Tetherd Cow Ahead

Oh dear. Ohdearohdearohdearohdearohdear.

Sometimes someone turns on the Stupid tap and the washer just ruptures and Stupid starts gushing out all over the shop AND YOU CAN’T STOP IT. These last few weeks have been like that, what with Melissa Rogers and her daft ShooTag™, the resurgence of Prophet Pete, and now…

The two largest supermarket chains in Britain, Tesco and Marks & Spencer, have started advising their customers to be aware on which days of the week they choose to taste wine because it will effect the taste. This breathtaking piece of utter folly is so risible that I had to check the date of the Guardian article several times as I was reading to keep reminding myself it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke.

This is the skinny (although I do advise you to read the article to get a sense of the full absurdity):

Tesco and its rival Marks & Spencer, which sell about a third of all wine drunk in Britain, now invite critics to taste their ranges only at times when the biodynamic calendar suggests they will show at their best.

The calendar has been published for the last 47 years by a gardening great-grandmother called Maria Thun, who lives in rural Germany. She categorises days as “fruit”, “flower”, “leaf” or “root”, according to the moon and stars. Fruit and flower are normally best for tasting, and leaf and root worst.

To put it succinctly – two major UK retailers are consulting and recommending wine ‘horoscopes’.

Jo Aherne, winemaker for Marks & Spencer manages to make herself look like a complete twat (and the wine tasting fraternity even more filled with blarney than it already is) by claiming:

Before the tasting, I was really unconvinced, but the difference between the days was so obvious I was completely blown away.

Once again we see the that little crack of Subjectivity in the door of Reason being jimmied open by the great big club foot of Pseudoscience. Nowhere are we offered any evidence that these taste tests were blind tests, let alone the double blind trials that a scientific assessment would demand. These people are just espousing an opinion, and, worse, an opinion based on highly subjective appraisals of something that is to most people an arcane field of expertise. This is a situation busting for pseudoscientific exploitation.*

Tesco’s senior product development manager, Pierpaolo Petrassi, says of the tastings:

It may be a little step beyond what consumers can comprehend.

Oh yeah. You’re so right there Pierpaolo old chap. I’m certainly having trouble comprehending it.

Perhaps the most extraordinary part of this Guardian article, though, is slipped in almost unobtrusively:

The Guardian tested the theory this week and tasted the same wines on Tuesday evening, a leaf day, then again on Thursday evening, a fruit day. Five out of seven bottles showed a marked improvement.

[Checks date for third time. Nope, not April 1]

The Guardian, a world class newspaper, known for its usually sober news and feet-on-the-ground reporting is endorsing this piece of flimsy superstitious mumbo jumbo! Jesus H. Christ – where did I put that shifting spanner! The basement is awash and the stuff is leaking into the hallway!

As the article trails off and the loony wagon heads into the sunset, our keen correspondent throws a small bone to the wolves:

In other quarters, doubts remain. Waitrose’s† wine department has investigated the idea and cannot see a correlation. Many scientists have little time for biodynamic wine, pointing out that the movement’s guru, Rudolf Steiner, claimed to have conceived the concept after consulting telepathically with spirits beyond the realm of the material world. Among his other works are claims that the human race is as old as the Earth and descended from creatures with jelly-like bodies, and a belief that men’s passions seep into the Earth’s interior, where they trigger earthquakes and volcanoes.‡

Uh-huh. And so, Mr Booth, Guardian correspondent, you’re lending credibility to this wine horoscope idea exactly why?

So, after digesting all that, consider the following:

•Comprehensive blind taste tests conducted by the American Association of Wine Economists have revealed that, if the variables are hidden from the testers, then for the majority of people there is no correlation between the cost of a wine and its perceived enjoyment. In other words, if they don’t know what it cost, most people can’t tell what kind of ‘quality’ they’re drinking. On the other hand:

•Other blind tests show that the perceived expense of a wine, if known, positively influences perceived enjoyment. And:

•A European Commission study from 2001 determined that in excess of 50% of those interviewed considered astrology a science. A Harris Poll conducted in 2003 found that 30% of Americans thought that the position of the stars and planets affect people’s lives.

