Bach Flower Remedies

Recently we adopted my neighbor's Blue Heeler. We named her Tyche (tie-kee) after the Greek goddess of luck and prosperity since she's now the luckiest dog alive. The neighbors just called her Baby Girl, they never really named her.

To make a long story short, she was left outside 24/7/365 in the rain/heat/freezing cold, to be neglected and lonely. She's the sweetest dog, so loving and smart. The neighbors had her for a year outside, so she's 2 now and has never been housetrained. She's had to fight for every scrap of food. So she's a bit of a handful.

For the past couple of months, she had been escaping her chain and visiting in the mornings. I would go outside and play with her with my other two dogs. They all got along very well. I have  a chocolate lab mix (Koku) and a Siberian Husky (Stazi). Stazi is a very dominant alpha dog. When Tyche came over, she was submissive and my dogs played very well with her.

So here's what's so interesting. When the boy said I could finally have Tyche, he just let her loose. I had no leash so I coaxed her to our yard. And instantly she was ferocious, and so was Stazi! How did they know that she was suddenly part of the family?

Now, she's not fixed (we're going to have that taken care of in a couple of weeks), so that might be part of the problem. But it's been very stressful. We're working on potty training. But Tyche's aggressiveness with Stazi is a real issue. Stazi didn't really fight back at first, and ended up with a big scratch on her ear. The last time Tyche got in Stazi's face, Stazi fought back and it was pretty scary.

Why am I telling you all of this? Well, I made a comment about Stazi's scratched ear on Facebook and I was told by someone to get Bach Flower Pet Rescue Remedy to fix the problem completely. Apparently it had been a "lifesaver" to this person with her 3 cats during a cross-country move.

This got my hackles up because I have a "no woo" policy on Facebook (and in person). But I know the woman meant well so I thanked her for the advice and said I'd rather have a science-based solution to my problem. I did not try to change her mind, I simply said thanks and I might look into it, but that I wasn't interested if it wasn't science-based.

She and her boyfriend then gave me a hard time. This is what their argument boiled down to:

•  Herbs were the only medicine until people started making synthetic ones (Appeal to Tradition, I think*)


• Some vets in the American Veterinary Medical Assoc. apparently recommend Rescue Remedy (Appeal to Authority, probably a small minority who never read the actual studies)


• I can complain to a shrink if I won't take BFRs (Bach Flower Remedies) and they can give me something to calm me - science based (as if that's evil or I should be ashamed of a chemical imbalance in my brain!?) 

The 10 Commandments of Logical Fallacies

1. Thou shall not attack the person’s character, but the argument. (Ad hominem)

2. Thou shall not misrepresent or exaggerate a person’s argument in order to make them easier to attack. (Straw man fallacy)

3. Thou shall not use small numbers to represent the whole. (Hasty generalization)

4. Thou shall not argue thy position by assuming one of its premises is true. (Begging the question)

5. Thou shall not claim that because something occurred before, it must be the cause. (Post Hoc/False cause)

6. Thou shall not reduce the argument down to two possibilities. (False dichotomy)

7. Thou shall not argue that because of our ignorance, claim must be true or false. (Ad ignorantium)

8. Thou shall not select only the supporting information and ignore everything that goes against the claim. (Cherry-picking)

9. Thou shall not assume “this” follows “that” when it has no logical connection. (Non sequitur)

10. Thou shall not claim that because a premise is popular, therefore it must be true.(Bandwagon fallacy)

Which logical fallacies do you think belong on this list?

Slightly adapted from here.

Rules and Guidelines for Participating on HDC

Here's a bit of HDC maintenance I've been meaning to get to.

Note: With the addition of BuddyPress, the main rule is to be civil. These rules can change at any time to reflect how the site is being used.

While I love your comments here at Heaving Dead Cats, spam and trolling are no fun for anyone. To give as much freedom for comments as possible, we need some rules and guidelines:

1. Any comments or links which require a significant effort to determine if they may or may not be legitimate are subject to deletion.


2. If you want to promote your own blog, that's fine. Do so by posting a relevant comment. Promote yourself by participating.


3. No Ad Hominem attacks. If you have an argument with someone, discuss it civilly. If you attack the person and get nasty I will delete the comment. We are grownups here. There's no need to play dirty.
   
   
   
   1. If you consistently attack others in a nasty way, you'll be banned from future commenting.
   
   
   
   


4. Be polite. Do not feed trolls. Do not be a troll. Trolls are banned.


5. No spam of any kind. If it feels like spam to me, it goes in the trash.

These rules are subject to my interpretation and may change at any time. If you think you have not been fairly treated, email me your concern and I will take it under consideration.

What's Your 'Favorite' Pseudoscience?

