Dave, Aysha, and Lisa attended with a group of approximately twelve sceptics, many of whom were from CFI and Skeptic North. Apparently before we even stepped foot into the Convention Centre there was some controversy over at Skeptic North. Some of the organizers of the expo, along with some other folks associated with it, were engaged in a back-and-forth with the blog’s authors in the comments section (some of it was genial and some of it was nasty). So the organizers knew at least that some members of Skeptic North would be in attendance, and they were ready for them.

Lisa’s immediate response to the expo was revulsion at having to give propagators of woo and pseudoscience her $8 admission fee. She would much rather have donated the money to some sort of charity than to fork it over to them. So she felt a little better when Sunday turned out to be two-for-one admission.

Once inside the expo, the group naturally split off into sub-groups, with a plan to meet at the exit at 12:30pm. Somehow Aysha and Lisa managed to stick together and experienced most of the expo as a pair, going undetected as skeptics and experiencing no drama. Not so for some of the other attendees. Approximately 20 minutes into their foray, Lisa and Aysha heard an announcement over the loud speaker warning vendors that “four members of Skeptics North” were in attendance and may “attempt to record and/or photograph” vendors without authorization. The announcement also mentioned that the skeptics appeared to be dressed in black. It was an odd statement given that probably three-quarters of the people in the room were wearing black. At the moment the announcement came, Aysha and Lisa were discussing Omega Alpha’s products with the vendor, who then said, “You’re wearing black. Are you a skeptic?” To which Lisa responded, “Everyone here is wearing black. You’re wearing black!” It was light-hearted and they all went back to discussing Omega Alpha’s vast array of natural health products including their robust pet line (OptiPet Multi, E-Z Rest, GlucosaPet, Kidney Tone, and Liver Tone, to name a few).

Dave Bailey was prepared to go either way at the expo, but any notion of innocently engaging people went out the window when the organisers made their announcement. At that point his dander was raised and plan ‘B’ went into action. The previous evening Dave had downloaded a picture from Hell’s News Stand and ironed it onto a t-shirt — a cross-section of a toilet with the slogan, “If water has a memory then homeopathy is full of crap.” He took off his jacket to reveal his shirt and waited for reactions. For better or worse, none of the organisers or participants chose to take up the obvious challenge, although Dave did have a pleasant conversation with a couple of elderly ladies who seemed both amused and bemused. Later as Dave was being ‘followed’ out of the hall, a man walking in stopped to read it, chuckled, showed it to his wife, and then gave Dave a thumbs up and said he loved it. What he was doing there with that attitude was anyone’s guess — perhaps he wanted to have some past-life regression therapy to find out why homeopathy had failed to save him in a previous existence.

Dave was intrigued that some of the exhibitors seemed to be lowering themselves by appearing in such an environment when their presence at a genuine health expo would not have been out of place. He was particularly struck by the hemp booth, which didn’t seem to be touting any miracle cures, just promoting a product that is provably a resource with good sustainability and one that could be of much benefit to the agricultural community. Dave wonders if such vendors can’t afford to turn down any opportunity for publicity. (He highly recommends the hemp substitute for peanut butter — a free sample was eagerly devoured!)

This was Aysha’s first time attending the Whole Life Expo, or anything like it, so she was pretty excited to learn about which alternative products are popular right now. The one she was most baffled by was a homeopathic detox kit. Drops of the remedy had to be added to a 1.5 litres of water, shaken, and consumed daily for a few weeks. Aysha felt that simply filling a bottle with tap water at home would have been a more cost-effective and sensible option.

It was Lisa’s first natural health expo as well. She had no idea what to expect, but found herself constantly exclaiming about how unbelievable it all was. As Dave noted, there were some ‘legitimate’ vendors, but they were few and far between. The vast majority of them stretched the boundaries of science, and many of them were ethically questionable. It seemed as though Lisa’s incredulity grew greater with each booth she visited.

First there was Asea, the “scientific breakthrough that was thought to be impossible.” This was a particularly interesting experience because in trying explain how the product works, the vendor just got more and more twisted up. For the record, the front of the pamphlet explains that Asea is “NOT a vitamin or mineral supplement, NOT made from sea vegetables, NOT a [sic] herbal formula, NOT an exotic fruit or berry energy juice, NOT an over hyped antioxidant formula, NOT a novel delivery system.” So what is it? Lisa wondered as she excitedly opened the pamphlet to find out. Well, it doesn’t actually say. The brochure explains what Asea does for you (“boosting the cell’s communication allowing it to protect, repairing [sic], and replacing cells efficiently”). It explains the “science” of it (some stuff about reactive molecules, ATP, antioxidants, free radicals, oxidative stress, and redox signalling). According to the fine people at Asea, their product is “highly patented” (Lisa didn’t know there were high and low stages of patents) and is the only product that has stabilized the native cell molecules. Okay!

Aysha tried a sample of Asea while Lisa asked the vendor what Aysha might expect to feel from it. They were told that in about 15 minutes Aysha would feel a boost of energy. Lisa kept checking in, but Aysha reported no increased energy.

Lisa’s incredulity grows over at the Biotronix Research Instruments booth. Apparently these products heal with “electro-medicine.” This information packet is almost too brilliant to ever be thrown out and must be excerpted here, in its original form — all spelling and capitalization is in the original:

Every Cell In The Body Is Designed To Run At A Voltage Of 70-90 Millivolts. We Heal By Making New Cells ! For The Body To Make These New Cells Requires 70-90 Millivolts. We Get Sick When Our Voltage Drops Below The Operating Voltage of 20 MIllivolts. Thus, All Chronic Disease is Defined by Having Low Voltage.

However, If You Run Out of Voltage Before Finishing Making Enough New Cells To Replace Those That Are Damaged, Voltage Will Drop Even Lower And Now You Are Stuck With CHRONIC DISEASE. A Drop In Voltage Causes A Drop In OXYGEN!!! [—.] The Only Way You Can Get Well Is To Increase Voltage. This, Can Be Assisted By Using ELECTROMAGNETIC DEVICES. [—.] INTRODUCING: – A NEW INSTRUMENT ‘LYMEAID GENERATOR’

And it goes on—for SIX PAGES!!!

But the expo got even better. (Worse?)

