Derren Brown's Blog, page 38

Apple 'gay-cure' app severely slapped

THE REGISTER: "Apple is today accused of anti-gay discrimination, following the release of an iPhone app that aims to help people find "freedom from homosexuality".

A petition has been launched by Truth Wins Out, which describes itself as a non-profit organisation that fights anti-gay religious extremism on the change.org website, asking Steve Jobs to intervene to remove the app. The app is the work of the Exodus International ministry.

In a letter which those supporting their petition sign up to receive, they write: "Apple has long been a friend of the LGBT community, opposing California's Proposition 8, removing the anti-gay Manhattan Declaration iPhone app, and earning a 100% score from the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index.

"I am shocked that this same company has given the green light to an app from a notoriously anti-gay organization like Exodus International that uses scare tactics, misinformation, stereotypes and distortions of LGBT life to recruit clients, endorses the use of so-called 'reparative therapy' to 'change' the sexual orientation of their clients."

According to TWO, "reparative therapy" has been roundly condemned by every major professional medical organisation. The petition launched last week and has already attracted some 17,000 signatures: however, as word of the app spreads, the rate at which individuals are signing up appears to be snowballing.

Exodus International claims to be "the world's largest ministry to individuals and families impacted by homosexuality". On its site, Exodus states that it "upholds heterosexuality as God's creative intent for humanity, and subsequently views homosexual expression as outside of God's will".

Their new smartphone app was released last week and is "now available through iTunes". According to Exodus, this app has received a 4+ rating from Apple and "applications in this category contain no objectionable material". They conclude: "This application is designed to be a useful resource for men, women, parents, students, and ministry leaders."

TWO are unimpressed. Describing the app as "unacceptable", and requesting its immediate removal, they warn Apple: "Your company would never allow a racist or anti-Semitic app to be sold in the iTunes store, and for good reason. Apple's approval of the anti-gay Exodus International app represents a double standard for the LGBT community with potentially devastating consequences for our youth."

We have asked Apple whether it intends to take any action in respect of this app, but so far have received no response."

Read more at The Register

Further reading at Truth Wins Out

And you can sign a petition to remove the app here (Thanks Annette M and @d_g_)

Over a fifth of adults believe light sabres exist

Birmingham Science City: "Perhaps inspired by TV favourites such as Doctor Who and Ashes to Ashes, nearly a third of Britons (30%) believe that time travel is actually possible. The results were revealed in a survey, launched at the start of National Science and Engineering Week (11-20 March) by Birmingham Science City (www.birminghamsciencecity.co.uk), which aimed to see just how blurred the lines between science and fiction really are.

Other findings included:

1. Over a fifth of adults incorrectly believe light sabres exist.

2. Nearly a quarter (24%) of people are wrong in their belief that humans can be teleported.

3. Nearly 50% of adults wrongly believe that memory-erasing technology exists.

4. More than 40% of people incorrectly believe that hover boards exist.

5. Nearly one fifth (18%) of adults have the incorrect view that they can see gravity.

However, when you consider some of the scientific advances being made across the world today, it is not surprising that sometimes people get their science fiction and science fact confused.

For example, over three quarters (78%) of Britons believe that invisibility cloaks exist only in the realms of fiction, and yet a team at the University of Birmingham, led by Prof Shuang Zhang, has developed a method for making objects appear invisible.

Almost 90% of people think it would be impossible to grow an extra pair of eyes, even though scientists, led by Professors Nick Dale and Elizabeth Jones, at the University of Warwick have found this is possible in frogs. The team believes they will be able to use the technology to explore eye development in humans and grow an 'eye in a dish'.

Seven out of ten adults questioned thought it was impossible to move objects with their mind, yet researchers at Coventry University's Serious Games Institute have collaborated with California-based company, NeuroSky, to develop a headset which can read analogue electrical brainwaves and turn them into digital signals. This allows the user to manipulate images on a screen and power user-interfaces in games, education and medical applications using only their minds.

Dr Pam Waddell, Director of Birmingham Science City comments: "We commissioned the survey to see how blurred the lines between science fact and fiction have become. While films and TV can be acknowledged as creating confusion, it is also worth highlighting how advanced science has now become and many things deemed only possible in fiction have now become reality or are nearing creation due to the advancements of science."

"What's clear from this research is that science captures everyone's imagination, so we must continue to invest in it and strive to develop the latest 'stranger than fiction' creations!"

The survey also asked people what inventions they would most like to see created. Men opted for time machines or teleportation, each receiving 19% and 21% of the male votes respectively, whereas over a quarter (26%) of women instead favoured a universal cure for all diseases."

Via Birmingham Science City (Thanks Christopher C)

Placebos may help us but they don't have the same effect as medicine

GUARDIAN: "You report on a new study in Germany which finds that half the nation's doctors prescribe placebos (Mind-altering? Report endorses German GPs' use of placebos, 7 March). But the article risks causing confusion. It's wrong to say that, "Used to treat depression, placebos have the same effect as antidepressants in about a third of cases."

