Sunday, April 27, 2025

The BBC's Science News Coverage Is Often Third-Rate

 The term “filter bubble” is used for a situation in which someone receives only a stream of information that agrees with his beliefs. The term was originally used to describe computer algorithms that give you only a stream of stories, news items or posts that match your interests (such a flow of items also having a tendency to match your own beliefs about things). But the term “filter bubble” is also used in a wider sense, to mean any stream of information or opinion that was designed (by computers or humans) to conform to the beliefs and expectations of a particular type of person.

On our TV sets we have particular American TV channels that are examples of filter bubbles. On the Fox News channel, we are given only stories and information that conform to the opinions and expectations of Republican voters. On the MSNBC channel, it often seems we are given only stories and information that conform to the opinions and expectations of Democratic voters. 

There are similar web sites that are designed to give news items and opinion pieces that conform to the beliefs of some particular type of voter. Between 2001 and 2025 all US presidents and congresses have recklessly piled up sky-high budget deficits that have caused the US national debt to skyrocket to nearly 36 trillion dollars.  During  eight years of George W. Bush and two years of Donald Trump, we heard hardly a word about such a problem on Fox News; and during eight years of Barack Obama and four years of Joe Biden we heard scarcely a word about such a problem on MSNBC. 

If you're a scientist or a typical consumer of scientist dogma, you may think to yourself: “You often have that kind of filter bubble in politics, but not in science,” or “When I get my science news, it doesn't involve any kind of filter bubble.” But such opinions are very wrong. The favorite web sites of scientists and scientist fans are actually some of the clearest examples of filter bubbles anywhere on the Internet.


Some of the favorite web sites of scientists and materialists are these:
  1.  The New York Times.
  2.  Quanta Magazine
  3. Scientific American
  4. The web site of the journal Nature
  5. LiveScience
  6. The web site of the journal Science
  7. Nautilus Magazine
  8. BBC.com
  9. National Geographic
  10. Wikipedia.com

Below are some of the reasons such sites are filter bubbles:
  1. No coverage of the paranormal, or only biased or untruthful coverage. Human experience with paranormal phenomena is extremely vast, consisting of a huge variety of anomalies experienced by a large fraction of the population. Such experiences include things like ESP experiences, apparition sightings, near-death experiences, precognitive dreams, visions of the terminally ill, anomalous experiences with mediums, and UFO sightings. Besides the vast amount of experiences that have occurred outside of laboratory settings, there is a gigantic amount of evidence for paranormal phenomena gathered under laboratory conditions, including abundant laboratory evidence for both ESP and unexplained physical disturbances and manifestations. But in the filter bubbles of the favorite web sites of scientists, there is virtually no reference to such important realities. If any reference is made, it is likely to be jaundiced or untruthful.
  2. Very little coverage or discussion of facts inconsistent with the beliefs favored by those inside the filter bubble. The person in the materialist filter bubble believes that the human mind is purely a product of the brain, or perhaps just an aspect of the brain. He also believes that the brain is a machine for storing and retrieving memories. There are many observational facts that conflict with such dogmas, typically facts that are not even contested. For example, there have been quite a few persons with normal, near-normal or above average intelligence despite having little functional brain tissue or only half a brain (discussed in this series of posts); synapses (claimed to be the storage sites of memory) are made up of proteins that have average lifetimes of only a few weeks; and autistic savants with brain damage can show memory recall abilities far beyond that of a normal person. But within the filter bubbles of the favorite web sites of scientists, you will get very little or no discussion of these and very many other facts that conflict with the claims of materialist orthodoxy. A similar situation might have occurred in the 1970's if a pro-Nixon newspaper were to have only a few lines in its paper (buried in the back pages) referring to the Watergate affair.
  3. Uncritical regurgitation of extremely dubious experimental results or theoretical speculations. Besides a replication crisis in modern science, there is a vast problem of hype, triumphalist overconfidence and exaggeration, in which extremely dubious speculations, flimsy explanations or weak experimental results are constantly being trumpeted as momentous science breakthroughs or "facts." In the favorite web sites of scientists, such dubious results and weak intellectual products are typically reported without criticism, and often hyped even further, often in a way that seems designed to bolster prevailing dogmas and prejudices.  The result is typically a kind of "pom-pom journalism" in which pushover fanboys tend to fall for authority pronouncements  and professorial party lines "hook, line and sinker." 
Notice that I include the British Broadcasting Company or BBC in the list above of filter bubble sites favored by scientists. The BBC has a reputation as a reliable source of journalism.  In regard to coverage of science topics, the BBC surely does not deserve such a reputation  Over many years the BBC has been guilty of very bad coverage on science topics. The BBC's science coverage is often Bunk, Baloney and Crap, like the Fake News we read in the headline below. 

Fake News, BBC-Style

The web site of the British Broadcasting Company is very much a materialist filter-bubble site. An example of its strong bias was a long article it published on mediums. There was no discussion at all of any of the many years of studies in which scientists had dramatic successes in testing mediums under controlled conditions, including repeated spectacular successes with mental mediums such as Leonora Piper and Gladys Osborne Leonard, and equally dramatic successes with physical mediums who produced dramatic physical paranormal phenomena (see here and here for two examples). Instead, the only mention of scientific tests of mediums was a quote by someone who misspoke by saying mediums have never produced paranormal results when tested under controlled conditions. So the article was roughly equivalent to an article giving no evidence for rocket successes, and quoting someone claiming that rocket launches have never succeeded.  An example of the BBC's appalling gaslighting of paranormal witnesses is discussed here

