Advocating skepticisme

[till]

I have been saddened to see who counts for me be lured by "the Secret" (a self help book full of spiritual nonsense backed by pseudo-science). I watch helplessly as she spends thousands of pounds for seminars and progressively dive deeper into this nonsense.
Although full of absolute nonsense this book can prove extremely hard to debunk for different reasons:
_ It advocates shunning those who voice the contradictory opinions too loud (they bring negative energy)
_ It can have some initial positive effects. Amy (not her real name) was extremely shy and insecure, this book actually really helped her (it encourages you to believe in yourself no matter what). The placebo effect is on its side.
_ Reality is a lot less less appealing. I can give you no fast track to success nor sure way to get anything you want
_ I am no expert: I am just a poor ordinary chap; not a genius with deep understanding of quantum physics, spirituality and recepient of a secret shared by Einstein Washington and the like.... This is advocated by full time con-artists (I can be open-minded but this is absolutely preposterous) who are making this their full-time cash cow.

As you might have guessed I do not share her fascination for the secret andam appaled at this whole industry that feeds on people naiveness and insecurity.

As much as I'd like to shout-out what I think about this whole mascarade this is not going to bring anything constructive. I care for Amy and am sad to see her being weaved in this nonsense. I obviously cannot tie her to a chair and force her to read Poper until her ear bleed so I'll have to try a smoother approach. Any ideas on how to proceed?

[Pebble]

Welcome and thanks for the post, elsewhere on the UK skeptics there is a thread on the vile underhanded nature of Rhonda Byrne. I have not read the book so cannot really be of too much help. Like all these 'new age' claims they are superfically appealing but as you have noted have the potential for great damage.

Undermining the whole thesis is difficult, so I would suggest concentrating on one aspect where the claims are obviously ludicrous. Wiki suggests the health claims:

From Wiki:

Criticism of health claims
ABC news referred to claims that the mind has power over our health as "perhaps the most controversial" in The Secret. They quote Rev. Michael Beckwith, founder of Agape International Spiritual Center[32] in Culver City, California, and one of The Secret "teachers" as saying: "I've seen kidneys regenerated. I've seen cancer dissolved."[56] The film features one man who was paralyzed, mute, and on a ventilator after his spine and diaphragm were crushed in an airplane accident. He credits his full recovery to the power of his mind. A similar story is told by another interviewee whose breast cancer went into spontaneous remission without medical intervention.

If I were in your shoes, I would choose an area where the claims are fairly readily shown to be falsifiable, in terms Amy would understand, and find out enough about that area to sow the seeds of doubt, and leave time do the rest.

[Mongrel]

Pebble - there's a good round up of "The Secret" here (http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2007/02/the_secret.html)* that managed to gain the attention of some of its adherents. Interesting and (morbid) funny stuff

*Some of the language on the site is NSFW

[Matt]

As you might have guessed I do not share her fascination for the secret andam appaled at this whole industry that feeds on people naiveness and insecurity.

As much as I'd like to shout-out what I think about this whole mascarade this is not going to bring anything constructive. I care for Amy and am sad to see her being weaved in this nonsense. I obviously cannot tie her to a chair and force her to read Poper until her ear bleed so I'll have to try a smoother approach. Any ideas on how to proceed?

This story was linked to in James Randi's Switft

http://www.slate.com/id/2166211

An open letter to Oprah highlighting the dangers of "The Secret" for one unfortunate who chose positive visualisation over medical help.

It ends with a plea.



That's why we need to your help. To make our case stronger, we need to assemble our own list of testimonials—to the power of negative thinking. Has a healthy dose of pessimism improved your life? Has envisioning the worst ever helped you to avoid a disaster? Or has an overly rosy outlook left you blindsided by calamity? We'll append your anecdotes to this letter, and send the whole package to Oprah. Write us at slate.to.oprah@gmail.com (slate.to.oprah@gmail.com).


And here's the respose I sent them.


Good afternoon.

I've just read your interesting article on Oprah's promotion of "The Secret" after being referred from James Randi's Swift commentary.

I am one of those pragmatic IT folks you mention but it is a tale of a medical worst-case-scenario that I have to tell.

Simply put, my girlfriend developed the following symptoms: a late period and a one sided pain. Her period was over a week late and the bleeding irregular. She asked a doctor for advice and was told to take a pregnancy test and if it was negative not to worry but if it was positive to contact the GP again straight away.

