Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

[SkeptInq@aol.com]

 Skeptical Inquirer Electronic Digest, March 6, 2000

 Visit the CSICOP and Skeptical Inquirer Magazine website at
http://www.csicop.org. Receiving over 200,000 hits per year, the CSICOP site
was rated one of the top ten science sites by HOMEPC magazine.

 In this edition of SI DIGEST:

 --ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH: CSICOP Experts Comment on Midwest UFO Sighting
 --OBERG: Space Aliens Invade NASA
 --SALON: The Truth About the Polygraph
 --OTTAWA CITIZEN: Naturopath Gets Three Years for Child's Death
 --UCSD PRESS RELEASE: No Martian Life in Mars Meteorites


 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH: CSICOP EXPERTS COMMENT ON MIDWEST UFO SIGHTING

 In this article, CSICOP experts including psychologists Barry Beyerstein and
Robert Baker, astronomer James McGaha, and UFO investigator Phil Klass are
interviewed on the January UFO sightings near St. Louis, MO.


 Midwest UFO sightings get once-over from scientists
 By Heather Ratcliffe/St. Louis Post-Dispatch

 For the full article, go to
http://detnews.com/2000/religion/0002/03/01280203.htm .

 [Stacy McKenna rubbed her eyes. Was she really watching three UFOs hovering
over south St. Louis during rush hour traffic? "I just kept rubbing my eyes
because I thought if I rubbed them hard enough, they would go away," said
McKenna, 28, a college student and waitress. The objects she saw about 5:45
p.m. CST on Jan. 10 were shaped like triangles with white lights at each
point, she said. "At first they were just two bouncing, glowing lights. Then
another one dropped out of the sky," she said. "It was so huge, I screamed
because I thought I was going to hit it." McKenna and dozens of St.
Louis-area residents have seen what they thought was an alien spacecraft
since the first UFO report Jan. 5 by a Highland, Ill., man and four police
officers. McKenna spent two days rationalizing the sighting, which occurred
as she headed toward Interstate 55. She talked to friends, surfed the
Internet for pictures and visited the same spot at the same time she first
saw the UFOs. Finally, she called the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to report her
encounter.  "I didn't believe in UFOs before," she said. "But I'm certainly
intrigued now." Experts say movies and television shows such as "X-Files"
have created a culture in which people are quicker to suppose some unusual
object in the sky is an alien craft....]


 OBERG: SPACE ALIENS INVADE NASA

 Thursday, 2 March 2000 21:01 (ET)
 space aliens invade nasa
 By JAMES OBERG, UPI Space Writer

 For the full text of the article, go to
http://www.vny.com/cf/news/upidetail.cfm?QID=68304

 [HOUSTON, Texas, March 2 (UPI) -- Space aliens have invaded NASA, but
 nobody seems worried. In fact, those who organized the extraterrestrial
visit hope that the public will learn more about real space flight because of
it. The "invasion" begins March 6 at "Space Center Houston", a
privately-owned museum on one corner of the 1620-acre NASA site in Houston.
It is hosting a visiting exhibit entitled "Roswell and the Alien Invasion."
Since 1992, public visitors wanting to tour NASA's Johnson Space Center have
started in this facility. There are exhibits, rides, theatres, and a gift
shop. Trams run to actual NASA facilities such as the Mission Control Center,
a mile away. The "Alien Invasion" exhibit occupies the center of the museum's
main floor. It takes the form of a costume parade held annually in Roswell,
New Mexico, reputed site of the alien spaceship crash in 1947. People dress
up as space aliens and drive strange-looking vehicles....]

 SALON: THE TRUTH ABOUT THE POLYGRAPH

 The truth about the polygraph
 It's junk science, but proponents say it can be a useful tool in
interrogations, and even a deterrent.

 By Susan McCarthy

 For the full text of the article, go to
http://www.salon.com/health/feature/2000/03/02/polygraph/index.html

 [...The polygraph is an American phenomenon, with limited use in a few
countries, such as Canada, Israel and Japan, as a result of American
influence. In the 1980s, in the wake of one of those spy scandals that the
British are so good at, U.S. intelligence agencies urged the U.K. to use
polygraphs for "security vetting." The House of Commons' employment
committee, "concerned at the Government's apparent faith in the polygraph
test procedures and its implications," held an inquiry, at which the British
Psychological Society, among others, roundly denounced polygraphs, and the
scheme was dropped....]

 NATUROPATH GETS 3 YEARS FOR GIRL'S DEATH

 Lortie gets 3 years for girl's death
 Naturotherapist told diabetic to stop insulin
 Christopher Guly
 The Ottawa Citizen

 For the full text of the article, go to
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/city/991215/3298950.html .

