Old Newspaper Accounts of Clairvoyance or Telepathy

 "The distinguished Parisian Professor of Medicine, Rostan, gave at the time his corroborative testimony to the existence of this power in the article ' Magnetisme,' in the ' Dictionnaire de Medecine,'  wherein he remarked : 'There are few facts better demonstrated than clairvoyance' ....Innumerable instances are recorded of the possession of the faculty of clairvoyance by persons in the normal state, in sleep [hypnotism], and in some abnormal conditions of the system. " -- Edwin Lee, MD, "Animal Magnetism and Magnetic Lucid Somnambulism" page 103 and page 133.

Although very abundantly reported in books and journals such as The Zoist (as you can read about in my set of 14 posts here),  reports of clairvoyance are rather hard-to-find in old newspapers. But some accounts can be found. For example, the following account appeared in 1905:

"MUSICAL CLAIRVOYANCE  PUZZLES PARIS PEOPLE.

 Paris is very much concerned at present over a new phenomenon, which is called, for lack of a better name, musical mediumship, says Public Opinion. In the same way that a few years ago the attention of French scientists was largely occupied with thought transference, now many investigators in the French capital are carefully following the experiments which are being conducted with the musical mediums. In the last number of the Journal des Debats. M. Henri de Parvllle carefully goes over the whole ground, and the facts presented are well worth considering. M. de Parvllle first takes up the case of a subject by the name of Aubert. 'This man, although he had but a rudimentary knowledge of music, performs on the piano, in a semi-hypnotic state, compositions which recall the musical style of Moxart, Chopin, Beethoven, Schubert and others. A second and far more remarkable case, however, is that of Mlle. Nydia. This woman, in a hypnotic state and with her eyes carefully bandaged, is able to play on the piano any piece of music which may be given her. Thus at a sitting recently held at the Theater de la Monnaie, in Brussels, Mlle. Nydia was led to M. Slyvayn Dupuy, chief of the orchestra of the theater, who gave her a piece of music composed by himself, which had never been published. M. Dupuy saw that the bandage had been tightly placed over the girl’s eyes. Mlle. Nydia then sat down, held the paper in her hands for a few moments, and then, to the great astonishment of everyone, played the piece without hesitation. 

Two physicians examined the young woman, and found her to be in a real hypnotic state and absolutely insensible to the exterior world. There were then placed over her eyes a succession of bandages, alternating black and white, and she was led to the piano. One of the spectators offered a new opera, which was placed on the piano. The hypnotizer looked at his subject, and immediately the girl played the piece with the greatest cleverness. Another spectator, who had just arrived from New Zealand, offered a piece of music which had never been performed in Europe. Mlle. Nydia, however, executed it at once, and she played with the same skill a piece which had just been composed by M. G. Germain. At public request she played a piece of Paderewski, which was unknown to her, and, finally, a lady wrote the title of a piece of music on a slip of paper, put it into an envelope, which was afterward sealed, and gave it to the girl. She placed it on her forehead for a moment, and the next instant was playing Beethoven’s ‘Clair du Lune’ sonata."

The writer is presumably referring to Debussy's "Clair de Lune," misidentifying the composer.  You can read the account here:

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=CR19050613.2.60&srpos=32&e=-------en--20--21--txt-txTI-clairvoyance-------

The terms "artificial somnambulism" and "mesmerism" were used for hypnosis before the word "hypnosis" became popular. An 1891 newspaper article states this: "The testimony in favor of subjects in this artificial somnambulism being able—some of them—to see what is going on at a distance, to read sealed letters, and to hear a conversation taking place several miles away, seems to be so conclusive that many distinguished scholars, physicians and philosophers are firm believers in clairvoyance and clairaudience." 

Below is the first part of a news article from 1931:

Below is the remainder of the story:

You can read the accounts using the links below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1926-11-02/ed-1/seq-17/

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1926-11-02/ed-1/seq-24/

In the newspaper account below, we read of a Mr. Tyndall who is able to perform a "carriage test" of mind-reading or clairvoyance:

