You CAN be too careful - when the Precautionary Principle doesn't apply

The precautionary principle, that proposed changes should not be implemented unless it has been demonstrated that they will lead to improvement, has become a mantra of modern decision making, ranging from scientific and environmental developments to organisational management. In the context of climate change, Softest Pawn argues that it wrongly applied and flawed in any case. I don't agree in detail, but it has become such a commonplace that it is worth exploring some more conceptual aspects of the way it is used.

It assumes that the situation is stable

If the choice is change or no change, it is reasonable that the case for change should be robust. But in many contexts, this is not the choice being faced - rather it is change A or change B, or change a little or change a lot. The PP is no help here - the competing arguments must be considered on their merits.

It assumes that the current situation is acceptable

If the current solution is not resulting in the desired outcomes, then there is no reason to prefer it to changes which may offer better outcomes.

It assumes that timing is not critical

The PP is basically a holding position - the case for change requires more evidence or study, after which the question can be revisited. If the change is time-critical, the opportunity may have gone.

It assumes that the effects of both choices can be predicted
Sometimes they can't, or not accurately, in which case deciding which is 'safest' becomes problematic.

It places the burden of proof on change

A higher level of evidence may be demanded for change than for stability, illogically.

It arbitrarily favours the current situation

Because greater effort is required to initiate change A, judgement is balanced in favour of the status quo (B) - but if the situations were reversed, then option A would be preferred on the same evidence.

So the next time someone says 'better not do anything, to be on the safe side' you may well be able to argue that this is not the safe side at all.

My first day as an atheist meme

I saw this at Kafir Girl and thought it was in interesting set of questions, even if nobody has tagged me (sniff).

Can You Remember The Day That You Officially Became An Atheist?

I was at university and had a long debate with a Philosphy student friend in which I attempted to defend my belief at the time in a theist view that there was a prime mover god-type figure somewhere, albeit one which took no interest in what happened on Earth or anywhere else, or offered anybody eternal life. He asked the astute question why I believed this, since I had renounced any form of written or personal revelation on which to base it. By the next morning I had recognised that the belief was based on emotion not reason and I abandoned it; when I told him, I remember that he was surprised and impressed that I should actually alter my beliefs as a result of such a process.


Do you remember the day you officially became an agnostic?

Strangely enough, it was my confirmation (age 14). I had been going to church with my family for years without feeling that it applied to me; the course of confirmation classes had raised a series of moral conundrums without satisfactorily solving them (chief among them the purpose of pain and who goes to Heaven or Hell). But I was holding out in the expectation that once confirmed I would experience what otehr believers obviously did: some sense that there was something there that listened, and spoke to them. And after a grand service officiated at by a bishop I had thought, well, here goes. Nope, still nothing. It seemed obvious to me then that the whole structure was created by people, without any necessary input from God.


How about the last time you spoke or prayed to God with actual thought that someone was listening?

Never, not even at the level of wishing.


Did anger towards God or religion help cause you to be an atheist or agnostic?

Not at the time, although I find attempts to justify the Massacre of the Innocents make me cross now.


Were you agnostic towards ghosts, even after you became an atheist?

Yes. I took the view that at least ghosts have a long and varied tradition of people seeing them and writing about them, and I was at that time open-minded about the limits of consciousness, so I was happy to entertain the possibility of telepathy. The critical point from my point of view was that ghosts made no claim to scriptural authority: if they existed, they existed. It was some time later that I shifted to the view that people believe they see ghosts rather than people see ghosts.


Do you want to be wrong?

No. We ought to live this life as if it is all there is, doing the best we can. There is no framework for another life which can accommodate the principles of mercy, justice and partial revelation to the living which redounds any credit to God.

Bad Science by Ben Goldacre: book review

I have been following Goldacre's column in the Guardian and latterly his blog for a couple of years now, since it is usually the best source of sensible information on any news story that touches on science, technology or medicine. I was fearful that the book might have shared the blogs slightly smug and inward-looking style ('we're clever people and we know everything'), but in fact it is well-written, coherent, and engaging, written in a light and chatty style.

There are extended accounts of the bizarre history of some recent media panics (MRSA, MMR, Dore, and fish oil), but more importantly, the science and 'science' of these stories is examined forensically, so that the reader learns to interpret news stories critically: what does "50% reduction" mean in this situation, what's the sample size. This is worthy and important and should (in time) change the way that news media present their accounts (I have already noticed a survey fatigue, where all involved seem happy to accept their spurious basis).

