–Benjamin Franklin

I was recently and publicly called a “fat hater” on Facebook by someone I know. It was in response to an article I wrote for Discovery News about a rhyming children’s book for 4 to 8 year olds called Maggie Goes On a Diet.  The article was about a controversy surrounding the book, in which an overweight 14-year-old girl loses weight and gains self-esteem through diet and exercise. Outraged critics were concerned that the book could harm children, and I interviewed one expert (and quoted another) who claimed the book was damaging. I also analyzed their criticisms, and pointed out several logical errors and mistaken assumptions that critics were making about the book (for example that the diet Maggie goes on is an unhealthy, calorie-restricted diet, and that the book was likely to have a significant influence on children or their diets).

I spent about half a day researching and writing the column, and the final product provided a much deeper level of analysis and critical thinking than most of the other news stories on the topic (do a Google search for the topic and see for yourself). Many Discovery News readers agreed with my analysis.

Yet others dismissed my piece—not because my facts or arguments were wrong, but because it was just another example of my well-known “fat hating” bias. My article could be safely ignored and dismissed (or perhaps not even read) because anything I wrote was clearly driven by an anti-fat ulterior agenda. I would have welcomed some substantive criticism or comments explaining where my logic or arguments were faulty, but none were offered.

This is, of course, a version of the logical fallacy of the ad hominem attack: Criticizing the person, not the argument or claim. We see it all the time in skepticism; it’s nothing new. But when a colleague and ostensible critical thinker does it, it’s disheartening.

I should confess that I have also been publicly accused of hating both gays and dwarves. No, I’m not making this up. Interestingly, as far as I know I’ve never been accused of hating (or bias against) Blacks, Jews, Asians, or Muslims. Then again, the week’s not over.

As it happens, I am not at all shy about identifying targets of my hatred; George W. Bush and psychics who exploit grieving families pretty much complete the list. If I hate you, I’ll make that perfectly clear; you won’t need to read between the lines. But gays, dwarves, and fat people (not to mention fat gay dwarves) are fine by me. The claim that I hate gays would surely come as a surprise to my many lifelong gay friends, including James Randi, to whom I dedicated one of my books. And the idea that I hate overweight people would also surely come as a shock to nearly all of my ex-girlfriends, few of whom are svelte.

A few years ago, I even lost a friend who refused to speak to me because I had written an article that included a discussion of false rape claims. She (apparently) badly misread the piece and somehow concluded that I was suggesting that real rapes don’t occur, or that real victims shouldn’t be believed. I of course wrote no such thing. On very rare occasions I’ve even heard the suggestion that I am somehow biased in favor of sex offenders (whatever that means) because I have written about the sex predator panic scares, explaining to parents that family and friends pose a far greater danger to children than any convicted sex offender. In fact a child is far more likely to be physically or sexually abused, abducted, or even killed by his or her parents than a sex offender stranger. This is a well-established statistical fact, and how that could be interpreted as a bias toward sex offenders is beyond me.

I am used to attacks and criticism; it comes with the territory. Any time you are challenging someone’s beliefs or claims, and especially when you do with references, sound arguments, and sources, people get upset. In my twelve years of doing skeptical investigations and science literacy work, I’ve been threatened with both violence and lawsuits (including from a New York Times reporter—involving a predator panic piece I wrote, in fact). I get hate mail of some sort nearly every week; I’m told that I’m stupid, willfully ignorant, and an embarrassment to journalism. Some people leave comments on Discovery News articles saying I should be fired. I think writing is the only profession where people who have read a few paragraphs of your work feel entitled to tell you what a horrible, incompetent person you are, and on a fairly regular basis.

I don’t mind the criticisms, it’s the bias accusations that annoy me, and it’s instructive to briefly analyze them. When I question claims about aliens and UFO photographs, critics assert that the only logical reason I would do so is because I have a bias or agenda as part of a government conspiracy to keep the truth from the public. When I question claims about alternative medicine and homeopathy, it’s not because I have researched it and know a lot about it, but because I’m being paid by Big Pharma. When I question claims made by psychics, critics say it’s because I have a bias toward protecting the scientific status quo—or that if I were to accept the reality of psychics it would devastate my worldview. And when I question claims about the links between media images and eating disorders, it can’t be because I know something about it—having studied it for years and written a book about the mass media—but because I hate fat people.

All of these folks have one thing in common: The assumption that the reason I’m criticizing their claims or arguments because 1) I haven’t done adequate research into the subject, and if I did, I’d realize that they were right; and 2) I have a hidden agenda, some bias or ulterior motive that compels me to write my ill-informed rubbish despite all the obvious evidence against my position.

Often the basic logic goes something like this: “You are saying something that’s different than what I heard (or believe), so you must be wrong.” It rarely seems to occur to them that maybe what they heard (or believe) might be wrong, and that the author who has spent hours (or days or years) researching it might know more about it. Truly open-minded people who are willing to listen and consider information and arguments that contradict their beliefs are discouragingly rare.

Many of these accusations of bias and hatred would of course not happen if I stuck to safe, non-controversial claims (among skeptics, anyway). If I restricted my critical analyses to UFOs or Bigfoot or psychic claims, I would only garner criticisms and attacks from the believers (and there’s plenty of those). My friends and fans, skeptics and otherwise, are happy to have me fight the good fight against woo, pseudoscience, and New Age bullshit day in and day out, month after month, year after year.

But some of them get very uncomfortable when I write and discuss topics that touch a nerve, especially issues about gender or sexuality (religion, as you might expect, isn’t really a point of contention among this crowd). Things get a little awkward when I question whether or not, for example, the “It Gets Better” anti-bullying campaign actually had any effect, or whether the “epidemic” of gay teen suicides last year was real. Things get a little awkward when I question whether sex offender notification laws are useful, whether false rape claims are a problem, or whether fashion models and a rhyming kid’s book actually lead to anorexia.

I apply my skepticism across the board, asking for evidence behind any and all claims. I don’t like it when people whose ideas and policies I oppose lie and repeat false statements to make their points, and I don’t like it when people whose ideas and policies I agree with lie and repeat false statements to make their points. I try hard not to be selectively skeptical. I believe that there should be no sacred cows, no taboo topics.

I will continue to write about body image and sex offenders and bad statistics and faulty arguments wherever I encounter them. I will endure the barbs and personal attacks, because I believe that these things should be openly discussed, and the arguments, pro and con, should be carefully analyzed instead of ignored or dismissed because of some perceived bias. Truth is best served when everyone asks, “What is the evidence?” not only for claims and ideas they oppose, but also for those they support. The principles of free speech are not tested by popular speech, but by unpopular speech. In the same vein, the true nature of open and skeptical inquiry is not tested when a person says something we agree with, but in how we react when a person says something we disagree with.