Aysha and Lisa caught about 10 minutes of a talk/demonstration by Nicholas Ashfield. The presentation platform happened to be right near the washrooms, and when Lisa saw the device on the table, she couldn’t resist finding out what it did. The device looked like something that would be used in a low-budget 1970s sci-fi movie to appear “science-y” — it had knobs and a meter. Ashfield’s field of expertise (over 30 years of practice) is Radionics: “vibrational healing that clears past traumas, restoring attunement [sic] with life.” According to his flyer, Radionics is “gentle, fascinating, and effective.” While not a particularly great speaker, Ashfield did have a few choice bon mots that Lisa just had to jot down. When it came time to demonstrate his product, Ashfield asked for a volunteer, and one bald gentleman in a black shirt (perhaps a skeptic??) raised his hand a little too eagerly. Then a bunch of other people raised their hands, including Lisa. Ashfield said he couldn’t just choose someone, that he had to let the “source” choose for him and he used “internal dowsing” to eliminate everyone in the crowd except for—bald-black-shirt guy! Ashfield referred to this “source” over and over again, but never explained what it was. Apparently it was some sort of supernatural entity that guided him. It was the “source” that allowed Ashfield to use Radionics to “clear” the plant—ahem, uh—volunteer from a distance — he didn’t have to be hooked up to the machine or even be near it; it works long distance. Ashfield informed us that in physics it’s known as an “index.” Ah. So long-distance, via Radionics, Ashfield managed to tune into the plant/volunteer’s “energetic e-mail address.” And then he told his fortune. Aysha commented that it was like he was reading the guy’s horoscope out of the paper. Indeed. After a relatively racist comment (about how Native people have been using this technique for a long time because they have a connection to nature that modern, “civilized” people didn’t have), Aysha and Lisa had had enough of the Radionics guy and moved on.

(Side note: It was just before Ashfield’s talk that the second announcement about ‘skeptics in our midst’ came over the loud speaker. Ashfield said he didn’t mind if skeptics were in attendance because he, too, used to be a skeptic — before he tried Radionics.)

Lisa really wanted to have a “Bio-ENERGY & KARMA DIAGNOSIS” and even filled out the form to have it done, but alas the line was too long. Instead she had her posture checked. There were maybe five or six chiropractic-type people there all with the same tools for checking posture, so Lisa had it done twice. The first gentleman told her that her head was too far forward while pointing to a photo of a spine with scoliosis in a subluxation text book. He really wanted her to sign up that day for treatment at a discounted rate. He even took credit cards!

Despite all of these experiences, not every vendor was sketchy. Or, at least, some provided pleasant surprises. One vendor spent a great deal of time discussing her product for digestive problems. Aysha and Lisa maintained a credulous, curious demeanour throughout the expo, asking questions with keen interest. When Lisa asked this vendor, “Should I take this pill if I don’t have digestive problems?” it is to the vendor’s credit that she said no. She instead suggested foisting it upon grandma at Christmas dinner. Nonetheless, the question was meant as a set-up to see if the vendor would recommend her ‘remedy’ even in light of a lack of symptoms, and she passed the test.

Aysha also found herself impressed by a vendor’s candor. She had a great conversation with a vendor about a “chakra reading” being offered at one of the other booths. The vendor had a ‘reading’ done the day before and seemed a little skeptical of what she was told. She mentioned that a lot of what the ‘reader’ told her was very general and could have applied to anyone, but that a couple of major things were going on in her life that the ‘reader’ did not mention; the vendor really felt that the ‘reader’ should have picked up on those things. Aysha told the vendor that she agreed and that she wishes people would talk more about the misses that they experience when they have a ‘reading’ done. Aysha was impressed with vendor’s critical reflection on her experience.

Dave was surprised to learn (and later confirmed through independent online research) that what he has been using as cinnamon for years is actually not true cinnamon, but cassia, a related plant that is usually substituted. The true cinnamon is much less woody than cassia, thin and brittle in texture, but with a very similar if not identical aroma. The genuine article may soon be appearing on his spice rack. Knowledge worth the $4 admission fee?

What shocked Lisa most about the expo overall was what seemed to be the absolute lack of effort on the part of the vendors and manufacturers to pass their products off as scientific. It seems that just saying something is science and having a few pseudoscientific words and phrases at the ready is all these vendors generally need to fob their wares off on unsuspecting consumers. But when pushed even a little to get into the nitty gritty by people with some scientific knowledge, the vendors tripped over themselves in a befuddled mass of confusion and ignorance. When the Asea vendor was going on about redox signalling and mitochondria, Aysha asked for more specifics about how it worked. The woman then pulled out a lovely colour photo of a cell, when she didn’t identify as a blood cell until Lisa pointed it out to her. “Oh yes,” she said, laughing, “thank you for pointing that out!”

Another vendor had a few products, one of which was a plate that allegedly leeches bad chemicals from your food. Simply place your grocery bag on this plate and it will remove all harmful chemicals from your food. Lisa asked how it works. The vendor explained that it uses a “process” by which the “bonds” between the chemicals are “broken down.” When Lisa pushed further — microwaves? what? — the vendor replied, “It’s proprietary.” Lisa didn’t leave it there. “Well, what about the good things in food, like the vitamins and minerals? Does it break those down too?” The response was “no.” Magic!

Aysha and Lisa visited a booth promoting “polarity therapy” workshops. This was something neither of them had heard of before and they were ever so curious! The pamphlet explains polarity therapy as “the art and science of balancing the subtle, natural electromagnetic energy that creates and maintains our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual selves.” When prompted, the vendor had an extremely difficult time explaining what it was, highlighting instead that we could learn all about it through the workshops. She pointed to a couple of books there and then said that it takes years to learn.

Aysha and Lisa still don’t know what polarity therapy is.

For the most part, the members of Association for Science and Reason had a fine time at the expo until Dave Bailey ran into a little trouble at the end for taking photographs. While there was apparently a sign indicating that photography was not allowed inside the expo hall, Dave went outside of the expo hall to a balcony above it and took photos from there. He was approached by security and someone who seemed to be one of the organizers or associated with the organizers. Members of CFI and Skeptic North were treated antagonistically, and you can read their respective reports via the links below.

CFI’s account:
Skeptic North’s account, 1:

Skeptic North’s account, 2:

The treatment most commonly associated with this issue is the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR). The furor began in 1998 after an unfortunate set of circumstances which led the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet, to publish an article by Dr. Andrew Wakefield. I say ‘article’ rather than ‘research’ because the study may have had a (literally) fatal flaw – Dr. Wakefield was doing a study that was paid for by a group of parents of autistic children. These parents were looking for evidence that would aid them in a lawsuit against the makers of the MMR vaccine, which they were convinced had caused their children’s autism.

Immunization rates in Britain plummeted as a result of the article, with 25% of children not receiving the medication. A resurgence in the infection rates of these diseases followed, and in March 2006 a 13-year-old boy became the first person to die of measles in the UK in 14 years.

