‘Calgary researcher’s room-to-roam proposal may be fittest theory‘ was the headline  of an article written by Jamie Komarnicki and published in the Wednesday, August 25, 2010 of the Calgary Herald.  It seems one way or another, news organizations across the world have picked up and reported that University of Bristol researchers Michael Benton, Sarda Sahney and Paul Ferry have developed a replacement for current evolutionary theory with which Charles Darwin is most closely associated.

The world-wide attention is not surprising. A new theory of evolution would be big news and worthy of such attention. Unfortunately for the University of Bristol research team, that is not what we are dealing with here.  Far from groundbreaking, the University of Bristol research team study appears to be rather pedestrian.  How did such a profoundly ordinary study become a global sensation? Well, start with a research team more adept at self-promotion than good science and add in a gullible media.  To create a perfect storm of confusion, have one of the interviews conducted by The Calgary Herald, a newspaper with a strong, almost maniacal, anti-evolution and anti-Darwin agenda.

The Sarda Sahney Interview

Which appears to have happened here. The Calgary Herald article was apparently the result of an interview conducted with one of the research team members, Sarda Sahney who happens to reside in Calgary. From what is contained in the article, it appears that much of the confusion was generated by Ms. Sahney in framing the discussion in terms of ‘survival of the fittest‘.  She is quoted in the article as saying: When Darwin was talking about survival of the fittest, he saw individual animals and species competing with each other for resources.This is a gross simplification that creates a convenient and easy to knock-down strawman. Writer Jamie Komarnicki  follows this up with: A cornerstone of evolutionary theory — Darwin’s famously coined “survival of the fittest” — is being questioned by researchers at the University of Bristol who argue competition isn’t the driving force of evolution. Apparently, Jamie couldn’t be bothered to do even the most rudimentary research.

Darwin didn’t coin use the phrase survival of the fittest. That was done by Herbert Spencer who proposed it as a synonym for natural selection. Darwin occasionally used  the phrase but only within this limited definition -  in which fittest meant a fit within in an ecological or environmental niche – not, as Ms. Sahney and Jamie Komarnicki infer, a competitive battle in which the most physical fit or strongest species wins. By framing things in this way, Ms. Sahney essentially sets up Darwin and modern evolutionary theory as simplistic and outdated, making it all the easier to posit her own room-to-roam replacement. Whatever Ms. Sahney intentions though, she must have been aware (or certainly should have been), of the fuss this would create along with the headlines.  I guess that’s how you get your picture in the paper.

Richard Feynman once said in describing science:  .  .  . reality must take precedence over public relations, for Mother Nature cannot be fooled.  Evidently, University of Bristol researchers have taken it upon themselves to put public relations before reality in an effort to fool the rest of us.

To Ms. Sahney’s credit, she is quoted at the end of the article as saying: We’re not saying Darwin is wrong; we’re just saying he didn’t have all the information and we can expand upon his theories. But this is a rather flaccid statement. Would anyone have paid attention if Ms. Sahney put reality clearly before public relations and said: Nothing we are proposing conflicts with evolutionary theory or Darwin. We are suggesting the availability of new environmental space may have been a more important factor than competitive pressures in driving speciation on land.

The Role of the Media (and The Herald).

While the role of the research team members in this mess shouldn’t be excused, neither can the role of the media.

First, is the general ignorance of the press.  The media doesn’t understand science and refuses to invest the money or time to obtain some expertise. Now I am not talking rocket scientists here. To bend an old quote, before any member of the media writes a science story, two things should be true; the writer should have taken a university level science course and should have passed it. When ignorance is combined with the belief that every story must be dumbed-down for a public comprised of idiots, we get a double whammy of stupid. (It may well be the public is comprised of idiots  but the media would be wise to remember that we are all members of the public – bloggers and  newspaper editors included.)

Second, the deliberate twisting of  facts and stories to fit an agenda. The Calgary Herald will grasp at any straw that looks as if it could support an anti-Darwin argument. All that any researcher would have to imply is that something may disagree with Darwin, and you are sure to get a full-blown over-the-top piece of nonsense claiming that science has discovered that Darwin and evolution are wrong or about to be replaced.

