Tag Archives: Science

SHINRIN-YOKU AND PHYTONCIDES — BREATHING NATURE’S PREVENTATIVE AND HEALING COMPOUNDS

6 Replies

Fresh air and forests have a profound effect on us. There’s something therapeutic found in nature walks—especially through pristine and vibrant woods filled with inspiring sights, smells, sounds, tastes, and touches. The Japanese have a name for this. “Shinrin-yoku” which translates to “Breathing and taking in the wellness of a healthy forest atmosphere”. Millions simply call the practice “forest bathing”. Shinrin for forest, yoku for bath.

Phytoncides (Fye-Ton-Sides) are volatile organic compounds that healthy trees emit, or gas off. It’s the forest’s self-protection system at work, dealing with dangers like insects, fungi, and bacteria. When we forest bathe, we breathe in phytoncides which empirical evidence proves help our mood, better our sleep, lower our blood pressure, and boost our immune system. There’s even proof that phytoncides inhaled while forest bathing help to prevent, and possibly cure, cancer.

Preventing and curing cancer are bold statements. How can forest air possibly combat the demon of all illnesses that is cancer? We’ll get into that—how phytoncides from trees activate Natural Killer (NK) cells in our bodies—but first let’s look at the history of Shinrin-yoku and the chemical makeup of phytoncides.

Despite its enormous population of 126 million, this Japanese island complex of 146,000 square miles is still two-thirds covered with pristine forests. That’s 59,750,400 acres of treed greenspace, 27 times larger than Yellowstone Park. I’m not going to try to compute the volume of phytoncide off-gassing from Japan.

For centuries and generations, the Japanese have recognized the therapeutic properties of their forests. Although the phrase shinrin-yoku is relatively new, the benefits of walking through forests is ancient knowledge. Shinrin -yoku is based on three traditional concepts:

  • Yugen is about being so keenly aware of the beauty of the world around you that the deep emotions you feel can’t be expressed with words.
  • Komorebi literally translates to “sunlight leaking thought the trees.” It describes the relationship or interplay between the sun and the leaves.
  • Wabi sabi celebrates the beauty of imperfection and impermanence.

In 1982, concerned by the rapidly growing population and an expansion into greenspace, the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries took a novel approach to protection. Dr. Tomohide Akiyama had been studying the health effects on humans who were repeatedly exposed to phytoncides from trees and was convinced of the significant benefits to the Japanese people if forest exposure were promoted.

Top: Japanese symbols for Shinrin-yoku. Lower: Japanese symbols for Phytoncides.

Dr. Akiyama saw promoting forest walks and nature sensing was a win-win for people’s health and tree protection. He, through the Ministry, began a campaign where Shinrin-yoku was a recognized health practice, and the term “forest bathing” was born. Today, Shinrin-yoku is a worldwide phenomenon helping millions of people improve their health. It’s especially popular in the Pacific Northwest of North America where I live in a temperate rainforest covered with phytoncide-producing conifers like cedar, spruce, fir, pine, hemlock, and balsam.

That’s not to say that deciduous trees like maple, alder, birch, oak, and a weird local thing called an arbutus don’t gas off. Same with grasses, shrubs, and plants of all types. That unmistakable scent from freshly cut grass? Phytoncides.

Phytoncides aren’t one single entity. They’re a variety of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that include terpenes, aldehydes, and alcohols. The word originates from the Greek phyton meaning plant and cide meaning kill. In other words, natural antimicrobials designed by nature as medicine for the plants. Forest medicine, you could say.

Claims that practicing Shinrin-yoku and inhaling phytoncides have proven human health benefits are backed up by science. There have been many peer-reviewed papers presented on forest bathing and all come to the same conclusion. There is overwhelming evidence the claims are valid—claims of stress reduction, lowered hypertension, sleep improvement, mood alteration (for the better), immune protection, and the one assertion that leaves some folks skeptical. Shinrin-yoku and phytoncides reduce the risk of cancer and possibly even stop and reverse cancerous cells in the human body.

