Background of the Marcoule Site:

The Marcoule site is a large industrial site that conducts activities related to nuclear technology and nuclear energy. It was first setup to produce and process materials for the French nuclear weapons program in the 1950’s. The last French reactors dedicated to plutonium production for weapons were shut down in the 1980’s and activities related to refining and processing weapons materials at Marcoule ceased in 1997.

Beginning in the 1970’s, the Marcoule site has shifted from weapons-related activities to nuclear energy and nuclear materials-related activities in support of the French nuclear energy program. This includes research and development of nuclear energy systems, fuel fabrication and materials processing, remediation and disposal. In 1995, a MOX fuel fabrication plant opened at Marcoule, making the site an integral part of France’s nuclear fuel reprocessing program.

Activities at the site also include such things as the remediation and recycling of low level materials from nuclear reactors, processing of medical radiological waste and the fabrication of components and materials for nuclear systems.   Marcoule is the primary site in France for receiving materials from decommissioned nuclear reactors.

There are currently no active nuclear reactors on the site, although it has hosted some nuclear reactors in years past.   The site has three inactive UNGG reactors, which were built starting in 1955.   The last of these reactors was shut down in 1984.   These reactors are gas cooled, graphite moderated reactors, similar in principle to the British Magnox reactors, though developed entirely separately.  Like early Magnox reactors, the UNGG reactors did produce electricity, but were primarily built to breed weapons-grade plutonium.  The site is also the home of the Phénix reactor, an experimental fast-spectrum sodium cooled reactor which was operated from 1968 until 2009. Phénix is now in cold shutdown and is expected to be fully decommissioned in the near future.

As an industrial nuclear site which now functions largely for civilian purposes, but which was originally built for weapons material, the Marcoule site may be considered analogous to the Savannah River or Hanford Site in the United States or to the Sellafield site in the UK.

Information On the Explosion:

An explosion and subsequent fire were reported to have occurred at one of the facilities located at the Marcoule Site at a part of the complex operated by Centraco. The facility which experienced the explosion does not deal with high level waste, nuclear fuel or any highly radioactive material. Rather, it is a facility for the recycling of metal components from nuclear facilities. These components may have very minor surface-level radioactivity as a result of exposure to reactor coolant loops or indirect contact with radioactive materials.

While these materials are not hazardous, regulations generally require that they be processed in nuclear licensed facilities and treated as radioactive waste until they are entirely remediated to within very tight standards. Recycling of the metals used is common practice both to avoid having to pay for disposal and to recover highly valuable materials used in the construction of these components. The alloys used typically use large quantities of nickle and may also contain copper, zirconium and other valuable materials.

This furnace may also have been used to burn flammable radiological waste, such as gloves and coveralls. This is a common practice to reduce the volume of waste. All ash and particulates are carefully screened to avoid releases into the local environment. However, based on available reports, it seems that the furnace was being used for recovery of metal at the incident occurred.

Reports are that a foundry furnace at the site exploded and caused a fire which was relatively quickly contained. At this point, it’s not entirely clear what the nature of the explosion was (IE, whether it was a true explosion or just that the furnace had burst into flames). No abnormal amounts of radiation were detected and no workers were contaminated.

One worker was killed by the explosion. Reports are that a “carbonized” body was found, indicating that this was likely a very high temperature explosion. Four other workers were hospitalized. It is unknown what their condition is.

The Cause of the Explosion:

What caused the explosion remains entirely unknown. Historically the most common cause of such events is human error. A foundry furnace can malfunction and explode if it is operated improperly, such as overloading it with material, improperly ventilating the exhaust or operating it beyond its temperature limits. It is also possible that the explosion was caused by a mechanical failure, such as a faulty gas valve or an access hatch that came open.

There will be an investigation and eventually the cause will be known. Of course, if it turns out that any parties are negligent or did not follow proper regulations thus causing the explosion then they should be held accountable either civilly or criminally, depending on the circumstances. Once the cause is established it will also be possible to take steps to prevent such an accident from happening again.

Of course, the loss of any life is regrettable, especially in an industry as safety-conscious as nuclear energy. Our thoughts are with the family of the deceased and with the injured workers, who I am sure, all readers will wish the best to for a speedy recovery.

However, this was not a nuclear accident and it has nothing to do with nuclear energy other than the fact that the foundry in question was processing materials associated with the nuclear industry.

And while the world was obsessing over this…

A petroleum pipeline in Kenya exploded killing at least 75 and injuring an unknown number of others. But nobody gives a flying ‘eff about that.

I happened to have the opportunity to go to attend the taping of a portion of this program. It’s actually a bit of a long story but they needed 12 men to participate in a psychic evaluation. I volunteered but it turned out they had more than 12 as it was (additional persons were called in case someone could not make it.) Thus I became an “alternate” and ultimately was not used for their evaluation group.

