Extraordinary claims. Ordinary investigations.

In 1917, Elsie Wright, 16, and Frances Griffiths, only 10 years old, photographed fairies. Their photos were allegedly examined at Kodak, and no evidence of trickery was found. Most notably, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would endorse the whole case of the Cottingley Fairies.

Later (actually, decades later) it would turn out the fairies were simple cut-outs fixed with pin-hats – which explains why the photos weren’t tricked, as the fairies were real, in a way. And the now old ladies would also confess to their deed:

“People wanted to be taken in”.

We covered the bizarre case from the beginning, and even managed to get inside photos of the scene from “the house that dripped blood”. Ladies and gentlemen, the case has been solved by the police, and the resolution is astonishing.

Genetic analysis of the blood confirmed it was from the old lady that lives in the house with her husband. That would be most disappointing, but before considering hoax, read this:

“Officer Lopes said that even before the results of the DNA tests, he already knew the blood was from the lady. ‘Two days after the blood showed up, we already suspected that the blood was hers. I spent a day in their house and my only doubt was if the bleeding was gynecological or from varicose veins. I examined the couple, and we realized that she had a recent hemorrhage in the varicose veins in her legs’.”

Yes, her varicose veins burst, and all suggests she honestly didn’t realize that. That explains why everything happened after she bathed (with her legs naked), and how she could claim that she had seen the blood squirting. It also explains the freshness of the blood, which coagulated in the floor. Any hoax involving blood taken, for instance, from a blood bank would not coagulate because they are treated with anti-coagulants. That was fresh blood taken from someone and spilled on the floor.

Or, as we now know, it was indeed squirted, as the varicose veins of the lady burst. As those veins, before the event, are already blown up, doctors confirm that people, especially old people, may not realize the burst. The fact the lady was diabetic also contributed for the large amount of bleeding before it stopped. She may have noticed her legs covered in blood, but must have assumed it was the house squirting blood on her, not the other way. Case solved.

The couple, including the lady, is well and fine. The police has confirmed they will archive the case, as there’s no evidence of any criminal intent. Indeed, the peaceful couple didn’t exploit the case despite the great media interest, and still remain anonymous.

Now, varicose veins bursts as explanations for a seemingly paranormal phenomenon, that’s priceless. Your read it here first. You are welcome.

After the invisible gorillas, we now have paranormal varicose – can you come with a better term for this? I’m sure you can, please share it in the comments.

[News source, in Portuguese: Investigação de casa que jorrava sangue está encerrada, diz delegado]

Carey Burtt’s superb “Mind Control Made Easy or How to Become a Cult Leader” (2000).

It may be fun, but this is no comedy, it’s more like a documentary. Cults thrive on our vulnerabilities, and a good demonstration of just how vulnerable we all are was given in a series of experiments conducted by social psychologist Solomon Asch in the 1950s.

In the video above you can watch a modern reproduction of the experiment. All involved are “confederates”, except for the one person who is the unsuspecting subject.

Asked about a simple obvious question, everyone will give correct answers at first, but then will start to give unanimously wrong answers. Again and again.

Will the sole subject eventually give in and give the same, but wrong, answer as all the others?

As you can see, and hundreds of reproductions have confirmed, they eventually do, in an alarming proportion. More than one third of the times the subject gives in to the collective error, and up to three quarters of the subjects eventually gave in at some point.

No one was told to conform. There was nothing to gain or to lose. This is spontaneous social conformity.

“That we have found the tendency to conformity in our society so strong that reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call White Black is a matter of concern. It raises questions about our ways of education and about the values that guide our conduct”, wrote Asch.

Beyond its worrying main results, Asch’s Social Conformity Experiments are also enlightening in their details and variations.

If even one of the confederates gives a different answer, the conformity drops dramatically (from 5% to 10%). And this dissenting minority doesn’t even has to give the correct answer. It just has to manifest a different opinion.

There’s more. The conformity gets stronger when the confederates grow in number from one to three, unsurprisingly. But from three up to 10 to 15 confederates, the conformity don’t keep growing in a significant way. We would expect it to grow in linear form as the group gets bigger, but apparently things do not work that way.

We may also assume that those subjects who eventually gave the wrong answer knew they were wrong, and did so in a conscious manner so as to avoid conflict. But apparently, things do not work that way.

The subjects blamed their errors as their own fault, and even though they may not have been entirely sure of their choice, on the other hand they didn’t consider it clearly incorrect. Cognitive dissonance?

Surprise, surprise, a recent reproduction of the experiment using fMRI (a “brain scan”) suggests that social conformity does indeed alters the perception of reality. The areas of the brain activated during the crucial cases of conformity weren’t those high-level areas dealing with conflict and planning (“I know this is wrong, but I will give the same answer as everyone else”), but those more elementary dealing with perception (“oh well, that thing really looks like the other”).

For more on Asch’s Social Conformity Experiments – including its difference among different countries and between the 1950s and now – check this meta-analysis (PDF). The NYTimes has an item on the recent experiment with brain scans, and the detailed paper of that study can also be read here (PDF).

This is just one of the 5 Psychological Experiments That Prove Humanity is Doomed.

[via MindHacks]

The latest Indiana Jones flick mixes the Crystal Skulls with the Chronicles of Akakor (referred in the movie as “Akator”, probably due to copyright issues), and Philip Coppens has already published a nice article on the whole Akakor thing.

There’s one small detail though, revealed by the Brazilian anthropologist João Américo Peret (in Portuguese). According to Peret,

“The indians like to play a joke and may have played with Tatunca Nara, when they taught him some words from the local language. For instance, Akakor means dysentery. Mongulala means making sex. And Akahin means bathing in the river…”

I couldn’t verify Peret’s claims, as the language he refers to is not Tupi-Guarani, but Peret is indeed a widely recognized researcher and spent many years helping many Indians across the country.

The adventures of the man with a hat are pure entertainment, and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull sure delivers that (spoiler: aliens with crystal skeletons!), even though the Lost City of Dysentery is no match for the Temple of Doom.

“Giant space vegetables ‘could feed the world’“, says the Telegraph, according to which “it is thought the near zero gravity conditions in space result in super-sized fruit and vegetables with a higher vitamin content. … Struggling for space in giant hothouses at the Guandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences are 21lb (9.5kg) tomatoes and enormous watermelons.”

That’s interesting, but some skepticism may be appropriated. They do mention a more down-to-earth value of “harvests which are ten to 20 per cent higher than normal”, a big difference from the “ten times their normal size and weighing more than an average man” vegetables claimed in the same news item. What’s actually going on here? Are giant space vegetables really our salvation?

Well, actually giant vegetables are nothing alien, though this is a perfect excuse to tell the story of a famous Mexican case of the 1970s. It all happened in Valle de Santiago, where a simple peasant, José Carmen García Martínez, managed to harvest giant vegetables, from lettuce to onions, of a truly gigantic size.

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