Here are a few studies supporting the claims.

1982 — Dr. Akiyama’s proposal to the Japanese government.

2009 — Effect of forest bathing trips on human immune function.

2019 — Comparative study of the physical and psychological effects of Shinrin-yoku.

2022 — Effects of Shinrin-yoku on health promotion and disease prevention.

The 2022 study headed by Dr. Qing Li has a fascinating and highly informative, 10-page downloadable pdf. If you’re at all interested in the science behind forest bathing, this paper is a must-read and it goes into the key function that phytoncides have on the immune system. That’s to build up Natural Killer (NK) cells that are the front-line warriors in the cancer battle.

Cells are the basic building blocks of all living organisms—you, me, and the trees. They’re the smallest units capable of performing life functions making cells the fundamental components of both structure and function in the human body and the trees’ trunks. And cancer is nothing more than cells running amuck and multiplying out of control.

Phytoncides, emitted by trees and plants, enter our body through our respiratory system and bond with our NK cells which are a type of lymphocyte or white blood cell that plays a critical role in our immune system. NKs are first responders against infection, disease, and cancerous tumors. They kill viruses and tumor cells without prior sensitization. In other words, NK cells stop cancerous cells in their tracks before they take hold and are recognized by sensory awareness.

Apoptosis and autophagy are two important biological processes. Apoptosis is the natural death of a cell so new ones can replace them. Autophagy is the recycling of cellular material. Cancer tumors won’t allow apoptosis or autophagy to occur. Left unchecked, malignant cancer cells continue to multiply until they kill their host.

Natural Killers are always present and on duty in our bodies. It’s just that they can’t do it all without a little help. That’s where phytoncides step in. They bond with NKs and increase production of granzymes, perfoin, and granulysin proteins which attack a tumor cell as soon as it occurs. This causes the cancer cell to apoptosis and all is well. See the image/flowchart below.

Speaking of Dr. Qing Li, he wrote the definitive book on Shinrin-yoku. It’s titled Forest Bathing: How Trees Can Help You Find Health and Happiness. This work examines Shinrin-yoku from a holistic vantage where the value in forest bathing is not just the phytoncide intake but the entire experience you get from exercising your five senses in a nature setting.

Another great book that touches on forest bathing is The Hidden Life of Trees written by the forester and environmentalist Peter Wohlleben. Mr. Wohlleben posits that the entire forest is interconnected by a “wood-wide web” where all the plants communicate with each other including a regulation of mutually beneficial phytoncide release.

If you’re a regular Dyingwords follower, you might wonder why today I’ve veered away from my usual crime/blood & guts topics and how I came upon something as obscure as forest bathing. To tell you the truth, when I first heard the term about a month ago, I thought it was some sort of hippy-dippy thing stemming from a new-age commune. So did my wife, Rita, when I brought up “forest bathing” while we were out rucking.

“Rucking?”, you ask. “What’s rucking?” Well, there’s nothing new-age or tree-hugging about rucking. It’s simply forest hiking with a weighted backpack (rucksack) and using trekking poles (walking sticks).

Rita and I live on Vancouver Island in British Columbia at Canada’s west coast. We’re surrounded by a pristine rainforest that’s nicely overcrowded with healthy trees. You know, the ones that off-gas phytoncides. And we’re avid ruckers, regularly putting on 8 thousand steps per day through the trees.

That’s a lot of phytoncides to suck in.

Something else I’ve taken up is roping. It’s not technical climbing as in mountains and rocks. It’s more of a low-impact pull, up and down steep hillsides, on a rope, while wearing a weighted pack. It’s incredible exercise, requiring every muscle in your body to participate.

Which brings me to yoga, meditation, and mindfulness. Forest bathing is often called a combination of the three with additional health benefits. While I’m not into yoga (I don’t like pina coladas either, however walks in the rain are inevitable when you ruck on Vancouver Island.), I’m in tune with meditation and mindfulness.