"Alexander J. Mclver Tyndall, the mind-reader, yesterday morning performed the carriage feat in the same manner in which it was performed by the late Mr. Bishop. On Saturday afternoon W. A. Spalding and W. O. Miller, two members of the committee appointed to superintend the experiment, hid a small silver match-safe in an oyster-stall of the Broadway market. Yesterday morning at 11 o'clock the committee, including Messrs. Spalding, Bennett, Miller, Dr. Bryant and two others, repaired to the Hollenbeck hotel. For a preliminary sample of Mr. Tyndall's peculiar power, a knife was hid in a crack of the brick wall surrounding the court back of the hotel, and the mind-reader, taking Mr. Spalding's hand, found the article without difficulty, although he bad been most carefully blindfolded. The committee, together with Mr. Tyndall, then descended to the street, where a carriage was in waiting. The mind-reader had again been securely blindfolded, and with Mr. Spalding mounted the driver's seat, while the rest of the committee occupied the body of the vehicle. Spalding placed his hand on Tyndall's forehead, concentrated his thoughts upon the article which had been hidden in the market, and the drive began. Tyndall had taken the reins and the whip, and as soon as he had thoroughly established communication between himself and his subject, he struck the horse a sharp blow and started down Spring Street at a sharp trot. At Fourth street be got off his course and turned down to Main at a gallop. Narrowly missing the curb at the corner, he turned down Main, and, with the horse still on the jump and the occupants of the carriage extremely nervous, he drove up Fifth Street to Broadway, down Broadway to Sixth, up Sixth to Hill, and down Hill street around old St. Vincent's college to the rear of the market. A door had been left open to admit the party. The mind-reader stopped the team, and, almost dragging Mr. Spalding by the hand, rushed by three or four doors, entered the one that was open, ran up to an ice-box, reached to the top of it behind a lot of rubbish, and placed his hand on a pasteboard box, which he lifted down. The match-box had been hidden in this box. The whole length of time occupied from the departure from the Hollenbeck until the finding of the hidden article was less than twenty minutes."

 You can read the full story here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84025968/1892-02-01/ed-1/seq-2/

Below is another newspaper account of a mind-reader or clairvoyant, dating from 1895. It refers to a horse-driven carriage:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89051168/1895-09-14/ed-1/seq-1/

Below is an 1886 report of mind-reading by W. Irving Bishop. Bishop became very well-known for his telepathy skills. He performed countless public demonstrations successfully, 

You can read the full account below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn91099608/1886-12-14/ed-1/seq-4/

Bishop would become very famous as a mind-reader, before suddenly dying three years later (during a telepathy demonstration) from what a newspaper called catalepsy. His death is reported in the 1889 article below, one with a title of "Death of the Great Mind Reader":

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87060190/1889-05-14/ed-1/seq-1/

Below is a newspaper account of the clairvoyance of Mollie Fancher of Brooklyn, New York:

Below are some excerpts from the newspaper account:

"Dr. S. Fleet Speir, an eminent Brooklyn physician, has attended Miss Fancher ever since her first illness. 'I am a firm believer in her power of clairvoyance,' he said. 'It exists. That is all I know, and is all anyone knows. For years and years she took no solid food. During as many ensuing years her lips were merely moistened occasionally with fruit juices and other slight nourishment....Dr. C. E. Adamson said that he had visited Miss Fancher on many occasions with Dr. Speir. He continued: 'I really believe that Miss Fancher possesses in the highest degree the perceptivity those fraud clairvoyants pretend to have. She is a wonder....You could take a bank check and hold the reverse side toward her, or in fact, shield it entirely from the view of anyone but yourself, and Mollie would tell you the contents of the check, the name of the bank, the amount and the signature. In the same way you could read a letter and Mollie would immediately reproduce the contents. Mind, the person testing her would not move the lips in reading or give any sign or indication by which she could gain the knowledge she exhibited.' ...."

We read in the account that the wonder show organizer P. T. Barnum (convinced of her clairvoyant powers) offered Mollie a fortune if she would become a star attraction of his traveling wonder shows, saying, "I offered other than money inducements, such as all possible luxuries of travel in a private car, the finest quarters at hotels, the best of attendance, and, in short, a very great betterment of her mode of living." But Mollie turned him down flat, saying that "millions would not tempt her to exhibit herself for a single day to the public."

We read in the account of the accidents that led to Mollie becoming permanently bed-bound: first a fall from a horse, and later a fall from a street car. Then we read this account narrated by a Rev. Talmadge:

"That was about twenty-one years ago. Her nervous system seems to be shattered. She had alternative spasms and trances for a month, and that was followed by a death like continuous trance of two months. Then came nine years of a wonderful and unexplained condition. She lay in bed in an unaltered position, apparently blind and with her eyes tightly closed. Trances were interspersed with spells of a sort of ecstacy, during which she told of marvelous visions and supernatural experiences. She seemed to have the gift of second sight [clairvoyance], and this was tested daily. Her physical rigidity remained a singular accompaniment of her mental exaltation."

