The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe
Skepticast #22: December 14th 2005 (Download MP3)
Topics:
Issue #1. News Items Holiday Scams
Issue #2. Science or Fiction
Issue #3. Eye Evolution
Issue #4. Venus the UFO
Issue #5. Video Games and Siezures
Issue #6. Psychic Detectives
Issue #1. News Items Holiday Scams
Officials warn consumers of widespread holiday scams By MICHAEL GORMLEY
The Associated Press
ALBANY Psst. Want a great deal?
That's the kind of sales pitch state officials warn consumers must resist more.
The still popular classic ploy of free money today is joining the Internet dialer scam and the jury duty hoax as part of what the state Consumer Protection Board includes in its top 10 scams for the holidays.
All of these offers sound like great bargains, but you'll have better luck pulling on a turkey wishbone, said Teresa A. Santiago, executive director of the state Consumer Protection Board.
Santiago and consumer advocates say the holidays are particularly dangerous for consumers. They said the generosity and benevolence of the season, as well as a more urgent desire for bargains, can let down the guard of even wary consumers.
And scammers know it.
The Federal Trade Commission also warns that legitimate retailers may be worth watching closely.
For example, when is a sale not a sale? When it's a sale on an item that isn't there.
The FTC warns consumers to make sure they read for things such as quantities limited, no rain checks, and not available in all stores which could result in a wasted trip to the store and an impulse buy at a higher price.
The FTC also suggests comparison shopping online, factoring in travel costs for bargains at distant stores, and a careful look at the return or refund policy.
Santiago along with the National Consumers League, the Better Business Bureau of Upstate New York, and the online watchdogs Ripoffreport.com and ConsumerAffairs.com say there are are several repeated scams to which consumers should be attuned. They include:
Bogus promises of loans and credit from cash-short
Peddlers of Medicare prescription drugs.
Although legitimate companies are allowed to market the new prescription drug plans now available under Medicare, some scammers are using telemarketers and unsolicited e-mails to try to steal money and financial information. The Better Business Bureau of Upstate New York said legitimate providers can't do door-to-door or e-mail selling.
While legitimate companies can use telemarketers, they must abide by state and federal Do Not Call lists.
To verify the legitimacy of a company in this area call 800-MEDICARE.
Credit card offers.
Telemarketers are looking for checking account numbers, and it's against the law to charge an upfront fee for a credit card.
The jury duty scam in which consumers receive an angry telephone call saying the victim failed to appear for jury duty. The caller then seeks personal information including a Social Security number and bank account numbers to resolve the issue.
On the Net:
www.nysconsumer.gov
Originally published November 26, 2005
Scams and pitches of the season
Here are some of the top scams and top pitches of scammers, according to state and national consumer advocates:
Telemarketers who promise free government grants. They are trolling for bank account numbers.
Buyers who contact people selling cars and other high-priced items in want ads.
The scammer sends a phony check often worth more than the purchase price to entice the seller and the check often looks good enough to clear, sticking the seller with thousands of dollars in debt and the loss of the big-ticket item.
Free coupons and trial offers. Sometimes these trigger the release of a consumers financial information to scammers who contract with legitimate retailers.
The lottery or sweepstakes win that requires consumers to pay a fee. A woman near Amsterdam, Montgomery County, recently lost $80,000 after a scammer told her she had to pay off her taxes at a special account before she could collect her prize. If collecting a jackpot requires you to pay first, ignore it.
Some of the classic, and new, lines of scammers include:
Improve sexual prowess.
Earn big money stuffing envelopes.
Free golf clubs!
Big senior discounts on prescription drugs.
Correspondence from a banks fraud department.
News that youve won in a lottery or sweepstakes to which you didnt enter.
Free money.
This is U.S. Customs. You need to pay the duty on your Publishers Clearinghouse winnings.
Bad Credit? No problem!
Burn Fat While You Sleep.
Were checking your husbands credit card.