Rucking and roping are full-immersion courses on meditation and mindfulness. While rucking through the trees, your mind is free to go still, as in meditation under motion or zoning out. But when on the ropes, on a 40 to 60-degree slope, your mind must be completely in the moment. Mindfulness of your grip, your foot placement, and your balance are paramount to preventing a fall with potentially serious consequences.

So how do you get into this Shinrin-yoku/forest bathing gig? It’s simple. You don’t need the gear and the grind. It’s just finding a wooded area and going for a slow stroll, absorbing the sight, sound, smell, taste, and feel of nature. It’s okay to see the trees (and the forest), listen to the birds, sniff the needles and leaves, taste the air, and run your hands up and down some bark—all the while breathing phytoncides, nature’s preventitive and healing compounds.

And if you want to get serious about forest bathing, there are online courses as well as extensive events to take part in. One online course is hosted by a Swiss-founded organization called Treeming.org. It’s reasonably priced in the $125 to $250 range, depending on the depth of information you’d like.

A much more involved education in the art of Shinrin-yoku is held in England by the Forest Bathing Institute. It’s pricey. To become a fully accredited Shinrin-yoku master it’ll cost you $4,113.81 USD.

DO YOU TRUST YOUR GUT FEELINGS?

Everyone—you and me included—has heard their small inner voice speak. It might have been a muffled word of sage advice, a loud yell of urgent caution, or a simple suggestion towards the right move. Evolutionary, our subconscious source of wisdom has served us well—“Whoa! Don’t step outside the cave right now” to “Hey! This wheel and axle invention will be big.” But as real as intuition is, many people choose to ignore their instincts. How about you? Do you trust your gut feelings?

There are lots of terms for gut feelings. Intuition is the main one, but there’re differences of opinion as to what constitutes raw instinct, subtle intuition based on life experience, and plain old gut feelings—also known as the sixth sense, vibes, foresight, precognition, visceral nudges, being-in-the-world, hunches, and downright lucky guesses. These are socially-acceptable labels, not to be confused with pseudoscience stuff like tactic knowledge, remote viewing, morphic resonance, ESP, clairvoyance, and cryptesthesia. Then there’s a half-way, new-age idea called Grok. You might want to Google that.

What got me going on today’s post is a recent comment left on an old DyingWords thread where a fellow made a statement that relying on gut feelings amounted to as much as taking a ride on a Ouija board. “Hang on a moment,” I replied. “I have decades of investigation experience and, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, I’ve come to rely on my gut feelings—hunches, intuition, Grok, or whatever you wanna call them.”

Just a quick personal story before we move on to look at the philosophy, psychology, and physiology behind intuition as well as taking a test to see how much you trust your gut feelings. In 1985, I was part of a police Emergency Response Team (ERT or SWAT for Americans). We were sent to the frozen wilds of the Canadian north to arrest an armed and murderous madman. Michael Oros, the bad guy, got the drop on my partner and me just as I had this incredible gut feeling that he’d silently crept up behind us. I spun around right as the fire-fight started. Because of this intuitive gut feeling—this overpowering presence of imminent danger—I was able to react to save my life and probably the lives of other teammates.

I didn’t imagine that gut feeling. It was as real as the keyboard I’m writing this on, and I have no explanation for it other than we, as human beings, are hard-wired to receive subconscious information through a process best known as intuition. Whether we use our gut feeling’s information or discard it is a matter of personal choice.

Gut feeling intuition has fascinated scientists and philosophers. It fascinates me, as well, and I don’t qualify as either a scientist or a philosopher. It’s not just people who have intuition and gut feelings. Why do dogs seem to know when their owners are coming home, and why do horses naturally understand what people to trust and what people to mistrust? Is it animal common sense?

