Botswana Sceptic

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2008-09-08T09:40:00.000-07:00

I've finally bowed to the inevitable and renamed the blog to use the more International spelling.

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Talk to your body?

2008-09-08T04:59:00.000-07:00

There’s been yet another outbreak of pseudoscience in Botswana. Sorry, I should correct that. This example isn’t even worthy of the term “pseudoscience”. Judge for yourself.

I recently received an email inviting me to “Botswana’s first BodyTalk Day”. According to the invitation this is “a revolutionary new approach to healing that has become the language of health in over 30 countries”. Wow. Notice how that claim actually means precisely nothing? It doesn’t say that millions of people are using it and it cures diabetes, AIDS and asthma. No. it’s just become the “language of health”.

The invitation goes on to say that BodyTalk “utilises state-of-the-art energy medicine to optimise the body’s internal communications”. Again, a statement that means precisely nothing. Note the use of terms like “state of the art”, “energy medicine” and “optimise”. All very vague don’t you think?

So off I went to the internet to do some Googling. One of the first web sites I found described in detail how BodyTalk works.

After a series of paragraphs explaining how our bodies are full of energy circuits, how the atoms we consist of are talking to one another and how we need to be resynchronised it explains what actually happens when you get yourself BodyTalked.

I hope you’re sitting down. Trust me, I’m not making this up. This is exactly what it says.

“For every malfunctioning energy circuit found, the practitioner or client contacts the corresponding “points” with his or her hands. The practitioner then lightly taps the client on the top of the head, which stimulates the brain center and causes the brain to re-evaluate the state of the body’s health.”

“The practitioner then taps the client on the sternum to “announce” the corrected energy flows to the rest of the body.”

So let me get this straight. This “practitioner” who is presumably either deluded, deranged or depraved gets to touch you, pat you on the head and then tickle your tummy and you’re cured?

I’m tempted to suggest a modified version of BodyTalk. I think I’ll call it BodyThump. Come to me with your health problems, I’ll stroke whichever part of you looks appealing, perhaps for quite a long time if it’s VERY cute, smack you on back of the head, punch you in the stomach and charge you P500.

So you think I’m joking? Well, I am, but so are BodyTalk, surely? Do they really expect us to take them seriously when they are talking such palpable gibberish?

Of course there is no science behind BodyTalk or any of the other ludicrous so-called alternative therapies that abound. There’s no real evidence that they do anything because they simply DON’T do anything. OK, forgive me, they do so something. In fact they do two things. Firstly they allow the placebo effect to demonstrate itself. That’s the effect you often see in medicine where simply doing something, even it’s just giving a sugar pill, has a slight effect. It’s to do with positive thinking, optimism and taking a bit more care of yourself. The second thing it does is to help you lose weight. From your wallet.

The demons of televangelism - Botswana Guardian

2008-08-15T04:36:00.000-07:00

There’s an advertisement going around for a forthcoming “Leadership Life Development Convention”. This is being run by Bible Life Ministries, a local evangelical church and will be attended by “Bishop Dr” I.V. Hilliard. This gentleman is shown in the advertisement looking very serious as he rests his theological chin on his no-doubt very spiritual fingers.

My problem is that the so-called Dr Hilliard appears to break Harriman’s 1st Law of Evaluating Preachers. This says that you shouldn’t trust a preacher who drives a better car than you do or, in this case, a preacher who wears a more expensive watch than you do.

He also breaks Harriman’s Law of Doctorates. Anyone who claims to have a doctorate when in fact they bought it from a diploma mill is a fraud. Both Hilliard and his charming wife Bridgett have honorary doctorates from Friends International University. Not even the normal dodgy degrees purchased over the internet after submitting an essay, these guys got honorary degrees, presumably after dropping some cash?

I’ll put aside my personal beliefs for a while and will willingly acknowledge that certain religious groups do provide a real sense of community to their members, they provide moral guidance and a vision of hope. Frankly I don’t believe a word of it but each to his own I suppose.

My objection is to the flagrant abuse that televangelists get up to. Hilliard and his fellow ministers like Joyce Meyer (who also has a doctorate from an unaccredited university) and Benny Hinn, who is simply stealing money from his victims, are exploiting the gullible, the naïve and the sick. Benny Hinn is my “favourite” in that I find him particularly repulsive. A series of undercover operations have exposed the way in which his teams filter out the really sick from his televised miracle healing. His financial operations are notoriously secretive although he has recently been under very close review by the US Senate Finance Committee who wonder where all the money goes that he gets from his unsuspecting and hugely credulous viewers. His public appeal for donations towards his new $36 million personal private jet just seems to summarise his approach.

In my very brief research on Fake-Dr Hilliard I found an online invitation to his wife’s 50th birthday party in 2006. OK, you might think, how sweet of him to invite people to celebrate his beautiful wife’s birthday! But not so. Firstly you had to pay him $100 to attend and then you’re asked to bring her a present. There was even a list of gift ideas that included “Monetary gifts. Designer handbags: Gucci, Chanel, Louis Vuitton. Gift Certificates: Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Escada”.

I confess I don’t know what half of those things are but the first one is just so blatant that it deserves repeating. “Monetary gifts”.

Roughly translated this means. “Pay me $100 to attend my wife’s no doubt spectacularly vulgar birthday party and bring along some cash to give her.”

As George Carlin once said about the typical evangelist’s message from God: “He loves you, and He needs money!”

This seems to be the basic message we get from the televangelists. The solution to the problems we face, whether it’s perceived family breakdown, HIV/AIDS, crime or old-fashioned social isolation, is to listen, switch off your critical faculties and to hand over the cash.

Simple or true? - Botswana Guardian

2008-05-30T07:03:00.000-07:00

There’s a big difference between an idea that is simple and one that can be expressed simply. Although scientists often describe a theory as “elegant” that doesn’t always mean that it’s easy to understand. Famously Richard Feynman said of quantum theory that if you think you understand it, then you clearly don’t understand it.

The trouble is that people often fall victim to theories and ideas that are just simple and no more. Theories that sound truly simple but are simply untrue.

The principle behind homeopathy for instance can be expressed very simply. A disorder can be treated with a tiny dose of the thing that caused it. Acupuncture can be “explained” by saying that it promotes the free flow of “chi” around your body to enhance your energy balance. Reflexology says that there are pathways between the soles of your feet and every organ of your body. Fiddling with your feet can therefore heal those other parts that are ill. All of these ideas can be expressed very simply, in no more than a sentence or two.

But simplicity is not the same as truth.

Every genuinely scientific study of homeopathy, acupuncture and reflexology shows that they are nonsense. They do nothing real. Any improvement can be traced back to the placebo effect.

If you want a real understanding of how health can be promoted and illness overcome then you have to do more than just come out with ignorant platitudes, you need to do some thinking. Real thinking. With your brain.

Real thought, real science and real knowledge are the sworn enemies of superstition, magical thinking and all the New Age lunacy that we see around us. They are also the enemies of prejudice in whatever form it shows it’s ugly face.

In a letter I wrote recently to the Guardian I mentioned that I resented being accused of being like a member of the Ku Klux Klan, the nasty, bigoted and profoundly racist hate group in the USA. This accusation was made because I had stood up for science, medicine and rationalism. During this letter I mentioned in passing that I was the “father of a Jewish son”.

Perhaps someone can explain to me the logic behind the comment in Bugalo Chilume’s tirade the following week when, referring to me, he used the phrase “In Israel, Harriman’s homeland”?

For the record, I’m not Israeli and neither am I Jewish. Similarly I’ve been to Italy but I’m not a Catholic. I’ve been to the Far East but I’m not a Buddhist. I’ve read many articles by Chilume but I’m still sane.

The real danger we face in the world today is the epidemic of nonsense. The nonsense of AIDS denial is killing people. The nonsense of global warming denial is threatening to kill our grandchildren. The nonsense of xenophobic hatred as a cover for gross criminality is killing people in South Africa.

I can be the father of a Jew without being Israeli. I can be white and, on a good day, a fairly good person. Chilume can be logical but he seems to choose not to be so.

Can’t he do better than that? - Botswana Guardian

2008-04-13T23:05:00.000-07:00

In a letter to the Guardian on 11th April we saw the return of Bugalo Chilume. As Voltaire said about God, if Chilume didn't exist he'd have to be invented. He really is a walking advertisement for reason, rationalism and thought. OK, admittedly by NOT demonstrating any of those things but I think reading his writings is an educational experience nevertheless.

We are all used to his ravings about Mugabe and how he's such a nice guy, much maligned by the evil imperialist West and probably very kind to small animals but that's what we expect from him. Mugabe of course can do no wrong and the fact that his economy and in particular his currency are now a laughing stock is someone else’s fault. The fact that he brazenly tries to steal an election is no doubt another conspiracy by the CIA, Prince Philip and aliens to smear him.

However what provoked my greatest reaction to his letter was an implied reference to me.

The last sentence of his letter referred to the various letters and articles that Gilbert Sesinyi has written in the Guardian over the last few months. Most of these were in response to, or prompted, articles and letters by and from me. I wasn’t the only one who opposed Gilbert's ideas but I did play a significant role.

His last words describe Gilbert's opponent letter writers, and therefore presumably me, as "members of the local Ku Klux Klan sleeper cell".

Just in case anyone hasn't heard of the KKK they are a dreadful, despicable and disgusting racist group in the USA, the ones with the white robes and burning crosses. They have a history of lynching blacks, persecuting their opponents and hating Jews, Catholics, liberals and anyone with a functioning brain. So you can understand how being accused of being like the KKK is grossly insulting, particularly when I am a social liberal, the father of a Jewish son and in possession of a functioning brain.

However, despite a moment of anger I ended up rather amused by his comments. I couldn’t help but think that if that is the best he can do I must have overestimated his reasoning skills, although that IS quite a challenge I admit.

All I did was to express my belief that reason is better than superstition, that science is better than magic and that enlightenment is preferable to ignorance. If all he can do in response is launch an ad hominem attack against me and other rationalists then I find that rather disappointing. Where’s the argument, where’s the evidence that I’m wrong, where’s the critical reasoning? Somewhat absent it seems.

All we saw from him was the grossly defamatory suggestion that because I and others don’t share his views we must be a bunch of vicious racists. Come on Chilume, you can do better than that. Can’t you?

Homeopathy - Letter to Mmegi

2008-02-27T22:03:00.000-08:00

I was appalled to see the article entitled "People living with HIV turn to homeopathy" in Mmegi on Thursday 28th February. Appalled because I don't think we should allow charlatans to sell their ludicrous products and, in so doing, exploit the desperate, the sick and the naïve.

Let's be clear. Homeopathy is based on nonsense. The article states that it is based on the idea of treating patients with a minute dose of the substance that causes the symptoms the patient is experiencing, but this is rubbish. What you actually get from a homeopath is water. Homeopathic "remedies" are so diluted that not a single atom of any original substance remains. If you push a homeopath on this subject you’ll eventually get them to confess that they believe the water somehow "remembers" a substance that it once contained. This is utter gibberish.

Every controlled test of homeopathic remedies has failed to show any real effect. The homeo-pathetic movement has consistently failed to help anyone other than themselves. Help themselves to fat bank balances that is. What the charlatans in Maun are really doing is breaking the law. Section 15 (1) (c) of the Consumer Protection Regulations forbids people from promising "outcomes where those outcomes have no safe scientific, medical or performance basis". If they take a single thebe for their water treatment they are breaking the law.

The most ridiculous aspects of what they say are almost unbelievable. The homeopath covered in the article confesses that she prescribed a "grief remedy" as well as something for liver toxicity. This is just scandalous.

So what about the wonderful effects the victims are supposedly seeing in Maun? They are nothing more than the placebo effect. Doctors around the world know that giving patients a totally ineffective medicine will make them a feel a little bit better for a short while. But that's more to do with getting a bit of attention and sympathy than any real effect.

What homeopaths pretend to offer people with HIV is hope. Hope is a great thing but only when it is based on a genuine hope, a real hope of improvement. What in fact homeopaths offer is false hope, based on a mixture of ignorance and lies. I have contempt for people who exploit the desperate. Utter contempt. I genuinely hope that nobody falls for this nonsense. If just one person does and stops taking their ARVs, the drugs that DO work, then the homeopaths who have come here thinking they can fool us will have blood on their hands.

Scence is blind - Botswana Guardian

2008-02-27T22:00:00.000-08:00

Saying something out loud doesn't make it true. Writing something in a newspaper doesn't make it true. Even just believing something doesn't mean what you believe is true. In the past people were taught, and genuinely believed, that the world was flat. They believed that the stars were gods, that the Sun rotated around the Earth and that illness was caused by evil spirits. But we moved on. We embraced knowledge rather than superstition and we put behind us beliefs that had no foundation.

Or did we?

Last week the astonishing South African Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, stated that traditional healers, whose work is soon to be integrated into the conventional health system would not have to prove that their remedies actually worked. Specifically she said that traditional medicine should not be "bogged down in clinical trials". According to the BBC she said that "We cannot use Western models of protocols for research and development".

Yet again she has missed the point. There is no such thing as a "Western protocol for research". There is no such thing as “Western research”. In fact there is no such thing as "Western medicine" any more than there is "Western sunshine". Medicine is medicine and the only real distinctions we should make are between medicines that work and those that do not, between ideas that are useful and those that are not, between things that actually help humanity and those that do not.

The scientific method, the approach that genuine medicine really uses, is based on one key thing. It's based on predictions that can be falsified. Not things that can be proved but things that can be falsified and that's what the clinical trials that Manto complains about are really all about. They are about really testing a theory that something works and testing it rigorously. What she presumably fears, along with homeopaths, reflexologists and herbal medicine sellers is the dreaded "double-blind, controlled trial". You get two groups, one gets the medicine you are testing and the other gets something that looks and feels like the medicine but is really often no more than a sugar pill or a glass of water. The key thing is that neither the people taking the medicine nor the doctors or nurses who actually give it to them know which is which until the end of the trial. Only then are the details taken out of a sealed envelope and the results properly analysed. That way can you remove the effect of people’s expectations. That way you can rule out the placebo effect, which is what happens when people believe they are getting a medicine when in fact they are not but they get slightly better anyway, just because they believe something is happening. The placebo effect is a powerful effect and it’s only by “blinding” both the patients and the doctors in a trial that you can rule out it’s effect.