Placebo is used in medicine in two quite distinct ways. The first, the one we are all familiar with, is the "sugar" pill given by doctors to patients to instil hope. These keep them happy while time and nature get on with healing. As reported, it is "a question of trust". How long will that trust last if the doctor routinely deceives his patients? Realistic information, honest advice and genuine encouragement are surely better.

Believing that "something is being done" does, however, obviously raise the spirits. It raises them in patients but just as much in doctors. We are both more likely to interpret the random variations in symptoms that occur in all illnesses as improvement if we have a strong faith in the medicine. Placebos are used in drug trials to equalise this effect.

Random controlled double-blind trials are our most powerful tool in proving whether or not a new drug works. In these, neither the doctor nor the patient knows who is getting the active chemical. The placebo (the "control" medicine) is there to reduce any bias from faith in the treatment. It is not there to influence the symptoms. This is the second meaning of placebo – a neutral dummy pill.

When your article says "placebos had helped 59% of patients who had been suffering from an upset stomach", it tells us precisely nothing. Compared to what? Virtually all stomach upsets get better over time.

When researchers write, for example, that 20% of the placebo group recovered in a trial and 60% of the active treatment group did, they are not saying that placebos "have the same effect" in a third as many of the patients. They mean that (for the patients with this condition) 20% will recover in the natural course of events, but with the added treatment 60% will recover. It is this added 40% that matters. The placebo has had no effect on recovery.

Most people with depression recover (thank heavens), and many recover without treatment. Many more, however, recover, and much quicker, with antidepressants. Your article states: "The efficacy of a placebo depends on many factors … including the size and colour of a pill." But the "placebo effect" from a brightly coloured pill is frankly minimal. Depression is a serious disorder which doesn't just evaporate with sugar pills. The placebo effect referred to in drug trials is just shorthand for that proportion of patients who recover naturally over time.

We must keep distinct these two uses (the inert dummy pill with an explicit scientific function versus the time-honoured but ultimately ineffective distraction) if we are to understand medical trials."

Via The Guardian (Thanks Annette M)

A real study of magicians' fake movements

"Magicians trick us with their sleights of hand, reaching for objects that aren't there and pretending to drop others that they've really kept hold of. This ability is all the more remarkable because research has shown how poor the rest of us are at faking reaching gestures and other movements. Now Cristiana Cavina-Pratesi and her colleagues have used motion-tracking technology to investigate how the magicians do it.

First off, ten magicians and ten controls reached for and picked up a wooden block, or mimed reaching and picking up an imaginary block situated next to the real one. Just as the participants began reaching, their sight was completely obscured by shutter glasses – this was to simulate the way that magicians often look away from where they're reaching. The participants' grasps were performed either with forefinger and thumb or little-finger and thumb, and markers were worn on these digits so they could be monitored with a motion-tracking system.

Just as has been found in earlier research, the controls' pantomime grasping movements were quite distinct from the real thing – the 'maximum grip aperture' (the maximum gap between thumb and finger) was smaller, as was a metric called the 'grip overshoot', calculated from the position of the thumb and fingers during the actual grasp. In contrast, the magicians' maximum grip aperture and grip overshoot were the same whether they actually grasped a real wooden block, or mimed grasping an imaginary one next to it.

Having confirmed that magicians' fake movements really are like the real thing, a second experiment, involving batteries rather than wooden blocks, made things harder. This time, the miming condition was performed without a real, to-be-grasped object anywhere in sight. The seven magicians and seven controls performed their real grasps as before, but when the miming grasps were performed, the batteries were hidden away. Curiously, under these conditions, the magicians were no better at faking than the controls.

The researchers said this suggests that 'the talent of magicians lies in their ability to use visual input from real objects to calibrate a grasping action toward a separate spatial location (that of the imagined object).'

How do they develop this ability? Cavina-Pratesi's team think it reflects a flexibility in the magicians' occipito-parietal system (located towards the back of the brain). 'This flexibility,' they said, 'might exploit mechanisms similar to those underlying people's ability to adapt to spatially displacing prisms through repeated target-directed movements.' They're referring here to the human ability to adapt to prism glasses that distort the visual world. At first the glasses are disorientating, but most people are able to adapt quickly. The researchers said future brain imaging studies will help reveal exactly what's going on in the magicians' brains as they perform their trickery."

Read more at BPS Research Digest (Thanks Hayley B)

Rock-Paper-Scissors: You vs. the Computer

"Computers mimic human reasoning by building on simple rules and statistical averages. Test your strategy against the computer in this rock-paper-scissors game illustrating basic artificial intelligence. Choose from two different modes: novice, where the computer learns to play from scratch, and veteran, where the computer pits over 200,000 rounds of previous experience against you.

