Lynne Murphy, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and English Language at the University of Sussex

“An American teaching English?” she cried. “Surely that’s evidence of a brain drain?” And we were off, with Lynne Murphy’s gentle, self-deprecating humor informing her talk on  ‘How America saved the English language’.

Talking to a packed out room (I think the biggest I’ve ever seen at Horsham), she had a tough crowd of English skeptics (with the odd expat here and there) to convince. As a grammar nerd, former EFL teacher and all round languages fan, this was my kind of talk. There have been several articles over the years about the decline of language and I’d never seen linguistics or grammar approached skeptically before, so I was looking forward to it. But I was skeptical. Obviously. I’m a proofreader and editor and I find ‘Americanisms’ irritating as they creep and seep into the conscious of students sending essays my way. So would Lynne change my mind? I hoped so.

In honor of Lynne’s argument, I have resolved to use American spelling where I can. For the sake of brevity, I’m taking more tips from Lynne and using BrE to signify British English and AmE for American English.

Re DotD, ‘skeptic’ and ‘sceptic’ sound the same. The BrE spelling comes frm French, bt the pronunciation is truer to the word’s Greek roots

— Lynne Murphy (@lynneguist) May 14, 2012

‘sKeptic’ spelling=earlier in English (16c)-which is SO APT considering my talk themes @horsham_skeptics: 1.AmE oft preserves older Eng &… — Lynne Murphy (@lynneguist) May 14, 2012

…& 2. British English likes to be like French. Saying that is my best way to pick a fight in an English pub. — Lynne Murphy (@lynneguist) May 14, 2012

Lynne had come to Horsham Skeptics in the Pub, (noting the ‘K’), to talk to us about the degradation of the English language and whose fault it is. Only she wasn’t arguing that our language was being degraded at all. And even if it were*, it certainly wasn’t Americans who were sullying the Queen’s English. Knowing we were of a skeptical ilk, Lynne made sure she noted this was no straw man argument, quoting English actresses like Penelope Keith and Emma Thompson who used language of the highest emotional, violent and disease-ridden connotations, talking of “SMS vandals” and stating that American English is “savaging and raping” and has “permeated, pervaded and polluted” British English.

Skepticism’s bête noire, Prince Charles, (who is, of course, the Prince of Wales) also got a mention as he has said that only English English is English and lamented “they make words that shouldn’t be”. Anu Garg, an Indian-American author and speaker, bemoaned that the changing English language was “a kind of barbarism”, an idea that many English people may well agree with, despite the hyperbolic association with destruction and violence or primitive and savage behaviours that word conjures.

Other bug bears noted were ‘fess up instead of confess, ‘face up to’ instead of confront and ‘it’s a big ask’, one that caused me some trouble only recently, on Twitter of all places. Of course Twitter is often blamed for the rise in tlkng lke dis in order to save on characters, yet I would have thought that the days of telegraphs, where you had to pay for each word, would have been a prime time to rstrct ur wrd lngth.

So it was, on May 15 (or the 15th of May) that I was convinced that America saved the English language. ‘Face up’ was found from as far back as 1720, where the OED cites Daniel Defoe, the English writer responsible for Robinson Crusoe.

‘It’s a big ask’ is Australian, not American.

‘Might of’ (might have)  is simply the artefact of an over-reliance on pronunciation to aid spelling – it’s illiteracy, not an Americanism.

It’s not just the average British citizen who finds ‘Americanisms’ galling (frequently not Americanisms, but the work of language preservationists, as you’ll see), but Cambridge-educated writers and actors like David Mitchell too, who, it seems, was loath to consult the Oxford English Dictionary when he labored under the misapprehension that tidbit was a censorious reaction to Americans’ bashful feelings for the word ‘tit’. Tidbit is actually the original English. See Lynne’s discussion here for more.

Moving on, we come to maths vs math – the one that still grates on me even though I’ve accepted Lynne’s stance on this.

I figured out where Americans put the missing “s” on the word “maths”. They put it at the end of the word “Lego”. Mystery solved. — Dan Owen (@danowen79) May 15, 2012

Maths is not plural, (one mathematics, two mathematics) so why do we put the ‘s’ at the end? We don’t say “maths are hard”. After Dan tweeted the above, I asked him about it and he concluded:

@Tannice_ It should really be “math’s” with the apostrophe hiding the “ematic” part of the shortened word, but obviously that’s sillier?

— Dan Owen (@danowen79) May 15, 2012

Which of course brings all kinds of problem with what looks like a possessive apostrophe rather than one signifying a contracted form of a word.