Since that time many of Wakefield’s collaborators have retracted their conclusions with a signed statement. The editor of The Lancet has said he never would have published the article if Wakefield’s conflict of interest had been known to him. As a result, vaccination rates in Britain have gone up to 85%. However, that is still lower than the 95% recommended by authorities as the minimum needed for herd immunity to keep those diseases at bay.

One would think that the purveyors and promoters of naturopathic medicine would be the last to accept any findings that the MMR vaccine is safe, but as skeptics we must keep an open mind to everything, and that includes giving credit where credit is due. The following can found on the web page of the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine (CCNM) after searching “vaccine”:

Association of autistic spectrum disorder and the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine: a systematic review.

Citation:

Wilson K, Mills E, Ross C, McGowan J, Jadad A. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med, 2003;157(7):628-34.

OBJECTIVE: To systematically review the evidence for and against the existence of an association between autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) and the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine.

DESIGN: We conducted a systematic review of the medical literature to identify all controlled epidemiological articles examining for an association between ASD and the MMR vaccine. We extracted data from the articles on the characteristics and objectives of the study as well as evidence of an association.

RESULTS: Twelve articles met the inclusion criteria. One study found no difference in the rates of ASD and the MMR vaccine in children who were vaccinated and those who were not. Six studies examined for evidence of an increase in ASD associated with an increase in the MMR vaccine coverage, none of which showed evidence of an association. Four studies examined if a variant form of ASD was associated with the MMR vaccine, none of which showed evidence of an association. Eight studies attempted to determine if there was a temporal association between developing ASD and receiving the MMR vaccine. Of these, 1 study identified an increase in parental concern in the 6-month period following vaccination with MMR in one of its analyses. The results of all other studies showed no association between ASD and the MMR vaccine.

CONCLUSIONS: The current literature does not suggest an association between ASD and the MMR vaccine; however, limited epidemiological evidence exists to rule out a link between a rare variant form of ASD and the MMR vaccine. Given the real risks of not vaccinating and that the risks and existence of variant ASD remain theoretical, current policies should continue to advocate the use of the MMR vaccine.

This is a direct quotation from the article cited, so it doesn’t represent anything original on the part of the CCNM. It is, however, a rather powerful statement when you consider who is reprinting it. We all enjoy the odd gotcha” moment, so when someone tells you that their favourite alt-med de jour is against vaccinating children, you can refer them to the CCNM and demonstrate that even they don’t buy it.

Then she discovered Judy suffered from osteo-arthritis, mild scoliosis (curvature of the spine), pronounced asymmetry and multiple subluxations that could lead to serious health problems. The cost of chiropractic therapy to deal with these problems, she was told, would be approximately $5,000.

However, Judy’s mother did not panic and pull out her check book. In fact, she was not alarmed at all, unlike most parents upon hearing such news. For she had taken her daughter to five chiropractors as part of an undercover investigation by a team of Toronto journalists.

Judy Matthews (a pseudonym to protect the youngster’s identity) was further examined by Dr. John Wedge, chief of surgery for Toronto’s famed Hospital for Sick Children, and found to be a “perfectly healthy girl” who needed no immediate or ongoing treatment.

Yet four out of five chiropractors in the Toronto area had found “serious” problems with Judy’s spine — specifically subluxations that needed chiropractic treatment.

Judy’s experience with chiropractors was part of the research undertaken by a team of journalists, headed by veteran reporters Paul Benedetti and Wayne MacPhail, to investigate pediatric chiropractic. Their investigation, which concluded that most chiropractic treatment of infants and children is “quackery”, was reported in a week-long series in Canada’s Sun Media newspapers and on the CANOE.CA news Web site in March 2001.

Among their findings were that as many as half the chiropractors in Canada may be using illegal tools for diagnosis, chiropractors often use scare tactics on parents of young children to build their practices, and more than 70 percent of Toronto-area chiropractors contacted in a random phone survey claim to be able to treat ear infections with chiropractic adjustments. Some chiropractors were found to claim they could treat attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity, asthma, learning disabilities and even autism.

More damning, the journalists could find no evidence that subluxations even exist or that the treatments cured the problems said to be caused by subluxations.

The cost to Canadian taxpayers through medical insurance plans and user fees for pediatric chiropractic was estimated at $40 million a year (much of which is covered by government-funded medicare in Canada).

Not all chiropractors were found wanting however. The articles noted that not all chiropractors treat infants and children and that some restrict their practices to musculoskeletal problems.

In recognition of their work, Benedetti and MacPhail received on March 28, 2001 the Ontario Skeptics’ first Award for Critical Media Reporting, “exemplifying the skeptical ideals of open-minded investigation, critical thinking, and alerting the public to the dangers of pseudoscience”.

The Ontario Skeptics also wrote the Ontario minister of health and other government officials to demand an investigation of pediatric chiropractic and to “put an end to the tragic waste of taxpayers’ dollars which are urgently needed for established treatments for actual medical conditions”. The government has not responded.

This article is based on an article that first appeared in Skeptical Inquirer.

Part of “Pseudoscience A to Z”, a series of brief articles in the OSSCI newsletter about topics that have not been subjected to much critical thinking by their promoters.

Let’s get one thing absolutely clear: Yes, you can live without food or water, as Breatharians claim. Yesterday I did it for at least nine hours, between my late-night beer and my morning granola bar. I sometimes go even longer. But I doubt it has anything to do with Prana Globules in the air. Confused? Attend….

Breatharianism was the philosophy espoused by Therese Neumann (1898-1962), who claimed that from 1926 until her death in 1962 she lived on nothing but transubstantiated bread. Transubstantiation, as you may already know, is the belief in some Christian sects that the bread served at communion actually becomes the flesh of Jesus Christ. Photographs reveal a rather chubby-cheeked, well nourished woman with all the signs of a healthy appetite, so I presume that the nutritional value of the bread would change, but that is not really our concern here. She was also a stigmatist, one who shows signs of crucifixion, and a mystic. And, for one who lived on very little, she appears surprisingly chubby in photographs. She is no longer with us (her lifestyle apparently does not extend the life expectancy), but she lives on as the patron saint of Breatharianism.

For living without food the proper term, if there can be such a thing, is Inedia. I have been unable to find a proper pronunciation, but let’s assume it’s ‘I need ya’, which is what I would be screaming at every doughnut after a few days. Ah yes, doughnuts. Could you make a good one with Prana globules instead of the usual ingredients? Juergen Buche, ND, thinks that is what enables one to live without food, which he claims is “not only unnecessary, but actually harmful to our health and well-being.” Prana is “divine energy”, and our Sun is a power station for its distribution. And food, well, that just poisons us. He claims that he was enlightened during a solo sailing trip up the East coast of the U.S. He began fasting, and claims that after three weeks he was “detoxified”. An interesting way of referring to food.