Below are some examples of cases in which the BBC gave us extremely low-quality science coverage:
  • A story on the BBC Science Focus site had this utterly bogus Fake News headline: "We finally know how life on Earth started, staggering new asteroid discovery suggests."  The study discussed provided not the slightest warrant for such a claim, and none of the study's authors made such a claim.  The study merely claimed to have found the tiniest trace amounts (roughly 1 part in a billion) of some chemicals used by living things, in a sample taken from an asteroid. As I discuss at length in my post here, the claims made in the study are not reliable, because the amounts reported are such negligible trace amounts that  we can have no confidence that the reported chemicals came from the asteroid, rather than from earthly contamination. The BBC article on this study has quite a few statements as bogus and untrue as the article's headline. 
  • About the same time there was an equally bogus headline on BBC Science Focus, a headline of "Alien life on Mars: Ancient beach discovery may offer clearest proof yet."  No evidence of life on Mars has been discovered.  No one has found the building components of life on Mars (protein molecules), nor has anyone ever found on Mars the building components of the building components of life  (amino acids). 
  • A laughable BBC article attempting to persuade us that Charles Darwin was some brilliant origin-of-life theorist.  Entitled "Darwin's hunch about early life was probably right," the piece is laughable partially because Darwin's published works contain no deep thoughts about the origin of life.  The only thing Darwin wrote having any relevance to the origin of life was a mere sentence he wrote in some letter on February 1, 1871. All he said was this: "But if (& oh what a big if) we could conceive in some warm little pond with all sorts of ammonia & phosphoric salts,—light, heat, electricity &c present, that a protein compound was chemically formed, ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present day such matter will be instantly devoured, or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed." Far from being a great insight, we now know that functional protein molecules require hundreds of well-arranged parts that have to be as carefully arranged as the letters in a useful instruction paragraph, making their accidental origin unthinkable, and also that life requires hundreds of different types of protein molecules, making the origin of life exponentially more difficult than what is described in Darwin's sentence (and by exponentially more difficult I mean like 10 to the hundredth power more difficult). 
  • In 2018 the BBC reported on a science experiment by using the false headline “'Memory transplant' achieved in snails.” But you need not think very hard to realize that there's something very fishy about such a story. How could someone possibly get decent evidence about a memory in a snail?  The study was an example of junk neuroscience.  Judging from the paper, the effect described involved a way-too-small study group size of  only 7 snails (the number listed on lines 571 -572 of the paper). There is no mention of trying the test more than once on such snails. Such a result is completely unimpressive, and could easily have been achieved by pure chance, without any real “memory transfer” going on. Whether the snail does or does not withdraw into its shell is like a coin flip. It could easily be that by pure chance you might see some number of “into the shell withdrawals” that you interpret as “memory transfer.”
  • A BBC "Science Focus" story  gave us this very false "almost finished" narrative about research  into the origin of life: "While we don’t know exactly how life began, we have a lot of clues. Let’s start with the easiest bits: what is life made of and where did those components come from? Living organisms contain thousands of chemicals: like proteins and nucleic acids that carry our genetic information. These chemicals are complex, but we now know that their constituent parts form quite readily." No, we do not have "a lot of clues" about life's origin. The constituent parts of proteins (amino acids) do not "form quite readily," and the evidence the article cited for such an opinion (the Miller-Urey experiment) did nothing to show that such amino acids "form quite readily," because it was not a realistic simulation of the early Earth, as I discuss here.
  • A BBC article told us this utterly false claim about parallel universes: "Physics has found all sorts of reasons why they should exist.”  This claim was Fake News, for reasons I discuss here. Physicists have not provided any actual justifications for believing in parallel universes. 

  • An article at the BBC Science Focus sight tried to persuade us that "do it home" brain zapping device may be good for treating depression. The article referred us to a study run by people being paid by a corporation selling such a device. We were incorrectly told that this was like a double-blind study: "It was a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomised study – something close to a gold standard in research." The study was not actually a double-blind study, because when the device is producing real brain stimulation, you can tell it is running. So the people getting the real brain stimulation would have been more likely to have reported improvement (due to a placebo effect) than people using "sham" devices that did not provide brain stimulation.  A double-blind study is like a study in which people get  a pill, and they have no way of knowing whether the pill is real medicine or merely a do-nothing placebo pill. 

  • An article at the BBC Sky at Night magazine has the incorrect title "NASA’s new SPHEREx telescope set to reveal what happened just a fraction of a second after the Big Bang." The claim was total baloney. No telescope could ever do any such thing.  According to what cosmologists tell us, the first 250,000 years of the universe's history, matter and energy were so densely packed that all light or energy signals from before that time must have been hopelessly scattered a billion trillion times, making it physically impossible to ever devise a telescope looking back to get signals from the universe's first 100,000 years. The BBC story was a bad example of a misleading news story. It began with this baloney claim: "NASA’s new SPHEREx space telescope will soon launch on its mission to answer some of humanity’s most fundamental questions around how life, and even the Universe itself, came to exist." That telescope won't do anything to tell us how life began or how the universe began. 

  • A bbc.com story announced, “Researchers have released the most accurate map ever produced of the dark matter in our Universe.” But how can someone have a map of dark matter locations when dark matter has never been observed? All attempts thus far to make direct observations of dark matter have failed. Dark matter doesn't even have a place in the Standard Model of Physics, and no evidence for it has turned up at the Large Hadron Collider.  The BBC claim was false. No real "map" had been produced. 

  •  A recent BBC news article had a bogus headline of "Fly brain breakthrough 'huge leap' to unlock human mind." Here is an excerpt from the story: "Now for the first time scientists researching the brain of a fly have identified the position, shape and connections of every single one of its 130,000 cells and 50 million connections. It's the most detailed analysis of the brain of an adult animal ever produced. One leading brain specialist independent of the new research described the breakthrough as a 'huge leap' in our understanding of our own brains. One of the research leaders said it would shed new light into 'the mechanism of thought'."  The claim at the end of the quote is obviously very absurd.  Fruit flies don't think. So there is no conceivable study of the brain of the fruit fly that could shed light on what allows humans to think. 

