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- Adeshpal Singh
Working individually

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Definition: The appeal to authority red flag is a marketing gimmick used to develop a sense of credibility in a product. People usually fall for this, though in reality, the claim is not in any way supported by any evidence.

Connection: In the 1950's, the tobacco industry would depict a doctor or a physician in their advertisements to make it look credible. It was unlike celebrity or athlete endorsement, as a doctor, with all his/her expertise could chose to smoke a particular brand, then it has to be safe. However, in reality, no real doctor was cast in the ads, as they would risk losing their license. Moreover, it was against the medical ethics of the time for doctors to advertise.

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Stanford Research into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising

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Definition: This red flag is employed when people lack the evidence to support their argument, but their belief in traditional ideas is far stronger than rational thinking.

Connection: Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), has a history of thousands of years. It predates the scientific era and roots from a superstition-based culture. It is largely based on "previous experience" and short term observation. So, it is highly flawed as anything with uncontrolled observation would be. For example, practitioners used to think pus is a good thing, it means the wound is healing. But this contradicts modern understanding, which is accurate due to sheer evidence.

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One of the themes of science-based medicine is to be suspicious of any form of medicine that is not science-based. In other words, beware of dodgy qualifiers placed before "medicine," such as: "alternative", "integrative", or "complementary" - those that imply that something other than science or evidence is being used to determine which treatments are safe and effective. I would also include "traditional Chinese" medicine in the dodgy category. A recent article defending Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) provides, ironically, an excellent argument for the rejection of TCM as a valid form of medicine. The authors, Jingqing Hua and Baoyan Liub, engage in a number of logical fallacies that are worth exploring.

Their introduction sets the tone:

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has a history of thousands of years. It is formed by summarizing the precious experience of understanding life, maintaining health, and fighting diseases accumulated in daily life, production and medical practice. It not only has systematic theories, but also has abundant preventative and therapeutic methods for disease.

It may be trivially true that TCM has a long history, but it is hard to ignore that the placement of this statement at the beginning of a scientific article implies an argument from antiquity - that TCM should be taken seriously because of this long history. I would argue that this is actually a reason to be suspicious of TCM, for it derives from a pre-scientific largely superstition-based culture, similar in this way to the pre-scientific Western culture that produced the humoral (Galenic) theory of biology.

The next line is an admission that TCM is largely based on anecdotal information, described as the "precious experience" of life. This is a point that is often overlooked or not understood by proponents but central to the scientific/skeptical position - what is the value and predictive power of "precious experience" in developing a system of medicine?

I maintain that there are many good reasons to conclude that any system which derives from everyday experience is likely to be seriously flawed and almost entirely cut off from reality. Obvious short term effects, the lowest hanging fruit of observation, are likely to be reliable. Uncontrolled observation is a reasonable way to discover which plants, for example, are deadly poisons. This is likely to produce some false positives but few false negatives, which is fine for survival.

Other obvious effects, like nausea, diarrhea, and psychedelic effects are also easy to discover. Similarly it was probably obvious that people need to eat, breathe, and drink in order to stay healthy and alive. But records of pre-scientific thinking about health and disease shows that little else was.

Pre-scientific doctors thought, for example, that pus was a good thing, a sign that a wound was healing. They also did not realize that removing blood from the body was harmful, because they did not understand the vital physiological effects of blood and had fanciful superstitious notions about its role in the body.

So there are severe practical limits to what uncontrolled life experiences could figure out about health and disease. Every culture figured out some basic things, like local plants that had some uses, how to treat some forms of trauma, and to midwife childbirth, but could not figure out the complexities of biology, physiology, anatomy, biochemistry, genetics, infection and disease pathophysiology and epidemiology.

Understanding health and disease took a more sophisticated method of observing nature - science.

How, then, could a pre-scientific culture without any knowledge of modern biology and without the methods of science develop a valid and effective system of medicine? The answer is - they couldn't. In addition, there is now a large body of psychological research showing the many ways in which people systematically deceive themselves when it comes to finding correlations and making assumptions about cause and effect.