Another adherent is Ellen Greve, also known as Jasmuheen, who runs the CIA. No not that CIA. This is the Cosmic Internet Academy, and for the outlay of a few thousand bucks you can attend one of her seminars and learn to live on nothing but air. She lives in a house full of food, but she claims that this is only for her husband, a mere mortal. During a four day long test of her abilities administered by the Australian version of 60 Minutes she may have died if not for the intervention of a supervising medical professional. Her followers are not so fortunate, as at least three of them have died of starvation.

Dr. Johnny Lovewisdom (!) is another purveyor of Prana, and the author of such page turners as The Ascensional Science Of Spiritualizing Fruitarian Dietetics, Spiritualizing Dietetics: Vitarianism, and Maitreya: The Lovewisdom Autobiography, Volume 2, in which “He describes the events that led from his hermit life at lake Quilotoa to his founding of The Pristine Order Of Paradisian Perfection”.

The Common Sense of Physical Immortality, a book by Leonard Orr, gives us such advice as “Death is a grave mistake”, “If you can’t take it with you – don’t go!”, and “Dying is no way to live!” He missed his calling. He could have made legitimate money writing bumper stickers.

Can anyone take this stuff seriously? Unfortunately many do, and as noted it has killed some people. Adults may fall for whatever foolish notion they wish, but many times innocent children are involved, as with the infamous Jim Jones and the massacre of his followers. The promoters of Breatharianism do not seem to make any distinction as to who may follow the path, and no doubt some people are involving their offspring in something which can be easily and quickly lethal. Here is a clear case where society and its institutions should take a firm stand against such nonsense. Living without food or water is so fundamentally and obviously wrong that one must question why no action has been taken so far against those who would make anyone believe otherwise.

Really, I can’t do this subject justice. Check out their websites for more info. Their own words will hang them.

Some might be surprised he is even alive—a week after publicly downing the entire contents of three containers of homeopathic remedies, including a supposed arsenic alum.

McMillan took the massive overdoses as part of an event to launch the organization’s year-long campaign on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM). The meeting featured York University professor Michael De Robertis presenting the history and research into homeopathy, as well as award-winning journalists Paul Benedetti and Wayne MacPhail reporting on their investigations into chiropractic and other alternative medical treatments.

The audience gasped as halfway through the meeting McMillan displayed three homeopathic products, opened the packages and tilted the contents of all—including a bottle of liquid, a dispenser of granules and three tubes of caplets— into his mouth, adding only a little water to help him swallow them.

“I wanted to dramatically demonstrate the ineffectiveness of these so-called remedies,” he said afterwards.

According to homeopathic theory and practice, the effective agents in the remedies are diluted by their makers to the point that it is unlikely that even a molecule remains, but “water memory” is supposed to help the diluted substance retain its curative properties.

Despite warnings from the products’ manufacturers about overdosing, the three selected for the demonstration contained no active ingredients, McMillan said.

“I was told that if they were effective, I would start feeling ill within one to two hours.” However, he completed hosting the meeting. And seven days later he reports no ill effects at all. “Not even a twinge.”

However, McMillan does not recommend anyone else try this experiment on their own.

“We researched the products beforehand and I consulted with a pharmacist about the particular ingredients in the three I decided to take,” he said. “Even if the advertised active ingredients are not actually present in mixtures, homeopathic products are often filled out with other substances that I understand may cause a reaction if taken in large doses.”

He also experimented with other samples of the products earlier to ensure he would not have an allergic or other reaction to the ingredients at the meeting.

Nor was the demonstration offered as a controlled, scientific experiment examining the effectiveness of homeopathic products in preventing or curing disease, he said.

“Skeptics Canada is calling for all such products to be tested for efficacy, with scientific evaluation meeting the same empirical standards that all medical remedies should meet,” said the chairperson.

“This was just a little dramatization to bring home the lack of understanding about these products.”

Soon after the documentary and book came out, at least one critical account in book form also arrived—and you can read this one for free. The Jesus Family Tomb Controversy: How the Evidence Falls Short by Dillon Burroughs, at this time of writing, is available for free download as a PDF file, from either the Amazon or Nimble Books website. You can also get a shorter version of the main arguments in a pamphlet co-authored by Dillon, “9 Facts That Disprove The Lost Tomb of Jesus”, which can be downloaded from the Skeptics.ca website here.

The main claim in dispute is that the tomb of Jesus, his mother Mary, his brother Joseph, his purported wife Mary Magdelene, his purported son Judah, and others was uncovered in 1980 during excavation for construction in Talpiyot, near Jerusalem. The ossuaries—burial boxes for bones of the deceased—were removed from the site and stored in Israel but they were left unidentified until Toronto-based archeologist and filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici (known for his TV series The Naked Archeologist) and Canadian-born Hollywood director James Cameron (The Titanic and Terminator) came along.

Jacobovici also claims to have rediscovered the tomb which had been covered over since the 1980s. Watching his team do the detective work to find it makes for exciting television. A viewer is compelled to believe that the filmmakers did in fact uncover the tomb, marked with the distinctive chevron and circle symbol (which irreverently reminds me more of a Star Trek insignia than a religious symbol, but that’s just me).

But is it the tomb of Jesus? What’s a skeptic to think?

What’s at stake?

First let me state that I doubt any such findings—even if confirmed—would invalidate the Christian story by proving the material death of Christ. Many Christians do have a deeply held belief that Christ rose from the dead and ascended bodily into heaven; any solid evidence that his bones were kept in an ossuary might create serious religious difficulties for them. But the actual bones are long gone, so we have no conclusive evidence that the remains of the Biblical Jesus were ever kept in the container with his name on it. Moreover, not all Christian faiths require Christ’s resurrection and ascension to be physical.

I would expect though that the greater damage to faith might come from the major overhaul of the Christian story that would be needed if all the Jesus tomb claims were to be upheld: that Jesus was married, that Mary Magdalene was his wife, that he had a son, and that he lived and died as a mortal.. This extensive revision of the Bible narrative would probably force a similar revision of Christianity within the churches that base themselves on a traditional understanding of the Bible. But it would not necessarily require the wholesale invalidation of Christianity or religion in general. In short, it would not be the atheists’ silver bullet.

Nor, could the Jesus tomb story completely undercut the position of atheists, agnostics or other non-Christians by proving the historicity of Jesus, as some religious figures have suggested. If the Jesus-tomb claims are confirmed, the most they show in this regard is that the Biblical figures had some basis in reality—not that any one of the figures was a god or had divine powers. No evidence of miracles is being claimed.