However, I still did get to hang around and help out a bit in the psychic evaluation, which was done by the James Randi Educational Foundation as part of their Million Dollar Challenge. Several self-proclaimed psychics were tested to see if they could read the test subjects accurately. I can’t actually tell you if any won the million dollars. You will have to watch to find out.

I’m really looking forward to seeing this show. Although it’s hard to tell what it will be after it is finally edited, the producers and reporters were generally very friendly to the skeptical side of the story. It’s a rarity to have skeptic organizations made a part of any media report on the paranormal and when they are, they usually are only given a chance for a token comment. In this case, skeptics were a major part of the production and the producers were extremely accommodating of the JREF’s protocol to assure the tests were valid and properly controlled.

I feel very privileged to have been a part of this production.  You *might* even see me in the background when the psychics are being lead into their interviews.  I don’t know if the footage with me in the background is actually going to be used.

The show will be airing at 10 PM Eastern, 9 Central in the US.

Check local listings outside these time zones.  If you are outside the US, the episode will likely be available after it airs.

Finally, for what it’s worth, if anyone happens to come out and claim the psychic tests were rigged, then all I can say is that I’ll attest to the fact that they were not.   Documentation of this can be provided, of course, but I’ll also say that I was there, I saw the items being places in envelopes and the sequestering of the test subjects.   Everything was double and triple checked, agreed upon protocols were followed to the T.

There is a segment of the show where a psychic works with pictures of persons in sealed envelopes.   Each picture was placed in two folders and then in the envelope.   *I* personally put them in the envelopes.  This was witnessed and verified by an ABC news producer, production assistants and members of the JREF staff.   They were then sealed and placed in a secure area until they were used.   This is how the challenge is always done:  extreme measures are taken to make sure it’s unquestionably valid.

And I’d really like to post about it, but I have work piled up, since I took a whole week off, and because I also didn’t get back until very early this morning and I really need some sleep.

In the meantime, I’d like to thank everyone from the James Randi Educational foundation for all the work that went into the Amazing Meeting 9 and all the speakers and presenters who contributed to it.

Sorry for the lack of posts for the past week. They will resume soon.

Watson was at a hotel for some conference she spoke at.  She stayed out late, going to the bar or whatever.  Then, at 4 AM she went back to her room, taking an elevator.   Some guy from the conference was on the elevator.   He tried to strike up a conversation.  He said he found her interesting and suggested she might want to come back to her room for a cup of coffee.  She declined.   They exited the elevator and that was that.

Now according to Watson this made her very uncomfortable.  It was an elevator, which is the quintessential (if not factually supported) place for rape to occur.  She was a woman and he a man and our society is one in which women are most often the victim of sexual assault and men most often the aggressors.   It was forward and the act of inviting a woman back to your room in a hotel has some obvious undertones (even if it didn’t necessarily mean anything other than he actually wanted to have some coffee.)

Richard Dawkins took Watson to task on this with some rather sarcastic comments which seem to be intended to point out that she really wasn’t a victim of anything and in a world where women are having their genitals cut in Africa, can’t drive cars in much of the Middle East, are sold into slavery in the Middle East and Southeast Asia and where many places still operate in a near-feudal manner, Watson is not really in that bad of shape and should just get over the fact that someone asked her an awkward question in an elevator, which probably was not the best venue.

What followed was a lot of really far-out feminists coming to Watson’s defense and attacking Dawkins.  They said he didn’t understand because he was a heterosexual Caucasian male from a privilege background, while Watson is a … heterosexual Caucasian female from a privilege background.   They repeatedly said how men “Just don’t get it” – that women live in a world of terror where every guy they encounter is a potential rapist and where the very act of making a social invitation means they must fear that you are planning on assaulting them.   Some either didn’t get Dawkin’s sarcasm and disgust for the culture of victim-hood that has permeated western society or thought he was somehow putting down women who actually do suffer horrible acts of violence by asking those who were asked to coffee to grow some thicker skin.

Of course, I’m a man so I can’t ever understand this.  Somehow others can know what I can understand but I can’t understand what they can.   Somehow they know what my background is and my life experiences but I don’t know there experiences.   And also, apparently every woman knows “what it’s like to be a woman” because there is only one single experience of being a woman, it’s not like, they are all different or anything, or like there is no one ‘anywoman’ who can tell you what the experience is for all XX chromosome members of humanity.

Oh and if you see a paradox here, that just proves you’re already a bigot and a rapist.

But before going into this any further, there’s a question nobody seems to have asked:  DO RAPES ACTUALLY HAPPEN IN HOTEL ELEVATORS?

Sure, they have happened.  In the history of human race and the billions of hotel stays that have been made, they have happened.   But lets get something straight:  people have also been struck by meteors on at least two occasions.

As Wattson suggested, if you Google “Hotel Elevator Assault,” you will find plenty of pages, but then take a closer look.  Many of them are about how to avoid it, some of them are about her and others simply have all three words together in the same page, such as “Kobe’s accuser said after the assault, she went to the hotel elevator” or “The alleged attacker was seen on a security camera exiting the elevator on the 11th floor.”

