One of the themes of this blog, reflecting my skeptical philosophy, is that our brains construct reality – meaning that our perceptions, memories, internal model of reality, narrative of events, and emotions are all constructed artifacts of our neurological processing. This is, in my opinion, an undeniable fact revealed by neuroscience.

This realization, in turn, leads to neuropsychological humility – putting our perceptions, memories, thoughts, and feelings into a proper perspective. Thinking that you know what you saw, or you remember clearly, or that your “gut” feeling is a reliable moral compass, is nothing but naive arrogance.

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of constructed reality to fully accept is our morality. When we have a deep moral sense of what is right and wrong, we feel as if the universe dictates that it is so. Our moral senses feel objectively right to us. But this too is just an illusion, an evolved construction of our brains.

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On two occasions I was invited to UCONN to debate the scientific legitimacy of homeopathy - in 2007, and again in March of this year. I often directly confront or debate those who hold an unscientific belief. Sometimes this is criticized as being pointless, but that claim is premised on the assumption that the only point to such a debate is convincing the person on the other side, but that is not the case.

I have several goals in direct confrontation: to better understand the claims and logic of those holding that view, to explore my own position and improve my ability to explain it, and to demonstrate scientific and critical thinking with respect to this issue to the audience.

The more recent homeopathy debate was between me an Andre Saine, a Canadian naturopath and homeopath. During the debate we barely scratched the surface of this complex topic, so we both agreed to continue our discussion in writing, moderated by Peter Gold who organized the debate.

Here is Andre’s first question to me, and my answer.

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I recently received this question:

I heard Seth Shostak mention in one of the “Big Picture Science” podcasts, that we are unconscious when we sleep.

I disagree. This is an altered state of consciousness.

Then.. you go further…

What about a COMA? Still not truly unconscious. People have memories after they wake up of people talking to them. They just don’t know where they come from.

What about NDE’s?

C’mon… if you were truly unconscious (regardless of scientific unmeasurability of brainwave activity) , you are still either having thoughts or remembering the thoughts before you wake up.

I contend that TRUE unconsciousness is ACTUAL death. (not clinical death – a decision made by instruments) The inability to think AT ALL in any capacity as if you had never been born.

Please discuss this? Am I wrong?

I do not believe in dualism. I trust that as I lay dying, I may have experiences that feel like fantastic dreams… but when I actually die… I am dead.

If I were unconscious while sleeping… How did my alarm clock wake me up? How did my snoring wife rouse me from non REM sleep?

Michael Goff (Aka, Evil Eye)

Thanks for the question. In short – this is wrong, or at least overly simplistic to the point of effectively being wrong. The primary problem is in dealing with consciousness as a binary state, and therefore any flicker of consciousness is not “unconscious.”

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The central nervous system evolved as a tool for rapidly dealing with and adapting to the environment. If we strip down the nervous system’s function to its essential core, it functions as a tool for sensing the surrounding environment and responding with either reward or aversion. As vertebrates evolved this function became increasingly sophisticated, but the essence remains.

Even in the human brain there remain reward circuits that respond to thoughts and sensations by creating a good feeling, and others that respond with an emotionally negative experience. Despite our incredible neurological sophistication, humans are still powerfully motivated by this simple binary system. We seek out pleasant experiences and avoid negative ones. Psychologists have identified a number of cognitive biases, such as cognitive dissonance, that essentially follow this paradigm.

Building a nervous system around reward/aversion circuits is apparently evolutionarily successful, but comes with a significant vulnerability – what if the system can be “hacked”? What if a creature hits upon a behavior that is not advantageous to its survival or propagation, but stimulates the reward circuits? A little bit of this is probably inevitable – incidental behaviors around the edges of those that are truly adaptive. But what if such behaviors take over one’s existence?

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This is the sort of thing that most people learn when they are very young. In fact, you don’t necessarily have to learn this – light that is bright enough to damage the retina is also painful and will cause you to close your eyes or look away. So telling people not to stare into the sun is the equivalent of telling them not to put their hand into a raging fire.

The exception here is an annular or partial solar eclipse – when most of the sun is blocked out by the Moon but a tiny sliver remains, that sliver is still bright enough to carve out pieces of your retina but too small to cause pain. Telling people not to stare directly at a solar eclipse is therefore useful advice.

Given the human penchant for believing feel-good nonsense it should not come as a surprise that there are those who advocate sungazing – staring into the sun. They believe this will give them magical powers.

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I recently got into a small kerfuffle with a journalist, actually a sports writer who decided to dabble in science journalism. The exchange started at science-based medicine when I wrote a piece critical of the claims being made for a new device called the GyroStim, which is being offered as a treatment for brain injury.

In this article I linked to a piece in the popular press about the treatment, in the Denver Post by a sports writer, Adrian Dater. Dater thought I was being unfair in my criticism of his piece, and so wrote a response on his blog.  The exchange and the comments have exposed many of the problems with journalism in general and science journalism in particular, that I would like to explore further here.