"It was in 1875 or ’76 that a change came to pass in her. Her

body relaxed, and she professed to have no recollection of what occurred during the nine years. But her clairvoyance developed, and the stories are innumerable of her reading of sealed letters, her discernment of visitors before they came into her room, and of all imaginable sort of second sight [clairvoyance]. The experiments were made so numerously and carefully, and by gentlemen of such unassailable probity, that there can be no doubt of their genuineness. Within the past two or three years she has recovered some of the lost flesh—for she had become little more than a living skeleton—and her appearance was much less spectral. But her mind reading power has been unimpaired.”

The Mollie Fancher case is described in my post here, and in the long book here. 

Similar to the case above are the equally dramatic cases of Eliza Hamilton and Mrs. Croad, discussed in my post here, and the cases of Frederica Hauffe and Adele Magnot discussed in my post here.  The denialism or evidence-ignoring under which male science professors refuse to mention or study cases of clairvoyance and mediumship so well documented in females (with other cases such as here, here and here) is a lamentable example of lingering sexism in the patriarchy of academia, where the most empirically groundless theories of male professors often get 1000 times more attention than the most well-documented and philosophically relevant effects related to female psychics or mediums. 

Speaking of females who act as if they have psychic abilities, the Internet is currently abuzz about the recent interview you can see here, in which two twins (Brigitte and Paula Powers) describe their mother's encounter with a thief.  It seems that for most of the three-minute interview, the twins seem to speak in sync, with one twin saying exactly what the other twin says at the exact time the other twin says it, as they both describe something they recently saw.

Another sync-speaking interview with the two twins is below:

Astrobiologists Play "Keep Torturing the Data Until It Confesses"

 In 2023 Nikku Madhusudhan and four other scientists created quite a stir. They authored a paper entitled "Carbon-bearing Molecules in a Possible Hycean Atmosphere." Researching a planet called  K2-18 b revolving around another star, the paper claimed to have found "potential signs of dimethyl sulfide (DMS), which has been predicted to be an observable biomarker in Hycean worlds." The term "Hycean worlds" refers to planets in other solar systems that may be entirely covered by an ocean. The term "biomarker" refers to something that may be a sign of life. A very simple compound, dimethyl sulfide is not any type of building block of life. But on Earth dimethyl sulfide is sometimes produced by life. 

But there were some reasons why the attempt to insinuate a biomarker was very dubious. One reason was that the claims about "potential signs of dimethyl sulfide" was a kind of "reading tea leaves" affair, in which scientists were analyzing the faintest of faint signals, rather like someone squinting at something on the horizon miles away. That type of observation offers plenty of opportunity to see what you want to see, by interpreting marginal hard-to-interpret just-barely-detectable data in some way that fits your cherished desires, rather than a hundred other ways. 

Then there is the fact that when scientists do observations like this, they are picking up signals from many different chemical sources, with the signals being all mixed up. It's a recipe for false alarms, rather like someone in a very crowded high school cafeteria trying to listen to what someone at a different cafeteria table far away is saying. 

Then there is the fact that the paper failed to detect any water at this planet. The paper stated this:

"We do not find significant contributions due to H2O or NH3, but find 95% upper limits of -3.21 for log(XH2O) and -4.46 for log(XNH3 ) in the no-offset case. These upper limits are also consistent with those from the other retrieval cases, as shown in Table 2. The non-detections of both molecules are important considering their strong spectral features and detectability expected in the 0.9- 5.2 µm range (Madhusudhan et al. 2021; Constantinou & Madhusudhan 2022). The non-detection of H2O is at odds with its previous inference using the HST WFC3 spectrum in the 1.1-1.7 µm range (Tsiaras et al. 2019; Benneke et al. 2019a; Madhusudhan et al. 2020)."

It is generally agreed that water is absolutely necessary for any form of life of life to exist. The apparent non-presence of water at K2-18 b is a reason for thinking that life does not exist there.

Despite the paper's failure to detect water, and its weak mention of a mere mention of "potential signs of dimethyl sulfide," the world's "give us an inch and we'll take a mile" science news press began publishing a flood of misleading stories falsely claiming that some promising sign of life had been found. An example was this story on www.yahoo.com, which very badly misinformed us by stating this:

"The ability of a planet to support life depends on its temperature, the presence of carbon and probably liquid water. Observations from JWST seem to suggest that that K2-18b ticks all those boxes."

No, the scientific paper said that water was not detected on  K2-18b, even though a sensitive test was made that should have detected traces as low as 1 part in a billion. 

After the "sugar rush" of this flood of misleading stories, other scientists got busy examining the data on the distant planet K2-18 b, to see whether there was any decent evidence for dimethyl sulfide. In 2024 scientists produced a paper arguing that K2-18 b was not a "Hycaean" planet covered by an ocean, but instead a gas planet like Neptune with no ocean. The paper was "JWST Observations of K2-18b Can Be Explained by a Gas-rich Mini-Neptune with No Habitable Surface" authored by Nicholas F. Wogan and others. 