Third, the willingness of newspapers to run stories they pick up ‘on the wire’ without taking the time to do any fact checking. No newspaper should run a science story that originated from the Herald without doing a little checking of their own. Perhaps the Herald could put up the media equivalent of those dangerous goods signs. It could read something like: Caution, this science story was written by staff of the Calgary Herald. We have no flipping idea what we’re talking about.

So where does all this leaves us?

Well, don’t expect a revolution in evolutionary biology anytime soon. Darwin and evolution are quite safe despite rumours and news reports to the contrary. The implication in  ‘Calgary researcher’s room-to-roam proposal may be fittest theory‘ that Darwin and evolutionary theory are about to be replaced, is absolute nonsense.

Researchers need to be careful and balance the need to promote, with the need to tell the truth. In science, truth trumps public relations. Anything else and we end up in a Fleischmann and Pons world where scientific integrity is sacrificed for the cameras.

The Calgary Herald still can’t get a scientific story straight, Their anti-science and anti-evolution biases are just too strong. No one, including other journalists, should ever trust a science story originating with the Herald.

Thanks to all those that have written in. I really appreciate hearing from you.

See you all again in late August or early Spetember.

In Lessons from my brush with polio, former Calgary Herald writer Catherine Ford gets it right in describing the advances in modern medicine and the snake-oil salesman of the alternative medicine industry. Some highlights of note:

Modern medicine has delivered us from the scourge of smallpox, yellow fever, cholera, diphtheria and tuberculosis. Nobody in Canada or the U.S, need fear any of the childhood diseases that were common a century ago,

So why are so many parents in Canada and the U.S. refusing to protect their children? In this, they are aided and abetted by hucksters of “natural” medicine and misguided celebrities who fuel the dangerous notion that vaccinations cause autism.

I would add, however, that the hucksters and misguided celebritieswould not be so effective if their positions were not so actively promoted by the media – including Catherine’s own Calgary Herald and the CBC – both of which march to pro alternative medicine agenda.

Ms. Ford ends with:

Perhaps that’s why I hold parents who fail to protect their children by taking advantage of medical miracles – which are free or at minimal cost – in such contempt.

This raises an interesting point. Do we believe that parents want their children to get sick and die? Probably not. Most parents take actions they believe will help their children. Unfortunately, some of these actions will condemn their children to sickness or death. In these cases, parents may well be the victims as well. Victims of the alternative medicine hucksters and the media that so actively support them.

That’s why I hold the hucksters and so much of the media in contempt.

More related good news

The good folks at the Skeptics Society have published a small paper entitled; Top Ten Things You Should Know About Alternative Medicine by Harriet Hall, M.D., the SkepDoc. I always enjoy Dr. Hall’s columns in Skeptic Magazine. She writes well, knows her stuff and is waaaay smarter than me. For example, I can only think of one thing you should know about alternative medicine – it’s a croc. But Dr. Hall has identified ten things. It is a great read. Click on the link to download it from the Skeptics Society website.

The opening sentence gives some indication of the quality of thought involved: Every time you put your pen to paper, you open a window into your unconscious mind. Uh, no you don’t Valerie, but writing an article does provide a window into your conscious one. To quote Mark Twain: It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

Valerie’s piece is done in advance of a visit to Calgary by Annette Poizner, author of  as yet unpublished book, Reading from the Soul: Handwriting Analysis and the Tree of Life. Unpublished you say? I can’t imagine why. Annette is continuing her mission to promote graphology as a highly useful tool for the psychotherapist’s tool kit. To test graphology, Valerie volunteered  to have her handwriting analyzed. Here, in an extended quote, is the testing process and Valerie’s conclusions.

In advance of her upcoming talks in Calgary on June 17, Annette Poizner invited me to find out “what your handwriting says about you”.  She asked me to provide reams of handwriting: 10 early childhood memories, two drawings, the description of a dream, a page long essay describing my day and several examples of my signature.

Although we’ve never met in person, what she gleaned about my personality, strengths and weaknesses from those pages of squiggles left me speechless.

This left her speechless? To bad it didn’t leave her with the inability to write. Forget cold reading, with that much information in hand and a few well placed phone calls, anyone could impersonate Valerie well enough to participate in wholesale identity theft, walk away with her credit and bank card access or even arrange to pick up her children at school (if she has young children at school, I really don’t know). The point being, Valerie would never provide a stranger with this information because she is smart enough to know that by providing it, a stranger could easily do the things just described.  Yet the same person is so naive as to express astonishment when a graphologist (as if there is such a thing) armed with all this information is able to pull off a semi-competent warm reading.

