Build Your Own Baloney Detector

Magnets are probably one of the most amazing things we ever get to play with. Watch a kid play with some standard magnets sometime. You’ll remember how wonderful magnets really are. How do they attract and repel each other? How do they disrupt your TV screen? (Assuming you have one of those rapidly disappearing CRTs.) How does a compass know which way north is all the time? Even Einstein as a child was delighted and perplexed by this force. (Of course, he went on to create Special and General Relativity. I went on… to play with magnets well into adulthood. Look, we can’t all be geniuses, OK?)

Unfortunately, the very wonder and mystery of magnets also makes them a popular tool for charlatans. It also causes no end of the confuse among well-meaning people who don’t have good intuition for magnetic fields. (And why would anyone? They’re not particularly part of our natural everyday experience — we’ll see why in a minute — so our ancestors never needed to know it. Evolution, you work too slowly!) So I figured I’d spend a little time talking about what magnetic fields do and don’t do.

First of all, what is a magnetic field?

No, I refuse to answer that even remotely fully. We could spend an entire course on that topic and just barely get into it. So let’s do the abbreviated version.

A magnetic field is a field that interacts with charged matter. Magnetic fields tend to deflect charges, altering their paths. (A time-varying magnetic field can also generate an electric potential, driving current down a wire. This is the principle behind an electric dynamo.) The fact that magnetic fields only act on charged matter in important. Most matter in the universe isn’t very charged, as it turns out. Sure, matter is made up of those electrons (negative charge), protons (positive charge) and neutrons (little buggers have no charge and are aloof regarding magnetic fields; snobs). But as it happens, positive and negative charges respond precisely the opposite way to a given field. So if you bind a proton and an electron together (making a hydrogen atom, in this case), they behave as if there is no charge there at all and proceed merrily on their way¹.

So you and I and this desk and even our planet are mostly uncharged because almost all of our electrons have a matching proton to live with. OK, it’s true you can give yourself a net charge by scuffing you feet on the carpet. Go ahead and try it. (We’ll all wait while you find a friend or, better, a relative to zap. Just, please, don’t zap a pet. They can’t zap you back and fair’s fair.) But as it turns out, that charge is small. “Small compared to what?” you ask. Well, first of all, small compared to the number of protons and electrons in your body. You can show that even a minuscule charge imbalance, say one extra electron in about 10 billion, would cause you to explode violently thanks to the electrostatic repulsion of like-charged particles. In fact, any time you do carry a net charge, you’re basically encouraging electrons to either join you or leave you to make you neutral again.

Another good comparison is the ratio of your charge to your mass. Electrons, being small and charged have a high charge-to-mass ratio. They react strongly to magnetic fields. Protons, being nearly 2000 times more massive (and equally charged) also have a pretty high charge-to-mass ratio, but smaller than the electron. They react well to magnetic fields, but they are more sluggish and don’t react as well as electrons. An electron moving through a magnetic field make a circular orbit around the field lines. (If the field is uniform and the velocity is perpendicular to the field anyway. That’s the simplest case, so let’s run with it.) A proton will also gyrate around the field line (albeit in the other direction thanks to its opposite charge), but with a much larger radius. Two thousand times larger, in fact.

So you or I, who have only a small number of extra electrons or protons, barely have any physical response to magnetic fields at all. In fact, if you or I had one extra eletron for every 10 billion in our bodies and walked along at a 1 m/s stroll (about 2 miles/hr), the force of Earth’s magnetic field on one of us would be about 100,000 times weaker than the air pressure from walking.

The conclusion here is that most macroscopic matter (that is, stuff you can see, starting from dinner and yourself up to and including planets and stars) are basically invisible to magnetic fields and do no react to them. Humans are not magnetic creatures. Intuitively, this is kind of obvious, I think. Humans invented the compass precisely because we aren’t magnetic and we need help finding magnetic north.

Given all of this, how effective would you expect magnetic fields to be at curing diseases? Or causing cancers?

Not very.

¹ — In the interest of full disclosure, the hydrogen atom doesn’t behave exactly as if there were no charges. The energies that the electron can have as it “orbits” the proton are changed, for example. But that’s a minor effect and one that we can reasonably ignore. It certainly doesn’t alter the atom’s bulk movements, for example.

I’m adding this one because I just heard it on the radio yesterday. You actually hear this sort of thing a lot, but what really disturbed me was that I heard this argument on NPR during All Things Considered.

What is “Argument by Innuendo”? It’s an argument made by vaguely referencing some perceived lack of reliability in someone or some group. It’s generally not stated outright, probably because that might tip you off.

