“Miss Jacky Newcomb, at the paranormal end of the angel spectrum, enjoys endorsements from Uri Geller.”

Bzzzt! Argument from authority again – and a lame authority at that. Uri Geller is an oft-debunked and wildly-ridiculed spoon bender who has been proven time and time again to have no paranormal ability. Even if he had (he hasn’t), his expertise would be in spoon bending and mind-reading (plus these days he flogs crystals on QVC). He’s not an authority on angels, then.

“Miss Lorna Byrne, whose memoir Angels in My Hair was bought for a six-figure sum by the publishers of The Da Vinci Code, is more devotional. “Remember strangers give you messages from your Angels too.” she says. “It could be a shop assistant, a bus driver, a neighbour’s child.”

Bzzzt! No true Scotsman fallacy? What they’re doing here is shifting the definition – if you’re definition of ‘angels’ allows for the inclusion of shop assistants, bus drivers and other people’s kids, then yes angels do exist. But they’re not angels. They’re shop assistants, bus drivers and other people’s kids. That’s not what the word ‘angel’ means.

“Guardian angels remain most popular, with 38 per cent of us believing in them, if we credit a single opinion poll”

Bzzzt! Argumentum ad populum. Just because 38% of people believe in guardian angels doesn’t mean guardian angels exist.

“But it doesn’t take a vision of a winged messenger with a flaming sword to convince people, once the possibility of angelic intervention is entertained. Gloria Hunniford has found angels very helpful in finding parking places.”

OK, you’ve got me there – I can’t begin to find a logical fallacy which describes this sufficiently. Argumentum ad bullshitum? What I will say is those angels do a damned noble job – thank the Lord in all of his wisdom that he deploys his ambassadors to Earth, his guardians from Heaven, to do His chosen work right here on this plane. And what does he, in his infinite and beardy wisdom, deign worthy of his interjection and aid? Cancer patients? Genocide? Keeping clergy from interfering with altar boys? No, blessed are the drivers, for they shall inherit a parking space. Sometimes. Brilliant.

“One day, after lunch, the late Jennifer Paterson, formerly one of the Two Fat Ladies, accidentally locked me out of my house in Shepherd’s Bush by closing the front door behind us in the front garden. What impressed me was her instant success in attracting the attention of a passing youth and persuading him to shin over the back wall and break into the house. I assumed he was part of the skilled Shepherd’s Bush burgling community. Later I wondered: perhaps it was an angel”

So angels can be burglers as well as kind strangers and parking attendants? Is there anything those angels won’t do for us? Angels – I salute you, and your fence-shimmying, car-park-watching glory!

“Theologically, angels are perfectly respectable. God is an uncreated spirit; human beings are bodily creatures with a spiritual component; angels are spiritual creatures with no bodily component. They have intellect and will and are much cleverer than we are. Satan is an angel gone to the bad.

Traditional Jewish, as well as Christian, speculation holds that there are millions more angels than there are human beings. So encountering one at your bedside would be only too likely”

Hear this and more on Righteous Indignation

Bzzt! Back to ad populums and authority arguments! Back on safe, clear irrational ground then. Just because the authority of religion says angels are real doesn’t make it so; just because there is speculation that there are millions of angels doesn’t make it so.

On the whole, this Telegraph article really is bizarre to read – if you ask me I’d guess that it’s some kind of blatant attempt to get into the SGU’s ‘Spot the logical fallacy’ feature, but then again I’m prone to those kind of outlandish statements based on little evidence…

“When I saw Hilery, I was astonished to see my ideas of health turned on their head. She explained to me that homeopathy treats the real causes of illness in the body, not just the symptoms – as conventional medicine does… Hilery didn’t perform a physical examination. Instead, she asked me about my background, my personality, my emotions, what made me stressed – even my parents’ health. She constructed a picture of me and gave me a remedy made up exactly to treat my left ovary.”

It’s hard to say, really, at what point the alarm bells should have been ringing.  Perhaps when the diagnosis involved no physical examination at all – that would have struck me as odd.  Or perhaps when she was diagnostically asked about her personality and her emotions, when her real physical pain was already known to be caused by erroneous fluid-filled sacs on her ovaries – that would seem a bit weird.  Or perhaps when Hilery trotted out a meaningless fallacy that conventional medicine only treats the symptoms of an illness, not the cause – that would strike me immediately as completely, utterly and patently absurd (anti-biotics, for example, kill bacteria and infections – they don’t go near your symptoms, you’ll still cough and wheeze right up until the causal infection in your chest begins clear).

