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THE SECOND COMING

Edited by Barry WilliamsCompiled by Richard Saunders

New Cartoons by Penny Rowe (Funny Penny)&

Richard Saunders

Pseudoscience

THE SECOND COMING A l l the bes t f rom the Skep t i c , 1986–1990

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PseudoscienceTHE SECOND COMINGAl l the bes t f rom the Skep t i c , 1986–1990

Vol 6 No 2 - 1986

An Evening at HomeAnthony Garrett

Mel Dickson's home, to be precise.On Saturday, 17th May, 1986, Dr Dickson hosted a

meeting of the Sydney MENSA group at which BrianMcCusker, a retired Professor of Physics at theUniversity of Sydney, was guest speaker. ProfessorMcCusker has appeared in these columns before inconnection with claims of levitation. Dr Dickson, as aNational Committee member of the Australian Skeptics,had invited several other skeptics to attend, includingmyself.

The first two-thirds of Professor McCusker's talkconsisted of an accurate description of the evolutionof physics, beginning with the formulation of theCopernican hypothesis that the earth goes round thesun. This was eventually accepted after Galileo'sconstruction and use of a telescope for observing themoons of Jupiter; emphasis was made that opponentsof the Copernican view refused to look through theinstrument.

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Following a tour through 19th Century atomism, wereached quantum mechanics, the staggeringlysuccessful theory of subatomic particles formulatedin the 1920s.

Quantum mechanics is a probabilistic theory: it doesnot predict what will happen in any one run of anexperiment, but only gives the relative frequencies withwhich the different possible outcomes will be observedin many runs.

In 1964, J.S. Bell, a theoretician working at theCERN laboratory in Geneva, apparently showed thatany theory incorporating three well-tried assumptionswould conflict with the predictions of quantummechanics.

The first assumption is Einstein locality, which statesthat no event can influence a separate one occurringbefore signals travelling at the speed of light from thefirst event can reach it. The second is the validity ofinductive reasoning, that it is acceptable to extrapolateon the basis of known information. The third is calledrealism. Usually we are forced to use probabilitybecause of our ignorance; for example, if we knowonly that one of three prisoners is to be released, weassign each a release probability of 1/3. However, ifwe have the extra information that one particularprisoner is to be released, probability concepts areirrelevant. A realistic theory is one in which, given allrelevant information, exact non-probabilistic prediction

can be made. Einstein believed that quantum mechanicswas incomplete, in that extra information which wedo not currently know how to gather would turn it intoa realistic theory. Renunciation of any of theseassumptions entails a revolution at the very heart ofphysics.

Experiments have now confirmed the correctnessof quantum mechanics in the realm where doubt waspossible, so it appears that at least one of the threeassumptions must be wrong. Moreover, an ingeniousexperiment performed in Paris by Alain Aspect ruledout the possibility of Einstein locality being responsible.Nor do we wish to renounce inductive reasoning, onwhich all of science is based. Thus it seems thatquantum mechanics is intrinsically non-realistic: nomatter what information we gather, we can only predictprobabilistically.

Professor McCusker ignored an important flaw inBell's logic, though in fairness it is not well-known.Perhaps there is a fourth assumption, sufficientlyingrained in our thinking that it has automatically beenmade in constructing the class of theories in conflictwith quantum mechanics, which is violated. The otherthree assumptions could then remain intact.

After all, it took nearly forty years from the birth ofquantum theory to isolate these three! However, ininformal discussion after the talk, Professor McCuskerrefused to entertain even the possibility of a fourthassumption, holding to the failure of realism andsuggesting the idea was a "defence mechanism" ofmine. Certainly I would want to defend threehypotheses of such proven usefulness until convincedthere is no alternative. In any case, realism works verywell in everyday, Newtonian physics.

Central to quantum mechanics is the concept ofobservation. In quantum theory, in contrast toNewtonian physics, observers are part of the game:their interaction with a system when makingmeasurements upon it affects the outcome. ProfessorMcCusker made a leap of breathtaking magnitude byinferring from this that we should study the observers(us) , and then plunging into the realms of transpersonalpsychology.

Rather we should study the observation process.No mention was made of Hugh Everett's interestingand useful 1957 work, in which a system described byquantum mechanics is imagined as divided in two, andit is deduced what is meant by saying that one part is"observing" the other.

Instead we were offered a hymn to the praises ofone Ken Wilber, apparently the latest in a series ofthinkers stretching back thousands of years who haveevolved the notion that there are precisely nine levels

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of consciousness. These begin with matter and proceedthrough life, mind and the spirit. Physics is intrinsicallylimited by being the science of only the first level. Itwould have been easier to take these claims seriouslyhad Professor McCusker not claimed In previous talksthat there were only eight levels.

In the question-and-answer session following thetalk, Professor McCusker took strong (spirited?)exception to the idea that it is the observation processrather than the observer which warrants closerattention, and that a non sequitur had occurred at thatstage in his talk.

He gave every appearance of being more interestedin scoring debating points than in searching for truth,and to that effect made an unprofessional aside aboutthe competence of the physicistsin the audience, avoidedunpalatable questions, andreferred to Skepticism as a"scientistic religion", placed"marginally above fundamentalistChristianity", with adherentstending to be "right wing". Healso claimed to have a physicalage under 28. Chipper he may be,but not that chipper! His partingshot to me after an informaldiscussion on levitation was toopine that I was a "religiousmaniac". He is entitled to hisviews.

Professor McCusker alsoclaimed he had his own "quitesimple" explanation of Bell'sconundrum which he wouldshortly write up, and which, quiteproperly if unfraternally, herefused to share with me. (I madeit clear Ian also a physicist.) Foran individual who rejects realismwithout a qualm, no furtherexplanation is needed;nevertheless, I look forward toreading this paper once it hasundergone the usual process ofpeer review.

One matter was at leastcleared up following the talk. InJanuary, 1985, ProfessorMcCusker claimed on ABC radiothat a course of levitation was runin Sydney with a 90% successrate. In several letters and after

at least one talk, McCusker has failed to answerSkeptics' queries as to its location (see the Skeptic,Vol.5 No.2 p7-8 and No.3 p27-8). After this talk hefinally obliged and identified it to fellow skeptic IanBryce and myself. It is the Trascendental Meditationorganisation of which the leader, Byron Rigby, statedin a 1981 letter that levitation was not a claim made inthe teaching of TM and "if it turns out that the "flying"techniques can enable people to lift for a sustainedperiod then I would be as interested and intrigued asyou". Curious.

Above all, Professor McCusker placed great storein personal experience. "Have you done this? - Tryit!" was a comment heard repeatedly. He suggestedit to me as a way of confirming levitation, and

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challenged us both to take this course, suggesting thatrefusal would be akin to the actions of Galileo'sopponents in not looking through the telescope.

He would not concede that just one demonstrationof levitation (I suggested he do it on the spot) wouldstrengthen his case as a hundred lecturers could neverdo, and did not appreciate that such a demonstrationwould actually be more convincing than taking thecourse ourselves - after all, we might be in the unlucky10% !

There is no excuse for a professional scientistovertly refusing to acknowledged such elementarypoints of logic. It is Professor McCusker who canrightfully be compared with Galileo's wilfully blindopponents. He is entirely free to engage in such selfdelusion - but he is not entitled to delude others.

To this end, the media, which love unorthodoxscientists, ought more often to bear in mind theoverwhelming successes of predictive science,repeated all over the world every day. For everyMcCusker, there are hundreds of orthodox scientists.Perhaps it is not too hard to guess why.

Halley's Comet And theParanormalMark Plummer

Did you get “comet neck” from viewing thecomet? If so, join "Roll on 2062" fromGreensborough, Victoria in his proposedcompensation claim, for neck injuries, againstthe Government of Victoria.

Would you like a gold certificate testifyingyou have seen the Comet, and your nameplaced on record with the National Library?If so, send $12 to the Halley's CometViewers' Association of Australia (nextmeeting, 2062).

Perhaps we have all seen Halley's Cometfor the last time if Mark Haeles has his way.Mark Haeles of PO Box 5911, Morley, WA,placed a public notice in a WesternAustralian newspaper formally laying claimto the Comet.

Or perhaps you believe the Comet has ameaning beyond the capability of materialisticscience. If so, you are in the company of a

number of Australians who gave a variety of viewson the Comet.

First was "Thomas" who modestly refrained fromdivulging his second name. Writing in the AustralianAstrological Monthly Review, "Thomas" presentedhis astrological view of the Comet. He suggested thatcomets were possibly destined to become an importantpart of the solar family, and were “embryonic planets”.He also suggested that they heralded the birth of aspiritual prodigy.

Writing before the 1st of April, he suggested that asthe Comet conjoins Mars and the Moon in 3 degreesCapricorn on 1st April, we could expect a considerableearth disturbance in India or the Indian Ocean aroundthat date.

James Beck, of the Atherton Tablelands writing afterthe event, said Halley's Comet may have been thecause of the Mexico City earthquake on 20thSeptember, 1985, when it reached its "stationary point"before going retrograde 3 degrees Cancer.

Skeptic, Laurie Hall, wrote to the AthertonTablelander newspaper a fortnight later pointing outHalley's went retrograde on 7th September, not 20thSeptember, and it was in the constellation of Orion,not Cancer!

Many astrologers and astronomers were called onto give opinions, and often the difference between thetwo was not made clear.

On Saturday, 3rd May, one Melbourne TV newscalled the Director of the Melbourne Planetarium, Dr

An advertisement from a Brisbane advertising catalogue -hope the "astrologers" had a good view.

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Journalist, Lawrence Money, called the Comet anover-hyped cosmic smudge, while another journalistRobert Haupt, completed a science assignment set byhis science teacher twenty-five years earlier, to reporton the Comet. He wrote it was easy to beunderwhelmed by it in this electronic age. He saidwhen you thought about its previous visits (27 sinceCaesar) and the alarms set off by its excursions, youdo begin to wonder.

I saw the Comet first from Mount Stromlo, thenfrom Dubbo, then from Ayers Rook and finally fromCoober Pedy. At Coober Pedy I positioned thebinoculars for a person young enough to see it in 2062,viewing it for the first time. When I saw that person'sexcited reaction, I knew that the excitement andwonderment of direct observation in science will alwayshold its own against any paranormal or pseudoscientificpostulation.

Robin Hurst, an "astrologer", but quickly issued acorrection at the end of the bulletin. one suspectsrumblings from the Planetarium if a correction hadnot been issued.

Interestingly enough my personal astrologer, AnitaWalker, followed her intuition and made herobservations when the Comet was first visible, andnot when it was closest. She told me the astronomershad failed to predict the tail would disappear when theComet was closest.

The Phillip Island Shire (Vic), believed the Cometmight cause enormously high tides, six feet higher thanusual in Westernport Bay, and swamp the lowersections of the island. The Newhaven Yacht Clubwarned members to remove their boats from themarina when the Comet was near.

I invited Dr Paul Kurtz to put his life on the line bycoming down to Phillip Island with me. He accepted,and we survived!

While we were at Phillip Island, several coupleswent to Mudgee (NSW) to make love in the open,under the Comet, in the belief that the Comet had thepowers to make childless couples fertile. Mudgee waschosen on account of its high quality wine and honey.

I was keen to scientifically observe this ritual buthad a prior engagement. A nurse from the localmaternity clinic in Mudgee said with the number ofpregnancies they get they found they didn't need acomet to conceive in Mudgee.

Dr Dayal Wickramasinghe of the ANU suggestedDarwinian theory should be modified to take accountof the possibility that the origins of life and the stimulusfor evolution may have come from comets likeHalley's.

Clergy got into the act. The Very Reverend LanaShilton said, "The present fascination with Halley'sComet shows the deep desire of most people to knowwhat exists outside of themselves, beyond their limitsof time and space. It expresses a longing for thesupernatural."

The Australian Evangelical Magazine editorialcompared the return of the Comet with the return ofJesus Christ, and called for the Comet to "move over".

The "Sydney Morning Herald" quoted eighttheologians on the Comet. Their quotes included thatthe Comet points to the majesty of God, the proof of aSupreme Architect, "a sign", and God creating orderout of chaos.

Hazel Gillanders in the New Life newspaperjourneyed to her backyard and up a ladder to see theComet. She used 73 lines writing about the Lord andonly one line to mention her observation of Halley'sComet.

Vol 6 No 3 - 1986

Book ReviewThe Bermuda Triangle Mystery -Solvedby Lawrence David Kusche. Hardback 1975;New England Library Ltd paperback reprint 1978.Rafe Champion.

It appears from a recent TV show that the legendof the Bermuda Triangle is still alive. Phillip Adamsmade some pointed comments about this in theWeekend Australian, Feb.15-16, and skeptics mightlike to know about a book which lays to rest somedozens of the allegedly "unexplained" disappearancesin the dreaded triangle.

Lawrence David Kusche worked as a referencelibrarian at the Arizona State University and becameinterested in the Triangle when people asked for helpto find information about the legend. Next to nothingwas readily available so he joined forces with anotherlibrarian and they advertised extensively for assistance,wrote to government agencies, research organisationsand libraries along the east coast, and explored othersources of information.

Kusche compared the popular accounts and mediabeat-ups about the Triangle "disappearances" withevidence from other records such as the Lloyd's listof missing vessels, and contemporary weather reports.His findings are published in a book, The BermudaTriangle Mystery- Solved, first printed in 1975, and

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reprinted in paperback by the New England LibraryLtd in 1978.

The results are shattering for the legend. For caseafter case, he found objective evidence to show thatthere was either no mystery, or nothing especiallystrange about the Triangle area. Four examples willsuffice. The "Bella" vanished in 1854, out of Rio boundfor Jamaica. According to the Triangle legend she wasone of the first modern victims. According tocontemporary reports, she was overloaded when sheleft Rio and six days later flotsam of the "Bella" waspicked up after a storm at sea. Taking account of herspeed and the time elapsed, she was at least 2000miles away from the Triangle when the storm hit.

The legend reports that the "Freya", a Germanbarque was found deserted in calm conditions shortlyafter she sailed out of Manzanillo in the West Indies,bound for Chile. Lloyd's Register records the loss ofthe "Freya" on the Pacific side of the continent (notthe Atlantic side), out of Manzanillo on the west(Pacific) side of Mexico.

According to legend, the "Raifuke Maru"disappeared with all hands on a calm and tranquil seaafter sending out a frantic message for help. In fact aliner picked up a message for help during a storm andraced to the spot in time to see the ship go down withall hands in mountainous seas.

Al Snyder, an internationally famous jockey rowedaway from a cruiser with two friends to fish, and neverreturned. Despite extensive searches by the navy andcoastguard and others spurred on by the offer of alarge reward, the bodies were never found. This ismade out to be a very strange event but the legendomits to mention that the disappearance occurred duringa savage storm that came up suddenly in the night andravaged the coast for 24 hours. Record wind velocitieswere recorded in some places.

Kusche's book goes on with such accounts for 200pages. In some instances, very time - consumingresearch was required to unearth the details of eventswhich had been thoroughly garbled and distorted in

the legend of theTriangle. As with thelies of CreationScience, new mythscan be invented atthe stroke of a penbut the researchneeded to set therecord straight maybe very labourintensive. Skepticscan be grateful forthe work that was putinto Kusche's book.

Vol 7 No 1 - 1987

The Brock Energy Polarizer -scientific breakthrough... orwitchcraft?

Readers will be familiar with recent media controversyregarding a commercial dispute between GeneralMotors - Holdens and Mr Peter Brock's company,HDT Pty Ltd. Central to this dispute appears to bethe so-called "Energy Polarizer", a device whichconsists of magnets and crystals, which is fitted toGM-H Commodore vehicles which, after certainmodifications, are sold as special vehicles.

Australian Skeptics has no interest in the commercialdispute nor in the mechanical modifications. Ourconcern is purely with claims made for the "energypolarizers", as published in the media. In this endeavour,we are frustrated by Mr Brock's public statement thatsome claims were made as "a smokescreen" after hispremises had been burgled. He was not explicit as towhich claims were genuine and which were"smokescreen".

In particular, we call upon Mr Brock to explainwhether the following claims are valid:

1. Does the device utilise "orgone" energy?2. Does the device utilise "energies unknown to

science which cannot be tested by normal scientificmeans"?

3. Does the device ''re-align the molecules in thevehicle"?

4. Does the fitting of the device, without any othermechanical adjustment, "turn a 'dog' of a car into asweet running one"?

If none of the above claims are valid, what claimsare made for the "energy polarizer"?

Australian Skeptics has made the investigation ofthe "energy polarizer" and various other magnet/crystaldevices known to be on sale a major project for 1987.Readers who have information or have had experiencewith such devices which claim to have a beneficialeffect on motor vehicles, water supplies, human beingsor anything else are invited to send us the details.Readers will be kept advised of developments in futureeditions of the Skeptic.

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Vol 7 No 2 - 1987

Bent Spoon Award for 1986 goesto Peter Brock and his EnergyPolarizer

In a year that saw the usual run of "psychics" promotingtheir usual run of usually wrong predictions, 1986 andthe start of 1987 also saw some rather unusualexamples of "paranormal" events - all potential Winnersof the Australian Skeptics' Bent Spoon Award.

The judging committee for the Bent Spoon Awardrejected the visiting American woman who filledvenues in most capitals, claiming to teach the cash-paying public how to "tap the universal force" to enablethem to bend cutlery. The committee considered, notentirely seriously, that this may have been organisedby the Cutlery Manufacturers Association in an effortto boost flagging sales (why else would anyone wantto mass bend spoons?).

Another strong contender was Zanex Ltd, whichpaid Israeli magician and alleged "psychic" Uri GellerUS$250,000 to find the location of gold mines. Thejudges rejected this story, as Zanex appeared to bemore a victim than a perpetrator of a "psychic" scam.

In the event, it was agreed that the one outstandingexample of pseudo-science of the year was the so-called "Energy Polarizer" being promoted by topAustralian racing driver, Peter Brock. The story ofhow Australian Skeptics became involved in the EPaffair reads like the plot of a Le Carre novel, and isrecounted in this issue. Mr Brock joins a distinguishedlist of winners of the Bent Spoon Award, whichincludes the Findhorn Foundation, the MelbourneMetropolitan Board of Works and "psychic" TomWards.

Bent Spoon AwardPeter Brock's Energy PolarizerBarry Williams

The story of Peter Brock, outstanding motor sportdriver, eight times winner at Bathurst and to manypeople a folk hero, and his misadventures sincebecoming publicly identified with the so called "EnergyPolarizer", has been well documented in the general

and the specialised motoring media in recent months.That Mr Brock, eminent in his chosen field, should

'muddy' his unquestioned skills as a driver and as abusinessman by delving into the mystical realm ofpseudo-science is, in many ways, a tragedy.

This article does not seek to interest itself, in anypartisan way, in the commercial controversies that haveinvolved Mr Brock's HDT Special Vehicles Pty Ltdand the Holden's Motor Company, nor does it seek tocomment, except in passing, on the quality ofmechanical and design modifications made to Holden'svehicles by the HDT company. The sole intent ofAustralian Skeptics in this matter lies with the claimsmade for the Energy Polarizer.

Certain words and phrases activate the sensitivepsychic antennae of a Skeptic. Phrases such as"energies as yet unknown to science" and "rewrite thelaws of physics" are sure signals someone is trying toblind someone with non-science. This story aboundswith such signals.

The first reference that we can locate to Brock'sEnergy Polarizer occurs in an article by Phil Scott,motoring editor for the Sydney Sun Herald in theMay 18, 1986 edition. The article, headlined "Brock's'Secret Weapon': Will cars run ?" gives the clearestpicture available of what Mr Brock was claiming forhis device. Readers interested in a fuller history of theevents which led to Brock's break with Holden's arereferred to the April 1987 edition of Wheels magazinefor a comprehensive story, also written by Phil Scott.

In the Sun Herald article, Brock is quoted as sayingthat his device "improves performance handling andride comfort as well as producing better economy andless component wear". A very impressive gadget ifthe claims are true.

When asked to describe how the device achievesthese remarkable results, Brock is quoted as saying"The Energy Polarizer is a transmitter that emits asignal [that is] neither electric nor magnetic nor is it aradio wave or X-ray." (Mr Brock seems to be unawarethat all of these are forms of electromagnetic energy.)He further claims “It's a form of energy called orgoneenergy" and goes on "British medicos are using aderivative of it to produce body scans” (in this he seemsto be referring to Nuclear Magnetic ResonanceImaging, MRI, which certainly uses electromagneticenergy, a great deal of it, and not orgone energy whichdoes not appear to exist - see box, next pages).

Mr Brock is also quoted as saying "We haven'taltered molecular structure but realigned the moleculesinto an almost crystalline layout" and "inside myPolarizer, among other things, you've got magneticenergy acting on a crystal which causes the

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transmission of a high frequency wave which in factis orgone energy. When the car is fully charged withorgone energy, the molecules are all nicely aligned andyou can feel it working better."

When the journalist put it to Brock that his claimsseem to challenge the laws of physics, Brock admits"physics doesn't recognise that this energy exists orthat it can do these things" and "the laws of physicsare going to have to be re-written".

Mr Brock's naive self-assurance here betrays anignorance of the history of science. It is an extremelyrare event for the laws of physics to be "re-written".They can be added to or amended, but probably theonly substantial "re-writes" were carried out by Newtonin the 17th century and by the proponents of relativityand quantum theory in the early part of this century.

The Sun Herald article has been quoted from atlength because it represents the most comprehensiveexposition of Brock's claims for his Energy Polarizerto appear in the media. From here on, the storybecomes far less clear.

In early February 1987 and subsequently someweeks later, I was phoned by a person who told me inconsiderable detail what was going on in the HDTorganisation. Much of this information later becamepublic through the media, and some of it was personalabout people associated with the organisation. It wasapparent that my informant was quite close to HDTand was very concerned with the potential results ofwhat was going on. It was suggested to me that theorganisation was split (polarised, in fact) between theprofessional engineers, mechanics and drivers, and the"believers" who were promoting the Polarizer.

In my informant's view, the believers were in theascendant and that this ascendancy was likely to havea deleterious effect on both the company and Mr Brockpersonally. It was indicated to me that there was adistinct probability that many professional staff wouldleave the company as they felt that they had noinfluence on decisions being made. This informationwas confirmed when many of the staff, including longtime Brock associate driver John Harvey, together withAllan Moffat, left the HDT team later in February.

To check the facts that had been given to me, Icontacted Bob Beale, science writer of the SydneyMorning Herald, and David Robertson, motoring writerwho confirmed many of the details. Mr Robertsonwrote an article in the SMH of February 19, in whichhe mentioned Australian Skeptics' interest in the claimsmade for the Energy Polarizer.

Mr Brock appeared on television on the TerryWillesee Tonight program (Channel 7 Sydney) andstated that some of the claims that had been made

were "a smokescreen" because his premises had beenburgled and certain papers taken. Mr Brock has notyet publicly stated which of his claims formed part ofthis smokescreen.

Australian Skeptics held a special committeemeeting on Sunday February 22, and as a result DrAnthony Garrett, Australian Skeptics committeemember and theoretical physicist, was deputised tocontact Mr Brock and Holden's to discover what, ifany, tests had been made on vehicles fitted with thePolarizer and to offer to carry out properly controlledscientific tests that would test the validity of the claims.

Dr Garrett sent a telex to Mr Brock on Monday,February 23, setting out our intent and our offer toconduct tests. He also wrote to Mr C.S. Chapman,managing director of Holden's Motor Company,requesting details of any tests that had been conducted.

In the telex to Mr Brock, Dr Garrett had includedthe background information that the aims of AustralianSkeptics included investigation of paranormal claims.The response from Mr Brock was prompt and brief.Quoted in full, it was:

"Dear Dr Garrett,Your recent communications are irrelevant, as Iand my colleagues make no claims what-so-everof paranormality.Yours sincerely,Peter Brock"

In contrast, the response from Mr Chapman, whileequally prompt, was much more detailed:

"Dear Dr Garrett:

Thank you for your letter of February 24.