From those three pieces of data, I leave it to you to extrapolate what’s going on here. My suggestion to readers from the UK is that you should, forthwith, buy your wine from Waitrose.

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*Much like the field of high-end domestic audio. And unlike wine-tasting, that is a province I know very well. But as I read all the hi-jinks with this wine stuff, that same peculiar odour – a blend of of fish and bullshit – starts to fill the air. You find this problem anywhere that there is a substantial amount of subjectivity and a stratosphere of opinionated ‘experts’.

†Another, obviously smarter, UK chain.

‡Well, that last bit about the Elder Ones is totally true of course.

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My ongoing war with Telstra resulted in the above Overdue notice last month (after extended phone calls, and numerous ‘Our records are definitely correct sir!’† exhortations, revealed that a recent $700 bill was – surprise – their error). It smacks so much of petulance that one wonders whether or not they have a ‘Was SO Your Mistake!’ Department.

I was tempted to send them one of Peter Popoff’s pennies just to see what eventuated.

Further entertainment was provided by the Telstra Fembot during this time:

Fembot: Remember you can interrupt me at any time, if you…

Me: [interrupting] Oh yes, don’t you worry, I will.

Fembot: …[confused pause]… I’m having trouble understanding you. I’ll get a Customer Service representative.

After I discovered that particular loophole, I happily interrupted ‘her’ every time.

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*A friend of mine relates the following story: at a party, making polite chat, she kept wondering why an acquaintance seemed to be having trouble with another friend’s religious leanings. The conversation had gone like this:

†I was completely taken-aback by the insistence by the operators that Telstra could simply not have made the error, since they continue to make egregious mistakes on my cell phone bill. So far, the Blunder Count is Me: 0, Telstra 7

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As it seems that Prophet Peter Popoff is letting his attention slip in regard to the matter of making me wealthy beyond my wildest dreams, I thought it was time I fired off a little reminder to him, along with some appropriate aides-mémoire. He appears more than keen to send me an evidently never-ending stream of trinkets so the least I can do is reciprocate.

I think he will be impressed with the accompanying prayer aids. I know I was. Here is the ten thousand dollars I’m donating to his ministry (you’ve seen that before of course).

Here is the paper facsimile of Jesus.

And here are the genuine nails from the cross.

They make a very attractive package!

I’m off to the post box now. I’m looking forward to my imminent wealth, and I just want to say here and now that I’m not going to forget a single one of you – when Prophet Pete comes through with the goods, there’s a big party at my place and plane tickets and accomodation for all international Acowlytes.

All of you, quick smart, off to pray now – big things are just around the corner! I can feel the flowings in my water!

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*Pat. Pending

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I learnt from a very early age that it’s bad form to kick someone when they’re down. But heck, some rules are made for the breakin’. And yes, I confess, The Reverend really doesn’t like to be called ‘ignorant’ (unless it’s by someone who’s earned the right to do that by being more knowledgeable than I am, in which case I will humbly take my smackdown).

Anyway, in this particular case, the victim is kicking herself (harder than I ever could), so all I need to do is sit back and watch.

Melissa Rogers, (CEO of the woo-powered ShooTag™ you will remember), has evidently been hitting the PR circuit hard, and her daft device is getting coverage from here to Weldon Spring Heights. In doing so she’s left a trail of howlers in her wake, including the risible:

It doesn’t hurt the flea, it doesn’t hurt the pet and it doesn’t hurt the planet.