Surely there’s more to human intuition/gut feeling than common sense. Something else is at work here, and the philosophical theories go back as far as Plato. In his book Republic, Plato defined intuition as “a fundamental capacity for human reason to comprehend the true nature of reality—a pre-existing knowledge residing in the soul of eternity—truths not arrived at by reason but accessed using a knowledge already present in a dormant form and accessible to our intuitive capacity”. Plato called this concept anamnesis.

Ancient Eastern and old Western philosophers intertwined intuition with religion and spirituality. From Hinduism’s Vedic, we get two-fold reasoning for human gut feelings (mana in Sanskrit). First, is imprinting of psychological experiences constructed through sensory information—the mind seeking to become aware of the external world. Second, a natural action when the mind is aware of itself, resulting in humans being awareness of their existence and their environment.

In Buddhism, you’ll find a similar take on intuition. Monks teach that intuition is a faculty in the mind of immediate knowledge that’s beyond the mental process of conscious thinking, as conscious thought cannot necessarily access subconscious information or render such information into a communicable form. Gut feelings, according to Buddhism, are mental states immediately connecting the Universal Mind with your individual, discriminating mind.

More modern-day philosophers, like Descartes, say intuition is “pre-existing knowledge gained through rational reasoning or discovering truth through contemplation that manifests in subconscious messaging.” Descartes goes on to say, “Whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive to be true is true no matter if I see it subconsciously.”

Immanuel Kant offered this: “Intuition consists of basic sensory information provided by the cognitive faculty of sensibility equivalent to what loosely might be called perception through conscious and subconscious.”

In Psychological Types written in 1916 by Carl Jung, you’ll read this: “Intuition is an irrational function, opposed most directly by sensation and less opposed strongly by the rational functions of thinking and feeling. Intuition is perception via the unconscious using sense-perception only as a starting point to bring forward ideas, images, possibilities, ways out of a blocked situation, by a process that is mostly unconscious.”

Freud—always the contrarian—called bullshit on Jung. Freud said, “Knowledge can only be attained through the conscious intellectual manipulation of carefully made observations. I reject any other means of acquiring knowledge such as intuition (gut feelings).”

That’s a short canvassing of philosophers. So, what do the scientists say about gut feelings?

Well, neurologists have a lot to offer about how intuition is biologically tied into the gut. They say our gut, our gastrointestinal (GI) system, has an entire mind of its own called the Enteric Nervous System (ENS) that operates alongside, but independent of, our brain and Central Nervous System (CNS) functions. Our ENS is two layers of more than 100 million nerve cells lining the entire GI system from start to finish—from our esophagus to our anus, or from our yap to our hoop as a layperson might say.

This incredibly complex ENS has a full-time job of regulating our GI tract whose main purpose is to keep us alive through sustainable nutrition. Neurologists say the ENS acts on instinct and constantly exchanges information to our brain through our CNS. When the ENS senses something awry, it immediately alerts the brain that can choose to react consciously or subconsciously.

That works both ways. When the brain consciously or subconsciously alarms, it notifies the ENS which just might explain why you get that feeling in your stomach—that gut feeling. It’s why anxiety can bung you up or make you throw up. In the end, it might be diarrhea that ultimately lets you know to trust your gut feelings.

Okay, that explains the neuroscience behind the ENS gut feeling reaction. But it doesn’t explain what intuition is, and it’s probably worthwhile to look at a definition of intuition which seems to be a different process than a physical gut feeling. Here’s the best differentiating explanation I could find about instinct, gut feeling, and intuition.

Instinct — our innate inclination toward a particular behavior as opposed to a learned response.

Gut Feeling — a hunch or a sensation that appears quickly in consciousness (notable enough to be acted upon if one chooses) without us being fully aware of the underlying reasons for its occurrence.

Intuition — the process giving us the ability to know something directly without analytic reasoning, bridging the gap between the conscious and subconscious parts of our mind, and also between instinct and reason.

If I understand this correctly, gut feelings are short flashes of raw sensory alerts while intuition is a higher-evolved mechanism of subconsciously processing information without stopping to run reams of paper through the mental printer. So, my reasoning goes, intuition must be more of a learned behavior manufactured through experiences, both consciously built and subconsciously retained. Gut feelings, on the other hand, are more instinctive and primal.