Semi-competent warm reading, that sounds so judgmental. Judge for yourself, here are some of the findings that left Valerie speechless:

My big sprawling handwriting reveals me to be ‘a vibrant, imaginative, nurturing, sensual person’.

My forward-driving penmanship shows I’m ‘thrusting’ myself with too much male energy into the outer world, neglecting the female energies of reflection and introspection back on the left side of the page.

Poizner detected a ’schoolmarmish’ side in my handwriting that seeks to repress my undisciplined loops, the hastily unclosed ’ss’ and the inconsistent  squishing or flattening of some middle letter zones.

I know, this leaves me speechless too, although, I’ll wager for different reasons. I am speechless that there is a person on this earth so gullible as to be rendered speechless by this drivel. Then again, maybe there really is a sucker born every minute. If this describes you, Annette Poizner is speaking on the psychology of handwriting June 17 at 8 p.m. at Temple B’nai Tikvah in Calgary. The talk is entitled: ‘Kabbalah and the Psychology of Handwriting’ and it will examine celebrities’ handwriting to demonstrate how graphology expresses personality using principles that seemingly derive from Jewish mysticism.

I am speechless again.

That’s scary. Not true mind you, but scary.

The article written by Sarah Schmidt of Canwest News Service refers to the recently released INTERPHONE study. It plays fast and loose with the truth, but we can’t point fingers at the media alone in this case. The efforts of researchers to suck ever increasing amounts of money from agencies and organizations whose research grant evaluation standards are more about political correctness than scientific merit, can also be blamed here.

So let’s start with the findings.  The research found that there was no association between cellphone use and either glioma or meningioma. At the same time, according to the Herald, researchers argued, There was suggestions of an increased risk of glioma at the highest exposure levels.

Suggestions of an increased risk? What is that? I have been involved in the evaluation of research for most of my adult life and I have never heard of a hypothesis test for a suggestion. Sounds more like a plea for additional funding.

Ooops, what do you know. That is exactly what the researchers want. Leader of the research team Elisabeth Cardis of the University of Ottawa is quoted as saying: possible effects of long-term use of mobile phones require further investigation. Isn’t that always the case?

This is the standard plea of those that conduct worthless research. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) in the United States, one of the National Institutes of Health, has spent billions of dollars trying to find some alternative therapy that actually works.  So far nothing except that the, more research is needed, plea is always good for additional funding from a Congress willing to sell out the health of citizens for a few extra votes.

In this tradition, Jack Siemiatycki, Canada research chair in environmental epidemiology and population health at the University of Montreal, one of four Canadian researchers on the project is quoted as saying: the scientific information we have right now , there is no way for us to legitimately tell the public whether we think it’s one way or the other that’s more likely true. Huh?

This is the tactic of the elusive conclusion. If the evidence in a study shows, as this one did, that there is no link between cell phone use and cancer, claim that the study failed to find a link and suggest more research is needed. This makes it appear that there is a link, but that the study simply failed to find it. In fact, the study failed to find a link because there isn’t any, which is in itself, a very definite conclusion.

No more research is needed. The money would be better spent investigating plausible sources of cancer rather than this politically correct, pseudo-scientific nonsense.

Notice the word science is gone.

That’s because the Nature of Things is not about science anymore, or at least, not just about science. Now it is equally about the increasingly flaky, pseudo-scientific nonsense promoted by the program’s star, Dr. David Suzuki. I remember when Dr. Suzuki first joined the program 30 years ago. He shattered the image of scientist as nerd and presented science in a way that I thought was magic.

Things have changed. Now, Dr. Suzuki is trying to sell magic as science. Literally. Take a recent example. On May 13, the Nature of Things presented: Blue Buddha: Lost Secrets of Tibetan Medicine. The documentary follows Tuvan Lama, Tibetan Monk and traditional healer, as  as he treats patients, engages in traditional rituals and passes on this vast medical heritage to the next generation.

