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Description:
This is the phenomenon of seeing patterns within an irrelevant sight or image.

Connection:
This is a simple picture of a drain pipe that was spilling onto a window sill. The water had frozen into a unique shaped which resembles a person standing near the window. While it is just a natural occurrence, our mind perceives it as something else. Using the critical thinking process it would be simple to determine how the ice formation came to, but easy for the mind to see the miracle.

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Definition:
It is difficult to understand but the unknown cannot be explained until it is further explored and truly understood and known.

Connection:
The story of atlantis is one that has gone around for generations. While there is some theory behind what happened or where the city is, there has never been any solid evidence to prove that the city actually does exist. The biggest flaw and limitation to this theory is the lack of evidence to prove atlantis is real. Still, we have many in the general population who believe in the story, while others are dead set against such a theory.

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Atlantis, a likely mythical island nation mentioned in Plato's dialogues "Timaeus" and "Critias," has been an object of fascination among western philosophers and historians for nearly 2,400 years. Plato (c.424-328 B.C.) describes it as a powerful and advanced kingdom that sank, in a night and a day, into the ocean around 9,600 B.C. The ancient Greeks were divided as to whether Plato's story was to be taken as history or mere metaphor. Since the 19th century there has been renewed interest in linking Plato's Atlantis to historical locations, most commonly the Greek island of Santorini, which was destroyed by a volcanic eruption around 1,600 B.C.

Plato's Atlantis

Plato (through the character Critias in his dialogues) describes Atlantis as an island larger than Libya and Asia Minor put together, located in the Atlantic just beyond the Pillars of Hercules-generally assumed to mean the Strait of Gibraltar. Its culture was advanced and it had a constitution suspiciously similar to the one outlined in Plato's "Republic." It was protected by the god Poseidon, who made his son Atlas king and namesake of the island and the ocean that surrounded it. As the Atlanteans grew powerful, their ethics declined. Their armies eventually conquered Africa as far as Egypt and Europe as far as Tyrrhenia (Etruscan Italy) before being driven back by an Athenian-led alliance. Later, by way of divine punishment, the island was beset by earthquakes and floods, and sank into a muddy sea.

Did you know? In 1679 the Swedish scientist Olaus Rudbeck published "Atland," a four-volume work in which he attempted to prove that Sweden was the original site of Atlantis and that all human languages were descended from Swedish. Though considered authoritative in his homeland, few outside of Sweden found Rudbeck's arguments convincing.

Origins of the Atlantis Story

Plato's Critias says he heard the story of Atlantis from his grandfather, who had heard it from the Athenian statesman Solon (300 years before Plato's time), who had learned it from an Egyptian priest, who said it had happened 9,000 years before that. Whether or not Plato believed his own story, his intent in telling it seems to have been to boost his ideas of an ideal society, using stories of ancient victory and calamity to call to mind more recent events such as the Trojan War or Athens' disastrous invasion of Sicily in 413 B.C. The historicity of Plato's tale was controversial in ancient times-his follower Crantor is said to have believed it, while Strabo (writing a few centuries later) records Aristotle's joke about Plato's ability to conjure nations out of thin air and then destroy them.

Atlantis Reemerges

In the first centuries of the Christian era, Aristotle was taken at his word and Atlantis was little discussed. In 1627, the English philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon published a utopian novel titled "The New Atlantis," depicting, like Plato before him, a politically and scientifically advanced society on a previously unknown oceanic island. In 1882, former U.S. Congressman Ignatious L. Donnelly published "Atlantis: The Antediluvian World," which touched off a frenzy of works attempting to locate and learn from a historical Atlantis. Donnelly hypothesized an advanced civilization whose immigrants had populated much of ancient Europe, Africa and the Americas, and whose heroes had inspired Greek, Hindu and Scandinavian mythology. Donnelley's theories were popularized and elaborated by turn-of-the-20th-century theosophists and are often incorporated into contemporary New Age beliefs.