Following many months of acrimony betweenPeter Brock and our Organization over the energypolarizer, I arranged a meeting in late October,1986, with Mr. Brock in order to try to resolve thematter. As a result of the meeting, GM-H tests onthe polarizer were conducted as a concession toMr. Brock, at the Lang Lang Proving Grounds inNovember, 1986.Neither I nor anyone in our Organization saw anyscientific substance to the device and werereluctant to spend company funds on it. However,in order to try to resolve the dispute and resumethe partnership, we agreed on a back-to-back testat our Lang Lang Proving Grounds and, at theinsistence of Mr. Brock, we agreed that we wouldnot publish the results. Mr. Brock was not satisfiedthat our test allowed significant time for properpreparation to allow the device to achieve certainharmonious vehicle effects and objected to thefact that the test was conducted by our

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Experimental Test group without his presence.Our Experimental Test group assured me that ourtest was conducted in the same 'arms length'manner as would take place in evaluating anyproposal of our own or from any of our suppliers.At my meeting with Mr. Brock I stated that healso was free to submit to us any favourable teststhat might result from his own submission of thedevice to any reputable engineering or scientificinstitution.To date he has not submitted to us results of anysuch tests. I have neither seen nor have been madeaware of any such record of any tests or testresults from the General Motors Proving Groundsin Milford, Michigan.I understand that some evaluations were madeon durability trucks at Milford at the request ofMr. J.D. Rock, our former Director of Marketing atGM-H, who is now the Manager, Truck & CoachOperation. Whatever the results of thesepreliminary evaluations might have been, JohnRock has not called them to our attention. If youwould like the results of these preliminaryevaluations, you may contact Mr. Rock as follows:[address supplied but not quoted here].Sincerely,C.S. Chapman"

These responses were received by Australian Skepticssome two weeks after the severance of relationsbetween HDT and Holden's.

The Willesee program (Channel 9 network)conducted tests on a Brock car that had travelled40,000km after a Polarizer had been personally fittedto it by Brock. Neither the car owner, motoringjournalist Paul Wiezel, nor another motoring journalist,David Morley, could detect any difference inperformance between the car when fitted with thePolarizer or a day later, after the Polarizer had beenremoved.

This test should have overcome Brock's objectionsto some tests in which the Polarizer was not fitted byauthorised people. The car was also tested usingsophisticated engine testing apparatus, in bothconditions, again without any discemable difference.

On the same program, Anthony Garrett wasinterviewed regarding the theoretical basis for thePolarizer. To quote Dr Garrett, "Nothing is impossible,but it is very very improbable".

Mrs Beverley Brock also appeared on the program.She made one interesting comment that drivers feelthat the Polarizer works (perhaps she has not heardof the placebo effect). She also spoke of "energiesthat science knows nothing about" and a "whole newfield of metaphysics that are just beginning to berecognised", which may well be true, but whatmetaphysics has to do with motor car performance is

a little difficult to determine. We understand that MrsBrock is a former science teacher.

There have been various tests carried out bymotoring writers on the Brock vehicles. Many of theseare, in fact, complimentary to the vehicles, but noneappear to be comparisons of similar cars with andwithout Polarizers. It is common knowledge thatBrock takes standard, off-the-assembly line vehiclesand then makes many mechanical modifications tothem. It is quite consistent that the specially rebuiltvehicles would perform better than those off theassembly line. Our research reveals no test that couldbe even remotely considered as a scientific test on theclaims made for the Polarizer.

A mysterious figure in this saga is Dr Eric Dowker,a Melbourne chiropractor described in variouspublications as "Brock's guru". Whether Mr Dowkeris responsible for the Energy Polarizer is difficult toascertain as media reports are equivocal on the point.In any event, Dowker is very difficult to contact andthe only public comments attributable to him arecouched in 'pop' psychological jargon, and are mostunhelpful as to his level of scientific knowledge (ifany)!

In the Sydney Morning Herald of February 25,1987, an advertisement appeared offering for sale thePeter Brock Energy Polarizer for $478.00. Theadvertisement asked people to send cheque/moneyorder or Bankcard authorization to CGM MarketingPty Ltd, 138 Mollison Street, Bendigo. It also containedquotes from two motoring writers extolling the virtuesof the Polarizer. One of these quotes, from Mike Kable,The Australian, February 23, 1987, said "Thedifference ... amounted to a much smoother ride andless tendency to skip about on broken bitumen thanthe Holden's Commodore without the polarizer."

The article from which this quote was taken actuallysaid "I am unable to give an opinion one way or theother on the polarizer, but the difference ... etc". Wewrote to the Advertising Standards Council with thisinformation seeking a ruling as to whether the quote,supposedly endorsing the Polarizer, was out of contextand whether it breached advertising standards.

In a response to Australian Skeptics, the ASC'sdetermination was as follows: "Council considered theadvertisement which stated the attributes of thepolarizer and quoted two 'experts' on motoring. Councilagreed that one of the experts' comments had beenquoted out of context and on the information before it,was not satisfied that the claims made in theadvertisement could be substantiated. The complaintwas upheld."

In a letter that I received from Mrs Beverley Brock,

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Other Polarizers

While the events in the main story wereunfolding, the ABC Investigators programconducted tests on yet another polarizer. Thiswas the "Dipole fuel polarizer", the invention ofa Mr Norman Dodge. Simpler in constructionthan the Brock device, this gadget clippedaround the fuel line of the vehicle and wasguaranteed to prove fuel-use efficiency by10-50%. In a road test and a bench test carriedout at the University of NSW, the device failedutterly to improve fuel economy. It sells for$180.At the time of going to press, Australian Skepticsis conducting tests on a third device. We willreport the results in the next issue.And we know of the possible existence ofanother. Readers who know of other suchdevices, are asked to contact Australian Skepticswith any information.

written on April 2, she stated that the Polarizer hadbeen "taken off the market". She also stated that theadvertisement had been run "for one day to test publicreaction. No sales were made as a result of those ads,as we were not happy with the timing. We no longerhave any business links with CGM Marketing". MrsBrock went on to say that independent testing wasbeing undertaken and that it would take some timebefore the results of those tests could be collectedand collated and that when that was achieved a suitablemarketing approach would be considered. Since then,nothing further has been heard from the HDTorganisation.

This article has considered, at some length, thecontroversy that has surrounded the Brock EnergyPolarizer. Australian Skeptics has offered, as anindependent body, to conduct or supervise tests thatwill determine whether the Polarizer will do what isclaimed for it. We have been frustrated by the factthat in his many statements on the issue, Mr Brockwill not state categorically how the device works, norexactly what results one could expect from it. WithoutMr Brock's co-operation, we cannot test the deviceas he has objected to such tests being conductedwithout his involvement.

The only facts that we can ascertain from withinthe mass of information and disinformation that haveproliferated throughout this affair are:

* Any claims made for the Polarizer are based onunsubstantiated assertions.

* No reliable testing has been carried out undercontrolled conditions that would indicate any of theclaims made are valid.

* That, if as originally claimed in the media, thedevice relies on orgone energy (HDT sales literaturerefers to it as A.B.A. energy), there is not a trace ofany evidence that such energy exists.

Australian Skeptics therefore believes that, in lightif these facts, there is no reason to believe that theBrock Energy Polarizer has any effect whatsoeveron the performance of a motor vehicle.

Australian Skeptics will always be willing to takepart in testing of this or similar devices and will publishthe results of the tests, whatever they reveal. In theabsence of any properly conducted tests, we wouldstrongly advise anyone contemplating the purchase ofa device that makes its claims based on "energiesunknown to science" to save their money.

We also believe that there has never been a moreworthy recipient of our Bent Spoon award.

Barry Williams is president of Australian Skeptics. He doesnot currently own or drive a Holden car.

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Technical Details

Brock Energy Polarizer

The Energy Polarizer is a small rectangular box, attached by asingle screw to the fire wall of the vehicle in the enginecompartment. It has no electrical or other connection to anyother part of the vehicle. It contains two opposed magnets andsome crystals. A metallised decal, attached to the rear windowof the vehicle, is allegedly the antenna of the Polarizer. It alsohas no physical connection with the Polarizer or any other partof the car.Testing the Polarizer is made difficult by the insistence by MrBrock that only authorised can fit the device and by claims thatsome hours are required after fitment for the full effect to takeplace, and several hours after removal for the effects to dissipate.Any series of tests would require a considerable time-frame.The following are copies of promotional material received fromHDT. Note that the instructions insist that the Polarizer not beremoved once fitted or changed from car to car. The insistenceis unusual unless one realises that such instructions make doubleblind testing very difficult.

"Energy Polarizer - What It Does?A high technology energy device which createsa "polarized" or "ordered" moleculararrangement as distinct from the normal"random" structure. This alters the behaviourand characteristics of materials andcomponents in the vehicle.Noted benefits to the overall vehicle performanceinclude:-- smoother - quieter, more stable ride andhandling, wet and dry.- improved economy and drivability.- quiet, smoother and more efficient enginerunning and flexibility.- reduced wear characteristics.Best results are observed after 6 hours drivingtime. An additional one hour is required for every1000 km the vehicel has travelled when fitted toa used vehicle. It is strongly recommendedthat an Energy Poloarizer is not removed oncefitted to a vehicle to "test it's [sic] effects". Underno circumstances can the Energy Polarizer befitted from vehicle to vehicle."

"What is an Energy Polarizer?An Energy Polarizer transmits a high energymainly generated by the vehicle to which it isattached. This high energy field - a. b. c. Energy- causes all molecules in it's - [sic] sphere ofinfluence to be aligned or polarized in thedirection of the high energy transmission, andare held in a linked or aligned state. Thesemolecules are subject to a vibratory rate dictatedby the Polarizor.The printed circuitry in a Polarizer causes amultiplicity of frequencies to be transmitted,effecting each molecule and allowing thatmolecule and it's [sic] environment to absorb

specific vibration levels including noises,vibrations resonance and impact harshnesswhich are always present in any vehicle andalso to dampen out the effects of imperfectmanufacture of vehicle components.The overall effect on a motor car is to absorbroad shocks more completely and quietly toreduce overall vheicle noises - both inside andoutside - to achieve greater efficiency of thepower train and steering system, improving theengine and suspension performance and tocreat a more pleasant environment for the driverand passenger.Certain frequencies have not been "tuned out"as they are necessary for increased road safety.The energy transmitted from the EnergyPolarizer always flows to that area mosteffected. That means a major problem stillremains a problem, and the energy is effectivelywasted on that area since the overall vehicle isdeprived and consequently is less enhanced.So a correctly manufactured and maintainedvehicle will always be superior to one that isnot, but all vehicles benefit from the fitment ofan Energy Polarizer. It should be notd a vehiclethat normally requires a high octane leaded fuelis more then able to operated on low octane(92) unleaded fuel, without any ill effectswhatsoever, when an Energy Polarizer is fitted.Tyre pressures must be lowered to maximisethe effect of an Energy Polarizer. Recommendedtyre pressure:- Standard and 60 series tyres:24 psi (165k.P.a.). 45/50/55 series tyres - 22psi (150k.P.a.). Light trucks and commercialvehicles: 30 psi (210k.P.a.)."

Orgon Energy

Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) studied psycho-analysis underSigmund Freud, and was considered to have contributedsignificantly to Freudian theory. In the 1930s, Reich postulateda new form of non-electro-magnetic energy which he namedOrgon. Initially he claimed that Orgon energy was dischargedduring sexual orgasm, although later he decided that it pervadedthe universe, being generated by the stars. Orgon was blue incolour and Reich claimed to have studied it under a microscopeand to have detected it both with thermometers and Geigercounters. It was responsible for, among other things, the blueof the sky, Aurora lightening, St Elmos Fire, and the bluecolouration of sexually excited frogs.Reich believed that clouds were caused by changes inatmospheric concentration of Orgon, and that UFOs, in whichReich became a fervent believer, were powered by Orgon. Hebelieved that Orgon could be used to immunise mankind againstradiation.It is perhaps superfluous to say that no other scientist has beenable to replicate Reich's findings and quite safe to claim thatOrgon energy joins N-rays, dianetics and phrenology as someof the curious side-tracks of scientific history that dependedmore on the faith of the proponents than on any scientificevidence for their existence.

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Vol 7 No 3 - 1987

Amazing tale from theundergroundPip Wilson

I have been for quite some time associated with the"alternative" movement in this country, and have servedas editor of two of its publications, Maggie's Farmand Simply Living.

While I am not blind to certain shortcomings andcontradictions in that movement and those publications,I have always felt a sense of pride in being connectedwith people struggling to find appropriate, just andcreative ways of living in these crazy, unjust andstultified times. Many of the excesses and naivitiesfor which the alternative movement is criticised arethe natural follow-on from a large and disparate sub-culture of people, and I often think that the counter-culture has come in for more than its share of flakbecause; of Australia's "tall poppy" syndrome - thesepeople make easy targets because they have chosento take on the difficult task of changing society, andthat doesn't go down too well in our world.

In that subculture, however, I have seen more thanmy share of bunkum, and it never ceases to amazethat the very movement that is based largely on areasoned critical analysis of 20th century Westernmores is itself prone to some irrational behaviour.

My current journal, Simply Living, has just publishedan article, "The 100th Monkey Debunked" by RonAmundson, which demolishes a widely-accepted (inalternative circles) modern myth which supposedlyendorses Rupert Sheldrake's theory of formativecausation. The "100th monkey phenomenon", readersmay know, was popularised by the doyen of alternative,'New Age' para-science authors, Lyall Watson.

Oner the years, while I have encountered countlessinspiring examples of the 'New Age' mind at work, sotoo have I come across some out-and-out bulldust.

One particular incident comes to mind. I had in myoffice two people, a man and a woman, who are the"alternatives' alternatives". I respect both for the qualityof individuality and achievement in their lives. Eachhas a special something that sets them apart from theordinary and makes them truly deserving of the highstanding they have in the New Age network.

To cut a long story short, I was discussing storyideas with them, and they both urged me to publish a

piece on "psychic surgery". This is the practice ofremoving diseased tissues from the bodies of ill peoplesimultaneous with the extraction of sums of filthy lucrefrom their wallets.

I remarked that I had already sent a photo-journalistto the psychic surgery of a psychic surgeon, a womanwho practises in Sydney. That reporter, who believedin this unique form of medicine, and who was quitedisgusted with my own scepticism, had eventuallyreturned from the offices of ‘Rev.............’ appalledat the chicanery he had witnessed. So appalled washe that he could not write anything at all on the subject.

I recounted to my guests that another prominentNew Age personality had told me that when filmingRev............. for a TV documentary, he had beendisallowed from placing a camera behind the psychicsurgeon, where he had hoped to capture on film thesleight-of-hand technique he was witnessing with hiseyes.

"Nonsense!" my two guests ejaculated. They wouldhave none of this. Why, Rev............. has an excellentreputation, people speak highly of her. "People alsospeak lowly of her", I countered, to no avail.

I then told them that a prominent Melbournepathologist had told me that the tests he had carriedout on tissue 'removed' from a patient by anotherpsychic healer had revealed that the said tissue waschicken entrails. (I hasten to add that the patient wasnot a chicken.)

This is when my friends became particularlyagitated. With a burst of enthusiasm that practicallyshook my office like the earthquake of Atlantis, myguests exclaimed "Amazing!".

(This is a word from the 70s that still cuts it in NewAge circles and can describe anything on the scalefrom 'benign tolerance' to 'utterly unutterable'.)

"A-ma-zing!" they cried. "Not only can psychicsurgeons manifest tissues from a patient without theuse of the knife, they can ..."

(And here's the punchline, and I swear it's true.)“...they can manifest tissues from a completely

different creature!”It's true. I swear, that's what they said. No, I can

hardly credit it either.Amazing!

Pip Wilson is editor of Simply Living magazine. She is alsoa major proponent of the restoration of Wattle Day to itsproper place in the Australian calendar.

13


ParapsychologyESP - a rejoinderAnthony Garrett

Bill Williams, in a paper broadcast on the ABC'sOckham's Razor on March 8, 1987, comments onextra sensory perception, or ESP for short. Hiscomments seem to be fair, but in fact they are too fair.

If the world divides up on a particular issue into the'yes's and the 'no's, it might seem most reasonable toallot equal weight to either side. Certainly, in theabsence of any further information, that would be thebest thing to do. But if serious information continuesto flow in which strongly favours one stance over theother, that information must be utilised. We must favourthat stance. To do otherwise, while apparently fair todissenters, is unfair to the stance's supporters.

So what is the position with ESP? There is a greatdeal of evidence against it. I hope Mr Williams willtake account of this evidence when working out hisfuture position, for in informed debate lies the road tothe truth.

His talk was titled "The Scientific Problem with ExtraSensory Perception". Well, there is a problem withESP, but not a scientific one. It is a problem of fraud,humbug and publicity. Strong words, but let me backthem up.

In Mr Williams' talk, we heard of a small group ofscientists, "conventionally trained and eminentlyreputable", who concluded, after experiment, that therewas something to ESP.

A major example given, Dr Soal of London, is nowknown not to be at all reputable. Painstaking analysisof his number-guessing data by statistician DrChristopher Scott revealed excesses of certain digitsin his own handwritten checklists, particularly the digitswhich are easily formed by altering certain others,which were found to be lacking. A ‘M’ is easily turnedinto a ‘W’, for example. To put it bluntly, Soal cheated.He committed the cardinal sin of doctoring data tosupport his beliefs, rather than selecting his beliefs onthe basis of the data. We all do this to a certain extentin real life, but in scientific research it is unforgiveable.

There are, of course, many experiments other thanSoal's. Most have been performed by trained,reputable scientists. But are these really the bestqualified persons to run such experiments? Suchpeople are experts in particular fields: Thouless andRhine, two scientists mentioned by name, wereoriginally trained in zoology and botany. Do theseeminently respectable disciplines provide a good trainingfor ESP research, and if not, what does?

We can answer these questions by considering thenature of ESP research. Anyone who becameaccepted by the scientific establishment as thepossessor of such powers would be instantly feted;Uri Geller's prestige increased massively after he hadsuccessfully conned two American physicists, forexample. So it is to the direct advantage of the subjectto try and cheat. I am not saying that all subjects cheat,of course; merely some.

So the people we want in charge of ESP experimentsare professionals in the cheating business, only wewant them on our side.

Well, such people exist: they are stage magicians.They are taught how to fool audiences, how tomisdirect them into looking at point A while the seriousbusiness of the trick is going on at point B, how to gainquite remarkable manual dexterity. To call themprofessional cheats is in no way an insult; some oftheir tricks take years of training to master.Unfortunately the magician is rarely in the position ofhaving a laboratory handy to run ESP experiments,while the scientist who does finds it difficult to believethat a professional entertainer can be of any assistance.Scientists are trained to detect subtlety in nature, notfraud, and it should be recognised that the two arewidely dissimilar.

I do not know of a single experiment in which amagician was acting as consultant in which ESP wasconfirmed. Unfortunately, such negative results aredifficult to get into print: the parapsychological journalsfar prefer exciting, positive results to papers whichstate simply that nothing happened.

The best experiments conducted by scientists havebeen painstakingly analysed by Professor Mark Hansel,who found ways in which fraud could habe taken placein each. This doesn't prove fraud did take place, but itcertainly forces us to place far less emphasis on theresults. Moreover, where experimental protocol istightened up, positive results diminish. It is logical toextrapolate and suggest that in perfectly tightexperiments, no effects will be found.

Parasychological experiments are taking place in agreat many Western universities. Active research isgoing on at one of Britain's oldest and most prestigiousuniversities, Cambridge. There are now at least twoChairs of Parapsychology in Europe. The most recentat Edinburgh is occupied by Robert Morris, formerlyof Syracuse University, New York. It was set upthrough a bequest from the will of the writer ArthurKoestler, after several other UK universities haddeclined the bequest. But this is not evidence of anykind of scientific "conspiracy" against parapsychology,for conspiracies have to be hidden.

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Certainly the scientific community is openly scepticalof parapsychology; and rightly so, given its trackrecord. Parasychology was accepted into theprestigious American Association for theAdvancement of Science many years ago, largely dueto the active lobbying of the social anthropologistMargaret Mead, whose influential research on sexualand social behaviour in Western Samoa is nowincreasingly discredited. Newly elected president ofthe AAAS, physicist John Wheeler pointed out thatparapsychology did not have a single replicable resultto its credit. The truth of this statement cannot bedenied.

Parapsychology would be far better accepted byworkers in established fields of science if its owninternal standards were higher. Experiments nowadaysare tending to be more complex, with the "hit level"due to random chance almost impossible to work out.

Card guessing is easy; but how on earth can youtell whether a sketch drawn by one individual issufficiently similar to a scene set out by a secondindividual for an attempt at thought transmission?Believe it or not, that is now the latest parapsychologicalcraze, called "ganzfeld".

The best experiments are surely simple, andperformed double blind. This means that the testerdoes not know in advance the result corresponding toa hit, and so cannot unconsciously cue the subject into it.

The necessity for magicians to be involved in theexperimental protocol was highlighted in the mostdramatic way possible some three years ago, whentwo of them posed as subjects in experiments hailedin advance as the best proving ground for paranormaleffects, at Washington University, St Louis, Missouri.

Effects were produced almost as a matter of routine;eventually the pair revealed what they had done. Thetricks they used could never have been employed hada magician been involved in the testing.

What of the person - and perhaps some are readingthis - who has had an experience which they attributedto ESP? One individual I know was very struck by thefact that their cleaner returned to the house at anunusual time, precisely when my acquaintance was insome physical distress. Well, that experience certainlysupports the hypothesis of ESP. Taken by itself, itsupports it very strongly; and, of course, since first-hand experience counts for a great deal, my friendfavours this explanation. But if more information canbe found, then it too should be taken into account.

How often have people felt that something waswrong, and found it wasn't? Such experiences wouldlodge in the memory far less vividly than a positive"hit". Or how often has something been wrong, and

no-one guessed it? To test for ESP we need to checkwhether there is any correlation between whathappened and what was felt.

Now perhaps you can see why reputable scientificexperiments form the backbone of data on whichscientific theories are based. I do not doubt my friend'sexperience, but it is vastly inadequate to prove theexistence of ESP. And the best laboratory experimentsdo not confirm it either.

Finally, a certain amount of dubious metaphysicswas invoked by Mr Williams in an attempt to begin thesearch for physical explanations of ESP. This is worthtrying only when we are quite certain there is somethingto explain, which is not at all the case at present. ESPeffects are apparently independent of distance, afeature which, it was indicated, is shared with skinresistance measurements. This is a very unfair andoversimplified analogy indeed. If ESP exists, it operatesby mechanisms presently unknown and veryfundamental. The fundamental theory ofelectromagnetism which underlies skin resistancemeasurement does, in general, predict a weakening ofeffect with distance.

And concerning the statements about time, Einstein'sideas long since showed that time and space are in atechnical sense the same thing. The comments madeabout time have no independent justification from anyother area of science: they are ad hoc and based solelyon an attempt to explain ESP . They do not even dothis: they only distinguish more clearly the differencebetween thought transmission and precognition, theability to see the future.

In his book, A New Approach to PsychicalResearch, which Mr Williams recommended,Professor Antony Flew rightly concluded in 1953 thatmore serious experimental work was needed. Well, ithas been done. As a result, Professor Flew is nowextremely sceptical of the whole field.

Let me close by clarifying the position. I am notclaiming that ESP certainly does not or cannot exist. Iam claiming that it very probably does not exist, andthat the evidence justifies a far more sceptical stancethat that adopted in Bill Williams' talk. I favour andhope for future experimentation, but please, let it bedone properly, with simple tests and magicians asconsultants against the possibility of fraud. Even thenI doubt that the results would satisfy everybody; butthey should be far more conclusive than at present.

Dr Garrett is a visiting physicist at the University of Sydney,as well as being a member of the national committee ofAustralian Skeptics. Importantly in this context, he was alsoinstrumental in establishing a sceptical society at CambridgeUniversity, UK. This article is an edited version of a talkgiven on ABC Radio's Ockham's Razor.

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Vol 7 No 4 - 1987

Book Review“The Rise and Fall ofPeter Brock”by Bill TuckeyGranada Publications 1987Anthony Garrett

This book, written by a prominent motoring journalist,chronicles the careers of top Australian motor racingdrivers Peter Brock and John Harvey, from theirhoonish origins in the 1960s to the spectacular severingof links between Brock's highly successful "souping-up" company HDT and Holden's last February. Thesplit led to Harvey's resignation from HDT,and the book is largely the result ofinformation he has since provided.

Readers of the Skeptic will need littlereminding that central to the issue wasBrock's endorsement of an "energypolarizer", a device with no moving partscontaining quartz crystals and magnets,which when mounted under the bonnet wasalleged to improve all aspects of carperformance.

That, at least, was the initial claim, and the originalpublicity seemed to promise easy testing of the claims.Unfortunately, a smokescreen rapidly blew up fromHDT, stating that certain incorrect information hadbeen released deliberately to protect the company afterthe theft of some papers (we learn more about this inthese pages); giving a new set of instructions whichmade blind testing of the polarizer effectivelyimpossible; and asserting that the real reason for thesplit was Holden's desire to strangle a potential rival.(A full article is contained in the Skeptic Vol 7, No 2.)

It was always difficult to believe this last claim, giventhe relative sizes of the two companies and - mostimportantly - the fact that Holden's, as themanufacturer of the unmodified vehicles, made profiton each of Brock's sales. As the foreword states, "thepolarizer never was a red herring ... It was the heartand soul of the disaster".

Tuckey refrains from commenting on the polarizer'sefficacy, but the facts he portrays paint a damningpicture. The results of tests conducted by Holden's,which Brock insisted in advance remain confidential,indicated conclusively that the polarizer was useless,polarising nothing more than opinions.

