30 Misleading Terms Used in Science Literature

Let us look at some "give you the wrong idea" words and phrases used by scientists and science writers, terms that tend to mislead the general public. 

#1 Building Blocks of Life

Scientific literature is constantly misusing and abusing the phrase "building blocks of life." The very term is an improper one, because living things are internally dynamic to the highest degree, with a constant replacement of tiny parts (protein molecules and cells) occurring within an organism; so a comparison to a structure with static "building block" parts is inappropriate. If anyone refers to "building blocks of life," there are only two appropriate ways to use the term: (1) when referring to macroscopic life, the "building blocks of life" would be cells; (2) when referring to microscopic one-celled life, the "building blocks of life" would be protein molecules. But routinely science literature will refer to some low-level chemicals such as amino acids or nucleotides as being "building blocks of life" when they are no such things (being at best mere building blocks of the building blocks of life).  A particularly egregious abuse of language occurs when science literature mentions some organic chemicals that are not necessary for life and are neither the building blocks of life nor the building blocks of the building blocks of life, and such literature refers to such chemicals as "building blocks of life." Such misstatements occur often in astrobiology literature and origin of life literature. 

 #2 Long-term Potentiation

What is misleadingly called “long-term potentiation” or LTP is a not-very-long-lasting effect by which certain types of high-frequency stimulation (such as stimulation by electrodes) produces an increase in synaptic strength.  The problem is that so-called long-term potentiation is actually a very short-term phenomenon. A 2013 paper states that so-called long-term potentiation is really very short-lived:

"LTP always decays and usually does so rapidly. Its rate of decay is measured in hours or days (for review, see Abraham 2003). Even with extended 'training,' a decay to baseline levels is observed within days to a week."

So-called long-term potentiation is no more long-term than a suntan. The use of the term "long-term potentiation" for such an effect is deceptive, particularly when it is suggested that so-called "long-term potentiation" might have something to do with explaining memories that can last for 50 years or longer. 

#3 Synaptic Plasticity

When I do a Google search for "plasticity definition," the first result I get gives me a definition of "the quality of being easily shaped or modified."  The Merriam-Webster online dictionary gives two definitions of "plasticity":

1. The quality or state of being plastic especially: capacity for being molded or altered.

2. The ability to retain a shape attained by pressure deformation.

It is rather clear what the intention was when scientists first started using the term "synaptic plasticity."  The intention was to bring to mind the idea of synapses being like clay in which memories can be written. Used by the Babylonians who used cuneiform, writing in clay was one of the oldest methods used by humans to record information. Clay had two great advantages: (1) a person using a metal stylus could instantly write letters on clay; (2) clay could permanently store letters written on it. 

There are two reasons why it is very misleading to be using the term "synaptic plasticity." The first is that no one has ever observed any effect in which synapses quickly take on some particular shape or pattern in response to some causal factor. Nothing like any molding or shaping effect has ever been observed. 

The second reason is that term "plasticity" implies the retention of some pattern that was produced by a shaping or molding effect. The second Merriam-Webster definition of plasticity is "the ability to retain a shape attained by pressure deformation."  What we observe in dendritic spines and synapses is such a high level of variability and instability that there is every reason to doubt that they could be capable of retaining any pattern if such a pattern were ever to be impressed on them. 

The effect that is misleading called "synaptic plasticity" should instead be merely called "synaptic variability" or "synaptic instability."

#4 Dark Matter

Scientists speculate that most of the matter in the universe is some invisible form of matter not yet discovered. They call this "dark matter." But that is a misleading term which implies visible matter that is dark. The "dark matter" imagined by cosmologists is invisible.  A non-misleading term cosmologists should be using for such a possibility is "invisible matter."

#5 Dark Energy

Scientists speculate that most of the energy in the universe is some invisible form of energy not yet discovered. They call this "dark energy." But that is a misleading term which implies visible energy that is dark. The "dark energy" imagined by cosmologists is invisible, and cosmologists should be calling it "invisible energy."

#6 Earth-like Planets

Many Earth-sized planets have been discovered, but no Earth-like planets has been discovered outside of our solar system. We should not be calling a planet "Earth-like" unless life was discovered, and life has not been discovered on any other planet. Scientists and science journalists very often describe a merely Earth-sized planet as an "Earth-like planet." Such language is very misleading. 

#7 Adaptations

Biologists use the word "adaptations" to refer to what they believe are extremely complex accidental inventions. For example, a biologist may refer to the first eyes as "adaptations," or the first wings as "adaptations," or the appearance of hands with fingers as an "adaptation." 

What is misleading here is the use of a euphemism designed to hide us from the shockingly far-fetched belief that is being advanced. Imagine if a biologist were to say something like this (referring to the Cambrian Explosion): "At this point in natural history there occurred in many different species the appearances of the extremely complex accidental inventions called eyes." Alarm bells would go off in a person's mind, for he may remember that he has never witnessed in his life anything like an extremely complex accidental invention, and the idea has a nonsensical sound to it. 

By using the term "adaptations," biologists avoid this problem.  But it is misleading to refer to very complex biological innovations as "adaptations," since the word "adaptation" (derived from the word "adapt") merely means "a change or the process of change by which an organism or species becomes better suited to its environment" (to give a dictionary's definition).  It is misleading because the term suggests some little not-too-hard thing has occurred, when some incredibly-hard-to-credibly-explain thing has occurred. In a biology paper whose primary author is Tom Roschinger, a CalTech scientist in the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, we read, "Biological systems have evolved to amazingly complex states, yet we do not understand in general how evolution operates to generate increasing genetic and functional complexity." Biological innovations so complex and organized that there is no current credible explanation for them should not be referred to by some term ("adaptations") that make them sound like some small-change affair. 

#8 "Reservoirs" in Reference to Extremely Sparse Molecule Levels, which May be Referred to Inaccurately as "Large Organic Molecules"

In the post here I discuss an example of an outrageous abuse of language sometimes occurring in science literature: the use of the term "reservoirs" to refer to molecule levels that are vastly more sparse (i.e. vastly less dense) than the molecule levels found in earthly clouds. The molecules referred are sometimes sometimes some of the simplest organic molecules, but are misleadingly referred to as "large organic molecules." 

#9 Astrobiologist

Until extraterrestrial life is discovered, the term "astrobiologist" must be classified as a misleading term, as it suggests or implies that extraterrestrial life has been discovered.  It would be less misleading if people referred to astrobiologists as "extraterrestrial life theorists," which would correctly signify the speculative nature of their studies. 

