Introduction
When I took AP English History in 1999-2000, we were required to have a subscription to either Newsweek or Time Magazine.
When I worked in the public library during most of high school, I admired the large, full-page covers of Time and I considered it to be one of the premier news magazines of the, well, time. There are even books of its covers and what they represent of America’s and the world’s history.
After I graduated high school and began to read news on a regular basis, Time and CNN were my primary news sources.
But, the Age of the Internet and shifts in emphasis have, in my opinion, led to a significant decline in Time. From its shift of investigative journalism to columnist opinions, and from lengthy reports to quick, ~5-paragraph summaries, it’s a change, and not for the better.
But worst of all, this kind of change allows for more credulous and – dare I say – pseudoscience reporting to masquerade as “news” under the still generally well-respective umbrella that is Time. Phil Plait beat me back in early October when he posted about Laura Stampler writing columns on astrology, but the latest is Charlotte Alter writing a completely credulous column that parrots Deepak Chopra.
Laura Stampler Parrots AstrologyZone’s Susan Miller
Two days in a row, on October 7 and 8, 2014, Time‘s Laura Stampler wrote two “interviews” she did with AstrologyZone’s Susan Miller. I place the word “interview” in quotes because it was the level of hard journalism that one might expect from talking to the television: Miller said what she wanted to say about astrology, and Stampler wrote it down.
For example, here are paragraphs 2 through 7 of the first piece on Astrologer Susan Miller On Why You Should Pay Attention to the Lunar Eclipse”:
“It’s called a blood moon, but I don’t want people to be agitated by that,” popular astrologer Susan Miller tells TIME. And while the April 15 lunar eclipse signaled a time of conflict and even tragedy — Miller notes that was the day day Boko Haram kidnapped 276 schoolgirls in Nigeria and the day before a South Korean ferry capsized leaving 300 dead and missing — “this one is much more gentle.”
In fact, Miller says the change that the Oct. 8 lunar eclipse brings, although shocking at first, will even be good, at least according to the stars. To understand why, we asked her all the questions you’d want to ask a famous astrologer.
“This eclipse is a full moon so something is coming from to an ending or culmination,” she explains.
“Eclipses are non-negotiable,” Miller says. “They end something and they brings something else. But it really needed to end… There’s a shock factor first, and then a solution that turns out to be so good that you realize, wait a minute, this is a blessing.
Miller recalls when she had a houseguest who “spent the whole year crying on my couch,” coincidentally over the course of a series of five eclipses. On the first eclipse, her husband asked for a divorce. On the second, he told her that he wanted to sell the house. Come the third the house was sold, fourth the property was split, and on the final eclipse the divorce was finalized.
The second piece, the next day, wasn’t much better. Well, really was somewhat worse. The title was, “Why the Most Famous Astrologer in the Universe Says You Shouldn’t Buy an iPhone Right Now.” Here are just two paragraphs as a sampler:
“I’m such an Apple addict, I love everything they come out with, but it’s not the right time,” Miller, founder of Astrology Zone, tells TIME. “I know that everybody wants to buy the iPhone 6, but you’ve got to wait.”
Why? Mercury is in retrograde between October 4 and 25 — and that period of cosmic slowing, when the planet appears to be traveling backwards, is notorious for misunderstandings and technological failings. “It’s not a good time to buy an electronic item,” Miller says. “Sometimes you can make the wrong decision or you buy something and you never use it and you say to yourself, ‘Gosh, that was a bad purchase.’ You bought the wrong model or then it goes on sale the following week, or something happens… [iPhones are] going to continue to have little software bugs.”
Readers of my blog should know by this point that astrology carries zero weight with me or with any other scientist. It is magical thinking, confirmation bias, and vaguely worded nonsense that can apply to most people who hear it. It also uses science-babble (akin to techno-babble on something like Star Trek where they use sciencey-sounding terms and phrases in various combinations and contexts that render them meaningless).
Having a major news source have any author posting about it in this kind of credulous “reporting” is worrying, among other adverbs.