Here’s an example: the speaker on NPR, arguing for why the federal government shouldn’t regulate something (never mind what) said that they shouldn’t, “because they’re politicians”. This isn’t an argument for not doing something. What about politicians make them unsuited to regulate? There may, in fact, be reasons and those reasons may make a valid (or even convincing) argument. But that’s not presented. We’re just to assume that our prejudices against politicians make them unsuitable to regulate this.

What makes this argument particularly nasty is that it plays on prejudices most of us have. Most of us don’t trust politicians. Or lawyers. Or (insert political party here). And, of course, it doesn’t outright state the prejudice, so we can each fill in our own personal interpretation. It therefore goes with the grain of our views and subtly wins us over without every making a case. Do not be fooled!

One of the most common examples of baloney is the conspiracy theory. A conspiracy theory is a claim that someone or some group of people is trying to effect change, hide the truth, or spread a falsehood, usually maliciously. (The latter point may seem silly, but there are all kinds of benevolent reasons to hide the truth from people, starting with birthday surprises.)

The trouble here is that conspiracies do happen. They happen all the time, in fact. History is full of examples: Caesar’s assassination. The Pazzi Conspiracy (to assassinate the Medici brothers). Guy Fawkes. The conspiracy that put Jane Grey on the throne of England for about nine days. There are scores more. If you read about the reign of almost any king or queen you care to name (certainly before the modern era) and you’ll find that no matter how popular and how capable they were, there were conspiracies against them or their governments.

But here’s the key thing about this abundance of conspiracies: you’ve probably never heard of more than a few of them. Why is that so important? You’ve never heard of most of them because they didn’t succeed. In quick (admittedly not scientific) look at conspiracies and history suggests that the vast majority of conspiracies fail. Often, they fail before the conspirators have a chance even to try their plan.

Why do conspiracies generally fail? Because most conspiracies are a built on two demands: secrecy and resources. Conspiracies, by their natures, are clandestine. In order to work, they almost always are required to surprise their targets. This is because the target is usually someone in a position of greater power, necessitating surprise to level the field.

Unfortunately, conspiracies also need resources. Resources range from time to plan and make arrangements to materials, to people in the right places to make things happen. And here’s where the intrinsic tension in conspiracies comes in. All of these resources are at odds with the secrecy requirement. Gathering materials draws notice. The more people you involve, the more likely someone will leak the information. And the more time the secret is kept, the more chances there are for leaks or discoveries. So every conspiracy has to balance its need for surprise against its need for resources. Getting the balance right (and since each situation is unique, it has its own balance) is difficult. Most conspiracies either fail to gather enough resources to succeed or are found out before they can move effectively.

OK, so most conspiracies fail. But they don’t all fail, right? Sure. But when you hear about a supposed conspiracy, ask yourself a few question:

Is it likely that the would-be conspirators have the resources to pull this off?

Can the secret be kept for as long as is claimed?

Most conspiracy theories that have gained traction claim conspiracies lasting decades.

Are the people who would be able to check on the conspiracy and have the motive to do so the ones claiming that the conspiracy exists?

Conspiracy theorists often overlook that the people with the most to gain from exposing the conspiracy (and are most able to expose it) are not doing so. If the US never landed on the Moon, why didn’t the Russians or the Chinese point it out?

Is it likely that no one on the inside is talking?

Tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of people were involved in the Apollo missions, many of whom would have known if the missions were fake. What are the chances that none of them has spoken out? Bear in mind that the United States can’t even keep its nuclear secrets (under higher security than NASA musters) secret for very long.

So while conspiracies happen, if someone tells you that one is happening and succeeding, that’s a warning flag and it’s time to ask more questions. (more…)

I’m sure we’re all aware that one fairly common form of logical fallacy is the argument from authority. In this fallacy, it is assumed that because some person in authority says something, that thing must be true. We’ve all encountered this in it’s obvious form, especially as children. (“My dad says….”) But there are more subtle ways to exercise this technique without giving it away. Some of these are even legitimate things to do. Use of a title is one such example.

By “use of title” I mean titles like “Doctor” or “Professor”. Titles that carry weight with most people, titles that make you suspect that the person at least has some experience or a clue as to what they’re talking about. (Of course, many would argue that this just means that the general public hasn’t met enough PhDs to realize that we don’t have the faintest notion most of the time.) It’s fair to be proud of these titles. They take a lot of work and at least some talent to earn, after all. But they can also be abused. I’m actually a little bit guilty of this myself: when I’m writing annoyed letters to customer support, I’ll usually select “Dr” just in case that gives my complaints more weight. (Forgive me?)

