I’m a skeptic and a photographer. Certain subjects are so ridiculous that to take them seriously enough for a formal skeptical analysis seems like a waste of time. But people in general and skeptics in particular vary in what they take seriously. For me, I took Bigfoot seriously enough to devote a great deal of time investigating one particular and quite esoteric branch of the mystery, namely “Bigfoot’s Dermal Ridges.”
But out in the real world most people equate the subject of Bigfoot with Weekly World News stuff, and so to even take the subject seriously enough to look into it seems like a foolish waste of time.
These days, the notion of a “Hollow Earth” is so ridiculous that it would be a waste of time to even investigate its claims, as there are numerous subjects that are vastly more important to investigate like anthropogenic global warming, vaccine safety, and homeopathy.
Some time back, I was visiting friends in Astoria, Oregon. Jan took me to the nearby town of Seaside which thrives on tourist business, especially in the summer. He took a photo of me in front of the window display of a palm reader.
For me, palm reading is about one click lower than astrology on the scale of what should be taken seriously.
I posted my photo to the popular photo sharing site Flickr way back in December. My characterization of palm reading was a parody; that one could read dermal ridges with the same degree of accuracy as reading flexion creases. Surprise, surprise, several months pass, and “Zorina” the palm reader wanted me to take the photo down! Instead of arguing that her palm reading was valid or accurate, she wanted the criticism of it to go away! It’s the lowest and sleaziest form of rebuttal, something that Simon Singh recently had to endure.
But I’m no lawyer, so I decided to utilize one of the Internet’s best resources for generalized questions; Metafilter’s AskMeFi. I got a number of very useful answers concerning copyright, and I’m satisfied that I’m not violating copyright by publicly posting my photograph.
One poster on Metafilter mentioned the Streisand Effect which is in fact happening to the photo on Flickr. If “Zorina” had never complained in the first place, she would have never become the butt of Internet ridicule!
The prefix “dodeca” means twelve, and derives from a Greek root.
We are already seeing a profusion of claims pertaining to the world ending in 2012, all of which are abject nonsense.
I should like to propose that those who make such claims need a banner under which to rally. We already have “birthers” and “truthers” but what to call those who promote a 2012 apocalypse?
Being that dodeca means twelve, how about “Dodecheads”? Please do not allow this term of endearment to ever become a grievous slur such as “Dodickheads.”
When I was in college in the mid 1980’s, a friend of mine gave me a very odd book. It was an old oversized hardback, entitled The Atlas of Men, by William H. Sheldon. The dust jacket was still mostly intact, though the copyright was from 1954. It may have been the first (and only) edition.
![4095946241_4737f6f2f7[1]](http://orgoneresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/4095946241_4737f6f2f71-350x456.jpg "4095946241_4737f6f2f7[1]")
My friend gave me the book because he knew that I liked weird literature, and this was certainly a weird book. It was mostly photographs of naked men, with their genitals and faces whited out. Along with the photographs were arcane graphs and charts. The text that accompanied the graphs and photographs seemed entirely fanciful and pseudoscientific.
![4095946673_a268d83ebc[1]](http://orgoneresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/4095946673_a268d83ebc1-350x275.jpg "4095946673_a268d83ebc[1]")
At the time, I had never heard of William H. Sheldon, and so had no reference as to how this work was received by the scientific community. In the mid 1980’s, I was more fascinated with the strange theories of Wilhelm Reich, and even back then there was more information available on Reich than on Sheldon. It wouldn’t be until years later that the World Wide Web was able to provide me with some sort of background on a figure as marginalized as Sheldon.
If you start with the Wikipedia entry on Sheldon, like many people would do, you get a rather cursory and dismissive overview of his strange theories. Most people have probably heard the terms “ectomorph”, “mesomorph”, and “endomorph”, used as generalized descriptions of human body types. For Sheldon this was just the start. He attempted to quantify each of those parameters, and furthermore made the claim that each human being possessed a certain amount of each of these qualities.