Then in early 2025 there was published the paper "A Comprehensive Reanalysis of K2-18 b's JWST NIRISS+NIRSpec Transmission Spectrum." It reanalyzed the data on K2-18 b and says "we find no statistically significant or reliable evidence for CO2 or DMS [dimethyl sulfide]." The paper had 16 authors, as compared to only five authors of Madhusudhan's paper. The 16 authors had found that Madhusudhan's claims about dimethyl sulfide at K2-18 b were unfounded. 

But now Madhusudhan is back with a new paper, trying to persuade us that dimethyl sulfide exists on K2-18 b. It is a paper entitled "New Constraints on DMS and DMDS in the Atmosphere of K2-18 b from JWST MIRI." He has some new observations, but only a scanty affair. It's a mere six hours of observations done with the James Webb Space Telescope, on April 26, 2025. Madhusudhan and his small team has put this data through some very arbitrary and gigantically convoluted analysis pipeline, one that was probably selected to maximize the chance of being able to claim that dimethyl sulfide exists on K2-18 b. The raw data gathered is shown below (Figure 1 from the paper).  Ignore the red line, which is not part of the raw data. 

Data like this does nothing to naturally suggest the existence of dimethyl sulfide. The James Webb Space Telescope has nothing like a "dimethyl sulfide detector" comparable to a carbon monoxide detector in a home. But it is possible for a scientist eagerly hoping to claim some evidence of dimethyl sulfide to arbitrarily analyze such data, to try and gin up something that can be claimed as evidence of dimethyl sulfide. 

At least seven long paragraphs of the paper discuss the incredibly elaborate rigmarole that is going on in Madhusudhan's analysis pathway.  It would be way, way too charitable to describe this analysis pathway as a Rube Goldberg machine. It would be more accurate to say that the analysis pathway is some incredibly weird analytic contraption that makes the crazy-looking machines of Rube Goldberg look simple and straightforward in comparison. Below is a paragraph giving us only one eighth of the "keep torturing the data until it confesses" craziness that was going on:

"We use the 1-D spectra time series to construct a white light curve (between 4.8-10 µm). We exclude the first 250 integrations, where the systematic trend is most extreme. We identify outliers on the white light curve, ± 2.5-σ from a rolling median, and replace the 1-D spectra corresponding to these outliers with linearly interpolated spectra from adjacent integrations. We scale the error bars on the light curve points such that the average error bar equals the observed standard deviation of the scatter in the out-of-transit residuals. We use emcee (Foreman-Mackey et al. 2013) to perform a Markov Chain Monte Carlo parameter estimation of the white light curve, fitting for a transit model with quadratic limb-darkening generated by pylightcurve (Tsiaras et al. 2016) multiplied by a systematic trend consisting of an exponential term and a linear term (as in section 2.1). In the white light curve, we fit for Rp/R∗, mid-transit time, a/R∗, i, quadratic limb-darkening coefficients and four parameters for the trend. Uniform priors are used except for a/R∗ and i, where we apply Gaussian priors based on values in Madhusudhan et al. (2023b) and use the Kipping parameterisation (Kipping 2013) for limb-darkening priors. We fix the period to 32.940045 days (Benneke et al. 2019a), the argument of periastron to 90o and the eccentricity to 0. The white light curve parameter estimates are given in Table 1." 

There are seven other paragraphs describing machinations and manipulations as bizarre and complex as these. It seems that at no point in these eight paragraphs do the authors give any justification for the weird convoluted spaghetti-code manipulations and transmogrifications that are occurring. There is nothing natural or straightforward about anything that is occurring.  Something comparable would be occurring if you took a photo of a pine tree, and passed it through many different arbitrarily selected photo filters, to finally end up with a photo looking like a sexy woman, without ever justifying your use of any of those filters. 

Finally the authors create some "model" that is basically a collection of guesses about 20 chemicals that might be in the atmosphere of this planet K2-18 b. Of course, their "model" includes their cherished gas dimethyl sulfide, because trying to gin up some evidence for that is the point of all these weird labors. Near the end of the paper, the authors triumphally announce that their model fits their pipeline-adjusted data.

This is pretty much just a big pile of baloney. No actual detection of dimethyl sulfide has occurred. The analysis pipeline is "keep torturing the data until it confesses" nonsense. There is no basis for any confidence in an analysis pipeline so convoluted and artificial.  We can conclude with 99% confidence that the described analysis pathway is untrustworthy. 