I looked around for scientific studies on intuition and found credible works by Daniel Kahneman who won a Nobel Prize for his work on human judgment and decision-making. Without going into detail, Dr. Kahneman and his group conclusively proved there was a valid science behind human intuition which included—not surprisingly—gut feelings.

Another scientific study led by Dr. Gerd Gigerenzer of the Max Plank Institute for Human Development, agreed. Dr. Gigerenzer stated, “People rarely make decisions on the basis of reason alone, especially when the problems faced are complex. I think intuition’s merit has been vastly underappreciated as a form of unconscious intelligence.”

These intuition studies tie into works done by Dr. Gary Klein’s organization at the Natural Decision Making Movement who studied real-life decision processing by people in high-stress situations. They observed police officers, soldiers, paramedics, nurses, and fighter pilots coming to the conclusion that these professionals’ intuitive abilities developed from recognizing regularities, repetitions, and similarities between information available to them combined with their past experiences.

Out of their scientific work of studying intuitive reactions under stressful and challenging situations involving time pressure, uncertainty, unclear goals, and organizational restraints came a fighter pilot training model called the OODA Loop or the Circle of Competence. It’s a simple formula every high-performance jet jockey now memorizes to the point of being instinctive, intuitive, and gut-felt. It goes like this:

O — Observe
O — Orient
D — Decide
A — Act

So, is developed intuition, or its cruder form of visceral gut feeling, reliable? I’d say if it’s good enough to train fighter pilots with then it’s good enough for us. Let’s put it to the test.

I found a terribly non-scientific (but totally fun) click-bait site with a ten-question roll-through called the Queendom Gut Instinct Test. You can take it for a spin here:

https://www.queendom.com/queendom_tests/transfer

To score your results, you have to click the boxes at the site, but don’t worry—there’s no cost involved, and it’s an interesting self-perspective based on your gut reaction answers. These are the ten questions and multiple choice answers:

1. Did you ever get the sense that something was wrong or someone was in danger and ended up being right?
Yes ———  No ———

2. Do you believe that your gut instinct is at least as reliable as your rational mind?
Yes ———  No ———

3. Do you believe that a person can give off good or bad “vibes?”
Yes ———  No ———

4. You’re shopping with your partner for a new home. The real estate agent you’re working with pulls up to a beautiful house in the exact style you are looking for. However, when you walk through the front door, you are suddenly overcome with a sense of dread and foreboding. The place has a really creepy ambiance. What would you do?
A ——— Walk right back out. There is definitely something wrong with this place.
B ——— Ask the agent about the house’s history. If something bad happened here, I am not      buying it.
C ——— Do a tour of the place, since I am here anyway. If I can’t shake the negative feeling       AND there are major structural issues with the house, then I won’t buy it.
D ——— Shake it off. Even if something occurred, my partner and I will fill it with better memories.
F ——— Make an offer. Who cares about the house’s history? This is my dream home!

5. Two weeks before you’re about to go on a trip overseas, you have a recurring dream that the airplane you’re on needs to make an emergency landing due to a technical failure. What would you do?
A ——— Ignore it. It’s just a sign that I am nervous about flying.
B ——— Go on the trip, but say a few prayers or bring my lucky charm.
C ——— Reschedule my flight. There’s obviously a reason why I am having this dream every night.

6. Your friend introduces you to his or her new significant other. From the first conversation, you get the sense that there is something off about this person – like he/she is hiding something, or not being genuine. What would you do?
A ——— Dismiss it as paranoia. I barely know this person, so I have no right to judge him or her so quickly.
B ——— Put the feeling aside for now, but keep an eye out for suspicious behavior.
C ——— Try to probe a bit and/or do some research to see if there is something to my hunch.
D ——— Warn my friend to be careful and not to trust this person too quickly – my gut is never wrong.