How about ‘gotten’, then? That’s one most of us find difficult to swallow? Gotten is actually the older past participle and if we reject ‘gotten’ then we must also forsake ‘forgotten’, ‘ill-begotten’ and ‘misbegotten’.

So we go on to pronunciation…. ‘erbs.

Herb vs ‘erb is one that’s arguably the most commented on and noticeable, yet we’re more than happy not to pronounce the ‘h’ of hour or honest. The reason for the ‘h’ of herb being so obvious now in BrE is because of class pressures. ‘Lower class’ people typically dropped the ‘h’, meaning the ‘upper class’ emphasised it so as to assert their superiority. Much as they do now on the difference between ‘aitch’ and ‘haitch’.

Eggplant is another word that AmE preserves, preferring it to the French, Aubergine. In fact, Lynne argues, the British are not, as you might think, Gallophobic at all. We love French and have taken its language and made it our own. We say shedule for schedule (not skedule like in AmE. The original pronunciation in the 18th C was ‘sedule’). We also take ‘ise’ instead of ‘ize’, for words like humanize and standardize.

Another interesting nugget (there were several) from Lynne’s talk was the word ‘transportation’. BrE speakers often complain that Americans overemphasize  words by lengthening them, yet transportation was the original word. As it became tainted by its connotations with penal transportation, we switched to ‘transport’ to mean general conveyance of people, animals and goods.

Fowler's Modern Language has a lot to answer for

So, does English need saving? Lynne says no: there’s little to no unidirectional evidence that AmE or BrE are invading our respective shores and taking over. But language is living and Lynne puts herself safely in the middle of the prescriptivist vs descriptivist language debate, something that, as an editor  but also a writer, I’m firmly on the fence about myself. As a gatekeeper (whether that’s as an editor or a teacher of English) you must teach the rules and standards of grammar and style, but you must also teach people when style impacts on substance enough that those rules can be bent and even twisted for poetic license.

English has a lot of weird, Kafkaesque rules, many of which are archaic and simply Latin grammar rules  imposed when we standardized.

But would English be where it is today, post-war, where over a billion people speak at least basic English, were it not for America? This is certainly arguable and came up in discussion, but I’m willing to bet people wouldn’t still be learning English centuries after Britain started to resent its arrogant (and now inappropriate) ‘Great’ moniker** and lost power over the colonies if it weren’t for America’s (relatively) new status as a superpower.

There were many things to be skeptical about last night, like natural tribal reactions to language differences, but whether Lynne was right on AmE championing ‘proper English’? I’m sold.

—

*the subjunctive: I like it. I might keep it!

**yes, I know. That’s not the derivation of Great Britain. I was making a point about how we’re not as massive or awesome as we used to be, in terms of power over other countries.

What I said

“Look! Now there’s an easy way to be a skeptical c*** online… http://www.yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ just link someone to their fallacy & be smug!”

What I meant (constrained by Twitter’s 140ch and what would have been understood by its intended recipient)

 I stand by what I tweeted (which was intended to be a DM to a friend. Swearing in public online isn’t something I do particularly often – just in private – which might give a clue to the fact that it was, truly, a joke to a friend and absolutely not a dig at anyone who had tweeted it).

I feel a little silly having tweeted something that I meant to be a DM, but hey, I got a blog post from it.

Some skeptics are smug. They’re not skeptical about themselves nor are they skeptical about the way they choose to engage with people about the arguments they use.

I’d never argue against the idea that people should learn what logical fallacies are. Education is great and I even did a couple of short talks to local school pupils on critical thinking, which included common logical fallacies.

However, knowing what logical fallacies are is a whole ‘nother ball game to being able to use them effectively.

This new website, http://www.yourlogicalfallacyis.com/  is, undoubtably, a brilliant tool to learn what errors of reasoning you may be using but I see how it will be used. All you have to do now is figure out what logical fallacy your opponent has committed, find the appropriate page on the website and simply tweet it to them. There! Done. Argument won. The skeptic prevails.

It’s not the way the content is written, but, I suppose, the fact it’s designed to be used in this way. It’s called ‘yourlogicalfallacyis’. Reminds me of the passive-aggressive www.letmegooglethatforyou.com, used when people are being too lazy to search out answers for themselves.

So often I see logical fallacies like ‘argument from authority’ just meted out as criticism to people as a kind of slap in the face. “You’re using a logical fallacy, therefore you’re wrong”.

