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Trigger(nometry) warning: semi-conservative video.

I can’t remember who recommended I watch this video, which features satirist, author, and Triggernometry co-host Konstantin Kisin speaking for 15 minutes at a meeting of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC). The group is described by Wikipedia as “an international organisation whose aim is to unite conservative voices and propose policy based on traditional Western values.”

The talk is laced with humor, but the message is serious:  Kisin argues that societies based on “Western values” are the most attractive, as shown by the number of potential immigrants; but they are endangered by the negativity and “lies” of those who tell us that “our history is all bad and our country is plagued by prejudice and intolerance.” To that he replies that people espousing such sentiments still prefer to live in the West. (But of course that doesn’t mean that these factors still aren’t at play in the West!)  Kisin then touts both Elon Musk (for “building big things”) and (oy) Jordan Peterson for “reminding us that our lives will improve if we accept that “honesty is better than lies, that responsibility is better than blame, and strength is better than weakness.”

He continues characterizing the West as special: “the most free and prosperous societies in the history of humanity, and we are going to keep them that way.” To accomplish that, he promotes free speech as the highest of Western values, and rejects identity politics, arguing that “multiethnic societies can work; multicultural societies cannot.” Finally, he claims that human beings are good, denying (as he avers) the woke view that “human beings are a pestilence on the planet.”  Kisin calls for more reproduction and making energy “as cheap and abundant as possible.”

The talk finishes with the most inspiring thing Kising says he’s ever heard: that we’re going to die; ergo, we have nothing to lose. “We might as well speak the truth, we might as well reach for the stars, we might as well fight like our lives depended on it—because they do.”  I’m not exactly sure what he means, nor do I feel uplifted or inspired by these words, which don’t really tell us why he thinks the tide is turning. And, at the end, I could see where this optimistic word salad came from: it’s in Wikipedia, too:

[The ARC] is associated with psychologist and political commentator Jordan Peterson. One Australian journalist identified the purpose of ARC as follows: “to replace a sense of division and drift within conservatism, and Western society at large, with a renewed cohesion and purpose”.

Do any readers get inspired by this kind of chest-pounding?  I have to add that I do like Triggernometry, one of the few podcasts I can listen to, but I’m not especially energized by the co-host’s speech.

Type-1 diabetes, IBD, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, coeliac disease and lupus are all caused by the body attacking itself. But new therapies that reset the immune system could offer lasting help

Consider the word “skeptic.” What image does it evoke? A cynic? Someone who doubts everything? Many conflate skepticism with pure doubt, but true skepticism is far richer. It is thoughtful inquiry and open-minded analysis. Its essence is captured by Spinoza’s timeless dictum, “not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.”

This commitment to understanding different viewpoints is at the heart of meaningful discourse—yet, in practice, it is often abandoned. Public debates—on issues from abortion and climate change to the principle of free speech—tend to degenerate into a melee of name-calling and outrage. Genuine skepticism, however, demands thoughtful engagement. It insists that we immerse ourselves in diverse perspectives, striving to understand them thoroughly before reaching reasoned conclusions. It calls for intellectual honesty—the willingness to consider opposing arguments without succumbing to anger or mockery, even when the evidence seems overwhelmingly in favor of one side.

Skepticism requires the ability to grasp opposing arguments without resorting to anger or ridicule, even when the evidence overwhelmingly shows they’re wrong.

Indeed, one of the greatest obstacles to having an accurate understanding of reality isn’t just having your facts wrong—it’s the human tendency to moralize our biases. We rarely think of ourselves as extremists or ideologues.

Instead, we often embrace belief systems that validate our most destructive impulses, fooling ourselves into thinking we’re champions of justice. Some of the most toxic voices in our society are utterly convinced that they stand on the right side of history. Skepticism requires the courage and conscious effort to step outside that mindset.

If this resonates with you, then welcome—you’ve found your intellectual home.

People rarely think of themselves as extremists or ideologues. Instead, they find belief systems that validate their most destructive impulses. Skepticism requires the courage to step outside that mindset.

And there’s more: even when we adopt Spinoza’s dictum, our understanding of the world will be lacking if the very foundation of our knowledge—the very basis on which you (and others) make decisions—doesn’t accurately reflect the world. This is where critical thinking and the tools of science come in.

Skeptic magazine: A Commitment to Depth and Balance

Skeptic is a leading popular science magazine that explores the biggest questions in science, technology, society, and culture with a relentless commitment to truth. We don’t push an agenda—we follow the evidence. Every article, before it’s published, is put to the test: Is this really accurate? How could it be wrong? Do the cited sources support the claims being made? Our mission is clear—to cut through misinformation and dogma, delivering sharp, evidence-based analysis grounded in reality.

So, what can you expect to find in our pages? Long-form, analytical pieces that explore complex issues in depth constitute the vast majority of our work. At times, we may also feature op-eds—particularly when they emerge from rigorous research and present an intriguing, contrarian perspective. And when an issue carries significant weight, we may publish “the best case for...” articles—usually pairing them with an equally strong piece presenting the counterargument(s). As an example, our recent coverage of abortion after the Roe v. Wade ruling featured my own explanation of the pro-choice position, Danielle D’Souza Gill’s robust argument against abortion (quoting none other than Christopher Hitchens!), and a comprehensive Skeptic Research Center report analyzing public attitudes toward the issue (it turns out most people don’t understand the effects of overturning Roe).

In today’s age of activism, this balanced approach might seem unassertive. But the truth is, absolute certainties are rare. We can only approximate truth, and what constitutes “truth” varies by domain—science, politics, law, journalism, and ethics all demand different methods of reasoning. Put simply, our mission is to present what is known about the world as rigorously as possible.

You, the reader, decide where you stand.

So, are you simply believers in “The Science”?

Lately, the rallying cry “Trust the Science” has become a viral meme—a slogan that, on the surface, criticizes the limitations of science in being able to solve complex problems. Yet, a closer look reveals two deeper issues. First, some public science communicators are overstating consensus and stepping into the policy arena—territory traditionally reserved for politicians and activists. Second, many academic institutions have allowed ideology to seep into their departments, undermining strict adherence to the scientific method and neutral, dispassionate inquiry. This contamination isn’t confined to academia; even reputable popular science outlets have been affected. The net result is a degradation of trust in deep expertise and the scientific approach, allowing less rigorous voices to gain prominence.

In truth, trusting science—meaning evidence gathered through systematic, methodical inquiry—remains our best tool for uncovering reality. But conflating this with blind faith in public science figures is a category error. Science is not a priesthood, and consensus is not dogma.

Likewise, flawed research built on unfalsifiable assumptions can only be dismantled through relentless skepticism and the unwavering application of the scientific method; within its fallibility lies the greatest strength of science: self-correction.

Whether mistakes are made honestly or dishonestly, whether a fraud is knowingly or unknowingly perpetrated, in time it will be flushed out of the system through the lack of external verification. The cold fusion fiasco is a classic example of the system’s swift consequences for error and hasty publication; the purported link between vaccines and autism was debunked in the 1990s, and yet still persists in some circles, which indicates that reason, like freedom, requires eternal vigilance.

Despite built-in mechanisms science is still subject to a number of problems and fallacies that even the most careful scientist and skeptic are aware can be troublesome. We can, however, find inspiration in those who have overcome them to make monumental contributions to our understanding of the world.

Charles Darwin is a sterling example of a scientist who struck the right balance between total acceptance of and devotion to the status quo, and an open willingness to explore and accept new ideas. This delicate balance forms the basis of the whole concept of paradigm shifts in the history of science.

Photo by Hulki Okan Tabak / UnsplashThe Next Chapter: A New Era for Skeptic

It’s been over 30 years since Pat Linse and I founded Skeptic magazine and the Skeptics Society, our 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to science research and education—a modest beginning in my garage that has since blossomed into one of the world’s most influential popular science publications.

Along the way, we’ve had the honor of collaborating with some of the greatest thinkers of our time, including our current Editorial Board members Jared Diamond, Steven Pinker, and Richard Dawkins, amongst many.

While Pat’s passing left an irreplaceable void, our team has doubled down on the mission to promote an evidence-based understanding of the world.

A glimpse into the past: Pat, Randi, Tanja, me, and our old offices—lost in the Los Angeles fires of January 2025 but not forgotten.

Today, I’m proud to announce that our esteemed Editorial Board is joined by three fresh voices—April Bleske-Rechek, Robert Maranto, and Catherine Salmon—whose incisive articles grace our recent issues and this new website.

We’re also delighted to have contributing editor Katherine Brodsky join us, launching her regular column, Culture Code.

Finally, we’re excited to reintroduce the Skeptic Research Center—led by social scientists Kevin McCaffree and Anondah Saide—now with its own dedicated site, where we’ll continue our mission of data-driven inquiry into some of today’s biggest issues.

In celebration of our rich 30+ year history, we’ll also be republishing some of our most timeless articles—works that remain as relevant and thought-provoking now as when they were first written—and publishing many, many more brand-new articles, podcasts, research reports, and even documentary films.

Welcome to the new Skeptic! Let’s explore reality together.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is about to launch a number of missions, including a private lunar lander, a lunar satellite for NASA and a prospecting probe for an asteroid-mining company

If you’re following this site, you’ll know that 22 biologists (including me) sent a letter to three ecology and evolution societies who had issued a statement directed at the President and Congress that biological sex was a spectrum and a continuum in all species. The statement claimed without support that it expressed a consensus view of biologists, although the members of the societies were not polled.

Of course this behavior could not stand, and so Luana Maroja cobbled together a letter to those societies noting that the biological definition of sex was based on the development of the apparatus evolved to produce gametes, and that this showed that all animals and plants had only two sexes: male and female. As Richard Dawkins pointed out, even the three Society Presidents used the sex binary in their own biological work.

The letter has now accumulated more than a hundred signatures.  If you are an anisogamite and want to sign the letter, this is a reminder that the deadline for signatures is in about a week: 5 p.m. Monday, March 3. You can sign it this way (from Luana’s post on Heterodox STEM);

The societies for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the American Society of Naturalists (ASN) and the Society for Systematic Biologists (SSB) issued a declaration addressed to President Trump and all the members of Congress (declaration also archived here), proffering a confusing definition of sex, implying that sex is not binary.

We wrote a short letter explaining that sex is indeed defined by gamete type.

We are now collecting more signatures from biologists who agree to have their name publicly posted. If you are a biologist (or in a field related to biology) want to add your name, just fill in the bottom of this form (it contains the full text of our letter and a link to the tri-societies’ letter).

Please fill in all the blanks, including your name, position, and email, and we ask that you have something to do with biology. Also, we will most likely post the letter with names, so if you want to remain publicly anonymous but agree with our sentiments, just write your own personal email to the Society presidents (two of them have emails in the original letter). Nobody’s email will become public if I decide to post the final letter and signers on this site.

It takes about one minute to fill in the form, so if you want to send a message to these three societies, you know what to do.

We have contributions from two people, but I am holding onto those, as it appears that this feature will become sporadic in the future. That’s sad, no?

Venus differs from Earth in many ways including a lack of internal dynamo driving global magnetosphere to shield potential life from solar and cosmic radiation. However, Venus possesses a dense atmosphere and, in a recent study, planetary scientists conducted simulations of the Venusian atmosphere to determine radiation penetration to the lower cloud layers. Their calculations revealed that the atmospheric thickness provides adequate protection for life at what’s considered Venus’s “habitable zone,” located 40–60 km above the surface.

Venus, the second planet from the Sun, is often called Earth’s “sister planet” because of its comparable size and composition. Yet its environment couldn’t be more different or extreme. It has a thick carbon dioxide atmosphere with sulfuric acid clouds that have created a runaway greenhouse effect, making Venus the solar system’s hottest planet—surface temperatures in excess of 475°C. The Venusian landscape features volcanic plains, mountains, and canyons under atmospheric pressure exceeding 90 times Earth’s. Despite these inhospitable conditions, Venus remains an object of scientific interest, with researchers studying its geology and atmosphere.

Venus

In 2020, scientists found phosphine in Venus’s atmosphere which, on Earth, is mostly made by biological processes or in other words – living things. This discovery was somewhat unexpected and facilitated a fresh look at Venus as a possible home for life. Surprisingly perhaps, Venus does have a “habitable zone” in its clouds about 40-60 km up, where the temperature and pressure aren’t too different from Earth’s. While the planet’s surface is totally uninhabitable, high up in the atmosphere might actually support some kind of microbial life that’s adapted to acidic conditions. A new piece of research has been exploring if the thick Venusian atmosphere would protect any such life that may have evolved or whether intense radiation bathes its habitable zone. 

The spectral data from SOFIA overlain atop this image of Venus from NASA’s Mariner 10 spacecraft is what the researchers observed in their study, showing the intensity of light from Venus at different wavelengths. If a significant amount of phosphine were present in Venus’s atmosphere, there would be dips in the graph at the four locations labeled “PH3,” similar to but less pronounced than those seen on the two ends. Credit: Venus: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Spectra: Cordiner et al.

The research, that was led by Luis A. Anchordoqui from the University of New York has revealed surprising results. The team discovered that despite Venus lacking a magnetic field and orbiting closer to the Sun, the radiation levels in its potentially habitable cloud layer are remarkably similar to those at Earth’s surface. Using the AIRES simulation package (AIRshower Extended Simulations – simulates cascades of secondary particles from incoming high energy radiation) the team generated over a billion simulated cosmic ray showers to analyse particle interactions within Venus’s atmosphere. 

Their findings show that at equivalent atmospheric depths, particle fluxes on Venus and Earth are nearly identical, with only about 40% higher radiation detected at the uppermost boundary of Venus’s habitable zone. This suggests Venus’s thick atmosphere provides substantial radiation shielding that might be sufficient for potential microbial life.

The research suggests that cosmic radiation wouldn’t significantly hinder life in Venus’s cloud layer. Any potential microorganisms that were there would face radiation levels similar to those on Earth’s surface. On Earth, life has found a way across a wide range of environments that span many kilometres, this is known as its life reservoir. Venus doesn’t have such a great reservoir so if radiation were to sterilise the habitable clouds, there’s no equivalent to Earth’s subsurface biosphere that could eventually recolonise the region. This means life needs to persist continuously in its atmospheric habitat without being able to move to other parts of the planet.

Source : The Venusian Chronicles

The post Although it Lacks a Magnetic Field, Venus Can Still Protect With in its Atmosphere appeared first on Universe Today.

To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Black Lives Matter activists and police unions are two houses both alike in indignity. Neither truly wants to improve policing in the most necessary ways: the former because it could undermine their view of the world and reduce revenue streams, including billions in donations; the latter for a more mundane reason. Cops, like other street-level bureaucrats, don’t want to change their standard operating procedures and face accountability for screwups. Unfortunately, with Black Lives Matter groups receiving billions in donations and helping increase progressive turnout, media and academia failing to provide accurate information to voters, and police unions enjoying iconic status among conservatives when they are better viewed as armed but equally inefficient teachers’ unions, we don’t see the political incentives for reform any time soon, despite some recent local level successes.

Injustice—How Progressives (and Some Conservatives) Got Us Into This Mess

Professors and other respectables rail against “deplorables,”1 but missing in political discourse is that mass rule, AKA populism, is not a mass pathological delusion. Rather, its appearance is for solid economic and social reasons. When problems that affect regular citizens get ignored by their leaders, people in democratic systems can get revenge at the ballot box. From inflation and foreign policy debacles, to COVID-19 school shutdowns that went on far longer in the U.S. than in Europe at immense and immensely unequal social cost,2 ordinary people sense that the wealthy, bureaucrats, professionals, and professors often advance their own interests and fetishes at the expense of regular folks, and then use mainstream “knowledge producing” institutions, particularly academia and the mainstream news media, to cover up their failings.

Indeed, as Newsweek’s Batya Ungar-Sargon shows in her brilliant book Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy, the mainstream media now stand forthrightly behind the plutocrats. This can be documented empirically: the Center for Public Integrity points out that, during the 2016 presidential race, identified mainstream media journalists made 96 percent of their financial donations to one political party (the Democrats) and to the more mainstream of the candidates running.3 That basic instinct to hold the respectables accountable for their failings may have been the only thing keeping the Trump 2024 presidential candidacy viable despite his many and well-documented failings and debate loss against Kamala Harris.4

Perhaps nowhere is popular anger more justifiable than regarding crime, a trend best captured in the saga of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The roots of that failure go deep, and implicate multiple sacred cows in contemporary elite politics. As Anglo-Canadian political scientist Eric P. Kaufmann writes in his landmark work The Third Awokening,5 critical theory and other postmodern ideologies (AKA woke) have been evolving for over a century. To his credit, and unlike most conservatives, Kaufmann does not paint wokeism as entirely wrong—like populism, it too came about as a result of grievances experienced by the wider society. Rather, he describes it as needing moderating influences because, as with all other ideologies, it is not entirely (or in this case even mainly) correct. This is all the more so since so many among the woke, who are vastly overrepresented in the political class, lack experience with people from different walks of life. Their insulation, which Democratic commentator and political consultant James Carville—who coined the phrase “it’s the economy, stupid” that was key to then-Governor Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory over President George H.W. Bush—derides as “faculty lounge politics,”6 promotes fanaticism, declaring formerly extreme ideas not merely contestable or even mainstream, but off limits to criticism.