In that sort of trial we could see whether so-called traditional medicines work. Hopefully some of them would. Maybe we really would find something marvelous that can really help humanity. Maybe science and tradition could come together and we could see through the medieval distortions and ignorance surrounding us

True science is a genuinely wonderful thing. Like justice it is blind. Blind to untruth, blind to expectations and blind to prejudice. Like all truth it is blind to prejudice, blind to ignorance and blind to lies.

A cure for everything? - Botswana Guardian

2008-01-31T23:14:00.000-08:00

It really is getting worse. In the past I’ve been irritated by the nonsense from various organisations trying to sell their useless rubbish. To begin with it was the Scientologists selling their ludicrous “we can fix everything” courses while hiding their deranged belief that our minds are inhabited by the souls of multi-million year old aliens. Then it was the alternative health movements who advocate fiddling with your feet, your bottom or your gullibility, homeopaths who think water has a memory of an ingredient that is no longer there, pseudo-oriental doctors who think sticking needles into part of you will rebalance your chi and then the silliest product in the history of unscientific rubbish: the detox foot pads.

This is all, of course, utterly unscientific, utterly without evidence and utterly useless. It’s all based on lies, naiveté or ignorance.

However despite this being completely silly I have always been able to see the funny side. Until recently every bit of pseudoscientific hogwash that I’ve come across has at least been amusing.

Until last weekend.

There I was strolling with my family around Riverwalk Shopping Centre when we passed by a pharmacy. An advertisement in the window offered “Rise-up and walk – the broad spectrum herbal medicine”. OK, I thought, here we go again, some herbal concoction made from leaves that hints, in vague terms, that it can help your immune system or can boost your health. Not so. This one was different. I won’t describe their claims, I’ll quote them directly:

“Effective Solution to Athritis, Blood Pressure, Diabetes, Cancer, Typhoid, HIV/Aids, Gynaecological Disorders, Viral, Fungal & Bacterial Diseases among others”.

Where to begin?

Well, perhaps by nominating the producers of this remarkable medicine for a Nobel Prize for Medicine. If this rubbish can, in fact, cure everything from typhoid to HIV/AIDS then the producers deserve a prize. At one stroke they have cured the world of AIDS, bacterial diseases like TB and typhoid and removed the threat posed by cancer.

Alternatively we can have the peddlers of this criminal rubbish reported to the Consumer Protection Unit for breaking the law. Our very own Consumer Protection Regulations state that suppliers have breached the terms of the Regulations if they quote “scientific or technical data in support of a claim unless the data can be readily substantiated”. They are also in trouble if they promise “outcomes where those outcomes have no safe scientific, medical or performance basis”.

Let’s be clear about a few things. There are no products that can cure cancer that can also cure typhoid, HIV/AIDS and diabetes. Anyone who tells you differently is either a fraud or a fool.

I genuinely wish there was such a cure, I really do. If it existed my wife wouldn’t have lost her sister, my father wouldn’t have lost three years of his teenage life to TB and millions of other people would be alive today.

But it’s simply not true. It’s a deliberate lie. It’s an attempt to cash in on our desperation and that’s what makes it so repellant. Sooner or later someone is going to spend money on this worthless rubbish and will stop taking their real medicine. Then they’ll die.

I beg you all not to buy products from suppliers who sell false hopes to the desperate. We really must all stand up against this sort of deception. Lives are at stake.

Shouting fire? - Botswana Guardian

2007-12-21T06:18:00.000-08:00

Do we have a right to unrestricted free speech? Well, most of us would instinctively say that yes, of course we do, we live in a democracy and we can say what we like. Or can we?

Oliver Wendell Holmes, the famed American Supreme Court judge once said in a ruling that “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic”. In other words there are certain things you can’t say. You can’t shout fire in a theatre if there isn’t actually a fire. We’re simply not allowed to say things that will cause panic or that may cause death, injury or civil disturbance.

So what are we going to do about Pastor Tshifhiwa Irene who visited Francistown recently and who told the crowds that God has decided to end HIV/AIDS in a few days?

According to the Midweek Sun Pastor Irene, who had presumably forgotten to take her medication that day, reported that HIV was caused by a committee of demonic principals, chaired by Lucifer himself, who took blood from a crocodile, a snake, a tortoise and a hyena, mixed it with demonic saliva and blood which then somehow produced AIDS to destroy humanity. There’s no point in trying to understand this deranged claptrap because it’s, well, deranged claptrap.

However I suppose we’re all entitled to our ludicrous opinions. Botswana is a free country where the state isn’t allowed to forbid ideas, no matter how weird they might be.

What I DO object to is when people like Pastor Irene shout fire when there isn’t one. She apparently went on to report that on 20^th November God started to roll out his big plan for ending HIV and AIDS and predicted that very soon “All children born of HIV positive mothers will be free of HIV”.

Let’s get our facts straight. There genuinely HAS been a reduction in the proportion of children of HIV positive mothers who were born with HIV and that’s tremendous news. But it wasn’t religion that did that, it was our Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission program. It was PMTCT that took the proportion of HIV positive children born to HIV positive mothers down from 40% to less than 4%. It was PMTCT backed up by rationalism, logic and medical science that did it.

Luckily also present at the so-called prayer crusade in Francistown was the local MP and Government Minister, Phandu Skelemani, who is reported to have said afterwards “She must be out of her mind” and proceeded to ask local politicians “How can any self-respecting leader attend such a misleading service?”

Coincidentally another recent story from Francistown reported that the police were investigating piles of anti-retroviral drugs and hospital cards that were found near makeshift community churches. It seems that encouraged by religious fanatics patients are throwing away their hugely expensive drugs in the hope of promised miracle cures. Cures that of course miraculously don’t ever happen.

I believe very strongly that if only one HIV positive person is persuaded to leave the PMTCT program or to discard their ARVs as a result of what Pastor Irene and her colleagues say then she and her fellow preachers will have blood on their hands. She has gone further than we should accept. Her speech may end up not being free but in fact very expensive indeed.

Barry Eustice – a personal tribute

2007-11-27T10:37:00.000-08:00

Barry Eustice died last week and Botswana is a slightly poorer country because of it.

Barry was well-known throughout Botswana for his charitable walks, walks that covered Botswana but also other countries, raising many millions for the disabled wherever he went. I’m not going to repeat all the dates, distances and achievements, many others are better placed to report on those. Yes, he got an MBE for his achievements but that wasn’t what impressed people.

Barry was a role model, a demonstration of the spirit that can overcome the greatest of disabilities and was living proof that whatever fate throws at you there is always room for a smile. Well, in Barry’s case a load of smiles and a few beers as well.

I first grew to know him a decade ago as a regular in the bar at the President Hotel in Gaborone. He seemed to be forever there, sitting on a bar stool, surrounded by friends of every background, often with the Weekly Telegraph crossword half-completed (but not for long). One of the first things he ever said to me was “Who directed Dirty Harry?” “Don Siegel”, I said. We knew then that we had each met someone with the same level of passion for the sort of knowledge that is completely useless but that comes in very useful in pub quizzes and long conversations in bars after you’ve had a few.

A few years ago my wife Kate and I were part of a large team of people that was helping Nomsa Mbere and her followers prepare for her walk across the Makgadikgadi Pans. In order to launch the walk publicly there was a gathering at the Maharaja and I persuaded Barry, as a famous walker, to come along and give everyone an uplifting talk. After a series of, I have to say, rather unexciting lectures up sprang Barry. Within minutes he had the audience eating out of his hand. There were stories of mishaps, accidents, women ending up topless and the occasional President who would come along to wish him well. It ended with Barry doing one of his party tricks. After a comedian’s warm-up he showed us how he could balance one of his crutches vertically on the palm of his hand. “See”, he said, “just because I’m disabled, it doesn’t mean I’m incapable!”

The last time I saw Barry I was sitting in a restaurant with a visitor from South Africa when Barry slowly walked by. He joined us and then I watched as my guest sat open-mouthed as I made Barry share some of his stories. He seemed to have that effect on people. Here was a rather diminutive, elderly-looking, disabled man who would stun his guests with his achievements.

Barry raised the profile of the disabled in Botswana. He raised enormous amounts of money. He bothered government and businesses into donating to charity. He started the Botswana branch of the Cheshire Foundation. Like Leonard Cheshire, Barry achieved what very few of us can hope to do with our lives. He made a real difference to the society he lived in.

In an age of mortals, he was a hero.

A change of career? - Botswana Guardian

2007-09-07T07:15:00.000-07:00

I think I’m going to train to be a lawyer. I know 43 might be a little old for a career change but I’ve spent some time recently reading our laws. Some of them like the Collective Investment Undertakings Act are incredibly dull but many of them are fascinating.

One of my favourites is the Penal Code. Discrimination is illegal. Anyone who treats another “less favourably” on the grounds of colour, race, nationality or creed can be fined up to P500 or go to prison for up to 6 months. It’s illegal to deliberately wound anybody’s religious feelings. It’s obviously not illegal to say you don’t believe something someone else believes or even to point out flaws in their belief systems but going out of your way to offend them is punishable by up to a year in jail. So don’t do it OK?

Then there’s witchcraft. Not acceptable. The Witchcraft Act makes it illegal to tell fortunes or to find stolen or lost things using any claim to supernatural power. The thing I like best about the Act is that it refers to “so-called witchcraft”. The authors of the law knew it was all unbelievable hocus-pocus and, quite rightly, outlawed it.

However, every so often the laws take a small step sideways and have, in my slightly humble opinion, erred. For instance the Botswana Health Professions Act, 2001 demands that any health professionals must be registered. All very sensible so far. Doctors, dentists, pharmacists and other recognised professionals like opticians, occupational therapists and physiotherapists all have to prove their legitimacy before they can practice. However the Act then mentions what are called “Associated Health Professionals”. This includes chiropodists who are a logical bunch but then goes on to include homeopaths and acupuncturists. This is a mistake. Those last two professions are based on pseudoscience. There is no real, scientific, rational evidence for either homeopathy or acupuncture. They are both based on rubbish. No clinical trials into their effectiveness have ever shown any real effect. I think it’s an insult to chiropodists to lump them in with charlatans.

Back to the Penal Code. The wonderful clause 92 makes it an offence punishable by a fine of up to P500 to say or write anything that expresses hatred, ridicule or contempt for any person or group based on their “race, tribe, place of origin, colour or creed”. It’s simply illegal to make sweeping, offensive generalisations about people because they’re black or white, born here or elsewhere. We are all given the same protection from being insulted.

Of course none of us have any protection against logical argument and reasoned criticism. None of us deserve any such protection. All of us, every day, are open to criticism of our beliefs, our values and our allegiances. That’s the way of a democracy and we are all VERY fortunate to live in a genuine democracy. Millions of people around the world are dying to have the rights of free speech and the protections we have. The people of Burma, led by Aung Sang Suu Kyi, are struggling to have just a fraction of what we have.

So I’m just very happy to be in a country where free speech is not only respected, it is also protected and encouraged. If anyone thinks I’m talking nonsense I would be delighted to see reasoned arguments saying why. If, however, all people can come up with is that I’m wrong because I’m white then not only are your arguments silly, they may even be illegal!

Alternative medicine can cause alternative illness - Botswana Guardian

2007-08-02T23:01:00.000-07:00

It goes on and on. The parade of rubbish, nonsense and drivel masquerading as “alternative medicine”. In the Advertiser last week two advertisements offered something rather special.

Promises. Just promises. Nothing else.

The first was from Lam-Med Health Care. It asked whether we suffer from “Arthritis, Cramps, Cellulite, Muscular Pains, Back problems, Cancer, Poor circulation, Stress, High Blood Pressure, Diabetes, Asthma, Eczema etc”. The solution to all of these problems? “Health through the power of Oxygen Ozone”.

The second, from “Siloam”, asked if we’re suffering from problems including “Insomnia and Headache”, “Sciatic nerve, rheumatism, arthritis” and yet again “High blood pressure”. The solution? “Reflexology and muscle and bone adjustment”. This lot go one stage further and promise that “you will be free from the suffering”. They say that Siloam “is the solution to your problems”.

Where to begin.

Firstly everything offered is known to be utterly useless. In case you don’t know reflexology is based on the idea that the soles of your feet somehow map the structure of your body. They say that if you apply pressure to various spots on your feet it will affect your organs. Squeeze here and your liver will be affected, tickle here and your spleen will be in top-notch shape.

This is nonsense. Every time there has been serious scientific research into reflexology it has been shown to have no more of an effect that having your feet massaged. Of course some of us might like having our feet massaged. It’s not my thing but people say it’s wonderfully relaxing and feels terrific. But that doesn’t make it medicine. It doesn’t make it true.

As for ozone that’s rubbish as well. Not only is there absolutely no evidence that ozone helps with any health problems, there IS evidence that ozone can actually be harmful to our health.

Then there’s the danger of relying on this rubbish rather than things that do work. Like medicine. Medicine based on science. Science that is rational, logical and enlightened. My fear is that some poor soul, suffering from one or other of the nasty conditions mentioned will go to these charlatans and take their nonsensical treatments rather than something that actually works. The risk is terrifying. Instead of taking real medication for potentially dangerous disorders like high blood pressure, asthma and diabetes they’ll take some ludicrous herb or the useless reflexology approach. Who knows what might happen. Someone’s going to die, if they haven’t already.

I’m not going to say that traditional or herbal remedies have no effect. We all know how many conventional medicines come from natural origins. Penicillin was discovered when samples in a laboratory were infected by an air-born mould. Warfarin, commonly used to treat heart conditions, is found in many plants such as sweet clover and even in liqorice.

