Friday, July 14, 2006
Here's the scene: Adam Dreamhealer is a normal 19 year-old, who
wears an earring, has a tattoo, pumps iron, and all that stuff.
A regular guy, except he has this gift. It came from a 4-foot
tall blackbird he encountered on a strange island. The bird
downloaded all the world's knowledge into Adam's head. Now Adam
goes into trances in dark rooms to manipulate quantum holograms
with his hands. (Tom Cruise in Minority Report?) It enables
Adam to cure cancers that haven't been verified by biopsy. How
does it work? "Quantum mechanics." An over-the-hill physicist
said scientists "groan" at that explanation. He said more but it
was cut. Dr. Edgar Mitchell of Apollo 14 fame came on and agreed
with Adam that it must be quantum mechanics. It was Mitchell who
carried out ESP experiments from space, and now worries about all
of these UFO visits. He is the author of Quantum Holography: A
Basis for the Interface Between Mind and Matter. Why am I
telling you this? Because I was the "over-the-hill physicist"
who allowed himself to be used. I will perform any penance WN
readers feel is appropriate. I really should have known better:
(WN 11 Feb 05) .
Feynman once described science as "what we have learned about how
not to fool ourselves." The most important discovery in medicine
is the randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled test, by
means of which we learn what works and what doesn't. When I was
first contacted by ABC about Adam Dreamhealer, a producer asked
how I would respond to Adam's claims? "I would ask for the test
results," I replied. But of course, there are no test results.
That's the point. And it's the only point ABC needed to make.
The U.S. program is described as being at a "crossroads," but it
could be mistaken for a roadblock. The Committee on Elementary
Particle Physics of the National Academies recommends priorities
for the next 15 years: 1) Fully exploit the LHC at CERN; 2) Mount
a compelling bid to build the International Collider on U.S.
soil; and 3) Expand particle astrophysics and pursue a program in
neutrino physics internationally.
Several readers commented on last week's science v. religion
story that, if a zygote is assigned a soul, identical twins would
have to share a soul. One reader noted that in the very rare
case of chimerism, which involves the fusion of two paternal twin
zygotes, one person would have two souls. Identical twins,
however, as we all know, are not identical. Many connections in
the brain, mostly dealing with language, are still not completed
at birth. In the sense that our "essence" is our "soul," the
soul keeps changing throughout life.
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