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This post, Hate, Bias, and Skeptical Inquiry, originally appeared on She Thought on October 9, 2011.
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From "The Art of Manliness"

Part One: On Engagement Rings

After months of discussion my partner and I came to the conclusion that a legal partnership would greatly benefit us and our goals. Some research demonstrated that a domestic partnership offers little in terms of legal rights or status as a couple, and seems mostly to involve all of the symbolism of marriage without one’s partner ever legally becoming your next of kin. Feeling somewhat guilty in the fact that being a heterosexual couple we have the right to marry in New York while many others do not (hopefully not for much longer), the decision to get married was not an easy one. I knew that abstaining from it would not be a useful protest, and coupled with the hopeful optimism that things seem to be changing for the better, the decision was made to marry.

Having wanted to participate in SheThought for quite some time but having neither the time nor a hearty subject matter to explore, I’ve been yet to produce a first draft of anything. However, as my partner and I reflected and discussed the matter of weddings and marriage, and the “traditions” we both, as committed skeptics and egalitarians, had ideological problems with, I found I wanted to share these thoughts for discussion, and this feels like the right community to do so within. So, I’ll begin with my opposition to engagement rings.

Sure, diamonds in general have, in recent history, been the cause of exploitative procurement practices and advertising manipulation. But that’s all been said in books and articles far better than my feeble attempt (See Christina H and Edward Jay Epstein)

Megan O’Rourke has also already told the origins of giving a significant gift in general as a proposal of marriage. You see, it was tradition that a bride be a virgin for her husband, but it wasn’t always necessary that they wait until the big day to have sex, so long as the man had proposed marriage.  If a man proposed marriage, ruined the so-called purity of the woman (and not necessarily by having had sex) and then changed his mind, he could be sued for damages under the Breach of Promise law.  These laws were falling out of fashion, thus necessitating some other form of contractual obligation a man would need to offer along with the proposal of marriage. A large value gift was viewed as a gesture of sincerity that the woman’s character would not be disgraced.

But when you look past the sordid history of the sexual and social repression of women in proposal gift giving, and the exploitative marketing of De Beers to turn that gift symbolically into a big, flashy diamond ring, we’re forgetting one other important philosophical point – the disequilibrium of the couple.

As I’m sure it should be noted, this point applies mainly to heterosexual couples, and the tradition of a man going out and purchasing a substantial gift as an expression of his love and commitment to a woman. We’ve seen this represented in fiction (books, television, cinema), we’re inundated with the imagery of a man on bended knee and a woman starring almost helplessly into the gleam of a bright, shiny diamond.  Most social paradigms (even currently) would measure the extent to which a man is serious and in love by how much he’s willing to spend on that ring. As a somewhat recent example, last season on Bones (a favorite of mine), Booth (David Boreanaz) was planning to propose to his girlfriend Hannah (Katheryn Winnick). There is a scene where Booth, accompanied by Sweets (John Francis Daley) is purchasing the ring. Sweets comments on the price of the ring Booth is selecting, and realizes he is not ready to propose to his own girlfriend Daisy (Carla Gallo) because he isn’t comfortable spending as much.

I’m sure we can think of many other examples from film and TV of such an exchange. So, I ask first, why do we willingly cheapen the love and affection of a legal partnership by symbolically representing the start of it with a monetary value? I ask second, why do we continue to place this social and financial burden on men, while often at the same time insisting on gender equality?

One of the main reasons why I made the decision to marry my partner (aside from how much fun our life is together, how we share so many of each other’s interests and values, respect one another’s individuality and differences and ultimately love each other, blah blah lovey-dovey stuff) is that we have a relationship centered firmly on our equality as members of this relationship. We are both active skeptics, (he claims to have contacted me after noticing I described myself as a “skeptic” on match.com and always attempt to discuss, and rationally so, our decisions, plans, etc. There was no grand romantic gesture, he did not take a knee, or sky-write it, rather we reflected on the decision, did some research even, and discussed how we felt about moving forward.

I am not preaching what others should do; I am merely arguing that the belief that men and women are equal in a heterosexual union is incompatible with the practice of the burden being placed on the man to invest a substantial sum of money and effort into a fireworks-laden proposal replete with a ring valued at two months’ salary. It perpetuates an imbalanced distribution of gender roles in the decision to marry, which in my opinion contradicts efforts towards an egalitarian marriage thereafter.

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This post, BrideThoughts: A Skeptic Gets Married Part One, originally appeared on She Thought on July 12, 2011.
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Speaker Liz Lutgendorff

I recently traveled to the British seaside town of Blackpool to speak at a paranormal conference about being a skeptical paranormal researcher. As scary as it was to speak in front of a large crowd of those who disagree with me, the saddest thing about the whole experience for me was the fact that I was the 2nd female speaker the conference has had in a whole decade of conferences.

Ten years, two women.

It’s hard to comprehend really and it saddens me that it’s an experience I’ve had time and time again. We often see people talking and blogging about how women are not fairly represented at conferences. The last conference I spoke at was the QED conference in Manchester, England, and women were fairly represented there which was fantastic to see and it shows that if you look in the right places and you try hard enough you really can find women who are happy to talk at your event.

Which is why I’ve set up the ‘She Talks!’ register for women in the UK to sign up to if they are willing to speak about their area on expertise at conferences and other such engagements. It seemed that so many conference organisers were saying they wanted to have more women speaking at their events but they simply couldn’t find them – so it seemed logical to create a register where they can do so. It was inspired by the ‘No Chicks, no Excuses’ site set up by Leslie Cannold,  Jane Caro and Catherine Deveny.

I saw a problem and I saw a way in which I could try and solve the problem, or at least make a small change to the problem, and I am trying to make it work.

Speaker Alice Sheppard

I’ve had opposition already (and the site is barely a day old) from people stating that the register is positive discrimination as it is harrassing conference organisers into inviting female speakers to their events, which means the female speaker is more likely to be at the event based on their gender and not their merit, thus, they’ll be the ‘token woman’.

This simply isn’t what ‘She Talks!’ is designed for and it isn’t what it will achieve, because the register is there to eradicate the problems that conference organisers claim they are having when it comes to finding women to talk at their events. The register was made to show conference organisers that they don’t have to have a female speaker just because she is female, but that there are plenty of women available to speak at their event who could do so because of their work, their research, their merit…

If you are based in the UK, or you travel here and are willing to speak about your area of expertise then please consider adding yourself to the register. I hope it can make a small difference, and who knows, maybe small differences like these will encourage a big difference in the long run…

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This post, She Talks!, originally appeared on She Thought on June 16, 2011.
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The skeptic world is abuzz with talk on gender and sexism. Here is another take on the issue, from the bad ass pixie-like box of kittens manga artist Sara Mayhew:

It also has never become easier to realize that someone you were hoping would be a friend and would be interested in you and your work was actually pretty much just interested in making out with you. If that’s not an option for him then you’ll probably stop hearing from him.

And to my fellow skeptics; You think it’s hard trying to communicate to someone evidence that they are wrong in a manner which they might be likely to consider it? Try attempting that when you’re a tiny brunette with giant brown eyes of whom nobody ever has a problem likening to a pixie. People stare down at you like they’re looking at a box full of kittens.