First off, do the terms ectomorph, mesomorph, and endomorph even have exact meanings? Obviously skeletal structures and proportions are more or less fixed by adulthood, but beyond that, soft tissue proportions are highly variable, and can change because of any number of factors. These terms might be used occasionally in non-technical senses, but they aren’t used in real science for a simple reason; they just aren’t needed.
There are all sorts of physiognomic indices in use, and they are all very specific in measuring single quantifiable characteristics. Real science tends to avoid complex, multivariate, and especially “fuzzy” definitions.
Not only did Sheldon get off to a bad start with ad hoc definitions of intrinsically fuzzy and complex concepts, but he then tried to tie in physiognomy with human behavioral characteristics. Here he fell into the same trap that bedevils astrologers, namely the belief that broad, commonplace descriptions of human character are scientifically meaningful. Here is how Sheldon characterizes males of the “4 1 5 somatotype”:
“In the male the 4 1 5 is one of the weakling somatotypes, and so obviously or conspicuously so that other youngsters usually treat him with a certain deference or neutrality which at one stage in their development they typically reserve for girls. This is not a somatotype that is ‘picked on’, except perhaps occasionally by other weaklings who are not quite so weak”
But it gets stranger still; as Sheldon went on to imbue his “somatotypes” with animalistic metaphors. Now he’s genuinely off the deep end. Here is how Sheldon characterized the individuals pictured in the illustration, the “3 6 1 somatotype”:
BETWEEN THE CATS AND THE BEARS
Somatotype 3 6 1 (Endomorphic extreme mesomorphy, at extreme ectopenia, 10-level) Wolverines. Sometimes called “cat bears” and also as “weasel bears.” Compact, short legged, giant weasels who know no fear. A wolverine can put to rout a hungry bear and can hold his own against any North American animal except man (who perhaps uses unfair weapons).
![4096706072_487b1a3c46[1]](http://orgoneresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/4096706072_487b1a3c461-350x289.jpg "4096706072_487b1a3c46[1]")
Had Sheldon done this once or twice, we could interpret it as a poetic metaphor or even a sly joke, but his animalistic descriptions are included with every single “somatotype”.
The late skeptic Mike Dennett once told me that when a paranormal or “fringe” claim is made, it never goes away, no matter how well debunked it might be. An obvious example is creationism. And so it was with William H. Sheldon. A website called Inner Explorations offers a spirited and lengthy defense of Sheldon. Sheldon also makes a cameo appearance on pages 109 and 110 of Grover Krantz’ book on Bigfoot entitled Big Footprints. Krantz offers the reader a line drawing reproduction of “somatotype 5 6 1” and argues that even if such a specimen were “expanded” to 6’6”, it would not equal the mass and bulk of the Patterson – Gimlin film subject. Krantz argues that the film subject is beyond human proportions. Well, so what? No one but the “lunatic fringe” in Bigfootery argues that it’s a human; even skeptics concede that it’s either the real thing or it’s a guy in a suit. If it’s a guy in a suit, it hardly matters what his “somatotype” is. Given Krantz’ demonstrated gullibility on the subject of Bigfoot, it’s not surprising to find that he would be familiar with, and feel comfortable including, the work of someone like Sheldon.
Sheldon’s work was mentioned some time back when news surfaced of “posture photos” of Ivy League undergraduates had been discovered.
The last tidbit that I think I can extract from the strange saga of William H. Sheldon is the nerdiest one. Considering that each of Sheldon’s “somatotypes” was a three-value datum, the problem became how best to graphically display them as a whole set. Sheldon produced a three-axis map, which upon casual examination, looks like a Reuleaux triangle. Alas, When I broke out my compass to double check, I found that it too fell short; the sides didn’t bow out far enough…
![4096706550_fdf30924ea[1]](http://orgoneresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/4096706550_fdf30924ea1-350x472.jpg "4096706550_fdf30924ea[1]")
I can’t remember exactly when I discovered the books of Jan Harold Brunvand. His first book, The Vanishing Hitchhiker, was published in 1981. His second, The Choking Doberman, in 1984. I suspect I may have read The Choking Doberman first. I was in college at the time, at the University of Montana. The notion of “urban legends” was immediately intriguing to me, as by this time I realized that even widely held beliefs could be completely false.