There is nothing about the Chinese culture or the Chinese people that should make them exempt from these documented psychological effects, or that would make their culture unique among the world's cultures in stumbling upon notions about health and illness that were actually correct. It is extreme cultural hubris to think otherwise. When the institution of medicine in the West incorporated scientific methods as the standard of determining which treatments were safe and effective, and in understanding disease, over time almost everything that constituted "traditional Western medicine" was overturned. The "precious experience" of centuries of Western medicine resulted in largely worthless or harmful treatments, from blood-letting to toxic mineral-based treatments.

The same is true for every other culture, including Asian culture. As evidence for this, in my opinion, is the very description of TCM given by the authors. They give a description of TCM philosophy, breaking it down into three components. The first is yin-yang:

According to the theory of yin-yang, all opposite matters in the universe, which are interrelated with each other or two opposite aspects within one matter, can be defined as yin or yang.

This is a "push-pull" philosophy of health - but it is just that, a philosophy. Nothing has been discovered in physiology that correlates with yin-yang, that would lead to the prediction that a yin-yang systems exists, or supports the existence or effects of yin-yang. It is just a made-up notion without any basis in physical reality - just like the balancing of the four humors of Galenic medicine.

Defenders of yin-yang, however, will often make superficial comparisons to any system in the body (and other areas of science) that has a basic duality or dichotomy. They then argue that this is "yin-yang". However, such an interpretation renders yin-yang vague and non-specific enough to be worthless. As with the predictions of Nostradamus, humans are good at retrofitting - finding apparent correlations. Many systems in the body exist in a certain balance, and many systems are interrelated. Some of these systems may have two dominant components (sympathetic vs parasympathetic), but others have three or more (such as the complex interplay among the various neurotransmitters in the brain).

Any variable (blood pressure, heart rate, GI motility, temperature, etc,) can be either increased or decreased - an inherently dichotomous situation. So it is trivial to call any such variable evidence of "yin-yang". But yin-yang does not have any specific existence, nor does it provide any specific insight into physiology. In has no more of a relationship to actual biology than Galenic medicine, which can be said to have contained the insight that the body contains a balance of various fluids. This is also true, but trivially and non-specifically so.

Next is the five phases:

The five phases theory defines the nature of matters based on the related characteristics of wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. The five phases maintain the generation and restriction relationship among them. TCM uses five phase theory to describe the relationship between five zang and their physiological function, five zang and structure and function of various parts of the human body, and also the correlation between each part of human body and nature and society.

Your liver, apparently, has the aspect of wood. This is an elaborate belief system, just like astrology, and has as much validity. It is rather poetic, also like astrology, and one can understand how a pre-scientific society would develop such ideas in order to attempt to understand something as complex and mysterious as the human body and illness.

There is no reason to presume, however, that such a description offers any insight into how the body functions or how to approach or treat any particular ailment. The authors give an example:

In the treatment of the syndrome of disharmony between the heart and kidney caused by deficiency of kidney-yin and hyperactivity of heart-fire, according to the law of 'water restrains fire', we can use the therapy of reducing fire and reinforcing water.

I would rather treat a problem with heart or kidney function based upon a good 'ol reductionist view of heart and renal function, understanding the role of blood pressure, body fluids, kidney function and regulation, electrolytes, etc. The notion ("law"?) that water restrains fire does not seem to offer any insight into how to treat a pre-renal syndrome.

Finally there is the visceral and meridian theories, which constitute an alternate (meaning incorrect) way of understanding the organs of the body:

Also, combining visceral manifestation theory with yin-yang and five phase theory, TCM has formed its own understanding towards the law of physiological and pathological changes of the human body. For instance, the liver matches wood, and the spleen belongs to earth. The over-acting of wood will lead to over-restraining on earth. Thus, we can see patients with transverse invasion of the stagnated liver-qi attacking the spleen.

How exactly does stagnated liver-qi attck the spleen? How would this be diagnosed? What I am saying is - what is the reductionist understanding of these concepts? It is common for proponents of such alternate ways of knowing to denigrate reductionist science, but if a way of "understanding" how something works reflects reality, then it should make sense and hold up to the evidence all the way down.

"Reductionist" really just means deeper levels of understanding how the world works. It should not be confused with "hyperreductionism" which means ignoring or minimizing higher order levels of organization and function. You cannot, for example, understand how the body works just from biochemisty, or even from studying single cells. You have to understand how tissues, organs, and the whole body works together.