  • The recent case of scientist Nikku Madhusudhan making groundless claims about detecting dimethyl sulfide at planet K2-18 b was a good litmus test of whether a science news source will fall "hook, line and sinker" for very untrustworthy scientist boasts.  For reasons I give in my post here, the claims were groundless. There is zero robust evidence that such a gas was detected at planet K2-18 b, and zero evidence of any biomarkers at this planet.  Most of the mainstream science news sources flunked the test, although we got some good science journalism at The Atlantic and Ars Technica, which presented reasons for being very skeptical about Madhusudhan's gloryhound boasts (I quote them in my post).  The BBC flunked this litmus test very badly. One of its stories falsely claimed that dimethyl sulfide had been detected, at planet K2-18 b ignoring very many reasons for disbelieving Madhusudhan's boasts. The BBC article was entitled, "Scientists find 'strongest evidence yet' of life on distant planet." No such evidence had been found. On the day  Madhusudhan's paper was published, I published a post saying that his claims were groundless, and that "nothing reliable has been done in this paper to show any likelihood of the existence of dimethyl sulfide on this planet K2-18 b," and that "nothing reliable has been done in this paper to show any likelihood of the existence of any biomarker on this planet K2-18 b."  In the following days we had articles in mainstream publications quoting scientists saying they were very skeptical about Madhusudhan's paper, such as the Gizmodo.com article here and and the National Geographic article here

Wednesday, April 23, 2025

The Lack of Strong Links Between Mental Illness and Brain States

The recent paper "Examining the Long-Term Impacts of Psychotropic Drugs and Considerations for People Discontinuing Treatment" is by Timothy Wand, PhD and a registered nurse. It can be read here. Below is a quote:

"Multiple studies have now cast doubt over any clear or direct neurobiological or genetic cause or association with mental illness (Border et al., Citation2019; Borsboom et al., Citation2018; Curtis, Citation2021; Marsman et al., Citation2020; Nour et al., Citation2022; Winter et al., Citation2024). For example, Nour et al. (Citation2022) surmise that despite three decades of intense neuroimaging research, there is no neurobiological account for any psychiatric condition. Torrey (Citation2024) concludes that not one gene has been found that can be causally linked to ‘schizophrenia’, and despite many studies and variety of techniques used, Parlatini et al. (Citation2024) confirm that no promising biomarkers have been identified for ‘Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)’. The chemical imbalance theory of mental illness and the serotonin hypothesis of depression have been refuted (Ang et al., Citation2022; Healy, Citation2015; Hengartner & Plöderl, Citation2023; Moncrieff et al., Citation2022Citation2023).

While genetics and biology have a role to play in all aspects of the human condition, the degree to which genetics and biology influence mental health and well-being remains a matter of conjecture. What is known without question, is that mental health challenges are predominantly associated with socio-economic disadvantage, as well as trauma, adversity, violence, abuse, neglect, oppression and discrimination (World Health Organization & the United Nations [WHO & UN], Citation2023).

The fact is, there is no pathophysiology, disease process or one identifiable biomarker associated with any psychiatric diagnosis. They are highly heterogeneous labels of questionable scientific validity (Kajanoja & Valtonen, Citation2024)." 

Below are two relevant quotes by scientists:

  • "In contrast, the major mental illnesses...bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, anorexia nervosa and depression have proved remarkably resistant to similar developments. Unfortunately, it is still not possible to cite a single neuroscience or genetic finding that has been of use to the practicing psychiatrist in managing these illnesses despite attempts to suggest the contrary." -- David Kingdon, Emeritus Professor of Mental Health Care Delivery. "Why Hasn't Neuroscience Delivered for Psychiatry?"
  • "Despite three decades of intense neuroimaging research, we still lack a neurobiological account for any psychiatric condition. Likewise, functional neuroimaging plays no role in clinical decision making....It remains difficult to refute a critique that psychiatry’s most fundamental characteristic is its ignorance. . . . Casting a cold eye on the psychiatric neuroimaging literature invites a conclusion that despite 30 years of intense research and considerable technological advances, this enterprise has not delivered a neurobiological account (i.e., a mechanistic explanation) for any psychiatric disorder, nor has it provided a credible imaging-based biomarker of clinical utility."  -- Neuroscientist Raymond Dolan and two other scientists (link). 

Erroneous "brains make minds" ideas can lead to bad psychiatry. A psychiatrist may see mind and mood and behavior problems as being all due to brain causes, ignoring economic causes and bad parenting  causes and social injustice causes and societal causes and poor education causes and life history causes and trauma causes.  And sometimes what is called a mental illness may be mainly an example of nonconformity or human mental diversity, something a healthy society should tolerate under a policy of "let a hundred types of flowers bloom." 

chemical imbalance theory

Undark.org has published some good articles questioning some of the legends and boasts of science professors. But it recently had a poor article trying to sell us on the idea of "psychiatric brain surgery." The principle evidence it provides for such a thing is very weak from a standpoint of decent evidence. We hear some testimony from an anonymous person who 16 months ago underwent tissue-destructive brain surgery to try to prevent him from thought patterns that had been classified as "obsessive compulsive disorder." The man seems pleased with the results, although we should suspect that what is going on is a mere placebo effect, something that would have achieved the same results if a mere sham surgery (with no real surgery) had been done. The man says he is "still aware of his repeating thoughts after surgery" and he may wonder whether his problem may recur. The author confesses, "Given the small number of operations performed each year, the field lacks large-scale trial data on its effectiveness."  So why has she written  some article trying to boost this dubious approach to mental health? 

During the 19th century there was endless testimony about the high medical effectiveness of hypnotism, which previously had names such as artificial somnambulism and mesmerism. But the medical mainstream refused to listen, largely because hypnotism was strongly associated with reports of mysterious psychic powers such as clairvoyance.  The promise of hypnotism was immense, as shown by the success of the physician James Esdaile in supervising many hundreds of tumor removal operations in India, in which patients undergoing severe surgeries with no anesthesia reported no pain, because they had been hypnotized to think they would feel no pain. This route was taken because anesthesia had not yet been invented. On pages 27-28 of a book by Dr. James Esdaile he lists a host of dramatic painless surgeries he performed without using anesthesia, but only hypnosis on patients. The list includes about 20 amputations, and 200 removals of scrotal tumors ranging from 10 pounds in weight to more than 100 pounds in weight. A book on this topic by Esdaile can be read here

Medicine has largely failed to take advantage of hypnotism, because of medical personnel being stuck on "brains make minds" errors. And so we had disasters such as the opioid epidemic, in which more than 700,000 Americans died from overdoses of opioid pills that were overprescribed by physicians looking for quick and easy ways to do profitable high-volume patient processing, rather than slower methods such as hypnotism.   Astonishingly, most people in the US still have blind faith in people in white coats, ignoring how the greed and haste of white coat guys led to 700,000 US deaths. Shouldn't a toll like that make you think: maybe these guys can sometimes be seriously wrong about things? 

