An interesting study (available online here) by a group of Danish researchers provides strong evidence that different types of prayer activate different areas of the brain and that some specific types of prayer activate areas of the brain usually associated with social cognition.
This may seem like fairly straightforward conclusions to begin with however the authors of the study point out “in fact most studies of the relation between brain function and religion assume the hypothesis that religious experience is fundamentally a uniform category of human experience” and illustrate this by pointing to examples such as the well publicised work of Dr. Persinger who claims to be able to be able to reproduce religious experiences by stimulating the temporal lobe.
To provide a more nuanced perspective and highlight the variability within the category of ‘prayer’ the authors designed a study to test whether different types of prayer were producing different patterns of neural activity. In order to discover this they took twenty young devout Christians from a Danish Lutheran sect, put them in an fMRI scanner and while they performed different types of prayer they collected images of their brain activity.
Thanks to investigative blogger gimpy I was made aware of an article published in an alternative medical journal a few days back by Lionel R. Milgrom, a prominent British homeopath. Gimpy will be producing a more detailed analysis 0f the lunacy in this article and the failures it represents in the (near?) future and when he does I’ll post a link to it (here it is) but until then I couldn’t let the sheer forehead slapping stupidity of this article pass without offering some comment.
I first wrote about Simon Singh’s legal woes with the BCA back on the 30th March 2009. It’s now coming up to seven months later and with Simon we’ve been through one preliminary hearing, one refused written application for permission to appeal and now one ACCEPTED oral application for permission to appeal. The fact that it has taken over seven months just to get to a point where Simon has gained permission to question the validity of Eady’s (bogus) interpretation of the meaning of his article is a testament to just how time consuming and complex legal cases, and libel cases in particular, can be.
However, before slipping right back into depression over the UK’s libel law and their plentiful, and all too apparent, problems I think it is worth celebrating the fact that a judge, in this case Lord Justice Laws (what a name!), seemed in making his judgement to take due account of all the arguments and evidence that Eady so casually dismissed as irrelevant. At present it seems that the actual judgement has not been published, or if it has then it has not yet been presented and explained in detail to us non-law folk by the estimable Jack-of-Kent, however by all anecdotal accounts it seems that the judge considered a) the relevance of the surrounding paragraphs- the all important context and b) how it would be all but impossible for Simon to know or prove that an entire organisation was being deliberately dishonest.
This is just one judges opinion but I think it is an excellent illustration of the value of persistence and a clear indication that Eady’s interpretation of the meaning is not necessarily an interpretation that a different judge would have made. This is important because and vindicates the position that the case is worth pursuing not just for its symbolic value. Simon may still win and we may still see a court case that addresses the alleged ‘plethora’ of evidence for the BCA’s claims.
It seems my earlier prediction from a few weeks ago that I would be back to a regular blogging schedule was a bit optimistic. Being in-between houses and temporarily living on a friends couch was not the most productive environment for producing good (or bad) quality blogging (although the couch was very much appreciated- thanks Neal!).
I’ve now moved and (mostly) settled into Oxford where I have just began an MSc in Cognitive & Evolutionary Anthropology. Now, although I’ve not been blogging lately I’ve still been keeping up with my usual skeptical and sciencey events and so hopefully some time this week I’ll post up a short summary of my thoughts on any interesting points that came up at the events I attended.
Also, as I’m sure everyone reading this knows Simon Singh had the first bit of good news in his ongoing legal battle as he won the right to appeal Justice Eady’s decision on the intended meaning of his article. So… WOHOOO!!!
Ahem, this was an unexpected development but certainly came as welcome news and again I’m hoping to have a slightly more detailed post up shortly that covers my reaction to all the ‘Singh-BCA and general crazy UK libel law’ news.
I also haven’t forgot that I promised to write a post discussing the role (or lack thereof) of suicide in Buddhism. It’s about 50% finished now but I have some more pressing and interesting things I want to get off my chest first before I get round to finishing it off. So I haven’t forgot but it’s still going to be a while.