But what about actual occurrences of women being raped or assaulted in hotel elevators.   Is it common?   Sure, it’s commonly feared.   People fear dying because of nuclear power plant accidents too.  People fear having their throat slit by an intruder in their bed at night.   Yet these are pretty small risks.

Sexual assault: fears versus reality

While sexual assaults are some of the most common crimes to occur, the vast majority do not fit the popular image that most worry about.   Being raped out of the blue by a stranger in a public location with little or no previous contact is one of the rarest types of sexual assault.   An even rarer type of sexual assault is home-invasion sexual assault.   Yet these are the types of assaults most prominent and which people tend to worry about most.   The fear of a masked stranger breaking into one’s home and assaulting them in their bed is common.  Yet such events are amongst the least common crimes.

At least 75% of sexual assaults are perpetrated by a person known to the victim.  Often a former intimate partner, friend or acquaintance and occasionally a family member.   Even when the victim does not have a previous relationship with the perpetrator, most rapes assaults still involve some level of voluntary contact or interaction prior to the assault.  Many are so-called “date rape” assaults.  Others involve the victim engaging in some level of intimate contact consensually but then having the perpetrator continue past clearly stated boundaries or becoming forceful when the victim attempts to stop the encounter.  In other cases, the rape is defined as being “alcohol-related,” where the victim has become too intoxicated to provide consent or resist.

Why a hotel elevator is a very unlikely place for a sexual assault to occur:

1. All modern hotel elevators have security cameras and intercoms.   At hotels, it is routine for cameras to be monitored by security.   If an assault were to happen, it is very likely that someone would come to the aid of the person being assaulted quickly.   Even if they did not, the presence of cameras has a very strong deterrent effect.
2. An elevator really does not provide much opportunity to keep a person captive.  The average elevator ride is less than a minute long.   Elevator doors can open at any time should the elevator be summoned by someone on a floor it is passing.   There is no control over who greets the elevator.  For an assailant it’s impossible to know if the elevator door is about the open to a group of security guards or to be summoned by a group of off duty police officers headed down to a law enforcement convention.
3. The stop switch cannot be used to stop an elevator and hold it indefinitely – this is a matter of some level of urban mythology.    In most elevator designs, it is impossible for a rider to suddenly stop the elevator between floors and hold it in the location, thus entrapping a passenger.  Most newer elevators have “keyed” stop switches – the switch cannot be operated by a rider in the elevator unless they have a key.On nearly all elevators, the stop switch activates an alarm, which, in a location like a hotel, would alert security to the incident in the elevator.

   On some elevators the stop switch has been reprogrammed such that it does not simply cause the elevator to stop, but rather will stop the elevator from ascending and cause it to stop on the nearest floor.   On others, it causes the elevator to stop and return to the ground floor in an unpowered descent.   This is a safety feature which is employed by elevators to allow passengers to exit in the event of a power failure.   The elevator will reach the ground floor by gravity alone.Even in circumstances where the stop button does cause the elevator to stop between floors, it’s not indefinite.  The elevator can always be restarted by hitting any other button. Actual examples of the elevator stop switch being activated.

4. Escaping an elevator is not difficult.   It will stop at a floor, usually within less than a minute and making it stop sooner can be done by hitting other floor buttons.   On some elevators, the “door open” button causes it to stop at whatever floor it is closest to.
5. Escaping a hotel after committing an assault is nearly impossible, especially if the assault is somewhere like an elevator, where exiting requires leaving the victim (potentially screaming for help) in an uncontrolled and public area to exit either through the hotel lobby or through guest floors.   Avoiding capture is even less likely for those staying at the hotel, who would have had their identity recorded.

Rape is a crime of violence.  It’s also a crime of control.  It requires  a place where the assailant can take control of the victim and have some level of comfort, knowing that the act will not be interrupted.   Many such assaults take place in residences.  Others take place in vehicles.   Both of these places provide the setting necessary to gain and maintain control.

A hotel elevator does not and therefore is a very unlikely location for a sexual assault.

Rape in elevators:
Elevators are not a very common place for sexual assaults, but they certainly do happen, although this is usually limited to elevators serving certain types of locations.

There are cases of women being raped in elevators or followed by men out of an elevator and then quickly raped, but very very few happened at a place like a hotel, which is generally continuously inhabited and not secluded. The vast majority happened at elevators that are relatively isolated at times when there would not be many people around. These include such places as parking garages and subway stations at night. Others have occurred at apartment complexes, where there were few using elevators or walking around at night, in the early morning or during working hours.

Other cases of elevators being used as locations for rape or sexual assault involve elevators that are not generally open to the public. Workplace assaults have occurred in service elevators or elevators cabs that are out of service and sitting idle in the subbasement of buildings. Cleaning crews or late night workers have been assaulted in elevators at office buildings after hours, when few were around and the elevators were not being used or monitored.

