SETI built on GIGO

I’ve never been a fan of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It’s like playing the lottery obsessively, throwing down lots of money in hopes of a big payoff, and I don’t play the lottery, either.

I’d really like to know if Seth Shostak is innumerate enough to play the lottery, though, because his recent claim that we stand a good chance of discovering extraterrrestrial intelligence within 25 years. All right, bring it: let’s see your evidence for such a claim.

“I actually think the chances that we’ll find ET are pretty good,” said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute in Mountain View, Calif., here at the SETIcon convention. “Young people in the audience, I think there’s a really good chance you’re going to see this happen.”

Shostak bases this estimation on the Drake Equation, a formula conceived by SETI pioneer Frank Drake to calculate the number (N) of alien civilizations with whom we might be able to communicate. That equation takes into account a variety of factors, including the rate of star formation in the galaxy, the fraction of stars that have planets, the fraction of planets that are habitable, the percent of those that actually develop life, the percent of those that develop intelligent life, the fraction of civilizations that have a technology that can broadcast their presence into space, and the length of time those signals would be broadcasted.

Reliable figures for many of those factors are not known, but some of the leaders in the field of SETI have put together their best guesses. Late great astronomer Carl Sagan, another SETI pioneer, estimated that the Drake Equation amounted to N = 1 million. Scientist and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov calculated 670,000. Drake himself estimates a more conservative 10,000.

The Drake Equation? That’s it? I hate the Drake Equation. It’s seven arbitrary parameters plugged into a simple formula, of which we have reasonable estimates of one (the rate of star formation), growing evidence of values for another (the number of planets around each star), and the other five are complete wild-ass guesses, most of them dealing with biology and culture, and we’ve got astronomers who know next to nothing of either inserting optimistic values. When biologists amend the values to something more reasonable, the likelihood of intelligent life plummets. Not that their wild-ass guesses are necessarily more accurate (although they are based on the history of life on this one planet), but it does say something that the equation can yield results that vary by six orders of magnitude, depending on who does the calculation.

It’s a useless formula. You can’t calculate anything from a formula in which almost all of the variables are complete unknowns, and it’s also meaningless in that no matter what result we acquire from empirical evidence, it can all be retrofitted to the magic formula. I really don’t understand the appeal of the Drake Equation, except that it turns our ignorance into a pseudo-sciencey string of fake math…but smart people ought to be able to recognize garbage.

I can’t really make a prediction here, unlike Shostak, who seems willing to gamble everything on promises he doesn’t have to worry about fulfilling. He could win the lottery. But I’m not going to place any bets on it.

You can buy anything on eBay, I guess

There ought to be some regulation of the kind of fraud some people peddle online. I’m tempted to try this one: BOOTY ENHANCEMENT Spell Cast by Powerful Wiccan Witch (note: bikini-clad bottom on display at that link), just to see what happens. Except that I know what will happen: nothing. Less than nothing, actually, since we’re changing diet here and I expect my booty will be shrinking — the TrophyWife™ has actually put together a flavorful, low calorie, non-fat menu for me that looks pretty good already.

But then…the magic spell is only $8.95!

And this is the most dismal statistic of all:

99.8% Positive feedback

* Consistently receives highest buyers’ ratings
* Ships items quickly
* Has earned a track record of excellent service

She’s got precisely ONE negative evaluation in her entire eBay history, from someone whose butt apparently failed to plump up. Suckers swarm over this stuff.

I’m in the wrong business.

Oh, look: Rebecca Watson beat me to this one.

Ghoul visits Vancouver

This is a good way to do it: when the fortune-telling, pseudo-necromancer John Edward showed up in Vancouver to do his ridiculous cold-reading act, CFI met his deluded followers with information and honesty. It was a sad spectacle; many of the attendees were desperate, bereaved people, there for a little hope and getting fleeced instead (tickets were $200!)

It sounds like they did everything just right. The only reservation I have is…where were the media? This is the kind of event where contacting a few newspapers and television and radio stations beforehand, and publicizing the protest, is an essential force multiplier — and the news media love a controversy. They’re planning another event when the odious James Van Praagh, another phony speaker to the dead, comes to town, and getting a newspaper op-ed or a minute on television can provoke in interesting ways.

The only thing that might make be break my boycott of the HuffPo is…

…is an article by Vic Stenger. He addresses that weird old canard that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”, which has always struck me as bogus. Of course it is! It is just evidence of variable strength, from laughably weak (I have no evidence of a teapot in orbit around the sun, which isn’t a very strong case since no one has looked for an orbiting teapot, and it’s a tiny target in a vast volume anyway) to extremely strong (there are no dragons in my backyard; I have looked, and there are no large firebreathing reptiles gnawing on virgins back there).

I wonder if the source of this cliche isn’t a different claim, that absence of evidence is not proof of absence…which is actually mostly true (still, there is no way to claim there are dragons in my backyard) and also entirely irrelevant, since science doesn’t deal in proof. And since most of the wackjobs who cite the aphorism can’t tell the difference between proof and evidence anyway, they probably think it means the same thing.

But what if she had vapors, or an imbalance of humors?

Come on, journals. What kind of garbage are you stooping to publish now?

This paper in Virology Journal has to be seen to be believed. The entire data set for the “study” is a few brief lines in the Bible, where Jesus heals a sick woman with a fever. From this, the authors conclude that she had influenza. Huzzah! A completely unjustifiable diagnosis from hearsay.