This, in my view, doesn’t wash. Being able to trot out the odd clever quote by a skeptic or atheist celebrity does not an argument win.

Recently I engaged in conversation with someone who seemed to have learned every clever quote and logical fallacy going. They parroted off “that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence“; “open-minded, so long as your brain doesn’t fall out!“; “I think you’ll find that alternative medicine that’s been proven to work is called medicine!” ad nauseam.

Whilst these ARE very clever skepto-quotes indeed, they just serve to make you look like a pompous idiot who’s learned all the right things to say but developed none of the skills that critical thinking really involves.

Now, of course, this is just an anecdote, and the plural of anecdote is…? Yes. That’s right.

But I am sure that I am not the only person who’s been on the end of someone pulling these phrases from their arse with a flourish, feeling they’ve won an argument without properly engaging in a real conversation. They wait for the opportunity to use yet another soundbite and don’t fully engage with people’s real arguments.

If you simply MUST bring someone’s attention to a logical fallacy, sometimes it might be better to couch it in terms of analogy rather than just playing logical fallacy bingo.

I must declare an interest and a bias here. My father’s had prostate cancer (not found through screening, admittedly) and I had surgery to remove pre-cancerous cells on my cervix last year. My very first screening for cervical cancer found dangerous cells that, had I left them, could have meant I went the same way as Jade Goody.

Four days ago, Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust released this press release,

Leading national charity calls for urgent action in approach to anniversary as ‘Jade Goody effect’ goes into reverse

Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust is calling for urgent action in the approach to the anniversary of Jade Goody’s death as latest figures show the dramatic surge in numbers taking up a life-saving test she is said to have inspired has not been maintained.

Three years on Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust says the so-called “Jade Goody effect”, when cervical screening rates rose for the first time in a decade, has all but disappeared.

Every three hours a woman in the UK is diagnosed with cervical cancer and every day it claims three lives – yet the disease is preventable. The UK’s NHS cervical screening programmes save around 5,000 lives every year but recent figures show one in five women overall fail to attend with figures worse for those under 35 with one in three not taking up their invitation.

So you can imagine my surprise when today I read in the Independent (after a tweet from @mgtmccartney, the writer of the  piece, lead me to it) this article: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/why-im-saying-no-to-a-smear-7577967.html

“The NHS persists in sending me red-ink letters despite my written declaration to opt out. I’m made to feel a risk-taker in not having cervical screening – yet I’d also be taking my chances if I had it done.”

I agree with her points – the NHS shouldn’t be sending her letters if she’s decided to opt out. But really, a red ink letter? So what? To defend herself against my accusation of being irresponsible, she said

I don’t think it’s irresponsible to treat women as autonomous adults who can make evidence based choices. @Tannice_

— margaretmccartney (@mgtmccartney) March 20, 2012

I think this is over-stating things. We are autonomous beings – a letter penned in red ink can be easily shredded and forgotten about. It might annoy, but for some women, it could save their life. No one is saying you have to have it.

“That potential for good has to be weighed against the risks of treatment. It’s known that having a cervical biopsy – which is done to get more information about the degree of abnormality – raises the risk of pre-term birth in later pregnancies. “

- this is also true. Women should be told the consequences of having a biopsy done and I’d NEVER argue against informed consent. Unfortunately the tweets that were sent out afterwards from the writer, including me, seemed to say that I was opposing women getting the info they need – that’s not true.

“I weighed up my personal risk factors for cervical screening (for example, smoking is a risk factor), threw in my own priorities – and decided not to have it.”

This is fine and dandy – for her. But smoking is not the only risk factor for cervical cancer. (From NHS website):

“Changes in the cells of the cervix are often caused by the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), which also causes genital warts. There are more than 100 different types of HPV. Some types are high risk and some types are low risk. HPV-16 and HPV-18 are considered to be high risk for cervical cancer.”

Margaret McCartney goes on -

“Most information sent to us, as potential participants, doesn’t make clear that it’s a personal choice, and a balance of pros and cons.”

- Again, I absolutely agree that information should always be given, but that information should also be balanced with the risks of cervical cancer. I was given lots of information when after the results of my screening came back. In fact, the NHS website says your doctor will discuss this with you:

“If any changes are found, your GP will discuss with you whether to wait and see if the changes go away on their own or whether you need treatment [...] In the UK, it is estimated that 8 out of 10 people are infected with HPV at some point during their lifetime. For most people, the virus goes away without treatment and does not cause any harm. [...] If your results show abnormal cells, you will be sent for screening every six months to monitor the cells. You will only be given treatment if the cells do not go back to normal. If your results indicate more serious cell changes such as these you will have a colposcopy to investigate further. A colposcopy is a procedure where the surface of the lining of the cervix is closely examined.”