Dr. Suzuki’s overly earnest narration provides a nice contrast to the nonsense on the screen. For example, Dr. Suzuki tells us:

• ancient Tibetan medicines are only mixtures of ingredients and are ineffective until they are prayed over using special ancient Tibetan rituals and incantations,
• ancient Tibetan medicine is recognized and accepted as a comprehensive medical system, 
• Tibetan medicine understands how the mind affects the body and how our personal energy fields can be used to help the body heal itself.

This is only a small snippet of the stupidity presented. There is much more, as it takes a lot of nonsense to fill an hour of television, but I can’t remember it all. I do remember one scene though. It concerns an unfortunate elderly woman who is dying of stomach cancer. She comes to see Tuvan Lama and telling him of her condition, she asks for any help he can provide.  Tuvan Lama takes her hand, and after a deep spiritual moment, asks her if her stomach hurts!  He then provides her with some special medicine that has been prayed over (because you know, you like need that) but reminds her to get right with the Buddha, because evidently, she is still toast.

Wow, this is the kind of medicine we need in the west, especially in Alberta. We have got way too many people going to hospitals for things like cancer and it’s costing us a fortune. We could bring Tuvan Lama and other monks practicing these ancient healing arts over here. That way, our cancer victims could die much faster and at less cost. (Patient: I have Leukemia. Monk: Better get right with the Buddha cowboy because you’re going to boot hill. That’ll be $100. Next!)

It’s sad to see a great program like The Nature of Things, slide so far downhill.  In my view, it is  a betrayal of those that originally put the program together so many years ago. They wanted to explain and develop an appreciation for science among their fellow Canadians. Now, the Nature of Things is trying to sell Canadians that mysticism and magic are science.

It turns out, Dr. Suzuki has created a whole new show: The Nature of Nonsense.  Weekly on, where else, the CBC.

CBC National News anchor Peter Mansbridge was filled with the appropriate level of indignation introducing the story of insurance fraud on the April 16, 2010 edition of the National. Unfortunately, the CBC’s pro alternative-medicine bias (examples of which are searchable on this site) placed the CBC in a position where they couldn’t quite get it straight as to who is defrauding whom.

The “investigative journalistic report” came complete with hidden cameras, disguised microphones and undercover journalists posing as customers. In reality, what we got was a public relations exercise posing as journalism.

Here is the story. The CBC ‘uncovered’ that beauty-spas are billing health insurance companies for a virtual cornucopia of complementary and alternative medicine  services such as acupuncture, message therapy, osteopathy, naturopathy and chiropractic where where in fact, the beauty spas were only providing cosmetic services. For example, a beauty spa provides hot rock ‘therapy’, and claims it as message therapy. The hot rocks treatment is listed on an bill as massage therapy, signed by a  registered massage therapist, and then submitted to the insurer for payment. It was reported that one spa representative offered to cover $2,000 worth of cosmetic services with fake receipts.

Alistair Forsythe, a senior researcher and spokesperson at the Canadian Health Care Anti-Fraud Association, that represents the health insurance industry, was quoted in the CBC report as saying: “We call that theft at the end of the day.”

Well, the Canadian Health Care Anti-Fraud Association should know.

It wasn’t all that long ago that the health insurance industry refused to pay for alternative medical treatments and therapies on the quite sensible grounds that there was no evidence that such treatments were in any way effective. Insurance companies didn’t want to pay for therapies that didn’t work.

That attitude changed when the bean counters (primarily in health care insurance companies in the United States) pointed out that whether the treatments worked or not was irrelevant. All that mattered was the comparative cost of an alternative medical practitioner to a real doctor and the subsequent impact on corporate profits. By covering alternative treatments, insurance companies could save themselves a fortune. So what if the treatment is cosmetic or bogus? Better to pay $250 for worthless treatments (that could see the patient become seriously ill or worse) than pay $4,000 (for a treatment that may actually do some good).

The beauty of this real insurance scam is that it can be promoted as providing freedom of choice. Mrs. Smith, you can go through a long and painful chemotherapy treatment in which you will loose your hair and suffer terribly or you can stretch out here in our therapy spa and have someone gently massage your back with parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. It’s a false choice of course – no one ever says: You can live or you can die. Turns out, honesty is bad for profits.

Insurance coverage of alternative medical practices was a cynical attempt by health insurance companies to reduce costs by replacing costly but effective treatments with cheaper ineffective treatments – the patient be damned – literally.