And even more absurdly, the journal editors thought this superficial noise was worthy of publication.

I will say, though, that my favorite parts were the bits where the authors noted that Jesus did not take her temperature because the Fahrenheit scale wasn’t invented until 1724, and the part where they seriously rule out the possibility that the woman’s illness was demonic possession. Another cheer for science!

Never mind me, though, Tara Smith knows more about disease than I do, and she pans the paper too.

Good news from Skepticon 3

If you were hoping to get into Skepticon 3, the fun free skeptics conference in Missouri, there’s very good news: thanks to a donation from Polaris Financial Planning, they were able to book a much larger venue, expanding from a maximum capacity of 500 to 1800, and also bring in more speakers. Register now! Everyone is going to be there.

In tangentially related news, the filmographer for Skepticon, Rob Lehr, is trying to raise money for a documentary on poverty, and you can help by voting in a contest for $50,000. Take a look, if it’s a worthy exercise, click on the little button and give it a shot.

“Implicit consent”—women can be stripped if they’re dancing at a bar

This is an appalling story. Those “Girls Gone Wild” videos are already about the sleaziest things you’ll find advertised on mainstream TV: they are basically made by getting young women drunk to reduce their inhibitions and than urging them to expose themselves for ‘fame’ and titillation, and convincing them to do something stupid in front of a camera. Usually it’s a case of consensual stupidity (which should never be arousing, except for the fact that even sober guys can be awfully mindless about that sort of thing), but sometimes it crosses the line into assault.

STLToday reports that the woman, identified only as Jane Doe, was dancing in at the former Rum Jungle bar in 2004 when someone reached up and pulled her tank top down, exposing her breasts to the “Girls Gone Wild” camera. Jane Doe, who was 20 at the time the tape was made, is now living in Missouri with her husband and two children. She only found out about the video in 2008, when a friend of her husband’s saw the “Girls Gone Wild Sorority Orgy” video and recognized her face. He called up her husband, and in what has got to be the most awkward conversation ever, informed him that his wife’s breasts were kinda famous.

The woman sued Girls Gone Wild for $5 million in damages. After deliberating for just 90 minutes on Thursday, the St. Louis jury came back with a verdict in favor of the smut peddlers. Patrick O’Brien, the jury foreman, explained later to reporters that they figured if she was willing to dance in front of the photographer, she was probably cool with having her breasts on film. They said she gave implicit consent by being at the bar, and by participating in the filming – though she never signed a consent form, and she can be heard on camera saying “no, no” when asked to show her breasts.

Got that ladies? If you’re willing to dance, you’re willing to be stripped of your clothes. And presumably we can carry this a little further and reason that if you’re naked in a bar, you’ve consented to sex, although fortunately it did not go that far in this case. I can oppose this decision for the purely selfish reason that I don’t women to be discouraged from dancing happily in public, and for the reason that this is a gross injustice, that porn merchants’ bottom line has just been declared more important than a woman’s right to privacy.

How can you have implied consent when the woman is plainly saying “no”?

How can you have implied consent when the woman has her top forcibly pulled down, and she reacts by instantly pulling it back up?

Being at a party and dressing attractively in clothing that displays cleavage does not imply that you’ve abandoned all expectations of any modesty at all.

As you might guess, skeptical women are clear that this was a violation, and they can reasonably feel threatened by such a decision, but even worse — they can feel threatened by fellow skeptics and rationalists who react inappropriately to this case. I was left feeling rather queasy about the discussion on the JREF forums. A good number of people did respond appropriately, deploring the decision, but quite a few others react by either making jokes about breasts (way to make women welcome, guys), or by legalistic analyses that justify it in various ways, which all boil down to the “she was asking for it” defense, with a bit of the “she was too greedy to ask for so much compensation” argument.

Look. It’s simple. Violations of personal liberty are wrong. There is no reasonable excuse to justify pulling someone else’s clothing off in public, against their will. There is no reasonable excuse for profiting off such actions. Don’t even try to defend it, accept it and move on. Don’t make jokes about the inherent humor in assaulting women. Don’t make it easier for women to be made uncomfortable in the presence of men.

And most of all, do not ever purchase any of those execrable “Girls Gone Wild” videos. They are one of the clearest examples of violations of the dignity of women. I understand that as porn goes, they are fairly soft-core, but their main appeal seems to be that they celebrate the humiliation and manipulation of women under conditions of diminished capacity and judgment.

There has been a lot of discussion of “dicks” in the skeptical community lately, where “dicks” are people who are rude and brash. I think we’ve been using the wrong definition. If you’re someone who does any of the above, or who thinks with a pretense of calm rationality that we can justify what happened to that woman, then you are a DICK with capital D-I-C-K.

One of the things I love about having a comments section with a reputation as being a vicious piranha tank is that I can open up this subject and I know there will be a few True Dicks who will make an appearance, but I also know that the people here, the lower-case dicks who get accused of shrillness and discourtesty, will shred the flesh from their bones. And that makes me feel a little better.

The special case rule

This is true, but cruel:

i-18e4837c715dadf7531abafc00d70e2a-skeptic.jpeg

It made me think…there would be a lot more vegans in the world if they could each declare one special exemption. I think “I’m a vegan, except when it comes to bacon” would be a very common phrase, just like “I’m a skeptic, except when it comes to religion.”

Mmmm, bacon.