Cryonics is the preservation of living humans or animals by extreme cooling with the aim of restoring them to a normal animate state at a later date. It is commonly confused (by me, at least) with cryogenics, which is simply the science of making things very cold.

I mention this as I was quite surprised to see the IET Engineering & Technology magazine featuring and article on cryonics. Like many people, I have always considered cryonics to be pure science fiction, taken seriously only by a minority of hopefuls who presumably desire to wake up in a world filled with rich eccentrics.

The article dispelled a number of my misconceptions. For example, modern cryonics is not freezing. Freezing causes ice crystals to form which makes a big gooey mess of cells, probably destroying any chance of revival. The modern process involves vitrification, which is achieved by replacing cell-fluid with cryprotectant fluid before extreme cooling. This fluid is unfortunately toxic, at least you can’t live with it in place of your cell-fluid. So all cryopreservation work has to be done after legal death, otherwise they’d be killing the patient. However, cryonicists do not consider clinical death to be a real death – unless it involves the destruction of information in the brain. Rather they consider cryonically preserved people to be alive but inactive, like someone in a deep coma. This is perhaps not unreasonable given the number of people who’ve been clinically dead – without heartbeat or breathing – and have been fully revived. Indeed this is the premise on which CPR is based.

While I certainly won’t be saving up to have myself cryopreserved, the whole thing seems slightly less crazy now. Slightly.

However, the process of reviving a cryonically preserved patient is still not possible with current technology. The hope is that future technology, especially nanotechnology, will someday be able to reconstruct a cyropreserved patient as well as reverse the aging process or condition which would have killed them. They also need to replace the cryoprotectant with cell-fluid. An alternative is to electronically scan the brain to reconstruct a working copy. Judging from the preservation case studies provided by the non-profit Cryonics Institute, preservation techniques appear to be carefully researched and carried out. Nevertheless, none of this is a guarantee of future revival. Cryonics currently requires an expensive leap of faith.

How big a leap? Is full revival of humans likely? The E&T article interviewed Tanya Jones, Alcor Life Extension Foundation’s executive director who said,

“While we are seeing that stem cells can actually revive every organ in the body, we still have many years of research until cryonics is a reversible procedure [...] However, recent testing has proven that it is already reversible for an individual organ down to -130°C, based on the testing of rabbit kidneys.”

Meanwhile, Ben Best of the CI says,

“Bull sperm have been successfully cryopreserved in liquid nitrogen and used for fertilisation since the early 1950s… And, since 1982, human embryos stored in liquid nitrogen have been used by fertility clinics with much success. Additionally, nematode worms have been successfully cryopreserved in liquid nitrogen and then revived.”

I’m no biologist, but it would seem there are some big differences between sperm and a  brain. In particular, sperm are individual cells, adapated to live outside the body for extended periods. Plus only a few of them need to survive for the revival process to be considered a success. A brain however, needs a constant supply of oxygen to prevent damage and can be irrevocably changed if a small percentage of cells die or the connections between them are lost. It’s difficult to tell how much damage has been done to even the most carefully cryopreserved human brains. Only when a human or animal has been revived and shown to have retained earlier memories can we say that there’s evidence this is possible. For now, my guess is that it’s unlikely people being cryopreserved today could be reanimated with their identity intact.

Having learnt about this, I wondered what religious people made of it. My assumption was that they’d be hopping up and down in anger that science is daring to intrude on the afterlife, which is usually considered sacred religious turf. Certainly it seems that the willingness to believe that cryonics can work may stem from a similar motivation to the belief in a supernatural afterlife – the fear of death.

To my surprise I’ve found little religious consternation over the ideas and aims of cryonics. Steve Tsai at apologetics.com considers the implications of Crygenic Resuscitations for a Christian world-view and concludes them to be no different from short-term resuscitations.

Part of this may be due to the way cryonics markets itself as a medical intervention for the living, rather than a ressurection of the dead. The Alcor Life Extension Foundation has a couple of thorough articles on cryonics and religion, comparing it to heart transplants and other life-saving surgery and concluding that we have a religiously-driven obligation to preserve life whenever possible and that this should include cryonics.