But the trouble is how unpredictable herbal remedies can be. If I go to my local pharmacy and buy paracetamol I know for sure that each tablet contains exactly 500mg of paracetamol. With herbal remedies, who knows? The only certainly I have is if I use a homeopathic “remedy”. At least with those I know they contain nothing at all!

I think it’s about time that we did something to fix this problem. Luckily we have the tools to act. These nonsensical therapies cost money. That makes us consumers. The Consumer Protection Regulations make it really unwise to offer products where “the supplier promises outcomes where those outcomes have no safe scientific, medical or performance basis”. Reflexology and ozone have no scientific or medical basis. The fantastic news is that they are illegal!

We’re being invaded - Botswana Guardian

2007-03-23T10:10:00.000-07:00

No, I’m not talking about Zimbabweans, I think we’re under threat from something much more dangerous than illegal aliens, health charlatans and international consultants telling us we’re doing everything wrong.

We’re being invaded by nonsense.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve encountered several ludicrous ideas. The Scientologists will probably say this is because of alien ghosts in my brain but I blame something much more harmful: the internet.

Several times in the last few weeks I’ve received emails announcing the release of a DVD called The Secret. This DVD, which you’ll not be surprised to learn costs money, tells us that our thoughts can “create reality”. Just thinking that you’ll become a millionaire will make you a millionaire. If you just think that your marriage is going to be wonderful then it will be wonderful. Just thinking that it will rain, will, yes, you guessed it, make it rain. The trouble is it’s not all positive, there’s a negative side as well. We become ill apparently because we think bad thoughts. Presumably we get robbed, raped and murdered because we made it happen with our bad thoughts?

Apart from the cruelty of the message that The Secret delivers, there is of course, the utter nonsense that it comprises. Did we have a drought because we made it happen by being negative? Did the tsunami kill all those people because they weren’t thinking happy thoughts? Did tens of millions of people die during the Second World War because they hadn’t bought a DVD from a bunch of New Agers? Can you make HIV leave your body just by thinking?

Of course not.

I’m a big believer in positive thought but I do recognise it’s limitations. Positive thought alone doesn’t do anything. It’s what results from positive thought that matters. We’ve all known people who have managed to survive illness and adversity and whose positive outlook has made them a great role model but their outlook was just helpful, it didn’t itself cure anything. There is almost always a third factor behind such obvious associations.

Someone who retains a positive outlook when faced with illness is surely the one who is also more likely to improve their diet, cut down on the booze and start exercising? Surely it’s those things that help them live longer, recover more quickly and become healthier?

We get the same thing from all the other purveyors of the “thought makes reality” message. Whether it’s The Journey talking about cell memory, churches telling the congregation that prayer alone will make us rich or the Scientologists saying that we just need to clear out all those pesky aliens from our minds, it’s all the same.

As Oscar Wilde said, the truth is never pure and rarely simple. Our health and wealth are, in fact, heavily influenced by things beyond our control. Of course we can modify our destiny hugely by taking personal responsibility for it. We can work harder, learn something new every day, and listen to genuine, qualified experts when they give us health advice but we can’t avoid the fact that much of what happens in life is beyond the control of positive thinking.

At a more profound level my objection is that so much of this is simply untrue. Cells don’t have memory any more than rocks do. Wealth comes from good fortune for a few lottery winners and the grandchildren of millionaires but mostly it comes from hard work, imagination and talent. As for Scientology aliens in my brain, well, I think they gave up and went home years ago.

Colour blindness

2007-02-16T01:20:00.000-08:00

It occurred to me that HIV, wickedness and ignorance all have something in common.

They are all colour-blind.

HIV can’t see in colour. It doesn’t check someone’s colour before it infects them. It doesn’t take a quick peek to see whether it’s about to infect someone black or white. It doesn’t even check to see if someone is male or female. In fact it’s very liberal and totally unbiased. If it didn’t cause such suffering and distress we’d probably admire it for being so unprejudiced.

Wickedness also doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t decide who to corrupt by looking at their skin colour first. You don’t need to be an academic to see the appalling history of human wickedness.

Adolf Hitler was wicked and white, Idi Amin was wicked and black. Joseph Stalin was wicked and white, Haile Mengistu was wicked and black and Pol Pot was wicked and oriental. Like most serial killers each of them slaughtered largely within their own ethnic group. In none of those cases did skin colour play even a tiny role. They were all just plain wicked. No ethnic group has a monopoly, or even a majority share, in wickedness. In fact it’s fairly evenly distributed. It’s a thoroughly human failing, not an ethnic one.

And finally ignorance. Ignorance knows absolutely no boundaries and unfortunately seems to be present in epidemic proportions. Just take a look at the enormous spread of ludicrous superstitions and crazy pseudo-religions spreading through the world. Whether it follows the decline of regular religion I’m not sure but you can’t avoid the latest nutritional, self-help or other “New Age” lunacy everywhere you go.

I don’t think it’s pushing a point too far to state that willful ignorance has even played a huge role in the disastrous situation the US government got themselves into in Iraq. Pretty much everyone else in the world was saying they shouldn’t try it but their minds were closed and a determined ignorance won the day.

However, it’s not just in the west that ignorance raises it’s ugly head. Just across our border in South Africa their esteemed leaders have regularly fallen into disastrous and (verging on criminal) flirtations with AIDS denialism and the awful German Matthis Rath and his horrible vitamin concoctions that “allow the prevention, treatment and eventually the eradication of today's most common diseases”. Well, they do after you’ve made him rich of course.

It’s not just Rath though. We’ve had the misguided here in Botswana saying they can cure AIDS with apple juice and prayer and others who say that walnuts are better than ARVS. Is it improper of me to call that last one the “Nuts theory”?

It’s not been widely covered here but we had an even more remarkable case of either willful madness or possibly just badness a month ago in Gambia. Their president, Yahya Jammeh, has announced that with his own combination of the Quran and some herbs he found in the forest he can cure people of AIDS within three days. According to the Gambian State House web site (http://www.statehouse.gm) his claims have left medical experts in Gambia “mesmerised and stunned”. Presumably because they knew he’d have them shot if they didn’t look suitably impressed.

My point is simple, if a little long-winded. There IS a strange parallel between HIV on the one hand and wickedness and ignorance on the other, but to assume that any particular group has a monopoly on either wickedness or ignorance is, in my view, wicked and ignorant.

Medical malpractice?

2007-01-24T07:43:00.000-08:00

Last week Gilbert Sesinyi wrote a response to a letter I wrote. I had objected to his idea that doctors and medicine were the source of our ill-health problems. According to Gilbert all we need is to do is avoid processed food and the “whiteman” and things will be OK.

For instance one of Gilbert’s central ideas seems to be that all organic chemicals are good for us and inorganic ones are all poisons. This is a huge simplification. Oxygen, baking soda and water are all inorganic along with an enormous range of minerals without which we’ll die. On the other hand nicotine, monosodium glutamate and most nerve gasses are all organic compounds. The terms organic and inorganic don’t mean the same as good and bad.

He says that people aren’t living as long as they used to and that this is medicine’s fault. I wanted evidence for this. All we got from Gilbert was an observation that his grandparents lived longer than his parents. Sorry Gilbert but that’s not evidence, that’s an anecdote. It’s a bit like saying that Uncle Albert smoked 20 cigarettes a day, lived to be 90 and therefore smoking isn’t dangerous.

The facts are actually simple. If you exclude the people dying because of AIDS, we are living longer than ever before. It’s our average life expectancy that has decreased and it’s AIDS that did this. Simple as that.

We then had to read Gilbert’s opinion that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. Instead he says that AIDS is due to poor nutrition, cellphone usage and “the whiteman’s culture”. This is similar to the evil nonsense South Africa has been forced to endure from the revolting Matthias Rath. All you need to do, says Rath, is buy vitamins and AIDS will go away. Oh and if you can buy them from him things will be even better. Well for him they will.

I really do object to this reckless, often paranoid denial about HIV and AIDS. I know people living with HIV and they have achieved amazing feats in coping with their infection, modifying their lifestyle, taking ARVs when required and continuing to be valuable members of the community. The denial movement slaps them in the face.

We should count ourselves lucky that we live in a country that is relatively free of AIDS denialism. Countless numbers of our South Africans cousins have died as a result of it and it’s a tribute to us as a country that our government, our health sector and most of our people have avoided the temptation to blame someone else for our situation and instead have taken some level of responsibility for it ourselves.

While all this got me a little hot under the collar Gilbert’s other assertions just made me laugh. Apparently I’m “a member of the oppressor’s nation, the white people”. Furthermore white people are all “either evil or the beneficiaries of evil”. Why can’t we shed these out-dated notions that categorise people “by the colour of their skin rather than the contents of their character”?

A much wiser man than me once said “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity”. He also said that “we must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools”. He was black by the way, although he did have a very “white” name: Martin Luther King.

Oh, did I mention that my grandmother is 87 and is fighting fit?

Richard Harri-whiteman

2007-01-24T07:23:00.000-08:00

A reply from Gilbert Sesinyi in the Botswana Guardian
"Doctors do as they’re taught".
Rest assured a response has been submitted already from this "member of the oppressor’s nation, the white people".

Be wary of doctors?

2007-01-12T13:30:00.000-08:00

I read with surprise and some degree of outrage the column by Gilbert Sesinyi last week in the Botswana Guardian. His piece entitled “Be wary of the doctors” was a startling piece of scaremongering and I think potentially dangerous.

In his column Gilbert suggests, amongst other things, that “the whiteman… is motivated by profit over excellence” and “His ways are surely the ways of death”.

It’s probably best if I gloss over who exactly this “whiteman” might be. I know it’s not me, because I happen to think profit and excellence are equally good things and that they can’t be divorced. Also, with the exception of that snake in my back yard a few months ago I don’t think I’ve killed anything recently.

The worrying thing about what Gilbert wrote was to do with health and the medical profession. Unfortunately much of what he wrote is clearly mistaken. For instance he states that “there is evidence that ancient man lived much longer than modern man”. What evidence? My understanding is that worldwide people are living longer than ever before. It is reckless to suggest that because the average lifespan here in Botswana has dropped into the 30s that this is because of medicine. It’s down to AIDS. It’s because of the medical and pharmaceutical professions that we have ARVs. The ARVs that are helping to increase lifespans despite the effect of HIV, not reduce them.

It’s also mistaken to suggest that doctors know nothing about nutrition. Gilbert asks why doctors don’t tell us to avoid processed food, refined flour and sugar and food laden with pesticides and fungicides. Well, as someone who spent the first half of his career surrounded by doctors I can’t remember ever meeting a doctor who didn’t go on and on about healthy eating. Also, without at least some of those chemicals we wouldn’t actually have any food to eat.

There is nothing inherently wrong with chemicals. Salt is a chemical. Baking powder is a chemical. Monosodium glutamate, otherwise known as MSG, which Gilbert suggests is a poison and “the root of chronic diseases”, is a naturally occurring substance found in tomatoes, peas and in soy sauce.

I firmly believe that we should be skeptical about all things and I certainly don’t exclude medicine and doctors from my skepticism. However we must be reasonable and accept that despite some failures, despite some scandals and despite some people seeing medicine as the solution to all of life’s problems, medicine is why most of us are alive today. Without medicine I probably wouldn’t have lived to an age when I would be grumpy enough to write irritated (and probably irritating) articles for newspapers. My wife would be dead, my eldest son would never have been born and my parents wouldn’t have lived long enough to know their grandchildren.

The solution is, as always to use our brains. If a doctor says that HIV was developed by the CIA in conjunction with aliens that doesn’t make it true. History is littered with the aftermath of charlatan doctors and healers who have brought about suffering and death, but that doesn’t undermine medicine as a body of knowledge and doctors as people who help us live to a ripe old age.

I often think it’s amusing, in a savage sort of way, to wonder who those who oppose medicine would call for if they, or heaven forbid, their children were injured in an accident? A nutritionist or a qualified doctor? I know who I’d want to see in a white coat.

Xenophobia - Botswana Guardian

2006-12-09T13:25:00.000-08:00

I’ve been thinking about xenophobia. We can’t avoid it these days, it’s one of those fashionable words that suddenly become the in thing.

Whether it’s to do with foreign investment, the Basarwa relocation issue or the termination of expatriate’s work permits it’s a word that keep on cropping up.

People seem to think that xenophobia means a fear of foreigners but that’s not actually true. It’s much wider than that. It actually means a fear of the unknown. It can be anything, not just an unknown or perhaps strange-looking human being. You can be xenophobic about someone from the next village, not just someone from a different continent.

To some extent I suppose that it’s a natural reaction. If you think back a few hundred thousand years to when humanity was in it’s infancy, being afraid of something new was probably a very wise approach. The new, unknown thing really might want to eat you. Although we’ve moved forward a long way, there’s a huge part of each one of us that remains back in the primitive days, showing primitive reactions.

You see it all over the world of course. The list of places where xenophobia has led to death and destruction is endless. Rwanda and Burundi, Serbia and Croatia and, now I get really depressed, the Middle East. Despite reasonably successful efforts at reconciliation there are still issues in Northern Ireland, Cyprus and even in South Africa. In fact it’s probably easier to list the places where there hasn’t been any history of xenophobic conflict. Well, it would be if I could think of any. Iceland perhaps?

But just because something is “natural” that doesn’t mean we should just accept it. We all have so-called natural instincts that we know we shouldn’t give in to. I’m a man, I know these things! And just because it’s natural doesn’t mean it’s good. In the same way, just because something is “unnatural” it doesn’t mean it’s bad. Condoms, hypodermic syringes and newspapers aren’t “natural” but they are all wonderful inventions that do untold good.

I’m a firm believer in understanding our nature, where we come from and what our instincts are but I also believe we are smart enough, have developed a sufficient understanding of what’s right and wrong and most importantly have sufficient self-control to overcome our more primitive instincts. Whether it’s an instinct to steal, fight or rape we all know these things are wrong and repulsive and we shouldn’t do them. Saying it’s natural is no excuse. Saying that you can’t overcome your instincts is nonsense.

The same goes for that specific type of xenophobia: our fear of strangers. Just because your instinct says you should reject someone who looks different to you, well that doesn’t make it right.