#10 String Theory

The term "string theory" is a term that misleads us by suggesting theorists speculating about something not-very-unusual (string being a very common household item). But string theorists make some of the most bizarre speculations ever made. It would be better to call string theorists "other-dimension theorists," which would tell us about how speculative such theorists are.  Different versions of string theory postulate up to 26 different dimensions. 

#11 Many Worlds Theory

Groundlessly claiming a warrant in quantum mechanics, Hugh Everett created a groundless pure-craziness theory that the universe is constantly splitting into different copies of itself, so that every possibility becomes reality. The term "Many Worlds" theory is used for Everett's theory. But such a term is very misleading, because it makes an insane idea have a reasonable sound to it. Because so many extrasolar planets have been discovered, it sounds reasonable for someone to say that there are many worlds.  But Everett's theory involves infinitely more than the mere claim that there are many worlds, since it involves the madness of claiming that there are infinite versions of each and every world, and infinite different versions of you and everyone else. 

#12 Body Plan

The term "body plan" is a profoundly misleading term that biologists love to use, a term that opens the door to deceptions about DNA. In biology literature the term "body plan" has a very limited meaning, something vastly different from a complete plan for constructing an organism. According to a scientific paper "a body plan is a suite of characters shared by a group of phylogenetically related animals at some point during their development." The wikipedia.org article on "body plan" tells us this: "A body plan, Bauplan (German plural Baupläne), or ground plan is a set of morphological features common to many members of a phylum of animals." 

According to this definition, all chordates (including men, bears, dogs and fish) have the same body plan. So when biologists talk about "the human body plan" they

are merely referring to the common characteristics of all chordates, including men, bears, dogs and fish:  basically just the existence of a backbone and bilateral symmetry (having the same things on both sides of the body).  They are not referring to the structure of the 200 types of cells in the human body, or the structure of internal organs, and are not referring to the dynamic intricacies of human physiology. But anyone hearing the term "body plan" will think the term referred to a complete specification of a human body.  So, most misleadingly, biologists may say that this or that "determines the body plan," when all they mean is the beginning of a bilateral organism with a backbone, something a thousand times simpler than the final product of the internally dynamic and enormously organized human body.  This is as misleading as someone saying that he has built a starship, when he has merely built a boat in the shape of a star. 

#13 Scientific Consensus

The term "scientific consensus" is one of the abused terms in the world of scientific academia. Some leading dictionaries define a consensus as an agreed opinion among a group of people. The first definition of "consensus" by the Merriam-Webster dictionary is "general agreement: unanimity." But scientists have very often referred to a "scientific consensus" on some particular topic when there was no good evidence that such a consensus existed, and quite a bit of evidence that no consensus actually exists.  

Some scientist advancing a new theory will start to say "more and more" scientists are accepting his theory. Once he starts to get a few people adopting his ideas, he may claim that "there is a growing trend" towards accepting his theory.  If some small fraction of scientists adopts his theory, he may claim this as a "growing consensus." Then if maybe half of scientists adopt his theory, he may claim this as a "consensus."  It is easy to see why such misleading statements occur. The more popular you make a theory sound, the more people will be likely to adopt it. 

I may note that claims of either a scientific consensus or anything remotely approaching a scientific consensus tend to be extremely unreliable.  The only way to reliably measure how many scientists believe in a theory is to do a secret ballot of scientists. Such secret ballots (of large numbers of scientists) never occur or almost never occur. 

#14 Talk of Brain Regions "Lighting Up" or "Activating"

All regions in the brain are constantly active. When scientists do scans of brains, they typically find differences in activity of less than half of one percent (about 1 part in 200) between one region and another. But science writers often refer to such very slight differences in activity as cases of some particular brain region "lighting up"  or some particular brain region "activating." That is misleading, as it suggests a large difference in activity, when the actual difference in activity is only very tiny. 

#15 Skull (When Used to Describe Bone Fragments)

The word "skull" is a word with a very exact definition. The Merriam Webster dictionary defines a skull as "the skeleton of the head of a vertebrate forming a bony or cartilaginous case that encloses and protects the brain and chief sense organs and supports the jaws."  Paleontologists and their press workers routinely misuse the word "skull," by using the term to refer to small bone fragments believed to be from a skull. Calling such fragments a skull is often as misleading as using the term "automobile" to refer to a bumper, a seat and a tire collected from a junk yard.

#16 Big Bang

The phrase "Big Bang" when used in reference to the origin of the universe misleads us by suggesting the idea of the universe started out as some big bomb that exploded, a kind of "cosmic egg" that blew up.  The Big Bang theory actually holds that the universe began in a state of infinite density called a singularity, and expanded very rapidly from such a state, with the density rapidly dropping.  A non-misleading term to describe the theory might be to call it the "origination-from-zero-radius theory" or the "origination-from-infinite density" theory. 

#17 Chemical Imbalances

It has long been claimed that one or more psychiatric problems are caused by "chemical imbalances." Scientists do not have any understanding of how some "chemical balance" results in normal mental function, and they do not have any understanding of how some "chemical imbalance" could cause psychiatric problems. 

#18 Genetically Determined

Scientists and science writers very often claim that some outcome is "genetically determined" when there is merely evidence that the outcome is genetically influenced.  There is a huge difference between a first thing merely influencing or affecting a second thing (merely having some effect on it), and the first thing determining the second thing (being the main cause of that thing).  For example, the weather influences how a car looks, but the weather does not determine how a car looks (a car's look is determined by the manufacturing process used to create it).  We do not have any evidence that either human mental traits or the structure of the human body is genetically determined. Because genes merely specify low-level chemicals such as protein molecules, we have the strongest reason for thinking that human mental traits and the physical structure of humans cannot be determined by genes. All that we have is evidence for a much weaker claim: the claim that human mental traits and the physical structure of humans is influenced or affected by genes. 

#19 Scientific Method

The myth that scientists follow some algorithm called "the scientific method" is one of the most long-standing myths of scientist culture. Statements of how this "scientific method" works vary widely but a typical description will include steps such as this:

1. Formulate a hypothesis
2. Design an experiment to test the hypothesis
3. Communicate results whether the experiment supports the hypothesis
4. If the experiment fails to support the hypothesis, formulate a new hypothesis.