- none of these procedures cause any harm to the cervix. The colposcopy is simply an instrument to have a good look at the cervix. It’s true that a biopsy will sometimes be done during the colposcopy, but you’ll be told about this before it happens.

Many women don’t take up their invitation for cervical screening and I think the reasons they don’t are probably not because of their fears about the health impact. This article, from June 2011, says that up to a fifth of UK women don’t attend their cervical screening test at all.

“About 1,000 women die of cervical cancer in the UK annually.”

“But experts estimate screening saves at least 4,500 lives a year in England alone.”

“The research, released to mark Cervical Screening Awareness Week, appears to suggest that many of those who have missed or delayed appointments for cervical cancer screening are doing so because of inconvenience, embarrassment or worry about taking time off work.”

Encouraging people not to even go (after all, the initial screening test won’t lead to the harm that Margaret McCartney talks about) is, to my mind, irresponsible. There’s no harm in having the information available that might lead to your death. Margaret argues that we should be informed better – I agree and take this to its logical conclusion – we should be informed about the risks of NOT doing anything about the pre-cancerous cells that lurk in our lady parts. After all – if we don’t know they’re there, then we’re not informed at all!

Margaret McCartney provides no evidence that women aren’t being informed about the pros and cons of these procedures – she includes information about those who are given info on a separate test and refuse it – prostate cancer – which is another post entirely – in fact I could write a book about that (with help from my expert mother who strived to learn all she could about my Dad’s cancer and treatment). I was talked all the way through my procedure and gave my informed consent to what might mean I have a difficulty pregnancy or even pre-term birth. Obviously, my experience doesn’t speak for all patients, but there’s little evidence here that women aren’t being informed. But they can’t be informed if they don’t even go!

I agree 100% that information about the risks of a biopsy should be given, but a female doctor writing in a national paper about not even bothering to have the initial information about whether she’d even need further treatment seems to me, irresponsible.

Her very profession puts her in a position of authority – perhaps meaning that women will take her advice as read and not even look into it – it’s a sad fact that people often don’t read a whole article, especially if they’re on their way somewhere or get bored half way through (not a comment on the piece – it’s very well written!). Without seeing the nuance (which there is in the piece) the message is – doctor says not to bother.

As one of the commenters on the article says:

As a doctor you are in a very informed position and can make such decisions with more accuracy, to glibly put that responsibility on people without your training is perhaps optimistic.

It’s yet another excuse for someone who’s frightened, embarrassed or just too busy to have a smear not to bother at all. Now who’s uninformed?

QEDcon is fast approaching (14 days left!) and due to a Facebook friend’s question to attendees about recommending some books, I thought about a QEDcon attendee book swap!

In these cash-strapped times, I thought it might be nice to use QEDcon as a chance to give and receive (or long-term lend) the gift of awesome books.

If you are interested in swapping a book, please either leave a comment here or email me through the contact form. Please indicate whether you want to swap the book permanently or if you’d be willing to post it back!

Here are the books I am willing to permanently swap (I will update the list when others add to the comments below)

Jon Ronson – The Psychopath Test

This is a story about madness. It all starts when journalist Jon Ronson is contacted by a leading neurologist. She and several colleagues have recently received a cryptically puzzling book in the mail, and Jon is challenged to solve the mystery behind it. As he searches for the answer, Jon soon finds himself, unexpectedly, on an utterly compelling and often unbelievable adventure into the world of madness. Jon meets a Broadmoor inmate who swears he faked a mental disorder to get a lighter sentence but is now stuck there, with nobody believing he’s sane. He meets some of the people who catalogue mental illness, and those who vehemently oppose them. He meets the influential psychologist who developed the industry standard Psychopath Test and who is convinced that many important CEOs and politicians are in fact psychopaths. Jon learns from him how to ferret out these high-flying psychopaths and, armed with his new psychopath-spotting abilities, heads into the corridors of power… Combining Jon’s trademark humour, charm and investigative incision, The Psychopath Test is a deeply honest book unearthing dangerous truths and asking serious questions about how we define normality in a world where we are increasingly judged by our maddest edges – From Amazon