…which are, come to think of it, probably the only true words she’s spoken about ShooTag™ because it’s pretty likely it doesn’t actually do anything. Still, it’s really nice to know the fleas are OK, even if one does wonder how OK they’ll be when they run out of a food source and die horribly of hunger. But enough of insect empathy – the thing that really caused me to choke on my cheese fries was the following priceless, almost frameable quote from the comments in the Pet News section of ZooToo.com (in full, just so you know I’m not lifting it out of context):

Melissa Rogers:

I would say that any pet that is not scratching or chewing at fleas is a happy pet! Shootag only adds a frequency to the already expended energy field of the pet. Take a look at Geoffrey West’s work and the science E=M 3/4.

Unbelievable.

Ms Rogers’ comments throughout the ZooToo site are so numerous and filled with exhortations to ‘go-shootag.com-and-buy’ that they verge on spam. Pretty much every statement she makes is farcical, but that particular one takes the cake. For a start, she’s pulled Einstein’s famous mass/energy equivalence formula totally out of her ass, getting one of the most legendary equations in history (and simplest to remember, I might add) completely wrong. Even if it was right, it means absolutely nothing in this context, and one must speculate it’s the only scientific equation she (half) knows*. How she thinks it sounds even a fraction of the way to being impressive simply beggars belief.

In addition, she gushes about ‘energy fields’ – a staple of smoke-and-mirrors pseudoscience – making some kind of fatuous claim in regard to a pet’s ‘already expended energy field’ (what the crap does that mean?) and, worst of all in my book, completely misrepresents scientist Geoffrey West from the Santa Fe Institute, who is doing some extraordinary, clever, cutting-edge biological thinking, and who would NEVER endorse a preposterous trinket like ShooTag™. This is, no doubt, from where she gets the idea of ‘fractals’ that she mentioned in her previous comment on The Cow – West, a former particle physicist, has advanced some very interesting science that deals with mathematical scaling laws in biology, particularly in metabolic behaviour as related to organism size and lifespan. With a colleague, he hypothesises that these scaling laws are related to the hydrodynamics of living systems, which in turn are delegated by networks that assume fractal structures. Rogers has probably picked up on the vibe that West is a bit of a maverick and his ideas are challenging to mainstream science.† But this does not make him a kook – he is still a scientist of some reputation, and follows proper scientific protocol.

It’s a depressing experience trudging around the ShooTag™ PR trail in the footsteps of Ms Rogers & co. Credulous tv shows looking for filler give her product a favourable airing; trade shows spruik her wares without so much as a critical blink of the eye; the press repeats the ShooTag™ promotional propaganda verbatim. No wonder these kinds of flim-flam scammers do so well – they’re selling stuff to people who have no brains to think for themselves!

And nowhere, nowhere, is there any serious, informed discussion of the outrageous claims made about ShooTag™. Ms Rogers says in several of her comments that the science behind ShooTag™ ‘will be revealed’ in due course, but I have no doubt that she and her cohorts will be long gone with their cash before that day ever comes.

Addendum:

‘Creates and invisible force field!!!’‡

As if to taunt me, this morning’s email spam contained something I’ve not seen before: an ad for a ‘pest control system’ that works on the same principles as ShooTag™ (ie, magic posing as science):

Simply plug in a single Crappex unit and it immediately turns the wiring in your home into a giant digital pest repeller creating an invisible digital force field. Chase mice, rats and roaches from your home by interfering with their nervous systems.

Here, the manufacturers are using ‘digital’ as their magic word, and asking us to believe that their ‘invisible digital force field’ is as holy-water-to-a-vampire for mice, rats and cockroaches (ie, things we consider ‘pests’) but, by inference, somehow discriminates in favour of cute little kitties and puppies. HOW??? WHY!!!???

Even hungry zombies would reject the brains of people stupid enough to buy these things.

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*It’s depressing beyond belief that no-one in the comments section of this site even takes her to task on this vapid nonsense. On the contrary, many of the contributors seem entirely prepared to take her at face value, happily digesting her ‘green’ solutions claptrap and raising a ‘you go girl!’ fist in agreement.

†The Santa Fe Institute and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, both of which West calls home, are known for their encouragement of challenging thinking.