Moreover, the claims would corroborate parts of the Bible (at least as it is currently constituted) while contradicting other parts, thus providing both ammunition and difficulties for both those disputing and those supporting the Bible’s literal veracity.

So, my own sense of the situation is that if the tomb and ossuaries were confirmed as those of Jesus’s family, there would have to be some rethinking on all sides, although the faith of either believers or non-believers is unlikely to be destroyed. There is too much wiggle room for both positions.

But we are far from having to have those debates yet. The credibility of the claim about Jesus’s tomb has yet to be established.

The critical response

The criticism of the Jesus-tomb claims (at least in academic circles) begins with the fact that they were first presented at a press conference and then on television, rather than in peer-reviewed journals or at other professional venues. This means that those with expertise in the subjects dealt with by the documentary did not have an opportunity to submit the claims to an intensive examination before they went public.

Archeologists and historians have noted that the history of the Jerusalem area during the era in question, the culture and practices of the people of that time, and the interpretation of the literature from this period are very complicated. Yet the filmmakers seem to have made huge simplifying assumptions in fields where consensus has not been reached. A great deal of assessment is needed to weigh the evidence put forward to support the conclusions reached. But those experts are being asked by media to present 15-second clips summing up their responses to the claims made on a television show—without having access to the research in the first place.

I sympathize with them in this. Taking research to the public before the professionals have a chance to evaluate it is akin to releasing movies without giving critics a chance to review them first. It smacks of a lack of confidence that the product would stand up to examination: better get it out to the consuming public before the bad reviews can sink it. But of course this is a much more serious and complex matter than whether a movie is a hit; the peer-review process is intended not only to weed out bad work altogether but also to find faults that can be repaired in order to improve the work in the end and provide conclusions that can be a dependable foundation for future work in the field. Without such ongoing examination, we end up with a body of work built on sand, to borrow a religious metaphor.

However, my journalistic side also sympathizes with Jacobovici and his team. They were not out to provide academically sound research but rather to give people something to think about. They’ve made what they consider an earth-shattering discovery and they want to get the news out to the people, instead of spending years debating picayune points with professional nitpickers.

Also, as much as I appreciate the academic peer-review system and consider it essential, I also recognize that it’s a method of self-regulation and control of intellectual disciplines, and is not always open to giving radical, new approaches a fair hearing. If one is more concerned with the court of public opinion anyway than in winning the approbation of the academic establishment, why not go directly to the public? This wouldn’t be the first time that a discipline-shaking scientific theory or discovery were announced in a popular venue rather than in an academic journal or at a conference.

I could also point out how many times the results of skeptical investigations have been reported in magazines, newsletters and press releases without serious academic or professional peer review. Why shouldn’t someone who carries out such extensive and exciting research that purports to change traditional religious views also be allowed to take his case to the public if he sees fit?

So, the media hoopla surrounding the Jesus-tomb claims might lead us to take the claims less seriously than if they had gone through a more conventional review process involving experts in their field, but it should not lead us to dismiss the claims altogether.

So let’s look at the other critical arguments that have been made. I’ll just list some of them very briefly before settling on one I find most interesting for skeptical research in general:

• The Poverty Argument: Only relatively affluent families in Jesus’s time could afford rock-cut tombs such as the one that is claimed to be the Jesus tomb, and Jesus’s family was poor.
• The Location Problem: If the family could have afforded a rock-cut tomb, it would have been created in their hometown of Nazareth, not just outside Jerusalem.
• The Family Muddle: Why does the so-called family tomb of Jesus contain so many people who are not known members of the family? It’s a big leap to assume they are all previously unrecorded members of the family (brother, son, and so on) or in-laws (wife). Some of the ossuaries in the tomb are completely unidentified—who are they?
• The Plain Box Dilemma: The ossuary said to have held Jesus is plainer than the others found in the tomb. Wouldn’t we expect the founder of a religion to have a more ornate burial box? Or at least something describing him as King of the Jews or Saviour or Lord or some such?
• The Inscriptions Difficulty: Jews were buried in shrouds at the time and only afterwards when tombs became crowded would those remains—mainly bones—be moved to ossuaries, on which identifications were hastily scratched. So the names indicate only who was thought to be in the box at the time they were moved. We do have confirmed cases of misidentifications, such as once when female DNA was found in an ossuary marked “son of”.
• The Inscriptions Difficulty II: It was customary in Jerusalem at the time to include the place of origin on the ossuary when the person interred was from outside Judea. You’d expect Jesus’s ossuary to describe him as Jesus of Galilee. The fact that the ossuary gives Yeshua’s descent from his father indicates the family is from Judea.
• The Inscriptions Difficulty III: The readings and translations of some of the inscriptions on the ossuaries are controversial. Even the reading of the inscription purported to be “Yeshua bar Yehosef” (Jesus son of Joseph) has been challenged.
• The DNA Irrelevance: The marriage of Jesus to Mary Magdalene is proposed as a solution to the problem raised by DNA showing that the people interred in two ossuaries were not blood relatives. But unrelated DNA cannot prove marriage. Several other ossuaries in the tomb were not checked for DNA. If they also turn out to be unrelated, are those individuals also to be considered in-laws? We can reach no conclusions about relations based on unrelated DNA.
• The Historical Hitch: We have no historical or Biblical records indicating Jesus was married or had a child, or identifying the name Mariamene on an ossuary with Mary Magdalene. Both Jewish and Roman historians agree that the tomb where Jesus’s body was left was empty at some later point and thus Jesus’s bones should not have been there to be encased in an ossuary. Also historical records indicate that James, the brother of Jesus and a founder of Christianity, was buried separately, although the filmmakers try to make a case that a supposedly missing tenth ossuary from the Jesus family tomb belonged to James.
• Improbable Probabilities: More on this one coming up.

These are only some of the difficulties raised. Granted, there are possible answers to these problems. You can probably think of some yourself. But little hard evidence is available to support those answers. This shows the number of assumptions the filmmakers must have made to eliminate these obstacles and make their entire theory fit together.

Ancient figures

Nowhere is this more telling than in the last difficulty listed. The filmmakers go to great lengths to make the case that statistics are on their side. What are the odds, they ask. that ossuaries bearing the same names as Jesus and his kin could be found in one place and not be the tomb of Jesus’s family?

In the film, University of Toronto mathematician Andrey Feuerverger is recruited to calculate this probability, and he does his calculations very carefully.

The likelihood of all those names being found together and not being those of the Biblical Jesus’s family is one in 600, he determines.

An American religion professor, James Tabor, goes further and includes the controversial ossuary of James in his more liberal calculations and comes up with odds of one in 42 million.