Surely we all know that people vary? Isn’t that one of the most interesting thing about our miserable species? Isn’t it actually rather wonderful that if you walk though one of our many shopping malls you see people of every shape, size and colour?

I’d go so far as to suggest we need to adopt a new approach. Xenophilia. A love for the unknown, the new and even what we might call strange. Let’s start welcoming variety. It doesn’t mean we all have to change ourselves, just that we should see new people and things as challenging, interesting and maybe even exciting

One last question. Where would we be now if Seretse and Ruth had both been xenophobic?

Religious punchups

2006-10-27T14:28:00.000-07:00

I’ve been experiencing a mixture of amusement and sadness following the recent arguments in the Botswana Guardian between Muslim and Christian writers.

Last week two Christian writers responded, in quite vicious terms, to Iqbal Ebrahim’s article suggesting that there is overlap between Christianity and Islam. A number of things struck me about their letters. Much of their argument was of the “My religion is better than yours, so there!” type, no more mature than an argument you might hear between two 7-year olds in a schoolyard.

However what struck me most was the absolute absence of logical thought. Arguments like “My religion is the sole truth because, well, my holy book says it is” aren’t even slightly intelligent debate in my view.

Quoting from scripture as an argument doesn’t really work terribly well when it’s the scripture you’re quoting that you are trying to prove is true. “My book is true and is the only true book, because it says it is” doesn’t work for me. Anyway can’t the same argument can be made for the Koran? And the holy texts of Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, the Moonies, even the lunatic ramblings of the Scientologists. They say they are the truth, so, well, they are the truth. Sorry, you’ll have to try a little harder than that.

Also I don’t think that the suggestion that Christianity is better than Islam because it came first works either. That’s about as logical as saying that my car is better than yours because it’s older than yours.

Actually maybe my car is analogous to religion. It consumes huge amounts of energy, it isn’t perfectly reliable and it pollutes the environment. I sometimes wonder if it’s worth the bother of keeping it. I love it though, however irrational that affection might be.

I would be very impressed if ever I actually saw a simple, logical and above all, rational argument from someone selling their religion. “It’s about faith, not rational argument” doesn’t work. Blind faith is, after all, blind. It can’t see.

On one of my occasional tolerant days I can be charitable towards religious organisations like the Salvation Army, like old-fashioned priests working for nothing in a village tending to the sick, the poor and the distressed and like those honest, hard-working and friendly people I know and respect. The trouble is they are undermined by the sharp-suited, limo-driven, mansion-inhabiting crooks you see on the religious TV channels.

More often than not I see religion rearing it’s ugly head behind almost all the conflicts our world sees. I don’t care whether it’s terrorism, Presidents saying they are advised by God to invade other countries or mullahs declaring fatwas that authorize the killing of authors because they wrote very long, dull books. What I see from religion is rarely peace. Instead I see hatred, contempt for followers of other faiths and a complete absence of rationality.

Back to the Guardian articles. The person I actually feel sorry for is Iqbal Ebrahim. In his article a couple of weeks ago he stood up, showed us that he is a member of that vast majority of Muslims who are perfectly decent people and extended the hand of friendship and understanding. And he got slapped in the face. Tell me, does the Koran teach that we should turn the other cheek?

I know some of the things I’ve said will irritate some people and I’ll probably be called an atheist, a heathen and perhaps even an infidel. Don’t worry though. I think those would all be compliments.

Detox your brain - Botswana Guardian

2006-09-06T06:36:00.000-07:00

I’ve now twice seen a simultaneously hilarious and depressing bit of nonsense on DSTV, along, probably, with the rest of southern Africa. A Home Shopping spot dedicated to the amazing “Detox Foot Pads” from a company called Remedy Health for just R169.95. Apparently you stick these pads to the soles of your feet at bed time and they apply warmth to the reflexology points and "detox your body while you sleep". The advert claims that this boosts your immune system. According to the personal testimonials from a range of grinning faces you wake feeling refreshed and with "less toxins and impurities". (For now I’ll ignore the fact that I think they mean "fewer", not “less”.)

According to the various buffoons presenting these pads they generate "far infra-red radiation equivalent to a full cardiac workout". The graphics they showed of two glowing feet were apparently "Thermo X-Rays" that showed "the incredible effects". Actually it looked more like a kid's drawings of feet with wobbly orange spots but maybe I'm too cynical and perhaps "Thermo X-Rays" are a bit of medical technology I've missed over the years.

Unfortunately they fail to point out that what they say is just complete rubbish.

To begin with there’s the reflexology angle. Reflexology is based on the notion that the soles of your feet are somehow connected to every other part of your body. Stimulation of specific spots on your feet can remedy problems in related organs of your body. However, it overlooks the fact that these connections simply don’t exist. They’re not there. Nowhere. They are as imaginary as the supposed benefits that reflexology offers.

Bring me an anatomy textbook and we can fail to find these mythical connections ourselves.

Then there’s the issue of “detoxing” through the soles of your feet. The advert shows some used foot pads and, amazingly, they are all blackened with what we are told are the toxins extracted from your feet. No chance that the dirt could just be from dirty, sweaty feet is there? Feet are actually horribly grubby things. Why do you think they smell so bad if not washed?

My initial thought was that the marketers of this nonsense assume that we are just gullible but the more I think about the hints about boosting your immune system the angrier I become. Don’t forget people like Mantho Tshabalala-Msimang, the Minister of Health in South Africa who recommends beetroot as a remedy for AIDS? It was also Tshabalala-Msimang who at one point circulated around her Ministry a pamphlet explaining how the CIA and aliens were behind the pandemic.

The danger is that this sort of nonsense from national leaders opens up the victims of the pandemic to all sorts of charlatans and con-artists. Look at people like Matthias Rath and what he's been up to all over the world, claiming that ARVs make things worse, that HIV and AIDS aren’t connected at all and that if you buy a few vitamin pills things will get better. We are very lucky in Botswana that, when it comes to HIV/AIDS, our politicians, health professionals and community groups haven’t fallen victim to this criminal nonsense

While I think that satellite TV, newspapers and the internet are wonderful things they also have the ability to spread deception, dangerous conspiracy theories and outright lies. Detox foot pads may be a relatively innocent example but they are not that far from things that threaten our welfare, maybe even our lives.

Sometimes the detoxing we need is not of our bodies, but of our brains.

Your future is behind you - Botswana Guardian

2006-07-28T08:17:00.000-07:00

I’m converted. Despite being a confirmed sceptic in the past I’ve now discovered something that has changed my mind about all that new age stuff and the traditional mumbo-jumbo.

Some of you may have seen on TV the profoundly eccentric Jacqueline Stallone. As well as being the actor Sylvester Stallone’s mother she is also a high-profile Hollywood astrologer and crystal-waving, New Age loon. Go visit her website at www.jacquelinestallone.com and take a look.

Thanks to Robert Carroll, the author of the fascinating Skeptic’s Dictionary (www.skepdic.com), I heard about her latest project.

Rumpology.

There’s no way I can explain this wonderful new science better than Ms Stallone herself. She says:

“Just as a print of your fingerprints, palms, soles and ears tell a story, so does your rump. The lines, crevices and folds of your rear-end can, to the trained eye, reveal your personality, fate and future in luck and love”. Apparently your left buttock represents the right side of your brain and, somehow gives clues to your past as well. Similarly, your right buttock will give Stallone clues about your reasoning ability and language skills. She says that her analysis of your bum “will indicate whether you are going ass-backwards (back in that little closet called the left brain) or are going forward, “taking the plunge” with your right brain God-given tools of intuition and creativity.”

What she asks you to do is to send her a digital picture of your bare bottom and a payment of $125 and in return you get a “personal, condensed, no frills report on the signs and markings on your rear end”, “a condensed one-year prediction in the direction your rear end is taking you” and best of all an A4-sized colour picture of your backside “which you may want to frame as a family keepsake… or give as a gift to a special person”.

Now obviously this is one of the best examples of complete pseudoscientific hogwash I’ve ever seen. In fact it’s such an extreme case I’m not sure it’s even worth trying to suggest it’s nonsense. With reflexology, homeopathy and all the other New Age rubbish there is at least something to get your teeth into. They are expressed in sufficiently scientific sounding language that anyone with an understanding of scientific method can rip them apart. Not so with Rumpology.

So instead of arguing with it I’m going to adopt it completely. I think Rumpology is fantastic.

In fact I’m here to announce my own version of Rumpology. I’ve taken the basic principles and developed them to a new, advanced level. I’m going to set up a new organisation to be called the Applied Rumpology Studies Establishment. For a start we’re doing away with all that business of sending digital photographs around the world. No need for that. At A.R.S.E. we do all the readings ourselves, by hand. At A.R.S.E. we believe that you can’t do a real reading with just a picture. Obviously you need to give it a good feel with bare hands.

So, if you feel that your life is lacking direction, you need a vision of how things can be better and more rewarding pop on over to the A.R.S.E. team for a feeling, sorry a reading. You’ll be impressed with how thorough we can be, how prolonged the reading will be and quite how many volunteers there will be to read you.

If you have a nice one that is.

The experiment - Botswana Guardian

2006-06-27T08:12:00.000-07:00

I’ve been a bad boy.

I recently conducted an experiment. Not a conventional, scientific experiment, but a rather eccentric one. One that investigated, in a very amateur way, the gullibility of the public.

So if you read this article and find that you were one of my experimental subjects, or should I say victims, and you feel like I’ve abused or insulted you then I apologise. I’m sorry. I really am. Well, perhaps just a little.

I wanted to see how gullible people could be. Not uneducated and ignorant people but literate, intelligent, 21^st century people. In fact exactly the sort of people who read the Botswana Guardian!

Those of you with internet access may have come across the eDumela website (www.edumela.com). This is a really great community site where people can chat, post messages, have online debates, post their pictures and maybe even find love.

A few weeks ago using an assumed name I posted a message to one of their Message Boards that suggested something ludicrous, something that can only be described as a ridiculous conspiracy theory. A story with absolutely no truth at all. None at all. A story that was plainly, clearly and obviously nonsense. One that I made up.

I suggested that the US government is relocating their base at Guantanamo Bay to the Kalahari and that there is a secret CIA base inside Kgale Hill overlooking Gaborone.

I’m not going to waste good Botswana Guardian newsprint on explaining why these rumours are nonsense, they just are OK? Oh and if anyone thinks that I’m somehow defending US foreign policy, well you clearly don’t know me.

After posting the original message I made no follow-up postings, didn’t respond to anything anyone else posted and in no way reinforced the original rumour. I wanted to see how many people would respond and what sort of reactions they would have.

Twenty-eight people posted responses to this ridiculous story and some of their responses were rather curious. A few of the responses suggest that people simply believe the rumour (“I’m sure this is all true”, “You’re not alone”).

However the really weird thing was how many other conspiracy rumours appeared as a result of the posting. One poster suggested that “US citizens in Botswana are immune to our laws” which is just nonsense. Others suggested that “Botswana is a CIA listening post”, “the US set up RB1 as part of their intelligence communication system”, “Batswana are being used as bio warfare lab rats” and that “the CIA have penetrated the high office in our land”. My favourite though is one really wild response. Apparently American Peace Corps volunteers are all CIA spies and part of a wider US conspiracy to involve groups like the Jehovahs Witnesses in intelligence gathering.

Where does all this come from? Maybe it’s something to do with the Internet? Perhaps the enormous amounts of information available and the ease with which it can be published contributes towards it? Do a search on the Internet for the words “conspiracy” and another of your choice and you can find a huge range of nonsense about how the CIA are behind everything, how the freemasons or the Jews really run the world and that the British Royal Family are really lizards.

So does it matter? Isn’t it all just harmless? Actually I think it can be dangerous. Think how much time has been wasted in South Africa in the battle against HIV and AIDS. Ludicrous conspiracy theories about how HIV has either nothing to do with AIDS or how it was invented by the CIA and aliens have had a devastating effect on people’s behaviour and the provision of ARVs.

Conspiracy theories cost lives.

Crooks in the pulpit - Botswana Guardian

2006-05-19T03:50:00.000-07:00

On the 25th January this year the Daily News reported that Ogomoditse Matsila, the Acting Director of the Department of Civil and National Registrations said that it was "possible that some churches and other organisations could be used for money-laundering or tax evasion".

She also mentioned that the powers her Department have to regulate and monitor churches are limited and don't give them the right to inspect and record the goings on within the churches.

Excellent! I don’t think we really don't want the religion police running around and checking up on the activities of honest, respectable church-goers do we? No, we don't. Most churches are, of course, respectable, charitable and honest. Despite not sharing their beliefs I obviously recognise the good works so many do, the sense of community they give to their followers and the personal morality they teach.

However I think that Mma Matsila and her colleagues deserve credit for realising that religion and spirituality are very often covers for fraud, deception and, in quite a few cases, crime.

I really worry about the flow of churches of all descriptions and varieties into the country. For instance can there really be that many varieties of the Christian message? Is there really a need for another charismatic preacher when we have loads of them here already? What else have they got to preach to us? More importantly, what else is it they want from us?

At the simplest level I suspect that a number of preachers get a real kick from the performance they deliver. Most people who have become comfortable with public speaking will confess, if you push them, that they get a kick out of being the centre of attention. I know that I do. I enjoy standing in front of people and have them listening to me. It makes me feel good, makes me feel that what I have to say is important and, here I go confessing again, it makes me feel important as a person. Even though I know I'm not!

I suspect that many preachers feel this way as well, but even more so. They are having a real influence on people's lives. They are changing people's behaviour, their values and their outlook on life. What a feeling that must be! I don’t have a problem with this so long as what they are doing is legitimate.

My problem is with the con-artists. I'm not going to be silly enough to mention any here in Botswana but consider one of the most famous cases. An American evangelist called Peter Popoff. He was famous for his televised gospel shows where he would heal the sick. "Miraculously" he would call out the names of people in the audience who he had never met. He would announce before actually meeting them what was wrong with them, what they desperately desired and amazing personal details that he couldn't possibly know. Or could he?

