The Observatory

Larry King: Curing Cancer with Consciousness

When coverage of science goes from ignorant to dangerous

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In the late 1970s, after putting a homemade pyramid on her head, Judy Zebra Knight (neé Judith Darlene Hampton) says Ramtha—a 35,000-year-old warrior who supposedly led an army against the inhabitants of the mythical kingdom of Atlantis—appeared before her and said that he had returned to spread his wisdom using Knight as his human vessel.

Such bouts of wisdom, imparted to Knight’s followers as she “channeled” the warrior spirit—for a substantial fee, of course—included a recommendation to invest in Knight’s fail-proof, Ramtha-backed, Arabian horse-breeding venture (which failed). Knight’s spiritual and publishing business ventures, however, including Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment and the sale of all things Ramtha under the umbrella of JZK Inc., have been glamorous financial successes.

Quack, snake-oil saleswoman, or profiteering prophet—you can call Knight many things, but what you can’t call her is an expert on the science of human consciousness or a medical expert in the field of addiction.

So it was shocking that Larry King and his producers decided to have Knight on as a guest for the August 2 airing of Larry King Live on CNN, on the subject of the science of consciousness, the brain, and addiction. What followed ranged from scientifically suspect to outright dangerous. Here’s an example of an early exchange between host and guest:

KING: Isn’t depression, though—if we can overcome that, of the mind, isn’t it a disease?

KNIGHT: Well, all disease is from an attitude that pushes the button genetically that begins to create those proteins inside of ourselves that are mutated. Depression really, at the root of it, is that if our brain is hardwired like this and we have no neuroplasticity—and that neuroplasticity means that thought can travel to other regions of our brain to where we analyze it and we get greater insight. A person that has depression does not allow the—their brain does not allow the thought to go any further. So it’s in a cycle of thinking emotion, thinking emotion, thinking emotion.

This is a gobbledygook of scientific terms like neuroplasticity (used improperly), and nonsense. The suggestion that all disease is a result of psychological triggers goes beyond negligent. It falls into the same category of thinking that posits people get sick because they are psychologically or intellectually feebleminded.

If that were the extent of the missteps in King’s show, perhaps we could grumble a bit and move on. But things got worse as King’s other guests arrived.

One, Will Arntz, a co-producer of the pseudoscience film What The Bleep Do We Know, is, as it turns out, also a student of Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment.

Dr. Candace Pert, a celebrated neuroscientist, could have helped anchor the show in reality—until you realize that she’s been pushing the new-age line recently, and also appeared in What The Bleep Do We Know, saying she believes that Native Americans were unable to see Columbus’s ships because the ships were so different from anything the Native Americans had ever experienced before.

And then there was Dr. Fred Alan Wolf—another What The Bleep Do We Know talking head—a.k.a. “Dr. Quantum,” the UCLA-trained physicist with a penchant for taking basic quantum physics concepts, merging them with a blurry dose of metaphysics, and presenting this quantum mysticism as science.

Here’s King and Dr. Wolf confusing the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the collapse of quantum wave states and observation, clinical psychology, and metaphysics:

WOLF: The question really is, what do you think you are? Who do you think you are? And can you change who the observer is that you think you are? And the whole idea is—quantum physics says that the observer affects reality. Therefore, if you can change how you go about observing what you call life, you can change the reality that you’re living in, and that is where it comes from. 



KING: All right. Give me a simple example. Give me a situation. 



WOLF: Let’s say that right now you’re sitting and you’re saying, “Oh, I’m so depressed. I feel so bad. I feel terrible.”

I tell people, just do one simple thing. It’s very simple. Ask yourself this question: “Who is feeling depressed?” But don’t answer the question. Just posing the question without answering it changes the chemistry inside the body, and just by asking, you can begin to lift yourself from that depression.

You’ve got to keep doing it for a while because it isn’t like automatic pilot. It’s not like, throw a switch. You’ve got to keep doing it, and after a while you begin to realize that the person who is saying “I am depressed” is not you.

There are snippets of truth throughout most of what King covered with his guests, but that’s what makes all the pseudoscience so much more damaging and misleading. The technical jargon and the insertion of ideas from quantum physics—a field with which it is particularly easy to mesmerize the science-phobic masses—are classic new-age tools for making gibberish sound like truth. (See Dennis Overbye’s Q&A follow-up to his critique of What The Bleep Do We Know at The New York Times.)