The death tax will wipe out your estate when you die, leaving your children with nothing.
SOURCE: State Consumer Protection Board, the National Consumer League, Ripoffreport.com, ConsumerAffairs.com and the Upstate New York Chapter of the Better Business Bureau.
Issue #2. Science or Fiction
Each week our host will come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine, one fictitious. He will challenge our panel of skeptics to sniff out the fake and you can play along.
1) German shoppers kill Santa 2) For some species of bats, bigger brains means smaller testes and vice versa 3) Women's menstrual cycle actually changes the wiring of women's brains
So...which one is false? Follow this link to find out.
Issue #3. Eye Evolution
Insight Into Our Sight: A New View On The Evolution Of The Eye Lens
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/09/050926074038.htm
How complex and physiologically remarkable structures such as the human eye could evolve has long been a question that has puzzled biologists. But in research reported this week in Current Biology, the evolutionary history of a critical eye protein has revealed a previously unrecognized link between certain components of sophisticated vertebrate eyes - like those found in humans - and those of the primitive light-sensing systems of invertebrates. The findings, from researchers at the University of Oxford, the University of London and Radboud University in The Netherlands, put in place a conceptual framework for understanding how the vertebrate eye, as we know it, has emerged over evolutionary time.
Human sight relies on the ability of our eye to form a clear, focused image on the retina. Critical to this function is the eye lens and the physical properties that underlie the transparency of the lens. The eye's ability to precisely refract light is because of high concentrations of special proteins called crystallins found in lens cells.
Vertebrates such as fish, frogs, birds, humans and other mammals all experience image-forming vision because our eyes express crystallins, which helps form the lens that is needed. But our invertebrate relatives, such as sea squirts, have only simple eyes that detect light but are incapable of forming an image.
This lead to the view that the lens evolved within vertebrates early in vertebrate evolution, raising the question: How could a complex organ with such remarkable physical properties have evolved in the first place?
Researcher Sebastian Shimeld from Oxford approached this question by examining the evolutionary origin of one crystallin protein family, known as the BetaGamma-crystallins. Focusing on sea squirts, the researchers found that these creatures possess a single crystallin gene, which is expressed in its primitive light-sensing system. The identification of this single crystallin gene strongly suggests that it is the gene from which the more complex vertebrate BetaGamma-crystallins evolved.
Perhaps even more remarkable is the finding that expression of the sea squirt crystallin gene is controlled by genetic elements that also respond to the factors that control lens development in vertebrates. This was demonstrated when regulatory regions of the sea squirt gene were transferred to frog embryos where they drove gene expression in the tadpoles' own visual system, including the lens.
The researchers say this suggests that prior to the evolution of the lens, there was a regulatory link between two tiers of genes, those that would later become responsible for controlling lens development, and those that would help give the lens its special physical properties. This combination of genes appears to have then been selected in an early vertebrate during the evolution of its visual system, giving rise to the lens.
The new findings deal a serious blow to the Intelligent Design movement which has long contended that the lack of an apparent evolutionary pathway for complex eye development indicated the presence of a supreme designer.
Ref: Current Biology, Vol. 15, pages 1684-1689, September 20, 2005. DOI 10.1016/j.cub.2005.08.046
Issue #4. Venus the UFO
UFO family saw in west could be Venus
By GREG WELTER - Staff Writer
ORLAND -- Members of the Martinez family spent the better part of four hours trying to identify the object hovering in the western sky Saturday night, alternately displaying red, green, blue and yellow lights.
Jessica Martinez said one of her sons first spotted it about 9:30 p.m. The family watched it for about an hour, then Martinez called over a neighbor, and an Orland police officer, to get their opinions.
No one knew what it was for sure. Martinez said she ruled out a rocket, an airplane and a blimp.
Police recommended she call a UFO hotline, which she located, but only got a recording asking her to describe the object.
She said one of the questions asked in the recording was "Did it land?"
