Unhelpful

More than 200 years after Thomas Paine made a sound case for an Age of Reason, America finds itself increasingly at odds with the very faculties of such an endeavor.

While belief in traditional superstitions, specifically ghosts and witches, is down from 20 years ago, belief in superstitions of a more current nature, as it were, is markedly up in the last 10 years. In fact, when the question about witches is asked in a context unrelated to Halloween, the percentage of positive responses goes up notably.

There are notable trends across age, with older respondents (50 years) more likely to believe in the concepts of telepathy and demonic possession, while the younger respondents (18-29 years) much more likely to believe in clairvoyant prediction, communication with the dead and channeling, extraterrestrial visitation, hauntings and ghosts, and witches.

The media often panders to this credulity. It is common for many forms of so-called alternative medicines to be given uncritical exposure in forums where the same lack of critical discourse would not be given to, say, telepathy. Even so, I’m reminded of an NPR program out of WAMU American University which would frequently lend credence to the practices of acupuncture, astrology, spiritual healing, cellular memory (transplant beneficiaries taking on the personality traits of donors), “scientific” astrology, and interviews with purveyors of “New Age” theories, including Deepak Chopra.

Needless to say, I expect better of Discovery Communications Incorporated’s (DCI) television network (which includes The Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel) and A&E Television Networks (which includes the History Channel and History Channel International).

To quote from Discovery Communications Incorporated’s statement on media literacy:

In the aftermath of the tragic shooting at Columbine High School, there emerged broad agreement that schools must provide instruction that helps young people critically analyze all the information that reaches them through TV, radio, movies and the Internet. Discovery has designed one such solution.

Rather than apply this objective to their programming, DCI helped fund a media literacy curricula for Maryland schools. While entirely laudable, I believe the responsible choice to further media literacy should probably include content on their channels which, to state the obvious, reach far, far beyond Maryland students. To associate the need for media literacy as a function of lessons learned by a specific tragedy is to gloss over the fact that media literacy is not only in the interests of content providers, but the worldwide media audience as a whole. While a successful approach to media literacy may include additional programming, it also warrants a change in the way future programming is made, as well as an examination of existing content.

Clearly, DCI’s Discovery Channel and DCI’s The Learning Channel (TLC) are meant to entertain. TLC in particular has some programming (Junkyard Wars is an obvious example) which is clearly entertainment first, without as much of a focus on education. While one could debate the educational qualities of an entertainment show like Junkyard Wars, one would be unable to fairly characterize the show as presenting inaccurate or unqualified speculation as science. As such, a nearly wholly-entertainment program on TLC does not violate the standards one would reasonably expect from a channel often focusing on examination of the sciences, health, and the human experience. Shows which are less about science, such as cooking, home improvement, and pets are featured on DCI’s network of channels, fit in with the whole, and add quality programming to the lineup.

A&E’s The History Channel includes a similar statement of purpose:

Now reaching over 62 million Nielsen subscribers, The History Channel reveals the power and passion of history as an inviting place where people experience history personally and connect their own lives to the great lives and events of the past. The History Channel is the only place “Where the Past Comes Alive.” The History Channel received the prestigious Governor’s Award from the Television Academy of Arts & Sciences for the network’s “Save Our History” campaign dedicated to historic preservation.

As before, The History Channel also carries entertainment programs with various degrees of historical relevance from comedy with only passing (and subjective) historical reference - The Black Sheep Squadron - to what I feel is one of the best (and consistently challenging) game shows on television - History IQ.

Both DCI and A&E carry quality programming on their flagship channels. But they also carry shows which utterly undermine the credibility of their scientific and historic programming.

It is one thing to discuss a metaphysical phenomenology, but entirely another to present it as truth with insufficient critical analysis by noted authorities, or worse yet, none at all. By “noted authorities”, I refer of course to those who are regarded by their peers as advocates of thorough scientific investigation, and whom are familiar with the scientific method.

