Category: woo

There is no evidence for extraterrestrial visitation of Earth, no pickled bodies of extraterrestrials, and no UFOs held by American companies

January 5, 2026 • 9:30 am

A person I know has, for the past year or more, been trying to convince me that Earth has been visited by UFOs, and that, indeed, some of those spacecraft have been captured along with the bodies of the piloting extraterrestrials. Her claim is that the bodies and the spaceships (presumably crashed) have been given to private companies by the government, and the craft are being reverse-engineered to suss out the technology behind the “UFOs”.  Further, the bodies of the pilots (bipedal like us, I’m told) are being examined to see what kind of life they represent.  As to why this is all being kept secret, I’m informed that there are important security considerations. But I’m not told which considerations are important enough to keep this  huge story secret.

I have read a lot of the information sent to me supposedly supporting this claim, and ultimately it all comes down to the assertions of one David Grusch, who relies on documents he can’t show people and hearsay that he can’t reveal given by others who supposedly have seen the extraterrestrials and their craft. It’s instructive to look up Grusch on Wikipedia, where you read stuff like this:

David Grusch is a former United States Air Force (USAF) officer and intelligence official who has claimed that the U.S. federal government, in collaboration with private aerospace companies, has highly secretive special access programs involved in the recovery and reverse engineering of “non-human” spacecraft and their dead pilots, and that people have been threatened and killed in order to conceal these programs. Grusch further claims to have viewed documents reporting a spacecraft of alien origin had been recovered by Benito Mussolini’s government in 1933 and procured by the U.S. in 1944 or 1945 with the assistance of the Vatican and the Five Eyes alliance.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) have both denied Grusch’s claims, stating there are no such programs and that extraterrestrial life has yet to be discovered. No evidence supporting Grusch’s UFO claims has been presented and they have been dismissed by multiple, independent experts.

Grusch also appears in an infamous 2½-hour hearing by the House Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs on “Unidentified and Anomalous Phenomena, or UAPs”. I’ve put it below. The hearing starts at 18:00, several True Believers gives testimony, and Grusch first appears at 46:45 and also later (I have not listened to the whole thing today). Note that AOC is on the subcommittee.

More from Wikipedia, including about this hearing:

On June 5, 2023, independent journalists Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal provided a story detailing Grusch’s claims of a UFO coverup by the government to The Debrief, a website that describes itself as “self-funded” and specializing in “frontier science”.  The New York Times and Politico declined to publish the story, while The Washington Post was taking more time to conduct fact-checking than Kean and Blumenthal felt could be afforded because, according to Kean, “people on the internet were spreading stories, Dave was getting harassing phone calls, and we felt the only way to protect him was to get the story out”.According to Kean, she vetted Grusch by interviewing Karl Nell, a retired Army colonel who was also on the UFO task force, and “Jonathan Grey” (a pseudonym) whom Kean described as “a current U.S. intelligence official at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC)”. Kean wrote that Nell called Grusch “beyond reproach” and that both Nell and “Grey” supported Grusch’s claim about a secret UFO retrieval and reverse engineering program.

Grusch claims that the U.S. federal government maintains a highly secretive UFO retrieval program and possesses multiple spacecraft of what he calls “non-human” origin as well as corpses of deceased pilots. He also claims there is “substantive evidence that white-collar crime” took place to conceal UFO programs and that he had interviewed officials who said that people had been killed to conceal the programs.

Grusch elaborated on his claims in a subsequent interview with the French newspaper Le Parisien on June 7. He said that UFOs could be coming from extra dimensions; that he had spoken with intelligence officials whom the U.S. military had briefed on “football-field” sized crafts; that the U.S. government transferred some crashed UFOs to a defense contractor; and that there was “malevolent activity” by UFOs.

During a July 26, 2023, Congressional hearing, Grusch said that he “was informed in the course of my official duties of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program to which I was denied access”and that he believed that the U.S. government was in possession of UAP based on his interviews with 40 witnesses over four years. He claimed in response to Congressional questions that the U.S. has retrieved what he terms “non-human ‘biologics'” from the crafts and that this “was the assessment of people with direct knowledge on the [UAP] program I talked to, that are currently still on the program”.  When Representative Tim Burchett asked him if he had “personal knowledge of people who’ve been harmed or injured in efforts to cover up or conceal” the government’s possession of “extraterrestrial technology”, Grusch said yes, but that he was not able to provide details except within a SCIF (Sensitive compartmented information facility).

So it’s not just the government that knows this stuff, but private companies, who apparently retain for study the craft and jars of pickled aliens, or “biologics.” (It may be relevant that Grusch has a history of mental disorders, for which he’s been committed twice to institutions.)  At any rate, you can see above that not just Grusch, but also two other people who have had respectable military or government jobs, testify to the credibility of extraterrestrial craft.

The hearing itself, with all three witnesses swearing to tell the truth, has been presented to me as giving credibility of the witnesses’ stories. To me all that means is that three people believe in UFOs and extraterrestrials, and yet fail to present convincing evidence. I have no objections to a hearing, because if there were credible evidence of this stuff, the government would like to know about it. So would the rest of us, especially biologists and physicists.