Read the full post at her blog, There Are Four Lights.

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This post, Cute as a Kitten, Smart as a Whip!, originally appeared on She Thought on April 20, 2011.
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I hate writing about feminist issues, because every time I do I get accused of being a feminazi or caring more about women than men, or of buying into victim culture, or any number of accusations that come with the territory.  Feminism isn’t generally my main issue, and so I’m always hesitant to distract from all the other things I care about by getting into knock down, drag out fights about why should I care about how women are treated or how they’re portrayed in the media.

Occasionally, of course, I do write something about feminism, because I’m upset enough to ignore the warning lights in my head that say I’m going to have to deal with a lot of BS because of it.  As you might imagine, this post is me ignoring those warning bells.

Skepticism has a woman problem.  It’s been said more than once, it’s been pointed out countless times, and it’s being addressed in a lot of positive ways that should absolutely count in its favor.  I don’t want to dismiss or underplay the fact that there are a lot of men in the movement who care a lot about this issue and are actively working to fix it.

That said, the amount of privilege and harassment

I see coming from a number of the powerful men in the movement is really distressing.  The assumption that young women are taking advantage of older men or that men have the automatic right to presume sexual interest and the right to sexually harass young women is a problem, and it’s a problem within this movement, not just outside of it.

This problem came up today, because Lawrence Krauss, a respected scientist and one of the featured speakers at TAM9, defended his buddy Jeffrey Epstein, a man who plead guilty to hiring underage girls, some as young as 13,  to have sex with him.  Krauss is skeptical of the claims because he always thought the girls around Epstein were 19-23 and apparently thinks it’s ok to have sex with a 13 year old so long as you think she’s 18.  He also doesn’t seem to understand that a 13 year old having sex with a powerful, rich man has been coerced into it, no matter what.  Ignorance is no excuse there, it’s rape and it’s taking advantage of a child.

He is also skeptical of the claims made by the prosecution, despite the fact that Epstein plead guilty and they did an 11-month sting operation documenting his activity.  And they have his, apparently horrific, diary.

It gets worse.

DJ Grothe, on the Skepchick article about this, comments , saying basically that he doesn’t know anything about the situation, but he lied about his age when he was under 18 so that he could get laid, so maybe underage prostitution isn’t that bad.  I appreciate that he’s not saying that sex with a 13 year old is OK, he specifically says it isn’t, but since that’s what actually happened, I’m really not sure why he felt the need to defend Krauss.  Nor do I understand how he is also missing the power play aspect of this.  Epstein took underage women who were not prostitutes and coerced them into sexual acts, using money and power.  This is not acceptable behavior, even if you’re OK with prostitution and 16-year-olds having sex.

This isn’t a question of the legality of prostitution or what the age of consent should be.  This is a question about abuse of power, non-consensual sex and sex trafficking of minors.

I wish I could tell you that this blindness to abuse of privilege and power existed only in response to this one issue, but it permeates the skeptic movement.  Many of the men in this movement are guilty of abusing their power to take advantage of the women in the movement or to hurt them when they won’t agree to sex, or turning a blind eye to the behavior or other men who are guilty of similar behavior.

If I could tell you all the horror stories I’ve heard, all the individuals who have been mistreated, insulted, taken advantage of by men in this movement, you’d be shocked.  If I told you the number of men I’ve been told that I need to be careful around because they have a “problem with young women”, you might not believe me.  Unless you’re a woman, and then you’ve probably heard some of it yourself.

I believe these stories because I’ve been at the receiving end of some egregious behavior and I’ve seen a lot of it with my own eyes.  The women in the movement ignore it because it’s less important to us than our desire to be part of a community that matters to us.  Hell, I don’t even feel comfortable talking about it because I know it’s going to make me unpopular, I don’t want to list anyone’s name because I just don’t feel comfortable with the backlash that would come with it.  I can’t bring myself to do it and I feel absolutely ashamed for that.

When a powerful scientist asks a young women who is trying to be taken seriously in the sciences if she’d like to be his next mistress after meeting her once,  that’s an abuse of power.  When a powerful man implies he’ll help a woman out if he sleeps with her, that’s an abuse of power.  When a powerful man implies he will blackball a woman if she doesn’t sleep with him, that’s an abuse of power.  When a powerful man dismisses or insults a woman because she doesn’t want to sleep with him, that’s an abuse of power.  There’s a word for coercing women into having sex.

I doubt this will be read by powerful men in the movement, but if it is, I just want to say that you have a responsibility to set an example as to how women should be treated and where their value should come from.  If you think women are only sex objects and you only care about the young, pretty ones who don’t seem too frigid, how on earth are we going to be taken seriously by everyone else?

Why is it that when I go to conferences I have to be hyper-vigilent to the behavior of men whose opinions I respect?

*http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tits+of+gtfo

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This post, Skepticism: Tits or GTFO?*, originally appeared on She Thought on April 7, 2011.
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Later, in August, I received an email from the woman who had gotten the role. She had read my blog post and admitted she had had some of my same reservations. Her online bio was impressive. She seemed WAY more qualified than me. I promised I’d get back in touch to give her my thoughts after I saw the show. In January 2011, I did just that. I related to her that I was happily surprised at how the show turned out and pleased with her portrayal of the scientific/skeptical viewpoint.

We finally sat down – connected laptop to laptop – to talk about being a scientist, a skeptic, a woman and an educator.

I’m excited to introduce She Thought readers to Indre Viskontas, miracle detective.

Indre is broadly trained in psychology, specifically in cognition. She completed her undergraduate degree in Toronto, Canada and obtained her PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from UCLA. She currently resides in San Francisco and is associated with the UCSF Memory and Aging Center. Her specialty (one of them, at least) is the neural basis of memory and creativity. An accomplished opera singer, Indre studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, obtaining a Master of Music degree.

We discussed our mutual, initial concerns about the premise of the show. We had both been contacted by the show’s production company, Pilgrim Films, the same outfit that does Ghost Hunters. The show is set up with a believer – author and journalist Randall Sullivan – and a skeptic. The producers admitted it was a Mulder and Scully setup.

While I had felt the opportunity was not for me, Indre was intrigued. “I wanted to get involved in television work,” she says. “But, the more and more I got involved in the process, the more questions I had. Would this affect my reputation? Would my colleagues (in science and art) think I’m selling out? I was afraid that they would edit it in such a way to make me look bad or unintelligent. I was worried about the time away from things I was doing. And, I wasn’t sure I’d be any good at it.”

The Art of Science

Indre’s education and research had been in trying to understand our brains and how they work. She described to me her research on epilepsy patients where she participated in designing memory tests to watch the cells learn and communicate. She conducted neuroimaging work with functional MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) to infer which parts of the brain were involved with different activities.