•  Nothing reliable has been done in this paper to show any likelihood of the existence of dimethyl sulfide on this planet K2-18 b. 
• Nothing reliable has been done in this paper to show any likelihood of the existence of any biomarker on this planet K2-18 b. 
• No observations have ever been done to show a likelihood that water exists on this planet  K2-18 b.
• In all likelihood (as suggested by the paper  of Wogan) the planet K2-18 b is a gas planet like Neptune, with neither an ocean nor a land surface, a type of planet that should be incapable of supporting life. Not just Wogan's paper but also this 2025 paper make this conclusion, with the paper stating, "Our results, therefore, render the mini-Neptune scenario the most likely interpretation for K2-18 b, given current observational constraints."

Imagine if you have took the six hours of data that Madhusudhan played with to get his results, and gave such data to ten different teams of astronomers, asking them to tell you what the data suggested, without telling where in space the data came from. Not even one of such teams would tell you that a biomarker had been found, and not one of them would say that any evidence of dimethyl sulfide had been found. Madhusudhan's funny business here merely shows that when scientists have their hearts set on reporting the existence of some thing they are eagerly hoping to find, and when they are willing to exert unlimited weird labors playing around with their data, then they may report finding some trace of what they were so fervently desiring to find. 

This is similar to what is going on in the world of neuroscience so frequently. Neuroscientists keep analyzing the noisy wavy blips of EEG readings, and they often report finding some faint sign of what they were eagerly hoping to find, after they subjected the data to many a strange convolution and contortion, in some arbitrary way, in a "keep torturing the data until it confesses" fashion. You can read about some examples of such a thing in my series of posts here. 

Postscript: An Ars Technica article published after this post is entitled "Skepticism greets claims of a possible biosignature on a distant world." We read this:

"The last issue is whether, if dimethyl sulfide is really present on K2-18b, it was produced by life as it is here on Earth. The answer appears to be 'possibly not': A 2024 paper indicates it's possible to produce the chemical through light-activated reactions."

A CNN article has a false clickbait headline, and a bad scientist misstatement.  But it least it has a good quote by astrophysicist Sara Seager, who states this:

"Now, with thousands of exoplanets in view, the temptation to overinterpret is strong — and some are jumping the gun. When it comes to K2-18 b, enthusiasm is outpacing evidence.”

The article also quotes a scientist named Schwieterman giving a technical reason for doubting that dimethyl sulfide was discovered at K2-18 b. 

To get an analogy what it is like for astronomers getting spectroscopic data from a distant planet, consider the visual below:

This text consists of many different sentences, overlaid on top of each other. Imagine trying to extract a particular word from such a mess. That's pretty much impossible. It's a similar deal for an astronomer getting spectroscopic data from another planet, because what such a person gets is signals from many different elements and compounds and chemicals, arriving all at once. Unless you are very lucky, there is almost no way to reliably extract which part is a signal from which chemical, compound or element. But with a mess like an astronomer gets in such a situation (or a mess like the one shown above), there are unlimited opportunities to see what you are fervently hoping to see. All that can be truthfully said about such a mess is something like this: "The data is too noisy for me to say much of anything reliable about it." 

I'm surprised to see some "question the hype" science journalism today in The Atlantic, where it's more typical to find credulous cheerleading of scientist boasts. Referring to Madhusudhan's team, an article there states this:

"The chemical [dimethyl sulfide] is one of several that could be responsible for the signal they found. And while it's the most likely one according to their models, others disagree." 

The article notes that dimethyl sulfide was found "in the dead, icy spray of a comet," meaning it isn't any reliable biomarker. "Abiotic" refers to something not involving life.  One paper is entitled "On the abiotic origin of dimethyl sulfide: discovery of DMS in the Interstellar Medium." Another paper is entitled "Evidence for Abiotic Dimethyl Sulfide in Cometary Matter."

In the Atlantic article we read a quote by astronomer Ignas Snellen stating that Madhusudhan's framing of his research is "irresponsible nonsense." 

Madhusudhan's overenthusiasm reminds me of the overenthusiasm of another astronomer, Avi Loeb. Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb somehow got the idea that a  2014 meteor (the CNEOS 2014-01-08 meteor) may have been an interstellar spacecraft that blew up high in the sky. Loeb ran a million-dollar oceanic expedition looking for what he hoped would be remnants of a crashed extraterrestrial spaceship, an expedition he organized.  He found no sign of anything looking like a spaceship or any of its parts. Loeb claims to have found tiny round specks only about a millimeter in size. All that he recovered were some tiny metal specks. The metal specks he found are just like metal sea specks found all over the world.  But  Loeb tried to suggest that he may have discovered smithereens of an exploded interstellar spacecraft. 