 This work contains a rational explanation of 27 paranormal phenomena – from walking over hot coals to spontaneous combustion – that appear to defy the laws of science. Can a human being really burst spontaneously into flames? Just how deadly is the Bermuda Triangle? And what’s the real story behind all those alien abductions? The answers to these and many more questions are within these covers. Guaranteed to liven up any dinner party, “The Skeptic’s Guide to the Paranormal” offers explanations for many phenomena which appear to defy known science. Speaking directly to the reader, and always with respect for those who believe, Lynne Kelly presents the facts about the paranormal. Lynne Kelly has been teaching science and mathematics for over 30 years. She holds degrees in education and engineering and delights in debunking claims of the paranormal. She also delights in all things arachnid and is famous for her spider jewellery 

- From Amazon

Stuart Sutherland – Irrationality

 This is an iconoclastic volume on the causes and effects of irrational behaviour. Why do doctors, army generals, high-ranking government officials, and other people in positions of power make bad decisions that cause harm to others? On the other hand, why do people insist on sitting through an awful play or film just because the tickets were expensive? Irrational beliefs and behaviour are virtually universal. It is not only gamblers and parapsychologists that fall into simple statistical traps to do with sample sizes or simple assumptions, but experts of all types, selection committees, and everyday people. “Irrationality” is an iconoclastic volume that draws on a mass of intriguing research to examine why we are irrational, the different types of irrationality, the damage it does us, and the possible cures. It also argues that we could significantly reduce irrationality and its effects – but only if we first recognize just how irrational we really are

- From Amazon

Please join in if you’d like to share the knowledge! :)

*Please note, I am not affiliated with QEDcon in any way; I am just an attendee!

If you’d like to help then please do share the link on Twitter or Facebook and complete the survey! There are only 10 questions, although question 8 will need some work as there are quite a few options to click on.

I really appreciate any help anyone can give to publicising the survey and I plan to collect and analyse the results for March. I will post the results on this website if I get a minimum of 100 responses.

Complete the survey here!

EDIT: the survey has now reached just over 200 responses (thanks in a big part to B3ta’s Rob Manuel for putting it in the Friday newsletter) so I will definitely be publishing the results.

I clicked, absent-mindedly, not expecting much apart from a really skinny version of Zooey – nothing much different from your average photoshopping.

I was wrong. Here is that abomination.

This seems to me to be a whole new ballgame: a complete ‘shopping of her face – if they don’t like the face they’re hiring, surely they should choose another?

Here’s what Zooey normally looks like

So, I decided to photoshop a photo of myself, to see how different I could make myself look. I’m not particularly good at photo editing, but here’s a gif of what I came up with:

2007 me, 'shopped to make me appear thinner and younger. Slightly more alien. Blink and you'll miss it.

But I wanted to see what the new ‘me’ might look like as per Zooey’s advert. Again, photoshop isn’t my strongest skill, but here I am, fully ‘Rimmeled’…

 Why not try it yourself, with your Facebook photos?

Nadine Dorries last night complained about Mock the Week being part of a ‘sexist’ BBC agenda. But, with the example of Mock The Week, could she be right?

Nadine Dorries argues Mock the Week is sexist

Chortle, reporting on this today, have done the maths. It doesn’t look good.

“Chortle has analysed the line-ups over all ten series of Mock The Week, going back to 2005, and found that fewer than ten per cent of the panellists have been women. Taking host Dara O’Briain into account as well, just 8.3 per cent of people appearing on the show are women.”

Dorries is, however, a little late to the Twitterstorm as this debate’s been raging there for quite some time. In fact, last year, as far back as September, several bloggers and Tweeters were debating this very subject with whoever is behind @Mocktheweek, sometimes into the small hours of the night, and @Daraobriain himself.

But this debate even goes back as far as 2009 when, in an interview with the Telegraph (more on them later), O’Briain, responding to Victoria Wood’s comments about comedy panel shows being testosterone-fuelled hives of elitist menfolk, said:

“There is a very small representation of women stand-ups on Mock the Week,” says the 37-year-old Irish comic. “But that’s because women just don’t do stand-up. A few do it, and a few ****ing good ones do it. But there’s a 90 per cent, 10 per cent split the entire way down the industry, from the Edinburgh Festival to the open mic level. Every [panel] show I’ve done we’ve torn our hair out trying to find female comics and there is no industry more hungry for women to be involved. But there just aren’t that many female stand-ups.”

Sexism is a funny thing

I was at a comedy/science/music event just last night and noted just one female comic/scientist/academic on stage. The news that Nadine Dorries was up in arms about an old Mock the Week episode got me thinking about this problem. What is it with female comics? Where are they all?