Hotel elevators and other busy public elevators have been the location where other crimes were purported. They are a popular location for pickpockets. Muggings and robberies on elevators are also known to happen. They are usually very fast. The assailant pulls a knife or other weapon on a person in the elevator and runs away with their wallet or jewelry as soon as the door opens, often fleeing out of the hotel lobby.

Bonafied Incidents of Women Being Sexually Assaulted in Hotel Elevators:
Confirmed cases in which a woman was actually assaulted, raped or attempted to be raped in the elevator of a hotel by a stranger.  I was unable to find any statistics that listed this as a location where rapes commonly occurred, so I had to resort to searching legal documents and news sources to try to find every example I could of rapes and sexual assaults in hotel elevators.    After three days I couldn’t track down very many!

1976 – A woman was stabbed and sexually assaulted by a man at the Marc Plaza in Milwaukee. She first encountered her assailant on an elevator she had taken from the hotel’s parking garage. The actual assault did not take place on the elevator, but rather, happened after the man followed her out from the elevator.

1977 – An airline stewardess was raped in the elevator of a Boston hotel.

1981 – A group of three men assaulted a deaf-mute woman in a hotel elevator in Toronto.

1983 – A woman was raped after being dragged off an elevator in a Louisiana hotel by three men.

1984 – A woman was forcibly abducted by four men who accosted her in an elevator at an Atlantic city hotel and dragged her to one of the rooms in the hotel where she was raped. She escaped after four hours.

1987 – A 14 year old girl was “molested” in a Virginia Beach hotel elevator. No further details available.

1988 – An actress was assaulted in a Texas hotel. The assailant pulled down the front of her evening dress and tried to further sexually assault her, but the door opened and hotel guests came to her aid, restraining the man until police arrived.

1989 – In a highly publicized incident, a Chicago man robbed and raped a woman in the elevator of the Hilton by pulling a handgun on her and stopping the elevator between floors. Most elevators will not stop in this manner and if they do, hitting a button will get them to move again. However, he was able to stop her from doing anything because he was armed with a gun. The same man had attacked two other Chicago women. Of the three women he attacked, only one was raped in the elevator. Likely because of the limits of most elevators to be held in place, the perpetrator raped another woman in a vacant room, while another of his victims was only robbed but not sexually assaulted.

1995 - A man was arrested for attempting to rape a woman in a hotel elevator in Lake Tahoe, although she managed to get away.

2005 - A woman staying at the Omni Hotel in Washington DC was assaulted by a man she had met at the hotel’s bar. Part of the assault occurred in an elevator, although the elevator was not where the assault began. The man assaulted and wrestled the woman on the ground floor of the hotel near the elevator area. He then pushed her into one of the elevators when the door opened. The hotel normally had three guards on duty in the lobby area and monitoring cameras which would have prevented the incident from happening. The victim thus successfully sued the hotel for negligence as they did not have their full security detail available on the night of the incident.

2006 – A Florida man attempted to sexually assault a 12 year old girl in a hotel elevator, but she got away. He was captured shortly thereafter.

2011 – A guest of the Pittsburgh Airport Hyatt was assaulted and stabbed in an elevator. It appears that the perpetrator had intended to sexually assault her, but she got away and received only non-life-threatening wounds.

That is twelve cases of women being assaulted on elevators at hotels, in a period of almost 40 years.  Many of these cases the victim managed to get away or the assault didn’t get very far. Granted, it’s possible that there could be others I did not find, and most of the sources I could find were English-language, so that limits the area in question. Still, it this clearly is not something that happens every week or even every year.

Perhaps just as importantly, not a single example can be found which actually fits the MO and circumstances of the situation Rebecca found herself and the fears expressed – that an attack would actually happen, that this would happen in the elevator, that the attacker would managed to successfully restrain or assault the victim and that this would all happen with a single attacker, but after some kind of initial approach that did not involve violence, such as trying to flirt with the victim and being declined.

One might counter by saying that even an attempted but failed attack would be a horrible and traumatic experience, and while that’s true, the actual chances of it happening are still extremely remote.  By comparison, in the United States alone, more than 1,300 individuals lost their lives due to lightning strikes between 1980 and 1995 and tens of thousands more were severely injured by lightning.

To put the rarity of this in greater context, examples of “Man Bites Dog” since the year 2000:

2000 – A San Fransisco man apparently bit his dog, calming it was a form of discipline.  He faced charges for cruelty to animals.

2001 – A drunken man was arrested for biting a dog in Florida.

2002 – A Long Island man defended his small dog when it was attacked by a pitbull by biting the pitbull.

2003 - A 33 year old man in Syracuse New York faces charges related to biting a dog.

2004 - A man assaulted a police officer.  When the officer’s K9 partner joined the fight, he bit the dog’s ear.