There was nothing special about the specks Loeb and his team gathered (as I discuss here), and there is nothing special about the data Madhusudhan got from K2-18 b. Madhusudhan's readings are just like the readings from quite a few extrasolar planets that must be lifeless because they are outside of the habitable zone of the stars they revolve around. Loeb got a nice book deal out of his glory-hounding efforts, and one can wonder whether Madhusudhan's similar efforts may eventually pay off financially for him. 

A National Geographic page interviews some experts about Madhusudhan's recent claims. Some excerpts:

" 'I'm pretty skeptical of this claim, and I wish the press coverage better reflected the skepticism of the astronomical and astrobiological community,' wrote astrobiologist Joshua Krissansen-Totton of the University of Washington in an email....Another researcher, astronomer Ryan MacDonald at the University of Michigan went further, criticizing the three sigma claim as 'statistical hacking' on Bluesky....'The simplest explanation of this planet is a very thick gas-giant atmosphere with no habitable surface,' says exoplanet scientist Nick Wogan of NASA Ames. ...And we already know that nature can produce DMS [dimethyl sulfide] without life. Last year, chemist Nora Hänni at the University of Bern and her colleagues found DMS on comet 67P—not exactly a habitable world. Other researchers have found it in interstellar space. And last year, chemist Eleanor Browne of the University of Colorado, Boulder and her colleagues showed that DMS can be produced in light-fueled chemical reactions in lab experiments with synthetic atmospheres.

'There's no reason to understand [DMS] as a unique consequence of life,' says Mathis. 'I just, for the life of me, cannot figure out exactly what the argument is about: why they think this could even potentially be indicative of life, given that we've seen abiotic sources.' ”

Post-postscript: An article at Gizmodo.com quotes some experts discussing Madhusudhan's recent paper:

Planetary chemist Oliver Shorttle says "I do not believe the report of DMS in the spectrum of K2-18 b moves the astrobiological needle." He states this:

"There is presently no requirement from the data that this planet hosts liquid water oceans and a climate amenable to life. In fact, based on the data there is every reason to believe the climate will be far too hot for liquid water oceans, with the deep atmosphere potentially being underlain by oceans of magma, not liquid water. For this reason, even if 1 and 2 return a DMS detection, our expectation should be that this [molecule] has emerged in a lifeless, hot, sulfur and hydrogen rich atmosphere and ask ourselves what the atmospheric chemistry is that would have enabled this. Believing instead that this is DMS of biological origin would require overturning our every expectation as to the climate of this planet, without any other reason to do this from the data."

Astrophysicist Ignas Snellen says this:

"The whole thing is completely blown out of proportions.... The research team finds bumps in their spectrum. It is not clear whether these are real, and if so, what they could be caused by. There could be dozens of molecules (if real), or even cloud features. What do the authors do? They just look whether DMS [dimethyl sulfide] could cause this (and add DMDS). They ignore the dozens of other species [i.e. non-biological sources of molecules] that could cause this bump and call it a day. If I had been the referee, I would have stopped this publication right there. There is no reason to invoke astrobiology, let alone call it the biggest breakthrough or whatever....In the long run this will hurt astronomy when nobody will take us seriously anymore."

An NPR story says that  a scientist has analyzed the most recent data from K2-18 b, and has found it has no signal of any kind. We read this:

"The results he got suggested that there's too much noise in the data to draw any conclusions. Rather than seeing a bump or a wiggle that indicated a signal, 'the data is consistent with a flat line,' says Taylor, adding that more observations from the telescope are needed to know what can be reliably said about this planet's atmosphere."

Physics professor Peter Coles has this to say on this topic:

"The DMS and DMDS in the title refer to Dimethyl Sulphide and Dimethyl Disulphide respectively. These are interpreted by the authors as biosignatures. There are two main problems with this claim. One is that DMS and DMDS are not necessarily biosignatures in the first place; see here for the reasons. The other is that there isn’t even any evidence for the detection of DMS or DMDS anyway...In statistical terms this is a non-detection. The Bayes Factor used in the paper to quantify the evidence for a model with DMS and/or DMDS over one without is just 2.62 in the logarithm. That’s not a detection by any stretch of the imagination; to be anywhere near convincing a Bayes Factor has to be at least 100. The subsequent cherry-picking of the data to improve the apparent probability of a detection is just statistical flummery....That the claim has somehow morphed into the 'the strongest evidence for life beyond our solar system' is absurd. The most charitable thing I can say is that Prof. Madhusudhan must have been carried away by enthusiasm. This doesn’t reflect very well on Cambridge University either."

