Is This Wi-Fi Organic?

A Guide to Spotting Misleading Science Online

Dave Farina

• Publisher: Mango
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781642504163
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy & Ethics in Science

How to Separate Real Scientific Truths from Fake News

"Scientific literacy is our best defense in an age of increasing disinformation." ? Kellie Gerardi, Aerospace Professional and Author of Not Necessarily Rocket Science

#1 New Release in Safety & First Aid, Education, Essays & Commentary, Scientific Research, and Ethics

We live in the internet age, where scams, frauds, fake-news, fake stories, fake science, and false narratives are everywhere. With the knowledge base gained from Dave Farina's simple explanations, learn to spot misinformation and lies on the internet before they spot you.

Is This Wi-Fi Organic? is a playful investigation of popular opinions and consumer trends that permeate our society. The organic craze has taken hold of grocery culture despite most being unable to define the term. Healers and quantum mystics of every flavor are securing their foothold alongside science-based medicine, in an unregulated and largely unchallenged landscape of unsubstantiated claims. Anti-science mentality is growing. Misleading popular opinions are used to sell you products and services that range from ineffectual to downright dangerous.

Learn how to separate fact from fiction. Dave Farina, author and science communicator from the YouTube channelProfessor Dave Explainsoffers easy-to-read lessons on basic scientific principles everyone should understand, and then uses them to expose threads of confusion among the public.

Learn:

• The real science behind semi-controversial health issues like drugs and vaccines
• What energy actually is, and how we use it each and every day
• A core of scientific knowledge that empowers you to spot misinformation, fake-news, fake science, and increase your critical thinking skills

Readers captivated by the scientific and critical thinking teachings in science books like Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking, The Demon-Haunted World, or Calling Bullshit, will love Is This Wi-Fi Organic?

Chapter 12

To Debunk Is Divine

If you’ve made it this far, it’s time for your reward. We are going to take our newfound knowledge in chemistry, biochemistry, biology, and physics, and we are going to use it to tear through a variety of fads, misconceptions, and hoaxes that are rampant in our culture today. Some of these phenomena are harmful to society. They endanger lives and cause artificial rifts in the populace that others can use to gain power. Others are mere flights of fancy that subsets of the population engage in with very little broader harm as a result, apart from being a drain on their bank accounts. In debunking these narratives, the aggressiveness should be proportional to the harm that is being done by the narrative. Exposing pseudoscience should only be done in a bellicose manner if that pseudoscience specifically harms others. This is because, apart from being a bit cruel, attempting to strip someone of their beliefs without provocation will often entrench them further in their delusions. Those who did not use logic to arrive at a position will not respond to logic-based arguments for the abandonment of that position. But when we are directly confronted with pseudoscience, no matter how benign, it is the duty of the educated individual to shine a light on ignorance. Even a passing interaction with a peer, or a stranger, where pseudoscience is presented, is an opportunity to strategically influence that person’s thinking, or at least plant a seed of doubt. The odds of success are low, and the strategy utilized may differ depending on the personality and skill set of the individual, but if we intend to transform our society into one that is wise and capable of critical thought, we must challenge ignorance wherever it is encountered, as every drop counts.

With each pseudoscientific narrative we disarm, and with each source of misinformation we discredit, we get closer and closer to reaching our potential as a society. Whether this means exposing a snake oil salesman or conveying some scientific facts to a friend in a nurturing manner, I challenge the notion that such activity is futile. I reject the idea that people can’t be convinced of anything. I scoff at the proposition that everyone should just stay in their lane and keep their heads down. Inaction is a cop-out. We are here to build a world together, and the collective consciousness responsible for its sculpting is a chaotic system of people and thoughts. We all play a role, and we all have some amount of influence, so let’s start using that influence wisely. It is possible to change the way people think, one must simply be skilled and persistent. Let the debunking begin.