Of course, the insurance industry was warned of this slippery slope. Once you start funding scientifically useless treatments, there will be no end to it. Pretty soon, you will be funding everything. That is exactly what is happening now. You reap what you sow.

For example, benefit plans in Canada often  include ‘massage therapy‘, but don’t distinguish between what parts of massage constitute the therapy, and what parts just make you feel good. This is not surprising. The distinction can’t be made because there is no evidence to support the claim that massage therapy has any therapeutic effect.  Therapy has become anything that makes you feel good regardless of effectiveness.

Which means there is no fraud, at least on the part of beauty spas. Spas submitting claims for massage therapy, signed by a massage therapist, are not committing fraud and certainly no fraud the insurance industry wasn’t willing to tolerate when it was saving them money.  Now that it is costing the insurance companies,  they are calling it theft.

Hmmmm. The alarm expressed by insurers seems to be doing little more than covering up the real fraud, the fraud in which people can pay with their lives. That’s the fraud of alternative and complimentary medicine. Perhaps one day, the  CBC will investigate that, and its own role, and those of the insurance companies, in promoting worthless treatments to the naive and desperate.

Conflict of Interest

In the meantime, a mea culpa. I have a personal interest in this story.  My wife has a benefit plan that includes coverage for many of these phony alternative medical practices, including massage therapy. Three or four times a year she trots down to the spa at the Hyatt Hotel in Calgary and treats herself to a day of indulgence courtesy of her benefits plan insurer and Alberta taxpayers.

She reports that the spa at the Hyatt is terrific, comes home feeling great and without any delusions concerning therapeutic effects. The phrase we use at our household is . . .  Hey, if they are dumb enough to pay for it. I like it when my wife is happy and feeling spoiled, especially when someone else pays.  So I would definitely like this to continue.

Further to this, as a Reiki Master, I am still working on my holistic Margarita Therapy (1/3 tequila, 1/3 orange liquor and 1/3 freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice over ice).  No word yet on insurance coverage but I promise to keep you all posted. It’s homeopathic – I swear!

It’s back!

Once again the Calgary Herald has decided to sacrifice journalistic integrity  by dedicating a full section, 14 pages, to promoting a load of hokey statistical nonsense masquerading as sound research.  I am speaking of course of the annual Fraser Institute’s Report Card on Alberta’s Elementary Schools. This means the equally trashy, Report Card  on Alberta’s Secondary Schools, is not far behind.

Too bad.

I have highlighted the issues with the Fraser Institute’s Report Cards before.  See Making the Grade Feb. 2005) and Making the Grade (May 2004). As I mentioned, these report cards only provide evidence that  analysts at the Fraser Institute should stop reporting on schools and try attending one. A course in basic statistics, with special emphasis on the difference between correlation and causation, would help. Reading Daryl Huff’s excellent How to Lie With Statistics, wouldn’t hurt either. Although, I get the sense that the Fraser Institute is already well versed in this topic area.

Despite the claims made by the Herald, the Fraser Institute and the lead reporter Sarah McGinnis, there is nothing in Making the Grade in the March 21, 2010 edition of the Herald that is of any use to parents, teachers or educational administrators. Statements such as: And its (Capital Hill School) first appearance on the Fraser Institutes Report Card on Alberta Elementary Schools in the past five years shows, the arts focus is yielding strong results across all subjects only demonstrates a level of incompetence in statistics and research methodology that is truly awe inspiring. Having Principal Elizabeth Bennett defend lowly ranked Holy Redeemer School as a gem in the rough is  plain disgusting. Rather than ask Elizabeth Barrett to defend her school, I think we should ask Sarah McGinnis and the Herald to defend the stupidity of their reporting.

Why does the Calgary Herald continue to pimp this nonsense for The Fraser Institute? No other research report produced in Canada is covered or reproduced to the extent of the Fraser Institute’s Report Card. This is not news coverage.  If it were, we would see a short column on the release of the report and perhaps a few highlights.

No, what we have here is an implicit partnership between a  newspaper and The Fraser Institute that year after year promotes junk science and worthless research. Research, that many would argue, is designed to promote The Fraser Institute’s political agenda and certainly does far more harm than good.

I know I am old fashioned, but I still believe news reporting should make some attempt to fairly report the news. That’s hard to do when you are in bed with the news maker, or acting as their pimp, or both.