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Comments

Marty Murray

Thu 7 Aug 2008 04:20 PM

Clearly all disease is partly expression of sub optimal mental processes and arises out of people's misconceptions of reality. If Russ Juskalian, or anyone else, wants to go over that with me I will be happy to explain it very clearly. I am not sure of the meaning of some of what was said on the show. At the same time, these people are on to something and that needs to be acknowledged whether or not you feel that all of that is being said is correct.

Blake Stacey

Fri 8 Aug 2008 12:38 PM

"Clearly all disease is partly expression of sub optimal mental processes"

For very small values of "partly", perhaps. Bad vibes ain't got nothin' next to cigarettes when it comes to starting cancer.

And stealing jargon from physics in order to shellac your babble with a superficial coat of respectability is way uncool.

S Batchelor

Fri 8 Aug 2008 03:50 PM

With such misleading claims made without challenge on this broadcast, King ought to do a massive follow-up show presenting the actual state of brain/hormone research.

Get "Nova ScienceNow" producers to help -- there's a team doing a fine job of accurate, yet 'entertaining' broadcast presentation, in my opinion.

Kevin Petrovsky

Fri 8 Aug 2008 04:25 PM

I have been following new research into the power of conciousness to affect reality, and it is amazing how much it really can. A large problem that is I see with this research going mainstream is that it has become taboo for science to aknowledge that the oberver has any real effect on the outcome of an experiment. There is no physical test to prove this in a laboratory, and I have read results of studies that indicate conciousness may possibly be affecting physical reality.

Because scientists cannot study the phenomena, you have those with no scientific training attempting to explain these results in scientific terminology, hence Knights misquoting of scientific theory in support of her argument.

To misunderstimate the power of the mind over body has been the largest weakness of modern science.

Leemar

Sat 9 Aug 2008 12:33 AM

JZ Knight is a cult leader. She runs a compound where individuals with extremely weak personalities seek help to validate themselves. What will you get out of it? You may come to view that there is no wrong - there is no right - there are only "experiences". Attending JZ Knight's "school" is a crash course in borderline personality disorder. How do I know? My sister is or was there - her name is Christy White - you can find her at Morningside Services (Google that) and the only thing RSE taught her about conciousness and reality is how to lose both. Check out scams RSE fraud RSE cease and desist RSE factnet ramtha LARSE EMF Ramtha Securities Fraud Ramtha Arabian Horse Ramtha) then tell me I got it wrong.

Judith Stock

Sat 9 Aug 2008 01:01 PM

I was going to subscribe to your publication when the opportunity came in the mail this morning. However, this article shows exactly where you stand. Take the blinders off, jump out of the box, try to look at things differently. No wonder you can't see the sailing ships.

Thought is causative, said Shakespeare. Want to argue with him.

Anna Haynes

Sat 9 Aug 2008 05:58 PM

ah, good ole What The Bleep... it was excruciatingly popular in my community.

A meta-suggestion for CJR:

S Batchelor says
> "With such misleading claims made without challenge on this broadcast, King ought to do a massive follow-up show presenting the actual state of brain/hormone research."

Here you (CJR) are criticising King's show, and commenter S.B. is suggesting that King do a more inform-the-reader-friendly followup; is anyone from CJR contacting King and asking for his response?

CJR helped do it with ABC's anthrax stories (thanks!); what's the argument (if any) *against* making contact-the-target-requesting-response (and-report-the-result) a standard part of media criticism?

(also - do you CJR writers ever participate in discussions down here in the comments section?)

Richard Galenes

Tue 12 Aug 2008 10:09 PM

For a university professor to question the current dogmas of science is to kiss tenure (and possibly your job) good bye.

The dogmas of science are little better than those of the Church and are based on assumptions that are unverified and can never be tested.
Science accepts the validity of the observer and assumption of purely local causes for phenomena. As today's physics would seem to indicate, both of these beliefs are questionable.

True thinkers tend to be held in disrepute during their own time. Only after decades or centuries do their discoveries begin to be accepted.