‡Another ‘Detection of Hokum Rule of Thumb’ must surely be: ‘Watch for terrible spelling and bad copy proofing’.

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According to Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Gazeta, doctors operating on a 28 year-old Artyom Sidorkin for diagnosed lung cancer were astonished to find, instead of the expected tumour, a living fir tree. Mr Sidorkin had been experiencing strong pain and coughing up blood, and xrays showed a growth consistent with a lung cancer diagnosis. The tree was successfully removed.

They have now sent the patient home, advising him not to smoke through the summer months due to a further possible risk of forest fires.

Story here.

Folks! I’ve had a communication from one of the purveyors of ShooTag™ which, I think you’ll agree needs to be awarded headline status, rather than languish in the Comments on this post.

Melissa Rogers, the person credited as CEO of ShooTag™ on the About page on the ShooTag™ site, has found her way to The Cow (whilst vanity-searching her product, we must assume). Well, of course, I said things she didn’t like so she found time to mount her best and most coherent argument against my point of view.

I reprint her thoughts for you here in full.

Melissa Rogers adds:

Your response proves that you are not disaplined in physics or quantum physics. The statements that you made about frequencies being the same as a cell phone demonstrate you lack of science knowledge. There are many types of frequencies and ours are not radio frequencies. When we go from patent pending to full patent protection, then all of our sceince (all three applications) will be disclosed. Instead of making a judgement without knowledge, try it. Actually, try the people mosquito tag. If you usually get bitten by mosquitoes, you will know if you do not get mosquito bites -won’t you? If would give you more credibility to have a quantum physicist contact us and then let him explain the science to you. Otherwise it just makes you sound ignorant! Technology is changing very quickly and most people have no science background to understand how any of it works. Did you know that radios were first made with crystals? did you know that digital items are made with liquid crystals? Did you know that cell phones use fractal geometry to make a minute antenna that uses your energy field to extend? Do your homework and try the people mosquito tag. See for yourself.

Now, let’s see:

•Your response proves that you are not disaplined in physics or quantum physics.

Melissa, unlike you, I’m not pretending I am disciplined in physics or quantum physics in any formal way. I’m not the one trying to take money from people based on my ‘expertise’ and so my credentials are not the ones under scrutiny. Nevertheless, I am very well read in both physics and quantum physics, and I plainly know a great deal more about these sciences than you do. I certainly know enough to understand that your page on The Science Behind ShooTag™ is a whole lot of waffle that makes no scientific sense whatsoever.

•The statements that you made about frequencies being the same as a cell phone demonstrate you lack of science knowledge.

Whoa! Hang on there pardner! For a start, it’s your site that bandies around the the words ‘electromagnetic frequencies’ without any discrimination at all. I am completely aware of the scope of the electromagnetic spectrum and my point was that you use this catch-all description without having the vaguest idea of what it means. I don’t know whether or not your frequencies are the same as those of a cell phone because you never specify. You just claim, in the scatty manner of peddlers of pseudoscience, that your product ‘uses electromagnetic frequencies’. That’s as daft as saying it uses ‘vibrations’.

•There are many types of frequencies and ours are not radio frequencies.

Really? So you think mobile phones use radio frequencies then? Um, exactly who’s the science dummy here? So, the frequencies that your device uses – they’re ultraviolet, maybe? X-ray? Gamma ray? Perhaps they operate in the visible light spectrum? You haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about, have you?

And, may I ask, does your device have a power source? From my investigation of your site it doesn’t seem so. If this is the case, then please don’t attempt to sell me the idea that it ‘radiates frequencies’ of any kind at all. This would be flying in the face of all known physics. Unless of course it’s radioactive, and I think I’m taking a pretty safe punt that it’s not.

•When we go from patent pending to full patent protection, then all of our sceince (all three applications) will be disclosed.

Yeah, now, see, you claim your patent is pending, and if that is even the case (which I doubt), it would be because it hasn’t been awarded. We can discuss this further if you actually ever get a patent.