Sexism across professions

So, there are a few things to consider. Is the comedy circuit any different to the general population? Look at other professions and you’ll generally find that there’s a problem with institutional sexism in the majority of high-level/high-profile jobs. Let’s look at one profession: lawyers. One blog, thelawyer.com put female senior partners at 29% (in 2006), from a pool of 40% women yet, as Susan Calman, a lawyer-turned-comic puts it, the UK Supreme Court has just one woman.

Let’s not even get into the clergy.

Are women funny? Awards, however they’re awarded, are of course not a good indicator of real success in comedy – many winners of comedy awards may provoke hilarity to you but leave me cold. But let’s have a look at the last 20 years of Edinburgh Comedy/Perrier/Foster’s Comedy Awards for best newcomer (instituted 1992, which is handy).

But that’s not easy either. It looks to be that sexism is really quite rife in the world of comedy. Both the 2002 and 2009 awards have been criticised for “lazy”, “myopic” and “insulting” choices and for being English-centric, choosing mainly white, English males. But let’s look anyway…

L-R Josie Long (2006), Sarah Millican (2008), Roisin Conaty (2010)

We had to wait a whole 12 years in the best newcomer category for a woman, Josie Long, to win 2006′s award. The trend jumped a year into 2008 – Sarah Millican and again in 2010 – Roisin Conaty. Will the trend continue in 2012?

So, are women just not funny? Perhaps a look at DVD sales could help more than awards? After all, don’t people vote with their wallets?

Looking at this week’s ‘special interest’ DVD sales (to the 4th Feb 2012), only one female comic’s DVD appears in the top 40 (Sarah Millican). Considering the article I’ve just unearthed from November 2011, she’s lucky to chart so high, as it looks like women aren’t really in common parlance when it comes to even recommending DVDs for Christmas stocking fillers. Of the Top 20 DVDs recommended by The Telegraph’s Dominic Cavendish, not one was a female comic’s offering. Looks like Millican’s 2008 win hasn’t done her too many favours.

So, with the information we have, it’s difficult one to prove or disprove whether it’s sexism or whether women are really just not funny, but taking the amount of women IN comedy into account won’t tell you the whole picture. What of the comedy population? I’m guessing it’s probably not as equally split as the general population, but this is likely due to a self-fulfilling prophecy – people think women aren’t as funny as men therefore fewer women get into comedy. Mock the Week is generally replete with male guests, the same funnymen churned over and over ad nauseum. In fact, we don’t get too many new guests from either sex popping up all that often either.

The dearth of women in comedy is something that Jo Brand has spoken about before – in fact in reaction to Victoria Wood’s comments surrounding panel shows, saying:

“One practical problem is that there are far more male comics than women. When I started on the circuit there were about 200 male standups and about 20 female – roughly one woman for every two and a half panel shows.”

So is it the BBC or Mock the Week who is sexist? I’d argue neither – it’s part of the self-fulfilling prophecy rearing its hilarious head, meaning that bookers, promoters and event organisers seem to be giving the audience what it thinks it wants: testosterone, dick jokes and willy-waving.

But it’s not just Nadine Dorries who’s concerned about the diversity in panel shows and news/current affairs programming. A report, primarily about age representation commissioned by the BBC  and released today by the Creative Diversity Network, states:

“[...] some panel shows were also criticised for rarely having women represented or only having ‘token women’ on their programmes. Comedy shows, such as QI or Mock the Week, as well as current affairs programmes such as Question Time were implicated in this.”

Many have suggested that Mock the Week should be providing more opportunities for up-and-coming women. I couldn’t agree more.

Screen shot of BME health website showing conference details for March's Spirit Possession conference: click for full site

Particularly of note, I thought was ‘Examining the ‘critical themes and debates on spirit possession [...] using a range of illustrative case study, clinical practice [...] and research [...]‘. Others who I’ve talked to about this have seen this in the context of a respect for various faiths’ belief in possession, but I see it as legitimising what is essentially a superstitious and dangerous belief. What debates are there? What case studies could possibly prove someone is suffering from spirit possession? The PDF (click pic above for link) talks of spirit possession in Judaism, Egypt and India. What research? The research around this area is particularly what puzzles and bewilders me.

Aghast, I tweeted the link, along with some interesting 140ch snippets and found a few people who were as stunned by me by the apparent credulity of the conference description.

Conspicuous by its absence is any discussion of the harm done by belief in spirit or demonic possession and the natural treatment for this misunderstanding of mental illness: exorcism.