First I have to say that there are many excellent journalists and science journalists out there. I am not implying that that there are no good journalists. I do find, however, that the baseline quality of science journalism is lacking and, if anything, getting worse. Part of the problem is the evaporating infrastructure for full-time journalists. Many outlets no longer maintain specialist journalists, and use generalists (including editors) to cover science news stories.

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One thing you learn going through medical school and studying all sorts of diseases and pathology is a powerful medical corollary to Murphy’s Law – anything that can go biological wrong with the body, does. Every single function in the human body is associated with a disease or disorder in which that function is impaired or not working, unless such an impairment is incompatible with life.

Pick any cell, protein, enzyme, structure, ion channel, hormone – anything you can think of, and I bet there is either a disorder associated with that thing not working, or dysfunction would result in a non-viable embryo or fetus.

In fact, there are diseases and disorders caused by underlying biological mechanisms we haven’t discovered yet, and studying these diseases offers big clues to healthy biology.

The brain is no exception to this rule. This is an argument I frequently offer to those who deny that anything that can meaningfully be called mental illness exists. The details of the wiring of the brain – which neurons connect to which other neurons, in what pattern, and with what strength of connection – are what largely determine brain function. (There are other factors also, like glia and biochemical factors.)

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On the SGU this week, the episode that will be released on Saturday June 8th, we do an extended review of the new Star Trek movie, Into Darkness (STID). so – this is a warning to SGU listeners, if you want to hear the episode without spoilers, see the movie before Saturday (or whenever you typically listen to the episode).

We talk about the science in the movie, the characters, the writing, its overall quality as a film and how well it lives up to the Star Trek franchise.

Here I am just going to delve into some aspects of the science in the movie. I am a fan of science fiction, and I am unapologetic in desiring good science in my science fiction. I have no problem suspending my disbelief, and allow writers to invent new science and technology as needed for the story, but there are limits. The unwritten rule-of-thumb in science fiction writing is that you get one huge gimmie, but not more than that.

Regardless of your preference for hard science fiction, there is no reason for gratuitously bad science in science fiction. Science howlers can take you out of a movie, it’s lazy writing, and often that also translates to bad storytelling.

Overall STID was not bad with the science, but there were a few annoying moments, and one unnecessary howler that did immediately take me out of the movie.

(Spoilers below the fold)

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The Amazing Meeting 2013 is coming up, July 11-14 in Las Vegas. This is an annual meeting for science, skepticism, and critical thinking hosted by the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). It is a truly incredible event each year, and I always enjoy meeting my regular readers at such events.

The lineup of speakers is impressive this year – check out the full list here.

There are a number of events that I am participating in or running:

The SGU will be giving a live show on the main stage.

The SGU will also have a table to sell swag, and we make an effort to spend as much time as possible there to be available to our listeners (and we will have some scheduled times when we are all there).

There is an SGU dinner Friday night where we spend a few hour with our listeners. We usually have some well-known skeptics joins us as well. We will have some fun activity, and also we have an auction, including auctioning off a coveted guest rogue spot on the SGU.  You have to register separately for this event (on the registration page, go down to Fundraising Meals and click “add option.” You then have to click on the bottom of the page on the “Continue to make ticket selections” button to add the number of tickets you want for the SGU dinner.)

The SGU is also sponsoring a late night poker tournament on Saturday night. This was incredible fun when we did it last year. See if you can knock out a well-known skeptic from the tournament and win a prize.

I am running a Science-Based Medicine workshop on Thursday, with David Gorski, Harriet Hall, and Mark Crislip. We will cover the basics of SBM and have an interactive section.

I will also be moderating an SBM panel discussion on fighting the medical fakers, with a special report from David Gorski on the Burzynksi clinic.

I will be on a another panel about the nature of scientific skepticism, discussing many of the topics I have covered in this blog over the last few years.

Hotel rates are super cheap if you register by June 8th. Hope to see many of you there.

I was recently asked about this article, Bedrock of vaccination theory crumbles as science reveals antibodies not necessary to fight viruses, which is a year old, but is making the rounds recently on social media. I was asked if there is any validity to the article. It’s from NaturalNews (not to be confused with NatureNews), which means, in my experience, it is almost certainly complete nonsense.

For the average consumer my advice is to completely ignore NaturalNews and Mike Adams. He is, among other things, an anti-vaccine crank. This article is written by staff writer Ethan Huff.  Let’s take a close look  and see if it lives up to the site’s reputation.

He writes:

While the medical, pharmaceutical, and vaccine industries are busy pushing new vaccines for practically every condition under the sun, a new study published in the journal Immunity completely deconstructs the entire vaccination theory. It turns out that the body’s natural immune systems, comprised of both innate and adaptive components, work together to ward off disease without the need for antibody-producing vaccines.

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