However, I suspect the main reason that religious institutions do not spend any time condemning organisations such as Alcor is because they don’t see them as a threat. There are still only a small minority of of the population willing and able to sign up for cryonic preservation and for most of us it remains science fiction. Even apparently innocuous subjects like Harry Potter or The Beatles can find themselves on the receiving end of religious wrath when they become popular enough to distract attention from religious ideas. I suspect that if cryonics was to become commonplace, such that many people’s fear of death was lessened, religions would lose one of their unique selling-points and express their disapproval in no uncertain terms.

If you visit the website of any pseudo-scientific practitioner one thing almost always displayed is a list of testimonials – effusive endorsements from previous clients. For example, here’s an extract from the website of Cynde Van Vleet, a Tellington T Touch practitioner from California:

My experience with Cynde and her TTouch work has been nothing but wonderful, rewarding, and informative.  Cynde is a most gentle  and intuitive animal lover who conducts herself professionally at all times, yet exudes warmth and kindness as well.  I have great respect and admiration for Cynde and the work she does with animals. Her knowledge of TTouch and the world of dogs is impressive, and I have learned a lot from her in our brief history together…

Similarly, here’s an example from alleged psychic Philena Bruce’s website:

“I came to Philena when I was in a very dark place. Through her patience, guidance and gentleness, I genuinely left feeling hopeful. She held me together emotionally and spiritually throughout this time. She lit the candle in my mind and let my spirit guide me to light. She has a wonderful personality and in my heart I know our paths were meant to cross.”
K.K., London, Project Manager

In most cases testimonials are intended to establish the credibility of the practitioner. In Philena’s case, the long list she provides also pushes the “entertainment only” disclaimer – which all psychics in the UK are now legally obliged to put on their literature – far out of the view of the casual visitor.

But are testimonials useful? Can we use them to work out how effective a treatment of practitioner is? Should we as consumers pay any attention to testimonials?

The most obvious problem with most testimonials, especially those you might find on websites, is with authenticity. It doesn’t take a huge amount of imagination to make up your own testimonials and in most cases it would be difficult to prove that they were fake. However, I doubt many of the testimonials I have seen have been faked. It seems more likely that they came from customers who were genuinely pleased with the service. I’ve no doubt that they have plenty of satisfied customers – I’ve met some of them.

However, we should keep in mind that testimonials are highly selective. They give us no indication of the percentage of customers who were satisfied with the service. Those who were not pleased with the service may not have given any report. They may have felt foolish for having tried it, so rather than write a negative testimonial, they may forget about it and get on with their lives. Even if they did write to complain, surely no one attempting to establish their credibility is going to publish their views. I’ve visited the personal websites of quite a few spiritual healers, fortune tellers and other sellers of pseudo-science, but I have yet to see a single negative testimonial. I think it unlikely that no customer has ever been dissatisfied with the services any of them provided.

How about if we independently collected testimonials from every customer who visited a particular therapist or fortune teller? Even then, we still wouldn’t be able to say with any certainty whether on not they had genuine abilities. We might be able to tell that they were friendly, professional, helpful and so on, but judging whether the treatment worked is something else. It has been well documented that people are more likely to judge something to have been a success once they have invested substantially in it – whether emotionally or financially. I suspect this is why payment or gift-giving always has to be part of the process of Reiki. Perhaps on some subconscious level people say to themselves:

“I’ve paid more than my weekly grocery bill for this treatment. Only a fool would do that for something which doesn’t work. I know I’m not a fool, so it must have worked!”

This effect is brilliantly explained in Carol Tarvis and Elliot Aronson’s book, Mistakes Were Made.

It seems testimonials are a pretty unreliable guide to whether a medical treatment is effective or whether a psychic prediction is accurate. Certainly they are a very poor substitute for research. They are a selective form of anecdotal evidence.

So why do they get used at all? I think there are several reasons.

Firstly, there are times when use of a testimonial is valid. It’s not just treatments with dubious efficacy that print praise from former clients. Testimonials are commonplace in all sorts of marketing – child carers, home builders, restaurants and so on.

