Debunking junk history

Gavin Menzies has a number of dubious hypotheses about historical events. One is that the Chinese explored large parts of the world in the fifteenth century. He suggests that Ferdinand Magellan, Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, and others followed Chinese maps. Others have taken Menzies’ idea and run with it.

In 2006, Paul Chiasson published a book, Island of the Seven Cities, explaining how the Chinese settled in Nova Scotia in 1421. As evidence, he shows an aerial photograph that he says was taken in the 1920s, showing traces of roads and foundations.

This web site, The ‘1421′ Myth Exposed, takes on those myths.

In this section, Island of the Seven Cities Exposed, Andrew Hanam thoroughly debunks that claim with a series of properly dated photos. The archaelogical evidence cited by Chiasson turns out to be modern firebreaks and drilling sites.

Other sections of The ‘1421′ Myth Exposed debunk the Chinese discovery of Australia, the massive size of Chinese junks suggested for oceanic voyages, and a “1418 map” that was produced within the last fifty years.

Australian homeopath lets baby daughter die

People who think that alternative medicines aren’t dangerous forget that alternative treatments displace proven ones. In Australia, a homeopath and his wife ignored medical advice to take their severely exzemic daughter to a dermatologist. While they mucked about with homeopathic treatments, their baby suffered repeated infections through her blistered and weeping skin. After five months of suffering, she died at the age of nine months.

THE parents of a baby girl who suffered from severe eczema ignored the advice of doctors and persisted with alternative medicine for their daughter until she died from infection, a court has heard.

Homeopath Thomas Sam and his wife Manju Sam are accused of the manslaughter of their nine-month-old infant daughter, Gloria Thomas, by gross criminal negligence.

On the opening day of their Supreme Court trial, a 12-member jury was told the Indian-born parents knew Gloria was suffering eczema on her face, arms, legs and torso at four months, but they failed to take her to a dermatologist.

The court heard that by the time Gloria was six months old, her eczema had begun weeping, causing her clothing and nappies to stick to her skin, which would tear whenever her parents changed her. Crown prosecutor Mark Tedeschi QC said the baby girl’s skin began to peel off, allowing infections to enter her bloodstream.

In the last five months of her life, Gloria was subjected to repeated infections which “placed a great deal of stress on her body,” Mr Tedeschi said. He added that the baby “wasn’t able to get sufficient nutrition to fight off infections and to grow”.

Gloria died from septicemia in May 2002 weighing just 5.3kg – which was “well below the third percentile for her age”, the court heard.

She had lost 20 per cent of her body weight at a time she should have been gaining 500g per week, the court heard.

Her body’s inability to fight off the eczema had left her with “an extreme vitamin and mineral deficiency and a severely weakened immune system”, Mr Tedeschi told the jury.

He said Gloria’s parents had failed in their duty of care to her by not ensuring she received proper medical attention.

The court heard Sam, who has a Masters in Health and Administration at University of Western Sydney and taught homeopathy, also failed in his duty of care to his daughter as a patient.

Electrifying personalities

From the Digital Bits Skeptic, Andy Kaiser, comes an amusing and edifying story about people who generate electrical fields, stop watches, and fry electronics: “A shocking lesson in human nature“.

Several months ago, I wrote and posted an article about “human static electricity generators”. I wrote it for laughs, and poked fun at a pseudoscientific claim that didn’t even take itself seriously. This was the case of Mavis Price, and an interview she gave to the UK newspaper the Daily Mail. Ms. Price is a woman whose body supposedly generates a massive amount of static electricity. Like a high-voltage ninja, this power gives her a “death-touch” to any electrical appliance. Computers and vacuum cleaners and television sets have all fallen victim to this static buildup.

So I wrote a critical article about this, poking fun at the situation and offering many suggestions as to why Ms. Price may be misinterpreting her symptoms.

And the strangest thing happened: the article received a few comments, as the articles usually do, but these comments were different. They were from people chiming in to support Ms. Price. Starting with comment number three, many of these people claimed they could generate their own static electricity, and, like Ms. Price, expressed their frustration at how this power is irritating and interferes with their daily life.

Andy was surprised to find so many people among his skeptical readers who believe that they generate myterious electrical fields. Read on to find out the result:”A shocking lesson in human nature“.

Quoting Carl Sagan

“I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic and national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us—then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.”

—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, 1996

Origami octopus by Joseph Wu

Octopus (hunting) take 5, originally uploaded by Joseph Wu Origami.

If anyone has a paper anniversary coming up, such as a year of blogging or a year since a creationist promised to “get back to you” about their debunked claim, one of Joseph Wu’s origami octopods might be the perfect gift—to themselves.