Now, the spread in the odds between these two calculations is enough to make one wonder. But even discounting the James ossuary and sticking with the more conservative figure, we have plenty to doubt here.

Feuerverger’s figuring amounts to a probability of more than .998 (599/600) that the tomb is that of the Biblical Jesus’s family (1.0 representing complete certainty). But calculations of probability are largely a measure of what we know versus what we don’t know. Let me explain:

If you know I have a bean in one hand but you don’t know which one, then you can calculate the probability that it is in my left hand as .5 (or one in two). It’s not 1.0 because you don’t know it’s not in my right hand. Once I open my hands and show you it’s in my left hand, your calculation of the odds that the bean is in my left hand jumps to 1.0 because you now have complete knowledge.

If you know I put beans under nine of 10 cups, then the odds of it being under any given cup you can figure to be .9 or nine out of 10. It’s not 1.0 because you don’t know that the given cup is not the very one that is missing a bean. Your knowledge takes you to .9 and your ignorance keeps you from going higher.

Same thing with Feuerverger’s Jesus tomb calculation. With absolutely conclusive evidence—if we somehow knew there were no other people then with the same names as Jesus and his family and we had complete knowledge on all the other issues raised— then the probability of the tomb with those names belonging to Jesus’s family could be determined to be 1.0. But other people in Jesus’s time did have similar names. What keeps the probability from quite getting to 1.0—by Feuerverger’s reasoning—is our not knowing whether this tomb is that one in 600 occurrence of another family with the same names.

Note, coincidence has not been ruled out by these calculations. On average every 600th tomb could have that concentration of names. Given thousands of tombs, there could be several others with the same cluster of names.

Still, the odds provided by the filmmakers are impressive.

But—and here’s the big but—the calculations are made on certain assumptions that hide other bits of missing knowledge.

For example, to help connect the Yeshua (Jesus) of the ossuary to the Jesus of the Bible, the name Mariamene e Mara on another ossuary in the family tomb is taken to refer to Mary Magdelene of the Bible and, contrary to the Biblical account, she is held to be Jesus’s wife.

This is a startling claim, to say the least, that runs against two millennia of tradition and scholarship. We won’t get into a debate on this issue here, but suppose we speculate that the odds of the Biblical Jesus being married to Mary Magdelene are one in ten, or .1, which most scholars would consider generous.

Similarly, the claim that the ossuary of Yehuda bar Yeshua (Judah son of Jesus) is that of the Biblical Jesus’s son is controversial. Suppose we give this one also a probability of .1 for our calculations.

Now, instead of assuming that we know Jesus was married to Mary Magdelene and had a son Judah, let’s bring our uncertainty—our lack of knowledge—on these matters into the calculations. Now the probability of the tomb being that of Jesus’s family is reduced from .998 to .0099 (599/600 x .1 x .1), or less than one in 100.

Even if we give a much more generous probability to each of the Mary Magdalene and Judah claims (say, .25 or one in four), we still end up with the odds of a match being pretty low (one in 16 in this case).

I have no idea, of course, what the chances of Jesus being married to Mary Magdelene and fathering Judah really are. No one does. But this hypothetical calculation shows the wide skewing of probability that occurs when assumptions are made.

Now go over that list of problems raised by critics, note the assumptions made by the Jesus-tomb proponents to overcome them, and assign odds for each of those assumptions being correct. Then multiply them out and you will get figures far different from those presented in the documentary. In all likelihood, the probability of the tomb being that of Jesus would approach nil.

Suspect calculations

But even if we were to accept all their assumptions as valid, the calculations are suspect for other reasons raised by critics.

For one thing the frequency of names such Yeshua and variations of Mary in Israel at the time — upon which the calculations were based — is uncertain. I’ve read estimates from experts giving a much higher frequency of names — including Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Matthew and Judah — than was used in Feuerverger’s calculations. One source, for example, says that over fifty percent of female residents of the area were called some variation of Mary.

Archaeologists say they have run across clusters of these names before and thus know that the basis for the statistical analysis is flawed.

In other words, we are missing huge amounts of knowledge from which to make certain judgments. If we were to take into account our ignorance on these matters, the probability that the tomb is that of Jesus and his family would have to be estimated at much, much less — close to zero, in fact.

To be fair, it should be noted that Feuerverger has wisely included a “fudge figure” in his calculations to account for the investigators’ bias. But this may not have been enough.

In fact, I question the value of such calculations of probabilities at all when so little is known. Their presentation in the documentary seems to be a polemical point, intended to persuade those who don’t examine the assumptions very closely, rather than evidence of any value.

We’ve seen this with many paranormal claims, when statements such as “What are the odds?” are made to make the claims appear more reasonable than they are.

Now, all this is not to say that the Jesus-tomb claims couldn’t be correct. If we were to gain some of that missing knowledge on any of the issues where the filmmakers have made huge assumptions to fill gaps, we might come up with calculations that would improve or decrease the odds—and eventually confirm or disprove the claims.

The lesson for skeptics is that whenever claims are backed up with “what are the odds?” kind of arguments, we should look for the assumptions and the missing knowledge behind them.

The suspect claims he didn’t do it. “Then you won’t mind taking a lie detector test to clear your name,” suggest the detectives.

Next scene they’re telling their captain either “He passed the polygraph, so we’ve got to keep looking for the killer” or “He flunked the lie detector — too bad we can’t use it in court.”

But in real life, although lie detectors (the popular name for polygraph equipment) are used by many police departments, the courts have very good reasons to keep the test results from being submitted as evidence, say scientists who have studied them — namely that the lie detectors don’t detects lies.

“Polygraph testing is no better than the reading of entrails,” University of Toronto psychologist John Furedy told a recent meeting of the Ontario Skeptics, referring to the ancient Roman practice of studying animal guts to predict the future. “Similarly, in North America the polygraph is all too readily referred to whenever the truth concerns some specific act like the identity of a killer or rapist, even some much less clear-cut issue, like whether Clarence Thomas sexually harassed Anita Hill a decade ago.”

The polygraph carries the aura of being scientific, with the sensors measuring supposedly uncontrollable human responses, such as blood pressure and skin conductivity, and the results printing out on graph paper, overseen by a seemingly objective expert. The subject’s relative anxiety as he answers the questions is thought to be reflected in the polygraph’s output.

But Furedy says his and other studies have shown it is virtually impossible for a polygraph to differentiate between an anxious-but-innocent party and an anxious-and-guilty party when the polygraph’s needles swing widely.

“There is no way of knowing whether this large response is due to an innocent person being nervous about the accusation, as against a guilty person being nervous about being caught.”