When I was about nine years old, I read nonfiction ravenously. In addition to well-researched books for children and adults, I also pursued books whose foundations were, to be polite, fragile. I lacked the sort of critical analysis one needs (now generally referred to as media literacy) to discern the difference between well-researched science and well-fabricated fiction. The books of Erich Von Däniken are an excellent example of this. I remember being astounded at the revelations in Chariots of the Gods. With insufficient evidence, a priori assumptions which all evidence are shoehorned into, and with later-documented forgeries of evidence, Von Däniken cobbles together a sort of prehistory dominated by alien visitation in order to explain the larger and more puzzling artifacts of the ancient world. Von Däniken replaces C.A. Coulson’s “God of the Gaps” theory (it’s only fair to note that it was not one to which Coulson put any credence in) with a sort of “Aliens of the Gaps”. Anything that can’t be explained quickly and neatly is immediately assumed to have connections to this extraterrestrial cosmology. It makes for great science fiction, but lousy science. For nine-year-olds, it’s often difficult to discern between the two.

Presumably this same difficulty is presented to nine year olds today who are presented shows which present the fantastic and outrageous with the same sort of credulity offered by Von Däniken’s books.

A&E’s “Ancient Mysteries: Witchcraft in America” spins an uncontested web of hearsay, linking the Salem witch trials - regarded by competent historians as a scandal and evidence of the harm of credulity and mass hysteria - to some of the more sensationalist voodoo practices of New Orleans, to which there is no significant cultural relation. From here, the program offers an apologetic look at the modern religion of Wicca which can best be described as a lifestyle choice rather than an actual system of religious belief, and is entirely modern in origin, and is directly related to the muddled occult practitioners in 1950s England such as Gerald Gardner, who created a sort of feel-good neopaganism out of recorded folklore, myth, eastern religions, the works of other English occultists, and Masonic practices. To attribute to it a system of religious beliefs that practitioners could agree to would be an exercise in cat herding, as it functions primarily as a lifestyle choice for bored Deists and amused agnostics.

A&E and The History Channel have several features about or featuring segments on the “prophet” Nostradamus, including A&E’s “Ancient Mysteries: Ancient Prophecy” and “Biography: Nostradamus: Prophet of Doom”, and The History Channel’s “In Search of History: Prophecies”. Almost without exception, the phenomenon of Nostradamus prophesy is presented in a most unskeptical, uncritical, and–frankly–unresearched manner. The History Channel offering, in particular, is wholly out of place, as it does not deal with the history of belief in Nostradamus, but instead addresses the subject of prediction itself. Despite the fact that this matter has been laid to rest by anyone who has the least bit familiarity with critical thinking, these shows about Nostradamus keep cropping up on channels supposedly offering history and science rather than myth and speculation. The Biography offering is the only of the three examples which can be said to have any business being on either channel, had it any pretense of being fair to the subject matter. Being fair, in this case, is not the same thing as “equal time”–not that even that is afforded–rather that the subject is treated with the seriousness which is warranted. In Nostradamus’s case, there is no incontrovertible evidence of even the slightest bit of actual prediction that anyone reading the original stanzas with a critical eye could point to, so being fair to the subject matter would consist primarily of displaying the mountain of evidence against its accuracy.

The History Channel regularly airs a series called “Haunted History” in which the local ghost folklore of various regions of the United States is presented. This series doesn’t even pay lip service to the fact that its entire basis is hearsay and rumor, often told by those whom are the most likely to see tourism profits from the exposure. No scientific evidence is ever offered; every event in the series is offered as if it were merely accepted fact. It most certainly is not, and to present this material as historical–without so much as a disclaimer–is facetious in the extreme. Even with a disclaimer, this sort of credulous nonsense really doesn’t suit a channel and a network whose general programming is usually of a much higher caliber.

I’m of mixed feelings about The History Channel’s reruns of “In Search Of…”. The research and critical examination of some topics was great (some World War II content, and an excellent piece on Van Gogh come to mind), but in some cases was nearly nonexistent in order to provide an air of mystery for subjects which had been played out in the media even then, with little useful evidence (UFOs, Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot). Even so, my fondness for the series has almost everything to do with it being a fixture of my childhood rather than an appreciation for its investigative merit. I remember as a child it often aired just as twilight came, when the rays of the setting sun were coming in nearly horizontally, lending an eerie atmosphere to the house. At that age, watching Spock wax mysterious about Stonehenge sure did beat watching the Monkees.

How is it that I’m supposed to take The History Channel’s historical programming seriously when I’m well aware they also air utterly nonhistorical content about parapsychology and spiritualism? In the same sense that I would not take Erich Von Däniken’s research on historical subjects such as World War II or Ancient Greece seriously, the History Channel itself risks its own credibility by letting this sort of unscientific folklore and hearsay pass for history.