She asked me why I thought she was being given this advice. My answer was that if she wasn't pregnant then the bleeding was explained as an unusually late period but if she was pregnant then the bleeding was something else and it was important to know what.
Well, the pregnancy test was positive and so she returned to the doctor. I considered the worst case scenario and so looked up the symptoms for an ectopic pregnancy.

This is a pregnancy where the embryo implants outside the uterus. It dooms the embryo and puts the life of the mother at great risk. The most important factor in successful treatment is to catch it early.

As such without wanting to alarm her I asked her to ensure that the GP was aware that she had recently recovered from a yeast infection. That she had had diarrhoea during this time and that although her blood pressure was only slightly below normal she more usually had hypertension. I didn't tell her that these were all symptoms of an ectopic pregnancy - we had lost our first child the year before. (He was still born after choking himself on his own umbilical chord.) So I didn't feel the need to give her any extra worries. The GP thought it was important for her to attend the hospital straight away but when she phoned the hospital to make an appointment she was told that in all likelihood it was just an implantation bleed and given a date over a month away.

I double checked whether she had mentioned the symptoms I'd highlighted and it transpired that she mentioned them to the doctor but not the nurse at the hospital with who she had made the appointment.

I insisted that the contact the hospital again and emphasised the symptoms I'd mentioned and that she was worried about an ectopic pregnancy.

At the time I did not count this as a high probability and so was still going to work as normal and allowing her to make the calls during the day.

The nurse at the hospital stuck to her guns saying that even if it was an ectopic pregnancy it couldn't be detected on ultrasound until 9 weeks and she was only 5 weeks pregnant.

This did not agree with the information I'd looked up on the Internet which suggested that a quantitative hormone test and ultrasound should be done at 5 weeks if ectopic was suspected. Later research revealed that this was because none of the ultrasound machines available to them was under 5 years old and the the hormone test cost £70 a pop to reveal the 1 in 50 cases with similar symptoms that were actually due to ectopic pregnancies.

However we did take comfort from the nurse's insistence that ectopic was unlikely and that we did have an appointment for later in the month.

So we tried to wait it out but over the next few days the bleeding and pain got worse and the diarrhoea and unsettled feeling continued. With no further luck from the hospital in getting our appointment moved forward she returned to the GP. He was shocked that no admission had been made and provided her with a letter demanding an immediate appointment. The excuse that she was only 5 weeks pregnant was apparently medically insufficient. It assumed that the last period was a true menstrual period in the case of many complications this is by no means guaranteed.

This it seems was not enough to sway the nurse in charge of admissions. In fact I began to suspect that the person my girlfriend had described as a nurse may have had no medical training at all and simply be an admissions clerk.

At this point I was furious. As I've mentioned we had already lost one pregnancy and at that time had been told that we would be given extra special care for our next pregnancy. Clearly this was not the case. I took umbrage and called the consultant who had made us this promise. I only got through to his office secretary but it turns out that, this was enough. I explained that we had these symptoms. I explained that these were the symptoms of an ectopic pregnancy as I'd researched on the internet and in that I also recognised that the diagnosis was difficult in such situations but that due to our history we were understandably extra cautious and needed extra reassurance. I explained what treatment and testing I thought we should be having and my frustrations with not having a swift appointment. Having envisioned and researched the worst case scenario I was particularly well informed on the issue and must have been quite convincing as we were admitted that evening. Breaking down in tears probably had something to do with it too.

As mentioned we were quite prepared to be told that our fears were an unnecessary worry, However in actual fact they were 100% accurate. She did have an ectopic pregnancy and by the time the blood tests and ultrasound confirmed this there was little time to act. The various treatment options I'd researched were discussed. Having already prepared ourselves for this decision sped the process up and she went under the knife straight away. I was all too aware that the window of opportunity for medical rather then surgical treatment had passed. A section of her fallopian tube containing the ectopic foetus was removed. Were were later told that it was just about ready to burst and we'd got it just in time.

So from my point of view my worst-case-scenario thinking saved my girlfriends life. From another point of view an admission clerk's positive thinking nearly killed her.

There's another darker interpretation of the message in "The Secret" that suggests that the symptoms didn't have a fixed cause until we started thinking about them. It suggests that my preparedness and consideration of the worst case scenario actually caused that scenario to happen.