From time to time, archaeologists and historians locate evidence-a swampy, prehistoric city in coastal Spain; a suspicious undersea rock formation in the Bahamas-that might be a source of the Atlantis story. Of these, the site with the widest acceptance is the Greek island of Santorini (ancient Thera), a half-submerged caldera created by the massive second-millennium-B.C. volcanic eruption whose tsunami may have hastened the collapse of the Minoan civilization on Crete.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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Atlantis, a likely mythical island nation mentioned in Plato's dialogues "Timaeus" and "Critias," has been an object of fascination among western philosophers and historians for nearly 2,400 years. Plato (c.424-328 B.C.) describes it as a powerful and advanced kingdom that sank, in a night and a day, into the ocean around 9,600 B.C.

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Reasons for belief: Perception / observation

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Reasons for belief: Perception / observation

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Description:
Experiences obtained from daily living are turned into memories and stored in our brain. However, these memories are often corrupted during the process.

Connection:
This article is about a woman who misidentified her rapist in court. It was a confusion that was based on a few factors such as race, trauma, and verbal cues demonstrating an example of appeal to emotion. The man was later sent free as he was not the rapist, and the courts are changing the way they work to avoid future cases. Using critical thinking it is great to see the courts changing the way they work based on these theories and previous experiences.

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How reliable are our memories? Are they reliable enough that you would put your life, or someone else's life, at stake? This is the case when witnesses testify in court or when someone identifies a suspect. Elizabeth Loftus is a researcher that studies the possibility of memory contamination. She believes that memory isn't always completely accurate. Sometimes, it is quite the opposite. Stress can influence someone's memory. Outside influences can also affect someone's memory. Legal systems are even changing the way that they inform jurors about witness testimony.

Do you think that you would be able to identify a man that broke into your home and attempted to rape you? Most would say yes. However, a woman had this happen to her but she identified the wrong man. Loftus testified on the man's behalf and he was set free. Loftus testified how the stress of the incident might have impaired the woman's memory. Loftus also testified that it can be hard for someone to identify someone that is not their own race.

Loftus also says that when witnesses use photographs to identify suspects that it can be reliable. Witnesses can also be influenced by what they hear. Loftus conducted an experiment to show this. She told 24 people four life events that happened during their childhood. Three of the life events were true. One of the life events was that they were lost in a mall, which was untrue. Twenty-five percent said that they remembered the event.

Due to the research that Loftus has conducted, the legal system is changing. The New Jersey Supreme Court has decided that jurors should be told about how witness's testimony might not be completely accurate because of the complications of memory. Other states are communicating with Loftus about making changes as well. Pennsylvania is one of the states that seems particularly interested in what Loftus has said.

So much depends on the testimony from eyewitnesses. A person's freedom or the correct conviction of a criminal. After learning of Loftus' research, it causes some concern about the testimony of witnesses. Clearly, not every witness' testimony is wrong. However, it is important that jurors know that not every memory is completely accurate.

References

Costandi, M. (2013, August 14). Evidence-based justice: Corrupted memory. Retrieved June 14, 2015, from http://www.nature.com/news/evidence-based-justice-corrupted-memory-1.13543

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How reliable are our memories? Are they reliable enough that you would put your life, or someone else's life, at stake? This is the case when witnesses testify in court or when someone identifies a suspect. Elizabeth Loftus is a researcher that studies the possibility of memory contamination.

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Description:
Mystical energy is when you obtain energy from an unknown source, or higher power. While you can't see where it comes from, you can feel it and understand where it is generally coming from.

Connection:
This website talks about how the mystical energy can benefit people throughout their daily living. One flaw has been that the wristband has been compared to a placebo and states that it is no more effective then a persons own will power. Many individuals still choose to frequently wear the product stating they couldn't get through the day without it, although the faith is not based on scientific evidence, wearers say they can feel the energy.

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POWER BALANCE™THE ORIGINATOR OF PERFORMANCE TECHNOLOGY Power Balance™ is the leading performance technology company with a passion for competitive sports pursued with the powers of Eastern Philosophy and Western Science along with new cutting-edge Innovative Technologies to deliver products that improve and enhance pe

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Description:
This red flag pertains to someone who is in power, leading others to believe in something that may not be correct. While you choose what to believe in, you believe what you're being told is true because you believe those with authority would always tell the truth.