Growing up as I did in the 1970’s, trick-or-treating by children was a tradition as deeply ingrained as celebrating Christmas with gift giving. Back then we didn’t have our parents escorting us from door to door.
Of course by the time we reached about 10 or 11, we became too old to go trick-or-treating. Certain adults would even scold us as when we rang their doorbell: “Aren’t you a little old to be doing this?” A total buzz kill for a child of that age…
Even as children, we would hear stories about “razor blades in apples”, but we were never given apples as treats. The worst “treats” we ever got were Bible tracts… Even in the early 1970’s everything edible was packaged candy anyway.
But by the late 1970’s, and certainly into the early 1980’s, the American cultural tradition of door to door trick-or-treating was on the wane. Over time, the idea that psychopaths were afoot, randomly poisoning or dangerously tampering with candy was taken more seriously. Back then, I had no reason to doubt this, as frankly I had no informational resources to fall back on. There was no World Wide Web, and I didn’t know how to do any kind of sophisticated search in the library.
Perhaps it was through one of Brunvand’s books, or through a newspaper story, that I encountered a rather radical notion; namely that the Halloween Psychopath was a myth! By 1985 I had learned of the Index Medicus, undoubtedly through pharmacy school. I remember using the resources of the Mansfield library, and probably the Index Medicus, to find a citation for a study published in a sociology journal about this topic.
Luckily, the library had the specific journal on the shelves, and I didn’t have to request a photocopy through interlibrary loan. It was just like the Internet, immediate gratification!
The study design was simple and elegant. The researchers assumed that a heinous act like the random poisoning of a child with Halloween candy would become news, at least local news. Surely if the Halloween Psychopath was real, some newspaper would have a story about it! The researchers went into the archives for, I believe, three newspapers; the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and a major Chicago newspaper. They carefully examined the issues of November 1, 2, and 3 for a period of something like 30 years prior to the publication of their study.
And what did they find? NOTHING! Zero, zip, nada! The only case on file in these newspaper archives was where a disgruntled adult had singled out a particular child to harm, hoping that the assailant wouldn’t be identified due to the number of people having given the child candy. But the assailant was eventually identified; he was a relative of the child, NOT a Random Psychopath.
I came from a “hard science” background so it was good to see that sound scientific methodology could be applied to the less-rigorous field of sociology. It was fascinating to me that such an esoteric subject would be investigated, and that a widespread belief was rather definitively shown to be bullshit!
I remember coming home for lunch to my parent’s house that day. I remember rather triumphantly announcing what I had just read. I figured my parents would share my enthusiasm at science having triumphed over urban mythology. My father seemed to be unmoved by this finding. He taught law at the University of Montana, and sensational subjects never seemed to interest him, especially those dealing with “fringe” or even popular culture.
My mother on the other hand had a rather different reaction. I had spent several minutes explaining the historical context of the Halloween Psychopath belief, my amazement that there existed genuine science on the subject, the nature of the test design, and the surprising result. After all that she exclaimed; “yes, but that really did happen”.
It was a sad sort of semi-epiphany for me, like learning that someone you know or like is a creationist, or believes in the divinity of the Shroud of Turin. I knew for years that my mother was irrational, but as I grew older and my critical thinking and research skills sharpened, it became all the more painful for me to witness her displays of intellectual nonsense.
No, the real danger for trick-or-treating children is being hit by a car, not receiving poisoned or adulterated candy. When I was a child, we would practically sprint from house to house in a mad dash to get as much candy as we possibly could. An obvious set-up for carelessly running across the street. So I guess that today’s modern tradition of parents escorting their kids is a good thing, if for no other reason than they can make sure their kids cross the street safely.
Note that I’m writing about events from almost 25 years ago strictly from memory. For a more much more updated and fact-checked take on the same subject, read Ben Radford’s excellent essay.
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