Perhaps the two most interesting chapters, though, are those on the placebo effect and on our perception of risk. I hadn't known, for example, that painkillers work better if they are packaged better and have been advertised, but it is true. The moral and practical implications of trying to deliver Evidence Based Medicine when this sort of placebo effect can dictate success or failure are a challenge. The chapetr on risk demonstrates at length how bad people are at distinguishing between chance events and patterns, between causation, correlation and coincidence, and how unreliable their accounts of their experiences can be, thanks to selection bias. This important factor explains why people sincerely believe things in the absence, or the face, of objective evidence, whether it is the Bridgend suicide 'cluster', electromagnetic sensitivity, or the Loch Ness Monster.

It should be noted that Goldacre does not adopt a hectoring tone: he argues that these are universal, human, traits; he just wishes us to be aware of them so that we can monitor our belief formation. He notes, for example, the tendency of people to use the limited evidence that moderate drinking is better for your health than teetotalism as a justification for their immoderate drinking. This is why factoids like 'red wine is good for you' are so powerful: there is so much contradictory advice out there that, as Paul Simon said, 'a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest' (an observation, incidentally, that is so perceptive and well-expressed that on its own should preserve his reputation for millenia).


The most contentious part of the book deals with the media and how they report science stories; Goldacre tries to explain why nonsense science so often trumps proper science in media coverage. He suggests that the fault lies with humanities background of most journalists, who find the science impenetrable and feel free to choose the wildest and most exciting of the opinions they are offered. Here he may be wrong, insofar as he assumes that science suffers alone. The sad truth is that the media deals badly with all areas of specialist endeavour. An archaeologist told me recently about press coverage of a Neolithic find; it was dated to 3000 BC, 5000 years ago; in print it became 3000 years old. I wasn't surprised: to the non specialist, it was simply 'very old'. There is an interesting question about how far journalists are to blame in not understanding or whether they undertsand adequately but dumb stories down because their readers won't need or want accurate details. This pervades serious newspapers: strange health advice is dished out in the supplements while in the main paper things are more rational. But perhaps we get the news coverage we deserve: if you want to depress yourself, look at the 'most read stories' list on the BBC News pages.

Goldacre believes that all media, and especially serious newspapers, are engaged in a project to educate and inform their readers; but they aren't. They are there to entertain, mainly: hence the celebritisation of news, with the daily updates of Pete Docherty's battle with drugs, and battles with photographers. But even in the old days, there was a strong vein of cynicism and philistinism in journalism: the attitude that the contents didn't need to be true, just true enough.

Nevertheless, the book is enjoyable and inspiring: the way he benourages the reader to engage with the primary sources should be enough to balance the increasing inaccuracy of the media as reliable informants.

Diane Lazarus and the Suffolk murders: two stories are better than one

Psychics recognise that the support of their believers does little to persuade the general population of the reality of their abilities, and they have often sought validation by associating themselves with police work and missing person cases. In the US, where psychics are fixtures of mainstream television, this has led to unedifying spectacle of Sylvia Browne telling Shaun Hornbeck’s parents that he was dead (see http://www.stopsylviabrowne.com/ ).

Little is said about this in the UK from the police side, although a recent FOI enquiry reported in the Skeptic Express found only one, unsolved case, where the police authority acknowledged the use of a psychic.

Diane Lazarus, winner of Channel Five’s Psychic Challenge, is keen to follow Browne’s example, and has claimed involvement in several cases, including Mark Green and Muriel Drinkwater (see Skeptic Express ), and most recently the Suffolk murders. Although she offered her help to the police, they did not take her up, and therefore she spoke to the press, leading to a story published in Wales on Sunday
Twist religious motive behind deaths 17th December, also
analysed in the Skeptic Express.

The only specific characteristics of the perpetrator were: “a young lad, a hoodie” and strong “religious” character.

Shortly afterwards, a suspect aged 38 was arrested on 18th December. He was then bailed and a second man, 48, was arrested on 19th December, and has now been charged with the murders. So not very young, then.

But in addition to the Wales on Sunday story, she had also spoken to the rival South Wales Guardian, who printed their story on 20th December.
Psychic senses profile of Suffolk strangler.
Since the South Wales Guardian is a weekly paper, it is not clear when the story was written (ie whether before the first arrest on the 18th). But what is clear is that the information provided by Lazarus differs considerably from that in the Echo:

She believes that the man - probably in his thirties - has large hands and is much stronger than he appears.

Nothing about religion there.
Lazarus has therefore covered the ground with the only specific information of which she is sure: that the murderer was a young lad, or in his thirties. If either of these choices had been correct, her powers would have been confirmed by incontrovertible evidence.