Note: A truly random game of rock-paper-scissors would result in a statistical tie with each player winning, tying and losing one-third of the time. However, people are not truly random and thus can be studied and analyzed. While this computer won't win all rounds, over time it can exploit a person's tendencies and patterns to gain an advantage over its opponent."

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Head over to the New York Times to play, or click the above image.

Ta Ta Twitter for Tour

I shall, just whilst touring, sign off from Twitter. There are a few needy souls there who step up into frenetic activity at tour time and can cast a dark cloud over the whole thing: I find they're much nicer to meet without a flurry of desperate messages before and after. Twitter sadly does them no justice.

The blog shall of course continue to feed through, and I shall most likely post upon it, now and then as we go along.

I look forward to seeing some of you on the road, and must gently ask again that people don't turn up bearing gifts, as some regularly do: they're very hard to keep hold of when we're touring and you spending your money on tickets is more than super-kind and embarrassingly generous enough.

Right, Woking awaits. Last night I realised a minute before going on that I was wearing ridiculously striped socks. I had to change socks with Coops. This is not a good thing: he has a famously adventurous approach to foot-hygiene. Luckily, my magical powers were not too deeply affected.

Today I have chosen more carefully.

D

Record companies make claim against Limewire for $75 Trillion

Law.com: Does $75 trillion even exist? The thirteen record companies that are suing file-sharing company Lime Wire for copyright infringement certainly thought so. When they won a summary judgment ruling last May they demanded damages that could reach this mind-boggling amount, which is more than five times the national debt.

Manhattan federal district court judge Kimba Wood, however, saw things differently. She labeled the record companies' damages request "absurd" and contrary to copyright laws in a 14-page opinion.

The record companies, which had demanded damages ranging from $400 billion to $75 trillion, had argued that Section 504(c)(1) of the Copyright Act provided for damages for each instance of infringement where two or more parties were liable. For a popular site like Lime Wire, which had thousands of users and millions of downloads, Wood held that the damage award would be staggering under this interpretation. "If plaintiffs were able to pursue a statutory damage theory predicated on the number of direct infringers per work, defendants' damages could reach into the trillions," she wrote. "As defendants note, plaintiffs are suggesting an award that is 'more money than the entire music recording industry has made since Edison's invention of the phonograph in 1877."

Full story over at Law.com

Quake moved Japan by 8 feet

Japan's recent massive earthquake, one of the largest ever recorded appears to have moved the island by about eight feet, around 2.4 Meters according to the US Geological Survey.

Friday's 8.9 magnitude quake unleashed a terrifying tsunami that engulfed towns and cities on Japan's northeastern coast, destroying everything in its path in what Prime Minister Naoto Kan said was an "unprecedented national disaster."

The quake and its tectonic shift resulted from "thrust faulting" along the boundary of the Pacific and North America plates, according to the USGS.

Full Story at Psyorg

Are you prone to mind control?

"Are you easily influenced by what others do and say? If so, you're just the type of person that hypnotists, magicians and mind-readers seek out as you're more likely to fall for their mind tricks.

In this video, psychologist Richard Wiseman gives you the chance to find out how suggestible you are. Give it a go – even the most hardened skeptics might be surprised by the results.

If you tried the test, how far did your hands move? According to Wiseman, if they stayed level or shifted just a few inches apart then you aren't that suggestible. But if they moved more than a few inches, you're the perfect candidate for a magic trick.

The test can also reveal something about your character. "Non-suggestible types tend to be more down-to-earth, logical and enjoy puzzles and games. In contrast, suggestible types tend to have a good imagination, be sensitive, intuitive and find it easier to become absorbed in books and films," says Wiseman.

To accompany his new book Paranormality, Wiseman has released a free set of psychological demonstrations where you can learn to perform mind tricks on others."

Read more at New Scientist (Thanks Annette M)

Genetic Errors Nixed Penis Spines, Enlarged Our Brains

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Geneticists have linked the physical appearance of humans to patches of DNA lost in the 5 million years since we shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees. One loss prevented men from growing penile barbs, which chimps possess. Another enlarged some regions of our brain.

"We can know what makes us human, what makes us physically different from other animals and why," said developmental geneticist Gill Bejerano of Stanford University, an author of the March 10 study inNature. Only 2 percent of the DNA in our genome forms protein-coding genes. The rest, once called "junk DNA," helps control and coordinate gene activity. Out of this regulatory coordination, physiological complexity emerges.

Bejerano's team started by comparing the genomes of chimpanzees and macaque monkeys, which share a 20-million-year-old common ancestor. They identified regions that hadn't changed in chimps, then compared these to corresponding stretches of the human genome. They found more than 500 mutations known as deletions, or stretches of DNA present in chimps but lost in humans.

Full Story at Wired