Brock's counter-claim that the instruments neededto test the device had not yet been invented is a wildred herring: it was always the effect on the car thatwas at test, and the devices at Holden's proving groundfar exceed in sophistication even the most advancedgarage test bed.

Tuckey displays sympathy with Holden's for theirpatience and for the frequent opportunities theyafforded Brock to retract, and to allow them accessto modifications he made to their cars for which theywere partially responsible in law. It cannot have beeneasy for Holden's to stand by their agreement to keepthe test results private as Brock pressed on. Tuckeybelieves their public silence, used to try and dispel theimage of a big company stamping on a small one, wascounter-productive. In Peter Brock, by contrast, weare given a folk hero and imaginative businessman,gradually drawn in by wilfulness and ignorance to a

world of pseudoscience of which he knewnothing.

We learn a good deal more of RicDowker, the "shadowy" chiropractor whoinfluenced Brock so heavily. Already by1984, the book claims, Brock believedDowker had exorcised the spirit of ahapless flag marshal killed at Le Mans,from his body. Dowker is an archetypalfigure to sceptics: he discussed patientscases with spirits supposedly in the room,

advocated rebirthing and the wearing of particularcrystals to restore health to various parts of the body,and believed in Wilhelm Reich's crazy "orgone energy",a sexual energy pervading the universe which was topower the polarizer. (More sensibly, Dowker also tookBrock off junk food and cigarettes.)

It is not surprising that Brock's mechanics resentedthe intrusions of a professional mystic into automobileengineering.

The rest followed as inevitably as night follows day.Australian Skeptics' involvement is included (pp 12,259-61, 274-5), and it is gratifying that Tuckey did notfeel it necessary to explain the organisation's identity.Above all, it is fascinating to discover in retrospectexactly what was going on at Brock's end.

This book, written robustly about an industry notnoted for its angels, takes anyone with $16 and a furtherinterest in the story behind the scenes of Brock'scompany. It suffers from the lack of an index, noweasy to compile with word processors, and thetemporal structure of the book leaves a certain amountto be desired. Alan Kennedy of the Sydney MorningHerald has also challenged the accuracy of two ofthe earlier "un-polarized" stories it contains, but there

16


is no reason to doubt the "polarized" material.It would be pleasant to agree with the tongue-in-

cheek letter appearing in the last Skeptic suggestingthat the controversy successfully gained Brock massivefree media exposure for his other, successful activities;but with the split from Holden's he has assuredly lostmore than he has gained. Perhaps he is older and wiser,perhaps not - but he has already displayedundiminished driving skills and appetite for controversyat this year's Bathurst race, while quietly downplayingthe polarizer (which is not fitted to racing vehicles,presumably for homologation reasons). It would beintriguing to know whether Brock's new contract withBMW refers to the polarizer in any way, or whether itcould all happen again.

Perpetuum MobileAnthony Garrett

There is a considerable grey area between scienceand pseudoscience. Sceptical organisations exist tocombat the latter, and to encourage the critical modeof thought employed by the former.

Often the distinction is clear cut; astronomy is clearlya science, for example, and astrology clearly apseudoscience. Internal consistency is the mostvaluable criterion for distinguishing between the two:a new idea in astronomy, if it conflicts with the old,must either be rejected or, less often, must causesufficient revision to the old ideas to permit itsincorporation without contradiction.

Astrology, by contrast, is a mess of ad hoc ideaswhich are often in mutual contradiction: predictions oftropical and sidereal astrology stand in open conflict,and one system cannot even predict anything at all forthose people born north of the arctic circle. Nobodythought to warn the Eskimos of this peril, and no harmhas befallen them as a result!

Astrology, though, was once in the mainstream ofscience - even though scientists today would not usethat word to describe the efforts of their forebears.To paraphrase Blake, "Knowledge itself will not bethe same when we know more". Perhaps the birth ofwhat we call the scientific mode of thought was aone-off revolution for all time; perhaps today's sciencewill not merely be outdated, but transcended. Thereare no signs of this yet, New Age idealsnotwithstanding.

In this article I shall examine another endeavourwhich was once mainstream science, and moreoverscience in today's sense of the word: perpetual motion.

The appeal is immediate to anyone who has seenEscher's marvellous visual pun, arising from theprojection of three dimensions onto two, in which watercascades down over a water wheel and then returnsby gravity to its starting point.

Perpetual motion was a hot topic in the last century,both for theoretical reasons (could energy be createdfrom nowhere?) and for practical reasons (becausethe age of the engineer was at its height). Since theidea is analysable from the standpoint of modernscience, it is in this realm that the answers should besought; the criterion of internal consistency, whichserves as a weapon against more complicated schoolsof thought external to science, is not needed.

Yet perpetual motion still stands as a grey area: someof its proponents are clear-cut cranks, some simplylacking in scientific education. I have personallyencountered both types. For the first type, it is all acrazy hobby, but for the second a good deal of time,money and even lives are needlessly wasted. Let thisserve as a warning to those who doubt that scientificliteracy is the currency of our age. Even a hundredyears ago the US Navy came close to espousing thecause of one particular machine.

The reason why perpetual motion still remainspopular, over a century after the idea was definitivelylaid to rest, is of course the dream of conjuring energyout of nothing. Were this feasible, all the coal-firedpower stations, with their sulphurous emissions, couldbe closed; likewise nuclear fission power plants, withtheir radioactive waste; "natural" power sources, withtheir threat of covering the world's deserts andmountains with solar cells and windmills, could bedropped; the huge funds expended on energy researchredeployed; and cheap energy made readily availableto developing countries. Not a bad list of achievementsfor a humble machine.

Types of perpetual motionPerpetual motion proposals are of two types, and

the distinction is crucial.A perpetual motion machine of the first kind actually

creates energy; some of this is inevitably renderedinaccessible through losses due to friction in thebearings of the machine, or air drag against the movingparts, or whatever; the rest is available to the world asfree energy.

A perpetual motion machine of the second kind, bycontrast, does not create or destroy energy. It runsforever by completely eliminating friction in the

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bearings, air resistance and such. However, any attemptto extract energy from it causes it to slow down.

These two types of machine run counter to the firstand second laws of thermodynamics respectively (Firstlaw - energy is conserved; second law - entropyincreases).

Most perpetual motion machines proposednowadays are of the first, "glory" kind. Theirproponents invariably agree with scientists as to thelaws of force and torque operating within theirmachines. These laws were first elucidated byIsaac Newton three centuries ago, and state thatForce = Mass x Acceleration; Torque = Moment ofinertia x Angular acceleration.

The reason for the laws' ready acceptance is thatone's intuition is schooled in them. Once it is acceptedthat undisturbed motion is a body's natural state, that italters its velocity only when a force is acting upon it,and that slowing down is not the natural state but theresult of frictional forces, the path to Newton's laws iseasy. (It nevertheless took a genius of Newton's statureto comprehend this for the first time.)

But, crucially, the same people do not accept thatthe force laws also imply conservation of energy. Thisconsequence is a fact - scientists call it a first integralof Newton's laws - but it is one step further removedfrom the forces and torques which people can feel,and so is often beyond untutored intuition. I aminvariably told, with a don't-blind-me-with-science look,"That's as may be, but what is wrong with mymachine?".

As a working scientist with a responsibility to myemployer, I am placed in a quandary when asked by awell-meaning perpetual motion advocate to examinethe design for a particular machine. Together with theinevitable discussion, it can take many hours.

Because it is an easy matter to produce a machinewith an obvious acceleration mechanism but a subtledeceleration process, the permutations are endless.Even more subtle are those machines whichinterchange energy between its various manifestations:motion, work against gravity, heat, latent energy ofevaporation (the 'drinking bird'), electromagnetism, andso on. Some of the subtleties are quite ingenious, but ifNewton's laws are operating as they have beenunderstood for three centuries, the catch is inevitablythere somewhere.

One particular catch occurs so frequently that it isworth special mention. Perpetual motion machines, incommon with many others, are almost invariably cyclic:after sufficient operation, referred to as a cycle, themachine has returned to its initial configuration. Awheel making one complete turn, and an internal

combustion engine, are examples of cyclic machines.(Cyclicity is a matter of convenience, since a non-cyclic machine would be difficult to exploit.) Often,proposed perpetual motion machines have an obviousacceleration mechanism in one part of the cycle, whilethe deceleration occurs in a separate part. It is essentialto consider the energy balance over a complete cycle.

Perpetual motion machines of the second kind,though less commercially attractive, are no lessinteresting. Moreover, they exist! The circumstancesfor their observation are very special, however, andcannot be duplicated in the household - as we shallsee - unless one has a very exceptional fridge indeed.

It will not have escaped the alert reader's noticethat, from Newton's laws, an isolated body with noforces or torque acting upon it exhibits preciselyperpetual motion of the second type. The problem isto reduce the force and torque to zero. A top may spinfor five minutes until friction at the point, and airresistance, cause it to fail. Place it in an evacuatedcontainer to eliminate air resistance, and it will run forlonger. Sharpen the point of contact and it will run forlonger still. But, eventually, it will still run down in theabsence of any external energy source. The startingenergy has not been destroyed, for the system isisolated, but converted into heat in the surrounding airand the point of contact.

Since heat is kinetic (motional) energy of the airmolecules, we could still see motion if only our eyesightwere good enough. The motion is therefore perpetual,although on a microscopic rather than an easilyobservable, everyday, macroscopic scale. The energyof the top has been degraded into heat. This degradationprocess translates into physics as the second law ofthermodynamics. It is a consequence of our inabilityto see on the atomic scale, rather than a law relatingto the fundamental dynamics of the system, and istherefore a law of an altogether different kind fromthe first.

Heat is inaccessible as an energy source (althoughenergy can be extracted from bodies of differingtemperatures) since one would have to know thediffering directions of motion of all those million millionmillion molecules in order to extract the energy. It isnot surprising that there is an intimate relation betweeninformation and entropy, the quantity relating to thesecond law of thermodynamics.

Real perpetual motionOther perpetual motion machines of the second kind

owe their explanation to quantum theory, therevolutionary post-Newtonian picture of nature on thesub-atomic scale worked out in the first three decades

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of the present century.One example is the humble electron peacefully

orbiting an atomic nucleus. Obviously there is no airresistance: air itself consists of atoms, and we are nowlooking within the atom! Because of the peculiaritiesof quantum theory, one can no longer view the electronas a tiny cricket ball going round a larger one; but thecriterion for a perpetual motion machine of the secondtype is still satisfied, namely the description of thesystem does not alter with time, unless it is perturbedfrom the outside. The system does not "run down".

It might be argued that this is cheating; we can'tsee this electron and, even if we could, the act of seeingit, involving bombarding it with photons, would alter itsstate. However, we have now learned how to set upan easily determined quantum state of arbitrary extent.The secret is to cool the system sufficiently close toabsolute zero.

The phenomenon of superconductivity, in which anelectric current circulates in a chilled wire with zeroresistance (not just a very small resistance, but trulyzero) is an example. Superconductivity has been inthe news recently because materials have been foundwhich lose all their electrical resistance at far highertemperatures than any known before (though stillcolder than the coldest fridge) and indeed at highertemperatures than was thought possible. Admittedlyyou can't see an electric current, but its associatedmagnetic field is directly observable.

Then there is superfluidity, in which a supercooledliquid will flow up the inside of a tube immersed in it,and back down the outside, indefinitely.

These examples undeniably constitute perpetualmotion of the second kind. They violate the secondlaw of thermodynamics because, ultimately, that is nota law at all but a heuristic. As was stated, one needsto possess complete information pertaining to a systemin order to extract all the thermal energy, and the secondlaw merely states in effect that it is impossible inpractice to obtain information on those millions ofmillions of particles.

It is not impossible in principle, and if the systemconsists of a single electron, or a single superconductingquantum state, it is an easy matter.

Finally, as far as the theory of perpetual motion isconcerned, energy conservation still holds in Einstein'srelativity theory provided that mass m is seen as afurther form of energy E related in theory by thefamous equation E=mc2 and in practice in nuclearreactors; and that in spite of the statistical nature ofquantum mechanics, energy conservation still holdsexactly in the quantum picture.

History of perpetual motionWith the scientific theory behind us, we can now

look at the entertaining history of the perpetual motionmachine. Much of the following is adapted from ArthurOrd-Hume's book, Perpetual Motion: The Historyof an Obsession (Allen & Unwin, 1977).

Nowadays, with the laws of thermodynamics takenlargely for granted, it is difficult to imagine a time whenenergy conservation was not established, and theequivalence of the various forms of energy, particularlyheat, was fiercely debated. Yet such was the situationup to the middle of the last century; and we owe it tothe early proponents of perpetual motion to judge themby their own time.

A Sanskrit manuscript from the first half of the fifthcentury refers to a wheel, free to rotate about ahorizontal axis, with sealed holes half-filled withmercury drilled radialiy in from its circumference.Once started, the whole was supposed to maintain itsrotation. Presumably its inventor believed the extramoment, arising when the mercury on the descendingside of the wheel moved under centripetal force fromthe inner end of its container to the circumferentialend, provides sufficient impetus to keep the thing going.

This is the earliest known coherent suggestion forperpetual motion. In reality, it is not a machine of thefirst kind (of course), and fails, because of friction, tobe of the second kind.

Nevertheless this machine is an unwitting prototypeof many proposed in 18th century Europe in whichweights attached to the circumference of the wheelare arranged to dispose themselves farther from theaxis on the descending side of the wheel than theascending. Some of these were marvellously intricate,and the Marquis of Worcester, who is believed to haveconstructed the first practical steam engine, proposedseveral and claimed success for one in 1655.

These were pre-dated by the Italian philosopherZimara, who in 1518 proposed a mechanical linkbetween a windmill and a set of bellows aimed at thewindmill. Perpetual motion machines invariably involvea conversion of energy from one mode to another inan attempt to beat one of the laws of thermodynamics,and it is usual to find that one mode is "traditional" -such as the wind operating the windmill - and is thenaugmented by a proposed back-link of the modes,completing a closed loop of energy. (An electric motorpowered by a generator, and also linked backmechanically to it, is another example.)

A measure of the respectability of perpetual motionat this time was that as great a genius as Leonardo daVinci, Zimara's contemporary, produced sketches for

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six designs of machine.By far the most common proposals concerned self-

propelling water wheels. The water mill was inwidespread use throughout Europe, and what wasmore natural than to harness its power to raise thewater once more? Escher's visual pun exemplifies thisconcept.

The appropriately-named Robert Fludd (1574-1637)and Georg Bockler of Nurnberg were two leadingvisionaries of this kind. It mattered little that BishopWilkins tested a similar scheme of his own in 1648and became sceptical as a result of its failure; perpetualmotion was in the air of the times.

From the 1720s onwards, proposals were rife. It isassuredly no coincidence that the idea was only laid torest once the industrial revolution was consolidated,when testing and failure became a matter of routine.

The harnessing of electromagnetism led to a newseries of proposals in the last century, all essentiallycoupling motors to generators. In fact, the earliestcoherent magnetic proposal goes as far back as 1570,when the Jesuit priest Taisnierus proposed that an ironball would roll down a ramp under gravity and be drawnback to its starting point, along a second ramp, by amagnet.

In the 18th century, a London clockmaker, JamesCox, constructed the first clock to be powered bychanges in atmosphere pressure. Such clocks are onlyas perpetual as the weather, ultimately powered bythe heat of the sun. Be that as it may, Cox's devicewas ingenious in design and attracted favourablecomment.

A natural corollary to the failure of perpetual motionmachines, before the idea of energy conservation cameto permeate the general consciousness, wasexploitation and fraud.

E. P. Willis of Connecticut charged admission toview an asymmetrical-wheel machine which he setup in New Haven and subsequently New York. It wasmaintained in a glass case and was actually poweredby compressed air passed up a strut and over one ofthe geared wheels. Willis was an exploiter rather thana fraudster, who challenged visitors to state how themachine could run other than by perpetual motion.

No such constraints attached to Charles Redheffer,who set up a machine in 1812 in Philadelphia whichran unceasingly. Needless to say, viewing was not freeof charge. A team of experts sent to examine it inconnection with Redheffer's application for fundingdetected that the wear on two connected gears wason the wrong side, and were satisfied that fraud wasinvolved. They did not detect its nature, but insteadreproduced the fraud by building a similar machine

with concealed clockwork and a winder disguised asan ornamental knob. Redheffer privately offered itsowner, Sellers, a large sum not to reveal his secret;instead, Sellers denounced Redheffer.

Worse was to come in New York, where Redhefferconstructed a further machine. The submarine pioneerRobert Fulton recognised its uneven speed during onecycle as characteristic of a crank (appropriately!),denounced it on the spot, and dismantled a suspicious-looking support strut to reveal a catgut-belted driverun by a man turning a wheel of eccentric shape (evenmore appropriately!) in a nearby room. The crowd,which had paid $5 a man, a large sum in those days,(ladies free, for some reason) demolished theremainder, and Redheffer fled.

But the finest fraud was perpetrated by John Keely,again of Philadelphia. In 1875, he unveiled acomplicated variant on the steam engine in which hewould blow into a nozzle for half a minute and thenpour five gallons of water into it. After a whizzbangshow of manipulating various valves and taps he wouldthen announce the apparatus was charged with amysterious vapour at a pressure of 10,000 pounds persquare inch.

Keely claimed the power source was thedisintegration of water. Latterday enthusiasts prefer,like Keely, to tap "new forms of energy" rather thandeny its conservation. This is theoretically possible,but it is extremely unlikely that new exploitable formswill be found, and even so it would still not providesomething for nothing.

The main reason for Keely's success - he raisedover a million dollars to set up the Keely MotorCompany - was showmanship. Keely was an imposingfigure with an air of honesty about him, who was fondof baffling the uninitiated with phrases such as"hydropneumatic-pulsating-vacu-engine", "sympatheticequilibrium", ''etheric disintegration" and "quadruplenegative harmonics". Such pseudoscientific terms areoften used by today's charlatans; plus ça change!

With the initiated he was far more guarded, andpains were taken to ensure no man of science waspermitted to examine the machine too closely.

In the 1880s, the Keely Motor Company,discouraged by his failure to produce a commercialmotor, cut off his funding. He found an alternativesource in a wealthy widow, Mrs Moore, who had faithin his ideas; and promptly unveiled a new one,"vibrating energy" in the ether, which underlay thedisintegration of water. The Motor Company sued himfor reimbursement, but he claimed his latest idea wasunrelated to those he had uncovered under its aegisand refused to pay. After a spell in prison, he succeeded

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in satisfying the court of this.Keely was forced to tread warily when his

benefactress attempted to have leading scientificfigures validate his device. Tesla and Madison declined,but a visit in 1895 led the engineers involved to suspectcompressed air sources. They were right. After Keely'sdeath three years later, the son of one of his backerspromptly rented the house, and found it wascomprehensively "wired" to a three-ton air tank in thebasement.

PatentsThe first patent on a perpetual motion proposal was

granted in Britain in 1635, only twelve years afterpatenting was introduced. By 1775 though, the ParisianAcademy of Science was sufficiently disillusioned torefuse to accept schemes. Since this was long beforethe establishment of energy conservation, thegentlemen of Paris can only have been motivated bythe repeated failure of all such devices in practice.

The US Patent Office decreed nearly one hundredyears later that a working model be submitted withinone year of the initial application; but enthusiasts stillgummed up the works with unimplemented proposals,and finally in 1911 a working model was demandedfrom the start.

This rule has been challenged in the courts withinthe last decade, and inventor Howard Johnston finallywon US patent no 4151431 on his proposal.Nevertheless, it is hardly accurate to suggest that theworld waits with bated breath for a working model.

ConclusionThe story of perpetual motion exemplifies the entire

human endeavour: an upward crawl to enlightenment,with theory and practice advancing side by side;momentous discoveries by pioneers, which ultimatelybecome the bedrock upon which the next advancesare built; and ever the charlatans seeking to exploitignorance for their own gain.

I have chosen to present the whole business as acase history rather than a warning; but if any lesson isto be drawn, it is that the best insurance againstcharlatanism is a scientifically educated public. Onlythree years ago a Los Angeles jury acquitted aperpetual motion machine inventor of fraudulentlyraising up to US$685,000 from the gullible, because(the attorney later found) they believed perpetualmotion and energy creation were possible. The soonerthat can no longer happen, the better.

Vol 8 No 1 - 1988

Pseudoscience and theInventorsBarry Williams

December 1987 saw the first appearance of a newspecialist magazine entitled The Inventor, which maywell prove to be a collector’s item. This has nothing todo with the fact that the magazine featured letters ofcommendation from the Prime Minister, the Ministerfor Industry Technology & Commerce and the Premierof NSW, nor for its proclaimed policy of “pursuingexcellence”, nor yet for its promotion of inventiveness.It will be because it may prove to be the only issue.

The Inventor contained considerable informationof undoubted interest to inventors. However, thefeature that brought it to the attention of AustralianSkeptics was its boldly advertised promotion of pseudo-science. Banner headlines emblazoned across thecover proclaimed “Dr Reich’s Orgone Theory Proven”and “Metric System Exposed”.

The Reich article, written apparently by the editor,Mr Larry F. Hoins, offered no evidence whatever tosubstantiate the extraordinary claim made in theheadline, consisting largely of a tirade of unsubstantiatedallegations about Reich’s critics, non sequiturarguments, von Danikenesque rhetorical questions andlengthy, incomprehensible quotations from an otherwiseunidentified Professor Charles Kelley.

The author’s contribution can be encapsulated inone typical quotation, “Is it possible that Dr Reich, indealing with the origins of life, fell foul of those whowant us for whatever reason to believe in the theoryof evolution? Sounds silly, doesn’t it?” Well, yes it does,but then so does the rest of the article.

The quotations from Prof Kelley, who is alleged tobe a scientist, are equally unrevealing. They purportto be from a validation of Reich’s theories on weathercontrol and contain such statements as, “Highlysignificant ... in understanding the weather controltechniques of Reich is the wide prevalence in theatmosphere of the abnormal form of Orgone energyReich called ‘dor’. In a ‘dor’ infested atmosphere,Orgone energy is immobilised. The atmospherestagnates, convective and lateral mixing slows downgreatly, pollution increases, and cloud formation islimited or absent. Persistent dor infestation results indrought.” Kelley also claims to have made and testeda weather control device, based on these principles.

The conclusion reached by the author contains the

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following interesting statement: “If even oneprofessional scientist such as Professor Kelley (whowas not in any way associated with Dr Reich) iscapable of proving Dr Reich correct...” Theparenthetical aside is the matter of most interest. Wesought to discover just who is Prof Kelley, our onlyclue being that the research quoted in the article waspublished in “Technical Report 60-1, The RadixInstitute”.

Correspondence with the editor of The Inventorelicited no further information on the mysterious Prof,but did contain the following observation: “If you wereas well informed as you are patronising, then yourlibrary would have the professional details of ProfessorKelley and you would not be writing to me castingdoubt on the Professor’s existence and credibility.”

The remainder of the letter was no more forthcomingon matters of pertinence to the topic of Reich’s theoryof weather control, but it did contain Mr Hoins’observations that critics of Reich were “vandals”,“baying hounds” and “not out of place in the black-robed Inquisition”.

As it happens, the Australian Skeptics has a fairselection of works of pseudo-science, but in the matterof Prof Kelley it is singularly deficient. A visit to theUnited States Information Service Library revealedno reference to the Radix Institute in various directoriesof US tertiary institutions, nor in a directory ofResearch Institutes. The answer came from a bookentitled Encyclopaedia of Associations which listsall American associations, societies and similar bodies.The entry for the Radix Institute reads as follows:

“Founded: l960. Members: 96. Dr Charles R. Kelley,Dir. Educational and scientific organization dedicatedto studying the creative process in nature as describedby Wilhelm Reich. Reich, a psychoanalyst who beganhis work with Sigmund Freud, discovered and describedthe existence of the ‘muscular armor’, or how blockedemotion is held in the chronic patterns of tension in thebody. His second major discovery was the concept of‘orgone energy’, the tangible life force also known asthe radix, the source of both energy and feeling....Formerly: Interscience Research Institute.”

Thus we find that Prof Kelley is the director of aninstitution whose sole purpose is to validate Reich’stheories. We may be excused for thinking that this ishardly an independent or a disinterested body, and theanswer certainly gives the lie to the previouslymentioned parenthetical aside.

The article quoted in no way supports the claimsmade for proof of Dr Reich’s theories - it merelyvalidates Lincoln’s dictum “that you can fool some ofthe people all of the time”.

The second article mentioned delves further intothe realm of pseudo-science with its attack on themetric system. Some of this article is factual, but itthen seeks to rely on the supposedly secret internalmeasurements of the Great Pyramid of Khufu to provesome of its points.