And speaking of the fellows in white coats making very bad mistakes, a recent NBC News story suggested that more than 2% of all cancers are caused by CT scans suggested by people in white coats, which are used too frequently, and often with too high radiation. We read this:

"About 93 million CT scans are performed every year in the United States, according to IMV, a medical market research company that tracks imaging. More than half of those scans are for people 60 and older. Yet there is scant regulation of radiation levels as the machines scan organs and structures inside bodies. Dosages are erratic, varying widely from one clinic to another, and are too often unnecessarily high, Smith-Bindman and other critics say.

'It’s unfathomable,' Smith-Bindman said. 'We keep doing more and more CTs, and the doses keep going up.'

One CT scan can expose a patient to 10 or 15 times as much radiation as another, Smith-Bindman said. 'There is very large variation,' she said, 'and the doses vary by an order of magnitude — tenfold, not 10% different — for patients seen for the same clinical problem.'  In outlier institutions, the variation is even higher, according to research she and a team of international collaborators have published.

She and other researchers estimated in 2009 that high doses could be responsible for 2% of cancers. Ongoing research shows it’s probably higher, since far more scans are performed today."

There are about 600,000 US cancer deaths per year. If we assume 2% of these were caused by unnecessary or too-strong CT scans per year, then maybe 240,000 were killed by such scans over the past 20 years. That's in addition to huge amounts of unnecessary suffering caused by non-fatal cancers.  Then there is also the very large number of neuroscience research subjects who may have been needlessly imperiled by the use of gadolinium contrast agents (discussed here), a technique that may have seriously endangered a much larger number of people who took them after doctors suggested taking them to make the doctor's analysis of MRI scans easier and faster. 

Besides such examples of guys in white coats blundering, there is an additional reason for suspecting that millions of others may have died in this decade because of guys in white coats blundering.  It seems that those in white coats can often make big mistakes. 

biologists following mainstream
 
Most of those in white coats are good people. But don't assume a claim is very probably true merely because it comes from someone in a white coat. 

Saturday, April 19, 2025

LTP Research Has Done Nothing to Show Any Neural Basis for Memory Creation

In the English language "lost in the woods" is a phrase meaning "to be confused, bewildered or helpless." Neuroscientists trying to explain how human beings create memories have always been very much lost in the woods. Such scientists have no credible tale to tell on this topic. The problem is that nothing in the brain bears the slightest resemblance to some apparatus for storing learned information. Humans create various types of devices for writing information, things such as pens, pencils, paint brushes, typewriters, laser jet printers, offset printers, and the read/write heads used by a computer hard drive. Nothing in the brain bears any resemblance to such things. 

So what do you if you are a neuroscientist trying to fool people into thinking that neuroscientists like yourself have some kind of understanding of how a human could form a memory? What such people normally merely do is to senselessly repeat the same old clueless charade that neuroscientists have been doing for about fifty years: they zap a tiny bit of brain tissue, creating some tiny change that lasts about as long as a suntan or the morning dew, and they try and pass off that little change as something like information storage, even though no information was stored. This is the witless nonsense of LTP experiments. 

What is misleadingly called “long-term potentiation” or LTP is a not-very-long-lasting effect by which certain types of high-frequency stimulation performed by scientists (such as stimulation by electrodes) produces a fleeting increase in the strength of synapses. The main part of synapses are gaps between nerve cells, gaps which neurotransmitters can jump over. The evidence that LTP even occurs when people remember things is not very strong, and in 1999 a scientist stated (after decades of research on LTP) the following:

"[Scientists] have never been able to see it and actually correlate it with learning and memory. In other words, they've never been able to train an animal, look inside the brain, and see evidence that LTP occurred."

In 2007 a scientist said on page 120 of her PhD thesis, "While LTP is assumed to be the neural correlate of learning and memory, no conclusive evidence has been produced to substantiate that when an organism learns LTP occurs in that organism’s brain or brain correlate."

So-called long-term potentiation is actually a very short-term phenomenon. Speaking of long-term potentiation (LTP), and using the term “decays to baseline levels” (which means “disappears”), a scientific paper says, "potentiation almost always decays to baseline levels within a week," while noting that even after considering LTP "we would be at a loss for a brain mechanism for the storage of a long-term memory."

Another scientific paper says something similar, although it tells us even more strongly that so-called long-term potentiation (LTP) is really a very short-term affair. For it tells us that “in general LTP decays back to baseline within a few hours.” “Decays back to baseline” means the same as “vanishes.” 

Neuroscientists have long been guilty of profoundly misleading behavior in trying to persuade people that so-called so-called long-term potentiation (LTP) is a "mechanism for memory." Inducing LTP requires artificial electrode stimulation which synapses do not naturally receive.  Also, human memories can last for sixty years, but LTP is a very short-lived thing.  So why do neuroscientists keep doing LTP experiments, and why do they keep mentioning LTP as if it had something to do with memory? There are two reasons:

(1) It always sounds better if you have some sound bite or catchphrase you can mutter when someone asks how something occurs, rather than saying, "I haven't the slightest idea how it occurs." When scientists can mutter the phrase "LTP" when asked about how memories are created, it makes them sound more knowledgeable, rather than sounding like people who have no understanding of a topic. 

(2) LTP research is an easy-to-conduct "no way to fail" line of research that provides an easy way for a neuroscientist to add to his total of published papers. Scientists love these kind of "no way to fail" research opportunities. Similarly, theoretical physicists keep grinding out speculative papers about string theory or primordial cosmic inflation.  If you have learned how to write such a papers, doing another such paper is a relatively easy and safe way to get another published paper. 

In a recent article in Knowable Magazine, we have a very bad article repeating "hook, line and sinker" the groundless legend that LTP research did something to show a neural basis for memory storage. The author (Tim Vernimmen)  is a freelance science journalist who as far as I can see has little history of writing on topics of cognitive neuroscience or human memory.  The article has the extremely misleading title "It began with a rabbit: Unraveling the mystery of memory" suggesting the utterly groundless boast that scientists have done something to unravel the mystery of memory -- something that is still a hundred miles over their heads. 