The nonnegotiable assumptions of late-stage woke include reflexively disparaging the achievements of Western civilization, while anointing non-Western or traditionally marginalized peoples and ideas as sacred. This deep script makes those (particularly wealthy Whites)7 with advanced degrees susceptible to believing the worst about White police officers, leaving influential segments of the political class subject to exploitation by grifters, with disastrous results. As one of us shows, many Americans believe that police pose a near genocidal threat to Black people, when in fact in a typical year fewer than 20 unarmed Black people (some of whom were attacking the police) are killed by nearly a half million White police officers, a lot lower than one would expect given that the Black crime rate is more than double that of other cohorts.8 Likewise, The 1619 Project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones and many other activists claim that police departments evolved from racist slave-catching patrols, which is simply not true.9

The problem arises when the Pulitzer Prize-winning Hannah-Jones and many other scholars and activists have an interest in maintaining the assertion that police are a threat to Black people, employing shocking visual images and taking advantage of widespread ignorance to make the case. The PBS News Hour, like other media outlets, has constantly highlighted the very rare instances in which White police officers actually do kill unarmed Black people, without ever placing them in the context of overall statistical evidence, which demonstrates that these tragic events are incredibly rare, nor giving comparable treatment to the far more numerous White casualties of police.10

Since the Black Lives era began, fatal ambushes of police officers have risen dramatically, almost certainly due to demonizing of the police.

Academia is an even greater offender. At the opening plenary of the 2021 American Educational Research Association annual meeting, AERA President Shaun Harper spent most of his hour-long session lambasting police as a threat to Black people. Harper is a master at securing grants and climbing the hierarchy to run academic associations. Yet his views on cops are out of sync with both reality and with the views of Black voters, who have consistently refused to support defunding police, and whose opinions on criminal justice generally resemble those of Whites and Hispanics.11, 12

Effective, accountable policing can save lives, especially in Black communities. Reform, rather than de-policing, is crucial.

Harper’s views do, however, reflect the Critical Race Theory (CRT) approaches preferred by professors studying race, both in education and in the social sciences more broadly—24 of the 25 most cited works with Black Lives Matter in their titles do not involve research that would save Black lives in any conceivable time frame. The 19th most cited article does empirically study (and suggest better) police procedures, making a case for having police document their actions in writing not just every time they fire their guns, but every time they unholster them. This mere reform, likely forcing cops to think an extra second before acting, reduces police shootings of civilians without increasing casualties among officers.13 In sharp contrast, however, other highly cited “scholarly” articles on Black Lives Matter:

… explore social media use and activism (4, including one piece involving Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and BLM), racial activism and white attitudes (3), immigration and migrants (2), anti-Blackness in higher education, “democratic repair,” radically re-imagining law, anti-Blackness of global capital, urban geography, counseling psychology, research on K–12 schools, BLM and “technoscientific expertise amid solar transitions,” BLM and “evidence based outrage in obstetrics and gynecology,” and BLM and differential mortality in the electorate.14

It is probably worth repeating here that at least one article, written by senior academics at respected institutions, looks specifically at the influence of the Black Lives Matter movement on the naming of popular ice cream flavors at Ben and Jerry’s. These “studies” get professors tenure, grants, and notoriety, but will not save Black (or any) lives in any conceivable time frame.

Sometimes academia allies with progressive politicians. As Harvard University-affiliated Democratic pollster John Della Volpe boasted at a recent political science conference,15 Black Lives Matter offers dramatic symbols that can measurably increase progressive voter turnout. Left unsaid was that the dominant BLM narrative both misleads voters and gets Black people killed—or that questioning it can be risky. This tension likely explains why, after careful, peer-reviewed empirical research by economist Roland Fryer found that controlling for suspect behavior, police do not disproportionately kill Black people (White suspects were in fact 27 percent more likely to be shot), then-Harvard University President Claudine Gay tried to fire Fryer.

She accused the tenured professor, an African- American academic star, of the use of inappropriate language, an offense for which Harvard’s own policies dictated sensitivity training. Fryer’s published findings were likely seen as attacking “sacred” beliefs and threatening external grants received on the premise of overwhelming police racism.16 As renegade journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon shows, the same dynamic holds in newsrooms, where reporting on Black Lives Matter’s spectacular failures to save Black (and other) lives is a firing offense.17 Indeed, were we not tenured professors at public universities in the South, we could likely get in trouble for writing essays like this one.

So what if progressives use anti-police demagoguery to win a few elections and grants? Isn’t that just election campaign “gamesmanship?” Does that hurt anyone? Yes, it does. Since the Black Lives era began, fatal ambushes of police officers have risen dramatically, almost certainly due to demonizing of the police. More importantly, Black Lives Matter de-policing policies seem to have taken thousands of (mainly Black) lives.18 During the BLM era, dated here as beginning in 2012, the age-adjusted Black homicide rate has almost doubled, rising from 18.6 murders per 100,000 African-American citizens in 2011 to 32 murders per 100,000 in 2021.19 Murders of Black males rose to an astonishing peak of 56/100,000 during this period (in 2021), while Black women (9.0/100,000) came to “boast” a higher homicide rate than White men (6.4) and all American men (8.2).

Yet for all our lambasting of Black Lives Matter, police unions and leaders have not covered themselves in glory in the BLM era, largely supporting precinct level decisions to de-police the dangerous parts (“no-go”- or “slow-go”-zones) of major cities, and refusing to support reforms that do cut crime but discomfort cops. Astonishingly, high homicide rates have little or no impact on whether police commissioners keep their jobs, giving cops few incentives to do better rather than just well enough.20

On the positive side, the political system is starting to respond to public anger from the increased crime and disorder of the Black Lives Matter era. In its presidential transition, the Biden administration largely sidelined the BLM portions of its racial reckoning agenda—even as it poured money into counterproductive and arguably racist DEI initiatives.21 More impactful responses came at the level of major city governments, which are those most affected by crime and disorder. Across progressive cities such as Seattle, Portland, and New York and less progressive cities like Philadelphia and Dallas, voters have started distancing themselves from Black Lives Matter policies. For the first time in decades, Seattle elected a Republican prosecutor (supported by most Democratic leaders). Uber-left Portland elected a prosecutor who was a Republican until recently. The Dallas mayor switched parties (from Democratic to Republican) out of frustration with progressive opposition to his (successful) efforts to cut crime by hiring and empowering more cops. New York elected a tough on crime (Democratic) former police captain to replace the prior progressive mayor. Even uber-progressives like Minnesota Governor and 2024 Democratic VP candidate Tim Walz did U-turns on issues such as whether police belong in schools, and what they can do while there.

Yet cops can do far more, and the Big Apple has shown the way. How that happened suggests that color matters, but the color is not Black so much as green.

New York City’s Turnaround: How a White Tourist’s Murder Made Black Lives Truly Matter

Sometimes history is shaped by unexpected (and undesirable) events that have positive impacts. A case in point is Brian Watkins, the 22-year-old White tourist from Provo, Utah, who was brutally murdered in front of his family on Labor Day Weekend in 1990 in NYC, while in town to watch the U.S. Open tennis tournament. His murder had historic impacts on New York, ultimately saving thousands of (mainly) Black lives, but it did not have the same impact nationally, a fact that says volumes about whose lives matter and why.

In 1990, New York City was among the most dangerous cities in the country. Today, as we show in our article “Which Police Departments Make Black Lives Matter?”22 despite high poverty, New York has the sixth lowest homicide rate among the 50 largest cities. That might not have happened without the brutal murder of Brian Watkins. As City Limits detailed in a 20-year retrospective23 on the Watkins killing, in 1990 New York City resembled the dystopian movie Escape from New York, with a record 2,245 homicides, including 75 murders of children under 16 and 35 killings of cab drivers, forced to risk their lives daily for their livelihoods. For their part, police, who found themselves outnumbered and sometimes outgunned, killed 41 civilians, around four times more than today.

The city that never sleeps was awash in blood, but NYC residents did not bleed equitably. Mainly, in what would turn out to be a common pattern, low-income minorities killed other low-income minorities in underpoliced neighborhoods. To use the first person for a bit, as I (Reilly) note in my 2020 book Taboo,24 and Rafael Mangual points out in his Criminal Injustice (2022),25 felony crime such as murder is remarkably concentrated by income and race. In my hometown of Chicago, the 10 relatively small community areas with the highest murder rates contain 53 percent of all recorded homicides in the city and have a total murder rate of 61.7/100,000, versus 18.2/100,000 for the rest of the city—with those districts included. In the even larger New York City, few wealthy businesspeople or tourists were affected by the most serious crime even during its horrendous peak.

Against that backdrop, after spending the day watching the U.S. Open, the Watkins family left their upscale hotel to enjoy Moroccan food in Greenwich Village. While waiting on a subway platform, they were assaulted by a “wolfpack” scouting for mugging victims so they could steal enough money to pay the $10-per-man cover charge at a nightclub.

In those bad old days, many young New Yorkers committed an occasional mugging to supplement their incomes, but this attack was unusually violent. In a matter of seconds, Brian Watkins’ brother and sister-in-law were roughed up while his father was knocked to the ground and slashed with a box-cutter, cutting his wallet out of his pocket. Brian’s mother was pulled down by her hair and kicked in the face and chest. While trying to protect her, Brian was fatally stabbed in the chest with a spring-handled butterfly knife. Not realizing the extent of his injury—a severed pulmonary artery—Brian chased the thieves until collapsing by a toll booth, dying shortly thereafter.

In 1990, New York City was among the most dangerous cities in the country. Today... despite high poverty, New York has the sixth lowest homicide rate among the 50 largest cities.

In Turnaround: How America’s Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic,26 then-New York City Transit Police Chief and later NYPD Commissioner William Bratton recalled the Watkins killing as “among the worst nightmares” city leaders could imagine: “A tourist in the subway during a high-profile event with which the mayor is closely associated … gets stabbed and killed by a wolfpack. The murder made international headlines.”

Within hours a team of top cops apprehended the perpetrators, which just shows what police can do when a crime, such as the murder of a wealthy tourist, is made an actual priority. Twenty years later, rotting in a prison cell, Brian’s killer sadly recalled his decisions that night as the worst of his life. Had police been in control of the subways, the teen might have been deterred from making the decision that in essence ended two lives.

Unlike the great majority of the other 2,244 murder victims in 1990, the dead Brian mattered by name to Big Apple politicians. Bratton wrote that New York Governor Mario Cuomo “understood the impact this killing could have on New York tourism.” With hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, two days after the Watkins murder, Bratton got a call out of the blue from a top aid to the Governor asking whether transit police could make the subways safe if the state kicked in $40 million—big money in 1990. For Bratton, “this was the turnaround I needed.”

With the cash for more transit police, communications and data analytic tools to put cops where crimes occurred, and better police armaments, subway crime plummeted. Later, NYPD Commissioner Bratton drove homicide down by over a third in just two years with similar tactics, and by replacing hundreds of ineffective administrators with better leaders, as Patrick Wolf and one of us (Maranto) detail in “Cops, Teachers, and the Art of the Impossible: Explaining the Lack of Diffusion of Innovations That Make Impossible Jobs Possible.”27 In another article coauthored with Domonic Bearfield,28 we estimated that as of 2020, NYPD’s reforms saved over 20,000 lives, disproportionately of Black Americans.

NYPD leadership made ineffective leaders get better or get out. This is a tool almost never used by police reformers at the level of city governance.

So how did NYPD do it? New York got serious about both recruiting and training great, tough cops and about holding them accountable. In the 1990s, NYPD Commissioner William Bratton imposed CompStat, a statistical program reporting crimes by location in real time. In weekly meetings, NYPD leaders praised precinct commanders who cut crime and grilled others. They made ineffective managers get better or get out. Homicides fell by over a third in just two years, followed by steady declines since.

Let us repeat part of that for emphasis: NYPD leadership made ineffective leaders get better or get out. This is a tool almost never used by police reformers at the level of city governance, who don’t want to be hated by officers, and who are also hamstrung by civil service rules and union contracts that make it difficult to terminate bad police officers, and almost impossible to jettison bad managers. NYPD was the exception.

Because of obscure personnel reforms by Benjamin Ward, the first Black NYPD commissioner and someone who wanted to shake up NYPD’s Irish Mafia of officers, where promotion often depended on what some called “the friends and family plan,” NYPD commissioners have unusual power over personnel. The commissioner can bust precinct commanders and other key leaders back in rank almost to the street level. Since retirement is based on pay at an officer’s rank, this essentially forces managers into early retirement, with the commissioner getting to pick their replacements rather than having seniority or other civil service rules determine the outcomes.

Legendary police leader John Timoney, who was Bratton’s Chief of Department in NYPD before going on to successfully run departments in Philadelphia and Miami, told us that he had the ability to personally fire over 300 cops in NYPD compared to just two in Philadelphia—the two being himself and his driver. In the latter city, everyone else was covered by civil service tenure.29 Politicians such as Tim Walz were publicly emphasizing their focus on saving Black lives, but showed no enthusiasm for personnel reforms such as these, which could actually get the job done.

Of course, firing cops can’t work if you don’t know who to fire. Since the mid-1990s, NYPD strengthened its internal affairs unit to get off the streets unprofessional cops in the mold of Minneapolis’ Derek Chauvin, the officer who killed George Floyd and who had 18 prior citizen complaints, before rather than after a disaster. Longtime NYPD Internal Affairs leader Charles Campisi details this process well in Blue on Blue: An Insider’s Story of Good Cops Catching Bad Cops.30

Yet none of this might have happened without the brutal murder of Brian Watkins. In a real sense, the Watkins family suffered so thousands could live. They deserve a monument.

How to Make Black (and All) Lives Matter

Rather than supporting neo-Marxist activism portraying police as fascists enforcing “late-stage capitalist technocratic white supremacy,” or similarly impenetrable academic jargon that seeks to pit citizens against police and fails to solve problems, we see police departments as public organizations staffed by unionized employees, some of whom are public servants, some of whom mainly serve themselves, and most of whom are somewhere in between.31 Just like companies, some police departments are incredibly successful; some are so ineffective that it might make sense to defund them and start over … and some—most by far—are somewhere in between.

So the real question for those of us who want to make police better rather than run for office or get government grants, is how we can get low-performing police departments to learn from the best, and how we can get the mayors, city councils, governors, and state legislatures overseeing police to enact the sort of civil service reforms, like higher pay coupled with abolishing civil service tenure, that are likely to succeed in getting police to make all lives matter.

Black Lives Matter de-policing policies seem to have taken thousands of (mainly Black) lives. During the BLM era … the age-adjusted Black homicide rate has almost doubled, rising from 18.6 murders per 100,000 African-American citizens in 2011 to 32 murders per 100,000 in 2021.

For us, the key to get elected politicians to take police reform seriously is to make police reform a serious election issue, rather than how well one virtue signals for BLM. To do that, first and foremost, failed police departments and the mayors and city council members running them must be shamed into action. Businesses should be encouraged to relocate from dangerous cities to safe ones. That starts with data.

To make that happen, earlier this year, in a leading public administration journal, along with Patrick Wolf, we published “Which Police Departments Make Black Lives Matter?,” an article that anyone can download for free.32 Here, we ranked police in the 50 largest U.S. cities (using 2020 statistics, but the overall rankings were stable from 2015–2020) by their effectiveness in keeping homicides low and not taking civilian lives, while adjusting for poverty, which makes policing more difficult. Some departments excel. On our Police Professionalism Index, New York City easily takes first place, just as it did in 2015. The top 18 cities also include Boston, MA; Mesa, AZ; Raleigh, NC; Virginia Beach, VA; five California cities including San Diego and San Jose; and five Texas cities including El Paso and Austin.

In contrast, by a wide margin, Baltimore ranked dead last (as it did in 2015). Baltimore’s homicide rate (56.12 per 100,000 population) was roughly 15 times higher than New York’s, and Baltimore police kill roughly ten times as many civilians per capita as NYPD. Baltimoreans should be outraged, particularly since, as noted above, top-ranked NYPD used to be in Baltimore’s league. Fifty years ago, NYPD killed about 100 civilians annually, compared to 10 today. In 1990, New York City had 2,245 homicides, mostly people of color, compared to just 462 in 2020. And, as discussed earlier, reforming NYPD saved tens of thousands of lives, mainly Black lives, while at the same time reducing incarceration.

