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Chapter 2 The Media and Public Gullibility One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives. —Mark Twain He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice. —Albert Einstein The evidence of opinion polls varies a little in numbers, but overall it would seem that most Americans believe in some sort of paranormal phenomena. According to one Gallup poll, nearly a third of Americans think that aliens probably have visited our planet, even though there isn’t a shred of evidence to support that belief, and many people think aliens have not only visited earth but have abducted people while they were here. Harvard psychiatrist (and alien enthusiast) John Mack published a study that suggests about 4 million people in the United States have been abducted by aliens. There are a few therapists who actually specialize in treating alien abduction victims, which in itself is reasonable, but when the therapists write books “documenting” the experiences of “actual” kidnap victims, a line of some sort has been crossed. (See Secret Life: Documented First-Hand Accounts of Alien Abduction, by David M. Jacobs.) If aliens don’t interest you, maybe a message from a dead relative would. Psychics bank on our grief and desire to hold on to our dead. In the past, they have waited in shaded rooms and offices for clientele to show up for word from beyond. More recently, the psychic entrepreneur has found his way to television. “Crossing Over” features John Edward, who does what debunkers call “cold readings.” In a studio filled with eager, supportive men and women, Edward fires questions at a preselected audience member. “I’m getting something about a dear one who passed recently, something about the chest or nearby, the cause of death . .” he might say. The target says, “Um, that could be Uncle Jack.” The psychic welcomes this progress, which the audience sees as remarkable. If anyone stopped to think about it, they might recall a number of close people who have died recently. Heart attacks and lung cancer kill plenty of people, and if Uncle Jack died from a brain tumor, well that’s near the chest, too. Edward fills out a picture that seems amazingly accurate, unless you consider all the wrong guesses he makes along the way. If you don’t want to hear from the dead, maybe you would like to be on better terms with your cat. Pet psychics can help you and Tabitha communicate because they can tell exactly what’s on your cat’s mind. “She hates that you moved her litter box, and you need to stop making fun of her when she tries to get into the fishbowl.” In fact, a pet psychic’s session with a turtle or a cow is very similar to a cold reading. Leading questions put to the animal’s owner help pet psychics fill in a surprisingly detailed picture. When we aren’t talking to house pets or the recently dead, we take in popular accounts of extraordinary lost civilizations. How many times have you seen a TV show about Atlantis? Every year or so there’s either a replay of a classic “inquiry” into the age-old mystery, or a new investigator finds the lost city. Almost. Some rubble just offshore somewhere holds the key. Viewers get the feeling this investigator is about to uncover brochures and furniture from the Atlantis Chamber of Commerce. It never happens. Attention soon turns to Noah’s Ark, which some explorer has reason to believe is beached at 5000 meters. Satellite photos show an unexplained, mysterious shape lying up there in the rocks and snow. With financing and other support the ark may be reached in a year or so. It isn’t. Public weariness with disappointments like this threatens to harden into rational thought, until Bigfoot shows up in a stunning new home video which airs on television and becomes the basis for a popular book that “Good Morning America” and other “news and entertainment” shows feature. An outside observer might suspect Americans are ill-educated. Yet the majority of Americans are literate, most are high school graduates, and a fair number go on to college. Every state in the union funds a public university. The United States has private institutions that draw students from around the world. It could be that nothing in public or higher education counters the stream of paranormal books, TV shows, and movies. Who is watching all the television programs based on paranormal material? A partial list of such shows in production as of 2005 includes “Crossing Over with John Edward,” “Joan of Arcadia,” “The Dead Zone,” “Haunted History,” “Mysterious World,” “Out There,” and so on. Some of these are presented as investigative, others as pure entertainment. All of them hose our culture with a stream of unreal events. It isn’t as if the media manufacture nonsense just to keep viewers happy and dumb, although an uncritical audience may suit them well. Still, networks and newspapers require an audience and some have been known to repeat sensational falsehoods. A lie that might die quietly in neglect takes on life as it airs repeatedly. Think of the little industry that has kept rumors about aliens and Roswell, New Mexico, alive for decades. Initial newspaper reports convinced readers that something extraordinary had happened there on or about July 4, 1947. Something did crash near Roswell in 1947—it was likely an experimental weather balloon. More than 30 years after that event, a book on the subject was published, and now Roswell has made its way into popular UFO legend. Movies like Independence Day play off the tale, big publishing houses support the fiction by signing experts and witnesses as authors, and web sites connected to the tale flourish. Hoaxers even fob off a video of an alien autopsy. The essays in this section take a critical look at media handling of paranormal stories. In an addendum to a National Science Foundation report entitled “Science Indicators 2000: Belief in the Paranormal or Pseudoscience,” Melissa Pollak outlines public attitudes toward belief in the paranormal, and the role the media play in that belief. Shari Waxman’s “Mind Over Media” argues that news shows tend to legitimize the paranormal generally, something that may take no more than a tag line such as “a Harvard-trained scientist now says there may be something to communicating with the dead.” We might not find out what Harvard taught that scientist, although basic logic would reject the argument from authority here. In “That’s Entertainment! TV’s UFO Coverup,” Philip J. Klass claims that television documentaries about UFOs often simply ignore evidence that contradicts UFO witness accounts. “Stupid ‘Pet Psychic’ Tricks,” by Bryan Farha, attacks a popular TV show that features a woman who claims she can communicate with pets. Farha suggests the pet psychic take the well-known “Million Dollar Challenge” from the James Randi Educational Foundation. If she passes a controlled test of her abilities, she wins a million dollars. In “Bone (Box) of Contention: The James Ossuary,” Joe Nickell demonstrates that television isn’t the only medium that has spread fantastic tales to eager and gullible audiences. The readings all insist that the burden of proof is on those who make extraordinary claims. It’s useful to keep such a standard at hand. Science Indicators 2000: Belief in the Paranormal or Pseudoscience The National Science Board Established by Congress in 1950, the National Science Board oversees the National Science Foundation and advises Congress and the president on matters relating to science. Melissa Pollak, the primary author of the report that follows, has worked for the NSF since 1980. She wrote the 2000, 2002, and 2004 Indicators chapters of the NSB reports. The piece that follows asks and answers a few leading questions about Americans’ beliefs in the paranormal. Science and Technology: Public Attitudes and Public Understanding Belief in the Paranormal or Pseudoscience1 • Belief in the paranormal: How common is it? • Do the media have a role in fostering belief in the paranormal? • What is being done to present the other side? Does it matter if people believe in astrology, extrasensory perception (ESP), or that aliens have landed on Earth? Are people who check their horoscopes, call psychic hotlines, or follow stories about alien abductions just engaging in harmless forms of entertainment? Or are they displaying signs of scientific illiteracy? Concerns have been raised, especially in the science community, about widespread belief in paranormal phenomena. Scientists (and others) have observed that people who believe in the existence of paranormal phenomena may have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. Their beliefs may indicate an absence of critical thinking skills necessary not only for informed decisionmaking in the voting booth and in other civic venues (for example, jury duty2), but also for making wise choices needed for day-to-day living.3 Specific harms caused by paranormal beliefs have been summarized as: • a decline in scientific literacy and critical thinking; • the inability of citizens to make well-informed decisions; • monetary losses (psychic hotlines, for example, offer little value for the money spent); • a diversion of resources that might have been spent on more productive and worthwhile activities (for example, solving society’s serious problems); • the encouragement of a something-for-nothing mentality and that there are easy answers to serious problems, for example, that positive thinking can replace hard work; and • false hopes and unrealistic expectations (Beyerstein 1998).

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