We read about a 1973 paper by Bliss and Lomo in which some rabbits had their brains artificially zapped after "stimulating electrodes were constructed from electrolytically sharpened tungsten wire insulated with several coats of varnish." We have a claim that the paper is "now considered a turning point in the study of learning and memory." No, it was only the opening of a dead end that has led nowhere.  Very many similar papers have been done, but LTP research has done nothing to show any credible neural basis by which memories could be formed. Vernimmen then makes this false claim: " Bliss and Lømo had discovered something momentous: a phenomenon called long-term potentiation, or LTP, which researchers now know is fundamental to the brain’s ability to learn and remember." No, researchers do not know any such thing, and LTP research has done nothing to show any neural basis for learning or memory. 

Vernimmen then makes this untrue claim: "By the early 1970s, neuroscientist Eric Kandel had demonstrated that some simple forms of learning can be explained by chemical changes in synapses — at least in a species of sea slug." No, Kandel did not show any such thing. Vernimmen is repeating one of the many groundless legends of neuroscience. We hear this myth sometimes stated as a claim that Kandel won a Nobel Prize for showing that sea slugs can learn by changes in synapses.  The official page listing the year 2000 Nobel Prize for physiology states only the following: "The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2000 was awarded jointly to Arvid Carlsson, Paul Greengard and Eric R. Kandel 'for their discoveries concerning signal transduction in the nervous system.' " The Nobel committee did not make any claim that synapses had been discovered as the basis of memory. 

The paper in question can be read here. The paper fails to mention a testing of more than a single animal, thereby strongly violating rules of robust experimental research on animals (under which an effect should not be claimed unless at least 15 subjects were tested).  We have no reliable evidence about memory storage from this paper. If the paper somehow led to its authors getting a Nobel Prize, that may have been a careless accolade.  The Nobel Prize committee is pretty good about awarding prizes only to the well-deserved, but it may occasionally fall under the gravitational influence of scientists boasting about some "breakthrough" that was not really any such thing.  In some cases the Nobel Prize committee awards science Nobel Prizes it should not have awarded. A notable case (the case of Christian Anfinsen) is discussed in my post here, which notes misstatements in one year's press release for a Nobel Prize. 

Vernimmen then spends several paragraphs discussing techniques of Bliss and Lomo, and then makes the following laughable statement:

"After a few brief periods of high-frequency stimulation, the oscillations would become more pronounced for up to 10 hours, indicating that neurons in the rabbit’s hippocampus responded more strongly — an enduring change that would later become known as long-term potentiation. This looked a lot like the kind of activity many scientists suspected to be at the root of learning and memory."

There are three things very laughable about this statement: 
(1) The attempt to claim that some utterly artificial technique involving zapping a rabbit with electrodes might be "the kind of activity many scientists suspected to be at the root of learning and memory." People are not zapped with electrodes when they learn. 
(2) The misleading use of the word "enduring" to describe a very short-term effect lasting only "up to ten hours."
(3) The attempt to insinuate that this very short-lived effect had some relevance to explaining memories, which in humans can last for 60 years. 

Vernimmen then makes another incorrect statement, saying, "Neuroscientist Richard Morris showed that giving rats a drug that blocks the NMDA receptor impairs their ability to learn how to navigate a maze that untreated rats can easily figure out." No, he did not show that. A 2014 study was entitled "Hippocampal NMDA receptors are important for behavioural inhibition but not for encoding associative spatial memories." And a 2011 study found this:

"We found that inducible knockout mice, lacking NMDA receptor in either forebrain or hippocampus CA1 region at the time of memory retrieval, exhibited normal recall of associative spatial reference memory regardless of whether retrievals took place under full-cue or partial-cue conditions. Moreover, systemic antagonism of NMDA receptor during retention tests also had no effect on full-cue or partial-cue recall of spatial water maze memories. Thus, both genetic and pharmacological experiments collectively demonstrate that pattern completion during spatial associative memory recall does not require the NMDA receptor in the hippocampus or forebrain."

Vernimmen then goes into a discussion of chemical events occurring in synapses. He fails to provide any reason for claiming that any of the chemistry he discusses has anything to do with memory. Vernimmen gives us an extremely misleading visual showing four steps of synaptic transmission, the process by which chemicals pass over a synaptic gap.
His four-part visual is showing the same thing as depicted below:

Synaptic transmission

Misleadingly, Vernimmen's  visual is labeled "How memories form: the steps of LTP." Synaptic transmission is not memory formation. All of the chemicals involved in synaptic transmission are extremely short-lived chemicals that do not even last a day, and have average lifetimes of less than an hour. 

Vernimmen seems to have got very badly confused here. The groundless hand-waving claim made by neuroscientists about memory and synapses is that a memory can form by a strengthening of synapses, something requiring at least hours.  But the strengthening of a synapse is not synaptic transmission, the passing of chemicals over a synaptic gap, which occurs instantly. Also, synaptic transmission is a natural event occurring throughout the brain, while the LTP produced by electrode stimulation (as in the experiment of Bliss and Lomo) is an artificial event produced by inserting manufactured electrodes into a brain.  So for Vernimmen to have a visual describing natural synaptic transmission and to label that as "How memories form: the steps of LTP" is a very bad example of bunk and baloney. Natural synaptic transmission is neither LTP nor memory formation. Neuroscientists do not claim that synaptic transmission (the passing of chemicals across synaptic gaps) explains memory formation.  Vernimmen's diagram has a bungling caption in which a synaptic gap (the gap between two synaptic clefts) is labeled as an example of a "strong connection." When neuroscientists are talking about a strengthening of connections in brains, they mean more synapses between neurons and stronger synapses, not anything in a gap between synapses. 

Vernimmen then makes the claim that LTP causes dendritic spines to grow. The claim is irrelevant to explaining how memories form, both because dendritic spines are too-shorted lived to explain memories lasting for decades, and also because LTP produced by electrode stimulation (as in the experiment of Bliss and Lomo) is an artificial event produced by inserting manufactured electrodes into a brain, not a natural occurrence.  See my post "Imaging of Dendritic Spines Hint That Brains Are Too Unstable to Store Memories for Decades" for the evidence about the short lifetimes of dendritic spines. 