It quotes, with approval, the work of C. PiazziSmythe, a 19th century Astronomer Royal of Scotland.Smythe is a well-known figure to those with an interestin archaeology. He certainly did propound somepeculiar theories about the measurements of thepyramids and their relationship to the universe. In fact,he has an important place in the history of archaeology,not for his work, but that it inspired a young man calledFlinders Petrie to visit Egypt to validate those theories.Petrie soon found that Smythe’s theories werenonsense, however he continued working in the fieldand is now generally regarded as the father of scientificarchaeology.

Publishers are entitled to print what they wish, butthe promotion of pseudoscience in a magazine designedfor those intensely practical people, inventors, is asincongruous as having a page 3 girl in the SydneyMorning Herald or an astrology column in ScientificAmerican.

While we in Australian Skeptics may well have beenagog to discover it the next edition would sing paensof praise to the celestial mechanics of ImmanuelVelikovsky, the benefits of perpetual motion or of theN-rays of René Blondlot, we cannot help but be pleasedthat this magazine may not appear again under itscurrent management, as the Inventor’s Association,which contracted the publishers to produce themagazine, has withdrawn the contract.

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Vol 8 No 2 - 1988

"Egypt Live" a dead lossBarry Williams

Those with an interest in Ancient Egypt would havebeen agog with excitement at the publicity precedingthe recent television extravaganza Mysteries of thePyramids ‘Live’ on the 7 Network.

The program, which was not 'Live' at all, but whichwas in fact a 'delayed telecast', was hosted by theEgyptian actor, Omar Sharif, whose knowledge of hiscountry's history seemed to approximate that of mostAustralians of theirs.

What attracted this sceptical critique was not thefact that the show was awful, which it was, but thenso is a lot of TV, but its total inability to distinguishbetween archaeological speculation and pseudo-scientific drivel.

Two rather embarassed looking archaeologists wereon hand to give their opinions on some of the recentdiscoveries at Giza, which included a newly-discoveredtunnel under the Sphinx. This was interesting, althoughthe tunnel itself could have been a Coober Pedy opalmine for all the visual impact it had during "the first-ever entry by a television camera" as Omarbreathlessly described it. The real scepticism wasgenerated by the inate politeness of the archaeologists,preventing them from responding to Omar's awedstatements about Tutankhamen's Curse and themysterious powers of pyramids with the obviousresponse that he was talking through his fez.

This program, which must have cost a fortune tobroadcast live, and which ran for two hours, contributedabout ten minutes worth of facts to the sum of humanknowledge. It contrasted very badly with the seriesAncient Lives broadcast on ABC TV last year.

Vol 8 No 3 - 1988

Crystal ClearRichard Chirgwin

There is no doubt about it, crystallised quartz is amarvellous substance. Since the early days of crystalwireless, the stuff has been close to centre stage inthe increasingly technological world in which we live.And, in recent years, it has held centre stage in ourincreasingly superstitious world. As well as being prizedby engineers in everything from radios to computers,crystals have suddenly become the source of everythingfrom mental health to faith-healing.

Proponents of “crystal energy” claim uses for thematerial in such areas as assisting meditation, focussing“healing powers” (different types of crystals havingdifferent application), focussing magical energies (ason the ends of wands), assisting telepathy, aidinglevitation, for alchemical uses, and of course in crystalballs.

Why this growth in interest by the mystical set?One of the easiest answers is to say that the known,

documented, provable and repeatable scientificproperties of crystals - their behaviour in the presenceof heat, mechanical force or electricity - have beenseized upon by those with more imagination thanunderstanding as evidence of crystal’s unique place inthe scheme of things. If something has so many invisiblephysical properties, it is argued, then surely it can haveunseen psychical properties as well.

This argument is, on the surface, the foundation formost of the more outrageous claims made concerningcrystals, and has for the most part been refuted manytimes (not that the ads or newspaper articles everstopped appearing). However, a simple rebuttal of thisextravagant extrapoation does not, I suspect, attackthe core of the problem.

Love of IconsWhat it all boils down to is this: people love, and

have always loved, icons.From the earliest artifacts of human history, through

reliquaries holding pieces of the True Cross, right upto the Madonna with brake light halo for the rearwindscreen, man has always sought something physical,something which he can see and touch, on which tofocus his faith or his superstition.

The recent history of the New Age sees the samecondition in the psyche; once it was mantras, then whocan forget the television programs in the late seventies

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and early eighties demonstrating how pyramids couldsharpen razors; and now, the crystal becomes thecentre of worship.

The crystal’s ascendancy has paralleled a movementin thinking among New Agers that perhaps arose outof the disillusionment when the seventies failed toproduce the wonderful “peace, love and good vibes”promised for the Age of Aquarius. As it became clearthat the stars were not going to save us from war,famine, murder and greed, and as the communes beganone by one to fail under internal tensions, superstitionbegan to turn inward and the mystics began to rejectas far as possible the idea that “the answer is in man”,turning instead to “answers in nature”. As mankindwas rejected, so were his icons; a new idol had to befound, something worthy of admiration, but not madeby people, like pyramids and mantras.

And so the crystal was rediscovered. I sayrediscovered, since claims of unusual properties aboutcrystals - about nearly everything -are not a modern phenomenon,although not necessarily asancient as theproponents wouldhave us believe.

A u s t r a l i a nWellbeing (No 22,1987) reports anineteenth centurystudy that claimed aurascould be seen aroundcrystals defining their polarity, sex(you read it right), and application(whether in healing, nervous disorders, telepathy,divining or energy radiation).

To the mystic, the crystal was almost a gift fromheaven: the crystal is not an artifact, it occurs naturally,so “obviously” it is “in touch with the universe”. Notonly that, the crystal in its technological uses issomething which exhibits properties only fullyunderstood by those with appropriate training. This, tothe New Ager, makes the psychic claims for crystallook very much like the scientific claims: the explanationis too difficult for the uninitiated to understand. It alsoallows crystal users to behave in much the same wayas a radio hobbyist - “I don’t understand why, but Iknow it works”.

One difference is that if a radio hobbyist wants tofind out why his crystal radio works, he can look it upin a book, and find out that quantum mechanics predictscertain behaviour in electrons of regular molecules. Acrystal oscillator, for example, has a predictableelectrical resonant frequency which is a function of

its size, structure and purity.Two particular uses of crystals in electronics are

favourites with the New Age philosophers as examplesof crystals being somehow “attuned” to the universe:crystal radios and quartz watches. (It should be notedhere that crystals are composed of silicon dioxide, andare not the same as the silicon of a silicon chip.) Theassociation between crystal and frequencies (andhence tuning) is quote as demonstrating that crystalscan be used to “tune you in” to energy, like a radio.

Crystal radiosFor a start, the idea of tuning is based on a

misunderstanding of the function of crystal in an oldcrystal radio set; it has, in fact, nothing to do with tuning.A crystal radio set is tuned by a simple coil/capacitanceor coil/resistance combination at the base of theantenna. The crystal itself in this application is not atuning device, but a detector.

It acts as a rudimentarysemiconductor diode, only

passing electricalcurrent in onedirection (in fact, ifthe valve had notbeen invented, itis interesting to

wonder whetherresearch into how a

passive crystaldemodulated a radio

signal may have led to anearlier invention of the

transistor). Because the crystal is a compound ofsilicon, places can be found on the surface of the crystalwhich have this electrical property. In this way, theradio signal from the antenna is converted intosomething which is intelligible when listened to throughheadphones; in radio parlance, the crystal in a crystalset is the demodulator.

The confusion that arises when the New Ager talksabout crystals in crystal radios is that crystal sets donot have batteries; they conclude that the crystal isproviding the power. This is completely wrong. Thehobbyist’s crystal set is powered by the radio signalitself. The very small voltage picked up by the aerial(usually in the order of microvolts, or millionths of avolt) is the signal which is passed on to the headphones.For this reason, crystal sets only provide a very smallaudio output (less than the signal picked up at theantenna) which can only be heard through headphonesin fairly quiet surroundings.

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Crystal in watchesToday, the major application for crystals in

electronics is as an oscillating signal source; it is in thisfunction that they are used in quartz watches. Thecrystal, when excited by a small electrical current, givesoff an AC voltage of its own of a stable frequency.The signal thus derived can then be amplified and usedto drive a variety of circuits.

Although quartz watches are a recent innovation,the behaviour and function of the crystal in the watchis nothing new. Crystals have been used as stablefrequency sources for many years in radios, televisions,computers (they provide the source of the computer’stiming signals), electronic test equipment, and so on.The idea that a crystal watch is based on some recentlydiscovered property of crystals is a complete fallacy.What made crystal watches possible was not someesoteric property of crystals, but the miniaturisationof electronics that made it possible to fit all the otherthings (counters, memories and displays) into such asmall space.

Crystal oscillators are products of the piezoelectriceffect, something which is also seized upon as evidenceof crystalline “strangeness”. It is a predictable andexplicable phenomenon: when “excited” with suddenpressure, electrons are disturbed from their orbits, andobserved as a voltage appearing across the surface ofthe crystal. This is used in such things as touch buttonsand impact detectors, since changes in pressure onlyaffect the voltage given off. Another point aboutpiezoelectricity is that the effect only occurs whilethe crystal is changing shape.

For a crystal to give off energy - in the form ofelectricity - two conditions have to be met. Firstly, thepressure applied must be sufficient to change the shapeof the crystal enough to give off a charge. Forapplications where only small pressure is applied, suchas touch buttons, the crystal is made extremely thin sothat a small pressure distorts the crystal enough togive off a charge. Larger crystals require a largerpressure to give off a charge, so stroking a large crystalis inadequate -banging it with a hammer is probablymore in line, but that’s hardly the image the New Agerslike to portray.

Secondly, to produce a larger output, the pressuremust be applied very rapidly and repeatedly. It is notjust that small distortions will go on giving off smallercharges ad infinitum; quantum mechanicsdemonstrates that there is a minimum level belowwhich no charge will be emitted. The smallest possiblecharge is a single electron. So neither can youaccumulate energy by stroking a large crystal.

In all scientific applications, crystals are passive

devices - they have no inherent energy of their own,and only exhibit electrical properties when acted uponby an active outside force (e.g. pressure or electricalcurrent). In fact, quartz crystals are not the best crystalsource of energy under these conditions in any case -they are used because they are not temperaturedependent. Better piezo-electric properties can befound in lead zirconate or barium titanate; unfortunatelyfor New Agers, these produce ceramics which areblack and unlovely. Still better properties can be foundfrom certain plastics, but once again these hardly fitthe natural image of crystals.

Back to the extravagant extrapolation - the fans ofcrystal say that “there is no reason to assume that wehave discovered all of the unusual and useful propertiesassociated with crystals occurring in nature.”(Wellbeing ). Embedded in this statement is a semantictrick designed to disguise a logical flaw, that since Aequals B, C also equals B, even when there is noconnection between A and C.

To reduce the statement down to its meaning:invisible scientific properties automatically suggestinvisible psychic properties. This argument is onlyselectively applied, or we could see a famous actressarguing in favour of mass exposure to high-levelradiation to cleanse the body of impurities!

Here, then, are some simple tests which I requireof a user of crystal for anything:

1) Can the psychic properties be consistently predictedfrom the kind and structure of the crystal, sight unseen,as the electrical properties can be?2) Are these properties repeatable - i.e. will the samecrystal always act in the same way in the sameenvironment without active intervention or externalinfluence in the test?3) Can the crystals stand up to any numerical test ofproperties - e.g. would a group of crystal-sensitivepsychics be able to pick out a crystal among pieces ofcut glass while blindfolded with any more accuracythan any random person off the street?

I’d believe it if I saw it.

Richard Chirgwin is a trained technician and a journalistspecialising in the field of electronics. Some informationfrom a talk delivered at the Fourth Australian SkepticsConvention by Dr David Wheeler has been incorporated inthis article.

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Pyramids, pyramyths &pyramidiotsBarry Williams

What is a pyramid? Is it a polyhedron whose base is apolygon and whose sides are triangles having acommon vortex? Well, yes it is, but it is far more thanthat. The pyramid, which in its megalithic manifestationplayed a very important role in the histories of twoearly civilisations, has excited more speculation andfantasy than has any other solid geometrical shape.Cubes and dodecahedrons have never had the pressof the pyramid.

Before we investigate some of the more fantasticmyths that have attached themselves to pyramids, weshould review some of the facts which, to the inquiringmind, are far more fascinating than the fantasies.

The Pyramids of EgyptThe heading of this section is the title of the book

widely regarded as the definitive work on the topic.Written by I.E.S. Edwards, keeper of Egyptianantiquities at the British Museum from 1955-72, thisbook presents the facts in a most readable form and isthe reference for the archaeological information in thisarticle.

The history of Dynastic Egyptian civilisation coversmore than 3000 years, of which the Pyramid Ageaccounts for fewer than 500, although this form ofconstruction continued, in a much debased form, for afurther 500. There are more than 80 known pyramidsin Egypt, some of which are so ruined as to appearonly as heaps of rubble.

It is not surprising that many people have exercisedtheir imaginations to speculate on the purpose of thesemassive stone structures and on the methods used intheir construction. Although there is much that isunknown about the Egyptian pyramids, there can belittle doubt that they were built according to thefunerary rites of the Egyptian religion and that theconstruction methods used were quite possible withinthe limits of the technology of the time.

The Egyptian religion was firmly based on theexistence of an afterlife, which depended for itscontinuance on the protection of the mortal remainsof the former citizen. In pre-dynastic times, importantpeople were buried under a mound of sand the shapeof which seems to have gained some religioussignificance. During the First and Second Dynasties,this mound was made more elaborate and became arectangular, decorated mud brick structure, called amastaba. Naturally enough, the mastaba of the Pharaoh

was the most imposing, although many fine exampleshave been found of those of nobles and officials.

In the Third Dynasty, circa 2680 BC, the Pharaohof the time, Zoser, was fortunate in having as hisChancellor, one Imhotep, who is credited with thebuilding of the first pyramid (and, incidentally, theworld’s first large stone building). Imhotep was deifiedby later Egyptians, possibly the first recorded instanceof someone “coming up through the ranks”.

It is tempting to speculate that Imhotep thought tohimself one day “If I put another mastaba on top ofthe first one and then another on top of that, until Ireach six, then my Pharaoh will be much moreimportant than his old Dad”, but excavations of Zoser’sStep Pyramid reveal that many changes in designoccurred during its construction. First, an unusual squaremastaba was built in the unusual material of stone.Then it was added to, in various stages, until it becamerectangular, then built upwards to become a four steppyramid, then extended on two sides and upwards tobecome a six step pyramid, which was its final form.All of this indicates that there was no sudden infusionof new ideas from “somewhere else” that suddenlychanged “primitive” Egyptians into brilliant engineersand stonemasons, a theory beloved of the moreirrational speculators on matters Egyptian. It is clearthat Imhotep was an unusually intelligent man but it isequally clear that his ideas did not spring frommysterious sources. His learning curve is inscribed instone.

From the first step pyramid, we can trace thedevelopment of this form of architecture through thefirst true pyramid, to the apogee of pyramid building,the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza. This is the oneabout which all of the fantasies have been constructedand it certainly is a remarkable piece of engineering.The first notable fact about the Great Pyramid is thatthe time which elapsed between the invention ofpyramid architecture by Imhotep and the constructionof this, the largest and best of them all, was only alittle over a century.

The Great Pyramid is unique in many ways. Whenit was built, it was the heaviest building (at around 6million tonnes) ever built. It still is. It consists ofapproximately 2.3 million blocks of stone, with anaverage weight of 2.5 tonnes. Its base is 227 metressquare, accurate to within 20cm on each side. Itsoriginal height was 150m, although the top 15m havedisappeared. It is accurately aligned to the four cardinalpoints, with its least accurate side, the east, divergingby only 5' 30" from true north-south, which, for acivilisation that had no compass, was not bad. Its basecovers 13.1 acres, its sides make an angle to the ground

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of 51o 52' and it was built using technology no moresophisticated than the lever, the roller, the inclined plane,stone and copper tools, intelligent minds and hard work.We should clear up a few popular misconceptions atthis stage, misconceptions largely propogated by theworks of wilfully ignorant authors such as Erich vonDaniken, who surely must hold the distinction of beingmore wrong about more things than any other personon Earth.

The Egyptians were not primitive people at all. Theywere every bit as intelligent and sophisticated as weare today, and, although their technology was simple,it was adequate for the task and they were expert inits application.

The Egyptians did not use slaves to build thepyramids but citizens who were paid in food for theirwork (there is even evidence that the Egyptiansinvented the strike for better wages). We know thatthe expert work on the pyramids was carried out by afull time team of craftsmen, and we can assume thatmuch of the heavy labour was carried out by unskilled“casual labour”, probably the local farmers who hadnothing to do while their land was inundated by theannual Nile flood.

The Egyptians moved large blocks of stone onwooden sleds, pulled by teams of men with ropes. VonDaniken would have us believe that the Egyptians hadno rope and that wood was in short supply because“trees did not grow in abundance along the Nile”. Bothstatements are lies. Many ropes have been found inEgyptian tombs, and the Egyptians used a lot of wood,much of which they acquired on trade withneighbouring countries, and many examples of whichhave been found.

The Egyptians did not carry out human sacrifice indynastic times (although there is some evidence thatpre-dynastic Egyptians did) and there is no evidencethat live humans were sealed in pyramids with theirdead Pharaoh. This latter is almost certainly aHollywood invention.

Mummification was carried out for the purpose ofpreserving the remains of Egyptians for the afterlifeand not, as von Daniken would have it, for resurrectionby returning astronauts. The techniques ofmummification are available to us in some considerabledetail, from existing texts. The internal organs wereremoved and stored separately from the body, and thebody was treated with various salts and resins andwrapped in linen.

All of this may have been counter-productive, assome older mummies of earlier Egyptians, merelyburied without treatment, have survived better thanthose of Pharaohs. The evidence suggests that

desication caused by interment in dry sand is a farbetter preservative than any of the treatments givento pharonic corpses.

What really gives the lie to von Daniken, however,is the fact that the brain was removed in pieces, throughthe nose, and not preserved. The Egyptians believedthat the heart was the seat of the soul, and that thebrain was not of particular importance. In the case ofvon Daniken, this may well be true.

MotivationWe will look further at some of the fantasies that

have been built around the Great Pyramid later, butfirst let us consider “why build a pyramid in the firstplace?”.

The answer to that is that we do not know. Thereare many logical hypotheses (and many more illogicalones) but there is no doubt that the purpose was of areligious nature. It may be that the pyramid was seenas a “stairway to the heavens” for the dead Pharaohto ascend to his rightful place alongside the sun god.There is no direct evidence that the pyramids werethe actual burial site of the kings, as no pharonicremains have ever been found inside or under apyramid. The pyramids may have been built as amemorial and not as a tomb, although, in the absenceof direct evidence, the latter purpose seems to be morelikely.

One hypothesis, proposed by German/Britishphysicist Kurt Mendelssohn, postulates that theexistence of the pyramids was secondary to the factof their construction. Mendelssohn proposes that therulers of the recently unified Egyptian kingdom neededsome work of national importance to weld togetherthe various regional groups into a cohesive andcentralised state. Mendelssohn’s theory, propoundedin his book The Riddle of the Pyramids, argues thiscase very well and, whether true or not, it is certainlylogical and it does explain some of the mysteries thatsurround these giant structures. This hypothesis fallswithin the parameters of reasonable speculation, asdo many others associated with a period of historywhich, while better documented than many otherancient eras, is far from comprehensively understood.

What surviving texts tell us about the ancientEgyptians is at considerable variance with the popularmythology that surrounds them. They were practicaland intelligent people, not given to excessive mysticismwhich is an error generated by the fact that the majorityof surviving literature is concerned with death, whichin turn is explained by the fact that their tombs survivedthe millennia in far better shape than did their mundanedwellings.

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Although there is clear evidence that the Egyptianshad sufficient knowledge of astronomy to enable themto devise an accurate calendar, and thus to be able topredict their most important annual event, the floodingof the Nile, there is no suggestion that they developedastrology, a fact that should endear them to all sceptics.In general, the Egyptians come down to us asremarkably likeable people, with little of the crueltyand brutality that characterises so many ancientcivilisations, and not a few modern ones.

We do not know why the pyramid became such animportant structure to the Egyptians, but there may bea clue in the sheer pragmatism of the shape. Once thedecision is made to build on a monumental scale, thepyramid makes the most sense to people who had notdevised arches or free standing columns. Once youbuild a pyramid, assuming you do it properly, it tendsto stay put. Staying up is far simpler than falling downfor a well built pyramid. (This is not the case for allshapes, as some well built Skeptics who attended theannual convention dinner will attest.)

We should also address the claim commonly madeby those who know nothing of Egyptian history andculture and who seek to achieve wealth and fame bywriting books which are firmly rooted in that ignorance.This claim is that “it would be impossible for us todayto build the Great Pyramid”.

This claim is both arrant nonsense and likely to betrue - nonsense because the reasons cited for the claimlie in techniques the Egyptians were alleged to haveand that are no longer available to modern people, andtrue for an entirely different reason in that it would behard to conceive of a politician or company directorconvincing the electorate or the board of the desirabilityof expending so much wealth on an intrinsically uselessstructure. (Cynics should not use the new ParliamentHouse as a rebuttal of this argument.) This question isaddressed in Ronald Story’s book Guardians of theUniverse?. A Japanese construction companyestimated in 1980 that the cost of erecting a replica ofthe Great Pyramid, using modern techniques, wouldbe US$563 million. If the labour intensive methodsemployed by the Egyptians were used, then the costwould approach US$18 billion. It would be a bravegovernment indeed that would suggest pyramid buildingas a cure for unemployment.

As for the “lost” techniques, there is plenty ofphysical evidence of how the Egyptians chiselled thestones, carried them to the site, used ramps to getthem to the necessary elevation and moved themaround when there. What techniques have been lost?

Yet another mystery which bedevils the proponentsof paranormal explanations is how the concept of

pyramid building sprang up in two widely separatedcultures as those of Egypt and Central America. Thesuggestion is that Egyptians colonised Central Americaand taught the Indians how to do it.This suggestion is difficult to sustain when we considera few facts.

The Central American pyramids were designed foran entirely different purpose to those of Egypt -ceremonial rather than funerary. All Central Americanpyramids are at a far lower angle than the Egyptianand were designed to be climbed after construction tothe temples located on top of them. In the case of theAztecs, human sacrifice seems to have been the majoractivity carried out on the pyramids, although thisprobably was not the case with the Maya.

Methods of construction differed greatly from thoseused by the Egyptians and, generally, the CentralAmerican pyramids were not used for monuments orburial, although one has been found to contain a bodyof some important person.

The crucial fact that makes any cross culturalexchange seem to be unlikely is that the earliestpyramids of Mexico are the so called Temples of theSun and the Moon at Teotihuacan, about the buildersof which little is known, but who have been identifiedby some mystics as the Lost Tribes of Israel (whoelse!). These pyramids are comparable in size to thoseof Egypt, and are dated at just before the beginning ofthe Christian era. It would seem to be highly implausiblethat Egyptians, at the final stages of their long history,would venture halfway around the globe and then teachthe natives a technology that they themselves hadabandoned nearly two millennia earlier. It is far morelikely that the practical significance of the pyramidshape for large construction appealed to two differentcultures, neither of whom had developed the arch, quiteindependently.

We can dispose of the absurd pseudoscientificclaims of ancient astronauts, time travellers andremnants of pre-existing hightech civilisations asespoused by the likes of von Daniken by a simpleexamination of the facts which have been discoveredby genuine archaeologists and other scientists. Suchclaims can be put down to wilful ignorance on the partof their proponents. Of more interest are some of theweird cults that read mystical significance into themeasurements of the pyramids, particularly those ofthe Great Pyramid of Khufu.

Pyramyths and PyramidiotsIt would appear that the driving force behind the

desire to mix measurement with Biblical prophecy, thatdrove many 19th century British authors to ascribe

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unwarranted significance to the Great Pyramid, wasa distaste for the metric system of measurement,introduced after the French Revolution. No self-respecting and God-fearing Briton was going to takethis example of atheistic Frog perfidy lying down.(Readers of middle years or older may have somesympathy with this view.)

Among the first to address this problem was a retiredpublisher, John Taylor, who believed that the pyramidhad been built by Noah, to God’s specifications, andwho decided that 25 inches was the size of the Biblicalcubit.

Taylor was the first to realise that the dimensionsof the Great Pyramid suggested that the Egyptianshad knowledge of the ratio pi (π; the ratio of thecircumference of the pyramid to its height gives a fairlyaccurate ratio of 1/2π). As it was known that theEgyptians had not developed mathematics on atheoretical level to that extent, this convinced Taylorthat the Great Pyramid was divinely inspired andpresented a genuine problem to more scientificallyinclined scholars.