Around May 22 we had the paper "Insufficient evidence for DMS and DMDS in the atmosphere of K2-18 b. From a joint analysis of JWST NIRISS, NIRSpec, and MIRI observations." Dismissing claims that any biomarkers or signs of life were found at planet K2-18 b, the paper concludes this:

"Our joint analysis of the panchromatic (0.6 - 12 um) spectrum of K2-18 b finds insufficient evidence for the presence of DMS [dimethyl sulfide] and/or DMDS [dimethyl disulfide] in the atmosphere of the planet. Furthermore, other molecules containing methyl functional groups (e.g., ethane) with absorption bands similar to DMS/DMDS provide an equally good fit to the data. We find that any marginal preferences are the result of limiting the number of molecules considered in the model and oversensitivity to small changes between data reductions. Our results confirm that there is no statistical significance for DMS or DMDS in K2-18 b's atmosphere."

Fake Physics Salesmen Will Not Help Us Avoid Fakery in Science Research

An article from not long ago discusses fraud in science research. We read this shocking statement (I'll boldface part of it):

"The U.S. financial system is hardly the greatest edifice of justice in the world. Yet, it demonstrates a basic level of self-policing, effort to uphold professional standards, and accountability to the rest of society. Academic institutions fall far short of these minimal standards. Known serial frauds are sheltered by their bosses and feted by their peers. The culture encourages this at every step of the way, starting with PhD candidates ordered to produce a positive result by any means necessary, continuing with coauthors and grantmakers who can’t be bothered to look at the data and check whether it makes any sense, all the way to department heads and famous bestsellers being widely cited even after they’ve been caught. Those who do not commit fraud themselves usually tolerate it in their peers. The minority who will not tolerate frauds usually weed themselves out quietly. I have lost count of how many friends of friends entered a PhD program, had an adviser who tacitly or explicitly demanded they commit fraud to get publishable results, and quit in disgust without raising a public stink. What that says about those who remain is not encouraging....With some honorable exceptions, most academics don’t care very much about the capital-T Truth....More likely, fraud will grow more and more common as young scientists realize that lies are the best way to advance their careers and that serious punishment is about as likely as being struck by lightning."

Towards its end, the article suggests that "hope rests with truthseekers outside academia." The author states this:

"More likely, reform will come through circumvention from outside the academic system. There is no shortage of people who pursue the sacred quest for Truth. Increasingly, they are not pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge in peer-reviewed journals and university campuses, but in fringe niches of internet discourse. Because the internet commentariat’s intellectual elite is more attentive to an argument’s substance than whether it observes the bureaucratic forms, these circles are much less vulnerable to the problems which afflict academia."

The article then refers us to a blogger that it claims as a great example of a truth-seeker.  I started reading his posts at the blogger's site. I was not very encouraged by the first posts I read, in which the blogger lectures us at great length about rationality, and tries to pass himself off as a rationalist. My experience has been that people lecturing you about rationality are often people clinging to irrational dogmas.  Often lectures about rationality are excuses for avoiding observational reports that conflict with someone's worldview such as a materialist worldview. The self-described "rationalist" will claim that 1001 types of things are "irrational," on the grounds that they do not fit in with his idea of how nature works.  That's a defective approach. It's much better to closely study observations that defy your expectations about how nature works, and modify such expectations and assumptions when necessary, rather than throwing away such observations and calling them "irrational." 

In one post the blogger repeats one of the most glaring errors of today's Darwinism. He states, "Evolution is powered by a systematic correlation between the different ways that different genes construct organisms, and how many copies of those genes make it into the next generation. " Genes do not construct organisms.  Genes only specify the amino acids sequences that make up protein molecules.  Genes have no specification of anything larger than a protein molecule. An organism is built out of a skeletal system and organ systems. Organ systems are built from organs and other components. Organs are built from tissues, which are built from cells, which are built from organelles, which are built from protein complexes, which are built from individual protein molecules.  By claiming that genes construct organisms, the blogger is saying something as wrong as claiming that nails and screws construct apartment buildings. 

Later in the same essay the blogger refers most erroneously to "fox genes which construct foxes" and "rabbit genes which construct rabbits." Genes do not construct visible things, and have no specification of any anatomy or cells. In the same article we have very nonsensical shadow-speaking in which humans are described as the faintest shadows of themselves. The blogger states, "We are simply the embodied history of which organisms did in fact survive and reproduce." Oops, our "rationalist" has given us the silliest kind of irrational shadow-speaking, in which humans are depicted as a billion times less than what they are. 

In another essay the blogger repeats the same errors, erroneously claiming that "DNA constructs protein brains." DNA is an inert molecule with no power of construction, and no specification of anything bigger than a protein molecule. DNA does not even have a specification of a neuron or any of the organelles that make up a neuron. 