7. Time to upgrade your wheels. How would you most likely approach this purchase?
A ——— I would conduct some research, weigh the pros and cons of different models, and then find a car that fits my needs and budget.
B ——— I would do some research on different models, then test drive the car to see how I feel in it.
C ——— I would have a general idea of what I want, but it would come down to one thing: if it’s the right car for me, I will know it when I’m in it.

8. You’re out buying coffee when you come across an old colleague who left the company to start his own business. He had a major fallout with management when he was turned down for a promotion. He says his startup is doing great, and he offers you a job on his team with a lucrative salary as well as benefits. It sounds like an amazing opportunity – but your gut is telling you to turn it down. What would you do?
A ——— Thank him for the offer, but decline. My gut is obviously picking up on something that he’s not telling me.
B ——— Ask him to give me some time to consider the offer, and then do some research on his company to see if it’s doing as well as he says it is.
C ——— Jump on the offer. There is no way I would turn down this amazing chance for a better job!

9. As you’re leaving your friend’s place and walking to your car, you hear a clear voice in your head say, “Don’t drive home. Stay here for the night.” You decide to listen and sleep over. The next morning, you find out that there was a fatal 8-car accident the night before – on the exact road you were planning to take, at the exact time you were about to leave. What would you most likely be thinking?
A ——— “Interesting coincidence.”
B ——— “That’s so strange. Maybe someone is looking out for me.”
C ——— “I am so grateful I listened to that warning in my head.”

10. You’re at a convenience store to pick up a lottery ticket. How do you choose your numbers?
A ——— I let the machine pick them at random.
B ——— I play the same numbers every time.
C ——— I pick the numbers based on what my gut tells me.

Again, you’ll have to take the test at its online site to get your Gut Instinct Score. How did I make out? I got an 85, and here’s what the site said about me:

Your gut instinct has been your ally. It’s that older, wiser friend who always has your back and stops you from making stupid decisions. When your gut tells you to pay attention, to be careful, to not trust someone, or to go right instead of left, you won’t question the information. You are in tune with your intuition. Chances are that on those rare occasions when you didn’t trust your gut, you regretted it. Just keep in mind that your logical reasoning is your ally too. It is not the antagonist to your intuition, it’s simply an additional source of information and a way to process it all. Just as you shouldn’t rely solely on your intuition to make major financial decisions, you also shouldn’t rely on logic alone as a survival mechanism. Make good use of both. When you use analytical reasoning to evaluate a problem and your intuition to pick up on deeper, more hidden sources of information, you’ve got the best of both worlds.

The Gut Instinct Test doesn’t tell you which questions you got “right or wrong”. I think there’s some sort of algorithmic scoring process that gives you a value which is why I got an 85 or an 8.5 out of 10. I know which one I bombed (for sure) and that was the lotto number thing. I always use the machine quick-pick because I’m too lazy to think it out for myself.

How about you DyingWords followers? Do you trust your gut feelings? And if you take the test, how about sharing your results?

CARL SAGAN’S BULLSHIT DETECTION KIT

Carl Sagan was one of the Twentieth Century’s great critical thinkers. His peers called Sagan the patron saint of reason and the master of scientific balance between blind belief, skepticism, questioning, and openness. Carl Sagan had the chops to back it up. He was a cosmologist, astrophysicist, philosopher, humanist, and prolific author as well as being the architect behind SETI — the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Sagan was also good at detecting bullshit.

I just read Carl Sagan’s book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. It was published in 1996 shortly before Sagan’s untimely death from myelodysplasia. In it, he debunks superstition, some organized religion beliefs, psychics, sorcery, faith healing, UFOs, witchcraft, and demons — especially the fire-breathing dragon in his garage. One of Sagan’s chapters is The Fine Art of Baloney Detection. He was profanity-correct twenty-five years ago. Today, we know he’d call it “Bullshit”.