Charlotte Alter Parrots Deepak Chopra
I haven’t really talked about Deepak Chopra on this blog before. That’s mostly because Chopra is primarily in the New Age “field” and tries to talk about medicine. And the nebulous concept of “consciousness.” His only real foray into astronomy or physics is to be a worse abuser of terms and concepts than astrologers, especially of anything “quantum.” I honestly simply haven’t considered him worth addressing on this blog.
However, in the context of bad media reporting, after Laura’s horrible pieces on astrology, I was watching for other examples, and this morning at the airport while looking through my RSS feed, I saw this headline: “Deepak Chopra on Why Gratitude Is Good for You.”
Sigh. (Yes, I literally sighed when I saw the headline.)
The “article” is by Charlotte Alter. It consists of six paragraphs. One of them is a sentence fragment introduction. The fifth is a paragraph that appears to be from one of Chopra’s books. In other words, this one isn’t even an “interview” with him, rather this is Charlotte reporting on what Chopra has written in the past about gratitude and why it’s “good for you.”
In her third paragraph, she wrote: “Chopra, who most recently wrote The Future of God: A Practical Approach to Spirituality for Our Times, says expressing gratitude on Thanksgiving isn’t just tradition — it’s also good for the body and spirit. And in a month when many Americans may be feeling worried or disappointed (about everything from the severe weather, to the unrest in Ferguson and the disturbing allegations against Bill Cosby), an effort to be more grateful can help get rid of those “toxic” feelings, if just for one night. “Anger and hostility can be inflammatory not only in your mind but in your body,” he said. “Gratitude is healing. It expands your awareness and shifts your focus from something that’s actually hurting you to something that is healing.””
This is why there are websites that randomly generate “Chopraisms,” combining random words into phrases that sound a lot like what Chopra sells.
Alter concludes with these three paragraphs:
But it’s not enough to just gorge yourself on sweet potatoes and bicker over the drumstick– you have to actually deliberately practice gratitude in order to reap the spiritual benefits.
“You can do a simple meditation where you quiet your mind, put your attention in your hear and just ask yourself ‘what am i grateful for?’ If you just ask the question in your own stillness, things will come up…You don’t have to go looking for the answer, you just have to ask the question and then allow any sensation, image, feeling or thought to come to you…People who practice this kind of ritual, they have a boost in their immune functioning, a shift in their hormones, it’s pretty interesting what happens even at the level of cell markers of information…This kind of thing actually has very powerful biological consequences.”
So stop stressing about how much pie you’re eating and focus instead on what’s good in your life. It’s healthy.
I’m not sure if the poor grammar is in the original Chopra writing or if Charlotte did some bad copying. I’m also not sure how you would “put your attention in your hear.” But I guess I’m just a mean skeptical scientist.
Decline of the News Industry
I don’t know if Ms. Alter is a good reporter or a stay-at-home occasional freelance writer who submits random blog posts to news sources in the hope of making a few bucks if they’re published. The same goes for Ms. Stampler.
But, once you have a reputation as a good company in whatever your field may be, allowing stupidity to be done in your name is a sure way to ruin your reputation.
It’s also a way for pseudoscientists to claim an undeserved reputation. Being published in these kinds of outlets lends undeserved credibility that can then be cited as evidence of veracity as a form of argument from authority: “Hey! I got published in X (which has a great reputation), therefore I should be taken more seriously now!”
I’m probably preaching to the choir here, though. Most of us know traditional media is dying, and they need to look for other ways of making revenue.
However, I’m reminded of the Murphy Brown episode where the news crew of FYI decided to have “ladies of the night” on along with some concerned mothers’ group and it erupted into a cat fight. The crew felt like dirt after doing it, but then they saw that their ratings were the highest they had ever been. They excitedly talked about other, similar ideas and more controversy and spectacle … and then they had another moment of, “What the heck are we doing here? We used to be serious news people and now look at us.” The episode ended with them pondering the trade-off between serious journalism and sensationalism and easy ratings.
I worry that Time is not that introspective.
Now, if only those damn kids would get off my lawn…
Exposing PseudoAstronomy 