DCI’s channels don’t often sink to the level of ghost stories and Nostradamus drivel, but a serious suspension of disbelief is required for watching some of the unsubstantiated claims in TLC’s “Trauma: Mind Over Matter”, in which claims of paranormal events are told without much of a nod to skeptical review.

One show I saw either on TLC or The Discovery Channel - I can’t recall the specifics, and I can’t find the particulars on the web, regrettably, featured underwater rock formations near Okinawa, referred to as the “Yonaguni Monument”. After presenting two researchers who were at first strongly in agreement with the idea that this structure was a man-made creation, the program goes in to weave in all sorts of Atlantis myths as being related. Never is it even mentioned that no evidence suggests that Atlantis is nothing but a fictional construct which Plato used to illustrate ideas about state and government. It is also never noted that amateur archaeology hobbyists have tried to prove that Atlantis exists in every major body of water, or that it was every continent then-unknown to Plato, or that it was ‘found’ in various locations such as Antarctica, Bolivia, the Azores, Crete, Gibraltar, Santorin, the Bahamas, Britain, and even Japan. Later in the program after at least one of the proponents of the thesis that the structure was man made becomes less convinced after more closely examining the structure. The oddly shaped structures are similar to some of the beach erosion in the area. The exact nature of the edifice–be it man-made, completely a function of erosion, or mostly natural but used by a civilization which came across it–hasn’t been conclusively determined to anyone’s satisfaction. Rather than own up to this, evidence of a “face” in the side of the structure is shown as proof of its creation or modification by an ancient civilization. Not once is it mentioned that it is very well-established for people to see faces where random forces are at work (clouds, stone patterns, rock formations on Mars) due to the way our brains interpret our surroundings. Rather, the filmmakers turn the camera on themselves, as it were, and interview the underwater photographers whom may be professionals in their fields, but are neither archaeologists, marine geologists, nor even, as it turns out, terribly familiar with the geologic processes intrinsic to the area being studied. They do, however, get the last word.

This is poor science, and at odds with a campaign to increase media literacy, except perhaps as an example of why it is needed in the first place.

I assure you that the above examples are not terribly unique. Here are others, with the program’s promotion copy, and my notes in brackets:

Discovery Channel - Secrets of Levitation - Examines eyewitness accounts of incidents where humans defy gravity by sheer concentration, raising themselves into the air up to several feet. [As is usually the case, noted authorities who make it their life's work to be familiar with so-called paranormal phenomenon are rarely consulted.]

Japan’s Mysterious Pyramids - History Channel - Most historians and archaeologists maintain that civilization as we know it began about 5,000 years ago with the emergence of the earliest Egyptian dynasty. But a small, yet persuasive number of scientists believe that a highly advanced civilization, nearly twice as old, flourished during the last Ice Ace. Solid evidence of this 10,000-year-old civilization is difficult to produce, but some feel a recent discovery off the coast of a tiny Japanese island, Yonaguni, may be the proof they seek. [This is another - but not the one I referred to earlier - which also takes a look at the "Yonaguni Monument", and tries to retrofit it into the various theories of Atlantis.]

El Chupacabra - TLC web content - I’m not sure there’s a televised program that this web content is an accompaniment to. Chupacabra is a South American monster myth, roughly similar to a combination of the Bigfoot and vampire myths. [Along with the normal potpourri of wildly divergent descriptions of the creature whose accounts only seem to agree on the name by which the monster is called, the usual conspiracy theories arise from self-described "UFO experts" that Chupacabra is a result of a failed NASA experiment. To top it off, NASA is consulted by the author of the piece to address this charge, as if NASA had nothing better to do with its time and public funding than to entertain supposed journalists wanting to legitimize a monster legend whose strongest proponents believe that extraterrestrials stare at them through bedroom windows and abduct them in the night for a sort of alien medical ant farm project. Don't they have enough contact with conspiracy theorists every time someone dignifies a moon landing disbeliever with exposure in mainstream media?]

Mysterious World - TLC - Travel through time to explore the best of the bizarre. From mythical beasts and legendary monsters, UFOs and extraterrestrials to history’s greatest mysteries, join us as we try to make sense of the unexplainable. [The concept that any of this is unexplainable is wrong-headed, though it may be accurate to say that the most likely explanations for most of these "mysteries" may be particularly unsatisfying to those who have the largest emotional investment in them.]