In The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan takes a hard run at paid product endorsements by unscrupulous scientists who “betray contempt for the intelligence of their customers and introduce an insidious corruption of popular attitudes about scientific objectivity”. Sagan also predicted the rise of fake news and the down-slide of political ethics and honesty. It made me wonder what he’d say about Trump.

Carl Sagan said that “through their training, scientists are equipped with a baloney (bullshit) detection kit — a set of cognitive tools and techniques that fortify the mind against the penetration of falsehoods”. Here is a list of what’s inside Carl Sagan’s bullshit detection kit:

1. Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”

2. Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.

3. Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.

4. Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among “multiple working hypotheses,” has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.

5. Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.

6. Quantify. If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.

7. If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them.

8. Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.

9. Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle — an electron, say — in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.

The Fine Art of Bullshit Detection drills deeper. Carl Sagan writes, “Just as important as learning these helpful tools and techniques, is unlearning and avoiding the most common pitfalls of common sense. In addition to teaching us what to do when evaluating a claim to knowledge, any good baloney detection kit must also teach us what not to do. It helps us recognize the most common and perilous fallacies of logic and rhetoric. Many good examples can be found in religion and politics, because their practitioners are so often obliged to justify two contradictory propositions”.

Carl Sagan goes on to admonish the most common and perilous pitfalls — many rooted in our chronic discomfort with ambiguity — and he uses examples of each in action.

1. Ad hominem — Latin for “to the man,” attacking the arguer and not the argument (e.g., The Reverend Dr. Smith is a known Biblical fundamentalist, so her objections to evolution need not be taken seriously)

2. Argument from authority (e.g., President Richard Nixon should be re-elected because he has a secret plan to end the war in Southeast Asia — but because it was secret, there was no way for the electorate to evaluate it on its merits; the argument amounted to trusting him because he was President: a mistake, as it turned out)

3. Argument from adverse consequences (e.g., A God meting out punishment and reward must exist, because if He didn’t, society would be much more lawless and dangerous — perhaps even ungovernable. Or: The defendant in a widely publicized murder trial must be found guilty; otherwise, it will be an encouragement for other men to murder their wives)

4. Appeal to ignorance — the claim that whatever has not been proved false must be true, and vice versa (e.g., There is no compelling evidence that UFOs are not visiting the Earth; therefore UFOs exist — and there is intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. Or: There may be seventy kazillion other worlds, but not one is known to have the moral advancement of the Earth, so we’re still central to the Universe.) This impatience with ambiguity can be criticized in the phrase: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

5. Special pleading, often to rescue a proposition in deep rhetorical trouble (e.g., How can a merciful God condemn future generations to torment because, against orders, one woman induced one man to eat an apple? Special plead: you don’t understand the subtle Doctrine of Free Will. Or: How can there be an equally godlike Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in the same Person? Special plead: You don’t understand the Divine Mystery of the Trinity. Or: How could God permit the followers of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — each in their own way enjoined to heroic measures of loving kindness and compassion — to have perpetrated so much cruelty for so long? Special plead: You don’t understand Free Will again. And anyway, God moves in mysterious ways.)

6. Begging the question, also called assuming the answer (e.g., We must institute the death penalty to discourage violent crime. But does the violent crime rate in fact fall when the death penalty is imposed? Or: The stock market fell yesterday because of a technical adjustment and profit-taking by investors — but is there any independent evidence for the causal role of “adjustment” and profit-taking; have we learned anything at all from this purported explanation?)

7. Observational selection, also called the enumeration of favorable circumstances, or as the philosopher Francis Bacon described it, counting the hits and forgetting the misses (e.g., A state boasts of the Presidents it has produced, but is silent on its serial killers) statistics of small numbers — a close relative of observational selection (e.g., “They say 1 out of every 5 people is Chinese. How is this possible? I know hundreds of people, and none of them is Chinese. Yours truly.” Or: “I’ve thrown three sevens in a row. Tonight I can’t lose.”)