Or perhaps the alarm bells would ring when the proposed treatment had to turn all of your ideas and understandings about health, physics and mathematics on their head to work – that would be a tiny bit of a red flag to me.  Personally, the alarm bell would ring loudest when a friend, someone who in some way cared about my health, suggested I see a glorified witch doctor to deal with a problem actual real medicine has got covered – that would be a biggie for me.  But then again I wasn’t ranked 24th on the women’s pro circuit in December 1985 (I was mysteriously and criminally overlooked that year).

Of course, the big point – as mentioned in the merest in passing by the Telegraph – is that most cysts go away of their own accord.  They disappear.  Poof.  Not even the drinking of an infinitesimal amount of cyst-causing agent could prevent that.  Which, if you believe the homeopath, if Hilery Dorrian was doing the job she claimed, would be exactly what Annabel had told to do – the very central principle of homeopathy, rule 1 in the manual states that like cures like.  Cure sleeplessness with caffeine.  Cure watery eyes with onions.  Cure small sacs of fluid forming on the ovaries with whatever bark, chemical or plant extract that caused them.  Which is none.  There is no tangible environmental or dietary cause for ovarian cysts, so no like to cure the like with. So what the hell was Annabel Croft, who (lest we forget) was Anneka Rice’s replacement on Treasure Hunt, taking?  Who knows.  But two things we do know: 1) It categorically was not responsible for the disappearance of her ovarian cysts.  2) If it was truly homeopathic, it was literally and mathematically no different to water.

Annabel left Dorrain’s homeopathy centre with an open mind, but not expecting a miracle. However, after taking the prescribed pillules, her cyst gradually became less painful; the throbbing stopped; and she never went back to her GP. She is convinced that the homeopathic remedies she took enhanced and perhaps speeded up the healing process.

Read that bit again (no, not the use of the word ‘speeded’ in place of ‘sped’, that’s just standard poor journalism).  She ‘[wasn't] expecting a miracle… However… her cyst gradually became less painful’.  So she didn’t get a miracle.  No ‘however’ about it – there was no miracle.  Zero, on the miracle front.  In fact the article should read, ‘She wasn’t expecting a miracle… Which is lucky, really, because her cyst gradually became less painful exactly as it would if it was healing of its own accord‘.  It’s also interesting to note Annabel was convinced that the quack remedies helped – this is a classic example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy: she has no way of knowing what did or didn’t cause her cysts to go away, but because she put her faith in this absurdity, Annabel can only assume the personality-based magic water did the trick.  If she had seen an acupuncturist, that would have been what cured her.  If she had gone to a chiropractor, they would have been what cured her (although of course they probably would have sued her too… go Simon Singh!).  And it’s not just former tennis stars – we’re all susceptible to this kind of thinking.

Annabel has been back to see Hilery – at a cost of about £30 a time – every six weeks in the past five years to get what she describes as an MOT

Sure. An MOT you need to get every six weeks, at £30 a hit.  For five years.  So that’s £1300 worth of magic water.  She should have bought it all at once and had a magic jacuzzi (though, come to think of it, all those bubbles would only over-succuss the water – it could become lethally strong…)

“And at home we all rely on homeopathic medicine. When I or one of the children have a cold, we take pulsatilla [a native British flower]“

Yikes.  Here’s the scary part – she uses this magical medicine, this mystery panacea to treat her children.  Fortunately it’s just for minor issues that are all self-limiting and not serious, but still whenever quackery and children are mixed, my skin crawls.

“And I always have handy some arnica for bruises, calendula for cuts and grazes, belladonna [not poisonous at this level of dilution] for a throbbing head”

Here, Annabel really does have something right – belladonna (otherwise known as Deadly Nightshade) is not poisonous at that level of dilution.  In fact, it’s no longer even Deadly Nightshade at that level of dilution.

So, Annabel has drank the Kool-Aid (albeit the tapped against table and wildly diluted Kool-Aid).  What of the potential for homeopathy to help a Brit finally win Wimbledon? (I don’t even need to comment too much, I’m sure, on the timing of the article – appearing right in Wimbledon week is a shockingly transparent piece of cynical PR on behalf of the homeopath in question)

“I’ve used gelsemium in the past to calm my nerves before presenting Wimbledon, but it’s possible it may also work for Andy. However, homeopathic remedies are designed to help with specific symptoms and Andy’s may be different to mine.”