Scientists do their work in a hundred different ways, and most do not follow such a method. Descriptions of the so-called "scientific method" make it look like scientists are ready to discard a hypothesis when it fails to be supported by an experiment.  The reality is that belief traditions arise in scientific communities, and scientists tend to very stubbornly cling to such belief traditions, regardless of observational or experimental results.  When scientists get a result that conflicts with their belief traditions (which may include some theory), scientists typically handle this in ways that do not involve abandoning the theory they are testing.  Such ways may include:

• Creatively interpreting the negative result to make it look like something supporting the hypothesis being tested.
• Changing the hypothesis to match whatever result was obtained.
• Playing around with the data in some statistical way until the negative result can be claimed as a positive result in favor of the hypothesis (or a neutral result consistent with the hypothesis).
• Dismissing the result conflicting with the hypothesis by special pleading, such as claiming that far-above-chance results in tests of psi or ESP were produced by subjects cheating, or claiming that there was experimenter error or equipment error.  
• Simply filing away the results without trying to publish them, and retrying the experiment, perhaps with some modification that will make the experiment much more likely to produce a seemingly positive result. 

#20 "The Neural Circuitry Behind" Some Behavior or Mental State

The very term "neural circuit" is misleading. A circuit is an unbroken electrical path, typically a roughly circular path that starts and ends in the same place. Neural pathways are not circular or even rather circular, they do not start and end in the same place, and they have a huge number of breaks, the breaks of synaptic gaps. Therefore, sections of brain tissue should not be referred to as "neural circuits."

As for the the idea that some behavior or mental state or mental trait can be explained by some arrangement of tissue in the brain, such an idea has no empirical support. 

#21 Claims Brains Are "Wired for" or "Hard-Wired for" This or That

The term "hard wiring" is an old mechanical term meaning to be determined by a particular arrangement of wires. Before modern electronics and software programming, the behavior of certain mechanical devices such as switchboards were determined by arrangements of wires, particular arrangements being called types of "hard wiring." Although neuroscientists sometimes speak as if investigating arrangements of wire-like components in the brain might shed light on human behavior, no one has ever shown that any human behavior can be explained by some arrangement of such components in the brain. It is therefore very misleading to claim that humans are "hard-wired" to do any particular thing. 

#22 Theory of Everything

The misleading term "theory of everything" has long been used by physicists to mean some theory that would unite two major physics theories: quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity.  The term has always been misleading, because each so-called "theory of everything" is merely a physics theory, and explains nothing in the world of biology or psychology. 

#23 "Regulate" or "Control" or "Sculpt" or "Mold" or "Direct" When Used About Genes or Chemicals

Chemicals inside the body are mindless things, and it is misleading to refer to them using action words that suggest they are intelligent agents. The quote below in a biologist's essay suggests that there is a massive problem of biologists using verbs in an inappropriate way when describing genes:

“In scientific, as well as popular descriptions today, genes 'act,' 'behave,' 'direct,' 'control,' 'design,' 'influence,' have 'effects,' are “responsible for,' are 'selfish,' and so on, as if minds of their own with designs and intentions. But at the same time, a counter-narrative is building, not from the media but from inside science itself."

#24 "Intended to Simulate" When Used About Experiments Like the Miller-Urey Experiment

For seventy years science literature has been speaking in a very misleading way about experiments like the Miller-Urey experiment. That experiment used a small closed glass aparatus filled with chemicals. Every other day the chemicals were continuously bombarded with electrical discharges. The result was some amino acids that accumulated at the bottom of the apparatus. Claimed as a simulation of early Earth conditions, the apparatus was no such thing, as nowhere in the early Earth did there ever exist such an enclosed space subject to even a thousandth as much electrical energy. Moreover, the chemicals used are now believed to be a mixture not matching the atmosphere of the early Earth. 

The results of such an experiment never should have been claimed as a result in support of claims of abiogenesis. But for 70 years science literature has been passing off such an experiment as something supporting claims that amino acids could have naturally formed  on the early Earth.  Typically science writers will not claim that the experiment realistically simulated the early Earth (a claim that is obviously false). Instead, we will merely hear that the experiment "intended to simulate" or "was designed to simulate" the early Earth. The insinuation is that the experiment might have simulated the early Earth, but we know that the experiment never was a realistic simulation of the early Earth.  The same phrase of "intended to simulate" is used for other experiments that just as obviously fail to realistically simulate early Earth conditions.  

#25 Cambrian Diversification

Since the time of Darwin, the Cambrian Explosion has always been the greatest embarrassment to Darwinists.  The main branches of animal species are called phyla, and there are about 35 phyla in the animal kingdom. Contrary to what we would expect under the assumptions of Darwinism, all or almost all of the animal phyla first appear in the fossil record in a relatively short span of time, what is called the Cambrian Explosion occurring about 640 million years ago.  Under Darwinist assumptions, we would expect such phyla to have originated gradually during the past 700 million years. 

To reduce this embarrassment, some science writers have started using the euphemistic term "Cambrian Diversification," which does not sound like such a dramatic and sudden burst of biological innovation.  You can compare this to someone avoiding references to the "atomic bombing" of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and referring instead to the August 1945 events as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki "urban renewal projects," or someone trying to trivialize the painting of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling by referring to it as a "ceiling color diversification."   

#26 Natural Selection 

Selection is a term meaning a choice by a conscious agent. The so-called "natural selection" imagined by those who use such a term does not actually involve any selection or choice.  The "natural selection" imagined by biologists merely involves a survival-of-the-fittest effect, in which fitter organisms survive longer or reproduce more. The duplicity of using the term "natural selection" for some imagined effect that is not actually selection is a word trick that was started by Charles Darwin, who coined the term "natural selection."

#27 Selection Pressure

When biologists use the term "selection pressure," they are simply using a variant of the term "natural selection." The term "selection pressure" is doubly-misleading, first because there is no actual selection involved in so-called selection pressure (selection being an act by a conscious agent), and second because there is no actual pressure involved.  

#28 Early Human

The defining characteristic of humans is their use of symbols.  The term "early human" is very often misleadingly used in science literature, to refer to pre-human species which have never been proven to have used symbols. Such language is used to try to bolster claims that species arising before humans were ancestors of humans.  A person who lacks any good evidence that Species X existing before humans evolved into humans may simply take the shortcut of calling this Species X an "early human" species.  But if there is no good evidence that Species X used symbols, then it should not be called an "early human" species. 

#29 "Genetic Blueprint" or "Genetic Program" or "Genetic Recipe"

What I call the Great DNA Myth is the myth that inside DNA is some blueprint or recipe that specifies how to make a human body.  