One possible explanation that has been advanced isthat, if the Egyptians used a rolling drum to measurelong distances, then pi would have become part of thecomputation quite fortuitously and Egyptians wouldhave discovered the ratio without being conscious ofthe fact. Whatever the truth of the matter, Taylor, whowas an adherent of the proposition that the Britishwere descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel, wasconvinced that the Pyramid had been built by theseproto-Britons. Obviously the Egyptians could not havedone it, as they were worse than the French.

Taylor’s ideas were taken up by no less a personagethan the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, Charles PiazziSmyth. (The real mystery in this story is how someonewith such a foreign sounding middle name got to beAstronomer Royal.) Smyth had been a pupil of SirJohn Herschell and, like Herschell and Taylor, heobjected to the use of the metric measurement system,which may help to account for some of theextraordinary theories he later propounded.

Finding that one of the casing stones of the GreatPyramid was approximately 25 inches, equal toTaylor’s cubit, Smyth decided that the inch (one twenty-fifth of a cubit and approximately one 10 millionth partof the Earth’s polar radius) must have been the divineunit of length. When it was discovered that the originalcasing stone was a bit over 25 inches (25.025 in fact),Smyth proposed that the “Pyramid inch” of 1.001 wasthe actual divine unit (the British unit presumably gotworn down a bit in the pocket of one of the LostTribesmen).

Of course it did serve to prove that the Britishmeasurement system was divinely inspired, which wasone in the eye for those nasty French. Smyth used thepyramid inch and various other measurements madeat the Great Pyramid to calculate the density of theEarth, its population and, for all we know, the winnerof the third at Ascot.

It is obvious that, given the number of measurementsone could make in a huge structure like the GreatPyramid, and with suitably preconceived ideas, onecan come up with any answers one likes. This Smythdid. His book, Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid,contains over 600 pages of these calculations andpredictions. The big problem was that all of this wastheory - no actual dimension of one pyramid inch hadbeen found. This was put right when Smyth, on a visitto Egypt, found a mason’s boss on a slab of stone anddeclared it to be the Divine Standard. The “science”of Pyramidology was now firmly established. Itsurvived the revelation that one of Smyth’s followershad been caught trying to file down the boss to makeit more accurate and the discovery that surviving GreatPyramid casing stones were all of different sizes.

With the bit firmly between his teeth, Smyth and hismany followers, who included the founders of theJehovah’s Witnesses, using his Pyramid Inch, decidedthat various internal structures of the Great Pyramidwere a record of the past history of the world (naturallybeginning in 4004 BC), and that was not all. Furthermeasurements showed that the future history of theworld was also contained in the stones. The end ofthe world was variously predicted as happening in 1874,1914, 1920 and 1925.

As with all failed predictions, when it does nothappen you revise the data to get a new date (seeNostradamus). What Smyth and his followers weredoing was bending the data to achieve theirpreconceived outcomes, a practice still followed bymany practitioners of the paranormal.

Smyth could multiply any dimension by a suitablylarge number and come up with a significantmeasurement, such as the distance to the sun derivedfrom the height of the pyramid (481 ft x 1000 million =90 million miles). Not very accurate, and certainly notas accurate as God or a space travelling ET wouldknow them, but they certainly fooled the customers.

Unfortunately for Smyth, like an earlier personageof Egyptian fame, he was nursing a viper in his bosom.His theories, largely because of his position, weretreated with a degree of respect that they obviouslydid not deserve. One of his most ardent supporterswas a chemical engineer, who along with his son,decided that to further refine Smyth’s theories more

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accurate measurements were needed to be made onsite. These two set to work to design more accurateinstruments to make the measurements as exact aspossible. As this took a long time, the engineer finallydecided that he was too old to travel to Egypt and hisson was sent out alone. He conducted several veryaccurate triangulations of the site and succeeded inproving conclusively that Smyth was talking throughhis hat (chapeaulalia?).

The young man, William Matthew Flinders Petrie,stayed on in Egypt to become the greatest Egyptologistof his time and to be regarded by many as the fatherof scientific archaeology. He was, incidentally, thegrandson of the explorer of Australia’s coastline,Matthew Flinders.

The fact that Smyth was wrong has done nothingto dissuade a lot of people from believing hispredictions and his theories continue to be recycled tothis day.

Pyramid Power or Much Ado About NothingAll of the foregoing can be explained by the inability

of some people to accept that ancient civilisations werecapable of carrying out major works of constructionor that these monolithic structures are intrinsicallyuseless.

The next stage in the saga of pyramidiocy leavesthe world of tangible pyramids and enters the realm ofpyramid as shape. More particularly, we will look atthe effect of pyramids on that shibboleth of the NewAge, “energies unknown to science”, or euts as wewill refer to them for typographical reasons.

It was probably inevitable that someone, sometime,would hit upon the idea that the pyramid itself hadsomething to do with the process of mummification.This idea flies in the face of all the evidence ofhow mummification was carried out,including the records left by theEgyptians themselves, but it isin accord with the thinkingof those who persistin seeing aproblem

where none exists.Martin Gardner, in his entertaining book The Magic

Numbers of Dr Matrix, traces the first reference tothis idea to the early years of the twentieth century.At that time, a “French occultist”, as Gardner describeshim, discovered that a dead cat became mummifiedafter being placed in a model pyramid. As thereappeared to be no great call for mummified cats in theensuing half century, no more research seems to havebeen carried out.

Then, in the late 1950s, a Czech named Drbalclaimed that a razor blade placed under a cardboardpyramid retained its edge for longer than wouldnormally be expected.

Next, we find that various film actors (who maywell be the descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel)claim to be able to meditate better while sitting undera pyramid. Others have claimed that foodstuffs keptin a pyramid retain all of their freshness, wishes cometrue when written on paper and placed in a pyramid,pyramids kill bacteria. This is all remarkable stuff, iftrue, but how true is it? Let us first consider euts,whether they obey rules, and how a pyramid mightchannel them.

Whenever a pseudo-scientist or a paranormalist ischallenged to explain some phenomenon that sciencedecrees to be highly improbable, he responds with euts.While not wishing to suggest that there are no suchthings as euts, we are not very encouraged to believein them by the claims made for them.

It appears that they can do anything and are notgoverned by any rules at all. Proponents of pyramidpower have claimed that pyramids can, inter alia,

mummify flesh, preserve food in a natural stateand resharpen razor blades. It would

appear, to the casual observer, thatthese three acts call for

three differentapplications of

energy.

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To mummify flesh presupposes an ability to removewater molecules; to sharpen razor blades requires theability to add molecules; and to preserve food meanspreserving the status quo. As the material from whichthe pyramid is constructed does not appear to affectany of these processes (they are available incardboard, wood, polystyrene, copper, polycarbonate,steel and many other materials) and as they appear tohave no control systems, how is the required processdetermined? Can the euts itself decide that the objectin the pyramid is a razor blade or a dead cat?

If that is so, and that appears to be the only logicalconclusion that follows from the claims, then we appearto be dealing with some form of sentient energy. Thisis an extraordinary concept and would require far morepersuasive evidence for its existence than is offeredby its proponents. Imagine theproblems Einstein would have facedwith relativity if gravity could thinkfor itself!

Next we ask, “What is inherentin the pyramid shape that allows itto channel this energy when othergeometrical solids do not?”. We donot hear about Cube Power orSphere Power (although this articlemay generate such thoughts in someminds - it has happened before).The answer is that there is nothing about a pyramidthat should give us reason to suppose that this shapeholds a privileged position in the world of solids. Farmore likely that the proponents of this fallacy areseduced by the supposed mysteries of the Egyptianpyramids and that as a result have invested the shapeitself with mystical powers.

There is no reason to believe that pyramids exertsome sort of influence on energy, be it known orunknown to science. This, of course, would not matterif there were examples of tests that “proved” theopposite. However, while there are many referencesin the pro literature to such tests, it is difficult to findreference to any properly conducted tests that givefactual results rather than subjective opinions. Thosetests that have been conducted using a double blindmethodology give no comfort to the proponents ofpyramid power.

In a test of French wine, as reported in the Winter1987-88 edition of The Skeptical Inquirer, wine keptin pyramids was judged to be no different in qualityfrom wine not so stored.

Proponents of pyramid power must fall back on theonly rule that euts are known to obey. This is the lawthat states “No paranormal event will occur in any

location that contains a sceptic”. This law is betterknown by its common title of “The Psychic’s Cop-Out”, which explains a lot of things other than thefailure of pyramids to perform.

To conclude this section on pyramid power, weshould refer to the influence of American author andrespected sceptic, Martin Gardner, on the level of beliefin this unlikely form of energy. In a satirical article inthe June 1974 edition of Scientific American , Gardnermade a number of outrageous claims for the powersof pyramids, which were being promoted by hischaracter Dr Matrix. Gardner was astonished at theamount of mail generated by this article, from peoplewho were seeking more details of how pyramids couldhelp them.

Some of Gardner’s tongue-in-cheek claims still formpart of the lore of pyramid power,so do not be surprised if cube orsphere power become New Agephenomena in the future.

Although there is nothingparticularly mysterious aboutpyramids, they certainly haveexerted an influence upon theimagination of many people formillennia.

Merely reading about how peoplefrom early civilisations set about the

tasks of construction and how modern people havewrested the secrets from the stones appeals to ourromantic instincts. It makes us realise the remarkablemental and physical accomplishments of which thehuman species is capable and has been capable sincethe beginning of recorded history.

It also makes us realise just how limited must bethe imagination of those who cannot take pride in theaccomplishments of our species and who must inventsuper beings to take credit for what humans have done.As sceptics, we should not resent such people as Erichvon Daniken, Charles Piazzi Smyth and the manyothers. We should pity them for the narrowness oftheir vision and the meanness of their spirit.

Barry Williams is president of Australian Skeptics and has along-standing interest in Egyptology.

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Vol 9 No 2 - 1989

From Myth to Mass Murder - TheParanormal Face of RacismColin Groves and Borek Puza

The founders of western civilisation had very decidedviews about race. The Greeks referred to theirneighbours dismissively as ‘barbarians’, because theirlanguages sounded to them just a featureless jabber -bar, bar.

Hippocrates ascribed mental as well as physicalcharacters to the different quasi-racial groups he knewof. Roman society was stratified: Roman citizens wereinherently better than anyone else, though anoutstanding individual from a conquered nation mightachieve citizenship. Agricola wrote what poor slavesthe British made, because they were savage andunteachable. Tacitus, on the other hand, heartilyapproved of the Germans - tall, blond, courageous,frugal, freedom-loving, they were the very antithesisof everything he hated about the Roman imperialsystem.

We cannot tell for sure whether classical authorshad anything approaching modern hereditary conceptsin mind when they attributed mental - even spiritual -qualities alongside physical ones to their own and othernations. What is evident, however, is that their versionof national characteristics was revived in Europe fromthe 17th century on (when Tacitus’ essay Germaniawas published in a modern European language for thefirst of many times). As early as about 1700, CountHenri de Boulainvilliers was contrasting the freedom-loving Germanic/Frankish strain in France with theimperial Romanic (Gallic) strain.

This way of thinking, embellished under the headingof Race, flowered amid the fashionable ‘Celticism’ ofthe Romantic movement, was bolstered by the slavetrade, was given pseudoscientific trappings, and hassurvived to the present day.

En route, the race concept adorned itself with geneticconcepts (which were used, not in any scientificmanner, but as a stick with which to warn off potentialdissenters), entered into a mutual back-scratchingrelationship with nascent European imperialism, andat close-spaced intervals was liable to take wing andsail off into the paranormal. At very few points in itscareer has the race concept had much to do withgenuine science, while the paranormal notions withwhich it is inextricably infused have simply not hit the

public consciousness.

AryansIn the late 18th century, William Jones and the

Brothers Grimm discovered the interrelationship amongnearly all the European languages (Romance,Germanic, Celtic, Slavic, Greek) and that these linksextended via Persian to the languages of northernIndia.

The reconstructed basic form of these Indo-European languages closely resembled Sanskrit, theancient language of the sacred Hindu texts, in whichwas recounted how civilisation - including Hinduism,the caste system, and Sanskrit itself - had been broughtto India some 4000 years ago by conquerors, the Aryans(meaning ‘noble ones’).

And so the Aryan myth was born; and, in theintellectual climate of the Romantic Movement withits confusion of race, language and culture, the culture-bearing Aryans were made responsible for bringingthe light to Europe too.

All one had to do was to find out who had inheritedthe preponderance of Aryan ‘blood’, and here wasyour master race - for blood and soul were surelylinked in that mystical entity, Race.

It was a French diplomat, ‘Count’ Arthur deGobineau (1816-1882), who crystallised these vaguerace feelings in his book, published in two parts between1853 and 1855, Essai sur l’Inegalite des RacesHumaines (Essay on the Inequality of Human Races).Although Gobineau complained that he was ignored,neglected, misunderstood, it is clear that even withinhis lifetime his views had enormous influence; afterhis death his view of race became virtually standardthroughout continental western Europe - a GobineauSociety was founded in 1884, and his Essai became,only slightly modified, a school reader in Germanyunder the Third Reich.

Gobineau distinguished three major races, or speciesas he continually called them: White, Yellow and Black.Were they all descended from Adam? This problemhad, in fact, been much discussed in the precedinghalf century. While agreeing that the fertility of hybridsbetween them could not be ignored, Gobineau let it beinferred where his sympathies lay: There is nothing toshow that, in the view of the first compilers of theAdamite genealogies, those outside the white racewere counted as part of the species at all.

The Black race has an “animal character, thatappears in the shape of the pelvis”, a crude yetpowerful energy, dull mental faculties, but an intensityof desire. The Yellow race has little physical energyand feeble desires; it is characterised by mediocrity

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and respect for order, and makes an ideal docile middleclass, though it cannot of itself create a civilised society;it “does not dream or theorise”. The Whites show anenergetic intelligence, perseverance, instinct for order,love of liberty; they are sparing of life (“when theyare cruel, they are conscious of their cruelty; it is verydoubtful whether such a consciousness exists in theNegro”); they have a strong sense of humour.

To create a civilisation, a little blood mixing mustoccur. “The civilising influence of those chosen peoples(the whites) were continually forcing them to mix theirblood with that of others”, but as the blood mixtureincreases, a state of racial anarchy is produced, leadingto degeneration, the decline of the civilisation, and evena progressive reduction in its population!

The most outstanding of the white sub-races is ofcourse the Aryan. (There are others, but they havemixed their blood too far, or have other drawbacks:thus the Hamites are negritised, while the Semites arehamiticised; the Slavs merely became too earlydetached from the Aryan stock.) The Aryan was, inpristine form, the most beautiful of all races: “the nobilityof his character, the vigour and the majesty of hisslender form, his muscular force, are attested for usby evidences which, for being subsequent to the epochwhen the race was a unit, are none the less irresistible.”Their skin tone was white and “rosee”; among thecolours of the hair and beard, blond predominated.Their basic type, though now mixed, can be seen inthe Kashmiris and most of the northern Brahmins, insculptures of Apollo and in the Venus de Milo.

For Gobineau, there had been ten, and only ten,civilisations in the history of the world: the Indian,Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, Chinese, Italian andGermanic in the Old World, and in the Americas theAlleghanian, Mexican and Peruvian. All but one ofthese had been created by Aryans. Which one? Aha -it was not what you thought: it was the Assyrian. Butthe Assyrian civilisation (incorporating the Jews andPhoenicians) was a poor sort ofthing until the Iranians took it inhand and revived it - and theIranians, of course, were Aryans.

The average untutored layperson may well be harbouringsome misgivings about the Chineseand the three American civilisationsbeing due to Aryans. Well, theManarva-Dharma-Sastra recountshow Maha-Tsin (“the great countryof China”) was conquered andcivilised by tribes of Kshatriyas, theHindu warrior castes, and “Nothing

invalidates, everything supports this”, according toGobineau, which if course settles the matter.

As for the three American civilisations, “their strongnationalism, their clear awareness of a complex goal .. . leads us to believe in the local intervention of amore energetic element, nobler than among yellowsor blacks. Only the white species can supply this. Thereis thus a priori reason to suspect that infiltrations ofthis pre-excellent essence somewhat invigorated theseAmerican groups.”

Having proved that there must be something else,Gobineau now feels himself free to speculate on theeffects of the Viking voyages and the legendary trans-Atlantic voyage of St Brendan.

Gobineau was very proud of what he consideredhis dispassionate, logical approach. “The precedingargument has established the following facts . . .” hewrites at one point. Entirely lost on him, and his legionsof followers, was that his entire edifice was based ona hypothesis - the existence of Aryans, and theirsuperiority - which he awarded the status of Fact, andset out to bolster, however subconsciously, bydistortions of history and recitation of fallacious ifcommonly held prejudices.

The advent of Darwinism in 1859 did enable sometheorists to claim that certain races are less removedfrom the ape than others, but because it asserted theunity of the human species, Gobineau was opposed toit. In the foreword to the second edition of his Essai(1882), he says that he will resist the temptation to bepolemical, and so refrain from attacking Darwinism,but he is certain that fantasies about Stone, Bronzeand Iron Ages “will die a natural death”.

WagnerOne strand of modern Racism was missing from

Gobineau: anti-semitism. This was supplied from anunexpected source, the composer Richard Wagner(1813-1883).

Apart from his musical works,Wagner produced a constantstream of writings, political andartistic essays, letters, biographiesand an autobiography. Anti-semitism was a consistent themein all of them, reaching a peak inhis notorious book (originallypublished anonymously), Jewry inMusic.It is surprising, after all this, to findanti-semitism so muted in hisoperas, but it is there none the less.In The Ring of the Niebelungs the

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evil dwarf, Alberich, is written, to Wagner’s explicitinstructions, to be played as a Jew - the performerwas to sing and gesticulate in a “typically Jewish”manner.

Yet, it is fair to say that Wagner’s public bombast inthis respect did not extend to his personal life. He hadclose friends who were Jews (notably the conductorLevi, who conducted the first performance of Parsifal;Wagner urged him in vain to get baptised). He refusedto sign Bernhard Forster’s violently anti-semitic petitionof 1880 to the Reichstag. When Wagner heard that ayoung Jewish music student had been so dismayed atreading Jewry in Music that he had committed suicide,he wrote a moving letter of apology and consolation tothe young man’s father.

But his public stance was one ofuncompromising anti-semitism, andcoming from such a popular figure,of ‘German renewal’, this waswhat had the effect. When Wagnerfinally met his hero Gobineau in thelate 1870s, the world knew aboutit, and Wagnerian views on theJews became thenceforthinextricably part of Europeanracism.

The half century betweenGobineau’s death and the SecondWorld War produced somenoteworthy lunatic writings on race. “What makes anindividual act,” wrote Vacher de Lapouge in 1899, “isthe legion of his ancestors buried in the earth”. “Thesoul of the race”, according to Gustave LeBon (1912),“is the strongest braking-power upon social upheaval”.Otto Ammon declared (1898) that the long skulledNordics, the true Aryans represent the bearers ofhigher spiritual life, the occupants of dominant positionsto which they are destined by nature, the innatedefenders of the fatherland and the social order.

Hans Gunther, the Nazi race ideologue, distinguishedthe six races of Germany by their physiques, theirpersonality traits, and their spiritual characters:“Fairness and trustworthiness are peculiar Nordicvirtues: Alpines are petty criminals, small-timeswindlers, sneak-thieves and sexual perverts, whereasNordics are capable of the nobler crimes.”

HitlerGunther, one suspects, took his cue from Hitler; and,

turning to the pages of Mein Kampf, we realise witha shock how much Hitler’s race ideas owed toGobineau - but filtered through Wagnerian anti-semitism.

Hitler was introduced to Wagner’s music, andthrough it to his thoughts, at the age of 12 when hesaw Lohengrin, in which the 10th century King Henrythe Fowler of Germany is recruiting in Brabant todefend the Reich against the barbarous eastern hordes.The libretto describes atrocities committed by theeastern invaders against the Germans, culminating inblood-curdling choruses which include “Sieg! Sieg!Sieg! Heil! Heil! Heil!” (often cut from modernproductions), and at the end the hero prophesies thatthe eastern hordes will never be victorious againstGermany. Little wonder that Hitler later declared,“Whoever wants to understand National SocialistGermany must know Wagner”.

For Hitler, racial crossing is to “sinagainst the will of the eternalcreator”; “All of human culture, allthe results of art, science,technology that we see before ustoday, are almost exclusively theproduct of the Aryan”; “All greatcultures of the past perished onlybecause the originally creativerace died out from blood-poisoning”; “All who are not ofgood race in this world are chaff”.Contrasted to the culture-bearing,community-minded, born-to-ruleAryan was the self-centred,

conniving, cultureless Jew: the Jews are deceitful (their“first and greatest lie [is] that the Jews are not a racebut a religion”), always planning to disrupt the nobledestiny of the Aryans, by implanting Bolshevism and,in particular, scheming to destroy the superior races’purity of blood. When French troops occupied theRhineland in 1923, some of their troops wereSenegalese: “It was and it is the Jews”, wrote Hitler,“who bring the Negroes into the Rhineland, alwayswith the same secret thought and clear aim of ruiningthe hated white race by the necessarily resultingbastardisation.”

Let us remind ourselves at this point how far theAryans had come since their invention. They startedoff as a linguistic group, speakers of Indo-Europeanlanguages. They then conquered India and wrote theVedas; we have their own word for that much. Nextthey conquer Europe and, under Gobineau, theyfounded civilisations all over the world (mixing theirblood in the process). Gobineau described themphysically, as well as in more esoteric ways, but therewas still a lot of difficulty recognising them, or rathertheir purest descendants.

Nobody, in the meantime, had ever bothered to

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provide scientific demonstration that they had everreally existed - in a word, that human populations hadat any time been more physically homogenous thanthey are today. Houston Stewart Chamberlain,Wagner’s son-in-law, though clear in his own mindthat the Aryans were in effect the Germans, admittedthat they could not actually be defined: “Subjectiveappreciation teaches more than can be learnt in acongress of anthropology”, he wrote in his 1899 opus,The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century. Theywere really anyone whose soul was right: “The noblevisage of Dante is indisputable proof of his Teutonicorigin”.

Other countriesWe should not kid ourselves that paranormal racism

was a peculiarly German phenomenon. At least up tothe First World War, French writers were notablywrapped up in such notions, especially in trying to provethemselves racially distinct from the Germans; usuallythis took the form of trying to prove that the Celts, orRomans, or whoever particular authors conceivedthemselves to be, were actually purer Aryans thanthe Germans. No-one seemed to question that, inAdolphe Pictet’s words of 1859, the Aryans are “arace destined by Providence some day to dominatethe entire globe”. During the Great War, French writerswould busily construct links between the Germans andOrientals, even the Mongols, so that the war becamein some eyes a struggle to stem the onslaught of theYellow Peril.

Which, of course, brings us to Australia, wherearound the turn of the century the purple press wasmuch concerned with the yellow peril, as recorded byNeville Hicks in his book This Sin and Scandal (1978).An Australian novel of 1909 ends: “For Australia isthe precious front buckle in the white girdle of powerand progress encircling the globe”.

In successive issues in January 1896, The Bulletinwarned about the racial dangers from the north; theChinaman was objectionable because of his menialnature, “bred in the bone of him for thousands of grimyyears”; the Japanese because he was an “apt andingenious workman ... as progressive as the Australianand possibly more energetic”.

The Sydney Daily Telegraph in 1911 printed anarticle by no less a personality than TheodoreRoosevelt, who warned that the Western World ingeneral, and Australia in particular, was followingFrance in “that decline of birth-rate which inevitablysignalizes race decay and which, if unchecked, meansracial death”. Pure Gobineau.

Roosevelt was a man of his times and his place; in

the United States, as Stephen Jay Gould has recountedin his book The Mismeasure of Man, the earlytwentieth century was a period when every effort wasmade to keep ‘inferior’ races from joining the whiteAmerican gene-pool. The Ku Klux Klan was claimingthat ‘Nordic Protestants’ were the noblest, fittest race,and that white supremacy was necessary forcivilisation.

Interestingly, the image promoted in many Klanpublications is of the dumb and docile Negro, whosenatural instincts are to keep his place and not causetrouble, being led astray and stirred up by the schemingBolshevist Jew.

While the Klan itself has now become anunderground organisation, cleaned-up versions of itspseudoscientific utterances can still be found inrespectable circles. Thus in 1972, William Shockley,the inventor of the transistor, wrote “Nature has color-coded groups of individuals so that statistically reliablepredictions of their adaptability to intellectuallyrewarding and effective lives can easily be made andprofitably used by the pragmatic man in the street.”

Meanwhile, in Australia, the Asian Immigrationdebate carries on. Scratch its surface, and you willfind the yellow peril and white supremacy, unchangedin three-quarters of a century; and not far below thesurface again lies the International Jewish Conspiracy,as in the Ku Klux Klan’s utterances. In the recentWestern Australian election, we even had anIndependent candidate, Jack van Tongeren, standingin opposition to the “Asianisation of Australia and theZionist control of Australia”.