Popoff was exposed as a con artist several years ago by one of my great heroes, James Randi. Randi has devoted much of his life to exposing charlatans, frauds and crooks and has set up an educational institute to continue his good work. I urge you to visit his web site at www.randi.org to learn more about what he and his associates do. If you don't have access to the Internet please write to me at P. Box 403026, Gaborone and I'll sent you more information.

Randi was convinced that Popoff's so-called abilities were not even slightly miraculous. He and his team went to one of his so-called miracle crusades with a radio receiver. Pretty soon they picked up signals being transmitted by Popoff’s wife to a tiny receiver in his ear. Before entering the hall every attendee had been asked to fill in a card outlining their personal details, their ailments and what they needed. Popoff's wife would then read these to him over the airways, allowing him to appear to have miraculous abilities.

Popoff went bankrupt shortly after he was exposed by Randi and his team. However the bad news is that he’s back again on the Internet preaching about how his followers should ignore his critics because they are the agents of Satan. I suppose that means me as well now. I’ve been called many things in my time but an agent of the Devil is a new one.

However how many of the TV evangelists we see on Channel 77 are up to the same tricks? Last year Carte Blanche on M-Net broadcast a major expose made by the Canadian Broadcasting Services on Benny Hinn and the staggering amounts of money he raises (and keeps for himself it seems). What’s that I remember about rich men entering the Kingdom of Heaven and something to do with camels and the eye of a needle?

I’m not suggesting that all the new preachers flowing into Botswana are crooks like Popoff. Clearly that wouldn’t be true. I just think that before we trust a new charismatic preacher or religious group we should do our research. We should think carefully about what they say. We must take step back and start from a position of scepticism, not trust. Only when they have proved themselves should we consider trusting them.

Maybe I can put it more simply. Never trust a preacher in a Mercedes.

Scientologists - Letter to Sunday Standard 9/9/2006

2006-04-08T23:37:00.000-07:00

Outsa Mokone

The Editor
The Sunday Standard
P/Bag 351
Gaborone
Botswana

9^th April 2006

Dear Mr Mokone

I was very surprised to see the article published in the Sunday Standard on 9^th April entitled “Scientology paints Botswana yellow” which covers the efforts this bizarre cult is making to convert people in Pandamatenga.

You make very veiled suggestions about me in the article, even though I am not named. As far I can recall only two people or organisations have written anything negative about the Scientologists in the Botswana press. I was one and the other was the Sunday Standard. You refer to “vitriolic letters to the editor write-ups”, which can only have been the ones I wrote. If you don’t have the courage to name me then please let me do it for you. What persuaded you at the Sunday Standard to fall for their propaganda? Have the alien ghosts the Scientologists believe in got to you?

My impression of your article is that it has been lifted directly from Scientology propaganda. 17 of your 24 paragraphs contain quotes directly from the Scientologists or flattering statement written to them from their gullible admirers. Only one paragraph even suggests that their may be any reasonable critics of this ridiculous cult, namely the very sensible German Government.

I wonder how many of the people in Pandamatenga really know what the Scientologists believe in? How honest have they been? Maybe I can fill in the gap they left?

One of their core (and confidential) beliefs is only made available to those who have paid enough and reached what they call “Operating Thetan Level 3”. This is that 75 million years ago Xemu, the Emperor of the Galactic Federation, decided to cure his over-population problems by murdering excess aliens by bringing them to Earth and killing them with hydrogen bombs. The souls of these people were then brainwashed with a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" for 36 days. These souls managed to escape and now haunt our minds and cause all our mental health problems. At the same time apparently this Xemu guy implanted both Christianity and Islam in our collective memory.

I am NOT making this up! Court records from the USA prove this and I would be very happy to make copies available to anyone interested. Oh and do the cult mention that before he founded his own religion L Ron Hubbard was a failed science fiction writer?

You appear to have breached your own “accuracy test” in publishing the article. Your own standards state that you must ask yourself “what absolute proof do I have that the story is correct”. Much of what you wrote in the article is absolutely false. For instance towards the end you refer to “how successful it’s drug treatment programs are” when the only scientific research into Narconon, the Scientology drug treatment program, showed it to be a catastrophic failure.

This study was conducted in Sweden in 1981 and the Scientologists claim that it showed 76.8% of 61 drug abusers they treated were drug-free four years later. However if you examine the report you find that only 14 of the 61 actually completed the Narconon program. Of those 14 only 4 said they hadn’t used drugs since. That’s a real success rate of just under 7%. That is not a success by anyone’s standards.

Incidentally your readers may have noticed that it’s not even possible to have 76.8% of 61 drug abusers without cutting them into pieces. It doesn’t come to a whole number.

In February 2005 the California State Superintendent Jack O'Connell urged all schools to drop the Narconon program after research concluded that it offers inaccurate and unscientific information and is seen by most as just a recruitment wing of the Church. In 1989 Everett R. Rhoades, M.D., the US Assistant Surgeon General said of Narconon that it “cannot be considered medically sound”. In 1991 the Board of Mental Health of the State of Oklahoma declared that Narconon “is not medically safe”.

I must also say that I am genuinely outraged that the cult has persuaded our police officers, teachers, customs officers and community leaders to lend them their support in their official capacities. Maybe we should ask Government if these officials were in fact authorised to endorse the actions of this cult?

Yes, people may think I have some grudge against the Scientologists. Yes, I suppose I do. Maybe my problem is that they were founded by a lying, cheating, apartheid-supporting, drug-abusing fantasist who constructed a church to make money from the gullible and the naïve. How can the cult he founded deserve any respect when they still idolise and canonise this now deceased drug-crazed madman?

I would like to end with a few quotes from the lunatic Hubbard himself that give a flavour of the true beliefs and ethics of the Scientology cult.

“Make money. Make more money. Make other people produce so as to make more money.”

Regarding critics of the cult he said “May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any

Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed”

And my personal favourite, written in 1952: “The only way you can control people is to lie to them. You can write that down in your book in great big letters. THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN CONTROL ANYBODY IS TO LIE TO THEM.”

With best regards

Richard Harriman

Sceptical about... Alternative Health

2006-04-07T07:50:00.000-07:00

Everywhere we look there are offers of so-called alternative or complementary health products and services. There are homeopathic remedies in health shops, reflexologists that cure our illnesses by fooling around with our feet, people that sell us crystals because they channel energy and, well, the list is almost endless and seems to be growing every day.

So am I going to say that it's all rubbish and that people are wasting their money every time they buy one of these remedies?

Yes.

Well, OK, perhaps not all of them. I may be sceptical but I'm not totally dismissive. I DO realise that many of the mainstream medicines we consume came from what you can call "natural" origins. Penicillin for instance was discovered when samples in a laboratory were infected by an air-born mould. Warfarin, commonly used to treat heart conditions, is found in many plants such as sweet clover and even in liqorice.

So I'm not against the idea that tomorrow scientists might discover that another so-called natural remedy does actually contain chemicals that cure disease and boost health. It happens all the time. Scientists all over the world are examining traditional remedies and finding amazing things.

What I AM against though is some of the more ridiculous claims that have absolutely no scientific basis.

A good example is homeopathy. The idea behind homeopathy is quite simple. An ailment can be treated with minute quantities of substances that produce similar symptoms to those of the ailment. Quite how this works is never explained although homeopaths no doubt want us to think that it's a bit like vaccination where an inert form of a dangerous infectious agent is given to the patient so he or she can form a resistance to it.

However, homeopathy and vaccination are completely different. One has a scientific basis and can be proved to work and the other? Well, no evidence I'm afraid, other than those "experiments" conducted by homeopaths themselves and they aren't exactly renowned for their scientific credentials.

Oh and one other difference between homeopathy and vaccination? One actually contains an active ingredient and the other doesn't. Homeopathic "remedies" are produced by repeatedly diluting a sample of the supposedly active ingredient. A homeopath may take a 1% solution of the active ingredient, perhaps a plant extract in water or alcohol and dilute it further several times. After being diluted to 1% each time you can quickly work out that after 10 dilutions only 1 atom in every hundred billion billion will be of the so-called active ingredient. And the most common forms of homeopathic remedy are actually diluted in this way thirty times. There is simply nothing left from the original ingredient. There's nothing there apart from water or alcohol.

So how do homeopaths claim it works? Well, if you have scientific background, sit down before reading further.

Apparently the water in which this ingredient once resided "remembers" that it once met the substance in question. Homeopaths talk seriously about "the molecular memory of water". And there was me thinking water was just hydrogen and oxygen and not something that remembered previous visitors.

Want another absurdity? Homeopaths believe that the more diluted the liquid becomes the more effective it is. And another? The principle of homeopathic "succusion" states that the remedy becomes even more effective still if you thump it against the heel of your hand or a leather pad. I promise you I am NOT making this up.

Homeopathy is nonsense. It flies in the face of all that we have learnt over the last couple of thousand of years in the fields of chemistry, physics and biology.

So what about all of you who have taken a homeopathic remedy and felt better afterwards? Were you imagining it? Was your mind playing tricks on you?

I don't think you were imagining it and I don't think you've gone mad. It just wasn't the little phial of water you drank that made you feel better.

So what was it? Well, there are three possibilities. Firstly you may have just got better! It happens. People just get better. Their bodies fight an ailment and win. Our bodies are usually pretty good at it. They have had millions of years to develop an immune system after all.

Secondly, there's the intervention effect. Sometimes just deciding to take action about your health brings about an effect indirectly. You start eating properly, taking exercise and looking after yourself better and this might involve you starting to take homeopathic remedies. Why assume it's the remedy that did it? Maybe all that extra fruit you ate that kept the colds away? At least fruit contains Vitamin C, something that actually does something!

The last possibility is the one that people often dismiss but is actually one of the most remarkable things that can happen in medicine. A truly remarkable effect that should never be dismissed or thought of as somehow second rate. The placebo effect. Just the action of taking medication can bring about an improvement, even if the medication is no more than a sugar pill. Nobody quite knows how it works but it does.

So why not embrace these possibilities instead of assuming that the homeopathic remedy you bought did something when it cannot possibly have done so?

Sceptical about... Blood types and diet

2006-03-16T06:25:00.000-08:00

I read a report in the Daily News recently of the proceedings at a “food security” conference held recently. Apparently the big issue were diets for people with different blood types.

Yet again I think we’re in danger here. In danger of believing something that is nonsense. Utter nonsense. Let me state this in very clear and simple terms. There is absolutely no evidence that blood type has anything to do with the body’s reaction to the food it consumes. None.

The theories that were presented at this conference were based on the books written by a father and son team, Drs James and Peter D’Adamo. In their books they claim that they have collected “over 1,000 scientific articles on blood types and their correlations to disease, biochemistry, nutrition, and anthropology”. Yet strangely not one of them has been under controlled scientific conditions. All they have is a series of anecdotes along the lines of “Well, it helped my Aunt Alice, so it must work”. It’s just like those people you meet who had an aged relative who smoked until he was 105 years old, so smoking can’t be dangerous.

If there is real evidence for these theories, evidence that came from strictly controlled scientific studies, not just a few cases where improving someone’s diet made them healthier, then I can’t find it. Where is it? My challenge to the blood type food faddists is show us REAL evidence, not just anecdotes.

The simple truth is that many of the dietary recommendations the D’Adamos make would work for many of us. They suggest that certain groups should consume less fat. OK, so who wouldn’t benefit from that?

However what’s not often mentioned by people selling the bizarre ideas from the D’Adamo family business is that they took it further than just diets. They suggest that even our personalities are affected by our blood types. Apparently those of us who have type O blood have “strength, endurance, self-reliance, daring, intuition, and innate optimism...". Those of us unfortunate enough to be type A are “poorly suited for the intense, high-pressured leadership positions at which Type O's excel” and “become anxious and paranoid, taking everything personally”.

Curiously the big period in history for research into the personality aspects of blood types was during the lowest point in European history, namely during Nazi Germany. It was found to be rubbish then and it remains rubbish today.

The trouble with this sort of pseudoscientific claptrap is that it leads into a profoundly dangerous area – group stereotypes. You know the sort of thing. Europeans are clever and industrious, Jews are scheming and money-grabbing and that Africans are just lazy. We all know how dangerous that can be. Oh, and it’s just plain incorrect as well.

The best summary of the blood group and diet issue that I’ve come across was made by Dr Victor Herbert (a real doctor) from the Mt Sinai Medical Centre in New York. He said that it is “pure horse manure. It has no relation to reality. The genes for blood type have nothing to do with the genes that handle the food we eat”.

I urge everyone to treat this and other pseudoscience with the contempt it deserves.

Sceptical about... common sense

2006-02-24T01:36:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, in my less than tolerant and easy-going moments (Yes, I DO have them occasionally) I'm astounded by the lack of simple common sense that some people display. Every week it seems that there's a story in the papers of someone who's been conned out of their hard-earned money or has given it all to a charlatan prophet in the hope of salvation or a miracle and has probably not seen them since.

Recently there was a story in the papers about a filling station manager in Francistown who had been conned out of P85,000. Apparently some guys approached him and told him that they had a magic box that multiplied money. All he had to do was put his own money in the box and miraculously it would increase. So he did. And you know what? They distracted him and ran off with the money. OK, so you are probably all thinking the same as me.

But the most remarkable thing about this story? They came back again the next day and he fell for it again! I really can't think how to describe (in polite terms) what I think about this, errr…. critically challenged individual.

Luckily the con artists who pulled this one off were caught and prosecuted but why isn't the victim being prosecuted for gullibility? Oh yes, I forgot. It's not illegal to be gullible. In my intolerant moments (and this is one of them) I think it should be illegal to be so foolish.

But how did it come to this? Presumably the victim is a reasonably bright guy. He must be, he runs a filling station. I have huge admiration for filling station managers. They have to be Finance Managers, HR Managers, Sales Executives, Stock Control experts and General Managers all rolled into one. It's high pressure, demanding work that requires the person to be constantly switched on. So how on earth did such a person fall for such nonsense?

