When
the Media Tell Half the Story C.
Eugene Emery Jr.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What
a difference nearly three decades doesn't make. Twenty-eight
years after Chariots of the Gods? author Eric von Däniken brought pseudoscience
to new lows by suggesting that our ancestors were too stupid to create the pyramids,
Stonehenge, and other monuments without the help of space aliens, his ideas are
alive and well thanks to a prime-time September 26, 1996, ABC-TV special, "Chariots
of the Gods? The Mysteries Continue." The
show suggested that there might be new information to support von Däniken's
theories that ancient drawings depict spaceships and our ancestors' knowledge
of the universe must have come from extraterrestrials. The
odd thing was that the program gave plenty of hints to suggest that von Däniken
is a crank. Yet ABC chose to gloss over the problems. One
of the first hints came when von Däniken talked about the ruins of the Aztec
city of Tenochtitlán, where the main ceremonial plaza with its huge flat-topped
pyramids was supposedly laid out in a way that produced "a remarkably accurate
scale model of our solar system," complete with Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto,
three planets invisible to the naked eye. If
anybody at ABC had known anything about astronomy, they should have questioned
several aspects of the "model." First, if it was so accurate, why was
the only big gap between Saturn and Uranus? (Answer: The layout wasn't intended
to be a model of the solar system.) Why did von Däniken choose not to put
a planet in the circle next to Uranus, which looked tailor-made to house a planet?
(Answer: Then the "model" wouldn't fit right.) And
if space aliens really developed the solar system model, why is Pluto included?
These days, because of its size, orbit, and origin, astronomers barely regard
Pluto as a real planet. It retains that distinction out of tradition. The
hour-long program was filled with such problems. On
another artifact, an image of what appeared to be a snake became, in von Däniken's
eyes, a light bulb filament. In another case, three lines of stones that formed
a jagged line were, instead, magically converted into two equilateral triangles
and a right-angle triangle -- supposed proof that space aliens gave our ancestors
geometry, trigonometry, and the Pythagorean theorem. The famous markings on the
Nazca Plains in Peru were shown, with host Richard Karn (of the ABC comedy series
Home Improvement) stating that "without the ability to fly, experts don't
know how the Nazcans gained the perspective needed to create such elaborate figures
on such a huge scale." Von Däniken and the folks at ABC are probably
still wondering how the streets of New York City or Washington, D.C., could have
been laid out so precisely when none of the engineers responsible had ever been
in an airplane, or how hoaxers can create intricate crop circle patterns in the
dead of night -- best viewed from the air -- without high-tech equipment. The
problem with such shows is that they are often produced by the network's entertainment
division, where accuracy and fairness don't have a high priority. But
the "Chariots of the Gods?" special was followed by a Turning Point
program on "Alternative Medicine: Hope or Hype?" that was produced by
ABC News. It featured respected moderator Hugh Downs talking about therapeutic
touch, hypnosis, iridology (the alleged ability to discern diseases by looking
at the colored part of the eye), and ozone enemas. The
program was a mix of messages. While Downs cited several alternative medical methods
and pointed out that "no medical studies have proven that any of these systems
work," he also spoke of trying "unorthodox treatments with mind-boggling
results." It
featured a patient of cardiac surgeon Mehmet Oz, of Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital
in New York, who has decided to offer some of his patients a menu of techniques
-- hypnosis, Yoga, therapeutic touch -- in an effort to see what works. Left unanswered
was the question of how he's going to be able to tease out which discipline is
beneficial and which is bogus if each patient is being given several types of
treatments. The
show also profiled a former ABC News producer with breast cancer who decided not
to have radiation treatments so she could, instead, follow the guidance of Park
Avenue physician Dr. Nicholas J. Gonzalez. Gonzalez, according to the program,
had her taking 134 nutritional supplement pills a day, performing two coffee enemas
a day, and drinking glasses of Epsom salts, olive oil, and whipping cream every
few weeks. Gonzalez freely acknowledged that there were no scientific studies
to back up his regimen. Downs
and ABC didn't seem particularly alarmed by all this, approaching the story with
sometimes-bemused curiosity and making it sound like we'll soon know whether this
stuff works. But
from the consumer's point of view, there's a big difference between a medical
treatment where the scientific evidence is not yet in, and one where tests have
been conducted and the results show that the treatment is bogus. ABC
repeatedly failed to make that distinction. Take
iridology, for example. The network pointed out that there was no proof that iridology
worked. That's true. But that's only half the truth. Iridology is not just unproven;
it has been tested and shown to be bogus. ABC
also took a hands-off approach to reporting on therapeutic touch, neglecting to
note that there are legitimate scientific reasons why doctors are skeptical. The
program mentioned that the people who perform therapeutic touch claim to be able
to massage and mold an invisible energy field into a healthier shape. But in order
for therapeutic touch to work, (1) an energy aura must exist around the human
body, (2) practitioners must be able to sense it, (3) the aura must be malleable
by human hands, and (4) changes in the shape of the aura must translate into effects
on the health of the body. Downs
and his ABC team neglected to note that nobody's been able to prove that the field
exists, never mind that it's malleable. (Therapeutic touch promoters try to counter
with the argument that the field has been photographed using Kirlian photography,
which supposedly captures energy around living things. They usually have trouble
responding if someone asks, in turn, why energy auras have been seen around Kirlian
photographs of inanimate objects like paper clips.) The
network boasts that "more Americans get their news from ABC." But if
news means giving viewers the whole story, this was one night when ABC did a disservice
to its audience.