There are various ways in which this false idea is stated, all equally false:

• Someone may describe DNA or the genome as a blueprint for an organism.
• Someone may describe DNA or the genome as a recipe for making an organism.
• Someone may describe DNA or the genome as a program for building an organism.
• Someone may claim that DNA or genomes specify the anatomy of an organism. 
• Someone may claim that genotypes (the DNA in organisms) specify phenotypes (the observable characteristics of an organism).
• Someone may claim that genotypes (the DNA in organisms) "map"  phenotypes (the observable characteristics of an organism) or "map to" phenotypes.
• Someone may claim that DNA contains "all the instructions needed to make an organism."
• Someone may claim that there is a "genetic architecture" for an organism's body or some fraction of that body. 
• Using a little equation, someone may claim that a "genotype plus the environment equals the phenotype," a formulation as false  as the preceding statements, since we know of nothing in the environment that would cause phenotypes to arise from genotypes that do not specify such phenotypes. 

All of these versions are equally false, because DNA only contains low-level chemical information (such as which sequences of amino acids make up polypeptide chains that are the starting points of protein molecules), not high-level structural information,  Many biology authorities have confessed this reality, and at the post here you can read statements by more than twenty biology experts stating that DNA is not a blueprint or a program or a recipe for building an organism. 

#30 "Essential for"

In the world of neuroscience we often have incorrect claims that this or that protein or this or that brain part is "essential for" some cognitive ability.  In some cases experiments have shown that the cognitive ability continues to exist even when the supposedly "essential" thing has been removed. 

Replication Study Show the Massive Rot Within Experimental Biology

A recent scientific paper gave the results of a large project designed to test how well cancer studies replicate. Entitled "Reproducibility in Cancer Biology: Challenges for assessing replicability in preclinical cancer biology," the paper is a shocking portrait of a massive degree of malfunction within the world of experimental biology. 

The authors attempted to replicate 193 experiments from 53 widely-cited cancer research papers. The authors were shocked to find that not a single one of the 193 papers gave a methods description sufficient for the authors to reproduce the experiment without asking for more information from the scientists who ran the experiment.  They state, "None of the 193 experiments were described in sufficient detail in the original paper to enable us to design protocols to repeat the experiments, so we had to seek clarifications from the original authors."

Upon asking for additional information from the scientists who ran the experiments,  the authors found that while 41% of the scientists were very helpful in providing information, 9% of the scientists were only minimally helpful, and 32% of the scientists were not helpful at all or did not respond to requests for information.  Such a result suggests that a large fraction of all cancer experiments (a quarter or more) are either junk science procedures that scientists are ashamed to discuss, or fraudulent experiments that scientists refuse to talk about any further, because of a fear of their fraud being discovered.  

Imagine if you were a scientist who had pulled some shenanigans or skulduggery when doing an experiment.  Years later, you get an email from someone saying, "I am trying to replicate your experiment, but your paper has not given me enough information -- can you please answer this list of questions?"  What would you do? In such a case you would probably just not answer the email. The last thing you would want is for someone to discover the sleazy shortcuts you had used, or to discover that you had fudged the results.  Conversely, if you did the experiment using best-practices methods, and proceeded in an entirely honest and commendable manner, you would not be troubled by such an email, and would probably answer it in a helpful way. 

The paper authors tried to reproduce the cancer studies in a way that produced a statistical power of at least .80 (which can be roughly described as a pretty good likelihood that the result was not a false alarm).  They often found that the studies they were trying to reproduce typically used too small a sample size to reach such a standard. We read this: "As an illustration, the average sample size of animal experiments in the replication protocols (average = 30; SD = 16; median = 26; IQR = 18–41) were 25% higher than the sample size of the original experiments (average = 24; SD = 14; median = 22; IQR = 16–30)."  

This is quite interesting from the standpoint of neuroscience experimental research. In neuroscience experiments, the great majority of scientific experiments use way-too-small sample sizes. Most experimental neuroscience papers use a sample size smaller than 15 for some of the study groups.  I have often cited this "15 subjects per study group" as a minimal quality standard that neuroscientists typically fail to meet in their experiments.  But according to the figures quoted above, it seems the quality shortfall is even greater than I have described. The paper suggests that sample sizes should be an average of not just 15, but 30.  If that is correct, then the failure of neuroscientists to use adequate sample sizes in their experiments is far greater than I have suggested. 

In the paragraph below the authors discusss some of the rot they have discovered within experimental biology:

"The present evidence suggests that we should be concerned. As reported in Errington et al., 2021b, replication efforts frequently produced evidence that was weaker or inconsistent with original studies. These results corroborate similar efforts by pharmaceutical companies to replicate findings in cancer biology (Begley and Ellis, 2012; Prinz et al., 2011), efforts by a non-profit biotech to replicate findings of potential drugs in a mouse model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Perrin, 2014), and systematic replication efforts in other disciplines (Camerer et al., 2016; Camerer et al., 2018; Cova et al., 2018; Ebersole et al., 2016; Ebersole et al., 2019; Klein et al., 2014; Klein et al., 2018; Open Science Collaboration, 2015; Steward et al., 2012). Moreover, the evidence for self-corrective processes in the scientific literature is underwhelming: extremely few replication studies are published (Makel et al., 2012; Makel and Plucker, 2014); preclinical findings are often advanced to clinical trials before they have been verified and replicated by other laboratories (Chalmers et al., 2014; Drucker, 2016; Ramirez et al., 2017); and many papers continue to be cited even after they have been retracted (Budd et al., 1999;Lu et al., 2013; Madlock-Brown and Eichmann, 2015; Pfeifer and Snodgrass, 1990)...Fundamentally, the problem with practical barriers to assessing replicability and reproducibility is that it increases uncertainty in the credibility of scientific claims. Are we building on solid foundations? Do we know what we think we know?"

A separate paper by the same authors ("Investigating the replicability of preclinical cancer biology") gives results on what degree of success was achieved in trying to reproduce the selected experiments.  Getting little or no help from such a large fraction of the scientists, and finding the original papers failing to give enough information for replication, the authors were only able to re-run 50 of the 193 experiments they had originally chosen.  Of those 50, only 46% were successfully replicated in the sense of producing results like those reported in the original paper.  

So after setting the goal of replicating 193 experiments, and doing their best to replicate all 193 whenever possible, the authors were only able to successfully replicate about 23 of the experiments.  That's a pitiful replication rate of only about 12%. The authors report this: "One method compared effect sizes: for positive effects, the median effect size in the replications was 85% smaller than the median effect size in the original experiments, and 92% of replication effect sizes were smaller than the original." What this suggests is that the effects reported in experimental biology papers tend to be massively overstated. 