Science, actually, takes the most holistic view of health and disease, for it attempts to understand how the body works at every level of organization, and recognizes the folly of ignoring any level. You cannot ignore how the system works together, nor can you ignore how the individual parts work all the way down to their most basic components.

Ancient philosophies of medicine, however, either ignore the deeper levels of function, or make up fanciful underlying concepts, like wood and earth, that have nothing to do with reality.

Finally they describe the meridians:

The meridians transport qi and blood all over the body, link up the upper and the lower, the inside and the surface of the human body, response and conduct the information.

Except, there is no evidence that the meridians actually exist. At the risk of sounding redundant, they are as made up and fictional as the ether, flogistum, Bigfoot, and unicorns. The linking of qi and blood is reflective of the fact that the notion of qi is historically tied to blood, and techniques such as acupuncture and cupping were also closely related to bleeding techniques that we are more familiar with from Galenic medicine.

This leads to the next section on therapeutics in TCM. Of course they discuss acupuncture and also moxibustion and massage, but give very quick descriptions. They state multiple times that these techniques "treat disease" - which is an odd and extraordinary claim for several reasons. There is, of course, no evidence that acupuncture or moxibustion alters the course of any disease. You have to believe in the notions of qi etc. described above to believe that there is any plausibility to the use of acupuncture for disease. Even for symptomatic treatment (the bulk of scientific acupuncture studies) the evidence is weak to negative.

The authors also describe TCM herbalism, stating:

Currently, there are over 12,800 types of Chinese medicinals known by people, including over 11,000 medicinal plants, over 1500 medicinal animals, and over 80 medicinal minerals. Also, there are approximately 1 million TCM prescriptions found.

This relates to my main point above - how could practitioners have sorted out the risks, benefit, side effects, interactions, indications, pharmacodynamics, and pharmacokinetics of one million preparations without using any systematic scientific methods? This would be a challenge for a modern scientific institution, and would have been impossible for any pre-scientific society. One has to either ignore this issue, or assume preternatural abilities on the part of TCM practitioners, at the very least making them immune to all the mechanisms of deception and bias that seem to plague modern ordinary humans.

All of this background is just a long windup to what appears to be the main point of this article - the challenge of studying these therapies and ideas with modern scientific methods. Those of us familiar with this line of reasoning can see the massive special pleading coming a mile away.

They outline four challenges to scientifically studying TCM - that TCM considers overall health (I guess rather than just one condition at a time), therapies require ongoing assessment and adjustment, multiple therapies are given simultaneously to work together, and there are multiple targets of therapy.

Let me turn this around a bit - assuming the premises of this reasoning are true (that TCM must include these higher levels of complexity) then it is true that TCM treatments would be difficult to study systematically. At the same time, however, they would make it very difficult (likely impossible) to derive any reliable conclusions about therapy from "precious experience". I would argue that the same features that make TCM difficult to study in a controlled setting make it impossible to assess in an uncontrolled setting.

So how, then, can TCM practitioners have any practical knowledge about what therapies work and are appropriate in specific situations? Something akin to "magical intuition" is the only answer.

That point aside - it is difficult, but not impossible, to study such treatments. First, I disagree with the premise and believe it is just special pleading, an excuse for the lack of scientific evidence for TCM. In modern medicine we often use multiple treatments working together to address a complex syndrome. Each individual component, however, should contribute to the overall benefit, and should be able to demonstrate its contribution in controlled studies.

Any contribution too small to detect in clinical trials is probably too small to be of clinical significance. Also, even if we accept the premise that multiple treatments only work when given together, you can still study this in a controlled setting - by individualizing a holistic treatment plan and then giving it or a placebo substitute in a blinded fashion.

You may have noticed that I left off the fifth "challenge" to studying TCM (which is often used as an excuse for a lack of evidence). The authors write:

Finally, the cultural characteristic embodied in traditional Chinese medicine requires more consideration on ecological features of data in TCM when conducting statistical analysis.

I'm not sure what to make of that statement, and the authors give no further explanation. I would just point out that science - and reality - has no cultural characteristic. If something is true about the world, it is true no matter what culture you come from. The point of science is to be transparent and universal, so that anyone doing the same experiment, no matter what culture they come from, should have the same result.