If democracy means anything, it means the ability to influence government, and the first duty of government is protecting life and property. For too long, this most basic of needs has been denied to people without means, who are disproportionately people of color. If we want to increase trust in government, we must start with the police. Doing that requires real data, not agitprop that paints cops as racist killers. To enable that, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) needs to rank large cities on their policing, in a manner we did, awarding those doing well and calling out those doing badly. The DOJ should also issue reports on which cities enable their police chiefs to terminate problematic officers.

This methodical approach would offend leftist cultural warriors and rightist police unions alike. On the local levels, to copy NYPD’s success, voters in Baltimore and other poorly policed cities such as Kansas City, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, and Miami, must ask pointed questions about their police, such as:

• Can police chiefs hire and retain the great officers they need? If not, why not?
• Can police chiefs fire subordinates who are not up to their tough jobs?
• Are there enough cops to do the job?
• Do police use CompStat to copy what works in fighting crime?
• Does the internal affairs unit hold brutal cops accountable?

Building a great police department takes time, but the NYPD has shown how it can be done. It is long past time to stop political virtue signaling and start reforming policing to save all lives.

Why do I find the word particle so problematic that I keep harping on it, to the point that some may reasonably view me as obsessed with the issue? It has to do with the profound difference between the way an electron is viewed in 1920s quantum physics (“Quantum Mechanics”, or QM for short) as opposed to 1950s relativistic Quantum Field Theory (abbreviated as QFT). [The word “relativistic” means “incorporating Einstein’s special theory of relativity of 1905”.] My goal this week is to explain carefully this difference.

The overarching point:

• in QM, an electron really is a particle, at least to the limited extent that QM can handle that notion;
• in QFT, an electron is at best a “particle”, with the word in quotation marks
  • (and I personally prefer the term wavicle.)

I’ve discussed this to some degree already in my article about how the view of an electron has changed over time, but here I’m going to give you a fuller picture. To complete the story will take two or three posts, but today’s post will already convey one of the most important points.

There are two short readings that you may want to dofirst.

• The first is an article about the distinction between physical space (within which all objects actually are located) and the abstract space of possibilities (which consists of all ways that the objects in a physical system could be arranged in physical space.) This issue, essential in quantum physics of any type, will be crucial below.
• The second is a short section of a blog post that explains how QM views an isolated object in a state of definite momentum — i.e. something whose motion (both speed and direction) is precisely known, and whose position is therefore completely unknown, thanks to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.

I’ll will review the main point of the second item, and then I’ll start explaining what an isolated object of definite momentum looks like in QFT.

Removing Everything Extraneous

First, though, let’s make things as simple as possible. Though electrons are familiar, they are more complicated than some of their cousins, thanks to their electric charge and “spin”, and the fact that they are fermions. By contrast, bosons with neither charge nor spin are much simpler. In nature, these include Higgs bosons and electrically-neutral pions, but each of these has some unnecessary baggage. For this reason I’ll frame my discussion in terms of imaginary objects even simpler than a Higgs boson. I’ll call these spinless, chargeless objects “Bohrons” in honor of Niels Bohr (and I’ll leave the many puns to my readers.)

For today we’ll just need one, lonely Bohron, not interacting with anything else, and moving along a line. Using 1920s QM in the style of Schrödinger, we’ll take the following viewpoints.

• A Bohron is a particle and exists in physical space, which we’ll take to be just a line — the set of points arranged along what we’ll call the x-axis.
• The Bohron has a property we call position in physical space. We’ll refer to its position as x1.
• For just one Bohron, the space of possibilities is simply all of its possible positions — all possible values of x1. [See Fig. 1]
• The system of one isolated Bohron has a wave function Ψ(x1), a complex number at each point in the space of possibilities. [Note it is not a function of x, the points in physical space; it is a function of x1, the possible positions of the Bohron.]
• The wave function predicts the probability of finding the Bohron at any selected position x1: it is proportional to |Ψ(x1)|2, the square of the absolute value of the complex number Ψ(x1).

Figure 1: For a Bohron moving along a line, physical space is the x-axis where the Bohron (blue dot) is located. The space of possibilities, the set of all possible arrangements of our one-Bohron system (red star) is the the x1-axis. This subtle but important distinction becomes clearer when we have two or more Bohrons; the physical space is unchanged, but possibility space is totally different. A QM State of Definite Momentum

In a previous post, I described states of definite momentum. But I also described states whose momentum is slightly less definite — a broad Gaussian wave packet state, which is a bit more intutive. The wave function for a Bohron in this state is shown in Fig. 2, using three different representations. You can see intuitively that the Bohron’s motion is quite steady, reflecting near definite momentum, while the wave function’s peak is very broad, reflecting great uncertainty in the Bohron’s position.

• Fig. 2a shows the real and imaginary parts of Ψ(x1) in red and blue, along with its absolute-value squared |Ψ(x1)|2 in black.
• Fig. 2b shows the absolute value |Ψ(x1)| in a color that reflects the argument [i.e. the phase] of Ψ(x1).
• Fig. 2c indicates |Ψ(x1)|2, using grayscale, at a grid of x1 values; the Bohron is more likely to be found at or near dark points than at or near lighter ones.

For more details and examples using these representations, see this post.

Figure 2a: The wave function for a wave packet state with near-definite momentum, showing its real (red) and imaginary (blue) parts and its absolute value squared (black.) Figure 2b: The same wave function, with the curve showing its absolute value and colored by its argument. Figure 2c: The same wave function, showing its absolute value squared using gray-scale values on a grid of x1 points. The Bohron is more likely to be found near dark-shaded points.

To get a Bohron of definite momentum P1, we simply take what is plotted in Fig. 2 and make the broad peak wider and wider, so that the uncertainty in the Bohron’s position becomes infinite. Then (as discussed in this post) the wave function for that state, referred to as |P1>, can be drawn as in Fig. 3:

Figure 3a: As in Fig. 2a, but now for a state |P1> of precisely known momentum to the left. Figure 3b: As in Fig. 2b, but now for a state |P1> of precisely known momentum to the left. Figure 3c: As in Fig. 2c, but now for a state |P1> of precisely known momentum; note the probability of finding the Bohron is equal at every point at all times.

In math, the wave function for the state at some fixed moment in time takes a simple form, such as

where i is the square root of -1. This is a special state, because the absolute-value-squared of this function is just 1 for every value of x1, and so the probability of measuring the Bohron to be at any particular x1 is the same everywhere and at all times. This is seen in Fig. 3c, and reflects the fact that in a state with exactly known momentum, the uncertainty on the Bohron’s position is infinite.

Let’s compare the Bohron (the particle itself) in the state |P1> to the wave function that describes it.

• In the state |P1>, the Bohron’s location is completely unknown. Still, its position is a meaningful concept, in the sense that we could measure it. We can’t predict the outcome of that measurement, but the measurement will give us a definite answer, not a vague indefinite one. That’s because the Bohron is a particle; it is not spread out across physical space, even though we don’t know where it is.
• By contrast, the wave function Ψ(x1) is spread out, as is clear in Fig. 3. But caution: it is not spread out across physical space, the points of the x axis. It is spread out across the space of possibilities — across the range of possible positions x1. See Fig. 1 [and read my article on the space of possibilities if this makes no sense to you.]
• Thus neither the Bohron nor its wave function is spread out in physical space!

We do have waves here, and they have a wavelength; that’s the distance between one crest and the next in Fig. 3a, and the distance beween one red band and the next in Fig. 3b. That wavelength is a property of the wave function, not a property of the Bohron. To have a wavelength, an object has to be wave-like, which our QM Bohron is not.

Conversely, the Bohron has a momentum (which is definite in this state, and is something we can measure). This has real effects; if the Bohron hits another particle, some or all of its momentum will be transferred, and the second particle will recoil from the blow. By contrast, the wave function does not have momentum. It cannot hit anything and make it recoil, because, like any wave function, it sits outside the physical system. It merely describes an object with momentum, and tells us the probable outcomes of measurements of that object.

Keep these details of wavelength (the wave function’s purview) and the momentum (the Bohron’s purview) in mind. This is how 1920’s QM organizes things. But in QFT, things are different.

First Step Toward a QFT State of Definite Momentum

Now let’s move to quantum field theory, and start the process of making a Bohron of definite momentum. We’ll take some initial steps today, and finish up in the next post.

Our Bohron is now a “particle”, in quotation marks. Why? Because our Bohron is no longer a dot, with a measurable (even if unknown) position. It is now a ripple in a field, which we’ll call the Bohron field. That said, there’s still something particle-like about the Bohron, because you can only have an integer number (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, …) of Bohrons, and you can never have a fractional number (1/2, 7/10, 2.46, etc.) of Bohrons. This feature is something we’ll discuss in later posts, but we’ll just accept it for now.

As fields go, the Bohron field is a very simple example. At any given moment, the field takes on a value — a real number — at each point in space. Said another way, it is a function of physical space, of the form B(x).

Very, very important: Do not confuse the Bohron field B(x) with a wave function!!

• This field is a function in physical space (not the space of possibilities). B(x) is a function of physical space points x that make up the x-axis, and is not a function of a particle’s position x1, nor is it a function of any other coordinate that might arise in the space of possibilities.
• I’ve chosen the simplest type of QFT field: B(x) is a real number at each location in physical space. This is in contrast to a QM wave function, which is a complex number for each possibility in the space of possibilities.
• The field itself can carry energy and momentum and transport it from place to place. This is unlike a wave function, which can only describe the energy and momentum that may be carried by physical objects.

Now here’s the key distinction. Whereas the Bohron of QM has a position, the Bohron of QFT does not generally have a position. Instead, it has a shape.

If our Bohron is to have a definite momentum P1, the field must ripple in a simple way, taking on a shape proportional to a sine or cosine function from pre-university math. An example would be:

where A is a real number, called the “amplitude” of the wave, and x is a location in physical space.

At some point soon we’ll consider all possible values of A — a part of the space of possibilities for the field B(x) — so remember that A can vary. To remind you, I’ve plotted this shape for A=1 in Fig. 4a and again for A=-3/2 in Fig 4b.

Figure 4a: The function A cos[P1 x], for the momentum P1 set equal to 1 and the amplitude A set equal to 1. Figure 4b: Same as Fig. 4a, but with A = -3/2 . Initial Comparison of QM and QFT

At first, the plots in Fig. 4 of the QFT Bohron’s shape look very similar to the QM wave function of the Bohron particles, especially as drawn in Fig. 3a. The math formulas for the two look similar, too; compare the formula after Fig. 3 to the one above Fig. 4.

However, appearances are deceiving. In fact, when we look carefully, EVERYTHING IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

• Our QM Bohron with definite momentum has a wave function Ψ(x1), while in QFT it has a shape B(x); they are functions of variables which, though related, are different.
  
  
• On top of that, there’s a wave function in QFT too, which we haven’t drawn yet. When we do, we’ll see that the QFT Bohron’s wave function looks nothing like the QM Bohron’s wave function. That’s because
  • the space of possibilities for the QM wave function is the space of possible positions that the Bohron particle can have, but
  • the space of possibilities for the QFT wave function is the space of all possible shapes that the Bohron field can have.
• The plot in Fig. 4 shows a curve that is both positive and negative but is drawn colorless, in contrast to Fig. 3b, where the curve is positive but colored. That’s because
  • the Bohron field B(x) is a real number with no argument [phase], whereas
  • the QM wave function Ψ(x1) for the state of definite momentum has an always-positive absolute value and a rapidly varying argument [phase].
• The axes in Fig. 4 are labeled differently from the axis in Fig. 3. That’s because (see Fig. 1)
  • the QFT Bohron field B(x) is found in physical space, while
  • the QM wave function Ψ(x1) for the Bohron particle is found in the particle’s space of possibilities.
• The absolute-value-squared of a wave function |Ψ(x1)|2 is interpreted as a probability (specifically, the probability for the particular possibility that the particle is at position x1. There is no such interpretation for the square of the Bohron field |B(x)|2. We will later find a probability interpretation for the QFT wave function, but we are not there yet.
  
  
• Both Fig. 4 and Figs. 3a, 3b show curves with a wavelength, albeit along different axes. But they are very different in every sense
  • In QM, the Bohron has no wavelength; only its wave function has a wavelength — and that involves lengths not in physical space but in the space of possibilities.
  • In QFT,
    • the field ripple corresponding to the QFT Bohron with definite momentum has a physical wavelength;
    • meanwhile the QFT Bohron’s wave function does not have anything resembling a wavelength! The field’s space of possibilities, where the wave function lives, doesn’t even have a recognizable notion of lengths in general, much less wavelengths in particular.

I’ll explain that last statement next time, when we look at the nature of the QFT wave function that corresponds to having a single QFT Bohron.

A Profound Change of Perspective

But before we conclude for the day, let’s take a moment to contemplate the remarkable change of perspective that is coming into our view, as we migrate our thinking from QM of the 1920s to modern QFT. In both cases, our Bohron of definite momentum is certainly associated with a definite wavelength; we can see that both in Fig. 3 and in Fig. 4. The formula for the relation is well-known to scientists; the wavelength λ for a Bohron of momentum P1 is simply

where h is Planck’s famous constant, the mascot of quantum physics. Larger momentum means smaller wavelength, and vice versa. On this, QM and QFT agree.

But compare:

• in QM, this wavelength sits in the wave function, and has nothing to do with waves in physical space;
• in QFT, the wavelength is not found in the field’s wave function; instead it is found in the field itself, and specifically in its ripples, which are waves in physical space.

I’ve summarized this in Table 1.

Table 1: The Bohron with definite momentum has an associated wavelength. In QM, this wavelength appears in the wave function. In QFT it does not; both the wavelength and the momentum are found in the field itself. This has caused no end of confusion.

Let me say that another way. In QM, our Bohron is a particle; it has a position, cannot spread out in physical space, and has no wavelength. In QFT, our Bohron is a “particle”, a wavy object that can spread out in physical space, and can indeed have a wavelength. (This is why I’d rather call it a wavicle.)

[Aside for experts: if anyone thinks I’m spouting nonsense, I encourage the skeptic to simply work out the wave function for phonons (or their counterparts with rest mass) in a QM system of coupled balls and springs, and watch as free QFT and its wave function emerge. Every statement made here is backed up with a long but standard calculation, which I’m happy to show you and discuss.]

I think this little table is deeply revealing both about quantum physics and about its history. It goes a long way toward explaining one of the many reasons why the brilliant founding parents of quantum physics were so utterly confused for a couple of decades. [I’m going to go out on a limb here, because I’m certainly not a historian of physics; if I have parts of the history wrong, please set me straight.]

Based on experiments on photons and electrons and on the theoretical insight of Louis de Broglie, it was intuitively clear to the great physicists of the 1920s that electrons and photons, which they were calling particles, do have a wavelength related to their momentum. And yet, in the late 1920s, when they were just inventing the math of QM and didn’t understand QFT yet, the wavelength was always sitting in the wave function. So that made it seem as though maybe the wave function was the particle, or somehow was an aspect of the particle, or that in any case the wave function must carry momentum and be a real physical thing, or… well, clearly it was very confusing. It still confuses many students and science writers today, and perhaps even some professional scientists and philosophers.

In this context, is it surprising that Bohr was led in the late 1920s to suggest that electrons are both particles and waves, depending on experimental context? And is it any wonder that many physicists today, with the benefit of both hindsight and a deep understanding of QFT, don’t share this perspective?

In addition, physicists already knew, from 19th century research, that electromagnetic waves — ripples in the electromagnetic field, which include radio waves and visible light — have both wavelength and momentum. Learning that wave functions for QM have wavelength and describe particles with momentum, as in Fig. 3, some physicists naturally assumed that fields and wave functions are closely related. This led to the suggestion that to build the math of QFT, you must go through the following steps:

• first you take particles and describe them with a wave function, and then
• second, you make this wave function into a field, and describe it using an even bigger wave function.

(This is where the archaic terms “first quantization” and “second quantization” come from.) But this idea was misguided, arising from early conceptual confusions about wave functions. The error becomes more understandable when you imagine what it must have been like to try to make sense of Table 1 for the very first time.

In the next post, we’ll move on to something novel: images depicting the QFT wave function for a single Bohron. I haven’t seen these images anywhere else, so I suspect they’ll be new to most readers.