 [A frail-looking Louise Lortie sat quietly in a wheelchair yesterday as a
Quebec judge in Hull sentenced her to three years in prison for the death of
a 12-year-old girl.  Ms. Lortie, a 63-year-old naturotherapist, was found
guilty on April 26 of criminal negligence causing death, after she
recommended that Lisanne Manseau stop taking insulin and rely instead on a
combination of salt baths and herbal concoctions to treat her diabetes.  The
girl died March 28, 1994, in a diabetic coma due to lack of insulin, three
days after she began a natural treatment....]

 UCSD PRESS RELEASE: NO SIGN OF MARTIAN LIFE IN METEORITES

 Meteorites Show No Evidence of Martian Life, Tests Find
 Source:   University Of California, San Diego (http://www.ucsd.edu)
 Date:   Posted 3/3/2000 at http://www.sciencedaily.com

 Martian Meteorites Reveal Clues To Processes In Planet's Atmosphere

 [Detailed measurements of sulfur isotopes in five Martian meteorites have
enabled researchers at the University of California, San Diego to determine
that the abundant sulfur on the surface of Mars is due largely to chemical
reactions in the Red Planet's atmosphere that are similar to those that occur
in Earth's atmosphere. Their conclusions, which are detailed in a paper in
the March 2 issue of Nature, also suggest that the variations in sulfur
isotopes found on ALH84001, the Martian meteorite thought by some scientists
to contain evidence of ancient Martian life, are not due to biological
processes.

 Instead, the UCSD researchers say, the chemical processes that produced the
variations in sulfur isotopes on many of the bits of rock that were blasted
from the surface of Mars millions of years ago and eventually recovered on
Earth appear to be purely inorganic-that is, non-biologic.

 "On Earth, if you see a large variation in the sulfur isotope ratio, it
generally, though not exclusively, means you've got a biogenic input," said
Mark H. Thiemens, professor of chemistry and biochemistry and dean of the
Division of Natural Sciences at UCSD. "Organisms are very good at separating
isotopes and choosing one over the other. So when you see big changes in
isotope ratios, it often means biochemistry."

 On Earth, such changes are often produced by terrestrial bacteria that
derive their energy solely from the conversion of sulfur compounds from one
form to another. In so doing, they selectively break the chemical bonds of
the lighter isotopes of sulfur, producing large variations in the normal
sulfur-isotope ratio.

 In their laboratory, Thiemens and UCSD researchers James Farquhar, Joel
Savarino and Terri L. Jackson sought to find out whether some of this sulfur
may have been produced by organisms. They also examined the sulfur in the
Martian meteorites to find clues to the evolution of the Martian atmosphere,
a major puzzle for planetary scientists.

 "Sulfur and a number of other elements are involved in the chemical and
physical cycling of elements between oceans, rocks, living organisms and the
atmosphere," said Farquhar, the principal author of the study. "We have shown
that the sulfur-isotope ratios in Martian meteorites have a component that
can only be explained by atmospheric chemical reactions. This provides new
insights into the origin of sulfur species found at the Viking and Pathfinder
landing sites, and into sulfur mobility within the Martian surface."

 "Mars is a nice case study, because it's relatively simple," explained
Thiemens. "There's not that much atmosphere, it's photochemical, it couples
directly to the surface and it's not complicated by biology or an ocean.
Sulfur is a major element and it has a number of isotopes, so it's a very
nice probe to understand an entire planetary system."

 The UCSD researchers' measurements of sulfur isotopes in reduced and
oxidized phases, which were supported by the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, are the first from a group of Martian meteorites, known as
SNC meteorites. Only about a dozen of these rare meteorites have been
recovered over the past two centuries. Farquhar and his colleagues examined
samples of five meteorites in this group, including a 1.3 billion-old-year
Martian rock that reputedly killed a dog when it fell to Earth in 1911 near
Nakhla, Egypt and a 165-million-year-old chunk of the Red Planet that fell
near Shergotty, India in 1865.

 The UCSD scientists said the isotopic variations in those meteorites,
combined with what is known about the Martian atmosphere from the Viking
landers, are best accounted for by inorganic chemical reactions in the
atmosphere, not biological processes.

 "When you put them all together to account for the data, it fits," said
Thiemens. "Biology can't accommodate what we see, but the photochemistry in
the Martian atmosphere does."

 The UCSD researchers will also present their results later this month at the
Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, scheduled for March 13-17 in Houston.]


 Editor's Note: The original news release can be found at
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/science/mcsulfur.htm
 ________________________

 SI Electronic Digest is the biweekly e-mail news update of the Committee for
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