Calgary Skeptic’s Society Blog

I’m sure many people have heard of, if not seen, the new show The Mentalist, which premiered this September on CBS. To give a quick synopsis of the show, it stars Simon Baker as Thomas Jane, a man who used to present himself as a psychic, doing cold readings and talking to people “on the other side”. After a tragedy in his personal life which was related to his fraudulent career, he turns a new leaf and admits he was faking it. He gets a job with the California Board of Investigation as a homicide detective. He has an exceptional talent in “reading” people – he uses their subtle body language and inadvertent hints in  conversation to narrow down his suspect list.

First, a quick review: I really like this show. It’s a solid drama, with the obligatory funny bits and a good-looking lead actor. The supporting cast is also excellent, especially Robin Tunney, playing Thomas Jane’s boss Lisbon. The show follows the one crime per episode style, typical of all crime dramas, and each episode includes a small bit about Jane’s personal life and history. The writing is decent, not brilliant by any means, but it kept me interested. The crimes are always interesting, and each episode has the plot twist we’ve all come to expect in hour-long programs. Though the structure is nothing new, the characters, storylines, and concepts are fresh material. Overall, I’d give it 4 stars out of 5.

Now the skeptical part. Thomas Jane openly declares that not only was he simply pretending to be a psychic for all those years, but that all psychics are fake. In the pilot episode, he gets into a debate with Grace, one of his fellow investigators. She asks “when you get together with a real psychic, do they know that you’re just faking?” to which Jane responds “there’s no such thing as a real psychic” - point one for the skeptic! I was a little worried in this part about a cop-out – that Thomas wouldn’t defend his skepticism in order to respect Grace’s beliefs. He gives a quick cold reading about Grace, stating that he knows her father is a football coach, that it’s obvious by her whole demeanor.

Later in the episode, she says, “I think you are a real psychic, you just won’t admit it” - the classic defense of many true believers. Thomas just laughs.

The one major let-down in the show is its rather constant talk of hypnotism. Thomas Jane hypnotizes one witness, instructing her to tell him the truth about what she knows about a victim. In another episode, Jane suggests hypnotism in order to remember little details that your conscious mind may have forgotten, but your subconscious mind can recall. In this case he doesn’t actually hypnotize the witnesses, just pretends to – I’ll let you watch the episode to see why. However, his talk of hypnotism is quite unskeptical, since to date no evidence has been found to confirm the idea that hypnotism can help an individual recall memories – think of the “repressed memory” hypnotists of the 1990s, who got themselves in quite a lot of trouble by implanting memories in a patient as opposed to helping the patient recall their real memories. See the Skepdic article on hypnosis for more information.

Hopefully the talk of hypnotism will subside in future episodes. Right now, I give the show an A- for a skeptical rating – it uses humour and logic to poke fun at psychics and show that they’re frauds. Let’s hope the audience will take this thought to heart. So far IMDB doesn’t have many ratings or reviews, and the ones I’ve found elsewhere were mostly positive, though not glowingly so. I’ll follow up when more people have reacted to the show.

I believe mainstream media is the best way to educate people on critical thinking and skepticism – up to now, it hasn’t been doing its job. Hopefully we’ll see more prime time shows such as The Mentalist that encourage people to think for themselves, demand evidence, and reject pseudoscience.

Last night was my sister’s birthday, and as most skeptics know, the family get-together is prime territory for learning all about the “interesting” beliefs that various members of the family hold.  For me, this moment came when my sister opened up one of her presents - a salt-lamp.  The lamps are absolutely gorgeous, and the light they give off is beautiful.  I really like the lamp, but I really hate the claims it makes.  For those not familiar, the topic has been covered before.

This is not an isolated incident.  It seems every time I get together with relatives something that perks up my skeptical ears will come up.  Anything from medical claims to conspiracies to the un-skeptical report they saw on Breakfast Television about whatever the coolest new fad is.  I’m sure many of you have had similar experiences, so I wanted to write about what I feel is the best way to handle these situations.  As always, your mileage may vary, so don’t take this advice as gospel truth.

Firstly, before I decide what to say, I decide if I should say anything at all.  This is, after all, a family gathering; do you really want to start an argument?  Try to gauge just how much stock the person puts in this belief.  Have they put a lot of time and thought into a belief, or did they just see the report on TV and find it interesting?  Assuming no harm is caused, if someone has put a lot into this belief then I don’t think that their birthday party is the best time to point out that they might not be correct.  If however, they had just picked up a tidbit of information from the internet or the news and they found it interesting, in most cases, I think that it is safe to proceed and ask some skeptical questions.  I have a hard time letting go of anything that can cause actual harm, no matter how entrenched in someone’s belief system it is.  This has lead to a couple of awkward moments, so it’s up to you to decide how important it is to say something.  Tread lightly, convincing the true believer is difficult to impossible, and might not be something you want to do when they are your aunt, and you’ve both had a few glasses of wine.

So you’ve decided that either the claim is too egregious to let go by unchallenged, or you don’t anticipate a huge argument, how do you go about it?  There are several approaches, but it is always important never to tell someone they are wrong, or their belief is stupid.  This is not only to be polite, but because they may not be wrong (only misinformed) and their belief is not stupid (perhaps misguided).