Conclusion: TCM is not medicine

TCM is a pre-scientific superstitious view of biology and illness, similar to the humoral theory of Galen, or the notions of any pre-scientific culture. It is strange and unscientific to treat TCM as anything else. Any individual diagnostic or treatment method within TCM should be evaluated according to standard principles of science and science-based medicine, and not given special treatment.

Founder and currently Executive Editor of Science-Based Medicine Steven Novella, MD is an academic clinical neurologist at the Yale University School of Medicine. He is also the host and producer of the popular weekly science podcast, The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, and the author of the NeuroLogicaBlog, a daily blog that covers news and issues in neuroscience, but also general science, scientific skepticism, philosophy of science, critical thinking, and the intersection of science with the media and society. Dr. Novella also has produced two courses with The Great Courses, and published a book on critical thinking - also called The Skeptics Guide to the Universe.

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What Is Traditional Chinese Medicine? | Science-Based Medicine

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Traditional Chinese Medicine is not actual medicine, and should not be treated as such. It has more in common with Galen's theory of the four humors than anything a doctor would recognize today.

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Definition: When two variables show a consistent behaviour, it does not necessarily mean that they are related. It could be purely coincidental and the events could be completely independent of each other. Correlation does not mean causation.

Connection: This map comparison analyses the Brexit votes and the mad cow disease outbreak. Now, these are very strikingly accurate, but it would be a mistake to jump to conclusions. When the underlying principles are hidden from plain sight, we are forced to confuse correlation with causation.

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People, searching for answers as to how this happened, have come to a staggering conclusion, thanks to an unverified graphic - mad cow disease.

An image has been repeatedly circulated on Facebook and Twitter comparing the results of the vote with that of areas of outbreaks of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

Many believed it:

However, this is not so. As much as many Remainers would like to believe that euroscepticism is engendered from bad beef, it's not the case.

As has pointed out, thousands of cases of mad cow were being diagnosed across the country every day throughout the country.

The outbreak has no correlation to Leave areas - someone has just changed the referendum results map's colour to monochrome.

Still...

More: 8 of the most misleading promises of the Vote Leave campaign, ranked in order of preposterousness

More: Show these charts to anybody who thinks Brexit was a victory for 'decent, ordinary' people

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The truth about the map comparing Brexit and mad cow disease

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Brexit has had quite a fallout. David Cameron resigned, Labour is in chaos, and the pound plummeted. People, searching for answers as to how this happened, have come to a staggering conclusion, thanks to an unverified graphic - mad cow disease.

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Definition: This is another marketing scheme that is used to trick consumers into thinking that the product is better than their processed counterparts. While, in reality it is actually not accurate and all natural doesn't necessarily mean good. Example, all natural types of mushrooms can be poisonous, some form of modification is necessary to deem it safe for consumption.

Connection: Some supermarket products are labelled as "All Natural", though it could still mean that it contains GMOs, gluten and other things that consumers should know of. FDA does not have a concrete definition of "natural", which is exploited by companies.

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As a consumer, you may be interested in buying the healthiest foods you can find, which means you'll be gleaning nutrition and health information from food labels. Two sources of information include the Nutrition Facts label and the ingredients list located on the back or side of the packaging.

In addition to those required labels, you may find a host of health or nutrition claims made on the front of the label. One common claim is 'natural,' 'all-natural', or 'made with natural ingredients.' What does it mean when food manufacturers' use these terms?

Defining "All Natural"

According to Merriam Webster Dictionary, the definition of 'natural' that fits the food world best is 'closely resembling an original: true to nature." So, all-natural foods should be those that are closest to their pure, natural state. It's hard to imagine any processed food as being close to its natural state though since most ingredients undergo some kind of alteration before being placed on store shelves.

The belief, of course, is that something that's 'all natural' is going to be much better for you than something that contains artificial ingredients. While that may or may not be true ( folic acid, for example, is an artificial form of B vitamin that's beneficial), seeing the word 'natural' on a food product may not mean what you hope it means.

What the FDA Says About 'Natural'

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration decides what types of health and nutrition claims can be put on packaged foods. For example, the FDA has requirements for using the word 'organic' on a food label. Unfortunately, the FDA doesn't have an official definition for natural foods, so their official position on using the word 'natural' is that "the agency has not objected to the use of the term if the food does not contain added color, artificial flavors, or synthetic substances."