Both the government and other experts who aren’t True Believers have heard the verbal evidence, but for some reason material evidence never surfaces. I’ll revert to Wikipedia for the last time:

Grusch’s assertions are primarily based on alleged documents and his claimed conversations, rather than testable evidence. Claims that the government is engaged in a conspiratorial effort to conceal evidence of extraterrestrial visitation to Earth are broadly considered untrue by the majority of the scientific community, because such claims oppose the best currently available expert information.

Joshua Semeter of NASA’s UAP independent study team and professor of electrical and computer engineering with Boston University’s College of Engineering concludes that “without data or material evidence, we are at an impasse on evaluating these claims” and that, “in the long history of claims of extraterrestrial visitors, it is this level of specificity that always seems to be missing”.  Adam Frank, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester, published a critique of the Grusch claims on June 22 with Big Think. Frank writes that he does “not find these claims exciting at all” because they are all “just hearsay” where “a guy says he knows a guy who knows another guy who heard from a guy that the government has alien spaceships”.   [JAC: that’s an apt critique of the claims.] Frank also said of the Grusch account that “it’s an extraordinary claim, and it requires extraordinary evidence, none of which we’re getting”, adding “show me the spaceship”.

Where is the damn spaceship? Where are the bodies of the extraterrestrial pilots?

You can go down the rabbit hole of these claims for days, but all I’ll say is I will remain skeptical until genuine evidence comes to light—and by that I mean production of the “biologics” and their craft.  The failure of proponents to provide such evidence, which is always “kept elsewhere” and is “a secret matter of national security importance”, make me think that what we have here is true conspiracy theory. Again, reporters and skeptics should look at this evidence, but they’ve always come up with bupkes.

When I asked my friend why the greatest news story in the history of humanity has not been broken by mainstream news, I get answers involving extreme secrecy. But give me a break: there existed pickled aliens and spacecraft remains, and none of it has been verified by mainstream news outlets, not in decades? Smells like Pizzagate to me!

Finally, when I’m told that the very testimony of people with decent credentials proves that they’re correct, I respond with this: “Well, there are lots of people with decent credentials who said they have had a personal encounter with Jesus Christ.” Plenty of Americans believe in the literal truth of the divine-Jesus story and have had Jesus Encounter Experiences, despite the lack of evidence—even historical, extra-Biblical evidence for a divine, crucified-and-resurrected Son of God.  These people far outnumber True Believers in UFOs. Should we then take their testimony about Jesus seriously?

I haven’t followed this controversy closely, and perhaps readers, or people like Michael Shermer, have something to say about it. But until I see those pickled aliens, I think it’s more parsimonious to think that their existence is about as likely as that of the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot.

I believe they’re supposed to look something like the picture below. If so, it would be a remarkable example of convergent evolution following two independent origins of life on two different planets.

Peacefyre, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Surprise! Agustín Fuentes and Nathan Lents criticize the sex binary

November 24, 2025 • 9:30 am

I don’t know how many times Agustín Fuentes, an anthropology professor at Princeton, will keep repeating the same arguments about why biological sex isn’t binary (see these posts on my site). It never seems to end. You’d think he’d stop banging the drum now that he’s written a whole book on the issue called Sex is a Spectrum, but he keeps on making the same old arguments that have been refuted many times (see this review by Tomas Bogardus, for example).  Why does someone make such weak arguments, and continue to do so without ever addressing the many criticisms he’s encountered?

I strongly suspect it’s because Fuentes is an ideologue: he believes that if people see biological sex as spectrum rather than a binary, opprobrium against trans people will lessen or vanish. But trans people should be treated with respect no matter whether or not sex is binary, for “is” does not equal “ought”—a lesson Fuentes should have learned. Further, nearly all trans people implicitly accept a sex binary: after all, they transition from having a male role or appearance to having a female role and appearance, or vice versa. But I’ve written about that before.  Nor does the binary nature of sex have anything to say about how we should regard people of nonstandard gender.Making that argument is another violation of Hume’s Law.

Now Fuentes has been joined by Nathan Lents, a professor at John Jay College. Lents has done good work refuting Intelligent Design, and I’m sad that this essay, published in ProSocial World, an endeavor of biologist David Sloan Wilson and colleagues, is not of Lent’s usual quality. In fact, it’s a terrible article, replete with mistaken arguments and bad logic.

Now it’s possible that these authors really believe that biological sex is a spectrum and are not just trying to buttress a “progressive” gender ideology, but I would find that behavior obtuse. Read Dawkins (link below) or Bogardus to see why.

I am so tired of this misrepresentation and confusion that it deeply nauseates me to have to discuss them again, but I’ll try to do so briefly, using quotes from the article by Fuentes and Lents. Click on the headline below to read (it’s also archived here).

Fuentes and Lents (henceforth F&L) first admit the binary of gametes, a binary used to define the sexes by most biologists who aren’t ideologues:

The major clades of eukaryotes – plants, animals, fungi, and the many kingdoms of protists – have evolved both unique and shared aspects in their sexual reproductive mechanisms, but one such aspect – the differentiation of gametes into two major forms – is a common theme. Anisogamy, the property of having two types of gametes – one very large and relatively immotile and one very small and highly mobile – is a key feature of sexual reproduction in all animals, all land plants, and many protist kingdoms.

