Skeptical Eye: About 20 years ago Ireland was in the grip of a veritable epidemic of moving statues, the most famous of which performed in Ballinspittle, Co Cork.
People flocked to witness the event and reports of the statues' movements were widespread.
I remember Gay Byrne dispatching a self-professed sceptic from among his radio show research staff who returned to Dublin converted. She had seen it with her own eyes - what more could be said. It was true.
This concrete statue defied the law of gravity in full view of many dependable witnesses including a local Garda sergeant. All of the witnesses could not be wrong. Or could they?
There are many ways in which our perceptions of the world may be distorted. In the case of the Ballinspittle statue, staring at the lighted crown atop the head of the Virgin Mary against a dark background resulted in the impression of movement where there was none.
The effect was in all likelihood heightened by the expectation of the pilgrims and the cries of those who "saw" the statue move. Stone statues do not levitate. However, this fact of physics may be undone by a wish to believe in magic combined with the right atmospheric conditions.
The legends of ghosts, fairies and banshees that inhabit our folklore may have emanated from such real events as the wailing of cats in bushes on dark windswept nights as revellers returned home on deserted country roads, or from the sudden sighting of a barn owl moving silently across a dark laneway, its white face and underside gliding in the manner of a phantom.
It is well known that our eyes and ears play tricks on us. We see and hear things that have no apparent physical presence. In the phenomenon of back masking, in which music is played backwards, demonic messages can indeed be heard. Perhaps the most vivid example comes from Led Zeppelin's song Stairway to Heaven. But the message has not been inserted by the band nor anyone else. We construct it from the gibberish in our attempt to make sense of what we are hearing.
The persistence of beliefs in a paranormal basis for phenomena such as those outlined above is facilitated by many anecdotes and testimonials as to their veracity.
"I saw it with my own eyes." "My brother, cousin uncle witnessed the event." Testimonials can be very powerful from a psychological perspective in convincing people of some very, very unlikely things. And the tendency to be fooled is not necessarily correlated with intelligence or training.
The well-known Harvard psychiatrist John Mack, who sadly died in a car crash last year, began working with people who claimed they had been abducted by aliens. They were so convincing and emotionally intense in relating their stories that he came to believe that they were telling the truth. He came to this conclusion despite a lack of objective evidence.
Another psychiatrist, Brian Weiss, claims that many of our problems emanate from events that occurred in previous lives. He now also claims that as well as regressing patients into their past lives, he can progress them into the future.
He bases much of his therapy on these untenable notions. His praises are sung by an Irish psychiatrist, Michael Corry, and his co-author, Aine Tubridy, in their book, Going Mad? Highly trained professionals can produce and promote some very bizarre ideas.
I often attend alternative medicine fairs. At these events everybody is right and there is no debate, just mutual encouragement of a plethora of practices no matter how crazy they might seem. Critical thinking is not encouraged and you are expected to leave all critical faculties at the door and revert to the supposed sanctity of your childhood credulity as you enter.
Mainstream practitioners, such as doctors, scientists and so on hold conferences at which data and ideas are presented and debate ensues as to how useful or not the presented material is.
Scepticism and critical thinking are actively encouraged and it can be daunting to present and have your research or theories challenged and criticised. This activity, however, serves to aid progress and the development of new ideas and is helpful in pointing out errors.
Alternative practices, on the other hand, lack this kind of discipline and languish in a mire of stagnation. They lack the practical and theoretical tools to progress, constantly insisting on the wisdom of the past and the power of the esoteric knowledge of the ancients.
Science and modern medicine is where the future lies despite the difficulties evident in both disciplines. Problems in these professions are faced and tackled and things move on. Those who depend solely on the lore of the ancients for their health may place themselves at serious risk.
At one alternative fair I met a man selling ESSIAC tea. This is claimed to cure cancer. When I challenged this notion he became immediately defensive saying that he was not claiming that ESSIAC cured cancer. He then handed me a large sheaf of testimonials stating that it was the users who were making the claims. In my view he was simply passing the buck and denying responsibility.
Any claim that is supported only by anecdotes and testimonials should be treated with extreme caution. As a sole source of evidence, these criteria are worthless. The claims of virtually every alternative practice that I know of fall into this category. Caveat emptor.