8. Misunderstanding of the nature of statistics (e.g., President Dwight Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence);

9. Inconsistency (e.g., Prudently plan for the worst of which a potential military adversary is capable, but thriftily ignore scientific projections on environmental dangers because they’re not “proved.” Or: Attribute the declining life expectancy in the former Soviet Union to the failures of communism many years ago, but never attribute the high infant mortality rate in the United States (now highest of the major industrial nations) to the failures of capitalism. Or: Consider it reasonable for the Universe to continue to exist forever into the future, but judge absurd the possibility that it has infinite duration into the past);

10. Non sequitur — Latin for “It doesn’t follow” (e.g., Our nation will prevail because God is great. But nearly every nation pretends this to be true; the German formulation was “Gott mit uns”). Often those falling into the non sequitur fallacy have simply failed to recognize alternative possibilities;

11. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc — Latin for “It happened after, so it was caused by” (e.g., Jaime Cardinal Sin, Archbishop of Manila: “I know of … a 26-year-old who looks 60 because she takes [contraceptive] pills.” Or: Before women got the vote, there were no nuclear weapons)

12. Meaningless question (e.g., What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? But if there is such a thing as an irresistible force there can be no immovable objects, and vice versa)

13. Excluded middle, or false dichotomy — considering only the two extremes in a continuum of intermediate possibilities (e.g., “Sure, take his side; my husband’s perfect; I’m always wrong.” Or: “Either you love your country or you hate it.” Or: “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem”)

14. Short-term vs. long-term — a subset of the excluded middle, but so important I’ve pulled it out for special attention (e.g., We can’t afford programs to feed malnourished children and educate pre-school kids. We need to urgently deal with crime on the streets. Or: Why explore space or pursue fundamental science when we have so huge a budget deficit?);

15. Slippery slope, related to excluded middle (e.g., If we allow abortion in the first weeks of pregnancy, it will be impossible to prevent the killing of a full-term infant. Or, conversely: If the state prohibits abortion even in the ninth month, it will soon be telling us what to do with our bodies around the time of conception);

16. Confusion of correlation and causation (e.g., A survey shows that more college graduates are homosexual than those with lesser education; therefore education makes people gay. Or: Andean earthquakes are correlated with closest approaches of the planet Uranus; therefore — despite the absence of any such correlation for the nearer, more massive planet Jupiter — the latter causes the former)

17. Straw man — caricaturing a position to make it easier to attack (e.g., Scientists suppose that living things simply fell together by chance — a formulation that willfully ignores the central Darwinian insight, that Nature ratchets up by saving what works and discarding what doesn’t. Or — this is also a short-term/long-term fallacy — environmentalists care more for snail darters and spotted owls than they do for people)

18. Suppressed evidence, or half-truths (e.g., An amazingly accurate and widely quoted “prophecy” of the assassination attempt on President Reagan is shown on television; but — an important detail — was it recorded before or after the event? Or: These government abuses demand revolution, even if you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs. Yes, but is this likely to be a revolution in which far more people are killed than under the previous regime? What does the experience of other revolutions suggest? Are all revolutions against oppressive regimes desirable and in the interests of the people?)

19. Weasel words (e.g., The separation of powers of the U.S. Constitution specifies that the United States may not conduct a war without a declaration by Congress. On the other hand, Presidents are given control of foreign policy and the conduct of wars, which are potentially powerful tools for getting themselves re-elected. Presidents of either political party may therefore be tempted to arrange wars while waving the flag and calling the wars something else — “police actions,” “armed incursions,” “protective reaction strikes,” “pacification,” “safeguarding American interests,” and a wide variety of “operations,” such as “Operation Just Cause.” Euphemisms for war are one of a broad class of reinventions of language for political purposes. Talleyrand said, “An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public”)

Carl Sagan ends the chapter with a necessary disclaimer:

“Like all tools, the baloney (bullshit) detection kit can be misused, applied out of context, or even employed as a rote alternative to thinking. But applied judiciously, it can make all the difference in the world — not least in evaluating our own arguments before we present them to others.