What all these numbers give us is a vivid portrait of massive decay, rot, malfunction and arrogance within experimental biology. Another scientific study surveying animal researchers (discussed here) gives similar results. Very clearly, junk experimental results are being produced to a massive degree by experimenters very often guilty of Questionable Research Practices. From the facts that such a large fraction of the experimenters refuse to respond to questions from those attempting to reproduce their experiments, and the fact that only a small fraction of the studies can be successfully replicated, we may assume that either a very large amount of fraud or a massive degree of incompetent activity is occurring within experimental biology -- probably both. Therefore, a good general principle to follow is: assume that any novel experimental biology result you read about in the science news is bogus or junk science, unless the result has been very well  replicated, with many other experimenters getting the same result.  (Vaccine results have been massively replicated, because when millions of people have taken a vaccine without harm, that is equivalent to massive replication.)

I have long discussed the poor practices and shabby standards of experimental neuroscience. When poor research practices occur in neuroscience, the damage is mainly intellectual.  Junk neuroscience experiments cause people to wrongly think that scientists are on the right track in their assumptions about minds and brains, which is not true. They are very much on the wrong track, betting the farm on false assumptions.  But at least such misleading junk science experiments don't lead to physical human suffering.  It's a different situation if so many cancer research studies are unreliable.  We can only guess how great is the physical toll to human beings when so many cancer studies are not reliable.  

Yesterday a jury found Elizabeth Holmes guilty of wire fraud. Her company Theranos had bilked investors out of countless millions, long making grand biology-related promises but producing only feeble results. There is many an Elizabeth Holmes (male and female) in the world of experimental biology.  They victimize not wealthy investors but the federal government. Every year the US government doles out billions for scientific research, and a large fraction of this goes to fund junk experimental science that cannot be replicated because poor experimental procedures were used, or because the scientists were trying to prove something that is untrue.  

You can see endless cases of wasted money by using the National Science Foundation's query tool.  Below is an example, searching for grants given on the topic of synapses:

https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/simpleSearchResult?queryText=synapses

Very often when you click on the rows of your search results, and very carefully analyze both the original research proposal and the resulting scientific papers published, you will find that a grant proposal was submitted promising some grand result, but that the scientific papers produced were merely junk science papers describing experiments using Questionable Research Practices such as a lack of a blinding protocol or way-too-small sample sizes.  The paper titles and the paper abstracts often claim to have found something not actually shown by the research.  

The US government has a whole big agency (the IRS) dedicated to tracking down and punishing people who file false tax returns. But the government seems to have no agency dedicated to tracking down and penalizing "sham, scam, thank you Sam" researchers who bilk Uncle Sam out of millions by getting lavish government research grants and then producing junk experimental results incapable of being successfully replicated.  We may presume that in the labs they sometimes whisper that Uncle Sam is an easy mark. 

 In an unsparing essay entitled "The Intellectual and Moral Decline in Academic Research," PhD Edward Archer states the following:

"Universities and federal funding agencies lack accountability and often ignore fraud and misconduct. There are numerous examples in which universities refused to hold their faculty accountable until elected officials intervened, and even when found guilty, faculty researchers continued to receive tens of millions of taxpayers’ dollars. Those facts are an open secret: When anonymously surveyed, over 14 percent of researchers report that their colleagues commit fraud and 72 percent report other questionable practices....Retractions, misconduct, and harassment are only part of the decline. Incompetence is another....The widespread inability of publicly funded researchers to generate valid, reproducible findings is a testament to the failure of universities to properly train scientists and instill intellectual and methodologic rigor. That failure means taxpayers are being misled by results that are non-reproducible or demonstrably false."

Sociobiology Was a Flop, but Socially Constructed Biology Went Viral

Many years ago biologist E.O. Wilson came up with a theory he called sociobiology, a theory he presented in a 697-page 1975 book with the pretentious title Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Wilson defined sociobiology as "the study of the biological basis of all social behavior," making an incredibly dubious claim by using such a definition. Sociobiology was basically the idea that genes largely determine behavior.  Wilson came up with the idea after studying the complex social behavior of insects such as ants. We can imagine the thinking of a materialist ant biologist, maybe something along these lines:

"Ants have all these complex behaviors, and they don't seem to learn them at all. It can't be something they think of, because their brains are so tiny. So it must be their genes. Genes must control behavior!"

But the idea that genes control behavior should seem nonsensical to anyone familiar with what a gene is. A gene is a tiny part of a DNA molecule. A particular gene gives the sequence of amino acids that make up the polypeptide chain that is kind of the starting point of a protein molecule. Can we say that a particular gene specifies a protein molecule? That is not quite right, because genes seem to have no specification at all of the complex shape of a protein molecule.  

Here is a good analogy for the situation. Imagine I specify a sequence of characters such as "UYUEEIBUIBAWWIRBIAWUBW," Opening a box of Alpha Bits cereal, you find a matching set of letters. Using thread, you make these letters into a chain, rather like a chain of beads.  You then shape this chain-like structure into some very distinctive 3D shape, like some origami structure.  Did my original string of characters specify the final origami structure? No, my sequence of characters only specifies part of that final structure, which sequence of letters it used. Similarly, a gene seems to specify only the amino acid sequence of a protein molecule, not its 3D shape. The genetic code used by genes is something capable only of specifying amino acids, not complex shapes built from amino acids.  How the complex 3D shapes of protein molecules arise is an unsolved mystery in biology, called the protein folding problem. 

Now, if a gene is so limited that it does not even specify the 3D shape of a protein molecule, what can we say about claims that genes specify anatomical structures or that genes determine social behaviors? Simply that they are laughable falsehoods. 

A gene is part of a DNA molecule, and DNA molecules do not and cannot specify the anatomy of any organism.  The claim that DNA is a blueprint or recipe for making an organism is a falsehood that many biologists have stated, for ideological reasons (because such a claim is convenient for advancing Darwinist dogma).  At the post here you can read the statements of more than twenty biology experts who state that DNA is neither a blueprint nor a recipe nor a program for building organisms.  DNA not have anything like a specification for building organisms, and does not have any anatomical information. Even if DNA had such information, it would not explain morphogenesis (the progression from a speck-sized human egg to a full-grown adult body), simply because blueprints don't build things. Blueprints are things read by intelligent agents such as construction workers, who use the blueprints to build complex things. There is nothing in the human body below the neck capable of reading instructions for building a human body if they happened to exist in DNA (instructions that would be vastly more complex than construction blueprints for building a house or an office tower). 

As for the claim that genes specify social behavior, it is even more nonsensical than the claim that genes specify how to build organisms. Consisting only of a nucleotide sequence specifying a sequence of amino acids, a gene can no more specify social behavior than a mouse can specify a plan for interstellar travel.  To try to back up his claims, Wilson appealed to a controversial doctrine of group selection, which many other evolutionists such as Dawkins and Pinker denounced as rubbish.  The bitter feud over whether group selection exists is a civil war within Darwinism, one that is rarely mentioned to the general public so that the idea of a unified front can be presented. 