Can you imagine how lucky I am, living here in Calgary? My home town is a site of a great convergence, a gathering of two of the worlds greatest flakes – Deepak Chopra and Sylvia Browne. Actually three flakes, Sarah Palin is coming too, but she is somewhat off topic for this blog.

Deepak, evidently, has come and gone. I missed him. You’d think that would be hard to do, given that attendees were taught the 7 Keys to Joy and Enlightenment.

The event was preceded by promotional pieces in the Calgary Herald masquerading as hard news. The Calgary Herald likes Deepak Chopra a lot.  According to the Herald, Deepak has taken on the US establishment single handed  (See: Author Deepak Chopra takes on U.S. establishment, ahead of Calgary visit.) Although, strangely enough, The Herald doesn’t bother to mention what it means by the U.S. establishment or what it means by saying Deepak is taking it on. The article does say that Deepak believes that politics in America has become divisive.  Wow! Thanks for the alert Deepak. I wonder how in tune with the universe you must be to figure that out.

Needless to say, The Calgary Herald was an event sponsor. For all the promotional effort, however, I haven’t met anyone that actually attended the Deepak event.

Then again, I don’t know that many wildly naive or downright stupid people. I wonder where they are? Well, on April 7, 2010, they will be at Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium listening to Spiritual Teacher and Psychic Sylvia Browne.

That’s right, the same Sylvia Browne who used the news of a coal mine disaster in West Virginia to prove her psychic abilities only to end up demonstrating that she;

i) has no psychic abilities and

ii) she will do virtually anything to pretend otherwise.

If you missed it, Sylvia was appearing on the Coast to Coast Radio Program with George Noory, when news broke that 12 of the 13 miners trapped in the Sago Mine Disaster had been found alive.

Noory: Of course, this is after the fact, with the 12 or 13 coal miners they found successfully.

Browne: I know.

Noory: Had you been on the program today, and had they not been found, would you have felt as if, because they had heard no sounds, that this was a very gloomy moment, and they might have all died?

Browne: No, I knew they were going to be found. Uh, you know, I hate people who say something after the fact. It’s just like I knew when the Pope was dead and I said it on, thank God I was on Montel’s show, and I said, according to the time, it was 9-something and whatever Rome time was, and I said he’s gone, and he was.

And then minutes later, when the news came that the miners were in fact dead, Browne reversed herself, saying:

Browne: I didn’t believe that they were alive.

Noory:  What’s that, the miners?

Browne:  Yeah, I didn’t think — and see, I’ve been on the show with you, but I don’t think there’s any that are going to make it.

Noory:  They say there are 12 gone. I think we threw you a curveball, we were telling you after the fact.

Browne: Yeah, no, I did believe that they were gone.

What kind of person does something like this? Whatever happened to shame? 

Well you won’t find it at The Calgary Herald as they are sponsor of Sylvia’s visit here.

In March 2004, James Randi, (The Amazing Randi), called Browne a liar on Paul Harris’ popular St. Louis radio show and continues to run a Million Dollar Challenge to Browne (and others) who claim psychic abilities. Browne, at one time, accepted Randi’s challenge to prove her abilities but she has since chickened out and now refuses to participate, claiming she doesn’t need the money. Which is very likely true.  There are plenty of  suckers around willing to spend between $63 and $126 a ticket – even in Calgary.

Then again, if she really did have psychic abilities (and any ethics) why wouldn’t she take Randi’s million and donate it to a worthwhile cause – say to Haiti? Come to think of it, if she has psychic abilities, why didn’t she warn the people of Haiti of the oncoming quake?

Oh right, I guess you have to buy a ticket first.

Visitors to www.askepticrtn.com may have noticed a host of troubles with our little website over the past few weeks. It turns out we were the target of some  hackers that planted malicious code throughout our site. Visitors to ASkepticRTN were treated to all sorts of nastiness.

I’m not very techie and it took the help of some friends to track down and eliminate the code. The cost of openness I suppose. Evidently, the ease with which people can post comments etc. also makes it easy to hack the site. We are not going to change.

Anyway, we are back.

Just in time too, as things are beginning to get interesting. It turns out some of the world’s greatest flakes and hucksters are descending on my little home town of Calgary to peddle healing and spiritualism by thoroughly engaging people in new age gobbledygook. At upwards of $100 per seat.

Stay tuned.