F&L’s beef is not that there is a gametic binary (see Richard Dawkin’s great Substack essay for why defining—actually, recognizing—the sexes this way is essential and useful), but rather that organisms recognized as “male” (small mobile gametes) and “female” (large immobile gametes) show variation in other traits related to sex.  On average, human males differ in body size from females, but there is variation within each sex. And so it goes for body hair, gene expression, behavior, penis size, and so on.  But of course these traits, while correlated and connected with sex, are not part of the definition of sex, which involves the gamete binary.

Some quotes from F&L:

In our view, this binary classification of sex in animals is insufficient for capturing the full breadth of biological sexual diversity.

Some of the inadequacies of the binary sex classification for individuals are uncontroversial, as it has long been known that a large number of species – around 20% of non-arthropod invertebrates – include individuals that are simultaneously hermaphroditic. Many others, including around 2% of vertebrates, are sequential hermaphrodites. Animal bodies exist in a variety of sexed forms, with some even reconfiguring their biology relating to sex, including for the production of gametes, within their individual life history, sometimes multiple times. The presence of simultaneous and sequential hermaphrodites vexes the binary classification for sexed bodies and demonstrates that sex is neither immutable nor neatly reducible to gamete production.

Furthermore, sexual dimorphisms, sexual bimodalities, and a spectrum of sex-influenced gene expression are observed throughout animal bodies and across animal species. Some of this variation is patterned in close association with gamete production, but much is not so simply described. Across bodies, behaviors, and physiologies, there is substantive inherent variety and diversity, creating a sexual continuum of genetic, developmental, and behavioral biology within and across species. Individual animals can vary widely in the development, patterning, and expression of sexual biology in a variety of ways, from body sizes and compositions, to color patterns and genital anatomy, to courtship behaviors and parental investment, to name some of the most commonly diverse components of sex. These biological variations rarely collapse into two discrete sex-based categories defined by gamete production. Moreover, much of the biological variations in bodies, even those closely associated with reproduction, are also engaged in a diversity of other bodily functions and processes with myriad phylogenetic, ecological, and behavioral constraints and affordances, which are also not ubiquitously or consistently associated with the type of gametes a body produces.

But nobody contests this form of variation; but to pretend that hermaphrodites refute the sex binary is disingenuous. Yes, some individuals can make both types of gametes, and some, like the infamous clownfish, can actually change their sex, but the gametic binary remains. (I don’t much care if you call hermaphrodites a “third sex”, but they still bear only two types of gametes—the only types that exist.) Human hermaphrodites, like other individuals called “intersex,” are vanishingly rare, and none have been able to produce viable gametes of both types. But F&L’s arguments are not about hermaphrodites or “intersex” individuals with differences in sex development. Instead, their arguments are about variation among individuals, most of them of regular sex.

They also extend their argument among species. In various species of animals, for instance, biological sex can be determined by genes, chromosomes, rearing temperature, social milieu, haploidy versus diploidy, and so on, but there are only two types of gametes and reproductive systems, no matter how sex is determined.  That in itself should tell you something important about the binary.  Nevertheless, F&L persist with their “variation means there’s no binary” argument:

Dramatic sexual diversity and variation is not limited to adulthood. There is also substantive diversity in mechanisms of sex development across various animal taxa. There are chromosomal systems, other genetic systems, as well as systems based on season, temperature, age, social status, and population density, most of which have convergently evolved in multiple disparate lineages, emphasizing the relative genetic, cellular, and developmental flexibility and adaptability of these sex systems.

But, to paraphrase Ronald Fisher, the sexes are always two. Why is that?  F&L are using a familiar but misguided tactic trying to refute the sex binary. I call this “The Argument from Complexity” and it can be stated this way:

There is variation among individuals in traits related to and correlated with gamete type, and that variation is often not binary but bimodal or even forming a spectrum. Further, the determination of these traits, like body size or behavior, depends on a complex interaction between genes, development, and the environment.  Therefore biological sex itself is not a simple binary, but a spectrum.

You can recognize the fallacy in this; I believe Emma Hilton calls it a “bait and switch”. Yes, determination of ovaries and testes itself is complex, with many genes (as well as the internal environment) involved. And individuals vary in gene expression, body size, ornamentation, and other traits connected with sex. But there are still only two types of gametes and two sexes. Male and female peacocks look very different, but nobody says that refutes the sex binary. (In fact, the sex binary explains this difference.) And individuals of the two sexes must mate with each other to produce offspring—save for parthenogenetic or self-fertilizing species, which still participate in the gamete binary. Regardless of the complexity of development in humans, you get an offspring only when a male having sperm mates with a female having eggs.  If the male is very short, or has a tiny penis, that makes no difference!

Here’s F&L’s version of The Argument from Complexity:

Importantly, the recognition that sex can be a complex mixture of anatomy, physiology, and behavior does not serve to deny or minimize the existence and impacts of sex differences. In fact, it affirms them and emphasizes their importance. While the matter of which gamete an animal body makes – its gametic sex – is clearly important, it is not the only variable by which animal morphologies or behaviors can be, or are, sexed. If these other variables were neatly binary, immutable, and non-overlapping, it would not be necessary to distinguish between gametic sex and biological sex. But, since nearly all other sex traits are either continuous or bimodal, are not always immutable nor perfectly correlated, a simple and categorical definition of sex that is based purely on gamete production is both unwarranted and potentially misleading.