Tracks and footprints found in New Mexico are by far the earliest evidence of people using primitive vehicles to transport things

The flying car is an icon of futuristic technology – in more ways than one. This is partly why I can’t resist a good flying car story. I was recently sent this YouTube video on the Alef flying car. The company says his is a street-legal flying car, with vertical take off and landing. They also demonstrate that they have tested this vehicle in urban environments. They are available now for pre-order (estimated price, $300k). The company claims: “Alef will deliver a safe, affordable vehicle to transform your everyday commute.” The claim sounds reminiscent of claims made for the Segway (which recently went defunct).

The flying car has a long history as a promise of future technology. As a technology buff, nerd, and sci-fi fan, I have been fascinated with them my entire life. I have also seen countless prototype flying cars come and go, an endless progression of overhyped promises that have never delivered. I try not to let this make my cynical – but I am cautious and skeptical. I even wrote an entire book about the foibles of predicting future technology, in which flying cars featured prominently.

So of course I met the claims for the Alef flying car with a fair degree of skepticism – which has proven entirely justified. First I will say that the Alef flying car does appear to function as a car and can fly like a drone. But I immediately noticed in the video that as a car, it does not go terribly fast. You have to do some digging, but I found the technical specs which say that it has a maximum road speed of 25 MPH.  It also claims a road range of 200 miles, and an air range of 110 miles. It is an EV with a gas motor to extend battery life in flight, with eight electric motors and eight propellers. It is also single passenger. It’s basically a drone with a frame shaped like a car with tires and weak motors – a drone that can taxi on roads.

It’s a good illustration of the inherent hurdles to a fully-realized flying car of our dreams, mostly rooted in the laws of physics. But before I go there, as is, can this be a useful vehicle? I suppose, for very specific applications. It is being marketed as a commuter car, which makes sense, as it is single passenger (this is no family car). The limited range also makes it suited to commuting (average daily commutes in the US is around 42 miles).

That 25 MPH limit, however, seems like a killer. You can’t drive this thing on the highway, or on many roads, in fact. But, trying to be as charitable as possible, that may be adequate for congested city driving. It is also useful for pulling the vehicle out of the garage into a space with no overhead obstruction. Then you would essentially fly to your destination, land in a suitable location, and then drive to your parking space. If you are only driving into the parking garage, the 25 MPH is fine. So again – it’s really a drone that can taxi on public roads.

The company claims the vehicle is safe, and that seems plausible. Computer aided drone control is fairly advanced now, and AI is only making it better. The real question is – would you need a pilot’s license to fly it? How much training would be involved? And what are the weather conditions in which it is safe to fly? Where you live, what percentage of days would the drone car be safe to fly, and how easy would it be to be stuck at work (or need to take an Uber) because the weather unexpectedly turned for the worse? And if you are avoiding even the potential of bad weather, how much further does this restrict your flying days?

There are obviously lots of regulatory issues as well. Will cities allow the vehicles to be flying overhead. What happens if they become popular and we see a significant increase in their use? How will air traffic be managed. If widely adopted, we will see then what their real safety statistics are. How many people will fly into power lines, etc.?

What all this means is that a vehicle like this may be great as “James Bond” technology. This means, if you are the only one with the tech, and you don’t have to worry about regulations (because you’re a spy), it may help you get away from the bad guys, or quickly cross a city frozen with grid lock. (Let’s face it, you can totally see James Bond in this thing.) But as a widely adopted technology, there are significant issues.

For me the bottom line is that this technology is a great proof-of-concept, and I welcome anything that incrementally advances the technology. It may also find a niche somewhere, but I don’t think this will become the Tesla of flying cars, or that this will transform city commuting. It does help demonstrate where the technology is. We are seeing the benefits of improving battery technology, and improving drone technology. But is this the promised “flying car”? I think the answer is still no.

For me a true flying car functions fully as a car and as a flying conveyance. What we often see are planes that can drive on the road, and now drones that can drive on the road. But they are not really cars, or they are terrible cars. You would never drive the Alef flying car as a car – again, at most you would taxi it to and from its parking space.

What will it take to have a true flying car? I do think the drone approach is much better than the plane approach, or jet-pack approach. Drone technology is definitely the way to go. Before it is practical, however, we need better battery tech. The Alef uses lithium-ion batteries and lithium polymer batteries. Perhaps eventually they will use the silicone anode lithium batteries, which have a higher energy density. But we may need to see the availability of batteries with triple or more current lithium ion batteries before flying drone cars will be a practical reality. But we can feasibly get there.

Perhaps, however, the “flying car” is just a futuristic pipe dream. We do have to consider that if the concept is valid, or are we just committing a “futurism fallacy” by projecting current technology into the future. We don’t necessarily have to do things in the same way, with just better technology. The thought process is – I use my car for transportation, wouldn’t it be great if my car could fly. Perhaps the trade-offs of making a single vehicle that is both a good car and a good drone are just not worth it. Perhaps we should just make the best drone possible for human transportation and specific applications. We may need to develop some infrastructure to accommodate them.

In a city there may be other combinations of travel that work better. You may take a e-scooter to the drone, or some form of public transportation. Then a drone can take you across the city, or across a geological obstacle. Personal drones may be used for commuting, but then you may have a specific pad at your home and another at work for landing. That seems easier than designing a drone-car just to drive 30 feet to the take off location.

If we go far enough into the future, where technology is much more advanced (like batteries with 10 times the energy density of current tech), then flying cars may eventually become practical. But even then there may be little reason to choose that tradeoff.

The post The Alef Flying Car first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

NASA's Juno spacecraft swooped in for a close look at a massive thunderstorm on Jupiter, revealing that it may have similarities to storms on Earth

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was nominated to be Secretary of Health & Human Services, I called him an "extinction-level threat" to public health. Here's how he will attempt to make vaccines extinct in the US.

The post How Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will undermine and ultimately destroy US vaccination programs first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

When offered a choice of bowls, free-ranging dogs in India tend to approach a yellow one much more than blue or grey

The journey to Mars will subject astronauts to extended periods of exposure to radiation during their months-long travel through space. While NASA’s Artemis 1 mission lasted only a matter of weeks, it provided valuable radiation exposure data that scientists can use to predict the radiation risks for future Mars crews. The measurements not only validated existing radiation prediction models but also revealed unexpected insights about the effectiveness of radiation shielding strategies too. 

Space radiation poses one of the most significant health risks for astronauts travelling beyond Earth’s magnetic field. Unlike the radiation from medical X-rays or nuclear sources on Earth, space radiation includes high-energy galactic cosmic rays and solar particle events that can penetrate traditional shielding materials. When these particles collide with human tissue, they can damage DNA, increase cancer risk and weaken the immune system. The effects are cumulative too, with longer missions like a journey to Mars significantly increasing exposure and health risks. 

Artist’s illustration of ultra-high energy cosmic rays

The International Space Station crews receive radiation doses similar to nuclear power plant workers due to a little protection from Earth’s magnetosphere, but astronauts traveling to Mars would face much higher exposure levels during their multi-month journey. NASA estimates that a mission to Mars could expose astronauts to radiation levels that exceed current career exposure limits, making effective radiation shielding one of the key challenges for deep space exploration.

A full-disk view of Mars, courtesy of VMC. Credit: ESA

A paper recently published by a team led by Tony C Slaba from the Langley Research Centre at NASA, they use computer models and data from on-board detectors to assess the health risk to long term space flight. The data is taken from the International Space Station (ISS,) the Orion Spacecraft, the BioSentinel CubeSat and from receivers on the surface of Mars. Collectively this data enables a full mission profile to be modelled for a Martian journey. The data was captured during the time period of the Artemis-1 mission, just under one month in duration.

NASA’s Orion spacecraft will carry astronauts further into space than ever before using a module based on Europe’s Automated Transfer Vehicles (ATV). Credit: NASA

Space radiation comes in two primary forms that pose risks to astronauts and spacecraft. Solar Particle Events occur during solar storms, releasing intense bursts of energetic particles from the Sun, while Galactic Cosmic Rays represent a constant stream of highly penetrating radiation from deep space. The findings enabled the team to assess current models for accuracy. They found that predictions match actual measurements to within 10-25% for the International Space Station, 4% for deep space conditions, and 10% for the Martian surface. This level of precision gives confidence in the existing models and in planning radiation protection for future missions.

They also found that, having assessed traditional shielding approaches, that they are largely ineffective against Galactic Cosmic Rays. In some cases, excessive shielding or inappropriate material choices can even amplify radiation exposure through secondary particle production. This occurs when the ‘original radiation’ creates a cascade of new particles on impact that can be more dangerous than the original radiation! They found that radiation levels vary substantially depending on location and the specific shielding configurations used! Quite the headache for engineers!

Radiation exposure is one of the greatest challenges in human space exploration. The study shows that our models for assessing radiation risk are reliable and that the ability to accurately assess those risks is crucial for protecting astronauts from serious health consequences. Having a good understanding of the risk directly influences how spacecraft are engineered, and plays a key role in mission planning for trips beyond Earth orbit. More work is needed now in the design of radiation protection systems if our space travellers are to be better protected from the long term risks posed by radiation.

Source : Validated space radiation exposure predictions from earth to mars during Artemis-I

The post We Know How Much Radiation Astronauts Will Receive, But We Don’t Know How to Prevent it appeared first on Universe Today.

Anthropogenic climate change is creating a vicious circle where rising temperatures are causing glaciers to melt at an increasing rate. In addition to contributing to rising sea levels, coastal flooding, and extreme weather, the loss of polar ice and glaciers is causing Earth’s oceans to absorb more solar radiation. The loss of glaciers is also depleting regional freshwater resources, leading to elevated levels of drought and the risk of famine. According to new findings by an international research effort, there has been an alarming increase in the rate of glacier loss over the last ten years.

The research was conducted by the Glacier Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise (GlaMBIE) team, a major research initiative coordinated by the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS). Located at the University of Zurich in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh and Earthwave Ltd, this international data repository and data analyzing service generates community estimates of glacier mass loss globally. The paper that details their research and findings, “Community estimate of global glacier mass changes from 2000 to 2023,” was published on February 19th in the journal Nature.

As part of their efforts, the team coordinated the compilation, standardization, and analysis of field measurements and data from optical, radar, laser, and gravimetry satellite missions. These include satellite observations from NASA’s Terra Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) and Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2), the NASA-DLR Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace), the GLR’s TanDEM-X mission, and the ESA’s CryoSat missions, and more.

Combining data from multiple sources, the Glambie team produced an annual time series of global glacier loss from 2000 to 2023. In 2000, glaciers covered about 705,221 square km (272,287 mi2) and held an estimated 121,728 billion metric tons (134,182 US tons) of ice. Over the next twenty years, they lost 273 billion tonnes of ice annually, approximately 5% of their total volume, with regional losses ranging from 2% in the Antarctic and Subantarctic to 39% in Central Europe. To put that in perspective, this amounts to what the entire global population consumes in 30 years.

In short, the amount of ice lost rose to 36% during the second half of the study (2012 and 2023) compared to the first half (2000-2011). Glacier mass loss over the whole study period was 18% higher than the meltwater from the Greenland Ice Sheet and more than double that from the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Michael Zemp, a noted glaciologist who co-led the study, said in an ESA press release:

“We compiled 233 estimates of regional glacier mass change from about 450 data contributors organized in 35 research teams. Benefiting from the different observation methods, Glambie not only provides new insights into regional trends and year-to-year variability, but we could also identify differences among observation methods. This means that we can provide a new observational baseline for future studies on the impact of glacier melt on regional water availability and global sea-level rise.”

This photograph, taken in 2012, shows the Golubin Glacier in Kyrgyzstan, in Central Asia. Credit: M. Hoelzle (2012)

Globally, glaciers collectively lost 6,542 tonnes (7,210 tons) of ice, leading to a global sea-level rise of 18 mm (0.7 inches). However, the rate of glacier ice loss increased significantly from 231 billion tonnes per year in the first half of the study period to 314 billion tonnes per year in the second half – an increase of 36%. This rise in water loss has made glaciers the second-largest contributor to global sea-level rise, surpassing the contributions of the Greenland Ice Sheet, Antarctic Ice Sheet, and changes in land water storage. Said UZH glaciologist Inés Dussaillant, who was involved in the Glambie analyses:

“Glaciers are vital freshwater resources, especially for local communities in Central Asia and the Central Andes, where glaciers dominate runoff during warm and dry seasons. But when it comes to sea-level rise, the Arctic and Antarctic regions, with their much larger glacier areas, are the key players. However, almost Thione-quarter of the glacier contribution to sea-level rise originates from Alaska.”

These results will provide environmental scientists with a refined baseline for interpreting observational differences arising from different methods and for calibrating models. They hope this will help future studies of global ice loss by narrowing the projection uncertainties for the twenty-first century. These research findings are the culmination of many years of cooperative studies and observations, which included the use of satellites that were not specifically designed to monitor glaciers globally. As co-author Noel Gourmelen, a lecturer in Earth Observation of the Cryosphere at the University of Edinburgh, said:

“The research is the result of sustained efforts by the community and by space agencies over many years, to exploit a variety of satellites that were not initially specifically designed for the task of monitoring glaciers globally. This legacy is already producing impact with satellite missions being designed to allow operational monitoring of future glacier evolution, such as Europe’s Copernicus CRISTAL mission which builds on the legacy of ESA’s CryoSat.”

The study also marks an important milestone since it was released in time for the United Nations’ International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation and the Decade of Action for Cryospheric Sciences (2025–2034). Said Livia Jakob, the Chief Scientific Officer & Co-Founder at Earthwave, hosted a large workshop with all the participants to discuss the findings. “Bringing together so many different research teams from across the globe in a joint effort to increase our understanding and certainty of glacier ice loss has been extremely valuable. This initiative has also fostered a stronger sense of collaboration within the community.”

The study also illustrates the importance of collective action on climate change, which is accelerating at an alarming rate. Research that quantifies glacial loss, rising sea levels, and other impacts is key to preparing for the worst. It’s also essential to the development of proper adaptation, mitigation, and restoration strategies consistent with the recommendations made by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Further Reading: ESA

The post Glaciers Worldwide are Melting Faster Causing Sea Levels to Rise More appeared first on Universe Today.

Satellites often face a disappointing end: despite having fully working systems, they are often de-orbited after their propellant runs out. However, a breakthrough is on the cards with the launch of China’s Shijian-25 satellite which has been launched into orbit to test orbital refuelling operations. The plan; docking with satellite Beidou-3 G7 and transferring 142 kilograms of hydrazine to extend its life by 8 years! It’s success will mean China plans to develop a network of orbital refuelling stations!

Like cars on Earth, satellites need fuel to manoeuvre and for their constantly decaying orbits to be boosted. But unlike vehicles on the ground, when satellites run out of propellant, they become expensive space debris. This challenge has driven the development of orbital refuelling technology, which could extend satellite lifespans and transform space operations.

An artist’s conception of ERS-2 in orbit. ESA

The International Space Station (ISS) offers one of the most well known examples of an orbiting ‘satellite’ and it too needs to deal with boosting its orbit. The problem is the drag imposed upon the structures by gas in our atmosphere. In the case of the ISS, docked supply craft are typically used to fire their engines to reposition ISS to the correct altitude. Without these periodic “orbital boosts,” the ISS would eventually lose altitude and reenter the atmosphere.

The International Space Station (ISS) in orbit. Credit: NASA

A significant milestone in autonomous refuelling came in 2007 with DARPA’s Orbital Express mission. This demonstration involved two spacecraft: the ASTRO servicing vehicle and a prototype modular satellite called NextSat. Over three months, they performed multiple autonomous fuel transfers and component replacements, proving that robotic spacecraft could conduct complex servicing operations without direct human control.

The technology continues to advance with China’s Shijian-25 satellite (launched on 6 January 2025) representing another step forward in orbital refuelling capabilities. The mission aims to demonstrate refuelling operations in geosynchronous orbit approximately 36,000 kilometres above Earth. This is particularly significant because geosynchronous orbits often host communications satellites that benefit from life extension.

The technical challenges of orbital refuelling are considerable though. Spacecraft must achieve extremely precise rendezvous and docking while travelling in excess of 28,000 kilometres per hour. The fuel transfer system must prevent leaks, which could be hazardous to both spacecraft and create hazardous debris. Adding to the challenge is that many satellites were never designed with refuelling in mind, lacking any form of standardised fuel ports or docking interfaces.

Orange balls of light fly across the sky as debris from a SpaceX rocket launched in Texas is spotted over Turks and Caicos Islands on Jan. 16, in this screen grab obtained from social media video. Credit: Marcus Haworth/Reuters

Looking ahead, several companies and space agencies are developing orbital refuelling systems. These range from dedicated “gas station” satellites to more versatile servicing vehicles that can perform repairs and upgrades alongside refuelling. As the technology advances, it could significantly change how we operate in space, making satellite operations more sustainable and cost-effective.