2004 – A Florida  man was jailed for biting his Jack Russel Terrier as a form of punishment.

2005 – For reasons not entirely understood, a partially blind man bit his guide dog and was arrested for cruelty to animals.

2007 - A Wellington NZ man attempted to evade capture after robbing a store by biting a police dog.

2007 – An Indian man who was upset with a stray dog that had been attacking his ducks chased down and bit the dog.

2009 - An Australian man’s small dog was attacked by a much larger dog.  He came to his dog’s aid and defended it by biting the other dog.

2009 - A UK man was bitten by a dog.  He bit back.

2010 – A West Haven CT man attempted to assault a police officer and in the process bit a police dog.

2011 - An Arizona man attempted to escape from police.  A police dog took him down, but he bit the dog back.

I should add, I did not spend nearly as much time tracking down stories of men biting dogs.  I did, however, have to limit myself to the years 2000-2011, because there were just too damn many of them to list otherwise!

So, in conclusion, if you want something to worry about, don’t bother worrying about being raped in a hotel elevator – worry that your dog might be bitten by a man.  It’s a far more common occurrence!

In the end, it’s just not a very reasonable risk and women should not panic if they are asked to coffee on an elevator.  It might be a dumb place to ask a woman for coffee, because it would somewhat put her on the spot (but how many of us haven’t asked something dumb at least once).   Still, being flirted with on a hotel elevator should not cause a feeling of terror.

It’s a little sad that a self-described skeptic would have such irrational fears and such a victim complex.

One nitpick: Phil can’t actually shoot rays of energy out of his eyes. If he could, I’m pretty sure I would have been zapped by now.

Health Fascism in Australia.

The sinister Skeptics group, agents of what used to be CSICOP now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) organised from the US and linked to the major corporate lobby groups, American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) and American Council Against Health Fraud (ACAHF), which is in turn linked to the Australian CAHF) are making ground in Australia. Supported by authoritarian ideological influences in government and Big Pharma, the Skeptics are running constant attacks on homeopathy, natural cancer treatments, those who question vaccination and those who support any form of alternative medicine.

With the present world fiscal crisis, all those linked to Big Pharma and Science are fighting a bitter battle to preserve drug company competitiveness. But where fascist influences in government and health with most force come together is in attacking anyone who speaks out about freedom of choice and expression in relation to vaccination.

Over the last year the international corporate lobby Skeptics, have been behind a campaign against the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN). In 2009, one of their trolls, a lay person with no standing in medicine or government complained about the web site of the AVN to the office of the State Government funded Health Care Complaints commission (HCCC) an organisation that accepts complaints against groups found be giving out false information about health.

The remit of the HCCC, did not actually cover parent groups which discussed the pros and cons of vaccination, so the State government slightly changed the remit to satisfy the Skeptics. The government then proceeded with a year long investigation into Meryl Dorey the woman who established and runs the AVN and the AVN itself.

Dorey was asked to answer their first 30 odd page report against her and the organisation, within a few weeks. She did this with a magnificent document that argued every point with brilliance. The complaint investigation actually argued against almost every sentence that had appeared on the AVN web site. If the AVN had said that vaccines contained toxic elements, such as mecury and aluminuim the HCCC argued with pseudo science that this was not true, giving pages of bogus evidence to support the vaccine manufacturers.

Oh how very sinister!

One small correction involving the post is that those who have done such good work exposing and shaming the AVN are not actually connected with the Committee For Skeptical Inquiry. As CSI stated on their Facebook page, ” Sorry, but we can’t take any of the credit for the good work being done by the Skeptics in Australia.” Of course, there’s a lot of cross-membership in skeptical organizations and CSI certainly is a general friend and supporter of the work done by the Australian Skeptics, even if they don’t get the credit for specifically helping out in this circumstance.

As for the Australian Skeptics themselves, I’ve met most of the leaders of the group and, well, they didn’t seem that sinister. Richard Saunders is one of the best known faces of skepticism in Australia. He was the president of the organization for some time and i currently the vice president. He also brought a lot of Timtams to TAM last week and was nice enough to share them with everyone. That… sure didn’t seem so sinister. Another well known Australian Skeptic, who was at TAM is Dr. Rachael Dunlop. In addition to being a real doctor, Dr. Dunlop didn’t seem even the slightest bit sinister, although she did have plenty to say about the AVN.

It’s quite amazing that a movement which is generally run by lay persons and has a playboy playmate as its single most public figure would be so critical of lay persons being involved in activism. Like many skeptic organizations, the Australian Skeptics have members in a broad range of fields. Some are fully qualified medical doctors, while others are educators, research scientists or just lay people who have an interest in promoting science and skepticism.  If you are looking for medical information from writers who are both doctors and skeptics, check out science based medicine.