She tried calling local radio and television news operations, but only got recordings.
Martinez and her boys, age 14 and 17, dragged out a telescope for a closer look, but even that didn't bring them any answers. However, she said lights from the object could occasionally be seen "flaring up" through the telescope.
Cold drove the family inside about 11:30 p.m., but Martinez said the object was still bright in the sky, and hadn't seemed to move.
Her sons stood vigil with the telescope Sunday night, but didn't spot it again. Police concluded it could have been a helicopter.
Local meteorologist Anthony Watts said he's guessing what the family saw was the planet Venus.
He said it can appear suddenly in the western sky, and sometimes be extremely bright.
He said the colors may have been the planet catching refractive light from the Earth's atmosphere.
"This can actually bend the light to produce different colors," Watts observed, likely explaining the "side-to-side" movement Martinez and others recalled about the alternating lights.
Martinez said she and her sons were online until 1 a.m. Sunday trying to get information on anything that might explain the phenomenon.
"We don't get a lot of aircraft out here in Orland, so when something like this appears, it gets our attention," Martinez said.
After the sun and Earth's moon, Venus is the brightest object in the sky.
Staff writer Greg Welter can be reached at 896-7768 or gwelter@chicoer.com
Trauma real for alien abductees
Abduction by imaginary aliens can be almost as traumatic as being caught up in real horror, according to US psychologists. The only difference is that when asked "would you go through it again?", most of ET's abductees replied: "Yes."
By Guardian Newspapers, 2/17/2003
Abduction by imaginary aliens can be almost as traumatic as being caught up in real horror, according to US psychologists. The only difference is that when asked "would you go through it again?", most of ET's abductees replied: "Yes."
In one of the more out-of-this-world research projects, Richard McNally of Harvard University told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Denver, Colorado, that he had interviewed 10 of the thousands of Americans who claimed to remember being carried off by extraterrestrials.
The Harvard scientists measured heartbeat, facial tension and sweating on the palms as they played back audiotapes of the subjects recounting their experience. "Our question is: do people who have apparent false memories of trauma show the same psycho-physiological reactivity? The answer appears to be yes," Prof McNally said
"In fact, the heart rate responses and skin conductance responses were at least as great in the alien abductees, when they heard their memories of being abducted and molested by space aliens, and subjected to these experiments on spaceships, as for people with genuine traumatic events.
"The moral of the story appears to be that it underscores the power of emotional belief."
In his research, Prof McNally also identified the recipe for an alien abductee. Most of the subjects were interested in astral projection, tarot cards, telling the future, bioenergetic therapies and, of course, aliens. "So they had a whole set of new age beliefs to begin with," he said.
They were also prone to fantasies, and vivid images. Third, and crucially, they had had episodes of sleep paralysis and hallucinations upon awakening. Sleep paralysis is not imaginary: it occurs on awakening from the dream state marked by rapid eye movement, and is experienced by 30% of the population. Some victims of sleep paralysis also report hypnopompic ("upon wakening") hallucinations.
"It is part of the basis of believing in ghosts," Prof McNally said. "In the European middle ages it was the incubus and the succubus who were the agents of the devil. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is space aliens. During REM sleep, the body is fully paralysed except for the eyes ... Often elements of dream will intrude into wakefulness."
Such experiences were often terrifying. So, typically, his abductees would consult mental health professionals, who would suggest they had repressed memories.
"So when we piece together the new age beliefs, the hypnopompic hallucinations, the absorption, and sometimes a little help from the memory recovery folks, you have got yourselves an alien abductee."
http://www.pennlive.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/news/1133173245280510.xml&coll=1
Issue #5. Video Games and Seizures
Girl Suffers Seizure After Prolonged Video Game Play
December 12, 2005 8:00 a.m. EST
Issue #6. Psychic Detectives
'Psychic witness' helped police solve murder
TV show will spotlight Lebanon-area woman
Monday, November 28, 2005
BY MONICA VON DOBENECK
Of Our Palmyra Bureau
LEBANON - Lebanon County detectives thought they knew who killed Mark Arnold in 1993, but they didn't know where to find the perpetrator.