Source : China successfully sent Shijian-25 satellite

The post A Chinese Satellite Tests Orbital Refuelling appeared first on Universe Today.

She murdered her patients. At least, that’s what the prosecutors said. All it took to get powerful opioids from California internist Lisa Tseng was a brief conversation. No X-rays. No lab tests. No medical exam. Video surveillance shows an undercover officer posing as a patient who asks Dr. Tseng for methadone (an opioid) and Xanax (an anti-anxiety medication), drugs that can form a deadly cocktail when combined. He tells her that he is in recovery and takes the drugs at night with alcohol to “take the edge off.” He makes clear that he is not in pain and does not plan to use the medications to treat a medical condition. Tseng writes the prescription—after the agent hands over $75 cash.1

Did she know what she was doing was wrong? Tseng received desperate calls from patients’ families and friends concerned that their loved ones were hooked on the meds she prescribed.2 She did not stop. Coroners and law enforcement agents called Dr. Tseng each time a patient died—14 in total.3 She did not stop. Perhaps she thought the financial perks outweighed the risks. Dr. Tseng’s reckless prescribing raked in $3,000 a day and exceeded $5 million in three years. 

Dr. Tseng’s prescribing spree ended in 2015, when a jury convicted her on three counts of second-degree murder.4 In 2016, Superior Court Judge George G. Lomeli imposed a prison sentence of 30 years to life in prison. The trial lasted eight weeks. It included 77 witnesses and 250 pieces of evidence. Families of overdose victims praised the judge’s decision and concluded that “justice has been served.”5

Dr. Tseng was the first California physician ever convicted of murder for overprescribing opioids, and one of the first in the United States. Her case was a turning point for law enforcement because it created a playbook for subsequent prosecutions and because it sent a clear signal to physicians across the nation: you could be next. “The message this case sends is you can’t hide behind a white lab coat and commit crimes,” declared Deputy District Attorney John Niedermann. “A lab coat and stethoscope are no shield.” Medical experts warned that Tseng’s case could scare physicians away from prescribing opioids and leave chronic pain patients to suffer without care.6

Illustration by Izhar Cohen for SKEPTIC

Law enforcement is responsible for making sure that doctors only prescribe opioids legally, which is no easy task. However, some physicians make it easy when they engage in behavior that is explicitly and undeniably criminal. These are the cases that make headlines. Opioids are illegal by default. Federal law gives doctors a special exemption to prescribe them for legitimate medical purposes, particularly pain. But how can a physician be legitimate if he has a parking lot filled with out-of-state license plates and a line of patients snaking around the building as if they are waiting to buy concert tickets? If he asks the patient to state his blood pressure while a brand-new blood pressure cuff hangs on the wall, unused? If he can’t tell the difference between a dog X-ray and a human one? 

Doctors are hard to investigate and even harder to prosecute. It is difficult for judges and juries to wrap their minds around the idea that physicians perpetrate crimes.

It sounds far-fetched, but in July 2012, Glendora, CA, police arrested physician Rolando Lodevico Atiga for prescribing powerful opioids to an undercover officer. The officer used a dog X-ray—with the tail clearly visible—to prove he had a bad back. Police Captain Tim Staab told CBS, “Either Sparky the dog really needs Percocet or this doctor is a drug dealer masquerading as a physician.”7 The medical board suspended Dr. Atiga’s license in August 2012.8 Then criminal proceedings were suspended in 2013 due to Dr. Atiga’s poor mental health and inability to stand trial.9

Doctors are hard to investigate and even harder to prosecute. It is difficult for judges and juries to wrap their minds around the idea that physicians perpetrate crimes. The image of the “dirty doctor” just doesn’t mesh with the popular image of “doctor as savior.” And many overdoses involve multiple drugs, making it hard to pin a death on a single drug or a single doctor.10 Still, over the past decade, judges and juries have put physicians behind bars. Law enforcement arrests scores of physicians for opioid crimes each year. They charge physicians with the same counts as illicit drug dealers: fraud, unlawful distribution, racketeering, manslaughter, and murder.11 Doctors are legally required to keep extensive records that investigators use to prove criminal activity. Physicians who avoid arrest still face steep penalties, such as losing their medical license, losing the ability to prescribe controlled substances, or paying a hefty fine. 

It was not always this way. As early as the mid-1990s, evidence showed that physicians were generously doling out opioids, but the first murder conviction did not occur until 2016.12 What happened over those twenty years that unleashed prosecutors’ power and helped them win cases against providers? The answer lies in organizational change, education, and technological innovation. New organizations centered on criminal healthcare providers cropped up, enforcement agents came together to share strategies, and Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) spread across the nation that made targeting physicians a far easier task. 

Reshaping the Enforcement Landscape 

A lot has changed since the days when pill mills popped up like weeds and law enforcement had no way to stop them. Enforcement agencies have responded to the opioid crisis with three strategies: (1) organizing task forces, (2) educating investigators, and (3) using PDMPs. Together, these efforts have made physician cases easier and faster to initiate, even if some challenges persist. 

Task forces are subunits of enforcement agencies that bring together individuals who have different resources and expertise to address a common goal. Federal agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and local agencies such as sheriffs’ departments have devoted themselves to physician cases by creating task forces centered on prescription opioids. DEA task forces do much of the heavy lifting, a major difference from decades ago. 

The DEA plays the biggest federal role in regulating opioids. The DEA’s Office of Diversion Control oversees registrants—physicians, pharmacies, hospitals, manufacturers, wholesalers, and drug distributors—who must register with the agency in order to provide controlled substances. The Controlled Substances Act (CSA) designates these registrants as part of a “closed system of distribution,” which means that the DEA tracks everyone who handles opioids along the supply chain and accounts for every transaction. The DEA monitors opioid transactions using the Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System (ARCOS), a database that tracks controlled substances all the way from manufacture to public distribution.13

“The message this case sends is … a lab coat and stethoscope are no shield.” 
—Deputy District Attorney John Niedermann

For decades, the Office of Diversion Control14 was considered a lesser part of the DEA, and the agents who worked for it—known as Diversion Investigators (DIs)—were treated as less important than Special Agents (SAs), who work for the Operations Division. The position of DI was originally created to relieve SAs from the burden of inspecting and auditing manufacturers and distributors of controlled substances as mandated by the CSA. Handing off those tasks to DIs freed SAs to focus on heroin and cocaine trafficking. This hierarchy persisted into the late 1990s, the heyday of opioid prescribing, when physicians treated pain as a fifth vital sign and were urged to treat it aggressively. With physicians and regulators on board with generous opioid prescribing, the diversion office found itself underfunded and understaffed. Laura Nagel, who was appointed head of the DEA’s Office of Diversion Control in 2000, led DIs who struggled to get resources and respect. Unaware of the giant opioid wave poised to crest a few short years later, SAs thought prescription opioids were nothing more than a child’s version of the hard drugs they pursued. 

That all changed in the early 2000s when, for the first time in U.S. history, Americans were more likely to overdose on prescription drugs than illegal ones.15 Suddenly, DIs were in high demand. In late 2006, the DEA created task forces called Tactical Diversion Squads. These included DIs, SAs, and Task Force Officers (TFOs), who are local police deputized to work with the DEA. DIs understood healthcare norms; SAs could arrest people; and TFOs had fine-grained knowledge of their communities. This arrangement created the organizational synergy needed to pursue doctors. 

Local agencies such as police departments and sheriff’s departments also created narcotics task forces that enabled them to exchange information with other local agencies. Members of such task forces can represent various police departments, the highway patrol, the district attorney’s office, the department of healthcare services, and the medical board. They may also ally with the FBI, the DEA, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). 

Federal and local agencies have complementary resources. Local police departments have insufficient funding to do provider cases, so they collaborate with federal law enforcement either formally by sending one of their officers to the DEA’s task force or informally by working cases with them. Federal agencies have more money and equipment. They can perform federal wire taps, which are expensive and require specialized technology. They can also afford expert witnesses, whose expertise is crucial in building a solid case against a doctor. Local agencies, on the other hand, have more agents, so they are better equipped to conduct undercover investigations and process the mountains of paperwork that a doctor case generates. 

Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) have dramatically transformed the ways that investigators and prosecutors conduct cases against providers.

Task forces are only one site of information exchange. Enforcement agents have found various ways to break down information silos and thereby distribute knowledge. Years of failed attempts have taught investigators and prosecutors both what works, and what doesn’t. They know which questions to ask, which behaviors to look for, and which charges to bring. When task force members, eager to share what they had learned with others, lacked formal venues in which to do so, they got creative. 

Together, new organizations, new knowledge, and new technology expand law enforcement capacity. These changes are evident when we consider what investigation and prosecution look like today. Let’s turn to PDMPs as an example. 

Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs 

PDMPs have dramatically transformed the ways that investigators and prosecutors conduct cases against providers. New organizational developments paved the way for monitoring programs to have the greatest impact. Enforcement agencies’ impetus to investigate providers coincided with the arrival of technology that made those investigations easier and faster. Enforcement agents find both provider and patient data useful—the former because it shows patterns of providers’ behavior and the latter data because it helps law enforcement convince patients to become confidential informants in exchange for leniency in their own cases. 

Healthcare providers have direct access to the database, but law enforcement access is more complicated. State laws restrict which enforcement agencies can get access and how. Some states give law enforcement direct access to data. In those states, enforcement agents have their own login to the system but can only legally access the data in the process of an active case, meaning that they are already investigating a specific crime. They can’t just search through the database to see what they find. Other states require law enforcement to request access from the agency that houses the PDMP, and the agency returns only information that is relevant to the case. Still other states require enforcement agents to obtain a warrant or a subpoena to access the data.16, 17 Regardless of how they get the information, PDMPs are a boon to law enforcement because they make tasks easier and more efficient. 

A prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) is an electronic database that tracks controlled substance prescriptions in a state. (Source: CDC.gov)

Physician cases are reactive instead of proactive, which creates a barrier to starting an investigation. Enforcement agents say that they do not go out looking for bad doctors but find them through tips they receive from a patient, a parent, a healthcare provider, or another agency. They use information from tips to gather evidence and determine whether the case is worth pursuing. For a provider to come under law enforcement scrutiny, someone has to notice their behavior, feel compelled to do something, and know who to call.

The legwork necessary to investigate a physician traditionally posed a second barrier because investigators had to travel from pharmacy to pharmacy to gather the physician’s prescriptions. Now, thanks to the PDMP, that legwork has become deskwork. Instead of spending time on a potentially fruitless pharmacy expedition, enforcement agents simply look up the physician in the database or request access to information from the agency that controls it. Investigators can obtain a physician’s prescribing history, analyze prescribing patterns, and link their findings to other databases without setting foot outside the office. 

Physician cases are decidedly unsexy. There are no drugs. There are no guns. There is paperwork. Stacks and stacks of paperwork.

PDMP data are a starting point. They do not make a case alone. Investigators examine the data from various angles and try to come up with alternative explanations for the patterns they see.

PDMPs also have their drawbacks. Investigators can use the database to track physicians, but a smart criminal physician also uses the database to monitor their patients and identify potential undercover investigators. People who are addicted to or diverting medications usually have a long PDMP report because they are actively trying to obtain opioids from various physicians. Undercover agents do not have a report at all, so running a report is a way to root out narcs. Knowing this, law enforcement finds ways to create fake reports so that they blend in with other patients. Overall, PDMPs benefit law enforcement because they improve the speed and accuracy of their investigations. Better investigations lead to more successful prosecutions (that is, a greater percentage of convictions). 

The War on Drug Doctors 

Drug cases capture media attention for a reason. Whether on popular TV shows or the evening news, drug cases are sexy. Towering bags of confiscated drugs and arrays of automatic rifles captivate audiences. This stagecraft also helps to justify the War on Drugs. Props such as drugs and guns show that the “bad guys,” the drug dealers, are armed and dangerous. They also show how desperately we need the “good guys,” the investigators and prosecutors, to keep the bad guys off the street. 

Photo by Wesley Tingey / Unsplash

By comparison, physician cases are decidedly unsexy. There are no drugs. There are no guns. There is paperwork. Stacks and stacks of paperwork. Not only do prosecutors have to prove to judges and juries that doctors—professionals revered as pillars of our society—are criminals, but they have to do so using something as uninspiring as paperwork. It’s a tough sell.

This essay was excerpted and adapted by the author from Policing Patients: Treatment and Surveillance on the Frontlines of the Opioid Crisis. Copyright © 2024 by Elizabeth Chiarello. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.

Pseudoscience can often survive because of the continuous publication and dissemination of alleged new discoveries that cast doubt on the findings of “official science.” Mass media regularly republish these “discoveries,” which question otherwise clear and well-established findings. The Shroud of Turin is a perfect example: each year, new statements and new “studies” surface, and instill in the public the (false) idea that there is sufficient evidence to think that the relic is not medieval, but does in fact date back to the time of Christ.

For example, in recent weeks newspapers around the world have reported1 that a group of Italian researchers discovered an innovative way to date the fabric of the Shroud of Turin, and that this dating disproved the results of radiocarbon dating carried out in 1988 (which had placed the creation of the Shroud to somewhere between the 13th and 14th centuries). According to these media reports, the cloth is likely to be around 2,000 years old.

However, this “information” is incorrect, and the media did not bother to check the reliability of what they published. If we examine the reports closely, here is what actually happened:

1. The article by the Italian scholars was published in 2022, so it is not new.2 The simple facts are that a news outlet in the U.S. broke the news two years late—and then many others simply copied from it.
2. The proposed dating system is not normally used nor has it been validated by the scientific community. It is based on the use of X-rays (Wide- Angle X-ray Scattering, or WAXS), which are supposed to measure the degradation of cellulose fibers. This system was invented in 2019 by these very same authors, and for the purpose of dating the Shroud, and so is not used by anyone else.3
3. The method is highly unreliable, because tissue aging is strongly influenced by environmental factors, such as humidity, temperature, light exposure, storage conditions, and the possible presence of microorganisms or of various chemicals, all of which are unpredictable variables that can heavily alter the results. Thus, it cannot provide a reliable dating that is remotely comparable to that provided by the proven Carbon-14 method, which dates the Shroud as being of medieval origin.
4. The inventors of the WAXS method are not neutral scientists; they are sindonologists (i.e., people who study the Shroud of Turin from a believing perspective; from the Greek word sindòn, used in the Gospels to define the type of fine fabric, undoubtedly linen, with which the corpse of Jesus was believed to be wrapped), and who for years have been trying hard to prove that the Shroud is authentic. None of them are experts in either dating or textiles. The main proponents of the research are Giulio Fanti and Liberato De Caro. Both share the commonality of being followers of the Italian pseudomystic Maria Valtorta, who died in 1961, and who, bedridden by illness, told of receiving heavenly messages and seeing the entire life of Christ, which she described in many books. Although the Catholic Church has put these books on the Index (that is, a catalog of writings condemned as contrary to faith or morals), Fanti and De Caro believe in Valtorta’s visions. Fanti also believes he received personal messages from Jesus and Our Lady, and De Caro, a deacon, is known for his belief in creationism.
5. The authors were never allowed to extract material directly from the Shroud. What they used was a very small sample (approx. 0.5 mm × 1 mm), which they claim originally belonged to the Shroud.
6. Between 2014 and 2022, these two authors have already invented four different systems to date textiles in order to authenticate the Shroud: measurement of the mechanical properties of individual linen fibers, Raman spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (Fanti), and WAXS (De Caro).
7. Their conclusions are considered so unreliable that even a journal published by the Center for Sindonology in Turin (which pursues proof of the Shroud’s authenticity) urged people to be cautious of their conclusions.4

Display of the Shroud in the chapel of the Dukes of Savoy; miniature from the Prayer Book donated in 1559 by Cristoforo Duc of Moncalieri to Margaret of Valois. Turin, Royal Library, Varia 84, f. 3v. Courtesy of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities, Regional Directorate for Cultural and Landscape Heritage of Piedmont

Around that same time, an article published in The Telegraph5 (and later recycled by other outlets) garnered significant interest. It stated that “new research by Cicero Moraes, a world leader in forensic facial reconstruction software, showed it could not have enveloped a corpse.” In fact, “the expert found the image on the shroud could only be created if a cloth was placed over a bas-relief of a human figure, such as a shallow stone carving.” Cicero Moraes is right, but his research is not particularly groundbreaking. For at least four centuries, we have known that the body image on the Shroud is comparable to an orthogonal projection onto a plane, which certainly could not have been created through contact with a three-dimensional body.

