 What do you call a person who believes in pyramid power? I have a hobby. I'm a collector. I collect pseudo-sciences. Really? What exactly is a pseudo-science? Well, a pseudo-science is a set of ideas presented as scientific when in fact they are not and fail to meet the accepted norms of scientific research. As my friend and colleague Sharon Hill of Doubtful News says, pseudo-sciences often tend to sound sciency rather than actually being sciency, whereas science is based on actual provable observation rather than mythology, mystical authority, sacred text, or faith. Scientific claims are testable, repeatable, and falsifiable. They not only can be proven, but they are framed in such a way so that it's also possible to prove them false. Scientific claims are coherent with the rest of science, and further exploration adds to their confirmation, so a new discovery in chemistry confirms and adds to our further understanding of biology. Now by contrast, pseudo-scientific claims are invariably not testable, not consistent with known scientific principles, supported only with selective evidence, are filled with exceptions and special assumptions, and are often based on faith, mythology, or the simple idea that they have been around for a very, very long time. But just because an idea is old doesn't always make it good, or else your HMO would be offering leeches and cupping in order to treat the humors. But these facets of pseudo-science, while accurate, are not why I collect them. I collect pseudo-sciences because so many of them are so damn goofy, and because no matter how goofy the claims, there's always somebody out there capable of making a buck on it. It's a tribute to the folly and foolishness of the human condition. We all know somebody who believes in something in my collection. As the humorous Josh Billings once said, it's not so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble, it's the things we know that just ain't so. And yes, the saying is often mis-tributed to Mark Twain, among many others, don't rely on Wikipedia. Now, my collection is up over 500 pseudo-sciences, and I haven't got the time to discuss them all here today. So let's just consider this the first installment of the Honest Liars pseudo-science collection, beginning with quack medicine. Quack medicine is a pseudo-scientific category with a rich history that's filled with both tragedy and it must be admitted hilarity. Perhaps we'll talk about some of both in another episode, but for the moment, what I really want to point out is that there's also a subset of medical quackery that applies to veterinary medicine, that is to say, crackpot medicine for your pets. And what I love about this is the term to describe a practitioner of quack veterinary medicine to wit an animal quacker. I love that. Here's another yogic flying. Followers of the cult of transcendental meditation believe that the cult's long-time leader, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, you know, old bearded guy in a bathrobe hung out with the Beatles, could actually teach you to fly. The magician, the late Doug Henning, who helped modernize and popularize magic in the 1970s and 80s, was actually an enthusiastic believer in TM and, sadly, gave up his career in pursuit of this kind of real, albeit nonsensical, magic. Well, many years ago, James Randi and I, along with my long-time skeptical friend and colleague, Chip Denman, went to observe a day of TMers taking part in what they call the yogic flying Olympics in Washington, D.C. This consisted of people sitting on mattresses with their legs crossed and bouncing. They called it flying. We called it bouncing. I often consider myself lucky when I find myself touching down on the tarmac in a commercial jetliner, celebrating the fact that the professional pilots up front seem never to be confused about the difference between flying and bouncing. Xenoglossi. These are not in alphabetical order, by the way. Xenoglossi. Here I can do no better than quote from the online skeptics dictionary. Quote, Xenoglossi is the alleged speaking or writing in a language previously and entirely unknown to the speaker. The probability of this actually happening is approximately zero. The skeptic dictionary can be found at skepdic.com. Crystal Power. Crystal power like many other ancient crackpot new age beliefs, or as I prefer to call a new age as in rhymes with sewage. Crystal power was particularly big in the 1970s. I remember at the time being seated on a plane and noticing the passenger sitting next to me, a woman who was obviously uncomfortable with flying. She was wearing a crystal pendant which she kept fingering nervously. And I couldn't help but think to myself, you know, if this plane goes down in the ocean somewhere, there's going to be 199 people desperately hanging onto their seat cushions and one woman hanging onto a rock. Channeling. Channeling was another new age pursuit that while thousands of years old was revived in the 1970s. What with Naptha, Ramtha, whatever the name of Shirley McLean's favorite channel or was. Jay-Z Knight was the channel or channeled Ramtha. But to me, channeling always seems just like bad ventriloquism. You know, they talk funny but their lips move. Aromatherapy. Like so many things, aromatherapy is as much a marketing category as it is a pseudoscience. So you might say that the science of aromatherapy is based on the principle that stuff that you like the way it smells, smells really good to you. Star Child. A star child is the offspring of an alien and a human being. Like, I don't know, Gary Busey. Pyramid power. Pyramid power is the belief that if you have something shaped like a pyramid and you put something else under it, magic happens. Razor blades sharpen, dead plants come back to life, cell phones get better reception. I don't know. So there's your first set of entries in the Honest Liars collection of pseudosciences. Score yourselves zero for each one you got right because each and every one of them is worth absolutely nothing. And oh, what do you call a believer in pyramid power? A pyramid idiot! This is Jamie Ian Swiss and I am the Honest Liar.