But wait, didn’t homeopathy ‘treat the real causes of illness in the body, not just the symptoms’?  Yet another example of the fuzzy logic and lack of critical thinking that woo, quack and bogus pseudomedical practices thrive on.

Still, if it is just water, it can’t harm, can it?  I mean, someone in the media might lost thousands of pounds on meaningless treatments, but that’s not so bad, on the grand scheme of things, right?  I mean it’s not like there are people selling homeopathic (and therefore ineffective) anti-malaria tablets, right?  And it’s not like people are stopping their treatment for AIDS or cancer to take homeopathic solutions, right?  It’s not like, for example, there are cases of children, babes in arms, dying of something as stupid and tragic and curable as eczema, because of homeopathic alternatives, right?  (I urge you not to click that last link unless you can cope with the horrible, sad, despicable and upsetting realities of the case in question).  As an aside, at this point I’d like to mention that Annabel’s homeopath of choice, Hilery Dorrian, sells her own range of homeopathic potions – including her very own eczema cure.  She even wrote a two-part article for ‘Homeopathy in Practice’ magazine, entitled ‘The management of eczema’ (in the editions for Autumn and Winter 2006).  At present, I don’t know where the death of Gloria Sun fits into Hilery’s eczema-management strategy.

Homeopathy kills by omission. It’s a murderer by distraction. Anyone who profits from this patently-absurd and wildly-dangerous practice, or any bogus pseudomedicine for that matter, is profiteering directly from the illness, desperation and death of their fellow man.  It’s that simple.

Still, I’m actually all for homeopathy.  100%.  200% in fact.  I believe so strongly in the pure principles of homeopathy that I strongly recommend taking homeopathic quantities of homeopathic remedies – for best effect, I would advise taking a very small amount of homeopathic remedy once, and then to dilute that amongst a large amount of placebo-controlled, double-blind-study-proven, western, modern, scientific and effective medicine.  For optimum health, take an infinitesimal amount of homeopathy one time once in your life, and dilute it with an entire lifetime of actual actual medicine.  Surely Samuel Hahnemann himself would support that…

But as it happens, the Merseyside UFOs weren’t aliens, after all.  I’ll let you have a moment to stop reeling from that shock revelation.  Done?  Good.  They were countermeasure flares deployed in a navy training routine.  Even the woo-tastic Telegraph is happy to go with this explanation, so it must really hold water – give those guys half an inch of wiggle room and it seems they’re the first ones to don their tin-foil hats and hum the theme tune to the X-Files.  And the BBC are not much better – ‘Do-Dee-Derr-Derrr…Do-Dee-Do-Derr-Derr-Derr…‘   As it happens, I was half-way through an ‘it’s probably something straightforward’ type post when it emerged that it was, in fact, something straightforward.  ’Oh,’ thought I, ‘that’s that then.  No need to write on UFOs, it’ll be ages before another one of those comes up.’  But UFOs, like buses and clichés, rarely come along one at a time…

So what’s this latest story then?  As the Telegraph reports:

“Campers in the Lake District were treated to a spectacular light show from a string of glowing orbs which flew in formation across the night sky.

It is the latest in a series of sightings which has baffled onlookers and excited UFO spotters across the UK” – Source: Telegraph

I for one appreciate the Telegraph taking a fine, unbiased opinion on this.  ’It’s the latest in a series of sightings’ – there’s a half-truth for you: It’s the latest in a series of pretty lame sightings.  People who believe in UFOs are described as excited; people who had no belief in UFOs were baffled – clearly stacking the deck early on in the report to favour an ‘Aliens!!!!!’ interpretation.  Let’s read on… and as Darlington-born (good lad!) Paul Haigh explains:

“[The lights] weaved in and out of one another and appeared to fade and then light up again as they soared through a clear sky…

“The lights were amazing and seemed to fly in formation, they were darting around, fading an lighting up again.

“There was never more than six in the sky at any one time, but as one faded another lit up, it was a really weird spectacle”

Lights fading or flickering?  Flying in formation?  Sounds like Chinese Lanterns/Sky Lanterns to me – mini hot-air balloons that fly up to a mile in height, for around 20 minutes or so.  They’re party decorations, like an alternative to fireworks.  Pretty, and pretty cool too.  And at £15 for 5 – pretty reasonably priced.  (Note: The Merseyside Skeptics Society does not endorse a particular brand of Chinese Lantern.  We will never become a shill for damn ‘Big Lantern’).  It’s a shame nobody in the lakes that night knew about these things during the sighting…

“There were various theories as to what they were, someone said Chinese lanterns, but they seemed much too big and moving too fast.”