Without any need for computer imaging, practical experiments of putting a piece of cloth on a statue or on a human body have been conducted and described in a book published exactly four hundred years ago by French historian Jean-Jacques Chifflet.6 A little over two hundred years later, in the 19th century, Italian historian Lazzaro Giuseppe Piano wrote: “Let the face of a statue be dyed with color and let a white cloth be applied to it; if, after having pressed it a bit by hand, the cloth is removed and spread out, one will see on it a distorted image, much wider than the face itself.”7 Cicero Moraes has certainly created some beautiful images with the help of software, and for that his efforts are to be appreciated, but he certainly did not uncover anything that we did not already know.

Why study a shroud?

I have devoted myself to studying the Shroud of Turin for over a decade,8 along with all the faces of sindonology, and the set of scientific disciplines tasked with determining the authenticity of such relics. My work began with an in-depth analysis of the theory linking the Knights Templar to the relic,9 and the theory according to which the Mandylion of Edessa (more on this below) and the Shroud are one and the same.10 Studying the fabric also revealed that the textile has a complex structure that would have required a sufficiently advanced loom, that is, a horizontal treadle loom with four shafts, probably introduced by the Flemish artisans in the 13th century, while the archaeological record provides clear evidence that the Shroud is completely different from all the cloths woven in ancient Palestine.11

As a historian I was more interested in the history of the Shroud than in determining its authenticity as the burial cloth of Jesus, although the evidence is clear that it was not. That said, for a historiographical reconstruction seeking to address the history of the relationship between faith and science in relation to relics, the Shroud does offer a useful case for understanding how insistence on a relic’s authenticity, along with a lack of interest on the part of mainstream science, leaves ample room for pseudoscientific arguments.

Relics

The Christian cult of relics revolves around the desire to perpetuate the memory of illustrious figures and encourage religious devotion towards them. Initially limited to veneration of the (sometimes alleged) bodies of martyrs, over the centuries it extended to include the bodies of saints and, finally, objects that had come into contact with them. As Christianity spread, the ancient custom of making pilgrimages to the burial places of saints was accompanied by the custom of transferring their relics (or parts of them) to the furthest corners of the Christian world. These transfers, called “translations,” had several effects:

1. They increased devotion towards the person from whom the relic derived.
2. They were believed to protect against war, natural disasters, and disease, and to attract healings, conversions, miracles, and visions.
3. They heightened interest in the place hosting the relics, thus attracting pilgrims and so enriching both the church and the city that housed them.
4. They increased the prestige of the owners of relics.

Relics are objects without intrinsic or objective value outside of the specific religious environment that attributes a significance to them. In a religious environment, however, they become semiophores, or “objects which were of absolutely no use, but which, being endowed with meaning, represented the invisible.”12 However, enthusiasm for relics tended to wane over time unless it was periodically reawakened through constant efforts or significant events, such as festivals, acts of worship, or translations, along with claims of healings, apparitions, and miracles. When a relic fails to attract attention to itself, or loses such appeal, it becomes nearly indistinguishable from any other object.

As the demand for relics grew among not only the faithful masses but also the fortunate abbots, bishops, prelates, and princes owning or associated with them, the supply inevitably increased. One of the effects of this drive was the frenzied search for ancient relics in holy places. Though the searches were often conducted in good faith, our modern perspective, equipped with greater historical and scientific expertise, can hardly consider most of these relics to be authentic. It was thus almost inevitable that relic intermediaries and dealers emerged—some honest, believing, brokers, but others outright dishonest fraudsters. There were so many of the latter that St. Augustine of Hippo famously spoke out against the trade in martyrs’ relics as early as the 5th century.

The Matter of Relic Authenticity

For a long time, many scholars did not consider relics to be objects deserving of interest to professional historians because the cult of veneration surrounding them was regarded as a purely devotional set of practices. Historians who study relics from the perspective of the history of piety, devotion, worship, beliefs, secular or ecclesiastical politics, and social and economic impact, should also speak to the origin of such relics, and hence their authenticity. In the case of relics of lesser value—those that have been downgraded, forgotten, undervalued, or removed from worship—the historian’s task is relatively simple.

By contrast, historians and scientists face greater resistance when dealing with fake relics that still attract great devotional interest. Many historians sidestep the authenticity issue by overlooking the question of the relic’s origin, instead focusing only on what the faithful have believed over time and the role of the relic in history. While this approach is legitimate, what people most want to know about holy relics like the Shroud of Turin today is their authenticity.

The Shroud of Turin is part of the trove of Christ-related relics that were never mentioned in ancient times. When the search for relics in the Holy Land began—with the discovery of the (alleged) true cross, belatedly attributed to Helena, mother of the emperor Constantine—no one at that time ever claimed to have found Jesus’ burial cloths, nor is there any record of anyone having thought to look for them.

There is more than one shroud.

The earliest travel accounts of pilgrims visiting the sites of Jesus in the 4th century show that people venerated various relics, but they do not mention a shroud. By the beginning of the 6th century, pilgrims to Jerusalem were shown what were claimed to be the spear with which Jesus was stabbed, the crown of thorns, the reed and sponge of his passion, the chalice of the Last Supper, the tray on which John the Baptist’s head was placed, the bed of the paralytic healed by Jesus, the stone on which the Lord left an imprint of his shoulders, and the stone where Our Lady sat to rest after dismounting from her donkey. But no shroud. It was not until the second half of the 6th century that pilgrims began to mention relics of Jesus’ burial cloths being in Jerusalem, albeit with various doubts as to where they had been preserved and what form they took.

The next step was the systematic and often unverified discovery of additional—and preposterous— relics from the Holy Land, including the bathtub of baby Jesus, his cradle, nappy, footprints, foreskin, umbilical cord, milk teeth, the tail of the donkey on which He entered Jerusalem, the crockery from the Last Supper, the scourging pillar, His blood, the relics of the bodies of Jesus’ grandparents and the Three Wise Men, and even the milk from the Virgin Mary and her wedding ring. Obviously, objects related to Jesus’ death and resurrection could easily be included in such a list. Predictably, the movement of such relics from Jerusalem—be they bought, stolen, or forged—reached its peak at the time of the Crusades.

The beginning of the 9th century was a time of intense traffic in relics. One legend, built up around no one less than Charlemagne himself, held that he had made a journey to Jerusalem and obtained a shroud of Jesus. According to this legend, the cloth was then taken to the imperial city of Aachen (in modern Germany), and then, perhaps, to Compiègne, France. There are accounts of a shroud in both cities, and Aachen still hosts this relic today.

The coexistence of these relics in two important religious centers has not prevented other cities from claiming to possess the very same objects. Arles and Cadouin (France), as well as Rome (Italy), all boast a shroud, although in 1933 the one in Cadouin was revealed to be a medieval Islamic cloth. There is an 11th-century holy shroud in the cathedral of Cahors (France) as well as in Mainz (Germany) and Istanbul (Turkey), and dozens of other cities claimed to possess fragments of such a relic.13 An 8th-century sudarium is still venerated in Oviedo, Spain, as if it were authentic.14

The Shroud of Turin

With this background it might not surprise readers to learn that the Shroud of Turin, in fact, is not one of the oldest but rather one of the most recent such relics. It is a large cloth that resembles a long tablecloth of over four meters in length, whose uniqueness is a double monochromatic image that shows the front and back of a man. The man bears marks from flagellation and crucifixion, with various red spots corresponding to where blows were received. The Turin Shroud first appeared in the historical record in France (a place that already hosted many competing shrouds) around 1355 CE. It is different from all the previous shrouds in that the others did not display the image of the dead Christ, and until then no source had ever mentioned a shroud bearing such an image (although Rome hosted the well-known Veil of Veronica, a piece of cloth said to feature an image of the Holy Face of Jesus). The explanation behind its creation can be found in the contemporary development of a cult of devotion centered on the representations of the physical suffering of Christ and His wounded body.

Pilgrimage badge of Lirey (Aube), dated between 1355 and 1410, depicts the first appearance of the Shroud. (Photo © Jean-Gilles Berizzi / RMN-Grand Palais, Musée de Cluny, Musée National du Moyen Âge).

The Shroud of Turin made its first appearance in a small country church built in Lirey, France, and by an aristocratic soldier Geoffroy de Charny. As soon as this relic was put on public display, it immediately became the subject of debate. Two local bishops declared the relic to be fake. In 1389, the bishop of Troyes, France, wrote a letter to the Pope denouncing the falsity of the relic and accusing the canons of the Church of Lirey of deliberate fraud. According to the bishop, the canons had commissioned a skilled artist to create the image, acting out of greed and taking advantage of people’s gullibility. The Pope responded by allowing the canons to continue exhibiting the cloth, but simultaneously obliging them to publicly declare that it was being displayed as a “figure or representation” of the true Shroud of Christ, not the original.

Various erasures and acts of subterfuge were required to cover up these historical events and transform an artistic representation into an authentic shroud of Jesus. The process began after 1453, when the relic was purchased by a noble family, the House of Savoy (and which reigned as Kings of Italy from 1861 to 1946).

Historians loyal to the court constructed a false history of the relic’s origins, deliberately disregarding all the medieval events that cast doubt on its authenticity.

Interpretations of this first part of the history of the Shroud diverge significantly between those who accept the validity of the historical documents and those who reject it. However, the following developments are almost universally agreed upon. Deposited in the city of Chambéry, capital of the Duchy of Savoy, the Shroud became a dynastic relic, that is, an instrument of political-religious legitimization and referenced by the same symbolic language used by other noble European dynasties. After surviving a fire in 1532, the Shroud remained in Chambéry until 1578. It was then transferred to Turin, the duchy’s new capital, where a richly appointed chapel connected to the city’s cathedral was specially built to house it in the 17th century.

Historians loyal to the court constructed a false history of the relic’s origins, deliberately disregarding all the medieval events that cast doubt on its authenticity and attested to the intense reluctance of contemporary ecclesiastical authorities to accept it. In the meantime, the papacy and clergy abandoned their former prudence and began to encourage veneration of the Shroud, established a liturgical celebration, and initiated theological and exegetical debate about it. The court of the Duchy of Savoy, for its part, showed great devotion to its relic and at the same time used it as an instrument of political legitimization,15, 16 seeking to export the Shroud’s fame outside the duchy by gifting painted copies that were in turn treated as relics-by-contact (there are at least 50 such copies known to still exist throughout the world).

Having survived changes of fortune and emerging unscathed from both the rational criticism of the Enlightenment and the turmoil of the Napoleonic period, the Shroud seemed destined to suffer the fate of other similar relics, namely a slow decline. Following a solemn exhibition in 1898, however, the Shroud returned to the spotlight and its reputation began to grow outside Italy as well. Two very important events in the history of the relic took place that year: it was photographed for the first time, and the first historiographical studies of it were published.

Shroud Science

Photography made available to everyone what previously had been viewable by only a few: an image of the shape of Christ’s body and face, scarcely discernible on the cloth but perfectly visible on the photographic plate. It was especially visible in the negative image, which by inverting the tonal values, reducing them to white and black, and accentuating the contrast, revealed the character of the imprint.

“Santo Volto del Divin Redentore” (Holy Face of the Divine Redeemer), a detail of the Shroud of Turin. Photo by Giuseppe Enrie, taken during the 1931 public exhibition of the Shroud of Turin. It is a negative photographic image, meaning that the lighter areas represent the darker areas of the Shroud.

Photographs of the Shroud, accompanied by imprecise technical assessments claiming that the photograph proved that the image could not possibly have been generated artificially, were circulated widely. This prompted scholars to seek through chemistry, physics, and, above all, forensic medicine an explanation for the origins of the image impressed on the cloth. More recently, these disciplines have been joined by palynology, computer science, biology, and mathematics, all aimed at demonstrating the authenticity of the relic experimentally, or at least removing doubts that it might have been a fake. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were many scientific articles published on the Shroud and discussions held in distinguished forums, including the Academy of Sciences in Paris.

The scientist associated with the birth of scientific sindonology is the zoologist Paul Vignon, while Ulysse Chevalier was the first to conduct serious historical investigations of the Shroud. Both were Catholics (the latter indeed being a priest), but they held completely contrasting positions: the former defended the Shroud’s authenticity while the latter denied it. Chevalier was responsible for publishing the most significant medieval documents on the early history of the Shroud, showing how it had been condemned and declarations of its falseness covered up, and wrote the first essays on the history of the Shroud to employ a historical-critical method (Chevalier was an illustrious medievalist at the time). The debate became very heated in the historical and theological fields, and almost all the leading history and theology journals of the time published articles on the Shroud.

After the early 20th century, almost no one applied themselves to thoroughly examining the entirety of the historical records regarding the Shroud (much less comparing it against all the other shrouds). After a period of relative lack of interest, new technologies brought the Shroud back into the limelight. In 1978, a group of American scholars, mostly military employees or researchers associated with the Catholic Holy Shroud Guild, formed the STURP (Shroud of Turin Research Project) and were allowed to conduct a series of direct scientific studies on the relic. They did not find a universally accepted explanation for the origin of the image. Some members of the group used the mass media to disseminate the idea that the image was actually the result of a supernatural event: in this explanation, the image was not the result of a body coming into contact with the cloth, perhaps involving blood, sweat, and burial oils (as believed in previous centuries) but rather caused by irradiation. At this time the two most popular theories formulated—despite their implausibility—as to the historical origin of the Shroud were:

1. The Shroud and the Mandylion of Edessa are one and the same object. (The Mandylion is another miraculous relic known to have existed since at least the 6th century BCE in the form of a towel that, according to the faithful, Jesus used to wipe His face, miraculously leaving the mark of His features on it).
2. The Knights Templar transported the Shroud from the East to the West. (It was based on statements extracted under torture from the Templars during their infamous trial of 1307–1312.)

The clash between sindonology and science reached its peak in 1988; without involving STURP but with permission from the Archbishop of Turin, the Holy See, and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, a radiocarbon examination was carried out that involved 12 measurements conducted in three different laboratories. As expected, the test provided a date that corresponds perfectly with the date indicated by the historical documents, namely the 13th–14th century. As often happens when a scientific finding contradicts a religious belief, however, from that moment on attempts to invalidate the carbon dating proliferated. These included conspiracy, pollution of the samples, unreliability of the examination, enrichment of the radiocarbon percentage due to the secondary effects of the resurrection, among others.

Dating the Shroud

In 1945, chemist Willard Libby devised the Carbon-14 (C14) radiocarbon dating method. Despite rumors that Libby was against applying the C14 method to the Shroud, I found proof that at least twice he stated precisely the opposite, declaring his own interest in performing the study himself.17 In the early 1970s, the test had been repeatedly postponed, first because it was not yet considered sufficiently reliable, and later because of the amount of cloth that would have to be sacrificed as the procedure is destructive. By the mid-1980s, however, C14 was accepted universally as a reliable system of dating, and was regularly used to date archeological artifacts as well as antiques. Several C14 laboratories offered to perform the testing for free, likely under the assumption that, whatever the result, it would bring them publicity.

The cloth of the Shroud can be assigned with a confidence of 95 percent to a date between 1260 and 1390 CE.

Once Cardinal Ballestrero, who was not the relic’s “owner” but only charged with the Shroud’s protection, had made the decision to proceed, he asked for the support and approval of the Holy See. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences was invested with the responsibility to oversee all operations. For the first time in its history, the papal academy was presided over by a scientist who was not a priest, biophysicist Carlos Chagas Filho. The scientists’ desire was to date the Shroud and nothing more, and they did not want the sindonologists to take part in the procedure. The Vatican’s Secretary of State and the representatives of Turin agreed to supply no more than three samples. Seven laboratories were proposed from which three selected: those at the University of Arizona, Tucson, the University of Oxford, and Zurich Polytechnic, because they had the most experience in dating small archaeological fragments.

The day chosen for the extraction was April 21, 1988. The textile experts examined the fabric and discussed the best place to extract samples; they decided to take a strip from one of the corners, in the same place in which a sample had already been taken for examination in 1973. The strip was divided into smaller pieces and each of the three laboratories received a sample. The procedure was filmed while being performed under the scrutiny of over 30 people.

The results were published in the world’s leading multidisciplinary scientific journal, Nature. Conclusion: the cloth of the Shroud can be assigned with a confidence of 95 percent to a date between 1260 and 1390 CE. In response, the Cardinal of Turin issued this statement:

I think that it is not the case that the Church should call these results into question…. I do not believe that we, the Church, should trouble ourselves to quibble with highly respected scientists who until this moment have merited only respect, and that it would not be responsible to subject them to censure solely because their results perhaps do not align with the arguments of the heart that one can carry within himself.18Prof. Edward Hall (Oxford), Dr. Michael Tite (British Museum) and Dr. Robert Hedges (Oxford), announcing on October 13, 1988, in the British Museum, London, that the Shroud of Turin had been radiocarbon dated to 1260–1390.