After obtained her PhD in 2007, she relocated to San Francisco. “I wanted time to explore artistic endeavors, primarily opera singing. I enrolled in master of music program. And, I worked part time under a fellowship in neurology to studies patients who lose their ability to communicate verbally and [subsequently] develop other, artistic skills.” She is still affiliated with the UCSF Center for Aging and Memory and edits the journal Neurocase.

Correlated to her study of human memory, she has a strong appreciation and interest in the stories of others, including those who recount their miraculous experiences for Miracle Detectives. I asked her how she deals with the obvious – that people’s stories don’t qualify as solid evidence, and, that they might be less than factual. She explains: “I assume that people are telling me honestly what they remember but when there is something out of the ordinary, there are other ways in which I can corroborate the story.”

In one episode, a woman recalls her car accident that she claims was a premonition and resulted in her miraculous survival. Indre describes her interview strategy: “I look to question them in a way that gets around their telling the story in the same way they’ve told it before. They might have told this story a hundred times. When you start to ask them questions about the event – things they aren’t’ used to talking about – they may remember other aspects. From there, you can find out if what they are saying [as a whole] makes sense.”

The woman’s memory of the accident did not correspond to police reports made at the time nor with other experts opinion calling into doubt the label of “miracle”.

Being a “Skeptic”

In the intro for the show, Indre says, “Some might call me a skeptic…” But, does she call herself a “skeptic”?

She admits she did not know of the whole connected community until she started doing research for the show. Referring to the network of names and faces identified with the major skeptical organizations, she says, “I don’t have a good sense of what it means to be a Skeptic. I consider myself a scientist.”

The word “skeptic” can have a negative connotation, which is reflected in some of the comments of those who do not like the show. Indre comments that the word “skeptic” conjures the attitude that “You don’t want to find anything. You just want to say peoples’ beliefs are wrong.” But, that’s not true, she continues, “It’s, maybe, characteristic of some skeptics but not all, and certainly not true of scientists who are making a living trying to understand [the world].”

Having interacted with skeptical personalities Ben Radford, Joe Nickell, Michael Shermer and Jim Underdown for segments of Miracle Detectives, she expressed excitement to get more involved with the community.

Making a TV show

When I asked about the shooting schedule for a TV series, Indre described a grueling schedule of 12 hour days for 12 weeks.

Off camera, she spent considerable time preparing for the next episodes, doing research and contacting sources. “Yes, there were times that I wasn’t’ quite articulate on camera because I was tired,” she admits. “But, I always felt that the days went by quickly. It wasn’t a chore; I was never bored. There was so much I had to think about each day. I started taking copious notes, filling entire notebooks full of ideas and what people said, then go home and parse it.”

She continues: “It was all encompassing. I found it difficult to think of anything else. We had one day off a week. I’d have Sunday with my husband. It wasn’t easy.”

I inquired into what we might not realize about working on a television show. I found that television is a very cropped and refined end product. “For every thing that comes out in the final product,” she comments, “there are hours and hours of work that get edited out.”

Part of that work is time taken to prepare and to practice. I notice the same background work would apply to many of our life experiences.

Preparation is important, Indre stresses, because, “when the opportunity arises for you to make a point, you have that database from which you can draw.”

No matter if it’s a lecture or presentation at a meeting, her philosophy is, “You need to know a lot more than you’re ever going to say. You tell the audience 20% of what you know. In the questions and other moments you need to draw upon the other 80%. It’s true in television as well.”

Regarding practice, Indre describes how she thinks of several ways to say things in plain language prior to saying it on camera. Then, she practices saying it. Professionals do this. She related an example: “I saw the same thing on Oprah when we were on her show. As i was sitting next to her, she was practicing the pronunciation of my name. I could tell that she was a very professional media person because she knows that she could hiccup on a name so she practices it.”

Reaction from viewers

Miracle Detectives is part of the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). Thus, we can presume the audience demographic is primary women around 30 or older who are open to the spiritual and New Agey ideas Oprah promotes. How does one espouse a rational, scientific point of view to this audience without being tuned out?

For starters, the show’s developers cast a woman in the role of the logical investigator, and an accomplished, confident one at that.

Indre tells me that that feedback from Miracle Detective viewers is mixed. Most of the time, they find themselves siding with Randall but some admit they think about things in a way they haven’t before. The closed door may have been opened a bit. That’s encouraging! To present people with another possibility to get them thinking is an achievable and meaningful goal for skeptics.

Indre is not out to change people’s beliefs about God, but to show that there is an earthly, alternative explanation for some seemingly miraculous events.

The show’s web site allows viewers to comment on each episode. Most comments are from those of faith who have no appreciation of science as the most reliable method for understanding the world. It appears they also resent a rational viewpoint. Those people who have a complaint are more likely to comment but, at least, it is evidence that believers are being exposed to a presentation of both sides.

Unfortunately, a lot of the comments are personal.

Indre says, “It’s hard to read comments from people who are clearly not thoughtful (she’s an idiot, she’s ugly, etc.).”

Not all are so shallow, she notes, “Sometimes I have people comment on specific cases and I how I do things. What about this? How could you not find that evidence convincing? For those, I will respond.” She let’s these viewers know that they did have content that couldn’t be shown because there simply was not enough time.

She also gets labeled as the “wet blanket”.

“I’ll hear ‘You’re my miracle dream killer,’”, she comments. “I don’t want to be the Debbie Downer, as I’ve been called. I don’t think it has to be that way. When we look at these cases, it raises more questions. Is there something about this case that can illuminate something else about the way the world works? Those kinds of questions fascinate me.”

I asked, “Have you been pleased with the editing on the show?” She replied, “For the most part, I’ve been pleased. There was one episode about a medical intuitive where I felt that… they left out some critical components.” Indre clarifies it was not intentional, however. “It was not just to show the skeptic is wrong and Randall is right. Their job is to make good television.”

The intuitive claimed to see a long list of health problems in their test person, Joe, resulting in a “hit” that was impressive to Joe. However, the intuitive failed to remark on the primary ailment that affected Joe, an injured shoulder. Indre concludes the intuitive failed the test but, instead, the “hits” were emphasized in the program.

In the same episode, Indre and Randall interview remote viewer, Pam Coronado. “In the case of Pam Coronado, she described the picture for 20 minutes,” Indre explains. “They can’t show the whole thing. They just showed what sounded relevant. When you just show part of her description, things sound very specific.”

Indre had been coached on how to deal with such cold reading techniques from Skeptic Magazine’s Michael Shermer. “I had a good framework from Shermer.” But, she admits, “Looking back, I only had 2 minutes of airtime to [make my case].”

If she’d realized that, she would have done things differently. “It was me not being quite skilled enough and them having to make a story out of it.” A lesson for television is that there isn’t time to explain things in detail. So, the whole story doesn’t always get fleshed out.

Relating science to the public

Work on the show has made Indre more passionate about science education for the public. This is a core issue for me as well so we talked about why the public might not relate well to scientific findings.

The way in which the media reports science news doesn’t help. Always quick with a specific example, Indre talked about ESP studies. “Usually there is one method of study that is being applied to the phenomenon,” such as anecdotal evidence, she explains. “In ESP studies they’ll use one method of inquiry and find an effect. All of sudden they say we have to shift the paradigm!”