Without any formal regulation, the consumer is left to trust the food manufacturers. A food product that's made with 'all natural' ingredients could still contain hormones, GMOs, gluten, or other things some consumers worry about. Natural foods don't have to be organically produced and it doesn't mean the farm animals were treated well. All-natural foods can also be high in calories, fats, sodium, or sugar.

In short, if you see the words 'all natural' on a food package, you still need to do a little digging to truly know if the product is good for you and your family.

Tips for Shopping for Natural Foods

Here's what you need to do if you want to buy all-natural foods at the grocery store. Clearly, the freshest produce is all-natural because it's unaltered and pretty much just what was harvested days or weeks earlier. A potato is natural, just the way it is. So is an apple or an orange.

The concept of all natural gets more complicated when you look at processed foods. First, it's important to point out that not all processed foods are bad. Milk and milk substitutes, meats, seafood, and frozen veggies are all examples of processed foods that can be good for you.

Choose items that are minimally processed, such as lean cuts of beef and pork, fresh chicken pieces, and fresh or frozen seafood. Processed meats such as sausage and bacon are likely to contain artificial flavorings or preservatives, so check out the ingredients list before you buy.

Regular milk may contain bovine growth hormone, which doesn't appear to be harmful to humans, but if you want to avoid it, look for BGH-free milk. If you're shopping for yogurt, look for plain yogurt or varieties that only contain yogurt, fruits, honey, and nuts. Colored yogurts often contain artificial colorings, especially those aimed at kids.

Very few brands of cookies, chips, crackers, or other snack foods are really going to be all natural, but if you go to the natural foods section of the store, you may see some that claim to be made with natural ingredients. It doesn't mean they're good for you. Dig further into the label to decide based off nutrition facts and ingredients.

Kids' cereals are often colored with artificial colorings, but you may be able to find brands colored with natural colors such as beet juice. Remember that whole grains are better than refined flours and 'natural' forms of sugar are just as high in calories as refined sugar.

A Word From Verywell

The idea of buying all natural foods seems like a good, wholesome idea, but since the FDA doesn't regulate the use of the word, you'll need to examine the ingredients list and the nutrition facts labels to find the healthiest packaged foods.

Thanks for your feedback!

What are your concerns?

Other Inaccurate Hard to Understand

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Your All Natural Food Might Not Be So Healthy

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As a consumer, you may be interested in buying the healthiest foods you can find, which means you'll be gleaning nutrition and health information from food labels. Two sources of information include the Nutrition Facts label and the ingredients list located on the back or side of the packaging.

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Definition: This red flag accompanies the usage of scientific sounding words to trick the consumer into thinking that it is credible. Just because it contains a scientific word does not imply so. It tends to imply that energy is a glowing cloud that hovers and heals as it moves.

Connection: The link takes you to a book "Quantum Healing", written by a guy Dr. Deepak Chopra. Now, the prefix doctor might immediately trigger appeal to authority red flag in some people and make them believe in this. However, the word quantum has no bearing with any healing whatsoever. It actually is a physics term used to denote the discrete energy possessed by a particle which is directly proportional to its radiation frequency. No connection with healing.

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DR DEEPAK CHOPRA WRITER OF `QUANTUM HEALING` Deepak Chopra is a physician whose unhappiness with western medicine led him to search for an alternative.

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Definition: Patternicity, also known as "Apophenia" is the ability of human brain to see patterns and faces in places where there are none. Carl Sagan wrote in his 1995 book: The Demon Haunted World, that this is a survival instinct as a result of evolution, as the ability to see shapes, faces in the wild would lead to less erroneous judgement of predators by the early humans.

Connection: This is a painting, "The Librarian", by Giuseppe Arcimboldo in Sweden, which resembles a human, though actually is a collection of books stacked in such a way to cause this illusion.

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The Librarian The Librarian 1566 Painting by Giuseppe Arcimboldo Reproduction | 1st Art Gallery

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80% off a Hand Made Oil Painting Reproduction of The Librarian The Librarian 1566, one of the most famous paintings by Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Free certificate of authenticity free shipping.

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Definition: This reason for belief is the most common one, as the curiosity of the human brain does not allow us to leave anything unanswered. So, when there seems to be no rational understanding of something, people come up with the absurdest theories and explanations.