Predictably, Shroud believers rejected the findings and started to criticize the Turin officials who had cut the material. Others preferred to deny the validity of the radiocarbon dating.

Sindonologists tried to discredit the result of the C14 testing by claiming the samples were contaminated. This hypothesis asserts that through the centuries the Shroud picked up deposits of more recent elements that would contain a greater quantity of carbon; the radiocarbon dating, having been performed on a linen so contaminated, would thus have produced an erroneous result. Candidates for the role of pollutants are many: the smoke of the candles, the sweat of the hands that touched and held the fabric, the water used to extinguish the fire of 1532, the smoggy Turin skies, pollens, oil, and many more.

On the surface, these may seem convincing, especially to those who do not know how C14 dating works; in reality, however, they are untenable. Indeed, if a bit of smoke and sweat were enough to produce a false result, the Carbon-14 method would have been almost completely useless and certainly not used still to this day to date thousands of objects every year. The truth is rather that the system is not significantly sensitive to any such pollutants.

So assume that the fabric of the Shroud dates back to the 30s of the first century and that the Shroud has suffered exposure to strong pollution (for example, around 1532, the year of the Chambéry fire). To distort the C14 dating by up to 1300 years, it would be necessary that for every 100 carbon atoms originally present in the cloth, another 500 dating to 1532 would have to have been added by contamination. In practice, in the Shroud, the amount of pollutant should be several times higher than the amount of the original linen, which is simply nonsensical.

If we assume that pollution did not happen all at the same time, but gradually over the centuries, there is still no mathematical possibility that pollution that occurred before the 14th century—even if tens of times higher than the quantity of the original material—could give a result of dating to the 14th century. It should be added, moreover, that all samples, before being radiocarbon dated, are subjected to cleaning treatments able to remove the upper patina that has been in contact with outside contaminants and this procedure was also used for the Shroud.

Those who allege that the Shroud was an object that could not be dated because it was subjected to numerous vicissitudes over the intervening centuries ignore the fact that often C14 dating laboratories work on materials in much worse condition, whether coming from archaeological excavations or from places where they have been in contact with various contaminants. For radiocarbon dating purposes, the Shroud is a very clean object.

A more curious variant of the pollution theory suggests that the radiocarbon dating was performed on a sample that was repaired with more recent threads. This would mean that the two (widely recognized) textile experts who were present on the day of the sampling were unable to notice that they had cut a piece so repaired, despite the fact that they had examined the fabric carefully for hours. To distort the result by 13 centuries, the threads employed in the mending would have had to have been more numerous than the threads of the part to be mended. To eliminate any doubt, in 2010 the University of Arizona reexamined a trace of fabric left over from the radiocarbon dating in 1988, and concluded:

We find no evidence for any coatings or dyeing of the linen…. Our sample was taken from the main part of the shroud. There is no evidence to the contrary. We find no evidence to support the contention that the 14C samples actually used for measurements are dyed, treated, or otherwise manipulated. Hence, we find no reason to dispute the original 14C measurements.19

Another possibility raised against C14 dating falls within the sphere of the supernatural. German chemist, Eberhard Lindner, explained to the 1990 sindonology convention that the resurrection of Christ caused an emission of neutrons that enriched the Shroud with radioactive isotope C14.20 Miraculous explanations can be cloaked in scientific jargon, but they simply cannot be tested scientifically, given that there are no available bodies that have risen from the dead emitting protons and neutrons. They are, however, extremely convenient because they are able to solve any problem without having to submit the explanation to the laws of nature.

With all of the available evidence, it is rational to conclude—as some astute historians had already established more than a century ago—that the Shroud of Turin is a 14th century artifact and not the burial cloth of a man who was crucified in the first third of the 1st century CE.

A pediatric neurologist at Boston Children’s Hospital diagnosed my son, Misha, with autism spectrum disorder at age three. At Massachusetts General Hospital, another pediatric neurologist answered my call for a second opinion only to rebuff my hope for a different one. “I did not find him to be very receptive to testing,” the expert sighed. Both neurologists observed that Misha didn’t respond to their request to identify colors, body parts, or animals, that he averted his eyes from theirs, that he pawed their examination table when he didn’t flap his arms. Autism, the doctors said, constituted a lifelong condition. Medical science didn’t understand its causes or cures, and scarcely comprehended the limits of its woes.

How could the neurologists deduce such a bleak judgment from 90 minutes in the bell jar of their examination rooms? If they knew so little about autism, then how could they gavel down a life sentence? I remembered reading somewhere that a properly trained neurologist ought to be able to argue both for and against any single diagnosis in a stepwise process of elimination. I opened the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), leafed to the entry under autism, and plucked out of its basket several inculpating symptoms. Aggrieved, I sought out the Handbook of Differential Diagnosis, a companion volume, and underlined an admonitory passage: “Clinicians typically decide on the diagnosis within the first five minutes of meeting the patient and then spend the rest of the time during their evaluation interpreting (and often misinterpreting) elicited information through this diagnostic bias.” Now what?

As an educated citizen of progressive Cambridge, Massachusetts, I consumed large volumes of such second-hand, semi-digested information. I felt that I should, and believed that I could, develop my own, independent judgment about Misha’s condition. I would do my own research, and I would draw my own conclusions based on what I learned.

I felt that I should, and believed that I could, develop my own, independent judgment. I would do my own research, and I would draw my own conclusions based on what I learned.

These virtues turned out to be constituent features of my error. My skepticism and sense of responsibility blended with my stubbornness as I struggled to evaluate a welter of “holistic” attitudes about medicine and health. Several fixed ideas confronted me. Autism, I read, is neither the psychopathology listed in the DSM nor the organic twist of disease supposed by neurologists. Autism, these alternative sources explained, is one among an epidemic of preventable chronic illnesses that American children contract from toxins in the environment. Holistic therapy, according to another, contains the requisite resources. Vitamin therapy, homeopathy, and antifungal treatment could heal children like Misha of their injuries.

The claim that autism is a treatable, toxin-induced chronic illness is a half-century old. Its history forms a pattern of culture and credulity imprinted on our own time. Today, indeed, as one in every 36 children receive the diagnosis, and as controversies swirl around COVID-19, more people than ever turn to holistic remedies to treat illnesses real and imagined. Homeopathic remedies fly off the shelves at pharmacies, alongside an array of alleged immunity-boosting, anti-inflammatory vitamins and herbal supplements.

Critics view the vogue for holism as the product of an irrational transaction between charlatans and suckers. As I reflect on my experience with Misha in the grassroots of autism agonistes, however, I find the issues don’t divide so tidily. The question isn’t whom to trust or what to believe, but how to make an existential choice between incommensurable propositions.

A family friend introduced me to Mary Coyle, a homeopath at the Real Child Center in New York. Coyle said Misha had likely contracted autism from contaminants in the environment. Was I aware of the epidemic of chronic illnesses afflicting children like him? Some of them, Coyle explained, received diagnoses of asthma, chronic fatigue, or dermatitis. Others were diagnosed with fibromyalgia, Lyme disease, or PANDAS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated with Streptococcal Infections). Pathogens lying at the nexus between the body and the environment fooled medical specialists at places like Boston Children’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. Coyle urged me to abandon their dead-end query, “Is your child on the autism spectrum?” To help Misha, I needed to switch the predicate and envisage a different question: “How toxic is your child?”

“Is your child on the autism spectrum?” To help Misha, I needed to switch the predicate and envisage a different question: “How toxic is your child?”

Why not find out? Although I had never heard of homeopathy or Coyle’s sub-specialty of homotoxicology, I believed that with some study I could probably draw the necessary distinction between evidence and interpretation in the test results. Coyle herself had been trained by conventional physicians before seeking out propaedeutic instruction in holistic medicine. Holism sounded nice.

We started out with an “Energetic Assessment.” Measuring Misha’s rates of “galvanic skin response,” Coyle said, would weigh the balance of electrical vibrations conducted through his pores. Toward this end, she deployed an electrodermal screening device that deciphered imbalances in his “meridians,” or “pathways.” Toxic metals, alas, appeared from the results to be obstructing his “flow” of energy.

With Coyle’s theory confirmed, she referred me to Lawrence Caprio to canvass for food and environmental allergens. Caprio, like Coyle, had defected from conventional to alternative medicine. I learned that while attending medical school at the University of Rome he had befriended a homeopath in the Italian countryside and lived “a very natural lifestyle”; the experience led him to pursue naturopathy.

Misha—Caprio now reported—turned out to be “intolerant” of bread, butter, eggplant, oatmeal, peanuts, potatoes, and tomatoes. Misha also displayed a “sensitivity” to bananas, car exhaust, cheese, chlorine, chocolate, cow milk, dust mites, garlic, onions, oranges, soy beans, and strawberries. Caprio flagged “phenolics” such as malvin (in corn sweeteners) and piperin (in nightshade vegetables and animal proteins).

Next, I mailed urine and stool samples to the Great Plains Laboratory in Kansas. The director there, William Shaw, had worked as a researcher in biochemistry, endocrinology, and immunology at the Centers for Disease Control before he quit and set up his own laboratory. Shaw suspected lithium in “the bottled water craze” and fluoridation in the public water supply as just two of the causes of autism. He came to believe that government scientists woefully misunderstood such sources. He compared their dereliction to the Red Cross’s failure to intervene in the Holocaust. Shaw also found toxic levels of yeast flooding Misha’s intestines.

Homeopathy, naturopathy, and renegade biochemistry cast me outside the institutions of science where Misha’s neurologists practiced. But to grasp how these new realms might be objective correlates of Misha’s condition—and how toxins, foods, and yeast might be culprits—I had only to remind myself of the progressive demonology that made the diagnosis seem plausible.

Industrial corporations have been chewing up the land, choking the air, and despoiling the water, I read, turning the whole country into a hazardous materials zone. I’d read Silent Spring, in which ecologist Rachel Carson claimed that our bodies weren’t shields, but permeable organisms that absorbed particulates. I’d heard Ralph Nader liken air and water pollution to “domestic chemical and biological warfare.” I’d finished Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature with the requisite dread. Listening to progressive news media about “forever chemicals” evoked moods that swung between indignation and paranoia. I paid for eco-friendly cribs, de-leaded the windows in our apartment, and tried to shop organic.

As Coyle, Caprio, and Shaw whispered in my ear, though, my imagination boggled with an even greater catalogue of possible pathogens. Our food contained more pesticides, hormones, and insecticides than I had suspected. Our air is filled with methanol and carbon monoxide. Chlorine, herbicides, and parasites degraded our tap water. Mold festered in our walls, floors, and ceilings. Formaldehyde lurked in our furniture. Heavy metals hid in our lotions, shampoos, and antiperspirants. Synthetic chemical compounds—polychlorinated biphenyls, phthalates, bisphenol A, polybrominated diphenyl ethers—seeped into our toys, diapers, bottles, soaps, and appliances. Even our Wi-Fi, cell phones, refrigerator, light bulbs, and microwave oven emitted radiation through electromagnetic fields.

Had the dystopia of the contemporary world poisoned my son? Coyle, Caprio, and Shaw not only defined autism as a preventable, “biomedical” illness, they traced the mechanism of harm to his pediatrician’s office.

Misha had received three-in-one vaccines: DTP and MMR. The holistic experts now told me that these vaccines contain dangerous metals, including mercury and aluminum.

Misha had received three-in-one vaccines against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (DTP) and measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) according to the recommended schedule. The holistic experts now told me that these vaccines contain dangerous metals, including mercury and aluminum. The vaccines, I read, could have spread from Misha’s arm to his gut and persisted long enough to perforate an intestinal wall. Mercury, a neurotoxin, could have leaked into his bloodstream and surreptitiously addled his brain. Or his pediatrician could have set off a chain reaction that had the same effect. The antibiotics she gave him for petty infections could have reduced the diversity of natural flora that controlled yeast in his gastrointestinal tract. An overabundance of yeast could have generated enzymes that perforated his intestines even if live-virus vaccines had not done so directly.

Either way, undigested food molecules such as gluten (in wheat) and casein (in dairy) could have joined forces with environmental toxins and heavy metals and attached to Misha’s opiate receptors, disrupting his neurotransmitters and triggering allergic reactions. The ballooning inflammation would have thwarted his immune responses. If so, then his “toxic load” could be starving his cells of nutrients. Escalating levels of “oxidative stress” could be congesting his metabolism. No wonder he lacked muscle tone, coordination, and balance!

How could I dismiss their diagnosis of “autism enterocolitis,” AKA “leaky gut?” My liberal education prided open-mindedness, after all. In 1998, a midlevel British lab researcher named Andrew Wakefield published a study warranting the diagnosis in The Lancet, one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals. Wakefield’s paper, it turned out, “entered his profession’s annals of shame as among the most unethical, dishonest, and damaging medical research to be unmasked in living memory,” according to Brian Deer’s The Doctor Who Fooled the World.

“The science right now is inconclusive,” Barack Obama said in 2008. Thousands of media outlets around the world reported a controversy between two legitimate sides.

In the meantime, both liberal and conservative politicians echoed the implications of Wakefield’s hoax. “The science right now is inconclusive,” Barack Obama said in 2008. Thousands of media outlets around the world reported a controversy between two legitimate sides. “Fears raised over preservatives in vaccines,” a front-page headline in the Boston Globe announced. Wakefield appeared on television with articulate parents by his side. “You have to listen to the story the parents tell,” he said on CBS’s 60 Minutes. Reputable television programs did just that. ABC’s Nightline, Good Morning America, and 20/20, NBC’s Dateline, and The Oprah Winfrey Show broadcast the gravamen of the indictment out of the mouths of well-educated parents.

The accusation against antibiotics resonated with definite misgivings that I held over the dispensations of American medicine. Doctors in the United States order more excessive diagnostic tests, perform more needless caesarean sections, and prescribe more superfluous antibiotics than their counterparts around the world. A prepossessing dependence on technology encourages American medicine to treat symptoms rather than people. From this indubitable truth, Coyle, Caprio, and Shaw drew an uncommon inference that aggressive medical care had sabotaged Misha’s birthright immunity.

Misha, so endowed, could have repaired the damage done, no matter whether vaccines or antibiotics had upset his “primary pathways.” His body would have availed “secondary pathways” such as his skin and mucous membrane. Coyle said his innate capacity for adaptation had been telegraphing itself in his fevers, his eczema, his ear infections, even his runny noses. Yet his pediatrician had stood blind before the hidden meaning of these irruptions. Reaching into her chamber of magic bullets, she prescribed steroid creams for his eczema, acetaminophen for his headaches, amoxicillin for his ear and sinus infections, antihistamines for his coughs and runny noses, and ibuprofen for his fevers. This “Whac-a-Mole mentality,” Coyle despaired, had plugged his “secondary pathways” as well.

The trio of virtuoso healers would help me sidestep the adulterated dialectic of science and charm Misha’s autism out of its chronic condition.

A vicious cycle set in. Vaccines and/or antibiotics had predisposed Misha’s microbiome to harbor viruses, bacteria, and fungi. Turning toxic, they invaded his cells, tissues, and fluids. The foreign occupation precipitated allergies. The allergies provoked inflammation, which arrested metabolic energy, which led to anemia, which invited recurring infections. His pediatrician perpetuated those with cascading doses of foreign chemicals. “Rather than freak out and take medication and look to suppress,” Coyle counseled, “we should celebrate that the body is working and go and look at the primary pathways and clear out the blockages.” Up to 103 degrees Fahrenheit, “the fever might be a good thing.”

If I could accept that “allopathic” medicine did not stand apart and speak objectively, but instead reflected the sickness of American society, then the trio of virtuoso healers would help me sidestep the adulterated dialectic of science and health. A holistic treatment protocol would charm Misha’s autism out of its chronic condition and turn it into a treatable medical illness. “The body’s infinite wisdom,” Coyle said, “would take care of the rest.” As the protocol purged and flushed his toxins, the fawn of nature would close the holes in his intestines. His allergies would ebb, reducing inflammation, reviving cellular respiration, and reconnecting his neurotransmitters. The realignment of his meridians would reflow his energy. “Once you clear,” Caprio said, “the whole thing just changes dramatically.”

♦ ♦ ♦

Autism parents first embraced holistic treatments in the 1960s and 1970s, when emphatic personal testimonials, printed and distributed in underground newsletters, led to the formation of grassroots groups such as Defeat Autism Now! (DAN!) and ushered in the “leaky gut” theory. DAN! grew out of the psychologist Bernard Rimland’s Autism Research Institute. Rimland’s 1964 book Infantile Autism blew up the prevailing, psychogenetic thesis of autism’s origins, which blamed mothers for failing to love their children enough.