More pernicious is when people use “Dr.” or “PhD” to introduce themselves before selling you on an idea or, worse still, a product. I first noticed this pattern when reading a book on health that I’ll discuss later. One thing that immediately concerned me was that the author’s name on the cover read, “XXXX XXXXXXX, PhD”. I hadn’t really thought about including the “PhD” before then. I realized suddenly that what bothered me was the fact that usually people don’t include the title in such works. For a popular work, it doesn’t really matter if the author has a doctorate or not, just that they know enough to explain the material clearly. For scholarly work, it’s pretty much assumed that the author has an advanced degree. So really, any time I see “Dr” or “PhD” right in the by-line, I start to wonder why the author is touting that.

If you’re inclined to delve further, check what the degree or title actually applies to. It’s pretty common for people to point to their PhD and try to stay quiet about what it’s in. But if you think about, a PhD in Astrophysics (say) is not really any more qualified to make medical claims than a car mechanic or a grocery clerk. So it is quite important to know what the degree is in. (Or what kind of professor someone is. Or what field of medicine an MD specializes in, even.)

Of course, it’s true that an advanced degree in the relevant discipline (or being a professor in the field, or a doctor of that specialty, or whatever) means you probably should give at least some extra attention to what the person is saying. They’ve most likely learned more about the topic than you have, after all, thanks to years of dedicated study. But that doesn’t carry over to other fields. Titles like “doctor”, “professor”, or “PhD” indicate a high degree of specialization in a topic and it’s exactly this that means that we need to ensure that the specialty matches the claims.

In the end, titles are dangerous and you’re probably better regarding people who use theirs with caution, at least until you can verify that it’s the right title for the claim. And remember, when dealing with factual claims, there are no authorities, only experts. And experts, even in their own discipline, are wrong every day.

It’s worth thinking about what a Baloney Detector (BD) is and what it isn’t before really getting started.

One thing it is not is fool-proof. While your BD can tell you to worry or even to turn down an offer, it’s not the same as knowing something isn’t right. To really determine if an idea is correct (at least to current evidence), you need to fully research the idea and data pertaining to it. This is a time-consuming processes, however. Often, life doesn’t give us the chance to do do this before making a decision. Even when we do get that kind of time, we have to pick and chose what we research. Hence the BD.

A BD tells you to ask more questions. To be wary of claim. In a pinch, it may warn you say “No.” However, just because your BD doesn’t detect anything fishy, it doesn’t follow that nothing is wrong. A clever shyster can evade any set of rules you use to catch them, so don’t get overconfident.

In many ways, a BD is like a wrist-watch. Sure, there are clocks that keep more accurate time and there are clocks with many more features (like weather indicators). But a watch has a singular redeeming feature: it can go everywhere with you and is there when you need it. Your BD is the same way: it’s not as good as peer-reviewed research or being an expert in the field, but it is portable and easy to use with a variety of topics.

First of all, welcome to Build Your Own Baloney Detector. I hope you find this blog interesting, useful, or at least entertaining. I’ll try to make it all three, although I cannot make promises on the latter.

Of course, you’re probably wondering what this blog is all about. I’ll tell you. In A Demon Haunted World, Carl Sagan talked about a “baloney detector kit” as a set of tools to figure out when something isn’t on the level. This could be because someone is lying to us or that they’re just confused themselves. It doesn’t matter, many of the tools carry over, regardless of whether the source means to mislead us.

That’s what this blog is about: tools you can use to at least begin to determine when you should be extra critical. (Sure, we should question everything, all the time. But practically speaking, that doesn’t work well. And it tends to offend friends and family when we ask for confirmation that they had tuna for lunch. Man, that’s a dinner conversation I’m glad I don’t have to repeat!)

There are a few types of posts I expect to be making:

• Flags — Flags are warnings that something may be amiss. They’re not proof, they’re just little things that should cause concern.
• Questions to Ask — Questions we can ask, either of others or of ourselves, to help us determine if a given idea is reasonable.
• Examples — Examples of skepticism at work. I suspect many of these will be drawn from my own life, but I welcome hearing about your experiences.
• Building Blocks — Some basic facts, figures, and science that may help you evaluate ideas you encounter.

Apart from that, we’ll have to see how this beast evolves. I may not have enough material to keep this up for a long time, but as long as I do, I hope you keep coming back.