In any situation where the customer is in a position to judge whether the service or treatment was effective a testimonial can be useful. For example, if the testimonial relates to a novel, film or restaurant, then the aim is entertainment and the customer is best qualified to say whether they have been entertained.

Secondly, testimonials are easy to understand. A clinical trial is not something that most people are willing to wade through. Doing so takes considerable effort and even an intelligent reader might not be able to judge the strength of the research.

Thirdly, testimonials are easy. All you need is a few satisfied customers to say you’re warm and friendly. A full research project is beyond the means of most independent therapists.

Lastly, testimonials are human. What other people tell us is how we gain most of our information, so it feels quite natural to read what other people say about a service or therapy.

None of these are especially good reasons to trust testimonials.

Pharmaceutical companies have to put all their products through clinical trials before they can be marketed. I don’t think that other treatments should be subjected to any lesser scrutiny.

In an ideal world each therapists’ techniques would be independently evaluated with something akin to clinical trials, before an official regulator’s endorsement could be given. The next best thing would be for their methods to be independently reviewed and researched to discover whether they can work. However, the money to do this research has to come from somewhere, perhaps a jointly-funded regulatory body whose research and methods are made public.

Alternative therapists have told me that clinical trials are biased and corrupt due to the companies pursuit of profit above all else. There have certainly been some cases where this is true and there’s a case for improving accountability and publication of medical research in general. However, I imagine the situation would be much worse if the pharmaceutical industry could validate new medicines simply by gathering testimonials.

I’ve also been told that using testimonials instead of research is acceptable for alternative treatments because laying your hands on someone or reading their palm doesn’t have harmful side-effects that ingested medicines can. However, the purpose of clinical trials is twofold; to ensure there are no dangerous side-effects and to ensure the treatment is effective. Giving someone an ineffective treatment – even for free – is irresponsible and dangerous in itself.

[BPSDB]

Michael Shermer’s skeptical book, Why People Believe Weird Things has been around since the late nineties. I should probably have read and reviewed it sooner; so much of the content is relevant to what I write about here. I’ve had the book a while now, but a few weeks ago I managed to wrestle the book back from my wife and actually read it. I’m glad I did.

Shermer starts the book by explaining what he means by a weird thing, the difference between science and pseudoscience and how skepticism works. He also gets my respect for admitting to the weird beliefs he previously held, which included a variety of unusual treatments alleged to enhance the performance of athletes. He cites their complete failure to improve his competitive cycling as one of the reasons he became a skeptic.

The majority of the book is devoted to covering a wide variety of weird beliefs. These include paranormal abilities, alien abduction, creationism, Ayn Rand’s objectivism and even holocaust denial. Shermer has certainly done his homework on all of these, providing some fascinating quotes and an 18-page bibliography for those looking for further reading. In several cases, the author has had direct experience of debating with those who believe weird things, on radio and television. These accounts are candid and modest – he spends more time noting his frustrations and failures to get his message across than he does celebrating great victories for reason. I found this to be all the more enlightening.

I found myself shaking my head in wonder and horror at some of the ridiculous and repugnant ideas described. However, Shermer carefully describes, dissects and debunks each of the weird beliefs without resorting to ridicule or personal attacks. Furthermore, the explanations are easy to follow and the book as a whole is pleasingly free of unexplained scientific or philosophical language.

Only in the last section does the book really address the question of its title. The harder question this leads to is why smart people believe weird things. Shermer concludes that, being of above-average intelligence is no guarantee of being free from weird beliefs. It seems that great minds do not necessarily think alike. He summarises his explanation for this as follows:

Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.

I found this to be a surprising revelation, but one which Shermer has arrived at after much study across the diverse range of beliefs described in the book. Too often it seems that people take it as an insult to their intelligence to say that they believe something weird. To accept that even the most intellectually gifted amongst us have blindspots in our understanding of the world is a step in the right direction.

I had, perhaps naïvely expected the book to be entirely about the psychology of belief. I found the descriptions of weird beliefs to be very interesting, although I would have preferred more discussion of the successes and failures of his debates and the thought processes behind the beliefs.