“As scientists,” she says, “we know that every method has its flaws so we need [lines of] converging evidence.”

That means using a host of different techniques and testing methods to point to a real effect. Yet, this important process of bolstering a claim is not what comes out in the news. Novel findings get hyped and people respond to results of just one study. She notes: “The news outlets don’t report ‘Oh, look! Ten papers used 10 methods and got the same results!’ That’s not exciting,” and concludes the public doesn’t have the patience to wait for findings to be well established, a key feature of accepting knowledge as valid.

Regarding parapsychology claims, she rejects the outcast scientist conspiracy, “If there really was solid evidence for such phenomena we’d all be studying it. It’d be fascinating. I mean, who wouldn’t want to build their career on a groundbreaking effect! Unfortunately, when you look closer, the work hasn’t been replicated by other labs, they haven’t used multiple methods and so it’s [ultimately] not that convincing.”

Future plans

“Will there be a season two of Miracle Detectives?” I ask.

“Right now the network is trying to figure out what their programing is going to be like,” Indre says, “so those decisions haven’t been made yet.”

I was interested in any other projects she had in store. As I anticipated, she has a lot of things cooking. “Ever since I started my PhD, I felt I was the kind of person who went project to project instead of having a 40-year career in one thing.”

She related to me that she is working on a proposal about art and science together in a creative non-fiction book. She tells of her collaborative work on artistic projects with artist Deborah Aschheim to display scientific information. In addition, she continues to perform in concerts and has recording projects. She even mentioned pitching an idea to another network about a potential show.

Gender issues in science and entertainment

SheThought readers are used to discussions regarding gender issues. This topic was appropriate to bring up with Indre in two contexts: science and the entertainment industry.

She admitted that the gender question triggered some strong feelings.

“I’ve working in traditionally male environments like electrophysiology and even in television,” she begins. “Sure, I have come upon gender issues where I felt that if I was man, I might have been treated differently.” Yet, she feels those situations are manageable. She explains, “Before now, I felt I could pretty much handle any gender bias that gets thrown at me. I learned how to work with difficult people.”

There is, however, one issue that provokes her. “The biggest issue facing women in science and TV is how do fit children into the equation. As I’m getting into that part of my life, it’s definitely an issue for me. I’ve never before felt quite as vulnerable as now when I’ve wondered if it’s time to start a family. It’s the first time I’ve been told outright ‘If you have a child/if you get pregnant, we will replace you’. That made me angry.”

Getting pregnant would mean taking time off but it does not mean one would be less good at doing the job. Indre told me she wonders if the attitude towards pregnancy in the entertainment industry may be specific to the situation. For example, she’s heard that some producers think pregnancy might “provide a new perspective and interest”.

She does not know if the negative view is widespread or industry-wide but thinks it deserves attention. “Both industries, science and entertainment, could be more supportive towards family decisions,” she remarked. “Unless we raise the issue and start thinking about possible solution, it’s not going to get better.”

I agree. This sentiment also rings true with promotion of any social issue including skepticism. We must raise the rational viewpoint with the public, believers and pro-paranormalists. There are other solutions out there besides the one that culture considers most compelling for the moment. Using Indre’s philosophy for discussion, we ought to figure out what we agree upon and move forward in little steps from there. Unless we start somewhere and keep the discussion going, even against criticism and biased claims, we won’t get anywhere.

Indre Viskontas is a face of new scientific skepticism. Question, push, take chances but don’t discount, don’t alienate. She readily admits it’s a fine line to walk. I’m encouraged by Miracle Detectives in their presentation of a thoughtful, intelligent skeptical personality to deliver the reasonable point of view. It’s a step in the right direction.

Miracle Detectives: http://www.oprah.com/own-miracle-detectives/miracle-detectives.html
Indre Viskontas personal site: http://www.indreviskontas.com

More of this in-depth interview with Ms. Viskontas will be featured in a future issue of Skeptical Inquirer. Subscribe today.

Sharon Hill is a geologist interested in the public understanding of science. She blogs at Doubtful and organizes the Keystone Society for Rational Inquiry
Twitter: @idoubtit http://twitter.com/idoubtit and @keystoneinquiry http://twitter.com/keystoneinquiry

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This post, Indre Viskontas: Scientist, Skeptic and Miracle Detective, originally appeared on She Thought on March 3, 2011.
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Essentially, SD has rewritten a clarification that was to be added to their law regarding justifiable homicide so that if someone killed another human being in defense of a pregnant woman’s fetus, it would be a legal act. Just a little thought can take us through scenarios in which we can see how the law might benefit or harm people, overall. For example, say we encounter a situation similar to the events leading up to the famous Scott Peterson case. If Scott Peterson was killed in the process of defending Laci to protect her unborn child, should the killer of Scott Peterson be let free? Well, SD’s law already accounts for that, in that situation, with their laws regarding homicide in defense of other people. But what if Laci Peterson, Scott Peterson’s wife and murder victim, were not at risk of death, but her fetus was? Would the killing of Scott fall under the same laws?

The answer is, currently, no. The reason for this is because of legal wording that has been an undertone of debates about reproductive rights for a long time. In order for it to be legal for a Scott Peterson type to be killed to protect Laci’s unborn, the unborn would have to be considered a person because the law specifically addresses the defending another person defense as applying if the individual is protecting another person. In light of this, it is not completely irrational to protect a fetus through the law with an addition to laws regarding justifiable homicide, assuming that what is protected is a wanted entity.

The reason why I use the Scott Peterson case as an example is not because it is a fantabulous example for this particular issue. Instead, it is because the Scott Peterson case has a comparable issue. In the Scott Peterson trial, it became an issue of major debate as to if Laci’s unborn child could be considered a second count of homicide against Scott or not. If it could, people feared, would this mean that an unborn fetus could be defended by law as a victim of homicide if it is aborted? The debate was pretty heated for quite some time and experts who examined the body were under pressure to decide if Laci had given birth to the infant or if it had somehow left her corpse after her death.

Since the fetus was killed as a result of Laci’s death, the debate over if Scott should be charged with the death of the fetus as a second count of homicide grew. This debate is what ultimately led to the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. Which, as it turns out, does for federal law what Rep. Phil Jensen claims to be doing with his provisions. The Unborn Victims of Violence Act includes provisions to protect those who perform abortions or obtain abortions. So, what does Jensen’s law really say?

Fortunately, it is easy to find a copy:

FOR AN ACT ENTITLED, An Act to expand the definition of justifiable homicide to provide for the protection of certain unborn children.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA:
Section 1. That § 22-16-34 be amended to read as follows:
22-16-34. Homicide is justifiable if committed by any person while resisting any attempt to murder such person, or to harm the unborn child of such person in a manner and to a degree likely to result in the death of the unborn child, or to commit any felony upon him or her, or upon or in any dwelling house in which such person is.
Section 2. That § 22-16-35 be amended to read as follows:
22-16-35. Homicide is justifiable if committed by any person in the lawful defense of such person, or of his or her husband, wife, parent, child, master, mistress, or servant, or the unborn child of any such enumerated person, if there is reasonable ground to apprehend a design to commit a felony, or to do some great personal injury, and imminent danger of such design being
accomplished.