When it comes to evaluating medical claims and determining what measures a person should take to maintain good health, medical doctors are the people who have the expertise necessary. Medical advice should always come from a qualified doctor and I doubt anyone in the skeptic movement would dispute that. Yet when taking on the liars of a group like the AVN, we cannot expect the medical community to stand alone in defense of good science and medicine. Groups like the AVN must be countered in the media, the classroom and in local communities.

Above all else, it should be remembered that when people believe the lies of the AVN, people suffer the effects of preventable illness and some die. That makes this issue not only a medical one, but also an ethical one. The suffering of a fellow human being due to the lies told by a group like the AVN is everyone’s business, doctor or not.

Groups like the Health Care Complaints Commission in Australia and other similar regulatory agencies around the world exist to protect citizens from fraud and harm caused by unscrupulous or unqualified parties in the medical field. All citizens have the right to alert their local authorities when they have good reason to believe that standards are being violated or patients are being harmed.

In the end, I’m left to asking where the “fascism” is that they seem to insist the skeptics are all gunning for. As a big supporter of the efforts against the AVN myself, I would like to make it clear that I have never stated that I want medical decisions to be taken away from individuals or for treatments to be forced on anyone. What most in the skeptic movement want more than anything else is for people in general to make the correct decisions based on real scientific evidence. That is why we go after groups like the AVN. The goal is to expose these groups for what they are, to counter their lies with solid science and to let their reputation take the beating it so deserves. As these groups paint themselves as crusaders for good health, we must show that this is a lie.

The AVN’s ability to cause harm exists only as long as there are people who are ignorant enough of the facts and of the AVN’s reputation to be suckered in. Seeing their carefully cultivated image of honesty and benign concern for the health of children being destroyed is what scares the AVN and groups like it more than anything else.

Check it out here

]]> http://depletedcranium.com/tam-8-links-from-gess/feed/ 0 http://depletedcranium.com/the-little-dude-from-the-moon-at-tam-8/ http://depletedcranium.com/the-little-dude-from-the-moon-at-tam-8/#comments Fri, 16 Jul 2010 19:21:52 +0000 drbuzz0 http://depletedcranium.com/?p=7450 Having returned from Las Vegas and The Amazing Meeting, an annual conference on skepticism hosted by the James Randi Educational Foundaton, I’ve been very eager to start posting about my experiences at the meeting.   Unfortunately, I’ve been fairly busy, as apparently going to Las Vegas for a week tends to result in a lot of work piling up.   In general, the meeting was attended by mainstream skeptics, who may not agree on everything but tended to agree on well proven things, like the fact that the US Apollo program did indeed send men to the moon and back.

This was not quite 100%, however, as at least one conspiracy-obsessed heckler did attend, and attempted repeatedly to heckle Phil Plait and Adam Savage.   Jarrah White is about as committed to the belief that the Apollo moon landings were faked as one can be.   He’s already produced (at last count) 393 Youtube videos on the subject – all of them absolutely stunning in their lack of technical and scientific knowledge.

I recognized White’s voice from the videos as soon as he got up to question Adam Savage. That snooty, nasal, sharp whine with an Australian accent was hard not to recognize, especially as I’ve seen plenty of his videos before. Apparently he came all the way from Australia to try to get up in the face of those who he considers the conspirators behind the faked moon landing

His behavior was about as strange as one might expect. I was concerned initially that he might try to rush the stage or do something else completely crazy – after all, Apollo conspiracy theorists have been known to physically threaten astronauts and do all manner of other crazy things. I alerted the staff and security to his background to be on the safe side, but luckily he didn’t try anything too violent.

Instead, he repeatedly insisted that he get a sit-down interview with Phil Plait. Phil was quite civil, and informed him that to get scheduled interview time he would need to register as press. The Amazing Meeting does not have very exclusive standards for who is given press status – bloggers and podcasters can easily get it. When he was asked for his information on this topic, he repeatedly made a scene about not wanting to reveal his background. I’m not sure how things worked out, but eventually he got a press pass and thus could get his interview. Unfortunately for him, Phil Plait decided to decline the request. After rudely interrupting Phil, who was trying to converse with others at the conference, the Little Dude from the Moon finally started yelling at Phil that he thought his answers were dishonest and he was a liar. Phil said something about how he didn’t believe he could say anything that would change the Little Dude’s mind and that if the Little Dude felt that way, he was not interested in sitting down for an interview.

I’m just glad that no punches were thrown. As he came from Australia, it seemed a reasonable concern that he would not want to make such a trip without getting in at least one dramatic moment or big confrontation. I did challenge him openly to a debate. He never responded to this. Surprised? In fact, I only saw him around on the first day of the three-day event. No word on whether he left early or went into hiding or what.
He has also already posted at least one video from the event:

Debunking his ridiculous claim:

There are several intentionally-placed laser reflectors on the surface of the moon. The US Apollo program left laser reflectors at the sites of Apollo-11, Apollo-14 and Apollo-15. The Apollo-15 reflector is the largest, with almost twice the surface area of those placed by Apollo-11 and Apollo-14. The Soviet Lunokhod-1 and Lunokhod-2 lunar lander also carried similar, although smaller laser reflectors.