I’ve also noted the assertion from the introduction that spirit possession is listed in the DSM IV and ICD-10 – something Wikipedia refutes (as of 27th January, when I checked this article). I checked myself to the best of my ability and found this:

ICD-10

Screenshot from the ICD-10

DSM-IV

DSM IV Research Criteria for dissociative trance disorder: click for Google Books result

Not exactly what the BME is asserting. Someone’s belief that they are possessed is not the same as actual possession.

I’ve decided not to go through each of the aims: that’s  already been done in painstaking detail by Stuart Sorenson (otherwise known as TheCareGuy, a trainer in mental health and/or social care related topics, here. What I’d like to look at is the harm done by belief in mental illness provoked by spirit and demonic possession.

How common is a belief in spirit/demonic possession?

The Bible

Let’s go back to biblical times, if we may. The idea of demonic/or spirit possession is perhaps best described in Mark 5:1-20 (also found in Matthew 8:28-14 and Luke 8:26-39). Emphasis is mine.

When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an impure spirit came from the tombs to meet him. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones. 

For Jesus had said to him, “Come out of this man, you impure spirit!”

When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. Those who had seen it told the people what had happened to the demon-possessed man [...]

It’s notable that a quote that I’ve omitted from these verses “my name is Legion, for we are many” (Latin: Legio mihi nomen est, quia multi sumusis) is used in literature, film, comics and books; perhaps most notably in the film The Exorcist. It’s so popular, it warrants its own Wikipedia page.

Medical establishments

The Christian Medical Fellowship, ‘formed in 1949 [with] over 4000 UK doctors and 1000 UK medical students as members’ also has something to say on the subject of demonic and/or spirit possession. Again, emphasis is mine.

In the lay mind, some accounts of demonisation[...] do present a very convincing example of ‘madness’ . However, I believe that there is a danger that we look for demonisation amongst those who are psychiatrically ill for a variety of reasons which do not have a basis in their similarity with the description of demon possession as found in the Gospels. Psychiatric patients, especially those who are psychotic, behave, speak and think in ways that we find difficult to understand. We therefore struggle to find an explanation for their experiences, and if science does not have convincing answers, then we look elsewhere. 

As Christians in psychiatry, then, we have an important responsibility. We need to be informed of the findings and limits of psychiatric research, so that we can offer rational scientific explanations and treatments for psychiatric illness, where these exist. We need to bring healing to, and show love and care for, patients with stigmarising [sic] mental illnesses, just as Jesus showed compassion for those who were stigmatised by physical illness (eg Mt 8:1-4). However, we also need to recognise that not all human problems will be explicable by medical science. The New Testament tells us that Jesus has commissioned us to ‘ drive out demons’ (Mk 16:17), and we must be ready to respond to this commission if and when we are called to do so.

Psychiatry, then, is not the only domain within which we need to be aware of demonic influence [...]. Furthermore, we cannot expect to make a simple differential diagnosis according to certain signs or symptoms of demonisation. However, this does not exclude the need to consider other possible links between demonic activity and mental illness.

[...] if people can become depressed because they are bereaved, or because of physical illness, why should they not also become depressed because of demonic interference in their lives? 

[Psychiatrists] need to ensure that they do not neglect the spiritual dimension of life. However, I am not convinced that psychiatric clinics are particularly full of unrecognised demonic influence. Neither is the recognition of demonisation a question of medical differential diagnosis, although a psychiatric assessment may sometimes assist the non-medical minister to avoid attributing a primary psychological disturbance to demonic activity. 

I suppose it’s a small mercy to note that the last paragraph shows some semblance of common sense and states that the UK’s clinics are perhaps not full up with poor, possessed souls!

What’s the harm?

Well, I won’t replicate the efforts of Tim Farley’s whatstheharm.net which details the worldwide deaths of  over 1,000 victims of this belief, but I will detail those of the 6 known UK victims of exorcism:

Kousar Bashir, 1991, 20 years old. Died after enduring systematic beatings during a horrific eight-day ritual after her father, Mr Bashir, paid two holy men £200 to rid an “evil spirit” people believed had taken over her body. He later killed himself in 2005.

CHEUNG KIU HO, 1993, 48 years old, murdered by her brother. A post mortem showed fractures to most of her ribs, a lacerated liver and multiple internal injuries. Mr Chi, who said he had been trying to stamp out evil spirits that had possessed his sister, was jailed for five years. 

Mary Odegbami, 1994, 26 years old. Murdered by her fiance who believed she was possessed by the devil because she didn’t want to marry him. He locked her in a room, starved her and beat her for 14 days. She eventually died.