Vernimmen then gives us this passage:

" Bear and his team at MIT, for example, were the first to show that LTP is involved in the formation of fearful memories in mice. In a 2006 experiment, they trained mice to avoid a dark area where they’d previously received an electric shock to the feet. Meanwhile, they used an electrode to record how neurons in the hippocampus responded. 'Sure enough, there was LTP,'  says Bear:"

The reference is to the low-quality paper here, which does not qualify as robust research, because it used a study group size of only seven mice. And you don't show that something explains memory by showing that it exists when a memory is formed. There are endless thousands of things going on in the brain and body while a memory is formed. 

Vernimmen ends with a groundless self-serving quote by Bliss that "The weight of evidence suggests that LTP is central to the physiology of memory storage."  No neuroscientists do not have any understanding of any such thing as a "physiology of memory storage." Nothing in Vernimmen's article has substantiated the claim that LTP has anything to do with human memory.  From the standpoint of actually doing something to credibly explain human memories that can last for 50 years, research on LTP has been the deadest of dead ends. 

scientists going down dead end

It seems that whoever is in charge of quality control at Knowable Magazine isn't doing a good job. Vernimmen's article had lots of false information, and at its bottom we ironically see the sight below. First, there is a link to an article with the ludicrous title "Making the case against memories as evidence." Then there is a plea for donation to the magazine, with the claim that this will "fight misinformation." Oops, it seems that our self-described "misinformation fighters" are guilty of spreading some very bad false information of their own. And clearly these guys are really, really bad at understanding memory, as they have made the utterly goofy claim that memories should not be counted as evidence. If you followed that principle, then half of the murderers in prison would be set free, basically everyone convicted because of the testimony of a witness. 


Below are some of the very many reasons for rejecting claims that human memories are formed by any neural mechanism:

  • Although it is claimed that memories are stored in the brain (specifically in synapses), there is no place in the brain that is a plausible storage site for human memories that can last for 50 years or longer. The proteins that make up both synapses and dendritic spines are quite short-lived, being subject to very high molecular turnover which gives them an average lifetime of only a few weeks or less. Both synapses and dendritic spines are a “shifting sands” substrate absolutely unsuitable for storing memories that last reliably for decades.
  • It is claimed that memories are stored in brains, but humans are able to instantly recall accurately very obscure items of knowledge and memories learned or experienced decades ago; and the brain seems to have none of the characteristics that would allow such a thing. The recall of an obscure memory from a brain would require some ability to access the exact location in the brain where such a memory was stored (such as the neurons near neuron# 8,124,412,242). But given the lack of any neuron coordinate system or any neuron position notation system or anything like an indexing system or addressing system in the brain, it would seem impossible for a brain to perform anything like such an instantaneous lookup of stored information from some exact spot in the brain.
  • If humans were storing their memories in brains, there would have to be a fantastically complex translation system (almost infinitely more complicated than the ASCII code or the genetic code) by which mental concepts, words and images are translated into neural states. But no trace of any such system has ever been found, no one has given a credible detailed theory of how it could work, and if it existed it would be a “miracle of design” that would be naturally inexplicable.
  • If human brains actually stored conceptual and experiential memories, the human brain would have to have both a write mechanism by which exact information can be precisely written, and a read mechanism by which exact information can be precisely read. The brain seems to have neither of these things. There is nothing in the brain similar to the “read-write” heads found in computers.
  • We know from our experience with computers the type of things that an information storage and retrieval system uses and requires. The human brain seems to have nothing like any of these things
  • As discussed here, humans can form new memories instantly, at a speed much faster than would be possible if we were using our brains to store such memories. It is typically claimed that memories are stored by “synapse strengthening” and protein synthesis, but such things do not work fast enough to explain the formation of memories that can occur instantly.
  • Contrary to the idea that human memories are stored in synapses, the density of synapses sharply decreases between childhood and early adulthood. We see no neural effect matching the growth of learned memories in human.
  • There are many humans with either exceptional memory abilities (such as those with hyperthymesia who can recall every day of their adulthood) or exceptional thinking abilities (such as savants with incredible calculation abilities). But such cases do not involve larger brains, very often involve completely ordinary brains, and quite often involve damaged brains, quite to the contrary of what we would expect from the “brains make minds” assumption.

  • For decades microscopes have been powerful enough to detect memories in brains, if memories existed in brains. Very much brain tissue has been studied by the most powerful microscopes: both brain tissue extracting from living patients, and brain tissue extracted from someone very soon after he died. Very many thousands of brains have been examined soon after death.  Microscopes now allow us to see very clearly what is in the tiniest brain structures such as dendritic spines and synapse heads. But microscopic examination of brain tissue has failed to reveal any trace whatsoever of learned information in a brain.  No one has found a single letter of the alphabet stored in a brain; no has found a single number stored in a brain; and no one has ever found even a single pixel of something someone saw a day or more before.  If memories were stored in human brains, microscopes would have revealed decisive evidence of such a thing decades ago.  But no such evidence has appeared. 
  • There is nothing in the brain that looks like learned information stored according to some systematic format that humans understand or do not understand. Even when scientists cannot figure out a code used to store information, they often can detect hallmarks of encoded information. For example, long before Europeans were able to decipher how hieroglyphics worked, they were able to see a repetition of symbolic tokens that persuaded them that some type of coding system was being used. Nothing like that can be seen in the brain. We see zero signs that synapses or dendritic spines are any such things as encoded information. 
  • Many humans can remember with perfect accuracy very long bodies of text, but synapses in the brain do not reliably transmit information. An individual chemical synapse transmits an action potential with a reliability of only 50% or less, as little as 10%. A recall of long bodies of text would require a traversal of very many chemical synapses. A scientific paper says, "In the cortex, individual synapses seem to be extremely unreliable: the probability of transmitter release in response to a single action potential can be as low as 0.1 or lower."