If the accused lawyer is smart, he will call Lazarus as a witness, in the hope that some members of the jury will believe in psychics, so that the following exchange can take place:
Lawyer: So you’ve helped the police in the past?
Lazarus: Oh yes, several times : Mark Green, etc etc
Lawyer: And you’re convinced that you can sense the true perpetrator
Lazarus: Yes
Lawyer: You sensed a young man with religious convictions was the murderer?
Lazarus: Yes
Lawyer: Would you describe the accused as such a man?
Lazarus: No, definitely not.
Lawyer: You sensed a man in his thirties with large hands. Is this the accused?
Lazarus: No, definitely not.
Lawyer: So you believe that the accused is not the man who is responsible for the murders?
Lazarus: Yes I do.

This should be enough to implant reasonable doubt in the jury and hence lead to his acquittal, guilty or not.

The Dagenham code*: review of Yehuda Berg's The Power of Kabbalah

Some modern systems of belief are explicitly new: Scientology was created by L. Ron Hubbard; others claim continuity with past traditions, such as the wicce. Yehuda Berg places Kabbalah somewhere in between: he presents its teachings as a body a secret knowledge which has been the preserve of a tiny obscure and misunderstood Judaic sect for at least 2,000 years, but which has only recently been publicised to the wider world as a tool for personal growth, accompanied by the contemporary trappings of bookshops, specially endorsed substances and products, and celebrity advocates like Madonna, her husband Guy Ritchie and her onetime lover Sandra Bernhardt. The book is written in a lively and clear style, and starts with a section debunking the misconceptions that have accumulated about Kabbalah, before looking at the drivers of human behaviour. There follow sections on Kabbalist cosmology, cross-referenced to contemporary scientific theories which parallel or confirm its model, a section on meditation and the power and meaning of the Hebrew alphabet, and a series of appendixes including a history of Kabbalah. Although the book is probably not designed to produce this effect, it creates in the reader a shift from neutral acceptance towards increasing skepticism and irritation. The first principle he cites is that there should be no coercion in spirituality, and he hopes that the accuracy of his depiction of the world should convince the reader of the validity of the cosmological model underlying it, which is a good place to start, although this obscures the extent to which his views are reliant on authority and revelation as their source.


Understanding oneself
The key argument in Berg's analysis of behaviour is that most people live humdrum lives only rarely reaching transcendence: he argues that these moments of transcendence are a connection with another realm of being, and occur when we act in line with our core identity. He suggests that the reason many people feel dissatisfied is because they misunderstand their nature and desires, becoming focused on the wrong goals (for example stating their goal as "becoming a millionaire" rather than "being financially secure": the former becomes a treadmill, possibly doomed to unfulfilment; the latter is a state of mind and could be achieved by anyone). He gives some good advice here about how to achieve a better state of mind while living in the world by changing one's attitude. He firmly discourages the culture of blame or guilt: it is a person's own responsibility to sort out their life. More questionable is his attitude to rational thought: his advice is to go with intuitions and to distrust rationality. I am unconvinced that people in general, or particularly people with problems, are over-reliant on thought, and his testimony from scientists which is supposed to support his argument fails to do so, since what is recounted is a series of cases where the scientists, having rationally defined a problem, have then intuited a solution, subsequently confirmed by rational thought. This is not a transferable model for personal lives, whatever he says. Perhaps more dangerously, he also says that when in times of doubt, trust in the certainty of Kabbalah is the best response; he presents a complex and unconvincing example of a businessman who suspects he is being defrauded by one of his salesmen: he denies all the apparent evidence, and is rewarded by it not being as bad as others feared. The danger here is that Berg is giving licence to anyone who gets into a state of denial that they are right, not wrong.


Science proves Kabbalah right
Berg likes science, or at least he appeals to it often as a source of credibility, although he is sometimes naive, saying for example that "a burning candle emits no light against the backdrop of a brilliant sunlit day" (p. 68), a piece of reasoning on a par with the lodgings landlady who closed the curtains on bright winter days because the sunshine put the coal fire out. Similarly, he uses the term 'selfish gene' (p. 111) to mean a gene that makes people selfish, a complete misunderstanding of Dawkins' concept. This becomes a serious problem when he cherry-picks scintific theories to demonstrate that Kabbalah got it right:

• he is happy to parallel Kaballah's creation with scientific Big Bang, although the newer concept of a steady state universe of cycles of Big Bangs and Big Crunches doesn't fit at all


• he is happy to say that matter is of dual nature like electrons and protons, ignoring the existence of neutrons which undermine such an argument


• he is happy to link the 10 'dimensions' of the Kabbalah universe with the 10-dimensional space of superstring theory, but igonres other string theory elements proposing 11 or 46 dimensions, or the metatheory M theory that proposes 4 branes and 11 dimensions (not that I'd claim to know what this means)

It would therefore be unwise to argue that modern science has confirmed Kabbalah's cosmology: the most that could be claimed is that some modern theories fit some interpretations of Kabbalah.