Oops, my bad again.   But they couldn’t have been Chinese lanterns, because they were too big.  And the speed they were moving!  For something so big they must have been going so fast!  Or, of course, they weren’t big.  They were just closer.  And therefore slower.  Like, say, a Chinese lantern.

“They looked as though they were being propelled under their own power rather than being blown by the wind, it was a still night.”

Lucy Gray, 26, of Leeds, said: “They seemed to be dancing around in the sky, not just racing straight across it like clouds.

“They were moving in formation, keeping a regular distance apart and they’d all shift around at the same time”

Propelled under their own power?  Sure – the power of their tiny flame, just enough to carry it’s tiny hot air balloon up.  It was a still night?  Sure – at ground level.  But at one mile up, there was clearly plenty of wind – Lucy tells us that herself when she mentions the clouds ‘racing straight across’ the sky.  Dancing around?  Sure – they’re light, and they’re buffeted by air currents.  Keeping a regular distance apart?  Sure – they could have been tied together.

“It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen and I can’t explain it, unless they were aircraft on a training exercise.”

Or, Lucy, unless they were £15-worth of paper, candles and cheap fuel, tied with a string, one mile up (give or take), buffeted on the wind.

For me, the worst part of the article is still to come.  I can forgive Paul and Lucy – excited onlookers to some unusual-looking lights, giving quotes to a journalist, having a bit of a giggle. It’s all such a lark, aliens and all that.  But the journalist decides to end the whole account with the following:

“Similar lights in recent weeks have been found to be Chinese lanterns, often released during Summer weddings.”

Yes. Silmilar lights HAVE been found to be Chinese lanterns.  Pretty much identical lights, in fact, have been found to be Chinese lanterns. Pretty much identical lights, as described in the Telegraph as UFOs, have been later found to be Chinese lanterns.  So it’s really rather dishonest journalism to tack this simple explanation to the bottom of the last para, the token note of scepticism, when there are perfectly simple explanations already to hand.  Especially in a newspaper that has run 13 – THIRTEEN – UFO stories in 3 months.  That to me is an unnaturally high number, smacking of a little bit of manufacturing.

One sighting that, somehow, the UFO-obsessed Telegraph missed was the tale of the definitely-not-a-Chinese-lantern sighting over Muswell Hill in London.

This was actually something else that sat in my ‘too-silly-to-write-about’ pile for a while – struggling, bit-part and entirely-unheard-of actor Sam Lathem sighted what he described as  ’a large cube-shaped “ship” with orange lights erratically making its way across the sky’ late last month.  Sam was so spooked and amazed by what he saw that he took the time to draw a sketch.  A sketch.  He drew it.  In this day an age, when every phone has a camera and cctv cameras line the streets, he decided to sketch it.  Fishy.  In my head, he then tried to sell the sketch to the UFO, like a caricature artist in a tourist hotspot, but the UFO politely declined in broken English.  That bit’s just in my head though.

And this UFO is just in Sam’s head, I’d say.

In Sam’s own words:

“It was really strange because there was no noise and you would have thought at that distance it would have woken up everybody on the street. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Yep, it doesn’t.  But the suggestion that there was no UFO, that an actor of Sam’s standing (actually, he really looks spookily like a fat Arnold Rimmer/Chris Barrie) might benefit from a bit of niche publicity – to me that makes a whole lot more sense than an entire city failing to look up and see a cube the size of a truck hovering silently above their heads (yes, in exactly the same way a brick doesn’t).

So it’s silly season on the UFO stories, it seems.  OK.  I mean, I largely got into this scepticism lark to expose the psychics, tarot-readers and other such scoundrels who prey on the bereaved and vulnerable.  Or to help put an end to the quack practicioners of bogus treatments which erode faith in real medicine and damage the health of those who fall for the woo.  But as long as UFOs are so prominent, and tabloids cheaply sell-off their own journalistic dignity for a quick story, without second thought for the leg-up it gives to fuzzy, magical thinking – they’re back on the list.  Now, I’m off to draft-up a ‘there’s probably a very simple explanation for those lights… they’re probably Chinese lanterns… etc’ post, ready for the next sighting…