South Africa bashing seems almost too facile in thepresent context, but let us recall that the National Party,which has been continuously in power in that countryfor forty years, was founded in the 1930s using theGerman National Socialist Party as a model, even tothe ‘manifest destiny’ ideology of the rulers (in thiscase, the Afrikaners).

ZimbabweImmediately to the north of South Africa lies

Zimbabwe, which under the name of Rhodesia wasuntil some ten years ago the only other white-supremacist country in Africa. The nation’s formername commemorated Cecil Rhodes, Empire-builder;its present name derives from some monumental stoneruins, Great Zimbabwe, in the country of its largesttribe, the Mashona. The largest of these monuments,called the Elliptical Building (formerly the ‘TempleRuin’), has an outer wall some 250 metres incircumference, 10 metres high and, in places, fivemetres thick, of regular coursed rectangular stonework,

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History of Pseudoscience -Part 1 Tony Wheeler

4004 BC, dusk on Saturday, October 22: Creation ofHeaven and Earth.

4004 BC, 9am on Monday, October 24: Creation ofMan.

2630 BC: Imhotep, minister, advisor, physician,architect and astronomer to Dzoser, Pharaohof Egypt, builds the Step Pyramid, the first ofEgypt’s great pyramids.

2349 BC, Friday, November 28: A comet “under theconduct of Divine Providence”, visits the earthas punishment for a wicked world. It is waterfrom this comet that produced rain for forty daysand nights, and Noah’s flood, and other effects,according to William Whiston, British clergymanand mathematician, in 1696.

1470 BC: Atlantis (in the form of the Aegean island ofThira) sinks beneath the seas following amassive volcanic eruption.

350 BC: Plato writes the dialogues Timaios and Kritiasin which the island state of Atlantis is describedas existing 11,500 years earlier.

100 CE: The vernal equinox processes into theconstellation of Pisces; the dawn of the Age ofPisces. (The dawn of the Age of Aquarius willbe about 2150.)

120 (about): Claudius Ptolemy writes Tetrabiblos, thebible of astrology.

256: Huang Fu Mi writes An Introduction toAcupuncture, a practical textbook.

565 (about): Adamnan writes The Life of St Columba,including an ambiguous encounter of the Saintwith an animal on Loch (or the River) Ness;later to be incorporated into the Loch Ness“monster” saga.

1299: Marco Polo (and Rustichiello of Pisa) writes

decorated with chevron and herringbone patterns.There are drains, doorways with wooden lintels, curvedsteps, and a high conical tower, but no roofs.

In modern times they were made known to theoutside world by a German explorer, Carl Mauch, in1871, who had been told of ‘the ruins of Ophir’ (theancient land to which Solomon and Hiram King ofTyre had sent expeditions) by a missionary in theTransvaal, and by a German trader of “large ruinswhich could never have been built by blacks”. Mauchwas convinced that he had discovered the realm ofthe Queen of Sheba (despite meeting an old Africanwho gave detailed descriptions of ceremoniesconducted in Great Zimbabwe by his father).

Cecil Rhodes was inspired by the idea of GreatZimbabwe as Ophir or Sheba, and in turn inspired thefoundation in 1895 of Rhodesia Ancient Ruins Ltd,which, under the cloak of archaeology, fostered muchshameful plundering of the gold and artworks found inthe ruins. The so-called excavators ascribed thebuildings to Sabaeans or Phoenicians; it was evensuggested to be a kind of blueprint for Solomon’stemple in Jerusalem. One investigator went quiteoverboard: “The whole of the Temple Ruin was setout on a series of curves, whereof the radius was amystical number, embodied in the relations betweenthe large and small cones.”

As early as 1906, however, the noted archaeologistDavid Randall-McIver realised that it was built by theancestors of the present-day inhabitants, but he washowled down: “the decadence of the native”, wroteone of the Rhodesia Ancient Ruins vandals, “is aprocess which has been in operation for manycenturies and is admitted by all authorities”, becauseof “a sudden arrest of intelligence and mentaldevelopment which befalls every member of the Bantuat the age of puberty”. It disagrees with our priorassumptions (read, perhaps, wishful thinking), thereforeit’s not true.

It took another 30 years of genuine archaeologicalwork to establish that Great Zimbabwe, along withthe plentiful less spectacular stoneworks littering thelandscape, was built by Africans related or ancestralto the modern Makaranga section of the Mashona;and the advent of the radiocarbon technique dated thefirst traces of the building to AD 1075 +/- 150.

One might have thought that there was an end to it;but not so. Archaeologists in Rhodesia beganpropagating these findings, which could not be allowedin a white supremacist country, and the matter wasraised in the Rhodesian parliament in 1969. TheMinister of Internal Affairs promised to look into it. Ayear later, he reported back: “... a new guidebook is

being prepared on behalf of the Historical MonumentsCommission in which all theories relating to Zimbabwewill be presented absolutely impartially.”

Equal time. That sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Colin Groves is a senior lecturer in anthropology at theAustralian National University, Canberra, as well as beingpresident of the ACT branch of Australian Skeptics.

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The Travels, which includes a description ofthe manufacture of false pygmies using smallmonkeys.

1357 (about): A holy relic advertised as the “true BurialSheet of Christ” is exhibited by the canons ofLirey, a small town in the diocese of Troyes,south-east of Paris. (Scientific tests in 1988 areto indicate that the “Shroud of Turin”, as it laterbecame known, is a medieval fake dating around1325 +/- 65 years.)

1430 (about): Rosenkreuz founds the secretRosicrucianism society in Germany.

1486: Malleus Maleficarum (“Hammer of Witches”)published, written by Henrich Institor and JakobSprenger, professors of theology of the Orderof Friars Preachers. It is credited with turningwitch-hunting and interrogation into a fine art,and described as a “terrible book which hascaused more suffering than any other writtenby human pen”.

1503:Michel de Nostredame (later calledNostradamus) born; he is later to publish tenvolumes of four-line prophetic verses, whichinclude information on Hitler, the Kennedyassassinations and the destruction of Californiain 1988.

1510: Heinrich Cornelis (“Cornelius Agrippa”) writesOf the Occult Philosophy, a three volumetreatise regarded as the masterwork of(cabalistic) magic.

1513: Piri Reis map, showing portions of the Americasand Africa and supposedly Antarctica,apparently with the help of an advanced culturelike Atlantis.

1556: Georg Agricola discusses and illustrates diviningin his book on metals and metallurgy, De RaMetallica.

1563: Johann Wier, sometimes known as the father ofpsychiatry, argues that witchcraft might becaused by mental illness, and that delusion andsuperstition had turned lawyers and theologiansinto murderers. His book was placed on theCatholic Church’s Index of prohibited works,and burnt by Protestants.

1609: Samuel Champlain, discoverer of LakeChamplain, is the first to sight its “monster”,Champ.

1651: Unicom Horn is included in the official drug listsof items to be stocked by all registeredpharmacists in London; its use advised for thetreatment of epilepsy, impotence, barrenness,worms, plague, smallpox and other assorted ills.

1659: Gaspard Schott, a Jesuit father, denouncesdowsing as Satanic. (Schott later moderated hiscondemnation in favour of unconsciousmuscular action as the cause.)

1671: The Society of Apothecaries in London is

founded; included in its coat of arms are twounicorns. (The City of London Guild ofApothecaries has a dragon on its livery.)

1683: Ten Rhyne introduces acupuncture to Europewith a book of his experiences in Japan asmedical officer with the Dutch East IndiaCompany.

1692: Eighteen months of witch hunts begin in Salem,Massachusetts, with accusations extending tothe president of Harvard University, and resultingin the execution of thirteen women and sevenmen as witches.

1693: Methods of using traditional dowsing rod, aforked stick, described in French work Treatiseon the Divining Rod.

1701: a decree prohibiting the use of divining rods incriminal trials is issued by the Holy Inquisition.

1727:The translation of a book by Englebert Kaempfer,physician at the Dutch embassy, of hisexperiences in Japan introduced acupunctureto the English-speaking world; nine acupuncturepoints in the abdomen are described.

1746: Unicorn Horn is no longer included in the lists ofdrugs to be stocked by registered pharmacistsin London.

1755: The Kraken, a sea creature which is “the largestand most surprising of all the animal creation”,is described by Erik Pontoppidan, Bishop ofBergen, in Natural History of Norway.

1774: Franz Anton Mesmer finds that his patientsrecovered when he treats them with magnets,and postulates a universal, magnetic, etherealfluid with energetic qualities as the active agent;later Mesmer adopts the name “AnimalMagnetism”.

1778: Franz Anton Mesmer introduces his theory ofcuring disease by balancing or redistributing thepatient’s magnetic substance (animalmagnetism) to Paris.

This list, originated by Tony Wheeler, secretaryof the Queensland Skeptics, will be continued infuture issues. Readers contributions on datesboth in Part 1 and future parts are welcomed.

Quotation:“A hallmark of crank manuscripts is that they solveeverything....A second hallmark of cranks is that they are humorless.A third hallmark of the crank is that he is sure everyoneis out to steal his ideas. A fourth hallmark of the crankis that he is determined to bring the newspapers insomehow. A fifth hallmark of cranks is that they use alot of capital letters.”- Jeremey Bernstein, “Science Observed: Essays outof my mind” 1983 Basic Books (New York), Ch 14,pp 305-314.

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Vol 9 No 3 - 1989

Harmonizers and Polarizers inAustralia and BeyondIan Bryce, Mel Dickson, Anthony Garrett& Tim Mendham

At about the same time as Peter Brock was receivingmuch publicity and attention for his Polarizer whichhe claimed would improve the running performanceof automobiles, Australian Skeptics was approachedby the developer of a similar system for endorsementof his products.

Hans Rex, through his Newcastle-based companyHarmony Health Products, marketed two devicesclaimed to “polarise” materials through their”kinemassic force”. One was a Water Polarizer, whichwhen fastened to a water pipe, was claimed todecrease copper content in the water, reduce surfacetension and increase wetness, improve chloride,improve taste, change the mineral content, affect yeastand plant growth, change ice structure and improvethe taste of wine.

The second product was the Harmatron, claimedto cause “dramatic improvements in the behaviour ofmotor vehicles”, including fuel consumption, horse-power and better starting, etc.

Mr Rex, an aeronautical engineer by training, hadpreviously been involved with yet another polarisercompany (Skeptics knew of at least four at the time)called BIOS, whose other director was SergeiBarsamian who had in turn been previously involvedin controversial claims of evidence for a mysteriousenergy force in nature and a cause of cancerpropagation (see the Skeptic, Vol 6 No 4 and Vol 7No 2).

Mr Rex’s interest in these areas was apparentlyfirst aroused through iridology. He claimed to havegiven up smoking (an 80-a-day habit) and the changein his iris was immediate and perceptible. He claimedto have validated iridology through “hundreds of tests”.In conversations with members of the Skeptics, healso mentioned having 6000 patients for his alternativemedicine clinic in the Newcastle region, had curedarthritis with an amulet and had taken people into theirpast lives.

This report describes tests carried out by AustralianSkeptics in 1987 to evaluate his claims for his products,and to describe his subsequent product developmentsand his promotion of them overseas.

Scientific BasisIn support of the claims, Harmony Health Products

supplied material claiming a scientific basis for theseproducts. These included:- letters to Australian Skeptics and sales brochuresfor the products;- an apparently scientific paper by S. Mielordt;- an apparently scientific paper from the “HansBrugemann Institute”.

Copies of a number of endorsements by “satisfiedcustomers” of the Harmatron and a Magnetizer (earlyversion of the Polarizer?) were also included, althoughthere was no indication of any scientific assessmentin these anecdotal claims.

Examination of these documents by scientistsrevealed no relevant valid material, only some unrelatedscience and a jumble of pseudoscientific terms,including: kinetic mass, kinemassic force field, anti-gravitation, energy healing system, spiritual technology,morphogenetic field.

Correspondence from HHP claimed positive resultsin tests carried out at Royal Newcastle Hospital,Newcastle Council Building, “the University inCanberra” and by other parties.

Claims included “the high copper content in thedrinking water dropped by 60%, minutes afterapplication of the Water Polarizer”. This immediatelysuggests poor experimental design, as one wouldexpect high copper content in the first water run froma tap, due to its sitting in the building’s small diametercopper pipes for some period. After some minutes,water which had sat only in the large steel mains wouldappear. A control test without the Polarizer would berevealing.

When pressed for test reports and names, Harmonycomplained that “everybody seems frightened to sticktheir neck out”. One set of results that was forthcomingfrom the “University in Canberra” was apparentlycarried out on February 2, 1986 (see Table I). Sampleswere collected before and five hours after the WaterPolarizer was fitted. Twelve parameter determinationswere then carried out, with components measured inmilligrams per litre (mg/L). Despite the claim by MrRex that these tests proved his product’s effectiveness,the results indisputably indicated that there was little(if any) effect, and none that could not be attributed toacceptable measurement accuracy. The authors weresurprised, in fact, that Mr Rex had tendered this pieceof evidence as it seemed to prove the opposite of hisclaims. This did not seem to concern him at all.

Thus, positive test results claimed by HHP couldnot be accepted.

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Tests of PolarizerA sample of Sydney’s reticulated domestic water

supply was obtained from a household tap (afterrunning off a quantity). This sample was thoroughlymixed to overcome any non-uniformity in contaminationfrom pipes or temperature difference.

The sample was subjected to alternating tests andtreatments as follows:1. The sample of tap water was tested.2. Some pool chlorine (calcium hypochlorite 65%) wasdissolved, diluted and mixed with the sample.3. The sample was then passed through a pipe fittedwith a Polarizer using the attached clip and againtested.4. The sample was then brought to the boil in analuminium container, cooled and again tested.

At each stage, the sample was tested with the Basic4 Test Kit from Poolmaster Inc, California, accordingto the manufacturer’s instructions. This test measuresthe following properties of a water sample:a) Chlorine residual - the amount of free chlorine inthe water, measured in parts per million (ppm).b) Combined chlorine - as above, but includingcombined chlorine.c) pH - the balance of acidity versus alkalinity in thewater. This is measured on a scale from 0 to 14, withO being most acidic, 7 being neutral and 14 being mostalkaline.

d) Total alkalinity - the amount of certain alkalinebuffering materials in the water, measured in ppm.e) Acid demand - the amount of acid needed to beadded to restore it to a neutral pH level. In this case,the figure recorded is the pH after one drop of the testacid was added.

The four tests on the water sample gave the resultsas in Table 11. These results can be summarised asfollows:1. Adding a very small quantity of pool chlorine causedsignificant changes to the chemistry of the watersample.2. Passing the water sample through a pipe with theHarmony Water Polarizer attached made nomeasurable difference, within the experimentalaccuracy.3. Simply boiling the water made a large difference tothe water sample.

A further test for free chlorine was carried out atthe University of New South Wales. A Lovibondcolorimetric test tablet was dissolved in 10mL of bothuntreated tap water and “Polarized” water. Theresulting colour indicates the concentration of freechlorine. The colour difference between the samplescould not be detected by the eye.

Therefore a spectrophotometer was used to measurethe absorbancy or depth of colour at a wavelength of285nm. Eight measurements of the untreated sample

Table I: Water Polarizer test (5/2/86) by "the Canberra University"

HCO3

Cl SO4

Ca Mg Na K SiO2

PO3- CI0 F- pH

Before 12.1 5.3 4.2 5.0 1.3 3.3 0.5 9.5 0.02 0.2 0.2 7.60

After 12.2 5.3 4.1 5.0 1.3 3.4 0.5 9.5 0.02 0.2 0.2 7.64

---------------------

Table II: Australian Skeptics test of Water Polarizer

Test 1 Tap 2 Chlorine 3 Passed 4 Boiledwater added through

Polarizer

Free chlorine (ppm) <0.4 3.0 3.0 0.5Combined chlorine (ppm) < 0.4 3.0 3.0 0.5pH level 7.7 7.8 7.8 7.9Total alkilinity (ppm) 40 40 40 70Acid demand (pH) 6.8 7.4 7.3 7.8

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gave an average result of 0.450, while eightmeasurements of the treated sample gave an averageof 0.462. The difference is far less than the standarddeviation of the results. Thus there is no measurabledifference between the samples.

To test the manufacturer’s claim that the crystalstructure of ice is altered, samples of water werefrozen and the appearance of the resulting ice wasrecorded. it was found that passing water through apipe fitted with a Polarizer had no effect on the bubblestructure or other visible properties of the ice.However, boiling the water for ten minutes beforefreezing had a considerable effect.

Taste TestsTests were also carried out on water and on wine,

to examine the claimed taste improvement caused byPolarizertreatment. Firstly, a Polarizer was fitted tothe neck of a bottle of wine while some glasses werepoured, and it was absent while other glasses werepoured. Subjects reported no change in the taste.

Secondly, a detailed test on the taste of water wascarried out at the University of NSW. Volunteers eachtasted three plastic cups of water. All had been filledfrom the same tap, but the Polarizer was fitted to thetap for one or two cups. They were told to select theodd sample, and to say why it was different.

Of 21 volunteers, ten found no difference amongthe three. Of the eleven finding a difference, fivecorrectly identified the odd cup. For the test to indicatea significant difference in the taste, seven out of elevenshould have correctly found the odd sample for asignificance level of 5%. The conclusion was that therewas no significant difference in flavour produced bythe Polarizer.

Conclusions on PolarizerIt was concluded that the changes to chemicals,

chloride and minerals claimed for treatment of waterby the Polarizer were not supported by tests.Claims of changes to the properties of ice were notsupported.

Further claims of changes to the taste of water andof wine were not supported.

Harmatron DeviceA device was fitted to the negative battery terminal

of a motor vehicle according to the manufacturer’sinstructions.The claimed “dramatic improvements to the behaviourof motor vehicles”, including fuel consumptionhorsepower and better starting etc, were not found.

Further Adventures ...Update on Hans RexMr Rex’s emphasis on the Polarizer and the plethora

of other motor vehicle performance improvementdevices on the market at the time decided the weightof testing carried out by Australian Skeptics. However,it was in the area of “harmony” that Mr Rex was tomove.

After some further correspondence following thetests described above, in which Mr Rex invoked “fifthforce” arguments, quantum physics, the role of theobserver and a “prephysical” universe, little more washeard from him or Harmony Healthy Products untilthis year.

One of the authors (TM) was approached in Mayby a researcher for “The Acid Test”, a popular scienceprogram on Granada TV, UK. The program wasrunning an item on Mr Rex, now operating in the UK,and had approached the British & Irish Skeptics forcomment, who redirected the researcher to theAustralian Skeptics.

Mr Rex is now promoting a product called theHarmonizer, “a unique device neutralizing the effectsof external radiations and harmonizing internalvibrations”.

In support of his claims, leaflets have been issueddescribing “Harmonology - the science and philosophyof Harmonisation”. Statements include: “Old religiouswritings and new scientific articles tell us that all matterin our physical Universe consist of vibrating energy,which in itself causes vibrations in the vast Universalocean of energy.... A human being is a harmonicoscillator as well. Every elctron [sic], every single celland the entirety of the system pick up energy from thesurrounding field by harmonic oscillation. The morewe are in harmony within ourselves and throughourselves with the Universal field, the higher our levelof energy, or level of resistance will be. But not onlythis - the more we are in harmony, the happier andhealthier and more fulfilled we will be.”

“Greater Harmony can be induced by bringing adisharmonious system in resonance with a moreharmonious one. This principle we use inHARMONOLOGY. Certainly it is not a new principlesince all healing methods in the widest sense employ itin one way or the other. What is different is ourapproach. In HARMONOLOGY we are usingHARMONIZERS, scientific technical devices whichput out harmonious frequencies, allowing a system itis in contact with to entrain itself and vibrate in unisonon that more harmonious frequency.”

The leaflets describe previous devices developed“which not only help human beings, animals and plants

40


to reach a higher level of harmony, but allow us to testfor the degree of harmony as well”. These include:Ultratest, “an electronic device which allows for themeasurement of photon flow on acupuncture points”;Testsender, “which allows to test the level of harmony,for remedies etc, from a saliva sample and also allowsfor distant treatment of patients”; Area Harmonizer,“similar to Harmonizer but influencing a wider area”;and the Water Polarizer.

The Harmonizer is an oval-shaped amulet about thesize of a cough lozenge, with a formable metal backing.Inside is a lime green epoxy filler and a circular pieceof paper, 1cm across, with a spiral pattern printed onit. This is covered with a clear epoxy which seals thewhole arrangement. There seems to be nothing elseinside the Harmonizer.

The leaflet which comes with the Harmonizer says(in English, French and German) that “Thousands ofclients have experienced remarkablechanges in their feeling of well-being, levelof energy, ability to cope with life and alsoimprovements of ailments ranging fromdevitalization to rheumatoid/arthriticconditions, migraine, MS, general aches andpains, virtually any disease one can thinkof.”

It goes on to say that the physical bodycan be thrown out of harmony by theinfluence of “negative thoughts (worry,anxiety, greed, fear, etc), faulty nutrition (over refinedfood and drink, microwaved, preserved and otherwisetreated), environmental pollution, environmentalradiation from overhead powerlines, electric meterboxes, electric appliances, radar and radio stations,etc, and geopathic zones, which are caused bydisturbances in the earth’s crust”.

Once harmony has been restored, a person “feelsbetter, thinks more positive, copes with life andovercomes disharmonious vibrations, i.e. disease, muchbetter”.

However, there is a caveat. “A person wearing aHarmonizer may experience A HEALING CRISIS,where things get worse before they get better, i.e. onemay experience aches and pains, the reoccurence ofold disease symptoms and generally the worsening ofsymptoms. If changes should not occur within a periodof some weeks, a BLOCKAGE may be present. ABLOCKAGE can be caused by amalgam fillings inteeth, scar tissue, bacterial focus at root of teeth, etc.In such case a HARMONOLOGIST or any healthpractitioner acquainted with modern medicine (BFD,Vega System, Moratest, etc) should be consulted.”

This aspect of the Harmonizer makes testing of its

efficacy extremely difficult. As it appears to be theuser’s fault if the Harmonizer does not work, how doyou control for extraneous influences from the wearer.That “etc” in the list of blockages covers a multitudeof possibilities, such as in-grown toe-nails, poor pastlives, or strawberry jam for breakfast. This is typicalof many alternative practices, some of which go asfar as to say that the patient actually wills themselvesto be sick. In other words, there is no concept of“falsifiability” built into the product. If it does not work,it is not because the Harmonizer is useless, it isbecause there is something wrong with the patient.The “modern medicine” examples referred to aboveshould, of course, be properly called “modernalternative medicine”.

On March 16, 1988, Sai Baba, “the Avatar of ourage”, gave the Harmonizer and Mr Rex’s work, hisblessings.

The Harmonizer can be worn day andnight and when having a shower or bath,and it is comforting to know that there areno known side effects. How it can haveside effects if it apparently affects “virtuallyany disease one can think of” is hard tosee.

All of Mr Rex’s promotional material,both in Australia and overseas, embracecustomary ingredients of pseudoscience -blockages, vibrations, mysterious and as yet

unknown energy forces, mystical understanding of theEast, “well-being”, and current fears, includingamalgam fillings and overhead power lines.

The Harmonizer, like the Harmotron and the WaterPolarizer, are pseudoscientific nonsense of the firstorder and in the most literal sense of the word. Theyare not science as they are not testable, or if they canbe tested, prove to be worthless. Mr Rex’s claims forhis local crop of goodies were proved to be merelywishful thinking, or worse. His current UK practiceseems to be the same.

The snake oil merchants are still with us.

At the time of the original tests described in this article, theauthors were all members of the national committee ofAustralian Skeptics. Since then, Anthony Garrett has takenup a position at the University of Glasgow. The others remainon the committee.

41


Experiencing a Ghost HouseGregg Thompson

During January this year, I was invited to witness theexpulsion of “spirits” from a “haunted” house outsideBeaudesert, near Brisbane. I had the opportunity ofmeeting the “medium” Glenys, who could supposedlycommunicate with lost souls who had died but hadnever passed through to the “light” on the other side.These souls were, therefore, still roaming around onthis world and frequently performing mischievousdeeds.

I was invited to attend by my friend Nikki who is aprofessional photographer. She was there tophotograph the house and ghosts for a reporter, Joan,who was covering the event in order to publish ghoststories in Picture magazine and elsewhere. On theway there, the reporter explained that there was nodoubt in her mind that supernatural things must occur.

The reporter had previously told us of the medium’sinvolvement with a “scientific study” of metaphysicalevents conducted by Queensland University. Onquestioning the medium herself in the car, she informedme that it was actually a chap from Griffith Universitywho investigated one of her “contacts” with the otherside. She ridiculed him because he could find nothingsupernatural during her performance.