To avoid pulling a muscle, let’s warm up a bit. Pseudoscientific claims are made left and right regarding water. First up is the phenomenon called “hexagonal water.” This is described by its peddlers as water molecules that arrange themselves in a hexagonal pattern, with eight molecules in a ring formation. This structure is said to have unique properties with “exciting health ramifications.” What they do not mention is that this pattern of water molecules goes by another name. Ice. Water freezes in this pattern, among others depending on the precise conditions, because that’s how it can maximize hydrogen bonding. The only thing this could accurately be describing is ice cubes, which sadly do not have health ramifications beyond a mild local anesthetic. This pattern absolutely is not retained when water is a liquid, because that defies what a liquid is. In the liquid phase, molecules move past each other constantly, like balls in a ball pit. So apart from fleeting clusters that last for less than a trillionth of a second, hexagonal liquid water is not a thing.

Similar claims are made regarding energized water, alkaline water, oxygenated water, and so many other kinds of super-special water, all of which are desperately trying to convince you that they are better than normal, distilled, pure water. But much to their chagrin, energized water doesn’t mean anything. Alkaline water implies a basic pH, which by definition is not pure water. This would be instantly neutralized in the acidic environment of the stomach and is not advantageous in any way. And oxygenated water is just water with bubbles in it, which is not useful, since we are not fish, and oxygen enters our bodies through the lungs, not the digestive tract. We also can’t “change the molecular structure” of water by whispering words of love or hate into it. Beyond the sheer absurdity of the claim, if you were to change the molecular structure of something, it would not be that molecule any longer. Images of water crystallizing in different arrangements, called polymorphs, are the result of manipulating ambient conditions to affect the rate of freezing. The images are then arbitrarily paired up with claims regarding exposure to certain genres of music or particular verbal messages. It’s a hoax. All these bizarre claims really do is dismiss the relevance of practically unlimited clean water from a tap, a very recent development which is one of the most incredible achievements in the history of humanity, one that the underdeveloped world can only dream of.

TL;DR—All “special” waters that boast health benefits are hoaxes.

Now let’s aim for a more significant target. An enormous collection of pseudoscientific concepts falls under the umbrella of “quantum mysticism.” The ethos, or rather the angle taken by this fad, which first picked up steam in the 1980s, can be summarized as follows. Quantum physics is confusing, so it’s magic, therefore if magic can be framed using the terminology of quantum physics, that magic is real. Pushers of this narrative tend to be people who sell books or services. The key to this narrative is its philosophical allure. Religion has historically given people a sense of purpose, interconnectedness, and divinity. As the civilized world grew largely secular, this necessarily meant withdrawing from fundamentalist religious beliefs. There are those who have the tendency to trade one kind of religiosity for another, and quantum mysticism offers such a belief system, containing all of the transcendence and empowerment without any of the burdens of organized religion. Personal desires can be manifested, not through prayer but through meditation. The instinctual yearning for permanence is satiated by tying deep truths to the practices of the ancients. And according to them, all of this is backed up by science, because in the twentieth century, science figured out that reality is magic.

In actuality, quantum mysticism is what you get when you combine two highly contradictory traits. On one hand, a self-image of being science-minded despite supreme ignorance toward science, and on the other hand, a proclivity toward fantasy. It is the epitome of pseudoscience, because it makes absurd claims and presents them as being conclusions that are logically derived from accepted physics. But the interesting thing is that it simultaneously stands in defiance of Big Science, and in particular, Big Medicine. It is costumed as primeval truths from a time when humans were aligned with planetary energy, despite their thirty-year life expectancies, that have recently and suddenly been obscured to make way for Big Business and their profits. In short, it’s just more of the same childish narrative we have been dealing with this whole time.

TL;DR—Be skeptical of anyone using the word “quantum” who is not a physicist. They don’t know what it means, and they assume that you don’t either.

Let’s get a bit more concrete with some of the language that is put forth. I live in Los Angeles, California. The enclave of Santa Monica appears to me to be the epicenter of quantum mysticism, harboring holistic healers and psychics of more flavors than the ice cream section at the grocery store. For example, examining the website of one local organization that shall remain nameless, the owner is described as a reiki master teacher, author, sacred sound alchemist, quantum healer, and meditation instructor. I see tabs on the home page entitled Chakra Shop, Rei...