It's not just that this particular guy was dreadfully gullible. It's as much a tribute to the quality of the con artists we have. Con artists are clever people. We should be proud to be in a nation that produces such imaginative people. They are specialists who prey on the gullible, the desperate and the innocent (that's a polite way of putting it). But surely we can see through their scams?

Why do smart people continue to fall for cons? Why don't we learn? Part of it is that con artists usually prey on one of our most disreputable characteristics: greed. So many of us want to get something for nothing and worse still, think that’s it’s actually possible to do so. We don't want to work to make money; we think we can get rich quickly without doing the work we know it actually takes.

So when they turn up and offer us something that is clearly too good to be true, like a magical box that multiplies money, our first thought is of the money, not of how ridiculous the idea is.

The same goes for all the internet-based cons, the so-called 419 scams which all revolve around an offer out of the blue, from a total stranger, usually about an opportunity to help him extract millions of dollars from Nigeria. You are offered 10% of the total sum as payment for your services. However, as soon as you're hooked, they tell you that you need to pay an advance fee, maybe legal fees, account opening fees or taxes. Funnily enough as soon as you pay these fees the con artists disappear.

These scams are obviously fakes aren’t they? If we engage our brains for more than a moment we must realise it. But thousands of people all over the world have fallen for them, giving away millions of dollars. How on earth do people believe that a total stranger will appear out of nowhere, offering them a few million dollars? This simply doesn't happen. Ever.

Do I really have to say this? There’s no such thing as a free lunch. If someone you've never met before offers you something that is clearly too fantastic to be true then the truth is clear. He's lying and wants to steal money from you.

So what about common sense? It’s been said before but I think it’s worth repeating.

Common sense isn’t.

Sceptical about... Scepticism

2006-02-07T01:40:00.000-08:00

What actually is a sceptic? The Oxford English Dictionary defines a sceptic as “a person inclined to doubt accepted opinions”. You could also say that a sceptic is someone who understands that just because someone says or writes something, it doesn’t mean it’s true. That goes for me as well. You are forbidden from believing anything in this article unless you’ve thought about it first.

I believe that in this increasingly dangerous and confusing world we must examine everything. Nothing is exempt from analysis and critical thought. There are no sacred cows.

However some things don't take a lot of thought. For instance it's pretty easy to show that killing people is wrong, mainly because it's cruel and causes pain and suffering. Surely nobody needs to explain why pain and suffering are bad things that should be avoided if possible.

Nobody really needs to think hard about lying. Almost always lying is a bad thing and we shouldn't do it. Getting drunk and hitting people is bad. Being a racist is bad. Torturing people is bad. Cheating to become President of the USA is a bad thing.

None of these things really deserve a great deal of debate because the issues are fundamentally quite simple.

Then there are the issues where common sense and a little thought are needed, maybe not even full-scale skepticism. If a man approaches you saying he has a magic box that will multiply your money and all you need to do is give him the cash for a little while, well, surely it doesn’t take too much thought? Unfortunately for the filling station manager in Francistown who fell for exactly this a few weeks ago, well, maybe he’d left his brain at home that day.

At the other end of the spectrum there are the genuinely complicated moral and emotional issues like abortion, the death penalty and, dare I say it, the relocation of the Basarwa. I believe that on these issues most people, if they really examine their consciences, will confess that they understand the other side’s viewpoint even if they disagree with it. However the issues are often so complex, so difficult, so loaded with emotion that it's very difficult to be absolutely certain.

I think that the very best weapon we have in thinking these through is the sceptical approach. These issues deserve clear, rational and very careful thought. They are so important that we MUST give them the thought they require, that they demand. Surely if we are to be honest with ourselves we have to think them through for ourselves? The sceptical approach is simple. In my view it all comes down to the rule I mentioned earlier. Just because something has been said or written that doesn't mean it's true.

My biggest complant about the human race is our tendency to behave like sheep. We seem to be programmed to accept whatever someone in authority tells us to believe. Whether it’s a politician, a church leader or Survival International we seem sometimes just to take on their opinions as if they were the direct words of God and not to be challenged.

Despite their complexity surely these issues deserve clear, rational and very careful thought? Surely the best weapon we have in dealing with them is between our ears? Each of us is blessed with the most amazing piece of equipment the world has ever known. No inventor has ever come up with anything as advanced, as clever and as amazing as the human mind and they’re not going to, at least during the lifetime of anyone reading this article. So why don't we use it? It's like being given a Ferrari for Christmas and only ever driving it to the supermarket.

Every last one of us has the capacity to think about what we hear, what we are told and what matters. To make matters even better we live in a country where using our brain is actually encouraged! Remember that there are still a few countries left, like Burma, Turkmenistan and a certain country just a little north of us where using your brain will get you thrown in jail if you're lucky and a shallow grave if you're not. Let’s exploit the freedom we have and think about things, debate things, have heated arguments over a few drinks (not on a Sunday though) and listen to what other people think. And then make up our own minds.

Sceptical about... Qualifications

2006-01-11T01:43:00.000-08:00

I am a fully ordained Minister of Religion. I can conduct weddings, funerals, christenings and baptisms. I can bless relationships, business opening and house-warmings. I haven’t actually done of these yet but who knows, maybe one day someone will ask me.

I can also absolve people of their sins which I can tell you comes in very useful, particularly when they’re my own.

You may be wondering what Church I belong to. This is where things become interesting. I don’t belong to any church at all. With the exception of weddings and funerals (not conducted by me unfortunately) I haven’t been to a Church service in about 30 years and I’m 41 years old.

So how am I a Minister of religion? Easy! Go to an Internet café, log onto the Internet at your workplace or dial up from home and visit the Universal Life Church at www.ulc.org. Five minutes later and for absolutely no money you are an ordained Minister of religion.

You think this is a joke? That it’s somehow not “real”? That it’s not legally recognised? You’d be wrong. I am fully legally entitled to conduct weddings, for instance, in almost all of the United States although I confess I’m not sure if I’m allowed to here in Botswana. Furthermore any weddings I conduct where they are permitted are recognised everywhere else in the world.

To tell the truth I ordained myself more as a joke than anything else. I honestly didn’t think it was legally recognised until after I’d done it and it came as a bit of a surprise.

I’m still not sure what to think about it. Sometimes I just think it’s funny that I, of all people, am a Minister of religion. Other times I think it says a lot about how religion operates in the USA, some of it ludicrous but most of it wholly admirable. The separation of state and religion, like we effectively have here in Botswana, is surely a wonderful thing and it separates us from theocracies like Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UK!

One thing it does prove though is just how easy it is to become “qualified” and how easy it would be to exploit these qualifications for selfish and perhaps corrupt reasons.

There are probably several other so-called Churches out there that will ordain people for the fun of it, I just found one of them. However, the thing that I think is most dangerous is not the ordinations you can get but the academic qualifications that are available.

A very quick search of the internet will find you a huge number of what they call “non-accredited” universities. These are institutions that award degrees that no legitimate academic institutions recognise. For instance if you applied to study for a Masters degree at UB and told them that you already had a BA from the “University of Cape Cod” they’d laugh at you and show you the door. Well, that’s assuming they checked of course.

Before you get too excited, the degrees these places award aren’t free. These are largely money-making schemes that probably appeal to people who want to get a job, a pay-rise or a promotion without actually going through the hard work of really studying for a real qualification. Another visit to the Internet and a quick search enabled me to find over 500 of these dubious places that will award a degree for various amounts of cash and for various trivial amounts of work from you.

Some of them are quite funny though. Calamus International University, which is based in the British West Indies, offers distance learning degrees in such subjects as “Regression and Reincarnation Studies” which allows you to help people remember being abducted by aliens and “Depth Psychology” which is based on a bunch of pseudoscientific nonsense that was thrown out by the rest of Psychology 30 years ago.

So what does it cost to get a degree from Calamus International University? According to their website, a BA will cost you around P16,000 and a Masters or a PhD will be around P30,000.

A good investment? Well, perhaps if you are prepared to lie in every job application or course you apply for. On the other hand if you are prepared to be honest and tell the world you weren’t energetic or clever enough to get a recognised degree then perhaps that’s OK.

If I take off my ordained hat and replace it with my sceptical one, what are my thoughts? As someone who once considered an academic career I’m appalled by how close having a non-accredited degree is to cheating. As a manager if I found that one of my employees had portrayed himself as being really qualified by having one of these meaningless “qualifications” I’d fire him on the spot.

As Mr Sceptic I think it’s slightly pathetic, rather silly and laughable but I also think it poses a serious threat. The lesson is to be sceptical about what you’re told when people say they’re qualified. See their certificates and then check that they’re from somewhere trustworthy!

My blessings to you all!

My sources and inspirations

2006-01-01T08:18:00.000-08:00

Much of the information I use in these postings is gleaned from a variety of excellent sources. Much credit must therefore go the authors of these web sites, including:

However, any errors made on this site are entirely my fault!

A little healthy scepticism

2005-12-10T01:29:00.000-08:00

In some circles being described as a sceptic is an insult but I’m proud to be one. I’m proud to be seen as someone who questions what I’m told and who doesn’t just believe what is said by someone who claims to be in authority. I know that this means I sometimes come across as awkward and difficult to persuade but I defend my approach passionately. I really believe that scepticism is healthy, useful and powerful starting point.

So what use is being sceptical? Why should we bother?

Firstly, what is a sceptic? The Oxford English Dictionary describes a sceptic as a “person inclined to doubt accepted opinions”. My view is that we should continually doubt what is accepted. If in the past nobody had been brave enough to question the beliefs that the world was flat, that the Earth circled the Sun and that powered flight was impossible where would we be now?

However I don’t think that these are issues of the past and reserved for the great philosophers and scientists. I think every one of us today needs to be sceptical about so many things. There are so many issues we face, so many new threats that deserve critical thought and so many liars, cheats and fraudsters that want our attention, our faith and our money. The best protection we have against all of these is not the government, not new laws and not just hoping they’ll go away. Our best defence is our ability to make rational decisions based on critical thought.

Some examples? In the last few years we’ve seen a huge rise in the number of churches registered here in Botswana. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, some of them are doing good work to help people sort out their lives, giving them a moral code and acting charitably. The danger is those that are not quite what they seem and who’s pronouncements don’t stand up to rational examination. Take the so-called Church of Scientology. This is a group that refuses to state their real beliefs, claiming that they are secret and that threatens to sue for breach of copyright anyone who publishes their beliefs. It’s a group that claims to have solutions to all of life’s problems, including mental illness, warfare and hunger and that claims to be able to cure people of drug addiction with record-breaking success rates. It all sounds good but unfortunately none of this stands up to even a simple examination. Their solutions are nonsensical, the science they claim proves their claims is completely unfounded and their success rates have only ever been disproved. Every one of their claims can be shown to be false with a little rational thought. A few moments of scepticism shows them for what they are.

Then there’s The Family, a fringe so-called Christian group that advertise in the press and have a habit of giving out balloon animals in shopping centres. Just another well-meaning, if eccentric group? Well, aren’t they the group founded by David Berg who actively encouraged sex with children? This is the man who boasted of having sex with his granddaughter and suggested that laws against defilement were a “tool of the devil”. Before signing up for their particular brand of belief shouldn’t any sensible recruit would do some research, ask around, search the web or visit a library? Regardless of their charitable work would any right-minded Christian want to be associated with them?

At a far more benign level I do feel obliged to ask why it is that we believe that a visitor to our country managed to conjure up rain on demand when we all knew that rain was coming anyway. Why did he leave it until he must have known rain was coming? Why didn’t he come in the dry season and command the heavens to open? THAT would have been impressive. That might actually have challenged my scepticism.

It’s not just so called religions that should be considered carefully. Look at companies like Amways who operate what they politely call Multi Level Marketing schemes. The promises made are seductive but as soon as you apply a little thought to the way they operate you realise that the vast majority of people who sign up will lose money. Yes, the agents may generate some income but the average figures from the USA show that although the average Amways agent earns $700 each year from the scheme they have to spend $1,000 to achieve this. So it costs them $300 but they end up with a bathroom full of soap so I suppose they do OK. However surely if people gave it some serious thought before signing up they’d realise it simply isn’t going to work?

The bad news is that the list seems to be endless. There’s no end to the list of people and organisations that prey on gullibility. How often do we read about con artists who make money by selling property or cars that they either don’t own or simply don’t exist? Who in their right mind would part with cash having never actually seen the car or it’s blue book or having never seen the property or it’s documents? However it seems to happen again and again.

My point is that we are faced with challenges and threats that may seriously damage our finances, our mental health and our family relationships. Surely these decisions require us to exercise some critical thought? Some serious, critical thought?

So what exactly am I suggesting people do?

Well, all it takes before falling for a scam, a con-artist or a cult group is to engage our brains. Think carefully about what you are being told or sold and ask just how reasonable it is. Remember that there is always a rational explanation for events, even if we don’t yet know what it is. As they say, there really is no such thing as a free lunch. The guy selling you a solution to all your problems, a miracle cure or a business opportunity you can’t afford to lose is almost certainly a fraud.

Is “Best Practice” a new form of Colonialism?

2005-11-14T01:56:00.000-08:00

Wherever you go in business these days you see references to “best practice”. You read it in proposals and reports from the big consulting companies, you see it on the web and you read it in those books at the airport that give you the solutions to all your organisation’s problems.

My question is simple. Does the very idea of “best practice” actually make any sense? In particular, does it make sense in Botswana?

When we talk about “practice” we are talking about the way in which something is done. The practices used in a Toyota factory aren’t the car itself but the way in which the car is produced. The practices may include technicalities like the way in which the radiator is fixed to the engine. At the other extreme they may include the way in which technicians who install radiators are recruited and how their annual leave is calculated.

Anyone in business has read about some of the companies that are mentioned in these best practice stories. We hear about Toyota and FedEx and organisations that have done away with inefficiency by allowing the staff to determine their own shift patterns or where the director’s salary is a multiple of the lowest paid employee or where the sales force are forced to memorise the company Mission Statement and recite it at the beginning of every day.