In a recent interview,  probably his last, Wilson (who recently died)  spoke very falsely about the success level of his theory of sociobiology. He states, "I think sociobiology is now well-accepted." We can do some preprint server queries to show how untrue this claim is. Searching on the main biology preprint server for biology paper titles using the word "sociobiology," I find zero matches. Conversely, a search for papers with "synaptic plasticity" in their title finds 131  matches. Searching on the main biology preprint server for biology paper titles using the word "sociobiology" in their abstracts, I find only 3 matches. Conversely, a search for papers with "synaptic plasticity" in their abstracts or titles finds 633 matches.

Doing the same searches on the main physics preprint server (which includes quantitative biology papers),  a search for papers using the term "sociobiology" gives zero matches, but a search for papers using the term "synaptic plasticity" finds 73 matches. A search on the same server for papers using "sociobiology" in their abstracts returns only 4 matches. Conversely, a search for papers with "synaptic plasticity" in their abstracts finds 251 matches.

So the sociobiology theory of Wilson was clearly a flop, and when Wilson claimed in the recent interview that his sociobiology theory is "well-accepted," he was making a bogus claim. But in a strange example of boot-licking fawning, the Vox page with the interview of Wilson hails him as a "legendary figure," one "who's considered a modern Darwin." Of course, the interview is all softball questions, like 99% of interviews of scientists these days.  Nowadays when science journalists interview scientists, they act like North Korean journalists interviewing government officials. 

Sociobiology as presented by Wilson was bunk, because there is no "biological basis of all social behavior" and there is not even a biological basis for half or a third of social behavior. But there is an intersection of the social and the biological that is all too real: the fact that some of the most important claims of today's biologists are socially constructed claims. 

We may distinguish between two general types of claims: empirically mandated claims and socially constructed claims. An empirically mandated claim is one that is forced on us by observations.  An example of an empirically mandated claim is the claim that sharks exist.  We are forced to believe that because so many have reported seeing sharks. 

A socially constructed claim, on the other hand, is one that people were never forced to make by observations, but a claim that people started to make largely because making the claim had benefits for one or more social groups, and a claim that people continued to make largely because of factors such as social contagion, the influence power of long-standing social organizations,  and group conformity pressure.  Modern biology is dominated by two socially constructed claims: the Darwinist claim that all species arose because of accidental biological effects,  and the claim that all of the main mental phenomena are produced by the brain. 

It is rather easy to make a crude sketch of the social construction of such ideas. There appeared an overconfident authority (Darwin) who did not even understand a hundredth of the incredibly complex organization  of human bodies (not yet discovered in his time);  and he taught a "this explains it all" theory so simple it can be written on the back of a postcard. Such a person was put on a pedestal, just as a hundred previous overconfident thinkers were put on pedestals by social communities that wanted a nice, simple explanation.  There was a group of people (atheists) yearning for some explanatory story that would allow them to avoid believing in anything higher than themselves, and these people jumped eagerly to embrace a modern day creation myth purporting to explain biological origins as accidental occurrences.  Claiming to understand origins mysteries a thousand miles over their little heads, professors yearning to portray themselves as  Grand Lords of Explanation jumped on this bandwagon of social contagion, starting to claim they understood the great mystery of biological origins, just as a thousand previous priests or preachers or visionaries or doctrinaires had portrayed  themselves as Grand Lords of Explanation with some glorious special insight. Millions started to believe the nice simple claims that humans arose merely because of random mutations, and that all mental phenomena come from the brain and that memories are stored in brains, largely because people like nice simple explanations, and people like to look up reverently to authorities (whether priests, presidents or professors) who have been put on pedestals and who claim to have simple answers to long-standing mysteries.  In an effect that is sometimes called "compliance," very many with no natural inclination to believe such ideas reluctantly started to endorse them,  to "fit in" and because they were afraid of being labeled as nonconformists.  Such people were like those in the 1950's who hated to dress up with neckties and put on hats before departing to go to their office jobs, but who did so anyway every weekday because of the power of social conformity effects.  Back in the 1950's almost all men would wear ties and hats when going to office jobs, so everyone thought, "I've got to dress like everyone else is dressing."  And nowadays people parrot very dubious and unproven dogmas of biology, thinking, "I've got to explain like the others are explaining."

If Wilson had been a wise man, after spending so much time studying very complex purposeful behavior in ants and honeybees, he would have concluded that such very complex purposeful behavior could not have come from their very tiny brains, and he might have counted this as a reason for thinking that minds do not come from brains (many such reasons exist).  Instead he unwisely  concluded that the behavior of such insects must be caused by genes, things that merely specify low-level chemical information, and cannot specify complex purposeful behavior. 

When a Court Case Was Won by Mind Reading

In 2016 I wrote a post lamenting the miserably bad coverage of the paranormal that has long occurred in the pages of the New York Times.  At some time in the twentieth century, the New York Times seemed to turn into a kind of Pravda for materialists.  Pravda was an ideologically-driven paper that was one of the two main party organs of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, from 1912 (before the formation of the Soviet Union) until 1991 (when the Soviet Union broke up). During that period of nearly eighty years, a Communist in Moscow would pick up his daily edition of Pravda, and be almost invariably reassured that the world was working just exactly the way a Moscow Communist would expect it to work. The paper very rarely reported facts or reports clashing with the belief system or expectations of Communists; and in the rare cases when such things were reported, they were mentioned in such a biased way that the Communist faith of the reader would never be shaken. 

For many decades the New York Times has reported in a similar way in its treatment of the paranormal. It has seemed to follow the policy of never publishing stories that caused a dogmatic materialist to question his assumptions about the way the world works.  Evidence of this can be found by using a search phrase of "parapsychology site:www.nytimes.com" with the Google search engine.  The first ten results are all from before 1986. The next ten results are all from before the year 2000. 

When we finally get (in the 30th search result) the first link to something in the New York Times other than an obituary written in the past twenty years and dealing with parapsychology, it is a poison-pen piece inaccurately defaming parapsychology research and unreasonably calling its researchers and subjects "shallow."   The book review discusses an excellent 500-page book detailing at great length a host of evidence for the paranormal, very much of it very good scientific evidence produced under controlled lab conditions by prestigious authorities.  