. . . Animal morphology and physiology are the product of complex interactions of biological, developmental, and environmental systems, and the human environment is a particularly complex assemblage of biotic and abiotic factors: what we refer to as human culture.  Human phenotypic expression is always mutually shaped by cultural milieu.  It is well-established that adult height and weight, childhood development trajectories, taste bud reactivity, muscle development and coordination, patterns of sexual arousal, resistance (or lack thereof) to disease-causing bacteria, and nearly every other aspect of human bodies emerge from mutual and interactive development of physiology, morphology, cultural context, and lived experiences.

All that is sand thrown into the eyes of the public; it has nothing to do with the binary nature of biological sex.

Finally, N&L even make the bonkers argument that the athletic advantage of males or females may not be a result of their evolved differences (based on gene expression), but could be a result of social conditioning. This is an argument made by those “progressive” individuals who think that we should not be dividing sports into male versus female leagues. (The Olympic Committee has just decided otherwise.):

Furthermore, it is not currently known which, or how much, of all of this patterned variation is shaped by differences in how boys and girls, and men and women, use their bodies on a daily basis. While human anatomical development is a fairly canalized pathway producing a relatively consistent phenotypic range, the developmental process itself both affects and is substantively affected by how that anatomy is physically and socially engaged, especially during childhood and adolescence. Indeed, there is emerging evidence that persistent culturally mandated gender differences in play behaviors and sports participation, which are quite substantial in many cultures, have clear and strong effects on the developmental dynamics of skeletal and muscle formation.

Similarly, gendered differences in the social environment likely contribute to differences in sexed bodies in ways that are probably impossible to untangle. For example, it is well established that hormone levels and ratios are affected by the social environment, and these same hormones directly impact both the development of many tissues and sex-related and non-sex-related behaviors (muscle hypertrophy, hair distribution, metabolism, mental alertness, and libido, to name a few). Such complexities are not limited to humans by any stretch, as Patricia Brennan explains in another essay in this series, in Ruddy Ducks, social interactions directly impact the seasonal growth and development of the penis, emphasizing the dynamically responsive nature of sexual anatomy, even in adult animals.

It’s not clear to me what the penis of ruddy ducks has to do with human behavior and sports participation. Sadly, F&L don’t discuss the evidence that even injecting biological males with hormones and giving them puberty blockers, an important change of internal environment, nevertheless still gives these trans-identified males an athletic advantage over biological women.

I hope that I don’t have to make these points again, but I suspect I will.  The ideological termites have dined well, and have even managed to convince biologists and science popularizers like Steve Novella and Bill Nye that sex is a spectrum.  Have a look below at Bill Nye using the Argument from Variation to claim that sex is a spectrum. (I have never liked his arguments, and this bit shows he’s drunk the Kool-Aid.)  Nye also notes that sex is “assigned at birth”.  What is extra confusing is that he conflates sex with both “sexuality” and gender.

The new kerfuffle about UFOs, and why believers resemble religionists

November 23, 2025 • 11:45 am

UPDATE: See the review of this movie that reader Dan links to in comment #5.

I’ve recently heard a lot about UFOs, mainly because I have a friend who seems to think they’re real. I’ve watched the videos taken from planes supposedly showing alien craft, and I’ve read various explanations for them, both involving and not involving aliens. I’ve seen people swearing that actual UFO craft are in the possession of the U.S. government, which is “reverse engineering” them to see how they work, and I’ve heard people who are considered “reputable” espouse belief in UFOs.

But in the end I remain deeply skeptical. Where did these aliens come from: a star light years away? Most of all, I think that if there’s credible evidence for UFOs—evidence including remains of alien vessels themselves—then why is the press ignoring such a big story? It would be the biggest news story of our lifetime, by far. Yet the press doesn’t seem that eager to sniff out the hard evidence for UFOs—the supposedly extant captured flying saucers.   The people who spread these stories seem to me to be conspiracy theorists, like the Q-Anon people.

Still, the story won’t go away—its persistence being yet another reason why people find UFOs credible. Well, creationism hasn’t gone away, either, but that doesn’t mean it’s right. Like creationism, UFOs just appeal to people with certain points of view: in the case of creationism, religious views. In that sense the UFO-believers are like religionists, for a lot of their beliefs in aliens rests on our failure to yet understand those high-velocity specks photographed by some aircraft.  It’s the Argument from Ignorance. Goddies like Ross Douthat think that if we can’t explain phenomena like the “fine-tuning” of the Universe,or human consciousness, it points to God. Likewise, if the UFOers can’t explain those high-velocity specks, well, it points to aliens.

Now the NYT has an article about a new documentary showing “credible” government officials espousing belief in UFO. Click below to read the article, or see it archived here.

Excepts (indented):

The long government shutdown had left a secret screening in limbo. But Monday on Capitol Hill, a handful of House members filed into a committee room to watch a new documentary featuring nearly three dozen government officials and others discussing what they can disclose about unidentified aerial phenomena, long known as U.F.O.s.

The unusual bipartisan mix of Republicans and Democrats had gathered to watch “The Age of Disclosure,” which had its high-profile debut at South by Southwest earlier this year. In the film, 34 former and current senior members of government, military and intelligence groups claim that they have knowledge of advanced nonhuman intelligence and contend, among other things, that there’s been an 80-year cover-up of the reverse engineering of technology retrieved from crashes.