Applied to my story the message of "the Secret" is that I killed my child. If anybody wants to repeat that accusation to my face I can assure you that no amount of positive visualisation will lead to a happy outcome for them.

The happy news is that we are pregnant once again and all is going well. All tests and scans show that our little Ronnie will be a happy healthy boy and will be joining us in early September.

I hope my story is of some help to you in your campaign to open Oprah's eyes to the harm that could result from ill conceived mystical nonsense like "The Secret"

The little boy, Ronnie I mention is now nearly a year old and a testament to the value of negative thinking.

[till]

I used to disregard the new-wave movement as marginal and rather harmless (except for the occasional freak case). Turns out some of these gurus are multi-millionaire and "the secret" has toped New York Time's bestseller's list for several consecutive weeks.

As much as I believe it is important to learn to disagree without feud and respect other opinions, this is too much for me.

My father has devoted much of his life to shedding light on quantum physics (superfluids to be exact) and the quantum physics interpretation of the "law of attraction" implies that either:
_ He is incompetent (and does not know about the law of attraction)
_ He has known about the law of attraction all this time and has never told me about it.
I believe this gives me moral ground to stand on and refute some of the claims in that book.

Whatever I do I need to be non-confrontational and as calm as still water (I do not have answers, Gurus have answers. I only have questions, you should come up with your own answers...).

I'll try to collect my thoughts on debunking. Posting on this forum is preaching to the converted, we need to promote critical thinking. I'll try to use this post to collect my thoughts. Please feel free to contribute (I am obviously not very knowledgeable).

[Pebble]

Have had a look at the web site http://www.law-of-attraction-info.com/

Obvious mumbo jumbo:


How do you create your desires using the powerful law? There are just a few basic steps.

1. Get very clear on what you want

2. Visualize and raise your vibration about it

3. Allow It

You must be very clear on exactly what your desire is. Focus on it. Give it all your positive energy. Feel good!

A major factor behind this Universal Law is the energy and vibrations of our emotions and feelings. Any thought you may have, when combined with emotion, vibrates out from you to the universe and will attract back what you want.

You can leave all the details to the universe. Let the Universe figure out the method of delivery, when you will receive it, etc. Now all you have to do is Allow It. Sounds easy, right? This can be the most difficult part to do. Be doubt-free. All you need to do is expect it. Act like you already have it. Be grateful.

And always take inspired action. If something feels right, then go ahead and do it. Taking action is an important step.

That is it! You can always be expectant of good things, your desires. Feel good knowing your desire is on its way to you.

Always expect your desires. Expect miracles.

It seems to me that here we start with the knowledge that those who succeed try hard, are focused and really want something. Then one ignores all the lessons of history and science to create a hotch-potch of feel good nonsense.

The suggestion appears to be that all disabled people simply fail to want to be better enough, that dying of cancer is simply a negative attitude, that those starving in disaster areas around the world simply fail to want food and shelter enough, and that the people raped and brutalised in the conflict zones around the world could stop it all by simply being strong minded.

Am I missing something or is this such patent nonsense that simply holding a mirror of the reality around the world up should be enough to show how crazy this is?

[SimonC]

The suggestion appears to be that all disabled people simply fail to want to be better enough, that dying of cancer is simply a negative attitude, that those starving in disaster areas around the world simply fail to want food and shelter enough, and that the people raped and brutalised in the conflict zones around the world could stop it all by simply being strong minded.

Am I missing something or is this such patent nonsense that simply holding a mirror of the reality around the world up should be enough to show how crazy this is?

You are missing nothing, Pebble. If you have the stomach to watch the film version of 'The Secret', you will hear participants quite clearly make this very claim - that people from abuse victims to the desperately ill have, in effect, brought it upon themselves. The claim is that we invoke all the circumstances in our lives ( positive and negative ) through 'the law of attraction'.

I find the whole idea not only ludicrous but utterly repellant. Without straying too far into personal-anecdotage, my Dad is currently fighting motor-neurone disease. According to the ideas of 'The Secret' proponents, he must have somehow wished that circumstance upon himself. Not only that, but since this obviously has an impact on all of my family, then myself, my Mum, brother, and the children in our family presumably all, somehow, 'attracted' my Dad's illness.

It's assinine, insulting and utterly repugnant. I would, however, say that if one of the proponents of this garbage would like to tell me, or any member of my family, directly that we somehow wished this into existence, they would very much attract the circumstance that would befall them...