But are these required to get a laser beam return from the moon?
Technically the answer is no. With a powerful enough laser and a sensitive and large enough telescope, it is possible, though extremely difficult, to detect the photons from a laser being reflected back from the moon. The surface of the moon is not exactly super-reflective, but it’s also not a perfect absorber of photons.  However, the reflectors still provide a much stronger return than the surface of the moon ever would.

Several attempts were made to detect laser light reflected off the moon in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. In 1962, a team at MIT finally managed to detect photons reflected off the moon by a laser. The laser they used was a pulsed ruby system, aimed through a twelve inch telescope. By the standards of the day, this was a very powerful laser. In order to detect the return, a 48 inch telescope was coupled to an array of photomultiplier tubes, cooled in liquid nitrogen to increase their sensitivity. Not long after this, the Soviet Union conducted a series of similar experiments with pulsed lasers and telescopes.

While these experiments were considered successful, the return signal was only barely detectable. A more successful method of bouncing signals off the moon had been done using modified radar equipment. In the 1940’s and 1950’s, microwave transmitters powerful enough to send a signal to the moon and detect the return signal became available and a series of experiments were conducted by the US, UK and Soviet Union. As far as radio reflectors go, the moon is far less than ideal. The total path loss from a moon returned signal is generally over 250 decibels.

Today, Moon-bounce or “EME” communications, for Earth-Moon-Earth remains popular in the amateur radio community. Part of the reason for its popularity is that it is very very difficult to get reliable returns from signals reflected off the moon, thus making it a badge of honor to do so. Amateurs who engage in EME use extremely large, high gain antenna arrays to pull in even the vanishingly weak signals returned from the moon.  Even despite these efforts, EME communications is usually limited to CW or other narrow band modulation methods.   Voice communications, though possible, are extremely difficult to maintain via EME.

The purpose of the reflectors:

The reason that reflectors were left on the moon was not simply to make it easier to get a return from laser light, but also to provide a single fixed reflector that could be accurately referenced from the earth.  While range-finding to the moon by radio or laser can provide a fairly good idea of the distance from the earth to the moon, the precision is hampered by the fact that the moon is not a regular surface.    If the light is returned from the bottom of a crater, it may have to travel hundreds of meters further than if it is returned from the lunar highlands.    By using the laser reflectors, the distance to the moon can be measured with millimeter precision.

The laser reflector experiments continue to be utilized today and have provided a great deal of fundamental data about the moon, the orbital dynamics of the earth and moon.   Not only has distance been measured with extreme precision, but it now is known that the moon is spiraling away from the earth at the rate of about 38 millimeters per year.   The measurement of distance is precise enough to verify orbital predictions made by Einstein’s theory of Relativity.   Range-finding has also allowed for extremely precise measurements of the earth’s orbital stability as well as measuring even the slightest wobble in the moon’s orbit.

How the reflectors verify the moon landings:

In addition to the volumes of other evidence that proves that, yes, human beings did go to the moon, the reflectors continue to be detectable and continue to be useful for scientific purposes.   While the surface of the moon may be reflective enough to allow for laser light measurements to be made, the reflectors are orders of magnitude more reflective.   The difference is very obvious when the moon is scanned with laser optics.

When the beam from a laser at the McDonald Observatory reaches the lunar surface, it is about 6.5 kilometers in diameter. If this beam is focused on a random part of the moon, so few photons are reflected back that they generally cannot be detected by the equipment being used. However, when the beam is aimed at one of the reflectors, a very solid, strong reflection is detected. When measurements are made, the observatory occasionally does not hit the reflector on the first attempt, and must scan a small area of the moon until it acquires the target. When it does, it is obvious. There is no doubt that these sites are unique in their ability to reflect back light, even if the rest of the moon does have some very limited reflectiveness.

Decidedly non-skeptical, Larry King has allowed his show to be used by everyone from Jenny McCarthy and her anti-vaccine movement to Sylvia Browne and other self-proclaimed psychics.   His interviews tend to pander to them, even kissing their collective asses.   Whether it be UFO’s or claims of powers to find missing persons, Larry King can’t seem to see reality from lies and lets his television show become the platform for all kinds of bull.   To skeptics… well, we’re lucky we ever get represented on his show.

In this clip you’ll notice James Randi pauses for a moment after Larry King states that Sylvia Browne “described the accused villain pretty well.”   In fact, she had not described him well at all and had said Shawn Hornesbeck was dead, despite his being found alive years later.   This interview was actually done during The Amazing Meeting 5 and as such, I was able to speak to Randi afterward.   He paused because he was waiting for the punchline, so to speak, expecting Larry King to say something more, since his statement was so absurd.   Had I been in that situating, I’m not even sure I would have known how to react.