Connection: The "Bermuda Triangle" has to be one of the most popular modern culture mysteries. There are several explanations put forward but none of them answer all the questions. This link explores many possible explanations, as humans resort to anything to get to the roots of a mystery.

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The Bermuda Triangle (also known as the Devil's Triangle) is an area bounded by points in Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico where ships and planes are said to mysteriously vanish into thin air - or deep water.

Recently, some people have wondered if there is a Bermuda Triangle connection in the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, even though the jet went missing halfway around the world.

The term "Bermuda Triangle" was coined in 1964 by writer Vincent Gaddis in the men's pulp magazine Argosy. Though Gaddis first came up with the phrase, a much more famous name propelled it into international popularity a decade later. Charles Berlitz, whose family created the popular series of language instruction courses, also had a strong interest in the paranormal. He believed not only that Atlantis was real, but also that it was connected to the triangle in some way, a theory he proposed in his bestselling 1974 book "The Bermuda Triangle." The mystery has since been promoted in thousands of books, magazines, television shows, and websites.

Over the years, many theories have been offered to explain the mystery. Some writers have expanded upon Berlitz's ideas about Atlantis, suggesting that the mythical city may lie at the bottom of the sea and be using its reputed "crystal energies" to sink ships and planes. Other more fanciful suggestions include time portals (why a rift in the space-time fabric of the universe would open up in this particular patch of well-traveled ocean is never explained) and extraterrestrials - including rumors of underwater alien bases.

Still others believe that the explanation lies in some sort of extremely rare and little-known - yet perfectly natural - geological or hydrological explanation. For example, perhaps ships and planes are destroyed by pockets of flammable methane gas known to exist in large quantities under the sea - maybe lightning or an electrical spark ignited a huge bubble of methane that came to the surface right next to a ship or plane, causing them to sink without a trace. There are a few obvious logical problems with this theory, including that methane exists naturally around the world and such an incident has never been known to happen. [ Gallery: Lost in the Bermuda Triangle]

(Image credit: National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS).)

Others suggest sudden rogue tidal waves. Or maybe some mysterious geomagnetic anomaly that creates navigational problems confusing pilots and somehow causing them to plunge into the ocean; then again, pilots are trained to fly even with a loss of electronic navigation, and that theory doesn't explain ship disappearances. In fact, the Navy has a web page debunking this idea: "It has been inaccurately claimed that the Bermuda Triangle is one of the two places on earth at which a magnetic compass points towards true north. Normally a compass will point toward magnetic north. The difference between the two is known as compass variation. ... Although in the past this compass variation did affect the Bermuda Triangle region, due to fluctuations in the Earth's magnetic field this has apparently not been the case since the nineteenth century."
Mystery of the disappearing facts
But before we accept any of these explanations, a good skeptic or scientist should ask a more basic question: Is there really any mystery to explain?

A journalist named Larry Kusche asked exactly that question, and came to a surprising answer: there is no mystery about strange disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle. Kusche exhaustively re-examined the "mysterious disappearances" and found that the story was basically created by mistakes, mystery mongering, and in some cases outright fabrication - all being passed along as fact-checked truth.

In his definitive book "The Bermuda Triangle Mystery - Solved," Kusche notes that few writers on the topic bothered to do any real investigation - they mostly collected and repeated other, earlier writers who did the same. Unfortunately, Charles Berlitz's facility with language did not carry over into credible research or scholarship. His books on the paranormal - and on the Bermuda Triangle, specifically - were riddled with errors, mistakes, and unscientific crank theories. In a way, the Bermuda Triangle is largely a creation of Charles Berlitz's mistakes. Kusche would later note that Berlitz's research was so sloppy that "If Berlitz were to report that a boat were red, the chance of it being some other color is almost a certainty."

In some cases there's no record of the ships and planes claimed to have been lost in the aquatic triangular graveyard; they never existed outside of a writer's imagination. In other cases, the ships and planes were real enough - but Berlitz and others neglected to mention that they "mysteriously disappeared" during bad storms. Other times the vessels sank far outside the Bermuda Triangle.

It's also important to note that the area within the Bermuda Triangle is heavily traveled with cruise and cargo ships; logically, just by random chance, more ships will sink there than in less-traveled areas such as the South Pacific.

