Pseudoscience Vlogging

A while back, I was doing some serious head-scratching after stumbling upon an odd conspiracy and pseudoscience-laden YouTube channel called Suspicious0bservers.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking: "Crackpots on YouTube, you say? It just can't be! Alert the media!"

And I would ignore it like we all do most bizarre Net content, but this channel's videos are uploaded on a fairly regular basis, get tens of thousands of views and hundreds of likes, and employ a rather effective snake oil salesperson technique (which I will explain shortly). Apparently, many people are buying this crap, and, if you read some of the comments under the videos, you get a clear sense of the disturbingly uncritical acceptance (clicking on the comment screen-capture images will take you to the video from whence they sprungeth):



The entire planet is cooling down, and we can only assume it's just a case of Ben Davidson from Suspicious0bservers being right about that, and all these thousands of scientists being wrong about the fact that it is actually and unequivocally warming, ya know?



Start off the new year during summer in the northern hemisphere? Dunno, I guess KingChrist ofEarth still uses the Alexandrian or Julian calendar, or maybe relies on a fiscal calendar, or something, and the creator of this Suspicious0bservers account is a scientist, dontchya know (in actuality a legal professional with a low-level law degree)? KingChrist is somehow certain that anyone who disagrees with the Suspicious0bservers channel might be very smart, but is definitely dangerously stupid at the same time. If you find any one sensible thing in that comment, lemme know.



Main source for space news?! What the...? I can only therefore suspect that James Doakes relies primarily on his horoscope for financial and investment decisions as well.



Wow. "No fearmongering, no disinformation, no bullshit. Just what is happening and why." Sounds SPECTACULAR. I mean, we should all make the Suspicious0bservers channel our main source for space and climate news, right? Well, except for the fact that the fearmongering, disinformation, and bullshit in reality gets wrapped up with legitimate-sounding reporting, so that people fail to recognize it. For example (click on the video still image to go to the pertinent point in the video)...



Sure, we get a halfhearted mention of humans changing climate, but if suggesting that solar prominences, or coronal mass ejections (CMEs), or the Sun's magnetic field itself are affecting the recent changes in climate to any noticeable degree is NOT disinformation and bullshit, then I don't know what is. They can be a very serious problem for us, but a fairly stable Sun has had little or no effect on the observed global temperature increase, be it a trend-reversing cooling influence (as I assume Ben Davidson of Suspicious0bservers would have us all believe), or a warming one.

And then we have this doozy (click on the video still image to go to the pertinent point in the video)...

"Antarctic sea ice [is] setting record high marks, growing faster than the Arctic is melting up north."

Mind you, that part about Antarctic sea ice increases outpacing Arctic sea ice losses is NOT part of any argument that Ian Eisenman makes. He is not trying to refute or support that assertion, and would most likely call it utter nonsense that even his scientific rivals would have the good sense to avoid stating. Eisenman is only saying what increases in ice we calculate over southern seas may not be as great as we believe due to errors in data processing, and, whether or not you, Davidson, the science community at large, and I agree with him, he really makes no comparison at all between the melt/expansion rates at either pole. That nonsensical assertion is Ben Davidson's alone, and it marches in line with the standard denier tunnel vision-style malarkey regarding polar ice conditions. They cherry-pick the things that agree with their climate change ignorance, and reject everything else. However, this particular claim is a straight-up fallacious twist that I must admit I haven't seen much...Antarctic sea ice is growing faster than Arctic sea ice is shrinking...hmmmm, lemme think about that one for a moment...

Ummm, wot?

Once again, we find ourselves forced to make a decision. Either Ben Davidson of Suspicious0bservers is right, and the entire climate science community is wrong, or it's the other way around:



Gee, tough choice, I know.

And, finally, Davidson would like us all to take seriously the Thunderbolts Project's kookiness, some of which I addressed in my last Suspicious0bservers post (click on the video still image to go to the pertinent point in the video)...



It must be Davidson's "scientific" opinion that the dust covering a comet is magically impenetrable and somehow prevents the outflow of material from its nucleus, rather than encourages it, and/or that the dust just can't be the material left over after the coma was produced. From the "comet nucleus" wikipedia page:

It is thought that complex organic compounds are the dark surface material. Solar heating drives off volatile compounds leaving behind heavy long-chain organics that tend to be very dark, like tar or crude oil. The very darkness of cometary surfaces allows them to absorb the heat necessary to drive their outgassing.

Therefore, for Davidson, people who think planets shoot lightning bolts at one another and their moons are right about some other oddball "static sublimation via solar wind interaction" theory of theirs. Once more, about all I can muster in response to this convoluted pseudoscience merry-go-round is a weary wot?

Yup, great place to get all yer space and climate change news, I gotta tell ya. One-stop, screwball shopping.

Notice how these videos make totally unscientific pronouncements, like the ones I highlight, and then move on to mumbo-jumbo-style, sciency-sounding coverage of earthquakes, sun spots and solar activity, terrestrial and space weather, NASA and ESA missions, and so on. Bouncing all over the research map, like this proves or accomplishes something interconnected and important. This strange YouTube channel uses the same intellectually-dishonest tactic upon which charlatans like Deepak Chopra base entire lucrative careers: toss the bullshit in with the rest of the word salad to hide it. This is the snake oil-selling trick I mentioned earlier. If you babble somewhat coherently about real discoveries in legitimate science to portray yourself as a knowledgeable expert, you can then use the trust you've just established with your audience to convince them that they should also believe your batshit insane nonsense, like "human quantum-body essence" remedies, or CMEs/solar magnetic field causing the Earth's climate to dramatically change/cool/whatever, is real as well.

To formally and informally educated people who think critically and know better, sites like Suspicious0bservers may seem harmless, absurd, and a bountiful source of unending chuckles, but we have to consider how uneducated and credulous people, like those I mention above, see them. These content sources are not without their seductive dangers. In fact, I would argue that their Trojan horse-style strategy of hiding the pseudoscience inside the science is not that far off — at least conceptually so — from how some terrorist organizations spread and gain popularity. Present a helpful facade of goodwill to the public, while initially tempering or concealing your true agenda, until you're in a position of authority and control. We have to fund an educational system which prioritizes critical thinking skills, so that people are armed with the intellectual weaponry necessary to fight off the bewitching temptations of the charlatans on their own, or we will only sink deeper into, as one great science advocate once put it, a combustible mixture of ignorance and power.

I think the full quote, as well as a few more salient and germane ones, ought to reinforce the point here.

"We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science and technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don’t know anything about it?"

-Carl Sagan, "Charlie Rose: An Interview with Carl Sagan," May 27, 1996

"Science is [...] a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along."

-Carl Sagan, "Charlie Rose: An Interview with Carl Sagan," May 27, 1996

"[Science] urges on us a fine balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything — new ideas and established wisdom. We need wide appreciation of this kind of thinking. It works. It’s an essential tool for a democracy in an age of change. Our task is not just to train more scientists but also to deepen public understanding of science."

-Carl Sagan, "Why We Need To Understand Science" in The Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 14, Issue 3 (Spring 1990)

"...if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones."

-Carl Sagan, "The Burden of Skepticism" in Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 12, Issue 1 (Fall 1987)