The reviewer (a person with no substantial writings on the topic of the paranormal or parapsychology)  is allowed to dismiss the book's very weighty evidence on the grounds that "none of the experiments described in 'Phenomena' struck me as scientific," which is a very impressionistic, unscientific statement. After making unsubstantiated insinuations that the testers were credulous dupes,  the reviewer most inaccurately states that there were no "efforts to replicate results," which is very false (very many of the results described in the book were well replicated).  It sounds very much like the reviewer didn't even read the book being reviewed, or how could he have made so large an error? The writer gives as his main evidence against paranormal phenomena the fact that he spent lots of some rich person's money searching for paranormal results without finding anything that convinced him, on the grounds that they could be duplicated by magicians (a factor that is irrelevant when you are testing subjects that you have made sure are not using any of the fancy mechanical and electronic equipment of magicians). Of course, given a sufficiently skeptical observer with enough hatred for those who make claims of the paranormal (someone like the reviewer), a negative result will always be claimed no matter what was observed. It's just the kind of book review we would expect to get in a paper that has for decades served as a kind of Pravda for materialists. 

The New York Times has in recent years published some noteworthy articles on UFO sightings, but such articles should not cause us to regard this as much of any change of attitude at the paper. You can be a die-hard materialist unreasonably denying the mountain of evidence for psi phenomena, and still believe that Earth is being visited by spaceships from other solar systems. The "kneel before the high priests of academia" attitude of the New York Times is often shown in its science articles, where unfounded dogmas, groundless speculations, poorly designed experiments and poorly-established boasts of professors tend to be treated with reverent credulity.  There are very good reasons for thinking that some of the most important claims made in the Science section of the New York Times are untrue (reasons which may be found by reading other posts of mine). 

If we consider its coverage of the saving of Lily Groesbeck, we can find an illustrative typical example of the "don't tell materialists anything that might upset them" policy that seems to be in effect at the New York Times.   About 10:30 PM on March 6, 2015, a car carrying Lynn Groesbeck and her 18-month-old daughter Lily flipped over and crashed into the bottom of a small river. Apparently the mother was killed by the impact, but her daughter survived. Strapped into her toddler car seat, the toddler hung upside down in the overturned car. About 14 hours later an angler noticed the car, and called the police.

Three police officers and a fireman arrived. They reported hearing a voice coming from the car. “The four of us heard a distinct voice coming from the car,” officer Jared Warner told CNN. “To me, it didn't sound like a child's voice.”

"It felt like I could hear someone telling me, 'I need help,' " Officer Bryan DeWitt told CNN affiliate KSL. "It was very surreal, something that I felt like I could hear."

Tyler Beddoes, a third officer on the scene said this to CNN: "All I know is that it was there, we all heard it, and that just helped us to push us harder, like I say, and do what we could to rescue anyone inside the car.”

Upon opening the car, the officers found the mother had suffered severe trauma, and was apparently dead. By all indications she died when the overturned car plunged into the river. The child was “definitely unconscious and not responsive," says Warner. The 18-month-old child, thankfully, survived and was reported to be in good health.

The question is: how could such a voice have been heard, when the mother was dead, and the child unconscious? We have here a dramatic incident of great interest, a seemingly paranormal event. The CNN article on the saving of Lily Groesbeck gave us the officer quotes above, which were later corroborated by a dramatic head-cam video that I saw on www.youtube.com, but which is no longer available there.  In the video the officers speak just exactly as if they were hearing a voice urging them on to save the child. 

But what did we read in the New York Times article on the amazing event? The New York Times article merely mentioned that a baby had been saved, without telling us anything about the mysterious voice urging on the officers.  The paranormal part of the story was apparently censored or suppressed by the New York Times. 

And so it is, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, and decade after decade at the New York Times. Objective attempts to measure how many people have paranormal experiences produce very substantial percentages.  To thousands of people this question was once put: "Have you ever, when believing yourself to be completely awake, had a vivid impression of seeing or being touched by a living being or inanimate object, or of hearing a voice, which impression, so far as you could discover, was not due to any external physical cause?" Of the 27,339 replies to this question  3,266 answered in the affirmative. A signficant fraction of the human population seems to have out-of-body experiences (about 10% to 20% according to the surveys listed here).  In a survey of 300 students and 700 non-student adults in  Charlottesville, Virginia  (not at all a hotbed of New Age thinking), the result was more than half of the respondents claimed an extraordinary ESP experience.  We live in a world in which psychic phenomena and paranormal events are extremely common, with a very substantial fraction of the population experiencing or reporting them. But you would never know that from reading the pages of the New York Times.  

It was not always that way. Long ago, rather than seeming to follow a motto of "all the news that won't shake the cherished beliefs of a certain class of people,"  the New York Times actually lived up to its motto of "all the news that's fit to print." When a psychic demonstrated ESP in a court room in 1915, the New York Times was not afraid to report what happened. 

Here is the report published in the New York Times in 1915, as quoted in the interesting 1951 book Second Sight in Daily Life, written by an author (W.H. W. Sabine) providing many first-hand examples of ESP and precognition:

"W. Bert Reese, whose 'mind reading' demonstrations have mystified many scientists, including Thomas A. Edison and Dr. William Hanna Thompson, author of Brain and Personality, was discharged yesterday by Judge Rosalsky in General Sessions on his appeal from a conviction by Magistrate Barlow of disorderly conduct, under a section dealing with fortune telling. Reese convinced Judge Rosalsky, Assistant District Attorneys Bostwick and Flint, and two reporters by demonstrations in court that he was not a disorderly person, but a man with apparently unusual powers." 

"Reese was arrested at 230 West 99th Street on February 26 on complaint by Detective Adele Priess, who said she had paid him $5 to have her fortune told. Reese denied that he had told her fortune or accepted any money. He was found guilty and held in $1,000 bonds to keep the peace for one year."

"When his case came before Judge Rosalsky yesterday on appeal, Reese asked permission to demonstrate his abilities to the court. He told Judge Rosalsky to write something on each of three pieces of paper, and to fold them so that he might not be able to read what had been written. Judge Rosalsky put the papers in different pockets after he had mixed them up so that he could not distinguish them himself. Then Judge Rosalsky produced one of the folded papers and pressed it against Reese's forehead." 

" 'You ask me how much money you have in a certain bank,' he said. 'Fifteen dollars is the answer.' Judge Rosalsky admitted that the answer was correct and produced the second piece of paper. 'This piece contains the name of one of your old school teachers Miss O'Connor,' Reese said. The third question, which he read correctly but did not answer, was: 'What was the rule in Shelley's case?' " 

"Reese performed similar demonstrations for the benefit of Mr. Bostwick, Mr. Flint, and the reporters. His last feat was to give the maiden name of the mother of one of the reporters. All the questions were written on General Sessions stationery, which Judge Rosalsky supplied." 