Science Mysteries - The Discovery Channel - Various. [A wide array of programming including some which is scientific and investigative, and some which is absurd and continually offers unscientific theories about the paranormal as if they were established fact: the efficacy of ESP, the existence of spontaneous human combustion, the existence of a Loch Ness monster (in a show where every bit of evidence offered has turned out to be manufactured or misidentified, no less), and the existence of a Burmuda Triangle (a thoroughly debunked concoction of fraud and hearsay which shares a lot in common with Atlantis in that even the people who believe in it rarely can agree on where in the world it is).]

History’s Mysteries: Crop Circle Controversy - The History Channel - The puzzling formations known as crop circles have appeared worldwide throughout history. In the Middle Ages, they were called “witch” or “pixie” circles, and a 1678 woodcut, the “Mowing Devil”, depicts one thought to be Satan’s work. But in the 1980s, the phenomenon escalated, with dozens of crop circles popping up in England and other countries. When two Englishmen claimed they had perpetrated the hoax, many felt the riddle was solved. And yet, more have materialized. We explore the mystery. [There is no mystery, and there is no history. This phenomenon is of late 20th century origin. It has been uncovered for the hoax that it is. No crop circle formation that has been ascribed to mysterious origin is any different than those made as examples by people in broad daylight with witnesses - often by the original perpetrators of the hoax. After this phenomenon was re-created, in person, for witnesses, only the most dedicated of "cereologists" kept up with the self-delusion that anything involving crop circles was not entirely man-made in origin. Having carved a niche for their unfounded theory, many "cereologists" had to much invested to publicly admit that they had been taken for fools, and instead insist on proving their foolishness by continuing to promote their credulity as somehow scientific, when in fact the vast lot of them have no background in science, nor a proper familiarity with what constitutes evidence versus hearsay and flights of fancy. While the fad itself may be of historical interest, presenting the topic as mysterious and as having links back to the 17th century is about as responsible as discussing PT Barnum's "Fiji Mermaid" without any mention of the fact that it was a fraud consisting of the mummified remains of a monkey and a fish - it's rather too important a detail to gloss over as somehow "inconclusive".]

Uncritical looks at Feng Shui, Bigfoot, astral projection, the creation myths of new age religions whose actual history is (or should be) well-known, homeopathy, end times prophesy, speaking with the dead - it goes on an on. All of this misinformation that passes for entertainment has a very negative affect on media literacy and the critical thinking of impressionable viewers. DCI and A&E owe it to their viewers as well as themselves to carefully screen their content for this sort of unexamined modern day mysticism. There are many amazing subjects to cover in history, the sciences, and humanities; so much, in fact, that relying on unsubstantiated pop culture phenomenon isn’t just unhelpful, it’s utterly unnecessary. Both networks are responsible for quality programming, why either of them would choose to cheapen it is puzzling to me.

Is it not surprising that John Edward (Crossing Over) is able to keep an audience for a television show based on supposed conversations with dead relatives of audience members? It is if you’re already familiar with the gimmicks all cold readers and faith healers use: planted microphones in the audience staging area, having paid staff pose as fellow audience members in order to get them to talk about why they came to the show–as the staff wears a microphone, verifying earlier information in a way that seems revelatory to the audience but merely review for the victim, and perhaps more important, careful editing. All of these practices are well-docmumented, both in the case of John Edward and the long history of others plying his con man’s game. The difference, perhaps, is that the show is on the Sci-Fi channel, which by its very name suggests that their programming centers on fiction. Personally, if I were to use such a semantic ploy to salve my conscience, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night, but perhaps that’s one of many reasons I’m not a likely to find myself besieged by job offers from the Sci-Fi channel’s parent company, USA Networks Interactive.

Keeping an open mind is not the same thing as refusing to entertain solid evidence that disproves a pet theory.

The scientific method is not merely the process of using long words to describe self delusion or, worse, fraud in order to shroud it in a veil of legitimate-sounding jargon. Science requires, among other things, reproducibility and peer review. It also requires the ability to think rationally rather than giving in to flights of fancy and romantic absurdities.

Media literacy should not just be a function of the viewers; encouraging media literacy on one hand while deliberately trying to subvert on the other is ridiculously cynical.

DCI and A&E both owe it to their audience not to play fast and loose with science.

Truth is not a function of opinion polls.

Comments?