The books and articles all suggest, in various ways, that “if it worked for them it will work for you”. If we adopt the same working practices as Toyota then we will do as well as Toyota. If we let our staff set their own shift patterns they will all suddenly begin to cooperate, form strong teams, work harder and make us millionaires.

The big consulting companies sell us the same idea. The major consultancy companies in the world, and their numbers are dropping as they buy each other or go bankrupt through shady dealings, all sing from standard hymn sheets. These are set by their methodologies, dictated by highly paid consultants many thousands of kilometres away in New York, London or Mannheim.

I’m sorry, but I’m not convinced.

More and more people are beginning to see that standardised practices are not what we always need. I see absolutely nothing wrong with standard practices when they are technical and precise or when they lead to a recognised standard. Production standards and measurement are, I believe, what really matters in business. However, the way in which they are achieved, in other words the “practice”, surely doesn’t always need to be the same?

The management “guru”, Robert Sutton uses the ridiculous example of Herb Kelleher, the CEO of the very successful Southwest Airlines in the USA. Kelleher was famous for his massive consumption of Wild Turkey whiskey. As Sutton points out:

“Do you really believe that if your CEO starts drinking large amounts of Wild Turkey, your firm's performance will improve? It sounds silly, but many companies borrow practices just because Toyota, Wal-Mart, Apple Computer and especially General Electric use them.”[1]

I believe that Sutton and others are right. Just because one organisation adopts a set of practices and succeeds, it doesn’t always follow that if you do the same then you will also succeed. Just because Toyota profit from their new production practices it doesn’t follow that Volvo will as well.

I believe that the suggestion that we should adopt “best practices” from elsewhere in the world is just arrogant. Even at a trivial level, the use of the word “best” suggests to me that they can never be improved. Like the skater scoring 6 out of a maximum of 6, where is the room for improvement? Do we really think that there will never be a better skater, or a better practice?

“Best practices” are fine for where they were developed. They may contain nuggets of knowledge and expertise from which we can learn and profit. However, what Sutton and others (like me) propose is that they should be taken as menus from which you should select what you need, not Holy Commandments that must be blindly obeyed.

Instead, I believe that an organisation should take the more difficult, but actually more practical approach of defining standards and measuring performance against those standards. I think that every bank I enter, anywhere in the world, should serve me immediately. How they achieve that may vary from bank to bank and country to country. Frankly I don’t care how they do it so long as it works.

I think we should take the lead from a market that has already emerged: the Far East. Rather than adopt all the business methodologies they saw in Europe and North America they defined many of their own. They kept many of their traditional approaches and defined their own ways of doing business and despite the ups and downs of the market they remain a powerhouse of design, manufacturing and excellence. Which of us doesn’t own a car or a CD player or a TV from the Far East? It wasn’t just cheap labour that got them where they are; it was their approach. One that they defined for themselves.

I believe that, like them, we should adopt the very best standards but we should define our own ways of achieving them.

The title above makes reference to the “best practice” approach being a new form of colonialism. I’m probably putting this too strongly. Perhaps, but isn’t the essence of colonialism the view that the conquering power has the right to determine how the conquered are governed? Isn’t that what the “best practice” message suggests?

[1] Robert Sutton, The Best-Practices Trap, see http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,1397,1532120,00.asp

Scientology - Letter to Mmegi 11/09/2005

2005-09-11T07:29:00.000-07:00

Mesh Moeti
The Editor
Mmegi

11^th September 2005

Dear Mr Moeti

Yet again I was delighted to read a letter from Paul Sondergaard in Mmegi on 1^st September in response to my letters regarding the deeply strange so-called Church of Scientology.

One of the observations people have made to me is that in all their responses the PR people from the Scientologists never actually deny any of the things I report about them. They don’t deny that at a certain point in a person’s passage through Scientology they are taught that their founder discovered that our brains are haunted by the ghosts of dead aliens, murdered with H-bombs in Hawaii 75 million years ago by Xemu, Head of the Galactic Empire.

They don’t deny the research findings I reported that show that their drug treatment program Narconon has a success rate lower than not doing anything at all. They don’t deny the various quotes I’ve given from their founder, the renowned drug abuser, liar, and convicted criminal L Ron Hubbard. I have copies of the original court documents to prove it – they know it and that’s why they don’t deny it. They don’t deny these things because they are all true!

To his credit Mr Sondergaard does concede that “in the 60s, some actions were taken that Church policy was against. Certain people were punished by law for those illegal actions”. Actually it was in the 80s this happened and it was Hubbard’s wife and 10 other senior Scientologists that went to prison for burgling and phone-tapping over 100 US private and government agencies who were investigating the Scientologists. Vicki Aznaran, who was a key leader within the Scientologists said, after leaving them in 1987, "This is a criminal organization, day in and day out”.

Instead they make extremely vague suggestions that I am “spreading false information”, that I’m libelling them and Hubbard (which I’m not sure is legally possible as he’s stone cold dead) and that I have some grudge against the Scientologists. Will you PLEASE tell me and everyone else what it is that’s false in what I’ve written? Where is the libel? Where is my grudge?

My biggest complaint though is the issue of secret scriptures. In his letter Mr Sondergaard says “Yes, we have confidential scriptures” and later “Same with Christianity, Islam, the Jewish faith, Shinto, and so on.”

No they don’t. They don’t. They simply do NOT have confidential scriptures. Yes, as he says they have esoteric scriptures, yes they have arcane literature, yes they have fringe groups with slightly off-the-wall teachings, but real religions don’t have secret scriptures. Real religions don’t hide their core beliefs. Real religions don’t make their flock pay vast sums of money to read these scriptures. Real religions don’t threaten to sue people for breach of copyright when they disclose them to the public. Real religions don’t say that those who disclose the contents of these scriptures, having read them in court documents, have lied, libelled them and are spreading false information.

Finally, he makes me a very generous offer. He suggests that I visit their Church in Johannesburg and see for myself what they do.

Paul, what makes you think I haven’t already been?

With best regards

Richard Harriman

Technology is not the answer

2005-09-06T08:10:00.000-07:00

In the month we hosted the WITFOR conference and had visitors from around the world discussing how to use Information and Communications Technology to help solve the world’s problems it may seem strange to write an article suggesting that technology is not the answer.

However I believe it’s true. Technology itself doesn’t solve problems. Technology has the capacity to mask what the real problems are. Technology can just as easily compound problems as well as help solve them.

So you want me to justify what I’m saying? Let me give a few examples.

Recently I was at a conference when we were told about a new invention that, it was suggested, will revolutionise health care in hospitals. This is a digital pen that will automatically remember whatever a nurse writes on a patient’s notes. When the digital pen is later “docked” at the nurse’s desk whatever has been written will be transferred electronically to the patient’s central medical file. So far so good, but what came next wasn’t good. Apparently the benefit from this is that the doctors won’t then have to waste so much time going to see the patient for themselves and can review the case from the comfort of their desk.

Doctors spending even more time at their desks? Doctors not having to go and see patients for themselves? Seeing even less of the doctor next time I’m ill in a hospital bed? No thanks!

A few years ago the IT industry in the US and Europe was obsessed with the opportunities that IT made available to shoppers. From what they said it seemed that soon we’d all be buying books, groceries and shares on the Internet. Well, what actually happened? A lot of people lost a huge amount of money having invested in these so-called “dot-com” schemes. Why? Because there wasn’t a need for it.

Yes, people are still buying books from Amazon, myself included. However, I do that only when the book I want is difficult to find. I, and millions of others, would MUCH rather go to a decent book shop to browse and chose what I want to read. My mother, who lives in the UK and who has access to the Internet at home, absolutely hates going shopping. Does she buy her groceries using her PC? No, despite hating the experience she would rather go shopping herself and make choices in a natural setting, not stuck in a small room with a glowing screen.

My particular hate is entirely automated switchboards. You know the type. You call in and it says “Press 1 for Customer Service, press 2 for Accounts…..”. How many actually have an option which says “press 9 to speak to a human being”? You can imagine what the salesman said to the CEO a few months beforehand. Something about firing the switchboard operator, saving loads of money and controlling access by customers to information.

Well, there are times when I call and I want to do several things at once. There are times when I call to complain and all I get is that irritating recorded voice that simply will not let me get through to a human being I can complain to. The result? I get even more irritated than when I began the call.

All they’ve managed to do is erect a barrier between me and them.

Before you think I’m some sort of anti-technology fanatic, let me make my position clear. I love technology! Anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m surrounded by gadgets. I consider my Apple iPod to be one of my children! I am no enemy to technology, just so long as it’s there for a reason. The iPod allows you to go shopping or wander round the house or the airport with a vast archive of portable, high-quality music. The critical thing is that it actually addresses a real need. Well, that’s what I tell my wife anyway.

I think that all technology should be seen as being like the iPod, particularly in the business world. The latest technology is NEVER the answer to the problems your business faces. What matters most to your business is how well you treat your customers. What matters are the processes that operate in your company. What matters is not how new your computer is, it’s how well you use it.

My advice to businesses regarding technology? Don’t spend a single thebe on technology until you have identified a genuine need for it. So many times companies and individuals are convinced by smart salespeople that an item of technology is the solution to a problem that has yet to be defined. And I’m not just talking about equipment. I mean the hugely expensive business systems that sales teams will say will revolutionise the way you operate.

Oh no they won’t, not unless you first take a hard look at the way you do business. If when you’ve done that you find that a piece of technology will help then that’s great.

Just make sure you really need it!

Why do I oppose the Scientologists? 31/8/2005

2005-08-31T07:05:00.000-07:00

As readers may have seen over the last few weeks I’ve been critical of the so-called Church of Scientology who recently arrived in Botswana to spread their rather strange teachings.

Since I first started writing about them many friends, colleagues and acquaintances have asked me what it is about the Scientologists that attracted my attention. What is it about them that I actually object to?

Several people even asked if maybe I once was a Scientologist who now has some grudge against them. For the record let me state that I have never been a Scientologist, am not now a Scientologist and have no plans to become a Scientologist!

To be perfectly honest when all this started I wasn’t entirely sure why I was so opposed to them. Yes, I knew something about their background, some of the things they’ve got up to elsewhere in the world, some of their criminal convictions and also some of their “confidential scriptures”. I knew about their deeply bizarre but fascinating founder, L Ron Hubbard. I knew about how he was a science fiction writer turned religious guru, a consistent liar about his war record and his academic achievements and how he claimed to be a world-leading scientist when in fact he had no scientific achievements to his name.

But then I thought to myself that many religions have histories they’re not proud of or sects they prefer not to think about. Look at certain elements of extremist Islam these days, look at some of the ultra right-wing, white supremacist, so-called Christians lunatics you get in remote parts of the USA, look at Hindu fanatics burning mosques. None of them are perfect. However, even those who have what I consider strange beliefs or eccentric founders nevertheless do good work, act in a neighbourly manner and are charitable.

So what’s different about the Scientologists? Why do I oppose them?

Well firstly I object to groups that make completely nonsensical claims. As I’ve written several times already one of their core beliefs is only made available to those who have reached what they call “Operating Thetan Level 3”. This is that 75 million years ago Xemu, the Emperor of the Galactic Federation, decided to cure his over-population problems by murdering excess aliens by bringing them to Earth and killing them with hydrogen bombs. The souls of these people were then brainwashed with a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" for 36 days. These souls managed to escape and now haunt our minds and cause all our mental health problems. At the same time apparently this Xemu guy implanted both Christianity and Islam in our collective memory. This is only the beginning, there’s a whole lot more of this material available on the Internet (which, despite their comments really CAN be a source of good material if you know where to look and who to trust).

I try my best to be tolerant of other people’s beliefs but this is just plain silly isn’t it?

I object to groups and people who lie and who spread lies, even if they do it innocently. I suspect that many of the Scientology Volunteer Ministers who have come to Botswana are decent but deluded people. However I particularly object to people who think they can come to Botswana, my wonderful adopted home, and think they can get away with deceit because they see us as a developing and unsophisticated country. Luckily I think they may have picked the wrong country this time!

I object to them because they play on our weaknesses. They exploit our worries and our concerns and suggest that they have instant and easy solutions. They claim, for instance, to be helping to solve the whole passion killings problem. They claim to help reduce crime, drug addiction and marital problems. They claim that they can help us so long as we book ourselves on their courses which of course cost more and more the further you progress.

I’m not a particularly religious person but I have profound respect for those devout followers of faiths that are generous, charitable and neighbourly. I respect churches that get out there and do good work, feed and clothe orphans, communicate a message of love and tolerance and who don’t hide their beliefs but proclaim them with joy and with pride. And above all who do it for nothing and without publicising it!

This is not what I see from the Scientologists. That’s why I oppose them.

Scientology - Letter to Mmegi 24/08/2005

2005-08-24T07:27:00.000-07:00

Mesh Moeti
The Editor
Mmegi

24^th August 2005

Dear Mr Moeti

I was greatly amused to see the letter from Paul Sondergaard from the Scientologists in South Africa in response to my article published on the 5^th August 2005.

Mr Sondergaard makes a number of allegations in his letter that I think I should address. He suggests that because I have stated my distrust of the Scientologists in the past that I must have some vested interest. Well, if distrusting an organisation whose senior staff went to jail for burgling and bugged the US agencies investigating them is having a vested interest then, yes I’m guilty. If opposing an organisation that was founded by a convicted felon, a liar and a drug abuser is having a vested interest then, yes I’m guilty. If distrusting an organisation that, according to it’s own Public Affairs Director, has scriptures that “are confidential” then, yes I’m guilty.

I plead guilty to thinking that the people deserve to know the truth about Scientology, not the sanitised nonsense that they spread about wanting to end insanity, criminality, war and cruelty to small furry animals. OK, I made up that last bit but I find it very hard to treat them seriously.

He also suggests, rather rashly, that I have “spread libellous information” about them and their founder, that I have threatened them, that I am “sprouting false information” and that I lied in the article. Mr Sondegaard, please either tell me what it was that I wrote that was a lie or sue me. Your choice.