Perhaps the biggest name in “The Age of Disclosure” (in theaters Friday and on Amazon Prime), is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the former senator whose participation helped open the door for other top officials to go on record when he served as the vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In the film, he cites “repeated instances of something operating in the airspace over restricted nuclear facilities, and it’s not ours. And we don’t know whose it is.”

. . .Representative André Carson of Indiana, a Democrat from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, praised the documentary, saying it “pieces everything together that we’ve seen on television, on film and on social media.” Carson, a host of the screening who also appears in the film, added, “There is a section in here that will bring context to all the fuzzy photos that we’ve seen.”

One attendee, Representative Eric Burlison, Republican of Missouri, said he hoped “The Age of Disclosure” would help make the U.A.P. issue a priority for the Trump administration.

“I think we’ve had enough hearings” and it is now time for hard evidence or “receipts,” he said in an interview while waiting for his colleagues to arrive. “I’m trying to find the receipts. In private conversations, I’ve been given enough information to find them, I just don’t have access.”

. . . . The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, tasked with investigating U.A.P., has said it has no verifiable information to support reports of a government program to reverse-engineer extraterrestrial materials.

. . . . The controversial documentary has drawn mixed reactions from critics, with several reviews questioning unproven statements.

The showing was held in part to mobilize support for the U.A.P. Disclosure Act, legislation proposing a path to undoing government secrecy on this topic that has been introduced by Senators Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, and Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota. Rounds was interviewed in the film.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, did not attend but sent a statement calling for greater transparency and saying she would work in Congress to “reduce the stigma around reporting, strengthen our national security, and ensure U.A.P. records are being properly disclosed.”

Well, yes, if the government has files that attest to the existence of UFOs, it should release them, unless there are pressing national security concerns, but I can’t imagine what those would be. (Could the Russians steal our reverse-engineered mechanisms for why UFOs go so fast?)  And if we have actual spacecraft from aliens that are in the process of being reverse-engineered, I can’t believe that the entire American press corps would not be sniffing it out as hard as they could, and that eventually they’d find them—IF they existed. Documenting their reality would make the reputation of any reporter or newspaper. Sadly, there has been no credible documentation.

Right now I’d put my money on their non-existence, but of course I was a career scientist and my mindset is one of doubt, especially about extraordinary claims. Show me a flying saucer and I’ll change my mind.

More woo funded in New Zealand—money for vitalism disguised as science

July 4, 2024 • 9:45 am

New Zealand, which is still moving towards integrating science and woo, has combined them again in a new summer fellowship offered by the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Auckland (below) The supervisors are Professor Cate Macinnis-Ng, an ecologist, and Sarah Rewi, a research fellow.

I’m not sure whether these fellowships are funded by the Kiwi government, though I’m guessing they are because the U of A is a state school. This means that the project below is likely funded by NZ taxpayers. Importantly, it combines science with woo, in the form of Mātauranga Māori (MM), the indigenous “way of knowing” that includes some empirical trial-and-error knowledge, tradition, religion, story-telling, ethics, sociology, and sundry forms of spirituality. Co-supervisor Dr. Rewi has studied how MM “informs” the study of sooty shearwaters and grey-faced petrels.  In that study, the contribution of MM apparently included advice from elders on where and when to kill the chicks for food, and, usefully, how to rotate chick harvest among areas. Because MM includes some real empirical knowledge, it’s not all bunk, but there’s no need to meld MM and science when you can simply incorporate the genuine empirical knowledge of MM (which is scant compared to the amount of woo) into science.

See the ad here (scroll down at the link) or click below:


Here’s a description of the position as noted above; bolding is mine:

With interests in mātauranga-based science research on the rise, it is important these forms of research are responsive to Māori community needs. Understanding the impact of land-use, particularly agricultural activity, on groundwater resources is of key concern to Māori. This project will involve field-based work and data analysis researching into spatial patterns of groundwater chemical composition and microbial communities. It will examine how scientific indicators can assist mana whenua in their assessment of the state of the water’s mauri. No specific skills are required but it is recommended that the candidate has an interest in the interface between mātauranga and science. It is a requirement that the student has whakapapa Māori.

Note that no specific skills are required but you have to be willing to meld MM and science (bolding is mine). And you apparently have to be Māori, so in that sense it’s a racially biased ad. As reader Peter said, who found the ad, “Imagine if a student had to prove they had English ancestry to get a grant to study Roman Britain.”

What do the Māori words mean in the ad? Remember, even most Māori don’t speak the language fluently, and many don’t speak it at all, while European descendants of “colonists” have the language forced upon them without translation, probably because of sacralization of all things Māori. At any rate, here are translations:

Mana whenua, as defined in the Māori dictionary, means this:

(noun) territorial rights, power from the land, authority over land or territory, jurisdiction over land or territory – power associated with possession and occupation of tribal land. The tribe’s history and legends are based in the lands they have occupied over generations and the land provides the sustenance for the people and to provide hospitality for guests.

Apparently the ad means that the research is aimed at helping local people lean some stuff about groundwater, like what spirits it embodies. But things really go into the weeds when we look at the definition of mauri:

Mauri (noun) life principle, life force, vital essence, special nature, a material symbol of a life principle, source of emotions – the essential quality and vitality of a being or entity. Also used for a physical object, individual, ecosystem or social group in which this essence is located.