Connection:
While using critical thinking and skepticism, we can see that appeal to authority is a common marketing technique. This technique is seen in this Colgate advertisement and is frequently seen in ads for self-care products. This video clearly states “Includes real dentist testimonial accurately portrayed by an actor”. Society has learned to respect certain professions such as police, doctors, paramedics, celebrities etc. In order to draw attention and trust towards new products, authoritative figures are used.

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Description:
Red herring is when a piece of information is meant to be misleading. It is usually used as a distraction from the original point of conversation.

Connection:
This short video demonstrates comedically how politicians apply the red herring tactic to dodge difficult questions in discussions and/or debates. Using critical thinking we can reflect and see that politician’s frequently do this by referring to another different issue, which is irrelevant, to sidetrack those from the original discussion.

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Description:
When completely natural things that are used for specific purpose they shouldn't be used for. This purpose can then become unsafe, and potentially even cause harm.

Connection:
The connection between this and all natural is that this home made remedy was supposed to help but ended up causing more harm. A mother bought her baby a homeopathic soother, but it ended up causing seizures in her infant. One flaw with the item was that this was obviously not an intended effect of it, but the effects of this homeopathic soother had serious side effects. The FDA later warned the public to not use the tablets/soothers and to always watch carefully when using new products.

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Newborn Blaine Talbott started teething especially early, when he was just two months old. His mom, Karina, was looking for something gentle and harmless to help ease his distress and when she saw homeopathic teething tablets in the store, she grabbed them.

"It said homeopathic, all natural, you know, organic stuff, and so you think that that's stuff is going to be safe for your child," said Talbott, a full-time homemaker in Colorado Springs.

But soon Blaine was suffering seizures. Neurologists could not explain them, but when she ran out of the homeopathic tablets, the seizures stopped.

Karina Talbott had been giving her baby Hyland's homeopathic teething tablets, which the Food and Drug Administration has since asked people to stop using. The tablets often contained harmful levels of belladonna, a plant-based poison.

"I was petrified. I mean my child's two months old and you really don't think that something like this is going to happen to your kid."

Now, FDA says it's going to take a tougher approach to the $3 billion-a-year homeopathy market.

While the FDA always could regulate homeopathic products, it has not been generally doing so. Now it will to some degree.

"Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration proposed a new, risk-based enforcement approach to drug products labeled as homeopathic," the agency said.

"To protect consumers who choose to use homeopathic products, this proposed new approach would update the FDA's existing policy to better address situations where homeopathic treatments are being marketed for serious diseases and/or conditions but where the products have not been shown to offer clinical benefits," it added.

"It also covers situations where products labeled as homeopathic contain potentially harmful ingredients or do not meet good manufacturing practices."

There's no scientific basis for homeopathy. "There is little evidence to support homeopathy as an effective treatment for any specific condition," the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, one of the National Institutes of Health, says in a statement.

"Several key concepts of homeopathy are inconsistent with fundamental concepts of chemistry and physics."

Homeopathy dates back to the 18th century, when medical science was pretty basic.

"We didn't have much to offer. We had quinine for malaria. We had willow bark, which basically contained aspirin, but not much else," said Dr. Paul Offit, chief of the division of infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Offit writes about homeopathy in his book, "Do You Believe in Magic? The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine."

Homeopathy was meant as an alternative to bleeding and purging patients. The idea is that if a substance is diluted in water, the water will somehow "remember" that the compound was there. This approach was used to make potentially harmful products safe enough to use.

More than 200 years later, there are drugs, vaccines and surgical procedures proven to work safely, yet homeopathy persists.

"At its most benign, homeopathy is basically what it's diluted in, which is water," Offit said. "So the harm is you use the homeopathic product instead of something that can help you."

But sometimes, the products are contaminated - like the Hyland's teething tablets were.

Offit says it's understandable that many people believe in homeopathy. "We want to believe in something that isn't harmful like pharmaceutical products, and here is a nicer, gentler way to relieve your pain, your stress," he said.

"It's fanciful, and we want to believe it. We want to believe that these are just people who care about us. These are just elves and old hippies making their products in a flowery meadow."

The homeopathy industry has fought hard against FDA regulation. Last January, when FDA asked Hyland to warn its customers to throw away any unused bottles of the belladonna-tainted teething tablets, the company resisted but has since relented.