So that’s all for now just a short shout to say hello again to the blogging world, let everyone know I’m still around and will be posting more stuff soon and I also wanted to post up an excellent science song that was pointed out to me today (Cheers again Connor!). The song was created by John Boswell of The Symphony of Science and as he describes:
“We Are All Connected” was made from sampling The History Channel’s Universe series, Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, Richard Feynman’s 1983 interviews, Neil deGrasse Tyson’s cosmic sermon, and Bill Nye’s Eyes of Nye Series, plus added visuals from The Elegant Universe (NOVA), Stephen Hawking’s Universe, Cosmos and more.
Derren Brown is a magician of the mentalist variety. Mentalists use a variety of techniques to create the illusion that they can read minds and have other amazing mental powers.
Recently Derren Brown created a storm of controversy when he claimed that he was able to predict the lottery numbers and then appeared to do just that on a live TV show filmed as the lottery numbers were announced. He claimed that he would reveal the technique used to make the prediction a few days later on a subsequent show however, when the show aired the explanations he provided were not convincing and created a substantial amount of uproar among both his fans and his detractors.
Various sites have provided detailed examinations of the problems with his explanations along with more plausible alternatives (which you can see examples of here and here) so I’ll just provide a brief summary.
The majority of the show was spent suggesting that he had used a group of 24 volunteers, various psychological experiments/complex mathematics and automatic writing to arrive at the numbers. This is a non-explanation as group psychology has absolutely no way of impacting a machine randomly selecting numbered balls nor can automatic writing give you insight into the future.
The second explanation, offered alongside immediate denials, intended to arouse suspicion of the ‘methinks, the lady doth protest too much’ variety, was that the lottery balls could have been tampered with. This is illegal and would also be practically impossible given the amount of security and safety systems that are in place to prevent such things from happening.
The much simpler explanation, as discussed by a significant amount of newspapers and commentators, was that it was a trick achieved by some clever camera effects, projecting the numbers onto the balls or some other form of trickery. This is the simplest explanation and is strongly supported by the fact that Derren did not reveal the numbers until the lottery draw was completed, has not yet won the national lottery and says himself that it was a trick (albeit with a nudge and a wink to suggest that maybe it wasn’t).
In essence Derren is simply a magician performing a trick on TV and as such there should be no real surprise that he would provide false explanations for how his trick was performed. Yet there was surprise, or at least there was a significant sense of irritation, which stems from the fact that Derren does not package what he does as magic or as involving traditional illusionist techniques. And without invoking those it seems that he did something impossible.
Having introduced the main players in the Sahlins-Obeyesekere debate in the first post on the subject it’s now time to turn to the main arguments, rebuttals and accusations that kept Captain Cook’s death as a hot topic in anthropology during the 90’s.
A chronology of the relevant books/articles might also be a good place to start:
1985- Marshall Sahlins publishes Islands of History which includes his discussion of Captain Cook’s death and how it is attributable to the mythical worldview the Hawaiian islanders subscribed to.
1992- Gananath Obeysekere publishes The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific which is a searing attack on Marshall Sahlins and other scholars theories relating to Captain Cook and his interaction with the Hawaiian islanders. Obeyesekere accuses Sahlins of having bought into a myth by accepting colonial accounts at face value and failing to read the accounts critically.
1995- Sahlins publishes How “Natives” Think: About Captain Cook for example which is a book length point by point rebuttal to Obeyesekere’s attacks on Sahlins’ theories and research. Sahlins attacks Obeyesekere claiming that he has cherry picked sources to support his theories, invented a universal ‘native’ mindset based on Western values and that a number of errors show he lacks important knowledge about the region and the historical period.
1995- The famous American Anthropologist Clifford Geertz writes an account of the debate describing it as part of the ‘Culture Wars’ in the New York Review of Books.
1997- A new edition of The Apotheosis of Captain Cook is published with an extended afterword in which Obeyesekere offers some rebuttals to criticisms from Sahlins primarily arguing that Sahlins has misunderstood his arguments.
1997- Robert Borofsky writes an excellent article in Current Anthropology summarising the debate and the issues surrounding it which is followed by a number of short replies from various other anthropologists including Obeyesekere and Sahlins.
So there’s the bare bones of the sources I’m drawing from… anyone so interested should really think about having a read through some of them as they are very interesting. However, in case you can’t be bothered what follows is a summary of the juicy bits and my thoughts on them.