The emphasis is mine. That one word does what the provisions added to the Unborn Victims of Violence Act does to protect abortion providers and recipients. This law, while it feels scary, isn’t going to make it legal to kill abortion doctors and provides no more incentive to do so than the federal law that is already in existence.

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This post, South Dakota’s Under-handed Trick?, originally appeared on She Thought on February 16, 2011.
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With all due respect to the writers of the post on BlagHag called When Gender Goes Pear-Shaped, this is going to be a breakdown post.  I don’t want to make people feel uncomfortable, but the way ideas are conveyed in that post fueled this whole affair (though unintentionally, I’m sure), and I think some complaints were valid, but not all. So I’m going to try to address all the bigger issues one by one.

Right now, if you look at the post in question, you’ll find that there’s a little blurb at the beginning that says:

Guest Post by Sharon Moss, President of the Humanist Community of Central Ohio with Lyz Liddell, Director of Campus Organizing at the Secular Student Alliance

These are the views of individuals and do not represent the views of the Secular Student Alliance or the Humanist Community of Central Ohio.

That second part wasn’t there in the original version that I read, but there are two things that I think are important that contributed to some of the backlash to this post. Firstly, you should note that Jen McCreight did not write this post, but it is posted on her blog. When people first started responding to this, Jen got to feel the initial flames because Jen is held accountable for whatever does end up on her blog. This resulted in people accusing Jen of creating drama, then Jen objecting by pointing out that it wasn’t her words, but she believed in the message and then parties on each side of the fence not listening to each other and turning up their music louder, alternately, until all the neighbors decided to move away for all of the noise. Jen is correct that people shouldn’t be pointing fingers at her and holding her accountable for what other people write. People are responsible for their own words. At the same time, Jen is responsible for what is posted on her blog. So Jen can’t really be blamed for the drama, but she can be questioned about why she supported it, which, she answered in a later post:

Yesterday I allowed Sharon Moss and Lyz Liddell to do a guest post on my blog. I rarely let people do guest posts, but I trust both of them immensely and have a great personal interest in making women feel more welcome in the atheist community, so their post seemed appropriate. They even waited a week before writing it, so they had plenty of time to think about their opinions and reduce a reactionary response. And while the comments have erupted into what I can safely call a clusterfuck, I’m here to stand by my decision to let that post go up.

Honestly, she could have stopped there. That’s where her responsibility over this whole thing ended. Sadly, she clearly felt the need to defend the writers of the post because that’s what she ended up doing, but she didn’t have to. Jen’s clear objection to the chicken-gluing that’s going on in her comments coupled with her accurate description of the situation as a ‘clusterfuck’ inspired me to give it various related names; as a result of her defense, now she’s become enmeshed in this battle and it has become obvious that even she doesn’t seem to know where she stands. She had every reason to trust these other women with her blog, they are people with experience and even some authority in the community. But Jen is still in the process of learning (she’s admitted this, herself) and her defense of the writers of this post ended up seeming reflexive. I’ll discuss more on that, later.

The original post by Moss and Liddell began with a very modern-aged dramatic comment that had appeared on Sharon Moss’ facebook:

If the freethought community doesn’t have a problem with sexism, why did I just spend 20 minutes in the bathroom consoling a woman who was publicly insulted when she asked the panel a question about sexism in freethought communities? Note to dudes, it doesn’t matter if it is sexism or biology, if you’re making people who come to your group uncomfortable, you’re doing it wrong. — Facebook status, Sharon Moss, 1/30/11

This comment, alone, could easily send any mass group into a frenzy over a variety of problems. For one, who in the freethought community thinks we’re sexism-free? The video of the panel that I watched involved an entire conversation spun off of the idea of sexism in the community. Of course people involved in that discussion would be offended at this comment! As I mentioned, before, the “weaker sex” comment was probably a bad idea. That guy should be forced to listen to a hundred babies crying inconsolably (because they just got vaccinated, of course) for three days as punishment for his ill-timed jest. Note that I am not chastising the joke, even I laughed when I heard him say it (after this controversy had begun to unravel) but the situation in which it was dished out was inappropriate because he used it to smack down a legitimate concern that someone had and he effectively ended that aspect of a conversation that could have been interesting and useful. One guy’s comment, though, doesn’t mean that the entire community is saturated with that kind of sexism. It means that guy – that one guy – was responsible for a sexist comment that sent a woman into a bathroom, crying. It wasn’t a matter of if the freethought community, itself, has a problem with sexism. That was a matter of one person’s bad behavior. We can’t pin his behavior onto an entire community. That would be poor judgment on our part.

As for the second part of this facebook post, it is unfair to blame women feeling uncomfortable in a community entirely on the ‘dudes’ (and if we’re complaining about terms used to describe women, shouldn’t we also be concerned about terms that we use for men? Not that ‘dude’ is an offensive term, but it is clearly used in that comment as a divisive term). That was the point of the panel discussion, wasn’t it, to figure how why there are fewer women and how women may become more attracted to the movement? There’s really not that much evidence, as was mentioned, that men making women feel uncomfortable is a reason for women not being at these meetings. It appears to be the case that there is something else going on. Blaming the problem entirely on the ‘dudes’ keeps us away from examining the problem objectively so we can find an answer.

Sharon Moss explains her use of the facebook status, thusly, calling it sarcasm:

I’m not one to post snarky facebook status updates. I generally view snarky facebook statuses as the realm of the powerless. And, damn, did I feel powerless.

Actually, snark can be a pretty useful tool. In fact, in a strange twist to this story, I seem to recall a moment when someone was being snarky on a certain panel and said something that might have been somewhat unwise that ended up setting the blogoshpere afire. As I recall, it was something about the weake … uh, oh. I really do think that the weaker sex comment was inappropriate in the context it was in. I wouldn’t have gotten my panties in a wad over it and I would have thought it was funny, but I have to agree that comment was an overall destructive thing to have been said. I also think that Moss’ facebook comment was just as destructive, for the same reasons. This opening quote contributed, significantly, to the aftermath of the BlagHag fustercluckacalypse. It set the tone for the whole post and it effectively shuts off the opposition, from the beginning.

I’m going to skip over the background information and things I’ve already mostly covered, but I do want to address this, from the Moss/Liddell article:

The all-too-common problem came up of a woman showing up to a meeting and every dude there hitting on her. First, the panelists grabbed a theme that had been floating around all weekend: that men hitting on women is just biological (therefore excusable), making it sound like a woman in that kind of situation shouldjust STFU and get over it.