Wednesday, April 16, 2025

HSAM Wonder Daniel McCartney Was a Math and Memory Marvel

The credibility of claims that memory recollections come from brains is inversely proportional to the speed and capacity and reliability at which things can be recalled. There are numerous signal slowing factors in the brain, such as the relatively slow speed of dendrites, and the cumulative effect of synaptic delays in which signals have to travel over relatively slow chemical synapses (by far the most common type of synapse in the brain). As explained in my post here, such physical factors should cause brain signals to move at a typical speed very many times slower than the often cited figure of 100 meters per second: a sluggish "snail's pace" speed of only about a centimeter per second (about half an inch per second).  Ordinary everyday evidence of very fast thinking and instant recall is therefore evidence against claims that memory recall occurs because of brain activity, particularly because the brain is totally lacking in the things humans add to constructed objects to allow fast recall (things such as sorting and addressing and indexes). Chemical synapses in the brain do not even reliably transmit signals. Scientific papers say that each time a signal is transmitted across a chemical synapse, it is transmitted with a reliability of 50% or less.  (A paper states, "Several recent studies have documented the unreliability of central nervous system synapses: typically, a postsynaptic response is produced less than half of the time when a presynaptic nerve impulse arrives at a synapse." Another scientific paper says, "In the cortex, individual synapses seem to be extremely unreliable: the probability of transmitter release in response to a single action potential can be as low as 0.1 or lower.")  The more evidence we have of very fast and very accurate and very capacious recall (what a computer expert might call high-speed high-throughput retrieval), the stronger is the evidence against the claim that memory recall occurs from brain activity. 

It is therefore very important to collect and study all cases of exceptional human memory performance. The more such cases we find, and the more dramatic such cases are, the stronger is the case against the claim that memory is a neural phenomenon. Or to put it another way, the credibility of claims that memory is a brain phenomenon is inversely proportional to the speed and reliability of the best cases of human mental performance.  The more cases that can be found of humans that seem to recall too quickly for a noisy address-free brain to do ever do, or humans that seem to recall too well for a noisy, index-free, signal-mangling brain to ever do,  the stronger is the case that memory is not a neural phenomenon but instead a spiritual or psychic or metaphysical phenomenon.  

In the paper "Remarkable Cases of Memory" by W.D. Henkle in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. 5, No. 1 (January, 1871), we read many accounts of people with memories far greater than that of the average man. Here is one account:

"Casaubon thus speaks of Joseph Scaliger: 'There was no subject in which any one could desire instruction which he was not capable of giving. He had read nothing (and what had he not read?) which he did not forthwith remember; there was nothing so obscure or obsolete in any ancient author, Greek, Latin, or Hebrew, with regard to which, when interrogated, he could not at once give a reply. He was at home in the history of all nations and all ages, the successions of government, the affairs of the ancient church; the properties, differences, and names, whether ancient or modern, of animals, plants, metals, and all natural objects, he knew accurately. With the situations of places, the boundaries of provinces, and their division at different times, he was perfectly familiar. He had left untouched none of the severer studies or sciences. So extensive and accurate was his acquaintance with languages, that if, during his lifetime, he had made but this single acquirement, it would have appeared miraculous.' He committed [to memory] Homer in twenty-one days, the other Greek writers inside of two years. Sir Wm. Hamilton says, 'taking him all in all, he was the most learned man the world has ever seem. ' "

Henkle then documents in the greatest detail the extraordinary memory and calculation abilities of Daniel McCartney, born in Pennsylvania, USA on September 10, 1817. Henkle gives a transcript of the second interview he had with Daniel McCartney. In the interview Henkle would ask about random dates in the past Henkle had selected. The numbers in parentheses before the answers are how long a delay before the answer was given.  We may presume that Henkle knew stenography or had a stenographer with him. Before the advent of tape recording, stenography was a skill allowing you to write down exactly what someone was saying, even if he talked at a normal pace. 

Q. October 8,1828?

A. (2 seconds.) Wednesday. It was cloudy and drizzled rain. I carried dinner to my father where he was getting out coal.

Q. February 21, 1829 ?

A. (2 sec.) Saturday. It was cloudy in the morning, and clear in the afternoon ; there was a little snow on the ground. An uncle who lived near sold a horse-beast that day for $35.

Q. October 13,1851 ? 

A. (15 sec.) Monday. It was kinder [sic] pleasant-like weather. I stayed all night Sunday night at my brother's, and next day I went to the depot in Cardington to saw wood.

Q. July 1, 1863 ?

A. (1 sec.) Wednesday. Sultry and cloudy. I kept the baby of the family I lived with, while the man and his wife went to Tipton to buy goods. "

All of the days of the week were correct. Below is another section of the interview. 

"Q. March 5, 1849?'

A. (2 sec.) Monday. It was a disagreeable sloppy day. Gen. Taylor was inaugurated that day. I heard at the time, that the Bible Washington was sworn in on was carried from New York to Washington to use at Taylor's inauguration.

Q. April 15, 1861 ?

A. (3 sec.) Monday. It was bright and clear. Fort Sumter was taken the Friday before. I was cutting stove wood for a man.

Q. May 8,1846?

A. (2 sec.) Friday. It rained some. The Saturday before, I attended a quarterly meeting in Iberia. [He is a Methodist.]

Q. December 2,1859 ?

A. (2 sec.) Friday. It was very cold and raw. On the Tuesday before, it began to grow very cold, and continued cold until Saturday, when it began to moderate. John Brown was hanged on the 9th, a week later.

 Q. Are you certain?

A. I am not positive.

 Q. Do you remember anything in particular that occurred that day? 

A. Nothing particular. I remember it was pretty cold getting in wood.

Q.. April 12,1861?

A. (2 sec.) Friday. It was pleasant but cloudy. I went from Wilton to my brother's, ten miles away. 

Q. What else happened that day ? 

A. Fort Sumter was taken

Q. April 9,1865?

A. (5 sec.) Sunday. It was cloudy in the afternoon. Lee surrendered that morning.

The days of the week McCartney gave are all correct. His statements about the inauguration of  General Zachary Taylor and the capture of Fort Sumter are correct. The only mistake he made is that when given the date that John Brown was hung, he has mentioned the hanging of John Brown, but incorrectly stated that it was a week later. 