I did not let on that I was a Skeptic, so that I couldsee a typical spirit exorcism. They recounted how thereporter supposedly was pushed out of the room by aghost on their last encounter. This sounded too goodto be true, so I was looking forward to either a goodexhibition or, if my luck could be so good, a trulyamazing physical phenomenon that would bear seriousscientific investigation.

We arrived with a large chain of electrical stormslighting up the southern horizon. Before we got out ofthe car, Glenys warned us of the history of this “evil”house. The medium wanted us to believe that therehad been a string of gruesome murders and suicides,all of which seemed so over the top that they weremost likely taken out of horror comics or B grade horrormovies. As an example, one fellow suicided by hanginghimself on meat hooks, another had stabbed hisAlsatian dog to death under the house, etc, etc.

When we stepped outside the car, the medium sawa blue and a white light coming out of the distant bush.She said they were probably spirits arising from thecemetery in that direction. I suggested that it wouldmore likely that those lights were simply street or houselights further down the road. She agreed that was apossibility and that we should investigate before leavinglater that night. Not only did this house have ghosts

but, last time she was there, UFOs were seen comingand going in the western sky. It seemed I had hit thejackpot!

As we were about to pass through the front gate,she told us we’d feel and smell the evil of the placejust as she’d done on previous occasions.

She went in first, followed by myself. As shepredicted, she shuddered at the gate and said she couldfeel it was going to be a bad night. I couldn’t helpfeeling this was for my benefit to get me in the moodby the power of suggestion. If it was, it didn’t work. Ifelt nothing and told her so, and went on to meet thepeople who lived there.

Haunted houseThe house was rented by a Maori woman in her

early thirties, her 16 year old son and two daughtersabout 12 and 8 years old. The husband was away, andthey were glad as he thought the whole thing was aload of hogwash. The lady’s mother and father werealso there, as well as the medium’s husband who hadarrived to assist her.

The house was a typical, small weatherboard homeon 1.5 metre stumps with two tanks, a front verandahand in need of some simple repairs.

The medium first proceeded under the house to findthe “ley lines” with her wire sticks usually used forso-called “water divining”. What this had to do withghosts she couldn’t explain. It seemed like nothing morethan a meaningless preamble attempting unsuccessfullyto impress her small audience. She lost interest whenI remarked that I too knew how “water divining”worked. I asked her if she’d seen a documentary onTV a few years ago where the country’s best divinersgathered at North Ryde for the $30,000 prize moneyavailable for diviners who could consistently findunderground water. The diviners believed it was acinch, until they were tested scientifically only to findnot one of them could get much above chance, letalone a hit every time.

On entering the house, she explained to the familythat she got rid of the ghosts last time and that theyshouldn’t be afraid. I asked if she could get rid ofthem permanently. “Oh yes,” she replied firmly. “Thenwhy are we here now?” I asked innocently. Incontradiction to her previous statement, she repliedthat they can come back! (Especially if you need tojustify a bit more photography for a story, I thought.)Strangely, this family which reportedly was so affectedby the ghosts seemed not the least bit perturbed tome.

42


The ExorcismThe medium walked into one of the bedrooms and

asked me to hold her torch. Her husband stood closeto her and soon she began to quiver and go into anapparent trance. She then muttered some aggressivewords in a distorted voice and thrashed around a littlewhile her husband stood behind her telling the “spirit”possessing her that it must go to the “light” where itcan find peace and pass through to the other side.

It must have done just as he suggested because shesoon recovered as she slumped in a chair. Both themedium and her husband kept commenting that thatspirit was a real badone! If that meagreepisode was bad, I hopethey never go and seethe movie “Poltergeist”,as they would surelyhave a cardiac arrestbefore half time!

I must admit to agreat temptation to bungon a really good actingjob together with somespecial effects lightingand sound to make themthink a real wild spirithad possessed me andscare the hell out ofthem. It would be mostinteresting to see suchpeople’s reaction,especially if the spiritcondemned them forfaking contact with itsworld and warned themnever to do so again.

This boring show wasconducted twice morethat night. Most of thehousehold didn’t evenbother to watch. I didn’tblame them if they’dseen it before.

Earlier that night I was told by the reporter that themedium’s voice changed completely from one spirit toanother and that she could talk with accents and slangpeculiar to the earliest settlers, so I was looking forwardto this aspect of the night’s entertainment. I was bitterlydisappointed. Our medium simply distorted her voiceto sound lower and more gravelly or menacing,regardless of whether it was a male or female spirit.The lack of creativity was appalling.

The final “spirit cleansing” was done in a bedroomwhere the photographer had asked me to replace thehanging light bulb with a UV bulb for effect. This wasthe climax, so she had to fall to the floor with this one.Much to the disappointment of myself and the reporter,all the medium’s husband could say was “Go to theLight”. No questions were asked. The “spirit” snarledand said to us “You all think this is a joke, don’t you.”

GhostsThe reporter claimed that she saw an elderly woman

lying on the bed and hoped that the camera hadrecorded it, even thoughno one else could see it,including the medium.The reporter and themedium couldn’t agreeabout the appearance ofthe ghost. Lo andbehold, nothingextraordinary turned upon the film.

It was said that thetwo young girls hadbeen terrified by a ghostwhich had lifted the endof their bed and shakenit so violently that theywere being thrown upand down. This soundedimpressive - the stuff Iwas looking for. I askedthe girls on their own ifthey had seen anyghosts, whether theyhad ever had the bedshake or been thrownoff, and they answeredno to all my questions.

During a discussionwith everyone in thelounge, it becameapparent that the

grandmother was the main perpetrator of these tales.She was the one who would see the ghosts in detailgoing to have a shower and other such things.

The boy had heard only some noises. The Maorigrandfather believed but had not seen them and hisdaughter said she believed in ghosts, but had difficultyrecounting convincing occurrences.

The grandmother was scaring the youngest girl bymaking her believe that the house was full of ghostsand that she would protect her granddaughter if any

43


tried to kill her. I thought this was a bit much.The children’s mother had baked a cake for the

occasion and seemed to me to be treating the ghostsas simply an excuse for some visitors and the possibilityof some small degree of notoriety in a pulp magazine.

I reminded them that we should investigate the“spirit” lights in the cemetery before leaving, eventhough the storm was just breaking overhead. Onreluctantly driving down the road, they weredisappointed that the lights were coming from somehouses past the cemetery. On returning past thecemetery, the medium exclaimed “Did you see that?People or things moving about in the cemetery.” Wereversed and got her spotlight from the boot. It wassimply the reflection of our headlights off the wetheadstones.

On the way home, even the reporter and the mediumsaid that they were of the opinion that “the grandmotherbrings the ghosts with her when she comes and takesthem home when she leaves”.

Vol 9 No 4 - 1989

Von Däniken:Old Hat in the New AgeMark Plummer, president of the Victorian Skeptics,and John Happs, president of the WA Skeptics,report on Erich von Däniken’s ill-fated return toAustralia.

During the 1960s and 70s, Erich von Däniken gaineda great deal of publicity with a series of bookspropagating a racist theory that the ancients were tooprimitive to have constructed ancient monuments orhave invented writing and maths but were assisted byintelligent extraterrestrial beings. These beingsimproved the gene stock by breeding with earthlings.

His first book was Chariots of the Gods?, and itwas followed by Gods from Outer Space, The Goldof the Gods, In Search of Ancient Gods, Miraclesof the Gods, Von Daniken’s Proof, Signs of theGods?, Pathways to the Gods, The Gods and theirGrand Design and four others in German. They werebest sellers, translated into 35 languages and sold over50 million copies - although most of that was thephenomenal success of his first book, which sold 30million copies in its own right.

Opposition to his theories came from academicshorrified at his distortion of history and Christians

outraged at his claims that God was an ancientastronaut. One of his major critics was Australianfundamentalist Dr Clifford Wilson, who wrote anexcellent critique titled Crash Go the Chariots.

Von Däniken was refused an Australian visa in 1972,but this decision was overturned in 1973 by immigrationminister Al Grassby. This was before the formation ofthe Australian Skeptics, but when von Däniken cameto Australia in 1973, the media were reasonably criticalof his claims.

In 1976, the International Committee for theScientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal(CSICOP) was formed, and early issues of itsmagazine The Skeptical Inquirer, carried criticalarticles on von Däniken. The BBC Horizon program,which filmed an episode in South America highlycritical of von Däniken’s supposed proofs, was veryinstrumental in destroying his public credibility.

By the 1980s, von Daniken had been thoroughlyanalysed and discredited and slipped from the publiclimelight. It was therefore with some surprise that welearnt in October that he was returning to Australia tofilm Aboriginal paintings in the Kimberlies and go on anational lecture tour. Because we had plenty of notice,we were able to gather relevant material from TheSkeptical Inquirer, Dr Wilson and old newspaper filesand send it to each of the state branches, the mediaand the Aborigines in the Kimberlies where vonDäniken was to visit.

His first port of call was Perth. On November 20,John Happs received a call from Perth’s Channel 9,informing him of von Däniken’s lecture tour, includinga speaking engagement the following evening at thePerth Concert Hall. He was also to be interviewedthe morning of November 21 by the television station.He was asked if he would like to follow on from vonDäniken and respond to his commentary.

John indicated that he would, but would rather debatehim face to face. von Däniken agreed to this andChannel 9 made the necessary arrangements.

TV debate“I arrived at von Däniken’s hotel room at the Perth

Hilton and was shown in by Von Daniken himself whowelcomed me most affably before introducing me tothe Channel 9 crew and his tour guide.

“Apparently von Däniken had been interviewedprior to my arrival and a segment of this interviewappeared on the Channel 9 news at 6pm that evening.This contained the claim from Chariots of the Gods?that God was an astronaut and that the worldwideevidence for this was overwhelming.

“I sat next to von Däniken during our ‘debate’ and

44


he was invited to make his claims initially so that Imight respond to these. My first line of attack wastowards von Däniken’s credibility, reminding peoplethat he had served time in prison for fraud and that Iwouldn’t feel confident about any claims that he mightmake. Additionally, I pointed out that von Däniken hadno formal scientific training, nor any academicqualifications which would allow anyone to accept thathe could undertake serious research into any area ofscience.

“Von Däniken was quick to claim that his fraudconviction had been quashed and that was all in thepast. He went on to admit that he was young andcareless at the time that he penned Chariots of theGods? and that he had made a number of errors. Thoseof us who saw the BBC documentary on von Dänikenand the book would put the ‘number’ as being oneerror, or a gross distortion of fact, for virtually everyclaim made.

“At this stage of the ‘debate’, I felt that the publicmight be getting a more balanced perspective on Erich.Unfortunately, after a mere ten minutes into ourexchange, his tour guide interjected and said that hehad another appointment and that the discussion mustend. Von Daniken appeared to be as surprised as wewere but I assumed he had merely forgotten that hehad a double appointment. I attempted to continue ourconversation since I had prepared copious notesconcerning von Däniken’s claims of ‘hard evidence’from around the world and how these comparedunfavourably with reality. My attempts to keep VonDäniken seated and talking were to no avail and hewas duly escorted from the room.

“The Channel 9 crew asked me to stay on to givean interview which did allow me to cover some of thepoints I wanted to discuss in detail with von Däniken,including some of his claims about the pyramids (‘Don’tbelieve Clifford Wilson - he is a fundamentalist’),statues on Easter Island (‘Thor Heyerdahl is not areputable investigator’), misquotations from the Bible(‘I used a German Bible, which is obviously differentto yours’), and those amazing plates of gold foundinside a network of tunnels in South America. I wantedto ask von Däniken why Juan Moriez had stated inEncounter magazine that von Däniken had neveractually asked to see the tunnels and plates of gold butwas more than happy to accept his tall story on facevalue. This sounds just like von Däniken doing his kindof research.

“More importantly, I wanted to talk about theWandjina cave paintings in the Kimberlies, since VonDäniken had spent a great deal of time actually lookingat and photographing these. He had claimed that these

paintings represent ancient astronauts as seen byAboriginals thousands of years ago. To von Däniken,the haloes on the paintings were space helmets andthe lines coming from them did not represent primitiveattempts at depicting hair but were evidence ofantennae. Such literal interpretations by von Dänikenmight mean that the early cave paintings found inEurope and North America should also be interpretedliterally, to the extent that a long time ago there was arace of stick people living in caves who survived byhunting herds of anorexic buffalo.

“My interview with Channel 9 was reasonablycomprehensive in terms of time and coverage and,although the actual segment shown on A CurrentAffair was very brief as might be expected, thepresentation was balanced. I felt that, once again, themedia demonstrated that things have changed withregard to their shift away from sensationalising theVon Daniken brand of pseudo-scientific nonsense.”

Public lecturesOn Tuesday, November 21, von Däniken gave an

evening lecture in the Perth Concert Hall. DannyVarney, the secretary of the Western AustralianSkeptics, and other members of the Skeptics weregiven free tickets by Channel 9. They reported thatonly about 200 people turned up in a hall that seatstwo thousand, and that Von Däniken’s lecture wasmediocre, getting a lacklustre response from theaudience.

Von Däniken then went to Adelaide. Alan Lang ofthe South Australian Skeptics reported that only 130tickets were sold for his November 23 lecture in theAdelaide Festival Centre, which has a capacity of1978. Alan estimated that ticket revenue would havebeen no more than $4000 (tickets for the Sydney showwere costing $31.50 each). The hall costs $4650 tohire, and advertising in The Advertiser newspaper andradio, posters and programs is estimated to be another$2000. Von Däniken was staying at the best hotelswith his minder and tour guide. Clearly, the tour wasin severe financial trouble.

The next morning, Mark Plummer telephoned thepromoters and challenged von Däniken to a debate.Mark also asked the promoters what sort of visa vonDäniken was travelling on. They promised to call himback soon.

A day later, the promoters telephoned Mark andsaid that von Däniken had become sick and wascancelling the rest of his tour. Apparently he was wellenough to catch the next available plane home toEurope. He left Melbourne on the first flight - aSingapore Airlines flight to Singapore, to be exact.

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Mark then visited the offices of the promoters, EagleCorporation, and found boxes and boxes ofundistributed programes. The glossy program containeda prospectus for a proposed four-part TV series to bemade, titled Angels From Heaven.

Unfortunately, the promoters are about twenty yearstoo late. It is doubtful television networks would nowbe interested in handling material from yesterday’s man- the ancient astronaut fanciers of yesterday have beenreplaced by the more mystical leanings of the NewAge, although some aspects such as pyramids survivein modified form. von Däniken has been thoroughlydebunked, and the poor response to his tour from boththe media and the public indicates that he is no longera front-runner in the stakes to fleece the gullible.

Vol 10 No 1 - 1990

The Skeptics & the Investigatorslan Bryce reports on an ABC “Investigators” itemon some ‘miracle’ products and their Inventors.

I was fortunate recently to appear on ABC-TV’sInvestigators in relation to two businessmen sellingbogus products based on pseudoscientific claims. Thisfollowed a multitude of complaints received by theInvestigators, their inquiring to the Skeptics, and thefact that we had been dealing with both thesegentlemen over the last two years.

Such is the nature of television that a total of fourhours shooting over two afternoons was condensed tosix and a half minutes of air time. To fill in the details,I will give some more of the story here.

The segment went to air on February 20, 1990, andwas reviewed in The Sydney Morning Herald onFebruary 24.

PART 1:NORMAN DODGE AND HISALL-POWERFUL MAGNETS

The first of these television segments concernedNorman Dodge. His career can be traced by examiningthe succession of magnetic devices he has marketed.

Fuel Dipole for carsFollowing the publicity surrounding racing driver

Peter Brock and his use of “polarizers” (the Skeptic,Vol 7, Nos 1 and 2), a number of other fuel polarizersappeared on the market. One was the Dipole, or Fuel

Combustion Modulator, sold by Norm Dodge,containing strong magnets.

Claims made in his sales brochures include anaverage 30% fuel saving, and raising the compression.One brochure says: “Even after 7 years of R&D and3000 users, we do not know why it works”, but anotherstates: “Q. How does the Dipole work? A. By controlof electrons in fuel, causing fusion, i.e. chainreaction......”

Has the device been tested? Mr Dodge’s brochuresays “Even the sceptics are amazed when the FuelCombustion Modulator is tested.” Despite “7 years oftesting” and repeated requests by the Skeptics for hisresults, the closest I have got is a quick flash of somepapers before they disappear back into his briefcase.Real tests have been done by other parties, however.The Investigators John Millard did a segment onDodge in 1987, for which they won the Skepticsjournalism award (the Skeptic, Vol 8, No 2). The ABCpurchased a Dipole, fitted it to a car, and ran a carefulfuel consumption test on the road. Result: no change.

The ABC also commissioned a thoroughdynamometer test by the NSW State Pollution ControlCommission on a Holden VH Commodore V8, whichalso showed no change in fuel consumption oremissions. (There was a slight change when a retunespecified in the brochure - a 40 timing advance wascarted out, but it occurred whether or not the polarizerwas fitted.)

Perhaps these failures are explained in the brochure:“the results of the Dipole can remain in the fuel linefor up to three tanks of fuel”!

So we have two failed tests out of two; Dodge’srefusal to produce results from his own seven yearsof testing; and also a consultant from the Universityof NSW Mechanical Engineering Department stating‘there is no way that it can work”.

Clearly the public needs to be protected from bogusscientific claims such as Dodge has made, as he hasnevertheless sold about 3000 Dipoles at prices as highas $180.

Magnetic acupuncture devicesDuring 1988, Dodge joined the Inventors Association

of Australia (IAA), and managed to secure a place onthe NSW committee. After volunteering to mail outtheir newsletter, he started slipping his own brochuresinto the envelopes. Moreover, he joined the exhibitionssub-committee and proceeded to sell his Dipole atexhibitions of inventions.

As a long-time inventor and past IAA committeemember myself, I was alarmed that the sale of bogus,non-working products would greatly harm the genuine

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inventors showing their products. I arranged to briefthe committee on Mr Dodge’s activities, in hispresence. As a result, he was instructed not to sell hisfuel Dipole at the Beyond 2000 Spectrum exhibition inSydney.

Never to be out-manoeuvred, he dodged this byrenaming his magnets to be magnetic acupuncturedevices, and sold these. He printed new brochureswhich explained that “When these currents clash withmagnetic waves, they produce impacting heats on theelectrons in the body cells.”

Not only will the devices cure toothache andpreserve youth, but “Almost every known diseaseailment or illness can be treated cured or preventedby magnetic therapy.” We are not told how many yearsof R&D went into these findings. Dodge’s standing inthe IAA rapidly declined as his true colours becameknown.

Home water polarizerNext came a polarizer for the water supply to the

house and garden. Viewers of The Investigators willrecognise this golfball-sized device as identical to thefuel polarizer except for being chrome-plated, and thehole through it filed out to clip over a larger pipe! Theprice is $150.

The Dipole’s benefits know no limits. The brochurestates that polarised water will “improve the growthrate of humans, animals and vegetation by a half to athird.” Does this mean the average height of a manwill increase from about six feet to 8-9 feet?

Swimming pool polarizerThe most expensive of Dodge’s devices is the

swimming pool polariser at $480 plus tax. Unlike thedevice above which promotes growth, the magnets inthis one, when clamped around the pool’s filtrationsystem pipe, “kill most bacteria, saving on pool chlorineby up to 65%”.

Drinking straw polarizerFinally, buyers of the larger polarizers will receive,

at no extra cost, a small polarizer which clips over adrinking straw, giving them all the benefits ofpolarisation at every sip!

ConclusionNorman Dodge’s misuse of science extends even

to the business names he uses: “Scientific Fuels” and“The Institute of Magnetism”. You can find out abouthis latest research from the phone number given onhis brochures for these apparently august organisations,(02) 528 9342.

Mr Dodge claims all sorts of effects from hismagnets, including influences on combustion fuels,curing diseases, promoting growth and killing bacteria.Magnets might seem mysterious to the lay person, butin fact their effects on materials are well known toscience. in a medical CAT scanner, patients aresubjected to a magnetic field thousands of timesstronger that in Dodge’s devices, and they have noeffect whatsoever on them.

Mr Dodge’s career is most notable for its ground-shifting. As soon as one of his products is complainedabout, investigated and exposed (a time-consumingprocess), he dodges to a new line. This is easily doneby redefining his device to be something else, giving ita quick coat of paint, inventing a new list of claimedpowers, and printing a new load of brochures.

By the time complaints roll in and investigation andreporting is done, he has made his money and canmove on again. Perhaps this will become known asThe Dodge Technique.

I become particularly annoyed when bogus claimsfor a product are presented as having a scientific basis.A potential buyer can not be expected to conduct aninvestigation to separate science from pseudoscience.

We hope that existing laws on falsely representinga product in order to make financial gains can beapplied to put such people out of business once andfor all.

PART 2.HANS REX’S BOGUSSCIENTIFIC GADGETS ANDMEDICAL CURES

The second matter in which the Skeptics assistedThe Investigators was the extraordinary case of HansRex.

The Skeptics have been investigating Mr Rex forseveral years now. A unique feature was that hevoluntarily submitted two devices to the Skeptics for

Norman Dodge’s home water polarizer

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evaluation - most such people steer clear of us.

Car & water polarizersTaking advantage of the interest in car polarizers

triggered by Peter Brock, Mr Rex placed a Harmatronon the market to be attached to a car’s battery terminal.This was claimed to cause “dramatic improvementsin the behaviour of motor vehicles”, including fuelconsumption, more horsepower and better starting.

Rex also marketed a water polarizer which woulddecrease copper content, increase wetness, improvechloride and improve the taste of wine.

The Skeptics tested both of these devices, both ofwhich failed completely to have any effect (theSkeptic, Vol 9, No 3). But one feature of Mr Rex’sapproach is that apparently any test results are good,as he willingly distributes scientific tests of his deviceswhich clearly show no effect whatsoever!

AIDS cure and fictitious clinical testThe major point of interest to The Investigators

team was Hans Rex’s claims to be able to cure cancerand AIDS by means of an amulet or device worn bythe patient.

On January 18, the ABC team and myself visitedRex’s Healing Centre at 98 Old South Head Road,Bondi Junction in Sydney for a prearranged interview.Mr Rex readily repeated these claims on camera,stating that Dr Julian Gold ran a test using 15Harmonizers and 15 dummies, and “one in 15 AIDSsufferers got virtually better [sic] overnight.”

The Dr Julian Gold Mr Rex was referring to headsAustralia’s largest AIDS clinic. The ABC interviewedthe eminent Dr Gold, and presented him with Rex’sclaim. Dr Gold replied “I’m amazed to hear that. I’venever heard of Mr Hans Rex and I’ve never seen theproduct before.” He believes this is charlatanism andis taking advantage of people in the most tragiccircumstances.

He suggested that if a plastic and aluminium gadgetcan cure AIDS, then we may as well abandon medicalscience.

Rex was only slightly set back when asked “Doyou think Dr Gold would support your claims?” Heresponded “Well ... er ... I think so!”Not even complete exposure of the falsity of hisreported clinical test caused him more than a moment’shesitation.

Hans Rex’s pseudoscienceMuch of the videotaped interview between Rex,

John Millard and myself consisted of Rex pouring fortha stream of pseudoscientific terms in support of his

various bogus devices.Typical of his mumbo-jumbo was “I have created

kinemassic force fields by matching two differentmetals in the Harmatron.” When given a response“But that’s nonsense, it can’t work at all”, he replied“You’re typical of all the scientists with closed minds.”Mr Rex complained that a physicist at SydneyUniversity, Dr Anthony Garrett, ignored all thedocumentation he provided. In fact, Dr Garrett spentmany weeks of his own time studying the suppliedmaterial, but found only some badly written sciencewhich in no way supported Rex’s claims.

One item which went to air on The Investigatorswas Rex’s claim that it was all explained by “the Tiller-Einstein model of negative spacetime”. I turned to JohnMillard and said “Negative space-time? I think that’swhere these things belong.”

Diagnosis by tooth fillingsWhile exploring the world of alternative medicine, I

have been diagnosed by bumps on the head(phrenology), the soles of the feet (reflexology), theiris of the eye (iridology) and by probing the stomach(hara diagnosis). But none of this prepared me for myintroduction to Rex’s latest technique.

While the ABC film crew were first gettingorganised, Rex’s offsider, Philippe Thebault, kindlyoffered me a free consultation. (He and Rex did notyet know who I was.) We sat down at a table onwhich was placed three white boxes, covered withknobs, switches and meters, and connected by wires.(These can be seen on The Investigators segment.)There followed (remember, you read it here first)medical diagnosis by tooth fillings!

Mr Thebault explained that mercury, copper andsilver leaching out of amalgam tooth fillings could causemedical problems, and moreover each particular toothaffects a particular organ. He then proceeded tomeasure the electrical resistance from each tooth fillingto the rest of my body, with the box apparentlyconfigured as an ohmmeter.