Meditation and the Hebrew alphabet
The recommendation of meditation as a way of improving one's sense of well-being is hardly revolutionary, any more than a doctor's prescription of more exercise and less alcohol. Clearly, the ritual of meditation (in the sense of the regular conscious application of time and thought to one's mental life) yields benefits to many. The approach recommended by Berg is in many ways simialr to the Taoist I Ching: to focus on the pictogram of a Hebrew name of God, related to a phrase or purpose, eg 'to remove egomania', with a short passage of advice. Berg might be expected to argue that such meditation makes people feel better, or perhaps evene changes them in some way to make them into better people. But he goes a step further, and argues that meditation can cause miracles. He relies on the evidence of Dr Spokojny, who recounts two cases where his use of Kabbalah has proved efficacious where his medicine hasn't. Dr Artur Spokojny is a Harvard-trained MD who now has his own Total Healing practice. He oversaw experiments on Kabbalah-blessed water:

'"We have reversed entropy and reversed the second law of thermodynamics," contended Dr. Artur Spokojny, a cardiologist who oversaw the independent lab tests [on behalf of the Kabbalah Center]'.

The full evidence for these claims, as for the ER miracles, has not yet been presented to the world.


Theology of Kabbalah
Although the 'theory' of Kabbalah is not presented clearly as a single body of belief by Berg, some elements stand out:

• the key commandment that one should love thy neighbour as thyself


• the 10 commandments, on the other hand, are a misunderstanding and do not apply


• reincarnation and multiple lives happen


• the Devil is real and the world is full of temptation and evil

History of Kabbalist thought
His brief summary of history starts with the 'Book of Abraham' written before most the Bible, a book known only to Kabbalists; Moses then wrote the Pentateuch, encoding within them Kabbalah knowledge. He then has Pythagoras as a Kabbalah devotee, although Josephus' version (97 AD) of what he says Hermippus of Smyrna says about Pythagoras is not so specific, and in general Pythagoras' number mysticism is different to that of Kabbalah and sourced from Egypt and Assyria, if anywhere. Plato and Aristotle are also roped in on the basis of what Dr Seth Pancoast says (this is the Seth Pancoast who

"extended this thinking in his Blue and Red Light: or, Light and its Rays as Medicine (1877), in which he cautioned against “light quacks” even as he claimed to have cured Master F., an eight-year-old paraplegic, after only a week under red glass, and Mrs. L., a 32-year-old widow suffering from severe sciatica, after only three sittings in a bath of blue light." (Cabinet Magazine).

The only surprising inclusion in later history is Isaac Newton, who again was interested in number mysticism and theology but is not normally included amongst followers of Kabbalah. The surprising omission is the tedious visionary Nostradamus, who Berg doesn't mention.


Authority and evidence

Regardless of the coherence of the body of belief that Berg presents, there remains a fundamental issue of epistemology. How can Berg know that there are 10 dimensions or that reincarnation happens? The answer has to be that for every belief not susceptible to direct verification by our senses or minds, we must rely on what we have been told. And so despite the initial gestures towards confirmation by experience, Kabbalah is reliant on two bodies of authority: written texts and interpretation.

As a result, Kabbalah is out of step with more modern cults, since it requires belief in Holy Writ. Berg makes many mentions of the Bible without gloss: his US readers probably read this as their Bible, although the Jewish Bible is meant; he argues against literalism in interpreting it, presumably expecting his audience to be of fundamentalist tendency. But in Kabbalah the Bible contains God's word, but encrypted. Kabbalah also requires the acceptance of two further holy works, the books of Abraham and Zohar, neither of which is known elsewhere.

Further than this, though, Kabbalah's validity relies on the work of its interpreters: if Berg and his father and their predecessors are wrong, their beliefs are wrong.

Thus the pantheistic almost godless cosmology with the individual's mind at its centre that Kabbalah appears to be at first glance is actually a scripture- and revelation-driven set of specific beliefs requiring faith in a Hebrew God and a complex interpretation of His works.


Further reading

In the course of researching this review, I came across various strange stories, including:

The Strange Case of Supernatural water (Kabbalah water proposed as a cure to citrus canker in Florida)
Red String to protect you from the evil eye
Psionic Kabbalah Manifesting Capsule
Madonna breaks bones in fall despite wearing Kabbalah bracelet
Jerry Hall renounces Kabbalah after pressure to fundraise
Celebrities linked to the Kabbalah Center



* 'Dagenham' is known to Londoners as the District Line underground station two stops beyond Barking.