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When
the country's best known psychic, Jeane Dixon, died of a heart attack January
25 at the age of 79, it was disappointing to see that the media based their obituaries
more on her legend than on the facts.
Dixon became famous for predicting the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Yet hers was a forecast that nobody
has been able to document. Various
obituaries made reference to a 1956 article in Parade magazine in which she supposedly
said that a tall, young, blue-eyed, Democratic president elected in 1960 would
die in office. Actually,
the May 13, 1956, article in Parade said, "Mrs. Dixon thinks (the 1960 election)
will be dominated by labor and won by a Democrat. But he will be assassinated
or die in office, `although not necessarily in his first term."' As Terence
Hines noted in Pseudoscience and the Paranormal (Prometheus Books, 1988, p. 43),
her prediction covers a lot of possibilities. In fact, she predicted in a 1960
forecast that "John F. Kennedy would fail to win the presidency." Nonetheless,
virtually every obituary gave her far more credit than her actual forecast deserved.
USA Today, in its January 27 edition, bluntly stated that "her prediction
that President John F. Kennedy would die in office came true." Most
news outlets tempered their stories by mentioning a few of her mistakes, most
notably her forecast that the Soviet Union would beat the United States to the
moon and that World War III would begin in 1958. Unfortunately, the "sometimes
she was right, but sometimes she was wrong" attitude doesn't cut it. Because
nobody expects a psychic to be perfect, the failed forecasts may have simply reinforced
the idea in the minds of some that her gifts were real. In
fact, Dixon seldom made a real forecast. She was the queen of equivocation. Her
predictions in the supermarket tabloid the Star were so full of ifs, coulds, and
mights, she almost always had an excuse if a prediction failed to come true. Consider,
for example, her predictions for last year: "This winter, Nelson Mandela
faces a personal crisis -- and danger could return in April. His former wife Winnie
could win an election and be returned to government (Star, January 9, 1996, emphasis
added). For 1997, she said, "Late October could bring another plane tragedy
over water," "Roseanne is headed for big health problems if she doesn't
slow down," and "A temptress or even a female assassin could be waiting
for President Clinton on a foreign trip. His best defense to ward off trouble
will be to bring along his wife Hillary" (Star, January 7, 1997, emphasis
added). She also
could be extraordinarily vague. The February 11, 1997, issue of the Star, which
carried an eight-page tribute to her, had to stretch to find seventeen "amazingly
accurate" predictions. The magazine gave her credit for forecasting the March
24, 1989, Exxon Valdez oil spill because she reportedly said, "A shipping
accident will make headlines in the spring." The tabloid gave her credit
for predicting the AIDS epidemic, which surfaced in the early 1980s, because she
said, in 1978, that "a dreadful plague will strike down thousands of people
in this country." On
the unusual occasion when she made an unequivocal prediction for an unexpected
event that would be guaranteed to make news, her forecasts nearly always flopped.
In the 1995 issue of the Star, she said it would be the year "Pope John Paul
II will have a hand in liberating Cuba from Castro" and "a whole new
world of dinosaurs will be discovered in Central Asia." With
Dixon's death, members of the media had a chance to set the record straight about
a woman whose name had become a household word, largely on the basis of a myth.
By and large, they missed the opportunity.
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