I have already talked about something related to this problem once before, here on shethought. As much as nobody has the right to shut down women’s sexual behavior, nobody has the right to try to shut down men’s sexual behavior. Courting rituals are a part of the sexual behavior of men and women. As long as these men are not forcing themselves on to women, it is not our place to stifle it. Yes, it is overwhelming to someone when they are outnumbered, at a conference, 2 to 1 by the opposite sex, so you will encounter a higher frequency of men hitting on you. But what they are doing is not hurting you. If you feel uncomfortable by it, it is not because they are doing something to bring you down or to be malicious. They wouldn’t be hitting on you if they thought you were not something of value. The appropriate response to a situation where you’re getting unwanted attention is to point out for the guy that it is unwanted attention. It is completely socially acceptable, though it may harm someone’s ego, to tell the random peacock, fanning his feathers at you at a convention, that their beak is inadequate to help you build your nest. Then, you just walk away.

The article continues:

Then the moderator asked the women in the audience, as if it were a rewording of the same question, whether they would feel harassed or flattered if they showed up to an event and a few guys started flirting with them. We women in the audience, pressured to respond to the question at hand but feeling duped because we knew it wasn’t the same thing, gave an honest response. Sure, a few guys flirting with us is sexy. BUT!!! (we all screamed in our heads, even though the panel never let us say it out loud) 20 guys our father’s age blatantly staring at and talking to our cleavage is a totally different situation! It’s not sexy, it’s gross and creepy.

Based on what I saw happening in the video I linked to in my previous article, I feel this isn’t a great portrayal of what happened. Also, while the authors imply that everyone in the audience thought the same thing, I really doubt that they did. No single woman can speak for all women. Also, I dislike the theme that exists that seems to say that a man staring at a woman’s chest is somehow wrong and that they can’t function in any appropriate way towards women, when they do so. How insulting is that idea to 1) all men and 2) women with chests so large, Mount Rushmore could successfully motorboat them? The idea that a particular view of another person can so successfully override all neurological pathways in such a manner as to excuse the brain itself from any rational functioning is pretty absurd. Yes, sometimes a person can be caught off-guard by their attraction to something, but that is certainly not the dominant trend. Also, sometimes our anatomy betrays us. Some women are cursed with breasts so large that they have to wear a bra while they sleep, for fear of smothering themselves. These women, sadly, have to deal with stares all of the time, too. Are they to assume that because the rest of society thinks men are so dysfunctional that they can’t function when they see cleavage that they (these busty women) will never, ever have an intelligent conversation with a man?

Furthermore, to add a little science to the matter, if you were really worried about a man lusting after you while he was talking to you, you’d worry about him looking at your face. Studies have shown, and being int he industry I’m in, I can anecdotally verify, men want to see faces when they’re aroused. They look at the face of a person in porn before looking at their body. It isn’t that the body is unimportant, but the face is usually a priority. So if you’re really all that concerned then you should probably start worrying more the next time a guy at a convention stares back into your pretty eyes.

Also, ‘it’s gross?’ I’m not sure what the appropriate response to that comment should be, but I feel bad leaving it hanging without a comment. I do understand someone feeling creeped out when they’re being watched and the onlooker’s gaze is unwelcome, but why would it be gross? We aren’t kids in a schoolyard, anymore. Looking at people or looking at people’s body parts is a useful thing to do, it isn’t ‘gross.’

I already covered much about my opinion on the exchange between the woman in the audience and the panel, but I don’t want to leave out a comment on this:

Her question focused on the language the panel had been using – “female” instead of “woman,” and pointed out that it made us sound like livestock rather than people.

While I agree that the word choice is awkward, it is because the word ‘female’ is more of a general term, not because it implies livestock. A ‘female’ can be a human or it can be an animal, this makes it not really equivalent to the word ‘woman,’ which only applies to females who happen to be human. I think that using the term ‘livestock’ and ‘animal’ to state the position of ‘this word seems awkward and is perhaps a bad choice,’ could very well have added another barrier to making this a productive conversation to have. It is interesting to examine why the term ‘female’ was used, but by claiming it implies something it does not, to pretend it is dehumanizing, shut down the potential for questioning it further. If it was really used because people were uncomfortable using the term ‘women,’ then that makes some sense. There are feminist groups who refuse to use the word ‘woman’ or ‘women’ because it linguistically links men and women. In order to attempt to disassociate the terms, many feminist groups resort to different spellings, as if that would somehow change the history of the term: womyn, wimmin, etc. Someone trying to avoid the controversy altogether might then face a bit of a dilemma when they have to reference women. There’s the camp who thinks the misspellings are absurd and the people who dislike the word ‘women’ and there’s a distinct lack of better terms. Thus, it might seem to be a great solution, for everybody, to use the term ‘female.’ So, the word choice was irrational, but it is quite likely that it was irrational because they were trying to avoid another problem that, too, was irrational.

The next part of the article focuses on Sean Faircloth’s presentation. Interestingly, it is tough to even find out what was said or what happened because even though Jen McCreight says she saw a video, I couldn’t find a link to it anywhere in the comments section of her post or in any of her posts referencing it. I looked, I couldn’t find it and since I couldn’t get into contact with Faircloth (I really tried), I am limited in what I can say about it. Given her own limitations to properly assess what happened, Jen took a small part of what was said about Faircloth’s presentation out of the original post (but I have a copy of the original and there was still much criticism left in) and even after saying she saw a video of the presentation, she didn’t put that part back up. From what I can gather from the comments section of the original post and based on what I’m finding about Faircloth and what I read on JesusFetusFajitaFishsticks, Faircloth really was misrepresented. At the very least, his presentation was presented as one-sided, with encouragement to the men to lustily scope out the women as if they had a huge incentive to do so. In reality, it seems to be the case that he had extended a similar encouragement to the women, using the incentive as an illustration about a sociocultural perspective, not as a reason to be a dick to all women in the audience.

Yes, some men respond to women, sexually, and some women respond to men as well. At conventions, there are frequently sexual hookups and I even know of at least two long-term relationships that began as the result of hookups at conventions. Basically, anywhere humans go, sex (as a behavior) is likely to follow. It is not our right to make that go away.

Again, my post has become a terrifyingly long one and I fear your brains may all be suffering as a result. I have yet to cover every aspect of this debate, though.

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This post, When Sex Gets in my Apple-Bottomed Jeans (Part Deux), originally appeared on She Thought on February 13, 2011.
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When you research a subject like this in depth, you find that certain studies keep popping up as offering especially strong evidence. These studies are widely cited and referenced in both popular and scholarly discussions of the subject.

One of the most famous studies of the effects of mass media on girls involved teens on the island of Fiji, and what happened to them after television was introduced to the island in 1995. It is considered especially important and insightful because it allowed a very rare glimpse into a culture that had not been previously exposed to television. (Before anyone nitpicks, the headline above is merely simplified shorthand for what the study found, it did not actually claim that TV causes anorexia, but that girls exposed to TV scored higher on a test for disordered eating, as noted below.)