As Nick Matzke, an American scientist working in New Zealand, noted here, here and here, mauri is simple vitalism, the view that all objects are imbued with some undefined “life force”.  In a letter to the New Zealand Herald, Nick correctly noted that mauri, which is worming itself into the NZ science curriculum, is simple pseudoscience:

Unfortunately, the concept of ‘life force’ is a well-known pseudoscience, known as vitalism. Vitalism was experimentally debunked by chemists in the 1800s. Having a government agency force it back into the chemistry curriculum by political fiat — while steamrolling the vehement and informed objections of science teachers — is a huge problem. Vitalism is a pseudoscientific error on the same level as asserting that the Earth is flat, or that the world is only 6,000 years old. If vitalism is right, then all of chemistry and biochemistry is wrong.

And so is biology! (See my post on the incursion of mauri into chemistry and electrical engineering.)

To say that the funding will help the locals assess “the state of the water’s mauri“, then, is to say nothing; it’s like saying the project will help assess the state of the water’s Christianity. There is no mauri that we know of, so this is a funded search for nothing.

Finally, what is the single qualification to get the money and do this “science”? The student must have “whakapapa Māori”, which apparently means Māori ancestry. Here’s the definition of the first word (Māori, of course, are the indigenous people, descended from voyaging Polynesians):

Whakapapa. (noun) genealogy, genealogical table, lineage, descent – reciting whakapapa was, and is, an important skill and reflected the importance of genealogies in Māori society in terms of leadership, land and fishing rights, kinship and status. It is central to all Māori institutions. There are different terms for the types of whakapapa and the different ways of reciting them including: tāhū (recite a direct line of ancestry through only the senior line); whakamoe (recite a genealogy including males and their spouses); taotahi (recite genealogy in a single line of descent); hikohiko (recite genealogy in a selective way by not following a single line of descent); ure tārewa (male line of descent through the first-born male in each generation).

In other words, unless I’m mistaken, the only requirement for this fellowship is that the student has Māori ancestry. This, of course, is ethnicity-based hiring, eliminating all requirements for the position save one’s ancestry, which must be indigenous.  This would be illegal in America, but it’s both legal and encouraged in New Zealand.

I’ve given up hope for the future of science in New Zealand, a country with a proud scientific past. In a misguided effort to incorporate indigenous “ways of knowing” into science, of which this ad is one example, the NZ government is busy ruining science education in the country. I had hoped that the newish Luxon government would do better then the damaged wrought by the Ardern administration, but the opprobrium towards criticizing anything indigenous seems permanently engrained.

King Charles, cancer, and homeopathy

February 6, 2024 • 11:00 am

This morning I received an email from a colleague that said this about the New York Times‘s article on King Charles’s cancer diagnosis:

In the NY Times report there is one sentence mentioning that he is using homeopathy as part of his suite of treatments.

UPDATE: My colleague, who is reliable, swears he saw this in the NYT yesterday, and is baffled that the sentence is gone today.  Readers with a bent for sleuthing might try finding the original article at an archived site.

Well, I can’t find that sentence in the NYT article this morning, nor in the archived version posted right after midnight. Yet we know the King is an advocate of homeopathy. The Guardian of December 17 last year noted that the King had appointed an advocated of woo, including homeopathy, as head of the “royal medical household”:

Yet last week we heard that the head of the royal medical household is an advocate of homeopathy. Dr Michael Dixon has championed such things as “thought field therapy”, “Christian healing” and an Indian herbal cure “ultra-diluted” with alcohol, which claims to kill breast cancer cells. Methods like these might be “unfashionable”, he once wrote in an article submitted to the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, but they should not be ignored.

The link above goes to an earlier Guardian article, noting that the head of the royal medical household is not the same thing as thje king’s doctor:

Dr Michael Dixon, who has championed faith healing and herbalism in his work as a GP, has quietly held the senior position for the last year, the Sunday Times reported.

While Dixon, 71, is head of the royal medical household, for the first time the role is not combined with being the monarch’s physician. Duties include having overall responsibility for the health of the king and the wider royal family – and even representing them in talks with government.

There are a lot of people online who are somewhat gleeful about this diagnosis, saying that they’re hoping that King Charles puts the rubber to the road and uses alternative therapies, like homeopathy, but the Daily Fail and other sites note that even Dixon doesn’t think that homeopathy can cure cancer:

[Dixon]  thrown his support behind offering treatments such as aromatherapy and reflexology on the NHS.

In one paper he authored, he referenced an experiment suggesting Indian herbal remedies which had been ‘ultra-diluted’ with alcohol might be able to cure cancer, although Buckingham Palace has staunchly denied Dr Dixon himself believes this can work.

A statement from the palace at the time of his appointment read: ‘Dr Dixon does not believe homeopathy can cure cancer.

‘His position is that complementary therapies can sit alongside conventional treatments, provided they are safe, appropriate and evidence based.’

Dr Dixon, who has reportedly prescribed plants to patients such as devil’s claw and horny goat weed, has also written papers suggesting Christian healers may be able to help people who are chronically ill.

He has a kindred spirit and staunch supporter in the shape of King Charles, who has himself been outspoken on how he believes alternative medicine can help people with illnesses, and was appointed patron of the Faculty of Homeopathy in 2017.