A big section of the blogger's blog posts is devoted to selling reductionism. Very strangely, he states in one of his posts, "Ultimately, reductionism is just disbelief in fundamentally complicated things." It is rather obvious that we do not have here a careful student of biology, which everywhere presents us with examples of mountainously complex and enormously complicated things. Nowhere at the site do we get a sign that this blogger is a very thorough scholar of biology or any of the sciences.  It sounds as if he is relying mainly on armchair reasoning rather than in-depth investigation of facts and observations.  

In a later essay, the blogger makes this confession:

"So by the laws of science, if psychic powers are discovered, non-reductionism wins. I am therefore confident in dismissing psychic powers as a priori implausible, despite all the claimed experimental evidence in favor of them."

The blogger is apparently a psi denialist, one of the many so-called "rationalists" who refuse to study and accept two hundred years of compelling written evidence for the existence of telepathy and clairvoyance.  Nowhere in his very many blog posts do we have any sign  that the blogger has studied the evidence for paranormal phenomena. 

In another long section on the site, the blogger starts giving us posts trying to sell one of the most absurd and extravagant pieces of nonsense that humans have ever constructed:  the Fake Physics of Hugh Everett's "many worlds" theory that there are an infinite number of copies of you in parallel universes. Supported by zero evidence, this Fake Physics lunacy is as irrational as any doctrine ever taught. It is also the exact opposite of reductionism. Instead of stripping things down by reducing, the believer in Everett's "many worlds" theory is doing the worst conceivable extravagance in needlessly postulating an infinity of unobservable things. 

After reading this section, it becomes crystal-clear that the recommended blogger is neither a rationalist nor a reductionist. No one who tries to get us to believe in about the most irrational doctrine ever constructed can claim to be a rationalist, unless we define that term so that it includes the most irrational thinkers.  And no one claiming that there are an infinite number of copies of you in parallel universes can credibly claim to be a reductionist. The blogger loses all credibility when he most ludicrously states, " I write as if the existence of many-worlds were an established fact, because it is," referring to the doctrine of parallel universes, which is not supported by the slightest speck of evidence. The blogger in question lacks even a high-school diploma, so we need not take seriously his opinion on this matter, which is a matter related to the most abstruse quantum mechanics he does not understand. 

Materialism at its maddest, Everett's fake physics "many worlds" lunacy is morally destructive nonsense. It is morally destructive because anyone believing in it will tend to lose any basis for moral action. For example, if you are driving in winter, and you see a small child without a coat wandering on the road, you may say to yourself, "There are an infinite number of parallel universes in which that child will survive, and an infinite number of parallel universe in which she freezes to death, so I need not bother to help the child."  Never expect moral behavior from anyone who believes in this loony nonsense. Always expect dishonest speech from such people, who tend to supply us with abundant examples of their deceptive speech. 

For  the blogger to teach this most nonsensical of doctrines and also to try and pass himself off as a rationalist and reductionist is the most laughable farce. We should classify all believers in Everett's "many worlds" nonsense as being the most irrational of thinkers, and also thinkers engaged in something the exact opposite of reductionism.  

The author of the article with the opening quote gave us a good article exposing the problem of fraud and misconduct in today's scientific research. But near the end of the article he has given us a very big bum steer by mentioning a particular blogger as someone outside of academia we should go to for guidance. We should seek out diligent scholars outside academia; but we won't help fight the problem of fake research in academia by reading the posts of Fake Physics salesmen such as the recommended blogger. 

Postscript: A recent scientific paper informs us about how universities and colleges are covering up evidence of fraud and researcher misconduct:

"The vast majority of misconduct investigation reports, however, remain hidden from view. While summaries from the ORI and the US National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) Office of Inspector General are useful, they are not very detailed, and in the case of the NSF are carefully anonymized....And while public universities like Ohio State are subject to laws pertaining to the disclosure of public records, in our experience, such statutes in many states are not helpful for these types of records even for public universities. Some exempt investigation reports because they are considered personnel records; others require requesters to be residents of the relevant state; and still others consider all investigation reports to be drafts by claiming they are subject to revision until some final — and often malleable — decision by a state or federal agency... Universities often use exorbitant charges, based on the costs of legal review of relevant documents, to win their wars of attrition against requesters. And private universities are not subject to public records laws at all, of course....Recent experience suggests that in many cases, science is failing to self-regulate, prioritizing self-interests — on the part of both institutions and individuals — over reform. The existence of schemes such as citation cartels, paper mills, rigged peer review, and other abuses are clear indications many scientists are willing to take steps to game the publishing system. The rapid encroachment of artificial intelligence into the production of journal articles poses perhaps the largest threat yet to the integrity of scientific research."