A dental chart with the reading for each tooth wasprovided. He recommended that I get my amalgamfillings replaced with plastic fillings.

Lack of hygieneNot only was the electric current mildly painful, but

I may have received more than I hoped for. I laterrealised that the probe used to contact my teeth wasnot sterilised, not even wiped, before or after mydiagnosis.One wonders if Mr Rex and Mr Thebault, far frombeing able to cure AIDS as claimed, might even be

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spreading it among their unfortunate patients due toignorance of basic hygiene.

Diagnosis by salivaThebault then used a second diagnostic technique

on me. A sample of saliva was taken on a slip of paperand placed on the plastic surface of white box number1 (let us say). A pair of tweezers was used, againwithout any sterilisation.

He explained that all organs of a type (e.g. lungs)vibrate at a particular frequency, and the equipmentwas measuring those vibrations as represented in thesaliva. He selected each vibration using knobs on boxnumber 2. A row of green knobs selected organ system(endocrine, digestive, circulatory, lymphatic, urinary,etc.) while a row of red knobs selected diseases orproblems (food, toxins, viruses, drugs, bacteria, yeast,deficiencies, etc.).

Box number 3 contained the ohmmeter set-up.Thebault proceeded to select an organ system anddisease on Box 2 and for each selection touched theresistance probe to his thumb - "an acupuncture point".This, of course, gave a different reading on the metereach time, accompanied by electronic whistles from aspeaker (The Machine That Goes Ping?).

Readings on or below 80% were claimed to show aproblem. My results were: adrenal, 80; skin, 80; liver,80; lungs, 78; brain, 95; kidney, 100.

My final diagnosis was as follows:- Strong allergy to dairy products and problems with

digesting them;- Asthma;- Candida;- Sinus;- Casein deposits emerging through skinunder eyes.

In fact, I have never suffered from the first four,and the fifth is absurd. Zero out of five for diagnosisby tooth filling and saliva!

Heating at a distanceThe array of white boxes was labelled

"Harmonology International Energy Heating System".I asked Mr Thebault and Mr Rex, "I have seen howyou diagnose using this machine, but how does it heal?"

With its rows of knobs, dials and wires, theexplanation should have been right up my alley. But Ialmost fell off my chair when they explained, "Thiswill probably be new to you, but we use it to broadcasta remedy. We send out healing waves, and reach thepatient wherever he or she may be."

What a scam! You see the poor gullible patient oncefor diagnosis, and then continue to send out bills fortreatment thereafter.

The exposéIt is not often that a Skeptic is confronted with a

bogus set-up which can be completely debunked inone stroke. One reads of Randi and Houdini exposingpsychic and paranormal frauds on camera, but I didn'texpect the opportunity to present itself to me.

Tooth Filling diagnosis result Ian Bryce’s block diagram of theHarmonolgy International Energy Healing System.

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While Rex was raving on endlessly aboutmorphogenetic fields, my eye idly fell to the mass ofelectrical cables with 3.5mm "banana plug"connections, and started tracing them from point topoint. I suddenly realised that there was only one wirejoining Box 1 to Box 3, and that same connection wasthe only wire to Box 2. All other wires ran round incircles, or to the probes for the ohmmeter in Box 3.

It was extremely difficult to bring the conversationaround to the Energy Healing System without givingaway my intentions, because Rex will tolerate nointerruption, but gladly interrupts every sentence ofother people. However, I did introduce the equipmentand was able to hold up Box 1, on which the salivasample had been placed, showing one single wireconnected.

Of course, the law of conservation of charge statesthat a closed circuit is needed to carry a current. Inthis case, there was no return path for the electrons.Likewise, Box 2, containing all the knobs used to selectorgans and diseases, had a single wire dangling fromit. Neither box could have the slightest influence onBox 3, which contained the meter.

Unfortunately, the ABC crew ran out of videocassettes at the crucial moment, due to Rex'sinterminable ramblings. I guess this shows thatinvestigators must take charge of such confrontations,and not allow the subject to sidetrack the enquiry.

Has this bogus diagnosis and healing systembenefited anyone? Hans Rex told us earlier that hehas sold 37 of them to other practitioners in fourcountries, and the current price is $1200. He has alsosold many other products, and carries on a practice aswell.

ConclusionThe area of medical cures, especially for terminal

disease such as AIDS, is one where sick people areparticularly vulnerable. Often they are willing to “tryanything", and are not able to sort out the fraudulent,especially if it is presented in an apparently scientificmanner.

Hans Rex and Philippe Thebault have proventhemselves willing to sell expensive gadgets which donothing, to provide false diagnoses, and to charge forbroadcasting non-existent "healing waves". Theyfalsely claim to be able to cure terminal disease, andback it up with a fictitious clinical test and bogusscientific literature. This material has been placedbefore the NSW Health Department, and we lookforward to a full investigation.

Book ReviewEUTSEnergy and the Paranormal WorldSir Jim R. Wallaby

A few weeks ago, I was engaged in quiet discoursewith our respected Editor on matters pertaining to theproduction of this journal. “Sir”, he said to me, (I likeyoung Mendham, he is obsequious without beingservile) “Would you please be so kind as to write anarticle, pointing out the incompatibility of the paranormalwith well-tested and fundamental laws of physics?”Not wishing to disappoint the lad, I responded “Ofcourse my boy”, ever mindful of my monograph onHeisenstein’s Relatively Uncertain Principle, which isstill discussed, in hushed tones, whenever NobelLaureates gather.

At this point, our friendly tàte-a-tàte was interruptedby the intrusion of the grizzled visage of one Williams,who, for reasons that completely mystify me, presidesover our inquiring little group. Fixing me with thatbenevolent gaze that has made his name a by word atreunions of SS members, he delivered himself of thefollowing tirade.

“What do you know about the fundamental laws ofphysics, you silly old bugger?” (I believe Williamswrites speeches for the Prime Minister.) “You areundecided about Heisenberg, you don’t know whetherSchrodinger’s moggy was Burmese or Alley, you thinkthat Planck’s Constant is a carpenter’s rule and youbelieve that quantum mechanics are the blokes whokeep the flying kangaroo flying.”

Not wishing to dignify this intemperate outburst witha reply, I took my leave. Despite all, however, the oaf’svituperation had caused a niggling doubt to fester inmy mind. Could I possibly carry out my task withoutfirst undergoing a two-week crash course in particlephysics? I confessed to myself that I was indeed atrifle rusty on the Copenhagen interpretation and thatsuperstring theory posed some knotty problems. Onthe other hand, could I disappoint the trustingMendham? The horns of a dilemma indeed. I waseven contemplating the only way out for a man ofhonour. Drink!

Liber ex MachinaLittle did I realise it, but salvation was at hand.

Sheltering from the rain in the literary emporium ofthe estimable Eve Abbey, my eye lighted upon a slimvolume entitled A Physicist’s Guide to Skepticism byMilton A. Rothman. The sub-title was what reallyattracted my notice. “Applying laws of physics to

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faster-than-light travel, psychic phenomena, telepathy,time travel, UFOs and other pseudoscientific claims”,it read. “Aha”, I mused, “If this Prof Rothman knowshis stuff, then my problem is solved.” The appallingWilliams, who was lurking in a neighbouring aisleperusing some Victorian ‘art’ studies, mutteredsomething about “plagiarism is a crime”, but,summoning up all the innate dignity with whichcenturies of noble breeding has endowed me, I lefthim to his own devices.

The book, as it transpires, fulfils all of the hopes Ihad for it. It seems that Prof Rothman, a retired physicsprofessor from Trenton State College, Trenton, NewJersey, does indeed know his stuff. More importantly,he expounds his knowledge with a clarity which shouldenlighten even those whose scientific knowledgebarely exceeds the combined output of the creation“science” cult.

The book begins by asking the questions wefrequently hear being asked by those who, in theinterests of democracy, seem to believe that allpropositions are equally valid. “How do you know thatwe can’t travel faster than light?”, “How do you knowtelepathy is impossible?” etc. It then goes on to showthat, while science does not know the answers to everyquestion, this does not mean that science does not knowthe answer to any question.

He also challenges the view that any scientifictheory is provisional and subject to complete overthrowin the future. Rothman points out that it took a revolutionin thinking for us to accept the idea that the Earth is aspheroid and that it revolves around the sun, butquestions whether there is any conceivable case for afurther revolution which will overturn our present stateof knowledge of this topic. Refinements in any theoryare always possible, perhaps probable, but the totalreversal of many of our established scientific modelsis inconceivable.

Forms of energyRothman examines the various ‘conservation’ laws

that lie at the heart of nature. Not, I hasten to add, thelaws conserving trees or buildings, all of which aresubject to the whims of politicians, but those that governthe conservation of energy, momentum and suchlike.He considers these under two headings, “Laws ofpermission”, which allow, but do not guarantee, certaineffects, and “Laws of denial”, which absolutely forbidcertain events. This is a very useful tool and is thebasis upon which we can use the law of conservationof energy to reject the idea of a perpetual motionmachine, without actually having to test every examplethat is presented. An interesting practical example of

this is the blanket refusal of the US Patent Office toeven consider a PPM for the granting of a patent.This may also be one of the few recorded cases of abureaucracy making an intelligent decision.

He examines the four fundamental interactionswhich control all actions at the atomic level and showsthat, if we test and validate our assumptions about thelaws against the interactions, we can make predictionswith a remarkable degree of confidence and that wethen do not have to test every example. For instance,it has been experimentally shown that events that aremediated by the strong nuclear and electromagneticinteractions obey the law of conservation of energy towithin a few parts per thousand million million. If ourleaders could determine their forward estimates withthat degree of precision, they could calculate the budgetexactly, to within an accuracy of six decimal places.Bring on the quantum politicians, I say!

Rothman puts it another way. If you were a typistwith a similar standard of accuracy and you could keepup a speed of 100 words per minute, you could typefor 20 million years without making a mistake. [Ifanyone knows a typist like that, could they pleasecontact me. - Ed]

Rothman shows that electromagnetism is the onlyone of the four fundamental interactions that could, bythe nature of the claims made, conceivably beresponsible for the majority of claimed paranormalphenomena. He then goes on to show that thefundamental laws in fact make the claims impossible.He does not deny that other forces may yet bedetected, but shows that if they do indeed exist, thenthey must fall within very clearly defined parameterswhich makes it highly improbable that any suchundiscovered forces could account for dubiousphenomena. Such forces may be found to operate inextremely high energy states (which means very hot)such as those pertaining nanoseconds after the BigBang. It is unlikely that we will ever be able to simulatethese conditions in laboratories and the temperaturesrequired far exceed those that exist in today’s realworld, even in the fevered brains of New Agers.Alternatively, other forces may remain undiscovered,simply because they are so weak as to get lost in thebackground noise and thus have no discernible effecton matter.

Now, Rothman gets to the nub of the matter. It is allvery well to postulate new forces, energies or particles;scientists quite often do it, as the case of the neutrinoexemplifies. Certain actions which occurred withinquantum experiments indicated the need for such aparticle to make the maths come out right. It took 20years before experimental evidence showed that the

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neutrino actually existed. Similarly with the intermediatevector bosons, which were postulated as the mediatingparticles of the weak nuclear force and which werenot actually observed for many years. In these andother cases, theory predicted just what researchersshould have looked for, and by looking, they found them.

The dreaded EUTSBut what of energies unknown to science? What

of psychic energy or orgone energy or whatever,which, we are told, account for phenomena such astelepathy or precognition? To answer this question,we must first ask, “Where is the body of experimentalevidence that requires us to postulate these energiesor particles?” “Where are the consistent theories thatgive us an indication of what to look for?” The answeris, of course, “There are none.” All we see areinconsistent experiments giving inconsistent and vagueresults and a whole lot of wishful thinking. As Rothmanhas it, there is no requirement to explain a phenomenonunless you have evidence that the phenomenon exists.Or, as one of our patrons, Dick Smith, was wont tosay, “I don’t need to know how Santa’s reindeer flyuntil I know that Santa’s reindeer do fly.”

It is clear that we know enough about the real,material world to be confident that no known forcescan produce alleged ‘psychic’ phenomena. Theproposition that is usually advanced to counter this issome hypothetical non-material energy which existson some plane other than the material. Rothman isaware of this cop-out and exposes its most glaringflaw. You can postulate as many paramaterial planesas you wish, but, at some stage in the proceedingsthere must be an interface between the paramaterialforce and the material electrons in the material brainor nothing will be detected and nothing will happen.

Consider two world views, each seeminglyincomprehensible to the lay mind. On one hand, wehave quantum theory which is so counter-intuitive asto be inexplicable by analogy and thus to beincomprehensible to non-specialists. A theory aboutwhich Neils Bohr, one of its founders, is reported tohave said “If you are not confused by QuantumMechanics, then you have not understood theproposition.” Yet quantum theory allows us to predictevents with an accuracy almost unique in our historyand is directly responsible for our entire electronicstechnology. Quantum theory is the most powerfulexplanation of the natural world that we have.

On the other hand, we have ‘psychic’ theory, alsoinexplicable in ordinary terms but for different reasons.Psychic theory is inexplicable because there is nothingto explain. The predictive ability of ‘psychic’ theory is

precisely zero and until we have some concreteevidence that any such phenomena exist, that isprecisely where it will remain.

Reading Prof Rothman’s book should convince anyreasonably intelligent individual that it would beinadvisable to suspend one’s respiration while waitingfor that evidence.

Sir Jim R. Wallaby is noteworthy for having been bannedfrom all psychic experiments involving quantum theory, notbecause of the famous “sceptical effect” but because hisbody exerts an undue effect on sub-atomic particles due toexcessive gravitational force.

Vol 10 No 4 - 1990

Physics or Physicist in Trouble?Dave Wheeler

As part of a series of lectures on “ScientificRationality: Retrospect and Prospect” organised bythe University of NSW Centre for Liberal & GeneralStudies, a figure who has come up against Skeptics inthe past made an appearance to discuss “TheDevelopment of Science: From Newtonian Physics toTranspersonal Psychology”.

The promotion for the lecture looked promising:“public address on scientific rationality” and “physicsin trouble”. The speaker looked ideal: a retired physicsprofessor from Sydney University (are the bellsringing?).

But there it ended - the event proved to be more anexercise in cynical audience manipulation than a displayof knowledge, more a demonstration of faulty argumentthan a search for scientific rationality.

The views of Emeritus Professor Brian McCuskerhave been dealt with before in the Skeptic (Vol 6, No2, pp 19-21). On that occasion in 1986, Prof McCuskerwas quoting from the works of Ken Wilber, whosethesis that there a nine levels of consciousness rangingfrom matter through life, mind and spirit, obviouslymade a big impression as he was still quoting thoseviews as “fact” in October 1990.

It didn’t seem to matter to Prof McCusker thatWilber’s views are just that, an opinion; for McCusker,there are nine levels of consciousness and that’s that -no evidence presented, no argument considered. Theselevels of consciousness form the basis of much ofMcCusker’s thesis and therefore had a major bearingon his lecture, which seemed to this author to be aclassic example of bad argument rather than scientific

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rationality.For example, McCusker would argue from the

particular to the general: Meditation greatly helped mythinking - therefore it will solve all the world’s majorproblems. This is like saying if it’s raining on my house,then it’s raining everywhere. He also suggested thatan error in one area of physics (albeit a “major” error)denigrated the whole of physics - one doctor is a crooktherefore all doctors are crooks.

He accepted as proven the existence of psychicphenomena, and ignored arguments to the contrary.For example, he described a radio performance ofpsychic powers which received a favourable response(“It worked”) from a lot of listeners, therefore it musthave been a valid power. This, of course, convenientlyignores the exposes of famous practitioners such asUri Geller, Doris Stokes and ‘Steve Turbot’/Rob Steiner(exposed and exposer). Ample evidence exists to showsuggestibility will achieve results in this situation everytime, no matter what the demonstration - just ask anymagician.

He quoted John Hasted’s pro-psychic views onspoon bending but ignored John Taylor’s recanting ofsimilar views and discrediting those of Hasted’s (whichreminds me, we haven’t heard much from Hasted orhis metal benders since 1983 - is there an update?).

He produced no evidence of what higher levels ofconsciousness can do, let alone that they even exist inthe first place, and that those people in the higher states(presumably including himself) could function better,which was left undefined except for the oft-repeatedreminder that such higher-level functioning would solvethe world’s problems

He used unproven phenomena to validate otherunprovens. In an overhead transparency, it was statedthat in the “higher” mind states the consequencesincluded astral travelling and psychic phenomena, andin the “lower” states included poltergeist activity. Forthose who believe in such phenomena, the referenceto one validates the existence of another.

This is akin to saying that Santa Claus existsbecause the Tooth Fairy told me so.

Perhaps the most objectionable of his lecturingtechniques was his unfounded faith in his own viewand unwillingness to listen to any one else. His“arguments from authority” exhibited a religious faithin the veracity of his views. For example, he statedthat “Physics is a lower form of study than biology”.A questioner from the audience disputed this, andMcCusker’s response was “I’m telling you it is!” Thatthe questioner was a professor of biophysics madelittle impression.

He said he had worked with or met noted physicists,

implying that he therefore knew what he was talkingabout.

He avoided confrontation by claiming to have beenmisunderstood or that the questioner hadn’t trainedproperly. Perhaps this should be read to mean thatMcCusker had not explained himself properly, whichmight be a problem for higher-level minds dealing withordinary mortals.

Unfortunately, most of the audience of 150 did nothang around for the question time, when there was atleast a chance to hear some dissenting views. Thosewho did not stay would have come away with thefollowing impressions:* science is a sloppy discipline* scientists (physicists in particular) are fools* it is a “fact” that there are nine levels of experienceand Ken Wilber’s work is definitive, especially sinceno criticism was given or allowed* psychic phenomena from poltergeists to astraltravelling really occur* discoveries cannot be made by hard, logical thinkingbut only by “insight” (yet the insight usually followslong periods of hard, logical thinking, showing the twoare, at the least, often strongly linked)* if it can be thought of, then it exists.

I think that it is a great idea to promote discussion,but it is destructive to have speakers like McCuskerallowed to go unchallenged in the lecture forum,particularly when they use audience control techniquesto substantiate their argument.

Universities should be forums for free discussionof both sides of issues; the place for unsupportedpontifications is the pulpit.

It was a shame that only a small part of the audienceremained for the discussion, as they would have seenscientific rationality at work then. They would haveseen that the argument from authority is not aparticularly useful position, and they would have seenvigorous objections from the physicists in the audience,something not possible in the lecture format.

On the day following the lecture, I rang Dr GrahamPont, the philosopher who was convener of therationality lecture series and who chaired the post-lecture discussion quite impartially. I asked his viewof the events and got the succinct reply: “Interesting... he didn’t support his view ... I saw the emergenceof a new style of irrationality”.

I guess that says it all.

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Book ReviewNormal or Paranormal?by Alan RadnorLennard Publishing, Luton, 1989 $27.95Alan Towsey

When my Book Club’s monthly list (which usuallyoffers a large selection of quality fiction and non-fictionat half to one third the retail price) announced thisbook with the following blurb:

“Science may now be proving the existence ofthe paranormal almost by accident! With theapproach of the 21st century and a new age ofscience, new theories and methods are backingup many claims made by psychics, mystics andseers since the dawn of time. This book givessimple explanations of new approaches anddiscoveries in anthropology, biology, chemistry,physics and the bold new science of Chaos, whichmay actually explain phenomena such as near-death experiences, telepathy and clairvoyance,”

I thought, “This I must see - perhaps we sceptics area little too sceptical”.

To do full justice to Paranormal or Normal? wouldrequire another book in itself. In this brief review Ishall confine myself to its major characteristics,illustrated by a few examples.

The author turns out to be a journalist and a graduateof Glasgow University (as well as a member of theSociety for Psychical Research), and as such onewould expect him to be able to write good English.But one of the first things that struck me when I beganto read the book was his frequent use of sloppyEnglish. Here are some samples taken at random:

“While books like God Drives a Flying Saucer arenot taken seriously by many, it does claim to putforward reasons for both Man’s origins and triesto explain an apparent leap in his intelligence fromsavage to scientist. There is a fascination, andalmost a subconscious belief that Man’sintellectual abilities were not part of a naturalprogression.” (p 49) and (Referring to Geller)

“Among the observers and guests on the showwere Lyall Watson and Professor John Taylor.They, like Dimbleby, were staggered when it wasfound one of the watches which had started hadits hands bent up and touching the glass”. (p.71)“The founders and subsequent members of theSPR were all scientists. Many were, and stillare,” (p. 139) (my emphasis)

Now, in my experience, those who write sloppyEnglish usually also indulge in sloppy thinking. And soit proved.

Radnor tends to cite a new theory (e.g. that A=B),then reasons along the lines, “If A=B, then C=D”,which in its context might be acceptable, but then, lateron, forgetting that A=B is only a theory, he argues:“Since it has been clearly shown that C=D....”

An example of this may be found on pp.8-9. Havingdescribed the discovery of mitochondrial DNA (ofwhich he says:

“Unlike ordinary DNA this does not exist inside ababy’s cells, and carries on physicalcharacteristics, but is outside the cell.” ), and howthis led to the conclusion “that it must have comefrom one source - a woman whom scientists (in amoment of stunning originality!) called Eve”, hesays a few paragraphs later: “ So, if Eve iseverybody’s common ancestor, which is lookingmore likely,....we are entitled to ask what wasshe like?”, and then, on p. 11, “To sum up, it isclear we are all descended from one woman witha particular genetic imprint. We all ensure thecontinuance of some of her characteristics. Thiscould apply to the famous ‘sixth sense’ which isthe basis of instinct and intuition. As stated above,woman’s sixth sense has been spoken about,referred to, and generally accepted for thousandsof years.”, and again on p.104: “We have alsoseen that every human being alive in the worldtoday can be traced back to a common ancestorknown as Eve.”

But, of course, the Eve theory is still controversial.On p.153 we have the classical “cop-out”:

“....the work of the Mobius Group has highlighteddeficiencies in the design of parapsychologicalexperiments which, by their very nature, have togo beyond the limits of normal science, a factthat this book has been emphasising.”

We are told on p. 181 that

“Kirlian photography is now being used as adiagnostic tool in medicine.”

I thought that idea had been laid to rest long ago.Radnor quotes (pp. 88-9) the alleged success of

‘psychic detectives’ such as Hurkos and Croisetwithout question. Yet both are debunked in C.E.M.Hansel’s book ESP and Parapsychology: A CriticalRe-Evaluation (Prometheus, 1980).

On p.153-4 he describes the first experiment of the

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Mobius Group, in which Schwartz

“sent a standard navigational chart of the areaaround Santa Catalina Island, in the Pacific Oceanoff Southern California, to three psychics, askingthem ‘ to locate something manmade on the seabottom, describe how it had gotten there and howold it was, and sketch a picture of anything theysaw.”

Amazingly,

“the psychics felt that almost a hundred yearsbefore, a wooden sailing ship had sunk off SantaCatalina, and while the wooden hull would rot, therewould be ‘specific artifacts’ left, like the anchorand rope-winding gear on the sea bottom.”

You know, that’s exactly what I guessed too - andI’m not even psychic! And, of course, they wereright...

Schwartz is quoted as saying (p. 155):

“For the last 75 years archaeologists all over theworld have been very quietly working with psychicsto mark locations of previously unknown sites.”

Funny - I have quite a few up-to-date books onarchaeology in my library, and not one of them mentionspsychic archaeologists - not even Glyn Daniel’s AShort History of Archaeology (1981), which roundlycastigates what the author calls “alternative, lunaticor bull-shit archaeology”.

Psychokinesis (and, of course, Geller) is acceptedwithout question. Hansel, Randi and many others havethoroughly debunked these ideas.

On p.164 we read:

“(The medium Eusapia) Palladino was testedunder strictly controlled conditions at the turn ofthe l9th century and appeared to have genuinepsychic abilities. Sceptics could not accept thisand said she should be dismissed as havingdemonstrated nothing more than ‘trickery’although they could not describe how this done.”(sic)

Hansel tells us that Palladino was classified as afraudulent medium by the SPR, failed to display anypsychokinetic powers under strict conditions in Paris,and further relates how she was completely unmaskedin 1910. He gives details of the reports appearing inthree journals, including Science (No 77 of that year),showing among other things how she was able to freeher foot from her shoe and reach it behind her into a

curtained alcove containing a small table, a guitar andother objects. When her foot was suddenly pulled bya man who, before the séance and unknown to her,had crawled into the alcove, at the instigation of theinvestigators, she uttered sudden, startled and unearthlyscreams of horror.

And so it goes on - inadequate research, partiallyassimilated science, unsubstantiated and oftenmisleading assertions. Was the book perhapsdeliberately written in the knowledge that, these days,it would find a ready market? In any case, I think Iwasted my money.

the second coming - pseudoscience - australian …...1 pseudoscience the second coming all the best...

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