•If would give you more credibility to have a quantum physicist contact us and then let him explain the science to you.

Oh, I would LOVE to hear an explanation from a quantum physicist. PLEASE get one to write to me. But don’t bother if it’s Prof. William Nelson – he is NOT a quantum physicist.

•Technology is changing very quickly and most people have no science background to understand how any of it works.

Yes, I’m afraid that is entirely true. Most people have very little understanding of science. If they did, gewgaws such as ShooTag™ would never see the light of day. Melissa, what your product offers is in no way based on science. If it was, you’d be able to clearly communicate the ideas behind your device in a way that doesn’t sound completely addled to anyone with knowledge of scientific principles. You’d have conducted properly run double blind experiments, and accumulated data that confirms your results from unbiased researchers. You’d have submitted your science to peer-reviewed periodicals, and have the endorsement of real scientists instead of a lone nutcase who has a track record of ridiculous claims and refers to fictional publications (the ‘Quantum Agriculture Journal’, for example).

•Otherwise it just makes you sound ignorant!

Really? You seem strangely desperate to try and make me seem ignorant. That’s what’s called an ad hominem argument, and is usually the last resort of someone who has run out of actual facts.

•Did you know that radios were first made with crystals? did you know that digital items are made with liquid crystals?

Um, yeah, but so what? Is that supposed to impress me? Is it an example of your superior science knowledge, perhaps? What’s it got to do with anything? How does it relate to your invention?

Oh crap. Something just occurred to me – please don’t tell me that the ShooTag™ uses some kind of ‘crystals’. That would be most dismal. Or actually, do tell me that, if you like! I think that would firmly stake your credibility in this argument.

•Did you know that cell phones use fractal geometry to make a minute antenna that uses your energy field to extend?

Now, do you even have the foggiest idea what that means? Do you know, or understand any fractal geometry? What ‘energy field’ are you talking about? Extend what? How? Why?

Or is it, perhaps, that like the words ‘magnetic’ and ‘quantum’, you’re throwing in ‘fractal’ because, for you, it’s some kind of mysterious magical notion that you believe will somehow be impressive? Well, sadly, it might bluff those who know nothing about such things, but really, you’ve picked the wrong person on whom to use that kind of language. I work with fractal math. I know what it does and what it means. What you are attempting to say does not in any way sound sensible to me.

•Do your homework and try the people mosquito tag. See for yourself.

I shouldn’t need to try your product to know that it’s plausible, in the same way that I shouldn’t need to buy, oh, toaster or something to ‘see if it works’ – I know that the toaster is likely to function as its manufacturer claims because the scientific principles on which it’s based make sense.

You imply that you know more about science than I do, and yet you don’t even have the most basic understanding of scientific process. I’m not the one you need to convince. Convince people who have no vested interest in your product (that is, NOT people who’ve forked over money, or friends, or credulous tv presenters). Convince unbiased scientists, using properly conducted scientific trials. Take all the spurious anecdotal ‘evidence’ off your website and replace it with some properly endorsed rational thinking.

I reiterate what I said in my original post – if your science is genuine, and your device does what you claim, then doctors working in malaria zones all over the world will be beating your door down. That would certainly be convincing evidence.

But while you continue to invoke dubious ‘scientists’ like ‘Professor’ William Nelson, mythical gazettes like the ‘Quantum Agriculture Journal’ and spout equivocal gibberish such as that which you use in ‘The Science Behind ShooTag™’, your credibility is near zero. Your small pool of personal ‘It-worked-for-me-TOO!’ testimonials may serve to fleece gullible pet owners of their dollars, but it doesn’t constitute any kind of science.

Come back and push my face it in when you’ve solved the world’s malaria problems (which, if your device works as claimed, should be a trivial undertaking and be achievable in a scant year or so – or maybe you don’t think that’s a worthwhile use for your invention?). I promise I will make a full and humble apology in that event.

Until then, all you have to do is show me where the science is in all your claims.