The web site What's The Harm? (http://whatstheharm.net) has been up for just over a year. In this presentation I review what I've learned in creating the site, how I've had to adjust it over time, and talk about the reaction to the site. Versions of this presentation were given at Skepticamp Atlanta (Feb. 6, 2009), Boston Skeptics in the Pub (Feb. 23, 2009) and on The Amazing Adventure 4 Cruise (Mar. 13, 2009). These slides are from the final version.

1. A Year of Harm
Tim Farley
whatstheharm.net
Amaz!ng Adventure 4
March 13, 2009

2. What’s The Harm?
• Public web site
• Went online in January 2008
• Where did I get the idea?
• What is the site good for?
• What have I learned in doing it?
• Where is it going next?

3. Inspiration: TAM 5
• Penn Jillette kept mentioning TAM
on his radio show
• The Amazing Meeting 5, Las Vegas
– January 2007
– Sponsored by JREF (randi.org)
– Hundreds of skeptics in one hotel
• I attended and was amazed
• I wondered: “What can I do?”

4. Looking for an Idea
• Why are we skeptics?
• What good do we do?
• Aren’t there victims of “woo-woo”?
• Who focuses on them?
• Stories exist, but supporting news
stories disappear quickly
• TAM 5.5 theme: “Skepticism &
Activism”

5. What are these cases?
•News stories
–Deaths, injuries, loss of money
•Relate to skeptical topics
–Psychics, Alt-med, Religion,
Scams
•Reported on skeptic web sites
•Largely anecdotal evidence

6. Case: Laurie Mathiason
• 20 years old
• Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan
• Went to her chiropractor
for a “tailbone injury”
• He adjusted her neck.
She went into a coma
due to induced stroke.
• She died 3 days later

7. Case: Brittney & Jessica
• Ages: 2 and 4
• Vancouver, Washington
• Mother suffered from severe
depression, but controlled it
with medications
• Treatment lauded in the news
• She stopped taking her anti-
depressants in favor of St.
Johns Wort, an herbal remedy.
• She fell into a deep depression
and murdered her daughters.

8. Case: Dawn Page
• Age: 52
• Holton, Oxford, England
• She went to a “nutritionist”
for advice in losing weight
• Was put on a “detoxification
diet” that required large
amounts of water & no salt
• She suffered brain damage
and was awarded £810K in
a lawsuit

9. Idea: “Wall of Harm”
• List victims names along with the
pseudoscience or belief that hurt
them
• Remind skeptics at TAM this is
why we do this
• Act as a call to action

10. Inspiration: Vietnam Wall

11. Next Step: JREF Forum
• Started thread on
forums.randi.org
• Put up prototype web site, asked
for comments
• Got many good ideas, more cases
• Logo created by volunteer
• Many technical suggestions
• Surprisingly, no objections to
“anecdotal evidence”

12. Lesson: Be Neutral
• Original site was very skeptic
oriented
–Used words like “woo,” “bogus,”
and “quackery”
• Neutral tone allows site to
appeal to non-skeptics as well
–Suggested by Robert S. Lancaster
of “Stop Sylvia”
• Lure believers in via Google hits

13. Idea: “What’s the Harm?”
• Vietnam Wall metaphor doesn’t
work outside the U.S.
• Useful outside the 3 days of TAM
• “What’s the Harm” is an existing
and understandable meme
• Web site allows more details to be
included, with supporting links
• Launched the site in January 2008

16. Why anecdotes?
• Some people just don’t “get” it
–scientific evidence
–probabilities and risk
–logical fallacies
• Most people can empathize with
a person who died
• It makes the dangers of
pseudoscience more real

17. Very Specific Tool
• It is the Allen wrench
in your toolbox
• Don’t need it every day
• If you do need it, it is
essential
• Solves a specific
rhetorical problem

18. Adopted Some Limits
• Stories from last 50 years
• Must affect a specific person
• Must be concrete and
understandable (death, injury or
substantial $$$)
• No hate crimes
• This helps limit control the scope
and focuses on skeptic topics

19. Case: Isabella Denley
• Age: 13 months
• Victoria, Australia
• Parents stopped her epilepsy
medicine due to side effects.
• They saw an iridologist,
applied kinesiologist, a
psychic and an osteopath.
• She was being treated solely
with homeopathy when she
died of a severe seizure

20. Lesson: Woo Squared
• People prone to believe one
pseudoscience will believe others
• Multiple forms of “woo” will
appear in individual cases
• Common syndrome in many
stories
• Needed to adapt database to
handle this

21. Case: Rudi Boa
• Age: 28
• Tumut, NSW, Australia
• He was backpacking on
vacation and ran into a
fellow Brit. A pub
discussion of evolution
became violent.
• Rudi was murdered.

22. Lesson: I Get Letters
• Alan McManus writes:
– “Evolution or Darwinism would indeed be
true to its theory by allowing a person to
murder another person …”
• 7 paragraphs of how Darwin allows
murder
• He had it backwards!
• When corrected, he said it was “neither”
Darwin nor Creationism that caused it

23. Cases: Vegetarianism
• Early source of controversy - many
emails
• Originally titled “Vegetarianism /
Veganism”
• Some thought site was against
vegetarianism
• Page was mostly child victims
• Children require more B12 and
other nutrients than adults, hence
the issue

24. Lesson: Adjust
• Sometimes people miss that the
core idea of the site is critical
thinking
• Removed two adults in that category
• Renamed it “Child Vegetarianism”
• Added link to a helpful pro-
vegetarianism book about children
• Adjustments to existing content are
sometimes necessary

25. Case: Paula Ceely
• Age: 20
• Dyfed, Wales, UK
• She was following GPS
instructions to the
letter, and ended up
stuck on a train track.
• Her car was wrecked by
a train.

26. Lesson: Levity Helps
• The endless parade of dead
people can be depressing
• Some silly cases lighten up the
site
• Critical thinking is useful in cases
other than “woo”
• Controversy over whether GPS is
really the cause can open a dialog

27. January 2008 Statistics
• 480 cases (63 with photos)
• 2,427 people died
• 17,708 people injured
• $89 million in damages
• 414 linked news stories
• 62 visible categories

28. February 2009 Statistics
• 790 cases (114 with photos)
• 368,379 people died
• 306,096 people injured
• $2.8 BILLION in damages
• 890 linked news stories
• 78 visible categories

29. What’s Next?
• More Cases
– Every time I go looking, I find cases
• More Categories
– Dahn Yoga, EST, Fasting/diets,
Gerson therapy, Polygraphs, Tarot,
Therapeutic Touch and more
• More Ways to Sort and Search
– Show me my state/country/
continent only
• Skeptical Software Tools

30. It Comes Back to Penn
• See Penn Jillette’s video endorsement of the
site at Crackle.com at the URL below
• URL: http://tinyurl.com/PennHarm

31. Lessons Learned
• Web sites are a good venue for
activism
• Special purpose web sites are needed
• Skeptic community can help you
• Neutral tone helps reach believers
• Be prepared to learn, adapt & change
• People believe multiple crazy things
• Some levity helps
• Have a thick skin

32. Questions?
•Site:
whatstheharm.net
•Blog:
skeptools.com