The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe: How to Know What's Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake

by Steven Novella

Those who deny the existence of mental illness play similar semantic games. They narrowly define illness as pathological disease, meaning that there has to be something objectively abnormal about cells, tissues, or organs. This description does apply to some diseases, but not all: There are disorders that are defined by the way some organ or system is functioning, but in the absence of clear pathology. Migraine headaches, for example, are a clear disorder without any diagnosable pathology. There are many brain disorders, because brain function depends upon more than just the health of brain cells. Healthy brain cells may still be organized and networked in such a way that their function is disordered. The brain is the organ of mood, thoughts, and behavior. Disordered brain function may therefore lead to a mood disorder or thought disorder. We call such entities mental illness.

Prosper-René Blondlot (1849–1930) was an accomplished French physicist who received three prizes from the Académie des Sciences for his work in electromagnetism. Despite this, he is best known for his role in one of the classic scientific blunders of modern times.

See also: argument from authority

Humans in general are great at coming up with reasons to maintain their desired beliefs in the face of contradictory data. More intelligent and educated people aren’t necessarily better at critical thinking, but they are likely to be more clever and creative in coming up with such excuses—and scientists are no exception.

An excessively positive outlook can also complicate dying. Psychologist James Coyne has focused his career on end-of-life attitudes in patients with terminal cancer. He points out that dying in a culture obsessed with positive thinking can have devastating psychological consequences for the person facing death. Dying is difficult. Everyone copes and grieves in different ways. But one thing is for certain: If you think you can will your way out of a terminal illness, you will be faced with profound disappointment. Individuals swept up in the positive-thinking movement may delay meaningful, evidence-based treatment (or neglect it altogether), instead clinging to so-called “manifestation” practices in the hope of curing disease. Unfortunately, this approach will most often lead to tragedy. In perhaps one of the largest investigations on the topic to date, Dr. Coyne found that there is simply no relationship between emotional well-being and mortality in the terminally ill (see James Coyne, Howard Tennen, and Adelita Ranchor, 2010). Not only will positive thinking do nothing to delay the inevitable; it may make what little time is left more difficult. People die in different ways, and quality of life can be heavily affected by external societal pressures. If an individual feels angry or sad but continues to bear the burden of friends’, loved ones’, and even medical professionals’ expectations to “keep a brave face” or “stay positive,” such tension can significantly diminish qua...

Even with a legitimate MLM and product, the ultimate enemy is math. The structure of an MLM is inherently self-defeating. If, for example, the company starts with just six people, and each level has to recruit six people of their own, in just twelve levels you have over two billion people. Even without complete recruitment, you quickly saturate a population. Further, every person you recruit is now a competitor. They may share your social network, and you’ll both be recruiting from the same pool.

“Genetic modification” refers to several techniques for changing organisms to suit our wants and needs. The technology involves various methods for inserting one or more specific genes directly into a target organism, or selectively altering or silencing a gene that is already there. There are two basic types of gene insertions: transgenic and cisgenic. Cisgenic insertion involves inserting genes from closely related species, ones that could potentially crossbreed with the target species. Transgenic insertion involves genes from distant species—even from different kingdoms of life, such as putting a gene from a bacterium into a plant.

Opposition to transgenic technology often takes the form of “This couldn’t happen in nature.” This is not valid logic (it is an example of both the appeal-to-nature fallacy and the genetic fallacy), and it’s also factually incorrect. There is something called horizontal gene transfer. Genes can move between unrelated organisms. For example, it was discovered in 2014 that cultivated sweet potatoes contain a transgene from a soil bacterium (Agrobacterium), a completely natural transgene. Objection to transgenes seems to be based on the notion that genes from one organism are inherently different from genes from another organism. But this is untrue. A gene doesn’t know it’s a fish gene or a tomato gene or a person gene. They are just genes. In fact, fish and tomatoes share about 60 percent of their genes. It’s true that different kingdoms use different promoters, which are gene regulators, but these are easily swapped out to make them compatible with the target species.

It’s not my position or the scientific position that all GMOs are automatically safe. That would be just as irrational as blanket hostility. Rather, it is simply clear that the label “GMO” is arbitrary and you can’t treat all cultivars labeled as GMO as a group. They should be evaluated individually for their safety and environmental effects. Not all plants made from traditional breeding are safe, and not all GMOs are harmful.

There is, for example, a GMO black tomato that takes two specific genes from the snapdragon and inserts them into a tomato to produce higher levels of flavonoids. This species must go through regulatory hoops, while the fifty varieties of black tomatoes made by cultivation, with much more unpredictable results, require no testing.