Above all, why does he refuse to deal with the issue of the aliens. In the article I wrote that once Scientologists reach a level of study called “Operating Thetan Level 3” they are finally told one of the core discoveries of the founder of Scientology, L Ron Hubbard. This is that 75 million years ago Xemu, the head of the Galactic Federation, decided to cure his over-population problems by murdering excess aliens by bringing them to Earth and killing them with hydrogen bombs. The souls of these people now haunt us all and cause us all our mental health problems.

If this nonsense is NOT part of your belief system Mr Sondegaard then please deny it. Of course if you want to deny it perhaps you can explain the copy of the original handwritten note by your founder outlining the alien business which can be seen at the following website (yes, I confess that I surf the web): http://www.xenu.net/archive/OTIII-scholar. Before you suggest that it’s all lies or one of the confidential scriptures then perhaps the following quote from Warren McShane, the president of the Religious Technology Centre (part of the Scientology group) will help. He said, under oath in court in Colorado, that “the explosions, the Galactic confederation 75 million years ago, and a gentleman by the name Xemu ….. are not trade secrets.”

Let me say once again that I have no vested interest in opposing the Scientologists. I’m not selling a product that competes with theirs. I support religious freedom. I believe in the right of the Scientologists to exist in Botswana.

However I think they should be honest with us. I believe they should be completely and not partially honest about what they are and what they do. I believe they shouldn’t themselves threaten those of us who try to spread the truth about them. In my original article I ended with a quote from L Ron Hubbard. When discussing opponents of Scientology he said that they “may be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.”

Within 2 weeks of publishing my article I can feel this starting to happen. However Mr Sondegaard, please rest assured that I’m not going to stop spreading the truth about Scientology.

With best regards

Richard Harriman

Scientology - letter to Botswana Guardian 21/08/2005

2005-08-21T07:07:00.000-07:00

I’m very grateful for the opportunity to respond to the article written in the Guardian last week by Shaleen Wohrnitz, the Director of Public Affairs for the Scientologists in South Africa. Her article was written in response to my letter printed by the Guardian the previous week. In my letter I called into question many of the claims made by the Scientologists and revealed a few truths about them that they clearly don’t want people to know.

Ms Wohrnitz suggests a number of things about me personally. She suggests that I am “cynical about life and betterment”, have a “jaded view of the world” and she calls into question my integrity. I refuse to fall into the trap of personal mudslinging but I will say this. Why doesn’t she actually respond to the suggestions I make rather than trying, rather feebly, to insult me personally?

Ms Wohrnitz doesn’t say that the quotes I gave from L Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, are untrue. She suggests that they are taken out of context. I ask what possible acceptable context can there be for the statement that opponents of Scientology may “be tricked, sued, lied to or destroyed”? She doesn’t deny the quotes because they are true!

She doesn’t deny that Hubbard, a former science fiction writer, taught his followers that 75 million years ago Xemu, the head of the Galactic Federation, decided to cure his over-population problems by murdering excess aliens by bringing them to Earth and killing them with hydrogen bombs and that the souls of these people now haunt us all and cause us all our mental health problems. She doesn’t deny that he taught this nonsense because it’s true that he taught it!

She doesn’t deny that Hubbard had a history of mental illness, drug abuse and lying about his war record and his apparent scientific achievements. She can’t deny this because it’s true!

However Ms Wohrnitz does make some claims about Narconon, the Scientology program that supposedly deals with drug addiction. She claims that “Narconon has a documented success rate of at least 80 percent”. This is a claim repeatedly made by Narconon’s supporters but that unfortunately isn’t backed up by the evidence. Your readers may not be surprised to learn that the Scientologists are reluctant to allow real research into the success of Narconon and almost all of the research that has been undertaken has been done by the Scientologists themselves. However, even the data they come up with themselves doesn’t support their claims.

In Sweden in 1981 they conducted a study that they claim showed 76.8% of 61 drug abusers they treated were drug-free four years later. However if you examine the report you find that only 14 of the 61 actually completed the Narconon program. Of those 14 only 4 said they hadn’t used drugs since. That’s a real success rate of just under 7%. Not quite the same is it?

All the other studies available seem to show a similar distortion of the facts.

Ms Wohrnitz and the Scientologists are very good at making completely unsupported claims. Like the success of Narconon, like the 30 leading religious scholars who say Scientology is a religion, like their claim that they are preventing passion killings, it’s all unproven and without any proof. Ms Wohrnitz, give us some real evidence and then we’ll listen to you.

My last comment about Ms Wohrnitz’s article is regarding something she says about their teachings and how they’ve been stolen and published on the Internet. Firstly, almost everything available about the Scientologists on the Internet is actually taken from court documents and is therefore in the public domain. Better still though is the staggering comment she makes, that the “scriptures of Scientology are vast, and some are confidential”.

Confidential? How can the scriptures of a religion be confidential? Am I the only one that thinks this is absurd? I ask all you Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Rastafarians and whatever else you might be to do something for me. Next time you see your priest just ask if there are any bits of your holy books that are confidential. If he or she looks confused or just laughs at you then I think you’ll understand why I feel the way I do about this strange bunch. Real religions don’t have secret scriptures!

Yes, I’m cynical about Scientology. Yes, I’m sceptical about Scientology. Wouldn’t you be about a so-called religion founded by a man who said he’d discovered that tomatoes can feel pain?

If anyone wants to contact me for more information about the Scientologists then my time is yours. You can contact me by post at P Box 403026, Gaborone or you can email me at harrimanr@yahoo.co.uk

Scientology - Mmegi article 01/08/2005

2005-08-01T07:17:00.000-07:00

Everyone in Gaborone has by now either seen or heard of the big yellow tent at the GSS Sports Grounds. Yes, the Scientologists are here in Botswana. You may also have read the various articles in the press regarding this group. Some of the articles have been written by the Scientologists themselves, others by outsiders (which have not been nearly so positive about them!).

I was invited to debate the subject with the Scientologists themselves recently on GabzFM. I was there in my role as a sceptic who has no personal complaint with them but who has heard a little about them elsewhere. The experience was fascinating!

I was keen to learn what it is that the Church of Scientology actually believes and teaches. At great length these visitors from South Africa explained some of the supposedly good works they undertake around the world but were curiously evasive about their core beliefs. They were keen to make claims about what they DO but very unwilling to explain their creed.

So what exactly is it that Scientologists believe? Ask a Christian, a Muslim, a Hindu or indeed followers of any normal religion what they believe and they will tell you honestly and with pride. Ask a Scientologist and they simply won’t tell you. They make claims about what they DO, but not what they believe. Why are they so shy about their beliefs?

The answer is simple. What they believe is ridiculous. The secret is that once Scientologists reach a level of study called “Operating Thetan Level 3” they are finally told one of the core discoveries of the founder of Scientology, L Ron Hubbard. This is that 75 million years ago Xemu, the head of the Galactic Federation, decided to cure his over-population problems by murdering excess aliens by bringing them to Earth and killing them with hydrogen bombs. The souls of these people now haunt us all and cause us all our mental health problems.

Now can you see why they are so reserved about their beliefs. Of course they refuse to give a Yes or No answer when you ask them about this. Wouldn’t you be embarrassed explaining this nonsense?

L Ron Hubbard was, coincidentally, a science fiction writer before starting his own religion as well as a convicted felon with a history of substance abuse and who consistently lied about his academic record.

The Church seems occasionally to have a curious grasp on truth. For instance they repeatedly refer to a famous article in Time Magazine in 1991. This was the first really influential expose of about the Church and some of their activities. Needless to say the Scientologists were appalled at their secrets being exposed and sued Time for libel and claim that a retraction was published. This is widely repeated by the Church to anyone who will listen. However they seem to forget to tell the complete story. When I contacted Time Magazine in New York to ask their opinion of this suggestion I was told that “TIME won the lawsuit brought against it by the Church of Scientology. The court granted our summary judgment motion, and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the decision. We did not retract the story or any part of the story.”

That’s not quite what the Scientologists would lead us to believe is it?

Curiously the Scientologists neglect to refer to this loss. Just as they suggest that the Cult Awareness Network (CAN) who campaigned against the Scientologists were somehow discredited because they later went bankrupt. If they are suggesting that we shouldn’t trust a bankrupt I think that they should also point out that the founder of Scientology, L Ron Hubbard was, according to his FBI record, also a bankrupt.

To be fair to the Scientologists they do undertake a lot of community outreach work that attempts to address a number of key social issues such as crime and drug abuse. However these schemes (Criminon and Narconon) have both been criticised as being no more that recruiting mechanisms for the Church. Also, the Church make some rather strange claims about these schemes when the only evidence from external researchers shows that these schemes simply don’t work.

In 1989 Everett R. Rhoades, M.D., the US Assistant Surgeon General said of Narconon that it “cannot be considered medically sound”. In 1991 the Board of Mental Health of the State of Oklahoma declared that Narconon “is not medically safe”.

Despite this the Scientologists continue to suggest that their schemes are incredibly successful.

The list of claims made by the Church doesn’t end there. Hubbard himself stated that their techniques can cure leukaemia, arthritis and radiation burns. In 1975 he said that “Scientology is used to increase spiritual freedom, intelligence, ability and to produce immortality”.

They make various claims about their membership. The most recent claim was that 8 million people worldwide are members of the Church. However their definition of “member” includes anyone who has attended a course, even if just once. The bad news is that if in the past you’ve attended a Scientology course and even if you left halfway through because you thought they were talking nonsense, well, sorry but you’re a Scientologist. You’re one of the 8 million!

Hubbard and his successors (he died in 1986) are notoriously sensitive to criticism. They have resorted to a number of techniques to dispose of and distract their opponents. Critics have been slandered and libelled. In the early 1980’s Hubbard’s wife and a number of top Scientologists went to jail in the USA for burgling and bugging over 100 private and governmental agencies and who dared to oppose them.

Interestingly the most common response from the Church when criticised is to sue their critics not for libel but for breach of copyright. They see their teachings as commercial secrets which, in a sense, they are. To get to high levels in the Church you must undergo endless courses which put you in touch with yourself (and the aliens no doubt). All of this costs money and the amounts apparently increase astronomically the further you go. At the big yellow tent in Gaborone you can buy an initial booklet for P10. To get to the Tom Cruise stage (the Scientologists love celebrity endorsements) some people suggest that you need to spend sums approaching P4 million.

My final point is a personal one. Unlike the suggestion made to me on the radio show that the critics of Scientology have some sort of vested interest in opposing them I have no such interest. I’m not selling products in opposition to them. I’m not evangelising for an alternative set of beliefs.

If you want to believe in Scientology then good luck to you. But at least be open with us about what you believe. Allow critics to criticise. And don’t think you can come to Botswana and solve all our problems with a distinctly dubious set of beliefs and techniques. We’re not that naïve.

One last quote from Hubbard. In an internal policy letter written on 18^th October 1967 he instructed his followers to deal with opponents as follows:

“May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any
Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist.
May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.”

Scientology - Letter to Botswana Guardian 31/07/2005

2005-07-31T07:09:00.000-07:00

Mike Mothibi
The Editor
The Botswana Guardian
P/Bag 00153
Gaborone
Botswana

31^st July 2005

Dear Mr Mothibi

I am surprised at your inclusion of a piece on the Scientologists (Botswana Guardian 29^th July 2005, page 8) that did not cover both sides of the argument about this rather strange organisation.

In particular I am surprised that you did not at least report some of facts and evidence that disagree profoundly with the side presented by Ms Wohrnitz from the Church of Scientology.

When discussing their drug treatment programme Narconon which she claims has an outstanding record in treating drug addicts Ms Wohrnitz neglects to mention that it is under investigation in Russia and in the Ukraine. Similarly she seems to have forgotten that in February of this year the California State Superintendent Jack O'Connell urged all schools to drop the Narconon program after research concluded that it offers inaccurate and unscientific information and is seen by most as just a recruitment wing of the Church.

Your readers may not know that the treatment at the core of the Narconon program is enforced sweating, based on the very strange theory that this can rid the body of the drugs which appear as coloured sweat!

The claims made by Scientologists about Narconon are fairly typical of the many claims they make. L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology claimed that his religion could cure leukaemia and arthritis. In the Dianetics & Scientology Technical Dictionary copyrighted in 1975 and reprinted 1987 he stated that “Scientology is used to increase spiritual freedom, intelligence, ability and to produce immortality.”

Then there is the suggestion made by Scientologists that they constitute a religion because “it brings man to total freedom and truth”. This is despite Hubbard once stating (in Creation Of Human Ability, 1954, p. 251) that “Scientology... is not a religion.”

What exactly is it that Scientologists believe? Ask a Christian, a Muslim, a Hindu or indeed followers of any religion what they believe and they will tell you honestly and with pride. Ask a Scientologist and they simply won’t tell you. They make claims about what they DO, but not what they believe. Why are they so shy about their beliefs?

The answer is simple. What they believe is ridiculous. Once Scientologists reach a level of study called “Operating Thetan level 3” they are finally told one of the core beliefs of the Church. This is that 75 million years ago Xemu, the head of the Galactic Federation, decided to cure his over-population problems by murdering excess aliens by bringing them to Earth and killing them with hydrogen bombs. The souls of these people now haunt us all and cause us all our mental health problems.

When you confront Scientologists about this nonsense they become curiously evasive. In my experience they refuse to give a Yes or No answer when you ask them about this. Some of them have the good grace to look embarrassed though!

Ms Wohrnitz ended her article with a quote from Hubbard who, it might not surprise your readers to learn, was a science fiction author before founding his religion. He also had a history of mental health problems as well as drug use and he also had a habit of making rather extravagant claims about his war record, his academic history and his supposed scientific discoveries.

There are so many quotations from Hubbard but the one that struck me most of all is from a lecture he gave in June 1952, reprinted in Volume 1 of the Technical Volumes of Dianetics & Scientology on page 418:

“The only way you can control anybody is to lie to them.”

Finally your readers should be warned about their dealing with the Scientologists. When discussing critics of Scientology in 1967 Hubbard said that they may “be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.”

With best regards

Richard Harriman