Sylvester Orieso, 1997, 5 years old. His mother strangled him in an attempt to drive out demons. She kept his body in her home for days believing he would be healed. 

Farida Patel, 1993, 26 years old. She believed herself possessed by djinns. Her family called a Syrian woman to conduct an exorcism. She was beaten for hours, fracturing nine ribs.

As for the idea of belief in demonic/spirit possession in the general population, that’s pretty unclear. I did have one person reply to my tweets saying they’d seen someone under the spell of a witch doctor. Sadly, a similar belief, one of witchcraft, has already claimed the life of at least one known victim, only two years ago:

Kristy Bamu suffered because of his family's beliefs

Let’s hope that the conference organisers are wrong and that ‘the extent to which it is recognised and / or discussed in clinical practice is [NOT] less than we would expect, even in UK cities where there resides a diverse population.’ As mentioned above, the specific cases that are alluded to in the PDF for the conference seem to be in Egypt and India.

I hope we don’t need this conference.

I also hope we’re not going to see a resurgence in completely medieval beliefs.

Regarding: The worst year of my life: cancer has my family in its grip - http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2011/nov/20/a-family-gripped-by-cancer

Reading about 10 minutes behind tweets, @SallyMorganTV said “Another new venue, at the G Live in Guildford tonight. It’s a sold out show. Look forward to seeing you there xSx”

Jokingly, I tweeted “Sally Morgan’s in Guildford… tonight? Why did no one tell me!” and “Maybe I should print out some @ProjectBarnum posters and give them to the audience?”

I should point out that I wasn’t entirely serious. At such short notice  there was no way I’d get there (45 mins drive from my home) in time to speak to them before they went in. However, I did get some encouragement from Alice Sheppard (@penguingalaxy), Simon Clare (@faithlesseye) and Hayley Stevens, (@HayleyStevens/@ProjectBarnum) who founded Project Barnum.

Project Barnum is a campaign to get theatres to understand the kind of psychic trickery that many Mediums and Psychics use in their shows & a free online resource for info on psychic trickery and how you might be being misled

Myles was kind enough to volunteer to come along to gallantly defend me from any kind of shenanigans so we put on our trainers in case we needed to run away (we definitely didn’t) and went on down.

Of course, being a sold out show, there was absolutely nowhere to park, so we settled on York St parking and went away to a nearby pub to regroup, talk about psychic practices (Myles is not particularly au fait with the skeptic movement… yet). Returning to the venue, we saw streams of fans pouring out, towards the very car park we had parked. Fortuitous.

I nearly lost my bottle but my curiosity got the better of me and I approached a group of three women. My cold reading skill told me that they were clearly related. Breezily, I asked them if I could ask them a few questions.

That’s where things got interesting. The older lady said that she didn’t believe that a grandmother could be lying on stage. ‘Argumentum ad twinset and pearlsum’, said @Mickvagg.

Indeed – although this is actually argument from personal incredulity with a bit of emotional appeal thrown in. The lady’s daughter seemed to see the fallacy in her mother’s argument and pointed out that old ladies and old men sometimes do unspeakable things. Having a child who then has another child does not mean that you are immune to doing things that are immoral or illegal or even just a little naughty.

After speaking to them a while and gently putting my point across about the techniques that some psychics and mediums employ (using the ‘Spot a cheat‘ sheet from Project Barnum):

Image credit: Project Barnum (projectbarnum.co.uk)

and talking about Randi’s million dollar challenge they suddenly seemed a little uncertain about Sally’s powers and we gave them another poster with a link to Project Barnum’s website to seal the deal.

We later talked to a group of two women and three guys. One of the men seemed slightly taken aback that someone would approach him to ask questions and Myles and I both said later that we were worried he might kick off. But he didn’t. He was aware of P.T Barnum (the man, the legend) and appreciated the link. His wife was a tarot reader, which set my skeptical brain off a little. I didn’t go into tarot reading, but she seemed rather skeptical of it herself. They too weren’t aware of the ‘entertainment only’ caveat but did seem a little on the fence about the abilities of psychics, which leads me to ask why someone would spend around £25 quid on a ticket if not for entertainment value? We had a jovial conversation and they went off to eat their McDonald’s meal in peace, with another poster that linked to the website.

By the time we’d finished speaking to those people, most of the other fans had gone but we felt proud to have said our piece and maybe made a little dent in the confidence that those 8 people had in the power of the Psychic to reach across to the other side. Worth the 90 minutes of driving? Absolutely.