First, what is pseudoscience? Pseudoscience: a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific methodology, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status. Pseudoscience Hallmarks:

• Experimental results are not reproducible or able to be verified by others, sometimes through lack of openness of data


• Lack of effective controls (not properly randomized or double blinded, as the case may be)


• The scientific method has not been rigorously adhered to


• Not falsifiable (the result can not be disproved)


• Not testable


• Often overturns established science and proven laws of nature


• Vague scientific claims, often lack specific measurements


• Failure to define the operational terms so that others can independently measure or test them


• Failure to use Occam's Razor (the explanation that requires the fewest possible additional assumptions is usually the most accurate)


• Technical jargon or obscure language meant to confuse and sound like an authority in science


• Lack of boundary conditions (real science specifies limits where the predicted phenomena do and do not apply)


• Heavy reliance on testimonial and anecdotal evidence or personal experience


• Argument from ignorance (just because a claim hasn't been proven false, they say it must be true)


• Selection Bias (cherry picking the results to only use the hits and suppress the misses)


• Evades peer review before publicizing results

Neil C. Reinhardt Shows His True Colors

When someone sends me spam, I figure the information sent to me is fair game. Remember the guy who sent me the email about noni juice? I blogged about it twice: (here and here).

In the second post, I went through his email line by line and stated the logical fallacy. I made no personal attacks (except one, I'm only human after all). When I published the post, I removed his name. I wasn't trying to attack the spammer personally. I just thought it was an excellent exercise for us.

What I didn't do, is write back to the guy. As I said, it seemed like spam, and I didn't want to get into it with him. I figured I'd never hear from him again. I heard from him 5 times this evening. Oh, lucky me, I just got another one from him. That makes 6.

When he sent the first ones, he apparently hadn't seen the articles. In the first email of the evening he wrote:

"P.S. FYI The odds of you ever knowing, and/or ever meeting, anyone who is MORE truthful than I am is zero!"

To which I replied, "In my experience when someone starts out saying how [insert noble quality such as honesty, fidelity, etc. here] they usually prove to be either self-delusional or outright liars."

He didn't like that. He said later that my experience was limited. Which I have to say, he's right. My data pool is not immense. But it's a good rule of thumb in my experience. When someone tells me, "I'm so honest, I'm so faithful, I never lie, I'll always do this behavior" I will remember that. It's usually a huge red flag that they will fail in that exact respect sooner rather than later.

I'm not a psychologist but it seems to me that that there are two things going on. Either you're lying to yourself when you say such a thing, or you're lying to whoever you say it to. Or some combination thereof.

Anyway, I started to reply to this guy's email. I wanted to make it very clear that I didn't want his juice and I didn't want to argue with him. The way he talked about James Randi was another red flag I should have heeded.

He sent a long email of glowing reviews from other people. (I gather he is on a forum or something). This is anecdotal and irrelevant to me.

Another email was vague and I have no idea what it was about.

Then the kicker. Obviously he visited HDC. If you don't want to read strong language, skip this. It's exactly as he sent it in its entirety. Notice I do not do the courtesy of removing his name this time:

Logical Fallacy Land Revisited

Last week I shared a crazy email I got from some crackpot (yes, that's a well deserved ad hominem attack there) trying to sell me noni juice.

Now, I think I can safely say that juice is good for you, to a certain extent. In many ways, it's way better to eat the whole fruit, because juice usually has a very high glycemic index since it no longer has any fiber in it, and usually has a lot of sugars that get metabolized quickly, spiking your blood sugar levels. But, most juice does have vitamins, some minerals, and antioxidants. While it's good to consume your vitamins and minerals in food, antioxidants have lately been under a lot of study, some positive, some negative. So while it's good to get them in food, it's probably not beneficial to go out of your way to consume huge amounts of them.

So noni juice, which comes from the noni tree in Southeast Asia, probably has some basic goodness to it. But it's not a miracle cure. See the above link to the wikipedia article that says that noni juice has never been proven to do much of anything and can't be sold as a medical cure for anything. It's just juice, people. Overpriced and sold as a multi-level marketing scheme.

The crazy email I shared the other day really tickled my funny bone because it was so ridiculous though. Some of you commented with great rebuttals (thank you very much!), but I thought I'd go through it myself with the name of the logical fallacy in bold after the false claim made. Here's the letter again:

I am an old guy who has lived in more places than most even visit, done more different types of things than most even consider doing, much actually less do. And I have had many more professions than most. (Appeal to Irrelevant Authority. So he's an active old guy who can't hold a job. Irrelevant)

Logical Fallacy Theater in 4 Acts

Butch, my awesome husband, found the following 4 act play with lobsters in trees. I have added a bit of information for your edumacation enjoyment. Who knew some lobsters were so daft?

Act 1: Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc (after this, therefore because of this). Since the event followed this one, that event must have been caused by this one.

Logical Fallacy 2: Ad Hominem- A Personal Attack

Today's logical fallacy is also very common, in my experience. It's called Ad Hominem, which is roughly translated from the Latin for "to the person." It's a personal attack against you instead of your argument. It can be subtle because it isn't just that they call you a bad name, but they use a weakness or characteristic of you to imply that your argument is weak.

This is Part 2 in a series about Logical Fallacies. We are going through one fallacy at a time. There are many types of fallacious arguments. I'm going to try to explain them with examples then find ways to help you refute those arguments when they occur. Please comment or email if there's a particular fallacy you want me to tackle, or if you have success with refuting an argument using a good technique you can share.

Example: You: I don't believe in UFO's.
Opponent: You're so close minded!

Example: Opponent: I believe in UFO's.
You: You're crazy and/or stupid.