One of the first statistics that someone who is researching religion in Japan will come across is that when statistics are collected the total membership of the main religions when added together equates to almost double the population of Japan. So for instance, in 2006 the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs reported that there were 106.8 million Shinto adherents and 91.2 million Buddhists while the total population of Japan was 127.8 million people.
The explanation for these strange statistics is very straightforward- in Japan most people do not regard religions as exclusive and this includes the various temple and shrine authorities who collect the statistics. This attitude is illustrated quite nicely by the fact that it is common in Japan for a person to have Shinto ceremonies shortly after they are born and at certain ages (3, 5 and 7) throughout their childhood, have a Christian wedding when they get married and have a Buddhist funeral after they die. It is also relatively common for individuals to be unaware of what Buddhist sect they and their family belong to until after a close relative dies and they need to contact a temple and summon the relevant priests.
When the famous British explorer Captain James Cook was killed on a Hawaiian island in 1779 the Hawaiian tribesmen responsible removed his body from the beach, disemboweled it, baked it and then distributed the bones across a variety of their villages. These actions were not motivated by spite but were in fact the traditional mortuary rites performed on the island for those of high status.
Unsurprisingly, these actions were interpreted by Cook’s crew as something entirely different. Rather than seeing the actions as displaying respect for a revered leader they regarded them as an abominable attempt to desecrate the remains of a fallen enemy.
Thus, for some time after Cook’s death, and in the face of growing tension and a barely contained fury, his crew attempted to negotiate with the islanders for the return of his body so that he could receive a traditional naval burial. The volatility of the situation is evident in the accounts written at the time which report how a number of the crew favoured attacking the islanders villages and taking the body back by force while at the same time a number of islanders seemed to have been determined to provoke a full scale confrontation by performing a range of provocative acts.
However, such a large scale and bloody battle was eventually avoided, as after a few days and a number of minor skirmishes the Hawaiians relented and returned enough of Cook’s remains to satisfy his furious crew (although there remains some doubt as to whether the remains returned were actually authentic!).With the return of Cook’s remains to his crew the first (very literal) battle for Captain Cook’s corpse came to an end and after performing a Christian burial at sea Cook’s crew departed the Hawaiian islands to return to England, give an account of their journey and report their captains death to the authorities.
Cook’s physical remains were now lost to the sea (or preserved in Hawaiian villages) yet this not be the final battle that his corpse was involved in.
I believe the traditional way of announcing a hiatus is to do so before it is due to happen rather than when it is about to end and I also believe that there are many self evident good reasons for sticking to that traditional order.
Nevertheless, throwing caution to the wind, I am now announcing the end of my non-announced hiatus!
So that schedule of a new post every 3-5 days I mentioned about a month ago will now be kicking in.
Today, Simon Singh announced that he will applying for “an oral reconsideration of his application for Permission to Appeal” after his initial application was turned down last week. For the one or two people who don’t already know; Simon is a science writer being sued by British chiropractors for an article he wrote in a newspaper over a year ago and he is asking to appeal because a judge decided in a preliminary hearing that his article meant something that he did not actually believe or intend to suggest and which makes his case very difficult to win.
I’ve been following this case since it started and I have to admit that when Simon’s initial appeal request was turned down last week, although it was somewhat predictable, it did rather dampen my spirits and lead me to reconsider whether the case was worth pursuing. It seemed to me that Simon had already done more than anyone could have been expected and it seemed like a waste to have such an excellent science writer have his time taken up by expensive legal proceedings that in all likelihood, because of the crazy UK libel laws, he would not win.
After reading Simon’s detailed explanation of why he believes this case is still worth fighting I have now completely changed my mind. If you haven’t read his explanation I suggest doing so now – the announcement is available here. It provides an excellent summary of what’s gone on and also a detailed breakdown on his reasons for fighting on and why he thinks it’s important that he continues. It also reveals that pursuing the case will not prevent Simon from carrying on his usual schedule or deprive the public of any new science books and he makes a very compelling case as to what he hopes fighting the case will achieve.
I believe the traditional way of announcing a hiatus is to do so before it is due to happen rather than when it is about to end and I also believe that there are many self evident good reasons for sticking to that traditional order.