As for me, I have no beef with King Charles, and my first thought when I heard he had cancer was that it was a shame, as he’d waited so long to become King and if he died from this, it would have been a long wait for a short reign. I hope he gets well. What kind of person would want the King to die because he advocates medical woo?

But he should never have promoted that woo, and I’m sure he won’t be using it in his new course of treatment.

The supernatural invades American museums via indigenous artifacts

December 30, 2023 • 11:00 am

About half a dozen readers sent me the article below, which appeared on Colin Wright’s Substack site Reality’s Last Stand.  This piece, however, was written by Elizabeth Weiss, professor of anthropology at San Jose State University. She’s a brave woman, for after her own university banned her from accessing the ancient human remains she was studying, or publishing pictures of them, she sued the University. This was because the remains were presumably those of Native Americans, who saw them as sacred relics of their ancestors and demanded them back. (The lawsuit is, as far as I know, still pending.) Weiss is, like me, wary of allowing indigenous American peoples full possession of any remains dug up on “their” land, for we don’t often know if the remains are really those of a tribe’s ancestors, and, also like me, she argues that scientists should be allowed to study them before and if they are returned to any tribe.

The post below is related to that view, but is mostly concerned with an issue we’ve seen in New Zealand: governments and scientists bowing to the religious and supernatural beliefs of indigenous peoples. In this case, museums are validating or being forced to mouth the religious beliefs of Native Americans, resulting in some crazy (and unpalatable) mixtures of science and faith.

Click to read (“the American Museum of Supernatural History” is a jab at the American Museum of Natural History, or AMNH, involved in many of these incidents).

Elizabeth’s thesis, also giving one of several examples in her piece:

In the past two decades, science institutions have faced challenges from another source: indigenous religions. Unlike Christian fundamentalist beliefs, these indigenous beliefs often receive enthusiastic support from academics, scholars, and mainstream media journalists. This support might stem from a desire to oppose Western civilization and align with the “victims” of modernity as part of an effort to “decolonize” museums. Alternatively, it may also be linked to a trend of virtue signaling, which has allowed the misconception that “indigenous knowledge is science” to take root in academic circles.

I recently reported on this trend in City Journal, discussing New York City’s American Museum of Natural History’s Northwest Coast Hall. One exhibit features a display case with a warning label about the “spiritually powerful” objects contained in the case. This exhibit blurs the line between fact and fiction by presenting creation myths as history. It also asserts that artifacts are imbued with spirits that release “mist” visible only to elders, implying that the objects should be repatriated.

Weiss notes that other scholars didn’t find anything objectionable to the deference given these artifact, apparently bowing to what’s been called  “the authority of the sacred victim.”  That’s instantiated in this regulation:

Are museum staff actually buying into these beliefs, or are they appeasing their indigenous partners to continue curating and studying artifacts? The influence of repatriation ideology, movements, and laws, notably the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, are increasingly depleting museums and universities of Native American “human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony.”

And here are a few more examples in which museums apparently give in to the claims of indigenous people, even though those claims don’t involve human remains and are often imbued with religious beliefs.

The Willamette Meteorite Agreement of 2000 resulted in the American Museum of Natural History “recognizing the spiritual relationship of the Grande Ronde Community to the Willamette Meteorite.” This agreement allows the tribe to perform ceremonies in the museum, celebrating this spiritual connection. Additionally, it forbade the museum from removing any part of the meteorite for trade with other museums, a practice once common for diversifying collections for exhibition and research. These scientific exchanges benefited both museumgoers and researchers. However, indigenous religious beliefs have restricted these practices. Moreover, the publicity and support for this agreement has led other museums to adopt similar practices. For instance, the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon handed over their piece of the meteorite to the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.

Since when do meteorites belong in any sense to Native Americans?  That would only be the case if it fell on their tribally owned land.  But if they come into the possession of scientists, who might buy them or get them because they fall on public land, then those have a right to study them or trade them for other items. Remember, lands ancestrally inhabited by Native Americans don’t often belong to native Americans, so meterorites which fall on them belong to either the new owner, the finder, or, if on public land, to the Smithsonian.

Here’s another example with a snarky (but accurate) remark by Elizabeth:

The negative influence of indigenous beliefs on science is also evident during tribal visits, such as when the Tohono O’odham Nation visited the American Museum of Natural History in 2021. During their visit, the tribe reviewed the items that were being curated, discussed the history of the collection, and “ritually cleansed ceremonial pieces” at the museum, which was closed to the public during the visit. Additionally, in November 2021, David Grignon, the tribal historic preservation officer from the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, “ceremonially cleansed sacred items” in the museum’s Division of Anthropology “smudge room.” For a scientific museum to have a “smudge room” is akin to a chemistry lab having an alchemy room. Museum spaces should be dedicated to scientific research, curation, and exhibits–not to religious activities.

Except, that is, when the religious activities are performed by Native Americans. I doubt that Museums would be allowed to let a priest sprinkle holy water on old Catholic artifacts to sanctify them.

