Lies and Delusions

 Social media has enabled unfounded conspiracy theories to propagate at lightning speed.  Such distortions of reality, however, are not a new phenomenon.  The earliest I can personally recall occurred in 1954 when I lived near Seattle.  It was the Windshield Pitting Mystery. The first reports originated in the nearby community of Bellingham where - as reported by local papers - "tiny holes, pits, and dings ... seemingly appeared in the windshields of cars at an unprecedented rate"  Purveyors of the story came up with explanations which included cosmic rays, sand-flea eggs and fallout from H-bomb tests. 

Seattle Post- Intelligencer Collection

Police departments in the Northwest were forced to exhaustively investigate the windshield stories and soon concluded that the whole thing was the product of what was deemed at the time as an example of collective hysteria.

A careful combing of news archives would no doubt turn up many similar examples of theories based on flimsy reasoning.  I particularly recall a couple from the 1990s which appeared among communities of people looking for explanations and relief from disabling psychological and developmental conditions.

I was employed for a time as a training program developer by an agency providing care services for people who needed extensive help in meeting the challenges of daily life.  We frequently relied on presentations to staff by therapists from the area who were familiar with issues of the population we served. One such therapist came with an invitation from our program's director to tell us about her practice of Recovered Memory Therapy.

The underlying assertion of the therapeutic approach was that people commonly repressed memories of sexual abuse which led to severe psychological problems later in life.  The therapist which came to address our staff claimed to be able to help people uncover the repressed memories and thus appropriately address the treatment leading to recovery.

I recall being very skeptical myself about the claims made about the Recovered Memory techniques.  I do not remember any very clear opinions from other staff about the presentation and I do not know if any referrals to that kind of therapy were generated by the agency I worked for. However, the beliefs and practices related to the idea of recoverable memories of abuse became entrenched in therapeutic practices on a very wide scale.

Ultimately, the claims of value in the Recalled Memory movement were debunked by real scientific investigation, but not before a lot of damage was done to patients and their families. Even now after many years it is not hard to find remnants and variations of the movement which include beliefs in the existence of cults of satanic child abuse, as was alleged during the attacks on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election.

Another destructive outbreak of pseudoscience in the disability treatment field contributed to my decision to quit the agency that employed me.  I recall going to a big training session which included people from all over New Mexico in which a case was made for using Facilitated Communication for non-verbal autistic people.

The idea was that the afflicted people could spell out meaningful messages on a typewriter with a facilitator providing physical support at the elbow.  The likelihood of deception was so transparent that I stood up in the middle of the presentation to point out the problems with the approach, and also to express doubt that the presenters had not seen the many available news articles about the refutation by legitimate scientific sources of any validity in the technique.

Today, we see many examples of rational and ethical failures similar to those of the past. What is new is that the damage is routinely being amplified by government agencies which originally offered some protection from such abuses. Perhaps real science will come to our rescue as in the past, but there seems no clear path to that at the moment.