Despite the fact that the Bermuda Triangle has been definitively debunked for decades, it still appears as an "unsolved mystery" in new books - mostly by authors more interested in a sensational story than the facts. In the end, there's no need to invoke time portals, Atlantis, submerged UFO bases, geomagnetic anomalies, tidal waves, or anything else. The Bermuda Triangle mystery has a much simpler explanation: sloppy research and sensational, mystery-mongering books.
Benjamin Radford is deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine and author of six books, including "Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries." His website is BenjaminRadford.com.
The Bermuda Triangle has fascinated many who lean toward believing imaginative stories and bizarre explanations, but skeptics take a whole other view of the area. Find out whether you've got the facts straight.

Bermuda Triangle Quiz: Fact vs. Fiction

Related:

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The Bermuda Triangle (also known as the Devil's Triangle) is an area bounded by points in Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico where ships and planes are said to mysteriously vanish into thin air - or deep water.

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Definition- People tend to be very emotionally biased. This leads to them favouring emotionally satisfying choices rather than rational and well-thought ones. People tend to think what they want to, and not what is the reality. Emotions blur and distort the sense of reality.

Connection: A very similar thing happened in this case. Amanda Berry, a kidnapping survivor, despairs at the death of her mother who was convinced by the "psychic", Sylvia Browne that her daughter is dead. She was not. This might have led to her early demise. The mother was forced to give in to her emotions and listen to that psychic as she had not other option. Being a mother, her emotions wanted some sort of connection with her daughter, and the psychic provided that, though she claimed to do so but didn't, in reality. In such circumstances, a person ought to put emotions to one side and think rationally.

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In Year Two of her ten-year terrifying captivity in the Cleveland home of Ariel Castro, 18-year-old Amanda Berry felt there was only one hope keeping her alive - knowing that her mother was fighting for her.

Glued to news of the outside world on the small black-and-white TV she was allowed, she felt a rare surge of joy in November of 2004, hearing that her mother was to appear on The Montel Williams Show to consult with a psychic they both admired, Sylvia Browne.

Berry revealed the details of that day in her new book, Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland, co-authored with her fellow captive Gina DeJesus.

The Plain Dealer reported on Browne's predictions:

For 19 months, Louwana Miller refused to give up hope that her missing daughter might still be alive.

Not anymore.

...
"She's not alive, honey," Sylvia Browne told her matter-of-factly. "Your daughter's not the kind who wouldn't call."
...

Miller said she returned devastated from the show, taped this month in New York.

"I lost it," she said.
Miller said she believes "98 percent" in Browne.

A year and a half later, a devastated Louwana Miller was dead from heart failure at age 44. A friend told reporters that her meeting with Browne was the breaking point: "From that point, Ms. Miller was never the same."

But what we didn't know until this week was that, among the millions of Americans watching The Montel Williams Show that day, was Amanda Berry herself.

In excerpts from her journal, we get some small sense of the frustration and despair she felt as the scene unfolded:

November 16, 2004 ...

This is huge! Mom's going to be on The Montel Williams Show.

... she's going to be on tomorrow with Sylvia Browne, that cool psychic. I love her. This is amazing! Mom and I used to watch Montel all the time and we loved it when Sylvia was on. She made some amazing predictions.

... I want my mom to know I'm alive. Sylvia has to tell her!
November 17
There she is!... This is so exciting!

Sylvia is asking Mom about a "Cuban-looking" guy who is short and stocky. It's him! He's Puerto Rican, not Cuban, but it's close.

"Can you tell me if they'll ever find her?" Mom asks. "Is she out there?"

Then Sylvia says: "I hate this when they're in water. I just hate this. She's not alive, honey."

What? Why did she say that?

Mom's face just drops. I start crying and shouting at the TV. I'm not dead! I'm alive and I'm right here!

...

... She is a fraud. Now my poor mother is going to be convinced I'm dead, because she trusts Sylvia. This is going to crush her. She has to ignore what she was told and keep believing I'm alive and fighting to bring me home. If she doesn't, how can I keep hoping?

They cut to a commercial, and my mom is gone.

Berry begged Castro to deliver a letter she wrote to her mom, telling her not to listen to Sylvia Browne. She showed it to him so he could see there was no hint of how she could be found. Castro tore it up and handed it back to her.