Jan Helen McGee told them the killer was at a beach, probably Ocean City, Md., or Rehoboth Beach, Del. Detective Paul Zechman called the police departments there and, sure enough, they found Robert Wise living in Arnold's stolen car at a shopping mall near Rehoboth.
Wise is serving a life sentence in state prison for the murder.
As a result of her help in finding the killer, McGee, who said she has had psychic abilities since childhood, will be featured on The Learning Channel program "Psychic Witness" on Thursday.
District Attorney Deirdre Eshleman said she's not sure she believes in psychics, but she can't dispute the results.
"To my mind, any help we can get is good, no matter how bizarre," Eshleman said.
"A lead is a lead," Zechman said.
Liza Douglass, associate producer of "Psychic Witness" for New Dominion Pictures, said the story was perfect for one of its episodes because "Zechman felt her help and insight pointed him in the right direction."
McGee said she has worked with many area police departments, but has tried to keep her psychic abilities private. She teaches piano and voice at Marty's Music in Annville and has taught drama, music and speech at the Harrisburg Academy, Harrisburg Area Community College and the Milton Hershey School.
"I'm really apprehensive," McGee said of her television appearance. "A lot of people are fearful or angry at psychics. But do you think angels and prophets died off after the Bible was written? Prophetic things have always been spoken of."
She said she is going public now because she wants to teach police officers how to use psychics properly and avoid scams. She never seeks money for her insights, she said.
On the night that Arnold, 61, was shot to death in the small building that he occupied in South Lebanon Twp., McGee had a nightmare about the murder, she said. The next morning, she read about it in the newspaper.
She said she knew details of the case that surprised investigators, such as that Arnold had a collection of black rotary phones in his home.
Police were skeptical. They should be, McGee said.
"There are more scams than good advice," she said. "Usually the good ones are quiet."
She called herself "a piece of the puzzle" who thinks differently. She has always been psychic, she said. As a toddler, she could sense where her mother was. She has warned friends to visit elderly relatives shortly before their deaths, and she told her students at HACC's Lebanon campus to leave the building just before fire destroyed it.
She said she can no more prove her psychic abilities than someone can prove love.
According to Eshleman, who prosecuted the case, Zechman didn't admit to her for several years that McGee had pointed him in the right direction. He told her only that "an anonymous source" had helped.
Zechman said this week it wasn't that he was embarrassed, but at the time, "you didn't go around bragging about it."
"I think it's more accepted now," he said. "Police are more progressive-minded and willing to use things they may not completely understand."
Eshleman said the motive for the murder was robbery.
McGee said she thinks it was something more. She said she thinks Wise, who knew Arnold, envied him and wanted to be him. That is why he stole Arnold's car, wallet and other personal items and was wearing Arnold's boots when he was found, she contends.
"What is creepy is that I can see the motivations of killers," McGee said.
Zechman said he has spoken about other cases with McGee and has referred her to other police departments. He and Eshleman said they are willing to use her again.
"If you say psychics are real, you run the risk of coming off as a harebrain," Eshleman said. "But it's not expensive or time-consuming. ... It doesn't make any difference if I believe it or don't believe it. Anything that leads to relevant evidence is fine by me."
MONICA VON DOBENECK: 832-2090 or mdobeneck@patriot-news.com
TO LEARN MORE
WHAT: Jan Helen McGee (717) 580 1076) will appear on "Psychic Witness."