The Today Show and The Dick Cavett Show had given psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, the chief exponent of the “refrigerator mothers” thesis, free reign to liken them to concentration camp guards. Rimland’s Infantile Autism refuted that thesis. Letters poured into his Autism Research Institute from grateful parents attesting to the efficacy of the holistic approach: vitamin therapy, detoxification, and elimination dieting. Pharmaceutical companies rolled out new childhood vaccines for measles (1963), mumps (1967), and rubella (1969) and combined the immunizations against pertussis, diphtheria, and tetanus into one injection. Rimland began distributing an annual survey that queried parents about the effects.

Belief in an etiology variously called “leaky gut,” “autism enterocolitis,” or “toxic psychosis” awkwardly amalgamated elements from both ancient and modern medical philosophy. The old idea of disease as a sign of disharmony with nature queued behind the modern concept of infection through the invasion of microorganisms. But no theory of etiology needs to be complete for a treatment to work. “Help the child first,” Rimland urged, “worry later about exactly what it is that’s helping the child.”

Like anti-psychiatry activists, breast cancer patients, and AIDS activists, autism parents confronted physicians with the backlash doctrine of “consumer choice” in specialist medical care. “The parent who reads this book should assume that their family doctor, or even their neurologist or other specialist, may not know nearly as much as they do about autism,” William Shaw wrote in Biological Treatments for Autism.

The first television program to elevate parental intuitions, Vaccine Roulette, aired in 1982 on an NBC affiliate in Washington, DC. The show promoted the vaccine injury theory—and won an Emmy Award. Accelerating rates of the diagnosis over the next decades brought the injury theory from a simmer to a boil. In the 1960s, an average of one out of every 2,500 children received the diagnosis. By the first decade of the 21st century, the prevalence rose to one out of every 88, an increase of over 2,500 percent. Up to three-quarters of autism parents used some form of holistic treatment on their children.

A Congressional hearing in 2012 featured their cause, heaping suspicion on vaccines, speculating on gut flora, and praising the efficacy of vitamins, homeopathy, and elimination dieting. Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat from Ohio and one-time Presidential candidate, expressed outrage over the spectacle of “children all over the country turning up with autism.” Kucinich blamed “neurotoxic chemicals in the environment,” particularly emissions from coal-burning power plants. Like the autism parents in attendance at the hearing, Kucinich did his own research and drew his own conclusions.

“There’s only medicine that works and medicine that doesn’t.” Clever and concise, Offit’s polemic nonetheless begged the relevant questions. Who decides what works? Fundamental science is one thing; therapeutic interventions are quite another.

“There’s no such thing as ‘conventional’ or ‘alternative’ or ‘complementary’ or ‘integrative’ or ‘holistic’ medicine,” alternative medicine skeptic Paul Offit complained the next year. “There’s only medicine that works and medicine that doesn’t.” Clever and concise, Offit’s polemic nonetheless begged the relevant questions. Who decides what works? Fundamental science is one thing; therapeutic interventions are quite another. “Evidence-based medicine,” introduced in 1991, supplies a template of criteria to translate medical science into clinical medicine. Atop its hierarchy sits the “randomized control trial,” a methodology loaded with social and financial biases. Even when a therapy works incontrovertibly, that fact doesn’t free its applications of ambiguity. Antibiotics work. We’ve known that since the 1930s. But which of their benefits are worth which of their costs?

When does an accumulation of confirmed research equal a consensus of reasonable certainty? In 1992, ABC’s 20/20 exposed a cluster of autism cases in Leominster, Massachusetts. A sunglasses’ manufacturer had long treated the city as a dumping ground for its chemical waste. After the company shuttered, a group of mothers counted 43 autistic children born to parents who had worked at the plant or resided near it. Commenting on the Leominster case, the eminently sane neurologist Oliver Sacks voiced a curious sentiment. “The question of whether autism can be caused by exposure to toxic agents has yet to be fully studied,” Sacks wrote, three years after epidemiologists from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health determined that no unusual cluster of cases had existed in that city in the first place. Who gets to decide the meaning of “fully studied”?

Bernard Rimland and the autism parents in his movement answered the question for themselves. “There are thousands of children who have recovered from autism as a result of the biomedical interventions pioneered by the innovative scientists and physicians in the DAN! movement,” Rimland insisted in the group’s 2005 treatment manual, Autism: Effective Biomedical Treatments.

William Shaw and Mary Coyle, both DAN! clinicians, adapted Rimland’s manual for Misha. Coyle vouched personally for the safety and efficacy of the holistic treatment therein. She swore she used it to “recover” her own son.

Interdicting toxins marked the first step on the “healing journey.” Taking it obliged me to decline Misha’s pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (for pneumonia) and his varicella vaccine (for chickenpox). Meanwhile, I eliminated from our cupboard and refrigerator the foods for which Caprio had proved Misha sensitive and intolerant, and I prepared a course of “optimal dose sub-lingual immunotherapy” to “de-sensitize” him. Coyle drew up a monthly schedule to detoxify him with homeopathic remedies from a manufacturer in Belgium. Shaw itemized vitamins and minerals to supplement Misha’s intake of nutrients, plus probiotics and antifungals to control his yeast and rehabilitate his intestinal tract. My kitchen turned into an ersatz pharmacy of unguents, powders, drops, and tablets.

Every morning, I inserted two tablets of a Chinese herbal supplement, Huang Lian Su, into an apple. This would crank-start his digestion. I added half a capsule of methylfolate into his breakfast. This would juice his metabolism. Ten minutes after he finished breakfast, I stirred Nystatin powder into warm coconut water, drew two ounces into a dropper, irrigated his mouth, and ensured that he abstained from eating or drinking for ten more minutes. Fifteen minutes before his midday snack, I squeezed six drops of a B12 vitamin under his tongue. Every evening, I slipped him two more Huang Lian Su tablets.

An exception in federal law places vitamins, supplements, and homeopathic remedies outside the FDA’s approval process. Only their manufacturers know what these dummy drugs contain.

To fortify his glucose levels, I could elect to give him two vials of raisin water every other hour. To normalize his alkaline levels, I added a quarter-cup of baking soda to his baths. The “de-sensitizing drops,” however, had to be dribbled onto his wrists twice every day. Misha also needed regular, carefully calibrated doses of boron, chromium, folic acid, glutathione, iodine, magnesium, manganese, milk thistle, selenium, vitamins A, C, D, E, and zinc.

Homotoxicology, the core modality, entailed his daily ingestion of homeopathic “drainage remedies” to purge toxins and open pathways. The bottles arrived in the mail. Coyle provided a table of equivalencies, linking particular remedies to organs. This compound for his small intestines; That one for his large intestine; This one for his kidney; and That one for his mucous membrane.

At the same time, homeopathy’s whole-body scope of intervention claimed to relieve a wide range of illnesses. Shaw and his colleagues said the modality could treat autism, plus sensory integration disorder, central auditory processing disorder, speech and language problems, fine motor and gross motor problems, oppositional defiance disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, eating disorders, headaches, eczema, and irritable bowel syndrome. The marketing materials that accompanied Misha’s compounds claimed that they could treat bloating, constipation, cramps, flatulence, nausea, night sweats, and sneezing.

I learned the shorthand rationale as part of my self-education. Homeopaths stake their claim on a manufacturing process that distinguishes their remedies from pharmaceutical medicaments. It’s called “succussion.” A label that reads “4X,” for example, indicates that the original ingredient has been diluted four times by a factor of 10—the manufacturer has succussed it 10,000 times. “12X” indicated that the original ingredient has been succussed one trillion times.

The compounds prescribed for Misha said they contained asparagus, bark, boldo leaf, goldenrod, goldenseal, horsetail, juniper, marigold, milk thistle, parsley, passionflower, Scottish pine root, and other herbs and plants of which I’d never heard.

The compounds prescribed for Misha said they contained asparagus, bark, boldo leaf, goldenrod, goldenseal, horsetail, juniper, marigold, milk thistle, parsley, passionflower, Scottish pine root, and other herbs and plants of which I’d never heard. Having been succussed, though, the remedies actually contained no active ingredients. In the bottles remained “the mother tincture,” a special kind of water said to “remember” the original ingredient. The only other ingredient listed on the label was an organic compound that served as a solvent and preservative. Thirty-one percent of some of Misha’s remedies contained ethanol alcohol, a proof as strong as vodka or gin. Coyle instructed me to “gas off the alcohol” on the stove before serving him.

Succussion confused me. Misha’s reaction worried me. He looked a fright. Black circles ringed his eyelids. Yeast blanketed his nostrils and lips. Rashes and red spots appeared all over his body. Pale and lethargic, he oscillated between diarrhea and constipation. He broke out with recurring fevers. He stopped gaining weight. Because he didn’t speak, or reliably communicate in any other manner, I couldn’t understand why his emotions seemed to be running at an unusually high pitch.

Coyle explained that different glands and organs in the body stored specific feelings. The kidneys stored fear. The pancreas stored frustration. The thyroid stored misunderstanding, the liver anger, the lungs grief, the bladder a sense of loss, and so forth. Those emotions poured out as his body excreted toxins. I shouldn’t regard the worsening of his symptoms as a side effect, but rather as a necessary condition of his recovery—“aggravations,” in homeopathy’s parlance. A Table of Homotoxicosis charted the correspondences with the precision and predictability of biochemistry. Nor should I abandon the treatment. To do so would be to “re-toxify” him. I must allow the treatment to fully fledge. I must keep my nerve.

♦ ♦ ♦

I lost my nerve. It took 18 months of gnawing doubt and thousands of dollars out the door. Then one day I swept all the vitamins, antigens, probiotics, antifungals, and homeopathic remedies into the trash bin. I restored Misha to a regular diet, caught him up on his vaccines, and demanded (and received) a full refund from Coyle.

I had blundered into a non sequitur. The environment is toxic. Conventional medicine does reflect the sickness of our culture. Yet that doesn’t render holism any better. The supplement industry, I came to understand, has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into thousands of clinical studies without demonstrating that vitamins, herbal products, or mineral compounds are either safe or effective, much less necessary. The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) neither tests the industry’s marketing claims nor regulates its product standards.

Caprio and Coyle regard Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) as a reproach to modern, Western medicine. TCM, they pointed out, is 5,000 years old. Actually, I learned, Chairman Mao Zedong contrived TCM after 1950 as a means of controlling China’s rural population and burnishing the regime’s reputation abroad. In 1972, during Richard Nixon’s tour of Chinese hospitals, his guides stage-managed a demonstration of TCM’s miracles. American media reported the healing event at face value and launched the holistic health movement stateside. Several years later, the FDA sought to regulate the vitamin and supplement industry. Manufacturers fought back with a marketing campaign centered on “freedom of choice” and convinced Americans to stand up for their right not to know which ingredients may (or may not) be contained in their daily vitamins.

I needed to file a public records request with the Connecticut Department of Public Health to discover that Lawrence Caprio had been censured and fined for improperly labeling medication, for practicing without a license, and for passing himself off as a medical doctor. I also learned that Caprio’s naturopathy license had been suspended for two years after the FDA determined his bogus “sensitivity tests” violated its regulations. Misha, an actual immunologist confirmed, had no food allergies in the first place.

Misha, an actual immunologist confirmed, had no food allergies in the first place. Was my son ever really burdened by toxins?

Was my son ever really burdened by toxins? Coyle said the results of the “energetic assessments” revealed that Misha carried quantities of heavy metals. Degrees of dangerousness were measured against a standard range credited to “Dr. Richard L. Cowden.” I sent Misha’s results to Cowden. I stated my belated impression that meaningful ranges for heavy metals don’t exist—we all have traces—and my belief that autism cannot be reversed. “I have reversed advanced autism in many children,” Dr. Cowden snapped. “I saw reversal of more than a dozen cases of full-blown autism, including my own grandson. So I am pretty sure the parents of those dozen+ children would debate you on your IMPRESSION/BELIEF.”

Cowden advised me to repeat Misha’s energetic assessment through the Internet and to place him into an “infrared sauna” to detoxify him. I declined.

Even before Misha’s first energetic assessment, the FDA had accused the device’s manufacturer of making unapproved claims. The FDA had approved it only for measuring “galvanic skin response.” But the company’s marketing materials had crossed over into unapproved diagnostic and predictive territory when they claimed that the “software indicates what is referred to as Biological Preference and Biological Aversion.” The software was recalled. “Dr. Cowden,” I also learned too late, was not the “Board Certified cardiologist and internist” that he advertises. He surrendered his medical license in 2008 after the Texas Board of Medical Examiners twice reprimanded him for endangering his patients. According to the American Board of Internal Medicine, Cowden’s certifications are “inactive.”

The “homotoxicology” that Coyle practiced had sounded to me like a branch of toxicology. But the two fields turn out to have nothing in common.

The “homotoxicology” that Coyle practiced had sounded to me like a branch of toxicology. But the two fields turn out to have nothing in common. An analysis of clinical trials of homotoxicology established that it is “not a method based on accepted scientific principles or biological plausibility.” Actual toxicologists pass a rigorous examination for their board certifications and adhere to a code of ethics. Homotoxicologists become so simply by declaring themselves homotoxicologists.

As for vitamins, supplements, and homeopathic remedies: an exception in federal law places them outside the FDA’s approval process. Only their manufacturers know what these dummy drugs contain. Last year, after fielding numerous reports of “toxic” reactions, finding “many serious violations” of manufacturing controls, and recording “significant harm” to children, the FDA warned the consuming public.

Homeopathy offers no detectable mechanism of action, nor any reason to believe that “aggravating” the primary symptoms of an illness is necessary to cure it. Water does not “remember,” at least not if the laws of molecular physics hold true. The tinier the dosage, homeopaths insist, the more potent the therapeutic effect the mother tincture will deliver. By this logic, a patient who misses a day might die of an overdose.

As I steered Misha back toward medical science, though, I remembered the gap that holism fills for parents like me. I took him to a “neuro-biologist,” a “neuro-psychologist,” and a “neuro-immunologist.” His “neuro-ophthalmologist” ordered an MRI. His “neuro-radiologist” read the images with algorithms—and pronounced his brain “normal” due to the absence of indications of damage.

That determination proved only the vacuity of scientific materialism. The “biological revolution” that seized psychiatry in the 1980s aspired to network the anatomical, electrical, and chemical functions of the brain. A procession of neuroimaging technologies held out the promise of progress: electroencephalography (EEG); computerized axial tomography (CAT); positron emission tomography (PET); magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS); magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The resulting studies have always fallen pitifully short of a credible evidentiary threshold and have never done anything to expand treatment options. Mainly, neuroimaging has furnished opportunities to market the research industry, a breakthrough culture that has never broken through.

Holism, by contrast, answers prayers in the immaterial world, bidding to restore harmony through an aesthetically elegant fusion of mind, body, and spirit. As Coyle explained on her website: “Homotoxicology utilizes complex homeopathic remedies designed to restore the child’s vital force and balance the biological flow system.”

One part of me still craves holism’s beautiful notions. Another part recognizes in their desiccated spiritualism the return of a repressed pagan unconscious.

One part of me still craves holism’s beautiful notions. Another part recognizes in their desiccated spiritualism the return of a repressed pagan unconscious. I can no more believe in goblets of magic water and occult energy than I can conceal my disappointment with “neuro-radiology.”

Scientists long ago dispatched the “leaky gut” theory with a series of disproof. Holistic parents, researchers, and clinicians, however, continue to reject what they contend are the false revelations of cold, mechanical instrumentalism. Tylenol, electromagnetic fields, “toxic baby food,” COVID-19 vaccines, HPV inoculation, “geo-engineering,” and genetically modified foods top the current indictment. William Shaw published a paper in 2020 purporting to demonstrate “rapid complete recovery from autism” through antifungal therapy. Mary Coyle attested last year to having healed her son’s chickenpox through “natural” remedies.

Many of the holistic advocacy organizations intermittently lost access to social media platforms during COVID. Yet censorship has deepened the martyrdom ingrained in this theodicy of misfortune. A spiritual war against invisible enemies animates their imaginations and elevates their personal disappointment to the status of a historical event. Rebaptized in nature’s holy immunity by ascetic protocols of abstinence and purification, they turn over a new leaf, as it were, and crave vindication above all else. “This book offers you two messages,” Bernard Rimland promised of the testimonials that he collected in Recovering Autistic Children: “You are not alone in your fight, and you can win.”

Here’s another message: Children need love and respect above all. As René Dubos wrote in Mirage of Health, “As far as life is concerned, there is no such thing as ‘Nature.’ There are only homes.”