" 'I do not consider you a disorderly person,' Judge Rosalsky said, when the demonstrations were finished. 'You are honorably discharged." 

The book by Sabine says this about Reese (the man who prevailed in the court case):

"Reese was repeatedly tested by scientific men under their own conditions, and satisfied them of his supernormal powers. Schrenck-Notzing [a physician] described him as the most extraordinary man of the day, and his demonstration to judge, lawyers and reporters amply bears that out." 

The New York Times allows us to search its archives, but wants you to pay for any articles you read from such archives. Using its archive search facility without paying anything, I can find the headline below, which corroborates that the book quote from the New York Times is an accurate one:

One of the skills in question was an inexplicable ability to describe contents hidden in sealed envelopes or closed boxes. In the nineteenth century such an ability was demonstrated countless times in public exhibitions, and also documented at length by distinguished writers, as discussed here and here. Evidence for such an ability is also to be found abundantly in the twentieth century (see here for example or the post here describing a very similar ability).  There is a mountain of good evidence for the reality of telepathy, much of it gathered at universities under good experimental protocols (see here for example).

The fascinating 632-page book "Psychical and supernormal phenomena, their observation and experimentation" by Dr. Paul  Joire is teeming with evidence for paranormal phenomena, and most abundantly documents evidence for telepathy and clairvoyance.  On page 337 we read one of countless cases in the literature of parapsychology in which reliable witnesses describe someone's ability to inexplicably tell what is inside closed boxes or the inner contents of sealed envelopes inside sealed envelopes. A clairvoyant was given a page with two verses, enclosed like this: "there  were  two  envelopes  and  two  sheets  of  paper to  pass  through  before  coming  to  the  sheet  containing  the inscription  to  be  read." One of the envelopes was opaque, and various seals were applied to make sure that the clairvoyant had not opened either of the envelopes. The clairvoyant accurately quoted the verses contained within, which should have been unknown to her by normal sight or hearing:

"Votre  parti  certainement 

Se  tue  par  rassainissement"

The success of this experiment was sworn to by eight distinguished witnesses, including a mayor, a lawyer and a journalist. 

Online the New York Times nowadays is mostly behind a paywall. You can read its headlines at www.nytimes.com, but after reading a few articles a month you will get a prompt that stops you from reading further and asks you to pay for a subscription that costs 52 dollars a year. This at least has the advantage that fewer people are exposed to the paper's biased and often misleading articles and book reviews related to topics of minds, brains, nature, science and spirit. But I hear the paper has pretty good coverage about health, arts, sports, politics, world affairs and local affairs.

Postscript: The book Science and Psychical Phenomena by G. N.M. Tyrrell has a description of an even more careful preparation of a sealed envelope to test clairvoyant reading of its contents. On pages 75-76 we read this: 

"The mode of preparation of the sealed packet, carried out by Mr. Besterman in his office at the rooms of the Society for Psychical Research in London, was as follows. He took a sheet of paper measuring 93 mm. by 107 mm., and ruled with lines, from a loose-leafed note-book, and drew on it a rough sketch of an ink-bottle, writing in capital letters the words SWAN INK, one on each side of the bottle. Under the word SWAN, which was on the left of the bottle, he drew a blue line, and under the word ink on the other side he drew a red line. Then he folded the paper twice at right angfes, one of the folds running right through the word swan. 'This,' says Mr. Besterman, ‘was placed in a reddish-orange Ensign light-tight envelope (that is not transparent to white light), measuring 94 mm. by 119 mm. This envelope was in turn enclosed in a black Ensign  light-tight envelope, measuring 106 mm. by 130 mm. This black envelope was finally enclosed in a large Manilla envelope doubled in two, and thus measuring 114 mm by 152 mm. Each of these envelopes was closed in a special way and bore private and invisible marks. The outer doubled envelope was, in addition, sealed with surgical tape arranged in a special way and signed by me.' "

On page 77 we read of how the contents of the elaborately sealed packet were almost perfectly identified by the test subject located far away:

"It is a curious fact that M. Ossowiecki’s ‘readings’ did not take the form which suggested that he was actually reading the contents of the packet. Instead, he went backwards in time and described the scene in Mr. Besterman’s office when the packet was being prepared, giving, in fact, certain details about Mr. Besterman’s surroundings and the time of the day when the packet was sealed, and so forth, which could not possibly have been obtained from anything in the packet itself. He then took a pencil and drew an approximation to a bottle with a line on either side of it, adding ‘something written and something red.'  Next, he drew an unmistakable bottle with the letters SWA on the left and the letters IN on the right. Finally, he made a complete drawing of a bottle in the middle of the paper, and the word SWAN on the left and INK on the right, both in capital letters. Some distance below the word SWAN (not immediately underneath it as in the original), he drew a line with his pencil, which he said was red. Actually, in the original, SWAN was underlined in blue and the word INK on the other side of the bottle was underlined in red. But for this mistake, the reproduction was perfect, the shape of the bottle being exact."

The news story below appeared in the Washington Post on September 26, 1958:

"Swindling Charge Dismissed

Mind Reader Tested in Berlin Court Wins Acquittal by his Performance 

By Richard O’Regan 

BERLIN, Sept. 25, (AP)—Six spectators in a courtroom in sub- urban Berlin raised their hands. Yes, they told the judge they were willing to have their minds read by the man on trial.

They wrote six questions and handed them to the bench. The judge turned to Gerhard Belgardt, 39, otherwise known as Hanussen II, Germany’s No. 1 Mind reader.

None of the spectators nor the mind reader had been told that they might take part in a mind reading test.

Belgardt was accused of swindling clients in private seances by professing to give news of missing relatives.

The judge: “What is on the first piece of paper?’

Belgardt: “The lady is asking about her sister. She is an inch taller, considerably younger and works in a public building.’

The questioner: “That’s right. My sister works as a medical assistant.’

The judge: “What is on the next paper?’

Belgardt: “The man has asked about his son. He will come along well in school.’

The man: ‘Correct.’

The judge: 'The next questioner is a city detective. What has he written?’

Belgardt: ‘He asks about his mother or his grandmother. I have no contact. Either the question is phony or she is dead. The man has suffered long—a concentration camp. Is that correct?’

The detective: ‘Correct. I asked about my grandmother. She is dead. I was in a concentration camp.’

Three further questions were asked and Belgardt got the answers relatively right.

The judge dismissed the case declaring ‘the accused has a certain validity to his claims as a mind reader’.

Hanussen II, embracing his wife: ‘I had foreseen that I would be freed.' "