But the worst is the AMNH’s procedures in dealing with Native American “objects of power”, which have to be treated specially because they supposedly possess supernatural powers—powers that dictate how researchers and scientists must deal with them. Get a load of this:

However, none of these examples are as shocking as the protocols established to curate so-called “objects of power.” These protocols were introduced at the 2021 annual joint conference of the American Institute for Conservation and the Society for Preservation of Natural History Collections. Developed in collaboration with Northwest Coast cultural advisors at the American Museum of Natural History, Amy Tjiong and colleagues outlined the necessary steps for curators and researchers when handling these “objects of power,” defined as objects “used in association with traditional/spiritual healers’ practice, sacred ceremonies, or warfare.” The new protocols include the need to “greet” the object and “explain” to it that permission has been granted from community representatives. The objects must also be clearly tagged, covered with “muslin,” and glass cabinets should be “covered with brown paper to prevent disturbance and unintentional encounters.” Lastly, bundles of “Devil’s Club (Oplopanax horridus, a shrub used to contain power)” should be hung in doorways and cabinets where these “objects of power” are stored.

That is palpably absurd.  Museum staff are supposed to procure a special shrub to prevent objects from exerting their special power?  But the rules continue:

To further promote the myths that surround these objects, museum staff decided to heed warnings by their indigenous partners. For instance, museum staff were told to “Be wary of any object that incorporates human hair.” This guidance influenced the handling of a Haida orca headdress: “Community members instructed the museum not to put this headdress on view. Museum professionals were warned that handling can be dangerous.” Consequently, this object is not currently on display.

Click on this poster heading to see the protocols developed in the 2021 online conference described above. It lays out how museum workers and scientists are supposed to deal with spiritually “powerful” objects:

From the poster above, presumably an object lesson in how to display powerful sacred objects.

Caption on poster “Warning sign on cabinet door that also appears on all doors to this room, brown paper obscuring objects behind glass, devil’s club bundle suspended at top.”

And, from the poster, the rules that museum workers and scientists must obey vis-à-vis those objects, taken from the poster above (click to enlarge). Don’t forget to greet the object and explain your permissions before you handle it! And check out the first point about pregnancy and menstruation:

This itself is an object of power, power exercised by indigenous people to control the behavior of museum workers.  Note the ludicrous claims of this poster about the “power” of these objects. As Elizabeth notes:

Perhaps museum staffs know or suspect that if they don’t play along, their indigenous partners will suddenly demand everything back. Regardless of the reason, it seems difficult to trust any science coming from people who take seriously the concept that whistles can be used to summon “supernatural beings.”

Perhaps most offensively, they caution, “DO NOT APPROACH” objects of power “if you are feeling discomfort, i.e., if you are in a physically or emotionally vulnerable state (including menstruation and pregnancy).” This clearly sexist warning abandons science and implies that women, particularly during menstruation and pregnancy, are emotionally unstable and weak. Allowing religious beliefs to be taken seriously in a place of science hinders scientific progress, enables discrimination, obstructs the teaching of science to those who partner with museums, and casts considerable doubt on the quality and objectivity of the research coming out of these institutions.

That’s all true, and here scientists and museum staff are being forced to obey supernatural beliefs of Native Americans,—beliefs that are not only false, but also misogynistic and offensive. But this is what happens when science mixes with the supernatural; the former is diluted and the latter is given credence—and perhaps credibility.

Here’s one more example and a photo:

Most absurdly, museum staff and indigenous partners debated over whether to display a whistle. According to Clyde Tallio from the Nuxalk Nation, “Whistles are so powerful they have caused intercultural conflicts.” Museum protocols explain that, “Nuxalk elders say whistles would not normally be on display, but instead are traditionally stored in boxes.” Because of this, Tallio advises that whistles should not be observed directly, but should instead be placed in closed boxes with an accompanying photo and text explaining its sacredness. However, museum staff decided to take extra precautions: one Nuxalk Kusiut whistle was “removed from display entirely, as it is a summoning tool for supernatural beings.”

From the poster; the removed whistle is the photo on top:

In my view, any object in a museum should not be displayed as if it had supernatural powers, though it’s okay to say that this is what the indigenous people believe. Nor should museum staff have to genuflect and respect the “power” of items that, after all, are just stuff used by Native Americans.

A new magazine collaboration between Big Think and Templeton

November 1, 2023 • 12:45 pm

Reader Dave called my attention to this new online magazine called “The Well”. Click on the screenshot to go to the site.

And below that, the scary part (I’ve outlined it in red):

Templeton!  There they go again with the Big Questions, except some of them are answerable this time (“no, we don’t have free will,” and “no, evolution is not directional”).  What Templeton is doing, and is coopting a pretty reputable site to do so—though “Big Think” is sponsored by the Charles Koch Foundation—is to claim that there is Something Beyond Science, something numinous or ungraspable. Remember, the John Templeton Foundation was set up by the hedge fund billionaire to show people that the more we learn about science, the more we understand about God (now “spirituality”). As reader Dave wrote me:

Templeton’s continual attempts to usurp science is consistently repulsive — particularly by way of its other facade, Nautilus Magazine. So I couldn’t resist passing the aforementioned along.
Here’s something even sadder in the first issue, some self-help with Jon Haidt. The 11-minute video is okay, but I wouldn’t lend my name to Templeton. Now Haidt is one of the prize horses in Templeton’s stall:

And here’s an article saying that the “self” is real, and that buttresses the idea of free will:

As Vonnegut said, so it goes. . .