The study is often described as concluding that television had created anorexia-like behavior or body image disturbance. Here’s how one writer, Sylvia Lerigo, cast the story:

Compared to the past, when simply “being” was the priority, Fijian teens had become as obsessive about body image and weight as teenage girls in the West who were suffering with conditions like anorexia. Prior to this invasion of television, the Fijian female body was considered more attractive when fuller and naturally feminine, which Fijians considered ideal for childbearing and child rearing. Becker noticed that almost 74% of young women in Fiji considered themselves “too fat” and thinness was what most Fijian teens craved. Why Teenage Girls Want a Skinny Image: Teens Spend Large Amounts of Time Obsessing About Looks

Let’s take a closer look at this widely-cited study to examine what, exactly, it found.

In Dr. Anne Becker’s famous 2002 study (“Eating behaviours and attitudes following prolonged exposure to television among ethnic Fijian girls,” British Journal of Psychiatry, 180: 509-514) Becker and colleagues visited Fiji in 1995, a few weeks after television was introduced to the island, and returned in 1998, three years later.

Each time they asked school-age Fijian girls (average age 17) about how much TV they watched (and their attitudes about the programming), and questions about their binging and purging behaviors. High scores on an eating disorder scale [EAT-26] increased 12.7%, and induced vomiting to control weight increased 11.3% between 1995 and 1998. Becker concluded that “key indicators of disordered eating were significantly more prevalent following exposure to television.”

The Fiji studies are often cited as strong evidence that exposure to thin images in the mass media are linked to eating disorders, and have implications for American teen girls as well. There are several important caveats that should be kept in mind when considering the study’s validity that are rarely mentioned, and only become apparent upon a close reading of the research. For example:

1)      Becker’s study involving Fijian girls had a total of only 63 participants in 1995, and 65 in the 1998 follow-up. This is a very small sample size, and makes the study’s conclusions difficult to generalize. A sample size of at least a few hundreds subjects would provide much better evidence that the findings were valid. Fiji had a population of around 85,000 people in 1995, and it’s not at all clear that a sample of 64 teen girls represents the population as a whole.

It should be noted that only one-third (29.2%) of the 1998 sample, or 19 girls, scored high on the eating disorder behavior test. So Lerigo’s claim that “Fijian teens had become as obsessive about body image and weight as teenage girls in the West who were suffering with conditions like anorexia” seems misleading at best.

There’s also the puzzling fact that while Becker takes pains to state that eating disorders were essentially unheard of in Fiji prior to the introduction of television, she found 8 girls (out of 63) who scored high on the 1995 test, a mere two or three weeks after television was introduced to the island. This group is considered the “before TV exposure” group, yet 12.7% of the girls apparently scored high on the test with little or no television exposure. Yet after three years of exposure to the mass media’s constant thin images and unhealthy messages, only 12 additional girls scored high on the test. While an increase from 12.7% to 29.2% is statistically significant, is seems like a curiously small increase if the mass media is as powerful as often claimed.

2)      The girls, though claiming to diet and wanting to emulate the bodies of thin TV actresses, did not actually lose weight between the 1995 and 1998 surveys. Becker notes, “there were no significant differences between the samples in mean age or body weight” (p. 510) (in fact, if anything the girls got slightly fatter, as the average BMI went from a 24.5 to a 24.9). Thus the Fijian girls were a hair’s breadth away from being overweight (overweight is a BMI of 25) both before the introduction of TV and three years later, thus there’s no evidence that exposure to the TV images led to any weight loss or anorexia.

This puts Lerigo’s comment that “Becker noticed that almost 74% of young women in Fiji considered themselves ‘too fat’” in a whole different light. If you hadn’t read the study, it would seem to suggest that these thin or normal-weight girls had been brainwashed into believing they should be thin like Jennifer Aniston. Instead, the reason that 74% of Fijian girls considered themselves “too fat” is because they probably were too fat! This has nothing to do with thin models in mass media and everything to do with the high-fat typical Fijian diets.

3)      Fijians were incredibly naive about television. According to Becker, the girls they interviewed believed that TV shows like Seinfeld, E.R., Home Improvement, Beverly Hills 90210, and Friends were news stories and reality shows. They did not understand that the people they were seeing were actors. They could not understand the difference between a scripted sitcom and real life, yet they were being asked complex questions about their attitudes regarding the TV characters. On this important measure alone, American teen girls are polar opposites from the Fijian girls. Young women are very media savvy and certainly don’t mistake Grey’s Anatomy for a news report. This seriously undermines attempts to draw parallels between the Fiji study and the media’s influence in modern America (something most writers on the issue, including Lerigo, specifically do). Becker herself points this out: “Generalization about the impact of television upon Fijians to other populations requires caution” (p. 512).

4)      Becker did not determine whether or not the 65 girls in the 1998 follow-up study had disordered eating symptoms or attitudes before 1995. Because the same population of girls was not used (which would control for this variable), there is no way to know whether or not television caused the increase or not. Put another way, for all Becker knows, the girls she interviewed in 1998 might have scored high on the disordered eating test before they ever watched television, if Becker had tested them in 1995. Furthermore, even though television was only introduced to Fiji in 1995, mass media images of thin models and actresses were seen in Fiji many years earlier in the form of magazines, newspapers, films, and so on. So it was not, as often claimed, a culture that had little exposure to the “thin ideal.”

All this of course does not mean that the famous Fijian study is invalid, but it’s important to understand the limitations of the research, and what the study actually found. This widely-cited, highly-touted research is far less impressive when you take a closer look at the study—something writers and reporters rarely bother to do. The claim that exposure to TV and its mass media images increased eating disorders is one interpretation, but there are good reasons to be cautious about the validity and generalizability of the study.

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This post, A Closer Look at the Famous Fiji “TV Causes Anorexia” Study, originally appeared on She Thought on January 24, 2011.
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Perth researcher, teacher, and SheThought contributor Kylie Sturgess is quoted (and SheThought given a shout out!) in a new article on women and superstition in the Australian National Times:

Are women really more likely than men to believe in the paranormal?

You’d certainly think so if you were to go by what’s on the female-oriented pay-TV channels: ghost hunters, “psychic” detectives, people who claim to talk to the dead, even supposedly psychic children.  Women’s magazines are full of horoscopes and ask-a-psychic columns, while men’s mags are full of beer ads and babes. The conclusion seems obvious, doesn’t it?

But Perth teacher and researcher Kylie Sturgess has found that the difference between women and men isn’t so much in their propensity to hold paranormal beliefs as it is in the kinds of paranormal beliefs they’re likely to hold.

“Women are more likely to be at the ‘social’ end of paranormal beliefs,” Sturgess says. “They’re more likely to believe in things like mediums, astrology, psychic healing, and ghosts.

“Men, for instance, are more likely than women to believe in the alien astronaut theories of Erich von Daniken, and more cryptozoological things like the Loch Ness monster.”

Check out the full article here!

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This post, Do I (and all women) WANT to Believe??, originally appeared on She Thought on January 5, 2011.
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