After dozens of studies by medical schools and psychology departments, universal correlation has been found between telling a lie and having a stronger heartbeat or having suddenly sweatier palms.

Moreover there are proven techniques for fooling the polygraph. An Internet survey turns up many tips for hiding one’s nervousness from the polygraph — whether you have a guilty conscience or are just naturally twitchy. One of the most popular techniques is clenching your sphincter while relaxing your buttocks. This anal puckering may sound a bit difficult to do at first but a half hour’s practice could help you evade that twenty-year jail stretch.

There’s a still greater problem with the test. A subject’s nervous response to questions about the misdeeds of which he is suspected can be rated only in comparison to his response to “control” questions. The examiner may first ask innocuous questions, regarding perhaps the subject’s name, age and work to find that person’s normal level of response. He will also ask questions concerning matters that might be expected to elicit guilty responses – such as asking about masturbation or about driving after drinking. Everyone is assumed to have engaged in these activities at some time but is likely to lie about them, thus giving the examiner an idea of the subject’s level of response when being moderately deceptive. Then when the questions concerning the real issue are made, the subject’s responses are compared to these control questions.

You can probably spot the flaw: Not everyone has the same level of guilt about every topic. It would take an extensive psychological profiling of a subject to reach conclusions about the significance of that person’s response to the control questions, before the responses to the serious test questions are compared.

So what should you do if you are pressured by a real-life Lenny Briscoe to take a test “to clear your name”?

Refuse, says Furedy.

If you do have to take a polygraph however and the examiner says the test has found you guilty or deceptive, “then you should leave immediately rather than try to defend yourself,” says Furedy.

That’s because although the test results may be wildly misleading, investigators can use the claimed conclusion to try to pressure you into confessing in the post-test interview phase – and anything you say then can be introduced in court.

This is one reason why police use polygraphs despite their unreliability. They can pressure nervous suspects into confessing or revealing damaging information.

Whether innocent or guilty.

Ley lines are either one of two mysteries: lines joining points of ancient sites and places of supernatural power, or they are mundane lines drawn on a map that make the skeptic wonder how anyone could fall for such a thing.

Alfred Watkins (1855-1935) was a photographer and antiquarian who, like many we run across, decided to step outside the boundaries of his training and take on a new task, that of amateur archaeologist. Looking at a map of ancient sites in the area of England near Leominster (pronounced “Limster” by locals) he fancied that he could discern straight lines along which the sites were situated. They appeared to be trackways, regular paths of travel. It seems that at first he thought of them simply as trade routes, which doesn’t appear too far-fetched, aside from the unlikelihood that ancient people would avoid going around an obstruction. His choice of the word Ley is obscure, but may come from an Anglo-Saxon word for “glade”, or a clear patch in a forest. (It certainly has nothing to do with Willy Ley, scientist and skeptic!) After a few lectures on the subject he published his seminal book in 1922, Early British Trackways, followed by his best-known work The Old Straight Track in 1925. Numerous other books expanded the study of Ley lines and led to the formation of The Straight Track Postal Portfolio club, wherein aficionados could exchange information. It lapsed into oblivion around the start of World War II, but a few individuals kept the interest going until resurgence occurred during the 1960s.

Finding a group of burial mounds, Neolithic forts, and stone circles roughly aligned would be interesting, possibly even worthy of investigation, but an alignment of only two objects would be, well, just a line, right? Not according to the more recent adherents to the field. These days you just mark places of interest on a map, start connecting the dots until you have a schematic of a drunken spider’s web, and call the results a network of Ley lines, along which mysterious energies flow. Others say that sites occur on concentric circles drawn around another site.

A sort of leap forward in the interpretation of the lines came about in 1939 with the publishing of the pamphlet Geometrical Arrangement of Ancient Sites, by Straight Track Club member Major F. C. Tyler. (One might surmise from his rank that a course in critical thinking was not offered at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst.) In it he noted that the lines often shared a common point of origin, that is, they converged on a certain point, which might be a village or archaeological site. Furthermore he claimed that not only did ancient trackways form straight lines, but that the lines themselves existed before the tracks were established. Going out on the proverbial limb, and making the mystery even grander, he proclaimed that these alignments were “the remaining index of some great geometrical arrangement of these sacred sites.”

Lest one think that only eccentric Englishmen were involved in all this, let me introduce a German fellow named Dr. Josef Heinsch. A year before Tyler wrote his dissertation Heinsch had appeared before the International Conference of Geography, at which he presented his own work in the field. In Principles of Prehistoric Sacred Geography, he called upon a long-lost magic principle by which the ancients had built their sites. He said that the patterns remained when the Christian church took over many old sites for its own use.

Let’s jump ahead to the 1950s, and bring in one of the major crazes of the decade: UFOs. A Frenchman named Aime Michel, writing in his book Flying Saucers and the Straight Line Mystery, claimed that the reported sightings of UFOs fell into perfectly straight lines, which he was considerate enough to plot on a map. As it would be difficult to get permission to reprint it here I will ask you to trust me on this: the alignments are dubious at best. Most are simply a line drawn between just two sightings, though a few include a third point.

The relationship between Ley lines and UFOs was forged by one Tony Wedd, formerly a pilot in Britain’s Royal Air Force. In his book Skyways and Landmarks he proposed that UFO pilots used ancient sites as navigation points. I guess that even with all their technology the idea of tuning in to navigational aids (like our own radio-based VHF Omnidirectional Rangefinders) had escaped them. After all, where does one purchase Earth navigational charts and flight supplements since the outlet on Rigel 7 went out of business?

As you might expect, the New Age movement has seized upon Ley lines. Not only does the belief seem to be growing, but it has even succeeded in dipping into the public purse. A dowsing organization called the Geo Group recently received $5,000 (US funds) from the Seattle Arts Commission to produce a map of Ley lines in the Seattle area. After taking money from the taxpayers of the city they are now flogging the maps back to them at $7 a pop.

I would definitely not purchase one. As I don’t pilot a flying saucer it would be useless for navigation, and besides, the only spot in Seattle which I would consider sacred is the Boeing aircraft facility. More science went on there in one minute than was ever used in researching Ley lines.

Ica Stones reveal an interesting facet of human history. The etchings on their faces show ancient humans as an advanced people, riding pterodactyls through the South American skies, performing complex transplant surgery with anti-rejection techniques, and possessing the ability to travel interstellar space without fuel. Wondrous stuff! They could outperform us technologically in almost every way, but left their only records… carved on stones?!