I can offer another personal story to shed some light on what kind of pandering Larry King is prone to:
Shortly after this, Larry again hosted a “psychic” to defend Sylvia Browne. His guest stated that psychic visions are not always clear and that is why sometimes things like these errors happen.

The show took phone calls and I called in. Actually, I put the number on my speed dial and dialed repeatedly. It took more than 50 calls but I finally got through and talked to one of the producers who screened the calls.

This was how the conversation went. This is paraphrased, because I didn’t know I’d even get through and did not have the ability to record the phone call at the time, but I did take some notes. Therefore, although paraphrased, this is a fairly accurate representation of the call:

Screener: “So what did you want to ask?”
Me: “Well I just wanted to know how she could be so wrong. I mean, she was very speffic. it’s not like it could have been hazy. This is not apples to oranges, it’s like saying you see the Chrysler Building and can count the windows but in fact you see an orange.”
Screener: -chuckles- “Yes, she was pretty far off, huh? But what did you want to ask for your question?”
Me: “Well, I just would like to know if she could explain how a vision could be so speffic and yet so wrong like that. What’s the deal with that?”
Screener: “We really can’t ask her that kind of question, but thanks for calling”

But not anymore. Larry King is now retiring to spend more time with his wife. His 7th wife, by the way, who filed for divorce this year but then apparently changed her mind and then attempted suicide a month later. Yep, seems Larry might want to consider working on that relationship a bit more. Although I’m not sure if being around more will make it better or worse.

The Skeptics Guide to the Universe did a live podcast to kick off the event and were followed by a number of different panels and speakers.   I was happy to see James Randi was able to make it to the event.  Mr. Randi is one of the most outspoken and iconic members of the skeptical movement.  Randi helped found what is currently the modern skeptical community back in the 1970’s, a time when a lot of questionable research was beginning to come back into vogue.

Randi is the type whose always ready and willing to attend any event that can help increase education and awareness.  Last year he had planned on attending NECSS but had to cancel and appeared only in a pre-taped video due to his health problems.   At the time Mr. Randi had just been diagnosed with colon cancer and had to have a section of his large intestine removed.   This was followed by chemotherapy for several months.   Thankfully, Mr. Randi was looking perfectly at NECSS last week and it appears that the cancer was taken care of before it could spread and become a bigger problem.

As with last year, the event was MC’ed by Jamy Ian Swiss and featured the talent of George Hrab.  D.J. Gorthe, the program director of the Center for Inquiry and president of the JREF also contributed as did Steve Mirsky of Scientific American.

Of all the presentations and speakers, I personally found the presentation by the doctors of Science Based Medicine to be the most eye-opening and in many ways the most disturbing.   In recent years, “alternative medicine” has managed to work its way into the halls of academia and set up shop at otherwise reputable medical schools.   Indeed, none seem immune as such courses are now being taught (and sometimes even required) at medical universities as prestigious as Yale and Harvard.   Alternative medicine programs managed to work their way into the curriculum a number of ways, but in general it comes from warping themselves in legitimate and apparently important concepts like giving patients choices, treating patients with respect and improving quality of life.

Of course, the good doctors of Science Based Medicine have no problem with the concepts of improving patient experiences and providing things like music and recreational activities to those being cared for.  Nutrition and exercise are certainly another area that, despite being labeled as “alternative,” have a great deal of medical value.   However, likening it to a “bait and switch” or to the Trojan Horse, Doctors Gorski, Novella and Snyder demonstrated all too many situations when these benign concepts allowed quackery like homeopathy or energy medicine to find their way into the curriculum of doctors in training.

Constructive Criticism:

I’m a bit apprehensive to say anything negative about the event, because I really did have a great time and overall it went off without a hitch.   I’m more than aware of how difficult these events are to put together and have come off seamlessly and those involved in getting it to work deserve a lot of gratitude.

However, there is one thing that could have been a bit better and raised my rating of the event from four to five stars.   I really felt it was a bit heavy on the skepticism and light on science.   What I mean by that is that nearly every speaker and panel talked exclusively about skepticism, anti-quackery, anti-bad science and anti-bad reporting.   These concepts are important and certainly form the core of what unites the community, but at many of the meetings I’ve attended I especially enjoyed having some informative talks on general science added in.

For example, at TAM London, Brian Cox gave an excellent talk on fundamental particle physics and some of the things that CERN is hoping to learn with the new Large Hadron Collider.  At TAM-6, PZ Meyers gave an excellent talk on the current state of research into evolutionary genetics and Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson gave a great opening on the history of science and its conflicts with religion.   Other great talks included one at TAM-5 by the director of the Center for Bits and Atoms as well as Scott Dickers of The Onion.

As the New York and New England Skeptics have plenty of in-house talent when it comes to cutting edge science, academics and research my suggestion would be that, in the future, they consider mixing it up a little ad adding some more general and special interest talks of the nature mentioned above.

Never the less, I still want to stress that it was a well done event that came off without a hitch and was more than worth attending.