December 5
My mom has been on the news a lot and she seems different, sadder. She says she took down the yellow ribbons at our house... took down the posters in my room and gave away my computer...

All because of Sylvia Browne, that fake. She put a knife right in my mom's heart because it made for good TV ratings. The article [in the Plain Dealer] says my mom is 98 percent sure that what Sylvia told her is true, that I'm dead. She said she "lost it" after that show.

...

I am crying so hard that I'm shaking. I wish God would show her some sort of sign that I'm alive. I get my strength from knowing that my mom is fighting for me. If she gives up, I'll feel like I don't exist.

I can't begin to fathom the despair she must have felt, facing the nightmare that lay ahead, this time with her last lifeline seemingly cut.

But hey, Browne got the "Cuban-looking" thing right, right?

Not so fast. Browne very likely prepared for her appearance on the show and would have known that Berry lived and worked in a west Cleveland neighborhood which the Associated Press described as a "tight-knit, mostly Puerto Rican neighborhood."

A few months prior to that, Browne also told the parents of Shawn Hornbeck (another missing boy) that their son had been murdered by a "dark-skinned... Hispanic" with "dreadlocks." Here's Shawn's convicted kidnapper, Michael J. Devlin:

Oh, and another small detail Sylvia got wrong? Shawn is alive.

Berry and DeJesus have been doing TV interviews this week about their book, and Berry spoke of her anger at Sylvia Browne.

It even pressured Montel Williams into finally apologizing:

I saw ‪#‎AmandaBerry‬'s incredibly courageous interview last night... I'm so sorry that anything said on my show caused her pain, and I am so grateful turned it out to be incorrect. Amanda Berry is a clearly one very strong young woman whose courage should inspire us all.

Notice Williams apologizes for what an unnamed guest said, but not for his own decision to have a "psychic" frequently deceiving the public on his show until it was canceled in 2008.

As for Sylvia Browne herself, she went to her grave in 2013, having never apologized for any of her cruel deceptions. Her less-than-humble statement on Amanda Berry, posted on her website in response to criticism of her after Amanda's escape, included this line: "Only God is right all the time."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Amanda Berry on the Despair of Watching a TV Psychic Tell Your Mom You're Dead

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In Year Two of her ten-year terrifying captivity in the Cleveland home of Ariel Castro, 18-year-old Amanda Berry felt there was only one hope keeping her alive -- knowing that her mother was fighting for her.

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Problem:  As stated in post 2, advertisers claimed that physicians recommend smoking as they do it themselves.

Information:  The first link is to a study that was conducted for cigarette sales till 1953. It gives very organized numbers in a chronological order. Cigarette campaigns in 1950s were indeed all over the place. Physicians and doctors holding cigarettes, on hoardings were a common sight.
https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=qymm0104
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3894634/

Evidence:  The truth about the tobacco industry has been revealed in the first article which shows malpractices and unethical marketing. The second link correlates cancer to smoking and shows that no matter what the advertisements say, the "actual" doctors do not recommend smoking.
https://www.who.int/tobacco/media/en/TobaccoExplained.pdf
http://www.env.go.jp/air/asbestos/commi_hhmd/03/ext01.pdf

Assumptions: Appeal to authority red flag is misused in this campaign as the doctor/physician's appearances enhances the credibility of the claim. And moreover, the number 20,679 (number of physicians who apparently recommend smoking), sounds more believable than a round number.

Alternatives:  There are two possible scenarios;
1.) Doctors recommended smoking and it is healthy for a person to smoke.
2.) The tobacco industry made false claims to enhance business.

Best alternative: After evaluating the evidence, I would say the tobacco industry's marketing practices are self-centred and unethical at the very least. They claimed a fake number of physicians to be supporting their brand, although there is no such testimony or evidence to be found. Moreover, it was highly unethical in the medical community at the time, for doctors to endorse a brand. The number 20,679 roots from the company's marketing department and the posters of doctors and physicians are a work of fiction or merely actors pretending to be doctors. Smoking increases the chances of lung cancer, no matter what any private company claims. There is tons of scientific studies linking the two together. Conflict of interest should always be analyzed carefully as the tobacco industry's number one motive is to increase sales. Hence, it is the consumer's own duty to be skeptical and verify the company's claims to make an informed decision for their lifestyle.