Below is another section of the interview:

Q. December 28,1835?

A. (2 sec.) Monday. Cool but pleasant. We were chopping in the clearing, and came near falling [felling] a tree on one of the boys.

Q. June 15,1836?

A. (2 sec.) Wednesday. It was very clear, hot weather. The folks that I lived with had a swarm of bees that day.

Q. December 25, 1837?

A. (2 sec.) Monday, Christmas day. It was raw, but not very cold. My father was buried that day.

Q. April 4,1841 ?

A. (3 sec.) Sunday. It was rainy and muddy. Gen. Harrison died that day.

Q. July 21,1861 ?

A. (2 sec.) Sunday. Very hot and sultry. It was the day of the Battle of Bull Run.

The days of the week given were all correct. April 4, 1841 was the date of the death of General Harrison (US president William Henry Harrison), and July 21, 1861 was the date of the Battle of Bull Run. 

Below is another section of the interview:

Q. What is 32 times 45?

A. (2 sec.) 1440. I multiplied by 5 and then by 9.

Q. What is 93 times 97?

A. (12 sec.) 9021. From 9300 I took away 3 times 93.

Q. What is 53 times 84?

A. (8 sec.) 4452. Twice 53 is 106 ; 10 times 106 is 1060 ;

adding 53 gives 1113; multiplying by 4, 4452.

Q. What is 123 times 456 ?

A. (35 sec.) 56,088. Multiply 456 by 100 ; then 23 by 400 ;

then add; multiply 23 by 56 and add.

Q. What is 3756 times 182 ?

A. (4.5 minutes. He became confused.) 683,592.

Q. What is the sum of 26, 67, 43, 38, 54, 62, 87, 65, 53, 44,

77, 33, 84, 56 and 14 ? (One minute occupied in calling the

numbers.)

A. (Instantly.) 803

The answers given are all correct. Later in the interview McCartney is asked "How do you bound Tennessee?"  He gives this completely correct answer: "It is bounded on the north by Kentucky and a small part of Virginia, on the east by North Carolina, on the southeast by Georgia, on the south by Alabama and Mississippi, and on the west by Arkansas and a small portion of Missouri." The answer suggests something like a photographic memory. 

We then have a transcript of McCartney being asked about many random dates during the past few decades, and in each case he correctly gives the day of the week, and recalls various things about what he was doing on that date. On page 21 we have some more math questions:

  • He is asked what is the cube root of 59,319, and in 30 seconds gives the correct answer of 39. 
  • He is asked the cube root of 76,507, and in 17 seconds gives the correct answer of 43.
  • He is asked the cube root of 117,649, and in 5 seconds gives the correct answer of 49, saying that he knew that long ago. 
  • He is asked the cube root of 571,787, and in 15 seconds gives the correct answer of 83.  
  • He is asked the cube root of 357,911 and in 15 seconds gives the correct answer of 71.
  • He is asked the cube root of 110,592 and in 2 seconds gives the correct answer of 48.
  • He is asked the cube root of 389,017 and in 15 seconds gives the correct answer of 73.
  • He is asked the cube root of 4,741,632 and in 3.5 minutes gives the correct answer of 265.  

Henkle had a third interview with McCartney, and asked him about the same dates that he had previously asked about. This was an excellent way to see whether the claimed recollection of things McCartney did on a day long ago were actual recollections and not confabulations.  McCartney passed this test well. Henkle states this:

"In this review Mr. McCartney reproduced his answers as to dates, kind of weather, and circumstances, with the exceptions given below. His description of the weather was in other words, but in every case essentially the same, thus showing that he remembered distinctly the facts but not the words that he had previously used. The same may be said as to his reproduction of circumstances. In some cases he expanded the accounts, and in others he shortened them. Some of the days of the week were given in a shorter time and others after a longer time than on his first examination."

Henkle then discusses some minor differences in the recollections about what the weather was on some particular day and what McCartney was doing, but they seem to be no more than what you would get from a minor narrative variation in what you get from someone with the same memory. 

Cases such as the case of Daniel McCartney intensify the explanatory shortfall of "brains make minds" explanation and "brains store memories" explanation. We have here a case of lightning-fast mathematical calculation ability and lightning-fast autobiographical recall stretching back decades. Given the high number of brain physical shortfalls, neural explanations cannot account for the mental abilities of ordinary people. When we look cases such as that of Daniel McCartney, the failure of neural explanations to credibly account for human mental abilities becomes all the more obvious. 

The paper discussed above (the paper "Remarkable Cases of Memory" by W.D. Henkle) may have been the first paper ever documenting the phenomenon of Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM, also called hyperthymesia). In recent decades many other cases have been documented of HSAM subjects (such as Jill Price) with the ability to recall almost every day of their adult lives. You can read about some of the cases in my series of posts here. A scientific paper documented the ability of such HSAM subjects to score 25 times higher on a random dates test than control subjects. 

brains make minds illusion

 In the 1972 book "Coding Processes in Human Memory" we have a  chapter entitled "How Good Can Human Memory Be?" written by Earl Hunt and Tom Love of Washington University.  Registered users at www.archive.org can read the whole chapter using the link hereThe authors start telling us about a subject they studied who they call VP. We are told VP was born in Latvia in 1935, and that by the age of five he had memorized the street map of Riga, a city of 500,000.  We are told he could play up to 60 games of chess simultaneously by correspondence, without consulting written records. 

The authors did tests on VP. The most impressive result is the result shown below, in which VP manages to recall a short story almost verbatim an hour after reading it twice, and also six weeks later, even though he had not been told he would be tested on the story a second time. The story was one notable for being hard-to-remember.

exceptional memory

At the end of the chapter, we are given the text of the story, VP's first recollection of it, and the recollection six weeks later. The story is about 350 words long. Here is one example of how good the recollection was. The story begins, "
One night two young men from Eugulac went down to the river to hunt seals, and while they
were there it became foggy and calm." An hour later VP recalls all words of this sentence in correct order, missing only the "and." Six weeks later VP recalled the same sentence exactly as well as he did the first time.