WHEN: 9 p.m. Thursday. CHANNEL: The Learning Channel
DUMBED-DOWN TV
Reader Ken Wolgemuth, of Thompsontown, Pennsylvania, assures us that we are correct in re-labeling The Learning Channel as The Dumbing-Down Channel. Says Ken:
If an article from the Harrisburg (PA) Patriot-News, describing a local "psychic" to be featured on The Learning Channel this Thursday, is to be believed (a big if, granted), we have here an individual who located a murder suspect and has been given credit for that feat by the "skeptical" police, does not seek publicity or take money for her "psychic" assistance, and is now going public "because she wants to teach police officers how to use psychics properly and avoid scams."
The article, gushed out by reporter Monica Von Dobeneck, clearly states that psychic witness Jan Helen McGee helped police a murder that occurred 12 years ago. The facts are that Detective Paul Zechman was contacted by McGee shortly after the murder was announced in the media. She told him that shed had a bad psychic dream about the killing; that was apparently all that Zechman needed to call her in for consultation.
The newspaper article says that McGee told Zechman that :
the killer was at a beach, probably Ocean City, Md., or Rehoboth Beach, Del. [He] called the police departments there and, sure enough, they found Robert Wise living in Arnold's stolen car at a shopping mall near Rehoboth.
Hold on. Thats just one thing that McGee, in a long interview with the detective, came up with. Did she also suggest several other places? Were not told, but this guess using the expected modifier probably is singled out because it was correct! And thats a 25-mile stretch of local beach. Note that the culprit was found living in a stolen car obviously reported as stolen and we dont know if the police set out to find that person as a result of being alerted by Zechman, or if Zechman merely had his man located because he was in the stolen vehicle. Bear in mind that police knew that Wise and the murder victim were acquainted, and Wise locally known as a beach bum was already strongly suspected as being the killer, but had simply not been located. This report presents matters as if Wise, right out of the blue, had been identified and located by means of McGees powers.
District Attorney Deirdre Eshleman now says that Zechman didn't admit to her for several years that McGee had offered him any guesses. Hed told her only that "an anonymous source" had helped him. Does it not appear that Zechman is now recalling, selectively, what McGee told him years before those points that now checked out! and is choosing to attribute powers to her? We know, from other accounts of how police psychics have been credited with hits, that often this is the case. Of course, if we had access to the tape recordings Zechman made of the interview, we would know. But well never have access to those tapes, Ill bet.
And, Im struck by this sentence from the newspaper account:
[McGee] said she knew details of the case that surprised investigators, such as that Arnold had a collection of black rotary phones in his home.
We have to wonder, did McGee specifically say, The killer has a collection of black rotary phones in his home, or did she mention among dozens of other guesses that she saw a black telephone somehow connected with this matter? The morphing of a generalized statement into an explicit one, often takes place in the re-telling. Certainly, if McGee did deliver her guess as stated above, I would have to take this very seriously.
McGee identifies with the celebrated prophet-without-honor of the Bible, found in Mathew 13. She says:
A lot of people are fearful or angry at psychics. But do you think angels and prophets died off after the Bible was written? Prophetic things have always been spoken of.
Reader Wolgemuth wants McGee tested by the JREF:
She says she "can no more prove her psychic abilities than someone can prove love." However, I suspect that you and your colleagues would have no problem developing a suitable testing protocol. Seems to me, she's a prime candidate for the JREF Challenge. Wouldn't you agree?
Yes, of course, Ken. But I rather think that McGee would want to reply on The Dumbing-Down Channel and local newspapers to support her claims, rather than actually having them looked into. As for that challenge to prove love, I think we could come up with a testing procedure, and we most certainly could test McGee.
Detective Zechman defends his acceptance of these mind-boggling powers. Says he: Police are [now] more progressive-minded and willing to use things they may not completely understand.
Zechman said he has referred McGee to other police departments, and that he and District Attorney Eshleman are willing to use her again. Yes, that department did something foolish and nave, and they want others to get on their rickety bandwagon. That vehicle will lurch into view Thursday evening, just before this page goes up on the Internet. It will be interesting to see how the story is sold. I will welcome reviews from readers who saw it.