"As you may remember, the company discontinued the manufacture and sale of these same products in October 2016. As part of the recall, consumers should discard any teething products they may have," it now says on its website.

"I am sure the industry will push back," Offit said.

"These are snake oil salesmen who been getting away with it for far too long."

The FDA said it was planning to rescind a 1988 deal in which it allowed homeopaths to bypass the formal FDA approval process, so long as they followed good manufacturing practice and other guidance.

The agency said it would not go after every homeopathic product at once but would focus on potentially dangerous products first.

"People may be placing their trust and money in therapies that may bring little to no benefit."

"Examples of products that may be subject to the enforcement priorities in the draft guidance are infant and children's products labeled to contain ingredients associated with potentially significant safety concerns, such as belladonna and nuxvomica; and products marketed for serious conditions, such as cancer and heart disease," the agency said.

Nux vomica or nuxvomica is made from the same tree that is the source of strychnine, used to poison rodents and birds. Belladonna is made from the deadly nightshade plant, once used as a sedative.

"Given the concerns about the proliferation of potentially ineffective and harmful products labeled as homeopathic, the FDA will consider taking additional enforcement and/or regulatory actions, consistent with the current enforcement policies, which also align with the risk-based categories described in the draft guidance; in the interest of protecting the public."

FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said the proposed guidance - which does not carry the force of law - is open for public comment.

"We respect that some individuals want to use alternative treatments, but the FDA has a responsibility to protect the public from products that may not deliver any benefit and have the potential to cause harm," Gottlieb said in a statement.

"In recent years, we've seen a large uptick in products labeled as homeopathic that are being marketed for a wide array of diseases and conditions, from the common cold to cancer," Gottlieb said.

"In many cases, people may be placing their trust and money in therapies that may bring little to no benefit in combating serious ailments, or worse - that may cause significant and even irreparable harm because the products are poorly manufactured, or contain active ingredients that aren't adequately tested or disclosed to patients."

As for Blaine, who is now 4, his seizures stopped, Karina Talbott said. He has some developmental delays but she does not know if they are linked to the belladonna tablets.

She contacted Hyland's. "I sent an email in letting them know what the product was doing. They had emailed me back asking for the lot number, also the bottle. I sent that in to them and never heard anything else."

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Homeopathic remedies are useless and may be harmful, FDA warns

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Newborn Blaine Talbott started teething especially early, when he was just two months old. His mom, Karina, was looking for something gentle and harmless to help ease his distress and when she saw homeopathic teething tablets in the store, she grabbed them.

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Red Flag #1 Confusion of correlation with causation

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Red Flag #1 Confusion of correlation with causation

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Description:
The correlation is how one idea or thing relates to another while the causation is why it causes that thing. Sometimes however, just because they are related, does not mean that it directly causes the next.

Connection:
This article (#7 hormonal imbalance) goes over the differences in the cause of hormonal imbalances. While during a randomized controlled trial they found many people had similar results, but for different reasons. They though the imbalance was due to menopause or coronary artery disease, but later found it was a variety of reasons, and not specifically caused by only one variable. Every RCT has its limitations though as each person can have such a variety of subjective symptoms.

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A case in point: hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Beyond treating symptoms associated with menopause, it was once hailed for potentially reducing coronary heart disease (CHD) risk, thanks to a much-ballyhooed 1991 observational study [source: Stampfer and Colditz]. But later randomized controlled studies, including the large-scale Women's Health Initiative, revealed either a negative relationship, or a statistically insignificant one, between HRT and CHD [sources: Lawlor et al.; New York Times].

Why the difference? For one thing, women who use HRT tend to come from higher socioeconomic strata and receive better quality of diet and exercise - a hidden explanatory relationship for which the observational study failed to fully account [source: Lawlor et al.].

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Advertisement Randomized controlled trials are the gold standard in statistics, but sometimes -- in epidemiology, for example -- ethical and practical considerations force researchers to analyze available cases. Unfortunately, such observational studies risk bias, hidden variables and, worst of all, a study group that might not reflect the population as a whole.

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Made by Jack Mason and Danika Poirier