• Mention that you’ve heard of this type of claim before, but that it never seems to get any traction. Ask them why they think that might be.  This works well with miracle cures and free energy claims.
• Bring up the alternative explanations for an unidentified phenomenon.  For example, if someone thinks that they are psychic because of dreams coming true, you can explain that given all the dreams and all the things that happen in a day, it’s actually more unlikely to not recognize something from a dream in your day to day life.
• Question the scientific sounding lingo. Negative ions?  What do you think that might mean?  How is that good for our bodies?  And so on.

If you manage to get a conversation going, and the person is interested in discussing it, great!  If all you get is sneers and no one seems interested in listening to you, you have to decide again if maybe everyone will be better off if you just let it go this time.

Now, you’ve made that first probe, and gotten a bite, great.  Let’s hope you’re prepared.  Here are some generalized tips for many popular claims.

• Make sure the person knows that you are only interested in evidence, and you don’t just want to shoot down their ideas.  Ask them why they think personal feelings are more trustworthy than what scientists or experts say.
• Explain the fallibility of memory, eyewitness accounts and anecdotes.  Explain blinded studies, the placebo effect, and why blinding is so important.
• Find common ground.  Find out what they DON’T believe in, and then find out why.  If they don’t believe in the alien abduction phenomenon, you argue with them as if you were an abduction proponent.  Chances are they will shoot down your claims and you can then draw the similarity for them between why they don’t believe that claim and why you don’t believe theirs.
• Know your logical fallacies.

In the end, don’t expect to change anyone’s mind.  If you plant a seed of doubt, or convey to them some of the principles of critical analysis then next time they come across a claim they might think twice about it, and you’ve done your job.

So what happened with my sister’s salt lamp?  There was some talk about the negative ions and interested oohing and ahhing over the literature that came with it and I stayed quiet.  I think everyone at the table knew how I felt about it. After a very heated discussion about homeopathy some time ago I decided to just keep quiet this time.

Besides, it was my sister’s birthday.

Fair and Biased.

That’s what good documentaries should be. All too often documentaries with an obvious agenda try to pass themselves off as fair and impartial. (Here I am thinking of films like “Jesus Camp” and Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11″) Their message is lost in their attempts to convince us that they’re not biased, that they’re presenting the material objectively. Bullshit.

When did it become bad to show your bias in documentaries. If your film is largely an editorial on a specific issue you should have a bias. Use that bias to make your point and present it in an interesting way.

So, the question is: Is “Religulous” a film that has something interesting or important to say?, or is it just “Borat” redux; a bunch of scenes of smart people shooting fish in a barrel.”

The answer is a bit of both. Fortunately it is much more the former rather than the latter.

Bill Maher isn’t out to make fun of these people. He is not there to insult them for our amusement. (Well, not usually) He has questions for these people, and he genuinely wants them to have answers for him. I think he would like nothing more than to have one of them give him these answers. There’s a scene in the film where he’s interviewing a character in a theme park. At one point the person being interviewed offers up a really compelling piece of rhetoric and it really does sort of stop Maher in his tracks, he doesn’t cut away, they don’t shrug it off. In fact they address it seriously and devote a few minutes to Maher talking about being thrown for a loop.

He’s not just interviewing crazy people here, specifically I’m thinking of when he speaks to a senior Vatican priest and a Vatican astronomer. These were two highly intelligent men who really had a lot of interesting and compelling things to say. If anything I would have liked to see a lot more from these men and a bit less from a few of the people who had literally nothing to say. Here I’m referring to the guy whose religion was based on smoking marijuana. (could someone please tell me why the hell that guy was even IN the movie? It honestly felt like it was an excuse for Bill Maher to smoke.)

Sure, there are scenes in the film that are only there to amuse. Let’s not forget that this movie is also a comedy. Some of the people he talks to are flat out crazy. But, the only people he flat out mocks are the people who deserve it. (Second coming of Jesus anybody?)

There are some flaws however, throughout the film Charles cuts to clips from pop culture in response to certain things that the interviewees say. Some of these are very effective and hilarious. Some of them however, are not. A lot of the time they are unnecessary. We as the audience are intelligent enough to know when something is funny or crazy, we don’t need a clip from pop culture to clue us in. I think there were just too many of them.

Ultimately, regardless of what you might think about the rest of the movie, the ending really works. After all the comedy we’ve seen he sums up his point: “Doubt is humble.” That’s really the theme of this movie, you should be able to question religions. You should be able to talk about these things with people without people saying you’re attacking them. Lastly, if you’re someone who saw this movie and was offended by the way Maher treated your religion I would be very curious to know how you felt when he went after the other guys. Did it bother you the same? Or were you only offended with he talked about YOUR beliefs. He doesn’t want cynicism. He wants skepticism, and I think that’s something we can all agree the world needs a bit more of.

“You want to know how I know you’re not sure? because I’m not sure and you don’t possess mental powers that I do not.” - Bill Maher

“Atta boy Bill!” - Joey Gruszecki