The “interesting facet” I am referring to is the ability of humans to deceive and be deceived, and Ica Stones exemplify this sad fact of our society. To the skeptic they are about as irritating as kidney stones. They are stones, that much is certain, and seem to exist as fossilized human gullibility. A volcanic material known as Andesite, they are naturally covered in an oxidized layer which, in contrast to the very hard rock, can easily be scratched away by an artist. And when that is done we learn, as with much art, more about the artist than the subject. We learn that they are frauds.

It was 1966 when a Peruvian physician, Dr. Javier Cabrera Darquea (usually known simply as Dr. Cabrera), first brought these curiosities to the attention of the world. (Actually there are conflicting claims about when he first saw the stones, but this is the one I’ve picked!) He called them Gliptoliths, and said they came into his possession when he was allegedly contacted by an illiterate farmer who claimed that he had found them in a cave. The story goes that Peru’s Ica River had overflowed its banks, destroyed a nearby mountain (no small feat in itself), and exposed a previously unknown cave. In a move which thickens the plot and muddies the waters the farmer refused to reveal the cave’s location, but kept on bringing more stones to Dr. Cabrera and selling them for a tidy sum. Hey, who ever said that illiteracy equals stupidity?

After a BBC report on the “artifacts”, the Peruvian government was under some understandable pressure to ascertain whether genuine antiquities were being hawked as souvenirs. An investigation was launched. The farmer, afraid of the severe penalties for such an offence, confessed to carving them himself, but as there were about 15,000 of them in existence by then it seems unlikely that he produced them all. There must have been a cottage industry at work in the area, with whole families feverishly scratching Andesite in between watering the yams and feeding the llamas.

Photographs show stones of various sizes, from mere pebbles up to the size of pumpkins, with the odd boulder thrown in for good measure. The carvings are often extremely intricate, if rather stylized, and believers claim that this is proof that the simple peasants of the area cannot be the artisans; therefore they must have been made by an advanced civilization. Probably the same ones who helped those dimwit Celts erect Stonehenge, those backward Egyptians build the Pyramids, and the inept Easter Islanders carve all those statues. Perhaps they had cultural strictures on how to record facts, but a few Kodachromes and leather bound journals would have been more convincing to me.

Where did this civilization go? According to Dr. Cabrera they foresaw some sort of planet-wide catastrophe and decided to find a new home in the Pleiades star cluster. This was actually a simple procedure, as they just climbed aboard their hi-tech magnetically-driven spaceships and waited for a passing comet to haul them off those well-known landing strips on the Nazca plains.
The response from the archaeological community was, to put it mildly, underwhelming. Yet forty years later the Ica Stones are still discussed breathlessly on internet chat rooms and web forums, especially amongst the Atlanteans and ufologists.

Those amateurs showcase another unfortunate facet of human behaviour: the ability of educated people to waste their talents. Many of their web sites are beautifully designed and well written, and could easily convince the casual observer that they are serious, scholarly treatments of the subject. Unfortunately, credulity reigns in this field, unhindered by trifles such as provenance, corroborating evidence, Occam’s Razor, and plain old common sense.

Hollow Earth adherents can point to a well-known man of science as their “patron saint”: Sir Edmund Halley. You may have heard of a comet named for him? That is one of the very few connections to genuine science that you could hope to find in this notion. Many modern believers will refer to it as a theory, but to call it that today is really an insult to the word, and to call it half-baked would insult pastry chefs.

It all began in 1692, when the illustrious Sir Edmund postulated the idea that the Earth, rather than being a simple globe, was actually composed of four concentric spheres nestled one in the other, with a luminous atmosphere. He also thought that the aurora borealis was caused when this atmosphere leaked through a hole at the North Pole.

How could one come up with such an idea? Halley was having difficulty explaining inconsistencies in the Earth’s magnetic field, particularly the way it seemed to move gradually over time. He explained this with his concentric spheres, each having their own magnetic field. Let’s not be harsh on him, for this was many years before the evidence for a molten core which acts like a giant magneto. Independent spheres with their own magnetic fields could also account for the observed phenomenon, as unlikely as the (literally) underlying geophysics might be.

Searching for more information on hollow Earth proponents will lead one through an odd assortment of characters, but one who looms large in legend is Captain John Cleves Symmes, the pride of Hamilton, Ohio. An impressive monument, topped by a sphere with a hole through it, was erected in the town by his son after Symmes’s death in 1859, and can be seen to this day. Despite his obviously unorthodox beliefs he did contribute to science in at least one positive way. He tried unsuccessfully during his life to finance a U.S. expedition to the North Pole, and after his death one of his ardent supporters, newspaper editor Jeremiah Reynolds, took up the torch and managed to convince the government to send a research team to Antarctica. They failed to find a hole, but did establish that the area was a continental land mass and not merely an icecap.

What of the inhabitants inside the hollow Earth? Scouring the literature on this subject over the years we find that adherents seem to fall largely into two camps. There are those who believe that the inhabitants are peaceful, enlightened beings, living in a paradise free from hate, greed or want. Fabled Atlantis often figures into these stories, and brings its advanced technology into play by being the source of UFOs, which they use to fly to the surface. It seems that such an advanced race is still lacking when it comes to designing an elevator. The other camp clings to the belief that the underworld is a secret Nazi base, and it is their flying saucers that appear in our skies. The alleged “holes at the poles” are dwarfed by the holes in this theory.

There is a significant Canadian contribution to this business. According to Leslee Dru Browning, a self proclaimed psychic, she was astral travelling one day with an inhabitant of the hollow Earth, a person she called Zyne. She says that he took her into the inner realm – but not through the North Pole. Rather, they entered somewhere in the hills near Zephyr, Ontario, about an hour north of Toronto. An unofficial Skeptics Canada expedition, carried out in a soft chair with some single malt to relax the brain cells, combed the area in vain, but astral travelling is not a skill I have mastered. Time to do it the mere mortal way, with a car, a map, and a pair of legs.

Zephyr is nestled in the rolling hills of northern Durham, with farms undulating away in every direction. The ads, flyers, and business cards in the general store are a typical mix of old and new, with posters for yoga classes pinned beside info on the local farrier. A tiny town, little more than a hamlet, its peaceful citizens appear to have no idea of what lurks beneath their feet. And whatever that may be, it certainly doesn’t seem to involve holes. The geology is not the type that would support a cave, nobody ever tried to build a subway, and I couldn’t even find a pothole in the road, which makes this town mysterious enough given the time of year.

A few kilometres southeast of town lies the inaptly named Mud Lake, filled with clear water. Could this be a portal to the nether regions? My visit revealed nothing out of the ordinary, and the only denizens appeared to be tree swallows.

An expedition with scuba gear might find out more, but not me. I would rather try fishing.